“We all know,” Cadell said.
Upon landing they were subjected to the ice test. David found it just as nerve wracking this time. How could you really know if the Witmoths had infected you? He had heard that the process was agony, but what if it had grown subtler? He was relieved when nothing more than a wet shirtsleeve resulted. Once given the all clear, the military Aerokin pulled away, swinging around to the perimeter of the city.
A crowd of Drifters waited, wide-eyed and cheering.
They think we are heroes, David thought. When all we did was drop in and run. Hero? I have never been more scared in my entire life. There is nothing I would rather be doing right now than running and not stopping until I am as far away from here as possible, and then running some more.
The moment the test was completed Cadell strode towards the city, pushing through the crowd as he went.
“Where are you going?” David shouted and Cadell stopped, his gaze dark and hard. David quailed beneath that glare, wished he had not asked.
“To the Tower of the Council of Engineers. I have seen what I needed to see, and more. The city must be evacuated, not tomorrow or the next day, but now. Get to the hotel and gather your things. We leave as soon as I return. And if I do not return within twenty four hours, leave without me. Get as far from this damn thing as you can, Kara Jade is paid to take you to Hardacre.”
The crowd closed around him and he was gone from sight.
“Be careful,” David said to Cadell’s back.
Kara Jade patted David on the shoulder, almost jovial. She’d just checked over the Aerokin’s wounds and they’d obviously proven not as bad as she’d feared. “He’s just going to the tower. He’ll be fine. It’s not as if he’s walking back into the Roil.”
No, David thought. He’s going to a different sort of trouble. Different but trouble nonetheless.
Blake and Steel came over from their own ships and both slapped Kara Jade’s back heartily.
“Never in my life have I seen such bravery and stupidity,” Blake said, tugging on his beard. “We went up a little and followed you with our scopes. Through the curtain, into the darkness and we thought you dead regardless of the Roslyn Dawn’s genotype. Bravery and stupidity I say, and in equal measure. But then we’ve learnt to expect it from you, and her.”
“We are all stupid being here,” Kara said as she guided the Dawn’s flagella to the docking bollards. David admired the care she used in looking after the Dawn. “It was both brave and stupid indeed, but we have learnt something. The Roil transforms what it touches, it’s what it does, and it has transformed my heart, magnified my fears.” She looked at her two friends and the next words that came were urgent and troubled. “The Roil has amassed a huge army, bigger than anything that I have seen. Just beyond the Obsidian Curtain, obscured in countless spores, is encamped Chapman’s doom.”
“An Army?” Blake shook his head and raised his hands as though to block out the memory of the words. “This is madness, what does the Roil need of an army? Its great cloud is potent enough, this is cruelty itself, when it starts imitating the ways of humans. Still Drift stands above it all, we are not overly threatened.”
Kara’s face tightened and she stabbed a finger at both of them.
“You are fools if you believe that. Without the Groundlings the city of Drift is nothing. Where will we get our food? With whom shall we trade? And when the Roil closes all the lower skies and swallows the entire earth; when there is naught but Roil beneath us, what shall we do?”
Blake’s eyes widened and his face reddened with shame and a little anger.
“You’re right and I know it. But do you have to be so blunt, girl? After all what can we do?”
Steel who had remained silent through all of this now met Kara’s eye and there was a look in her face, a kind of resolve that almost matched the pilot’s. “I think I know,” she said. “This festival should float.”
Kara nodded
“You should take as many people with you as you can. North to Mirrlees or better yet, beyond the Narung Mountains, into Hardacre where it still passes for cold.”
“We cannot take many,” Blake said.
“Take as many as you can. It can never be enough, but that is all we have now. Half measures and slim hope.”
Chapter 43
The Engine is mad. It was built by the mad. What is hubris if not the grandest of madness? Think of it there, in the Distant North. Consider its endless thought and what it might be scheming with its great clockwork mind. Should its thoughts turn south again, distance alone will not save us.
Its thoughts know nothing of the miles, its thoughts take it everywhere.
He’d delayed when he should have run, but to do what they had wanted of him… He’d doubted more than any of them, and Stade had provided ample distraction.
He could not lie to himself. It had been fun. The chase he’d set Stade’s Vergers, which hadn’t been much of a chase, but a peculiar sort of predation. Oh, and the death he’d meted out, telling himself that it was fair and just. And if any innocents got in the way; if they fell; if he killed them. Well, there were no true innocents, and this game was not a game. Sometimes people died, sometimes quite a lot of them.
Cadell had always been the most sentimental of the Old Men. A dangerous shifting sort of sentiment, one that could both justify and mourn the deaths of so many.
The dozens he had slaughtered these past two years, they were nothing to those many who had died because of him.
Cadell approached the Tower of Engineers as though he owned it. Built in the centre of the city it rose above everything, an imitation of the Breaching Spire. At its crown, bordering the central spike, were the two huge Lights of Reason shining into the sky, a few months ago they would have been illuminating clouds now the rains had gone and they seemed almost to touch the stars. Impressive except that in another few weeks, if that, they would be smothered by the Roil.
The lights represented the ideals of Truth and Reason, but Cadell doubted there would be much of either on display inside the Council Chambers. Otherwise Chapman would have been evacuated weeks before. Had Buchan not been exiled he knew with a certainty the city would be empty of all but the mad.
The great doors were locked, but they opened at the touch of his hand, the locks freezing, then shattering.
Two guards stood at the foyer. They raised their rifles.
“That would not be wise,” Cadell said.
“What do you want?” demanded the nearest guard.
“I must speak with the Council.”
The guards exchanged glances. “The Council is in session. Have you made an appointment?”
“Of course not,” Cadell snapped.
“No reason to be so short tempered,” the guard said.
“Every reason,” Cadell said. “The Roil is about to strike. And I must speak to them one and all, the city must be evacuated.”
“On whose authority do you speak?” One of the guards asked, rolling his eyes.
“My own,” Cadell said and lifted his hand so that the ring he wore was easily visible.
Both guards lifted their eyebrows and lowered their guns.
“If you will excuse me,” one said. “I will have to get someone for you.”
The guard hurried off, leaving his very nervous friend.
“Is it true what you did to those Vergers?”
