one more time. But this time he had hardly pumped a dozen times before the noise of the bellows changed, and he suddenly found his hands moving without resistance. He stopped, leaned over. “Damn,” he said. “The bellows have busted. That’s that, then.”
“Won’t the heat keep filling the envelope without the bellows?” Brenna said, looking up at the distended blue silk.
“Some,” said Anton. “But not enough. And we’ve got to throw it overboard, anyway.”
“What? Why?”
“It’s full of hot coals, Brenna. When we hit, we’re going to tip. And then…”
Brenna pictured what that could mean, and jumped to her feet.
The mageservants had carried the stove to the airship on a palette with four crisscrossed wooden staves forming handles. Together, she and Anton lifted it, still hot, teetered to the edge of the gondola, and tipped it over the side.
The airship lurched skyward as the weight left it. Brenna, looking down and behind, saw the stove crash to the ice, disappearing in a cloud of steam as it spilled its burning coals. A moment later Anton heaved what was left of the coal over the side, as well.
Anton went forward, Brenna trailing him, and together they gazed out over the ice. Snow blowing and drifting across it obscured the view ahead. They could see nothing but white haze: no sign of the far shore. “At least ice makes for a smooth landing,” Anton said, as if to himself.
Brenna remembered the scene she had found when the airship had crashed in the trees outside the manor, Anton hanging from the rigging, dripping blood, the Professor dead in the snow, and swallowed.
They dropped lower and lower, flying in eerie silence broken only by the faint creak of rope against wicker as the gondola swayed. The snow-swept ice beneath them seemed to move faster and faster as they crept ever closer to it. The shadow of the airship, stretched out in front of them as the sun set behind them, grew bigger and longer every second.
“Any minute now,” Anton said. He abruptly grabbed a rope, turned, sat down in the gondola, and pulled Brenna down beside him.
“What’s the rope?” she said.
“Vent cord,” Anton replied tersely, which did nothing to enlighten her.
Brenna had thought it frightening enough being able to see the lake surface rising beneath them. She found it absolutely terrifying to not be able to see it, to not know for certain when-
They hit the ice.
The first blow tossed her across the gondola on top of Anton, who pushed her away and gave the rope he held a furious tug. She heard a ripping sound above her.
They must have bounced; they came down again, not as hard. The envelope was deflating above them, and looking up, she saw the big square holes in the top of the envelope and realized that the rope Anton had pulled had opened them, letting the last of the warm air stream out. But the wind had its teeth into them now, dragging them across the ice like a dead rat in the mouth of a cat. The gondola tipped on its side, and only Anton’s grip kept them both from tumbling out. She seized his arm with one hand and one of the loops of rope set as handholds inside the gondola with the other. She could hear the ice scraping beneath them, could turn her head and see the dark gray surface rushing by not a foot away. She could see nothing of what lay ahead of them, the envelope, now only a third its former size, still blocking the view. It shrank further, and then, abruptly, collapsed completely. The gondola slid forward into a welter of ropes and blue silk, spun slightly to the right, and then stopped.
Brenna found herself lying on top of Anton. She pushed herself off him, rolled over, and sat up. “Are you all right?” she asked.
He nodded, his face white. She realized suddenly that this second crash in an airship must have been even more frightening for him than for her. “I’m… fine,” he said. “And I think the airship is undamaged, too.” He gave her a crooked smile. “The Professor used to say any landing you could walk away from is a good one.” The smile faded. “Neither one of us walked away from the last one. So this is definitely an improvement.”
“Let’s see where we are.” Brenna scrambled out of the gondola, and stood up. She found herself facing southwest, staring along the long gray track the gondola had made as it had scraped snow from the ice.
Then she looked the other way.
They’d been closer to land than she’d thought. Just at the limit of visibility rose a line of spruce, shadows in the blowing snow.
And then a piece of shadow detached itself from that line. It rushed toward them, taking shape as it drew nearer, until she recognized it a sled drawn by a team of dogs.
“Company,” Anton said from behind her. “Friendly?”
Brenna moved closer to him. “We’ll know soon enough.”
Silent, they stood and waited for the dogsled to arrive.
Karl woke to find himself lying, fully clothed, in a strange bed. He felt a moment of panic, trying to remember where he was… then the events of the previous night came rushing back and he sat up.
He had a terrible taste in his mouth, an urgent need to relieve his bladder, and a strong desire for fresh clothes: those he wore had a definite horsiness to them.
In the Palace, he had an enchanted chamber pot that instantly whisked all wastes away in a flash of blue light. The cracked porcelain pot he found under the bed… didn’t. But it served the purpose. He closed it and put it at the foot of the bed, not knowing what else to do with it.
Then he went to the door and tried to open it. Rather to his surprise, it swung wide.
He’d had only a confused impression of the house the night before. He remembered climbing the stairs, and there they were, leading down; but he hadn’t noticed that this upper hallway went on a lot farther than he would have thought from the way the house looked from outside. There was no one around, and though hunger was now clamoring for a place at his mental table, he told it firmly to wait and went exploring instead.
He quickly figured out how the trick was accomplished. The farmhouse wasn’t just nestled against the hillside, as he had noted when they’d ridden up, it was attached to the hillside, the corridor extending not just under the slate roof that showed outside, but through an open door that (Karl confirmed) looked like a wall when it was closed. A secret door, a secret hallway, he thought. I could be in one of Verdsmitt’s mystery plays.
He walked into the underground portion of the hall. There wouldn’t be much point of a secret hallway if there weren’t also a secret exit out of it, and sure enough, at the end of the hall another door opened into a narrow staircase he presumed climbed up to the top of the hill
… though he could only presume it because, in the chamber at the bottom of those stairs, Jopps and Denson sat playing cards by the light of a lantern, a handful of small coins spread on the table between them. They glanced up.
“Um,” said Karl. “Just exploring.”
“Not this way, you’re not,” said Denson. He tossed a card on the table; Jopps swore and threw down his own cards. Denson scooped up the coins.
“That’s ten gelts you’ve won off me,” Jopps complained. “I’m beginning to think you’re cheating.”
“If I were cheating,” Denson said, “I’d have won a hundred by now.”
“What time is it?” Karl asked.
“Couldn’t tell you,” Jopps said cheerfully. “But getting on toward sunset, I’d say. You’ve slept the day away.”
Sunset! By now Falk would know Karl was missing. He’d probably even discovered that he’d gone through the Barrier… into the Common part of New Cabora.
Which means he’ll take it out on the Commons, Karl thought uneasily. That’s why they wanted me out of the city. But what will he do?
“Where’s Vinthor?” he said.
“Downstairs sipping wine with our host, I shouldn’t wonder,” Denson growled. “While we’re stuck up here with each other.”
“Shut up and deal,” Jopps said. “At least we’re inside. Them that are outside are envying us right about now.”
Denson shrugged. “There is that.” He shuffled the cards and started dealing.
Karl went back down the hidden corridor, into the “real” corridor, and down the stairs. Vinthor, it turned out,
