“I care about Dean,” I blurted. That was a truth I didn’t have to question, ever. Dean, aside from Nerissa and Conrad, was always first in my thoughts. “Just as much as you do. He saved my life. I’m not trying to lead him astray or get him in trouble, but he should be able to have his own life in the Iron Land if he wants it.”
“No, he should not,” Shard said shortly. “Saying that just proves how young and unsuited for
“Yes, Commander,” said the Erlkin, and moved for me. Before she could close her hands around my arm, an alarm began to whoop from the flight console.
“Commander!” the pilot shouted. “Contact on the aether waves! Bearing one-zero-two!”
“Show me,” Shard said tensely. The Erlkin she’d snapped at darted back to her station.
“This ping,” said the pilot, pointing to a radio screen. A large, wavering blob appeared and disappeared under the stroke of the aether detector. “Huge.” She flipped another switch. “And closing in fast.”
I felt the fear return, smooth and cold as an iron ball in my stomach. Whatever was out there in the fog, I knew from the prickles all over my exposed skin that it wasn’t going to be a friendly encounter.
“We’re being hailed!” another Erlkin at the side console shouted.
“Put it through the aethervox,” said Shard. A moment of static blanketed all other sound, and then a voice I thought I’d only hear again in my nightmares barked out of the cloth-covered speakers mounted at the apex of the glass bubble.
“This is Grey Draven, Director of the Bureau of Proctors. You are an enemy vessel, carrying fugitives. You are ordered to heave to and surrender any wanted criminals on board.”
I froze. I couldn’t have moved for anything in the world, no longer able to pretend that Draven wouldn’t find me. Before I’d spoken to the Wytch King, I’d fervently hoped that Draven had died, like so many in Lovecraft, when the Engine was destroyed. Failing that, I’d simply hoped to run forever and never have to look at his face again. But he was out there, in the fog, inexorable, and I was never going to escape.
Draven, while he was alive, was never going to leave me be.
Shard cut her gaze to me, then shoved the radio operator out of the way and depressed the return switch, a finely wrought ebony knob. “You’re out of your depth, Mr. Draven. The Proctors don’t rule here, and no humans are wanted by the likes of you once you cross the borders of the Mists. Go home.”
“I know you have her.” Draven’s voice was precise and flat as a scalpel blade. “Don’t play games with me, you goblin bitch.”
I watched Shard’s back stiffen, but she was all calm as she responded. “Go home, Mr. Draven. I don’t know how you got to the Mists, but leave. There’s nothing for you here.”
Draven laughed. “I came through the Gates, of course. The gates Miss Grayson so kindly ripped asunder when she destroyed the Engine in my city.” A pause, while Shard turned to stare at me. “Oh, I’m sure she didn’t tell you that,” Draven purred. “That she’s the reason for all of this misery. That with her unnatural talents, she sent a pulse of power from the Engine to the Gates so great that it shattered the very fabric between our worlds and all the others, that she destroyed countless innocent lives, that she’s a traitor to her kind, prey to the honeyed words of the Fae.”
Shard took a step toward me, another. Her eyes weren’t flat now. She’d been proven right. I was nothing but a criminal, something foul that had contaminated her little flying world. I was in deep trouble, and began to consider where I could run to. Nowhere good.
“Commander,” said the pilot. “We have visual contact.”
Shard let her gaze wander from me, and we both stared as a dirigible hove out of the mists. It was the largest I had ever seen, a zeppelin with its rigid balloon painted matte black and embossed with the gold seal of the Proctors, raven’s wings stamped just underneath the gear and sickle, the symbol of the Master Builder, the false god Draven and his kind had created to replace magic and religion.
The dirigible was running red lanterns, a color aether took on when it was treated with other chemicals to burn brighter or hotter or longer. The hull was silver and looked like the body of a beast that lived deep under the ocean and only surfaced in legend, when it feasted on what floated above.
Gatling guns swiveled toward Windhaven from the hull, their cylinders turning slowly, and the dirigible was so close I swore I could count the individual bullets waiting to stream forth and puncture the glass bubble we stood in.
Shard swore, a coarse, barking word I didn’t understand but recognized instantly as a curse. “Evasive action,” she snapped. “Get us out of their fire zone!”
“Headwind, Commander,” the pilot said. “We can’t.”
“You have a choice, Erlkin,” Draven’s voice purred. “It’s an easy one. Give me Aoife Grayson or I blow that floating scrap heap out of the sky.”
I backed toward the door, desperate to get away from Draven’s voice and the view of his great dark shadow of an airship. If I couldn’t see or hear him, I could pretend this wasn’t happening. Shard wasn’t paying attention to me now. She was screaming orders, and her crew was scrambling to obey.
“I guess you’ve made your choice,” Draven said. “Too bad.” With that, tracers of orange fire streaked across the distance between the zeppelin and Windhaven. One shell shot through the glass of the pilothouse and embedded itself in the far wall. Wind screamed through the opening, and cracks like spiderwebs spread from the hole. Windhaven appeared to be well armored, but Draven’s gunners had been lucky, and the glass fell away in jagged slices as the negative pressure fought with the bullet holes.
“Return fire!” Shard bellowed. “Don’t let them get another shot like that!”
I bumped into the hatch and reached behind me to spin the wheel. My heart was hammering in time with the rounds from the Gatling guns on Draven’s airship. I couldn’t think beyond the cold fact that we had to get off Windhaven before Draven boarded it and found us. If he’d already tracked us here, there was nowhere I could truly hide from him. Draven was relentless. Eventually he’d board Windhaven, and then we’d be, as Cal would put it, screwed up like sugar in the gearbox.
I’d known Draven was depraved and possibly insane, but obsessive enough to track me into a foreign land full of hostile Erlkin? I shuddered to think what he’d do if he actually caught me again.
I slipped out through the hatch, unnoticed by any of the crew, and fled down the corridor, back the way I’d come. Windhaven jolted and swayed under round after round of fire, and there was a shriek followed by a thump that rocked me off my feet, sending vibrations through the entire hull.
Some kind of antiaircraft projectile. Windhaven righted, but I felt a change in the tenor of the turbines. We’d been hit, and a dip in my stomach told me the craft was losing altitude.
Hands took me by the arm and tried to right me, and I swatted at them reflexively.
“Relax!” Dean shouted over the whooping alarms and thudding of projectiles as Windhaven and the dirigible exchanged fire. “It’s me. Just me.”
“Thanks be for small favors,” I said, slumping. “We have to go, Dean. Now.”
His face was grim, and his jaw twitched when he nodded. “Yeah. Figure no good’s going to come of me staying here. My mother can take care of herself.”
I let him pull me to my feet. “Where are Conrad and the others?” I said.
“Cal and Bethina are in the regular cabins like you,” Dean told me. “My mother put Conrad in a holding cell down near the engine room.”
“Of course she did,” I muttered. Nothing could ever be easy on me and my family. “Is there a way we can tell Cal and Bethina how to meet us at the balloon bay?”
“There’s aethervox between the rooms, yeah,” Dean said. We stopped at a red iron box with a symbol stamped on the outside, three lines rising from a triangle. Dean picked up the handset and cranked a knob to bring up power, then turned two dials, one for deck number and one for room.
Erlkin were beginning to fill the corridor around us, rushing to and fro. Nobody paid any attention to me, since I was with Dean and they had more pressing matters, like the ever-increasing tilt of the floor beneath our feet. The hit to the bridge must have been worse than it looked. We were falling, and at a rate of speed that made my stomach float slightly off center, a sick reminder of the impact that awaited us. I’d brought Draven here, and now I’d destroy Windhaven like I’d destroyed Lovecraft—unless I got off the ship and directed Draven’s rage away from
