beginning to overwhelm them: the whistling wind-scream of the falling airship. Taziri ripped the engine panels away and hauled herself up against the metal box where her massive batteries huddled in three rows, daisy-chained together just below the decoy steam engine.
“Damn resistors!”
She tore the main cable off the lead battery with her bare hand and felt ten thousand bees racing under her skin as the connection was broken and the propellers fell eerily silent. Her utility knife was already open in her other hand and she hacked the fat black resistor off the cable and then jammed it back under the battery terminal’s latch. A fiery shower of sparks leapt toward her goggled eyes as the propellers roared back to life and the airship surged forward.
For a moment, they continued to fall with the Halcyon ’s glassless cockpit still pointed at the jagged mountain face. But then the deck leveled out and the view raced upward in a blur of rock and scrub brush until a dozen massive temples and palaces and towers appeared ahead. Taziri dashed back to her seat and squinted through her partially scorched goggles at the airfield. The heavy cannons at the edge of the city were still firing and she could hear the bullets whining past them, but she didn’t hear a single ping against the Halcyon ’s hull.
Taziri focused on the prow of the queen’s skybarge, on the shining cockpit of the Star of Orossa. “A little to port! A little bit more!”
“I’ve got it!”
“Just a little more!”
For a moment, Taziri let her eyes wander a bit to the side and she realized that although they were still falling, it was only at a shallow angle. The Halcyon was screaming along, faster than she had ever flown before, but she was almost level to the ground. Suddenly the view was obscured by a wall of gray as the tiny airship plunged into the Upper City, hurtling over a street through a sculpted canyon of stone and steel. Ahead, the airfield had erupted into chaos. People were running in every direction, some toward the queen but most away from the skybarge. Chaou was nowhere to be seen.
Taziri grabbed Ghanima’s shoulder. “Steady! Steady! You’ve got it!”
“I know! Shut up!”
The Star of Orossa filled their forward view. There was nothing but gas bag and gondola, and the slender strip of grass beneath them.
“You’ve got it!”
“I said I know!”
A dripping icicle of horror suddenly plunged into Taziri’s bowels as the golden airship and the ground thundered up to smash the Halcyon. She wrapped her arms around Ghanima and tried to haul her out of the pilot’s seat, but she slipped and fell to the floor behind the cockpit as they crashed to earth.
The sounds of crunching metal and screaming people rose to such unbearable decibels that all Taziri could hear was a painful screeching white noise as the deck drove into the airfield and everything inside the Halcyon that wasn’t bolted down flew forward. Taziri tumbled up against the back of the pilot’s seat, wrenching her neck and shoulders. Through her narrowed eyes, she watched the engine compartment of her ship tear itself in half as the electric motors and propellers plowed into the ground and ripped the walls of the Halcyon away. The little steam engine popped free without a sound and disappeared into the air and her batteries full of acid and sharp metal plates tumbled out of the stern and rained down on the three human bodies in the cockpit.
And then everything was still.
Taziri slowly lifted her head, then ran her trembling hands over her own body. She discovered a rectangular, acid-soaked plate impaled in her right kidney. For a moment, she could not process the idea of something stabbing through her body, but the moment passed. She grabbed the plate with shaking fingers and eased it out of her flesh. Her world went white, spinning and hazy, nauseated and cold, but only for a second, and with her left hand clamped over her bleeding wound, she sat up.
The first thing she noticed was that she was sitting on the grass looking at the crumpled remains of the Halcyon, which lay half-buried under the crumpled remains of the Star of Orossa. The second thing she noticed was that she was no longer inside her airship. The sun had just peeked over the eastern ridge and was stabbing her eyes through mud-caked goggles. Taziri pulled away her headgear and stared around for a moment, dazed and blinking.
Everything hurt, but the pain in her body was distant and confused, obscured by the pain in her skull. Like a puppet on shredded strings, she stood up and stumbled toward the wreckage, not really seeing the great scar in the earth stretching out behind the Halcyon, not really hearing the voices of the dozens of people around him. Everything was too unreal, too sharp, too bright.
One by one, a few facts trickled into her head. Words and names came into focus. Ghanima. Syfax. She glanced around but couldn’t see them. A high-pitched whine of white noise stabbed at her ears while green and purple spots danced across her vision. At her feet, she saw burnt and broken things she knew she should recognize, but didn’t. Bits of glass and metal sparkled in the dirt. A propeller stood leaning in the earth like a crooked tombstone just a few yards away. A wrench. A valve. A gauge. Taziri stumbled through the wreckage, breathing short, shallow breaths through clenched teeth as she clutched her side. She paused and glanced up. In the distance, off toward the west, she saw the gas bag of the Star of Orossa spiraling up into the sky, and she smiled.
That’s good. I think.
A wave of dizziness washed through her aching head and she shuffled a little farther around the remains of the skybarge, but all she saw were bits of airships and clumps of dirt. With a shiver and a sigh, she started walking toward the people on the far side of the field.
Maybe they know what happened.
Chapter 45. Lorenzo
The hidalgo stared down the hallway of the royal palace. At the far end he saw people dashing back and forth down the connecting corridor, alternately grim-faced and panicking. Servants, soldiers, and ladies in elaborate dresses. Lorenzo touched his medallion and reflected for a moment on what a strange week he was having. And then he ran.
One of Lady Sade’s maids had taken Qhora away for some sort of private discussion about their meeting with the queen. He had almost insisted on going with her, but she assured him that she would be fine, and he had trusted her. His quiet time alone lasted a little over ten minutes before the gunfire began and he raced out into the hall.
He charged down hallway after hallway, shouldering through the crowds, apologizing to each person he collided with. His hand clutched the spot on his belt where his sword should have been. Now it was sitting in a guard station down at the bottom of the Royal Road.
Every hallway and doorway and stairway looked the same to him, equally new and equally unhelpful. People were pouring in and out every which way, offering him no hint as to where the danger was. He grabbed a young man carrying a pitcher of water and asked, “What’s happening? What were those shots?”
“I don’t know!” The porter trembled. “Something about assassins in the palace. Assassins with guns! Lady Sade is dead, and some old woman, and I don’t know!”
“Where are they? Where is Lady Sade?”
“The Morning Garden. Back that way, turn right, end of the hall, in the courtyard on your left. I think.” The porter pointed down the hall, then backed away a few nervous steps, and darted off in the opposite direction.
Lorenzo ran. He found the Morning Garden with a crowd of soldiers standing in the warm light on the grass around a profusion of bodies on the ground. He rushed around the corner and ran straight into a man in a white uniform, his face obscured by a white veil. The guard shoved him with the side of his rifle. “Stay back.”
The hidalgo peered over the man’s shoulder and saw Lady Sade sprawled against the wall, her chest painted red, her eyes open and vacant. On the ground by her foot was another woman with two medics working furiously on a wound in her belly. To the left were four other women, all pinned on the ground beneath the other guards, and in the corner a huddle of children were being detained at gunpoint.
