“Dissection?” said Oliver, straining to move his arm.
“Ah yes,” said Lord Gilbert. “You wouldn’t know about such things. But you’ll learn! A dissection involves slicing up the device into its constituent components, so that I can learn how it performs the transport without damaging its cargo.”
Oliver glared at Two. “Liar! You said it wouldn’t be hurt! You—”
“I didn’t know!” protested Two. “I thought—”
“Olivers!” shouted Lord Gilbert. “Rule one in this house is that there is to be no fighting! Oliver One, you really must learn some manners. Manners are one of the first things I was forced to teach young Two here, after his parents’ disappearance.”
“Your one-track mind, my boy,” said Lord Gilbert severely, “is becoming quite irritating. I see that I shall have to teach you some manners as well, now that you are living here with me.”
“I’m not living with you,” said Oliver, glaring. “I’m taking the kite and finding my great-uncle and going home.”
Lord Gilbert licked his lips. “Oh, you will live with me indeed. You shall assist me with my experiments. And you shall make me many more hunters.”
Oliver was stunned. “You want
“Of course!” snapped Lord Gilbert. “Using your extraordinary kitesmithing talents, the same as Two. I provide the brains and he provides the kite! I need more hunters, many more, and with two of you I can double the output!”
Oliver was just opening his mouth to tell the bitter truth about his kitesmithing skills when the HM IV suddenly emitted a loud, birdlike chirp. Lord Gilbert grinned. “Ah, my creations have returned.” He twisted the dial on the HM IV, and Oliver sensed feeling returning to his arms and legs. He stood immediately.
“Now don’t get any ideas, Oliver One,” warned Lord Gilbert. He waved the HM IV threateningly. “Let’s go see my hunters.” He gestured, and Oliver went grudgingly onto the balcony at the top of the steps. Lord Gilbert followed.
Oliver stepped outside into a blustery, late-morning wind. Instantly, his piercing headache returned. He closed his eyes, wincing.
“Something wrong?” asked Lord Gilbert idly, coming alongside.
Not wanting to show any weakness, Oliver took his hands from his head, formulating a sarcastic reply. He opened his mouth to deliver it—
and opened his eyes—
In all the history of Windblowne, going back 455 years, the giant oaks had always stood unyielding. They gave the people of Windblowne homes and protection. No one in Windblowne could ever consider harming an oak.
Or so Oliver had thought.
If you had asked him what the most terrible, horrible thing you could possibly do to an oak would be, Oliver might have said, with a shudder, “Cut it down.”
Now Oliver saw there was a far worse fate, and it was the fate of the great oak nearest Lord Gilbert’s treehouse.
For Lord Gilbert had touched another button on the HM IV, and the big metal gates next to the treehouse had slid smoothly aside, revealing an oak, or what was left of one.
The oak had been stripped of its branches and split down its center. The two broken halves leaned out to either side, where they sagged against supporting struts made of metal. Tubes running into the tree seemed to be collecting sap, and the oak was scorched and burned in many places. It was pierced by spikes covered with blinking lights. Surrounding all of this was a mass of cables, spilling from the base of the tall metal shaft and spiraling around the oak before twisting into openings connected to humming machines. Amid the jumble of machines was a large, mirror-like disc, the place at which all of the tubes from the mutilated oak converged. The oak was ripped and gutted and torn and broken. The ground around the tree, however, was well-tended, and another machine was carefully applying water around the roots.
Horror-struck, Oliver realized the oak was still alive.
“I see you’re admiring my project,” said Lord Gilbert proudly. “Isn’t it marvelous? All those little machines working as one.” He glanced at the sky. “Ah, my hunters have returned. And they’ve brought me a present!”
Oliver, glad to look at anything besides the tortured oak, looked up. Seven dark dots, arcing and weaving, had appeared against the sky.
Lord Gilbert went on. “A kite, Oliver One, can be more than a silly toy made from bamboo and silk. It can also be a beautiful, deadly predator, a hunter of the sky, made much more dangerous by my brilliant—” He broke off, frowning and flicking buttons on the HM IV. “Why haven’t they got it yet?”
The dark dots drew closer. Oliver could see that one of them was the crimson kite, darting about, trying to break free from the orb of hunters that surrounded it. At each dart, one of the hunters flew swiftly to intercept. With each of these maneuvers, the kite was forced closer to the treehouse. In seconds they were directly overhead.
Lord Gilbert muttered angrily and jabbed a button on the HM IV, and the shrieking hunters collapsed upon the kite.
Oliver cried out as the crimson kite burst free in a desperate dive.
One hunter, wings folded, dove after it.
The kite streaked directly at the machine, threading a harrowing path through the wires, the hunter only inches behind. At the last moment, the crimson kite pitched upward. Unable to react, the hunter slammed into the mirror disc with a thunderous crack. Blinking lights went wild as sparks and smoke exploded from the machines around the oak. The hunter ricocheted off the disc, banged into the metal treehouse wall, and collapsed onto the balcony.
Lord Gilbert howled and raced to the balcony railing.
Oliver found himself at the top of the steps, shouting. For a moment he thought the crimson kite might be able to fly to him, and they could somehow escape. But the remaining five hunters had taken a tactically commanding position above the disc. The crimson kite flew straight into them and was attacked immediately. Then all of them were obscured by the smoke pouring from below.
Oliver whirled toward the damaged hunter, which was writhing and jerking on the balcony floor.
Oliver had never seen anything like this kite. It had the trim frame and bowed spars of a fighter but the shape of a hawk, with an array of metal spars forming a skeletal head and body. Knifelike talons protruded from the ends of what would be its legs. The sails were made of something, not silk, that Oliver didn’t recognize. One of its wings flicked up, and Oliver saw gears and spokes, meshing and grinding as the hunter struggled on the balcony. It flipped itself onto its back, and beneath the head Oliver spotted a metal box with a kind of screen that emitted horrid sounds—buzzes and whirs and hisses and shrieks like nothing Oliver had ever heard before.
And then something on the metal box clicked open. A glass eye.
Oliver stumbled backward, frightened, as the thing jerked about, shrieking, metal talons scrabbling on the balcony.
The flock of hunters flew out of the smoke. Four of them glided gracefully to the balcony railing. The last circled just overhead, screeching triumphantly. Oliver saw the crimson kite twitching helplessly, clenched in metal talons.
Lord Gilbert glared at Oliver. “Well,” he said, his voice tight with anger, “it seems your friend put up quite a fight.” He touched a button on the HM IV, which gave a whistle, and held out his arms.
The hunter swooped in toward the balcony and released its quarry. The kite fell into Lord Gilbert’s hands.
Lord Gilbert’s face was filled with fury. Oliver looked at the kite and cried out. It had been terribly hurt. Half its tail was torn away, and there were two long slashes in its sails. Lord Gilbert clenched it in quivering hands that had turned bloodless white. The kite trembled painfully, ripped and wounded and helpless.
Then Lord Gilbert’s look of fury vanished, and his face went suddenly, terribly, cold. “You,” he said grimly, “you’ll never escape from me again.”
And then, with one swift and devastating move, he grasped the spine of the crimson kite and snapped it in
