middle of the crush. She couldn’t go back. Someone tried to take the child from the woman but she resisted and the child’s small body was tugged between them. Adelaide tried to help the woman move. The woman lashed out and Adelaide tumbled half a flight.
A kick to her bad leg. The pain almost paralysed her. She clawed herself upright.
A colossal rumble from above. Cries, one person to the next It’s coming down! The tower’s coming down!
Adelaide fought her way out of the stairwell, back into the deserted maze. She ran from room to room. Light streamed inside, half-blinding her. Now, when she needed a broken window-wall, there were none. She ran back and forth. Surely this was the same room, hadn’t she been here before?
Finally she found a gap, sharded with glass and dripping ice, barely large enough for her head to fit through. In one corner was a heater, still hot. She swung it at the grimy window-wall. The bufferglass cracked, but did not give. Her palms burned. Again and again she pounded.
The window-wall gave in a rain of bufferglass. Particles showered her hair and clothes. She leaned out and gasped.
She was fifteen floors above the sea, facing the volcanic city. Below, she saw the skadi boats, black dots circling the tower’s base. Above her, the fire. Plumes of smoke rose in other areas of the city. The sky was red and utterly cloudless.
The remaining lights in the city flickered and went out. She knew what that meant. The Guard were rerouting energy. She saw a hive of activity at the base of the adjacent tower, the mouth of a huge cannon, angled upwards. She had heard of these monsters but never seen one until now. The cannon jerked as it began to spit out liquid fire. She, like Vikram, had been deemed dispensable. Who had given the order? Had the skadi overridden her family, or had the Rechnovs consigned her to Axel’s fate?
Flames licked at the tower wall, billowing from broken portals. A piece of burning junk rushed past, narrowly avoiding her head. She ducked back. Beneath her, the foundations growled. Stars, the tower was coming down.
She inched towards the edge. Fear paralysed her.
Somewhere up there was Vikram. No, he couldn’t be, they must have deserted their stations by now-they must see it was futile?
But what if he hadn’t She took a step back, prepared to turn and run back up-she’d deserted him once, she couldn’t do it again-but he’d told her to go The floor shook beneath her. Her feet slid apart.
She leapt, and was surprised for an instant to find herself falling, as though she might have flown after all. The wind flung her limbs wide. The world somersaulted. She strained to point her feet towards the waves-the waves, the sea, so close now-take a breath! she thought, take a deep breath now She smashed into the water. Icy shock, a burn like lye. It coursed up her spine and then she was under.
Water filled her mouth. Her legs flailed. She pushed one toe against the other heel, trying to get rid of her boots. It was stuck, it wouldn’t budge, she needed air Her head broke surface. She dragged in oxygen but another wave pushed her back under. She tugged at the boot, got it free. Her coat weighed her down. She grappled with it before her shoulders shrugged free, then her hands, and she hauled herself once more to the surface Oxygen and noise and light Currents tugged her below. Her arms were no match for the ocean. Bubbles streamed from her mouth. Her lungs burned. She couldn’t fight it for long. She got the next lungful of air and screamed for help. She saw a boat, close enough to reach her. The hull gained and they hadn’t seen her. She floundered to the left to avoid being hit, heard shouts on board, the air full of cries and the smell of fire. Other boats, not far away. Their occupants standing transfixed, the searchlights redundant echoes on the tower Get away, swim, get away Under. Arms and legs barely moving, her body numb everywhere but her heart and lungs. She opened her eyes. Flares of light through the water. Was this how Axel died? Drowning, like Eirik 9968 had drowned, like Adelaide was going to. Had he thought of her at all, falling, dying? Did he have time to think? Did the sea take him quickly? Did he open his mouth to welcome the water?
She drifted.
They were drowning, she and Axel. They did everything together. It made sense that they would die together.
But Axel’s not here.
She kicked. She broke surface, heaved. Water streamed from her mouth. She spat, gulped in air. She would live. She would.
Fighting to stay afloat, she saw a terrible and unreal sight. The leaning tower began to shudder. Ablaze, it collapsed in on itself like a castle made of sand. One moment it was there, black and burning. The next there was only a strip of lightening sky.
The sea boiled. She screamed.
Vikram!
Hands hauled her out of the water. She fell back into the stern of a boat. She lay prostrate, unable to speak, staring at the space where the tower had been.
“It’s alright, we’ve got you.”
“Breathe easy now, cough up that water.”
Two westerners leaned over her, a man and a woman. Their faces were thin and anxious.
The sound came then, a high, eerie, keening sound. She did not realize at first that the noise came from her. Even when she knew, she found that she could not stop, even when the woman crouched close to her, patted her shoulder gently, and the boat sped away from that absence on the horizon, from the fire on the surface, everything growing smaller, everything fading.
“It’s alright,” they said. “You’re safe now. You’re out.”
50 ADELAIDE
I n the night, the bodies that they found were piled onto rafts. They stiffened and frosted. The flames would unglue them. The mourners gathered in boats and wept, but no words, no tears passed Adelaide’s lips or eyes. She watched as a woman with long grey hair was ferried from raft to raft. The woman drew a line of salt on their foreheads and then she poured oil onto the human pyres.
The mourners threw burning torches through the air. Flames leapt from the oil; embraced the hands and feet and faces of the dead. They wore no shoes. Their shoes had been taken for others to use. Her rescuers said they would not mind.
The fires crackled and spat. She watched the flames unravelling vessels that had held running blood, flickering consciousness; returning matter to the ashes and salt it had once been. The bodies, none of which she had recognized as his, were swarmed by smoke.
Austral lights glimmered overhead. In another week it would be midwinter night. Four boats towed the pyres away. They glided on their final journeys, the cradles of fire dimmer and dimmer, out to the ring-net. She wanted to call out-stop! Don’t take them! Don’t exile them. Just in case he was there. In case he could not get back in.
Now a soft keening filled the air. It was a sound like none Adelaide had heard before, neither crying nor song. The wind was in it, the waves. The ghosts, too.
She imagined Vikram’s ghost was standing beside her, seeing what she saw, hearing what she heard. He asked, “What do you want to do?”
She looked at the tiny lights on the ocean surface.
“I have to get into the Silk Vault. There’s something there that I need to see.”
“And then?”
“I want to disappear.”
EPILOGUE
