‘Hot air from vents to the west blowing over cold meltwater rivers running off the Eastern Plateau,’ Jez replied absently.
‘Oh.’
The conversation lapsed for a time.
‘Cap’n?’ Jez queried, when things had become sufficiently uncomfortable. ‘Are we going?’
Frey thought about sharing his idea with them. He could offer to cut them loose and go his own way. Wouldn’t that be the decent thing? Then nobody had to go down into the Boneyard. Least of all him.
But it all seemed a bit much to try and explain it now. Things had gone too far. He was resigned to it. Easier to go forward than back.
Besides, he thought, in a rare moment of careless bravado, nothing clears up a hangover like dying.
He arranged himself in his seat and released aerium gas from the ballast tanks, adding a little weight to the craft. The Ketty Jay began to sink into the mist.
The altimeter on the dashboard ticked steadily as they descended. The world dimmed and whitened beyond the windglass of the cockpit. The low hum of the electromagnets in the aerium engines was the only sound in the stillness.
‘Come to one thousand and hold steady,’ Jez instructed, hunched over her charts at her cramped desk. Her voice sounded hollow in the tomb-like atmosphere.
‘Crake?’
‘Still nothing.’
They’d puzzled over the compass for most of the day, but nobody had been able to decipher its purpose. The lack of markings to indicate North, South, East or West suggested that it wasn’t meant for navigation. The four needles, which seemed capable of swinging independently of one another, made things more confusing. And then there were the numbers. Nobody knew what they meant.
They’d established that each pair of number sets corresponded to a different arrow. The pair of number sets marked ‘1’ matched the arrow marked ‘1’. Each number was set on a rotating cylinder, like the readout of the altimeter, and presumably displayed the numbers zero to nine. The upper set of each pair had two digits, allowing a count from 00 to 99. The lower set had the same, but was preceded by a blank digit. All the numbers except this blank were set at zero.
Frey had the sense that this compass was vital to their survival in Rook’s Boneyard. They were in danger until they could work out what it did. But right now it didn’t seem to be doing anything.
Frey brought the Ketty Jay to a hover when his altimeter showed they were a klom above sea level, down among the feet of the mountains. The mist had thickened into a dense fog, and the cockpit had darkened to a chilly twilight. Frey knew better than to use headlamps, which would only dazzle them; but he turned on the Ketty Jay’s belly lights, hoping they’d provide some relief against the gloom. They did, but only a little.
‘Alright, Cap’n,’ said Jez. ‘Ahead slow, keep a heading of two-twenty, stay at this altitude.’
‘We’ll start at ten knots,’ he replied.
‘Right.’ Jez looked at her pocket watch. ‘Go.’
Frey eased the Ketty Jay forward, angling to the new heading. The sensation of flying blind, even at crawling speed, was terrifying. He suddenly found a new respect for Harkins, who had chased a Swordwing at full throttle through the mist after the destruction of the Ace of Skulls. That nervy, hangdog old beanpole was braver than he seemed.
For long minutes, they moved forward. Nobody said anything. Frey could
