Every catwalk she passed was empty, but as she circled the inner circumference of Ondinium Mountain, she saw offices built into the walls and opening out onto the metal walkways. She wondered if the chamber's emptiness were normal or if the Engine had been abandoned only because of the wireferry explosion.
Cristof was right, though. There had to be another way into the chamber. Those giant gears and mainsprings would never fit through the hall and stairwell they'd taken.
It probably was a state secret.
At last she spotted a crosswalk running perpendicular to the catwalk, stretching out across the empty space to end in a small platform beside the Great Engine. Taya caught a thermal current and let herself rise higher again, squinting down at it.
Was that someone on the platform next to the Engine? Despite the glaring, unnatural light, she found it difficult to discern whether it was a human figure or a trick of the chamber's constantly moving shadows. She tilted her wings and tailset and swept back down again.
The figure turned, and Taya caught a glimpse of a startled, uplifted face.
She gasped and tilted too far. The air broke around her and she tumbled, one wing catching beneath her and twisting.
For a moment the walls and Engine spun and gravity fought ondium for possession of her body. Heart pounding, Taya contorted herself, throwing her arms wide and arching her back. The fall didn't frighten her nearly as much as the intruder — she knew how to deal with gravity and open air. She gave one last half-spin until she was falling face-down again. Then she swept her arms down, hard, feeling metal feathers snap shut against each other to catch air.
Something burned across the back of her left leg and she flinched. Her downsweep checked her fall and propelled her back up. Taya aimed herself at the metal-mesh crosswalk overhead, her eyes fixed on the ondium rods that crisscrossed its bottom and held it suspended. She spread her wings again and felt a welcome push of hot air as excess pressure was released from one of the steam engines far below.
Her calf was starting to hurt. She looked down, but she couldn't see anything beneath the hinged bars that extended from the armature back to her tailset.
She looked back up.
The intruder was crouched on the catwalk, staring down through the meshwork. Amazement and admiration gleamed in his green eyes as he gazed at her.
She hadn't been mistaken.
The intruder was Alister Forlore, complete with embroidered robes, jeweled ornaments, and an ivory mask hanging from his belt.
Their eyes met, and for a moment all Taya could think of was how relieved Cristof would be that his brother was alive. Then she realized what that meant, and a surge of righteous anger swept away her relief.
The decatur looked up, then leaped to his feet, holding out a hand as if to stop something.
Taya craned her neck over her shoulder and saw a lictor standing on the side catwalk, aiming an air rifle at her.
Lady! She swerved, soaring up and to the right to put the crosswalk between her and the gunner.
A series of sharp, metallic pings warned her that the lictor was firing again. Taya had no idea where the bullets had gone — buried, perhaps, in the enormous grinding cliff of gears behind her — but they hadn't hit her.
A crosscable nearly caught her and sweat broke out on her forehead as she swept beneath it. The lictor who'd fired at her lowered the barrel of his rifle to the catwalk floor, unscrewing its used air reservoir.
Out of the corner of her eye, Taya glimpsed a second lictor running along the catwalk, trying to keep abreast of her. He was carrying a rifle, too, but he was moving too fast to aim.
'Stop shooting!' she shouted, furious. 'I'm not your enemy!'
Or was she? Were the lictors secret Torn Cards, working for Alister? Or — her heart leaped — could Alister be innocent, somehow snatched from death to protect the Engine?
Another burst of warm air swept up around her. She spread her wings to catch it, letting the thermal pull her up and over the crosswalk, away from the level the shooters were on.
Alister's head was tilted upward, and he held a hand over his eyes to shade them from the bright glare of the incandescent lights as he stared past her.
Taya tilted to see what he was looking at.
'Oh, no!'
Cristof must have heard her shout, because he was plummeting down, a dark winged shape hurtling through the empty space between the mountain and the Engine. He was falling fast, his wing-clad arms spread wide but their ondium feathers slotted open to let the air whistle past their metal edges.
Taya swiftly calculated the angle of attack she'd need to intercept his fall. He was wearing enough ondium that it wouldn't take more than a glancing blow to drive him back toward the catwalks, but she had to hit him without getting their wings tangled together. A conscious icarus who was out of control could help a rescue attempt by locking his wings up, but frightened fliers all too often caught a rescuer's wings in their own.
Then Cristof swept his wings down, awkwardly emulating the strokes she'd taught him. His flightfeathers snapped shut and his descent slowed. Taya held her breath, watching him fumble through the morning's lessons to angle himself toward the crosswalk.
Lady, he was freeflying! Badly, to be sure, but the ondium counterweights she'd packed into his suit were giving him the margin of error he needed to keep himself aloft.
She tilted, trying to catch the last wisp of her dissipating thermal.
Then she saw the second lictor swing his rifle around.
'Cristof!' Taya shouted at the top of her lungs and plunged down, angling herself sideways so that the stretch of her metal wings would be between the gunman and the outcaste. Her leg protested the twist needed to steer with her tailset, but the maneuver worked. The lictor started as she swept past him, and his shots went wild, lead pellets ricocheting off the walls and machinery around them.
She pulled out of the dive and saw Cristof backbeating hard, his feet aimed at the crosswalk where his brother stood. Alister stood motionless, watching his brother with an expression of sheer incredulity.
One of Cristof's heavy boots hit the railing and he hovered there a moment, suspended, teetering.
Taya swooped over him.
Alister reached out and grabbed his brother's keel, yanking him down to safety.
Cristof's soles hit the iron crosswalk. He slipped an arm from the wingstruts and swept it upward, his fist slamming against Alister's chin and snapping the decatur's head back.
Taya turned and saw both lictors running toward the crosswalk to assist Alister. She circled wide, her wings teetering as she lost the current she'd been riding. Then she turned and aimed herself for the top of the crosswalk.
Her timing was almost perfect. She swept over the crosswalk just as the riflemen stepped onto it. They ducked, instinctively throwing their arms over their heads, and one of the air rifle barrels clipped the front edge of her left wing.
The impact tore the weapon from the man's hands and sent it falling into the chasm, but it also threw her off-balance. She spun, struggling to right herself. The Great Engine loomed before her with sickening speed.
Backbeating as wildly as Cristof had a moment before, Taya jerked her ankles from the tailset and lifted her feet in front of her. Her thick boot soles hit one of the Great Engine's giant spinning gears, hard. Her left foot slipped against a slick coating of machine oil, but the other got enough of a grip to push her back, away from the mechanism, as the gears’ teeth ground against each other. She snatched her feet away before they could get trapped. Sweat dripped down her face, running along the edges of her flight goggles.
She fought her way back up again.
Cristof had his needlegun out and pointed at Alister, but in his haste to subdue his brother, he'd forgotten to lock his wings up and out of the way. One of the floating wings had become tangled in the iron railing, trapping him in place.
The lictor who'd lost his rifle drew a knife. With one hand, he grabbed Cristof's trapped wing and yanked on
