pursuit.
‘Look,’ whispered Ash.
Across the street and to the right, in a small stand of trees circling a stone cistern, a shape rose from the shadows and stepped carefully into daylight. A Special, blackened with soot. The soldier glanced after the running soldiers, then began to run in the opposite direction, past their location.
Che was too slow this time. ‘Hey!’ Curl called out before he could stop her.
The man spun around in alarm, but he lowered his knife when Curl waved her hand at him and he saw her leathers. He came across at a sprint and hunkered down next to Curl, looking calm and measured as he inspected them in turn. Blood covered his blackened neck and hands. Che did not think it was his own.
The Special’s attention lingered on the old farlander the longest.
‘Morning,’ Ash said with a nod.
The man jerked his head by way of a response.
‘What’s happening?’ Curl asked outright. ‘How did the city fall so quickly?’
He glanced at Che and Ash again, then back to the girl. ‘I won’t ask how you missed it.’
Curl scowled at him.
‘They finished the bridge last night while we were still evacuating. Sent in Commandos too, across the water.’
‘How many got out?’
‘The army? Most of them, along with Creed. I’ve a feeling we’re the only ones left in the city, those of us trapped here in the south-west.’
‘Is there a plan? A way out?’ Che asked him.
The man leaned to spit on the boardwalk, then regarded him with thin eyes. ‘The word was passed after we lost the southern fire-positions. They’ll be trying for a pickup tonight, at midnight. Skyships.’
‘From where?’
‘There’s a marina on the south-west point of the island. We were told to rendezvous on one of the warehouse roofs. It’s where I’m trying to get to now.’
‘In daylight?’ It was Ash, as cool as the man was.
‘Reckon I can make it on my own, if I’m careful. Have you water?’
Che passed him his own flask.
‘My thanks,’ said the Special as he wiped his lips. He nodded again. ‘Good luck to you,’ he said as he tossed the flask back. Then he glanced along the street, and without another word took off along it.
Curl rose as though to follow him, but Che snatched her wrist and held her back.
‘You heard the man,’ she said. ‘We have to get to that marina.’
It was Ash who spoke some sense into her. ‘You think the three of us will make it in daylight without being seen? He said midnight. We must wait until it is dark and our chances will be better.’
‘He’s right,’ added Che, and she stopped struggling in his grasp. He released her.
‘What are you?’ Curl asked the old man suddenly.
When Ash would not respond, she looked to Che instead.
‘It’s a long story,’ he told her. ‘Now come.’
Ash darted through one of the back doors of the tenement building, his head darting left and right. They both hurried to keep up with him.
They went through the door and up a series of steps to the third floor, the uppermost floor. Ash entered one of the open doorways into a small apartment. He inspected the ceiling of each of the three small rooms while Che and Curl waited in the hallway, keeping watch. The old farlander returned and strode back down the hallway, still examining the ceiling.
At last he stopped by a window. He opened the shutters and peered outside, then hopped up onto the sill. As they looked on he jumped again and caught hold of the eaves of the roof. He tried to pull himself up; gasped and could not manage it.
‘Give me a hand there,’ he said as he dangled in front of the window.
Che tucked his pistol into his belt and offered his cupped hands as a stirrup. With a grunt the old man was up.
‘You next,’ said Che to Curl, and helped her to do the same before climbing up himself.
On the sloped roof, Ash was tugging free the wooden tiles and setting them to one side. Che stopped and scanned the streets surrounding the building.
When he turned, Ash was gone and a hole in the roof had replaced him. Che ducked his head inside and saw a small dark attic space beneath the eaves. He dropped his backpack down to Ash, helped Curl down after it, then climbed down. Carefully, he settled his feet on one of the beams of wood that ran across the top of the plaster ceilings below, between the old straw stuffed flat in the wide spaces.
Che held his nose for a moment, resisting the urge to sneeze. ‘No trapdoors in the ceilings. No access. I like your thinking.’
Pass me down the tiles,’ Ash told him, and then he laid the tiles out across two beams so that they would have somewhere to sit.
They sat in silence while motes of straw danced in the beam of daylight. What water they had was shared around equally. None of them had anything to eat.
Che held his head in his hands, feeling sorry for himself. His hangover seemed to be worsening, if that was possible. He felt as if he was dying. ‘If you still intend to kill me, old man,’ he said, ‘I’d advise you take your chances now.’
The farlander surprised him with a smile. ‘What was it, Keratch?’
With a nod he replied, ‘It was forced on me.’
‘You were the one who kept asking for it,’ Curl snapped.
Ash tutted, as though admonishing two children. ‘I am told that in old Khosian, Keratch means a serious injury to the head.’
‘Yes,’ said Che. ‘That sounds about right.’
The farlander studied Curl in the shafts of light. ‘You look a little young for this.’
‘I’m seventeen,’ she told him crisply. ‘Old enough for most things, don’t you think?’
He seemed to agree. ‘Well, Curl, I am Ash,’ and he held out his hand. She shook it, tentatively.
Ash stood and poked his head out through the hole in the roof, resting his arms on its edges. Below him, Che fumbled through his pack until he found his covestick, then poured the last of his water from his flask across it and scrubbed his teeth in the gloom. ‘How are you?’ he asked Curl from around the brush, hoping to break through her frostiness.
‘I could do with using that after you.’
‘If you don’t mind sharing,’ he said. He looked to Ash. ‘Anything of interest out there, old man?’
Ash said nothing. He seemed to be fixated on something in the distance.
Che spat and offered the covestick to Curl, then hobbled over to Ash to poke his head out too. He followed his gaze through the rising pillars of smoke, focusing on the citadel that reared up at its very heart. ‘Tell me what you see there,’ Ash said.
‘A flag, flying from the citadel.’
‘What kind of flag.’
Che squinted. The light was good today, the sky a clear blue. He felt a jolt of shock pass through him.
‘I thought you said she was dead,’ Ash remarked drily.
Che glanced down to see if Curl was listening. He bit his lip, adjusted his footing beneath him on the beams as he pondered for a moment.
‘It could be a ruse of some kind,’ he said quietly. ‘Perhaps they don’t wish to announce her death just yet. Or perhaps she’s dying even now.’ He shook his head.
The Roshun grunted. His gaze remained fixed on the distant flag on top of the citadel: white in colour, a black raven upon it, flapping in the wind like a challenge.
