Fall of Sky City (A Steampunk Fantasy Sci-Fi Adventure Novel) (Devices of War) (19 page)

Keeley remained silent the entire time.

I wiped my fingers on the cloth she handed me, and I searched for a place to dispose of my bag. Completing that task, I turned to her, grabbed a flask of water and asked, “Want to get out of here?”

“And be attacked by sphynktor bugs or land in a quicksand pit?”

I frowned. “Which apparently you can’t drown in.”

She grinned in good humor. “Who knew?”

“Right?” I took a couple steps toward the door. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

“And go where?”

I raised my eyebrows and shrugged wide. “Where there’s sky.”

She snorted, but followed me.

Instead of heading toward the bonfire, I turned the other way and climbed the steep side of the dune. It required the use of my hands and feet, but I managed. I went to where the front of the plane would be and stopped. Kilometres of pale, glittering sand, laid out before us, dancing and shifting as though it were an ocean.

“It’s beautiful,” she murmured.

It was unexpected. I never thought that dirt could be so pretty, but it was.

“I always wanted to see a giraficus.”

I blinked with a chuckle. “A what?”

“A giraficus.” She sent me a grin and headed further into the desert. “I’ve only ever read about them. They love the desert, though they stay closer to the vegetation.”

“Don’t tell me. They eat sphynktor bugs.”

She snorted. “They’re herbivores. They live off plants.”

“Then what would they love about the desert?” I looked at the drifting sands as we walked. It was pretty, but I didn’t see anything that would make me want to stay any longer than I had to.

“It’s said that they used to have legs.”

“And now they don’t?”

She shook her head, sinking on the other side of the next dune. “They have fins, sort of. They’re kind of an adaptation between fins and legs, but they still have their long necks so they can reach leaves in the tall trees. They’re quite intriguing.”

I shook my head. My luck with creatures unknown wasn’t so great thus far.

We walked in silence.

I was certain we would see nothing. A very large expanse of dry, hot desert surrounded us. If any creatures were out here on the sands, I doubted seriously we’d find them.

That’s when we saw the large dot of green that shimmered and shook as though it were smoke. The closer we got to it, the more certain I became that it was real and not a figment of my imagination.

We weren’t alone.

Cries of birds filled the air. As we drew closer, other sounds met us, the growls and grunts, chuckles and chitter of animals I couldn’t name. The shimmer became solid, and the blob of green became blades of grass and leaves.

A small herd of five large, red beasts with massive haunches and an array of horns running along the brow meandered nearby. The big one turned, watching us, stomping its finned paw.

I held up both hands in surrender and stepped carefully around him and his herd.

“That’s a horndon,” Keeley said with excitement. “I’ve only ever heard of them in stories. I never in my wildest dreams thought I’d see one.”

Me neither, but to tell the truth, I hadn’t even heard of the horndon. I’d never paid much attention to the landies talk about their animals. I knew the creatures that shared the skies with me and that was good enough. Before I’d been apprehended by the Hands, I’d rarely set foot on land.

Now that we were here, they all seemed perfectly willing to ignore us. I found I was with Keeley on this one. It was kind of neat to see them so close.

This was a watering hole, and it appeared as though there were rules here. Some of these creatures were obviously hunters with long claws or fangs, but they all laid in the sun, panting, and watched as their food walked right by them.

What really caught my attention was the cats. One of them sauntered past us, his large, padded feed leaving a print two hands wide. As he walked past, I had to look up at him, his amber eyes letting me know just how insignificant I was as he licked his lips. He was similar to a sky cat, but his coloring was much different, orange, brown and black instead of white. He also lacked wings. He was still dangerous though.

“Do you see your giraficuses?” I asked.

Her grin was wide, her eyes bright. “You don’t see them? They’re right there.”

There were a lot of things out there I didn’t recognize.

She grabbed my arm and pointed. “See there? The orange horsefish with the long neck?”

Horsefish. I knew what those were. There they were. They weren’t quite horsefish, but they shared some similarities. Their necks were long enough that their heads were buried in the tall trees on the west side of the watering hole. Gills lined either side of the long neck. And instead of legs, there were fins, almost. They fluttered like a stingray, but there was enough solid bone in them that they were able to stand. Well, it was either bone or incredibly strong muscles. Either way, they were fascinating to watch.

We sat there as Sang crossed the sky and Kala began to rise.

“Tell me about your family,” I said, playing with the grass under my feet, one arm propped on a knee.

“I don’t know.” She glanced up at me in surprise. “I barely remember them.”

“Really? How long ago were you taken?”

“I was young, maybe eight?”

“Old enough to remember.”

She flinched. “Old enough to know better than to remember.”

“So whose idea was it to build the plane and leave?”

“Joshua’s.” She snorted with a smile. “He said there was a whole lot more to the world than Sky City, and he meant to show it to me.” Her gaze remained on the giraficuses as they glided from one tree to the other on their rolling fins. “This is nice.”

“What Family are you from?”

“Bahrain.”

“Ah.” I grinned. “So you’re a landie.”

She threw sand at me. “Air head.”

We laughed, the tension released.

“How long were you with the Hands?”

“Long enough.” She bit her lip, tracing something in the small plot of sand in front of her crossed legs. “Sky City really is the only thing I’ve ever known.”

I wasn’t going to push. If she’d chosen to forget the years she’d spent with her real family, then she had her reasons. “Well, I remember being outside the city, and I’m glad to be done with it.”

“And with Nix?” She glanced at me through her pale eyelashes.

“Especially with Nix.”

She met my gaze with open friendship.

I looked away, running my fingers through the fine grass. As if on cue, the tapping inside my head fluttered into existence. “I—” I closed my lips and shook my head. “She did things.”

Keeley’s hand crept toward mine, though she didn’t touch.

My mouth opened and closed, opened and closed. I ducked my head. “I’m glad to be gone.”

We were both silent for a long moment.

“I watched my mother and father as they were buried alive,” she whispered, her green eyes watching the giraficuses. “Our oldest sister too. She was too old to be useful.”

Buried alive. That—I blinked. How horrible. Could they have picked a slower death?

“The knights entered our town and said we were performing magick beyond the sanction of the Hands to grow our crops. They only buried the ones who hadn’t fought back.”

I watched her. Her face was devoid of emotion, her tone conversational. Her eyes showed the scars. “I’m sorry.”

“I know they’re not good, Synn,” she said, “but I didn’t want to leave. I knew the rules there. I knew how to survive. Out here?” She shook her head and turned to me. “I don’t know what to do. What’s the point of being out here? What’s the goal?”

“We live.”

“But what does that mean? In Sky City, living meant doing my job.”

I scooted forward until my knee brushed hers. “Living is this.” I gestured to the watering hole and all the different creatures here. “It’s something different every day.”

“It’s a little scary.”

I threw my head back and laughed. “Like with the sphynktor bugs?”

We shared a grin.

“Yeah. It can get a little hairy sometimes, but it’s all worth it. You just wait. A few weeks of this and you’ll think Sky City was lame.”

She ducked her head, crossing her arms at the elbow and lacing them around her legs. “Should we get back?”

“We didn’t exactly tell anyone where we were going.”

She sucked in her lips. “It’s not like we have anywhere to go.”

“True.” I rose to my feet and offered her a hand. “Ready?”

The walk back didn’t take as long as I’d thought. We really weren’t that far from the watering hole. Depending on how much longer it took to get our message to the
Yusrra Samma
and then for it to swing over and pick us up, we might have a lot more opportunities to watch the creatures of this strange land. I really didn’t mind.

We’d almost made it to the plane when a high pitched whining whir filled the air.

Keeley and I stopped and looked at each other, listening intently.

We both realized what we were hearing at about the same time. Planes. Lots of them.

They’d found us.

CHAPTER 17

INO IS GLAD TO SEE YOU

Keeley
and I ran the rest of the way to the downed plane. The thing was covered, except for a few pieces, and I had no idea how to fix that. The one good thing was that Sang hung low in the sky, and Kala was still just barely creeping up, so the lighting wasn’t good.

“They can find us,” Joshua shouted, dumping sand on the fire.

“But we’re pretty well camouflaged.”

Joshua shook his head before I’d gotten even half of my sentence out. “They can see the ship.”

A deep frown furrowed in my brow. “What are you talking about?”

“Radar,” he shouted, throwing his hands up as he stomped toward the rear of the plane. “Radar is wha’ I’m ruddy well talkin’ about.”

I shook my head, confused.

Keeley understood. “You said it yourself that they couldn’t get it on the smaller birds. The radars are too big and heavy.”

“Then you tell me why there’s a whole fleet headed this way.”

He was starting to go off the deep end. I took a step and stood in his way. “They followed our trajectory. They’re looking to see if there’s anything left, if we landed safely. They’re searching.”

“How can ye tell?”

I couldn’t. “Do you hear that? They’re banking right. They’re not coming at us straight on.” If I were in the air and listening to my ship, I could say that with a great deal of certainty, but down here I was just guessing.

He saw it. He pursed his lips, staring between me and Keeley.

“They don’t have the technology to build a lighter radar and the queens didn’t want one in the first place,” Keeley said. “They have a radar, sure, but it’s somewhere central, not coming at us. Wherever it is, we’re out of range. You know how short they are.”

He nodded grudgingly.

I peered at the sky directly above us, unsure of what was going on inside me. My mind told me to hide, to help Joshua in any way I could.

But something buried deep in my head calculated all the ways to draw the attention of the planes, to let them find me and return me to Nix.

I ground my jaw and focused all my will to bury those thoughts. I was not going back. I would not be subjected to her ever again. I didn’t
want
to go back, no matter how much my mind might think I did. I didn’t. End of story.

Not quite.

I wanted to hear her voice again, to go back to classes, to study with the astronomers, to develop new things in the laboratories. I fit in there. It’s where I belonged.

No!

Yes.

“We still have an issue,” I said, pushing Nix’s voice as far away as I could. “If they fly directly overhead, they’ll see our tail, and there’s no way to further camouflage it.”

Joshua started to turn, his hands moving, his stance nervous, but then he stopped, his eyes narrowing at me. “At least…not yet.”

Come back to me. Signal the planes.

I ignored the voice and raised an eyebrow at Joshua.

Keeley stepped over to him and eyed me, her arms crossed over her chest.

Was he going to tell me? Or was he waiting for us to be captured?

Like you want to be. It’ll be easy. Just show yourself when the planes are overhead.

He opened his mouth and tipped his ear to the sky.

The planes were still a ways off.

Joshua pulled off his shirt, revealing his Mark, long vines of green and brown trailing up his forearms and creeping up around his elbows. “I’m goin’ ta move the sand.”

My eyebrows shot up, and I looked around. Unless he planned on burying us, I had no idea how helpful that was going to be.

“And Synn’s going to melt it?” Keeley asked. “That’s brilliant.”

Joshua grinned, raising his hands. He flicked his eyes at me over his shoulder. “You goin’ ta bare yer Mark or no’?”

My lips flattened as I frowned. “Why do I need to do that?”

He just grinned and turned back to the sand. “Yer call. Bring on the heat.”

I’d never actually used my gift on purpose. I had no idea what I was doing.