Pirate Sun (9 page)

The Slipstream official’s voice came around the corner again: “You have exactly ten seconds to tell me where he is.” And Chaison swore again—because he recognized that voice.

Without hesitation he stepped into the mouth of the alley and said, “I’m right here, Kestrel.”

His old friend turned, spotted him, and smiled. Then he raised his arm, pointing his baton directly at Chaison.

“Seize that man!”

Chaison was so surprised that they nearly got him. He left several hairs in the fingers of one of the pols before he reached the rope ladder to the crow’s nest. His muscles were screaming before he was ten feet up, but the pols were fat and unused to actually chasing their prey.

The rope ladder swayed and danced, and the headwind pried at his wings, but there was nothing to see once the rooftops dropped below. He made it to the platform, rolling onto it gasping, and drew his sword. The first head that popped above the planks was going to get hacked off.

There was a hurried discussion below, then Kestrel’s voice ordering the men aside. Chaison pictured them leaning out with one foot on the rungs, arm out for balance like dancers, as Kestrel pushed his bulk up the rungs past them. “It’s me, Chaison,” he said before his eyes appeared through the hatchway.

“What the hell was that all about?”

Kestrel grimaced. “Sorry about that, old man. I have to impress my hosts with my…zeal. Show them I’m not biased in your favor, understand?”

“No, actually. I don’t.” Chaison crouched, the sword still in his hand. He had a suspicion that the rest of the pols were sneaking up the spoke ropes, preparatory to dropping on him from above. It was what he would have ordered in Kestrel’s place.

“Why are you here, Kestrel? And why are
you
here?”

The seneschal made a half-visible shrug. “Surely you’re not going to play coy with me, Chaison. We both know what this is about.”

Chaison ransacked his mind and memory for any clue as to what Kestrel was talking about. “I’m to remain safely behind bars here, is that it? Part of the pilot’s peace pact with Falcon?”

Kestrel scowled in his familiar way. “Surely I deserve more honesty than that,” he said. “With the situation in Rush balanced on the edge of a knife you have the gall to plead ignorance? I’m loyal to the pilot, you should know that. It’s out of loyalty that I’m here; I’ve come to make sure you don’t make it home, Chaison.”

Chaison gaped at him. “But
why
? What situation?”

Kestrel stared back for a second. Then, “Fuck it,” he said. “Now!”

Chaison was already in motion. Having already come to this platform from above he had some idea of where the spoke ropes were, even though he couldn’t see them in the mist. So he unfurled his wings and leaped without looking. For a second the world disappeared into swirling gray; then there was the crisp image of a man—one of the pols—soaring past him in the opposite direction. The policeman cursed and swung his baton, but they were already by one another. Chaison saw the rope he’d been aiming at and lunged for it. He caught it with the tips of his fingers, lost his grip and fell—and caught another cross-rope ten feet below.

“Your betrayal runs deep, Chaison,” Kestrel bellowed from somewhere nearby. A grumble of thunder lent punctuation to his words. “It’s a cunning plot, but it won’t work! This weather’s got you cornered and you know it.”

The tightly drawn cross-ropes came in pairs, one for walking on, the other five feet above it as a handhold. Chaison quickly walked the footrope over to a vertical line and shimmied up it. Twenty feet up he spotted another rope ladder along another set of cross-ropes. He made it to that ladder and went up it, even as dark shapes appeared on the line below him.

“I’ve got him! He’s headed up!”

Chaison cursed and climbed faster, but his freefall-wasted muscles were at their limit. They were going to catch him in a minute or two. From what Kestrel was saying it sounded like he intended to kill, rather than capture, Chaison Fanning. He just wished he knew why.

He ran out of ladder and, moments later, ran out of cross-rope too. With one hand on a taut vertical line he balanced next to the knotted end of the footrope and watched four pols with drawn swords emerge out of the mist at its other end. Two proceeded to dance lightly along the footrope, their black wings half-raised for balance in the stiff headwind. Chaison kicked at the rope but it barely moved. He was too tired to climb the vertical; maybe he could slide down it…but there were shouts from below now as well.

He took a deep breath and turned to face the first ropewalker. The man grinned and fell into a fencing pose, his raised backhand clutching the overhead handrope. He inched closer.

Then he disappeared. Violent cold sprayed over Chaison and he nearly lost his footing.

Mirror-bright shapes shot like cannon-fire out of the mist to shatter into billions of cascading droplets among the ropes. Chaison hung on to the lines as they began to buck and sway under the onslaught of the sudden storm.

TWO MORE OF
Chaison’s attackers were swept off the ladder in the first seconds of the deluge. A third tried vainly to get down the ladder but a sphere of water bigger than he was hit him at a hundred miles an hour, and he was gone as though he’d never been there.

The town’s alarm siren began to bray. Chaison swung around the ladder and stared into the grasping waves of cloud that had reduced visibility to nearly zero. He saw dancing, darting shapes, which resolved into a school of bright yellow fish. Their long fins were flickering madly as they tried to escape something; they shot past him leaving little glimpses behind—of lace tail, gelid eye, splayed gill. Then gigantic lurching motions in the cloud announced the arrival of the raindrops.

They hit the town like missiles. The wind was shifting and the sixty-mile-per-hour headwind caused by Songly’s rotation quickly became a stinging gale. The storm hurled raindrops big as chairs, tables—houses—against the wooden walls and roofs of the town. He heard a distant crash that could be the sound of somebody’s roof caving in, or of street planks heaving up. Seconds later the drops became a charging army of strange twisted forms, their shapes driven out of the round by the turbulent air so that some looked like amputated arms, others bedraggled spiders leaving trails of spray. They divided and recombined, jostling and tripping one another in their haste to wreck the frail town-wheel.

The rigging was being shot out from under him. Chaison stepped off the rope ladder and let himself fall until he passed a blindly lashing rope. He grabbed for it and swung in a long arc out of the turn of the wheel. If he let go now he would be one with the storm. Pailfuls of water doused themselves over him and he choked, blinded. Then the rope stretched tight and swung him hard, and at an angle, over Songly’s street.

All he could think as the buildings swept by was,
Maritin’s work will all be in vain
. Maritin was Ergez’s masseur, who had worked after each sparring session between Darius, Chaison, and Ergez’s friends to put their misplaced joints and locked muscles aright. After an extended sojourn in freefall, the body had a tendency to go out of wack at the least provocation. Here came a big provocation: he was about to hit the upside facade of the market.

The vision of harsh rectangles, planks, and nails disappeared in a white explosion as a huge quivering raindrop got to the street ahead of him. Chaison opened his wings, slowing too late, and hit the churn of water, which cradled him for an instant then lowered him gently onto the street. The frothed water was draining between the planks as he got to his feet and staggered in the direction of Ergez’s manor.

He had to pass the alley where Kestrel had confronted his work gang, but both laborers and inspectors were long gone. There were few people on the streets, just a couple of men hurrying to their emergency posts at the town engines. The other riggers would be aloft despite the danger; hopefully they’d had time to don wings in case they were swept away by the storm.

The secret policemen would be huddling somewhere safe. This was not the sort of emergency that called upon their skills.

It took almost a minute of pounding on Ergez’s door before someone came; the air was full of the roaring noise of the storm. The portal creaked open an inch, revealing the frightened face of Maritin. The man gestured frantically for him to come in. “Hurry, hurry!” Chaison stepped in and Maritin slammed and secured the door behind him.

“It’s a disaster!” Wringing his hands, the masseur fled leaving Chaison to find his way through semidarkness to the courtyard. It didn’t help that gravity had become decidedly uneven: his weight would increase then decrease in long thirty-second pulses, while the rain-slick floor shuddered and swayed in sympathy with the assault of the water.

Chaison had seen storms before, but never anything like this. Growing up in Rush he was insulated from their effects anyway, since there the town-wheels were huge iron behemoths that would shrug off anything less than the impact of an ocean.

“There can’t be this much water in the whole country!” The voice had come from over to his right; peering in that direction Chaison saw a little huddle of light from some oil lamps set on a table that was surrounded by wicker chairs. He walked over to find Ergez perching in one chair, with Darius, Richard, and Antaea in the others. On the table between the lamps was a cube-shaped tank of clear gelatine, which contained a seemingly random throw of little beads. This was clearly a map of Songly and vicinity. Ergez was leaned forward painfully to point to one side of the tank.

“It’s coming from the Gretels.” He looked up and saw Chaison. “Admiral! Did you hear? A ship staggered in to port at the axis,” he jabbed a thumb upward, “just before this hit. They’d been running ahead of it for the past twelve hours. Said it looked like a giant hammer falling on them.”

“From the Gretels.”

“From our neighbor and enemy, yes. Is that not curious?”

The floor shook under them. Chaison had to smile. “I admire your poise, Hugo. I don’t think your employees would call all of this ‘curious.’”

“It can’t take up the entire border,” muttered Ergez, ignoring Chaison’s comment. “There’s not that much water in the region. Of course, the Gretels have a couple of small seas…. It must be a jet, long but narrow, but where it’s coming from…”

“The home guard will figure it out,” Antaea said confidently. “Meanwhile we just hang on and hope the town holds together.”

“Yes, but we should be prepared,” said Chaison. “Pack up your things and keep them handy,” he told Darius and Richard, “in case we have to abandon the wheel.”

Ergez shook his head. “Oh, there’s a ways to go before that—” The floor swayed under them and he fell silent.

Chaison was feeling decidedly lighter; the gravity gang must be running the town’s jets in reverse, braking the wheel to a slower rotation. That was Songly’s second line of defense against such violent weather, the first being to turn the town-wheel to cut into it. If both of these tactics failed, the wheel could be stopped entirely. It would then be a loose band twisting in the wind—a scarf with houses. But the stresses on the structure would become manageable.

Ergez was looking around, obviously judging which heavy objects would need tying down. “Come,” Chaison said to his men. “Best get it over with now.”

Upstairs, he grabbed Richard’s arm as the ambassador made to enter his room. “Hang on. We have to talk.”

Darius came over; Richard glanced at the stairs and Chaison nodded. Antaea was still down there with Ergez.

“This weather can’t last,” said Chaison. “We have to take advantage of it while we can.”

“I was hoping for another day,” said Richard. “The lads have promised to introduce me to—” But Chaison was shaking his head.

He recounted his run-in with Kestrel and the subsequent chase. “It won’t take them long to find us here. They need only put the rest of the rigging gang to the question—”

Darius barked a laugh. “Anybody disturbs those riggers now, they’ll be thrown off the town! It’s the riggers keeping the place together.”

“And they’ll be heroes once it’s over,” said Richard.

“Nonetheless, Kestrel will find us. If I know him, it won’t take long.”

Darius grinned. “So we leave? Tonight?”

Chaison nodded. He turned to Richard. “Have you learned enough to give us an alternative to Antaea?”

The ambassador preened. “It takes a lot to earn the trust of these folk. I’ve had to be honest!” He shook his head in distaste. “So some outside of Hugo’s household know that we’re fugitives. That was good enough for a couple of them—these people hate their government with a passion I’ve never seen. Just to spite the pols, they gave me places and secret signs for hideouts in three cities. If a straight run for Slipstream’s border turns out to be impractical, we will have places to stay.”

“Excellent! Darius, have you secured some transport?”

The boy nodded. “There’s a local merchant’s been modifying his bike for speed. He ain’t gonna report it if it’s stolen. Better still, he’s got it in this private shed with a trapdoor. All we have to do is get in, get on it, and drop out the bottom of the town.”

“All right. Get ready, then. We’ll leave after dark.”

A hint of doubt came across Richard Reiss’s face. “Going out in
that
will be very dangerous—”

“So is staying here.”

SNEAKING AWAY WAS
going to prove difficult. Ergez’s men flitted back and forth like nervous hens, securing everything not already nailed down and arguing endlessly over everything else. They wrung their hands over cracks in the wall and jumped at every sound. All the rooms of the manor were lit. Chaison sat in his own small chamber, arms crossed, and frowned at the wall.

There was only so much panicked running around he could listen to; this crisis was nothing like some he’d been in. So his thoughts drifted, inevitably, to Kestrel’s betrayal. He knew his friend was loyal to the pilot, despite all that had happened over the years. Somewhere in Kestrel burned a deep and ineradicable fear—a terror of the mindless mob he imagined was the only alternative to authoritarian rule.

Falcon Formation must believe that Slipstream was behind Chaison’s jailbreak. Maybe they protested in strong terms, and in response the pilot sent Kestrel—and perhaps others—to help in the search. It seemed an extreme gesture of goodwill, and not at all like the pilot. And why should Chaison’s breakout cause such a ruckus in the first place?

There was too much he didn’t know; one thing he did was that Kestrel was now his enemy. That was a bewildering and saddening thought. It also implied that other former allies and friends in the admiralty might have taken the same turn.

Where would that leave Venera? Assuming she had made it home safely, did she now find herself the wife of a despised traitor? If so, how would she react?

Chaison realized that he had no idea what she might do.

Over the hours the thud and smack of impacting water lessened. The courtyard drained and someone optimistically mopped it dry. Gradually, the running and shouting trailed away as Ergez’s people relaxed enough to snatch some sleep. Chaison sat and brooded.

Finally Darius rapped lightly on his door. “It’s clear,” he murmured. Chaison donned his wings, picked up the hip pack that contained his only possessions, and followed Darius into the hallway.

Lamplight showed a boy who still resembled the
Rook
’s go-fer, but who had lost some of the feral look that had settled on him in prison. His face was starting to fill out. Richard Reiss had trimmed his beard to a civilized gray fringe, but it still covered most of his wine-colored birthmark. Man and boy were dressed well but conservatively and had long ago replaced their stolen military swords with a simple gentleman’s épée in Richard’s case, and a respectable knife in Darius’s.

There was something else though, more important than their grooming or clothes: both Darius and Richard were calm and alert. They looked ready for whatever was coming. Seeing this, Chaison smiled.

“Which way?” he asked.

Darius pointed toward the courtyard stairs. He shrugged apologetically. “Doorman’s sleeping by the servants’ entrance, with his arms around a big bag holding all his worldly possessions.” His grin turned him momentarily into the rodent he’d appeared just after the prison break. “Seems he’s got little confidence in you riggers’ ability to keep Songly together.”

“Through the main rooms then.” Chaison led the way past the closed servants’ doors, to the top of the stairs. Gaslight cast a sharp coffin-shape of white across the bottom of the steps. He stepped down quickly, but paused when he heard voices. He held up a hand to stop the other two, and crept the last few feet to glance quickly into the courtyard.

Ergez and Antaea stood by the fountain. She was a study in red today, her arms crossed across a silk blouse, one leg splayed sideways below her cocked hip. She was wearing her boots despite the delicacy of the floor. Ergez stood half in shadow, his hands on his hips as he leaned forward to stare at her.

“You think the appearance of this bizarre black-market money somehow vindicates your position?” he was saying.

“No, it’s not
proof,
Hugo, I’m not some fanatic who sees God in every shadow,” she said. Antaea sounded defensive, which was a first. “It’s just a fact,” she went on. “Pardon me for grasping at facts! Hugo, you can’t tell me that this world, where kings and dictators can enslave scientists and thinkers, is worth saving! You’ve seen the universe outside Virga; this place is worse than primitive, it’s barbaric! Who exactly is the guard guarding, hmm? The bureaucrats of Falcon? The pilot of Slipstream?”

Ergez gave a growl of annoyance. “If we became political we’d be just like them—only worse. Our power—”

“Has to be given to the people.” She let that statement hang between them for a long moment. “You know me, Hugo. I’m not preaching revolution, I don’t believe in the violent overthrow of states. But I’ve seen artificial nature. I know what’s possible for us. All that the guard keeps out.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“What’s going on?” hissed Darius from behind Chaison. He held up a hand for silence. “Wait.”

Either Antaea had said something Chaison didn’t catch, or Ergez had figured out the answer to his own question. “You surely don’t think you can—”

“He did,” said Antaea. “Ergez, he
did
. This is the man who caused the Outage. If he could do it, why not—”

“No! I forbid it. Antaea, I’ll tell the others—” There was a scuffling sound, a low curse, a thud. Chaison heard Ergez gasp “No!”

Chaison swung off the last step and around the corner into the courtyard. He was met by a strange tableau: Hugo Ergez and Antaea frozen in mid-struggle, staring back at him. Antaea had her hands on Ergez’s wrists, had half-bent his arms behind him. Weakened by his infirmity, Ergez was bowed backward over the fountain.

“What are you doing?” Chaison asked, keeping his voice pitched to the low tone he’d learned inspired the most fear in men he had to discipline. To his surprise Antaea let go of Ergez and stepped back, looking abashed.