Roil (22 page)

The folk of Drift look down, look down

and what they see makes each one frown

The first thing Margaret noticed about Cadell was his extreme age, he somehow reeked of it, but in him it wasn’t a weakness but a strength born of time, as though he were granite. The second was the Orbis he wore, it drew the eye, and looking at it now, it seemed as bright as the sun. She’d seen nothing like it, her own parents had worn simple silver bands to signify their office.

Cadell caught her gaze. “Once, all councillors wore these. But that was a long time ago. Today’s rings are markedly inferior.” And as he said it, it was as though the Orbis disappeared, what glamour what light it possessed was hidden, and it could have passed as merely a tawdry bauble.

He turned to David. “Well, lad, you have the habit of making interesting friends.”

They talked for an hour in the shadow of the wall and Margaret felt as though she had been plunged into some sort of fairy tale. Old Men, Vergers. Cadell claimed to know the secrets of the Engine of the World. In fact, he claimed to have built it. As much as, he’d said, anything of its complexity could be said to be built.

For the first time in a week, she thought she might have a chance at succeeding in her aims, that maybe she’d had a turning in her luck. She looked at them both as resources, stepping-stones to the North and the Engine there.

Margaret shared her own intentions to find it, at which Cadell patted her arm avuncularly. “You know so little about the Engine, my dear,” Cadell said. “You cannot know how lucky you are. If you had somehow made it to Tearwin Meet (and I could credit it because, well... you have made it this far) the walls would have stopped you, and if they didn’t, and there is a chance of that, slim, but a chance, then still you would have failed. Only the Old Men can operate the Engine. Only our blood, and this,” he raised his hand, revealing the Orbis again, and once more it burned brightly. “The Engine would have stripped the flesh from your bones. You may come with me to Tearwin Meet. You may help me reach the Engine, but you can never operate it. It is a folly of the ancient Engineers, it is my madness, and the curse laid down by the Engine itself. It would have been your undoing, no matter how lucky you were.” Cadell glanced at his watch. “We can’t stay all night here. We’ve a meeting to attend.”

Margaret must have looked confused, and Cadell shook his head. “Oh the sorts of people I gather around me, lost children, when what I need are warriors.”

Margaret scowled at that. She knew how to fight.

“There’s an Aerokin pilot,” Cadell said, “waiting at the
Inn of the Devoted Switch
.” Cadell looked at his watch again, and tsked. “And we are rather late.”

No time for rest then. But soon, and then she might just show Cadell who was the lost child and who the warrior.

“You’re late,” Kara Jade said. “And you said nothing about passengers.”

Cadell laughed. “If you only knew the day I’ve had.”

The day all of us have had
, David thought.

Kara Jade didn’t look amused, just looked at her watch. “I was hoping we’d have done our talking by now and I’d be drunk.”

“Things don’t always turn out how one hopes,” Margaret said.

Kara turned towards her, as though she were some annoying biting insect newly discovered. “You’d better hope that that is true, then. I’ve some awful inclinations towards you, and we’ve only just met.”

“Please,” Cadell said. “Please. I did not come here to fight.”

“And I didn’t come here to be a pilot for three people. Just one. That is all.”

David had never been in a pub like this. While the
Inn of the Devoted Switch
seemed crowded and a little forcefully jovial, he could not be at all sure it was not typical of its ilk. In Mirrlees he had been to but a handful of drinking places with his father, being too young to legally buy drink (though those who had sold him Carnival had never set such an age restriction).

Drifters he knew, his father had had dealings with them, even counted some among his friends. But even the best of them were arrogant if not rude. He’d seen the city of Drift once, a few miles east of Mirrlees. He had been young, perhaps no more than five, sitting on his father’s shoulders.

And his father had recited this poem.

The folk of Drift look down, look down

and what they see makes each one frown

The folk of Drift they rule the skies

A truth contained within their eyes

The folk of Drift are rude indeed

If the clouds were yours, wouldn
’
t you be?

Nice poem, but some Drift folk lived by its lines too faithfully.

The inn was crammed with Drifters, and their haughty and garrulous natures were in evidence in every over-emphatic movement, every dark and dangerous stare. The air folk were loud and famous boasters and brawlers. If you were to believe them their city was older than the Council itself, their technologies built in the eons before, they’d once ruled not only the sky but the ground as well, but had found it boring, so the “tedium of empire” (as they called it) had given way to the Council. They were, according to them, also better lovers, poets and fighters than any one of the groundlings. David did not believe a word of it. Which did not mean he would voice such doubts here. He wanted to live a little longer, if he could.

The Drifters wore their various guild colours, the yellow of elevator coxswain, the dark greens of steersmen, and the coveted red and black of Aerokin captains.

In one corner, and David had to blink twice when he realised who it was, lounged Mr Blake and to his left his partner in flight, Miss Steel. They were arguing about something, which was no surprise. Lawrence Blake and Catherine Steel were a running argument, almost as famous for their fights as their Air Show, a bit of which – the Air Show, not the fights – David had seen when he was ten. Five Standard Dirigibles at mock battle, flying low and in tight formation, and Mr Blake leaping from ship to ship carrying a big coil of rope, binding them together like they were sheep rather than ships, then clambering onto the back of his Aerokin, the
Arrogant Spice
.

“Blake and Steel,” he said, pointing in their direction.

Cadell blinked.

“If you say so.” Margaret said, clearly unimpressed. “Drifters, let them see how long they would have lasted in my city.”

Cadell nodded to the crowded press of people at the bar. “David, why don’t you go over there and order some drinks. The house brew for me, please.”

“Nothing for me,” Margaret said.

“Bourbon,” Kara Jade said. “Two fingers of it.”

For a moment, David remembered the incident at the dining car on the
Dolorous Grey
and shuddered. This was almost as dangerous; some of these pilots were armed to the teeth and full of piss already.

David pushed his way through the crowd, careful not to give any offence. Drift folk were volatile. Every glance he caught was a challenge and each push or shove the possible opening gambit in a fight. He caught snippets of conversation as he went.

“City’s not long for it, I reckon. Heard they’ve sighted Quarg Hounds in the deserted suburbs and you know what comes next. I was there in Consolation City, trade work, when it all came down. You know, the Grand Defeat. And it was sudden, the sky dark with all manner of beasts, the Roil rolling in like a storm. The standing army of three cities destroyed, barely got out with my life and that was only because–”

Another went.

“Sooner this Festival is done with the better. Sad, though, I’ve always liked coming here – such pretty men.” Fingers pinched his arse, he kept his head high, kept walking.

“Bloody folk music. What’s that all about? Another flaming mandolin player comes up to me with a glint in his eye and a bloody cap rattling with coin he’ll be playing it where the sun don’t shine.”

“Heard the Council’s locked down the city. They’re turning people away now. Went up this morning, there were hundreds of ’em, heading up to Mirrlees, heading up to the rain. Not sure what welcome old Stade’s going to give ’em, doesn’t have a history of looking kindly on refugees. I’ve heard rumblings about camps. Oi, stop you’re listening in, boy, or I’ll cuff your ears till they bleed!”

David reached the bar and ordered his drinks.

Cadell was scowling when David returned. “The
Roslyn Dawn
was bred for this task, Miss Jade. It is why your mothers gave her to me.”

“It’s not a ship, it’s a she, and they gave you nothing,” Kara snapped. “They sent me on this mission. I am their agent, and my powers are discretionary.” Cadell looked at her as though he knew this was not true.

David passed her the bourbon. Kara Jade sculled it, without looking, and gave him back the empty glass. “Mr Cadell was telling me just what he means to do. What do you think?”

“I’m not sure.” He looked over at Margaret, and she shook her head.

“I might have that drink after all, David,” Margaret said.

Kara Jade snorted. “Not sure? Well, you better be. David, I’ll be flying you, Mr Cadell and the lady here into the Roil.”

David blinked. That was the first he had heard about it.

“The Roil, you say?”

Cadell grimaced. “Why else did you think I pushed for you to go with Buchan and Whig. I need to get in there, I need to see it.”

“I’ve been in there,” Margaret said. “Trust me you
don
’
t
want to see it.”

“Wants and needs are a different thing, girl,” Cadell said. “And I
must
see it. Unless I do my argument with the Engine is incomplete.”

“Well then,” David said. “If we’re all going to die, how about another round.”

Kara laughed. “Only if you’re buying. And a better bloody quality bourbon this time, that last one was shit.”

Aerokin are unpredictable as the weather. The Mothers of the Sky more so, their motives ever uncertain. Only the Roil
’
s intentions were clear. Against such an implacable force, motives, plans and politics are meaningless. You may as well play games with a rock.

“How long now?” Cadell asked, the translucent floor beneath them vibrating in time with the
Roslyn Dawn
’
s
nacelle exhalations, loud enough that he had to shout.

“Four minutes until we reach the curtain,” Kara Jade said, she did not look at all happy about it. David was not sure if the reason lay in their proximity to the Roil or the bad hangover she must be nursing.

Last night she had, to put it politely, overindulged. They all had, but the woman possessed a will to drink that David had never seen before – and his father had known some serious drinkers.

At one stage Kara kissed him on the cheek and started singing air shanties, all rollicking good fun until she had vomited everywhere, then as though a switch had been flicked she’d stumbled off to the
Roslyn Dawn
. Both Cadell and Margaret had gone to their respective rooms by then, so David had been left with the clean up.

Kara Jade had hardly looked at him since, except with the occasional stare of condemnation, as though, somehow, it was all his fault.

“Seven minutes,” she said, turning and giving David another grim look.

David shivered.
Seven minutes until the nightmare begins.

Cadell had hardly given him any Carnival that morning, and not nearly enough for him to deal with this.

He looked about him at the arcane array of controls, which Kara Jade had explained were less controls and more a point of dialogue with the
Roslyn Dawn
. As though flying was nothing more than having a chat. From what Kara had told him the Aerokin wasn’t happy about this foray into the Roil but, like her, it was following the orders of the Mothers of the Sky.

When the Mothers of the Sky spoke it was law.

The gondola shook with the vibrations of the nearby nacelle-enclosed bio-jets. Everything that wasn’t actually grown by the
Roslyn Dawn
itself was polished brass and smooth leather, and smelt softly of disinfectant mixed with an odour that was distinctly animal – slightly doggy with a hint of malt if David had to compare it to anything else, and while not unpleasant it certainly didn’t help with his hangover.

The
Roslyn Dawn
’
s
gondola was more a cyst or an odd extrusion of matter. Cadell had described it as modification of the
Dawn
’
s
claws and that they were, in effect, crawling around inside a fingernail. That nail was semi-translucent and narrow, it ran along the belly of the Aerokin. Midway along its length was the doorifice – an all too fleshy puckering that flapped open on contact – it was the same fleshy colour as the Aerokin itself, the gondola hard around it.

Kara had showed them all how two taps with a hand made any section of the gondola instantly transparent or opaque.

David had tried it on the floor and felt at once that he was about to fall out of the sky. He tapped it twice more and could breathe again. Why hadn’t Cadell given him more Carnival?

“It’s one way, of course.” Kara said proudly. “You can see out, but nothing can see in.”

“She’s a fine ship all right,” said David, as though he knew anything about Aerokin.

“She’s not a
ship
.” Kara Jade hissed – perhaps remembering that kiss – a muscle in her cheek twitched. “Ships aren’t clever. Ships don’t breathe. Ships don’t get angry and hurl their stupid passengers into the sky.”

“Um, what I meant to say was she’s the finest Aerokin I’ve ever ha–.”

“The
Roslyn Dawn
is
the
finest Aerokin, without a doubt.” Kara Jade sniffed, David wondered if he wasn’t going to get a punch to the face. “A real evolutionary leap forward. You will not see her like anywhere. She is faster, lighter and more stable than anything the Mothers in the Sky have ever gestated: the endpoint of over three decades of research. With the
Roslyn Dawn
my people have taken the technology and the breeding programs as far as they can go. Though she requires a fine pilot, she needs only one. Not like her bigger kin, with their Elevator and Rudder crews.”

“The finest Aerokin, the finest pilot, we are indeed lucky,” Margaret said.

“Yes, you fucking are,” Kara Jade replied. She swung back to her instruments. “Two Minutes, I want to hit it at three thousand feet.”

David rubbed the bridge of his nose. His head felt like it was going to explode. He winced, and Kara Jade must have caught the expression. “Click your jaw,” she said with surprising gentleness. “It will help your ears deal with the shift in pressure.”

David did, and yes, it helped a little. He thanked her, then glanced over at Margaret. He wondered how she felt going back. If it were him... well, if it were him he probably wouldn’t even be on this airship.

Margaret’s face was calm. Her dark eyes gazed out steadily at everything. Her lips though were twisted and one of her hands kept straying to the hilt of the rime blade at her belt.

The
Roslyn Dawn
flexed along its length, shifting the chemical components of its body, increasing the percentage of hydrogen to oxygen. Its ascent sharpened, silent but for the vibrations of the hull. They powered towards the Roil.

For all that he had read of the Roil and seen from afar now David knew, at once and undeniably, its indifferent bulk. Nothing had prepared him for this.

It rose above them like some mountainous yet becalmed tsunami that possessed the apparent tangibility of stone. But that did nothing to describe the sensation of motion and stillness that gripped David now. He looked to the Old Man.

Cadell sat silently, his eyes closed, his fingers linked together in what may have passed for prayer but for the whiteness of the knuckles, the soft flexing of his shoulders. He was readying himself for something.

“We’re almost there,” David said. Cadell’s eyes opened.

“I know,” he said. “I can feel it. Is it too much to hope that it can’t feel me?”

David swallowed, another detail that he had not wanted to hear.

They entered the Roil all at once; it did not close about them in fragments like real mist did, but smoothly and completely as though the
Roslyn Dawn
had plunged into a vertical lake of darkness.

One moment light surrounded the
Roslyn Dawn
– sunshine and clear blue sky to the rear of them – the next, day was gone, swallowed up. The quiet dark transformed all at once.

Gales crashed up behind the face of the Roil and the
Roslyn Dawn
shuddered as she struck these, lifting up perhaps thirty or forty yards, then she was through the unquiet air.

David realised that he had been holding his breath.

He looked over at Margaret. Her face was pale. Cadell also bore a resolute expression, as though he could endure this and would; but only just. Kara Jade alone betrayed no emotion in those first moments, so intent was she on the task at hand.

Thunder, borne on spikes of green lightning, tumbled the silence. The dice rolls of giants. Again, again, again. David’s bones tingled.

Kara Jade grinned, her jaw clenched so tight her eyes bugged, as her hands hovered over the controls.

“Just nature’s spear shaking,” she said. “Impressive but of no real substance. The
Roslyn Dawn
is more than capable of taking multiple lightning strikes.” She turned a few dials and stared through the cockpit windows out into the storm. “Though I’d prefer she didn’t have to.”

“Bring her down,” Cadell said. “I want to get a good look at the surface. Are your floodlights charged?”

“Of course they are.”

They began their descent. The Roil increasing in density as they sank, a cloudy darkness heavy with spores. The
Roslyn Dawn
creaked and mumbled.

Kara Jade glanced over her readings. “The air pressure is higher than I would like.”

Something flared below and a wave of heat rushed up towards them. The
Roslyn Dawn
shuddered and lifted with the impact. Kara Jade cursed softly, a frown washing over her face. “I know. I know,” she whispered. The nacelles exhaled in response, the
Roslyn Dawn
swung out in a wider circle. The nose dipped, presenting a smaller target, David guessed.

“There’s a lot of heat down there,” Kara said.

“And hot air rises, yes,” Cadell said. “But we have to get closer, I need to see what is going on beneath.”

“As you wish,” Kara Jade said, and ran a hand along the inner wall of the cockpit. “If you’re going to die anywhere, my darling, it might as well be here, you know, somewhere bloody exotic.”

She crooned at her craft, and the
Dawn
descended into the furnace heat: shaking as it struck the violent wind, but never feeling out of control. Kara Jade and her craft were as good as she said they were.

David watched her, entranced. He looked over at Margaret. She was charging her guns. He felt like he should be doing something, but all he had was a handkerchief in his pockets and a wrap of powdered Carnival in his boot.

Could do with some of that now, he thought. He walked towards the sleeping compartment of the
Dawn
. Cadell stopped him.

“Not now, lad,” he said. “You’ll need your wits about you.”

David nodded. Didn’t even reach for an excuse.

“And close your mouth, you’re gaping like a fish.”

As they neared the ground, objects took shape through the murk. Memories returned unbidden to Margaret and she regretted for the umpteenth time her decision to go on this mad journey.

“The Interface,” Margaret said, pointing down at the long spine of the tunnel ending in the rectangular block of buildings. “They’re using the Interface.”

The Interface had been split open, its contents strewn over the ground, a cannon lay toppled next to a desk chair. A bed rested on Anderson’s carriage. The
Melody
was nowhere to be seen but still the sight shocked her, worse than she would have expected, remembering that place. Everywhere she went destruction followed and people were lost.

She thought of Anderson. Was he now a puppet of the Witmoths? And her
Melody
, she could not bear to think of it being used by the Roil. Not that it looked like they needed to.

Below, the earth seethed.

Quarg Hounds boiled into the tunnel, crowding around the Project. The lost Interface had been worn down and overrun.

Something slapped against the window by her head and Margaret started. She frowned when she realised what it was.

“Hideous Garment Flute,” she said, matter-of-factly and stared into its teeth-crammed mouths; row upon row of cartilage and bone snapping shut with every shudder of its flight membranes. Grey mucus slid down the gondola wall.

Beneath her she could see the
Roslyn Dawn
’
s
flagella striking out at a knot of the creatures, batting them from the sky. The Aerokin groaned.

“Be calm, my darling,” Kara Jade said softly. “Out soon. Out soon.”

Another flute joined it, and Margaret reached for her ice pistols.

A hand clapped down on hers. The strength and the awful chill in that grip – as though he had devoured all of Winslow’s lozenges – surprised her.

“Don’t be a fool,” Cadell snapped. “Break the gondola walls, if you could, and you let the Roil in, and I’m not quite ready for that.”

His voice trailed off as he looked down, beyond the ruined buildings and the maddening mass of Roil creatures, at the immense fuming structure there. Margaret followed his gaze and stared at what looked like some gigantic termitary.

“Heat sinks,” Cadell said, craning his neck to get a better view. “They have created heat sinks. There and there. I’ve seen nothing like it, not this close to the edge. Well, at least that explains the ground shaking. They’re building a dreaming city. This is not good, not good.”

The
Roslyn Dawn
continued its descent. Cadell put out a hand.

“Keep it steady, Miss Jade,” he said. “No lower than this, thank you. Just where we are.”

The engines whined. The
Roslyn Dawn
slowed its descent, then stopped.

“Well done,” Cadell said.

Down below, two huge pipes rose out of the earth, dark smoke poured from their cavernous openings, and around that heat swarmed rippling clumps of shadow.

Witmoths.

The sight reminded Margaret of the vents and chimneys that had once dominated Willowhen Peak. Only here, at the pinnacle of these boiling mouths, no battle raged, these were meant to draw the Roil, meant to sustain it.

Margaret stared over at David, eyes bulging in his head, his mouth wide open like some sort of idiot. He held a pair of binoculars in one hand but he did not use them, perhaps too frightened of what they might reveal.

Now you know
, Margaret thought.
You have seen the power of this place. What was once abstraction has become reality for you.

David was not the only one to whom this was all new.

Kara Jade had lost her cockiness. “So many,” she whispered.

“The Roil is getting ready for something,” Cadell said. “And that should not be. The Roil does not push, it shambles. It drifts, it dreams: it does not do this.”

“What about the Grand Defeat?” David asked.

“Freak weather conditions,” Cadell said. “A hotter summer, a low pressure system that became a storm that lead to a heatburst. But there was no thought to it, no strategy. This is different.”

“Things have changed,” Margaret said, and slapped a fist against the wall of the gondola, hard enough that one of the Hideous Garment Flutes slipped free and tumble-flew away. She followed its wild improbable peristaltic flight: all those membranes sliding and billowing frantically. She had seen clouds of these beasts fly, loud and shrill, over Tate.

“An I-Bomb. If we possessed an I-Bomb, we could halt this here and clear away the madness with a single detonation.”

“But we do not.” Cadell snapped. “Nor do we have your parents’ laboratories.” He pointed down. “Though it appears our enemy has something similar. Miss Jade, heave too. Now!”

On the Roilscape beneath them, what could only be described as a cannon turned towards them, though most cannon did not look as though they had been grown, nor did they have chambers that bubbled and spat liquid fire.