Skybuilders (Sorcery and Science Book 4) (23 page)

“What was that?” Ariella called back to Marin.

“The wind. It’s nothing to worry about,” she answered, digging deeper into the toolbox. Beside her, the discard pile of now useless electrical tools was growing.

Marin’s plan had worked perfectly so far. In fact, up until the point they'd opened the valves, Ariella had seen no one at all. As she left her last thruster room to meet up with the others, the city floated over the Wilderness and every one of the Helleans’ mechanical monstrosities died a simultaneous death. It had been truly beautiful.

Unfortunately, their luck hadn't held. Ariella, Marin, and Leonidas made it as far as the ladder that would bring them to the hangar floor before a barrage of bullets from down the hall sent them scurrying for cover.

As Marin tried to figure out a way to open the hangar doors, Ariella and Leonidas stood watch just inside the room, guarding the way in from the hallway. Four shimmering silver machines that resembled tiger-sized monster crabs stood motionless at zigzagging angles from one another, victims of the effects of the Wilderness. Obviously, the Helleans expected to be free of the Wilderness before their prey escaped. Why else would they have bothered to expend the effort to lug them into the hall in the first place?

Leonidas pointed to the floor-to-ceiling window beside the hangar doors. “Are we rising?”

“Hmm? What?” Marin asked, fumbling a tool. It thudded against the ground.

Ariella thought it mildly resembled a wrench, but for all she knew, it was used for hammering. It did look sturdy…

“Crap,” spat Marin, peering outside. “I'd hoped it would take them a bit longer to try that.”

“Try what? What are those machine-lickers doing?” Leonidas asked.

Marin raised an eyebrow at the peculiar insult, but answered, “I think they’re hoping to ascend high enough to escape the anti-electrical effects of the Wilderness.”

“Does that even work?” asked Ariella.

Marin shrugged. “You’re the Elition. You tell me.”

“Elitions cannot fly.”

“In other words, you don’t know,” said Leonidas.

“This sounds like something human scientists would have tested out by now,” Ariella commented.

A frown spread across Marin’s lips, and her shoulders sagged down like a popped balloon. “This is all my fault. If I hadn’t been messing around trying to figure out how to make airships take off inside the Wilderness… This must be why they invited me to Oasis. They were asking a lot of questions about how I managed to get that Selpe airship up in the air again at Evergreen. This wasn’t about cooperative science. They wanted to pluck the ideas out of my head and use them for…for their own capitalistic gain! They’re probably planning on selling this ‘technology’ of Wilderness-ready airships back to us. The thieving bastards.” Her fists clenched up, and she punched the wall. “It makes me so mad!”

“So, she doesn’t get mad about their trying to kill us, but dare to steal her ideas and her wrath is unleashed,” Leonidas commented to Ariella with an amused smile.

She did not return the gesture. “This is no time for jokes.” She held out her hand. “Marin, if you’re done with that tool by your feet, hand it to me.” With no knives at their disposal, hard and heavy objects would have to do.

Marin quietly handed the tool over, her eyes unfocused. She seemed to still be caught up in her own guilt, which just wouldn't do if they were to have any chance of getting out of there.

“And see about getting those doors open,” Ariella reminded her.

As Marin turned back to the open panel in the wall, Ariella pressed herself against the wall to the left of the door. She darted out in one quick movement, launching the metal tool. The man tried to duck, but he was too close. It spun through the air and hit him square in the forehead. He fell back flat on his back.

Leonidas looked from the unconscious man to Ariella. “Why not aim for the leg?”

“A man can still limp forward with one wounded leg, and he can still shoot. An unconscious man can do neither.”

“And a dead man?”

“Much the same. It’s just a question of how long he’ll stay down.”

His eyes grew wide.

“I’m just doing what needs to be done to get us out of here.
Someone
has to be pragmatic. Someone has to keep us alive.” And with Silas gone, that task fell to her, the next strongest in the group.

“And when it becomes pragmatic to dangle people out of windows, Ariella?”

She glared at him. “I’m not Silas.”

“You’re well on your way. For a moment there, I could almost see your eyes glow.”

“Enough with the jokes.”

“I’m not joking. Silas wasn’t gone five seconds before you stepped into his brutal boots. First, there was that Crescent Order assassin in the tunnels. Then the guy on the ladder. And now this.” He extended his hand toward the unconscious man. “Be careful, Ariella, or you'll turn into someone you don’t like. Someone your friends don’t like.”

“Thanks for the suggestion. Now go get the equipment ready for jumping,” she said curtly.

Though she had put steel into her voice, she could not help but mull over his words. How would Davin see her now? How would Isis see her? Prophets were supposed to be gentle souls. Of all the Elitions, they were the ones who would not hurt anyone. It was built into them, this gentleness; if they ever decided to take a person’s life, the Prophetic Whiplash of their victim’s dying future would drive most Prophets to madness. Ariella had always considered herself lucky to be spared this burden—to be able to function free from insanity just like any normal Elition. But maybe she had it all backwards. What was normal about being able to kill someone without remorse?

“I’ve nudged the door open!” Marin called out. “Come give me a hand, you two!”

Ariella leapt across the room, landing so close to Marin that she made the scientist jump. The hangar doors were parted just a crack—not wide enough to jump out but sufficient to turn her into an Elition icicle. And to get a good look at the landscape.

The morning sky was a backdrop of pale blue beneath a thick flurry of white. Even as Ariella watched, the air was growing heavy with flakes, the snow beginning to twist into swirling columns that danced across the flat white tundra. They had only minutes before the incoming storm blocked out the sun altogether, trapping them inside a prison of pure white.

“There,” she said to Marin, pointing out a grey stone snail-shaped structure in the distance. “That’s Winter’s Gate. This storm’s picking up far too quickly to risk a long trek to the temple.”

Marin’s eyes drifted up, and she chewed on her lip. “Has Leonidas found the wings?”

“I have,” he said, wobbling forward like a penguin.

He'd put on a flying suit—in white, of course. The Helleans hardly used any other color. Well, at least they would camouflage with the blizzard revving up outside. Material webbed beneath the arms and between the legs, making it difficult for him to walk. And for Ariella to keep a straight face while watching him.

Marin arched a skeptical brow at him. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

“Does she?” he countered, nodding toward Ariella.

She decided not to remind him that some Elitions would make the jump even without wings. It was the sort of challenge a Phantom would get into his head to try. But Ariella had nothing to prove to the world, and she wasn't demented enough to toss herself out of an airship or floating city without something to catch her.

“I’ve done this before,” she simply said. As far as human contraptions went, the wings were pretty innocuous. At least they didn’t have any blinking or beeping parts.

“And you?” he asked Marin.

“Have you forgotten how I spend my free time?”

“Hmm…well…ok… All spies know how to fly with wings,” he finished with a smug grin.

“But apparently not walk in them,” muttered Ariella.

Marin snorted in assent.

“Ladies,” he said, spreading his arms to wrap a hand around each of them. The webbed wings cut short his attempt at suaveness, but he didn’t let that deter him. He favored them each with a provocative smile. “You need to trust me when I say I know what I’m doing. I wouldn't throw myself casually out of a floating city if I were not positively certain I would not die in the act of doing so.”

“He’s got a point,” Marin said to Ariella. “You can count on Leo when his life—or his ego—is at stake. Even despite his many other deceptions.”

Leonidas threw up his arms as far as the wings would allow. “Are you going to hold that over me for the rest of my life?”

“Perhaps.”

Leonidas turned to Ariella.

“Though you seem to think I’m the new Silas, I don’t hold a grudge like he does. But I still don’t entirely trust you,” she added quickly.

Marin grabbed a suit from him, then circled her finger in the air. “Turn around.”

Leonidas rolled his eyes but did as she asked. Only when his back was turned did Marin begin to remove enough clothing to slip her suit on. Ariella snatched her suit from him and promptly stripped down to her underwear. Leonidas gaped at her for a moment before turning to take a few steps toward the room door. Shaking her head, Ariella quickly got into the suit. Humans were far too squeamish, even ridiculously flamboyant ones like Leonidas.

As Marin finished zipping up her suit, a percussion of bullets pounded the doorframe, kicking up a storm of shrapnel into the air. Leonidas wrapped himself protectively around Marin and pushed her toward the hangar doors.

“It looks like they’ve finally found something a bit more potent,” he commented.

“Then I’d say it’s time for us to make our exit,” replied Marin.

Ariella slipped her fingers into the gap between the doors and tried to pull them away from each other. They croaked and screeched in protest, but she did manage to part them a bit further. Only a bit. If she wanted to get them open enough to jump out, she'd need to pull harder. Sweat dripped down her neck, and the muscles in her arms and chest began to burn. She braced her feet against the floor, but still she slid. The webbing of her suit didn’t seem to much like the exertion either. Maybe she should have opened the doors before putting it on.

“Need some help there?” Leonidas asked, leaning forward.

“No,” she grunted and nudged his head out of her way with a thrust of her shoulder. What they really needed was Silas. A simple sneeze from him, and the doors would have flown open. But Silas wasn’t here. She had to get them all out of there alive.

The barrage of bullets grew louder, the Helleans having made their way nearly to the room. Ariella gave the doors a final concentrated heave, screaming out as they screeched the rest of the way open. Her arms still braced against the doors, she took a moment to choke out a few choppy breaths.

A hand tapped her shoulder, and Ariella turned to find Marin holding out a helmet to her. Ariella would have preferred a bucket of water.

“The wind will push us too hard to make an effective landing at our target!” Marin shouted over the howl roaring in through the now-open doors. “As you come over the temple, you’ll need to circle around and come in from the other side, using the wind to slow you down for the landing! Now, let’s go before they shoot holes in our wings! I’ll jump first!”

She moved for the door, ready to jump, when Leonidas caught her hand. He met her eyes, holding her gaze for a few long seconds. Then, he swung an arm around her back and scooped her in closer, kissing her with the passion of a man about to die. When he finally pulled away from her, Marin stood motionless, shock saturating her face.

“For luck,” he whispered with a wink and jumped out through the doors.

Marin remained frozen in place, her gloved fingers stroking her lips as she stared out through the open doors.

“Now would be a good time,” Ariella prompted her.

Marin shook herself, then jumped out. And then, as a dozen Helleans marched into the hangar, guns firing, Ariella threw herself from the city. On the way out, she avoided the bulk of the barrage, but a bullet caught her in the leg. A piercing burn erupted in her thigh, spreading pain to every tip of her body. Poison. She bit her tongue, willing herself to push through the pain and concentrate on gliding down toward Winter’s Gate.

Leonidas was already circling around to the other side of the temple, his winged arms pushed against the wind to straighten his body until it was vertical to the ground. Snow whirled around him, but he managed to hit the ground at a brisk run, proof that he had in fact done this before. Marin followed, landing just as neatly on her feet.

Wind battered Ariella’s face, a frozen force against her skin. The wound in her leg was already starting to hurt less, though she wasn’t sure if that was because it was healing or because it was going numb from the poison and the cold. It depended on what exactly was in that bullet. If they were shooting to kill an Elition, she probably wouldn’t long outlive her landing.

But if she didn’t pay attention, she wouldn’t even live that long. Ariella focused on her downward glide, forcing herself into a curve. Beneath her, the snow-dusted grey stone walls of the temple stood out against a fresh powdery layer atop an icy ground. Whirling snow battered her eyes and melted on her skin, sending streams of ice water down her cheeks. As she circled around to face the wind, she felt it pummel the front of her body, and slowly she began to level out. Gravelly snow crunched beneath her boots when she set down—thankfully without her shot leg giving out under her. She shook it out and decided the poison hadn't been one of the varieties that worked against Elitions. It seemed the Helleans had been too busy with their crippled city to track down that batch of bullets.

Ariella jogged up to Marin and Leonidas, who were waiting for her, and the three of them headed toward Winter’s Gate. The wind howled like a bear prematurely awoken from hibernation, and the snow fell as thickly as goose down. Though they were not even a hundred meters away, the temple’s walls were almost invisible. Only the tiny splotches of grey behind a curtain of blinding white guided them in the right direction.

Pushing against the frozen gale, they reached the front entrance, step by heavy step. As soon as they were all inside, taking a cloud of snow in with them, Ariella shoved hard against the double doors to force them closed. She turned around and her jaw dropped.