Terminal World (29 page)

‘I don’t know what to believe,’ Quillon said dispiritedly. ‘It all seems irrelevant now, doesn’t it? If the world can change the way it just has, then anything’s possible. The world could return to the way it was, the trees could come back and the waters rise again.’

‘If you think so,’ Kalis said doubtfully.

‘You don’t?’

‘If I were you, I would have stayed in my city. It will always be safer and warmer there.’

‘You’ve seen what happened to my city. I was lucky to get out when I did.’ He glanced at his surroundings. ‘If this can be considered lucky.’

‘Why did you leave?’ Kalis asked.

‘I had no choice. People wanted to kill me for something I did.’

‘Where were you going?’

‘To Fortune’s Landing. That was the idea, anyway.’

‘I have seen Fortune’s Landing. It is not so great.’

‘I was told I could make a living there.’

‘Perhaps.’ But he could see in her eyes how unlikely she regarded this proposition. ‘You would have been better off in Soul’s Rest, city man.’

‘It looked a lot further away on the map.’

‘Closer now, if this is the Long Gash. Perhaps they are taking us there.’

‘Have you seen it?’

She shook her head. ‘I have heard people speak of it. That it is much bigger than Fortune’s Landing; that the city wall is twice as tall, decked in gold, and that the narrowest street in Soul’s Rest would be a promenade in Fortune’s Landing. That there are enough people inside the wall that you need never see the same face twice. That they have machines, electricity and television, as in Spearpoint.’

‘Do you believe this?’

‘I do not know. In some parts of the world, so I have heard, they say the same about Fortune’s Landing.’

‘Ah.’

‘Perhaps Soul’s Rest is bigger now. It is said that the two cities were once the same size, and that both are older than Spearpoint. Did you know this?’

‘I confess it had escaped me.’

‘It is said that they were founded at the same time, by two brothers who were also twins and also princes. They came from another land, a palace in another kingdom. This was before the Moon became two.’

‘I see.’

Kalis inhaled a measured breath. Her tone of voice told him that this was something she had recited many times before. ‘The palace was made of purest silver, with two great towers, taller than any other in the kingdom. The king had built it as a tribute to his wife, who had died giving birth to his sons. When the king’s enemies destroyed the palace, he was heartbroken, for it was as if they had torn the memory of his wife from his heart. Fearing for his sons, he sent them out into the desert to found two new cities. Thus was his heart broken twice, for he knew he must say goodbye to his beloved princes for all time. Yet before they left, he made for them two suits of silver armour, and that armour would bring them luck because it was made from the same metal as the fallen towers, metal that the king had dug out of the palace ruins with his own fingers. And so the princes travelled, crossing land and sea, and when after many months they had grown weary of journeying, they set down their armour, gathered it into mounds and on top of the mounds founded two new cities. The sons built new towers, taller even than the old palace, and at last climbed to the top of them, and then - using the last pieces of their armour - they held mirrors to the sun, and flashed messages all the way back to the kingdom, so that the king would know that his sons were safe. And so the king, who was still heartbroken, was at last able to sleep peacefully, for he had lost everything except that which mattered the most. He died that night, but his heart was full of contentment and before he slipped into death he dreamed of his wife again, the two of them young and in love in the gardens of the palace. And so the cities were founded, and because one brother was named Spirit, or Soul, so his city became Soul’s Rest. The other brother was named Opportunity, or Fortune, and so his city became Fortune’s Landing. And that is why those cities have those names, and why they are also twins.’ She paused and studied Quillon intently. ‘It is just a story,’ she added, as if there had been any doubt in his mind. ‘For bedtime. But because you had not heard it, I thought you would like to.’

‘Thank you,’ Quillon said. ‘After all that you’ve said, I’d like to see Soul’s Rest now, if only to find out if there’s still a tower that might be older than Spearpoint. But I’m not sure that’s where we’re being taken. They’ve mentioned returning us to Swarm, but nothing about a ground city.’

‘They do not like cities, or those who live on the ground,’ Kalis said.

‘They don’t much like Spearpointers either, from what I can gather.’

‘We are all dirt-rats to them. Even you.’

None of the crew had given any guidance in the matter, but it seemed probable to him that
Painted Lady
was travelling directly westwards, following more or less the same trajectory that Meroka and he had been pursuing when the storm hit. The shadows were lengthening in the opposite direction from the airship’s motion; Spearpoint was falling steadily away behind them, falling further and further out of reach.

‘How fast do you think we’re moving?’ Quillon wondered. ‘Fifty leagues an hour, I’d guess. We flew all through the night and we haven’t slowed down once since this morning. If that’s the case, then we could easily be more than five hundred leagues from home by now. In four days we could circumnavigate the world. I never really grasped how small our planet is until now.’ He paused before continuing, ‘Have you ever been this far west, Meroka?’

She did not answer him. He was not expecting her to. Meroka was still disgusted at Quillon, both for what he was and the way she had been deceived about it. She was also bitter about the loss of her Testament, and blamed Quillon for that as well. Curtana’s men had found a recess in the book’s spine where the blade had been hidden.

What was clear, though he was careful not to speak of it in front of Nimcha, was that
Painted Lady
did not have the sky to herself. He had seen another ship at dawn, and during the day he had made several other sightings of distant, stalking craft. They were too far away for him to discern more than the skimpiest details, but from the efforts
Painted Lady
made to put space between herself and these other airships, Quillon thought it doubtful that they were other elements of Swarm. The close action that Gambeson had spoken of was still a possibility. There must, he was certain, have been an earlier skirmish: an engagement that had resulted in the injuries Gambeson was now tending to. The ship had appeared intact when he had seen her from the ground, but he knew very little about dirigibles.

With the approach of twilight came a change in the weather. The cloudless day had given way first to a high layer of rib-like clouds, and then to a gathering cloud-bank that was all but indistinguishable from fog. It thickened by degrees, white mist curling around Painted Lady like a glove, obscuring even those useless glimpses of the Long Gash. Quillon marvelled at the iron nerve of the navigators, still driving the ship forwards. But it was only by the drone of the engines that he could tell they were moving at all. He could hardly make out the whirling propellers at the ends of the outriggers, and it was only by concentrating all his senses on the task that he was able to judge that the ship was changing course with some regularity, swerving, veering and shifting altitude. None of this could be accidental, so he was forced to assume that the ship was engaged in deliberate manoeuvres, either in pursuance or evasion of some stealthy, cloud-garbed enemy. The guns fired occasionally, the recoil of heavy airborne artillery felt through the gondola almost before their ears had registered their sound. The bursts seldom lasted more than a second or so, suggesting to Quillon that the crew were opening fire on phantoms of light and shadow, loosing a few rounds before realising their error. Curtana must have authorised them to use discretionary fire, which could only mean that the danger was sufficiently grave to justify the expenditure of ammunition.

He had been in the care of Curtana and her crew since the moment of his capture, but it was only now that the significance of this was striking home. The fact that he was a prisoner would be immaterial if the airship ran into an enemy it couldn’t outgun. Everyone sensed the same helplessness, or so it seemed from the mood of his fellow captives. Nimcha was silent, and most of the time her mother simply stared through the walls, fixated on something only she could see. Even Meroka had little to say, and nothing at all to him.

The intermittent shooting continued, single cannon rounds and tooth-grating bursts of rapid fire, and then there came a volley that didn’t end as quickly as the others had. The airship swerved violently, the engines roaring louder than he had ever heard them, and through the window he saw
something
loom out of the mist, a fleeting grey shape like a bloated whale, snatched away by cloud before his eyes had registered more than the vaguest of impressions. All he was sure of was that he had seen another airship, that it had been very close and that it had most definitely not been a phantom.

The firing resumed. This time he had the sense that it was directed and disciplined, with Curtana’s crew trying to estimate the course of the invisible enemy through their intimate, hard-won knowledge of airmanship and aerial combat. Even above the roar of the engines he heard shouted orders, the snap and crackle of small-arms fire, and felt the drumming of booted feet on metal plates. Then he heard something different, a rapid series of metallic twangs, as if someone outside the gondola was hammering along its length.

They were being shot at.

Painted Lady
steered hard once more, her guns and cannon roared, and again something large and grey bellied out of the mist. This time Quillon had enough time to recognise weapons and armour and engines. The other ship was at least as large as
Painted Lady;
at least as fearsomely armoured and equipped. But it hadn’t been some mirage-like reflection. The other ship made even
Painted Lady’s
spikes and ramming devices look like serene accoutrements. The gondola was covered in barbs and crenulations of what was either actual bone - the remains of some vast and terrible animal - or wood that had been carved and sharpened to the same effect. The bonework extended onto the envelope, garlands of skulls and femurs and pelvises wrapping the toughened, metal-plated skin. There was a grisly figurehead at the front of the gondola - a carved or mummified corpse in mortal torment, arms flung wide, ribcage pulled apart to expose glistening innards, gouged holes for eye sockets, mouth wrenched open in an eternal scream.

‘Skullboys,’ Kalis said.

Quillon nodded. ‘I was hoping we’d seen the last of them. But Curtana’s made it this far. She must be used to dealing with them, if they’re in the air as well.’

The shooting continued. There was more shouting; a scream from somewhere; much too nearby to have been one of the Skullboys.

‘That sound like someone in command of things to you?’ Meroka asked, the first words she had said to him in hours.

Another round clanged against the gondola. This one punctured the metal, letting in a finger of grey daylight. Nimcha jerked back from the hole into her mother’s arms, eyes wild and wide with fright.

‘You’d better get on this side,’ Quillon said.

‘You think it’s going to make any difference what side they sit on?’ Meroka asked.

Guns roared fire into the mist. Quillon squinted into the swirling white haze but he couldn’t see any trace of the enemy now. He did not doubt for a moment that they were still out there.

‘Nimcha can bring the change again,’ Kalis said. ‘Would that silence your doubts, if she did it again?’

‘She’d better not,’ Meroka said.

‘If it helped us—’ Quillon began.

‘It won’t, trust me.’

‘A little while ago you wouldn’t even credit her with those powers.’

‘Right now I’m not prepared to take the chance that I’m wrong. Kalis, listen to me. If you control that daughter of yours, you tell her not to do anything, understood?’

‘She has her own will,’ Kalis said.

‘And I’ve got a pair of hands that are pretty good at strangling. The only things keeping us from those Skullboys are engines and guns, and we need ’em both.’

‘You’re assuming it has to be a shift to a lower state,’ Quillon said. ‘What if she changes the zone so that more advanced technologies are available?’

‘One way we lose, the other way we gain nothing.’

Quillon turned to Kalis. ‘She might be right. The risk’s much too great.’

An airman opened the door, carrying a service revolver which he was in the process of reloading.

‘Quillon,’ he said. ‘You’re to come with me. Doctor Gambeson’s orders. He thinks it’s worth taking a risk on you.’

Quillon made to move from the bench. ‘What’s prompted that change of heart?’

‘Ask him, not me. You’ll only ever be one mistake away from a bullet, so try not to slip up.’

Quillon took the tinted goggles from his shirt pocket, ready to don them as soon as he had left the room. ‘I’ll do my best.’

‘What about the rest of us?’ Meroka asked. ‘We’re supposed to just sit here and lap this shit up, right? We’re sitting targets. If you’re under attack, wouldn’t it make sense to let us join in the fight?’

‘Including the girl?’

‘I can use a gun. You might want to mention that to your boss.’

‘Captain Curtana’s got a few things on her plate at the moment.’

‘Judging from all the shouting and screaming, she’s not the only one. Wouldn’t it make sense to use every skilled hand you can get?’

The man fumbled the last bullet into his revolver, snapping shut the cylinder and spinning it. ‘I’ll speak to her. In the meantime Quillon comes with me.’

He was taken out of the room and led through the narrow companionways of the gondola. They walked past the small medicine locker where Gambeson had performed his first, tentative examination. The door was open and most of the shelves were now bare of bottles and preparations.