The Blood Debt (16 page)

He was flying!

‘So,’ said Chu over her shoulder, ‘was it worth the effort?’

‘Yes!’

‘You know, I hope, that you’re getting off lightly. At the moment, I’m doing all the work. If we’re going to keep this up, you’ll have to help out.’

He sobered. ‘Of course. Show me how.’

‘Try shifting your weight from side to side. See what happens. Don’t worry about making a mistake. We’re relatively safe up here. Unless we come out the side of the thermal, there’s not much you can do wrong.’

He nodded and took a grip on the straps leading to the wing’s control surfaces. Shifting his body from the way it wanted naturally to hang, flat in the harness, was surprisingly difficult. Giving up on subtlety, he wrenched himself violently to the left. The wing instantly banked to the right. He swung awkwardly, trying to regain control. Momentum and gravity warred over him, and he lost.

Chu tipped them onto a level heading with a gentle nudge.

‘It’s not as easy as it looks,’ she said. ‘Is it?’

He agreed wholeheartedly. It was as hard as rock climbing for a beginner. ‘You make it look easy.’

‘Thanks to a lot of practice. Try moving just part of you, rather than all of you at once — a leg, your upper body, your arms. Get the feel of the wing and work with it rather than against it. It’s a partnership, like you and me. If we’re working against each other, we won’t get anywhere. You can’t
make
the wing do what you tell it to. You have to make it
want
to do it.’

He could appreciate what she was saying, but putting it into practice was difficult. The wing wobbled from side to side as he experimented with moving his weight around. He found it very difficult to maintain an even keel; the slightest nudge sent them angling left or right, up or down, and the odds of over-correcting were high. It was better, he soon discovered, to give in to the non-linear nature of flight and allow the wing to travel in graceful curves. Straight lines were strictly for the ground.

Before long, his muscles begged for a respite from the strain of tugging backwards and forwards, over and over again. Not a single limb was spared, and he could see why missing a leg might hamper the quartermaster’s ability to fly, and why strength was an advantage.

Finally he managed a complete circuit of the top of the thermal without losing control. That was a long way from attaining mastery over the wing — and the thought of landing already worried him — but it was progress.

‘Tired yet?’ Chu asked him.

‘Yes, but I don’t want to stop.’

‘Good. Let me take over for a bit and you can rest. All you’ll have to do is tell me where the wind is going.’

He sagged gratefully into her, breathing heavily. ‘Where are
we
going?’

‘Over the Divide.’

A chill deeper than the wind swept through him. ‘I thought we weren’t going to do that until later.’

‘I said we wouldn’t do any real searching until tomorrow. It won’t hurt us to make a quick pass, just so you know what it takes.’

He nodded, hiding his nervousness. A fall would be fatal no matter where they came down, in the city or in the Divide. The thought wasn’t terribly comforting, but it did put things in perspective.

He studied the flows of the wind. ‘There’s a current over there,’ he said, pointing with his free hand. ‘Catch it and it’ll take us halfway.’

‘Excellent.’ Her spine flexed under him, and the wing responded smoothly, tilting steadily nose-upward. ‘Hold on tight. You’re about to see some
real
flying.’

She flexed again and the nose came down. The wing surged forward as though released from a cage. Skender clung to Chu with both hands and hoped for the best.

* * * *

They dropped out of the thermal with a lurch. Chu banked hard and fast, skidding through the air with consummate skill even though she couldn’t ‘see’ it. Moments of free fall alternated with sudden jolts upward. Skender swung back and forth like a rag doll in a dog’s mouth. He concentrated on the city far below, studying the layout of its streets and the angular shapes of its roofs and towers, not thinking at all about the solid stone, bricks and mortar waiting for them should they make a mistake.

The navigation lights looked like stars reflected in a still, red-tinged lake. Their distribution was uneven, forming odd constellations, matching none in the sky. Skender thought he saw the road they had followed the previous night to the Magister’s chambers, but everything looked different from above. The usual landmarks — windows, doors, street signs, graffiti — were invisible. He couldn’t decide if the city looked bigger or smaller. Certainly he had never been able to see it from end to end while inside it, so his appreciation of it had been confined to those few areas he had visited. Above, he could see every tower and building, from the smallest to the very large. There was no avoiding the vast mass of industry and humanity it contained. Only one section was dark, a bulging triangle far away from the bustle of the New City; he recognised it as the boneyard, the chimney-like structure in which the bodies of Laurean dead went for disposal. Birds fed on the flesh before it desiccated completely, leaving anonymous, sun-bleached skeletons behind. He was heartily glad the sun had set.

Gradually he became aware of a severe chord cutting into the city: they were flying over the Wall protecting the inhabitants of Laure from the Divide. The Wall curved gently inward, like a dam. Beyond it was nothing but darkness. That, in a way, was worse than the many lethal details of the city. There was no way to tell what lay beneath them. All manner of creature could be slithering across the distant ground, waving sharp-tipped limbs at them.

He pointed Chu towards another steady stream. The wind seemed colder over the Divide, and moved more quickly, as if in a hurry to distance itself from the wounded earth. Turbulence became commonplace. Skender hugged Chu more tightly, for comfort as well as warmth, and she didn’t object.

‘It’s eerie out here, isn’t it?’ Her voice was just loud enough to hear over the snatching wind. The city was a blur behind them, the only source of light for many kilometres. He wondered what it would be like to fly without any sort of navigation at all. On a moonless night, he wondered, it might be possible to fly right into the ground without realising.

His only reassurance was the wind, which he could still sense through the licence’s charms. Its restless flow warned of sudden disturbances. He was reasonably certain they wouldn’t crash into the far side of the Divide without fair warning.

‘Have you ever done this before?’ he asked. ‘Flown out here on your own at night?’

She shook her head, sending a gentle vibration through the wing. ‘Too scared.’

That simple admission made him feel a little better. ‘And there’s not much point, I guess. It’s not as if you can see anything.’

‘There are ghostlights out here sometimes,’ she said. ‘Occasionally, if they come too close to the Wall, someone’s sent out to check. Usually older, more experienced flyers, or one of the heavy lifters with a Survey crew aboard. One mission brought back a man’kin in the shape of a giant gargoyle; chained, of course. It had lost a wing and couldn’t speak. They tried to fix it, but it fell apart, and the bits were laid down in Slaughter Square. Some say that if you go there at night you can hear the pieces whispering to each other.’

‘What’s Slaughter Square?’ he asked, ignoring for the moment the image of a man’kin with wings.

‘You haven’t been there? I’ll have to take you. It’s a charming place. Centuries ago, a disease killed hundreds of people. The only way to stop it was to kill the sick and their families and the rodents who spread the disease. Once a year there’s a festival celebrating the Year of the Plague. Rats and mice are killed and left on every street corner; their blood is poured in Slaughter Square. It’s very charming. We get lots of tourists.’

‘You’re joking, right?’

‘Only about the tourists. If you stick around long enough, you’ll be the first.’

Skender had no intention of staying in Laure any longer than he had to. Once he found his mother, he could go home and return to his ordinary life. But when he tried to remind Chu of that, the words caught in his throat.

You haven’t been there? I’ll have to take you.

Had she just asked him out on a
date?

Before he could respond, she pointed into the deep darkness away from the city.

‘Look. There’s something.’

He craned past her, sending the wing wobbling from side to side. ‘Where?’

‘There.’ She pointed again. ‘See it?’

Their flight levelled out. He peered into the darkness, squinting but unable at first to make out any detail.

Then, at the very limit of his vision, he saw a light.

‘Yes, got it now,’ he said. ‘Any idea what it’s coming from?’

‘None at all. Want to check it out?’

‘Uh —’ The night was impenetrable in that direction, the Divide gaped wide, and the cold had seeped into his bones. Only the front of him, where Chu’s body gave him protection, retained any heat at all.

He thought of his mother and what it must be like to be in the Divide at night, alone.

‘Okay,’ he said, ‘but we’re not stopping unless we absolutely have to.’

‘Goddess, no. I may be reckless, but I’m not an idiot.’

He searched the sky for an appropriate stream. ‘Bring us up a bit, then across that way.’ He indicated a heading slightly to the right of the light. ‘There’s a nice strong current running through there.’

She glided them along the correct trajectory. He felt the stream grab them and pull them forward. Skender had never been swimming, but he had read about it in books. When writers talked about being swept up in powerful currents, he imagined it would feel something like this, with the pit of his stomach suddenly hollowing and all control wrested from him.

Chu sniffed. ‘I know this wind. It’s called the Dark Bellows; it flows along the Divide from the mountains. Can you smell the trees?’

He took a lungful but could smell nothing but her. ‘It’s good,’ he said.

She sniffed again, tilting her head back until it bumped his. ‘There’s something else on the wind. A new stink. Man’kin, I think,’ she mused. ‘They’re out late.’

‘I can’t smell them. Could they be behind the light?’

‘No. Look at our heading. The light isn’t in the Divide, it’s on the far side.’

He peered over his shoulder to get a fix on the city glow — now a less-than-brilliant haze far behind them. Looking forward again, he could see that she was absolutely right. The Divide floor was obviously a very long way beneath them. The light she had spotted was only just below their height.

‘Where’s the Aad?’ he asked, worried they might be heading to Laure’s ill-favoured, haunted half.

‘To our left, a kilometre or two away.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Absolutely. The only thing out there,’ she said, pointing directly ahead of them, ‘is dirt and scrub.’

‘Not any more.’ The light was faint but not an illusion; more yellow than a star and too fine to be a fire. As they flew closer, it resolved into two lights, not just one. They were spaced evenly apart and seemed to be moving, rocking from side to side.

‘What is that?’ she asked. ‘Some sort of vehicle?’

‘That’s what it looks like.’ Skender pictured a-buggy or truck bouncing across uneven ground with headlights on.

‘Could it be your mother?’

He shook his head. ‘She travelled by camel. And even if she hadn’t, how would she get up here?’

‘There’s an old road cut into the side of the Divide not far from here. It’s steep but not impassable.’

He watched the lights moving nearer, curious about their origin. They probably belonged to an isolated traveller whose presence had nothing to do with him and his mission, but they still piqued his interest. Why would someone be driving so close to the Divide in the middle of the night? Where man’kin, dust devils and ghostlights walked, worse creatures no doubt followed.

They flew directly over the vehicle, too high up to make out any details but close enough to see that it was a buggy large enough for four people. An additional two sets of lights glimmered to the south: more vehicles out on a midnight journey.

Then the wing caught a rising gust from the edge of the Divide and they banked sharply around, losing forward momentum. Skender mentally kicked himself for neglecting his duties as wind-watcher. He reminded himself that staying aloft was much more important than the identity of the people in the vehicle below.

‘Take us left and down,’ he said. ‘We can pick up speed and head back, if you want.’

‘Getting tired?’ she asked.

He didn’t bother lying. ‘You better believe it. It’s been a long day.’

‘And we’ve got a longer one tomorrow.’ She reached over her shoulder to pat his face. ‘All right. I’ll take pity on you. Back we go for a nightcap, then some shut-eye.’

‘A
quick
nightcap,’ he said.

‘Sure. That seems to be all you can handle.’

She chortled to herself as they glided silently over the buggy, far below.

* * * *

The Father

‘Humanity is a fearful species. For every fear we

know, it is said, there are a dozen monsters who

prey on it
—
and all of them, at some point or

other, have called the Divide home.’

THE BOOK OF TOWERS,
EXEGESIS 17:7

hilly stirred in her sleep, dimly aware of the buggy bouncing over rough ground, its engine growling and rhythmic through the seat’s thin cushioning. The dream had her in its grip and wouldn’t let her go.

She was standing in a wide expanse of yellow sand, a vast basin that seemed perfectly flat at first, but was in fact rising up around her. She felt like a grain of wheat in a vast, empty silo. The sand began moving, shifting and tumbling as though blown by a breeze. The breeze grew steadily stronger, sweeping in circles like the currents of a willy-willy. Sand danced higher and higher, then rose in a funnel, getting in her eyes and nose. She felt the ground being sucked out from under her feet, giving her the impression that she was sinking. Blinking and coughing, she crouched down and put her arms over her head.