“There!” Kathryn pointed.
Tylar spotted the flash of bronze. It was Master Gerrod, brilliant in his armor. He stood braced in a doorway a few spaces down the tilted passageway. One metal hand gripped Rogger by the shirt collar, keeping him in place.
Across the passage, Eylan shoved several folks out of her way with the handle of a long ax. The Wyr-mistress’s dark eyes found Tylar and narrowed. Her efforts grew fiercer. Her duty had been to act as his bodyguard, to keep his valuable seed safe from harm. She seemed furious at how difficult he was making her chore.
Tylar and Kathryn hurried to the others.
He turned to Rogger and Gerrod. “We must get to the captain’s deck.”
Another explosion bucked the ship savagely. It rolled to port, throwing everyone to the wall. Cries grew sharper in alarm. Tylar snatched Kathryn around the waist. He felt her heartbeat pounding. He stared through the open door of a passenger’s cabin and out its window.
With the ship rolled over, the city appeared beneath the flippercraft. Tall towers stretched close. He spotted townsmen on the streets, near enough to see their faces staring up. He knew what they were seeing. A flippercraft, trailing a tail of smoke and fire, about to strike the city.
Then the ship swung back even, taking away the view below—only now the craft’s nose dipped more steeply.
A hand grabbed his elbow, as hard as any shackle.
He turned to find Eylan hauling him up.
Tylar attempted to shake free. “My seed will have to wait.”
She scowled at him. Using her free arm, she stopped one of the crewmen with the butt of her ax handle, pinning the young man to the wall. “Take us to the foredeck,” she demanded in a voice that offered no mercy.
The crewman balked, near blind with panic.
Not a good sign.
“I may be able to help the captain.” Tylar grabbed the man by the shoulder, shoving the ax handle away. “I have Grace that may serve to save the ship.”
The man’s eyes fixed to him, to any hope, then nodded.
Gerrod and Rogger joined them. With Eylan in the lead, roughly knocking folks aside with the flat of her ax, they forced their way forward.
The crewman unlocked the hatch of the captain’s deck. “We’ve lost all aeroskimmers. We’re riding on the dregs of Grace. If you can do anything . . .”
Tylar led the others into a mirror of the stern common room. A deck overlooked a curved wall of glass, the captain’s eye. But instead of open decking, the space was occupied by an arc of control seats. To the right and left, men fought to wield the starboard and port aeroskimmers. Smoke poured from one side, flames lapped on the other.
In the center, directly ahead, the helmsman sat, strapped to a chair that protruded out over the window, like the bowsprit of a ship. The position gave the man a full view of the city hurtling toward them. His feet worked a set of pedals, his hands a vast wheel. Smoke framed his form. A spat of flames danced under his toes.
It was deathly quiet as the team worked to save the flippercraft, to save the passengers, to save themselves. The captain stood behind his helmsman at the foot of the bowsprit. His brows darkened at the sight of the newcomers.
Tylar had no time for pleasantries. He hurried forward.
Below, the city filled the window.
Tylar recognized immediately the desperation of the captain’s plan. The Tigre River lay directly below them. The captain was dropping the flippercraft into the river, plainly hoping to cushion their crash, and in turn, spare the lives of the townsfolk below.
But there was a problem with his plan.
Directly ahead, a massive structure blocked the river. Nine towers and a keep. Chrism’s castillion. They were falling too fast. With the aeroskimmers out, they could not swing around. It was a dead man’s drop. They might strike the river, but like a skipped stone on a flat pond, they would crash headlong into the keep itself. Though the castillion was raised up on giant pillars to allow river barges to pass beneath, it was not high enough to accommodate the bulk of the flippercraft.
“Captain,” Tylar said, “where’s your main plumb to the alchemical tank?”
The captain pointed to the left. “We used all our reserves. We have nothing left.”
Tylar was already moving. Kathryn followed, along with the captain. They reached the plumb feed used to fill the tanks. It was a column of thick glass, sealed at the top. The entire crew’s eyes were on them.
Tylar ordered the captain, “Open the plumb.” He turned to Kathryn and bared his wrists. “Your sword. Cut deep.”
To her credit, she did not balk. The blade slid free with a flash of silver. With a speed borne of desperation, she thrust her blade’s edge across both wrists. She was not gentle. She sliced to bone. Tendons severed. Blood poured.
Tylar swung his arms over the open feeding tube. His blood flowed down the glass, heading for the mekanicals in the ship’s belly.
Rogger appeared at his side. “Your Grace’s aspect is water. Not air. This is no Fin.”
“It’s about to become one.” Tylar nodded to the window, hugging the tube, wrists on fire. The Tigre River swelled out the window. The castillion lay an arrow’s shot away.
Tylar closed his eyes and willed his streaming blood. He pictured the crimson river reaching the main mekanicals that flew the ship. He recalled the explosive effect his raw blood had on the Fin as they fled Tangle Reef.
Pure, undiluted power.
He prayed it was enough.
He cast his will along with his blood to the heart of the flippercraft. He flowed his Grace through the mekanicals and over the keel of the craft.
Water . . .
Into an ocean he had been born, birthed as his mother drowned in a sinking scuttlecraft off the Greater Coast. He touched that place, drew upon half memories buried deep within. Water flowed back with his first sensations of this world. He was pushed from warm womb to cold sea.
Falling, falling, falling . . .
He wailed, babe and man. His mouth filled with water, his lungs. Deep in his chest, beyond blood and bone, he felt the daemon respond, stirring and waking. Here, too, water swelled.
Once again, he drowned in it, lived in it, breathed it.
This was his Grace, gifted by Meeryn.
He opened his eyes and stared out at the window. Water filled the world. A moment from striking. But they were one and the same: ship, river, and man.
“Hold fast!” the helmsman screamed.
There was no need. The river accepted its own, opening beneath them, drawing them to its flowing bosom.
The flippercraft fell smoothly into the river’s embrace, sinking rather than striking, drawn beneath its waves, joining the strength of its currents.
“The wheel’s responding!” the helmsman choked out, trapped between horror and hope.
Rogger yelled back at him. “The castillion!”
Though they had landed, caught by the river itself, Lord Chrism’s keep still rushed toward them. The window was three-quarters submerged, but there was enough view out its upper section to see the castillion’s massive stone pylons and the lower half of the keep.
“Take the ship down!” Rogger screamed, running for the helmsman.
Tylar nodded, too weak to respond . . . or stand. Hugging the plumb tube, he slid down its length, smearing blood. He felt arms catch him. A warm breath touched his ear.
“I have you,” Kathryn said.
He nodded again. Yes, once you did . . .
Vision narrowing, he saw Rogger yelling at the helmsman, but no words reached him. Still, he watched the waterline climb the window. The flippercraft submerged toward the bottom of the deep river.
The castillion pillars swept toward them, dark shadows in the river. The ship hoved over, turning slightly in the current. The pillars passed to either side. Sunlit waters became murky depths as they dove under the castillion. A grinding scrape shook the ship, coming from topside, as if the upper skin of the flippercra
ft were being sheared away.
The craft shook and rattled.
Then sunlight bathed down over the hurtling ship.
A cry pierced the pounding in Tylar’s ear: “We’re under and through!” Cheers followed.
Tylar closed his eyes. He still felt arms around him. He fell into them, gratefully and fully—then slipped away.
“Help me with him!” Kathryn screamed.
She lifted Tylar into her arms, drawing on shadows to give her strength. But she was surprised at how light he was, an empty shell of his former self. Blood ran down his arms, soaking through her cloak.
The captain had beached the flippercraft into a section of docklands, crashing through a few small ferryboats, riding up over a stone pier, and burying its nose onto the shore. Its stern still lay in the water, pulled by the currents. The river threatened to carry the craft back out again.
They did not have much time.
The captain shouted orders, attempting to rein in the growing chaos.
A jam of passengers blocked the exit from the captain’s deck. Passengers pushed forward from the sinking stern. Some carried baggage in their arms or atop their heads. Others simply clawed and cried their way forward, attempting to reach one of the two flank doors.
Behind them, water flooded in from the shattered rear window, climbing higher and higher, washing up the ship as the river pushed into all compartments. All that had kept them from drowning earlier had been the air trapped inside the flippercraft. And now smoke choked the air, thicker since their landing in the Tigre. River water had doused the flames in the lower holds, but smoke still rose from the smolders and flaming oil slicks.
Kathryn hugged Tylar to her breast, his head hung back, neck exposed. So pale, so pale . . .
She needed to get him to safety. There was no time even to bandage his wrists.
Eylan came to Kathryn’s aid. Using the haft of her ax like a cudgel, she forged a brutal path out the captain’s cabin and into the hallway. Rogger fell in tow. Gerrod already stood at the hold’s doorway, gripped fast with the strength of his mekanicals, a boulder in a river. Once Kathryn reached him, he joined Eylan in wading through the crowd, aiming for the starboard hatch. Sunlight blazed there.
“We must reach the streets as swiftly as possible,” Gerrod said. “The entire garrison will be down here to investigate.”
Kathryn followed in the pair’s wake. Rogger came behind her.
But still the crowds resisted. The water grew deeper, climbing to midthigh. Kathryn did not know when she started crying. But the tears were hot against her cold cheeks. Don’t die . . . not now . . .
Tylar still breathed, but raspy and coarse, too shallow.
They needed to hurry.
The ship rolled, pushed by the current. Wood ground on stone. Water sloshed, folk fell, some going under, trod on by others. Gerrod helped a little girl, pulling her out of the water by the scruff of her collar. Her father gratefully accepted her back, eyes wide with the panic they all felt. None wanted to be aboard the flippercraft if it should be dragged back and under the river.
The doorway was packed tight with the press of bodies.
It seemed they would never get through.
Then men appeared to either side of Kathryn. They were the ship’s crew, armed with staves and poles. She recognized the leader of the men who had guarded the captain’s deck.
“Stay with us,” he hissed at her.
With barked yells and much poking and striking, the crowd was beaten aside. The crew reached the starboard door and set up a post there. They forced order upon the point of their staves. The way opened. Kathryn and the others were waved through. With some semblance of calm established, the flow of escaping passengers quickened.
Kathryn glanced to the leader of the crewmen.
He met her eyes. “We’re in your debt. All of you.” His eyes settled to the slack form of Tylar. When he looked back up, there was only sorrow there. He, like Kathryn, knew death.
But Kathryn didn’t have to believe it or accept it. She jumped into the river. Waist-deep in its current, she trudged toward shore. By now, half the city seemed to have gathered along the levy.
Off to the left, a glint of armor shone through the rambling crowd.
A troop of castillion guards.
Gerrod led their party away, drifting down the river to the right. They reached shore and climbed out. “Quickly. This way,” he said and set off at a fast pace, heading into the dark and narrows of the wharfs.
Eylan stepped to Kathryn’s side. “I can take him,” she said in a soft voice, very unlike her usual brusqueness.
Still Kathryn shook her head. “I can’t . . .” She continued with Tylar, held up by shadow and sorrow.
“We need to find an alchemist,” Rogger said. The thief, soaked from crown to heel, looked like a drowned river rat. “Firebalm will heal his wounds in a heartbeat.”
“Where?” Kathryn gasped. She did not know the city well.
“No,” Gerrod said, stopping in the shadows of an alley. “We’ve no time.” He reached up and pulled down a shirt drying from a window line. His mekanical fingers ripped strips. “Bind his wounds. That will hold for now. And we don’t want to leave a blood trail for any hunters to track.”
As they packed and cinched the wounds, Gerrod’s caution proved warranted. A troop of castillion guards swept down the neighboring street. Kathryn used the alley’s shadows and cast her cloak over their huddled party.
“Something has the city stirred up,” Gerrod said after the guards passed. “The response to the crash was too swift. All the city’s garrisons must have already been on the street.”
“Why the activity?” Rogger asked.
Gerrod gained his feet. “Word of the godslayer’s arrival must have reached the wrong ears.”
Kathryn agreed. They had no way of knowing how things had fared back at Tashijan. Once she was found to be missing, it would take Argent ser Fields only a short time to discern they had fled by the dawn flippercraft.
With Tylar’s wounds bound, they set off again.
“Where now?” Rogger asked.
“To where we were originally headed,” Gerrod answered. He pointed upward, to a pair of towers a quarter reach away. It was the Conclave of Chrismferry. “We came to question a healer . . . now we need him even more.”
Dart crowded the window with Laurelle. They stared off toward the castillion and the Tigre River. A trail of smoke rose from the near shore. Moments ago, all had heard a deep low boom, thunder in sunlight. Dart had been nearest the window. A quick glance out revealed a geyser of water exploding up from the Tigre, not far from where the river disappeared under Chrism’s castillion.
A distant crash of stone echoed.
From their height and position, Dart watched something massive shoot out from under the main keep, a huge boat, nothing like she had ever seen, a wooden whale. It trailed fire and smoke, rocketing forth. Then it vanished behind the dockworks on this side of the river. The subsequent crash could not be mistaken, billowing up with fresh smoke. The strange craft had struck the wharf area.
“A flippercraft,” Yaellin had said dourly.
Dart scrunched her brow. A flippercraft? What was one of the air ships doing in the river? Had it fallen out of the skies?
Laurelle stayed close to Dart. For too long, both had been jangled by the terror and hopelessness of their plight. Holing up here offered no comfort. Now stopped, tensions grew as their reality sunk home. They were outcasts, fugitives. A life of easy luxury and respect had been shattered in one night.
Dart pushed open the window, needing fresh air. Laurelle leaned against her. Her fingers found Dart’s.
Across the short way to the river, shouts reached them, along with the shrill whistles of the water wagons. A pair of mekanical flutterseats whisked out from under the castillion and sped over the water. They bore the gold and crimson of Chrism’s guard.
“What do you think happened?” Laurelle asked.
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“A crash,” Yaellin said behind them. His voice had hardened.
Laurelle glanced to him, hearing his worry. “What . . . do you think it concerns us?”
Yaellin answered with a darkened countenance. He kept his sword upon Paltry, even though the man’s hands had been bound behind his back and tied to the bed’s head rails.
Dart kept her vigil at the window. It was as if now the very skies were falling.
Paltry stirred on the bed, working his shoulders. “It was the flippercraft bearing the contingent from Tashijan, wasn’t it?” he said with thick disdain. “Your friends. Your allies. Those who came to help you.”
Dart glanced back at Yaellin, praying he would discount Paltry’s words. Instead, Yaellin remained silent.
Paltry laughed, but with no humor, only satisfaction. He took strength from their despair and glanced to Dart. “The abomination will be slain. I failed once in my duty. But now the great weight and wheel of Chrismferry will crush you.”
As his words sank home, Dart’s heart stopped beating. I failed once in my duty. She pictured kindly Master Willym falling atop her, his blood washing hotly over her. Murdered. A bolt meant for her.
Laurelle realized the same. Fire entered her voice. “You! You hired the assassin.”
“And it was gold poorly spent. I took great care to hire the best blackfoot, to get him placed in the shadows, to arrange his flight afterward. And what did I get for my efforts? The abomination still lives.” His gaze poisoned upon Dart.
“You killed Master Willym,” Dart said coldly.
“An unfortunate consequence. But the old man had been burned by Grace for so long, he didn’t have long to live.”
Dart remembered the former Hand’s last word.
Beware . . .
Had Willym known about Chrism, suspected something? Had he tried to warn her? She remembered, as she struggled from beneath him, a last glimpse into the dying man’s eyes. A sudden clarity and horror. She had thought it was the sight of his own death—but now she knew what it was. It was the break of some charm, a curse lifted, a yoke shattered. Willym had been ensorcelled, his will and memories bent. Such black alchemies were not beyond the corrupted. Only his death had set him free.