‘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.
‘How many wounded?’ Quillon asked.
‘Seven at the last count. We were already carrying four seriously injured men.’
‘I presume there was an earlier engagement?’
‘This is the first close action we’ve seen on this mission, actually. The injured men came from a semaphore station. Swarm’s always maintained good relations with the signal guilds - it’s the only way we can communicate when our fleet is separated. We were supposed to be delivering antizonals when the storm hit. The station was overrun with Skullboys; most of the signalmen were killed before we could get to them. We extracted eight survivors, of which six needed medical attention. Two died shortly afterwards, despite Gambeson’s best efforts.’
‘He’s a very good doctor, but he’s still just one man.’
‘So are you, Quillon. Do you really think you’ll make that much of a difference?’
‘I’ll do what I can. You rescued us; that places me in your debt.’
‘Half the crew still think you should be thrown overboard, along with the mother and daughter. People are beginning to wonder what you are. You think wearing those goggles is going to put an end to the scuttlebutt?’
‘If you know why I wear them, what’s to stop you telling everyone else?’
‘Doctor Gambeson asked me not to.’
‘It’s that simple?’
‘When a man’s saved your leg, you do as he asks. But I can’t speak for everyone else.’
‘We’ll just have to win them round, won’t we?’ Quillon said. ‘Speaking personally, surviving to the end of the day would be a good start.’
The airman pushed doors open and led him through into the sickbay. Quillon reeled, momentarily unable to process the sight that greeted him. The shuttered room was much too small for the number of injured men that had been squeezed into it, their beds and bunks locked together like the pieces of a child’s puzzle, with scarcely any room for Gambeson to pass between them. The air reeked with chemical disinfectant, barely disguising an underlying stench of disease and decay. Yellow bandages, blood- and pus-stained, littered the floor. Quillon’s feet crunched on the broken glass of a bottle, a sticky brown residue of spilled medicine oozing from it. Bullet holes riddled the wall. Death was loitering in the room, Quillon thought, awaiting an opportunity to pounce.
‘Ah, Doctor Quillon,’ Gambeson said, looking over his shoulder as he bent down over one of the men, inspecting a chest dressing. ‘Good of you to come.’ He gestured in the vague direction of a shelf. ‘I’ve had your bag brought down. I trust everything’s still in it, and you of course have my authority to use any of our supplies as you see, um, fit. Might I rely on you to proceed without my direct supervision?’
‘Of course,’ Quillon said.
‘The gentleman in the furthest bed may be the one most urgently in need of your attention.’
Quillon collected his bag and went to the man. He had been shot in the arm, and judging by the amount of blood on his bandages he appeared to have received only the most basic attention.
‘Mister Cudgel,’ Gambeson said, directing his remark to the airman who had accompanied Quillon. ‘You may leave us now. I’m sure you have more pressing business to attend to.’
‘I was told to keep Quillon under guard.’
‘And I’m countermanding that order, even if it came from Captain Curtana herself.’ Gently he added, ‘I need hardly remind you that I have that authority, at least in the sickbay.’
‘Ask the captain to let Meroka fight,’ Quillon said urgently. ‘I promise none of us will do anything to endanger the ship.’
‘The doctor speaks good sense,’ Gambeson said. ‘I believe we would do well to take him at his word.’
Quillon opened his bag and reached bony fingers into its black heart. Very quickly he was lost in the business of healing, all sense of time and his own needs eclipsed by the exigencies of the task. It was not the first time he had dug bullets out of people. Fray had occasionally called on that skill, when his own men had need of back-room surgery. Then, as now, the work had called for a steady hand, scrupulous detachment and a willingness to improvise with less than ideal instruments and supplies. Gambeson’s sickbay was at least as well equipped as Fray’s back-room clinic in the Pink Peacock (the same room where Fray had cut Quillon’s wings away) but it could never have been intended to serve this many sick and wounded.
The fighting continued, although he was only distantly aware of it. The ship swerved, dived and lurched. The engines roared and quelled. Gunfire sounded from just outside the gondola, from the defensive positions along the railinged balcony. Once, a pair of little silver-edged holes appeared in the metal walls on either side of the sickbay, neat as full stops.
‘It’s not always like this,’ Gambeson said, looking up from his patient.
‘You don’t have to apologise, Doctor. I’m just grateful for the chance to be doing something.’
‘Your being from Spearpoint hasn’t helped your cause, I’m afraid. Rightly or wrongly, there’s still a good measure of animosity within Swarm. I wish it were otherwise, but people will be ... people. Grudge-bearing is part of our nature.’
Gambeson had been careful not to mention Quillon’s angel nature in the sickbay.
‘Spearpointers don’t see Swarm in quite the same light,’ Quillon said ruefully. ‘Most of them haven’t even heard of it.’
‘Out of sight, out of mind. We’ve never had that luxury, Doctor. Even when we’re halfway around the world, Spearpoint’s influence is still present. Even in the way we talk.’
‘Your accent is unfamiliar, but we don’t seem to have much difficulty understanding each other.’
‘We shouldn’t. What you call Spearpointish we call Swarmish, but in truth it’s the same language. Spearpoint split from Swarm less than a thousand years ago. That’s really not that long, compared to how long some of the ground communities have been out there, going about their own business. The woman - Kalis? Swarmish isn’t her first tongue. She can speak it, but it’s awkward for her. The girl has a little more fluency - she’s probably been in contact with the dirt-rats ... the surface communities ... that speak Swarmish, or a variant of it. Most of the
signalling guilds use it, and their influence tends to spread out from the semaphore stations.’
‘You seem well informed,’ Quillon observed.
‘Too many late-night discussions with Ricasso, I suppose.’
Quillon raised a nearly hairless eyebrow. ‘A name I’ve heard twice already.’
‘He and I share similarly unfashionable interests. With Ricasso it’s the deep history of our world, its origins and ontological underpinnings. For reasons that I need hardly elaborate on, I’ve long been fascinated by the history of medicine, as practised throughout the zones. There’s no shortage of common ground.’
Quillon thought back to what had happened at the Skullboy ambush. ‘Which still doesn’t tell me anything about Ricasso, or why he would be interested in a live carnivorg.’
‘Ricasso’s the leader of Swarm,’ Gambeson said. ‘The closest thing we have to a king, I suppose. He’s also Curtana’s godfather. Whatever she says Ricasso takes as gospel. You couldn’t drive a hair between those two.’