The Blood Debt Part 6

*Oh, that's just great. How are we supposed to get to the Aad without a licence? Are you telling me to break the law and steal a heavy lifter?'

*I'm not telling you that. A licence you will have. His licence.' One k.n.o.bbled finger pointed at Skender.

*Mine?' he said, alarmed by the high-pitched voice he heard coming from his own mouth. *But I don't know the first thing about flying!'

*Then you had better start studying. The paperwork will arrive tomorrow morning. And be warned: the guards on the heavy lifter hangars have been tripled. Don't even consider trying to steal one.'

*But -' The thought of being suspended over thin air by a sheet of canvas and a set of unreliable charms made Skender's head spin. He glanced again at Chu, prepared to argue the point that giving him a licence was as useless as giving them none at all - but her expression was furious, and it appeared to be directed at him as much as at the Magister.

*You can thank me later.' The Magister settled back into her seat with a smug expression. *Leave, now. My generosity is quite exhausted.'

Chu turned on her heel and stalked out of the room. Skender, left standing on his own, froze for a moment before executing a short bow and hurriedly following. The door slammed shut behind them, cutting off the beginnings of an amused chuckle from the ruler of Laure.

He caught up with Chu outside. Grabbing her arm, he spun her around.

*I'm sorry,' he began.

*You're sorry? Great. That makes me feel a whole lot better.'

*It's not my fault!'

*Well, it's not mine either.' She spat into the gutter. *I should never have expected that b.i.t.c.h to help me.'

*But she has,' Skender protested. *Hasn't she? She's letting you fix your wing for free.'

*A fat lot of good a wing will be if I'm not allowed to fly it.'

*One step at a time, Chu. You can't have everything at once!'

*Why the h.e.l.l not?' She turned and stalked away, a palpable wave of gloom travelling with her.

*Does that mean our deal is off?'

She didn't answer. Skender let her go. There was no point pus.h.i.+ng her, although he hated the thought of ending it like that. If she didn't come around, he supposed he would just have to find another way past the problem.

With the beginnings of a headache throbbing in his temples, Skender waited until Chu was out of sight before retracing the route back to the tavern. In the hostel that was his temporary home, he climbed under the mosquito net and tried to sleep. He wasn't strong enough in the Change to reach out and touch his father's mind, but part of him wished strongly that he could. In a city full of strangers and their unfamiliar ways, he felt very alone and very much at the mercy of those around him, all of whom had their own games to play. The quest to rescue his mother had taken some surprising twists and turns, and he still didn't know how close he was to achieving that end. If Chu didn't reappear the following morning, he would be right back where he started.

The Wake.

*The occurrence of wild talents is undeniably rising in all parts of the Strand. Ordinarily, one instance a century would be remarkable. Records indicate that three have emerged in the last fifty years alone. Of those three, the first spontaneously combusted while swimming in a Ruin water tank; the second overreached even her considerable talent and was consumed by a golem; the third remains at large, a threat to everyone around him. The reasons behind the increase are presently unknown.'

REPORT ON ANOMALOUS PHENOMENA.

YEAR FOUR OF THE ALCAIDE DRAGAN BRAHAM.

F.

or s.h.i.+lly, the journey was both a respite and a ch.o.r.e. The old north road from Fundelry to Gliem was rutted and full of detours, so their progress was slow at first. They drove in s.h.i.+fts, two awake while one slept, stopping only when they needed to refuel or top up water. Once they hit the paved stretch leading to Kittle, their pace improved dramatically. Landscape flew by, becoming browner and hillier as they headed inland. The feeling that she was leaving her home was strong, but she wasn't as panic-stricken as she had been years before. Then, she had had very little say in the matter; now she was coming because she wanted to. Rus.h.i.+ng headlong to someone's aid felt very different to running away.

That feeling sustained her when they reached Kittle. Instead of continuing north as they had on that previous journey, following the Old Line into the hills, they turned east along an ancient thoroughfare that snaked as wide and flat as a giant serpent's skin across the undulating landscape. Skirting foothills that never truly amounted to much, through low scrub and abandoned pastureland, the road took them the five hundred kilometres to Moombin, directly north of the Haunted City. There they paused to rest. Tom's rank saw them well looked after by local merchants. In exchange for repairing a seized-up tractor, he earned them a hearty meal and an offer of accommodation. Although grateful for the latter - s.h.i.+lly could easily have been tempted - they opted to press on.

From Moombin, the road continued east for another three hundred kilometres before angling gradually northwards. They pa.s.sed four horse-drawn caravans and one trader from the Interior, her camels loping steadily behind her with heads held high. Apart from that, the old roads were empty. The second night fell in a wash of rich red. Cloudless, the sky melted into a star field as rich and varied as any she had ever seen. With her hands on the wheel and her attention firmly ahead, she tracked the moon's steady progress across the heavens. The buggy's headlights sent yellow, dancing light across the road ahead of them. Beside her, in the forward pa.s.senger seat, Sal maintained a watch for any animals that might cross their path. He held her stick across his lap, tracing its charms with his fingertips. Tom sprawled across the back seats, dead to the world.

Sal kept her awake by singing songs he had picked up during his travels as a child. She didn't understand the words to all of them; many dealt with notions and quests quite at odds with her experience. Ghosts of dead people, G.o.ds, angels, other worlds - they were kids' stories, not to be taken seriously. She liked the songs with rolling rhythms and lyrics that made her want to put her foot down harder on the accelerator.

*"Over the Mountains Of the Moon, Down the Valley of Shadow, Ride, boldly ride,"

The shadow replied - "If you seek for Eldorado!"*

She handed the wheel to Sal when her stiff leg could no longer work the brakes. Sleep came to her in fits and starts as they bounced along the weatherworn tarmac; her dreams were of storm-tossed fis.h.i.+ng boats and giant, purring cats. Every time she awoke, the relentless throbbing of the engine had numbed a new part of her. The Change sparked along the buggy's many wires and cylinders, just centimetres from where she lay. The principles by which it worked were familiar in theory and mysterious in practice. The engine ran on alcohol fuel, but not just by burning it. It needed the Change as well as fire. Mages and Wardens had been trying and failing to store the Change for centuries - since being static ran against its nature - but alcohol made from organic material, when combusted, did change, and the essence, the so-called chimerical energy, of that reaction when bled off via pipes and wires to engines could be turned into mechanical force.

Loudly.

When Sal stopped two hours before midnight to relieve himself and to give Tom the wheel, her head hummed like a gong in the blessed silence.

*How much further?' she asked, hugging herself to keep the chill of the wind at bay and stamping her feet to restore their circulation.

*That depends on how far the search party has progressed,' said Tom. His focused gaze alighted on her, then slid away into the night. *At the speed they were travelling, they should be about an hour or so from here.'

*I don't think I can sleep any more. Do you want me to drive?'

Tom shook his head. *There are Broken Lands ahead. I'd rather be behind the wheel for them, if you don't mind.'

*Not at all.' She had vague but deeply imprinted memories of bouncing through a different patch of Broken Lands on the way to the Interior, after the accident that had left her thigh shattered. The leg had been strapped and splinted, her mind fogged by powerful painkilling tablets. *That's a job I'm happy to leave to you.'

Sal returned from the darkness as wind moaned softly through the endless scrub. *Spooky,' he said. *What would happen if the Homunculus got away from the search party and found us here?'

*That would depend on its nature,' said Tom. *Why Highson made it, and for what purpose.'

*Or for whom.''

An artificial creature designed to house a disembodied mind, Tom had said, like a ghost or a golem. What exactly had Highson summoned, and why?

*We'd better just hope,' s.h.i.+lly said, *that it's not in a bad mood if we come across it.'

The feeling that they were finally closing in on the search party kept all three of them awake as the landscape became ragged and disjointed around them. The road turned back eastward and became increasingly unreliable, and their pace slowed as a result. The road disappeared completely on occasions, giving way to wide stretches of sand, naked stone or gravel, only to reappear some tens of metres on. Wheel ruts or milestones marked the long, empty stretches, evidence that the road was still used, despite its patchwork nature.

They came to a T-junction and turned right along a south-southeast heading.

*Is this the right direction?' asked s.h.i.+lly from the front pa.s.senger seat.

*There's a north turn fifty kilometres ahead,' said Tom, his eyes fixed forward as he navigated the irregular terrain. *If we haven't come across anything by the time we reach it, we'll stop there and wait for dawn.'

*Sounds good to me,' said s.h.i.+lly. All thoughts of sleep were completely banished as the eerie thrall of the Broken Lands took a strong hold on her. The temperature seemed to drop even further.

Sal leaned forward from the back seat, perching between s.h.i.+lly and Tom with an elbow resting on each of their seats. His eyes scanned the Broken Lands ahead of them.

*I sense,' he said, *something.'

*So do I,' said Tom.

Feeling left out, s.h.i.+lly put her hand on Sal's arm. She had no talent herself, but she was acutely sensitive to the flows of the Change around her. No small blessing - as she had come to realise - it allowed her not just to read the world in ways others could not, but also to tap into the strength of those who were talented. With Sal's permission, she could share his perception and use his strength. For the time being, she just wanted to look and see what he and Tom saw.

By the light of the Change, the Broken Lands were full of strange eddies and truncated fluxes. The usual patterns of life were disrupted along with the landscape, frozen in an att.i.tude of chaos and confusion. Wind and water didn't know where to flow; animals lost their bearings. A sense of wrongness pervaded everything. Legend told that such regions were wastelands left over from a cosmic battle.

And there was something else. She immediately sensed what Sal and Tom were referring to: a concentration of the Change, a knot of vitality that lurked in the tangled web of the Broken Lands directly in their path.

*Is it the Homunculus?' she asked.

*I don't know,' said Tom. Through Sal she could sense his nervousness. *It's definitely on the road, though.'

His foot edged off the accelerator. The throbbing growl of the engine dropped back a notch.

*I don't know what to do,' he said.

Sal's jaw muscles bunched. s.h.i.+lly tightened her grip on his arm.

Before either of them could suggest anything, a bright light exploded high up in the sky. s.h.i.+lly s.h.i.+elded her eyes against the sudden glare and squinted between her fingers. A miniature sun transformed the world into a realm of stark black and white. Harsh details leapt out at her: a jagged shelf of rocks to the left of the road; the bitten roughness of Sal's fingernails where his hands gripped her shoulder; the strange way the shadows moved as the new sun sank towards the Earth.

*It's a flare!' said Tom, pulling the buggy to an ungainly halt. Another sun blossomed to one side of the first. *Two of them!'

*Who's firing them?' asked Sal.

*And whose attention are they trying to attract?' s.h.i.+lly added. Movement in the stark landscape caught her eye. *Look!'

Something was running towards them along the road, waving its arms. A surge of adrenaline gripped her.

Sal stood up in the seat. She felt the Change stirring in him, gathering like a thunderhead. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up.

*No!' Tom grabbed Sal's leg. *Wait!'

The figure ran into the light cast by the buggy's headlights. Blue, she thought, and her heart anxiously tripped a beat; old habits die hard.

*A Sky Warden!' exclaimed Sal. The thunder head receded slightly. *We've found the search party.'

Tom was the only one who didn't seem rea.s.sured. *What are they doing?' he asked, his frown deeply etched in the shadow cast by the flares. *Why are they giving themselves away like this?'

s.h.i.+lly didn't say anything. The Warden was almost upon them. She figured that, in a moment, they would have their answer.

*You're a sight for sore eyes, young Tom.' The woman was in her middle years, round-faced and heavyset with short brown hair and good-humoured eyes that never stopped moving.

*Warden Banner?' Tom's expression was still one of puzzlement. *I didn't expect to find you here.'

*Glad to see the universe can still toss you a surprise or two. We heard the sound of your buggy but didn't know who you were. That's why we sent up the flares. You might have run into us in the dark, or worse. Only when you got closer did I recognise the cadence of your engine and decide to head you off.'

Sal wanted to ask what she meant by worse but was struck temporarily dumb by the blue robe and the torc. Banner motioned that he should make room for her in the back seat. He did so, taking Tom's acceptance of her at face value, for the moment. *I was dragged along for the ride when you went missing, Tom. They needed an Engineer, and Marmion would only have the best.'

*Warden Banner was my first tutor at the Novitiate,' said Tom, almost shyly.

*Not for long.' She mussed his hair with genuine fondness. *This one has taught me a thing or two since.'

*You're not here alone, I presume,' said s.h.i.+lly, bringing the conversation back to the immediate.

*G.o.ddess, no. The others are up ahead.' She pointed past Tom's cheek. *Take us onto the shoulder up there, by that outcrop. We're parked just over the hill.'

Tom revved the engine and put the buggy back into gear. Sal was glad they were moving again; he felt dangerously exposed being stationary in the Broken Lands.

*So, Tom,' the Warden said when they had travelled a short distance, *are you going to introduce your friends or are they going to have to do it themselves?'

Sal and s.h.i.+lly exchanged a quick glance.

*They're Sal and s.h.i.+lly,' said Tom without hesitation. *I asked them to help.'

*You did, did you?' Banner's sharp gaze examined them in detail. Her warmth didn't ebb, but the lines around her eyes drew together. *Well, this should be interesting.'

Sal felt his teeth beginning to clench in a familiar antic.i.p.ation of conflict and forced himself to relax. He wasn't a child any more. The Wardens had no claim over him or his talent. At the first sign of overt hostility, he could just leave.

Or could he? Despite the long, exhausting drive, he felt as if they had caught up to the search party with great suddenness. He had no idea what he would do if they did reject him and s.h.i.+lly. Would he go back home or continue searching on his own? How much exactly did he owe his real father?

Banner's eyes flicked forward as Tom reached the outcrop. *See that track? Follow it to the bottom. Flash your lights twice.'

Tom did everything she said without hesitation. The buggy bounced down the side of a shallow hill, jolting in and out of potholes and ruts, shaking the last dregs of sleep from Sal. They found themselves in the middle of a petrified forest. Grey tree stumps, as rough as bark but as solid as stone, surrounded them like silent spectators. Out of the darkness between them emerged the shapes of two angular open-frame vehicles large enough to hold a dozen people each, and a domed tent. A faint tang of smoke hung in the air.

Tom flashed the lights as instructed and a small group of people emerged from their hiding places. Eyes and crystal torcs glinted in the glare. Sal's shoulder muscles ached from tension.

*Stop here.' Tom brought the buggy to a halt and killed the engine. *All clear!' Banner called to the rest of her party. *Looks like we picked up some stragglers.'

One of the Wardens said a short, sharp word, and light blossomed from three mirror-finished cylinders on spikes, anch.o.r.ed in the ground around the impromptu campsite. By the stored starlight, Sal made out more than a dozen men and women moving in to get a better look at them. One of the men was the tallest Sal had ever seen, a rangy giant with thick black hair crowning a deeply lined face. The only one not wearing a torc or a blue robe, his attire consisted of practical leather pants and an open-necked s.h.i.+rt.

It was this man who spoke first. *Stragglers, eh? I suppose that fool Braham sent you. Doesn't he trust us?'

One of the other men hissed. *Show some respect, Kail. The Alcaide knows what he's doing.'

*Not out here he doesn't.' The rangy giant spat into the dirt and stalked away.

Banner alighted from the buggy and whispered quickly into the ear of the second man who had spoken. Shorter, with a receding hairline and a soft, oval face, he looked more like the Wardens Sal was used to than the hard, abrupt Kail.

Whatever Banner said, it provoked an instant reaction. *Why would he do that?' he asked, looking at Tom, then Sal and s.h.i.+lly, in alarm.

*They say they're here to help.' Banner stepped back in deference to the balding Warden. She looked relieved that they were no longer her problem.

Sal didn't need Tom's prophetic dreams to tell him what was going to happen next. They were about to be told to go home without being given the chance to speak.