Trent Jamieson - Night's engines

Margaret fired. Whig ducked away.

This was getting too serious, and fast.

“What on earth are you doing?” Buchan’s cries stabbed David more fiercely than he expected. He thought, Don’t you see, I’m sparing you so much.

“I can’t see it,” Margaret said. “This could all end in embarrassment.”

“ Pinch is here,” David said.

“Where?”

The Aerokin’s tendrils dropped from the sky, curling around her and David. They were surprisingly warm to the touch, and while firm, their grip was gentle. Margaret had to trust that they wouldn’t just let her go, once they were high enough. Not the sort of thing that came easy to her. She took a deep breath, and pushed such thoughts as far from her mind as possible (not very far at all). In a moment they were lifted up, Margaret’s weapons clattering in their bag. The gondola opened wide, like a gummy mouth — and they were slid into it, embraced by the wet-dog-mixed-with-malt odour of Aerokin.

Pinch wobbled in the air, hit by a gust of wind.

Her nacelles shifted and up they went, at speed.

“There really isn’t a lot of room in here,” David said, as the Aerokin’s tendrils slid and shuddered back out the opening with the surety of snakes. “Larger than the Melody Amiss.” Margaret’s voice was low. “And I spent days in her.”

Whig had reached the roof and shook his fists after them. Even from this height, David could see the fear that battled with the anger.

“I feel sorry for them,” David said.

“You should,” Margaret said. “We owe them a lot.”

“And this is coming from the woman who was going to shoot out his eyes.” “David!” Margaret said. “You know me better than that.”

“Do you really think it’s a trap?” David said.

Margaret snorted. “I think this whole damn world is a trap. Drift or Tearwin Meet, we’re rushing towards its jaws, away from those of the Roil. It’s what we’ve always been doing. Things are closing in, they always have been, since before either of us were born.”

David whistled. “You really are miserable, aren’t you?”

“Death's waiting for us, David. Here or at Drift or in Tearwin Meet. It no longer follows us, but has run ahead.”

She pushed past David to the rear of the gondola where it widened, to stow away her bag. The great belly of the Aerokin rumbled and churned above them, generating the various gases for flotation and propulsion. Two bodies and her weaponry made the job considerably harder. But Pinch could compensate.

Changing her shape, making herself more aerodynamic. Through gas, form and thrust, the Aerokin was capable of quite a lot of lift.

The gondola could accommodate three people at a stretch, just as Kara said. David could see two mattresses at the back. A larder that housed rows of canned goods — beef mainly, a few vegetables, some stewed fruit — beyond it was a small room that contained a toilet, really just a hole that opened onto the sky. And nothing that even resembled a control panel.

Pinch lifted higher over Hardacre, catching the wind of the storm, her nacelles riding with it, driving them west and north. There were rooftops far below. The city was luminous, though it was a softer glow than either Mirrlees or Chapman, all that gas. A northern suburb burned, and David wondered if there hadn’t been another riot.

He tapped the membrane, and tried to zoom in, but the rain fell too heavily now or the membrane had yet to fully develop; all he got was magnified blur.

Down below were the hard old fields that fed the city. Rocky ground, and thin hard earth, and yet the city had sprung from them, these fields ploughed and nurtured with an efficiency and skill that softened and sweetened the cruel landscape. Hardacre had become so good at it that they even supplied a large percentage of Mirrlees’ food, or had.

David considered that grim grey land; he knew that daylight would shine on fields ready for harrowing, and that four months ago Hardacre had a bumper crop.

Things, perhaps, were never as awful as they seemed. He knew that they were heading into trouble, but he owed Kara Jade this at the very least, whatever the nature of her trouble was. Without her they would never have gotten as far as they had. He liked to think he was a better man than someone who would leave a friend in trouble — even if it meant deserting other allies.

And, finally, they were moving again, crossing a new landscape, putting another city to their backs. David was tired of hunting — it hadn’t taken long for that weariness to settle in — and of being in the one place. He wondered if you could ever get so used to running that it became comfortable.

He closed his eyes. Up here, away from the noise of the city, he could feel them much more easily.

Flashes of woodland came to him, trees leaning against each other, gnarled and weary. Screams came near and distant. Mumbled conversation, because the Old Men never stopped talking. Cadell had managed to rein all that in, but David knew how much it had cost him. David could taste death in his mouth, they had killed recently, they were always killing. He felt some sympathy with their hunger, with their rage, even if it was directed at him. After all, whether they liked it or not, whether he liked it or not, they were linked now. And would be until either they died or he did.

Margaret was wrong — Death didn't wait for them, it accompanied them.

The Old Men were some distance to the south-west, but not nearly far enough away. At least now they couldn’t catch him for a while. David sensed that even if he made it to the Tearwin Meet, and activated the Engine, they would still come after him, that they wouldn't stop.

His stomach rumbled.

“You better eat something,” Margaret said, lobbing a can at him. He snatched it out of the air easily, reflexes so much better attuned to food, even when it was wrapped in metal. The tin opener followed. He caught that too.

Beef, he could sense it even through the can.

“Thank you,” he said. “What about you?”

“I’m not hungry.”

David envied her.

He ate alone, watching the city fall behind the horizon, his back turned to her because he was ashamed how he looked when he ate. The meat was cold, and salty, there was no blood to it, it was unsatisfying. When he was done, he wiped his face, walked past her and checked the larder, certainly a lot of food.

He opened another can and ate it too.

And by the time he was done, Hardacre was little more than a soft and fading glow, the dark around it possessed of a great and terrible authority.

He hoped that Whig paid good attention to the note David had left him. David worried that he was leaving them buried to the neck in trouble, hadn’t he been doing that all along? Since the moment he’d run from his assassinated father — the body still twitching — he’d been leaving behind one darkness after another, and more bodies than he wished to dwell upon.

What did it matter that he was doing it again?

After all, if he failed, then none of them had that much time left anyway. Old Men or Roil, there really wasn’t a lot of difference. At least the Old Men wouldn’t have them twitching to the commands of Witmoths; the Old Men’s one command was die.

Simple.

Even the biggest fool could understand that.