Mike Wild - The Clockwork King of Orl

It wasn't going to take her all the way, she knew.

The precarious assemblage of metal buckled beneath her when she was halfway across, and more evidence of her passage rained into the street below with a series of resounding clangs. Again, cries of alarm drifted up to her, but again she could only apologise in passing as she really had little choice but to keep moving, flailing and running through the air now as if she were some heavenly messenger who'd lost the power of flight but remained intent on delivering a missive to Dorweazle.

With a loud cry of exertion Kali made it — just — thudding down onto the roof of the boarding house in a crouch, though she knew her problems weren't yet over. The steep, badly maintained and rain-slicked roof offered little purchase and she found herself skidding backwards amongst streams of rainwater towards its lip, one still too far from the ground for her liking. She instinctively assessed her situation once more then quickly grabbed the edge of a passing chimneystack to brake her sliding form. The brickwork crumbled in her hands but she didn't stay around long enough for that to matter, instead throwing herself away from the chimneystack and increasing her downward momentum while at the same time skewing herself diagonally across the roof to where another stack jinked crookedly from the tiles. As bricks from the first clattered past her and down, Kali grabbed onto the second, used it as a pivot to spin around, and then flung herself away from it as she had done with the first. The second stack collapsed behind her completely, its bulk rumbling down the roof in her wake, but though Kali suspected Dorweazle might be less than pleased with her fleeting visit she was beyond apologising now — because for the first time she was starting to think that her suicidal manoeuvres just might work.

She was now sliding upright and face first towards the lip of the roof, in exactly the position she wanted to be. Only a couple of storeys separated her from the ground, the last leg as it were, and with luck she'd make it without breaking her own. For the final time she scanned the buildings ahead of her, decided on the way to go and then skied right off the roof of Dorweazle's.

She angled forwards, turning her ski-jump into a dive, and then curled into a ball. Tracing a perfect arc downwards, she fell for two seconds and then impacted with a shop's awning positioned between storeys, breaking her fall halfway. As she hit, and bounced, she uncurled herself from the ball and allowed herself to bounce again, flipping head over heels off the edge of the awning and laughing out loud as she saw her feet approach the ground. By all the gods, she'd made it. She was dow -

Something snagged and she jerked to a halt, toes a foot above the street. She dangled there for a second and then there was an ominous tearing sound. Suddenly, she dropped, the remains of her underwear remaining behind, fluttering from the awning like a flag.

Kali stared. She couldn't believe it. After all she'd just been through!

The second chimneystack, caught until now on guttering, smashed into the ground right behind her and exploded into a cloud of debris and dust. For a second she couldn't see a thing, and then the cloud cleared, and she could.

A small crowd of people stared, murmuring and pointing at her. The naked, ashen-white woman who'd just fallen from the sky. Oh, this is just great, she thought. It was the Curse of Slowhand, come to get her from beyond the grave. Damn him.

"What?" she yelled, holding her arms out. "They kicked me off Kerberos, all right?"

Bootfalls echoed suddenly, seemingly from everywhere, and Kali realised that the bells of Scholten Cathedral were still ringing, alerting everyone in the know to the fact there was a fugitive in their midst. Shadows loomed on the walls along the street, and she dashed for the nearest alleyway, double jinking and jinking again so that she emerged from another as the owners of the shadows passed it by. They could have been cathedral guard or they could have been city watch, she wasn't sure, because it was no small measure of the Final Faith's influence in the city that the livery they wore was almost exactly the same. But crossed circles or not, you never knew where you stood with the watch, because while some were indeed good men, others — sadly, an increasing number of others, along with a good percentage of the population — were in the expansive pocket of Makennon and her people, bribed to be their eyes and ears throughout Scholten by a regular pouch of full silvers or the promise of divine favour. It would be just her luck to run smack into the wrong ones.

The point was, she could trust no one, and that fact became all the more disturbing when she realised that she didn't have the faintest clue where in the city she was. She knew Scholten passably well but no one could possibly know all of its backstreets, and the rather unorthodox route she had taken to arrive here hadn't given her much chance to look for familiar landmarks, which had left her totally disorientated.

The only thing she did know was that she needed to find Slowhand's stash and the stables near to it. Where had he said it was — between the Whine Rack and Ma Polly's? Okay, the fetish house, as far as she knew, was near the eastern gate, so she'd make her way there.

Kali glanced at the stars to orientate herself and began to move, and it was then that it hit her. She ached like the hells. More, as the chimney's dust streaked off her in the rain so that she could see beneath, she was completely black and blue. Not to mention that she was limping like a trigon, her shoulder felt dislocated and a little finger throbbed like the pits, as if broken. One thing was clear, however. If she was somehow changing, then she was far from superhuman, and she'd been lucky that fall hadn't killed her. It was a handy lesson to bear in mind for the future.

Despite the night hour, the city streets still had traffic, and, regardless of the fact she was naked, Kali was forced to keep to the alleyways, take liberties sneaking through the occasional house and even return to the rooftops once or twice to avoid patrols or civilian spies. Even so, her route was not without danger, and she moved cautiously and stealthily through Gizzard Yards, Red Square and Thumper's Cross. Here and there she spotted the conical helmets, tower shields and red tabards of the watch engaged in less than official business but, in doing so, bided her time until they were done, and then moved slowly on. At last she came upon her destination, a muddy gap between the Whine Rack and Ma Polly's, confirmed where she was by looking up to see a rope dangling limply through a ring, and then searched in nearby bushes for the stash that Slowhand had told her would be there. She found it and, somewhat chilled by now and hoping for warm garb, pulled forth a filigree shirt and pair of stripy tights. She cursed. Slowhand might have been wishing to stay in his troubadour disguise but, sometimes, she worried about him.

There was, at least, a decent pair of boots and a considerable amount of coin also contained therein, and Kali took both. All she needed to do now was find the stables. That task — as it turned out — was relatively easy, because she would have been able to smell them a league away.

Kali followed her nose, slipping along more alleyways, keeping to the walls and in the shadows. The area through which she now moved was less than salubrious and she had to pick her way over collapsed drunks and weave through bins overflowing with rubbish, from which the head of an occasional scavenging polerat poked out. Cries and laughter and the louder sounds of disagreement and argument coupled with the odd smashing plate or bottle leaked from the houses all around her, echoing in the night air. At last, though, she came upon a fence, a slight whinnying and clopping of hooves from beyond leaving her in no doubt that she had found that which she sought. She scrambled up and peered over, and her heart sank. She had either found the wrong stables or Slowhand's requirement of what a horse was or could do was considerably less than hers.