Shae stared at the box with its metal head and its wires and soulglass and speaker. The lumicker had done it. He’d built part of an aluman.
It was talking. And it knew who she was.
She had so many questions, but she knew they all could wait. What was important right now was whether the onslaught could be stopped, whether the Blue Keep could be saved.
Like her heart, the Sparrow hung in the air, poised at the edge of the battle.
It seemed that every last cannon on the walls of the Blue Keep had opened up. The valley was the flashing of fire and a single great roar.
“Tell the alumen to stop!” Aro shouted at the box. “Tell them to retreat!”
The pale-blue eyes he’d built didn’t blink. “I command them not,” its speaker said.
Well, Shae thought, that was that. She pushed the lever forward, spinning up the lumick engines.
“Her fight belongs to her,” the speaker said. “Close the portal, Bela. Run!”
“Bela?” Shae turned physically toward the box with its disembodied aluman. Ti’nay’s teeth, had it really said Bela’s name?
Her hand was still on the lever. The rotors were already churning the air toward the thick of the fight. The Sparrow started forward …
… and then lurched to a halt that sent Aro tumbling into Shae, who caught herself against the ship’s wheel. Ragan and Tadd sprawled across the wood of the foredeck.
“They are here,” the speaker said.
Kayden had already been on the ground, collapsed against the railing up front. So it was he who lifted himself up first, looked over the side, and saw what it was. “Alumen!” he shouted. “They have the mooring lines!”
Shae helped Aro to his feet. Together, they ran to the edge. The mooring lines at the stern and bow of the ship, which had tied them to the keep’s tower, hung low enough that the alumen were able to grab them. Three of the metal men already had hold of the rear line. More were running for the front line at the bow.
“That’s not good,” Aro muttered.
Shae spun back to the helm, pushed the planes upward to lift the bow and the mooring line with it. Alumen on the stern line were bad enough. She certainly didn’t want to know what would happen if they got hold of the bowline too. They’d likely pull the Sparrow down and swarm it.
She felt the front of the ship start to lift, but it wasn’t fast enough. Probably because their speed wasn’t fast enough.
Shae reached over and shoved the power to full. The lumick engines whined to speed. The airship crawled forward, dragging the alumen like anchors.
Aro was beside her. “Is that all the power we have?”
“Damnit,” Shae said. It was enough of an answer. They both knew it wasn’t enough power. Even now, the little bit of forward movement they’d gained was stalling out. More alumen were probably grabbing hold of the stern line. The airship physically jerked downward. “Damnit,” she repeated.
“They’re pulling us down!” Ragan shouted. He was panicked. Tadd was too. And Kayden, between them, was shaking in his fever. None of them was useful on deck. They were a distraction. Kayden most of all. She needed him protected. Safe. And if they went down and he was on the deck—
“Both of you: I want Lord Kayden below!” she shouted up at them. “Now!”
It was an order. They didn’t disobey. Each man took a shoulder, and between them they lifted the fevered man up. They hurried him back toward the rear hatchway beneath the helm.
Kayden looked up at her like a man betrayed. He shook his head, tried to shrug himself loose. “No, Shae, let me fight!”
Ragan and Tadd paused, confused about whose directions to follow.
Shae leaned over the wheel, looking down on them. “It’s not a debate, my love.” Something caught in her throat. She stiffened her back against it, whatever it was, and she focused her emotions into a gaze upon Ragan and Todd that was hot enough to burn holes through wood. “I’ve got the helm. Get below. All three of you. Bar the door behind you. Protect Lord Kayden with your lives.”
Terrified of her wrath, Ragan and Tadd obeyed. They carried him to the hatchway and opened it, began helping him down. The whole time, Kayden simply stared at her, caught between sorrow and elation. It hurt him that she knew he was too weak to fight. But he was enraptured to have had a glimpse at her heart.
Just before he disappeared out of sight, his tongue finally pried loose. “Shae,” he said, “I love you.”
And then he was out of view, and she heard the doors of the hatchway shut. She heard a bar being put into place.
Her hand was squeezing a handle on the wheel so hard that she feared it might crack. She forced herself to let it go, then pushed herself away from the helm so she could look once more over the side.
A mass of alumen crowded around the stern line. They were clambering over each other, jumping, trying to reach the airship. The ship jerked lower.
“Remember how to reload?” Aro asked from behind her.
She turned around. The old lumicker had his boltgun out of its holster. He seemed to be checking its two barrels. The flashes of cannon fire from the Blue Keep’s walls made dark lines of the wrinkles on his face.
Shae swung Perle’s Eyes down from her back. She levered the action on the handle. The boltgun was a remarkable weapon. She wished she had more time with it.
Aro held up his smaller boltgun. “This one works the same. Just in case. Ever kill someone?”
Shae thought of the men and women whose blood had dampened her blade. “Many.”
“Good. You know you can’t hesitate,” the lumicker said. “Try for chest shots. Middle of the works, about right between where you and I got nipples. That’s where the crystal is.” He took two fingers and tapped his chest. “Does it every time.”
Shae nodded. “We used to spread bone powder on our faces before battle.”
His mustache ticked up in a half-grin. “I like that.”
Shae smiled. His calm acceptance of what was coming calmed her too. They were dead in the beginning, she thought.
She gripped the handle of the boltgun, took a deep breath. “Ready?”
The lumicker shoved aside his tools so he could climb up onto the map table. He looked down at the box with its now-silent speaker. “Had a lot of questions for that.”
Shae stepped up to the railing and looked over the side. Alumen were continuing to surge toward the wall. Metal bodies hung across most of the lumicklines. But hundreds more were climbing up behind them, piling up as they fell, forming a metal ramp of the dead that would soon enough reach the top. Oth Marek was visible in the distance, trying to get cannons repositioned to fire down at the base of the pile, close to the wall, rather than out at the army in the valley. He would fight to the end, and that made her glad.
Closer, the swarm of alumen at the stern mooring line was drawing near. Shae shouldered up against the rope ladder to steady herself. She aimed, waited for one to expose its chest, and fired a bolt through it. Its blue eyes went black, and it fell away, out of sight in the tumult.
Aro opened fire, too, his boltgun lashing down into the pile. A metal man fell. Then he shot and felled another. “Two to one,” he laughed.
Shae pulled the trigger to even the count, but Aro had already reloaded his two barrels and was firing again.
And so it went. Tick by tick, the airship was pulled down. Shot by shot, the pile of the dead rose to meet them.
Futile. But then, so much in life was, Shae knew. They were dead even now.
“Shae, the wall!” the lumicker suddenly shouted between shots.
She looked up. The ramp had nearly reached the top of the wall. Marek still couldn’t get his cannons to fire at its base. One aluman, scrambling up, had already jumped the last reach and managed to latch its clawed hands onto the stone parapet. It was heaving itself up. The men on the walls were pulling back, trying to form lines against it.
She swung Perle’s Eyes in that direction, took quick aim, and pulled the trigger.
Too fast. The airship was shaking as the alumen pulled it down. Her bolt cratered into the rock of the wall.
Shae cursed as she reloaded the weapon. She tried to imagine that it was just like shooting a blowpipe on a moving ship. Patience. Breath. Calm.
She braced on the rope ladder, once more centered the aluman in the boltgun’s glass, and adjusted for the distance. The airship beneath her shook and trembled, but she gently let each bounce bring the aluman back into her sight. She watched the aluman lumber to its feet. She watched it straighten up to its full height. She watched its clawed hands ready for flesh.
Then she watched her bolt blow a hole through its back.
“Damn fine shot!” Aro said.
“Next one will be better,” Shae said as she reloaded. Seconds later, she took down the next aluman attempting the ramp.
“The pile’s getting tall back here,” the lumicker said between shots of his own. “Not to brag.” He laughed. “Got another barrel of powder I could toss overboard to reset the stack?”
Humor of the Embraced, they used to call it aboard the Pale Dawn. Some of those sent to the Mother insisted they do so with a joke. It was, Shae had always thought, a way that they protected themselves from the horror. And as Aro said it, she grinned, felt the urge to laugh too.
But then she remembered the barrel of firepowder they’d dropped on the mountainside.
The one that had slid onto the precipice and not gone off.
She whipped the boltgun around, tried to spot its dark shape up on the slopes. It had to be there somewhere, on the edge. She ought to be able to find it. She stared up at the mountain, trying to remember what she’d seen as they’d flown down the slope, trying to work backward to where it would be.
“What are you doing?” Aro asked.
“The barrel up there,” she said. “If I could shoot it—”
The lumicker stepped up to stand on the railing beside her, one hand on the rope ladder. “Even if you could find it, you’ll never make that shot. Ship is shaking too hard.” He thought for a moment, then pointed above them. “Top of the bag.”
“What?”
The lumicker tugged at the rope ladder, then paused long enough to shoot an aluman below his feet. “Climb up. The airbag will dampen the movements.”
Shae swung Perle’s Eyes back to her shoulder, looking up to where the rope ladder disappeared up the side of the airbag. “Give me time,” she said.
“All I can.”
She hopped up onto the railing, saw for herself how close the alumen were piling up below. It wouldn’t be long before one would make the last leap, just as the one had up onto the wall. Would they attack the lumicker on the deck first? Or would they crash through the windows on the side of the hull as she once had? Would Kayden die first?
Shae pushed back the yawning pit in her stomach and started up. The ladder stretched out over the side of the ship as it angled up toward the bag, so she stayed on the inside of it for the initial climb. It was a familiar feeling, really. Hand over hand, foot over foot. Just like running the ropes up a mast.
When her head reached the bottom of the bag, she flipped her grip onto the other side of the ladder and swung herself around in the open air until she was on the outside of it. For a moment, looking down as she hung in space, she saw the lumicker astride the railing at the base of the ladder, his boltgun flashing down at the clawed hands reaching up.
Her toes caught on the ladder again, and she was going up. In seconds, the ladder was against the bag itself, and her hands and toes were pushing into it as she climbed. Then she rounded the outside of it and sped up even faster, scampering her way up to the top on all fours.
She spun around to her belly and looked back at the mountainside, the boltgun propped up by her elbows.
Aro was right. The bag absorbed most of the movements from below. If not for the din of the cannons on the walls and the screaming of the alumen and the damnable cold, it might have been peaceful.
She tracked up the mountainside, scanning the scars on the snowy slope, rock to rock.
It didn’t take long to spot a squarish shape, dark against the snow, at the top of a rocky precipice.
She measured her breaths, guessing at the drop over the distance. She pulled the trigger twice, but she saw nothing react to either shot.
That meant the bolts had to be hitting snow—which meant she must be missing high, right? If she was missing low, she’d be seeing something spark off the rocks below her target.
She reloaded. Took aim, just slightly lower. Loosed another shot. Again.
And again.
The fifth shot hit. One moment the barrel was in her vision. The next moment, the glass flashed with blinding light. Shae gasped and pulled her eye back from the weapon, blinking away the circle of brightness.
When her vision cleared, she saw the debris falling from a cloud where the barrel had been. Above it, great cracks were opening up across the wide, snowy slopes.
The slope broke up in slabs so massive that, for a moment, it looked like the mountain itself was coming apart. They slid out—one under the other, folding and piling up—and then it all gave way in a slide rushing down the mountain, growing and speeding by the second, hurtling toward the valley bottom.
Closer, a cheer went up from the Blue Keep.
Shae lowered the boltgun, got to her knees. So that, she thought in fascination, is what an avalanche is.
It crashed into the side of the metal army, an unrelenting surge of white, and blasted out across the valley, swallowing alumen whole. The wide wall of it seemed to rise up like a great wave, and Shae abruptly realized it was going to hit them too.
She heaved Perle’s Eyes around to her back, then threw herself around to the rope ladder on the opposite side of the airbag. One hand gripping the rope, she was trying to weave the other around the line for a better grip when the snowslide hit.
The bag bounced into her, pushed her up into the air.
She had time enough to feel her grip give way, and then the white powder hit her, and she was flying.