Clash of the Sky Galleons (15 page)

‘Now, on a more personal note …’ He glanced around furtively. The rock bailiff had packed away his equipment and was hurrying off to catch the noon-day baskets. ‘Shall we take a little walk, Stone Marshal?’

Zaphix smiled smoothly and fell into step with the leaguesmaster as he walked. Behind him the razor-sharp talons of the black-feathered shrykes clicked on the rock as they followed.

For a few minutes they walked through the Stone Gardens, neither of them speaking. Past the freshly harvested rock stacks and the smaller ‘infant’ stacks, they went; over rubble that had fused itself back into the rock surface and on between budding stone mounds that were about to sprout. Soon, they were nearing the very edge of the gardens - indeed the very edge of everything; where the rock stuck out and the Edgewater River cascaded down into the yawning void below.

As the bright yellow sun had risen higher in the sky, it had slowly burned off the fog that enveloped the Stone Gardens through the morning. Now, with the distant bell at the top of the Great Hall softly
chiming midday, all that remained were wispy snakes of mist that wound their way round the bottoms of the stone stacks and the ankles of those walking between them. And as they approached the tapering slab of jutting rock in the farthest corner of the gardens, with the yellowy-blue sky all round them, it felt to Zaphix Nemulis as though he was walking through the air.

They came to a halt in front of the very last stone stack. The leaguesmaster and the stone marshal looked up.

‘How is it coming along?’ asked Imbix, his voice silken and his eyes glinting greedily. ‘How big is it exactly?’

‘Now, now, Imbix, it doesn’t do to hurry such things,’ said the stone marshal. ‘Ten strides, and still growing, by my latest measurements.’

‘Excellent! Excellent!’ cackled the leaguesmaster. ‘But I need it to grow bigger still!’

‘Yes, so you keep telling me,’ said the stone marshal, being careful to keep all irritation from his voice. ‘And as I have told you before, Imbix, delaying the flight of a mature rock is a very tricky business indeed …’

‘A business for which I’m paying you handsomely!’ snapped the leaguesmaster.

‘Yes, indeed you are, Imbix. Now take a look here …’ said the stone marshal smoothly, trying to deflect the leaguesmaster’s attention from the small fortune in marsh-gems and mire-pearls he’d already parted with. ‘I have drilled a small hole through the stonecomb …’

He pointed above their heads to a tiny hole in the surface of the huge boulder at the top of the stack.
Imbix followed his gaze, his brow furrowing.

It leads to the very heartrock at its centre,’ said Zaphix. ‘A minute crystal of stormphrax in a length of glowworm skin has been inserted,’ he explained. ‘The skin has now rotted away and in darkness, the stormphrax weights the rock down sufficiently to allow it to grow untroubled. It can be removed later, when…’

Ingenious,’ Imbix Hoth broke in. ‘But can you make the rock bigger?’

‘Given time,’ said the stone marshal.

‘I need it now,’ snapped Imbix.

Zaphix Nemulis nodded. ‘I’ll do my best,’ he said, ‘but I can make no promises…’

‘Get it to fifteen strides and you shall be as rich as a leaguesmaster!’ Imbix declared, his finger-spikes digging into Zaphix’s arm.

Just then, from behind them, one of the shrykes gave a loud hiss and leaped behind a small stone stack. Imbix and Zaphix turned to see it emerge a moment later with a struggling mobgnome clutched in its talons.

‘What’s this?’ screeched Imbix Hoth furiously. ‘A spy? A traitor? What have you heard? Speak up!’

‘Calm yourself,’ Zaphix Nemulis interrupted, eyeing the unfortunate creature, who was clutching a grubby sack in his trembling hands. ‘It’s just some poor wretch in search of rubble by the look of it. I’ll give him a reprimand and send him on his way …’

‘No!’ Imbix silenced him. ‘The mobgnome is mine!’

Eyes blazing, the black-feathered shryke threw the mobgnome at the leaguesmaster’s feet.

‘Have mercy, sir,’ the mobgnome whimpered, wringing his hands together. ‘I … I gathered a little rubble, just chippings … My sky ferry’s on its last legs …’

‘That’s as may be,’ said Zaphix, icily.

‘Twelve mouths to feed, my wife has,’ the mobgnome wailed. ‘Twelve hungry mouths …’

‘Yes, well, now there’ll be one fewer for her to worry about,’ said Hoth, raising a spiked hand. ‘Shrykes!’ he shrieked, his raucous voice slicing through the air like a rusty blade. ‘Deal with this vermin!’

A blood-curdling shriek went up as, in a flurry of black plumage, the eight shrykes fell on the hapless mobgnome, who disappeared beneath flashing talons and stabbing beaks. When the bloody flurry was over, all that was left of the mobgnome was a red stain on the rocky ground.

‘That,’ said Imbix Hoth, as the shrykes fell into formation behind him, ‘is how I deal with rock-rustlers.’ He glanced across at Zaphix Nemulis, his narrowed eyes as bloodshot as those of the shrykes under his command. ‘It is how I deal with
any
who cross me.’

• CHAPTER SEVEN •
THE BANE OF THE MIGHTY

Quint glanced across at Maris. She was staring straight ahead, her face in profile, with that look of steady determination on her face that he knew so well.

What was it? he wondered. The arch of her eyebrow, the delicate line of her chin - or perhaps the way her mouth curved up ever so slightly at the corners? Whatever it was, Quint had come to depend on that look, to seek it out whenever he needed courage or reassurance. Of course, he knew that beneath that expression there lurked the same worries, fears and confusion that he himself felt, but the fact that Maris seemed so determined not to show her emotions somehow always made him feel better.

The day hadn’t started well. Quint had committed the tiny body of Nibblick, his ratbird, to Open Sky - sending a small bundle of blazing lufwood chippings up into the morning sky from his window.

Maris turned and caught him staring at her, forcing Quint to look hurriedly away, his face reddening. The broad street leading to the sky-shipyards was lined with stalls and workshops, and teeming with Undertowners.

As usual, the rock harvest had thrown everything into disarray. For most Undertowners, what with the white ravens and the
chorus of the dead,
the day was just beginning. They’d spent almost the entire morning inside, their doors locked and windows shuttered. Stores and stalls that should have opened at dawn had remained closed; in the foundries and factories, no one had turned up to relieve the night-shift; while the streets themselves - normally thronging with merchants and pedlars, barrows and carts - had been all but deserted.

It wasn’t until eleven hours, when the white ravens had finally abandoned their terrible din and begun to return to the Stone Gardens, that the superstitious Undertowners, rich and poor alike, had ventured from their mansions and palaces, their hovels and dens. They’d emerged, blinking, into the sunlight and glanced furtively around. Then, fingering their charms and amulets gratefully, they’d muttered heartfelt thanks to Open Sky that they had been spared by the spirits of the dead, and that their harbingers - the white ravens - had returned to the eerie Stone Gardens. Now at last, they were able to get on with the concerns of the living.

Suddenly, the shops were open and the markets
were trading. The air filled with the sounds of business - raised voices, bidding and bartering; chain-rattle and hammer-blow, and the crack of the hammelhorn-drivers’ whips as they urged their beasts of burden on.

Just up ahead, Captain Wind Jackal and his crew made their way through the crowds, attracting long looks and furtive glances as they did so. Resplendent in their heavy greatcoats, bedecked with their compasses, telescopes, parawings and grappling-hooks, they each carried a sky chest upon their shoulders -huge tilder-leather and lufwood trunks packed with their personal belongings - in readiness for the long voyage ahead.

They looked magnificent, thought Quint.

It was an opinion that seemed to be shared by the Undertowners, judging from the warm smiles and approving nods the sky pirates attracted. The only exceptions were the odd, scowling faces of low-hat leaguesmen as they crossed the street to avoid them.

A bevy of portly gnokgoblin matrons, one with a prowlgrin pup crushed beneath a fleshy arm, smiled broadly as Quint and Maris squeezed past them. Quint smiled back, proudly.

All at once, the air was shot with the moist odour of the Mire. Quint peered in through a narrow doorway on his left to see a plump mobgnome perched on a tiny stool, his legs going up and down as he operated a foot-treadle. On the spinning platform before him, a pot was slowly taking shape as his large hands smoothed and teased and caressed the mound of white clay.

Next to the potter’s, its squat façade decorated with hooks from which mugs, jugs, vases and vats were suspended, was a tall thin carpentry works. A stack of window frames stood on one side of the entrance; a dozen or so doors on the other. The air smelled of wood-pine and scorched timber, and the high-pitched squeal of a circular saw forced the two goblins - one buying and one selling - to conduct their haggling at maximum volume.

Quint turned sideways to allow an oncoming line of lugtrolls - a heavy roll of ornate carpet resting on their left shoulders - to get past, just as the sounds of angry voices rang out.

He looked across at where the shouting was coming from, to see a red-faced flat-head goblin driver standing up at the front of his immobile hammelhorn cart, waving his fist. In front of him was a prowlgrin-drawn carriage, its mobgnome driver looking equally angry, and in front of
him,
a long covered wagon, three hammelhorns in harness, impatiently pawing the ground and tossing their curly-horned heads from side to side.

Outside the gates of the sky-shipyard, all traffic had come to a standstill, and even those on foot were unable to continue any further.

‘Make way! By order of the Leagues!’ a voice bellowed, and Quint glimpsed the high hat of a leagues-master bobbing above the growing crowd.

As he spoke, the noise of the heavy metal wheels trundling slowly along the cobbled road became
apparent. It was a low, ominous rumble, below the general hubbub of voices, and felt as much as heard. The metal pots and pans, kettles, cauldrons and watering-cans hanging out on display at the front of the ironmonger’s clinked and chimed, while opposite, suspended from a hook outside his store, the leather-worker’s great red and blue passionbird shuffled about on its perch, flapping its wings and squawking indignantly.

Next to Quint in the crush, Maris looked steadily ahead. Leaning over towards her, he whispered softly into her ear.

‘Sorry,’ he said.

For a moment, Maris seemed to ignore him.

The huge stone-wagons, which had been loaded with harvested flight-rocks back in the Stone Gardens, now trundled into view, like great buildings on wheels. The crowd broke into wild cheering as the teams of hammelhorns were urged on by the wagoneers. The gates of the sky-shipyard slowly swung open and the first of the mighty wagons turned off from the convoy and clattered inside. The rest of the wagons
continued on down the broad street towards the other sky-shipyards, the high-hat leaguesmaster and his shryke bodyguard leading the way.