Taro thought that wouldn’t have been a problem, if only the rope he was gripping with all his strength hadn’t been attached to that vane.
He just had time to mutter, ‘Oh, fer fuck’s sake—’
Then he was falling too.
Elarn opened her eyes and, after a moment of disorientation, focused on her surroundings. She was sitting in a plush seat, her head cushioned on the headrest. She felt giddy and there was a strange roaring in her ears. Salik sat beside her. They were riding in an air-taxi. He was escorting her home from the successful concert, after a wonderful meal. She had had a little too much to drink—
No. That had been days ago. This was another journey. She wasn’t sure where they were going, or why. She felt good, in a vague, dislocated way . . . but she also suspected that something was wrong, though she could not quite remember what.
Salik was leaning forward to talk to someone. She swung her head round - slowly, because she felt a little sick - to see who. It was a person with blond hair; his bodyguard, what was his name? Never mind. The bodyguard was sitting in a seat in front of them. Beyond him, a dramatic view commanded what was left of Elarn’s attention: a dark mass above, rocky red earth below, and ahead, the eye-burning orange of the forcedome. But the view was blurred; there were dark smears over the windscreen in front of the bodyguard. There were disturbing memories associated with those red smears, something bad the bodyguard had done to the man who had been in the taxi before them, something that Salik thought she hadn’t seen. Perhaps she hadn’t. Perhaps she had just imagined it.
Salik leaned back and picked up a long black thing inlaid with a pattern of silver and red. Elarn squinted. What was that? It looked like some sort of stripped-down rifle, the elegant ghost of a gun. Salik handed the gun-thing over the seat to his bodyguard, holding it as though it might explode in his face. The bodyguard took it equally carefully and poked it out of the open window next to him. Salik was looking that way too, so there must be something interesting over there. She craned her neck carefully to look past Salik. No, nothing there but a black column running vertically through their field of view.
They stayed like that a while, but Elarn could feel herself falling forward, so she flopped back into the seat. Salik looked round at her briefly, then back out of the window again. He was saying something to the bodyguard, something about not being sure if they had hit it. Hit what? With what?
She had to trust that Salik would tell her. What other choice did she have?
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Undertow lore had it that when you fell off the world you had three dozen heartbeats before you hit the ground, long enough to make peace with yourself and the City.
Taro wasn’t counting. He was too busy screaming.
His hands clenched as the nets dropped away and he squeezed his eyes shut. As he tumbled through the air his guts twisted in counterpoint, while the wind shrieked in his ears and Nual’s cloak whipped and twisted around him.
The scream ended: empty lungs. No point breathing in again. Too much effort.
Shouldn’t he be dead by now? He started trying to count heartbeats, but that meant concentrating on something other than being terrified. It did occur to him that when he did come down among the rocks - which must be soon, surely - the end might be less painful if he were face-down. Shame he had no idea which way was up.
Impact!
Pain.
He’d landed on something. It wasn’t the ground. He could tell it wasn’t the ground because he wasn’t dead and whatever it was, it was falling too, but slower. And it was hot, a soft covering over something hard. But it wasn’t flat and it wasn’t very big and he felt himself sliding off. He dug his fingers in. Flesh, he had landed on flesh. Something squealed.
He opened his eyes to see grey fur. He hadn’t landed on some
thing
, he’d landed on some
one
. He released his grip slightly.
A soft, neutral voice said, ‘Put your arms around my neck. Quickly, or we will both fall.’
Taro obeyed, ignoring the protests from his damaged shoulder to reach round and link his hands around its neck - not
its
neck,
her
neck. Her skin burned like fever, but perhaps that was normal for her. Beyond the alien’s head he could see the ground, way too close and getting closer by the second. He could hear Solo’s breathing, harsh and laboured. Beneath him, muscles bunched. He felt her wings shift and spread and rise and his panic eased off for a moment, as he couldn’t slide off when her wings were raised. The muscles released and the wings dropped with a dull
whoommmph!
of displaced air. Taro tightened his grip round her neck as her back rounded. Ahead, the ground was still rushing up, but slower now, at a less scary angle. Taro laid his cheek against the heat of Solo’s back, trying to make himself as small a burden as possible. Her musty smell, freaky but not unpleasant, filled his nostrils. The thinly-padded bones of her shoulders and ribcage rubbed against his face as her back muscles moved over them.
Solo spoke again; her voice-box sounded as flat and emotionless as ever, but the clipped sentences implied she was putting a lot of effort into keeping them in the air. ‘Where is Nual?’
‘Don’t know.’
Please don’t let her be dead
, he thought. But he didn’t have time to deal with that possibility now; he was still getting used to not being dead himself.
‘Last night Nual went to find you. Not seen her since. When the City shook I went to where you live. Looked for her there. I found you instead, falling. The City is damaged, Taro, badly damaged. Nual will know what to do.’
‘I know, but she’s . . . I dunno where she is. But the Minister told me what’s happening.’ For the first time in several minutes he thought about why he’d come downside. He raised his head. Solo’s flight was under control now but they were still losing height with every upstroke. He’d got his view across the Undertow, though from rather nearer the ground than he’d hoped. He scanned the horizon as best he could from the alien’s back. Off to the left, near the Heart of the City, he spotted a dark shape circling downwards. ‘Solo! You see that?’
Solo swung her head round to look. ‘Yes. Air-taxi. Not allowed below the City.’
‘I know, they shouldn’t be here. I gotta—’ He stopped.
I gotta shoot anyone who tries to fly under the City
. But he had to do it with Nual’s gun, wherever that was.
‘You have to what, Taro sanMalia?’
‘I lost Nual’s gun,’ he said, despair in his voice. ‘I was meant to stop those people. Shit! Can you—Can we get any closer?’
‘Bad idea. The City has defences, maybe still active.’
The Minister had told him the automatic defences put in by the City builders could be disarmed at a distance by a shot from - what’d he called the Angel’s guns? - an x-ray laser, that was it, if you hit the narrow band running round the spine near the base.
Except Taro had lost Nual’s gun.
‘Aye, I know about the defences. But the air-taxi is gonna be in range of them before we are.’ The vehicle had veered inwards; it was only a few hundred metres from the spine now. If the defences were active they’d soon find out.
Nothing happened. So whoever was in the air-taxi had an Angel’s gun and knew how to disarm the defences. Which meant it must be Scarrion and his master. ‘We gotta stop them, Solo. Nual should be doin’ this, but she ain’t here. There’s only me.’
‘I will take you closer. It will be hard work, so no more talking. ’
Solo’s wing-beats changed pace, the strokes becoming longer and harder. Beneath Taro’s chest, the alien’s back flexed and heaved.
‘Shit and blood!’
Elarn had never heard Salik swear. He sounded agitated, eager in a way she had not known before, not even when he had made love to her.
The bodyguard turned his head to speak to his master. ‘I’m sorry, sirrah. The terrain won’t allow a vehicle this size to land.’
‘What about the autopilot? If we find an area where the rocks aren’t too high can you set it to hover, low enough that we can climb down?’
‘I will try, sirrah.’
Her head was beginning to clear, though the strange buzzing at the edge of her hearing remained. She had heard all of that conversation. Some of it had even made sense. She marshalled her energy to speak, but all that came out was a dry croak. She tried again. ‘Wh—where are we?’
Salik’s head swung round and for a moment his face was not that of the man she loved, but of a driven stranger. Then he smiled. ‘Elarn. How do you feel?’
‘Woozy. Not sure what happened.’
‘I’m afraid I had to give you something to calm you down. You were hysterical. Things must seem very confusing right now, but everything’s going to be fine.’
She hoped so, but she was no longer sure. She suspected that what she wanted to think of as perfect love might be near-perfect deception.
The bodyguard spoke again. ‘This is the best I can do, sirrah.’
Salik turned away and looked back out of his window. With some effort Elarn managed to focus on their surroundings. They were hovering a couple of metres above a rugged rust-coloured landscape. Some of the more distant rocks were tall enough that they were at eye-level with their current position. Salik turned back to her. ‘We’re going to get out now,’ he said gently. ‘I’ll help you.’
‘Get out—?’
‘We need to climb to the ground. Scarrion will go first and give you a hand down.’
The bodyguard opened the cab door and lowered himself down. The air-taxi rocked, before readjusting to the change in passenger weight. Elarn looked at Salik, hoping for further explanation. He just smiled reassuringly and covered her hands, lying inert in her lap, with one of his own. A double rap sounded from near her feet. She jumped.
‘It’s all right, Elarn. It’s only Scarrion. Open your door now. There’s a catch on the right. That’s it, just pull it down.’
Elarn did as Salik had asked. Cold air swirled into the cab, making her head hurt even more and triggering a sudden flash of fear. Wherever they were, she was sure they shouldn’t be there.
‘You have to try to move now,’ said Salik, gently but firmly.
She looked back at him. She wanted to ask him what was happening, but words were so slippery. Perhaps she should refuse to get out until he told her the full truth. It wasn’t as though moving would be easy anyway in her current state. But there was something in his expression that said that one way or another, she would be getting out here. Below, the bodyguard - Scarrion, that was his name, of course - stood on a boulder, reaching up to her.
It took all her concentration to force her limbs to move, but once she had pulled free of the seat things got easier. She slid down into the assassin’s arms, trying not to flinch at his touch. He reeked of blood. As soon as her feet touched the ground she stumbled free of his grasp, feeling strangely weightless. At first she thought it was whatever Salik had given her earlier, but then she realised she really was lighter. They were somewhere with lower-than-normal gravity.
When Scarrion turned back to help his master down, Elarn noticed the gun slung across the assassin’s back, the same elegant black weapon he had pointed out of the window earlier. Now she was able to focus on it properly she saw that its sleek lines were marred by a small box-like contraption of wires and gauze, taped just in front of the position she would expect the trigger to be.
As soon as his feet touched the ground, Salik reached over and took Elarn’s hand, as though he thought she might float away. Or run.
‘There’s a short walk now. Are you up to it?’
Elarn nodded, then realised that by agreeing that she
could
do it, she had agreed that she
would
. She had missed another chance to try to slow down Salik’s relentless progress towards his mysterious goal. He had already pulled her round to face the dark column she had seen from the air-taxi earlier, and now she found herself walking alongside him, her body moving automatically. With every step their feet sent up clouds of ochre dust that stuck to her clothes and made her nose itch. They had to take frequent detours round large boulders and more than once she tripped on smaller rocks half hidden in the dust.