Skyfire (17 page)

It's Curiefer.

Maisy's words echo through my head, the beat of a broken drum. My mind flashes back to our journey through Taladia – the cargo carriage of the train, the struggle through the mountains. The wastelands. The airbase. The biplanes loaded with Curiefer, ready to destroy the Valley.

And Maisy's warning in my ears, as fresh as if she'd said it yesterday:
‘Curiefer is the only known substance that can deactivate magnets.'

Is that what Lord Farran is planning? King Morrigan won't bring alchemical weapons to the battle – he'll expect the Valley's magnetism to still be in play. But with enough Curiefer, Lord Farran could destroy the magnetic field. He could arm his
soldiers with alchemy bombs and rifles, while the Taladians carry only swords and bows …

There's only one way this war can end.

‘Nothing,' Clementine whispers, sounding a little faint. ‘What we did at the airbase … it was all for nothing.'

She's right. We risked our lives to destroy King Morrigan's stash of Curiefer and to stop him invading Víndurn through the Valley. To stop this war. Now his plan has reached Lord Farran's ears, and the prisoner will repeat it from the opposite direction.

But up on the lip of the geyser, Lord Farran makes no move to harvest the Curiefer. Instead, he fishes an object from his pocket. In the lantern light, I recognise the glint of a firestone.

‘What's he doing?' Lukas breathes into my ear. ‘What –?'

Lord Farran hurls the firestone into the geyser.

I watch, open-mouthed, as the stone tumbles into the dark. It falls out of sight and there is a long moment of nothing. Of anticipation. As though the whole world is holding back a sneeze, just waiting for the right moment to –

Psssshhblam!

The geyser explodes and a jet of shining Curiefer gushes up into the dark. The sound alone almost cripples me. I barely keep my grip on the branch, while my crew shrieks and cries around me. Air
smashes into my jaw and I clench my eyes shut as a flood of heat and flame rushes overhead. The fire spews upwards, away from us – but the heat is everywhere, as deadly as flame itself.

Beneath our tree, the earth begins to writhe. Steam, smoke and heat slither up from the undergrowth like snakes. It's midnight. We're high enough to escape the boiling earth – but the explosion of skyfire is another matter entirely. The wind is hot enough to bite my skin, to sting my throat …

And I realise, with violent terror, that this is how I'll die. Not from the flames, but from the heat. The air itself is boiling, writhing, wrapping around me to burn my flesh and suck the oxygen from my lungs …

Maisy throws out her arms. The heat flares backwards, as though hit by a wall of solid air.
Flame
. She's using her Flame proclivity to shield us. Her eyes are wild and her hair flies back as she struggles to hold off the heat. The rest of us grab her, steadying her legs upon the branch.

The sky above us burns red and yellow, frothing with smoke. Cinders fall like rain and the air stinks of bitter fumes. If Maisy falters, if that wall of heat ripples down on us …

The others are spluttering now. I gasp for air and get a mouthful of cinders, struggling to hurl up the heat from my lungs.

It stops.

The skyfire retracts upon itself, as though the geyser's lungs are sucking in a breath. The light and heat and ash roll back, giving way to a stark black night and a spatter of star-shine. The sole sign of the fire is a lingering heat in the air, and a curl of dark grey smoke upon the breeze.

My ears ring. I think I hear Clementine grabbing Maisy, sobbing into her shoulder, but everything is fuzzy. The canopy is awhirl with smoke. I can hear someone coughing, choking, spluttering. Perhaps it's me.

Through blurry eyes, I search for Lord Farran. I look for a pile of charred bones: a heap of burned flesh. There's no way he could have survived the flames – not out there on the lip of the geyser. His proclivity isn't Flame; he had no way to hold back the fire. But there's nothing. Just empty air. ‘Where …?'

‘Get down!' Teddy manages, coughing. ‘Too much smoke …'

We scramble from our tree. The midnight steam has faded and the rocks are cooling rapidly beneath my boots. I drop to my knees, retching, and smoky rasps pour from my throat.

Ahead of us, a figure paints himself out of the night, sliding from the darkness itself. A whipping silver cloak. A head of white hair.

Lord Farran.

But I don't just see him. I sense him. A cold ripple in my proclivity: the sting of an invader within the scope of my power. Someone else is touching the night. Someone else is playing with the tendrils of
my
Night,
my
darkness,
my
–

This man's proclivity isn't Silver. It's Night. The man who banned temporal proclivities – the man who declared them an offence worthy of death – has a temporal proclivity himself.

He turns towards us, his mask gone. His face shines in the light of his lantern. It's too late to duck away; he sees me, and our eyes meet. His beard is gone, and he isn't wearing the magistrate's gold chain, but I recognise the face instantly. My stomach sinks with the weight of a thousand lies.

It's Hinrik.

I think suddenly of his speech at the ball:
‘I have eyes and ears in every pocket of society.'
And not just Taladian society, but his own. All this time, Lord Farran has been wearing a mask. Parading around as his own damned magistrate, spying firsthand on the whispers and rumours that fill his nation's streets. A man who trusts no one. And now, as his eyes meet mine, Lord Farran knows he has been unmasked.

He's upon us in a moment. He melts into Night and reappears behind us. He whips a pistol from the holster at his belt, and its barrel stares at me like a
metal eye socket. It sizes me up, preparing to blast my skull into fragmented blood and bone.

‘Wait!' I say. ‘If you kill us, you'll regret it!'

He stares at me. I stare back, my lips dry. The last time I saw that face was in our cabin in Bastian's village. He was assessing my proclivity, preparing to deliver a gunshot wound to my neck. And here we are again. His Hinrik persona is cast aside, but I'm about to die in the exact same way.

‘Regret it?' Lord Farran's voice is low and powerful, with the same unerring confidence that enriched his words upon the ballroom stairs. ‘Why? Do you think I'm afraid of you?'

I shake my head. ‘I think we're worth something. If you kill us now, you're throwing away an advantage in this war.'

Lord Farran raises an eyebrow.

‘We're from Taladia,' I say. ‘You know that. But you don't know why we ran away. You don't know who we are. I know Quirin's working for you – if you bring him here, he'll identify us, he'll tell you –'

Clementine grabs my arm. ‘Danika, what are you doing?' she hisses. ‘Shut up!'

I don't take my eyes off Lord Farran. I'm playing a dangerous game. We've guarded our identities so tightly; they're all we have, all that stands between us and death.

‘We didn't mean to interrupt you, Lord,' Teddy
says, a fake drunken drawl in his voice. ‘We were going for a stroll, that's all, and we got a bit tipsy – golly, you know how it is, biggest party of the year and all that – and we reckoned we were going up the right mountain, but …'

Lord Farran's finger curls around the trigger. Teddy shuts up.

We have only one option. Back in Rourton, I learned never to bet against a gambler at his own game. Lord Farran's game is lying. He plays it even better than Teddy Nort. And if we want any hope of living beyond the next ten seconds, we have to risk something drastic.

We have to risk the truth.

‘My name is Danika Glynn,' I say. ‘If you've got spies in Taladia, you might have heard of me.'

Farran's eyes narrow, but he doesn't speak. He doesn't shoot me, either, which I take as a good sign.

‘I shot down a palace biplane. These people are my crew. We set fire to the town of Gunning, we blew up the king's airbase in the wastelands, and we flooded the catacombs to stop his invasion. We're the most wanted fugitives in Taladia.

‘If you take us to this battle, alive, you can trade us. King Morrigan wants us badly. He wants to execute us in public, to show his people what happens to traitors. If you hand us over alive, he might give up an advantage, or make a deal, and –'

Lord Farran laughs with a derisive choke. ‘Do you think I'd believe that? That
children
destroyed those biplanes? Flooded the catacombs?'

Teddy bristles beside me. ‘We're not little kids. We're the new generation. Just because old gits like you don't –'

I cut him off with an elbow to the ribs, my eyes on Lord Farran. The longer that I watch the man, the longer I suspect there's something … wrong … about him. His posture doesn't quite match the grand, powerful figure from the Ball of No Faces. This close up, there's no hiding the arch of his spine. The ragged lines across his face. The coarseness of his breath.

Lord Farran isn't well. He has the look of a man who is gradually weakening – succumbing to a long illness.

But even a weakened man can pull a trigger.

I glance sideways at Lukas. This situation could escalate at any second. If Lord Farran decides he's done with us, all it'll take is a rally of gunshots. We have only one trump card left to play, but I don't want to play it without permission.

Lukas stares back at me, an unbearable tightness behind his eyes. Then he nods. ‘Go on.'

I turn back to Lord Farran. ‘I haven't told you everything. I haven't told you who we're travelling with.'

Lord Farran isn't interested. His finger hovers at the trigger. I feel my friends tense, ready to move, and my muscles clench. If that gun fires, it might not be me who's in the firing line.

‘Lukas Morrigan!' I cry, before he has a chance to shoot. ‘Lukas Morrigan, heir to the throne of Taladia!'

This time, the silence isn't just uncertainty. It's shock. Lord Farran stares at me, long and hard. Then his eyes shift between us, one by one. He looks at Teddy and dismisses him, then brushes over the richie girls, before his gaze flickers back to settle upon Lukas's face.

Lukas steps forward.

As soon as he enters the lantern light, Lord Farran's eyes flare in recognition. He stares at Lukas – at the high cheekbones, the dark curls of hair, those startling green eyes – and his lips part, sucking a sharp breath into his throat.

He's seeing those Morrigan features. I don't yet know how Lord Farran has lived so long, but in this moment I don't doubt the stories. There's something honest in Farran's hatred, the shock flashing to vitriol. The flared lips, the breath of bitter recognition. Somehow, this man is the prisoner. He must have twisted magic, twisted his body, done
something
to stretch his life through the centuries. And as he looks upon Lukas Morrigan's face, he recognises
those who once tormented him. The long-dead king who sent him to die in the catacombs.

‘I heard that the prince was missing,' he says. ‘I was under the impression you'd died in an accident and your father hushed it up.'

Lukas shakes his head. ‘If you offer us in trade, my father will give you anything you ask for. You don't need to start this war. Whatever you want, he'll give it to you.'

‘Oh no,' Lord Farran says quietly. ‘I very much doubt that.'

He shifts his weight and lifts his arms, focusing the pistol on Lukas's chest. I stiffen, preparing to leap. I'm hyper-aware of every twitch in my veins, the tightness in my throat, the sharpness of my breath. It's as though time slows down, and all that exists is the man, the gun, and Lukas.

Lord Farran stares at Lukas as if he has stumbled across a chest of treasure and has no idea how to spend his newfound riches. But the pure hatred remains behind that stare. It burns so hot and tight and dark within him that I half-expect him to spit out a ball of poison when he next speaks.

‘Oh, this is good,' he says. ‘This is very good. I wanted revenge on the current king, but I'd say you're an equally valid target, Lukas Morrigan. The crown prince. Heir to the throne of Taladia, by virtue of only the scum in your blood.'

Farran's fingers shake on the pistol now, his face a mask of fury. He's barely restraining himself, fighting his urge to blast Lukas into oblivion. He spits onto the rocks beside him, then bends to wipe his mouth on his shoulder. ‘You and I have a lot to discuss, Prince Morrigan.'

I suddenly notice the flicker of his body: a recurring little fade into the dark. It's so subtle that almost no one could spot it … no one except for me, with a Night proclivity of my own. The flicker tugs at the edge of my consciousness, flaring my magic as though it's been stung by a wasp.

Night. His proclivity is definitely Night. And now the words of the song roll through my skull, as strong and rhythmic as a heartbeat:

 

Oh mighty yo,

How the star-shine must go …

 

Star-shine.
It isn't just the third verse of the smuggler's song that deals with the prisoner. The entire song is his story. The tale of a man with star-shine in his veins: a proclivity of Night. Those lyrics guided us across Taladia, along the route that Lord Farran himself once took when he first chased the Valley. And finally, they have guided us here – into the clutches of the prisoner himself.

‘Your proclivity is Night,' I say. ‘Not Silver.'

Lord Farran whirls to face me, taken aback. It's as though he'd forgotten that the rest of us existed, now that he has a Morrigan in his hands. ‘Don't you dare interrupt me,' he says. ‘I have no interest in you, you little –'

‘That's how you've lived so long, isn't it?' Lukas cuts in. ‘You're like the Timekeeper.'