Storm Thief (17 page)

Kittiwake led them away from the shipyards, on a route around the north side of the cavern towards the western wall. There were more communities here than on the steep south side where Moa had languished. Kittiwake was hailed and greeted as she went.

When they reached the western wall, they went through it, and there was the ocean.

They had all seen it before, of course, but never like this. Their eyes had adjusted to the dimness of Kilatas, and then to the even darker tunnel which Kittiwake led them into. Then, suddenly, the tunnel opened and they were standing on a ledge, fifty feet above the waves that crashed and sprayed beneath them. They were on the side of the Orokos plateau. Above them, as high as they could see, the colossal flanks of the plateau rose up and up until they became a mass of cranes and outposts, guard-towers and metal walls. It made Moa feel as if the whole island were leaning forward, about to topple on them and crush them like ants.

Before them was the endless water. It was mid-morning, and the sun in the east cast the long shadow of Orokos across the waves, but in the distance the ocean sparkled. The air was crisp with salt. Some way to their left, one of the immense waterfalls that spewed from the canal vents thundered down from an unguessable distance above them, misting the air. The sky was untroubled by cloud. And far away was the horizon, the beautiful horizon and the promise of what lay beyond.

They stood there for some time, each thinking their private thoughts. Only Rail seemed restless, scanning the water, craning out as if he could see around the curve of the island.

“We're perfectly safe,” said Kittiwake, when she noticed him. “I have lookouts to warn us if any Dreadnoughts are nearby. We've not kept hidden all this time without being very, very careful.” She waved to their left with one hand. “See? The noise of the waterfall drowns any sound that might come from Kilatas. The holes in the wall that let in sunlight are so high up that no Protectorate ship can see in. If I believed in any gods, I'd say they put that cave there just for us.” She raised her head, looked out to sea. “But I don't. I believe in chance. And chance is what is going to help us escape Orokos for ever.”

Vago had been watching the black shape of a jagbat wheeling in the distance, a mere speck to the others but easily visible to him with his superior vision. Now he tilted his head curiously, his interest piqued.

“How will you escape?” he asked.

“We're going to sail right out of here. We're going to sail to the land that's just over there.”

She was pointing to the horizon. Vago looked.

“There is no land,” he said.

“It's beneath the curve of the horizon,” Moa supplied. “You can't see it.”

“Then how do you know it is there?” the golem asked.

“We have clues,” Kittiwake said. “There have always been rumours, for as long as anyone can remember. But there is also evidence.” She was having to raise her voice over the roar of the waterfall. “I come from a long line of fisher-folk. The sea has been in my blood for as long as I can remember. But the Protectorate don't let just
anyone
sail any more. They have specially sanctioned fishing boats, and Dreadnoughts to make sure nobody else takes to the water. I remember sailing when I was a child, and it was the most . . . perfect feeling I can recall. Then they forbade us, because we were ghetto folk, and I never sailed again on the open water. That is torture for me, golem. Do you understand? The sea calls to me, and I can't answer.”

Rail had sat down on the lip of the ledge, his feet dangling over the drop. He'd heard about this before from Moa. Moa was rapt, however. She never tired of the tragic romance of Kittiwake's past.

“I found a bird, like you did,” Kittiwake went on, glancing at Vago before looking into the waves again. “I found its body in a net when I was young. There was no bird like it that anyone had seen. It caused quite a stir, I recall.” A flurrying wind blew, ruffling her white ponytail. “That was when I began to believe. That there was something beyond Orokos. That this place wasn't the limit of our world but a prison. And out there, hidden just out of sight, there was somewhere else.”

Her eyes had become unfocused, as she drifted on the tide of her dreams; but now she caught herself, and sharpened once again.

“Of course, the bird wasn't enough. But we kept watch. And over the time, we found more signs. Things were washed up, caught by the scavengers that collect rubbish from around the base of the island. Things that people couldn't explain. Strange items. Always from the west. Usually the Protectorate got hold of them, but some we kept.

“And then, one night, we saw the lights in the sky.”

Moa couldn't suppress a smile at this. The very thought of them made her heart swell.

“Out there.” Kittiwake was pointing. Vago looked. “After night had fallen. Strange glows that lit and flashed and faded, like a thunderstorm of many colours. And we heard sounds too, tiny pops and crackles, as if the sky was being torn. But the colours: yellow and white, bright orange and blazing pink. Not even a probability storm has those colours. We saw them, and we have seen them many times now. Something is over there.”

This was too much for Rail. “Something that could be a sea-storm, or the glow of some luminous monstrous jellyfish, or any of a hundred things that we can't even guess at,” he snapped. “Something that doesn't give anyone even the
slightest
reason to believe that there is land there.”

Kittiwake's expression was indulgent and faintly pitying. “Your friend is not convinced,” she told Moa. “He swallowed the line we were all given long ago by the Protectorate, that there is nothing else but Orokos in all the world. It's a tricky hook to get out, but one day maybe he'll cough it up.”

Rail rolled his eyes. “Well, when you've killed yourself and all the people you'll take with you, I'll just keep chewing on that hook.”

“Rail!” Moa snapped, but he ignored her.

“What does he mean?” Vago asked, addressing Moa rather than Kittiwake. But it was Kittiwake who answered.

“Have a look,” she said, pointing to their right. “The test is about to begin.”

She produced a small pair of brass binoculars and gave them to Moa. Moa turned them towards the thin lines of white that were tracking across the blue of the ocean, from around the side of the plateau.

It took her a moment to identify what they were. The tiny craft were little more than streamlined hunks of wood with crude miniature engines driving propellors. Each was about half the size of a man, speeding along without riders. They had begun in a straight line, all heading in the same direction, but several of them had started angling away as the chop of the waves changed their course. All of them, however, were heading out to sea.

“Drones,” Kittiwake said. “It's never quite been determined exactly how far from Orokos ships are allowed to go. It seems to fluctuate.”

There were seven drones in all, and by now they had travelled quite a distance away from the island, and the pack had mostly split up.

“Here we go,” said Kittiwake. “Any moment now.”

And there they were, breaking the surface, bobbing up out of the ocean. Skimmers. Moa turned her binoculars on to them, a trickle of chill sweat running down her spine. These were the things that had killed her father.

At first, they seemed like smooth metal balls about two feet in diameter, with four red lenses that looked uncomfortably like eyes spaced around their upper hemisphere. As Moa watched, they rose a little way, until they were hovering a few inches above the water. They swivelled towards the drones that were speeding across the waves.

“How many do you see?” Kittiwake asked. “Three?”

“That's right. Three,” Moa said. Kittiwake grunted in satisfaction. Moa was about to ask how Kittiwake knew, when they were almost too far away to see without binoculars; but then the Skimmers erupted into life.

They shot across the sea, raising fins of spume behind them. As they went a multitude of blades unfolded from their round bodies and began to spin. By the time they reached the drones, each one was a whirling blur of sharp edges. They smashed into their targets like cannonballs, reducing them to splinters in moments; then they sped off on a new course. Another drone was torn to shreds, throwing bits of wood into the air. . .

. . .and the Skimmers stopped, coming to a dead halt. Three of the drones were still heading out to sea, but the lethal machines were making no attempt to catch them. They sank back down to sea level, waited for a moment with their red eyes above the surface of the water, and then descended and were swallowed up.

“They made it,” Moa breathed. She looked up at Kittiwake, who was grinning. “Three of them got through.”

“Four of them didn't,” Rail reminded her.

“But three of them
did
,” Kittiwake said. “They'll run out of fuel before they get far, but they got past the killing zone.” She twitched an eyebrow at Rail, a tiny expression of triumph. “It's taken us a long time, but we've established a pattern. Different numbers of Skimmers appear at different times, in different places. At first we thought it was random, but it isn't. And we also learned that there's an outer boundary as well. If you get far enough away from Orokos, the Skimmers will stop chasing you.”

“So all you have to do is break through!” Moa finished.

Kittiwake made a noise of agreement. “Now we know when the best time is to sail, when there will be the least Skimmers in the water.”

“The best time to sail?” Vago asked.

“It's quite simple. We've set explosives all along the wall that separates us from the sea. When the time comes we'll blow it open, and every man, woman and child in Kilatas will sail out of Orokos, and head west. The more boats we build, the more targets the Skimmers have to take out. They won't be able to get us all. Even given that our boats are slower than those drones, our estimates are that about thirty-three per cent will make it through.”

“
Thirty-three per cent?
” Rail cried. He got to his feet and faced Kittiwake in disbelief. “You're saying that only one in three will even get past the Skimmers? That the rest will die?”

“That's the risk we're all prepared to take,” Kittiwake said. Her voice was hard. “One in three. Do or die. And we'd rather have a one in three chance of living than the certainty of rotting in this place for the rest of our days.”

“But you don't even know if there's anything out there!” Rail argued. “You have a one in three chance of getting out into the open ocean, sure; then a one in a million chance of actually
finding
anything. Half your boats would sink in the first storm!”

“We only need to make it over the horizon,” said Kittiwake. “There's land over there.”

“And what if there's not?”

“Then at least we died trying. But there
is
land there. We've seen the signs.”

“And what if you get there and they don't want you? Or that place is
worse
than this one is? Have you thought of that?”

Kittiwake gave him an indulgent smile. “Rail, this plan has been my life for a long, long time. There's nothing you can come up with that I haven't already thought of. It comes down to a matter of belief. It's a leap of faith. We can stay here with our dreams just out of reach, or we can risk everything to reach for them.”

“Nothing's worth risking that many lives for,” Rail said.

“Some things are,” Kittiwake replied.

Rail shook his head and looked at Moa for support, but there would be no help there. He could see by her expression that Kittiwake's passion held her entranced.

She'll get sucked into this
, he thought suddenly.
She'll get sucked into this mad scheme if we stay here.

“I'm glad you came back now, Moa,” Kittiwake said. “You were almost too late. It wouldn't have been right to leave without you. Your father believed so much in what we were doing.”

“You're leaving?” Moa asked. There was a tremble in her voice. “You're really leaving?”

“In seven days. That's when we have the best chance of making it. We sail in seven days.”

And with those words, Rail felt his world teeter. He realized now what a mistake it had been to bring Moa here. This place wasn't a sanctuary; it was a trap. A trap for dreamers like her. A whole town full of people caught up in Kittiwake's delusion, and Moa was the perfect candidate. He knew what she was thinking. She believed in a world outside Orokos, just like she had always believed. And here was Kittiwake offering her this one chance to reach the places that she visited in her sleep, the wonderland that she imagined must exist out there. But it
didn't
exist. And Kittiwake would die finding that out, and she would drag Moa and everyone else in this insane town with her.