The Old Men thought they knew everything, the Mothers of the Sky knew more. It's hard not to, when the world is stretched beneath you like a map. Which makes their mistakes all the grander.
THE CITY OF DRIFT 1411 MILES NORTH OF THE ROIL
“I’m really sorry about this, David,” she said with a voice that lacked the slightest whit of contrition.
David struggled to open his eyes, the lids gummed with blood. They came apart slowly. He blinked a scratchy sort of blink. His wrists were bound in iron, his shoulders burned. He tried to touch the ground, and could just manage it, though not enough to support his weight. “What are you doing?”
“You know what I’m doing,” Mother Graine said.
David closed his eyes, focussed on the iron shackling his wrists, and the chains that lifted them above his head, and made them cold. Very cold. A bitter sharp sort of chill that built within him and spread out. His breath thickened, the air itself slowed around him. The iron shuddered and rattled. It warped. Slowly, he lifted himself up, and yanked. The iron burst, and he hit the ground hard, breath knocked out of him, almost thinking he might shatter himself, but he didn’t. He tore his hands free, took a step forward, and He woke in virtually the same position as before, only this time, his toes brushed a puddle of something, melted ice, blood, piss or all three of them. This is not good, he thought.
“You didn’t think I was waiting for that, David?” Mother Graine’s breath plumed. “Breaking free of that iron wasn’t going to leave you in a position of strength, you’re too far from the earth and the Lodes.”
He pulled on the manacles, just once, or tried to, instead he only managed to swing forward, his shoulders numb, but not quite enough that he didn’t know he’d pulled something, maybe broken something else. “Yes, I should have known better.”
His stomach rumbled, he was hungry: horribly, horribly hungry.
“That goes for most of the actions of Old Men and boys,” Mother Graine said.
“We all make mistakes.” He tilted his head to get a better look at the chains. “This is one of them.”
“Don’t be like that.” She stood next to him, touched his face. David suddenly remembered the night before, their lovemaking. His face burned, the first moment of heat in all that cold. Cadell had gotten him into this, where was the Old Man now? He seemed remarkably silent in his veins.
Mother Graine smiled, a grin more chilling than anything his skills could produce. “Now, David, I want you to know that this isn’t personal.”
“I’ve always considered death to be extremely personal.” He bit out at her hand, but she had already pulled it away, waggling a finger at him as she did so.
Mother Graine clicked her tongue. “Not for us, never for us.”
“What will happen to Margaret?”
Mother Graine blinked. “You really care?”
“Of course I do.”
“She will not be harmed. Unless she causes us trouble.”
“When doesn’t she cause trouble?”
“That personality type is encouraged here, David. Your idea of trouble and ours is different.”
Mother Graine fell forward, with a grunt. Margaret lowered her leg. “Not really,” Margaret said.
“You took your time,” David said.
Margaret nodded at him. Hands held him up.
“Did you just piss yourself?” Kara Jade asked.
He said, “Please get me down.”
“I’m doing my best,” Kara said, jangling keys. “You didn’t see which key they used to lock you up?”
“I was unconscious at the time, I’m afraid.”
Something clicked, Kara cried out triumphantly, and David almost fell into the puddle at his feet. “Gotcha,” Kara said, pulling him away.
Mother Graine had gotten to her feet. Her face had lost all its humour, but she did not look at all like a person who had been kicked to the ground. You, David thought, are a very dangerous woman, indeed.
Part of him knew just how dangerous, and even now found it thrilling.
“There's no escape for any of you,” she said. “Not a breath of it, I'll have you all hanging from iron.”
“Escape suggests that we’re going somewhere safe,” Kara said.
“Believe me, we’re not,” David said.
“I know what you plan.”
“And surely you can’t be against it?”
Mother Graine ignored Margaret. She looked at Kara. “It’s not too late for you,” she said. “You can still turn from this path.”
“The same goes for you,” Kara said, though her voice shook.
“You have no reason to fear me, daughter. I-”
Margaret struck her hard. Mother Graine stumbled. “I think it’s better if you don’t talk,” Margaret said, and turned to Kara. “Are you ready?”
Kara nodded, looked at David, still so unsteady on his feet.
He said, “Just get me out of here.”
Mother Graine’s eyes burned. “We will hunt you.”
“Then you better line up,” David said. “The problem, as I see it, is that everyone has different ideas how we should approach the threat of the Roil, or even who should approach it.
“Well, there is only one of me, and I’m not willing to sacrifice myself so that someone else can go and do what needs to be done.”
“We need only cut off your finger,” Mother Graine said.
David laughed. “Do not take me for naive. That would not be enough. Not nearly enough. This ring will not work on anyone else unless I am dead; dead, and having infected someone. Just who did you have in mind?”
Mother Graine’s eyes flicked towards Kara.
“You would have done that to me?” Kara demanded.
She'd have been a good choice, actually, David thought.
“We would have done whatever was necessary. This is the time of doing what must be done, and without hesitation. Do you think you would do this any differently?” Mother Graine said.
“Bloody oath I would.”
Mother Graine raised an eyebrow; Kara scowled and turned away.
“What must be done, will be done. You should have trusted me.”
“Trust is too rare a commodity these days.”
“And yet without it, we will all fail.”
“Well, you can trust me to punch you in the face if you don’t shut up,” Margaret said, stepping between David and Mother Graine.
David sighed. “Kara Jade can accompany me to Tearwin Meet. She and Margaret can see that I get this done.”
Mother Graine said, “But you are an addict-”
“Yes, this ring, and Cadell’s bite, has made me more than that, but whoever you had forced into taking up this bloody thing would have faced the same problem.”
“I still do not trust you.”
He looked over at Kara. “Do you trust her?” he asked Mother Graine.
“Yes, but-”
“Then it will have to do. She will be with me all the way, they both will. And at the end we will fail or succeed because of the strength we hold together. We have survived the fall of Chapman, the enmity of all that is powerful in this world. And yet we are still here. Even now, you sought to hold us, and yet we leave here on your fastest ship.”
“But before that,” Kara said, sliding a pistol from her belt. “Before we do a damn thing, you will show us the Mothers, whole and unharmed, or I will shoot you myself.”
Mother Graine led them down long cold hallways, lit by lights that sputtered and smoked, past shut doors behind which echoed the throbs of what David suspected must be engines. Once she demanded that they stop, her head tilted towards the ceiling, and above them boomed out what could only be titanic footfalls; the ground shook, the walls around them seemed to flex and contract. David covered his face with his hands, and whatever it was passed above and beyond them. Two hallways and three flights of stairs later, she hissed for silence and a bright light, buzzing softly, passed by. Mother Graine explained neither, only made sure they continued to descend. Several other times she stopped as though she was lost, but the pauses were brief.
Finally, at the end of a short hallway they reached a heavy iron door. Mother Graine nodded. In there. David reached out, touched it and He blinked, on his backside. Margaret and Kara were shouting at Mother Graine, all he could hear was the heavy thudding of his heart.
“I’m all right,” he said.
Every eye turned to him. He shook his head. “I’m all right.”
“I should have warned you,” Mother Graine said. “The door’s charged.”
“Yes, you should.” David tried to stand, fell back. “How much of a charge?”
“Enough to kill most people.”
“Wouldn’t that have been convenient?”
“Honestly, yes.” She smiled. “Quite frankly, I still can’t believe that you touched it and survived.” She gestured at the panel beside it. “It will only open to my touch, I am afraid.”
“Do what you have to,” Kara said.
The door opened to a room chilled to almost freezing. The room felt at once vast and small, it extended beyond sight in all directions from the wall, and there was something wrong about all that space. David could feel forces at work that warped reality.
Within a dozen yards of them was a cage made of cast iron. Inside, barely moving, seven women stood, their clothes torn and bloody. Despite the cold, David could sense it. Just as he had sensed it in Hardacre, only here it was stronger, almost choking in its potency.
A taste at once familiar and wrong. Here? he thought.
Kara let out a cry. “What have you done, old woman?” She spat, “What have you done?”
She moved towards the cage. David's hand swung out, and he caught her by the wrist. Kara tried to yank her hand free, and he could feel the strength of her: the rough consequence of years of working the ropes, suspended above the air, of climbing and scrubbing, of being everything that a pilot must be; but now, right now — earned or not — he was stronger.
David said, “Stop, look at their mouths.”
Darkness gathered and fluttered there, moving slowly, circling the heat of their breaths.
“Witmoths,” Mother Graine said. “Kara, I did nothing. The moths arrived with some of the Aerokin from Hardacre. It’s a tougher breed, capable of resisting the cold, but not this cold. I had to bring them here, lost two more sisters to it on that screaming mad descent into stone. Men and women died to bring them to these depths. Cadell, we never had the resistance to them that you do. Our blood burns hot like Cuttlefolk, not cold.” She touched David’s wrist. “I am the only one left.”
“And you cage them,” David said. “How dare you cage them? Death is the only honour left to them.”
Mother Graine straightened, her eyes hardened, and her lips thinned. “You know nothing of cages,” Mother Graine said. “Not yet, and when you do, you will rethink the horror of this.”
“I know enough to-”
One of the mothers opened its eyes and stared at Margaret. “There you are,” it breathed. “There you are.” It spun its head towards David, joints cracking in its neck, and hissed. “Saaaa! And there you are, too. We’re coming for you.”
“Of course you are,” David said.
The Roiling blinked. Witmoths crawled from its eyes, fluttered towards David. He lifted a hand, killed them with a touch, though it had him sweating, a briny cold prickle of sweat. The room weakened him, separated him from the great Engine in the north. Every second that passed accentuated that.
“I'm not meant to be here.” He turned to Mother Graine and the others. “We have to go, now.”
They fled that great hall then. The door shutting behind them, and with it closed, David felt his strength return.
“So now you know,” Mother Graine said quietly.
Kara grabbed Mother Graine by her collar and yanked her close. “You kept this hidden. You’ve left them like that.”
“What else was I supposed to do, child?”
“I’m no more your child than any of us. You did not trust your people to this, how can we trust you?”
Mother Graine sighed. “And tell my people what? That they are doomed? That there is no hope? There’s honesty and then there is madness.”
Kara’s face did not soften. She looked like she was going to be sick. She pushed the Mother of the Sky away. “Get us to the Dawn. We have to leave this madhouse. I can’t take another moment of it.”
“Those who have helped you will be punished.”
“You threaten me? Even now you threaten me? None of us do this lightly,” Kara said. “We know what we stand to lose.”
“Kara, my Kara, I don't believe you know what you are giving up. These two, they’ve lost everything already, but you-”
“Shut your mouth,” Kara snapped. “Shut your mouth now. I’ve lost it all, my city is rotten at its heart. Now take me to my Dawn.”
“When she dies, you will curse your friends’ names for making it happen. You will go mad, worse than anything that the Witmoths could produce, a madness of grief and blood — that’s all these two can-” Mother Graine gasped. Margaret removed her elbow from her stomach.
“That’s enough now,” Kara said, quietly. “Take me to my Dawn.”
Mother Graine nodded, her eyes hard. “This way,” she said, opening another door.
They followed her through.
The door shut behind them. Darkness. There was a soft sound, like wind given bones and whispering papery flesh. Kara’s torch clicked on.
The beam of the flashlight cut through the dark, revealing cockroaches in their thousands. David flinched.
“Why do secret passages always seem to be crowded with cockroaches?” David asked. “I don’t even know how they managed to get here.”
“That's what these things are?” Margaret said, boots crunching down on those creatures not quite quick enough to get out of the way. “I was wondering, but wasn't quite sure. It had always been too cold for cockroaches in Tate. The cockroach and the flea died out when the Roil came.”
“They're a lot of fun, until one flies in your face,” David said.
“They fly?” Margaret asked.
“Toughen up, you two. We go forward, we get to the Dawn and we get out of here.”
David could feel them moving all around. Even as he watched, one flew into Kara’s hair. She clawed the insect free and flung it to the ground.
Mother Graine sighed. “Not far to go,” she said.
David couldn't disagree more.