Foul Tide's Turning (41 page)

‘That I hope the Frontier Mounted is riding a long way from here,’ said Carter. Because his company was striking out for Midsburg, now. Battles could be won with words and hope and legitimacy for a cause as well as by bullets, and the saints know, the north had few enough rounds. The prince and the assembly needed to see this. Carter remounted Peppercorn.

He didn’t catch the sly, imperceptibly quick glance exchanged between Tom Purdell and his pilot.
Just as they had known
.

‘My gun’s as empty as our fuel tank,’ cursed Cassandra, watching the pair of Rodalian flying wings break patrol formation and curve away to intercept the
Lightning Gull
from two directions simultaneously. Alexamir answered with an apprehensive grunt and she didn’t dare take time to check the look on his face, probably not much different to hers.
So, what are the pilots’ orders?
Talatala’s citizenry would have found the remains of the nomad’s primitive incendiary device in the burnt-out shop by now. Sheplar wanted her taken alive, but the rest of the town would want her— Tracer rounds cut through the dawn air, a dull staccato thud of shells flickering out seeking the
Gull
. But they were still too far from each other for the rounds to find their mark.
There’s my answer
. Cassandra could almost taste her desperation, a hard breakfast to stomach; that she should have made it this far only to fail now.
Focus. Focus on the enemy, not your fears and fate’s poor draw
. Should she attempt a landing? Cassandra glanced down. Whatever passed for ground lay cloaked by a mixture of cloud and early morning mist. She couldn’t see mountain peaks breaking through like rocky islands anymore, so were they above the steppes? She fancied risking Rodal’s mad mountain winds even less than the thought of having to abandon their plane in some valley while being strafed by vengeful pilots.

‘I’ll try and lose them inside the clouds,’ announced Cassandra. She checked the fuel reservoir and made a quick calculation inside her head. Perhaps ten minutes’ more flying time.
They’ll still be scouring the clouds for us while the
Lightning Gull
’s sucking on vapours
. But it was the only way. Maybe she’d get lucky. Run them into a concealed peak. Cassandra would play hide and seek and land when she had no other choice. She began gliding lower, using the remaining force of the faltering trade wind to drive them down, the two wheeling birds of the skyguard having to push against the headwind. They’d stopped firing, saving their ammunition for when they drew closer in a minute or so. That opening burst was just to clear their guns. It didn’t bode well. Cassandra remembered her flying lessons well. Every ace shared a common trait. They closed almost to ramming distance before opening fire. It was a sure-fire way to bring an enemy down, as long as you were certain of your manoeuvring skills. Only fools treated kites as aerial snipers, wasting shells on long distance fire and hoping for a lucky shot to find their mark.
Skill beats luck. Hold your nerve and hold your fire
. These weren’t fresh-faced pilots straight out of the temple, then.

‘Our pigeon passes over the steppes,’ said Alexamir, his voice crackling hopefully in her ears. ‘Their spirits cannot protect them here.’

‘How can you tell?’

‘Can you not smell the earth below the mist, green grass fit to feed your steed?’

She could smell the rich leather of her air mask. Her own fear, maybe, but no dirt. ‘Are your people below?’

‘Those left to guard our party’s horses, perhaps. These borderlands are within range of the rice eaters’ wooden pigeons, and there is nothing their patrols love so much as diving down to show their claws to fine horsemen. They fight like cowards, little golden fox. Only raiders as courageous as Alexamir dare to pass so close to the mountains.’

Cassandra doubted a few arrowheads would prove much deterrence to their pursuers, even if she could draw the skyguard close to any nomads. She remembered the jealous glances Nurai had thrown her way after she had been taken by the raiders. The witch rider was as like to aim an arrow shaft into the
Gull’
s pilot. But then, the woman had told Alexamir where to find her in Talatala. Perhaps the need to return with a prize was greater than the acerbic seer’s jealousy of her?

She encountered no turbulence gradient as they dropped towards the white sea below, the heat of high altitude replaced by gravity’s salutation and a cold touch of cloud vapour. In front, the two flying wings had marked what she was attempting and one pilot dived into the clouds to seek her within and below, while the other stayed steady, maintaining a bird’s-eye view of the duel, ready to put a burst into her cockpit if she tried to climb for height.
Are they aware the plane I stole has no ammunition
? There was a good chance that information had been radioed through. Ammunition was clearly carefully accounted for in every barbarian army and skyguard, the lands at the far-called end of the caravan routes doubly so.

They were sinking like a submarine below the white vapour when the climbing plane finally found the range for a burst of fire. Cassandra felt a shudder at the back of her flying wing, a sudden unresponsiveness to the stick. One of the
Lightning Gull
’s two elevator rudders had been half shredded by the stream of bullets, pieces of fabric left flapping loudly behind them, and Cassandra was suddenly left flying a tractor rather than a scout craft, every move sticky and reluctant.

‘That is not good,’ said Alexamir.

‘Thank you for the mechanic’s report!’

She could hear the drone of the ascending fighter growing louder even if she could no longer see it, a triumphant tone to its roaring engine. No sign of slowing, it sounded as though it was still climbing.
I know what you’re doing
. The pilot had marked their position in the cloud and was preparing to turn and swoop in a high-side gun pass, looking to place a second, fatal burst into the
Gull
’s rear quarter. She pulled the leather mask off her face, breathing hard in the thin air. She needed to hear what was coming next. Alexamir’s muffled yells came in reaction to her seemingly insane decision, but they were no longer clear enough to understand without the ear-phones of her breathing apparatus. The enemy fighter’s engine pitch changed into a scream as it began its dive and she counted the seconds down in her mind, before pulling the stick back hard and early, giving the
Gull
’s damaged elevator the time it needed to commence the first half of a loop. Her engine screamed in protest at the turn, not the healthy sound of a fully working engine and she prayed that it hadn’t taken damage in the initial volley.
Come on,
Lightning Gull,
see me clear
.

Suddenly they broke free of the cloud’s chill, pulling up and over in the open blue sky, Cassandra waited for her stolen plane to hang inverted in a half-loop before throwing the stick and stealing momentum, rolling the
Gull
into an upright position and leaving them facing the diving fighter head-on. She could see the skyguard pilot’s surprised face, shocked that she should dare to pull such a manoeuvre – meaningless without a gun to unload into her rapidly closing attacker. The skyguard’s features grew even more surprised as he dived past and her hurled dagger found its mark in his chest under his throat. As the flying wing was absorbed by the cloud it began to spin uncontrollably, telling Cassandra that the pilot had more important matters on his mind than shooting her down. Choking for breath she tugged her air mask back on.

‘My knife!’ Alexamir sounded indignant. ‘That belonged to my grandfather!’

Cassandra turned them back into the cloud, before the second fighter realized the broken, corkscrewing plane fleeting past him was his wing-man, not the
Lightning Gull
. ‘A stolen Rodalian blade … and now it has found its way home. Have you another dagger on you?’

‘No! And you are very careless with my gifts.’

She could hear the drone of the remaining fighter, muffled by the clouds and seeking them out. A break manoeuvre might see them safe once or twice from its weapons, but they had nothing left to fight with, and time was on the enemy pilot’s side, not to mention a fighter’s swiftness and pair of working wing guns. ‘That was the gift of life, for the both of us.’

‘You are a worthy sky rider,’ said Alexamir, grudgingly. ‘Do you ride a horse so well?’

Cassandra remembered the largely ceremonial training she had received from a foreign cavalryman called Kele. Vandians valued practical, modern fighting skills, as well as the unarmed combat expertise needed for duels and the arena. But she’d yet to witness a duel fought on horseback. ‘I won’t fall off.’
Too often
.

‘That is good to hear. Silence your engine,’ said Alexamir.

Glide right past the enemy fighter inside the clouds? No engine noise for its pilot to track
. It might work, but there was a fatal risk. ‘If I switch the engine off, I might be unable to start it without someone to turn the propeller on ignition.’

‘Restart the engine on a dive,’ said Alexamir. ‘The force of passing air should rotate the wooden blade on this pigeon’s beak well enough and breathe life back into her.’

How the hell do you know that
? He was suspiciously well informed about aerial tactics for a barbarian. Such advice would never have worked on a decently modern rocket craft, but on this rickety, hand-crafted hunk of carpentry?
It just might
. She reached out to the control panel and felt a shiver of apprehension as she switched the engine off, the reassuring vibration replaced by the hissing passage of wind across the flying wing’s body. Apart from the flapping of their shattered elevator rudder, there was only the enemy fighter’s whirr, buzzing louder as it drew close.

‘Glide above him,’ said Alexamir, whispering through the communication tube, even though there was little chance any pilot could overhear them in the air. ‘He will be looking down, not up, seeing if our silence betokens the wooden pigeon remade as cruel wreckage on the ground.’

Cassandra took his suggestion and started a gentle climb. The erratic warm updrafts made for a choppy rise, especially on a single elevator flap, pulling the
Gull
over at an angle.

‘There is only one rice eater’s neck for me to break,’ announced Alexamir, before ripping his mask off and standing up inside the spotter’s cockpit. Cassandra barely had time to register that he’d strapped his parachute on, and then she was watching the insane nomad leap into the white ocean towards the passing shadow below. His final battle yell faded into the clouds. ‘Not too much for Alexamir!’

Judging by the unexpected pitch-turn the shadow executed as it vanished with a throaty engine growl, the single-man fighter had unexpectedly found itself flying with a dangerously deranged stowaway. This had been Alexamir’s real plan all along. Climb for height. Leap across and kill the enemy with his bare hands. How often had he made such a leap from a horse?
Idiot man. Is this my fault? Did I shame him into suicide by taking down the first skyguard
? But she felt nagging doubts. Alexamir’s clever scheme for killing the engine and gliding past. And someone had trained him how to use a parachute, and that someone wasn’t any blue-skinned savage expert in breaking unridden foals. She pushed the puzzle out of her mind.
I need to restart the
Gull;
follow him down and hope his mystery tutor showed him what the chute’s ripcord is for
. She heard a chatter of wing guns. A dying skyguard accidentally kicking the trigger in his final death throes, or a vengeful pilot opening up on a lone descending parachute? Cassandra tilted the plane down, wind rushing fast past her head in a roar. She fired the ignition switch, checking the rear of the
Gull
. Windflow turned the single rotor fast and it spun back into life, but her engine’s reassuring hum was replaced by a coughing rumble and then a thick black cloud trailing like a banner behind her, flames leaping along the broken elevator’s loose fabric.
Oh my sweet ancestors, that first burst did find more than an elevator flap
. She killed the engine before the fire spread any further, reaching under her chair and locating the canvas pouch for the pilot’s parachute, the
empty
pouch. Her only means of escape was resting on some bench back in Talatala, probably awaiting a safety inspection for tears and rent in the silk. A safety check that had just killed her. She burst out of the clouds, scattering a flight of kestrels, a view of green plains and endless rolling hills with a few stands of larch jolting beyond the nosecone, her broken flying wing trembling with turbulence. Rodal’s mountains stood like a row of black rotten teeth far behind her, sharp and cannibal. She tried to ignore the heat at her back, the crackling flames fanned by the wind of her diving aircraft. No sign of downed debris from her enemies or Alexamir’s floating chute. Cassandra attempted to level up in the glide, but her remaining functional elevator flap hung jouncing in the wind, become a fiery, useless mass. Prayers in elaborate temple script burned black along the length of the wing around her, Rodal’s spirits casting their final curse. If the engine’s fuel reservoir hadn’t already been drained, her poor wounded
Gull
would have been a blazing ball of wreckage scratched across the sky by now.
I escaped. I escaped, and I did it on my own
. How proud her father would have been of her.
I’ll know for sure when I meet him
. She finally lost command of the plane, not enough of her rudders, flaps and control pulleys left to influence the gliding
Lightning Gull
.

The wild grassland rose up to welcome her uncontrolled and spiralling dive.

ELEVEN

FAMILY REUNIONS

Willow was about to walk into an expensive restaurant high on the hill overlooking the capital when Nocks grabbed her arm; the odious man’s fingers biting into her flesh. ‘You remember the mistress’s commands, girly. Give your brother honey and spread it on thick. I’ll be standing behind old man Benner and listening to every word you say; his loyal old sergeant watching his back. One word against us or the king, one word for the rebels, and I’ll finish the job on your precious Carter Carnehan that I started in Hawkland Park. A whipping will be the best of it for him.’

‘Your mistress will have her words,’ spat Willow.
May she choke on them in childbirth
. Willow chided herself for her malice.
At least, let the witch perish in childbirth after her poor baby’s delivered
. Another innocent was about to enter the world; Holten had been confined in her rooms and surrounded by experienced midwives and the finest doctors the Landor fortune could command. Willow had a greater appreciation of the fragility of life since her own condition had made itself known. She could no longer read the stories of fighting in the newspapers without weeping until the sheets were soaked through. Combat fiercest in the contested central prefectures split between Owen and Marcus, Humont, Chicola and Bolesland. Each soldier – rebel or royalist – was the child of some mother somewhere, praying for her child’s safe, unwounded return. Nocks conversed with the coach driver and the coach rattling away down the street, then the odious little manservant ventured inside the restaurant to check their reservation. Willow stared at the view. She was close to the top of the hill where the cathedral stood like a citadel, Arcadia spread out before her under a cold, clear sky. The canals’ concentric rings dotted with flat boats, smoke from hundreds of chimneys rising up above the city, a couple of tri-wing aircraft patrolling over the harbour and the sea beyond, the sound of engines lost on the slope. Across from Willow on Assembly Hill, the domed parliament building sat empty and silent. Most of the honest assemblymen had fled north while the remainder languished in jail or prison camps. No, from up here you wouldn’t know the deep trouble the realm was in.

Willow walked into the restaurant entrance hall, removing her coat as the warmth rose. One of the staff took the coat and cloak from her. She could see into the three dining rooms ahead, two with hillside views, a cheaper chamber looking out on a street – and even its menu expensive – a high desk with a reservation clerk behind it standing sentry for all three rooms. Willow could see many diners seated in the establishment wore similarly silly uniforms to the clothes her father had ordered made. Mill overseers one day, majors and captains the next, swept up in the patriotic fervour fanned by the king’s allies and the press.
Like children playing at killing, except the murder is real.
If that wasn’t bad enough, half the remaining tables were filled by Vandians, even the empire’s common soldiers living like lords in the capital. Unlike the other locals here, Willow knew the true cost of the coins those troops threw around with such abandon.
Blood money. Paid for by the lives of their slaves in the mines
.

As Willow entered she almost collided with a group of laughing women withdrawing, obviously the worse for wear from drink. They wore green Vandian fleet uniforms, ill-fitting to match their ill-discipline and raucous laughter, like girls playing dress-up in their fathers’ clothes. The only way they could have looked more ridiculous was if they’d come into the capital wearing the armoured breastplates of the imperium’s legionaries. Steel-backs, as the newspapers had nicknamed the imperium’s common soldiers. The legionaries might look oddly archaic, but Willow knew from bitter experience how well the light artificial material the armour was formed from could slow and halt a bullet. These women’s dress and their flawless beauty marked them out as a party of Vandian camp followers, one of many currently carousing across the capital while their officers plotted and planned their coming victory.
Welcomed by the locals for their money if not for their manners
. A wild voice among the group soared in Willow’s direction and she was shocked to realize that she actually knew the woman braying at her.
Adella Cheyenne!

‘Willow Landor. Little Willow!’

‘Adella, I never thought I’d see you again,’ said Willow. ‘Certainly not here … in Weyland.’

‘I know,’ Adella giggled. ‘It’s so dull and provincial. But I’m to be a wife to Baron Machus, and he’s second-in-command of the fleet. Machus is here and where he travels so must I.’

‘A
wife
? But the baron grabbed you from the sky mines? You’re home now. You could slip away, travel back to Northhaven?’

‘And why in the world would I wish to set foot in Northhaven?’ she slurred. ‘To have your marvellous father tell me I’m not good enough to marry his precious son again? To have the great Benner Landor stare down his fat nose at me? I have moved on so much from those sad old days. My star’s risen far into the firmament, my fortune as good as the baron’s gold.’

‘To see
your
family, Adella. Don’t you know how they suffered after you were taken by the slavers? More than any family in Northhaven, especially when so many of us came home and you weren’t among those rescued.’

‘I don’t require rescuing,’ spat Adella. ‘Not then, not now.’

‘They need to hear from you again.’

‘You dare to lecture me?’ Adella’s words escaped in a shriek. ‘You look to your own family first. It’s no wonder that Duncan decided to stay in Vandia; caught between your constant carping and your father’s smug humbug. But then, Duncan receives other rewards, I believe … He’s a sleek little pet for Princess Helrena to cuddle when she’s bored.’

‘How can you be so cruel? You loved my brother once.’

‘Did I? Perhaps. Even I can make a mistake, I suppose.’

‘Go home, Adella. Your parents are old and heartbroken. They deserve to know you’re alive and safe before they pass.’

‘Maybe I will,’ Adella tittered as her companions grew bored of the distraction and started to tug her outside with them. She called back, ‘They’ll bend their knee to the baron quickly enough when the fleet flies north to smash the rebels. It’ll be fun to have all the commoners in Northhaven bowing and scraping before me.’

Nocks came into the hall from a serving corridor, alongside a waiter who surreptitiously slipped the manservant a coin.
A little scratch for booking the reservation here, no doubt
. The wretch stared appreciatively at the bevy of beautiful women swaying uncertainly outside. ‘Those Vandian lords know how to live. Of course, a man has to be richer than chicken gravy to take on more’n a single wife. And it’s a fool who keeps a stable, when he can rent his ride by the hour.’

‘Fools all over,’ said Willow, watching Adella depart. And she was willing to bet that every whore who’d ever lain with a pig like Nocks had a special price just for him.
Double or treble
?

Nocks grabbed her arm and squeezed her flesh. ‘Just you bring a little of
their
attention to your brother when he sits down. Duncan hasn’t arrived yet, but your old man’s waiting inside for you. Now, move.’

Willow shook his grip off and followed the head waiter inside. Benner Landor had a fine view of the city below and the Lancean Ocean beyond. He was seated at a round white linen-covered table large enough to host a party of ten.

‘Have you seen the prices?’ grumbled her father, tapping the oblong of card. ‘Even I won’t be able to afford to eat here soon.’

‘I’m sure you’ll cope,’ was all that Willow managed as she sat down. Prices had risen rapidly as the civil war’s flames fanned higher; from horses to flour, clothing to milk. Those that should be working in factories had been conscripted into fighting regiments and marched north. Hands that should be tilling soil, turning bullets on lathes instead. And that had been before the Vandians arrived … even the lowliest legionary was flush with enough silver and gold to make the king’s already heavily adulterated currency look as devalued as a barbarian’s wooden trading coins. Willow knew things would grow far worse if the fighting wasn’t over by spring, when Weylanders fighting the war would be needed in the fields and farms.

Nocks picked his way through the restaurant and took up position behind the table. ‘I asked the coachman to return to the hotel, Colonel, and come back when there’s news about the mistress.’

Colonel
. How strange her father’s fresh title sounded to Willow. At least the ‘
my lord’
Nocks once parroted was the same for a squire or a newly minted Marquess of the Borderlands.
Well, that’s the least of this bloody war’s changes
.

Benner Landor waved his hand perfunctorily ‘Leyla’s in the hands of the midwives, Nocks. Let them earn their fees. I asked William to look in on my wife, too.’

A duty that Willow’s unwanted husband was no doubt all too happy to perform. Willow suspected that the twin evils of her life, Leyla and Wallingbeck, had been far more than just political allies in the past. But it would be pointless to present such suspicions to her father. Willow had little proof, and any complaints she voiced would be taken as further evidence of malice towards her stepmother.
In the hands of the midwives
. Was that a slight coolness she detected in her father’s words regarding his young wife? Willow felt a surge of hope. Was Duncan’s return undermining that foul woman’s position in the house already?
Saints, let it be so
. Willow glanced at Nocks hoping to find some hint of disapproval, but the face of Holten’s creature, ugly as it was, gurned back at her, unreadable. He’d make a fine card-sharp around the gambling table.

‘You were present when I was born, Father,’ observed Willow, trying to sound neutral. No doubt every word she said would find its way back to Holten.

‘In those days we lived too far from town for a doctor to reach us,’ said Benner. ‘And we could hardly have afforded their services, besides. Things have changed for the family now.’

Willow remembered her mother and could hardly contain her tears. Her father’s large hands enclosing hers during the funeral; Duncan by their side, no amount of wealth or land held able to induce Lorenn Landor’s return from heaven.
Things have changed
. Everything from that moment had been a slow slide into decline. And now the country had joined Willow in her misery, as fractured and cracked as what passed for her family these days.
I’m glad you’re not here to see this, Mother
.

Married off to a foul instrument of Holten’s malice. The product of a rape swelling her womb. Willow as good as disinherited.
And those I do love?
Carter and Father Carnehan at the mercy of the king and his brutes.
And now the prodigal son had finally returned from his self-imposed exile
. Well, Willow would have to see if she could turn her brother’s reappearance to her advantage. With Holten in her rented townhouse, grunting and screaming as a new beneficiary to the Landor fortune found himself squeezed into the world … well, the birthing stool was no place to play games against the House of Landor’s true heir.

Willow sat alone with her worries, struggling to make small talk for half an hour with a father she scarcely knew anymore, until Duncan walked into the restaurant. How different he was from their last angry meeting inside the empire. Her brother wore a dark green velvet Vandian fleet jacket with a high collar, an ugly-looking pistol hanging from a copper-coloured belt with a gold metal hook buckle, his stride stiff and proud in black cloth trousers.

She thought she could cope with seeing Duncan again. Wearing the uniform of the empire. But the bile that rose inside Willow as a reaction to her brother surprised even her. ‘Why have you come to Weyland, Duncan? As you can see, the country’s got enough problems of its own to deal with.’

‘Your brother’s come
home
,’ said Benner Landor, his face colouring with irritation at her greeting.

Nocks bent down to refill Willow’s wine glass and whispered, ‘Careful, girly,’ in her ear. Willow did her best to ignore the blue-uniformed beast.

‘Weyland doesn’t feel like my home anymore,’ said Duncan. She noted a distance in his tone, as though he was hardly present. ‘I have made a new life for myself in the imperium.’

‘You’re not coming back to Northhaven?’ said Benner, unable to conceal his disappointment. ‘You are my first-born … boy, you are the heir to Hawkland Park and the house’s holdings.’

Duncan shook his head. ‘No. I
was
. I’m not that Weylander anymore. Now I’m Duncan Landor, a citizen of the Vandian imperium, in the service of Princess Helrena – a daughter of the emperor and empire both. You should see Vandia, Father, it’s like a dream. You could hide Weyland inside a single imperial province. Buildings there are as high as mountains and cities are as large as prefectures, food and entertainment free for the Vandian populace. They have machines and skills that the average Weylander would think magic.’

‘A dream for
some
,’ said Willow.
Every idleness and whim serviced by foreign slaves and serfs
. ‘You didn’t have to fly here with the Vandian fleet.’

‘Your brother needs no invitation to visit us,’ interrupted Benner.

‘I came to help rescue Lady Cassandra Skar,’ said Duncan. ‘Jacob Carnehan should never have taken her.’

Maybe he shouldn’t have, at that
. ‘What is the girl to you?’ asked Willow, curious at the change in the Duncan she remembered.

‘She is my duty and far more than that. She was under my protection when Father Carnehan took her hostage. I have to bring her back. I owe it to Cassandra and I owe it to her mother.’

‘The pastor,’ growled Benner. ‘All those years living among us, and not even his name was true. The hypocrisy of that devil, preaching compassion to our people while his words were tainted by the blood of hundreds of innocent victims. Jake Silver, brother to Black Barnaby. A murderer, a Burn sell-sword and a bandit. To think that his thuggish son believed he could marry you, Willow … it makes me shudder.’