Storm Thief (28 page)

The sun rose and the sun set, and the currents took him where they would.

He could have tried to swim, if he wanted. He didn't want to. Instead he was curled, a foetus, his wings wrapped around him like a cocoon. He didn't sink, nor did he float. A trick of his construction kept him at a certain level of buoyancy. Gas pockets in his hydraulics, perhaps, or an effect of the aether stored in his batteries.

Vago was moved by the massive, blind whims of the sea. In the dark where no sunlight could reach, he floated in its freezing womb. Eyes open or shut made no difference; it was only when some predator came to disturb his rest that he had any sense there was anything in the entire world but him. Few predators came. The aether charge in his body deterred them.

He floated, and here he was nothingness. He had no need to breathe, no need to sleep. He had glutted himself with Revenants in the assault on the Fulcrum, and there was no telling how long the power in his body would last. Time was meaningless down here, where there was no night or day.

Sometimes he thought about Rail and Moa, wondering if they had survived the crash landing in the sea, wondering if there really was another land over the horizon. Perhaps they were happy now. Perhaps they never made it. He couldn't say. This was limbo: a place of oblivion, a place where nothing was determined or certain. He liked it here.

He thought about Orokos, of the city he had left behind. The probability storm would have changed it utterly now. The Storm Thief's final rampage must have been terrible. What it was like, or if it was even still there, he would never know, unless the great flow of the oceans of the world took him back there one day.

And sometimes he thought about himself, about his life and what he had done with it. Down here, guilt and blame had no meaning. Was he a murderer? Was he really that person that had done those things, now that he had sheathed himself in a new body, now that the memories of his crime had gone? Was there ever any way to make amends?

He had no answers.

Could the sea forgive him, in time? Could it wash away his sins?

He couldn't say.

He had surrendered himself to the ocean, and he waited to see where it would take him. Perhaps, one day, he would bump against the flanks of a continent, and he would clamber back to the light. Perhaps there
were
no other continents, and he would end up back at Orokos. Perhaps he would float until his energy ran out, and the void took him.

In the end, it was all down to chance; but he knew one thing, above all else.

Anything was possible.

Chris Wooding's first book was published when he was nineteen years old. By the time he had left university he was writing full time and has been ever since. Chris is now the author of twenty-one books that have been translated into twenty languages. His books have won many awards, including the Nestlé Smarties Silver Award and he has been shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award. Chris also writes for TV and film.

 

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First published in the UK by Scholastic Ltd, 2006

This electronic edition published by Scholastic Ltd, 2014

 

Text copyright © Chris Wooding, 2006

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eISBN 978 1407 14387 3

 

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