The Blood Debt (20 page)

‘There’s someone else,’ said Chu, pointing inland.

He didn’t take her seriously until he saw the morning shadow stretched long across the flat land. It was cast by a single person, possibly a man, walking with steady paces over the sand, holding something in his arms.

‘Who the Goddess is that?’

‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

‘What’s he doing out here? What’s he carrying?’

‘This is weird,’ said Chu. ‘I don’t like it. I think we should get out of here.’

Skender shook his head. ‘Just a little longer.’ He projected the paths of the approaching vehicles and the walking man. They intersected not far from the line of hidden Sky Wardens. ‘I want to see what happens.’

‘Why? It has nothing to do with us, and it could be dangerous.’

‘How? We’re perfectly safe up here.’

‘My bones disagree.’

‘Your bones don’t have a licence. I do, and I’m telling you that the winds are clear. It’s smooth sailing all around here.’

‘Maybe that’s what I don’t like. How can the air be so calm? We’re over open land and the sun is up. It should be like the inside of a kettle!’

‘Then we got lucky. Chu, I don’t know what’s going on, but I think we need to find out. It probably has nothing to do with my mother, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t important.’

‘All I care about is my own skin.’

‘Fine,’ he snapped, ‘so remember that your skin wants to fly, and helping me will convince the Magister to help you. Do we still have a deal or don’t we?’

She didn’t respond immediately. They continued in slow wide circles over the walking man and his burden, and over the people in the hides, descending further with every complete circuit. The figure striding with the regularity of clockwork across the parched land was as black as anyone Skender had ever seen. The object in his arms could have been a sack, or a person. It was impossible to tell.

‘Okay,’ said Chu, taking a deep breath. ‘But if anything goes wrong, I’m going to —’

That was as far as she got before the wind emptied out of the wing and they were suddenly falling.

Skender’s stomach leapt to his throat. He let go of Chu and clutched at the straps for support. They were spinning, tumbling.

‘What’s happening?’

‘I don’t know!’ she yelled back. ‘You said the air was clear!’

‘It is!’ He tried to orient himself against the swinging horizon. He could see no chaotic flows gripping the wing, no miniature storms or hurricanes invisible to the naked eye. The air was as clear as it ever was.

And that, he suddenly realised, was the problem. It wasn’t just the air around him he couldn’t see. He couldn’t see the air
anywhere.

‘The charms!’ he cried. ‘Something’s killed the charms!’

She looked around her, at the wing and at him. His tattoos had faded, and so had the black marks normally adorning the wing. Her knuckles whitened where they gripped the control straps.

‘We’re falling free!’ He heard panic in her voice, barely hidden behind an iron determination to remain in control. ‘But it’s okay! I trained for this. There are ways to ditch without getting hurt.’

‘With a passenger?’

She didn’t waste energy answering the question. Wind whipped around them, blinding him. No longer his ally, it was both tenuous and as treacherous as a gale. Chu’s arms wrenched at the wing, brought their graceless descent under a measure of control. He tried to help her, but feared that he was only making things worse.

They were falling like stones. It struck him abruptly that they could both die.
The higher we go, the harder we’ll hit the ground.
In that instant, every other concern became insignificant: his mother, the identities of the strangers below, what Chu’s plans were, and what she really thought of him…

‘Hold on,’ she said. Her hands yanked at the wing’s slender control surfaces. ‘This could be rough.’

The ground ballooned in front of them. Chu threw herself backwards, trying to bring the nose up. The wing resisted. Skender could see them smacking hard against the ground if he didn’t do something fast, so he wrapped both arms around her and wrenched their centre of gravity higher. The nose jerked and skewed to the right.

‘Not the wing!’ she cried, kicking outwards. ‘Don’t damage the wing!’

The blur of the ground resolved into dirt and stones, rocks and stumps of trees, and then Chu’s legs were running, trying valiantly to match their velocity. Skender covered his face with his hands, unable to do anything more than ride it out, feeling the heat of the sun reflected off the ground at him and the sudden lurch of impact, and hearing the awful scraping of leather against dirt, as a landing even worse than the one the previous night unfolded beneath him.

* * * *

‘Sal, wait!’

Shilly was three metres behind him and falling back, unable to match his pace. His reasons for bursting from the hide and running out into the open were a complete mystery. He was blowing their cover. Marmion was going to skin them alive!

That this was her first concern appalled her. She cursed herself as she tried her best to keep up with him. Behind her in the hide she had left Tom with the glass globe and the decision whether to use it or not. She had kept one of the flares, just in case. Not knowing what Sal had seen or sensed in the heat-dancing landscape around her made it difficult for her to know what to do.

Sal was running as though all the creatures of the Divide were after him. But he wasn’t looking behind him. He was looking ahead and up.

That was when she saw it: a shape that could have been an enormous golden swallow dropping out of the sky. It angled in from above her and to her right. That it was the same thing she had seen the previous night, blocking the moon, she had no doubt. It was a flying wing of some sort, carrying two people below it. But what was it doing
here
and
now,
she asked herself, and why was it plunging at such a steep angle into the ground? If it hit, as it was bound to at any moment, its passengers were certain to be killed.

It levelled out at the last moment, turning a fatal drop into something more controlled. Lurching from left to right, it skidded across the dirt, raising a cloud of fine, dry dust into which Sal unhesitatingly ran.

‘Sal!’ she shouted, trying to make her stiff leg move more quickly. ‘Sal, be careful!’

He didn’t seem to hear her. Not caring about discretion any longer, Shilly pulled the flare from her pocket and did as Tom had instructed her. The top cracked with the sound of breaking chalk, and she held the base well away from her face as it ignited. With a bang and a fierce whizzing sound, the firework shot up into the sky, trailing a line of black smoke behind it. It exploded high above her in a multicoloured cloud. Seconds later, another, much fainter bang came in reply from away to her right.

The dust had settled enough for her to see Sal again, and the wide scar the flying wing had carved into the yellow ground. Sal was bending over the wing, trying to get at what lay underneath.

‘Don’t touch her!’ called a muffled voice. ‘She’s hurt!’

‘I can see that!’ Sal said, pitching his voice reassuringly but loud enough to penetrate. ‘We have to get her out of the harness. Hold still. I see the latches.’

Shilly could hear the concern he was trying to hide. There was blood on the ground where the flyer had skidded to a halt.

The wing wobbled.

‘Easy!’ Sal said more firmly. ‘I’ve got her. Can you get the wing off us? I need to look at her.’

Shilly limped to a halt as the wing lifted up and away. She reached out a hand to help the person underneath. As the wing swung upright and the face of the person attached to it became visible, she took a step backwards.

‘Skender?’

The name registered, but Skender didn’t seem to see her at first. He looked at her and his gaze skidded away. His eyelids fluttered. Then he put a hand to his head and sank to his knees under the weight of the wing.

She forgot her surprise and moved in. to help him. He was filthy and his robes were torn. The way he moved suggested that he was in shock.

And no wonder, she thought. After five years, he had just literally dropped out of the sky upon them.

‘Is she ...?’ Skender’s concern was solely for the person stretched out on the ground between them. A young woman, Shilly saw; about her age or a little younger. Sal had turned her over and bunched a wad of fabric from his tunic in both hands and pressed it to her forehead. It was turning red fast.

‘Head wounds bleed a lot,’ Sal said, gritting his teeth. ‘It’s hard to tell what’s going on underneath.’

‘Help her.’ Skender reached out with one badly grazed hand and gripped Sal’s shoulder. ‘Like you helped Shilly when she broke her leg.
Heal
her!’

‘I can’t,’ Sal said. Shilly noted that their identities seemed to have sunk in, even if he hadn’t acknowledged them in any other way.

‘You have to!’

‘I would if I could.’ Sal looked up at Skender with desperation in his eyes. ‘But I’m telling you — I
can’t!’

In the dust and the heat of the moment, with an unknown woman’s blood pouring through Sal’s fingers onto the ground and an old friend pleading for the woman’s life, Shilly felt a powerful chill, as of a cold, iron blade sliding down her spine.

‘He’s not lying,’ she said, turning to peer around her. Sal looked foggy-headed, as though trying to see through a veil. Skender’s eyes were still not quite focusing. She herself felt no different — but being only sensitive to the Change, not naturally talented in it, she supposed she wouldn’t.

Out of the weirdness of the heat haze to the southwest, a man walked towards them, carrying someone in his arms.

She let go of Skender and stood up. Despite the dread she felt, she would not confront that moment on her knees in the dirt. She would meet it face to face, and she would not scream like Larson Maiz.

The Homunculus stepped out of the wilderness. It
looked
like a man, but as it drew closer that first impression faded. Shilly was unable to bring it into focus; its outline constantly shifted, making its precise form difficult to pin down. Its skin was a deep, textureless black and it seemed to have too many arms. Its pace was even and unhurried.

The body in its arms hung as limp as a sleeping child, although it belonged to a full-sized man. The Homunculus carried him without strain. Dark hair with wide grey streaks framed a face she almost didn’t recognise. Shilly knew it could only be one person.

‘Stop right there,’ she said as the Homunculus came within a dozen paces of them.

Much to her surprise — and no small amount of relief — the creature came to a halt.

‘Who are you?’ it asked. The words issued fluidly from its mouth but, like its features, the sound possessed an odd distortion, as though simultaneously heard from a great distance and near at hand. Its mouth stretched far too wide. At odd moments it seemed to have four eyes.

‘I’m Shilly,’ she said. ‘Who are
you?’

The creature’s oversized head blurred. ‘You don’t need to know. Will you help this man?’

It stepped forward, offering her the body in its arms.

‘What’s wrong with him?’ she asked, conscious of Sal watching the exchange closely from behind her. ‘What did you do to him?’

‘Nothing. He needs water and food or he’ll die.’

‘We can help him, but —’

‘Good. It’s been a long journey. He couldn’t keep up, and you’re the first people we’ve encountered. This land is so
empty ...’

The Homunculus’s voice was full of sadness as it squatted and put the body of Highson Sparre on the ground at its feet.

‘We’ll take care of him,’ Shilly said. ‘Thank you.’

The Homunculus didn’t respond. It simply stood and looked around, getting its bearings. Shilly and the others stood between it and Laure. It turned, clearly intending to walk around them.

‘Wait,’ Sal said, speaking at last. ‘This man is my father. Why did he summon you?’

‘His summoning wasn’t successful.’ The face turned to look at him, its expression unreadable. The strange eyes swung to focus on Shilly, then moved on. ‘You —’ The Homunculus stared at Skender. ‘Your name is Galeus. We’ve met before, but you won’t remember. We weren’t part of this world, then.’

Skender’s mouth hung open in stunned surprise at the use of his heart-name. He shook his head.

‘But I remember everything,’ he protested weakly.

The Homunculus stood frozen for a moment, staring at them all with intense concentration. Through the peculiar distortion, Shilly thought she saw the features of a young man, not much older than them, coalescing out of the chaos. The details of his face weren’t completely stable; they came in and out of focus as though she saw them through ill-matched glass lenses. But there was definitely something trying to get through. Someone.

Shilly couldn’t take her eyes off that strange face.

‘Who
are
you?’ she asked again, caught in a very strange dream.

For an instant, she thought the Homunculus might answer.

Then a shout from the south put paid to that possibility.

‘Sal! Shilly! Get down!’

Shilly turned and saw Marmion and the other Wardens converging on the scene. Habryn Kail swung an arm over his head, and something whizzed towards them with a loud, singing noise.

She dropped her cane and ducked, recognising the bola for what it was, albeit one much larger than any she had ever used to catch rabbits or dune hens. The weighted rope spun over her and wrapped itself around the Homunculus’s chest. It went down with a cry of pain in a furious tangle of limbs. Its form dissolved. She saw at least two heads and far too many arms and legs as the creature tried to right itself. But the bola had tied itself tightly around the Homunculus’s torso. It was effectively pinned.

Then the wardens were among them. Skender gaped as the new arrivals helped Shilly to her feet and stood guard over the writhing creature.

‘What the Goddess do you think you’re doing?’ Marmion asked her, his face white with fury. ‘I told you to stay down!’