Heirs of the Blade_ Shadows of the Apt_ Book Seven - Adiran Tchaikovsky [1]
To her back lay the northernmost extent of a tangled forest that housed two Mantis holds – and too many secrets. The airship that had brought her this far had sailed high to cross it, far higher than weather or hostile natives might otherwise account for. Its pilot, Jons Allanbridge, had simply shrugged when queried.
‘I don’t like the place,’ was all he would say on the subject, while beneath them the dark sea of trees remained almost lost in mist and distance. ‘Now Sarn’s behind us, I’ll not make landfall before the Hitch.’ Seeing her expression, he had scowled. ‘Who owes who for this, girl? You’re in no position to ask any cursed more of me. Got that?’
Which was true enough, Tynisa had to concede. The knotted, clenched feeling inside her had twitched at being balked in such a way, but she held on to it, fought it down. Her hand stayed clear of her sword hilt, and it, in turn, stayed clear of her hand, in a tenuous pact of mutual non-aggression.
It had been cold in the upper reaches of the air, but she had planned ahead for that, remembering their journey together to Tharn. She had packed cloaks and woollens, and still she shivered, crouching close to the airship’s burner, while Allanbridge bustled about her. That voyage to Tharn had been in his old ship, the Buoyant Maiden, and Allanbridge’s status as a war veteran had proved currency enough to finance his trading the Maiden for this much grander vessel. She had the impression that he was finding the craft difficult to run single-handed; not that she would have been able to help him even had he asked.
He called this new vessel the Windlass, which Tynisa thought reflected a lack of imagination on his part, but then he was her benefactor, and she the one who had so unfairly imposed herself on his conscience, and so she had said nothing.
They had been aloft many days now, with Allanbridge stoically rewinding the Windlass’s clockwork engine each day. He cooked their meagre meals and did incomprehensible things to the airship’s mechanisms in response to changes in the Windlass’s handling which Tynisa was unable to perceive. He was not one for conversation so their days together passed in silence. She slept in the hold, while he had the single cramped cabin that was the benefit of having acquired a larger airship than the little Maiden. This lack of talk, of any meaningful human contact, suited her very well.
Sometimes she had company other than Allanbridge, or at least her eyes twisted the world to make it seem that way. From the corner of her eye she would see a slender, grey-robed figure hunched at the rail, his posture twisted as if racked by illness, and she would think, He always did hate travel by airship, then close her eyes hard, before opening them to see the rail untenanted again. I killed you, she reflected, and she could not deny his ghost its place in her mind.
Or she would come up from below decks to see a familiar golden-skinned face, that damnable smile that twisted in her heart, but he faded, he faded, so much less real than Achaeos’s image had been. Salma, she cried silently, and she would have held on to him if she could. Where the murdered Moth put the knife in her with his presence, Salma rammed it home with his departure.
Then, again, sometimes it was Tisamon – who she had actually seen die. When the vibrations of the airship denied her rest, when the other two hallucinations had been stabbing at her conscience, as she looked over the Windlass’s rail and could find no reason not to simply vault it and find briefly another kind of flight, then she would look along the length of the airship’s decks and see her father, exactly as she had seen him last.