Perdido Street Station - China Mieville [295]
Isaac looked up with a soundless shout. He heard a fluttering, a buffet of disordered air. The raw emblazoning, the blast of invented brainwaves that made his spine tremble inside him continued unabated as a sound approached, oscillating frantically between materia and æther.
A glinting carapace dipped through thermals: weaving patterns of dark colour shot violently through the sky on two reflected pairs of shapeshifting wings. Convoluted limbs and spiny organic jags trembled in anticipation.
Famished and trembling, the first slake-moth came in.
The heavy segmented body came spiralling down, sliding tightly around the column of burning æther as if on a funfair ride. The moth’s tongue lapped avidly around it: it was immersed in intoxicating brain-liquor.
As Isaac stared into the sky exultantly, he saw another shape flit closer, and another, black on black. One of the moths ducked in a sharp arc directly below a fat and sluggish airship, careering towards the storm of mindwaves that sent ripples through the fabric of the city.
The force of militia arrayed on the roof chose that moment to renew their attack, and the sulphurous snap of Derkhan’s pistols woke Isaac to the danger. He looked round to see Yagharek crouched in a feral pose, his bullwhip unrolling like some half-trained mamba towards the officer whose head had appeared over the rim of the plateau. It constricted around his neck and Yagharek pulled hard, slamming the man’s forehead against the wet slates.
He snapped his whip free as the choking officer fell clattering away.
Isaac fumbled with his cumbersome pistol. He leaned over and saw that two of the officers who had turned on Jack Half-a-Prayer were down and dying, blood spewing languidly from enormous rents in their flesh. A third was stumbling away, holding his gashed thigh. Half-a-Prayer and the fourth man were gone.
All over the low hill of roofs, the calls of the militia sounded, half routed, terrified and confused. Urged on by their lieutenant they drew steadily closer.
“Keep them away,” shouted Isaac. “The moths are coming!”
The three slake-moths came down in a long interweaving helix, eddying below and above each other, rotating in descending order around the massive stele of energy that yawned vastly from Andrej’s helmet. On the ground below them the Weaver danced a subdued little jig, but the slake-moths did not see it. They noticed nothing except Andrej’s spasming form, the source, the wellspring of the enormous sweet bounty that gushed precipitously up and into the air. They were frenzied.
Watertowers and brick turrets rose up around them like reaching hands as one by one they breached the skyline and descended into the city’s gaslight nimbus.
Faint waves of anxiety gusted through them as they plunged. There was something fractionally wrong with the flavour that surrounded them—but it was so strong, so unbelievably powerful, and they were so drunk on it, unsteady on their wings and shaking with greedy delight, that they could not stop their vertiginous approach.
Isaac heard Derkhan shout a foul oath. Yagharek had leapt across the roof to her and flailed expertly with his whip, sending her attacker spinning. Isaac turned and fired at the falling figure, heard him grunt with pain as the bullet tore open the muscle of his shoulder.
The airships were almost overhead now. Derkhan was sitting back from the brink a little, blinking rapidly, her eyes fouled with clods of brickdust from where a bullet had shattered the wall beside her.
There were about five militia left on the roofs, and they were still coming, slow and stealthy.
A final insectile shadow swooped towards the roof from the south-east of the city. It looped in a long S-curve under the Spit Hearth skyrail and shot up again, riding the updrafts in the hot night, coming in towards the station.
“They’re all here,” whispered Isaac.
As he refilled his gun, spilling powder inexpertly about him, he looked up. His eyes