Retribution Falls - Chris Wooding [122]
Outside, everything was calm and the air had cleared to a faint haze. Though there was still a heavy fog overhead, blocking out the sky, it was possible to see to the rocky floor of the canyon beneath them. A thin river ran along the bottom, hurrying ahead of them, and a light breeze blew against the hull.
Frey rubbed his head. “So how come it didn’t affect you?”
She shrugged. “Once I saw what was happening, I held my breath. I took only a few lungfuls before we flew out of it.”
Frey narrowed his eyes. The explanation had an overcasual, rehearsed quality to it. As an experienced liar, he knew the signs. So why was his navigator lying to him?
There was a clatter from the passageway behind the cockpit, and Malvery swung around the door. “Allsoul’s balls, what were we drinking?” he complained. “They’re all comatose down there. Even the bloody cat’s conked out.”
“You weren’t giving the cat rum again, were you?” Frey asked.
“He looked thirsty,” Malvery said, with a sheepish smile.
“Eyes front, everyone,” said Jez. “I think we’re here.”
They crowded around her and stared through the windglass as the Ketty Jay droned out of the canyon. And there, down among the fog and the mountains of the Hookhollows, hidden in the dreadful depths of Rook’s Boneyard, they found at last what they’d been searching for.
The canyon emptied out into a colossal gloomy sinkhole, a dozen kloms wide, where the ground dropped seventy meters to a waterlogged marsh. Streams from all over the mountains, unable to find another way out, ended up here, tipping over the edge in thin waterfalls. Mineral slurry and volcanic sludge, washed down from distant vents, stained the surface of the marsh with metallic slicks of orange, green, or blue. Ill-looking plants choked the water. The air smelled acidic and faintly eggy.
And yet here, in this festering place, was a town.
It was built from wood and rusting metal, a ramshackle sprawl that had evolved without thought to plan or purpose. Most of it was set on platforms that rose out of the water, supported by a scaffolding of girders. The rest was built on what little land the marsh had to offer: soggy banks and hummocks. Each part was linked by bridges to its neighbors and lit by strings of electric lamps that hung haphazardly across the thoroughfares.
The buildings varied wildly in quality. Some wouldn’t have looked out of place on a country estate in the tropical south. Others had been thrown together with whatever could be found or brought from the outside. They were made of wood and stone, with slate or corrugated iron roofs. Parts of the settlement were a cluster of shantytown huts, barely fit for habitation, whereas others were more organized and showed an architect’s touch.
Then there were the aircraft. There had to be two hundred or more, crowding around the town. Frigates floated at anchor, secured by strong chains to stop them from drifting. Smaller craft ferried their crews to and from the ground. There was one enormous landing pad, occupying the biggest land mass in the marsh, but even that was nowhere near adequate to cope with the number of craft berthed here. Several large landing pads lay on the surface of the marsh. They were temporary-looking things, buoyed up by flaking aerium tanks filled from portable engines to prevent the pads from sinking.
Frey stared at the multitude. He saw freighters, barques, fighters of all description, double-hulled caravels, monitors, and corvettes. The air above the town was busy with craft taking off and setting down, a restless to-and-fro. A Rainbird-class hunter-killer, sleek and vicious, slipped past them to their starboard and headed into the canyon they’d just exited.
“That’s a bit more than just a hideout,” Malvery murmured, amazed. “There’s a whole bloody port down here.”
And suddenly Frey knew where he was. Nothing else matched the picture. He’d always believed this place was a myth, a wistful dream for freebooters