the balloon cleared the edge of the floater, the undercarriage slammed against it and began to scrape up the side. The cabin’s port-side wall disappeared in a storm of wooden splinters. Before I had time to do anything, another rigging line snapped. We tipped sideways, thrown toward the gaping hole in the side of our hull. Vilaris lost his feet and hung by his chair’s armrest; Blaylocke’s body whipped around, but he managed to keep a one-armed hold and found himself dangling above the chasm. Chaz slid into the corner window. I stayed where I was, anchored to my spikes like a fly on the wall.
We stuck. Some jut of rock snagged the hull somewhere, and we stuck there with the balloon above and the undercarriage dangling with us inside it. Through the splintered hull I could see the floater’s rocky underside sloping away from us like the prow of a ship. Below us the nearflow blew the stones past in a dizzying sprint; below that, the Churn. Chaz propped himself up on his knees, subdued and too calm in light of the situation. Blood flowed from a wound in his head, dark and copious, matting his black hair to his scalp. Vilaris and Blaylocke had managed to gain some traction and were perched on the sides of their seats like frightened birds.
“Hang on,” I told them, knowing how redundant a thing it was to say. Let’s find out how unbreakable this glass really is.
It was a strange sensation, climbing a vertical floor toward the starboard side of the hull. When I got there, I gave the window pane a series of sharp strikes with my wrist spike. The blows left scratches; the glass trembled in its frame, but it held. I flexed my wrist. A steel dart about four inches long quivered in the wood beside the window. Again. Another dart sprouted beside the first. I drew one of Chaz’s gravmines from a pocket in my webgear and rested it between the two darts. It was a squarish box the size of a child’s building block. No explosive components, but a marvel of electromagnetic tech if ever there was one.
“Look sharp, fellas,” I yelled down. I uprooted my climbing spikes and let myself slide down to Chaz again. “Sit tight, buddy. I’m gonna get you out. Promise.”
The flecker wasn’t a marksman’s weapon; an approximation of aim was all I needed. I pointed straight up and fired. When the flecker particle skimmed over the gravmine, there was a familiar clink, like the sound of a streamboat’s runners. The window pane blew off its frame and spun away in one piece. Unbreakable, but not immovable. The cabin shifted again. We were swinging away from the floater, loosed from whatever had snagged us.
I didn’t waste time climbing. My grappler bit into the hull and took me upward. When I clambered out of the open window frame, we were beside the floater and rising. I can jump that, I told myself, doubting it was true. The longer I waited, the less true it would be.
I crouched and leaned into my jump, grapplewire trailing behind me through the air, breath caught in my throat at the sheer amount of open sky between me and the floater. At the pinnacle of that leap I knew I wasn’t going to make it, so I locked the winch and jerked downward, knocking the hull sideways. I reeled myself up the deck, hoping I hadn’t jarred any of my companions loose. On top of the hull again, I withdrew the grappler from the hull and took another leap. This time I shot my wire at the floater from above, latched on, and swung in below it, slamming against the underside.
The pain lanced through me, but I set the winch to reeling. Maybe I should’ve let Chaz build me those hoverboots, I thought, as I lifted myself onto solid ground. I wanted to lie there in the grass and catch my breath, let my body recover from the shock, but The Secant’s Clarity was getting away. As soon as my grappler punched through the deck I let the wire slacken and ran across to the far side of the floater. I planted my feet there and staked myself in with a pair of shiny new solenoids.
A long, nerve-wracking few minutes later, I had reeled the Clarity to within reach. Vilaris and Blaylocke came tumbling out through the gash and helped me moor her down. I ventured inside and set the ballonets to refilling. Presently the wounded airship settled to rest, and we found ourselves alone in a sea of clouds, drifting along somewhere between the stream and the nearflow. I pulled Chaz outside with me and collapsed next to the two City Watchmen, who were hugging the ground as though they hadn’t seen a patch of it in months.
“Well that was interesting, huh?” I nudged Chaz with my foot.
Chaz said nothing. Just smiled at me, a vacant smile with the corner of his mouth making a little upward twitch.
I sat up. “Chaz,” I said. “You hit your head pretty hard. I need you to say something to me. Are you okay?”
Nothing. Just the same empty smile.
“Guys, Chaz ain’t doing so well.”
Vilaris lifted himself into a seated position. “Chester? Chester. Professor Doctor Elijah Chester Wheatley. Do you hear me?”
“Yes,” said Chaz. “I hear you. Make me a tray on the seventh form of Kalican Heights with the gorge betwixt a jollity and his motes of singe-gutter. Can I hasten to gewgaw…” He stopped in his tracks, mouth hung open and staring. His jaw raised into another smile, something sinister in it.
Had it been anyone else, I would’ve seen fit to make a joke. But it was Chaz, sweet innocent Chaz, and for the first time in longer than I could remember, I felt guilty. I’d frightened him; tricked him. Shoot, I hadn’t stopped using the guy since the moment I met him. He wouldn’t have come on this little adventure if I hadn’t insisted. Not that I was blaming myself. I never blame myself, even when I deserve to. Chaz was a brilliant man, with more potential in one breath than any dozen copies of Blaylocke. Yet here we were, stranded, with no way to get him the help he needed.
I exchanged a look with Vilaris. He was thinking all the same things I was.
“Blaylocke,” I said, standing. “I want you to circle the ship and double-check all the mooring lines. The wind’s picking up, and it’s looking like we’re gonna be here a while.”
“Don’t order me around,” he said. “I’m the one with the crackler, remember? Why don’t you check the lines while I sit here and have a rest?” He showed it to me, the gray plastic remote whose activation could turn me into a temporary colleague of Chaz’s again. He was grinning.
I considered making a lunge for the remote, but Blaylocke was far enough away to press the button before I got there. “I was on my way inside to find a bandage for a buddy of mine who hit his head,” I said. “But yeah, you just sit there and take a load off. And when we get off this floater, you can sit there on your keister as long as you want. What am I, your mom? Get on your feet and take some blasted responsibility for yourself.”
I stormed inside, through the roughshod hole in the port side of our vessel. When I emerged with the medical supplies I’d found, Chaz was lying on his back in the grass. Vilaris and Blaylocke were crouched at one of the stakes near the ship.
“Come take a look at this,” Vilaris said, motioning.
I stared at them, frowning in disbelief. “You guys left Chaz by himself.”
“Because of this, yeah,” said Blaylocke.
I ignored them and rushed to Chaz. He lay with his eyes wide open, staring up at the sky, midday sunlight painting him in shades of gold. The floater was no bigger than a skating rink, with room enough for the airship and a wide grassy border around it. There weren’t many floaters this large so close to the surface. It was close enough to the nearflow that I could hear the winds howling if I listened. That meant the stream was much higher still, and we’d be lucky if we saw signs of life more than once every few days.
With his head wrapped in thick white gauze, Chaz looked like the refugee of some war zone. He had started to mumble to himself while I dressed his wound, his voice taking on a faint singsong quality at times. I wrapped the bandages around his head several more times than I needed to so the blood wouldn’t show through, and left him to join the others only after I was satisfied the bleeding had stopped altogether.
“Bout time,” Blaylocke said as I approached.
“Okay, what is it?”
“Look at this rigging line.” Vilaris held
up the end. “This is the first one that broke, while we were still in the nearflow. These ropes are thick. This is not the kind of thing that just snaps in half from a sharp rock in the wind. Look at the fraying around the edges. The breaking point is right in the middle, at the very top of the lift bag. Someone didn’t want us making it out of there. Someone sabotaged the Clarity, and it’s only thanks to you that we’re still alive.”
I ignored his thanks. I didn’t have time to take recognition for good deeds done with selfish intentions. “Isn’t Yingler the obvious choice?” I said. “Someone who secretly wants to oversee the downfall of Pyras so he can be the only living techsoul with access to all its wealth?”
“That sounds like a more fitting description of yourself,” said Blaylocke. “You’re the wild card—the stranger with a shady past and devious plans. Councilor Yingler has lived in Pyras for going on six years now.”
I would’ve thrown Blaylocke off the edge then and there if I hadn’t been so worried about Chaz wandering over it himself. Over my shoulder, he was still sitting in the grass where I’d left him. “You say ‘six years’ like it’s a long time,” I said. “I’ve left stains I liked better than you more recently than six years ago.”
“There’s one major difference between you and