I gasp my way to the top deck of the post hub: a large plaza surrounded by wooden warehouses—everything required to run a post operation. Trent is long gone by the time I arrive. I make straight for the arrivals desk, which means the pigeon rooms.
The small front desk is deserted, but the shed behind heaves with flapping, strutting, cooing, birds. The place stinks. The smell gets up my nose, into my lungs, and percolates into my brain—yuck.
The way to deal with an overwhelming smell is to breathe deep, three or four times, to accustom yourself, then you cease to notice the pong. Bad for your social life though.
I gag on my first deep breath and punch the bell. How can anyone possibly work in this stench?
A skinny boy in blue overalls, stained with white streaks, appears from the back room.
I try to look authoritative. “Any messages from the Felix Swift trading platform in the last few days?” I wheeze, trying not to breathe.
“Dunno.”
“Can you look? It’s important.”
He slouches off into the bird shed again and spends so long rummaging out back I almost get use to the smell. Almost.
The postie returns with a thick ledger, stained and faded with time. He opens it on the counter top, to a cloud of downy feathers, and flicks through the heavy pages until he finds darker ink, then checks through the entries for a few pages. His finger stops on an entry. “Yep.”
“A message? For me? Nina Swift?”
“Dunno—I need proof of identity before I can tell you that.”
I swear to myself, sure I have nothing that will satisfy the requirement. “Like what?”
“How about a warrant for your arrest?” someone grunts. I spin round to find Lieutenant Borker and Jack McGraw standing in the doorway. What are they doing here? I’m done for.
Before I can reply, something hot hits the back of my neck.
Bang.
The something solid hits my forehead. I try to open my eyes, but my head is swimming and all I want to do is sleep.
I wake up and find myself on the floor. Feathers choke the hot air and frightened birds flap around me, filling the air with panic. I fend off the birds and climb dizzily to my feet. Another smell assaults my nose: roast pigeon. I’m still in the post room, but an angry glow now fills the door to the bird room. Fire.
An explosion? I can think of no other explanation: I must have been knocked to the floor by a blast.
Something solid, but yielding, hits me. It’s the postie, leaping the desk and barging past to safety. “Fire! Fire!”
A groan grabs my attention. Borker and McGraw are sprawled on the floor, stirring. The post desk must have shielded me from the worst of the explosion, but Borker and McGraw took a full blast. A breeze whips in through the door, fanning the blaze in the pigeon shed into a furnace, driving the birds away from the front desk. I have time to check Borker and McGraw over before leaving. I’m not so callous as to leave even Borker helpless in a burning building.
Borker is bleeding from a head wound, but McGraw looks okay except for an angry red welt on his left cheek and a bloody nose. I haul McGraw to his feet, “Get back to your ship, the place is going up in flames.”
He groans and holds his head. “You?”
“Of course not. Now get going and take Borker with you.”
As McGraw staggers round to help Borker, I spot the ledger, curiously, still in its place on the desk top. Hurriedly, I rip out the last few pages before push past the disorientated Borker to freedom.
Outside, smoke shrouds the horror like an orange fog. Even in the brief moments I paused to help McGraw the fire has taken hold, ripping through the buildings on the top deck, fanned by the ever-present breeze.
Fire demands only two actions: fight or flight. I flee.
I dodge round grim fire-fighters and push past stunned onlookers—soon, if they are lucky, their gawping will turn to terror and they too will flee. I make for the head of the steps, but it’s difficult to judge anything in this smoke.