The Hanging Mountains (7 page)

‘Do you still want to wait until dawn?’ she asked Marmion, indicating the phosphorescent waterfall. Its light was bright enough to cast a shadow.

The warden considered the alternatives for a moment, green gleaming off his balding pate. ‘Perhaps not. We’ll wake the others and consult the Engineers. I trust their opinion on such matters better than my own.’

He turned to move from his perch, and Shilly went to follow him.

An arrow flashed out of the darkness and thudded fast into the bone between them. So violent was her recoil from the vibrating shaft that she would have fallen over the bow but for Marmion’s good hand pulling her back.

‘Ware!’ the warden cried, rousing the crew. ‘Archers!’

He pulled Shilly after him to the relative safety of the boneship’s central cavities. The Sky Wardens hauled the ship around, presenting a smaller target to the Divide walls. Shilly peered out at where the arrow still protruded from the boat’s bony flank. It had come from the south side of the Divide. Green light glittered off it as though from glass.

Marmion’s dark eyes took in more than hers, darting from the cliff face to the shimmering veil of the waterfall and back again. Other wardens crouched on the deck, in positions of relative safety, doing the same. Shilly saw no obvious weapons, but she didn’t doubt they had some at hand. Not without good reason did Sky Wardens rule half the known world.

The boneship kept turning until it was facing back the way it had come. Nothing moved in the surrounding darkness. The only sound was the river’s steady gurgle. Shilly tensed, struck by the thought that the archer might be in the water, not firing from the shore. However, she could see no sign of anyone swimming in the luminescent current.

They completed one full rotation without incident. Marmion raised a hand and the boneship steadied, began to move forward again. Light flashed as one of the wardens signalled Chu and Skender, high above.

Shilly felt a familiar, warm presence join her. Sal’s hand slipped into hers.

‘What’s going on?’

She pointed out the arrow. ‘We’re not alone.’

‘A warning shot?’

‘I think so,’ said Marmion, ‘but I won’t assume it to be so. A hand’s-length to the left and Shilly would’ve been hit.’

Sal looked at her in horror. She brushed off his concern. ‘Either of us could have been targets. They’re just trying to get our attention, whoever they are.’

‘They certainly got that,’ Sal breathed. ‘If they were trying to warn us off, though, the message obviously didn’t sink in.’

Marmion raised a hand for silence as the warden signalling the lookouts overhead reported what he had learned. ‘Chu has spotted movement along the edge of the Divide, but she’s finding it hard to see through the vegetation up there. If she flies closer, she risks crashing or being fired at herself. The base of the cloud cover is limiting her movements as well.’

‘Tell her to keep well away,’ said Marmion, ‘until. we find out who shot that arrow and why. If anything changes, tell her to use her judgment but not to land until we signal her.’

The warden moved off to relay the order. During the brief conversation Shilly’s gaze, frustrated by the lack of light elsewhere, had alighted on the glowing waterfall. Its magnificence only increased as the boneship drew nearer. The ceaseless flow of water and the roaring it made had a faintly hypnotic effect. She hadn’t blinked for at least a minute.

When she, did so, she realised that the oddly shaped twist of water that had snagged her gaze wasn’t water at all, but a person bathed in green, standing with one foot higher than the other on a stone. Willowy and tall, possessing a slightness that hinted at femininity, the figure stared calmly back at her, making no gesture or sign of recognition. Even across the distance between them, Shilly felt that patient gaze meet hers.

Before she could open her mouth to raise the alarm, the mysterious glowing woman stepped back into the water and disappeared.

‘Hail!’ cried a man’s voice across the water. A dozen dark shapes swarmed down the sides of the waterfall: men and women in dark uniforms with weapons upraised. Blades mainly, but two bows among them. They took up position on the stone steps at the base of the waterfall, waving for attention.

‘Hail, travellers!’

Marmion stood. ‘Hail!’ he called back. ‘Is it your custom to fire on innocent people?’

‘Not us,’ shouted the leader of the band through cupped hands. ‘Pull to, and I’ll explain.’ He gestured and the men and women with him sheathed their weapons. The two archers placed their bows carefully on the ground and held their hands in the air. Shilly couldn’t make out their faces. By the unnatural green glow of the waterfall, their uniforms looked black.

‘Let’s do as he says,’ Marmion told his crew, ‘but keep a sharp eye out. That arrow didn’t come from ahead of us, where these people are standing. It came from the side. There could be any number of archers waiting for us to sail between them.’

Shilly tried in vain to see the tops of the Divide walls. The last of the stars had disappeared in the west, leaving the night utterly dark beyond the reach of the waterfall’s eerie glow. The boneship could have been plying subterranean waters, for all she could see of the sky.

Enough hallucinations,
she told herself.
This night is already complicated without making stuff up.
She kept her eyes fixed on the waterfall as the boneship steadily approached.

No one else appeared to have noticed the glowing woman — if she had been there at all.

* * * *

‘This is a strange vessel.’

‘It’s not one we’d ordinarily choose,’ Marmion responded, pacing the deck from port to starboard with his injured hand tucked protectively under his robes. Sal watched from the sidelines as the two leaders sized each other up. Lidia Delfine was the extraordinarily deep-voiced woman — not man — who had hailed them from the edge of the waterfall. The boneship had taken Lidia and one of her lieutenants aboard, then moved out of range of the spray and the waves to parley. By mirrorlight her thick cloth uniform was a reddish brown in colour and decorated with two black circles stitched into each shoulder. Her black hair was pulled back into a practical bun. She stood no taller than Marmion, but radiated strength and confidence from every gesture.

Her eyes and skin were matches for Chu’s, as were those of her companion, a very large man with an edgy demeanour. The rest of her party remained on the bank by the waterfall, similarly dressed and featured.

‘We come from the Haunted City in the service of the Alcaide,’ said Marmion. ‘Whom do you represent?’

‘The Guardian of the forest. Here.’ She took a quiver her companion carried and held it outstretched. ‘Inspect these arrows. You’ll see they’re of quite different manufacture to the one sticking out of your ship.’

Marmion plucked an arrow from the quiver and rotated it, holding it up to take in its features. Even from a distance, Sal could see that one was distinct from the other: the arrow Marmion held was long and skinny and clearly made of wood, while the one protruding from the bow of the boneship was short and glassy, more a dart than the sort of fletched arrow he was used to seeing.

‘This proves nothing,’ Marmion commented, tossing the arrow back to Delfine, who caught it lightly with her free hand and inserted it back into the quiver. ‘But I am prepared to take you at your word, for the moment. If you didn’t fire this arrow at us, who did?’

‘The Panic,’ she said, with a slight tightening of her eyes.

‘Who are they?’ asked Shilly. ‘What do they want?’

Delfine looked at her, assessing her with one sharp glance. ‘Who knows what they want, beyond banditry and murder? My orders aren’t to understand them but to stop them.’

‘Are your orders to stop us, too?’

‘That depends.’ Delfine looked at Marmion again. ‘It depends on what you’re doing in the Pass, and why the Panic fired on you. Your being human might explain the latter, but there could be more to it than that.’

The Pass was the Divide, Sal assumed. ‘What does being human have to do with anything?’

‘Yes,’ said Marmion. ‘Tell us more about the Panic. Did you drive them away?’

‘Unintentionally. I suspect they saw us coming and retreated to size us up. Were our forces smaller, they might have taken us both on.’

‘Why?’

That, however, was all they were going to learn about the Panic for the moment. Delfine laid down her ultimatum calmly and with only a hint of challenge: ‘What brings you here, so far from the Alcaide’s seat?’

Marmion outlined their mission in the briefest possible terms, referring only to the flood and the man’kin migration. He mentioned neither the Homunculus nor the odd readings of the seers. With the glowing waterfall as a surreal backdrop, he introduced Wardens Banner and Rosevear, Highson Sparre, and Sal and Shilly. This gesture of Marmion’s pleased Sal — the two of them had been routinely ignored, or worse, by Marmion after a bad beginning to their relationship with him.

Delfine took in everything with a sharp nod. ‘And what about your friends above? Tell us about them.’

‘Chu and Skender are our forward scouts. I wasn’t aware you’d seen them.’

She looked smug at that. ‘If both hands hold a dagger, keep one behind your back. So my martial instructor used to say.’

Marmion nodded. Almost too casually, he produced his injured arm from where it nestled under his robes and let it hang at his side.

‘I don’t like it,’ growled the lieutenant to her left, a tall, solidly built man, with chiselled features and a sparse black beard. ‘First the flood. Now wardens with wings. Send them back where they came from and be done with it. The forest has suffered enough.’

‘Suffered from what, exactly?’

The lieutenant ignored Shilly’s question. ‘They have the stink of the bloodworkers on them.’

‘What
exactly
is it you don’t like about us?’ snapped Marmion. ‘That we aren’t from here? That we don’t look like you? That our dress isn’t the same as yours? Get it off your chest now, man, so we can talk in earnest.’

The lieutenant loomed over Marmion. ‘What’s important is the forest. We are sworn to protect it. Threaten it, and you will die.’

‘No one’s threatening anything, Heuve, so put your pride back in your pocket.’ Lidia Delfine waved her lieutenant back. He retreated, albeit reluctantly. ‘Is there anything else we should know?’ she asked Marmion.

He nodded. ‘One of our number was injured during the journey here. We lack the facilities and the knowledge to treat him. Perhaps you can help us with that.’

‘Let me see him,’ she told Marmion. ‘Then I will decide. Heuve, stay here.’

Marmion led her into the cabin, followed by Rosevear. They were gone only a moment, during which time Heuve looked at everyone in the ring surrounding him, one after the other, openly measuring them up.

‘You’ve no reason to be frightened of us,’ said Warden Banner soothingly.

‘He has every reason,’ Highson disagreed with a wicked smile. ‘He’s just one versus ten. I’d be nervous too, if I were him.’

‘If any harm befalls me —’

‘Oh, be quiet,’ said Shilly, tired of posturing by self-important men.

Delfine and Marmion returned. The woman’s expression was grim.

‘We’ll have to take him to Milang,’ she told the gathering in general.

‘Who’s that?’ asked Sal, recognising Chu’s surname with some surprise.

‘It’s not a “who”. It’s a place. It’s where we live.’

‘And where is that, exactly?’ asked Marmion.

She pointed at the waterfall, then upward and along the Divide.

‘I urge you to reconsider, Eminence,’ said Heuve.

Delfine cast him a look as sharp as a needle. ‘That’s enough. Warden Marmion, take us back to the shore. There’s a path past the falls. You’ll want to explore the way if you intend to bring your ship of bone with you.’

‘I’d like to, yes. Is the Divide clear beyond this point?’

‘For a fair distance.’

Marmion nodded. ‘Banner, Eitzen, I’ll want you with me. The rest of you stay here. There’s nothing you can do for now, and we’ll need all our strength to move the boneship.’ Marmion looked at Sal when he said this, and Sal nodded his understanding. ‘Good. Someone flash Chu and Skender and tell them it’s safe to come down. Highson?’

Sal’s father had taken his familiar position by the tiller. He guided the ship smoothly towards the base of the falls. A cool, luminescent spray drifted across the boneship, making Sal’s face wet.

Delfine and Heuve jumped ashore, followed by Marmion and the two wardens he had asked to accompany him. They immediately began climbing from stone to stone up the side of the falls, where the rest of Delfine’s people waited.

‘How old do you think she is?’ asked Shilly, tapping Sal’s leg with her cane.

‘I’ve no idea. Why?’

‘Just wondering why a big guy like Heuve is taking orders from someone as young as her. He doesn’t look the sort who’d do that without a reason.’

Sal watched the pair with keener attention as they climbed. Heuve’s expression was determinedly disapproving, but couldn’t hide genuine concern. He stayed as close to Delfine as she would let him, and his hand never strayed more than a few centimetres from the pommel of his sword. His gaze moved constantly, taking in everything and everyone around them.

Bodyguard,
he thought,
not just a lieutenant
— then he carried that thought to its logical conclusion. Delfine hadn’t truly explained who she was or what she had been doing by the waterfall.
Just who are you, Lidia Delfine?

Knowing sleep wouldn’t be easy to come by until this and other mysteries were resolved, he wished he hadn’t agreed so readily to stay behind.

* * * *

The Outcast

‘Beware the sisters of the night: black of heart

and aspect, horrible huntresses all.’

THE BOOK OF TOWERS,
FRAGMENT 175

kender felt Chu’s nervousness as the wing spiralled down to land. The two of them watched the people moving up and down the side of the ghostly waterfall. They were little more than dots, but he knew who they had to be. Chu’s people. The ones she had come from Laure to find.