Blightborn (15 page)

Lane snatches it back and scowls: “They’re not
looking
for us.
We’re
looking for
them
. I can use this visidex to talk to someone in there.”

“I don’t understand why we’d want to do that, announce our presence—why not just stand up now like a whistle-pig at the hole and start yelling that we’re out here, and, golly, we’d sure like to be let in.”

“I’ll show you,” Lane says, and taps the icon indicating the other visidex. Again the screen is sucked back down into a hole and is replaced by one word in big, bold text:

Connecting
.

Lane looks smug and excited. Cael just wants to slap that visidex out of his hand—but Lane seems to sense that and holds up a patient finger, mouthing for Cael to
just calm down
.

That word—
Connecting
—suddenly twirls off into nothing.

It’s replaced by a face.

The face belongs to a jowly man with a thin, chinstrap beard and a nose that looks less like a nose and more like a cluster of mushrooms growing together. He’s got a crumpled flat cap pressed over his head, and he peers forward and says, “This is Peterson. Who’s that out there?”

Lane gasps and quickly covers the camera with his thumb.

He spits on his other thumb and then smears it across the pinhole.

“Who is that out there?” the man says again. Voice like he’s talking through mushy grits. “Identify yourself.”

Lane clears his throat. “This is, uhhh, ahh, this is the provisionist for—” His eyes light up, and suddenly he affects a familiar voice, a voice Cael can’t place until Lane says it. “This is the provisionist for Boxelder. This is Bhuja Pepke. Here to, uhh, pick up the provisions.”

The man squints down at something offscreen.

“You’re not scheduled to pick up from here.”

“I was, uuuuhhh, I was told I was.”

The man leans into his own screen. “I can’t see you very well.”

“Visidex took a fall. Dropped it. On a rock.”

The man pries his cap back, shaking his head and scratching a balding scalp. “Pieces of junk, these things. We got the cheap Ganymede Electronics models. I’d kill somebody for a Noribishi. Am I right?”

“Totally right,” Lane says, giving Cael a shrug. “Hey, can we—” Cael punches him. “Can
I
come inside? I’d like to check your records and see where this all went south—”

“Sure, sure, hold on one sec. I’ll disable six and seven by the loading dock around front. See you in a minute, Mr. Pepke.”

The screen goes dark.

They look at each other. Stunned silence.

“I think we did it,” Lane says.

“I think
you
did it,” Cael replies.

They slam into each other in a big hug.

“Not to interrupt this love-fest, but
I
think we’re gonna need a plan,” Rigo says with a wheeze. “And fast.”

LEAPS OF FAITH

IT TAKES HER A WHILE
to figure it out. Long enough that she assumes she’ll get caught standing at the elevator with a stolen visidex in her hand, yelling at the mechanical Elevator Man, who denies her entry once every thirty seconds.
You are not authorized for this portal, Miss gwen-DO-LINN shewkitch.

But eventually tapping and swiping and clicking things on the visidex shows her what she needs.

Images. Pictures. A whole spread of them.

Erasmus the grackle. Horses—er, Pegasuses—like Blackjack, Pinky, Goosedown. Pictures of Balastair, too. Many of them with that woman from last night. Cleo. The one who’s now with Eldon Planck, the man Gwennie believes is working on the Pegasus Project from the other side, the
mechanical
side. First up, a picture of Balastair and Cleo on the Halcyon Balcony with bright smiles and windswept hair. Then the two of them on a
small skiff out in the open sky. Next a picture of the two of them standing on a sandy beach, the ocean lapping at their bare feet.

Beaches and oceans. Things she once thought belonged only in stories.
The world is large,
she thinks. Large and strange, and she resolves at that moment to visit other places—the sheer possibility of a greater world than she knows overwhelms her with a kind of fluttery, bubbly giddiness. The very thought that she might possess the ability to just say “to King Hell with it” and flee to places unknown, sights unseen, makes her dizzy.

But this is no time to dream.

Unfurl those sails, girl,
she thinks.
You aren’t going anywhere if you can’t get on this damn elevator
.

The pictures give her an idea.

She uses the visidex to find a picture of Balastair and Cleo at some hoity-toity Empyrean party—she in a red dress, he topped by a black top hat (itself topped by Erasmus the grackle).

In the corner she spies a little magnifying glass icon. She presses her finger against it—and the image suddenly swells on the screen.

It zooms in on his face.

She holds the visidex up so that the screen faces outward. Then she holds it in front of her face so that his replaces hers.

“Down,” she says. “To the Engine Layer.”

The Elevator Man replies,
Vocal print not recognized.

She clears her throat, tries again, this time lowering her voice just enough, mimicking Balastair.

It’s enough for the stupid machine.

“
Hello, Balastair Harrington. I regret to inform you that you are not currently authorized for the Engine Layer. Please obtain authorization from the Carriage Conveyance Authority or from the Office of the Peregrine.
”

Damnit!
She takes a deep breath. Where could she go?

A thought strikes her. A silly, stupid thought. Impossible. Perilous. An idea so bad it should’ve never crossed her mind.

But it did, and this seed grows quickly.

She tries again: “To the stables.”

The Elevator Man responds:
Of course, Mister Harrington
.

Ding!
The elevator gate opens.

It takes her all the way down to the Undermost.

Now it’s time to find her family. She’ll start with her father, she figures. Because he’ll know what to do.

But first—

She hurries by each of the stalls, petting the horses as she passes—Blackjack snorts and blows a sneeze at her, and suddenly she’s left wiping off her forearm and face, but he gets a nose scratch just the same. She’s already got a bag full of stuff she stole from Balastair’s pantry: a handful of fresh fruits the likes of which the Heartland has never seen, a half-dozen individually wrapped Flix-Brand Protein Bars, plus a bottle of something fizzy called Klee-Ko Club Soda.

The visidex turned out to be a pretty vital instrument—no wonder these people walk around with them all the time.

There, at the end of the stalls, is what she’s looking for.

A board with peg-hooks on it.

Hanging on those peg-hooks: tack gear for horses. Reins. A saddle. A harness. Every last bit of it unused—wishful thinking on the part of Balastair and the Pegasus Project since these horses don’t fly.

She grabs a harness, tugs it taut. The smell of oiled leather crawls up her nose.

The gear is meant for a horse.

But today it’s going on her.

She cinches the girth belt around her middle, tightening it as far as it’ll go—which is still loose, but that’s okay, because she’s going to need it that way. Gwennie’s never put tack on a horse before—horses in the Heartland are rare and frequently ill creatures—so she’s not really sure if she’s doing it right or if that even matters. Long as it’s on her she guesses it’s fine.

Deep breath. In, out, in, out.

She steps over to the hatch, dragging the bag with her.

Okay. You’re going to do this.

You got this.

It’s just being in a boat, flying over the corn.

Except, okay, fine, much higher up.

She grabs the hatch, throws it open.

Cold wind hits her.

Fear nests in her heart. She tells herself,
The wind is a sign, a sign to turn around, that this is stupid, too dangerous; this is something Cael would do, not you; you were always the sensible one in that crew!

But then she imagines the faces of her family.

They need you.

Father. Mother. Scooter, especially.

Gwennie grits her teeth, suppresses a scream, and climbs down out of the hatch.

The peregrine eventually tires of the game.

He goes upstairs, finds the window open, the curtains fluttering.

Outside, he sees Balastair at the far end of the skybridge, his daft little bird hopping from shoulder to shoulder with a nervous flutter as he waits for the Elevator Man to crank back the accordion gate.

Percy feels at his hip and finds the sonic needler there—a Rossmoyne Vitiator 505, a brilliant gun with a long, silver barrel and a snug, leather-swaddled grip around a mold fitted specifically to his palm. He takes aim as the doors open. Eyes down over the sights—

He lets the pistol drop with a sniff and sigh.

This is not the weapon for this shot. A rifle would serve him well, but he can’t traipse about the flotilla with a sonic rifle strapped to his back. The medium-to-long range capabilities of his needler are woefully imperfect. Damaging the Elevator Man or the elevator itself would not be ideal.

And so Harrington ducks into the elevator. Alone. The girl is nowhere to be found.

That’s fine. The peregrine has other ways to find people. That’s why he’s the peregrine, after all.

THE OUTLAWS MCAVOY & MOREAU

KSSSH
.

A rock picked up from the ground flies straight and true from Cael’s slingshot—and whacks into the camera hanging above the bay door.

The camera hangs limp now, like a dog’s wounded paw.

The two sonic fence posts glow suddenly, thrumming loudly before powering down—the glow doesn’t fade so much as it cuts short. The sound is like a motorvator running out of fuel before dying in a field.

“We good?” Cael asks.

“Only one way to find out,” Lane says.

The two of them step between the fence posts at the same time, elbow to elbow, and Cael holds his breath without realizing it, waiting for the horse kick of a sonic blast to break his back and wad him up like a snotted handkerchief—

But their feet crunch in the stones on the other side.

Lane laughs.

Cael lets out a breath and flicks a bead of sweat from the end of his nose. He tosses the slingshot over to Lane, then shrugs off the shoulder strap and drops the lever-action rifle—now with a cracked stock, thanks to that vicious hobo—into his hands.

Just in time, too, because a half second later the bay door ahead—a door big enough to accommodate a scowbarge—starts to rattle. A mechanized whine sounds behind the metal curtain, and the gate begins to open.

The man from inside, Peterson, trudges over with visidex in hand.

“Something’s wrong with our cameras—” Peterson is starting to say, but then he looks up and gets a gander of what’s waiting for him.

Cael jacks the lever action on the rifle—
ch-chak!
—and raises the barrel, lining up the sights at the same time Lane pulls back the pocket of the slingshot.

“Whuh . . .” is all Peterson can say.

The rifle feels tight against Cael’s shoulder. And heavy in his hands. It’s loaded up with ammo this time, not like before. It strikes him that this is an item of some consequence. A real weapon. A slingshot is bad news in Cael’s hands, but a rifle—

The image flashes in his head of the bloody rose blooming on Mayor Barnes’s chest. Pop standing there. Gun in hand. Smoke drifting and stinging Cael’s eyes. The rifle’s a hell-bringer. A death-dealer.

Some consequence, indeed.

“Knock knock,” Lane says, breaking Cael’s line of thought like a stick over the knee. “We’re home.”

“Outlaws,” Peterson says with a hiss.

“Back up,” Cael says. Then when Peterson doesn’t budge, “I said, back up! We’re coming in, mister, and you make one funny move, I’m gonna put a lead slug somewhere above that big nose of yours.”