Lumière (The Illumination Paradox) (36 page)

Smrt’s face morphs into indignation. “Shoot him in the head!” he says. “Straight through the eye, so there’s less blood!”

“Wait!” I say. “Wouldn’t you rather I pass you the journals first?” I swallow, hoping he takes the bait. Nothing goes down, my mouth is so dry. My hands are shaking.

“Very well, then,” he smirks. “As you please.” He reaches out to take them.

I act as though I’m about to pull them from my waistcoat, but instead turn, high-stepping it across the top wall, clutching the journals as I go.

“Shoot!” Smrt shouts.

Rifle shots pitch past me—one skins the heel of my shoe.

“
Good God, Good God, Good God,
” I chant. “If you’re listening, I could use a little help down here!” Bullets sing, chipping holes in the cement behind me. One nicks the crease from the leg of my pant. Another sweeps past my ear.

I spin, almost falling, and dart between the two walls of brick, shoulder thrust sideways to allow me to make it. Another barrage of bullets pops off the walls behind me. I pour on the speed, sidestepping across the middle as fast as I can, to the next street.

“Urlick!”
I hear my name and my head shoots up.

“Urlick, up here, it’s me!”

A head appears through a part in the cloud cover, wreathed in a ring of steam.

“Eyelet?!”

“Yes!” she shouts back. She peers at me over the side of a basket, tethered to a hot air balloon. “Here!” she says, tossing me a rope. It unfurls a good click from my hands.

She hauls it back up and throws it out again.

I race for the rope, but it slips through my fingers. “Jump!” she shouts.

Another bullet grazes my shin.

Brigsmen round the corner, surrounding the fence.

“Hurry!” she shouts. The basket rises.

I cross my chest in a ritual I’ve never believed in, close my eyes, and leap off the end of the fence. My hands grasp for the rope, a flurry of bullets lighting up my coattails.

F
orty one

Eyelet

I breathe a sigh of relief as Urlick’s hands meet the rope, but cringe when his shoulder pops under the weight. “Hang on!” I shout, bullets winging my ear. I drop back into the basket for momentary cover.

“I’m trying!” Urlick’s voice cuts through the rifle fire.

I look down again to see his tucked-up bottom swinging over the heads of a growing crowd of Brigsmen. I yank the controls of the balloon, trying to get it to rise, unsure of what I’m doing. Four controls later, something happens. The basket surges upward, rope running through Urlick’s hands.

“Urlick!” I scream, afraid I’m about to lose him.

“It’s okay!” he shouts, grabbing hold. “I’m okay!” He wraps his foot around what's left of the rope and starts to shinny up, one hand chasing the other, bullets zinging past his thighs, as he climbs.

I tug on the lever, releasing more steam. The balloon climbs again, taking Urlick with it this time, saving him from a fresh onslaught of bullets, but then he slips. A bullet passes through the fleshy part of his upper arm.

The rope spins. Blood spews in a spiral from his sleeve.

“UUUURLICK!” I nearly cast myself over the side of the basket without thinking. The basket careens to one side. I look down, spinning, swallowing down what comes up.

Urlick winces below me in pain.

“I’m coming!” I shout.

“You’re what?”

“Just hold on!” I grab the rope and lean out of the basket, stretching a hand out to reach him, but I can’t. I try again, stretching further, and a bullet zips past, grazing my cheek. I suck in a breath, imagining what it would be like to be earless, or brainless, should it hit. No time for this. Urlick needs saving.

Threading the toes of my boots through the weave of the basket, I make sure they’re securely hooked, then launch myself backward off the bottom edge, swinging upside down by the toes of my boots.

My hair rolls out behind my head like a flying caramel carpet. “
Ohmilord, ohmilord, ohmiLOOORD!”
I scream.

“What are you doing?” Urlick shouts.

“Saving you?” I gulp as I swing past. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

“Have you lost your mind?”

“No, not yet. But soon, I suspect.” I swallow, trying to hold the contents of my breakfast down.
Up, rather.
The ground looks like a drawing of a map from one of my textbooks. We’re up so high, the Brigsmen look like tin soldiers from here.

Another flurry of bullets swoops past us, and one grazes my calf. “OOoo!” I scream, noticing the hole in my stocking. “Better hurry,” I say, twirling the rope around my arm, reaching out, and clutching the sleeve of Urlick’s bad arm.

“When I pull, you shinny past me up the rope, understand?”

He nods as bullets sing past our ears.

“On the count of three. Ready? ”A bullet clips the top of his ear. “Threeeee!” I scream, wrenching him upward.

“Again!” I shout, repeating the process. Slowly, I manage to tug him up parallel to my waist, basket bent almost sideways in the air. “One more time,” I say. I shove him up the rope. His hand meets the bottom of the basket.

“Oh, no,” I rasp, feeling the tinge of silver slinking through my veins.

“What is it?”

“Nothing,” I lie, the two of us dangling upside down, and right-side up. “Just climb, before one of us ends up with a bullet in the brain!”

I’m running out of time, and I know it. I can tell by the haziness of Urlick’s face. The silver is on the move. My boots slip. “Hurry,” I shout, as he struggles to swing up onto the basket. One-armed, he drags himself over the side. The balloon jerks under the weight of his fall.

“Eyelet?” he calls to me.

“I’m coming,” I shout. With the last fight I have in me, I hinge at the hips and thrust myself upward, my fingers groping the air in search of the basket. By the grace of all there is in heaven, somehow they touch. Digging my fingers into the weave, I hurl myself upright—silver slithering through my shaky veins, the world around me turning black—stab the toes of my boots into the side of the basket’s thatch; and I climb, blindly, to the top.

“Eyelet! Oh, thank God,” Urlick breathes.

I hear him but I cannot see his face.

I lean, tumbling over the side into the basket, dropping down alongside of him. The smell of burnt bread overcomes me.

“You all right?” Urlick’s face appears as a dark circle above me. “Eyelet!” His fingers stroke my cheeks. “Are you all right?”

I want to say yes, but the answer is no. No, I’m not all right. Not at all. And I never will be.

“Eyelet?” He shakes me. “Talk to me. What’s happening?”

“I commandeered a balloon.” I finally manage to say. The words echo inside my head like they were never spoken. “I commandeered a balloon to come and save you.”

“That you did,” he says.

I shudder as the silver drags me under.

F
orty two

Urlick

“Eyelet?” She’s shaking.

Shock, likely, due to all the excitement.

The basket lurches to one side, threatening to expel us both, catching on the top branches of a tree as we float by. We’re too low. I’ve somehow got to pull us up.

“Eyelet!” I shake her. “Snap out of this, I need your help!”

She’s unresponsive, lying there with her eyes open, locked in a ghostly stare. I don’t want to slap her, but I fear I must. It’s the only way to bring her out of this shocked state. God knows it must have taken all her courage to hang from that basket the way she did to save me. But if we don’t gain some altitude soon, I’m afraid we’ll need saving again.

“Eyelet?” I tap her cheek lightly. She doesn’t respond. “Eyelet?” I try again. “Eyelet, wake up, please!” For a moment I worry she might be dead, but then, she’s trembling, so she can’t be. Corpses don’t move once they’re dead.

The basket tips to the side and I scramble to the other, trying to keep it balanced as I tug on the ropes. I stand and adjust a few levers, but nothing happens. “Eyelet, please, I don’t know what to do.” Finally, I pull something and it works. The balloon jerks upward, causing my stomach to jerk with it. My cheeks flush warm as sick jumps to my throat.

I yank on another lever and the flame pulses. The balloon sucks gently upward inside a healthy dose of steam. “That’s better,” I say, falling back against the side of the basket. At last, we’re camouflaged by thick cloud cover and out of rifle range. I reach up, backhanding the sweat from my brow. “Now to figure out how to land this bloody thing.”

I look down and realize I’m bleeding. The bullet, yes, I’d almost forgotten. I strip off my overcoat, rip a strip of fabric from my sleeve, and tie it into a tourniquet around my arm above the wound. Grabbing the ends with my good hand and teeth, I pull and knot it tightly. “There, that should do for a bit.”

I return my attention to Eyelet, bending my face to her ear. “Eyelet, can you hear me?” She continues to tremble. It must be the altitude. I roll her to one side, worried she’ll gag on her tongue. She moans when I do this, not unlike Cordelia, when she’s transfixed in a state of—

I gasp in a breath. No. It’s not possible. Is it?

I shake my head. No. This is not as awful as what happens to Cordelia. She’s not calling out, or crying in pain. She’s shaking, yes, but this is different. Different altogether.

I lay my coat over her, tucking it in around her chin. Perhaps if I keep her warm, whatever this is will pass. “It’s all right,” I tell her, smoothing the hair from her face. “Everything’s going to be all right.” I stand, perplexed by her condition, hoping I’m right.

The basket bumps up again, slipping through a seam in the cloud cover, exposing us in the sky. I hold a hand to my eyes, surveying the horizon. An array of farmland, roads and hillsides spill out before me. I strain my eyes, searching for the gaping maw of the quarry. I need to figure out a safe place to land our floating ship—close enough to it, but far enough away not to be seen.

Something hisses above my head: a gentle whine at first, then it gets stronger and stronger until it becomes a wind-flapping roar. I look up to see a small hole in the balloon’s fabric. The loose edge of a patch whipping in the wind.

“Eyelet!” I shake her. “Where did you get this balloon?”

Something pops above my head. Stitches rip. The patch blows loose from the side and slowly drifts to the earth.

The repair shop in Gears—I clap my head—she must have pinched it from Hammad. God knows that old man never fixes anything well.

The balloon begins to drop, plummeting toward the earth, dropping down beneath the camouflage of clouds. I seize the ropes, trying to hold our position. They burn the skin from my hands. It’s no use: whether I like it or not, we’re going down.

“EYELET!” I nudge her with my foot. “EYELET, WAKE UP PLEASE!” I yank back on the ropes, struggling to nurse the last bit of flight out of our wounded balloon, ground rising at a furious pace. “For the love of
God
, Eyelet, PLEASE, WAKE UP!”

The balloon balks and jerks in the wind. The ropes cut my hands. We’ve no choice: we’re going to have to bail if we’re to survive this. I look over the side. There’ll be nothing left of this basket when we crash. “Eyelet!” I shout again.

A set of tracks comes into view. Beyond them I spy the quarry through the cloud cover. It’s lined with Brigsmen holding guns. There have to be at least fifty, maybe sixty of them.

Even if I could land this thing in one piece, we wouldn’t stand a chance. We’d be shot the second we crawled from the wreckage. A steamplough whistle sounds to the right. Its shrill shriek ripples through the air.

My eyes fix on the long black locomotive snake slithering toward us through the grass.
That’s it.
“Eyelet, we’ve got to go now.”

I let go of the ropes and take her by the arm. “Eyelet,” I shake her, “our ship is sinking! We have to bail!”

The steamplough whistles again, drowning out my voice. A sharp popping punch follows. The balloon’s sprung another hole. Eyelet lurches forward into my arms, blinking, gasping, her hands shooting up over her ears. “What was that? What happened?” Her head twists up. “Where am I?” She looks petrified. Her cheeks flush red. Her eyes are wide and reaching.

“It appears we’ve just blown another tire,” I say.

“A what?” She looks up, bewildered, at the wilting balloon folding down around us. I can tell by the change in her eyes she gets it now.

“We’ve got to bail. And fast!” I say, yanking her to her feet.

“Bail? As in jump?” she gasps.

“That’s correct.” I rest a foot on the side of the basket. “Ready?”

She clings to me, her eyes springing even wider when she realizes how close we are to the ground. Her gaze moves from there onto the Brigsmen lining the ridge.