Take Back the Skies (34 page)

Ignoring the bulging filing cabinets along one wall,
knowing they were full of useless business meeting transcriptions and bills and receipts, she went straight for the locked desk drawers, taking the spare key clipped to the underside of the desk beneath a secret panel. Unlocking all six drawers, she beckoned Fox to join her, pointing to the drawers on the other side of the desk from her.

‘Help me look,' she instructed, already rifling through the top drawer. Now that she didn't have to worry about her father coming back, she could be as messy as she liked in her search.

Most of what they found was information they knew already; blueprints of every level of the government compound, schematics for the mecha-human soldiers, and transcripts of conversations about Collecting the children and arranging for newscast crews to be sent out to film in the Greaves. However, there were also enough names written in the documents to condemn almost the entire upper level of government.

‘Nathaniel was clearly prepared for some pretty serious blackmail, then,' Fox remarked, flicking through a journal full of scrawled writing. ‘He could get himself out of just about any accusation they could throw at him with all this evidence.'

‘And we can get an awful lot of people
into
some very serious accusations with it,' Cat declared, piling the journals back into their drawers and locking them securely. They would need those later. ‘Still, there's nothing in here that has anything about a location for the skyship.' She growled in frustration, about to turn for the door and suggest looking elsewhere, when a memory came to the forefront of her mind. One of the few nights her father had left the door
ajar, she'd peeked in to see him standing on a stool, pushing the portrait on the wall behind his desk back into place over something metallic. She'd never been tall enough to find out what it was. Of course!

‘Fox! Help me move the chair!'

The redhead gave her a confused look, but obliged, helping her shift the chair back from the desk, right up against the wall.

Cat pointed up at the portrait. ‘There's something important behind that painting. I can't reach it, but you can!' she insisted, ushering him to stand on the chair. With his extra inches, he was able to shift the portrait aside. To his surprise, it swung right up, revealing a dark grey square of metal set into the wall, its face inset with enough mechanisms to lock the entire house down.

‘Wow. That's one brute of a safe,' Fox remarked, staring at it in awe.

Cat looked at him with raised eyebrows.

‘Can you crack it?' she questioned, and he snorted.

‘Of course I can! Just give me a little while. This is some pretty sophisticated gear-work. And not the most comfortable position to do it in either,' he grumbled, leaning his knees against the back of the chair to brace himself. He pulled his tool kit from his pocket, eyeing the safe.

Cat hopped up to sit on the desk, her legs swinging absently. It was very odd being in her father's office and not having to worry about him coming in at any moment and punishing her for intruding. Even more bizarre was having
Fox
in her father's office; she didn't think the room had ever seen someone so scruffy in its life.

‘Nathaniel didn't skimp on the cash when he had this installed,' Fox muttered, a thin gear wire clamped precariously between his teeth.

‘Nathaniel didn't skimp on the cash with
anything
,' Cat pointed out. ‘But with this level of security, it's bound to contain something good. Fingers crossed, the information we need.'

She watched Fox work silently for several minutes, until finally she heard several quiet clicks in quick succession. Fox prodded the centre of one of the bottom gears with his wire, turning it gently, and to Cat's delight, the rest of the gears moved with it, slowly shifting the four lock bars to the side. With one last groan of gears, the door popped forward a fraction, and Fox dug his fingers into the groove at the edge to pull it the rest of the way open. Cat was impressed at the sheer thickness of the safe's door. The entire country could sink to the bottom of the ocean, and that safe would probably still survive.

‘What have we got, then?' Fox murmured under his breath, sticking his head into the safe. He pulled out several leather-bound journals that bulged with paper, passing them down to Cat. ‘Just those five, the rest of the safe is empty,' he told her, dropping down unceremoniously into the chair.

‘Really?' She'd thought there would have been something else in there; keys, a weapon, some ridiculously expensive jewel or heirloom.

She passed two of the five journals to Fox, keeping the other three and picking up one from the top of the pile. Scan reading, she ignored most of it; these were her father's
personal journals, and mainly consisted of his insane ramblings about what he would do when the country was finally his. Thomas Gale's name turned up several times in passing, which didn't surprise her.

‘Here we go!' Fox cried, jumping out of the chair to shove an open journal under her nose. He pointed to a paragraph of cramped writing that took Cat a little while to decipher. ‘Read there,' he prompted urgently, and her eyes darted across the page, growing wider as she read her father's writing.

‘The skyship is by Hebris! Are they mad? That's right next to the Stormlands! They could be sucked into a hurricane any moment!' she exclaimed incredulously. The Stormlands were known to be impenetrable, running all the way along the world in a continuous storm. No one had ever crossed them, and it was dangerous to even fly near them; the few people who had dared never came back, whether they approached from either the Anglyan side or the Dalivian side.

Fox hummed, his lips tightening.

‘Obviously they've got a very skilled pilot to keep them hovering around the edges. And you have to admit, it's a smart idea. No one would be stupid enough to go that far out to the Stormlands, so they'd never be found. Unfortunately for them, no matter how good their pilot is, ours is better,' he said. ‘Ben's been out there before. And their ship is bound to be bigger than ours, so they'll have a much harder time trying to get away if they spot us. With luck, the cloud cover should be enough for us to sneak up on them, if we're careful,' he explained.

‘We should take these to Harry,' Cat suggested, gesturing at the journals. ‘Nathaniel has written about all the weak spots in government, people to bribe, people who would let anything pass by them if it was suggested by the right person. It's practically a guide to bringing the country to its knees.'

Fox nodded in agreement.

‘We'll take them back to the ship with us. Are we done here, then?'

‘One moment,' she said, rushing back to the desk and pulling open the desk drawers. Taking out all of the material her father had gathered, she passed it up to Fox to transfer to the safe. When everything was securely inside, he shut the door, seeing the mechanisms automatically wind back into place and lock themselves.

‘There,' she declared in satisfaction. ‘Now we know it's all safe, just in case.' She doubted anyone would come by the house and manage to get past the swarm of children, but should the worst happen, it was good to be prepared.

Fox held out a hand to her. ‘Let's go,' he murmured, tugging her towards the door.

The living room was full to bursting when Cat and Fox returned, and Cat smiled with relief at seeing everyone had made it across safely. Mary looked more comfortable than Cat had seen her before; of course, she probably knew the house almost as well as Cat herself did.

‘What did you find?' Harry asked, standing as soon as he saw them.

‘The skyship is over Hebris, just on the edge of the Stormlands. Reckless, but clever,' Fox told him, glancing at Matt and Ben listening in intently.

‘Doable,' Ben assured them confidently. ‘It's been a while since I've been out that far, but if we have the right weather conditions, it shouldn't be too much of a problem.' He grinned. ‘Either way, I like a challenge. Did you find anything else?'

‘A lot of blackmail material. Nathaniel was well prepared. If he was going down, he was taking everyone else with him,' Cat said with a frown. ‘I've locked most of it in his safe – we can get it after we've found the skyship and hand it over to the foreign authorities. That way they can hold a trial by proxy for most of the government, especially if we've got Mary to oversee things.'

A trial by proxy was only performed when the country itself didn't have enough of an established legal system to perform a trial themselves, and had to call in foreign judges and jurors to conduct the trial for them. She doubted there would be enough people left in government after the arrests to conduct a full trial.

Passing one of the journals to Harry, Fox flipped it open to the page telling the ship's location, watching the older man frown.

‘We're supposed to get rain for the next few days, so I can't see the Stormlands being the most welcoming place in the world. Still, if we set course tonight, we can fly through the night and get there as the sun rises. If all goes well.'

‘Are we ready to leave tonight? What if the foreign authorities don't arrive in time, or even at all? We'll be awfully vulnerable without military help,' Alice pointed out, concerned.

‘It needs to be done as soon as possible,' Cat insisted. ‘The longer we leave it, the more likely the government is to discover we know what they're up to. If they find another place to hide before we can bring their skyship down, all our efforts will be for nothing.'

‘The lass is right,' Matt piped up. ‘We need to get going as soon as we can.'

‘We have to feed the sprogs first,' Alice said, looking at the children. ‘Is there enough food in the house, Cat?'

‘There should be plenty.' Cat bit her lip, a thought coming to her. ‘Mary, would you mind showing Alice to the pantry? I assume you remember where everything is?'
Mary nodded, getting gracefully to her feet. ‘I'm going to grab a few things from my room, if we have time.'

‘We've got time,' said Fox. ‘I'll come with you. I have to admit, I'm curious to see what your room is like.'

‘It's this way,' she directed, heading for the smaller, metal spiral staircase that led up to her bedroom. A grin was on her face as she opened the door, and she stopped. Fox came to a halt at her shoulder, peering over the top of her head.

‘Impressive,' he murmured, and Cat stepped forward, entering the room.

It looked as if she'd just popped downstairs for a glass of milk before bed; her things were still arranged neatly on her shelf, and there was a pile of folded laundry on her chair waiting for her to put in her dresser.

‘It's beautiful,' said Fox.

She crossed the room to sit on the padded bench at the bottom of the large window, staring out over the city. Everything looked just the same as it had when she'd last looked through the window, the evening before she'd run away. And yet, everything was so very different …

‘I thought Nathaniel would have had Samuel pack up my things. Or sold them off, even. I never thought he would keep them.' She didn't know why he'd kept them, and she didn't want to know, but she was glad he had.

Fox moved to stand beside her, and she shifted so she could lean against him. ‘So how does it feel to have a common boy all alone in your fancy bedroom?' he drawled playfully, making her giggle, her pulse picking up at his words.

‘How do you know this is the first time?' she retorted, trying to match his teasing tone. He winked at her, pushing a lock of hair out of her eyes. Cat's breath caught in her throat.

‘I'll be ever so upset if it's not,' he said mock-solemnly, his voice low and eyes bright as they met hers. Cat's lips curved in a smile, his fingers feeling hot where they rested on her neck.

‘I'd best spare your feelings, then, and stay quiet.' He growled at her words, though he was smiling, and as he leaned in closer Cat's eyes caught sight of the clock on her wall. They didn't have time for this!

Fox clearly sensed her abrupt change in mood and followed her gaze, his smile faltering as he came to the same conclusion. He coughed awkwardly, stepping away.

‘So what did you want to bring with you? You'll need a bag to pack it in,' he reminded her, tugging her gently away from the window ledge.

She opened her wardrobe, dragging a large canvas duffle bag from a drawer in the bottom, leaving it open on the floor and looking at her racks of clothes. Most of them were disgusting: gaudy, hideous outfits that her father had insisted she wear to formal occasions or meetings, but there were a few outfits she actually liked that were too obviously government to pack last time she'd come.

‘Is that what the government classes as fashionable?' Fox remarked with a raised eyebrow.

Cat nodded, and he scoffed.

‘Well, I suppose all that inbreeding can't be good for dress sense.'

Cat whacked him in the stomach. ‘I'm not inbred!' she protested. She rifled through the clothes, occasionally taking something out and tossing it on the bed.

‘You wear dresses?' Fox asked, sounding surprised, and Cat glanced over her shoulder to see him holding up a simple, pale blue dress. She shot him a deadpan look.

‘Yes, I wear dresses. The only reason I haven't since we met is because we've been a bit busy, and unless there's something you're not telling me, there weren't dresses available among your old clothes,' she said, making him laugh.

‘Point taken,' he conceded. ‘I just never thought you were the type to actually enjoy wearing pretty dresses. You've always seemed so comfortable in trousers and shirts.'

She shrugged nonchalantly.

‘They're far more practical. A dress would blow around something awful on deck. And it would have got in the way all the time back in the compound,' she reasoned. ‘But I do like wearing dresses when I can. I'm happy to dress as a boy if it suits what I'm doing, but I'm still a girl.' Her tone was somewhat defensive, and Fox held his hands up.