Harris backed away from Joseph. "Please don't do this."
"I have no choice." Joseph's voice was full of pain. "Kill me, Harris, please. Because I have to kill you."
Harris bumped up against a table and was suddenly halted. He scrambled sideways to elude Joseph's grab. He brought up the barrel of his autogun but couldn't bring himself to fire.
He heard a familiar jackhammer roar and the flesh of Joseph's side erupted with craters.
Joseph nodded and turned toward his attacker. "Yes, Welthy. Do that again. Only much, much more." His face twisted with sadness. "Forgive me. I have to smash you now." He grabbed the corner of a lab table and hefted it as easily as if it were a cardboard box; a fortune in scientific equipment slid off to crash on the floor.
He spun the table through the air. Welthy tried to jump aside, but the corner of the tabletop caught her in the gut. It smashed her into the wall behind. A moment's agony crossed her features and she fell like a broken thing.
"Ladislas, get out of here!" Harris shouted. "Don't attack him! Joseph, I'm going to run now."
"Then I will go to Gaby and take her. I have to, and I know where she is. Stay instead and kill me."
Harris aimed and fired. He struggled to keep the gun in line as he poured ammunition into the body of his friend.
Joseph staggered. His chest deformed with the damage he took. He kept coming.
Harris heard the higher-pitched crack of a pistol shot. A crater sprouted in Joseph's forehead. But the flesh there reformed instantly, the burned letters unchanged.
Joseph grabbed another table and flung it at Ladislas. The table took the man in the chest, hurling him back into the wall. Harris saw Ladislas' brief look of surprise give way to blankness.
Harris fired again. Joseph's shoulder flowed like wax under the impacts. Then Harris' autogun ran dry.
Joseph's face twisted in sympathy. "You did very well," he said.
Alastair and Ish jumped as the stairwell above them erupted in smoke and shouts. Suddenly there were continuous muffled explosions above them, but no gunfire being directed against them. They held their position, peering into the thickening cloud above, then began to retreat as it started to flow down the stairs toward them.
They descended two stories and reached Doc's conjurer's circle. Doc sat slumped, and Noriko, half-frantic, slapped his cheeks, pried an eye open to peer at it. "He is unconscious," she told Alastair. "Help him."
He joined her. "You help Ish." Noriko rose, wordless, and left him.
Alastair gave Doc a quick look. He didn't need to; he knew the problem from many times before. Devisement-induced exhaustion and collapse. He reached in his pocket for the small kit of medical essentials he carried when his bag was inconvenient.
Noriko saw Adonis emerge from the wall of smoke above. The creature descended toward them, carefully navigating each step with absurd delicacy dictated by its great size and awkward build.
Ixyail swore loudly in Castilian, words Noriko didn't understand, and opened fire with the Klapper. Her long, continuous burst tore through Adonis, meeting little resistance, tearing away bloody hunks of red-black meat. Adonis, not inconvenienced, kept coming.
Noriko drew her blade and sailed up past Ish. She stopped just short of Adonis and, lightning-fast, slashed at the arm it reached toward her. A section of cloth and meat fell away and hit the stairs with a disgusting plop.
No, not meat. In her peripheral vision, Noriko saw the stuff separate into a hundred distinct worms that crawled off in different directions.
Adonis' counterstrike was slow, clumsy, inviting her to step in and gut him. She stepped in.
It was a feint. Its off-hand slashed at her face. Warned by Harris' experience with the creature, she went under the blow, stepped past Adonis so close that she brushed against its side, and spun against its unprotected back.
Her blade took Adonis in the side of the neck. It bit through flesh the consistency of rotted grapes, snapped something harder within, and emerged from the far side.
Adonis clutched its head . . . and lifted it clear of its body. It collapsed in a puddle of clothes and squirming sludge.
Noriko stepped daintily back and watched as the mess that had been Adonis spread across the stairs. Soon there was nothing but three manweights of worms crawling away from empty clothes and oversized human bones.
Ish stared up at her. "Thank you," she said. "Next time I will know always to bring a sword to a gunfight."
Down at the landing, Doc shook off Alastair's restraining hand and got unsteadily to his feet. Ish turned to look. "Are you well? What now?"
Doc leaned against the wall. "We cover these stairs and wait for Athelstane's men to get to us with gas masks." His voice was weary; it looked as though he were having trouble focusing. "Then I want to see where those men came from."
Gunfire woke Fergus. He looked around.
Blackletter's gunmen lay in the corridor, dead or unconscious. The gunfire came from the laboratory. Fergus rose and looked in through the laboratory door.
Joseph, the clay man, looked liked a pincushion of the gods, so mottled was his skin with the craters and divots of gunfire. No longer could he be mistaken for a man even at this range. He chased Harris around the ruined lab, inconsiderately stepping on bound men as his path took him across them.
He carried a four-foot club, the leg of a lab table. He swung it, a fast, brutal attack. Harris struck the table leg with his hand, snapping it in the middle, sending half its length spinning across the room, but he continued to back away from his attacker.
Fergus forced his mind into some sort of working order. The old man had said Joseph was still his. This proved it. And with the evidence before him, Fergus doubted that any amount of gunfire would be enough to stop Joseph.
He turned to one of the grimworlders he'd killed and opened the man's backpack. Inside were several of the items and weapons he'd seen during his long night of questioning. And there was the one he wanted, the bomb-in-a-bag they called a satchel charge.
He pulled out the haversack full of explosives and drew the man's knife from its sheath. His fingertips tingled. It had to be made of steel. Stupid grimworlders.
He flipped open the sack and stared at the loops of cord fastened to its side. His mind was suddenly a blank. All night he'd surreptitiously watched as Costigan and Dominguez instructed Blackletter's men on the use of this equipment, and now he couldn't remember what they did to light the fuse.
Joseph tried to keep himself from thinking as he backed Harris up into one of the heavy metal barricades. If he thought, he might come up with tactics to use against his enemy. He didn't want to do that. He wanted to be stupid. To give Harris whatever advantage he could. Harris rolled back over the barricade and came up to his feet before Joseph could take advantage of his moment of awkwardness.
But Joseph kicked the barricade, throwing it and Harris to the floor with brutal force. He wished he hadn't thought of doing that.
He felt a sting in his back. He turned.
Fergus Bootblack stood there. His hands were empty. So was his face; there was no emotion there to prick at Joseph's guilt, to increase his sorrow.
"I have to smash you now, Fergus."
The mechanic just shrugged.
Joseph swatted him. He felt Fergus' upper arm break under the blow. The mechanic flew sideways, landing beside the door to the hall.
Joseph turned again. He pulled the metal barricade off Harris. The man's eyes were open but unfocused. Joseph picked him up and held him nearly at arm's length, as if the man were a steering wheel.
Joseph could feel the knife still protruding from his back. It felt heavier than it should. Something hung from it. No matter. "Harris," he said. "Wake up. I have to kill you now."
Harris came awake with the sickening realization that these would be his last moments on Earth.
Joseph held him almost gently. "I am going to break your neck," the giant said. "That way it will be over fast."
Harris kicked him in the head. Joseph's features deformed and then stretched back to normal.
Harris had the sudden impression of fire blooming behind Joseph. Then he was traveling backwards, the giant still clutching him. He saw clouds overhead and knew that he was falling.
He felt a sudden blow and the world spun away from him.
Duncan hissed in sudden vexation. Now his hangar unit was no longer answering him—unless cursing and moaning counted.
He'd failed. In part, at least; he'd wasted men. But it would still be a success if Joseph were able to kill Harris Greene, Gaby Donohue and the other grimworlders present.
He switched the talk-box dial. Captain Walbert's lean, bearded face came into view. "Captain!"
"Sir?"
"We're done. Take us away."
"Yes, sir."
Duncan saw relief in the captain's face. He switched off and frowned. The captain just did not show the proper enthusiasm. He'd actually had the nerve to protest hovering here and inviting retaliation from the Monarch Building. Of course it was dangerous—the Storm Cloud was a flying bomb. So was any hydrogen-filled liftship. But this job required nerve and toughness, which Walbert did not appear to possess. He'd have to be replaced.
Doc loosed the cables holding the rotorkite rotors in place while Noriko climbed into the cockpit. Ish gathered the rappelling ropes and drew them out of the way, but they were already beginning to withdraw from the hangar. Rain fell on them all through the open roof door.
Overhead was a vast gray expanse hovering below the cloud layer. It was a liftship—a huge vessel, easily two hundred paces from end to end, with the name Storm Cloud painted along its side. The ship slowly drifted eastward; in a few moments it would be clear enough for the rotorkite to lift off. Not far above the liftship was the solid mass of clouds Doc had studied earlier.
Doc understood the clouds now. They were not an attack; they'd been a screen for the liftship's approach. He chided himself; he'd been prepared for another airplane fly-by and rocket launch, but not for a liftship invasion.
He popped open one of the rotorkite's gullwing doors and climbed in, then dogged his door shut. Noriko spun up the rotors. Doc ignored the noise as Ish pounded on his door from outside.
"Checklist?" Noriko asked.
"No. Just take her up."
Harris became aware of a dull roar as his hearing and consciousness returned. His chest felt constricted. He opened his eyes.
He dangled in the wind, the collar of his jeans jacket in Joseph's grip. The giant, with his other hand, held onto the lowest wingtip of one of the ledge gargoyles.
There was a crater in Joseph's back a foot deep and three feet in diameter. Opaque gray fluid poured out of it, something like clay barely diluted with water. The giant's eyes were dull, nearly unseeing.
Far above him was the skyscraper-sized zeppelin-liftship.
Harris looked down. There was nothing between his feet and the sidewalk but a thousand feet of air.
"Harris."
"Yes, Joseph." He reached up and tried to get a grip on the clay man's arm. It was slick with the fluid from his back. Joseph shook him and easily broke his grasp.
"I'm going to die, Harris. When I do, I will fall, and you will fall, and you will die too. But I want you to understand that I do not do this myself. I cannot stop myself."
"I understand." Harris tried to reach up for the ledge with the statues. His arm was a yard too short. He touched the face of the wall and could find no purchase. "Are you sure you can't just tell Duncan to stuff himself? I'd really appreciate it."
"No. My limbs do not move in a direction that disobeys him. Can you forgive me? Please, Harris."
"Yes, Joseph. It's not your fault." He felt his throat tighten with grief for the pain Joseph was feeling.
"The explosion was propitious. It allows me to give you a few extra moments of life without disobeying Duncan. And it means I will not be able to harm Gaby."
Harris heard a scrape from behind Joseph; he turned his head back to look.
A rope dangled behind Joseph, ten feet away. It brushed the statuary, stretching from the liftship above to somewhere below Harris. And it was moving, swaying toward him. "Just hold on as long as you can, Joseph."
The rope swayed a yard closer. Harris looked up and saw the liftship's propellers turning. The ship was moving, dragging the rope along with it.
Joseph began to droop. Harris saw that the damage to his back was worse than before—made deeper and rougher by water erosion, Joseph's "bleeding." Harris grimaced.
"I am losing strength, Harris."
"How do you want to be remembered?" The rope edged closer. It almost touched Joseph. Another yard and it would be within Harris' reach.
"It will do no good for me to tell you."
"Tell me anyway."
"I would like to be remembered for having hurt no one. But that would be a lie."
The rope slid to within inches of Harris' hand. Joseph finally saw it. He looked puzzled.
Harris stretched, grabbed it, and dragged it to his right hand. With all his strength, he kicked away from the building face. The move pulled him free of Joseph's grasp.
Harris swung out from the building, then back toward it, hitting the wall two full yards away from the giant. He managed to get his feet up and took the impact with his legs.
Joseph's face twisted into a faint smile. "No, I was wrong. It will please me to be remembered for having failed in my last duty."
He fell, leaving a stain of gray clay on the wall.
Harris watched him disappear. Something hard and bitter swelled in his throat, closing it.
He felt his feet lose contact with the wall; they were now half a foot away from the stone. He looked up.
The liftship was picking up speed, carrying its trailing ropes and Harris away from the Monarch Building.
Gaby woke up feeling tired but peaceful, as though the blast of knowledge through her had washed her clean.
She was in Gabrielle's room. She tried to slide out and back into her body, but couldn't.
That was surprising. It hadn't happened since she'd first put the two halves of herself together. She felt a tug of fear and opened the eye in the communications room.
She saw herself slumped in her chair, her head lolled back, mouth slightly opened. Her eyes moved rapidly under closed lids. She didn't look hurt.
She tried to switch to the eye into the laboratory, but it was gone.
Then memory returned of her unexpected swim in knowledge. She must have fallen into a veritable sea of information.
Data. Duncan must have brought a computer from the grim world. Hooked it into his communication grid here. She hadn't been prepared to handle that amount of information.
Information—something about information she'd recently received was nagging at her. Names, dates . . . then she had it.
Essyllt Tathlumwright had said that Doc was born in 116 M.X.R. Gaby translated numbers in her head. That would have been Scholars' Year 1303. More than a hundred and thirty years ago. Doc was older than even she had thought. She'd read accounts of purebloods who achieved incredible age.
That made him old enough—
She looked into her mirror, sought out a specific eye, and opened it. The face of Essyllt Tathlumwright appeared, looking startled. "Goodness," the older woman said. "I don't think I even had it switched on."
"You must have," Gaby said. "Pardon me for calling back so soon—"
"You've changed."
"What?"
"Your clothes. You've changed. It's very becoming."
Gaby looked down at Gabrielle's dress and smiled. "Thank you. There's something I forgot to ask before. Did Desmond MaqqRee and his wife have any children?"
"Oh, yes." Essyllt looked at a sheaf of notes on the table before her. "One, a son. Named—"
"Duncan?"
"That's right." Essyllt beamed approvingly. "Born One Thirty-Eight M.X.R. You've been doing your research, too."
"Yes." Gaby felt cold sickness crawl through her. She tried to keep it from showing. "I have to run, Essyllt."
"Until later, then. Grace." Essyllt faded away again.
What had it done to Doc to believe that he'd killed his own son twenty years ago? What would it do to him to have to kill him now?
Dangerous as Duncan was, she had to prevent that, for Doc's sake. Gaby frantically looked for another eye.
His arms trembled from exhaustion, but Harris kept climbing. The gaping doors in the bottom of the gondola were not much farther above.
He had seen no one peering through that hole at him. He looked down and saw the skyscrapers of Neckerdam moving sedately below. This time there was no vertigo to bother him. So far, so good.
The rotorkite approached the liftship from astern, rising above it. "We can't stand off and trade fire with it," Doc said. He thought about it for a bare second. "So drop me on top."
"You're insane," Noriko said. "Do you remember being so exhausted you could barely stand, less than a chime ago? You're drained."
"It wasn't as bad as the time in Cretanis. I promised less, it took less. And Duncan is tired, too. He had to have put everything he had into holding that cloud together for so long."
"But his men, his soldiers, aren't. They're fresh and have better guns than you. No."
Doc gave her a surprised look. "When did you become so contrary?"
She looked flustered, also unusual. "I'm simply not going to let you kill yourself so that you will think of me as a good, obedient associate."
"I won't kill myself," he said, keeping confidence in his voice. "Noriko, I have to deal with Duncan. No one else can; he's a Deviser. No one else has to. Get me to him. If we don't stop him now, he will be back."
He saw her expression of resignation. She kept the rotorkite on course and said nothing more.
Duncan heard the distant thup-thup-thup of a rotorkite. He switched to the cockpit view again.
Captain Walbert turned from the wheel to look at him. "Yes, sir."
"We have more trouble. Doc or some of his men have taken to the air."
"Yes, sir. I've already sent the men to the gun platform."
The liftship's gun opened up before Noriko anticipated it, when the rotorkite was still half a stad away. Doc winced as he heard and felt bullets rap against the fuselage. Immediately the pitch of the engines changed, climbed. Noriko veered, lost some altitude, then gained a little back. She began evasive maneuvers, making the aircraft a more difficult target.
She brought the rotorkite in from astern, so close beside the liftship's great vertical fin that Doc feared a sudden breeze would hurl them into it, so close to the liftship's skin that the man at the ship's tail lookout position ducked down into his niche as the rotorkite passed over.
She was so low, in fact, that the men on the armament platform, toward the bow, couldn't depress their guns far enough to hit her without endangering the liftship. Doc actually felt the rotorkite's landing gear hit the liftship's skin; the kite bounced a little higher and continued forward, just above the curve of the ship's skin, until they were halfway or more to the bow.
"Best do it now," Noriko said. "Hear the engine? We will not get another pass; I have to land."
Doc didn't dare open the gullwing door. He'd be fighting rotor wash and affecting the rotorkite's flight characteristics. He kicked the window out instead. He leaned out.
Five paces below was the skin of the liftship; the rotorkite's window, still in its frame, hit it and began bouncing down its curving slope. "A little closer, Noriko."
The rotorkite's talk-box popped. Gaby's voice: "Is anyone there?"
While Noriko slowly brought the rotorkite down, Doc leaned out further, drew out his clasp-knife, and pulled it open. He'd need to use it to anchor himself against falling, then cut his way through the skin. He pulled on a pair of gloves; liftship skeletons were made of steel, uncoated for reasons of weight, their crews wearing heavy uniforms and gloves as protection.
Noriko finally felt steady enough to thumb the button on the talk-box. "I'm here, Gaby. With Doc."
"Don't let him get anywhere near Duncan. Duncan's his son—"
Doc grimaced and leaped free. He hit the rubber-cloth surface of the liftship and bounced, rolling down the slope. On his second impact, he managed to drive the knife into the ship's skin. He slid further downslope, cutting a rent three paces long in the skin; then he got his free hand into the tear and stopped sliding.
Wash from the rotors pushed at him as the rotorkite banked away. Noriko must have begun the maneuver as soon as she understood Gaby's statement. But it was too late. He was within striking distance of Duncan at long last.
As Harris got his hands on the lip of the bomb bay, his strength failed him. He hung there, legs wrapped around the trailing rope, and waited for his energy to come back.
It didn't.
He cursed. He'd just have to do the job without it.
Then Darig MacDuncan, the Changeling, stepped into view above and kicked him full in the head.
Sudden, shocking pain in his temple—Harris' right hand slipped and he rotated a half-turn, gripping the lip of the bomb bay floor with only his left. He frantically grabbed the rope with his right.
Just in time. Darig, smiling, stepped on the fingers of his left hand. The pain cost him his grip.
The sudden adrenaline was what he needed. He hauled on the rope for all he was worth, popped up over the lip of the floor, and grabbed Darig's ankle. He yanked. The Changeling fell, scrambling frantically as his legs stretched out over more than a thousand feet of air.
Harris grabbed the Changeling's belt and hauled. The Changeling, teeth bared, grabbed the sturdy base of a winch and didn't budge, so Harris used him for purchase. He pulled himself up atop the blond man and onto the metal floor beyond.
He put his back to the wall of this small metal cabin, next to a doorway hatch. "Give up, Darig." His words came out in gasps as he struggled to gain control of his breath. "Or I'll kick the hell out of you and you'll end up a big red smear on a Neckerdam street."
The Changeling glared. "I am not afraid of death, bug. But I will make it worth something." He grabbed Harris' leg and pushed off, rolling out through the hole.
Harris frantically gripped the lip of the hatch beside him. The Changeling's weight yanked at him, threatened to tear him free; the impact stretched him taut. Another second and he'd slide out the hole, paired with Darig in a skydive to death.
With his free leg, he kicked Darig. He felt the kick land . . . and suddenly there was no more weight on his leg. Harris lay exhausted, gasping, and pulled himself back into the relative safety of the bomb bay.
Duncan flipped his talk-box from empty room to empty room. The only scene that told him anything was that of the hangar, where members of the Novimagos Guard collected his men. He knew his radio transmissions were compromised; he'd heard someone call a testing pattern over his radio on the laboratory squad's frequency.
The grimworlder signal on his tracer was much reduced. Joseph had to have killed most of the grimworlders. Still, two signals remained, one back at the Monarch Building and one . . .
Here. He scowled at the little screen. One of the grimworlders had to be keeping up with the liftship, either on the ground or in the rotorkite he'd heard.
The view on his talk-box flickered and was suddenly gone, replaced by the face of Gaby Donohue. She was dressed in archaic fashion and her hair was much longer than the last time he'd seen her.
"Goodlady Donohue. What an unexpected surprise. I see Joseph hasn't gotten to you yet."
"Joseph's my friend, Duncan."
"Not anymore. He's already killed Harris Greene. He'll be coming for you and Doc soon."
He saw her turn pale. He enjoyed giving people bad news. Their reactions were usually memorable.
Her voice was faint. "You're lying."
"I have no reason to lie."
Her breathing became shallow. He thought he could see hatred struggling with despair within her.
One of them won, but he wasn't sure which. She leaned forward. Her voice was a whisper: "Duncan, there's something I've got to know."
He leaned forward to catch her words. "What's that?"
"Are you Doc's son? Duncan MaqqRee?"
He smiled. "I'm afraid so. A word of advice that will do you no good: Some fathers think they can dictate their children's lives forever. Why do you ask?"
"Just curious," she said; her voice was even quieter; he leaned still closer.
Then she opened her mouth and screamed.
Gaby Donohue's image exploded out at Duncan. He felt something sharp tear at his face. Then pain, worse than any he'd known in twice ten years. He reeled away from it and went off balance. His toppling chair carried him to the floor. "Gods!"
He couldn't open his eyes. Things tore when he tried to do that. He raised his hands to them, encountered flesh and blood and sharp edges. "Captain!"
No answer. There were distant cries, a faraway roaring that began to grow louder.
Captain Walbert stood alone at the wheel; with all his men assigned to other tasks or left behind in the Monarch Building, he had to fly his ship practically single-handed. But that wasn't why his back and shoulders were locked with tension. No, that was the fault of Duncan Blackletter, with his unreasonable orders and anger spewing across the talk-box every few beats. It could only be moments before some new offense would issue from the screen—
He was right, after a fashion. He heard a scream from the talk-box behind him and it burst, raining sparks and debris all over his back.
The crewman at the bow gun fired again, trying to put his stream of tracers onto the rotorkite sinking away from the liftship. The rotorkite was a difficult target, in spite of the plume of smoke that was already billowing from its engine compartment.
He heard a shriek beside him, an odd noise to come from the talk-box the old sodder had had installed so the liftship would be "modern." Then the talk-box exploded. He saw glass and fire rain down through the hatch into the liftship interior.
Fire—
The talk-box in the rotorkite's cockpit panel burst, raining hot bits of glass and wire all over Noriko. She jerked in surprise. The rotorkite veered, but she kept control, getting far enough away that the liftship's guns would no longer pose a threat to her.
She looked back at Storm Cloud and saw it. A glow, golden-yellow, shone through the liftship's skin toward the bow, illuminating the ship's metal skeleton from within. The skin there began to char black.
Doc paused on the catwalk running down the center of the Storm Cloud's interior. He took his bearings. Directly above, crewmen descended toward him along access ladders, their feet in felt boots. Below, blue-uniformed officers ascended toward him. None would shoot at him, nor he at them, with giant envelopes of hydrogen surrounding them. Forty feet below was the access shaft down to the liftship's gondola.
Then he saw fire blossom above, toward the bow.
He leaped over the catwalk rail and dropped past the men below, catching one crossbeam twenty feet down, stopping his plummet through sheer grace and strength; the impact wrenched his shoulder and he felt the flesh of his arm sear where it came into contact with steel. Then he dropped again, slowed himself by grabbing a beam ten feet above the shaft, and hit the catwalk beside the access shaft. He could already feel the heat from the wave of fire advancing toward him, and the men above were yelling. He swung into the shaft and slid down the length of the metal ladder into the gondola.
Above were the roar of fire and the screams of the men caught in it. His arms trembled from iron poisoning.
He stood in the vehicle's bomb bay. He saw the hatch leading into a room forward, another leading aft, open doors showing the buildings of Neckerdam below. And Harris Greene, panting, stood in the forward doorway.
"Fancy meeting you here," said Harris.
"I'll look aft, you look forward," Doc said. "Don't waste time. We're on fire."
"Good to see you, too." Harris went forward.
The third door Doc opened belonged to Duncan.
His withered, ancient son lay bleeding on the floor. Doc saw the ruin of the man's eyes and winced in sympathy.
For a moment he was awash in memories. Dierdriu smiling at their baby boy as she nursed him. Finding the body of the child Duncan strangled the morning he left home forever. The guardsman of Beldon telling him his wife had been found in the river. The body of Siobhan Damvert with her head twisted around nearly backwards and her eyes staring sightlessly.
Doc tried to harden himself against what had to happen now. And, just as it had been twenty years ago, he could not.
Duncan moved feebly, hearing him. "Captain?"
"No."
"Desmond." Duncan shrank away from him, drawing back against the wall of his cabin. "Father. Don't kill me."
Doc felt something break in his heart. "I'm sorry, Duncan. Gaols cannot hold you. If you do not die now, someone else will die because of you." He crossed the cabin, knelt before his boy, and drew his pistol. He saw his hand shake. His head felt light as once more the decision to do what he had to do threatened to overwhelm him.
Duncan brushed his leg against Doc's.
Doc saw a flare of brightness as lightning leaped between them. He heard the unaimed gun fire in his hand, felt his muscles jerk as the electrical jolt coursed through him.
Then he knew nothing more.
Duncan heard Doc fly across the cabin, hurled by the force of the old devisement. Doc hit the wall with a shuddering impact. Duncan heard him slide to the floor and go still. Smelled the odor of charred flesh rising from him.
Imbecile, Duncan thought. You didn't think I'd prepared myself after our last meeting? For years I've renewed that devisement each morning . . . and finally it has proved worth the effort.
He straightened up, ignoring the pain in his eyes—the hurt and blindness would be gone once he passed some gold to very expensive doctors he knew. He groped around on his tabletop. Now, where did I leave that knife?
The gondola narrowed as Harris continued forward. The passageway passed between a small washroom starboard and a larger radio room port.
The next chamber was some sort of map room with windows to either side. Two long tables were laid out with maps and charts Harris didn't bother to look at. The hatch forward was open.
Harris stepped through into the control room, the forward end of the gondola. Windows all around provided a panoramic view of Neckerdam and the river immediately ahead. A large, impressively carved wooden wheel, a ship's wheel, was situated at the very front.
A uniformed man stood there, impassively guiding the airship on its course. He turned a little as Harris entered. He was bearded, looked sober and intelligent.
"Where's Duncan?" Harris asked.
"Aft," the captain replied. "Cabin Four."
"We're on fire."
"You think I don't know?" The man sagged just a little. "I'll be putting her into the river. I won't let her fall on the city. You have nothing to fear from me." He turned away.
Knife in hand, Duncan crawled up his father's body. Three cuts, he decided. A grimworld smiley-face. One blow each into Doc's eyes, then a sweet curve across his throat. It would be a charming way to remember the man; a pity he couldn't photograph the moment. Then, he'd make his way to the pilot room and find out just what was going on—
For the second time, someone entered his cabin without permission. "Captain?" he asked.
Harris stepped through the doorway and sidekicked. The blow caught Duncan in the sternum and threw him off Doc's body. Harris felt frail bones break under the blow.
Duncan, twisting in pain but not unconscious, crawled away from his enemy. There was hate as well as pain in his voice this time: "Who's there?"
Harris stared at the shriveled, bloody-faced thing in the corner. Every bit of him wanted to take another two steps and kick the life from Duncan Blackletter.
But Duncan had caught Doc in a trap. He might have others waiting. Harris wouldn't let Duncan win through a mistake. Even the delay it took to kill him might prove fatal.
He grabbed Doc beneath the arms, pulled him out into the passageway. Doc looked bad, with burns on his arm, smoke rising from his hair and clothes.
"Who is it?" Duncan asked, voice harsh yet quavering. "Talk to me, you wretch—"
Harris let go of Doc. He stepped back into the cabin and swung the door away from the wall. He struck an open-palm blow at the inside knob. The blow knocked it free. "Enjoy your ride," he said, his voice cold. Then he stepped out again and closed the door.
As he dragged Doc forward, he could feel the liftship tilting down at the bow; the angle increased, became troublesome even before he got into the bomb bay.
Smoke poured down from the access hatch; the air was hot and getting hotter. In a bare minute, he'd be burning. He heard pounding from the direction of Duncan's cabin. Pounding and shouting.
The gondola was only two or three hundred feet above the ground. Even as he watched, the liftship moved out over the river.
The gear in the bomb bay included a winch. But it was wound with cable and not rope—nothing he could tie around Doc.
With his knife, he cut free a piece of the rappelling line he'd climbed. He tied one end to a loop at the end of the winch cable, the other end to Doc. He hoped the decidedly non-Boy Scouts knots would hold. The skin on his back was blistering from heat before he was done.
"Captain?" he called.
"Not done yet," the man replied.
Harris shook his head. He gently levered Doc over the lip of the hole in the floor, keeping his grip on the rope, playing it out as carefully as he could; it still tore flesh of his palms as Doc descended.
A moment later, he threw the main lever on the winch, watched the motor turn and cable unspool; he grabbed the cable with both bloody hands, swung out over open space, and rode the cable down, Doc dangling a dozen feet below him.
The heat was scarcely better here. He glanced up, saw the entire surface of the liftship glowing gold and white, a cleansing fire that would burn the last of Duncan Blackletter's stain from this world.
Witnesses along Neckerdam's eastern shore and Pataqqsit's western saw the slate-gray airship sail majestically over the river. The golden glow brightened in the ship's bow, then swept toward the stern, making an oblong sun of the ship, eating through its rubberized cloth skin, twisting its metal skeleton with unimaginable heat.
Two men made it out of the liftship, descending by cable from the gondola; one towed the other away from the descending wreckage. When the gondola was a dozen yards from the water's surface, a third man, his back afire, leaped out through the forward windows.
The ship was completely consumed with fire as it touched down on the water. It rested there a long moment, burning, dying, then began its final descent to the bottom of the river.
Tugboats and Novimagos Guard rescue craft approached as close as they dared and picked up the survivors.
Gaby opened her eyes.
The room was dark, but not so dark that she couldn't recognize Harris' face above her own. Recognize the feel of him as he crushed her to him. She held on to him with fierce strength.
She was in her own room in the Monarch Building, more tired than she thought it was possible to feel, but not too tired to remember. "Doc?"
"He's a little burned, a little stiff. He'll be okay."
"The others?"
"Everybody's banged up some. Except Joseph. Joseph . . . didn't make it."
"Dammit." She was silent a long moment. "What about Duncan? And the Changeling?"
"Dead. Really, truly, dental-records-prove-it dead. They scraped Darig off a rooftop the day it happened, fished what's left of Duncan out of the river yesterday."
"Yesterday—"
"You've been asleep for a couple of days, baby. You wiped yourself out."
"Did Doc . . . " She forced herself to ask the question. "Did Doc have to kill him?"
"No. If anybody did . . . I did. And you did, with that marvelous stunt with the exploding talk-boxes. You blew out talk-boxes in the liftship, in the Monarch Building, and all over this part of Neckerdam." He smiled. "It sort of makes sense. Gaby Donohue, Programming Director. You beat him with TV."