The girl shrieked as they fell upon her.
Her fiance swung a fist, desperate and panicked enough for it to catch an approaching Acolyte on the jaw.
In the next instant another Acolyte drew his sword and raised it to strike – the fiance, by instinct, raised his forearm to block the blow, and with a butcher's mindless simplicity the Acolyte hacked clean through it, then raised the sword again and hacked down through the wounded man's collarbone. The severed hand had already dropped to the floor. The arm flopped heavy and awkward next to it, where it rolled to settle on the open palm, while its owner fell screaming, blood spurting everywhere.
The mother stood up and vomited a shower of barely digested shrimps over her embroidered tablecloth.
The father mouthed words of inconsequence and stumbled around the table towards his daughter, his voice rising. But he slipped on the spreading pool of blood on the floor and, as he regained his footing, clutched at his chest, his face tightly pinched.
The doors at the far end of the room burst open and the mansion's guards tumbled in, weapons already drawn, anticipating trouble. They took in the scene: their master reeling as though drunk at the far end of the room, the bloody mess of a man still screaming on the floor, the daughter struggling in the arms of the Acolytes: and there, seated calmly at either end of the table and sipping wine, the two white-robed visitors from Q'os.
The men backed slowly from the room, closing the doors gently as they left.
The high priest groaned, then fell to his knees as Kira rose above him.
'Please,' he barely managed as he clutched at his chest. A small blade appeared in her hand. With the smallest of motions she swept it across his throat.
'Take the mother, too,' she commanded, as she stood over the dying man.
The Acolytes seized the mother and dragged both her and her shrieking daughter from the room. Kira paused to look down at Belias. She stared into his rolling eyes.
'Do not be bitter,' she told him, though it was doubtful if he even heard her words. 'You did well enough out of us – while it lasted.'
Kira stepped over the high priest, rather than around him, leaving a trail of dainty bloody footprints in her wake.
Kirkus finished his wine with one swallow and stood.
In the great hall of the mansion, the guards waited with expressions of poorly concealed fear. Egan, the high priest's chancellor, stood before them, his hands hidden within the sleeves of his white robe. His silver hair contrasted sharply with the flush of his face, and Kirkus assumed it to be anger until he observed an interested gleam in the man's eyes, which now followed both mother and daughter as they were pulled outside into the rain. He wondered if he was the one who had penned the note earlier that day.
'We have need of a new high priest, Chancellor Egan,' Kira announced.
'Indeed,' the man purred.
'I hope you prove a more dedicated follower of the faith than your predecessor ever was.'
Egan bowed his head. 'He was weak, Mistress. I am not.'
Kira appraised the man for a moment longer, then with a sniff she whirled about and swept through the front doorway.
Kirkus dutifully followed his grandmother outside.
CHAPTER FIVE
In Flight The cabin stank of mould and dampness and vomit. Nothing moved in the room, yet the gentle motion of the skyship could be detected through the occasional creak of timbers, a rattle of the lantern hanging from the ceiling, a minute sense of lift or fall in the depths of the stomach. In his bunk, Nico lay wretched and pale-faced.
Almost as soon as the ship had lifted off from Bar-Khos and climbed into the cloudy sky, Nico had goggled at the unnatural sight of land diminishing far below him, and he had clutched at the rail with a sensation of lightness in his head, and a loose churning in his belly. For three days now he had lain in his bunk awash with fearful tension and nausea, leaning over occasionally to retch into a wooden bucket on the floor. It was now painful for him to speak, for his throat was burned raw from the bile. He ate little, consuming only what water or soup he could hold down long enough to digest. Every moment, awake or in restless sleep, he was aware of the thousands of feet of empty air gaping beneath him, and the constant tensions on the ropes and struts by which the hull dangled from the flimsy, gas-filled envelope overhead. Every sudden shout from a crewman on deck, every thump of feet or twist of motion within the ship, heralded for Nico impending disaster. It was a misery like he had never known before.
Most of the time he spent alone. Ash shared the cramped cabin, but the old farlander did not seem to appreciate Nico's prolonged bouts of retching; he would become impatient with it eventually, and set aside the little book of poetry he always seemed to be reading, and stomp out on to the deck, muttering under his breath. It was Berl the ship's boy, therefore, who tended to Nico and brought him food and water.
'You must eat,' the boy insisted as he held out a bowl of broth. 'There's nothing left of you but skin and bones.' But Nico grimaced, and pushed the bowl away.
Berl tutted at his stubbornness. 'Water, then,' he told him. 'You must drink some water, no matter if you hold it down or not.'
Nico shook his head.
'I'll have to fetch your master if you don't.'
Nico finally consented to take a mouthful of water, if only to placate the boy. He asked what time of day it was.
'Late afternoon. Not that you'd know the difference in here, with the shutters closed all of the time. You need some fresh air, it stinks in this place. No wonder your master stays up on deck more often than not.'
'I don't like the view,' Nico told him, and he thought back to his first morning on the ship when he had flung open the shutters, only to reel away from the sight that greeted him.
He groaned, a palm clasped against his ailing stomach. 'I think there's something truly wrong with me.'
Berl grinned. 'My first time out I was sick for a whole week. It's common. Some gain their wings faster than others.'
'Wings?'
'Yes. Don't worry, another few days and you should be fine.'
'It feels like I'm dying.'
The boy hefted the skin of water towards Nico's lips again.
Berl looked to be no more than fourteen, though he exuded a confidence of one older than that. As Nico wiped his mouth dry he studied the younger boy. There were scars, small ones, on his narrow face, concentrated around his brows and especially about his eyes, which themselves seemed hard like long-healed wounds.
'I used to work beneath the Shield,' Berl explained, noticing Nico's interest.
Ah, thought Nico. He had once been told by his father how boys were sometimes used in the tunnels beneath the walls of Bar-Khos, in spaces too small for men but large enough for boys and attack-dogs alike. He now said as much to Berl, how his father had been a Special himself, trying to make a connection with him perhaps. The boy simply nodded, and set the skinful of water on the floor next to the bucket.
'That's enough for now,' he said. 'But you need to keep drinking it, you hear?'
'I will,' Nico replied. 'Tell me, where are we?'
'Over Salina. We made its eastern coast this morning.'
'I thought we would already be heading for Cheem.'
'As soon as we find a favourable wind. The captain likes to conserve our whitepowder whenever he can. As soon as we do, we'll strike north through the blockade. Don't worry, the Mannians have as few airships as we, and the Falcon here is a fast ship. The crossing should be swift.'
He stood, saying, 'Come on deck later, if you're feeling up to it. The fresh air will help.' And then he walked with an easy gait across a floor that was sloping visibly upwards, the ship itself climbing. Nico could hear the hull drive tubes being fired, burning their precious fuel.