“I know what you plan.”
“And surely you can’t be against it?”
Mother Graine ignored Margaret. She looked at Kara. “It’s not too late for you,” she said. “You can still turn from this path.”
“The same goes for you,” Kara said, though her voice shook.
“You have no reason to fear me, daughter. I-”
Margaret struck her hard. Mother Graine stumbled. “I think it’s better if you don’t talk,” Margaret said, and turned to Kara. “Are you ready?”
Kara nodded, looked at David, still so unsteady on his feet.
He said, “Just get me out of here.”
Mother Graine’s eyes burned. “We will hunt you.”
“Then you better line up,” David said. “The problem, as I see it, is that everyone has different ideas how we should approach the threat of the Roil, or even who should approach it.
“Well, there is only one of me, and I’m not willing to sacrifice myself so that someone else can go and do what needs to be done.”
“We need only cut off your finger,” Mother Graine said.
David laughed. “Do not take me for naive. That would not be enough. Not nearly enough. This ring will not work on anyone else unless I am dead; dead, and having infected someone. Just who did you have in mind?”
Mother Graine’s eyes flicked towards Kara.
“You would have done that to me?” Kara demanded.
She'd have been a good choice, actually, David thought.
“We would have done whatever was necessary. This is the time of doing what must be done, and without hesitation. Do you think you would do this any differently?” Mother Graine said.
“Bloody oath I would.”
Mother Graine raised an eyebrow; Kara scowled and turned away.
“What must be done, will be done. You should have trusted me.”
“Trust is too rare a commodity these days.”
“And yet without it, we will all fail.”
“Well, you can trust me to punch you in the face if you don’t shut up,” Margaret said, stepping between David and Mother Graine.
David sighed. “Kara Jade can accompany me to Tearwin Meet. She and Margaret can see that I get this done.”
Mother Graine said, “But you are an addict-”
“Yes, this ring, and Cadell’s bite, has made me more than that, but whoever you had forced into taking up this bloody thing would have faced the same problem.”
“I still do not trust you.”
He looked over at Kara. “Do you trust her?” he asked Mother Graine.
“Yes, but-”
“Then it will have to do. She will be with me all the way, they both will. And at the end we will fail or succeed because of the strength we hold together. We have survived the fall of Chapman, the enmity of all that is powerful in this world. And yet we are still here. Even now, you sought to hold us, and yet we leave here on your fastest ship.”
“But before that,” Kara said, sliding a pistol from her belt. “Before we do a damn thing, you will show us the Mothers, whole and unharmed, or I will shoot you myself.”
Mother Graine led them down long cold hallways, lit by lights that sputtered and smoked, past shut doors behind which echoed the throbs of what David suspected must be engines. Once she demanded that they stop, her head tilted towards the ceiling, and above them boomed out what could only be titanic footfalls; the ground shook, the walls around them seemed to flex and contract. David covered his face with his hands, and whatever it was passed above and beyond them. Two hallways and three flights of stairs later, she hissed for silence and a bright light, buzzing softly, passed by. Mother Graine explained neither, only made sure they continued to descend. Several other times she stopped as though she was lost, but the pauses were brief.
Finally, at the end of a short hallway they reached a heavy iron door. Mother Graine nodded. In there. David reached out, touched it and He blinked, on his backside. Margaret and Kara were shouting at Mother Graine, all he could hear was the heavy thudding of his heart.
“I’m all right,” he said.
Every eye turned to him. He shook his head. “I’m all right.”
“I should have warned you,” Mother Graine said. “The door’s charged.”
“Yes, you should.” David tried to stand, fell back. “How much of a charge?”
“Enough to kill most people.”
“Wouldn’t that have been convenient?”
“Honestly, yes.” She smiled. “Quite frankly, I still can’t believe that you touched it and survived.” She gestured at the panel beside it. “It will only open to my touch, I am afraid.”
“Do what you have to,” Kara said.
The door opened to a room chilled to almost freezing. The room felt at once vast and small, it extended beyond sight in all directions from the wall, and there was something wrong about all that space. David could feel forces at work that warped reality.
Within a dozen yards of them was a cage made of cast iron. Inside, barely moving, seven women stood, their clothes torn and bloody. Despite the cold, David could sense it. Just as he had sensed it in Hardacre, only here it was stronger, almost choking in its potency.
A taste at once familiar and wrong. Here? he thought.
Kara let out a cry. “What have you done, old woman?” She spat, “What have you done?”
She moved towards the cage. David's hand swung out, and he caught her by the wrist. Kara tried to yank her hand free, and he could feel the strength of her: the rough consequence of years of working the ropes, suspended above the air, of climbing and scrubbing, of being everything that a pilot must be; but now, right now — earned or not — he was stronger.
David said, “Stop, look at their mouths.”
Darkness gathered and fluttered there, moving slowly, circling the heat of their breaths.
“Witmoths,” Mother Graine said. “Kara, I did nothing. The moths arrived with some of the Aerokin from Hardacre. It’s a tougher breed, capable of resisting the cold, but not this cold. I had to bring them here, lost two more sisters to it on that screaming mad descent into stone. Men and women died to bring them to these depths. Cadell, we never had the resistance to them that you do. Our blood burns hot like Cuttlefolk, not cold.” She touched David’s wrist. “I am the only one left.”
“And you cage them,” David said. “How dare you cage them? Death is the only honour left to them.”
Mother Graine straightened, her eyes hardened, and her lips thinned. “You know nothing of cages,” Mother Graine said. “Not yet, and when you do, you will rethink the horror of this.”
“I know enough to-”
One of the mothers opened its eyes and stared at Margaret. “There you are,” it breathed. “There you are.” It spun its head towards David, joints cracking in its neck, and hissed. “Saaaa! And there you are, too. We’re coming for you.”
“Of course you are,” David said.
The Roiling blinked. Witmoths crawled from its eyes, fluttered towards David. He lifted a hand, killed them with a touch, though it had him sweating, a briny cold prickle of sweat. The room weakened him, separated him from the great Engine in the north. Every second that passed accentuated that.
“I'm not meant to be here.” He turned to Mother Graine and the others. “We have to go, now.”
They fled that great hall then. The door shutting behind them, and with it closed, David felt his strength return.
“So now you know,” Mother Graine said quietly.
Kara grabbed Mother Graine by her collar and yanked her close. “You kept this hidden. You’ve left them like that.”
“What else was I supposed to do, child?”
“I’m no more your child than any of us. You did not trust your people to this, how can we trust you?”
Mother Graine sighed. “And tell my people what? That they are doomed? That there is no hope? There’s honesty and then there is madness.”
Kara’s face did not soften. She looked like she was going to be sick. She pushed the Mother of the Sky away. “Get us to the Dawn. We have to leave this madhouse. I can’t take another moment of it.”