There were no guns any more. Thesk’s artillery had gone quiet. The Navy frigates dipped towards the earth in eerie, graceful silence as their aerium tanks vented, or ploughed into one another with stately momentum. The fighters, in contrast, were like fireflies, looping crazily, flashing where they exploded. A slow rain of burning metal was falling towards the hills and the city below, in thin fiery streams or colossal blazing chunks.
Pinn stared down in wonder, the flames reflected in his eyes as he drank in the sight greedily. From on high, the sheer scale of it was magnificent. He felt godlike. He’d never seen such beautiful destruction in all his born days.
‘We won,’ he whispered to himself. Then, louder: ‘We won!’
The Coalition Navy fell into disorder and ruin behind them, and the Awakener convoy ploughed on towards the capital.
Crake watched from the gallows with tears in his eyes. All around him, soldiers were shouting, and there were cries of despair. But all he felt was terrible, terrible sadness.
Hundreds of aircraft. Thousands of lives. And we couldn’t stop it.
The wind blew around the crag that the palace stood upon, bringing the sound of distant detonations as Coalition craft smashed into the earth. In the streets surrounding the palace, fires had begun. The battle had been fought to the east of the city, and most of the aircraft fell on the hills, but there had been a few flying overhead when the Azryx device was activated, and others had strayed from the battlefield. He watched as a light passenger craft made a shallow dive into a row of houses. It disappeared from view, and flame bloomed where it hit.
Rain began to fall. It came quick and heavy, as if someone had turned on a shower. Cold, stinging rain, falling on his face and shoulders, soaking him.
‘Drave!’ Malvery screamed in rage. ‘Do you bloody well believe us now?’
But Drave wasn’t listening to him. He was shouting at the soldiers. ‘To your positions! We have a city to defend!’
‘Get me out of these shackles, Drave, you idiot son of a bitch!’ Samandra yelled at him.
Drave motioned at a soldier, who ran over with the key and freed her. ‘You three!’ he said, motioning towards the Century Knights. ‘With me! Protect the Archduke!’
Samandra ignored him. She shook off her shackles and ran up to the gallows, where she tugged the noose from around Crake’s neck. He looked at her, shock and bewilderment in his eyes.
She read his thoughts. ‘Hey!’ she shouted. ‘It ain’t over! You hear? It ain’t over till it’s done!’ And she kissed him, hard enough to hurt.
‘Little help for the rest of us?’ Malvery cried in exasperation, struggling to get his head out of his own noose.
Grudge and Kyne pushed past their guards and hurried to the gallows, where they took the nooses from around the necks of the Ketty Jay’s crew and untied the ropes that bound their hands.
‘Century Knights!’ Drave bellowed from the doorway, his face running with rain. ‘Have you forgotten the oaths you swore?’
Grudge and Kyne looked at one another, then at Samandra. She was still staring into Crake’s eyes, her hands on his cheeks. He saw her face in front of him, but he couldn’t make sense of it all. Everything seemed dull and dreamlike to him. It couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t be. The fall of the Coalition. The end of everything he’d known.
‘I gotta go,’ she said to him. ‘Sorry, honey. I gotta go. I swore an oath.’
‘Samandra Bree!’ Drave yelled. ‘Are you a Century Knight or aren’t you?’
She bit her lip. Tears welled, but didn’t fall. ‘I gotta go,’ she said, and she ran. Crake reached for her, from instinct more than reason, but she was gone. By the time he looked around, the four Century Knights were on their way out of the courtyard. The soldiers had poured out with them. Only the crew were left, standing on the gallows, drenched by the hissing rain. None of them knew quite what to do with their newfound freedom.
‘Well?’ snapped Silo. ‘Ain’t none of us dead today. Get movin’!’
Malvery rounded on Ashua, who was standing a little way apart from the group. ‘Her too?’ he said. She flinched slightly at his tone.
‘Ain’t the time, Doc. She one of us till the Cap’n says otherwise.’
Malvery turned to Frey. ‘Cap’n?’
Frey looked back at him, and his eyes were dead. ‘Right now there’s only one single thing in this world I give a shit about, and she’s waiting on the landing pad.’ He looked up into the grey, oppressive sky, and at the convoy of Awakener craft coming closer. ‘Let’s get out of this damn rain.’
Thirty-Seven
By the time they reached the landing pad, the Awakeners were bombing the city.
Malvery huffed and puffed and cursed when he had the breath to do so. If only he was a younger man; younger and fitter and not so fond of drink. But the city needed him now. His country needed him. He pulled up his belt and staggered on in the wake of the others.
The landing pad was in chaos. Rain lashed the scene. Aircraft crew ran here and there, sodden grey ghosts in the downpour. Many hadn’t been privy to the news of the Awakeners’ secret weapon, and they had no idea why the Navy had fallen from the sky. Now they swarmed frantically over their aircraft, worrying at maintenance panels or stabbing buttons, unable to understand why the engines wouldn’t start.
Beyond the high walls that surrounded the landing pad, past a squat tower with wrought-iron balconies and a copper dome, Malvery could see the Awakener fleet spreading over the city like a vast black hand. And he saw the bombs, little pellets of death tumbling from the bellies of the frigates towards the streets below.
They’re bombing us! he thought in outrage. Bombing their own people!
The dull crump of distant explosions came to him, and made his blood boil. Vard against Vard. Countryman versus countryman, who so recently had fought side by side against the Sammies. He couldn’t wrap his head around it. Not since the Ducal Rebellion had such a thing happened, one hundred and fifty years ago. And yet even as that civil war ended, the seeds were being sown for a new one. For it was the followers of the deposed king who became the first Awakeners, turning his mad scrawlings into prophecy. And that had brought them to this.
Malvery was a man who let life happen to him rather than imposing himself upon it. Yet this was too much, even for him. Good men and women, in their ignorance, were fighting on the side of daemons to depose their Archduke. It was madness, and it had to be stopped.
They ran across the landing pad towards the Ketty Jay. No one paid them any attention. He caught Ashua’s eye as she ran alongside him, and there was fear of him in her gaze, and something like hope. She was puppyish in her shame, desperate for his forgiveness. But he looked away. She’d hurt him too much for that.
He’d begun to think of her as a daughter. He couldn’t help it. Even that tattoo all over the side of her face looked to Malvery like the mark of an insecure adolescent staking her place in the world. He’d hugged her to his breast, and she’d bitten him.
Did you know what you were doing? he thought. Were you working for the Sammies all along?
He could hardly bear the sight of her. And yet each time he wounded her with his scorn, it stung him just as badly. What a damned soft-hearted old fool he was.
Frey ran up to a panel on one of the Ketty Jay’s landing struts and punched in a code. The cargo ramp hissed open, and they hurried in out of the rain. Malvery came last. He was halfway up the ramp when a flash of lightning flickered behind the clouds, illuminating a black frigate sliding through the sky in the distance. A rolling grumble of thunder passed overhead.