He nodded. “I don’t need much, I’d think. Just a bite. Enough to level off the sudden dip in my blood.”
Nodding, she headed upstairs to fetch the lockbox from her backpack. There was a partly eaten cube in the box, so she brought that one back down. While he bit into the crumbly, gray, meaty-sweet mineral, chewing on it like it was a block of candy brittle, she took over the task of heating the bathwater. Her Fire affinity wasn’t as strong as his, but it could and did get the job done.
By the time the water was steaming visibly, Kiers felt much better. Setting the rest of the cube on the table, he asked her, “So, who’s first in the water. You or me?”
“You, I think.” Shaking the excess water from her hands, Vee reached for one of the toweling cloths they had found stored in a chest upstairs. “I’d like to take the portable aetherometer up to the ridgeline and see if I can pick up a signal up there. I think the mountains are blocking the aether rays. Earth and Air are opposites, after all. Besides, if you go first, I can have a fresh hot bath to warm up myself when I get back. Just let the woolens soak in tepid water for now. Don’t scrub them hard or heat the water, or they’ll start to shrink.”
That spoiled his plans for having her wash his back, but he had to admit her words held logic. “I’ll wait until you’ve bundled up and set out, then. Take the ice tunnel to the trees, to make sure no one spots you flying up from the cabin itself.”
Nodding, she headed for the front room, and the little entryway that held her coat and boots.
CHAPTER FIVE
By the time she came back, almost two hours had passed. Kiers had occupied himself with gingerly cleaning their clothes and hanging them to dry on a rack near the hearth, then dumping the used water down the basin drain and refilling the bathing tub with thon-heated water. When that was done, leaving him with nothing to do but wait, he perused their notes some more and borrowed some of the hunter’s paper to write down new speculations of his own, trying not to worry as her absence grew longer.
Finally, he saw movement through the cracks in the window shutters of Mister Horgen’s study nook. They had decided to keep those shutters closed so that no one could casually peer in at them. A bit of neck-craning and body-twisting allowed him to see a bit of gray skirt and scuffed white boot just before he heard the front door open. Relieved, he moved around to the entry door and poked his head through.
“Is everything alright?” Kiers asked her.
She shook her head. “Yes and no.” Her blue gray eyes were sober as she drew off her coat and cap, hanging them on the pegs above the bench at her side. “I sat up there for a while, searching on various frequencies on the aetherometer to be thorough, and picked up a sending from Najora. You know, the kingdom to the west?”
He nodded, worry drawing up several scenarios. “Have they somehow agreed to declare us fugitives there? Father didn’t have very many trade contacts in that land. Not this far north. We only traded with Triona’s king because of our librarian’s shared interest in ancient legends.”
She shook her head. “No, nothing like that. I picked up two things, one following the other. The first one was the casting from Najora. The people of the hexisle just on the other side of these mountains, Provender township, are reporting earthquakes . . . and signs of cracks along its edges. Signs of an uplift beginning. We have maybe a year before the Vull is sundered in the turnover as hexisles everywhere start to rise and fall.”
Kiers absorbed that as she bent and unbuttoned her boots. “That’s . . . That is going to create a great deal of upheaval everywhere. The records from a century ago spoke of hysteria, of people rushing to try and claim land on the hexisles starting to lift, of the townships going to war to fight off the influx of too many refugees . . . Which makes me think of the guards after us. Did you hear anything from them? You said you heard two things.”
Vee nodded. Handing him the backpack, she mounted the steps into the cabin proper, slipping her stocking-clad feet into the wool-lined boots as she spoke. “The sending from Najora’s aetherometer operators was an ongoing report, one being cast far and wide since this is news that’ll affect the whole world. But I found news on the other frequency, the ones the guards had last used. I didn’t get the original message they sent down the line, but I did overhear the return message from Jade Mountain, a response to their query as to what to do about the coming uplifts. They’re being recalled.”
“Recalled?” Kiers repeated, astonished. He followed her as she headed for the kitchen and the promised hot bath. “But . . . after all the time and resources they’ve poured into finding us . . . I don’t get it.”
“Did your family ever speak of a ‘Project Skyloft’?” she asked, trying to unbutton her blouse with cold fingers. She tried three times before giving up. “Bother. My hands need to warm up, first. Ironic, as I’m trying to get warm in a bath.”
“Here, let me,” Kiers offered, nudging her hands out of the way. He unbuttoned her clothes as he had last night, adding little caressing touches as he helped her remove each layer. “As for the project . . . I vaguely remember a Project Skyloft from when I was young. Something about an experiment in mathematics to see how many airship lofts filled with thonite it would take to keep a hexisle afloat.
“If I remember correctly, my brother had discerned that it would be impossible because the number of lofts needed to lift an entire diamond of stone one hundred miles wide would require more airship lofts than could be safely tethered in place. The surface of the island would get no sunlight whatsoever from the sheer coverage of the balloons.”
He removed her knickers, the last impediment. Vee blushed, but the heat radiating from the fire and the thought of soaking in hot water overrode modesty. “Do you remember anything else?”
Helping her into the tub, he thought about it for a few moments. “My other sister said that since we know thonite gas, which permeates the black rock of the hexisle, is what causes it to float, then it had to be some sort of alchemical interaction between that specific type of rock and the thonite itself. In order to make the hexisle float, you’d have to pump the gas back into the hexisle at great pressure to force it through the matrix and cause the enhanced lofting effects. She’s always been interested in chemistry. In fact, there have already been some experiments conducted on the underside to try just that, though I’ve been told they were eventually abandoned because of costs.”
Vee nodded. She was a little embarrassed to be completely naked before him, but was too cold not to appreciate the assistance. Sinking into the water, she frowned a little. “It’s not very hot in here.”
Kneeling beside the tub, Kiers smirked. Rolling up his sleeves, he tensed his toes and dangled his fingers in the water. “I realized while I was waiting if I made it too hot to start off, your chilled tender bits might get hurt. So . . . let me know when things get too hot, hmm?”
The way he dropped his gaze to her breasts, barely covered by the water filling the short but deep tub, let her know he meant it in other ways, too. She blushed again, thinking of his promise regarding tonight, and forced herself to finish her news before she forgot.
“Anyway, the soldiers have all been recalled from our trail and sent off on ‘Project Skyloft’ instead. I couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like they were being told to go and buy up all the reserves of thonite cubes they could find and afford. The signal was never very clear, compared to the one I was receiving from Najora. We know their aetherometer is much bigger and stronger than ours, since they have it mounted on that airship of theirs,” she added, “and they can send a signal all the way to the south—and the water is quite warm now, thank you.”