Abarat: Absolute Midnight

Chapter 61

Missing

“GRANDMOTHER?”

Mater Motley had put her hand, palm out, against the battle- deck window. Though her head was bowed, Carrion could see her anguished features reflected in the smoke-smeared glass.

“What . . . have they got?” she said.

“I don’t understand,” Carrion told her.

She, very slowly, looked round at him. There was naked disgust on her face, either at her own lack of foresight or at her grandson’s stupidity, perhaps both.

“Do you not feel the barbs raking your skin?”

Carrion considered the question, looking down at his hands as he did so, as though to silently interrogate them.

“No,” he said. “I feel nothing.”

Then his eyes went up to his glass collar. Inside, he saw his remaining nightmares were behaving strangely. Depending on circumstances, they behaved in one of two ways. When feeling peaceable, they slowly swam around, warily studying the world outside their dreamer’s collar. When they were aroused, however, either by rage or a desire to protect their maker, they would lash and thrash like electric whips, causing the fluid they all breathed to become milky and laced. But now they were doing something they’d never done before. They were perfectly still, the entire length of their bodies pressed against the glass, so as to be as close to their window as possible.

“Whatever it is you’re feeling, my children are feeling too.”

“Your children?” Mater Motley said, her expression of disgust souring with contempt.

“Yes, dearest Grandmama. I know you much prefer to burn your children and their children, but I take pleasure in the company of mine.”

“You’d do well to remember that you were the one I kept from the flame, do you not?”

“It’s never far from my thoughts,” Carrion replied. “Truly. I know I owe you my life.” The Empress’s expression sweetened at this. “As I do my scars.” And quickly soured again. “As I do my purpose. My very reason for living.”

“And what is your purpose?”

“To serve you, lady,” Carrion said.

He met her gaze, his eyes the color of the midsummer sea—a gleaming, glittering blue that concealed unfathomable depths: black, blacker, blackest.

All but one of his children that had retreated to the inside of his collar had detached themselves, and were now looking at her. Did they understand the meaning of the conversation between the old woman and their master? Did they understand her contempt and his subtle mockery? It seemed they did. When he ceased to study her, they too looked away, returning their gaze as did he, to the new form out the window.

The vessel hawked up another limb of lightning, and spat it down upon the bleak flank of Mount Galigali. The force of the strike threw up a cloud of vaporized rock in the midst of which fell a hail of lava boulders, which would have beaten holes in a vessel less well designed than the Stormwalker. A number of them struck the battle-deck window, but for all her sensitivity to the nuances in the air, the assault of shattered stones didn’t perturb the Empress in the least. She simply stared unthinking out at the billows of pulverized rock pressing against the battle-deck window.

“Call in the Commanders,” she instructed Carrion. “Quickly now!”

k

This time, Candy knew, there would be a kind of thunder to follow the lightning. It wouldn’t be the rolling growl of burning air, but the boom of guns.

Mater Motley wasn’t going to let her prisoners go without a fight.

“Candy? Candy!”

It was easy enough to identify the speaker: it was Zephario. But it was a lot more difficult to work out precisely where he was located. She had lost contact with him as the construction of the glyph had escalated, and she’d almost forgotten, in the heat of the moment, the deal that she’d made with him. He had given her the means to make this escape possible, in exchange for her attempting to connect him with his lost child. He had kept his side of the bargain, and now it was her turn. It had to happen immediately. There’d be no other time.

“Gazza,” she said. “I’m going to have to leave you in charge of getting this glyph and everyone inside it away from Mater Motley. Do whatever you have to do.”

“Where are you going?”

“To keep my promise.”

“Are you crazy?” Gazza said.

“A promise is a promise.”

“Even when you make it to a Carrion?”

“He can hear you, you know.”

“I don’t care,” Gazza said. “He’s going to get you killed. And I—” He growled, his brow in knots. “Why can’t I—can’t I?”

“We have to go,” Candy said.

“I have stuff to say.”

“Then say it.”

“I love you,” Zephario said.

“Oh?” said Candy. “Well, that’s sudden.”

“I’m speaking for the young fellow here.”

“Oh,” Candy said matter-of-factly. Then, comprehending, “Oh. You do?” she said to Gazza.

“Yes,” Zephario replied again. “He loves you with every last bone in his body,” Zephario replied.

Gazza smiled confidently. “There’s more,” he said.

“There’s no time for more,” Zephario said.

The look of confidence had gone from Gazza’s face. His eyes looked at Candy, ashamed of the young man who stared out from behind them, unable to say the words.

“Zephario and I need to go,” Candy said.

Gazza simply nodded.

“I’ll be safe up there.” They looked at each other. “I wish it was different,” she said, staring at his sadness with her own. “You know what I mean—”

“Yes.”

And his knowing was enough for her. Maybe there’d be another time, when things were different. But for now . . .

“I’ll see you soon, then. . . .” Candy said, and with perfect timing the glyph released her, extending its own structure twenty feet or so, allowing her to drop down below, without injury, onto the shattered ground of Mount Galigali.

The Empress had begun to give her instructions. Time was of the essence, she let it be known. Time, and that the job be done flawlessly.

“In a few moments,” she told her Commanders, “the Stormwalker will emerge from the cloud of volcanic dust that the lightning limb has caused to temporarily blind the vessel. At which point,” she went on, “I will have a comprehensive view of the site of execution. We should expect some minor attempts to resist. These people have foolishly tried to live by their own laws, refusing to obey the judgments laid down by their superiors. Obviously no Empire can sanction the presence of such individuals in its midst. They will—”

“Leave before their executioners arrive?” Carrion suggested.

“Do you find this funny?”

“No, Grandmother, I believe what you say is absolutely correct, and these iconoclasts should be executed. But—”

“But nothing. A knife for every heart, remember?”

“Of course.”

“Well?”

“You have the knives, I realize. But regrettably the hearts have already departed.”

“Impossible.”

The vessel was emerging from the smoke now, and what Carrion could see was visible to a growing number of soldiers. The camp was empty. The prisoners had gone.

“Where are they?” she said, quietly at first. Then more loudly: “They were here! Six thousand, six hundred and ninety-one prisoners! The gates are still closed. THEY WERE HERE!”

“Two of them are still here,” one of the commanders—a small, gray-skinned stitchling called Chondross—pointed out.

“The compound is empty.”

“They’re not in the compound any longer, my lady,” Chondross told her. “They’re down there on Galigali.” The stitchling pointed out of the window down at the boulder-strewn slope. “Do you see them?”

“It’s Candy Quackenbush,” Carrion said.

“Of course it would be her,” the Empress said. “She was bound to be in this chaos somewhere.”

“Who’s with her?”

“It doesn’t matter. Whoever he was, he shouldn’t have gotten so close to her. It will be the death of him. I need a gunner!” she demanded.

No sooner had she uttered the words, than one stitchling called out: “Empress. I have the gunner ready at the bows. She has acquired your target.”

“Gunner?” the Empress yelled.

The gunner’s image appeared.

“Here, my Empress,” she said.

“Targets,” Christopher said.

“Ah, there you are,” the Empress said. “Two stupid animals standing in our way. Thank you, Christopher.”

“My pleasure, Empress. And my duty. Shall I have them killed?”

The image of Candy Quackenbush and her traveling companion came up on the Window. The latter had been extensively scarred—his face little more than a rigid mask of disfigured tissue; out of which he gazed blindly. Despite his maiming there was something in the man’s bearing that caused Mater Motley to hold back for a few moments.

“I have the target in my sights, Empress. Shall I fire?”

“Wait . . .”

She brought the Window closer to her so as to better study the mask of scar tissue for some clue as to the face it had been, before its destruction by—

“Fire,” she murmured.

It was a simple, stupid mistake. Gunner Gh’niemattah had been trained to respond to an order without hesitation. The syllable her Empress uttered was barely audible, but she responded to the sound of that one syllable by simply pulling the trigger.

It was impossible not to be astonished by the speed with which the girl from the Hereafter and the blind man beside her were erased by bursts of brilliance as each rocket found its target.