The Nightmare Garden

4 The Sea of Dreams

IN MY DREAM, I was still alone. But this time, the skyline of Lovecraft had faded into the distance, and I saw it like a mirage on the horizon, shimmering. I stood in a room, the floor inlaid with silver, a star map of constellations I had never before laid eyes on. Alien stars, from an alien sky.

Before me stood a figure twice as tall as I, only a shadow, smooth and without feature. I stayed still, unsure of my footing in the dream. I always felt only vaguely attached to my dream-body, as if my mind were floating free in the void of outer space and my body were waiting back on Earth.

Behind the figure, a great gear rose, half of it above the platform on which we stood. Above us, a hundred skies turned by, sunrises and sunsets, skylines and the blackness of space. And in those skies things twisted and writhed, great tentacles of darkness coming down to merge and mingle with the shadow figure before me.

I found I could speak, which wasn’t always the case in these madness dreams—for that was surely what this was, brought on by the iron of Windhaven. “Where am I?”

The figure stared back impassively. I knew he was staring, despite his lack of eyes or any features at all. I could feel his gaze, hot and penetrating. Beyond him, beyond the gear and the platform, the skies spun faster. They were more than skies now—it was as if we were inside a giant dome and lanternreels in the thousands and millions were projected onto the glass sides.

“Where am I?” I asked again.

The figure reached out a hand. It was fathomless, black smoke in the shape of a human thing, and I felt cold emanate from the shadow as it drew closer to me. The tentacles writhed faster, lashing, and from all around us came a great moaning, which vibrated the dome to its core and came up through my feet into my bones.

Who are you? the figure hissed. Why did you come here?

“You tell me,” I whispered, my lips barely able to move from the frozen air of the dream and my own fear. This felt too strong, too real, to be purely a result of the iron around me. The madness was getting worse. I was starting to believe my own dreams. I dug my fingers into my palms, but in this dream place, I felt no pain. That didn’t soothe my worries any.

“I don’t know where here is,” I said. The great gear behind the figure began to turn, and as it did the tentacles retreated, the black figures floating in the skies shrinking away. In my ears, and through the dome, a thousand screams echoed.

You shouldn’t be here, the figure told me. This isn’t your dream. This isn’t a dream at all.

Then, as if I’d fallen from a great height, I snapped awake.

My head was throbbing, and it was dark in the room when I opened my eyes. For a moment I didn’t know where I was, and then it all came back to me. I slumped against the pillow. My clothes, none too clean to start, were soaked with sweat. That had been a bad one. Usually my encroaching madness didn’t talk back to me in my dreams.

I fumbled around until I found the aether lamp above the bed and turned the valve, the blue glow filling the tiny room. I took the uniform the Erlkin had left for me and stripped out of my filthy skirt and sweater, all the way down to nothing. I took my underthings into the water closet and ran hot water into the basin, washing them and leaving them on the towel bar to dry. While they dripped I stepped into the copper stall and let the trickle from the pipe above wash the grime off my skin.

The Erlkin didn’t skimp on amenities for their guests, and I wrapped a fluffy Turkish towel around myself and a smaller one around my damp hair in an effort to keep it from blowing up like a thundercloud.

I looked out the porthole again, but there was nothing now except night, a row of running lights on the hull streaming away from me like fireflies in the blackness.

When the hatch rattled again, I shrieked and spun, pulling the towel up to my chin. “Who’s there!” I demanded, casting around for something to throw or prod the intruder with.

“Whoa, princess,” Dean said, ducking through the hatch and shutting it. “Shhh. Nobody knows I’m here.”

“Dean,” I breathed in relief. Dean took in the scene, and me. Wrapped in a towel.

“Oh,” he said. “Sorry about that.”

“Do you knock?” I demanded, tightening my grip on the towel.

A slow smile grew on Dean’s face. “Don’t make a habit of it.” He cleared his throat, making a visible effort to keep his eyes fastened on my face. “This isn’t exactly going to convince me to start, you know.”

“You’re terrible,” I said, trying to collect the clothes the Erlkin had left for me and slide into the water closet, while at the same time hiding the warmth his stare brought to my cheeks.

Dean smiled wider. “Isn’t that why you like me so much?”

“Right now I’m not sure I like you at all,” I teased, shutting the door but for a crack, so Dean and I could still talk.

“You sure riled my mother,” he said, his shadow falling across the opening. I unfolded the clothes—brown pants with a wealth of pockets and a plain white high-collared shirt and dust-colored uniform jacket. They were patched and smelled of a cedar chest, but they fit when I slipped them on, and they were clean. By my standards lately, bliss.

“I don’t think she liked me very much,” I said, opening the door again. “Or at all.” I met his eyes. “Did you say something to her about Conrad and me? Is she going to let us go? I’m not angry, if you did. I understand she’s your mother, but I need to know.” Needed to know that Dean was as loyal as I’d always thought, and that he wasn’t the reason I was locked up in Windhaven with Shard looking for an excuse to jettison me out a hatch.

Dean was a good liar. He had eyes the color of silvery thunderheads, changeable and unpredictable and impossible to truly fathom. But he’d never lied to me. Not when it mattered.

“Course I didn’t, princess,” he said easily. “My mother is just sneaky that way—I could never put anything past her either. She’s also calculating, and she’s not dumb. She’ll realize you’re not a Fae spy and your brother isn’t a criminal. She’s our best tracker and the captain of Windhaven—she answers to the Wytch King only. She and a few other generals are just under him in terms of who bosses around the rest of the Erlkin. Everything will be all right once she gets her nose back into joint.”

He couldn’t even look at me when he said it. Well, I supposed there was a first time for everything—first kiss, first touch against bare skin, first lie. At least I could hope the part about him not ratting us out was true. I thought it probably was—Dean hadn’t seemed overly fond of his mother when we’d talked about her, and I certainly didn’t tell my mother everything. Or anything, because it didn’t matter to Nerissa in her madness anyway.

When I didn’t reply at once, Dean put his index finger under my chin and raised my face to his. “Hey. You believe me, don’t you, princess?”

“Sure,” I lied right back, amazed at how easily it came to my tongue. “It’ll all get straightened out, I guess.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” Dean said with a forced joviality that wasn’t like him. Dean didn’t smile when there was no reason to smile, and he didn’t lie to me—except now. Before I could decide whether to confront him or hold off until I’d discovered a sure way out of this flying iron hellhole, Dean drew me into his arms and pressed his lips to mine. “It’ll be okay, Aoife,” he murmured against my mouth. “I promise, all right? No matter what happens, I’ve got you.”

I kissed him back, because even when I was frustrated and wary, Dean had an effect on me I couldn’t fully explain. He made me light-headed and dizzy, wanting nothing but to taste him and keep tasting him until I’d had my fill. He made me need him, with his taste and his scent and his beautiful eyes, and I realized I had to just not think about what had happened for a few minutes and be with him.

Outside in the corridor, footsteps and voices stopped us from doing more than lying back on the narrow bunk. “I’m going to bug out. I really don’t want to play the scene with my mother if she catches me in here.” He looked for a moment as if he’d kiss me again, but then he rolled off the bed and stood, the usual edgy tension stringing back into his body. “I’ll see you later, Aoife.”

“Dean,” I said, as he put his hand on the hatch. “Tell me the truth. What’s going to happen to Conrad and me?”

Dean raised his shoulders, and I could tell that he was done stretching the truth. “It’s not good, Aoife. The Fae and the Fae-blooded don’t have any friends here.” His eyes darkened. “But I won’t let them hurt you. I’ll take Windhaven to the ground first.”

“I hope it won’t come to that,” I said as he spun the hatch open. We both jumped when we were confronted with Skip’s ever-sneering face.

“Well, look at you, Nails,” he said. “Still sniffing around the henhouse, are ya, even though the bird’s been naughty?”

“Go jump off a high spire,” Dean snapped. “I can talk to Aoife any time I want.”

I blushed, sure Skip could tell exactly what had been happening before Dean opened the door. His smirk didn’t argue with my assumption.

“You sure can,” he said, “but you’ll be doing it during an audience with the king.” Skip reached past Dean and grabbed me. I yanked against him reflexively and I fought the urge to punch him.

Skip overpowered me easily, giving a laugh when Dean snarled at him. “Come on, princess,” he said in a pitch-perfect mockery of Dean’s voice. “The Wytch King wants to speak with you.”

He dragged me off by the arm before either Dean or I could object, and all I could see when I looked back were Dean’s worried eyes, cloudy and uneasy as wind-driven storm clouds.

After a nerve-racking minute, Dean caught up with us. My feet barely touched the metal plates that comprised the floors of Windhaven. Skip’s stride was long and quick, and my arm burned where he grabbed it. “You’re a lucky little human,” he told me. “One of the few to ever lay eyes on the Wytch King.”

I managed to keep my voice steady, though I was terrified beyond belief. Even Dean had seemed afraid of the Wytch King when he’d finally told me the truth about being half Erlkin and about his people, and Dean wasn’t afraid of anything, that I could see. “What does he want with me?”

“I imagine you interest him,” Skip said. “Or he’s hungry. Erlkin like live meat.” He grinned at me, every tooth like a carving knife.

“Stop it,” Dean growled from behind us. “Right this redhot second.” He pried Skip’s viselike grip off my arm and slid his hand into mine. “The Wytch King doesn’t eat people,” he said to me.

I squeezed his hand. Whatever would happen between us, at least he was here now. I was relieved—without Dean, with my exhaustion and the weight of memory constantly on me, I was about an inch from being a blubbering mess.

“You used to be a lot more fun, Nails,” Skip muttered as we mounted a broad set of steps. The double doors at the top were flanked by two Erlkin in uniform sporting shock rifles.

“And you used to be a lot less of a jerk,” Dean muttered back.

The doors swung back of their own accord, and I was distracted from the imminent fistfight between Dean and Skip by what lay beyond. I’d been expecting a throne room, the sort of thing Cal’s fantasy-story heroes like Conan and Lancelot would enter, hair flowing and swords gleaming. Some grand hall covered in silk from floor to ceiling and emblazoned with noble crests.

Instead, the room was bare, containing only a broad metal table and a long swath of black velvet curtains covering the back part of the vast, echoing chamber.

The Wytch King himself sat in a swivel chair with his back to us, pale hands with pale fingers tapping against the dark, rough leather of his chair. He turned to face us, and I felt my stomach drop as if Windhaven had plummeted from the sky.

The Wytch King’s gaze was silver and pupil-less, glossed over with a mercury sheen that seemed to slip and slither across the surface of his eyes. His lips were black, and his teeth were filed to sharp points. He wore a high-necked black uniform that looked eerily like those the officers among the Proctors wore. He sniffed the air with flattened nostrils, and those silver eyes locked on me. They were the same color as Dean’s, but where Dean’s burned with life and warmth, the Wytch King might as well have been made from clockwork.

I felt a million things in that moment—fear, disgust, the urge to scream. Those were the initial tidal wave of panic, and then my engineer’s brain kicked in. The logical, impassive side that didn’t get scared or confused. I tried to assess how much danger I was actually in, and what I could do to get myself out of it. Not much, came the rapid answer, which started the panic all over again.

“Sir,” Skip said. “The human girl.”

The Wytch King stood, extended his hand to me, and smiled. “Hello, Aoife. I’ve been waiting to meet you.”

I looked at the hand, the nails blackened at the edges with some foreign substance I couldn’t identify. I recoiled at the thought of touching him, but I knew I couldn’t risk angering the Erlkin further. I put my hand in his and gripped it firmly.

His fist closed around mine like a bear trap, and while I struggled, all my fantasies of being resolute and a good ambassador for the Iron Land slipped from my mind and were replaced with the same low-frequency hum of panic that had been present since I’d left my father’s home.

“You aren’t soft,” he said. “Your hands are calloused. Not what I’d expect from a Fae spy.”

“I’m not a spy!” I said hotly, nearly at a shout. Skip’s hand dropped to his weapon and I turned my eyes on him, raising my voice to a real yell. “You want to shoot me, you pasty-faced freak?” I yelled. “Go ahead. Go ahead and do it so you can tell your friends how you stopped the dangerous Fae spy who hasn’t done a thing except try to stay alive.”

I ripped my hand from the Wytch King’s grasp, and his nails left tracks of blood across my palm. My chest was heaving, my vision was tunneled in black, and I could hear my heartbeat roaring in my ears. I didn’t even realize I’d balled up my fists and started for Skip until Dean caught me and spun me into his arms.

“Aoife,” he said against my ear. “Aoife!” again, louder, when I reflexively fought back against his embrace. “You’re bleeding,” Dean murmured. He released me and uncurled my hand to show three long furrows in my skin, oozing blood. “Let me take care of that for you,” he said softly. “Just cool your jets, all right? This is not the place. I know how you feel. But it just isn’t.”

“You know and I know we’re not leaving here,” I said, trying to still the shakes running through me. “They’ve already made up their minds that Conrad and I are working against them.”

The Wytch King began to laugh. It was an eerie sound, more like static crackling over the aether than a sound borne from a living throat. He wheezed for a moment and then slapped his knee. “I like your girl, Nails. Like her very much.” He turned those flat doll’s eyes on me, and once again I felt the chill of something cold and older than I could imagine sweep over me. The Erlkin might not have had the iron affliction or cruel, spiteful streak of the Fae, but they weren’t human, and things like me were prey to them. I was acutely aware of that as the king stared at me.

“It doesn’t change the fact,” he said, “that your brother consorted with slipstreamers, smugglers who weaken our borders by bringing your kind through. And I will not let that go unanswered. I can’t. My people rely on me to keep them safe, just as you rely on Nails.”

“I keep myself safe,” I said, steel creeping into my tone. “I’ve been doing it for a long time.” How dare he imply I was some helpless, sappy girl, cowering in fear unless she had a boyfriend to protect her? The more time I spent with the Wytch King, the more his unpleasantness reminded me of Grey Draven’s. The former Head of Lovecraft, the man who’d tried to use me to lure my father into a trap, had the same single-minded coldness as the Wytch King. I didn’t know if that made the Wytch King more human or Grey Draven less so.

“You welcome some humans,” I challenged the king, spurred by the memory of Draven and his cold-blooded threat to find and exterminate my father, Conrad and anyone else of the Grayson line he could get his hands on when I wouldn’t cooperate with him. “You helped my father.” Maybe if I could convince the Wytch King I wasn’t his enemy, I could wheedle my father’s location out of him. The thought made me stand a little straighter and try to act as if I weren’t a knock-kneed mess. During my life at the Academy, I’d gotten good at pretending such things.

“I did,” the Wytch King agreed. “I helped Archie Grayson, because the enemy of my enemy is my ally, and Archie has never crossed an Erlkin widdershins, which is more than I can say for most of your kind.” He took his seat again, leather and springs creaking under surprising weight. “But you’re not your father, little miss. And if the Fae and that human-shaped stain on the world who calls himself Grey Draven have their say, you’re never going to follow his footsteps through the Gates either.”

This time, the chill I felt had nothing to do with his stare. “How do you know him?” I demanded. Were we in even worse trouble than I thought? Had Draven somehow snowed the Erlkin into an alliance to bring me in, use me as the bait he needed to lure my father?

“We do not voluntarily shut ourselves in a cocoon of superstition like the Fae, Aoife,” said the Wytch King. “Don’t look so alarmed. I’ve heard of what happened in that iron city, the one called Lovecraft. Draven’s made sure your face is plastered across every newsreel there is, and your name spoken hourly on the aether waves. Your disappearing act has become something of an embarrassment to him now that he’s used the disaster to rise through the ranks, according to my spies.”

I had never imagined that Draven would use the destruction of his own city, the city he’d been responsible for, to leverage a promotion with the Proctors, but in retrospect I felt stupid for being so naive. Of course Draven would seize the chance—a supposedly mad terrorist attacks his city, and he, stalwart, picks up the pieces and puts on the brave face. Of course the Proctors would promote him, give him all the power he needed to hunt down the person responsible: me. It fell into place like the worst sort of war machine, efficient, sleek and deadly.

“Draven’s in charge of the Proctors now?” I whispered.

The Wytch King chuckled. “The director, from what I hear. Head of the whole business, making sweeping changes. There’s chatter that he’ll be president someday.”

I felt numb, dizzy, as if I were plummeting. Draven had the ear of the current president of the War Council. Only Inquisitor Hoover, who’d founded the Bureau of Proctors, stood above him.

If I’d thought getting back to Lovecraft would be hard before now, it had just taken on a whole new dimension of impossibility. Never mind the city—I wouldn’t be safe anywhere in the Iron Land where the Proctors had eyes.

Dean squeezed my hand gently, and I could tell by the lines between his eyes that his thoughts had followed the same track. I just felt worse—not only had I destroyed Lovecraft, I’d catapulted Draven into a position of even more power.

Somewhere, that ugly Fae Tremaine was laughing himself sick, I just knew it.

“So, my dear,” said the Wytch King. He raised his fingers and licked my blood delicately from his nails. “I wouldn’t be so anxious to escape Windhaven just yet. Once your brother has had his day in court, you’ll be free to go. Until then, well …” He tilted his head. “Silver-tinged Fae blood or no, it will be very interesting to have humans aboard. Very, very interesting.”

He gestured us out, and with prodding from Skip, we exited the king’s chamber.

Back in the hall, I looked at Dean and asked a question I already half knew the answer to, hoping he’d say something different. “Do we want to be interesting to the Wytch King?”

“Hell no,” Dean said. “Not one little bit.”

“I didn’t think so,” I told Dean with a sigh, before we separated, the brush of his fingers on my cheek the last thing I had to remember him by before Skip took me by the arm.

I let him take me back to my room, playing the part of the good little human girl, even though I was more determined than ever to be anything but. Anything but the Fae spy the Erlkin believed me to be. Anything but the simple, pliant girl Grey Draven wanted to think I was. That wasn’t going to fix anything, wasn’t going to find my father and free Conrad. And it wasn’t going to save my mother.

After I calculated that enough time had passed for most of Windhaven to be asleep, I tried the hatch of my room again. Using my Weird here was rolling the dice—the madness could find a way in as easily as my gift—but I felt the lock give quickly when I applied the force of my mind to it. My nose didn’t even start bleeding, as it had been wont to do in the past. I felt a brief boil of nausea in my guts, and thankfully, that was all. I was relieved. Knocking myself down would defeat the whole purpose of using my gift in the first place.

I didn’t know precisely where I was headed, I just knew I couldn’t let the Erlkin treat me like a prisoner any longer. And the more of Windhaven I saw and mapped in my mind, the easier it would be for me to get Conrad and escape when the time came.

I was sure it would come to that. I had a feeling, heavy in my chest, that arriving under the purview of the Erlkin had irretrievably left me in their web.

Windhaven’s lower decks appeared to be constructed like those of a seagoing ship, with layers of hulls and corridors stacked next to one another, like a heart with chambers too numerous to count. Brass ladders led from one level to the next, and I began to see repeats in the Erlkin symbols—numbers or levels, in diminishing order as I climbed, fewer and fewer spokes filling in each wheel.

The highest landing I could reach was blocked by a brass hatch, a skull and crossbones stamped straight into the metal. Not a fool, I pressed my hand and ear to the hatch and heard the howl of the wind from the other side. I wagered if I opened it, I’d be swept off Windhaven and meet the ground quickly enough, so I turned and went back down the stairs to the corridor. A series of arrows marked a symbol shaped like a lotus flower, and I followed them as the corridors narrowed around me, until only one hatch remained straight ahead.

It opened before I could put a hand on it to test what was on the other side, and I found Shard’s thin, elfin face and burning eyes glaring down at me. I flinched. This was the exact opposite of what I’d had in mind when I snuck out.

“It took you long enough,” Shard snapped. “How did you get out?”

I backpedaled a step. Her glare felt like a slap. “You were watching me?”

Shard pushed the hatch wider. “We can see all of Windhaven from here.”

I stepped into the room and gasped. Below my feet, the ground fell away, and clouds drifted below the belly of Windhaven. The walls and floors of the room were glass, bulbous petals of glass riveted to the walls along brass veins.

Rising from the glass in the center of the room like the stamens of this odd frozen flower was a pilot console replete with dozens of dials and four rudders that steered the four great fans. To one side sat a bank of dials and knobs marked with more of the strange symbols, and to the other was a wall filled with screens that twitched and danced with images.

Like the lanternreel screens back home in Lovecraft, but writ small. Dozens of them, showing rooms and halls and the exterior hull of Windhaven.

“The aether feeds images from all over Windhaven,” said Shard, “and sends them to the screens here. So yes, we saw you escape, and yes, I saw you with my son.”

She turned to me, but I refused to look away. “And?” I asked her, brash as the criminal she believed me to be. “Have you decided that I’m not a Fae spy? Or are you going to toss me off Windhaven without a parachute? Either way, make up your mind soon. I’m bored being locked in a tiny room on this floating lug nut.”

Shard moved her hand lightning quick and smacked me across the face. It wasn’t hard enough to draw blood, but my cheek stung where she’d struck. I flinched, feeling all my bravery disappear with the pain. I’d tried to act like Dean, but I didn’t have his nerve. Most of my bravery was like fast-burning aether—a bright flame with a quick flare, and then nothing except ashes.

“I hear you managed to impress the Wytch King,” she said. “So you’re probably not a Fae spy, I’ll give you that much. But what you are is a rude, impetuous little girl who can still bring the Fae to us, and for that alone, we’re not letting you leave.”

“ ‘We’?” I said. “You speak for all of the Erlkin?” I wasn’t sure exactly how much power Shard wielded aboard Windhaven, and she certainly didn’t seem to agree with the Wytch King’s assessment of me. This could go either way.

“You’re important to my son,” Shard said, her voice softer. She looked out the front of the bubbled glass, at the fog drifting back from the prow of Windhaven. “And Nails is important to me. I already lost him once when he chose his father over me.” Her eyes drifted back to my face, and I could tell by the coldness in them I was no more substantial to her than the fog outside. “I won’t let it happen again. Not now.”

“I—” I started, but Shard waved her hand.

“Go back to your room, Aoife. Nobody but Windhaven crew is supposed to be up here.”

“I care about Dean,” I blurted. That was a truth I didn’t have to question, ever. Dean, aside from Nerissa and Conrad, was always first in my thoughts. “Just as much as you do. He saved my life. I’m not trying to lead him astray or get him in trouble, but he should be able to have his own life in the Iron Land if he wants it.”

“No, he should not,” Shard said shortly. “Saying that just proves how young and unsuited for Nails you are.” She gestured at one of the Erlkin arrayed around the deck, checking gauges or watching the rudders and the aether screens. “Take Ms. Grayson back to her room. If she won’t stay in it, move her to a holding cell.”

“Yes, Commander,” said the Erlkin, and moved for me. Before she could close her hands around my arm, an alarm began to whoop from the flight console.

“Commander!” the pilot shouted. “Contact on the aether waves! Bearing one-zero-two!”

“Show me,” Shard said tensely. The Erlkin she’d snapped at darted back to her station.

“This ping,” said the pilot, pointing to a radio screen. A large, wavering blob appeared and disappeared under the stroke of the aether detector. “Huge.” She flipped another switch. “And closing in fast.”

I felt the fear return, smooth and cold as an iron ball in my stomach. Whatever was out there in the fog, I knew from the prickles all over my exposed skin that it wasn’t going to be a friendly encounter.

“We’re being hailed!” another Erlkin at the side console shouted.

“Put it through the aethervox,” said Shard. A moment of static blanketed all other sound, and then a voice I thought I’d only hear again in my nightmares barked out of the cloth-covered speakers mounted at the apex of the glass bubble.

“This is Grey Draven, Director of the Bureau of Proctors. You are an enemy vessel, carrying fugitives. You are ordered to heave to and surrender any wanted criminals on board.”

I froze. I couldn’t have moved for anything in the world, no longer able to pretend that Draven wouldn’t find me. Before I’d spoken to the Wytch King, I’d fervently hoped that Draven had died, like so many in Lovecraft, when the Engine was destroyed. Failing that, I’d simply hoped to run forever and never have to look at his face again. But he was out there, in the fog, inexorable, and I was never going to escape.

Draven, while he was alive, was never going to leave me be.

Shard cut her gaze to me, then shoved the radio operator out of the way and depressed the return switch, a finely wrought ebony knob. “You’re out of your depth, Mr. Draven. The Proctors don’t rule here, and no humans are wanted by the likes of you once you cross the borders of the Mists. Go home.”

“I know you have her.” Draven’s voice was precise and flat as a scalpel blade. “Don’t play games with me, you goblin bitch.”

I watched Shard’s back stiffen, but she was all calm as she responded. “Go home, Mr. Draven. I don’t know how you got to the Mists, but leave. There’s nothing for you here.”

Draven laughed. “I came through the Gates, of course. The gates Miss Grayson so kindly ripped asunder when she destroyed the Engine in my city.” A pause, while Shard turned to stare at me. “Oh, I’m sure she didn’t tell you that,” Draven purred. “That she’s the reason for all of this misery. That with her unnatural talents, she sent a pulse of power from the Engine to the Gates so great that it shattered the very fabric between our worlds and all the others, that she destroyed countless innocent lives, that she’s a traitor to her kind, prey to the honeyed words of the Fae.”

Shard took a step toward me, another. Her eyes weren’t flat now. She’d been proven right. I was nothing but a criminal, something foul that had contaminated her little flying world. I was in deep trouble, and began to consider where I could run to. Nowhere good.

“Commander,” said the pilot. “We have visual contact.”

Shard let her gaze wander from me, and we both stared as a dirigible hove out of the mists. It was the largest I had ever seen, a zeppelin with its rigid balloon painted matte black and embossed with the gold seal of the Proctors, raven’s wings stamped just underneath the gear and sickle, the symbol of the Master Builder, the false god Draven and his kind had created to replace magic and religion.

The dirigible was running red lanterns, a color aether took on when it was treated with other chemicals to burn brighter or hotter or longer. The hull was silver and looked like the body of a beast that lived deep under the ocean and only surfaced in legend, when it feasted on what floated above.

Gatling guns swiveled toward Windhaven from the hull, their cylinders turning slowly, and the dirigible was so close I swore I could count the individual bullets waiting to stream forth and puncture the glass bubble we stood in.

Shard swore, a coarse, barking word I didn’t understand but recognized instantly as a curse. “Evasive action,” she snapped. “Get us out of their fire zone!”

“Headwind, Commander,” the pilot said. “We can’t.”

“Do it!” Shard screamed.

“You have a choice, Erlkin,” Draven’s voice purred. “It’s an easy one. Give me Aoife Grayson or I blow that floating scrap heap out of the sky.”

I backed toward the door, desperate to get away from Draven’s voice and the view of his great dark shadow of an airship. If I couldn’t see or hear him, I could pretend this wasn’t happening. Shard wasn’t paying attention to me now. She was screaming orders, and her crew was scrambling to obey.

“I guess you’ve made your choice,” Draven said. “Too bad.” With that, tracers of orange fire streaked across the distance between the zeppelin and Windhaven. One shell shot through the glass of the pilothouse and embedded itself in the far wall. Wind screamed through the opening, and cracks like spiderwebs spread from the hole. Windhaven appeared to be well armored, but Draven’s gunners had been lucky, and the glass fell away in jagged slices as the negative pressure fought with the bullet holes.

“Return fire!” Shard bellowed. “Don’t let them get another shot like that!”

I bumped into the hatch and reached behind me to spin the wheel. My heart was hammering in time with the rounds from the Gatling guns on Draven’s airship. I couldn’t think beyond the cold fact that we had to get off Windhaven before Draven boarded it and found us. If he’d already tracked us here, there was nowhere I could truly hide from him. Draven was relentless. Eventually he’d board Windhaven, and then we’d be, as Cal would put it, screwed up like sugar in the gearbox.

I’d known Draven was depraved and possibly insane, but obsessive enough to track me into a foreign land full of hostile Erlkin? I shuddered to think what he’d do if he actually caught me again.

I slipped out through the hatch, unnoticed by any of the crew, and fled down the corridor, back the way I’d come. Windhaven jolted and swayed under round after round of fire, and there was a shriek followed by a thump that rocked me off my feet, sending vibrations through the entire hull.

Some kind of antiaircraft projectile. Windhaven righted, but I felt a change in the tenor of the turbines. We’d been hit, and a dip in my stomach told me the craft was losing altitude.

Hands took me by the arm and tried to right me, and I swatted at them reflexively.

“Relax!” Dean shouted over the whooping alarms and thudding of projectiles as Windhaven and the dirigible exchanged fire. “It’s me. Just me.”

“Thanks be for small favors,” I said, slumping. “We have to go, Dean. Now.”

His face was grim, and his jaw twitched when he nodded. “Yeah. Figure no good’s going to come of me staying here. My mother can take care of herself.”

I let him pull me to my feet. “Where are Conrad and the others?” I said.

“Cal and Bethina are in the regular cabins like you,” Dean told me. “My mother put Conrad in a holding cell down near the engine room.”

“Of course she did,” I muttered. Nothing could ever be easy on me and my family. “Is there a way we can tell Cal and Bethina how to meet us at the balloon bay?”

“There’s aethervox between the rooms, yeah,” Dean said. We stopped at a red iron box with a symbol stamped on the outside, three lines rising from a triangle. Dean picked up the handset and cranked a knob to bring up power, then turned two dials, one for deck number and one for room.

Erlkin were beginning to fill the corridor around us, rushing to and fro. Nobody paid any attention to me, since I was with Dean and they had more pressing matters, like the ever-increasing tilt of the floor beneath our feet. The hit to the bridge must have been worse than it looked. We were falling, and at a rate of speed that made my stomach float slightly off center, a sick reminder of the impact that awaited us. I’d brought Draven here, and now I’d destroy Windhaven like I’d destroyed Lovecraft—unless I got off the ship and directed Draven’s rage away from the Erlkin. I’d honestly rather be back under his thumb than have the weight of more lives on me.

“Cal!” Dean yelled. “Get the milkmaid and meet us in the balloon docks.” He paused and then rolled his eyes at me. “Why do you think, dummy? Get your ass moving!” He slammed down the handset and turned to me. “I swear, that kid’s thick as two boards. Let’s go.”

“I’m sorry,” I said as we ran against the tide of Erlkin moving toward the bridge and the doors to the outside. “This is my fault.”

“This is no more your fault than mine,” Dean said. “Draven’s the one shooting shells at our hull.”

As if to punctuate his point, an explosion rocked us against one of the curved walls and debris sprayed from a direct hit, filling the air with dust. The fine paneling and polished copper that made up the walls of the corridor and the section of hull beyond bowed and broke, and a shriek of cold air snatched at my hair and cheeks. A smoking hole reaching down into nothing stared back from where I’d been about to place my foot, half the floor and wall gone. Draven was using heavy shells—it took more than mere bullets to punch through inches of iron and rivets.

Dean’s forehead was cut, and blood ran from one of his ears. My own were ringing, like I’d stuck my head inside a bell, and wetness trickled into my left eye. “You’re bleeding!” Dean shouted at me, though I read his lips more than heard him speak.

I swiped at my face and my entire palm came away coated red. “I’m fine!” I shouted back. Whatever had hit me, I could still walk, and that was the important thing. I could panic about the amount of blood when we were away from Windhaven.

We struggled to our feet, and Dean went first along the narrow span of corridor that hadn’t been blown away. To the side was open air, and below I could see down at least four decks, sparks and escaping aether mingling to create tongues of short-lived blue fire amid the twisted wreckage.

“This way,” Dean panted. His voice came to me sounding flat and far away, like a bad connection over the aether.

We reached a stairwell, and looking over the railing dizzied me. We were at least twenty levels up.

“No lifts,” Dean said. “We’re in one and another shell hits …” He clapped his hands together.

“I hope Conrad’s all right,” I said. He had to be. My dazzlingly clever brother, who could escape any trap. He’d be fine. If he wasn’t, I’d lost my only other family and was totally alone. I couldn’t let myself contemplate that right now. I could only run.

Dean didn’t say anything, but he did move faster, taking the stairs two at a time.

The downward journey seemed interminable, especially when I was alone with my own heartbeat and the faint screech of the alarms. Every time Windhaven bounced violently, I had to stop and grab the rail or risk being pitched headfirst off the landing.

“Here,” Dean said at last. “Prison level.”

“Thank stone you know your way around here,” I panted, slowing at last. Dean shrugged.

“I grew up here. Skip and I used to sneak off all the time.”

I tried not to look too surprised. I’d always thought Dean hated the Erlkin side of him, and had pictured him absconding to Lovecraft as soon as he could toddle. But maybe it had been later. Shard’s pain over Dean’s return certainly seemed to indicate that.

By the cells, two Erlkin in uniform carried the same sort of guns Skip and the other soldiers had carried slung across their backs when they’d caught us in the forest. The cells themselves were plain gray doors, each marked, mercifully, with a number rather than a foreign symbol.

“We should evacuate,” one Erlkin was insisting, gripping his gun so tightly I could see the white of his bone through his papery skin. They hadn’t spotted us yet, and I waited in the curve of the corridor with Dean, sharing his breath and smelling the salt of his sweat and the sweetish odor of tobacco that permeated his clothes.

“And do what with the prisoners?” the other Erlkin demanded.

“Hell, I don’t care!” the other said. “Leave their asses behind. Filthy Fae and slipstreamers, the lot of them.”

“Fine,” said the other as another artillery blast shook Windhaven. “Let’s get to the balloons.”

I pulled Dean into an alcove as they passed, but they were beyond caring about a couple of teenagers wandering around. Dean picked up a left-behind manifest hanging on a clipboard and skimmed the sheet of vellum, pointing down the corridor. “Cell nine.”

Relief coursing through me, I ran down the hall and stopped at number nine, peering through the barred window in the top half of the door. Conrad had braced himself against the far wall of the cell, and his face slackened in relief when he saw me.

“Oh, thank stone,” he said. “Get me out of here.”

The lock was a tumbler and a bolt, nine pins, too complicated for me to try to shove with my mind at a time like this. If I had an episode and knocked myself out, I’d be useless, and we’d be sitting ducks for Draven. “Dean!” I shouted. “Keys!”

“They’re not here!” he yelled back. “Guards must’ve taken ’em.” He came down the corridor, looking up as Windhaven shuddered like an animal in the throes of a death rattle. The aether lamps flickered, throwing us from bright to black and back again. “We need to move,” he said. “Before all the evac balloons are gone.”

“Leave me,” Conrad said. “There’s no help for it.”

“No,” I snarled. “We’re not splitting up again—that’s what got us into trouble the first time.” When he opened his mouth to protest, I played my ace. Conrad and I could be equally stubborn, but I was better at changing his mind than he was at changing mine. “Draven is out there, Conrad. He’ll torture you. Throw you in some dark hole.” I’d already lost Nerissa. I couldn’t abandon Conrad to Draven and ever expect to sleep again. If he survived the crash of Windhaven at all.

“Yeah,” Dean said. “Nobody here is going to be your friend if you stay, man. It’s time to motor.”

“Aoife,” Conrad said. “Don’t listen to him. Get out before it’s too late and we’re both back in Draven’s cells.”

“Don’t,” Dean started, pointing at Conrad. “Don’t make your sister feel any worse than she already does.”

“I’m making her feel worse?” Conrad came to the bars, looking for all the world as if they were the only thing preventing him from wringing Dean’s neck. “You little grease monkey, it’s your mother who locked me up in here!”

“Both of you shut up!” I shouted, sick of their arguing. My head throbbed, warning me that all the iron on the prison level was building up in my blood. “Let me think!”

Dean and Conrad stared at me for a moment and then went quiet. They both knew me well enough. I pressed my palm against the door lock and tried to tamp down the panic inside me, control my heartbeat and breath. It wasn’t easy. I felt fragile, as if the frantic racing of my pulse would shatter the delicate vessel of my body.

My Weird came as intolerable pressure against my skull. My vision skewed and filled with the glow of the aether lamps, but I pushed the pain back. I grabbed the pressure and squeezed it out through my pores, my tear ducts, my nose and mouth, funneled the thing in my blood into the lock. It popped open, dead bolt flying back so violently it bowed the iron of the door, which in turn swung back and hit the cell wall with a sound like a gong.

“Come on,” I said, reaching for Conrad, who stood still and glassy-eyed, and grabbing his arm. This was the first time he’d seen me use my Weird, and much as I wanted to know he didn’t think I was a freak, we just didn’t have the time to talk now. He stumbled as I yanked him.

“Jeez, Aoife,” he said. “I’m coming, I’m coming.”

Dean leading the way, we ran toward the balloon bays as fast as the jostling, tilting vessel would allow.

Just before we reached the outer catwalks, which sprang away from Windhaven like a collection of spindly antennae, we ran into Cal. Bethina was with him, clinging to his arm as Windhaven shuddered under our feet, the death throes of the city feeding through the soles of my boots.

“It’s no good in the balloons,” Cal said. “Some got off, but they got shot down. They’re trying to slag the docking arms.”

Indeed, many of the catwalks were wrecked and smoking, just twisted memories of what they’d been. My heart sank to my feet. Draven was going to make me his prisoner again. Torture and interrogate me. Use me to bring in my father.

No.

I dug my fingers into my temples, determined to stop the clawing and whispering of the iron poisoning that tried to seduce me into the frantic, illogical thoughts of end-stage madness.

“Is there another way off?” I demanded of Dean. He nodded.

“There’s emergency craft for the crew and the security force. The last ones off the boat.”

“Good,” I said, already moving. “Let’s get there before somebody else has the same great idea.”

“I don’t know if they’re anything you want to try to escape a hail of gunfire in,” Dean said. “Took one out once when I was a kid and damn near pasted myself against a mountain.”

I kept moving. “We don’t have a choice.” We could either risk dying while getting off the ship or be condemned to something worse when Draven caught us. In my mind, the course was obvious, no matter how slim the chance we’d all survive in one piece might be.

“Agreed,” Conrad said. “We have to run. However we can. If we stay here we’re dead for sure.”

“Okay.” Dean nodded. “Better than no damn plan at all. Come with me.”

Cal grabbed Bethina’s hand, and Conrad brought up the rear. I followed Dean, and we made our way back toward the top of Windhaven so we could fall toward the ground, and freedom.