The King of the Skies Page 4

  “And we’re talking about the King of the Skies,” he went on, “Tyran Burnton. He’s a pirate—”

  “A sky pirate?” Carson’s voice rose in half a question.

  I rolled my eyes. Good observation.

  “—and a Seeker,” Clay finished.

  “And we care about him why, exactly?” Heidi asked flatly. One eyebrow had crept up just a fraction on her forehead. The question, to an outside observer, might seem to be aimed at Clay. But it was directed toward me.

  I didn’t have a stock answer, and nor did I want Clay to explain that Burnton posed a threat to a quest I’d been pursuing for months without telling my friends. If they’d been unhappy with me earlier, I dreaded their reactions to this secret I had withheld.

  Fortunately I was saved by Carson. Face screwed up like he was sucking a lemon, he asked, as if totally unaware that any conversation was ongoing around him, “So how does that work exactly, not having a solid surface on the planet? I mean, I understand the whole airship thing for traveling. But—did you say this Bunson is local to Heartsterror?” Without waiting for an answer—or allowing pause for Clay or me or anyone else to correct his mispronunciation—he continued: “So how did the people there evolve? Without a liquid medium for the chemistry of life to begin, or a solid surface and environmental factors that would guide that evolution in the direction of—”

  “Fantastic,” said Heidi. “My afternoon has swung from being attacked by pixies to Biology 101 lecture.”

  Clay ignored both of them, taking this opportunity to reenter the conversation and put it back on track. “Burnton,” he said, “and his crew used to focus on ship-jacking, corporate fuel theft, and so on.”

  “Fuel theft?” said Carson incredulously.

  “These days, though, they’ve made Seeking their full-time occupation,” Clay said. “They’ve been picking up treasures all over the place, making quite a name for themselves. Hence this ‘King of the Skies’ moniker.”

  “Is that so,” I said.

  “You’re pouting,” said Heidi.

  I folded my arms, turning away from her. So what I was pouting? No one had given me a name like the King of the Skies. And I’d done far more than this nobody I’d never heard of.

  “What does any of this have to do with us?” Heidi repeated. Still aimed at me.

  “So hang on,” Carson said, voice pitched up. “How do the people of Hats-leather live in a world where they can never touch the ground? Where do they get food? How do they find water?”

  “I’m sure the sky king would be happy to walk you through the logistics, Carson,” said Heidi.

  “I’m less convinced,” said Clay. “He’s ruthless.”

  “So I wonder again: why exactly does he concern us?”

  Carson frowned. “I just don’t understand—”

  Cutting in before Carson could mispronounce Harsterra again, I said, “Burnton is seeking something that I think we should set our sights on and acquire instead.”

  Heidi’s scrutiny so far had consisted of little more than an unyielding, expressionless look at me and that one crooked eyebrow. Now the veil broke, and her eyebrows knitted low over narrowed eyes. “Why? Are you looking to start a new rivalry now that we haven’t seen Borrick for a while?”

  “It’s not about rivalries,” I said snippily. Which was a lie: it totally was. The reputation he was allegedly building for himself needed grinding into dust to further my own. “It’s about a quest.”

  “Yaaay, quests. Because we haven’t done enough of those lately.”

  Ignoring Heidi, I went on, “I’ve had a line on something. Clay says this Burnton has his eye on the same thing. I’d like to head him off and make it ours before it gets into the wrong hands.”

  Carson was still puzzling over the mysteries of Harsterra. “But how did they evolve to build airships? Where do the materials even come from?”

  I massaged the corners of my eyes. “Would you please stop asking questions, Carson.”

  “Why are Burnton’s ‘the wrong hands’?” Heidi asked. “You realize that any other Seeker might view yours the same way. Or mine. Or tall, blonde and dimpled, here.”

  Clay looked blank. “Uh?”

  “He’s a pirate,” I said, and finally ceded a loss in this round of Avoid Heidi’s Gaze. “Of course his are the wrong hands.”

  “Maybe he’s cleaned up his act.”

  “Maybe,” I said, inflating, “he’s still a lowlife ship-jacker, throwing innocents overboard into the liquid diamond core of a gas giant.” God, I was starting to channel Carson with this science mumbo-jumbo.

  “Did he ever throw innocents overboard?” said Heidi. “Sounded to me from Clayton’s expository speech when you spilled into here that until this afternoon, you had no idea who this King of the Skies person is.”

  Clay held up a hand. “We don’t really have the time to argue about this. Burnton will make his move soon, I’m told.”

  “Make his move on what?” Heidi said, training attention to him. “I ask you because presumably Mira hasn’t half a clue. And how do you know his movements?”

  “Burnton wants the key to a crypt,” I answered.

  “Whose?”

  I pursed my lips. Damn it.

  I answered in a garbled mumble. I hated that Heidi was asking intelligent questions.

  “Excuse me?” she said, leaning forward and lifting her eyebrows high.

  I ground my teeth. “Brynn Overson.”

  Heidi spluttered something just as incomprehensible as my failed dodge.

  Carson’s confounded pondering was interrupted. “Who?”

  Apparently this wasn’t Carson’s day for getting answers, for at that moment Burbondrer appeared from whatever corner of my hideout he’d squirreled himself away in. Lumbering around, he boomed, “Hello.” Rare sight it was, too: no armor today, just a ceremonial black robe that hung lankly over his massive frame. His skin was cleaner than usual, and a perfumy aroma wafted from him.

  “What are you all discussing?” he asked.

  Heidi responded, “Why do you smell like my shampoo?”

  Bub opened his mouth to answer. Then he stopped dead, staring intently at Clay, his often-worn baffled look returning to his features. “Is Mr. Price joining our team?”

  Heidi ignored him, as did the rest of us. She rounded on me, voice laced with an accusatory sting. “You seriously want us to go after a key to—how did you even find Brynn Overson’s crypt?”

  “Honestly, though,” said Carson, “evolution on a world with an unsurvivable planetary surface—”

  “They did not bloody evolve there!” Heidi roared, whirling in her seat and jabbing a finger at Carson, barely an inch from stabbing him between the eyes. “All right? They’re humans transplanted there, along with their airships, from a place like Ostiagard. Okay?”

  Carson let out a long breath, like he’d been holding it. “Oh.” A pause. “Well, now it makes sense.”

  “For crying out loud,” Heidi said, dragging her hand across her face, the pulling at her cheeks and dragging her eyelids down too. “If your biggest hang-up about a world with no surface is trying to figure out how life evolved there, you’re going to seriously struggle when we go to Nurnacas for the first time.”

  Carson’s eyebrows flew like they were Burnton’s ship. “When we go where?”

  Clay rose, chair legs squealing on the hardwood floor. “Can we leave?”

  “For the crypt?” Heidi asked. “Or Nurnacas? Because if we’re taking Carson on a tour of all the hellhole places where life should’ve never forced its foothold, I need to get an acid-resistant tunic from somewhere. Do they sell those in London?”

  “Acid-resistant tunic?” Carson bleated.

  “We’re going to get the key to this crypt,” I answered, rising too, standing close to Clay’s elbow. He looked tense, and I wasn’t surprised. When you were already fighting down stress, enduring the intense volley that was two disparate conversations coming from
Carson and Heidi at once could only intensify it. My head was banging enough as it was, and I was used to this. “Going to the crypt itself comes later, and it requires … uh … us to find the key first.” Plus some other things.

  Before Heidi could ask any more about that, though, I turned to Clay. “And the answer to your question is, I’m ready to go right now.”

  His expression melted into relief. “Finally.”

  “But we’re not going to the pirate world where no one can stand or land,” said Carson. “Right? Nor are we going to the acid world?”

  “We’re not going to the pirate or acid world,” Clay confirmed.

  Carson slumped. “I guess I could go now, then.”

  “Why do you sound disappointed?” Heidi asked.

  He shrugged. “I like space. Acid world sounds like Venus. Did you know it’s the only planet to—”

  “I’m in,” Heidi said, quickly standing. But she still looked and sounded suspicious, scrutinizing me through narrowed eyes, her lips pursed tight.

  Bub shifted from foot to foot.

  “Well?” I asked him.

  He rolled an awkward shrug. “Could I comb my hair first?”

  Heidi’s head snapped around to him. “If those are your wiry, horrible hairs I keep finding in my brush—”

  “Uh,” I said, coughing. “Okay, so, let’s go!” And I tore down the central aisle and away.

  5

  Kent, proudly known as the Garden of England. Maybe it was, or maybe that was just grandstanding. Or maybe I was jealous. Essex, my home county, didn’t have a pretty tagline. Maybe ‘the arsehole of England.’ But I didn’t think the tourist board would be particularly willing to put that on their signs.

  Might entertain the kids on inter-county school trips, though.

  We’d taken the train out to Gravesend, on the high speed service. Totally pointless, if you ask me, considering just how close it is to London, but who am I to argue? It made our journey beautifully quick, and watching Bub battle with the pressure mounting in his ears and making them pop was the perfect distraction from this King of the Skies gnawing away at the back of my mind.

  Once in the Garden of England, we made our way to the local Asda. Dreary way to start a trip, eh? Least it’d be like home to Carson. (It was owned by the Walmart people, right? My small knowledge of Earthbound trivia was shrinking by the day.)

  “Why’s it called Gravesend?” Carson asked. His head turned in every direction, as though expecting to see something exotic and new, rather than a road that looked like virtually every other road in England.

  “Why are you called Carson?” Heidi replied.

  “It’s kind of a funny name for a place,” he continued.

  “Bit of a funny name for a person,” she retorted.

  “Funny like the Elephant and Castle?” I asked.

  “Don’t forget about Cockfosters,” Heidi said.

  “Like most of these places, the origins come from early English,” said Clay. “You can probably trace its roots there.”

  Heidi sighed. “This day.”

  “Having said that, a local once told me that it’s because corpses used to wash up here, or be dumped off ships here at the terminus of the Thames. Can’t quite recall though.”

  “How many locals do you talk to?” Heidi asked.

  Clay rolled a shrug. “I do my best to keep my ear to the ground.”

  “Right, then. Are any of them below the age of ninety?”

  The Asda was close to the station, Clay said, and we let him lead. We could’ve gone around the roads, but that meant a longer trek, skirting the edge of a pair of roundabouts on our way into the supposed “retail park” that was seemed far too proud of the Lidl, B&Q, and Poundland housed there. Why no fashion boutiques? Seriously, Gravesend, time to up your retail game.

  Instead, we cut through some trees, using a track of flattened dirt where other likeminded individuals had done the same. That brought us out into the carpark, near the loading area, which was fenced off behind white metal bars.

  “Poor drones,” said Heidi, watching workers unload a bright green lorry of its rollcages. The driver leaned against the front of his vehicle, sipping out of a paper cup. He was either bored or happy to have a break; hard to tell the difference from here.

  “Are we going in?” Carson asked.

  “We don’t have time for that,” I said.

  “But it’s so big,” Carson said wistfully.

  “Like London doesn’t have its own share of superstores?” Heidi said. “It’s got bread and cheese, just like every other supermarket we’ve visited.”

  “But—”

  Heidi cut him off. “It’s got a lot of bread.”

  “The cut-through is somewhere around here,” Clay said to me.

  He’d led us along the store’s rear wall, not far from where the delivery area was sequestered. A walkway snaked around there, roof overhanging it, white pillars every ten feet or so. Customers were milling along it on the way back to their cars, or heading toward the shop entrance. But here, near the end of it, there were only a few, so cutting a gate shouldn’t be too much of a problem, really. Not if we did it right.

  I flipped my compass off my belt, all cool, the sort of moviestar move that would totally grab Clay’s eye—

  It rocketed out of my hand instead, rebounding off the wall where we were cutting through, landing with a sad metallic clink before falling flat on its face.

  “Uh,” I said, aware of Heidi’s raised eyebrows almost as much as I was aware of Clay’s befuddlement. Heat rising in my cheeks, I stooped to pick the compass up, letting my hair fall over my face to hide my embarrassment. “Guess I’m not as cinema-ready as I thought, huh? Heh …”

  “Well, it wasn’t the best power walk shot,” Carson said with a smile.

  I checked the compass face, stepping close to the red brick wall. The glass fogged with dark mist at first, then, when I was so close my knuckles were practically rubbing the brick surface, it began to flicker. My frown deepened.

  “There’s a boundary here.”

  “Shuffle up,” said Clay. “A clear cut-through is here somewhere.”

  I obeyed, walking in the direction of the delivery area. The flickering intensified for three seconds before giving over to dense, black mists, which did not fade even when I had gone as far as I could.

  I went in the other direction. Some twenty feet from my starting point, the compass face showed red desert and tall spires of rock.

  “Found it,” I said, victorious, and looked up to see—

  The wall had ceased a couple of steps over.

  “Ah,” said Clay. “Yes. I forgot about that.”

  “How’re we getting through here?” Carson asked. “Cut a hole in the ground?”

  “That’s a bit less subtle than the wall would have been,” I murmured.

  “Try a lot less subtle,” said Heidi. “We’re in full view of everyone.”

  She wasn’t wrong. This position was in full view of the carpark. And although we were no strangers to disappearing into walls in reasonably clear view of the world, we kept our eyes peeled for convenient obstructions or waited for a lull so as to do so (hopefully) undetected. Dropping into a gateway in the ground? That was another story entirely. And admittedly, yes, Carson had dispatched a bunch of the Order of Apdau into holes in the ground a couple of months ago. But one, they were trying to kill us, and two, it was dark at the time. Daylight made it more of an issue. I’d only once done a vanishing act like that of my own, in the police station after our first Order of Apdau attack, and I’d done my very best to at least obscure the gateway itself; so as far as the camera was concerned, I had simply vanished into the ground under their noses.

  Still, if it was our only real hope …

  I squatted, holding the compass close to the tarmac.

  The compass image changed to darkness. Not the murk of a void; I could make out the vaguest shapes, if I squinted, and shielded the image from th
e sunlight. (Not much of that here in Kent; Gravesend was treated to a blanket of cloud.)

  “I think this’ll drop us into some caves,” I said.

  “So how do we get through then?” Carson asked.

  I frowned …

  A car revved hard behind me.

  I twisted to see a beaten-up car wheeling in behind us. Spaces were free, enough of them that he didn’t need this one—but the driver, wearing a green Asda shirt, clearly wanted the one I was crouched in right now. And he would take it whether I moved or not, by the look of him continuing to roll forward.

  I shuffled out of the way, along with my friends, and looked over the car. It was a wreck of a thing, the sort that had once been a pseudo-sportscar and now belonged in a scrapyard. Faded red, with go-faster stripes down the center, only a schmuck would’ve paid more than £200 for it. This schmuck had replaced the engine, apparently, as well as the exhaust: a bulky thing belched smoke from where it had been tied—yes, tied—to the rear bumper.

  He stopped hard and climbed out, slamming the door. The exhaust wobbled.

  Pox-faced, but surely not a teenager. If he was, employment with Asda had not done wonders for him. Bags hung under his eyes, and the skin around his throat was not tight.

  He gave us a cursory look, except for Bub.

  “Tip top cosplay, bruv.”

  And off he went, thumbing his phone and watching the screen intently. That he didn’t crash into any of the pillars was a miracle.

  “That,” said Clay, staring at the car, “is the worst car I have ever seen.”

  “At least he has a job,” Heidi said.

  “I would not want to get served by him,” said Carson. “Or buy anything he has ever touched.”

  “I thought he seemed nice,” said Bub.

  No observation from me—I was distracted. An opportunity had presented itself …

  Eyeing the compass face once more, I pressed it to the window of the chavmobile.

  “We can get through here,” I said.

  And without allowing any time for complaint, I cut a gateway in the passenger side door. It warbled open, shimmering edges flush to the contours of the door itself, dipping backward where the window was recessed a half-inch.