“How is our position?” Blaine asked.
Juni had her feet planted wide to brace against the airship’s low-altitude maneuverings. “Captain has us on a steady course.”
Blaine nodded, looking over at the crew members who were handling the winching machines that would haul up the crew in the harnesses at a moment’s notice. Blaine gripped one of the safety handholds and leaned over the railing to get eyes on the ground.
The horde was following after the dangling bait. They were high enough off the ground that the revenants shouldn’t be a risk. These weren’t the sort of revenants that could jump, bound as the spores were by the structure of the bison’s bodies.
That didn’t mean they weren’t dangerous.
With the high city wall impossible for them to breach, the revenants followed the pulse of the living, moving away from the gated entrance and the outskirts of the airfield. They gave chase, the morning breeze carrying the scent of decay in it. The revenants weren’t old husks, as if they’d wandered the plains for weeks on end, searching for live bodies to transfer spores to. No, these ones were days old, and it made Blaine wonder if Ashion had a death-defying machine within its borders after all.
The airship bobbed in the air as it navigated away from the horde at a pace that would keep the revenants coming. Their interference bought the town’s defenses space to maneuver. While the automatons stayed their fire, the heavy gates finally opened, just wide enough to allow several velocycles to drive away from the safety of the wall.
“Wardens on the field!” Blaine yelled, the cry being taken up by the crew.
The crew on duty at the winches got ready to haul those dangling in the air back up to the decking to get them out of the range of whatever fire the wardens were bringing. The rumble of well-kept velocycle engines grew louder, dust kicking up behind the tires as four wardens sped toward the horde.
They broke formation to drive around the farthest edge of the horde from the airship. Blaine didn’t see the grenades being tossed, but the explosions that followed sent dirt and ripped-apart chunks of revenants flying into the air.
Gears clanked as the metal ropes were rapidly winched up. The crew on the deck helped haul over the railings those who’d been strapped into the harnesses, gas masks still in place. The clack of gears was soon drowned out by the heavyrat-tat-tatof a Zip gun discharging.
TheKatabatichad four of the multibarrel weapons mounted to its hulls at the ball turrets, and the gunners knew their duty. They were careful to keep their fire relegated to the front of the horde while the wardens attacked the rear. None of them wanted to harm a warden, not when wardens were the ones that made Maricol safe and livable for everyone else.
Honovi’s skill showed itself in the way he kept their incredibly low altitude steady as the airship maneuvered around the horde, providing aid when necessary. Between their Zip guns and the wardens’ grenades, the horde of revenants was annihilated. What remained were blackened holes in the earth from explosives and enough ripped-apart flesh and shattered bone to carpet the prairie grass.
“That’s a mess I’m glad we don’t have to deal with,” Juni said before lifting the radio receiver to relay an update back to Honovi.
Blaine leaned over the railing again and waved down the nearest warden that he could see. The warden drove their velocycle closer through the remnants of the horde, uncaring of the dead the way few could afford to be.
“Hail the airship!” the warden shouted at them, her voice carrying easily.
“Our thanks for the assist,” Blaine called back. “Your orders?”
“We need to clear the airfield. Stay aloft until we signal it’s safe to land.”
“Shall we call for you?”
“Yes.” She snapped off an easy salute. “I’m Raziel.”
Blaine returned the salute before straightening up. “You heard the warden. Let’s get aloft.”
Juni relayed the information to Honovi via radio. Blaine crossed the decking to return to his husband, theKatabaticswaying as the engines changed pitch to gain altitude, away from the remnants of the dead.
Six
BLAINE
The town they eventually docked in was called Veran, a plains settlement that had never grown large enough to be called a city, and its citizens preferred it that way.
Veran’s foundations were old enough that its innermost city wall was made of a smooth stone that reminded Blaine of the kind found in the catacombs beneath Amari. Its presence spoke of numerous generations who had called this town home throughout the Ages. There was history here and secrets as well. The birthplace of a family of spymasters would hold nothing less.
Veran was where the surrounding province’s governing heart was located, its people taking pride in the town’s history. The Auclair bloodline’s ancestral estate stood behind its own set of walls in the center neighborhood of the town, well-known and well guarded. The convoy of motor carriages that had driven through the city from the airfield after the revenant attack hadn’t split up, making a straight shot toward their destination, much to Blaine’s displeasure.
“When an Auclair returns home, we don’t hide that fact,” Lore had told him tartly before ordering everyone about like the noble she was.
She hadn’t tried to impress her will on Honovi or the airship crew, though. Honovi had followed Blaine’s lead on the ground, and Blaine had followed Lore. Which found them driving past the iron gates and onto the estate grounds less than an hour later after they were allowed to dock in the airfield. From there, it had been a whirlwind of activity, with the estate’s servants waiting to attend their lady and her guests.
“How is the view?” Honovi asked from his spot on the plush armchair in the bedroom they were going to share. It was extravagantly decorated, with a mural of a hunt spanning the long wall. The wallpaper in the rest of the room was done up in amber and greens, the color reminiscent of the Northern Plains in late spring.
