Angry Lead Skies

80

Pixies flitted around us, giggling and squabbling, more annoying than a flock of starving mosquitoes. Not a single one had anything useful to say. Their presence didn't help anything. Singe and I weren't invisible anymore. There was no need.

Nobody was interested in us. But the squawking bugs threatened to attract attention.

For the gawkers, trying to figure out what was happening in the slowly collapsing tannery, a guy hanging out with a ratwoman bold enough to walk the streets by daylight was a secondary spectacle.

Threads of blue light as thin as spider silk crawled over the ruins. The entire heap of rubble hurled itself skyward. Everything inside went up with the building itself. People and debris alike floated on the surface of an expanding, invisible bubble.

More time seemed to pass than actually did.

The bubble popped. And collapsed.

A raindrop smacked me in the cheek. I noted that a cold breeze had begun blowing. The change in weather wasn't unseasonable or unlikely, it was just a surprise because I hadn't been paying attention.

Vigorous lightning pranced over the remains of the tannery. One bolt struck something explosive, probably chemicals used for treating leather. The explosion scattered brick and broken timbers for a hundred yards around. A spinning sliver sixteen inches long flew between Singe and me, narrowly missing us both.

Singe said, "We have found them. Do we really need to stay so close, now?"

"I don't know. You may have a point." I spied a dirty white behind wagging as somebody struggled to back his way out of the mess. When the pile finally finished birthing Bic it developed that he had hold of his employer by the ankle. He strove to drag the wizard out by main strength.

I said, "I think we might move a little farther away."

Lightning bolts, like swift left and right jabs, rained down on the ruins, starting small fires, flinging debris around. Despite his discomfiture and the inelegance of his situation the stormwarden was still in there punching.

Other things were happening at the same time. They were less intensely visual. I credited them to the Visitors because Bic's gang were the people being inconvenienced.

Damn! We'd dropped the invisibility spell and were trying to fade into the onlookers but Bic spotted us almost immediately. But he didn't get the chance to report us. A Visitor floated up out of the ruins, jabbed one of those gray fetishes in his direction. And he fell down, sound asleep. I wasn't feeling real charitable. I hoped he woke up with a headache as ferocious as the worst I'd enjoyed back when they were knocking me out all day long.

I told Singe, "It'll be a week before they get their stuff together back there. Let's use the time."

We did. To no avail whatsoever. Not only were the Maskers not hiding where John Stretch said, there was no sign of their skyship. I'd hoped it would be right there where I could sabotage it. Or whatever seemed appropriate at the moment of discovery.

Why would I want to keep them from going away? The longer they hung around the more likely they would fall into the hands of somebody off the Hill. Which would make times just that much more interesting for those of us who couldn't fly away.

"Singe? You smell anything that might be the Masker skyship?"

She strained valiantly. And told me, "I can tell nothing. What happened back there has blinded my nose."

Poor baby. "Follow me." It was time to get the hell away from the Embankment.

Our line of retreat took us back past the ruined tannery.

Raindrops continued to strike randomly, scattered but getting fatter all the time. And colder. One smacked me squarely atop the bean. It contained a core of ice. It stung. I regretted my prejudice against hats.

"Look," Singe said. We were slinking through the crowd of onlookers, which had swollen to scores, most of them tickled to see a stormwarden looking like he had a firm grip on the dirty end of the stick.

A groggy Bic was back up on one knee, a black-clad ankle still in hand, glaring at the mob, not a man of whom offered a hand. He spied somebody he thought he recognized, that somebody being Mama Garrett's favorite boy. He croaked out, "Garrett!"

Garrett kept on rolling. Maybe a little faster. Garrett's sidekick puffed and hustled to keep up.

Bic yelled as loud as he could. His excitement didn't do him any good at all. The one response he did get was a growing hum that sounded like a swarm of bumblebees moving in for the kill. It came from within the rubble. Masker sorcery. Bic slapped another hand onto his boss' ankle and went back to pulling.

"Look!" Singe gasped again.

The rubble had begun shifting and sliding as though restless giants were awakening underneath.

The bubble was coming up again. And now the bumblebees were singing their little bug hearts out.

The bubble got a lot bigger this time. Bricks and broken boards, ratmen and squealing henchmen all slid off. Bic forgot about me and Singe. He forgot his manners entirely. He yanked the mask off the stormwarden, slapped his face. I caught a glimpse of pallor disfigured by indigo tattoos. A real heartbreaker of a face. It must drive the hookers wild.

Something began rising up inside the bubble. Something shiny, like freshly polished sword steel.

The bumblebees lost the thread of their hearty marching song and began to whine. The bubble began to shrink and the steel to sink. But the bees picked up the beat after a few false notes.

The Masker skyship emerged from the ruins.

The addled stormwarden popped it with his best lightning bolt.

The skyship popped him back. Enthusiastically. He flew twenty yards, ricocheted off a brick wall, barely twitched once before an incoming Bic Gonlit, tumbling ass over appetite, crash-landed on top of him.

The Masker vessel lumbered into the sky and headed south, the bumblebees occasionally stumbling, the ship itself wobbling.

"A little faster with the feet, I think," Singe said when I slowed to watch. "I am developing a strong need to find myself somewhere far away from here." The crowd seemed to agree with her. Everybody thought it was time to be somewhere else.

"Yes, indeed, girl. Yes, indeed. Before old Bic wakes up and decides to blame us for everything."

We did go somewhere else. But we weren't much happier there than we'd been on the Embankment.