…>
said Kyorin.
said Timlar Preston.
Kyorin received an image of the Quatérshiftian prisoner brandishing his pencil like a sword, ready to sketch out the few missing pieces of the mechanics he needed for his device.
said Kyorin.
Kyorin listened and began to fill in the gaps. Thank the stars it was he who had survived the masters’ hunters, rather than his ignorant desert-born friend swept away by the river. Half an hour later Kyorin was finished, the voice of the man held captive by the Court of the Air fading as the power of Kyorin’s weakened body began to wane.
Timlar Preston’s anxiety was almost overwhelming.
sobbed Preston.
said Kyorin.
said Preston.
said Kyorin.
Far above, Kyorin sensed the Quatérshiftian prisoner finally lying down exhausted on his bunk, left to wonder if the voice in his head was indeed his madness snapped free.
Kyorin rested the book down by his side and glanced miserably towards the strip of sky above the alley. He couldn’t see the Court of the Air from the ground, so high was the aerial city’s station. Wrapped in clouds generated by its steam-driven transaction engines as they modelled the ebb and flow of Jackelian society, in as perfect a simulation as such primitive technology allowed. ‘I’ll get you out, my new friend. I must, or we are all dead.’
The chequerboard hull of a Royal Aerostatical Navy airship went past, a brief thrum from its engine and then it was gone. For a moment, Kyorin thought its shadow had remained, but it was the shadow of the vagrant looming large above him.
‘I’ll trade you.’
‘Trade me what?’ asked Kyorin.
The vagrant pulled out a book from his own jacket pocket, in a better state than the clothes from which it had emerged. ‘Lifted this from the stationer’s stall at the Guardian Fairfax atmospheric. Finished it now.’ He
said Timlar Preston.
Kyorin received an image of the Quatérshiftian prisoner brandishing his pencil like a sword, ready to sketch out the few missing pieces of the mechanics he needed for his device.
Kyorin listened and began to fill in the gaps. Thank the stars it was he who had survived the masters’ hunters, rather than his ignorant desert-born friend swept away by the river. Half an hour later Kyorin was finished, the voice of the man held captive by the Court of the Air fading as the power of Kyorin’s weakened body began to wane.
sobbed Preston.
Far above, Kyorin sensed the Quatérshiftian prisoner finally lying down exhausted on his bunk, left to wonder if the voice in his head was indeed his madness snapped free.
Kyorin rested the book down by his side and glanced miserably towards the strip of sky above the alley. He couldn’t see the Court of the Air from the ground, so high was the aerial city’s station. Wrapped in clouds generated by its steam-driven transaction engines as they modelled the ebb and flow of Jackelian society, in as perfect a simulation as such primitive technology allowed. ‘I’ll get you out, my new friend. I must, or we are all dead.’
The chequerboard hull of a Royal Aerostatical Navy airship went past, a brief thrum from its engine and then it was gone. For a moment, Kyorin thought its shadow had remained, but it was the shadow of the vagrant looming large above him.
‘I’ll trade you.’
‘Trade me what?’ asked Kyorin.
The vagrant pulled out a book from his own jacket pocket, in a better state than the clothes from which it had emerged. ‘Lifted this from the stationer’s stall at the Guardian Fairfax atmospheric. Finished it now.’ He
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