‘The strings!’ He yanked at a couple of the bundle of thin cords she’d passed him, those that travelled up into the kite’s body. Nothing seemed to happen.

‘What?’

He tugged at a couple more, then the rushing died in his ears, and he was falling. The kite dropped from the sky and he fell with it, until the tether wrenched at his body and arrested his fall. The kite fell past him, dropping toward the plaza below, then stopped fast, held by the same tether that rooted him to the platform. For a moment, he dangled in space, the kite spinning below him, the terrible impact of the fall working its way through his midriff. He gazed down at the plaza, this time without the overwhelming nausea. There were people down there, holding torches, and it looked to him like they were watching. He waved.

Then, with a creak, the tether began to tug him upward, reeled back up toward the platform, a pendent fish on a hook. Strong hands grabbed him and hauled him back aboard, and a moment later the kite followed, lifted by Foss and Rennic with something approaching reverence.

Chel sat back against the boards, solid beneath him at last, and felt only disappointment.

‘What happened?’

‘The wind dropped.’

‘The wind dropped!?’

The Nort shrugged. She seemed more concerned with checking the kite for damage. ‘It can happen.’

‘What if it happens again?’

‘That’s why you have the tether. And you will be higher, from the other tower.’

‘But …’ He gestured beyond the walls, over the gorge, toward the army camped on the plateau. The camp fires were a thousand twinkling lights across the dark expanse. ‘What if it happens out there?’

The Nort completed her inspection, stood, nodded to herself. She started walking back toward the door. ‘Pray to your god that it does not.’

***

Rennic was walking close to Kosh as they descended, crates of folded silk stacked in his arms. Her anger seemed like sunlight to him, her simmering fury returned now the testing of the kite was complete.

‘Are you well, alchemist?’

‘I am … incandescent.’

‘That display up there, that … kite. It’ll hurt them?’

‘Used correctly? They will be seared.’

‘You want vengeance, don’t you?’

She stopped short, sending the others into an uncomfortable pile-up. She breathed deeply, lost in the middle distance of the gloomy tower.

‘I want justice.’

Rennic laughed, a single puff of air from his nostrils. ‘We all want justice, alchemist, it’s only ever a question of whose.’ He paused in thought. ‘Hey, can you make something … Something that can break that armour of Hurkel’s?’

Her eyebrows lowered, deep furrows crossing her brow. At length, she said, ‘Not for certain. But I can do something that goes around it.’

***