‘They all say the same thing?’ Chel asked, shifting his own burden in tiring arms.

He shrugged, still gazing into the lamp. ‘Their proclamations tend to have a lot in common, friend.’

‘That stuff about the false god, the church—?’

‘The church of Vassad, of Hurkel, is no longer the Shepherd’s. It costs me no angst to decry the monstrosity of man that besieges us.’

Rennic twirled the knife around in his hand before stowing it in a sheath. ‘Shame,’ he said, retrieving his crates. ‘Thought we’d end up cracking some heads. Fuckers looked like they needed a kicking, lest they find their balls and come back for another try.’

Foss shook his head with a smile. ‘Behold the incarnation of churchly virtue.’

Rennic tried to spread his hands while keeping hold of his cargo. ‘Hey, they started it.’

Chel grimaced, images of Preachers’ Plaza in Denirnas swimming in his mind. I have a feeling that was me.

‘Come!’ Kosh snapped at them. ‘Dawn is approaching, and we have many stairs to climb.’

THIRTY-FOUR

The platform wasn’t like the one they had tested on. It projected from the upper spire of the workshop’s tallest tower, a thick balcony extended with buttressed planks, whipped by frigid wind beneath rushing clouds the colour of burning copper. Thin strips of pallid blue peeked between the trundling formations, while a simmering burnished band grew at the rugged north-eastern horizon. Chel squeezed between boxes on tired legs, never more conscious of the absence of any sort of railing on the projection from the tower-top, trying to keep up with the little Nort steaming ahead.

‘This is … very, very high.’

The former chief artificer had been waiting for them, and was now hunched over the now-familiar boxy construction of silk and thin wood, working at cords like sinew. Beside her, sand-backed crates stood stacked, their lids loosened, and the artificer was attaching something small and dark from within to the kite’s structure.

Rennic and Lemon lingered at the platform’s edge, where the wind-shield, here recognizable as the stalled sails of a windmill, deflected the worst of the wind’s stinging caprice. His load passed on, Foss took a step, felt the platform creak beneath him, and retreated.

‘If it’s all the same, friends, maybe I’ll watch from downstairs …’

Their surroundings remained gloomy, despite the expansion of the glow at the horizon. The camp on the plateau was cast in deep indigo, shaded by cloud and mountains. Lines of torches twinkled along rows of what Chel presumed to be tents. It was unnerving to be able to see it so clearly from the tower-top.

‘How far can the kite travel?’

Kosh looked up. Her gaze passed right through him, stopping somewhere out over the plains. ‘As long as the wind holds, the tethers will hit their reels at a thousand strides.’

‘A thousand strides? You’re sure?’