‘The payload is delivered via the string bundle – yank each to release a cluster. You will find lift – and therefore range – easier to come by, the more you drop, but ensure you retain enough munitions for the most distant targets.’

Chel stared into the indigo of the silent plateau, its lines of torches still winking in the predawn light. ‘I don’t want to hit anyone, just the engines and their ammunition. How will we see what we’re aiming at? It’s still darkness down there.’

‘Look for where their torches and watchfires are not. They will not want to keep naked flames close to their black powder dumps.’

Kosh signalled the artificer, and she retired to the lever that released the wind-shield. Chel could already feel himself being lifted by the fierce wind that flowed over and past it.

‘One more thing,’ the Nort said as she checked the final coupling. ‘Keep to your separate sides. If the tethers become tangled, you may pull each other out of the sky.’ She leaned in close, immune to Lemon’s screeched protestations beyond. ‘I have to say, Andriz, I am envious of your position, to be able to soar like a bird over this ugly mass, to leave it all behind. But, of course, the risks to me are too great.’ She patted his arm. ‘I hope you are as lucky as they say.’

Chel didn’t even see her signal. The wind-shield dropped, and the full force of the elements blasted over the platform. Before he could speak, the kite snapped tall and out of Rennic’s hands, and then with a lurch Chel followed, his feet lifted from the ground, the handles stubborn and heaving in his hands. From the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of silk and orange and knew that Lemon was away, clear of the platform and screaming with him into the dawn. The tethers spooled behind them, worked by the engineers, kept taut like fishing line, their bulwark against a sudden disappearance into the brightening sky.

Hands on the handles, thick bunches of thin cords wrapped around them, Chel soared. The city fell away beneath his feet, the domes and towers strange and receding from his vantage overhead. Now he could see the terrible damage of the bombardments, the charred craters, the smashed stone, some areas still smouldering, sending belches of dark smoke up into the sky beside them.

Still the wind tore at them, urging them forward, only the tethers and their wrestling of the handles maintaining the serenity of their ascent. On either side of him, dangling from the upper structure, the dark clusters jingled and sang, rattling on the currents of their climb. They were smooth, oblong things, their noses pointed and flimsy, their tops ringed with spiralled silk. Each looked bigger than Chel’s fist, and reeked of menace.