His second volley hit. The earth before the building ripped upward, then the door blasted inward and the roof exploded. For a moment, it looked like that was it, then a massive blast tore the structure apart, flattening the camp around it and sending a torrent of flame and smoke into the air. This time, the shockwave knocked Chel sideways, sending the kite swirling on the roiling air, making him battle to stay upright, let alone on course. Sweating and cursing, he fought back against the battering, fists tight around the remaining cords, mindful of their aggravated clattering above his head. Any moment, one would come free, knock another – or his head – and that would be it. Any moment.

The battering subsided, the kite levelled. Off to his right, another explosion ripped the dawn air, setting one of the mobile bell-towers aflame.

Chel found that he was laughing.

***

Chel soared over the churning plateau, rising higher as he dropped one cluster after another. He’d taken to releasing them in pairs, one either side, and had refined his aim with practice. The weight of the tether dragged him and the kite backward and down, even as the wind howled them onward and upward. He’d long ago ceased to feel the cold, the ache in his arms and legs, the loss of sensation in his extremities. He was one with the kite, always ranging, always climbing, the figures milling in panic below now little more than smears against the paling earth. The mountain walls loomed large in his vision, but he was closing on his target: the area at the plateau’s mouth, where workers toiled on their engines, where the church’s pet alchemists must mix and load their murderous compounds. He had four cords left beneath his numb fingers, and he intended to make them count.

To his right, gouts of flame rolled over the distant earth, searing a clump of low buildings. Lemon was keeping up her own contributions. Bells rang out, dolorous, urgent, useless.

Something floated up into his vision, slowing, turning, tumbling away. An arrow, fired from somewhere beneath. His smile broadened.

‘Nice fucken try, pal,’ he said to himself, in an imitation of Lemon’s accent. The confessors had spotted them, at least, but it would do them little good now. As long as the wind held and the tethers kept spooling, it was only a matter of time before those great engines burned.

***

He was closing in on his target when Chel saw Lemon’s kite buck in the air. It jerked as if struck, coming up short, sending the last of its munitions groundward as if in spasmic shock. Before the clusters had even hit, the kite began to veer, strung against its rigid tether, unable to climb, unable to progress over the plateau. With increasing speed, Lemon’s kite began to swing inward, toward the plateau’s centre. Toward Chel’s own tethered path.