Chel looked out over the plateau. Through black and billowing smoke, he could just make out the city perched over the slit of the gorge in the shimmering haze of the fires of the burning engines, all the way across the other side of the plateau. Lemon’s kite was vanished from the sky, her whereabouts unknown. The entire church army stood between him and safety.

‘Well,’ Chel said, wiping at the blood on his brow. ‘Shit.’

***

Shoulder pulsing and knees raw, Chel stumbled down the crumbling slope, toward the roaring flames of his wake. Engines were aflame, their huge blackened frames crackling, and still the occasional fiery pop signalled the detonation of something alchemical within. The heat was intense, even from a distance, but any of the church forces who’d survived the devastation had long since fled. Somewhere behind him the downed kite smouldered among the scrub, and Chel wanted to get as far away from it as he could before someone came looking.

Something moved, something huge, and Chel realized that one of the half-finished engines was rolling free. It moved slowly, as if pushed by an invisible hand, trundling forward even as it belched fire and roiling smoke into the morning sky. Chel followed it, moving in its wake, one battered arm held before his face to stave the burning embers blown clear. A plan was forming, half-baked: perhaps he could follow the burning engine all the way to the bridge as it cleared a path?

He heard shouts, horses, coming from one side. Limping as fast as he could, he scuttled around the far side of the giant, burning wagon, keeping its blazing bulk between him and the oncoming riders. He found himself beside one of its huge wheels, its outsize spokes revolving with almost comical slowness as the engine rumbled on. He looked up at the thick iron rims, scorched and peeling, rolling around higher than his own head, and had a sharp and sudden memory.

A wagon, huge, black, forbidden, wheels the size of the moon, towering over him and stinking of death. Pale skin in the moonlight, a hand dangling free of the wagon’s rail, flaccid, lifeless. Then away, dwindling into the shameful night, Chel’s screams drowned by his mother’s arms, holding him back, blocking his sight and sound. Denied one last sight of his father.

He was screaming now, hoarse and cracked, collapsed in the dust of the plateau. The engine rolled on without him, coming to a gentle stop before its axles cracked and it fell in upon itself in a burst of flame. The chance for escape was gone, he was lost and alone on the burning plateau, an army between him and any hope of safety. Arms wrapped around his head, he screamed again into the dust, his frantic hands gripping his skull as if it were the only way to hold it on.