The climb was exhausting. His fingers were senseless nubs and his arms heavy as iron mallets, and just as useful for climbing. He loved the sheet rope. It was the world’s best friend to humanity. He wanted to bring it home, ragged and dirty as it was, and keep it in a chest at the foot of his bed. Was that strange?

Arms reached down out of nowhere and pulled him over the edge. He heard cheering. He heard himself gasping. Someone untied him and someone else wrapped a cloth around one of his bloody hands. He lay on his stomach above the cliff and hugged the ground.

Then he looked up and saw Bitterblue, still sitting against her tree, staring at him with enormous eyes.

Picking himself up, Giddon went to her.

Chapter Forty

When Nev and Davvi dragged that scraggly gray man up over the edge onto the ground beside her, Lovisa didn’t recognize him. He was a shriveled, terrible-smelling rat and she recoiled, until he looked up into her face. When he saw her, he smiled.

“Katu,” she cried.

“Lovisa,” he said, his smile growing beatific.

Abandoning her rope, Lovisa threw off her coat and gave it to him. When he seemed confused by how a coat worked, she helped him with it, stuck his hands into the sleeves and pulled it over his shoulders, and then she was hugging him, crying, unable to hide how much his gauntness upset her. She couldn’t find the white streak in his hair, then realized it was because his hair was so grimy.

“What did they do to you?” she cried.

“Well, my dear,” he said lightly, resting a tentative hand on her shoulder, as if steadying himself. “I was attacked while I was diving. Next thing I knew, I woke up here.”

“While you were diving! You mean, you were attacked underwater?”

“Yes. I was diving for the Seashell. You know the Seashell?”

“Yes, but how did you know about it?”

“I saw a strange thing at sea, through a glass, the very same day the Seashell disappeared,” he said. “An airship lifting people out of a lifeboat.”

“Is that so strange?” said Lovisa. “It sounds like a rescue.”

“The last person who left the lifeboat took an ax to its bottom,” said Katu.

“Oh,” said Lovisa, her heart sinking.

“Then the airship passed close by me,” Katu said. “I heard snatches of conversation in Kamassarian and I thought to myself, This is a Kamassarian mystery. They saw me. I tried to turn my craft so they couldn’t read her name and figure out who I was. But then the balloon shifted in the light. I recognized it.”

“It was my airship,” said Lovisa.

“Well, your parents’ airship,” Katu said with a small smile. “I certainly didn’t think to myself, That Lovisa is up to something.”

“My father.”

“Or your mother,” he said grimly.

“Your own sister?”