Blightborn Read Free Page B

coming.
    He sees the rail-raft flying toward it.
    He sees Rigo dangling from the raft by the strap.
    Let go let go let go—
    Cael’s fingers slip—he loses his grip, starts to fall, catches himself again—and by the time he looks up once more, the train’s toothy cattle-catcher smashes into the raft, turning it into a shower of splinters.

THE PAINTED LADY
    “ WHAT PARTY?” GWENNIE ASKS .
    Balastair freezes in place. She knows he’s thinking because he does this thing—his pupils flit and twitch, back and forth, back and forth, as if he’s surveying data in the dark of his mind. His eyes—as green as leaves—suddenly lock on to hers again, and he says quietly, “I didn’t tell you about the party?”
    “No!” she barks, suddenly confused, panicked, and more than a little angry. “I don’t want to go to some party.”
    “It’s the Architect’s Party,” he says. “It happens once a year on every flotilla—it’s held by the architect of that flotilla. Or the architect’s family if the architect has, ah, passed on.” He suddenly looks uncomfortable. Pink cheeks gone white. “I can’t believe I didn’t tell you. It’s today. On the Halcyon Balcony. In an hour. In an hour. And you’re not even dressed!”
    He runs his hands through his hair—and the once-tamed wisps of blond lift and rise again.
    “I’m dressed,” she says.
    “Not for a party. Certainly not for the Architect’s Party. You’re barely dressed for a carousal of vagrants. I . . . I never sent a dress down?”
    “No!”
    “It must still be upstairs then. Come on. Come on .”
    “Come on!” Erasmus the grackle cackles.
    “I’m not going to the party,” she says as she hurries after Balastair, his long strides carrying them around the filthy, trash-swept hallway toward the elevator. There, the elevator sits behind a metal accordion gate. It’s a gate she’s tried to open many times on her own, a gate kept shut by—
    “ Hello, Balastair Harrington ,” chirps the auto-mate from the tinny round speaker that serves as its “mouth.” The mechanical half man stands on a pillar, two pairs of long, disjointed arms hanging from the bell-shaped torso. The creature blinks copper lids over stained glass eyes, click click click . “ Are we going up today? ”
    “Yes, Elevator Man,” Balastair says. “And she’s coming with me.”
    “ Hello —” Here the auto-mate pauses, and she hears a sound inside the bell of its body like cards being shuffled. “ Heartlander Gwendolyn Shawcatch .” Except it mispronounces her name: gwen-DO-LINN shewkitch .
    “Shut up, tinbody,” she hisses.
    Balastair shoots her a look. “You’re terribly angry; has anybody told you that? It’s very off-putting.”
    The mechanical mimes the act of pulling back the accordiongate, though it’s just an automated illusion—the gate pulls back as part of its own chain-driven mechanism.
    Inside, the elevator is gleaming: diamonds of dark wood alternating with tiled squares of copper discolored with a green patina. It is the opposite of everything that exists down here in the Undermost. Everything at this strata is dirty and falling apart—the lights flickering from dim to bright, a strobe effect that leaves streaks across her vision.
    Balastair is already in the elevator, and he’s pinching the fabric at her elbow and pulling her in. “Hurry, we don’t have much time to transform . . .”—he waggles his fingers at her—“ this into . . . something else.”
    “Something else!” the grackle mimics.
    The gate slams shut— click-click-click-BOOM .
    A brass plate next to the door pops open on a spring, revealing a screen not unlike a visidex; it shimmers and distorts, and suddenly a face appears on it, the face of the Elevator Man with his bulging speaker mouth and his stained glass eyes.
    “ Where to, Balastair Harrington? ”
    “Home,” he says.
    “ Home it shall be .”
    Behind the walls, something whirrs and rattles. Suddenly the