The Immortal Storm (Sky Chaser Book 1) Read Free Page B

Weatheren said, trying to sit up and collapsing back, clutching his side. Purple patches spread from a wound in his ribs. He'd crawled some distance and now slumped against a heat-blistered deck plate.
    “They're dead,” Kite said.
    The Weatheren chuckled painfully. “I-I admire your honesty but please don't come any closer,” he said. He was hugging a number of fire-singed objects. “What are you? One of those Murkers?”
    Kite frowned behind his goggles. He’d heard that name whispered in Dusthaven. “I’m no terrorist if that’s what you’re thinking,” said Kite.
    “No, you do not look like one,” the Weatheren said. “A skyless then?”
    Skyless . That's what the Fairweather folk called those who survived out outside the Dreadwalls. Those doomed to a slow death beneath the Undercloud. Kite tried not to show offence.
    “Is that a water bottle?” the Weatheren asked. “May I? I am terribly thirsty. ”
    Kite hesitated. Well water was ten royals a gallon after all. But the Weatheren looked as if he needed water more than Kite at this moment so he unhooked the tin water bottle from his belt and offered it across.
    The Weatheren gulped from the water bottle. Kite crouched nearby and studied him. Blue eyes a shade brighter than his gaudy uniform. Skin bronzed by the mythical sun. Flesh and blood after all.
    “Am I so fascinating?” the Weatheren asked.
    “Never seen a Weatheren before,” Kite replied. “That's all.”
    “No, I don't suspect you have,” the Weatheren said and coughed up a lip of blood. “Do you have any medicine in that bag?”
    Kite shook his head.
    “No, of-course not,” the Weatheren said. “Why would you?”
    Did all Weatherens talk this way? Ersa had told him they had mechanical minds, raised by machine mothers to think and act to a rigid set of rules and instructions.
    “What happened to the airmachine?” Kite asked.
    “The oddest thing,” the Weatheren said, looking passed him at the fire and smoke. “The pilot began to lose all control when the rhyme started. Neither should have happened. Most unexpected.”
    Kite recalled the song on the wind. “The rhyme?” he said.
    “My daughter sings it,” the Weatheren said, shaking his head in disbelief. “My daughter...oh...w-where is the nearest settlement?”
    Kite knew Dusthaven was ten leagues north-east of the Bone Roads. The Weatheren would never make it in his condition and Ersa would never let him on the sandboat. “Too far,” Kite said.
    The Weatheren coughed more blood. “Yes,” he mumbled weakly. “It would…appear…so..”
    Then the Weatheren exhaled with a soft sigh, eyes wide with bewilderment. The salvaged things slipped from his arms. After a moment Kite picked up the water bottle and reattached it to his belt. Death seemed a cruel reward for surviving that horror.
    Scattered at his feet the Weatheren's things was an odd assortment: an empty leather document case, a rolled up tube of fine transparent film and a mechanikin, a fancy mechanical toy, with one of its eyes torn out.
    “Boy?”
    Kite licked his lips. That leather alone had to be worth thirty royals. The mechanikin, even fire-singed, could fetch ten. More money than he’d earn in a month of scavenging.
    “Where are you, boy?”
    After all, Kite reasoned, the Weatheren had no use for leather or toys where he was headed. Ersa had said the same about the buttons hadn’t she? If he didn't take them some other scavvy would.
    “Hurry boy!” Ersa called again, this time with urgency.
    Kite crouched and bundled the items into his canvas scavenge bag. Then he hurried back, but not before giving the dead scientist a respectful nod. Weatheren or not, somehow it seemed the right thing to do.
    A salvage rig circled the crater. A squat, flat-bottomed airmachine with derricks fore and aft, rattling with hook-chains and the chatter of metal-hungry salvors. A Tom Skull flapped from her pilothouse.
    Looking for a hiding place Kite found a door-sized radar