The Rising (The Alchemy Wars) Read Free Page B

the rhythm of the compressor as epoxy and fixative sloshed into place. He waited a moment until the breach attained the proper hydraulic pressure, then closed off the chamber again. This one, at least, had listened to the lecture and, miracle of miracles, learned something.
    “He’s halfway here!” said the spotter.
    Chrétien asked, “He? Who’s he? All I see is a murderous ticktock that’s about ten seconds from leaping on this wall, scuttling up like a spider, and killing us all.”
    “Jesus Christ,” cried the spotter, now in the throes of true panic, “just fire!”
    “You’re oversimplifying, Sergeant, and shame on you for it,” said Longchamp, picking his teeth with a fingernail. “It won’t kill us all at once. It’ll start with the gunners, you know. Cut them in half before moving on to us. So we’ll enjoy a few more seconds to make our peace with the Lord before that Clakker carves us up.”
    The merchant, hunkered behind the bulk of the cannon, blindly swung the barrel back and forth. “I can’t see! Where is it?”
    “Anywhere! Northeast! Everywhere!”
    The merchant-gunner squeezed the double trigger with a grip that turned his knuckles whiter than freshly fallen snow. Twinned streams of blue and yellow water vomited from the cannon barrels, combining over the crenels to make a single stream the color of the first springtime fringe on the maple trees. The explosive release of pressure from the breach set the cannon to kicking like a mad stallion. The barrels snapped up, forcing the controls down with enough force to make the merchant yelp. He lost his grip. The breachman leaped aside. The cannon fired uselessly into the sky, then slewed back and forth to slam against the battlement hard enough to knock chips from the granite. Another wild swing caught the spotter by surprise. It connected with the characteristic celery-stalk
crunch
of broken bones that sent him sprawling along the wall. The sprinter reached the wall a few seconds later without a drop of green on him.
    The sergeant rounded on the spectacularly unsuccessful gunnery team. Over the crying of the spotter, he yelled, “What the hell was that?”
    A spot of motion over the seaway caught Longchamp’s eye: a fluttering blur of gray and white against a powder-blue sky.Soon it resolved into a pigeon. The messenger flew low over the town of Marseilles-in-the-West. It climbed as it passed over the walls of the keep, twice circling the Spire. The pigeon coops were situated about halfway up the tower.
    So. News from downriver. Longchamp sighed. Maybe for once the news would be good. Perhaps the tulips had caught the saboteur and found no connection to New France, no reason to swarm across the border to avenge their damaged pride. That would certainly merit the use of pigeon post. Pigeons were faster and more secure than the network of creaky semaphore towers snaked across New France.
    He snorted hard enough to clear his sinuses, then spat salty phlegm over the parapet. It would take a particularly callow fool to stake hopes on such fancies. Longchamp retied his scarf, stamped the creeping numbness from his feet, and headed back to the base of the Porter’s Prayer to begin the long ascent.

    The news from downriver was not good. It was a shitstorm of the Old Testament variety.
    Dozens of messenger pigeons occupied the rows of cages situated within the alcove stretching halfway around the Spire. The coops were louder than a whorehouse on payday, though not as enjoyable. Cleaner, too: every ounce of guano went to the chemists. An apprentice birdkeeper was seeing to that duty when Longchamp barged, panting and sweating, through the door from the Porter’s Prayer. The boy jumped; the tray he’d been sweeping hit the floor, the splash stippling his clothes with flecks of white and brown.
    “Saw the news arrive,” Longchamp gasped. “Where’d the little fucker go?”
    The boy pointed across the rows of coops toward the interior of the Spire.