Ventus by Karl Schroeder (leveled readers .txt) 📕

to me,” he said, raising his arms then wincing. “Tried to set me up for the murder of Yuri.”

She shrugged angrily. “Yes, I saw the result. Where’s Jordan?”

“No idea.” One of the front doors fell off its hinges. With everything else that was happening, this didn’t seem momentous. But harsh cones of electric light pierced the dust from outside. Calandria heard a loud whirring sound, accompanied by undulating movements in the doorway.

“What do we do now?” she said.

“Nothing,” he said, staring into the light.

“Not nothing!” She let her breath out in a rush, coughed on dust, and said, “We shoot down the aerostat.”

Axel’s eyes widened. “With what?”

“Call the Desert Voice. Land her here. Have her take out the aerostat on the way.”

“But Jordan—”

“Axel, we’re done here! We need to get Armiger and get out of here. Axel—” she couldn’t prevent her voice from rising as she spoke—“they’re killing everyone here! Because of Armiger!”

Axel’s lips were drawn in a tight grimace. He clenched his fists and glared at her while around them people screamed. “All right!” he said finally. “Do it!”

Calandria closed her eyes and opened the link.

*

Turcaret ducked involuntarily as something nearby fell with a crash. The manor was coming down around him, but he couldn’t leave it until he had taken care of his people.

He fought his way past running servants to his people’s quarters. The maids and footmen were clustered at the windows, staring outside in disbelief. “Run!” he barked at them. “Quickly now. Get outside before the rest comes down.”

“What’s happening?” wailed one. “Is it the war?”

He shook his head. “Just go.”

They made for the door.

He sighed. Duty was satisfied; now to find Jordan Mason.

He had no idea whether the assassination of Yuri had gone off successfully, but that seemed unimportant now. The Heaven hooks were in a rage. He could hear them, a deep sussurating chorus in his mind.

Never in his life had Turcaret been in the presence of such powerful Winds. He had heard voices as a child, and long before he met anyone who could explain them, had decided they were Winds. Little things spoke to him, trees and stones, and sometimes he could reply. They generally rambled about subjects he didn’t understand, but every now and then they brought news of the Hooks, or the Diadem Swans, and once or twice had told him of the activities of the desals. He clearly remembered the day he learned that the desals had chosen to put the lady Galas on the throne of Iapysia. She was blessed by the Winds; it was this fact that finally made him throw in with Brendan Sheia, because she had somehow angered the desals, and he feared what the Winds might do if that happened.

Now the voices discussed their search for a man. The Winds were acting to eliminate a threat—but how could that be? In all his years, Turcaret had never heard the Winds speak of any sort of danger to themselves or the world. They were all-powerful.

Sometimes when the Winds were very near, Turcaret could see secrets within things. That was happening now, but on a scale he could never have imagined. Everywhere he looked, ghostly words and images seemed to hover in front of objects—the chairs, walls, casements and jittering chandeliers each had its orbiting retinue of tiny visions. He knew if he had time to stop and examine them, each would reveal some secret about the object behind it. You could learn all the crafts, from masonry to bookbinding this way.

He had always felt exalted by such gifts. They were proof that he was special, destined in some way to be a great leader and master over both Man and Nature. When he heard whispers of the coming of the Heaven hooks last night, Turcaret had assumed they knew of his plot with Brendan Sheia, and were preparing to marshal the forces of heaven itself behind their attempt to wrest control of the Boros family. Sheia didn’t believe him when Turcaret told him, so they had continued with the conservative approach: framing the visiting imposters for the assassination. But Turcaret had suspected such detail work would prove unnecessary in the face of what was to come.

Now the Winds had arrived, and they were destroying the estate! He would have thought they disapproved of Yuri’s assassination, were it not that he could hear plainly they wanted only one thing: Jordan Mason.

Turcaret himself meant nothing to them. That knowledge came as a deep blow, worse than anything Chan had inflicted.

At the foot of the stairs, people were spilling into the courtyard. He could see Linden Boros trying to organize his men among tilting statues. The terrifying arms of the Hooks reared overhead.

Turcaret ignored them; they were no threat to him. He scanned the faces in the courtyard. He had seen Mason once, being hoisted aloft in Castor’s courtyard for some minor victory. And indeed, there he was coming out of the front hall. He looked more boy than man, his dark hair tousled, eyes wide.

“Give me your sword,” Turcaret demanded of a passing soldier. Dazed though he was, the man hurried to comply. Turcaret hefted the blade and walked through the mob, eyes fixed on Mason.

What was this boy to the Winds? He was nothing but a loutish tradesman, and yet the Heaven hooks were willing to kill everyone on the estate to get at him. “You!” Turcaret levelled his sword at Mason. “What did you do to anger them?”

“I don’t know!” shouted the boy. He shook himself and glared at Turcaret. “And who are you to accuse me?”

Anger always calmed Turcaret; it gave him focus. He smiled now at the boy. “You’ve spent too long with Chan. Answer me! What have you done to offend the Winds?”

Uncertainty crept into Mason’s eyes again. He was lit in intermittent flashes of lightning, making him seem to shift in place. If he tried to run, Turcaret was prepared to kill him.

“I don’t know why they’re doing it,” Mason said simply. He seemed guileless; whatever he had done, he was probably too stupid to remember or connect it to tonight’s events.

The Heaven hooks would keep tearing the estate apart until they found Mason. He was the cancer at the heart of the night, and only his removal would restore the correct order to things.

Killing him would also surely make the Winds notice Turcaret at last.

“Stand still,” he instructed the youth. He stepped forward and raised the sword.

Lightning flashed again, and Turcaret caught a glimpse of Mason’s eyes. In them Turcaret saw something he had never believed he would see.

Words and images flickered like heat lightning in those eyes. Somehow, this youth was both Man and Wind. The whispering voices of nature spoke from within him. All the people on this estate—all people everywhere—appeared to Turcaret as absences, silhouettes against the glow of the Winds. All except Mason, who shone like nature itself.

Mason glanced up at the sky. Suddenly everyone in the courtyard was screaming.

Mason jumped back. People were running for the walls, so finally Turcaret tore his gaze away from the youth.

He just had time to count the claws on the giant hand before it fell on him, took him, and crushed out his life.

*

Jordan met August Ostler in a cellar hallway choked with dust and swarming with terrified people. The soldier looked stunned, and Jordan had to take him by the shoulders and shout in his face to get his attention.

August blinked at him. Despite the warm red light of the torches, August’s face was deadly pale. “The Heaven hooks have come,” he said.

“I know,” Jordan said impatiently. “Where’s my lady?”

A series of scraping thuds sounded overhead, like the foosteps of a bewildered giant. The crowd grew suddenly silent; their gleaming eyes rolled and glanced to and fro.

Jordan felt curiously detached. He knew he would be in the same state as these people, if he didn’t know who the Heaven hooks wanted. But they wanted him; knowing that made his mind wonderfully clear. He was sure he was as afraid as anyone here, but his fear was focussed and sharp. He knew the thudding steps above were the gropings of a god which was determined to take the manor apart stone by stone until it found him.

August stammered. “Last I saw, she was being held by Linden’s men. They suspect her of killing Yuri!”

“Killing Yuri? That makes no sense!”

A giant roaring collapse took place somewhere above. It shook dust from the ceiling. People had begun to talk again, and this silenced them.

Jordan strove to compose himself. It seemed everything that went wrong in his life did so when he lost control. He folded his arms across his chest, closed his eyes, and tried his breathing exercises. With an effort he began mentally reciting one of the nonsense mantras Calandria had taught him.

He would have to leave the building. The Heaven hooks would get him for sure, but it sounded like it was just a matter of minutes anyway before they dug down to where he was now.

Once he came to this decision, he felt calmer. He opened his eyes.

August stood near him, eyes downcast. Only now did Jordan notice the bags he was carrying.

“These are Calandria’s!” He fingered the strap of one.

“Yes, I was carrying them because… well, never mind.”

“Give them to me!”

August did so without complaint. He seemed relieved, in fact, to be free of the responsibility.

Jordan sat down on the cold flagstones and began rooting through the bags. His mind was racing, spinning between the terrible feeling that he was somehow responsible for this disaster, and a hope that he might be able to set it right.

“August, what do the Heaven hooks look like to you?”

August shook his head dumbly.

“Come on! What do they look like? Animals?”

“No.”

“Trees?”

“Almost… no. They are what they are, Jordan.”

“Do they look like mechanisms?”

August frowned, then nodded.

Jordan had found what he was looking for. “Listen, August, when Calandria and I were on our way here, we stopped one night in a manse of the Winds. We slept there, unmolested.”

“Impossible.”

“I thought so too. I didn’t want to go in.” Jordan half-rose, and poked August in the spot where the man had been run through. “Remember this? The wound that nearly killed you last night? That’s now gone? Calandria May has more tricks than that. One of them is this.” He held up the gauze they had used to avoid the mecha in the manse, and told August how they had used it.

He had the man’s attention now. “I swear to you,” Jordan said, “the Heaven hooks are after me! I’m not Calandria’s servant, or Axel’s apprentice. I’m just a workman. But I’ve been cursed, and the Winds are after me. They’re tearing the manor house apart because I’m down here! If I leave, they’ll stop.”

“If that’s true…” August didn’t finish, but Jordan knew what he was thinking. August believed him. It was best for Jordan to go out there, and if he wouldn’t go voluntarily, he should be forced. And yet, from the look on August’s face, he had no love for the idea.

Could it be that August felt some sort of loyalty to Jordan, because he had saved the man’s life? Ridiculous. Other people were worthy of such admiration, but Jordan knew he was not.

He had no time to think about that now. Renewed crashings sounded above them, and deep thuds which seemed to be coming nearer. “Listen,” he shouted over the din, “Lady May says mecha are a kind of