“So now that we don’t have enough engines to fight the wind, you’re working your magic on that.”

Silk shook his head. “I can’t. All that I can do is pray, which isn’t magic at all, but begging. I’ve been doing it, and perhaps I’ve been heard.”

He drew a deep breath. “You want your engines back in operation, Major. You want to preserve this airship, and to deliver me to your superiors in Trivigaunte; the rest of your prisoners don’t matter greatly, as you must know. I do.”

Slowly, Hadale nodded.

“We can do all that, if only you’ll cooperate. Take us to Mainframe, as Pas commands and the Outsider wishes. Auk and his people can leave the whorl and thus begin carrying out the Plan. Hyacinth and I will return—”

“Shut up!” Hadale cocked her head, listening.

The pilot said, “Number seven’s quit, sir.” The absence of all emotion in her voice conveyed what she felt.

“Take her up fast. Just below the cloud cover.”

Hyacinth asked Silk, “Won’t the wind be stronger there?”

Hadale was on her feet, scanning the desert below. “A lot stronger, but I’m going to set her down and try to fix the engines. Even if we can’t, we won’t be blowing farther from Trivigaunte. We want a big level stretch to land on, and an oasis, if we can find one.”

“No land!” Oreb advised sharply; Hyacinth began, “If you’ll go to Mainframe like he—”

Hadale whirled. “He can’t fix them. He admits it.”

Silk had risen, too; almost whispering, he said, “You must have faith, Major.”

“All right, I’ve got faith. Slashing Sphigx, succor us! Meanwhile I need a place to set us down on.”

“I said I couldn’t repair your engines. I said it because it’s the truth. I should have added — as I do, now — that if only we were doing the gods’ will instead of opposing it, a way to repair them—”

“Sir!” The pilot pointed.

“I see them. Can you get us over there?”

“I think so, sir. I’ll try.”

Silk leaned forward, squinting. Hyacinth said, “Something like ants, but they’re leagues and leagues away.”

“That’s a caravan,” Hadale told Silk, “could be one of ours. Even if it isn’t, they’ll have food and water, and a few of us can ride to the city to guide a rescue party.”

“I just hope they’re friendly,” Hyacinth murmured.

Rubbing her hands, Hadale looked ten years younger. “They will be soon. I’ve got two platoons of pterotroopers on board.”

Chapter 15 — To Mainframe!

“Silk say.” Settling on Auk’s extended wrist, Oreb whistled sharply to emphasize the urgency of his message. “Say Auk!”

“All right, spill it.”

Matar prodded Auk’s ribs with the muzzle of her slug gun. “The lieutenant says for you to stop leaning out of this port. She’s afraid you’ll jump out.”

Auk withdrew his head and arm. “Not me. I could, though. With our gun deck — that what you call it?”

Both Matar and Chenille nodded.

“Shaggy near on the ground like this, it’s maybe eight cubits. That’s sand down there, too, so it’d be candy.”

Matar was studying Oreb. “Where did you find that bird? I thought your calde had it.”

“Girls go,” Oreb reported hoarsely. “Say Auk.”

“He just flew down and lit on me,” Auk explained. “Me and him’s a old knot.” Gently, he stroked Oreb with his forefinger.

Chenille told Matar, “We were together down in the tunnels under our city. It was pretty rough.”

“It was, my daughter.” Incus joined the group. “It was there, however, that I received the divine favor of Surging Scylla, our patroness.”

From her seat at the front of the gondola, the lieutenant called, “What are you talking about back there?”

“Tunnels, sir.” Matar was a lean young woman two fingers smaller than most.

“There,” Incus elucidated, “I learned to load and shoot a needler.” He approached the lieutenant, his plump face wreathed in smiles. “It is an accomplishment of which very few augurs indeed can boast. I had a most excellent teacher in my faithful friend Corporal Hammerstone.”

“Girls go,” Oreb repeated. “Camels. Girl take.”

“Matar!” the lieutenant called. “Get over here.” Matar hurried to obey.

Maytera Marble caught Auk’s sleeve. “There’s something else,” she whispered. “That little cat creature Patera’s wife had is back.”

Auk nodded absently. “He’s got word from Silk, I’ll lay.”

“Something about milk and mammals,” she explained, “and strong twine off caramels. I can’t quite make out what it’s so excited about. Gib has it.”

“That’s camels in a caravan,” Auk said under his breath. “I saw ’em, and I saw troopers going after ’em. Now I got to take the dell and her jefe before that flash little butcher does it and nabs the credit.”

The flat crack of a needler came from the front of the gondola; a woman screamed.

Silk had been watching two distant Trivigauntis probe the desert sand for soil with enough cohesion to hold a mooring stake. As the faint thuddings of the heavy maul reached the cockpit, he turned to the pilot. “Could we take off without untying those ropes?”

“The mooring lines?” The pilot shook her head.

“That’s unfortunate. It might have saved lives.” He sat down beside Hyacinth again and took her hand, listening to the moan of a winter wind that raised sand devils in the distance.

“We ought to have half a dozen more,” the pilot told him. “We will, too, pretty soon. We use twenty-four at home.”

“You have five already.” The number suggested Hyacinth’s five fingers; Silk raised them to his lips, kissing them and the cheap and foolish ring that had been the only ring they had. His padded leather seat lifted sharply beneath him, a forceful upward push like that of Blood’s floater rising from the grassway. “Feel that?” the pilot said.

Hyacinth pointed. “Something flashed way over there.” She swung wide the pane they had opened for Tick.

“Don’t do that,” the pilot told her. “We’ve got plenty of cold air in here already.”

Silk put his own finger to his lips. Almost beyond the edge of hearing, faint, irregular booms filled the intervals between the blows of the maul. “They’re firing,” he informed the pilot. “I know the sound from the fighting in our city.”

Then the gondola heaved beneath them again, faster than the moving room had ever moved, and wilder even than Oosik’s armed floater — rocked and shook them as it soared into the air.

Nearer than the besieged caravan, a slug gun boomed, loud among the gondola’s tormented creaks and groans. Reeling, the pilot jerked out her needler. Hyacinth knocked it from her hand and rammed both thumbs into her eyes, kicking savagely at her knees until both she and the pilot fell.

“What are you doing?” Auk inquired.

“Dropping ballast.” Silk pointed. “If you’ll look down there, you should see something like smoke falling from under the rear gondola.”

Auk thrust his head and shoulders through the opening left by a shot-out pane of glass. “Yeah.”

“That’s desert sand,” Hyacinth explained. “They started shoveling more on as soon as we got down, and the pilot told us about it. You can make this go up with the engines, or pull it down with them. That’s what we did when we landed. But if you want to fly high up for a long while, the easiest way’s to drop sand like he’s doing.”

Chenille said, “This floor’s about level now.”

Silk nodded, pointing toward the bubble in a horizontal tube on the instrument panel.

Auk took the seat nearest him. “If you want me to, I can get somebody else to do this. Even that pilot. I’d have one of ours sit here to watch her.”

“She’s blind,” Silk told him. He threw a lever on the instrument panel. “Hyacinth blinded her. I saw it.”

“She’s just got sore eyes, Patera. She’ll be dandy.”

Hyacinth sat on Silk’s left. “You like this, don’t you?”