Seeker

“It’s windier than I’d like,” Shinobu told her. “But once we get a little lower, we should be protected from the gusts.”Copyright Nôv/el/Dra/ma.Org.

It was nighttime and they were perched atop a 110-story building in London. Wind gusted about them, causing the building to drift gently this way and that, like the deck of a ship. And wind was not their only worry—judging by the clouds in the distance, there would be rain soon.

They stood near the parapet that encircled the roof. At their backs, rising steeply, was the decorative pyramid that formed the cap to the towering building beneath them. There was only a small border of walking space between the pyramid and the parapet, and on this narrow path they had arranged all of their gear.

Quin’s athame had brought them to London, and then, through trial and error with all six dials, they had managed to carve an anomaly through to the inside of the building beneath them. From there, with their welding equipment and brute force, they had made their way up onto the roof.

Traveler’s route through London was well known, and a quick search online had given them a map. From where they stood on this roof, Shinobu could see the massive airship turning at the bottom of its figure eight, preparing to make its way back toward them.

The breeze was whipping Quin’s hair around her face in a way that Shinobu found distracting. He was tightening her harness—tricky work—as she tried to keep the strands out of his way.

“Are you going to fiddle with your hair, or are you going to pay attention?” he asked, pausing to adjust the chin strap on his ancestor’s samurai helmet, which sat tightly on his head. All of the armor was tight, in fact. He was wearing it out of family pride and the secret hope that it might restore his own honor, but his great-great-great-grandfather must have been the runt of the family. “Or are you leaving the entire plan up to me?”

“This is not a plan!” she said, raising her voice over the wind. She dug in her trouser pocket and came up with a band to tie up her hair. “This is us throwing ourselves off a building!”

“We can still prepare. Stop playing with your hair!”

“You’re doing it again!” she told him. She looked over to Brian, who was arranging their gear beneath the parapet.

“What—trying to keep us from being killed?”

“Yelling.”

“It’s noisy up here!”

Without comment, Brian handed a plastic bottle full of brownish-black liquid to Quin. She popped off the top and thrust it at Shinobu.

“Drink!” she ordered. “And not just a few sips this time. I want half of that gone before you say anything else.”

“You want me to vomit all over you in a few minutes, then? I don’t think that’s going to make our landing any easier.”

But he took the bottle and began to drink. He was, he knew, going through opium withdrawal, Shiva withdrawal, and probably a number of other withdrawals as well. Master Tan had brewed an enormous batch of a new and even more dreadful tea to help him overcome the absence of drugs, and Brian had bottles of the stuff stored all around their packs. The taste did not improve with continued drinking, but without it, Shinobu guessed he’d be curled in a ball somewhere, moaning and writhing. Which might, he thought, be better than what they were about to do.

Quin waited patiently as he gulped down half the bottle, then experienced a few minutes of cramping and shaking before his head began to clear.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

The view of London at night was beautiful from where they stood, but he noticed Quin keeping her eyes on things closer at hand. Brian remained hunkered beneath the parapet, avoiding the view entirely. Out of loyalty to their Seeker training, Quin and Shinobu had agreed not to explain to Brian how they were getting to London, and he seemed willing to go along with this arrangement. But since they had blindfolded him and dragged him through the anomaly from Hong Kong, the big Asian had stayed rather quiet. He was now cutting the rocket fuses to size and arranging them carefully by the launching mechanism, muttering to himself. Most of his words were taken away by the wind, but every now and then Shinobu heard words like, “witchcraft” and “insanity.”

“Does he actually know anything about rockets?” Quin asked, nodding in Brian’s direction.

“He knows enough. We used explosives a lot for the big salvage dives.”

“And fireworks?” she asked skeptically.

“They’re similar.”

“You do realize we’re not underwater?”

“We’re not? So we won’t be able to use the inflatable life raft I brought?”

She smiled at that, and he was happy he was no longer snapping at her.

“I’m nervous,” she admitted.

“How about some tea?” He offered her his bottle.

She smiled again. “No, thank you.”

“Try to put your mind on something else as long as you can.”

Quin’s eyes lit up with a sudden thought. “What happened to my horse?”

“Your horse?”

“Yellen. When we … came through to Hong Kong.”

Shinobu shook his head, remembering, as though from a dream, the tangle of arms and legs and saddle and reins they had been when they’d escaped to There after the attack.

“I honestly don’t know,” he told her. “I was worried you were about to die—which you did, by the way. I don’t think Yellen came through with us. But if he did, maybe he’s someone’s backyard pet now. You know what those estates are like along Victoria Peak.”

A thoughtful look came over Quin’s face. Then Brian began tossing them canisters. These they hooked to every spare inch of their harness straps. On Shinobu’s body, extra space was hard to find. He was already carrying rappelling rope and a plasma torch, with its huge fuel canister.

Once they’d managed to get everything attached, Shinobu moved experimentally, discovering that the gear bounced around like mad. It felt as though he were moving about with carpenter’s hammers hanging all over his body. No matter how perfectly they jumped, the landing was going to be painful.

“Need my guidance system, Sea Bass!” Shinobu called.

Brian tossed him a cylinder that looked very similar to the array of fireworks he was preparing. This got attached at Shinobu’s left hip. Then he and Quin pulled on their gloves.

Shinobu lifted himself, with all his heavy gear, up onto the edge of the parapet, where he took a seat, his legs hanging inward toward the roof. Quin followed, keeping her eyes up. The wind was stronger on top of the parapet, but the gusts were coming less frequently now.

Traveler was half a mile away, approaching from the south, its exterior reflecting the lights of the city. They put on their goggles.

When Shinobu had jumped off the Bridge in Hong Kong, he’d remembered what John once said about Traveler being “safe from Seekers.” He’d realized then that the airship must have been designed so an athame couldn’t get you on board. The coordinates they could reach with Quin’s athame were all stationary locations. The dagger could not bring them to a moving point like Traveler, whose coordinates were changing all the time. So he’d formed a plan to arrive by a different route.

“Are you ready?” he asked her.

“You weren’t lying to me, were you,” she asked, “when you said you’ve done this before?”

That was a matter of opinion. Shinobu had jumped off high buildings in Hong Kong many times, but never with so much gear, in such bad weather, or with the intention of hitting a moving target. At this moment, however, he didn’t want to split hairs.

“Of course I’ve done this before. Lots of times.”

Very, very cautiously he stood up sideways on the parapet, facing along its length. The ledge was two feet wide, but Shinobu himself, with everything he was wearing, was wider than that. He found his balance. Then he pulled Quin up, so she was standing in front of him, her back toward him, as she also faced along the length of the parapet. Brian steadied their legs from below.

Shinobu watched her glance down. The building dropped off in a sheer face, plummeting a hundred and ten stories to the ground. Quin chose her footing carefully, edging backward until she was only a few inches away from him. Hooking the rear of her harness to the front of his own with carabiners, he drew her flush up against him.

“Oh, God,” Quin breathed. She had turned her head toward the view, and he watched her eyes sweep the distance from where they stood to the approaching shape of Traveler. The ship was a quarter of a mile away and much, much closer to the ground.

“It’s all right,” he whispered into her ear.

Brian was standing at the parapet by their feet, also watching the ship approach. He hauled the launcher up onto his shoulder and slid the first rocket inside.

“Ready when you are, Barracuda,” he said.

“I don’t think I can do this!” Quin whispered. She reached back and grabbed Shinobu’s hand. He squeezed it tightly in his own. He could feel her shaking beneath all her gear. What they were doing was, he had to admit, completely terrifying. There wasn’t much he could say to change that.

“Quin?” he asked her.

“Yes.”

“Were you trying to kiss me in the basement?”

Her head was turned from him so he could see only part of her cheek and her left ear, but when both blushed deep pink, he knew he’d successfully distracted her for a moment.

Without giving her warning or any more time to worry, Shinobu leapt off the building, pulling her with him.

And in one awful, gut-dropping moment, they were falling, plummeting at a speed that felt far too fast and completely out of control. Quin screamed. Shinobu’s stomach clenched, and his insides tried to climb up his throat as his body told him that they were going to die for sure.

But he had jumped off buildings before. He assumed his free fall position, his body pulling hers into the correct stance beneath his own. Traveler was ahead of them. He could see it clearly. He angled toward it. Wind whipped at their faces, with gusts buffeting them.

“Pull the chute!” Quin yelled.

“Not yet!” he yelled back.

Thousands of windows streaked by in Shinobu’s peripheral vision, skyscrapers blurring past as the huge shape of Traveler heaved closer.

“Pull the chute!” she screamed.

A streak of black tore by on their left, heading straight for Traveler. A moment later, a burst of pink filled their field of view and a boom echoed past them. The first firework had exploded in front of Traveler’s nose.

“Pull the chute!”

“I know what I’m doing!” Shinobu yelled, marveling at his ability to sound so confident when his words were only vaguely true.

The ground was racing up to meet them. They were almost on top of the ship, the pink flashes of the firework and acrid smoke all around them.

“Shinobu!” she screamed.

He pulled the chute.