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concealed their contempt for the Poisoner. They gathered around, brandishing their tribal knives in plain view, until their scowls were drawn to the distant lights.

“We’ve set bowmen at the vents on both sides,” Bataba explained. “Barrels of tar from the wrecked skyships stand ready in dawn and dusk corridors. These saboteurs will find scaling our walls no easy task.”

Devon wasn’t convinced, but he left his concerns unvoiced. “Just keep one eye on the sky,” he reminded him.

Bataba ignored the jibe. He was studying the landscape before them. The Poisoner turned to follow his gaze. They were closer now, close enough to see units of troops clustered around the campfires, and mounted soldiers milling behind. Armour and shields flashed. On higher ground to the southeast and southwest the skeletal silhouettes of wooden towers, mangonels, and scorpions waited before the abyss.

“The outriders have returned,” Bataba said.

The horsemen had broken through the infantry and reined in before a group of command tents situated behind the bulk of the army.

“At least we know where Clay is,” Devon observed, “or wants us to think he is.”

They didn’t have long to wait after the outriders had delivered their report. Buglers echoed commands through the lines of troops, and the armies of Deepgate rippled into motion.

Hundreds of banners split aside and streamed to east or west. Rear cavalry units moved into flanking positions. Reservist infantry assembled into blocks between them, bristling with spears and pikes. Lines of pitch fire tore through the sand before ranks of archers and arbalests. Aether-lights flared in unison high above, and Deepgate’s warships started to converge, moving into position for a concentrated assault.

The plain before them now levelled. Rocks popped and crumbled beneath the Tooth’s tracks, reduced to dust in the face of the great machine. Engines thundered. But to Devon these noises seemed distant, blanketed by a heavy silence in his mind.

He waited. The Tooth rocked and juddered, slowly building speed, flattening everything in its path. Caravan tracks crisscrossed the desolate ground before them like old wounds. The stars seemed to wink in approval. Deepgate’s fire-lit trunks of smoke grew nearer.

Still he waited.

Soon enough the warships arrived, and the battle began.

A colossal boom like a thunderclap sounded overhead, followed by a prolonged crackling. The desert flickered orange and red. Gouts of flame fizzed past the bridge windows and blackened the glass. Phosphor smoke seethed in their wake. But the Tooth shrugged off this attack as though it were summer rain.

Boom, crackle, fizz.

Two hundred yards ahead, a second shower of fire fell from the night sky.

“They have missed,” the shaman said.

“No.” Devon knew what was coming.

All at once, the Deadsands burst into flame. For a quarter of a league to either side there was nothing but a lake of fire.

“The ground is on fire!” Bataba cried. “Go around! Go around!” He groped for the control levers.

Devon elbowed him aside, and maintained his course, driving the Tooth straight for the flames. “Calm yourself. They want us to hesitate here. They want to steer us aside. Spine will then try to board.”

The shaman’s face had paled. Sweat beaded his furrowed brow and trickled down across his tattoos. He rubbed at the scar around his missing eye as if it were a fresh wound.

“Afraid of fire, shaman?” Devon shouted over the mountainous rumble of the tracks and the roar of approaching flames.

“We’ll roast alive!”

“Only if we stop.”

The Tooth ploughed on into the inferno. Smoke churned and boiled beyond the bridge’s forward windows. Embers streamed upwards in spiralling torrents. There was a snap, and one of the windowpanes cracked from side to side.

“This is madness,” the shaman hissed.

“Keep calm!”

But smoke was now pouring through the cracked window, billowing across the ceiling. Bataba hunched beside Devon and breathed frantically through his headscarf. Tears streamed from his remaining eye. The Heshette councillors retreated, coughing, to the rear of the bridge.

“Seal that crack!” Devon yelled. “If they drop gas now…”

Bataba relayed the order to a runner waiting by the door. Moments later a tribesman appeared with a tub of thick, grey bone-gum. Flinching back from the heat, he set to work sealing the damaged window.

The Tooth surged on, even deeper into the flames.

Devon started to sweat as the temperature rose, the throttle feeling slick in his palm. His lungs rejected the poisonous air, and he vomited, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. Men were barking orders in the corridors behind them. After plugging the window the tribesman staggered back, gabardine smoking. A runner appeared, muttered something quickly to the