salty. His tongue began to sting, and then to go numb, as Sasheen continued to kiss him.
‘Whore,’ came the strange belching voice of Lucian from behind her.
And then the rush of it hit Ché, like a breath of fire blossoming through the blood-ways of his body. It jolted him out of his tiredness in a snap so that his blood surged, pounding, and a sense of weightlessness overcame him, filling him with light instead, and air, and the first real glimmers of lust.
Sasheen pulled clear with a moan, and glanced quite obviously down at his crotch. She whirled away with a satisfied smile.
He gasped, close to losing himself entirely, and sprawled back against the settle as though falling.
Two pulses, he thought distractedly. I have two pulses in my neck.
‘Ah, breakfast,’ she declared, as the old priest entered with a tray of food.
Ché tried to move and then thought better of it. He clung to the settle as though he would fly from it at any instant, while the sounds of Sasheen preparing to eat filtered towards him from far behind.
‘What is this?’ snapped her voice. ‘I can hardly see them, they’re so small.’
‘Sandshrips are always small this time of the year, Matriarch. They are still young.’
‘What? And they can’t be fed up a little? And what’s this? Grubby marks everywhere. I suppose the kitchen staff are also too young this time of year to keep the silver clean?’
‘My apologies, Matriarch. I’m still training the new replacements in the proper ways. It will not happen again, I assure you. I can have something else prepared, if you wish?’
‘And wait even longer? No. You may go.’
Ché looked at the grim face of Lucian glowering at him with his maddened eyes. With a loll of his head Ché looked to his right, where the old woman Kira still sat unmoving.
There was a definite glimmer beneath her eyelids now – those bird eyes of hers staring across the space at Ché as though they could see right through him.
Ché closed his own eyes and soared.
CHAPTER THREE
Without Wings
Whoah, thought Coya, as a gust of wind buffeted the figure that dangled between the two skyships, and set the man swinging like the pendulum of a clock.
‘Hold there!’ shouted the startled deck charge, raising a palm to the crewmen heaving away on the secondary line. At once they stopped hauling, and stood there frozen in their positions, watching the swaying figure with the uncertainty of men who’d never attempted this feat before, and were aware of its possibility only because others were telling them of it.
Out there in the gulf of air between the two vessels, bobbing from the line strung between them both, the figure on the wooden chair opened his mouth to shout: ‘In your own time, gentlemen!’
Coya smiled despite his concerns for the man.
‘Bring him in, Seday, quickly now,’ he told the deck charge smartly, and although Coya appeared young for his twenty-seven years – young even with his body stooped over a walking cane – the men snapped to with the respect of earnest sons for a father, and started to haul on the rope once more.
Just then another gust hit, stronger than the previous one, setting the distant figure pirouetting again on his seat. Coya heard the wind pressing against the silken envelope overhead, saw how the two skyships were drifting from their relative positions. Manoeuvring tubes fired along their sides, at the hurried commands of their captains. Still, the skyships drifted slightly apart, the line playing out on the far Khosian deck. The slack was lost, causing the man to bob even more dangerously beneath its tightening length. With an inrush of breath, Coya leaned forward with his weight on his walking cane and his hand clutching the ebony grip tightly.
To lose this man now could very well equate to losing the entire war.
‘Quickly now!’ he urged, without taking his gaze from their charge.
The figure was well past the halfway mark and nearing the ship at last. He looked calmer out there than Coya did merely watching from the deck. With his feet dangling over an abyss of several thousand feet all the way to the choppy sea below, he was turning his head to take in the rugged coastline of Minos, and the bay in which the city of Al-Minos lay like a gleaming pearl. Drawing closer, Coya saw his long black hair whip around his wind-reddened face; his hands with their many plain rings; his heavy bear-skin coat covering