ran.
Nott didn’t want to look anywhere but directly in front of his own feet, yet he had to know if he was going to run right off the edge of the Bridge. He glanced up and was relieved to see that it would be impossible to do so. The sail swooped down and down to create a valley at the bottom; then it rose again, up to the edge. Quin and the other one were in that valley now, doing their best to run away.
Just in front of Nott, Geb was flailing his arms to keep his balance. One of his hands knocked against the disruptor on his chest, and the weapon fired. The sparks buzzed and hissed in a swarm, hit the surface of the sail, and bounced in all directions. They were stepping on remnant sparks as they hurtled downward. It was lucky disruptors didn’t damage you unless they got to your head.
One of Nott’s feet hit the sail wrong as he tried to avoid the sparks, and then his legs were behind him and he was rolling instead of running. He crashed into Geb and Balil, taking both of them down. The impact of all three with the sail was enough to topple everyone else. A moment later, all six Watchers were rolling, bouncing, flailing down the slope in a maelstrom of arms and legs and knives and heavy metal disruptors. Nott heard both disruptors fire in the middle of the turmoil.
The six boys ended up in separate heaps in the valley at the bottom of the sail. The canvas was still rippling and shifting, adding to the dizziness of the long roll. When he could finally see straight, Nott spied Quin fifty yards away, running for the neighboring sail.
“She’s getting away!” yelled Wilkin.
Geb rose up, the disruptor hanging crookedly across his chest. He looked furious.
Someone was screaming. It was Jacob, the skinny half-trained Watcher who wore glasses. He convulsed on the canvas, a storm of disruptor sparks about his head and chest. Sounds of animal agony came out as he beat his own head, then scratched helplessly at the sail beneath him. Nearby, his baby partner, Matthew, was staring with an open mouth.
“Everybody up!” ordered Geb. “Go!”
The Watchers—all except Jacob, of course—scrambled after Quin. Geb paused long enough to plunge a knife into Jacob’s chest.
That’s what you get when you’re a Watcher, even a baby Watcher, Nott thought. You live with madmen, and then one of them stabs you to death.
Nott was grabbed by the collar, and Geb hissed into his ear, “You made us fall, Nott. You killed Jacob.” The older boy pulled a rope from his cloak and said, “You’re going first.”
Quin and John climbed out of the valley of the sail to its edge, where it overlapped the next sail. One of the boys had been disrupted in their mad fall, but the other five were in the valley behind them and heading their way, the wine of the disruptors preceding them.
“Come on!” she yelled.
They leapt from the edge of the sail down onto the neighboring one.
“Do we cut through here?” John asked.
“Yes!”
They both dropped to their knees and, making their whipswords short and sharp, began sawing violently through the canvas. When they’d made a large cut, they grabbed hold together and pulled, tearing a large flap free. The loose material blew toward them in a gust of wind, and Quin found herself looking through the gap straight down hundreds of feet to Victoria Harbor below.
“Dammit!” cursed John as he stared at the water.
They weren’t over the Bridge itself at this spot on the canopy; they were standing on an overhang, and they couldn’t climb down.
The piece of the canvas they’d cut was flapping wildly, striking Quin’s feet and revealing the distant harbor again and again. The view spun until she forced her eyes away. Over the lip of the sail she saw the boys coming straight at them.
She turned to look the other way. The valley of the new sail was spread out before her, and to her right, it swept upward to a new peak.
“Should we keep running,” she asked, “onto the next sail and the next?”
John shook his head. “I don’t think we can beat them on foot.”
He was right. In the open, the disruptors could catch them, and the slanted surface of the sail would work against them, deflecting disruptor sparks into their faces as they ran.
“We have to climb quickly, then—just until we’re over the Bridge itself,” she