Burn Bright - By Marianne de Pierres Page 0,77
are divided because Lenoir killed one of the Night Creatures to protect me.’
Ruzalia leaned forward. ‘You? How fascinating. Why would the leader of the Guardians do that?’
Naif met Ruzalia’s penetrating stare with a steady gaze. ‘That is not important right now. I have a message for you from Eve and Clash. We’ve seen inside Danskoi. The Ripers are using the Peaks to make new Night Creatures.’
Ruzalia slapped her thigh in anger. ‘Danskoi. Right beneath my nose all along. I knew some perverted doings were at hand, but had no proof of it.’
The three gazed from Ruzalia’s viewing window as the levia-flies engaged the globes in a clash of light beams. Globes ignited and dropped like fiery comets to the ground. In their dying light, Naif could see more Ripers swarming up from Los Fien towards Danskoi in metal carriages, racing towards Lenoir and the others.
Then the zeppelin lifted and swung away.
The wrench of leaving Ixion faded a fraction as the light trails blended with the glittering luminosity from the clubs and majestic churches, transfixing her. Beautiful.
‘Hold tight,’ said Ruzalia.
The zeppelin lifted again, so quickly this time that Naif’s stomach felt as if it had been pitched outside her body. She gripped her chair and pressed her forehead to the window-glass, swallowing against the unpleasant sensation. Nothing but darkness below and above, and the vanishing lights of Ixion.
Where are we going to in this endless night?
Ruzalia leaned forward and dropped a translucent mask on her and Charlonge’s laps. ‘Quickly. Put it on.’
Charlonge obeyed instantly but Naif stared at the mask with suspicion.
A moment later, as brilliant daylight and Ruzalia’s laughter exploded upon her senses, she clamped her eyes shut and fumbled for it. She waited for the eye pain to subside before she dared to open them again and peer out through the mask’s filter.
The radiance of the sky and water made it hard to distinguish one from the other and for a moment she wondered if they were upside down. Then she saw a stretch of little green shapes – islands spaced apart as though they’d been sprinkled upon the ocean carpet by a giant hand.
She closed her eyes against the assault of light and colour and rested back in her seat while, next to her, Charlonge wept with sadness and relief.
A notion came to Naif then, born of anguish and anger and sorrow at what she’d left behind her; a thought emerging from her confusion. ‘Ruzalia, is it possible that the Ripers may not be the creators of what is happening in Ixion, but are caught in a trap of their own?’
Ruzalia crushed her cigar into a metal ashtray on the arm of chair and crossed her legs. She leaned back and blew rings into the air between them. ‘You pose an interesting question, youngling.’
Naif sank her face into her hands, exhausted with pain and sick with possibilities. ‘I have a friend called Rollo. He saw a Riper in Grave talking to a Councillor.’
‘Indeed?’ The pirate woman leaned forward, lighting another cigar. ‘Did your friend hear their conversation?’
Naif shook her head. ‘No.’ Saying it aloud gave her a surge of purpose. ‘But I will find out.’ For Rollo. For Krista-belle. For all of them. I will find out and come back. ‘Ruzalia, please can you take me back to Grave?’
This book has taken me several years to write. It’s a book I felt so passionate about that I kept working on it despite contracts for other novels. Many people have been a part of Burn Bright and I’d like to send them all my heartfelt thanks. Firstly, to Tara Wynne, my agent, who loved it right away even when it was just a one paragraph idea. My writers group ROR, who encouraged me to continue with it after they saw a skeleton draft (Tansy Rayner Roberts for her excitement, Dirk Flinthart for suggestions about the gangs, and Margo Lanagan who said it was full of de Pierres ‘yummies’, Richard Harland, Rowena Cory Daniells, Trent Jamieson and Maxine McArthur for the thumbs up).
Special thanks go to my publisher, Zoe Walton, who saw potential in the manuscript and gave a lot of extra time to help me re-work it into something much better. Zoe, I will never be able to thank you enough! Then there’s the Random House team. WOW! What can I say? You have been truly amazing. Peri Wilson, Sarana Behan, Justin Ractliffe, Linsay Knight – a gift to this veteran adult fiction writer venturing nervously into new territory.
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