slack-jawed wonder as the beast wheeled overhead. It was obviously as fascinated with them as they were with it, screaming a piercing note of challenge, wondering who these interlopers were that dared to brave its sky.
Masaru pressed the trigger on the needle-thrower, the device spitting out a chattering, angry hiss as he emptied the entire magazine in a single burst. Two-dozen hy po shafts sailed through the dark, at least four sinking into the beast’s hindquarters. The arashitora snapped left and swooped under the keel, shaking the Child with its bellow of rage. The sky folk ran across to the port side, saw the silhouette rise up over the railings and tear a great gouge through the hull. The impact was explosive, wood spraying in foot-long spears, the ship rocking on its haunches amidst the groan of breaking rope. One of the cloudwalkers lost his footing and plummeted over the side with a wavering scream. Another almost followed, saved only by the hands of his comrades.
“You pissed it off, Masaru!” Akihito’s face split in a wide grin. He swung the floodlight around, listening for the sound of pinions over the tempest’s din.
“Strap in!” roared Yamagata to his men. “Or get below deck!”
The crew lashed lengths of hemp around their obi and scattered to their posts, several climbing up into the rigging to secure broken cables. A scream split the air, the smell of ozone, rumbling thunder. A white shape plummeted from above and crashed into the portside engine, tearing it away with the shriek of tortured metal. The Child dropped thirty feet out of the sky, spitting a bright trail of flame.
Cloudwalkers cried out in terror as the inferno reached up toward the inflatable, burning tongues licking at the balloon’s flank. Fire and water kissed, giving birth to great clouds of choking, black smoke, a haze that flooded over the deck and cut visibility down to a handful of feet. One sailor fell screaming from the rigging, landing on the timbers with a sodden crunch, his clothes and hair ablaze. Smothering sheets of rain beat the flames back from the balloon, leaving a trail of long black scorch-marks on the canvas.
Masaru gritted his teeth and emptied his second magazine as the fleeting shape disappeared underneath them again, needle-thrower hissing, bolts sailing harmlessly into the black. He cursed the smoke beneath his breath, blinking the blinding rain from his eyes.
The crunch of tortured gears spilled from the flaming tear in the Child’s flank, and the entire vessel was rocked with another explosion as a secondary fuel tank ignited. Flames vomited from the torn and smoking hull. The ship bucked beneath them and listed sideways, the thrust of the remaining engine threatening to tilt the entire vessel onto its wounded side. Yamagata bellowed at his men, demanding that someone find Old Kioshi and get the Guildsman below deck to shut off the port fuel lines. He clung to the wheel with a white-knuckle grip, breath heaving in his lungs, teeth drawn back from his lips as he roared at Masaru.
“The bastard’s tearing us to pieces!”
A crag of rock loomed out of the darkness dead ahead and Yamagata cried a warning, leaning into the wheel with all his weight. The Thunder Child swung hard to port as the captain poured on the burn, the single propeller shrieking in dissent and spewing exhaust into the rain. Rivets popped along the engine housing as the ship rolled almost ninety degrees, showing her belly to the tempest. Cloudwalkers fell screaming from the rigging, those who’d had time to strap themselves in were jerked to a bone-jarring halt at the ends of their lines, watching their less-fortunate comrades plummet off into the mouth of the storm.
Masaru clung to the rigging and scanned the darkness, looking for a flash of white, listening for the sound of rushing wings over the crackling flames and rolling thunder and screams of dying sailors.
“Four darts’ worth of blacksleep,” he growled. “Hasn’t even slowed him down.”
Yukiko was crouched up near the bow, her arms wrapped around the chi barrels, Kin beside her. The boy looked frantic, almost petrified, his eyes fixed on the cloudwalkers gathered on deck. He hunched down below the level of the barrels, jaw clenched, face drawn and bloodless. He winced as the fuel tank exploded, the light of the roaring flames reflected in terrified eyes. Yukiko meantime was transfixed by the sight of the thunder tiger, mouth slack with awe, eyes shining and bright.
“Do you see it?” she breathed. “Gods above, it’s beautiful.” Closing her eyes, she reached out through the storm, feeling the world fall away beneath her feet. She pawed through the blackness, a blind girl in search of the sun. And then she touched it, searing hot, fury coiled among the soporific gravity of the poison, clouded and dark. She felt the need to destroy. To rend. Animal rage layered over ferocious intelligence, indignant that it had been challenged by this wooden insect, this slug with no wings, dragging itself through the sky and reeking of dead, burning flowers.
And then it felt her. Confusion. Aggression. Curiosity. Its voice bounced around the inside of her skull, as deafening as the peals of thunder crashing through the skies around her.