Positioning herself next to Chance Boy, who was barely out of his teens, she peered into the shifting haze of the mist and rain, searching for an opening. She pulled the pieces of the coin from her pocket and took a quick peek through her fingers. The glow was sharp and clear; the Ard Rhys was not far away. Putting the pieces away again, she braced herself against the railing and peered over the side. She could just make out the dark spear points of the Fangs below. She held up her hands where Austrum could see them through the darkness and downpour, motioning him left and then right, guiding him toward a place where a landing might be possible. All they needed to do was to descend far enough to secure mooring lines and ride out the rest of the storm.
Worried that she might be thrown overboard by the turbulence, Chance Boy had secured a safety line about her waist—something she had failed to do herself. She was balanced against the railing, her boots hooked into the struts to help hold her in place. She was being knocked about, but she was holding on and the safety line assured she would not fall even if she was dislodged.
But then she missed seeing a cluster of the spikes materialize right underneath the hull as she signaled Austrum to maneuver toward a hole in the mist. The jagged stone ripped through the planking, knocking the Walker Boh askew and tearing out the hull far enough up on the bow that it took out the railing to which she was tethered.
With a startled gasp, she went over the side and tumbled away.
10
Pain.
It ratcheted through Mirai’s body as she woke and tried to move. It flooded her senses and made her go instantly still.
Something is wrong.
She was hanging upside down, she realized, suspended by the safety line fastened about her waist, swinging slowly back and forth through a shroud of haze and grayness and damp. Rain was lashing her face, blown by storm winds that had not abated in their fury.
How long have I been unconscious?
She tried moving again, and this time realized that she was wrapped up in the safety line in a way that pinned her left arm to her side and tangled her legs. The pain seemed to be generated as much by this as by any injury, although on looking up to where the broken piece of the ship’s rail anchored her to the branches she had tumbled through, she wasn’t so sure.
But at least she was alive.
All was rain and howling wind, so she knew she was still in the thick of the storm and not much time could have elapsed. Maybe hardly any at all. Her head ached fiercely, and she supposed she had struck it hard enough falling through the tree branches to black out.
Then she looked down.
She was hanging over a line of jagged rocks forming part of the lip of a broad ravine. The ravine itself was little more than a black gash in the mix of rain and mist, and she couldn’t tell how deep it went. Huge trees ringed everything, some of them shredded of all foliage, all of them old and gnarled, their limbs twisted together in knots. The ravine zigzagged its way right through their center, in some places exposing huge roots that hung into the deep split like the arms of dead men in an open grave.
She looked away quickly. If her safety line had not caught in the trees, she would have fallen into the ravine.
And she would probably never have been found.
Her thick blond hair had come loose from its bandanna and was plastered against her face, obscuring her vision and causing her further discomfort. Using her free hand, she brushed it away, being careful to move slowly. She couldn’t tell how securely she was fastened to the trees, and she didn’t want to do anything that would cause her to shake loose. Bound up as she was by the safety line, she wouldn’t stand a chance of saving herself.
Peering upward for a long moments, she searched the grayness for some sign of the Walker Boh, but there was no hint of her. In a storm like this one, the airship had probably been blown away from where she had fallen overboard, and the Rovers had no idea how to get back to her. Especially not while the storm was still raging.
She was going to have to get out of this by herself.
The wind caught her in a sharp gust, and she found herself swinging in wide arcs over the chasm—out into the void and back over the rocks—a pendulum out of control. She gritted her teeth and tried to will herself to stop, to make her body be still.
Then the rope that suspended her gave way, and she dropped several feet before it caught again.
She closed her eyes against the wave of fear that coursed through her.