“Don’t forget: When you get over the side, spread out to slow your way down. ”
“I won’t forget,” she said. She tossed a parting nod at Rodimer and Fang both, and grasped the tube’s edge.
Cly walked around the square bay door. He twisted his wrist in a cargo net and used it to hold himself steady. “Go on,” he told her. “I’ve got you. ”
Although he wasn’t touching her, she could feel him there behind her, arms out, unwilling to let her fall where she shouldn’t. Then his free arm swung to hold her elbow.
She leaned against him while she lifted her leg and sent it over the lip of the tube. With a short lurch she left the Naamah Darling and the support of the helpful captain and fell a few feet until she was straddling the tube’s wall. Briar snapped her arms and legs tight around it, clinging to it tightly.
She closed her eyes, but opened them again, because it was better to see even if the view nauseated her. The tube was not as steady as it seemed, and it dipped, weaved, and bobbed. Even though the motions were slow, they were impossibly high above the earth. Every fraction of an inch one way or another was enough to take her breath away.
&
nbsp; Over on the Naamah Darling, three curious faces peered out through the bay.
They were still close enough, and the captain was long-limbed enough, that if she were to reach out and beg, they could pull her back on board. The temptation was almost more than she could stand.
Instead, one shaking finger at a time, she peeled her death grip free of the tube and sat up enough to pivot her hips and bring her second leg over the edge. She paused there for a moment, as if she were entering a bathtub. Then, with one last look over her shoulder—too quick to change her mind—she pitched forward into the deep black interior of the fresh air apparatus.
The shift from grim, watery daylight to full-on night was sudden and loud.
She did her best to hold her arms and legs out to slow her fall, but she quickly realized that she’d have to use one hand to hold the mask as she toppled down, lest it be ripped off by the sheer force of the scrambling slide. That left two legs and one arm for ballasting duty. Three being less stable than four, Briar clattered and tumbled, sometimes headfirst, sometimes knock-kneed and toes-first, down the yellow tube with its hard wood ribs.
She couldn’t see anything, and everything she felt was hard, damp, and whooshing past. As she toppled, a new and separate sound became louder and louder. It was hard to single it out over the clattering calamity of her descent, but there it was, a windy sound—in, out, in, out—as if some great monster waited openmouthed and breathing at the bottom.
She could sense that she was nearing that bottom, though she couldn’t explain how she knew. Still, she made a final, desperate push to brake her body’s battering drop: head upright, feet down, right arm out, both knees locked.
She finally dragged herself to a halt when her feet snared on a wider, thicker rib than the ones she’d plummeted past. The air sucked violently at her clothes, and then reversed its direction—coughing hard and long, pushing up and out. Briar thanked heaven she wasn’t wearing skirts.
After a ten-second blast the current reversed, and then came shoving back out again.
She could see nothing in the ink-dark hole under her feet, but between the enormous gasping breaths of the tube she heard machinery grumbling and large metal parts clicking together.
The air came and went with whistling moans, inhaling and exhaling Briar’s hair, her coat, her satchel. Her hat trailed above her head like a balloon, anchored by the ties that fastened it under her chin, over the mask.
She couldn’t stand there forever, but she couldn’t see where a farther fall might bring her. A series of clanks like the fastening and rolling of huge gears sounded in time with the breathing: close, but not dangerously close, she didn’t think. And at that point, all danger was relative.
On the air current’s intake stroke, she scooted one foot away from the rim and braced her back against the tube. Her foot felt around, examining the darkness by touch. She found nothing, so she lowered herself a bit more. Her arms strained against her body’s weight, even when the air tube’s outtake gasp tried to lift and expel her.
She let herself down another few inches, until she was hanging with her shoulders and chest level with the last sturdy rib, the toe-points of her boots dangling down over nothing, and finding nothing. By now she could reach the more substantial rib with her fingertips, so she unlocked her elbows and let herself droop down a few inches more.
There.
Her feet scraped against something soft. The investigating motion of her swinging boots pushed it aside, only to land again on something else soft and small. Whatever she was fondling with the bottoms of her feet, it was resting on something firm, and that knowledge was enough to let her exhausted hands release their grip.
She fell, only briefly, and landed on all fours.
Under her hands and knees, small things broke with a hundred muffled snaps, and when the air tube exhaled again, she felt light fluttering bits of debris rise into her hair. They were birds, dead ones—some of them long dead, or so she guessed from the brittle beaks and decayed, dismembered wings that flapped with the shifting air. She was deeply glad she couldn’t see.
Briar wondered why the birds didn’t explode out through the tube every time the air flow shifted, but by exploring with her hands and feeling the gusting gasps, she thought that perhaps they had only collected there, out of reach of the tube’s main drawing and exhaling force. This was confirmed when she tried to rise and knocked her head against a ledge.
Her stopping place was only a shielded corner where detritus could accumulate. She held out her hands, crouched to keep from hitting her head again, and searched for the chamber’s boundaries.
Her fingertips stopped against a wall. When she pressed against this wall it gave a little, and she realized it wasn’t made of brick or stone. It was thicker than canvas, more like leather. Perhaps it was fashioned from several layers fused together—she couldn’t tell. But she leaned on it, and continued searching with her hands, up and down, seeking a seam or a latch.
Finding nothing of the sort, she pressed her head against the barrier and was almost certain she heard voices. The wall was too thick or the sound too distant for her to gather a language or any distinct words, but yes, there were voices.
She told herself that it was a good sign, that yes, there were people there inside the city and they lived just fine—so why not Zeke, too?