Free Skyland by Aelius Blythe Page B

under the broken glass. "You've
already got enough cuts on you, come on."
    Broken glass... He picked up one half
of the teacup, felt the sharp edges against his callused thumb.
There was a bandage there. The cup dropped to the ground. The
callused hand curled into a fist. It hurt... Already cut...
Why? Why? The chair maker looked up. "Where...
where..."
    The woman was on one side of him, her hands
on his arm. "Let's help you up, there."
    The professor was on the other side tugging
gently at the chair maker's shoulder. "Come on now, it's okay. Why
don't you lie down over here."
    "Where is Belle?"
    He stared up at the lopsided eyes of the
professor. The lopsided eyes behind the cracked glasses looked back
at him, the mouth under them still pinched up in a pout, or perhaps
in some futile effort to control the expression. One hand lifted to
the face under the broken glasses, rubbed the corners of the eyes.
The pinched mouth twitched a little; it looked like it was having
trouble making words come out.
    "Grandpa..."
    "Where is my wife?'
    "I don't think she made it, gramps."
    "Didn't make..."
    "I think she–"
    "She's dead?"
    "I'm afraid so."
    "I-it can't be."
    "It looked that way."
    The chair maker pushed himself off the
ground, a sliver of china embedded in his hand. He didn't look at
it.
    "I need to go back. To-to get her.
    "There's nothing you can do now. Come on,
have a rest."
    "I need to go back to get–to g-get her
b-b-o..." He couldn't say it.
    "You can't."
    "Why not?"
    "It's not safe."
    The chair maker looked out the window. "But
all the fires are out."
    "Soldiers. They're moving through every
neighborhood in the city, searching, securing it."
    "What?"
    "The city is crawling with Union soldiers.
You can't go back."

 

    Chapter
Twelve
    in which there is
cold ...
     
    Clouds.
    Harper watched the white mist in front of
him. He opened his mouth and pushed out more air. His breath
ribboned out from his tongue, his lips, his teeth. Strings of
white, curls of air puffed shavings floated in a weightless pile
before him. Behind the cloud, in the polished obsidian walls he
could see himself like a dragon, mouth open, breath moving in and
out, a physical cloud in front of him. He shivered in the cold and
rubbed his hands against his arms.
    "Where is he?"
    A hand slammed down on the cold, black
table. An arm had pushed through the mist. The cloud shivered
before it dispersed. Harper breathed another one. His reflection
had gone away, too. Between him and the obsidian wall was a face,
an angry face that leaned down, leaned on the hand that had slammed
the table, on the arm that had pushed through the mist. Another
hand came up and swatted the cloud that Harper had just breathed.
The nails on the hand, clean but just a little too long, missed his
face by a hair. They tickled Harper's cheek as they passed.
    He looked at the angry face.
    "Why does the air turn into white when I
breathe?" When we breathe. He noticed clouds rising from the
angry man's mouth and nose as well.
    "Forget the fucking air! Where is Reynold
Fields?"
    "I don't know. Why is it so cold?"
    "To keep you awake! Where is your
father?"
    "Is the air white because of the cold?"
    "Shut up and tell me where Reynold Fields
is."
    Harper stared at the angry man leaning on
the table. He shook his head. Again.
    "Where is–"
    "I don't know."
    "You do!"
    "No. I don't."
    "You are his son!"
    "I know that."
    "Then where the hell is he?"
    "In his house..."
    "Don't be stupid. We already know he's not.
Your people can't find him."
    Of course not... they don't want to find
him. "And you expect me to know?"
    "You are his son!"
    Staccato puffs of white struck the air from
the man's flared nostrils. Harper tilted his head and watched the
clouds curl away and disappear, and he didn't answer.
    "You are his son!" the man repeated.
Again.
    "I know that. If he knows you're looking for
him, and if he's not at home then I have no idea where he would
be."
    "You must ... you must have some
idea...