1633880583 (F) by Chris Willrich Read Free Book Online Page B

patchwork and tar.”
    “I never said I would!” Bone protested. “If I’m older than you, why do you always make me feel younger?”
    “It takes care and attention to remain old at heart.”
    And so they labored, and Gaunt came out to help, this time with safety ropes and admonishments. “Don’t let him taunt you, Bone. Gravity has been out to get you for many years.”
    “Gravity and you, O wife,” he said.
    “I’ve only tripped you a few times, O husband, and only when you’ve deserved it.” Gaunt smiled down at the receding firelights of Amberhorn; Bone noticed them raising dimmer and dimmer glints in her auburn hair.
    “We’ll find him, Persimmon,” he said.
    “We will, Imago, we will,” she said, not looking at him.
    The silence was broken by a new face rising out of the gondola’s opening.
    “What are you doing? Where are we going? Is the battle over? Were there really giant fire-breathing automata?”
    “Joy!” Snow Pine’s voice was calling from inside the ger. “Get down from there!”
    Liron Flint was saying, “Go easy on her; it’s only natural that she be curious—”
    “You are not her parent,” Snow Pine said. “How like a man to barge in.”
    A-Girl-Is-A-Joy, daughter of Snow Pine, called into the gap, “I was just. Trying. To. Take. A. Look!”
    Joy was twelve years old, as far as anyone knew (for time was a peculiar thing within the Scroll of Years.) She was a match in appearance for Snow Pine, with dark hair she chose to wear longer than her mother preferred. Yet there was something in her determined-looking jaw and her cocksure smile that reminded Bone of Snow Pine’s late husband, the bandit Flybait.
    “You must listen to your mother, student!” Walking Stick said.
    “See?” Snow Pine called. “Walking Stick agrees.”
    “He’s a man who just ‘barged in. . . .’” grumbled Flint.
    “He is her teacher,” Snow Pine told Flint.
    “She only likes him right now because he agrees with her!” Joy said. “Flint’s right!”
    “And you’re only siding with Flint because he agrees with you!” Snow Pine replied.
    Look at me, look at me, busily patching the balloon, Bone thought. He began to whistle.
    Gaunt swept her leg, pretending to trip him. “Joy, let me answer your questions quickly, and then you should return to the ger. Yes, there were fire-breathing automata, but the battle is over. That is why we’re patching the balloon. We are now headed northeast, away from the Retired Empire of Amberhorn and toward the Homunculus Mountains. We are seeking the clockwork city of Loomsberg, where we might sell the artifact we’ve stolen.”
    Bone coughed.
    “Which Bone stole,” Gaunt said.
    “Mm?” said Bone.
    She rolled her eyes. “Which the great and legendary and astonishingly modest Imago Bone stole. Is that sufficient?”
    “Well—”
    She kicked him. Gently. She didn’t want him to fall. Probably.
    “But then we’re looking for Innocence?” Joy said.
    Bone had to remind himself that the girl had known their son longer, subjectively, than they ever had. She missed the only friend her age she’d ever known. “We’re always looking, Joy,” he said. “We have been since we accidentally led Kindlekarn to that sleeping Eastern dragon in the isles of Penglai, far beyond Qiangguo’s shores. But yes, the rumors said the flying carpet headed into the northern provinces of the Eldshore—rough country where we’ll have to watch our step.”
    “As opposed to the safe, carefree places we’ve visited so far,” Gaunt said.
    “From there,” Bone continued, “he might go into the tundra, but at least we’ve experience with that region. Beyond that he either has to backtrack or go on to the Bladed Isles . Which seems unlikely as they’re far from land. We will find him, sooner or later.”
    Hearing the words Bladed Isles, Joy lifted her right hand from the bamboo frame of the gondola opening and spread it wide, revealing the strange markings upon her