As the enormous burst of pain hit, Maggie saw-felt-tasted a searing whiteness. She staggered against the gharumal’s leg, a pressure drummed upon her mind, breath snagged upon her lungs.

Within the whiteness she sensed both the gharumal’s steadying bulk, and the manta’s pulsing agony. A more distant presence winked out.

‘Jupiter!’ Maggie cried.

Her vision cleared. The gharumal’s leg moved, toppled her forward. In a stumble she caught herself upon unsteady legs. Twenty metres behind, she saw the light from the shattered opening faded dim, distant.

How did I get to be so far inside?

Ahead she knew lay the source of the pain tugging at a center within herself, a place she could not quite reach but must.

The gharumal strode forward, and she found her steps moved to match. Somehow the huge tow beast had found a wide sloping corridor within the skyship. Light fell upon her from a grate high above and open to the sky. She swayed again dizzy at the vastness of the skyship’s interior. The deck beneath shifted under the massive weight of beasts mighty steps.

An urgency gripped her, and she ran ahead, pulled down the slope. Her big companion followed close behind. The stamp of her feet beat a staccato rhythm, the pounding of the gharumal’s footfalls echoed in counterpoint. The manic rhythm increased until she sprinted, and the gharumal pell-mall pace increased, its steady beat replaced by… Maggie looked behind, and wished she hadn’t. The beast had somehow managed to speed to a thunderous charge.

‘Galloping dino-monsters.’

She sped on. The manta closer now. She sensed its presence and pain clear in the tunnel of flashing light and shadow.

Maggie saw again the putrid green light of the flight engine on Qharamaraham. The pirate skyship of Red Back… and Captain Qharham. The engine room had oozed a sense of sickness. And here again, each stretching pace drew her, almost without volition, towards that sickness and agony… but hope.

At the centre of the ship, within the vast orrery of the engine room, she found the source of it all, a blinding sun of pain.

A creature bright with light writhed as it burned within concentric polygons of torture. The engine room.

Where on a flying skyship the nested polygons within a polygon hung from metal cables like a strange sort of wheel, here only lay the hovering twisting pain of a suffering creature.

‘Stop it,’ Maggie screamed.

And in that breath she did not know who spoke the words — only that from her throat burst agony.

The gharumal broke into the enclosed space. Maggie threw herself to the side.

Pain rose to a fevered pitch as Maggie saw burning light.

The lattice work prison ruptured. Zharaqsa crystals burst in a spray all around, their glow extinguished as they fell, back into shadows and dark.

And. In an endless heartbeat. It stopped.

Stopped

It

A rush of vertigo swept through Maggie. She rocked. Felled to her knees as the gharumal trumpeted its shock, it too slid with a crash to the deck.

Spent

Then she saw them. Manisaurs scurried around the now quiescent fallen manta.

‘Let them be,’ Maggie shouted. She struggled to her feet. ‘You’ve hurt them enough.’

Manisaurs took hold of her arms.

‘What are you doing here…’

They twittered and warbled nonsense and noise.

‘This is disaster…’

‘Humans are not to…’

’Stop.’

Maggie screamed again. For the manisaurs had brought hooks and ropes and chains to bind the manta once more.

‘You’re hurting me… hurting them.’

A small manisaur turned, surprise and confusion swept across their aura. ‘That is why we do it. We make zharaqsa. We light it. We power…’

‘Not you,’ Maggie screamed at them. ‘Not — you. You steal it!’

The monstrous reality of the moment crashed upon her.

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‘How could you?’ Tears flowed. Vision blurred. Pain speared into her.

The manisaurs shoved at the manta, hooks snagged in its flesh. The manta grew larger before her eyes.

Stop them

The gharumal rose and swatted at the manisaur torturers. It’s foreleg caught three, flung them against the bulkhead where they slipped wetly to the deck.

Horrified, Maggie moved to help the fallen manisaurs.

The manta called to her.

Help me

The remaining manisaurs had drawn back, dragging their fallen comrades. The gharumal shouldered its way forward. Its head lowered as if to charge. The sloping floor sagged, waters surged forward, as the weight of the beast bent the backbone of the skyship to its weighty presence.

The gharumal stopped then and lowed long and loud. The thunder of it filled Maggie’s chest, deafening, pounding.

She saw the gharumal now stood over the prostrate manta, Its legs bridged either side of the broad body.

Even in distress the manta’s beauty struck Maggie. She sensed the wondrous mind within the wide flat ray-like body. Then the iridescence of the silky feather-fur shimmered.

Maggie stepped forwards. She rested her hand on the leg of its protecting gharumal to quiet and reassure the enormous beast. Another step and her hand came to rest upon the head of the manta. It’s quaking body stilled. Fear shot through her that this light from the sea had been extinguished.

A calmness rose within her.

Them you stopped

I give thanks

For that you do

She knew. The manta lived.

A beat of running soldiers approaching jerked Maggie’s attention away.

‘All is not done yet,’ she said. ‘Hey Big Beast. Back off. Deal to those guys will you?’

To Maggie’s surprise the gharumal did as she asked.

The manta smiled.

For that you do

Beyond the manta a dark glimmer of liquid. The stern of the skyship lay in a water court. And in a flash Maggie understood.

‘They torture you, but care as well. They give you water, and food… But just enough so you live to be tortured again.’

That way lies escape

‘Hey Big Beast. Smash this wall down will you? We’re getting out of here.’

The gharumal backed into the engine room, and even as its head fought the attacking manisaurs, it struck out its rear feet and broke open the bulkhead. The dank stink of canal water rushed into the engine room. But despite that the air improved.

Emboldened by the attack from the passageway the attendant manisaurs returned, they swung their hooked poles and chains.

Maggie roared at them, and the gharumal screamed in concert.

The manisaurs scattered.

Maggie laughed at that. Perhaps they thought from her mouth had come the cry of the devil himself.

The manta rippled, and seemed to inflate somehow. Maggie pushed at its wide wing and the huge body slipped along the floor. She felt the mass, but…

‘You’re floating. A little.’

She recalled the graceful flights of the mantas at sea.

‘If zharaqsa comes from your pain. And Lushvra — aether, comes from your joy. Of course you can fly.’

She gave the manta a stronger push.

‘But I guess.’ She took a deep breath and shoved ‘You can’t fly backwards.’

The manta slipped towards the water, the iridescence shimmered and shifted under her hands, like a rainbow of oil shifting on water.

The manta slipped into the water, and Maggie sensed their shock of disgust.

‘Yeah, like swimming in a sewer,’ Maggie said. ‘No thanks.’

The gharumal roared as its rear foot stepped back, then slipped on the slime, Maggie dodged, slid down the noisome slope of the deck, and into the water. The gharumal landed on its stomach, feet scrabbling for purchase.

The manisaur guard flowed around the struggling behemoth and lined up along the edge of the water.

Each had a blow dart gun.

All pointed at her.

The gharumal screamed as the building sized beast tried to get its feet under itself, to stand. But the slime slicked sloping deck of the skyship’s engine room only made the huge animal slide further towards the water where Maggie struggled to swim away.

The soldiers retreated to the side, but kept their blow-dart guns trained on Maggie even as the huge weight of the creature bore down upon them. The grounded skyship’s old wooden boards creaked and groaned as if the skyship also felt the distress of the gharumal.

Maggie spat water, ignored the manisaur soldiers, and kicked as she grabbed for the manta. The freed sea creature floated high in the stink of the water but Maggie sensed it waited for her, for something about to happen.

The gharumal hit the water, a wave pushed towards Maggie, lifted her, and she flailed in foam before she found herself beached upon the mantas back. The creature radiated warmth through the fur-feathers upon its back. To Maggie it seemed as if she had fallen into a car-sized hug. Then the gharumal staggered to its feet, fell again to two legs as its rear slipped once more.

The soldier manisaurs fell behind the huge wall of muscle. Then with its rear half in the water, the gharumal’s front legs pushed backwards and it moved towards Maggie and the manta, a wave moved them. The manisaurs erupted in cries of alarm as the captured manta, and their gharumal tow beast eased away in escape.

Nothing could be done to stop it. Until the manta bumped against the rear bulkhead.

Manisaurs had entered the water. But Maggie knew they feared the water, they might brave it in the shallows, but they could not swim. They were creatures of the land. More comfortable in trees and crags, than in rivers and lakes.

Beneath her the manta sang a song of healing, and encouragement. The gharumal reached the bulkhead, its feet struck out, and the wooden timbers broke. Beyond lay a low stretch of water, but beyond the light of day shone bright.

The manta slipped lower in the water and swept its wings down through the water. Together the manta, Maggie, and the gharumal moved from the dark dank of the broken skyship into the brightness of the water court. Maggie blinked back the light as her eyes adjusted.

The gharumal rose to its feet, the water came only to its knees.

Maggie suck in a breath of fresher air. The canal still stank, but despite this she took in another breath of freedom.

‘Pariqamtu. The Jupiter.’ Maggie said. ‘That’s where they will be.’

And, as if she had commanded it, the manta swung to head and swam along the canal trailed by the gharumal. The murky water soon drenched Maggie and she shivered. These were not the tropical waters of Black Spire and Zenska.

Behind she heard the cries of manisaurs call for reinforcements. To cut them off. To do something. Anything.

She grinned. We did it.

She and the gharumal had saved the manta. For a day or more the undercurrent of pain, the ache of agony, had pressed down upon her like a weight. Her limbs had been heavy as if she had moved through molasses. Now a lightness filled her, a buoyancy in spirit that matched the slip and glide of the manta through the water of the canal. She gripped a hard ridge on the back of the manta, a fin of sorts, And marveled at their success, the freedom, and the opening of future horizons.

She knew these emotions she shared with the manta. Somehow, through tulanvarqa, its experiences were hers. The connexion extended to the gharumal behind. It too now tasted freedom. Had the tow beast also suffered the fears of the captured mantas within the black skyship?

The group rounded a turn in the canal. Maggie coughed water and wiped at her face, and then she saw. The Jupiter lay, it sail lowered, hulls tied close to the dock in the water court. A joyous Pariqamtu bounced on the hardstanding alongside as she spied Maggie.

Maggie’s happiness stuttered then. She saw no sign of Jupiter, Tamm, or Breeze.