Read Online Quillblade by Ben Chandler - Free Book Online

balloons and don’t try to follow us.’ Still, no one moved. ‘Do it!’
    Above them, Ignis ran along the railing of the Shôgo airship and another of the ropes connecting the two vessels caught fire. A moment later it fell away from the Shôgo airship and curled down to land in a smoking heap on the Hiryû ’s deck. The Shôgo warriors backed away from their opponents and shuffled closer to their diminishing escape route.
    â€˜Move!’ Lenis cried, and Ignis burnt another rope.
    This seemed to be enough to convince the Shôgo warriors. Abandoning all pretence of protecting their retreat, they rushed to the remaining ropes and climbed back to their airship.
    Ignis remained crouched on their railing, sending small wisps of flame towards anyone who approached him. A few moments later the airship began to pull away and Ignis jumped down onto the Hiryû ’s starboard balloon and ran across the mast-shaft to Lenis’s shoulder.
    Arthur wiped the blood from his sword. ‘We had better leave in case they try to follow us.’ He looked over at the Shôgo’s airship.
    The captain cleaned his own sword and sheathed it in one smooth movement. ‘Certainly. Mister Hiroshi and Miss Namei, please clean the decks. Master Clemens, please return to the engine room and get us moving.’

    Lenis slowly let out a breath and made to follow his captain’s command. He was shaking as he moved below decks. Absently, he took Ignis off his shoulder and began patting him. The Bestia wriggled in Lenis’s arms and kept trying to lick his face, thrilled at the attention and the excitement of it all. Lenis’s mind was elsewhere. Why had he and his sister been caught up in this madness? Stealing an airship from a foreign Warlord? How could he do the right thing when he didn’t even know who was in the right and who was in the wrong? Worse, what would the captain do to him now that he had seen what Lenis was capable of? He had acted on impulse, without thought for the consequences of his actions, and had done the one thing a slave must never do. People with authority feared slaves with power. Lenis knew this. He’d pulled plenty of stunts that had gotten them sold on before, but nothing that would make his owners think he was dangerous. Who would the captain sell them to now that Lenis had flaunted his power in front of him? Anyone in Shinzô who bought the Clemens twins would probably hand them back to the Warlord, either to gain his favour or for a price, and then ...
    Lenis arrived at the engine room. The sight of the engines reminded him that Aeris had been powering the airship all day. That was one of the most serious flaws in airship design. There was no way to switch over the Bestia powering the engines without first shutting the engines down, and they couldn’t do that while they were flying, which meant most of their travel relied on Aeris’s stamina. Under normal circumstancesthat wouldn’t be a problem, as airdocks were usually built within a day’s flight of one another, but they were hardly flying under normal circumstances.
    Lenis stopped thinking about himself. He didn’t like to push Aeris this hard, and by now, she would already be nearing exhaustion. He wondered how long it would take them to reach Gesshoku airdock.
    â€˜I’m sorry, my lady,’ he whispered into the engine block, where the Bestia quivered from fatigue. ‘What wisdom forbids, necessity dictates. Just a little while longer, I promise.’
    The lie felt worse than anything else he had done that day.

    The Hiryû flew into the night. They had been boarded in the early evening, and the captain pushed them on, eager to put as much distance between the stolen airship and the Warlord’s forces as possible. Lucis lit their way, running through a series of pipes interwoven throughout the airship’s hull. She trailed radiance in her wake and generated enough