Coldmaker(89)

I looked over at Shilah. Every bit of her skin had been stained black, and dressed in her dark robes, she looked like a shadow, with only the whites of her eyes and teeth reacting to the light of the Sinai.

‘It went right for us,’ I said, astonished. ‘Like a magnet.’

‘Your whole face is covered. And your neck and hands. All black,’ Shilah said, smiling.

I turned to look at Cam, expecting him to be covered in ink as well, but he was surprisingly clean, his complexion only slightly dusted by the cloud. He ran his hands over his robes and skin, with a puzzled look on his face. He retched out a cough, but it seemed forced. ‘Did it get me?’

‘No,’ I said, curiosity deepening. ‘It seems to have avoided you.’

Cam’s expression soured. ‘Maybe it was because you two were closer. Let’s try again.’

‘We need masks this time,’ Shilah said, grabbing a piece of boilweed and putting it over her mouth. ‘And eyewear too.’

I found a few pairs of Leroi’s soldering goggles, and we all strapped them on. I loaded another inked Wisp into the Bellows and cranked it hard, the cloud shooting out. Like the last one, it swarmed towards Shilah and me right away, but it barely touched Cam, passing over his body in the same impassive way it did everything else in the tinkershop. We cleaned our skin and repeated the test several times, but each result was the same.

The Cold shot right to the Jadan skin, but didn’t seem to care about Cam, regardless of where he stood.

‘The Cold finds us,’ Shilah said. ‘And not Nobles.’

I unstrapped my goggles and lowered my boilweed mask. Cam was frowning deeply, his bottom lip twitching in puzzlement. ‘Cam, I don’t know—’

Cam swallowed hard. ‘It’s okay. But maybe we could try some bigger Cold?’

We wheeled over the largest Cold Bellows that Leroi had made, inking up a few Drafts to test them out. The clouds were gigantic this time, massive plumes of inky air that made our teeth chatter and our skin tingle, but still the Cold ignored Cam completely, whilst it stained our Jadan skin so black that I wondered if the ink would ever wash off.

We even tried it with Cam turning the Bellows himself, but it was always the same, the light mist that eventually found him not even darkening the colour of his golden hair.

Cam lowered his goggles, his face more miserable than I’d ever seen it. ‘I’ve been so trying,’ he said in a sad voice. ‘I don’t want to be one of them.’

‘Cam,’ I said gently, even though my heart was racing. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘We’re not chosen,’ Cam said, backing away from the table. ‘He hates my family for what we’ve done. He hates what we’ve been hiding. It’s obvious. We’re infected. Like firepox, but worse.’

‘Who hates what?’ I took a step towards him. ‘Cam, just relax for a second—’

Cam held up a hand, turning it over to see how clean it was. ‘I’m sorry, Spout. I can’t be here.’

And with that, he ran out of the tinkershop, slamming the door behind him.

I grabbed one of the remaining pieces of clean boilweed, dipped it in the water trough, and went over to Shilah. ‘Hold still,’ I said, dabbing the stuff onto her face, trying to clean away some of the black from her cheeks and hair.

She stood straight and proud, a smile creeping onto her blackened lips. ‘Micah. Do you get what this means?’

I nodded, wiping her forehead next. I was transported back to the first conversation I’d had with Leroi, about the first Khat being less than Jadan. ‘I think I do.’

‘I told you we‘re worthy. That the Drought was all lies. Cold is meant for us. Micah, this changes everything!’

I moved the boilweed down her arm, wiping the ink away from her Opened Eye tattoo. She didn’t shy away, allowing me to mop her up.

‘Let’s get Leroi,’ I said, trying to take my mind off my pounding heart. ‘Maybe he can shed some light on all this.’

We went over to the study door, our knocks turning to pounds, our pleas turning to hushed shouts. He didn’t answer, regardless of how much we threw ourselves at the door. Eventually, anxious that we might find a corpse on the other side, I found some tools and picked the lock. The door swung open to reveal a single anklet on the desk, next to an empty decanter. A strong stench of alcohol filled the room.

All of his tinkering materials had been piled in the corner, and there was no other trace of the Inventor himself.

We were on our own.





Chapter Thirty


I put some muscle into it, scrubbing hard, even though it wasn’t necessary. The Cold had left the ink powdery and dry, so the residue from the clouds was coming off the floors and walls of the tinkershop with ease. I barely had to rub the boilweed over the black dust, but still I dug in, polishing the walls to a shine.

Abb told me sometimes the mind gets so overwhelmed that the only way to process things is through the body. I was sweating all over, my arms burning with fatigue, trying to step far enough away from the jumble of questions in my mind that I might stumble upon some answers.

‘Micah,’ Shilah said from my side, removing corked beakers from a shelf and dusting them with the boilweed.

I grunted in response, knelt down as I removed the black dust from a particularly deep nook in the wall.