Ventus by Karl Schroeder

Karl Schroeder / Ventus / Page 391
unstoppable noise in her head.
Jordan stopped, and put his hands on her shoulders. She
blinked, suddenly seeing the grey crescents of his eyes gazing
on hers. "I am listening," he said. "And I’ll do everything I
can to help you. We just have to take things one step at a
time."
This time she followed him attentively, and to her
surprise, after she had gone ten paces in his footsteps she
began, at last, to cry.
Jordan stood on the wall of an alley near the vertical
uplands of the city. It was deep night now, but the moon was
still up, and he could see its light glinting off the spires of the
desal that waited half-submerged in the bay.
"You want to talk to a desal?" It was the first thing
Tamsin had said since they had bedded down here. She stood
below him on the nest of trash they had made. She still
appeared stunned, distracted, her hair a bird’s nest and her
hands grimy. Even a little curiosity from her now was an
encouraging sign.
"It sounds crazy, doesn’t it?"
She didn’t answer for a while, merely chewed her
knuckle and looked around herself aimlessly. Jordan returned
his own gaze to the desal; ghostly in Diadem’s glow, its
pinions rose from the middle of the lake like something
discarded there, a sunken building or, he imagined, the
shipwreck from Queen Galas’ story. Except that the spires
were perfect, undamaged by time or the elements. The waves
slapped against their sides as peacefully as they did the docks;
there was no sign of preternatural life to the thing. Just now an
ornate barque from the temple was anchored near the giant
central tower. He could see the torchlit figures of priests