“Good question,” Twitch murmured, biting his thumbnail.

Mira looked at them. “The visit from the legion means I’m in serious trouble. The less you get involved, the better. My secret isn’t fun. It would make you targets for the rest of your lives.”

“We’ll probably get killed, anyway,” Jace said. “It would be nice to know why.”

Mira sighed. “Okay. Here’s the short version. The High Shaper is a monster. I know some things about the death of his five daughters. He planned it. He got away with murder. I even have proof. He would do anything to keep that secret.”

“You’re serious,” Jace said, astonished.

She nodded. “Four-hundred-legionnaires serious.”

Everyone kept silent for a long moment.

“The skycraft are spreading out,” Twitch reported. “They’ve deployed all the lifeboats. While heading this way, they’re also cutting off any retreat to the Brink.”

“Can we just keep flying away from the Brink?” Cole asked. “It looks like it goes forever.”

“It might,” Jace said darkly. “We can’t. If we get far enough from the Brink, the sky won’t hold us anymore. The same thing happens if we go too high, too low, or inland. It doesn’t change all at once. We’ll feel the boat start to slip when we get too far out, beyond where any of the castles go, near where the cloudwalls end.”

“The cloudwalls end?” Cole exclaimed. “Can we go around them?”

“The skycraft won’t work that far out,” Twitch said. “There’s no way over, under, or around them.”

Cole frowned. “We’re boxed in.”

“Pretty much,” Jace agreed.

“Think we can dodge them until dark?” Cole wondered.

Jace stared at the oncoming skycraft. “We’re about to find out.”

Chapter 18

CLOUDWALL

As the sun sank into the Western Cloudwall, Jace tried to keep the Fair-Weather Friend away from the oncoming swarm of skycraft, which included the three large vessels, along with seven lifeboats. The plan to escape the legion by skycraft looked worse and worse as the persistent armada cut off any attempt to double back, herding them away from the Brink and toward the dead end of the Eastern Cloudwall.

From what Cole could see, the skycraft mostly contained uniformed legionnaires, with raiders at the controls and also manning some of the weapons on the larger vessels. The pursuing skycraft moved with ruthless coordination, climbing when they rose, dropping when they dived, crowding them toward a corner with no escape.

Cole and the others had checked the castles they could reach ahead of the other skycraft. One had been crafted out of black metal and looked like a certain death trap. Another had crumbled to ruins, offering scant cover. A third was made of crystal, again leaving nowhere to hide. With the skycraft hounding them relentlessly, there was no time to plan. They could only flee and pray for darkness.

The Fair-Weather Friend swerved farther away from the Brink and began to shudder. It dropped jerkily, leaning hard to the right. Jace curved the little craft back toward the distant Brink. “If we go any farther out, we’ll fall.”

Cole looked back at where the sun had disappeared behind the Western Cloudwall. That side of the sky remained bright red and orange. It would still be close to an hour before the true darkness of night. He glanced at the other skycraft drawing nearer, leaving no room for evasion.

“They’ve got us,” Cole said. “We don’t have enough room to run until it gets dark. We have to try to break through them.”

Jace shook his head. “If we charge between them, they’ll just close in from all sides. We’ll get swarmed. They have grappling hooks and plenty of weapons. We don’t stand a chance of getting past them.”

“He’s right,” Twitch said, licking his lips. “Avoiding risk is my specialty. Charging through them won’t work.”

The Eastern Cloudwall loomed closer than ever. Impenetrably dark and unnaturally flat, the cloudbank stretched high and low, left and right. Cole squeezed his bow. None of the other skycraft were close enough to hit with an arrow yet, but the nearest weren’t out of range by much. “We’ve got maybe ten more minutes of running room.”

“Twitch,” Jace said. “What else can we try?”

“They want Mira,” Twitch said, tapping his fingers rapidly against his knee. “Maybe we can bluff. If we threaten to fly into the cloudwall, they might back off.”

“Try to stall them until it gets dark?” Mira asked.

“It’s worth a shot,” Jace said. “Unless anybody has another idea.”

Cole could see no other solution. If they tried to fly through their pursuers, they wouldn’t succeed. If they tried to fight, it would be even worse. The only option was to keep flying toward the cloudwall.

“What if they call our bluff?” Cole worried.

Jace frowned. “We’ll have no escape. If they ignore the bluff, and we don’t fly into the cloudwall, they’ll swoop in and take us in seconds.”

“It’s a pretty weak option if we’re not willing to follow through,” Twitch said.

“If we fly into the cloudwall, we’ll be killed,” Cole said. “At least if they capture us, we’ll have a chance to live.”

“I might live,” Mira said. “For a while. As a prisoner. They’ll want to question me—try to confirm what I know and who I’ve told. You guys are runaway slaves. Jace hurt some soldiers. Cole shot an officer. You all helped me. They know I could have shared my secret. They’ll execute you.”

“We don’t know that going into the cloudwall will kill us,” Twitch said slowly. “We just know that nobody has returned.”

“Now you’re talking crazy,” Jace said.

“Am I?” Twitch replied, tapping his knuckles together. “They won’t follow us in there. We could just go in a little, barely out of sight. My instincts feel better about that than letting them have us.”

“We bluff first, though,” Cole clarified.

“Of course,” Mira said. “But if they keep coming anyway, we take cover in the cloudwall. And if we can’t get back out, we try to survive it.”

Jace chuckled bitterly. “If you’re going to die, you might as well be doing something really, really stupid.”

Cole peered over the side of the lifeboat at the infinite drop. None of them had parachutes—there hadn’t been time to grab them. He gazed ahead at the imposing cloud-wall. What dangers was it hiding? Would it grind them to atoms? Did it house deadly monsters? Or was there some other explanation for why people never returned? Could it be a one-way portal to some other place?