Brightstorm Read online

  For Meg, Sammy, Poppy and Darren my crew

  Contents

  Cover

  Dedication

  Chapter 1: Brightstorm

  Chapter 2: Bad To Worse

  Chapter 3: Clause One Hundred And Fifty-Two

  Chapter 4.: Parthena

  Chapter 5: Pomerian Puffback

  Chapter 6: The Advert

  Chapter 7: Lucky Spoon

  Chapter 8: Harriet Culpepper

  Chapter 9: An Offer

  Chapter 10: Trust

  Chapter 11: What Goes Up

  Chapter 12: The Aurora

  Chapter 13: The Library

  Chapter 14: The Explorer’s Journal

  Chapter 15: Desert Sands

  Chapter 16: Citadel Kings

  Chapter 17: The Last Post

  Chapter 18: Great Glacies

  Chapter 19: The Case Against Eudora Vane

  Chapter 20: Thought-Wolves

  Chapter 21: Grave News

  Chapter 22: Ghost Sky-Ship

  Chapter 23: The Plan

  Chapter 24: Evidence

  Chapter 25: The Ice Lake

  Chapter 26: Under The Mountain

  Chapter 27: The Southern Aurora

  Chapter 28: South Polaris

  Chapter 29: Goodbye Dad

  Chapter 30: Victorious

  Chapter 31: Home

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  CHAPTER 1

  BRIGHTSTORM

  The heavy chug of a sky-ship firing its engines rumbled through Lontown.

  “Quick, pull me up!” Arthur called from the lower roof.

  “Clamp your hand on to the pipe – see if it’s strong enough to take your weight,” said Maudie.

  “We’re going to miss it, Maud!”

  “We’re not, it’s only just fired up, and if you hadn’t been so engrossed in Volcanic Islands of the North…”

  “If you hadn’t insisted on adjusting my arm…”

  “So, we both lost track of the chime. Come on, Arty, I want to see if the modification to the fingers helped.”

  Arthur sighed. Using his left hand he raised the iron arm attached to his right shoulder, then folded the metal fingers around the pipe. But as he tried to pull himself up, it juddered and slipped down.

  Maudie shook her head and looked away in thought. “They need more tension.”

  “Just help me up, will you?”

  “Perhaps if I use Harris screws,” she said.

  Arthur found a small jut of brick about halfway up the wall between upper and lower roof, and used it to launch himself with his left foot. He narrowly grabbed the lip of the roof and swung his other leg so that his foot hooked the edge, then he heaved his body up. “Thanks for nothing, Maud.”

  “You totally had it, Arty.”

  Their eyes met. “Race you to the top!” they said together, then scrambled up the tiles like a pair of wild cats.

  They reached the topmost part of the roof at the same time and straddled the ridge, out of breath and laughing.

  “Poacher will freak if she catches us up here again,” Maudie said.

  “It won’t be the first time.”

  “Or the last.”

  At that moment, the sky-ship rose from the distant docks above the domes and spires of the city skyline. Maudie took her uniscope from her tool belt. “Standard double engine… ooh, dipped haltway fans and a swivel blade propeller – good choice.”

  “Let me see!” Arthur said, tugging the uniscope from her hands. “I bet Jemima Jones is at the helm. I read that her father was letting her captain the first flight.”

  “Look at the balloon shape. Is that two montgolfieres?” Maudie snatched the uniscope back.

  “And have they positioned the sail in between?”

  “Yes, you’re right.”

  “Strange…”

  “Choice. And it’s smaller than I expected for a new sky-ship.”

  “Well, they only need to get to Creal. The Joneses don’t care about the far reaches of the Wide, they only care about exploring caves to find gems.”

  “Or maybe they’re just looking for a shortcut. They say the caves of Creal are so deep that they reach all the way to Tarn.”

  They fell silent as the sky-ship flew towards them, over the great dome of the Geographical Society, as was tradition for the start of every expedition, before turning west and chugging into the distance.

  Arthur glanced across at Maudie. The red ribbon holding back a lock of rusty brown hair had come loose and dangled across her forehead. Her freckles blushed bright in the sunlight and her eyes were set in a concentrated frown. Every feature of Maudie’s face mirrored Arthur’s almost perfectly, and he knew her thoughts at that moment were exactly the same as his.

  He squeezed her shoulder. “He’ll be back soon.”

  “It might be another moon-cycle, or more if they’ve hit bad weather.”

  “I hope not. I’m not sure I can put up with Poacher for that long!”

  Maudie pulled the ribbon from her hair and gave it to Arthur. He passed it under a strand of her hair and pulled it to the side. Maudie took the other end and between them they made a bow. They had always tied it together from a young age. Dad said it would be a good way to help Arthur learn to be twice as skilled with one hand.

  Something caught his eye below – a woman walked briskly across the square. “Who’s that?”

  “I don’t know, but she seems to be heading towards our house.”

  “Then let’s see if we can get there before Poacher!”

  They skittered down the tiles and on to the flat section of roof outside Arthur’s room. As Arthur scrambled through the open window, two steely knocks echoed through Brightstorm House.

  The footsteps of Mistress Poacher clonked along the corridor below. For someone so thin she made quite an impact.

  They barged out of his room, down the stairway, and past the housekeeper, sending her into a full spin as they raced along the hallway.

  “Well, really! I should hope it’s your father back to teach you some manners.”

  Arthur could imagine her narrow-eyed glare behind them, her lips squeezed tight as though tasting something sour.

  Maudie reached the door first and flung it wide. There was a dumpy woman with grey curly hair melding into the great furry collar of her coat. She frowned and looked between them. “Is your guardian here?”

  “We don’t have one,” Arthur said.

  “Or need one,” Maudie added, glancing over her shoulder at Mistress Poacher.

  “We have a father…”

  “But he’s on an expedition.”

  The woman pushed her spectacles up the bridge of her nose. Her gaze rested for a moment on where Arthur’s right arm would have been, if he’d had one.

  “A snake attacked him in the Northern Marshes. Arthur killed him with a knife.”

  The woman’s frown deepened. “How shocking.”

  Arthur shrugged. “I didn’t have a choice; it was me or the snake.”

  The furry collar of her jacket moved. Arthur blinked and looked at Maudie to see if she’d seen it too.

  Mistress Poacher put her arms between the twins and prised them apart. “This is the Brightstorm residence. Can I help you?”

  “Are you in charge?”

  Mistress Poacher lifted her chin. “Yes.”

  “My name is Madame Gainsford.”

  It was vaguely familiar, but Arthur couldn’t quite place it.

  Madame Gainsford blinked several times and pursed her lips as though the whole business of standing on the doorstep made her feel unwell. “May I come inside and talk with you?” Her eyes briefly flicked down to the twins. “Alone?”

  The fur collar moved again. This time it raise
d a head and winked. It wasn’t a fur collar at all – she had an animal draped around her neck. Then Arthur remembered where he’d heard the name; Madame Gainsford was on the Council of the Lontown Geographical Society. “Is it about Dad?” he blurted out.

  “Are they nearly home?” Maudie added.

  But their questions hung unanswered as Mistress Poacher pushed them out of the way and ushered Madame Gainsford along the hallway to the library. They followed behind, but Mistress Poacher put a firm hand up. “You two can get back to…” she waved her hand, “whatever it is you spend your days doing.” She turned to Madame Gainsford. “Any sensible father would have sent them to boarding school for a proper education, but I suppose new explorer families don’t hold the same values as the genuine bloodlines.”

  Then with a dull thud, the door shut.

  “Did you hear that? Genuine bloodline, what nonsense,” Arthur said.

  “More to the point, did you see that thing?” Maudie said.

  “Around her neck!”

  “I know!”

  “It actually moved.”

  “I think it was a stoat.”

  “And definitely a sapient.”

  There was the scrape of chairs being pulled out. Maudie put a finger to her lips, but no matter how closely they pressed their ears to the door, all they could hear was hushed talk.

  “I wish we had been to the Northern Marshes,” Arthur whispered.

  “We will one day.” Maudie smiled. She began drumming her fingers silently on the wall. “Maybe he’s been delayed. It’s probably a problem with the sky-ship – I told him he needed a better flexer pump. He’s likely stuck in the Second Continent somewhere, unable to find replacement parts.”

  Arthur nodded, but a strange fear rose inside him.

  The door suddenly opened. Madame Gainsford hurried past without looking at either of them. The stoat scurried at her heels and jumped back up around her neck as she let herself out the front door.

  “That didn’t take long,” Maudie whispered.

  The fire had gone out in the library hearth and Mistress Poacher sat at the dark oak table, her hands clasped so tightly that the veins in her wrist stuck out. Mistress Poacher was a late replacement housekeeper hired just before Dad had left for the expedition, and they’d soon discovered the smiles of her initial interview were just a show she’d put on for Dad. Every sound they made seemed to irritate her – she, like many in Lontown, thought children should be invisible. Not like Dad, who always had time for them.

  Her shoulders rose as she took a breath, and her gaze flickered between them. Arthur was sure her usual harshness had softened, and there was a rare glimpse of warmth, or was it a glimmer of pity? But she straightened up, and it disappeared.

  “Your father’s not coming back.”

  Her statement seemed to hang in the air without meaning.

  Arthur and Maudie exchanged a glance.

  “What did you say?” Maudie asked.

  Mistress Poacher raised her eyebrows. “He’s not coming back, so you’d better find a way to get used to it.”

  Arthur felt as though a great hole was opening beneath his feet, pulling him inside. “What do you mean?”

  “He’s perished in the Third Continent – that’s all I know.”

  Her words were lead.

  She stood up and brushed her hands on her pinafore as though ridding herself of what she’d just said. She walked stiffly to the door. The crinkle of her long black skirt stopped as she paused outside. “I always said you were too indulged, living in books about far-off lands, and messing about all day with tools. Now you’ll have to face the real world.” She sighed. “There’s a hearing in the morning at nine chimes at the Geographical Society. We’ll find out more then.”

  And then she left them.

  That night they took the blankets from Dad’s bed and curled up amongst the books and tools in the library. Dad’s chair remained beside the fireplace, exactly where he’d left it. If they both thought really hard, they could imagine he was sitting there, his head resting in the indentation on the cushion, his sun-blushed, freckled face smiling down at them, and his large hands placed on the frayed arms, fingers picking at the loose threads as he told them a story about his early adventures.

  Not a word passed between them for a long time. Arthur had always missed Dad terribly when he went away, but now he knew he was never coming back, it felt as though his heart had split inside him, and a great door had slammed on a future that had been so certain before – the trips the three of them were going to make, all the places in the Wide they would discover together, how he was going to teach them how to navigate and fly the Violetta.

  “I miss him so much,” Maudie whispered.

  And all Arthur could do was swallow back the tears.

  CHAPTER 2

  BAD TO WORSE

  In the morning, Mistress Poacher escorted them through the streets of Uptown towards the great dome of the Geographical Society.

  The siblings were silent as they trudged along, still trying to make sense of the terrible news. Arthur’s iron arm jostled against his side, banging out a numbing rhythm with every other step. Maudie had etched a Brightstorm moth on to a flat metal panel just above the wrist, and it now reflected a dancing patch of light on to walls along the street as they walked.

  As the watchtower began its first chime of nine, they turned the corner to the Lontown Geographical Society. The square bustled with people filtering towards the Society building. A few people stared as they noticed Arthur’s iron arm. He tried not to feel self-conscious – people stared if he wore it, they stared more if he didn’t. Dad had always told him not to care what people thought, but it seemed harder without his father by his side.

  Arthur paused to watch a group buzzing around a nearby Lontown Chronicle stand. He caught a glimpse of the headline. BREAKING – Death in the Frozen South – What Really Happened? Speculation Rises. Arthur tried to swallow, but his throat tightened. Maudie was staring too.

  Mistress Poacher glanced over her shoulder. “Come along.” Then she paused, and for a moment Arthur thought she would say something kind. Instead she took a comb from her bag and passed it to him. “For goodness’ sake, run this through your hair, Arthur. Your father may have found it acceptable for you to run wild, but you can’t very well be in the company of the finest in Lontown with hair worse than a floor brush. Maudie, you should be wearing the skirt I laid out for you, not those old house slacks. At least tuck in your shirts, both of you.” She tutted.

  They followed her up the stone steps, through the carved doorway, and into a grand hall. Majestic pillars and gilt-framed maps lined the walls, illuminated by glittering chandeliers. Statues of the great explorers with notable achievements stared from the sides. All around, the hall bustled with the people of Lontown, chatter and anticipation fizzing in the air. The sound made Arthur want to scream out; how could anything carry on as normal when his world had been ripped apart? He forced himself to focus – he had to get through this, for Maudie, if not himself. She looked across and he knew she was thinking the same for him.

  They pushed onwards towards the double doors of the auditorium. Some of the most respected explorer families in Lontown walked ahead of them – Rumpole Blarthington, five times as wide as his wife beside him, dressed in a plush velvet coat and top hat. Dad said he’d never achieved much and lived a lavish life on the exploration achievements of his great grandmother. Arthur glimpsed Evelyn Acquafreeda to his side; a tiny woman in iridescent blue jacket and trousers, as though it had been made from the skin of an exotic sea creature. She upheld her family tradition of refusing to embrace the advances from sea to sky-ships, and preferred to persist solely with sea exploration. Hilda Hilbury pushed past Maudie, her nose in the air. “Do excuse me,” she said, sounding as though she didn’t much care to be excused at all. She stood half a head taller than most in the room, even without her ribboned flowerpot hat, her stature matching her family’s achievements
in claiming the peaks of most of the mountains in the First Continent.

  In the auditorium, people were busying around filling seats, so Mistress Poacher hurried Arthur and Maudie to a few vacant chairs on their right. Soon, a loud clang rang through the room as the great doors behind them shut to disappointed shouts on the other side.

  A great arc of people gathered on the stage at the front. Arthur tried to make out who they were. Most seemed to be officials from the Geographical Society, and another group dressed in a less exuberant, more severe style. Madame Gainsford banged a hammer on the table and after a few last scuffles, silence fell. One woman transfixed Arthur. Her beauty was undeniable. She was dressed from head to toe in a pale shade of pink, and on her jacket she wore a distinctive silver brooch in the shape of an exotic insect, something like the dragonflies of the Northern Marshes but larger, perhaps something replicating a creature from the tropical east. He’d seen her picture in the Lontown Chronicle – Eudora Vane of the most famous explorer family in Lontown. She was the leader of the other expedition that had been trying to reach South Polaris alongside his father’s.

  Madame Gainsford stood up. “Esteemed members of the Geographical Society, connected members of Lontown and the many … interested citizens of Lontown, this urgent meeting has been called to discover the true and exact nature of recent events. The expedition to South Polaris was intended to uncover what lies behind the great mountains at the southernmost point any humans have ever reached, expanding our knowledge of geography and the very structure of this planet. As reported, the expedition not only failed in its main objective, but ended in catastrophe.”

  Whispered chatter rippled around the auditorium. Arthur and Maudie drew closer together.

  “Madame Vane, perhaps if you would address the board first. Can you tell us exactly what happened?”

  Eudora Vane stood up. Her voice carried through the hall, clear and honeyed. “We were in the Second Continent at the Last Post. We landed our sky-ship, the Victorious, for the night to replenish a few last supplies and for the crew to rest before heading off again at first light. Pitch supplies were scarce, but we’d managed to stock up with just enough to make it across to the Third Continent and back.”