Silverwing by Kenneth Oppel Page B

through and was out. A pigeon lunged to block his path, but Shade flipped sideways just in time, and soared through the window, back into the night.

K EEPER OF THE S PIRE
    Six pigeons burst after them from the turret windows.
    Shade shot a look over his wing, saw the birds fanning out across the sky to hem them in.
    “Can we outrun them?” he gasped.
    “Don’t think so,” panted Marina.
    “They’ve got to be half blind out here!”
    “Plenty of light.”
    She was right. It wasn’t like night in the forest. Light poured up from the city. They streamed over it, swinging wildly around towers, skimming rooftops, plunging down into deep canyons. His fear was shot through with exultation: He was back in the night, his own element. No bird could catch him. He was small, black as the sky, quick as a shooting star. Still the pigeons kept doggedly after them.
    “Follow me,” Marina said.
    He spun down into the city after her. Past walls of light, moaning machinery, Human vehicles on the glittering roads.
    “Where are we going?”
    “Somewhere dark.”
    She dropped down into a narrow alley between two lowbuildings, and he plunged after her, piercing the deep shadows with his echo vision.
    “Here!” she called out.
    They rounded a corner and threw themselves against a sooty brick wall, clinging with their claws. For good measure, Shade spread his black wings over Marina’s body, making them all but invisible in the darkness. They stopped breathing as the pigeons thrashed past over the alley, then circled.
    “Where’d they go?” said one soldier.
    “That way, I think.”
    “Go. We’ll check here.”
    Two soldiers stayed behind and settled on the rooftop’s edge, listening, their heads ticking from side to side. Shade watched them with his echo vision.
    “It’s too dark,” said the first soldier. “I can’t see a thing.”
    “We’ve lost them,” said the second.
    “Let’s head back.”
    “The captain won’t be happy.”
    “But what if those big ones come back …”
    “Forget what Saunders said. He’s a liar. There’re no bats like that.”
    “Then how’d they kill two of us? You saw that wound on Saunders’s shoulder.”
    “Maybe they had weapons, how do I know?”
    “He said they carried the bodies away in their claws.”
    The other pigeon had no reply to this.
    “All right. Let’s go back. Call the others. It’ll be light in a few hours. We can send another team at dawn.”
    They lit from the rooftop and disappeared. When he could no longer hear them, Shade hungrily sucked in air. He felt like he hadn’t taken a breath in hours.
    Marina pushed away his wings. “Nearly suffocated me under there,” she said indignantly.
    “Yeah, well it worked,” he shot back with a grin. He was so glad to be free of the turret. Glad both his wings were still attached to his body.
    “You can thank me for that,” she said. “They’d have caught us in the open.”
    “Hey, I was the one who killed the light and got us out of that stinking turret!”
    “That was quick thinking,” she admitted.
    “Sure was.”
    “And a lot of luck,” she added. “We’re lucky to be alive.”
    Shade shrugged. His whole body was buzzing. “They weren’t so tough. They’re not great fliers, are they? I mean, they’re not as fast as us, and they’re noisy for one thing, and they can’t maneuver very well. What an escape!”
    “They’ll come back for us.”
    He sighed. She was so sensible. It started to rain gently, and he felt suddenly very tired.
    “We’ve got to find the right tower,” he said. But how would they ever find the right tower in this city of towers? All he wanted was to be out of the city, and on their way again.
    “Let’s find a safe day roost first. I don’t want to be caught out by dawn, with every bird in the city hunting us.”
    Closed skies. The owl’s words echoed in Shade’s head. They’d never be safe now. All his life the night had been his, now it was taken away. And all