XXXVI“He's going to do it, isn't he?” said Diane. “All alone, he's actually going to try and get a new Engn working.”
“Yes,” said Finn. “He is.”
“And then, sooner or later, it will all happen again. All the secrecy and misery. The masters and the ironclads. Everything that's happened. Because sooner or later someone will want to use a weapon like that, and others will want to defend it, keep it for themselves.”
She, Finn, and Whelm stood on the lip of the rock pillar. In the distance, a dot that might have been a bird at first glance, the flying engine was just visible in an unblemished grey sky. They'd escaped eventually, smashing down the Hub door with a length of rusting steel shaft. Too late to stop Connor. Too late to escape with him.
“Perhaps it will be different this time,” said
