by Sharon Shinn
“The LNR will be ready in a few days. I want you to take her up,” Kayle said. “Secondday—thirdday at the latest. Are you ready?”
“I think I am.”
So that was cause to celebrate with a bottle of really bad wine purchased from a street vendor. Josetta even presented him with a congratulatory gift—a pair of leather gloves and a jacket to help ward off the chill of altitude and the wind of passage.
“And I have a second present,” she said, handing over a small packet. Ruins of dinner littered the table that sat between them; she hadn’t even gotten close enough to touch his arm. “I thought you should have something elay with you since you are going to be defying the element of air.”
Inside the packet he found three slim rings stamped with blessing glyphs. He still couldn’t identify them by sight, but he could make a pretty good guess. “Yours?” he said. “Beauty and grace and joy?”
She nodded. “I thought you could wear them with all the others.”
He instantly unfastened his silver chain and slipped the new rings on alongside Corene’s blessings and his own extraordinary ones. It was fanciful, of course, but these three seemed to make the necklace lighter, not heavier, as if they really were made of air.
“Now I feel safe enough to fly,” he said.
“Are you afraid?”
He thought it over. “I’d have to be a fool not to be nervous. It’s a dangerous pastime, and so many things could go wrong. But I’m not actually afraid. Excited instead. I can’t wait.” He laughed. “So maybe I am a fool.”
“Maybe you have merely found your calling.”
• • •
Before Rafe could take the LNR out for its first flight, they returned to the Chialto slums, where Josetta buried herself in work at the shelter. She seemed to be overwhelmed with all the details she needed to take care of, from finalizing the rental deal with the tailor to reconciling accounts for the existing building.
“There’s no help for it,” Rafe heard her tell Callie one day. He was sweeping the main room and the women were in the kitchen, but he could catch every word. “You’re going to have to take over the bookkeeping. I’ve been gone too much.”
“It doesn’t seem right for me to choose how to spend your money.”
“Are you warning me that you might cheat me?” Josetta scoffed. “You, the woman whose blessings are loyalty, honor, and honesty?”
“Those might be my blessings, but I never lived up to them until I met you.”
“Well, if you won’t help me out, I won’t have any blessings. I’ll only have curses. Exhaustion and despair and lunacy. Please say you’ll handle the money like you handle everything else.”
Callie sounded like she was trying not to laugh. “Well, I will, but I’ll tally everything down to the last quint-copper.”
“Excellent. I know I can count on you.”
Of course, there was even less privacy at the shelter than there was at the rental unit in the port. The new building wasn’t ready to hold beds yet, so everyone was sleeping at the shelter—Josetta, Rafe, Foley, Callie, Bo, the six guards, and the couple dozen lost souls who had found their way to this safe haven and showed not the slightest inclination to leave. Rafe thought longingly of his room over Samson’s tavern, but of course he couldn’t spend the night there unless Josetta (and the guards) accompanied him, and he couldn’t bear to put her through that inconvenience. So he unrolled a mat under one of the dining room tables and spent an uncomfortable few nights listening to strangers around him breathing in the dark.
Rafe felt a little bad about how happy he was when it came time to return to the port.
And then how close to ecstasy he felt when it came time to fly.
• • •
They practically required a caravan to travel from the port out to the giant facility where the aeromotives were housed. Kayle, Josetta, Rafe, Foley, Caze, Sorbin, a couple of Kayle’s mechanics, and the four other guards required three smoker cars between them. The day was clear and sunny—cool enough at this early hour, but bound to heat up to oppressive temperatures once the sun edged past noon. Rafe was wearing a thin silk overshirt for the drive, but his leather jacket and gloves lay on the seat beside him, and he was already dressed in leather trousers and thick boots. Ready to fly face-first into a punishing wind.
Rafe and Josetta were mostly silent during the trip, but Kayle, who was behind the wheel and driving with his usual disregard for safety, talked incessantly. Rafe supposed that the elay prime was, in his own way, as nervous as Rafe, and this was how he showed it.
When they arrived, the mammoth doors had already been pushed back, but the slim silver bird was still inside the hangar. A crowd of about thirty people had already gathered outside, and they raised a quiet cheer when Rafe stepped out of the elaymotive. He waved and grinned in their direction, then pumped his fist in a gesture of victory. He wasn’t displaying the kind of arrogance Arven had shown, not really; he just had to do something to relieve the tension gathering in his shoulders.
“Josetta, you wait out here with the others,” Kayle instructed. “If they move back from the roadway, you move. There is always some danger that the craft will fall from the sky, but if you follow the others, you should be safe.”
She gave him one expressive look. “Even if that’s true, you shouldn’t say so! Not right now!”
Kayle looked surprised. “But you will be safe.”
“No! That the aeromotive might fall!”
“But it might.”
She shook her head and turned to Rafe. “Is this my last chance to wish you luck, or will I see you again before you take off?”
“You’ll see me, but not to say anything.”
“Then good luck,” she said. She put her hand behind his head and pulled him down to press her mouth to his. When she pulled back, she was smiling. “An elay kiss for an elay venture.”
Kayle wore an arrested expression as he divided a look between them. “Well, that ought to keep you aloft,” he said. “Come along.”
Rafe gave Josetta one last sober glance before he followed Kayle across the paved entranceway into the cool dark of the hangar. There were maybe ten or twelve staffers in there, calling out numbers, checking fuel lines, checking rivets, checking struts. One—an elay woman with long silver-blond hair—merely stood at the front of the craft, rubbing her hands along its pointed nose and whispering to it as if reminding a fractious child that it had to behave nicely on a grand occasion. Rafe felt the skin prickle on the back of his neck, wondering if the machine might actually hear and understand her.
Finally, the chief mechanic approached Kayle. “Everything’s in order. The LNR is ready for takeoff.”
“Then let’s move it out.”
The workers positioned themselves behind the wheels and along the wings, cursing and grunting as they strained to budge the machine from its stationary position. Slowly, with the ungainly motion of a sea creature waddling across land, the slim silver craft creaked forward, gaining a little momentum as it crossed from the bottomless shadows of the hangar into the hard shellac of daylight.
The onlookers outside cheered again, more loudly. Rafe, strolling along beside the aeromotive—again, just like Arven—shot a quick look in their direction. Yes, there was Josetta, at the very forefront of the crowd, clapping and cheering like everyone else. He gave her a private smile and a quick wave and continued walking along at the LNR’s maddeningly slow pace.
“Here! Turn!” the chief mechanic called out, and the workers shifted their grips enough to adjust the machine’s trajectory. The goal, as Rafe could plainly see, was to line it up perfectly with the long, straight section of roadway. A few more shouts, a few more oaths, and the LNR was in position and at rest.
Kayle turned to Rafe and shook his hand. “Fly far and fast, and safely return.”
“Thank you. I wil
l.”
He climbed into the pilot’s box and settled into the padded seat. The space was so familiar from all the hours spent in training that Rafe felt some of his tension melt and his confidence ratchet up. He pulled out a silk scarf—another gift from Josetta—and wrapped it around his face, then nodded down at the mechanics. A moment later, he felt the great machine purr to life beneath him, trembling with a barely suppressed eagerness to be set free.
“And—she’s—yours!” the mechanic bawled. There was a whirl of bodies at ground level as Kayle and the workers dashed for safety. Rafe waited long enough to be sure they were all clear, and then he slowly twisted the dial that would feed the machine more fuel.
Its purr grew louder and its trembling more pronounced. A harder pull, a quicker response, and in minutes he was hurtling down the roadway, faster than any elaymotive, jouncing along more roughly than he’d expected, but it didn’t matter. Faster now and then even faster—top land speed. He gripped the altitude lever and pulled it toward his chest.
And all the rattling and bumping smoothed away as the LNR lifted cleanly into the air. Two feet—ten feet—twenty feet—a hundred, on a perfectly calculated angle. The land dropped farther below him, and the sun stooped closer to take a look. Higher. Straight into the untouched blue.
Simulated training was nothing like flying.
Oh, the hours in the practice box had taught him where to place his hands, how to compensate for the sudden quick shifts of wind; he didn’t even have to think about it to correctly adjust the angle of his wings when a stiff breeze tilted him unexpectedly to the left. The rehearsal had even taught him how to adapt his body to the constant dizzying changes in height and speed, how to keep his sense of focus and direction, how to ride out the buffeting winds.
But it hadn’t prepared him for the exhilarating way the air tore at his face as it raced by, hardly screened out at all by the scarf. It hadn’t prepared him for the unbelievably fresh taste of the cold air, as chill and delicious as starlight. It hadn’t prepared him for the assault on his senses, the almost battering effect of the rumbling motor and the shrieking wind.
It hadn’t prepared him for the elation. He felt drunk with euphoria, light-headed with delight. It might be altitude sickness, he warned himself, keeping one hand on the lever that would bring him closer to the ground. He had leveled out at about a thousand feet up, though he was pretty sure the LNR could go higher. Indeed, it seemed to chafe under his restraint like a restive horse eager to break into a gallop. He had the thought that if he lifted his hands from the controls, it would point its nose upward and just keep going.
Those are crazy thoughts, he said sternly. It’s not alive. You’re in control. You must think quickly and clearly or you’ll crash and die.
Those were never thoughts he’d had in the training facility, either.
He forced himself to focus, to concentrate, to shut down his sense of wonder and call up a sense of clinical detachment. He had traveled maybe a mile from the hangar in this short time; within another ten minutes, he thought, he would be able to see the ocean. Kayle hadn’t thought he would get that far, but if he did, he was supposed to make a hard turn and follow the shoreline.
Bad enough to come down over land, Kayle had said with his usual bluntness. But you certainly don’t want to land in water. I can’t imagine you’d survive.
Shielding his face with one hand, Rafe peered over the side, trying to see any landmarks. But he was over open country, all green and brown in gentle hills and flat stretches of vegetation; not even a road or a pocket of civilization to give him any hints of his location. He knew by the placement of the sun that he was still heading south, though, and he had to think that any moment—
There it was! The great dark bruise of the ocean, spilling over the horizon ahead of him, eating up more and more of the skyline as he made his rapid approach. Rafe muttered under his breath as he fought to turn the craft west, using both hands to pull on the controls that would tilt his right wing downward and enable him to pivot. The machine fought him, bucking against the energetic wind blowing off the sea. Rafe tasted the salt air and wondered briefly if the heavy humidity this close to the ocean could clog his fuel lines this quickly. He was close enough to the shoreline that he could see the waves foaming against the sand; another minute and he would be over the water.
He came to his feet and pulled the lever with all his weight, and the LNR made a slow, graceful curve to the right, losing a little altitude as it did. Rafe kicked the throttle open and lifted its nose again, and it climbed back to a more comfortable height. But he found it harder to keep the craft steady as they hugged the coastline, cutting across all the vagrant breezes that rolled in off the ocean. Rafe glanced down to gauge how close he was to the water, and saw the shadow of the aeromotive sliding along the ruffled surface of the sea.
Impossible but true. He was flying.
He followed the coastline for another mile, but it was hard work. The wind was so strong that it constantly rocked the aeromotive, and the repeated pulling on recalcitrant levers was rubbing his hands raw, even through the leather gloves. He had lost altitude again and was having a harder time regaining it, and his fuel gauge was hovering at the halfway mark. Time to head for home.
The aircraft acquiesced more courteously this time when he asked it to turn. At first they had the sea wind at their backs, pushing them along even faster, but that died off within a half mile. In fact, the air was so calm, the sky was so clear, and the aeromotive was so responsive that Rafe had almost relaxed into the smug exuberance of a successful flight when the motor failed and the world grew silent and the LNR began to fall toward the earth.
Rafe had a single blank moment of absolute terror before he remembered that he had practiced this moment a hundred times. He worked the fuel pump and hauled on the controls, hoping to reignite the engine, while desperately seeking to catch any errant winds that might help him glide down instead of plummeting. With a sudden roar, the motor growled to life; Rafe’s head was slammed against the back of the seat by the pressure of acceleration. Relief and euphoria flooded his veins, and he instantly tilted the craft skyward again, hoping to make up for lost altitude. A glance at his gauge showed that the maneuver had gulped down a good portion of his remaining fuel. He needed to get back to base, and without any more detours.
He was still on high alert, the adrenaline singing in his ears, so this time he caught the first warning sounds of impending disaster—a cough and stutter in the steady chugging of the engine. His hands were already on the throttle, throwing it wide open, his foot jammed on the fuel pump. Almost immediately, the engine caught again, and the craft surged forward with renewed energy.
But Rafe had a sense of cold certainty that he was on borrowed time. The LNR was struggling. He didn’t know how much longer it could stay aloft or how many more times he could coax it into restarting in midair. He had thought to keep the craft as high as he could, to give himself more time to recover if the engine failed again, but now he realized he’d better start looking for a landing spot and bring the LNR down as soon as he had a clear, straight stretch of road. While he actually had the power to direct it.
Accordingly, he canted to the right, edging eastward, hoping to intersect the main road some distance from the hangar. Hoping there was no other traffic between the port and the assembly building. Hoping the LNR had another mile in it at least, maybe two . . .
Twice more the engine shuddered and fell still, and twice more Rafe was able to flood the fuel lines and spark it into life again. By now he was sweating with heat and effort and fear; his scarf had unraveled from around his face, and his skin was burning from a combination of wind and sun. The glare was bright enough that he was having trouble seeing, and he had lost all sense of time and distance. All he knew was sound—that choke and gurgle in the engine’s full-throated roar—and altitude. Which was lower. And lower. And lower.
Then the craft fell ominously silent as the engine cut out again. Rafe stomped on the fuel pump and saw his gauge spin to zero. He was too low to hope the engine would catch in time to power the LNR upward again—too high to hope he would land in anything less spectacular than calamity. Probably didn’t have to worry about fire, though, since there wasn’t anything left to burst into flames. So Josetta wouldn’t have to stand there and watch him burn to death—
Josetta—
Knowing it would do no good, he jumped on the fuel pump with the full weight of his body, hauled maniacally on the gears, trying to get the slightest bit of lift, just enough power to cruise those final yards. But the LNR, which had seemed so sentient before, was nothing now but a lifeless metal coffin careening toward land. Rafe felt like his head was about to detach from his body from the force of the rapid descent. He wrapped his hands around his chain of blessings and prepared for catastrophic impact.
Then a mighty force slammed against the LNR and hurled it sideways, lifting it a hundred feet in the air and spinning it like a leaf. Rafe loosed an inarticulate shout and grabbed the steering mechanism, trying grimly to avoid being pitched over the side. Now the craft was flung in the opposite direction, rocked on a furious wind. Rafe’s head smashed against the wheel, against the back of the seat, against the metal sidewall. He was too dizzy and jostled to operate the controls, to try with levers and rudders to steer into the gale that had swept in to keep him aloft. He merely held on grimly as he was thrown from side to side, shaken like a child’s toy, then dumped to the ground in a screeching, bumping, endlessly spinning tumble.
