Amid Wind and Stone

by Nicole Luiken

  In the hallway, something bumped her arm. Turning, she glimpsed movement, but it vanished too fast to see. “What was that?”

  “What was what?” the lieutenant asked impatiently.

  “Something bumped me,” Audrey said, still unnerved.

  “Don’t tell me you believe in phantoms,” he sniffed contemptuously.

  She blinked. “Phantoms?”

  “The midshipman on night lookout swears one stole his lunch.” The officer rolled his eyes in disgust. “As if a phantom would have any use for his egg salad on rye. He probably fell asleep on watch, and a magpie ate it.”

  Birds rarely braved the Grand Current, and Audrey had never heard of a magpie doing so.

  A jolt of excitement sizzled through her. She’d heard of phantoms, of course—one of her favorite childhood books had featured one. Phantoms were said to be the children of air spirits and people, able to soar on the wind like birds and go invisible. In the story she’d read, the phantom had saved the life of a princess and asked for her hand in marriage as a reward. Which implied they were flesh and blood. She suspected the lieutenant was confusing phantoms with ghosts. Ghosts were the spirits of the dead and could pass through walls. They didn’t eat.

  Her father said stories about phantoms were hogwash, a fanciful explanation for how Donlon’s nobility came to possess their long-winded gifts.

  “Did anyone die on board?” Audrey asked. They resumed walking.

  “Of course not.” They reached the top of the ladder to the flight deck. “Go down and wait. A bell will ring when we’re in position.”

  She nodded and descended to the lower deck alone. While strolling over to the rail, she started to stuff the document tube into its carrying case, but something plucked the roll of paper from her grasp.

  She fumbled after it, but it hit the polished wooden floor and rolled across the deck. A freak gust of wind picked up the tube.

  No, not a gust of wind. Something. Someone.

  The phantom.

  Audrey could see the barest outline of a boy holding the tube. In the next instant, he swung his leg over the deck rail and climbed outside.

  She dove after him, but his sleeve slipped through her fingers. “No!”

  The phantom vanished around the corner, walking on air as casually as if it were a road.

  Shock and despair ricocheted through her system. Captain Dennis had implied the message was routine—but he’d had it ready to send before reading the message from the Admiral. It must be very important to rate being stolen. What if it contained critical information that could cause a war if it fell into the hands of the Sipars? She would be to blame. She should’ve forced Grady to admit the truth to their father and turn the message over to an experienced courier. Instead the message had been lost, because she’d felt envious and wanted to play—but being a courier wasn’t a game; it was deadly important.

  She had to make this right.

  She leaned over the rail and squinted into the wind, trying to find an invisible phantom.

  Her eyes teared up, and desperation and guilt thrashed inside her chest. This was hopeless. Phantoms were the children of the air.

  She put on her goggles and Called Zephyr. “Show me where he is.”

  A gust of wind blew a lock of hair in her eyes. She turned her head and saw a blurry outline clinging to the cargo cage. And, there, the document tube tucked into his own carrying case, both also near invisible.

  A door from the flight deck led to the mostly empty cargo space. She crept through, trying to be silent and surprise him from behind. The cargo cage was made up of a lattice of struts. It had no floor. If her foot slipped, she’d fall to her death.

  Audrey crouched down and started crawling across, testing each slender strut before committing her weight to it. Latching and unlatching her carabiners.

  Fifteen feet away, then ten. Five.

  The strut under her hand creaked, and he turned his head.

  The phantom was too pale to make out more than a few features: a nose, mouth, colorless eyes and hair. She had the impression he wasn’t much older than herself.

  He cocked his head. “Can you see me?” He sounded curious, unafraid.

  “Of course I can.” She held out her hand. “Give me back the message.”

  “There’s no ‘of course’ about it. Very few people can—” He broke off sharply, suddenly intent. “What’s a girl doing wearing a courier’s uniform?”

  She roughened her voice and emitted a coarse laugh. “I ain’t no skirt. You take that back.”

  He crossed his arms, as nonchalant as if he stood on solid ground instead of perched three thousand feet up in the air. “I know a girl when I see one. Boys don’t have curves like yours.”

  Audrey blushed crimson, suddenly aware of how formfitting the flight suit was—designed to prevent snagging—compared to her usual dresses and petticoats.

  “It doesn’t matter if I’m a girl,” she said bravely. “What matters is that you give me the message back. Now.” She extended her hand, but he casually moved the carrying case out of reach. Fiend.

  She unlatched her carabiners to give herself more freedom of movement but kept tight hold of the strut with one hand. The metal edge creased her palm.

  He chuckled. “Sorry. As much as I like to please the ladies, I’m going to have to decline. Someone paid a pretty penny for this message, and The Phantom always delivers.” He said “The Phantom” as if it were a title.

  He ducked under a high strut and stepped over a lower one so that he stood on the outside of the cargo cage. One leg hung out over empty space.

  For the first time, she wondered where he’d come from. The obvious answer, that he’d simply stowed away on board the Artemis and hidden since the airship’s departure from its last port, didn’t quite ring true. Perhaps he could have hidden for a few days—and subsisted on stolen sandwiches—but airship cruises usually lasted three months at a stretch. Plus, the dirigible-class Artemis was much smaller than the flagship; it would be too hard not to be trapped in a corner or bumped into in a corridor.

  Had he come from Sipar? But he didn’t have a Siparese accent. That was good, surely? Not a spy then, but a hired thief.

  “There’s nowhere for you to go,” she told him. “You might as well hand it over.” She crawled closer, reaching the cage wall.

  He smiled at her, the movement more visible now that she was closer. It seemed as if the light and wind bent around him. “It’s jolly kind of you to worry about me, but I’ll be fine.”

  He gave a cheery wave, then stepped off into nothingness.

  Audrey lunged through the cage window after him and tore the carrying case off his shoulder. She felt a moment of triumph before she overbalanced, and her body somersaulted through the space between the struts outside the cargo cage. She screamed as she suddenly found herself dangling from one hand and facing outward. Her full weight hung from one awkwardly bent arm. The steel bit in like jaws.

  She flailed her free right arm but couldn’t find anything to grab. Her body didn’t bend that way. “Help! Help!” With icy certainty, she knew her voice would never carry far enough for anyone on board the Artemis to hear her. And the Queen Winifrid still flew alongside them, not yet below.

  Her goggles fell down around her neck, and the wind whipped tears into her eyes. Her hand throbbed. Blood trickled down her arm and made her grip slippery. Terror dried her mouth and clogged her thoughts. She knew she had only seconds before she fell to her death.

  Crazy thoughts spun in her head:

  Grady would be devastated. He’d feel so guilty.

  Their father would blame Grady, but her mother would blame the Admiral, and the divorce that had loomed over Audrey’s whole life would happen. The scandal would force her mother into seclusion—

  All because Audrey had been an idiot.

  Crying, she Called Zephyr. Knowing as she did so that the breeze simply wasn’t strong enough to help.

  The loyal wind sw
irled around her. “Hold on. He’s coming,” the wind whispered.

  He who?

  She saw a blur, a ripple in the air, and then she made out the figure of The Phantom. The Grand Current streamed into her face, but he somehow rode a counter-current back to her, floating as easily as a swimmer in water.

  Awe and hope blasted through her.

  He scooped her up in his arms, taking the excruciating weight off her arm and allowing her to let go. She cradled her bleeding hand against her chest.

  He smiled at her. “I believe you have something of mine?”

  Her stomach dropped. The message. He’d come back for it, not to save her. “It’s not yours,” she said, then could’ve kicked herself. She should’ve been bargaining with him. The message wasn’t worth her life.

  Fortunately, he seemed more amused than angered.

  He deposited her back in the cargo cage. Tears ran from the corners of her eyes and were whipped away by the wind. She clung to a strut with her good hand and tried to latch on with the other, but her injured hand shook too badly. After her third unsuccessful try, The Phantom did it for her.

  Snip.

  He pulled the document case away, having neatly cut the strap holding it to her. Her position was too precarious to even try to grab it. She glared at him instead, hot enough to incinerate paper. “Give it back.” Her anger steadied her hands.

  He grinned. “Not even a thank you?”

  He had saved her. The manners Lady Bethany had instilled in her insisted she acknowledge the deed. “Thank you,” she ground out.

  He tipped his head to one side. “A poor effort,” he judged. “I expect you’re all choked up. Not to worry. Since words have failed you, I’ll let you thank me a different way.” Holding the document behind his back, out of reach, he leaned forward and kissed her.

  Her mouth parted in outrage, and she tasted peppermint.

  Before she could react, he dropped down to hang by his hands like a monkey. “Farewell. I hope we meet again Lady Courier.”

  He waved, then let go, and vanished into the gray sky, leaving her fuming.

  Back on the flagship, Audrey raced to change as fast as she could, struggling to do up the dress hooks behind her back. Her fingers felt cold and useless, and her palm hurt.

  Grady had looked so white-faced and terrified when she’d confessed the loss of the message. She’d told him to wait for her, that they would report to the Admiral together, but he’d refused. “It’s my responsibility.” He’d bandaged her hand then run off.

  Done. Audrey took the stairs up to the next level, boots ringing on the metal. The aghast look on a passing crewman’s face made her remember her newly shorn hair. She detoured to the suite she shared with her father, jammed on a straw hat, and tied the wide red ribbon firmly beneath her chin.

  She hastened to the bridge, chafing under the restriction to be ladylike and not run.

  Raised voices reached her ears from the corridor. When she peeked in, the lieutenant on duty shook his head slightly, signaling that now wasn’t a good time. She ignored him and entered the glass-enclosed bridge at the airship’s nose.

  The view outside was spectacular—the sky a lovely silver with pink streaks—but Audrey’s gaze zeroed in on her brother’s white face. He trembled and sweated, near to fainting.

  Admiral Harding loomed over him, in a towering rage. Audrey had seldom experienced that temper directed at her, but she’d seen her father come down hard on crew or servants who failed to meet his rigorous expectations.

  “What. Is. This?” he bit out. Black eyebrows slashed down over his eyes. “You dropped the message and now expect me to believe some nursery tale of phantoms? You don’t even have the courage to tell me the truth?”

  “Father!” Audrey raised her voice, heart beating loudly in her chest. She hid her bandaged hand behind her back.

  He glared first at her and then Grady. “And now you hide behind your sister.”

  Grady flinched.

  Audrey spoke quickly. “It’s true about The Phantom. I saw him, too.”

  Her father crossed his arms. “Your loyalty is commendable, but your brother claims he encountered this phantom on the Artemis.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Grady said. His lower lip wobbled.

  “I’m giving you three demerits for dropping the message and five for lying about it. That brings your total to eight. If you receive two more for anything in the next two weeks, you’ll be drummed out of the service.”

  Audrey exchanged horrified glances with her brother. Grady looked like he’d been hit in the stomach. He already had two demerits, one for failure to make his bed properly and one for being two minutes late.

  She couldn’t let this happen. “There was a phantom,” Audrey insisted. She lowered her voice so only her father could hear. “Please, don’t punish Grady. I’m the one who lost the message. I was the courier.”

  Grady groaned.

  Her father’s eyes widened, and his head whipped around. “Off the bridge!” he barked to Lieutenant Morris. The officer fled.

  “Is this true?” The Admiral grabbed Grady’s shoulders, shaking him. “Did you send your sister in your place? Coward!”

  “Stop it! He didn’t send me! I wanted to go.” Audrey blinked back tears, trembling. “He doesn’t have the long-winded talent, but I do!”

  Her father barely spared her a glance. “That doesn’t excuse his actions.”

  Audrey’s ears rang. “You knew Grady didn’t have the talent, and yet you sent him out as a courier anyway?” The realization stole the breath from her lungs.

  “Unlike you, he never Called the wind to bring his lost kite back to him at age five,” her father snapped. “But the talent isn’t required to act as courier, only nerve. I held the ship steady over the Artemis for twenty minutes. It was an easy jump. Sending you in his place was cowardice.”

  Her father made no allowances for weakness. But Audrey had seen Grady’s face. He’d lacked the confidence to make that jump. “I’m not sorry. If he’d jumped, he would be dead,” she said flatly.

  Her father’s expression remained implacable. “That would be better than having a son who’s a coward.”

  Grady gave a hoarse cry of despair and fled the bridge.

  Stomach hollow, Audrey started after him, but her father caught her shoulder. “Oh, no, you don’t.” And then it was her turn to endure a blistering lecture, featuring words like “irresponsible” and “national security.”

  But nothing he said could be worse than the realization that, in trying to help, she’d ruined her brother’s life.

  Chapter Three

  The Cavern of Traitors

  Stone World

  Dorotea cast a nervous glance behind her, but she was alone in the gloomy passageway. Over half the light squares were burned black, a sure sign that no one came to this area anymore. She’d only seen two people since stealthily leaving the Stone Heart Cavern, and no one since bypassing the hot springs turn, but guilt kept her jumpy.

  The tunnel ended in a door. Not a simple beaded curtain like the ones separating households in Artisan Cavern, but an Elect-made metal one set into a perfectly rectangular frame, with no crack showing anywhere. A faint reflection of herself wavered on the steel.

  A metal knob stuck out of it. Hesitantly, Dorotea grasped it, then pulled. Nothing happened. She pushed, pulled, pushed again with no results. Frustrated, she kicked the door.

  Maybe she ought to take the door’s stubbornness as a sign that her plan was crazy and doomed to fail. It was crazy, but she balked at the thought of giving up and returning to Artisan Cavern. Wildness clawed inside her at the thought of sitting helplessly at Marta’s bedside, watching her sister waste away—

  No. Impossible. Unacceptable.

  What she’d come here to do was wrong on so many levels—she’d already lied to her mother and taken her father’s things without permission (though, really, they belonged to her more than her mother), and now she was going to bre
ak her world’s strongest taboo. What she was about to do was commit treason. She understood that she was taking a terrible risk waking a monster in the belief that she could control it—but it still seemed less wrong to her than doing nothing. Mouthing prayers that couldn’t be heard by the sleeping Goddess and waiting for the roof to cave in on their heads didn’t solve anything. Dorotea might not be doing the right thing, but she had to do something.

  And if she were caught… Her legs grew watery, and she shivered, but she refused to shy away from the truth. If she were caught, she’d be banished to Above, a death sentence.

  If Marta died, she wouldn’t care what happened to herself.

  If Marta died, she wouldn’t deserve to live.

  Dorotea took a deep breath and pushed at the door again. She jiggled the knob, and a small panel beside the door lit up.

  Her pulse jumped, but no alarms sounded. Peering closer at the lighted rectangle, she read the words, “Please enter 9-character security code.” Below were rows of small squares like buttons that had the letters of the alphabet imprinted on them.

  Because she was born to Skilled parents, Dorotea had been taught to read, but the message didn’t make sense. Characters, like in a story? What story? She tried to remember a story with nine characters and failed.

  Hesitantly, she tapped in the name of the characters from her favorite story, Mikkal and Johanna. But when she reached the H in Johanna, the letters stopped appearing on the screen. A new message flashed: “Incorrect code.” Then the first message reappeared: “Please enter 9-character security code.”

  Why hadn’t it let her finish? Nine names wouldn’t fit on the tiny screen. She blinked in sudden realization and counted on her fingers: M, I, K, K, A, L, J, O, H. Nine letters. Was that what it meant by characters?

  Her father and the other Stone Hearts used to enter this cavern every morning to collect their gargoyles, but Dorotea didn’t remember ever accompanying him. She didn’t know the code. Stone Heart was ten letters. A type of stone? Chalcedony was ten, granite was too short…

  A sudden burst of hope shot through her. She knew something that was nine letters long.