by Frank Tuttle
She turned and faced the workmen. The Captain helped them hammer the coils back into place, and then they stepped back, mopping sweat and whispering to each other.
A carriage clopped by on the street outside, its driver whistling tunelessly. From within the carriage came laughter. The carriage passed. The courtyard fell silent, and Meralda grew acutely aware of the many stares directed toward her.
"Thank you," said Meralda, through lips gone suddenly dry. "However this turns out, you've proved yourselves heroes. There's no finer crew of craftsmen in all the Realms."
Mr. Pithnotty mopped sweat from his red face. "You can't just climb aboard and set sail, begging your pardon. You've got to christen her first, you know. Bad luck if you don't. Bad luck indeed."
"I christen thee the Lucky Jenny," said Mug, from his cage. "May your voyages be easy and your landings soft."
"That's hardly proper!" began Mr. Pithnotty.
"It shall have to suffice. We have four hours." Meralda put Mug's cage gently on the ground. "This is just a brief test of the coils and controls," she said. "I won't take her more than a few feet off the ground. Still, it's best if you wait here, with the Captain."
"Much as I'd prefer that, Mistress, I should be aboard with you," said Mug. "I can keep watch on the coils, the regulators, the batteries, the holdstones, and the gauges at the same time. Unless you've got a set of extra eyes in your pocket, I don't think you can do all that, can you?"
"This could be dangerous, Mug."
"All the more reason I should go. Just a brief test of the controls, you said. A few feet off the ground, you said. Did I misunderstand?"
Meralda shrugged and lifted Mug's cage over the Jenny's rail, resting it behind the slanted glass wind-screen. Then she clambered aboard herself.
The Captain motioned the workmen back.
"Keep her knee high," he said. "This is no time for heroics."
Meralda pulled a pair of leather goggles out of her pocket and pulled them down over her eyes. She pushed her hat down firmly on her head, and tightened the chin-strap she'd added as the workmen struggled to get the hull through the doors. "Stand clear," she said. I wish I could think of something momentous to say.
"Here we go."
She threw a pair of large knife switches. Sparks hissed and flew.
The Jenny began to hum.
Mug's many eyes spread out, turning themselves on the Jenny's mechanisms and bank of dials and gauges. "Looks good, Mistress," he said. "Currents are just where you predicted."
Meralda swallowed hard and pushed a lever half an inch forward.
The coils buzzed like angry bees, and the Jenny leaped skyward, falling in reverse.
Mug shouted numbers. Meralda clamped her jaw shut against the scream that very nearly escaped. She fought to keep her hand steady, to ignore the awful sensation that she'd fallen from a high place, and was still falling, despite rising up and up and up... "Mistress!" shrieked Mug. "A hundred feet! And rising!"
Falling, falling, falling...
Meralda blinked behind her goggles, opened her eyes, and relaxed her grip on the ascender lever. The dials showing current to the lifting coils fell. The Jenny slowed, still rising, but not at a breakneck pace. Meralda let out her breath and gently let the driving coils have their first taste of arcane current flow. The Jenny dove forward, launching herself at the horizon as a rush of cold wet air flew past.
Meralda laughed. The wind tore her hat away, and the strap caught at her neck. Her hair was loosed from its bun and her coat flapped behind her like a cape and though her body felt as if it were now falling forward, Meralda let out a wordless shriek that was half terror and half sheer delight.
"Mistress!" shouted Mug. "Have you taken leave of your senses?"
Meralda eased the Jenny into a wide, gentle curve.
"We're flying, Mug! We've done it!"
"Hurrah," shrieked Mug, as the Palace loomed close. "Mistress, mind the Towers, mind the Towers..." Meralda laughed and flew the Jenny close by the north tower. Surprised faces and pointing fingers followed her, and she waved as she passed.
"Both hands on the levers, if you please," said Mug. His eyes were pulled in tight amid his leaves, which shook and curled in the wind.
"Altitude?"
"Three hundred and six feet," said Mug.
"Airspeed?"
"Fifty-two miles per hour. I believe we hit seventy, for a moment, during the ascent."
"Batteries and holdstones?"
"No appreciable losses. Yet." Meralda nodded and worked her controls. The Jenny began to fall, banking as she did, her nose aimed at the courtyard in which the Captain stood bellowing. Meralda slowed the Jenny to a halt a dozen feet above the ground. She pulled her goggles up on her forehead and pushed her hat back down on her head.
"Captain," she called. "Please take Mug and keep him safe. I'll lower him with a rope."
"You'll do no such bloody thing," said Mug.
"Mage Ovis," shouted the Captain, brandishing a sheet of parchment in his hand. "I didn't want to resort to this, but you leave me no choice! This is a direct order from the hand of the King himself. You are to turn over control of that craft immediately, to me, and no arguments!"
"Well, he's got you there," said Mug. He pushed his green eyes through the bars of his bird-cage and regarded Meralda solemnly. "I know you think you're the only person who can fly this thing, Mistress. But give the Captain a minute or two. He can learn which levers to push, well enough." Meralda fumbled beneath her chair and produced a short length of thin rope.
"It's so windy up here I can't understand a word you're saying, Captain," she shouted, as she pushed the rope through the ring at the top of Mug's cage. "Also, we've had a malfunction. The dingbats are fused to the rhomboids, and I can't land the Jenny at all..."
"Not true!" shouted Mug. "No such thing as a dingbat and a rhomboid is a poorly-drawn square! You will not lower me down, Mistress!" Mug's vines shot through the bottom of his cage and pressed themselves tight against the Jenny's wood hull. "I'm rooted, Mistress," said Mug. "If you insist on flying this thing to your doom, well, I'm going too."
"Mug, let go this instant."
"Mage, I'm ordering you, put that boat down right here, right now, or I'll fetch a rope and a hook and climb up there myself!"
"He'll do it, too, Mistress," said Mug. "Oh look. I'm finally seeing battery drain. Did I mention I wasn't turning loose? Because I'm not, and if you go I go, and do you know anyone with sharper eyes than mine?"
"Mage, this is a signed order, from the King! To refuse it is treason!"
"Blast," said Meralda. She finished tying the end of the rope through Mug's cage, tied the other end to her waist, and sent the Jenny falling up into the windy, battered sky.
* * *
The first rule of flying, thought Meralda, is bring a heavy coat.
She hunched shivering in her makeshift pilot's seat, her hands freezing in her thin black gloves. The wind whipped and stung and howled past, clawing and tearing at her hair and her skin and especially her nose as it raced past.
"Eighteen thousand feet," announced Mug. The dandyleaf plant had curled himself into a tight green ball at fifteen thousand feet, and was extending his eyes a dozen at a time and withdrawing them when they grew cold. "Eighteen thousand feet, and one hundred and sixty miles an hour."
"Wonderful," said Meralda. The wind caught her word and swept it away as she spoke.
Ahead, the storm that had ravaged Tirlin boiled and curled and flashed, swallowing half the sky, reaching from the heavens above to the ground below. The newly-risen sun lit one face of it, revealing a black, hurtling mass of wind and cloud that churned as though stirred by some vast, angry hand.
Meralda briefly caught sight of a single airship, far below and many miles north, its fans straining to pull away from the storm's deadly grip. The airship, a bright red Alon craft, managed to put her nose to the south and p
ull away, just as Meralda lost sight of the craft beneath a rushing swath of clouds.
Lightning played continuously through the thunderheads, seldom reaching the ground, but arcing from cloud to cloud in a never-faltering show of flares and blasts and glows. The sound of the thing, even above the roar of the wind, was a monstrous, grumbling rumble that grew louder with every second the Jenny sped toward it.
They're in there, thought Meralda. Two children, an injured man, a desperate woman. Caught somewhere inside a monster that blots out half the sky.
"I'm not seeing anything," shouted Mug. "I didn't realize the clouds would be so thick."
Meralda didn't bother to reply.
"Are we going inside it?"
"We are," shouted Meralda. "We're going to pull right alongside the Sammi."
Mug's reply, if any, was lost to the wind.
Meralda fumbled in her pocket, terrified for a moment that the rush of air had robbed her of the only means of locating the wreck of the Sammi. But then her hands closed about the toy soldier that Mrs. Ghote dropped with her letter, and the hastily-assembled arrangement of free-spinning metal rings in which the soldier hung.
Please work, intoned Meralda silently as she grasped the rings.
Mug aimed a trio of eyes at her hand as Meralda withdrew the toy soldier.
The painted soldier spun and wheeled inside his metal bands, caught in the blast of wind. Meralda frowned -- should have enclosed it all in a glass globe, she thought. If I'd only had time, and hadn't been hiding it from the Captain and Mug. But they'd have known I meant to pilot the Jenny the instant I climbed aboard with this. Now, a painted tin soldier is my only means of finding the Sammi in all that murk.
"--is that?" cried Mug, most of his words lost.
"The most popular toy from last Yule," shouted Meralda. "Part of a set. Comes with a tiny animated dragon. They fight."
Mug put an eye close to the tiny soldier.
"So they're latched? You can use this to find the other half of the set?"
Meralda smiled and spoke the words that unlatched her tracking spell.
I just hope the spell is strong enough to counteract the wind...
The toy soldier spun to a halt, his tiny sword aimed directly at the storm raging ahead. Then his sword swung upward and wobbled from side to side before going rigid and still.
Mug hooted in triumph. "Marvelous, Mistress! You've found them! We can follow --"
Lightning, blinding and close, arced out of the face of the storm, flashing across the Jenny by what seemed a hand's breadth. The flash blinded Meralda and sent the Jenny leaping forward, slamming Meralda back in her makeshift pilot's chair and sending the toy soldier flying from her hand, caught and carried away by the wind and the thunder.
When Meralda's ears stopped ringing, she could hear Mug shouting.
"I've got an eye on it, Mistress," he said. Through the spots that danced before her own eyes, Meralda could see one of Mug's eyes -- a red one -- pushed through his cage. "I won't look away. Take us up and straight ahead."
Meralda pushed the lever forward, sending the Jenny hurtling toward the storm.
Another great arc of ragged lightning hurtled past, below this time, but close, too close.
"It doesn't want us here," shouted Mug. "It's awfully hostile for a great mass of water vapor!"
"It's just a storm," Meralda shouted. But her words were empty, and they left her shivering against more than just the icy high-air cold. It is just a storm, isn't it? It doesn't want anything. It cannot. It's just wind and water, heat and cold, raging as it races toward balance.
Thunder roared again, and the blasts of lightning on the face of the darkness raged and crackled anew.
Now or never, thought Meralda, with a glance at her battery dials. The needles quivered well below the halfway mark, and were falling fast enough for their motion to be perceptible.
"Hold on, Mug!" shouted Meralda, as she pushed a lever further. "They're nearly out of time."
The sky went black, as if the sun had never shone, would never rise again. The thunder became a continuous roar, and the lightning a never-ending glare.
The Jenny hung there, just for a moment, suspended just beyond the black mass of the storm.
"Well, we're dead," piped Mug, cheerily. "Nice knowing you, Mistress."
Meralda slammed the lever home, and plunged her tiny boat full into the face of the storm.
* * *
The winds inside the boiling clouds were so fierce, the Jenny spent several awful moments sideways and then completely upside-down.
Meralda's pockets emptied themselves, and she wondered, just for a fleeting moment, if some hapless farmer far below might soon be pelted with nine pence in loose change, half a dozen torn theatre tickets, and the keys to her flat.
Meralda gritted her teeth and pulled back on the Jenny's throttle levers, bringing her to a near stop. The wind still swept by and the thunder still rolled, but at least I can hear, thought Meralda, and I'm no longer being stung by raindrops.
"I'm no airship pirate, Mistress, but we seem to be inverted," said Mug, from below her. The rope tied to his cage hung taut by her face. "Careful, though. I still have an eye on the spot your toy pointed out."
Meralda adjusted her levers. With a buzz and a groan, the Jenny righted herself, and Mug's cage came floating down to rest at Meralda's feet.
The air around them howled and keened, as the storm's internal winds raced and blew. Meralda looked about, but the view in all directions was the same -- dark upon dark, boiling clouds lit by flashes, or tortured by blasts of thunder. There were layers within the dark, brought into sudden sharp relief by the continual shows of lightning. Strata, thought Meralda, that's the word. Inky black layer here. Dark grey there. Swirling ragged light greys here.
"When this is all over I'm going to curl into a ball and not speak for days," said Mug. "But right now, the Sammi is at least three hundred feet above us. Maybe four."
Meralda sent the Jenny soaring straight up. My hat is gone, she realized, as her hair streamed behind her, and huge fat raindrops, cold as ice, beat against her face.
I loved that hat.
"They're moving," said Meralda. "They won't be hanging there, perfectly still."
Mug stuck a leaf outside his cage.
"The wind is blowing that way," he said, pointing with a second leaf curled into a point.
Meralda moved levers and put the wind to her back. Above, a greater darkness grumbled and flowed, moving like a vast river made of angry black clouds.
"Oh no. Mistress. The holdstones. The batteries. We're losing both fast." Half a dozen of Mug's eyes emerged from his cage, scanning the Jenny from bow to stern. "The right flying coil must have a short. We're trailing smoke."
Meralda glanced at her bank of dials and frowned.
"We'll have to hurry then. All eyes ahead, Mr. Mug."
"Aye aye, Captain." Mug pushed twenty-eight eyes skyward, while a single blue one remained watching the dials. "Am I allowed to mutiny? Because if I am, I’d like to do it soon, before the batteries fail."
"You had your chance down in the courtyard," said Meralda. "Too late now."
"Blast," said Mug, his eyes peering upward, into the boiling dark.
Minutes crept past, punctuated by flashes of lightning and the ever-present grumble of nearby thunder.
"Batteries are down to seven percent," said Mug. "Holdstones are down to six."
Meralda didn't reply, but she couldn't help but calculate the percentages into time aloft. Fighting the wind was taking more of a toll than she'd thought. The burned section of the right coil was adding even more strain on the Jenny's failing reserves. Assuming we're three hundred miles or more from Tirlin, we'll never make it back, she decided. We might make another twenty miles. Thirty, if we go right down, right now.
"Thirty-six miles, Mistress," said Mug, echoing her thoughts. The Jenny rocked in a sud
den savage burst of wind. A brief but intense fall of rain -- which Meralda observed to be traveling horizontally -- soaked her and left the shorted section of the Jenny's right flying coil trailing a wide swath of billowing steam.
The Jenny lurched, listing heavily to the right. Sparks joined the steam, burning and hissing before vanishing in the dark.
Meralda watched the dials begin to fall.
"Best guess," said Meralda, mopping sideways rain from her eyes. "Point, and I'll take us that way."
Mug peered intently into the murk. A fusillade of lightning turned the clouds into billows of shadow.
"Mistress -- follow this eye!"
Mug held a red eye out ahead of the others. It remained fixed on a distant point in the storm, even as Mug tossed and rocked and wobbled.
"Do you see them?"
"I don't know. I saw something. I think. Just hurry!"
Meralda shoved her levers, and the Jenny wallowed up and ahead, trailing steam and bits of molten copper that trailed green as they fell.
Following Mug's gaze, Meralda piloted the Jenny into a mile-wide band of hurried, roiling clouds. The wind changed suddenly, and for one awful moment, the Jenny's nose dipped down and Meralda felt the tiny craft fall, really fall, for a dozen feet before the wind changed again and she was able to once again follow Mug's unwavering eye.
Lightning forked and blazed about them, claps of deafening thunder following every flash. Up and up, until the altimeter passed twenty thousand feet, and ice rimed Meralda's goggles. She pulled them off and hurled them away, and the altimeter reached twenty one thousand before the needle reached its stop and could move no more.
The air was frigid, colder than even the deepest chill of winter. And thin, so desperately thin.
"Meralda! Ahead!"
Lightning flashed, and a merciful rush of wind opened a ragged part in the clouds, and there, just for an instant, hung the Sammi.
Her pilot's car was all but gone. Her bright yellow envelope was sagging, pulled out of shape by the ruined rigging that still bore part of her airscrew and random bits of cab.
"Mistress, is that a woman?"
