The Window and the Mirror

by Henry Thomas

  “What have you got for me?” she whispered hurriedly.

  “Joth bid me to give you this.” He pulled a rumpled and creased letter from the breast of his coat and pushed it into her hands. It was warm and slightly damp from where he had carried it. “I’ve been riding for two days and two nights,” he added, to no one in particular.

  “Who do you think is more tired, you or your horse?”

  He smiled and shook his head. “I don’t know, lady.”

  “Where are they?”

  “They’re off to Kingsbridge by now. I’ve to get clear of this place afore anyone sees me.”

  She nodded. “Wait until they take me inside. Thanks for this.” She put the letter into her sleeve.

  He nodded and stammered.

  “What’s your name, anyway?”

  “Bell. Bellan, if it please you, lady.”

  “Thanks, Bellan. Well done. Now wait here until they take me back in.”

  “Watch that mage—he’s no good. He tried to have them two killed on the road after he sent them off.” The words came tumbling out in a rush.

  She saw his earnestness and knew he spoke the truth. Seven bells, they had escaped and were all right and headed for Kingsbridge at least! The thought was a relief to Ryla, but why Norden had sought their deaths defied logic.

  Bellan was looking at her with his big earnest eyes. He would be handsome one day, she decided.

  “I’ll be careful. You be careful too.” She gave him a quick peck on his smooth flushed cheek and was reminded of those faraway days of her youth and her young love and whispered dreams and promises that were no more; they were gone like her youth, like so much vapor. She smiled at him then and he returned it, innocently. She used his shoulder and pushed herself to her feet, then began strolling back toward the front of the Inn as easy as she pleased, leaving him crouched there in the stableyard behind the wall.

  The guard who had been assigned to watch her was stood in the street, looking off in the opposite direction down the lane as she came around the corner. He began pointing his finger at her and rattling off words in his guttural sounding language as he hurriedly strode toward her. Ryla simply waved him away.

  “If a lady wishes to have a piss, a lady wishes to have a piss.”

  She kept striding right for the door of the inn and never looked back. The guard shook his head and continued to harangue her as she pushed into the great room headed straight for the table where her crew sat at their breakfast. Galt, Kipren, and Elmund all subtly assessed her situation and smiled at her. She smiled back. This was turning out to be quite an exciting morning, she noted.

  “When you’re done with your breakfast, we’ll be Skyward bound, boys.”

  They nodded, practically in unison.

  “It’s about bloody time,” Elmund grumbled.

  “You are not lying there, brother,” Galt assented.

  “Where’s Joth and Eilyth?” Kipren asked lowly. “They get away?”

  “The mage has sent them on. We are taking on some cargo and Mage Norden, who still hasn’t told me where we’re headed.” Ryla was itching to open the note tucked away in her sleeve, but she did not dare—not while the smarmy mage could see her.

  Elmund met her eyes and she could see the question forming there.

  “Be ready, lads. I’ll know more presently. Give me a word when I’m clear to fish a letter out and read it unnoticed.”

  They looked about them warily. Ryla sat between them at the table in a position where she was mostly shielded from Norden’s view and poured herself a cup of ale.

  “Don’t look so nervous, boys.” She downed it in one go.

  Kipren went back to his breakfast.

  “They’re busy talking at the moment,” Elmund said lowly.

  Ryla raised her eyebrows at her empty cup and Elmund sighed and filled it as she caught the note blindly with two fingers and drew it out of her sleeve and unfolded it beneath the table.

  “Still good,” Galt said to her.

  She brought the note out and read it on her lap. It read: “Captain Durns, Norden wants us dead, we are on the road to Kingsbridge and will wait for you there at the first inn we find. Get clear of the mage, he is not to be trusted. Please destroy this.”

  She passed the letter under the table to Kipren then cut her eyes to the fire. He gave a tight nod before pushing back and making his way to the hearth. Ryla did not watch him but she knew she could count on Kipren to quietly accomplish his task without drawing any attention to himself.

  When he returned to the table he gave her a wink and went back to a half-finished round of bread, slathering some more butter on it with his eating knife.

  “Well?” asked Elmund.

  “As soon as we’re clear of the mage.”

  He nodded but did not look very pleased about it. No matter, she thought. The less he knew, the better—particularly should Norden get wind of anything. She knew she could count on her boys to stand behind her if she gave the word, but she would wait and judge the best time to do so, and at the moment she still did not have the full view of the situation. Most especially she was curious as to what Norden was up to and, more importantly, why. “Let’s talk to the innkeep about some provisions. We’re going in style this time, and it’s all on the Magistry’s tab.”

  This elicited grins all around.

  They outfitted themselves as well as the inn could provide and a few hours later they were being herded along by the Norandian cavalry and Mage Norden and his scrawny scribe as they rode ahead along the road out of Grannock, the two wagons making their trundling creaks and groans as they were driven along behind, canvas wrapped loads tied down securely behind the roughly hooded drivers. Amidst this strange company Ryla marched along beside her crew back to where they had drag-landed the Skyward days before, and all the while she bided her time and contemplated her next move. Hopefully the trip with Norden would not delay her too very long, and she would be off to Kingsbridge and back on the trail to her victory, her long-awaited vengeance.

  She knew how to play Norden should he prove difficult, but she was not quite ready to sacrifice her self-respect without a quantifiable justification. Whatever the cost was destined to be, Ryla Dierns would pay it if it ensured a victory that would avenge her honor, her family’s honor, the honor of her village. Javis had been just sixteen when Uhlmet came slaying dogs and causing a tumult. How horrible it had been for her to watch as he was strung up and hanged, his hands tied behind his back. Javis had stood proudly, defiantly as they put the noose about his neck. He had been shaking his head and staring at the little fawning lordling, saying over and over again, “He cannot do this, it is not just.” Saying it time and time again, as if to reassure her, as if he might reassure everyone by his words that the lordling was having a grand jest with them and pushing it to the extreme for a lark, as if to see how much punishment they could all bear before denouncing him—a trial of their loyalties. Then he was dangling and kicking and spasming, and when she ran to help him, the others held her back and would not let her reach him so that she might try to lift him and save him from death, but they had held her and restrained her and protected her and she had almost been hanged as well, but she had survived and she had sworn vengeance, and now that vengeance was in sight. She would sooner die than see the opportunity flee before her. She was a woman who had learned patience and so she waited. She would be ready when the time came.

  The Skyward rested in the field where they had left it, lines slack and swaying with the breeze, tubular mainsail sagging above the deck and billowing in the shifting wind. A resting airship always looked broken to the unfamiliar observer, Ryla knew. Once the mage returned her key, the thin and elegantly wrought bronze wand that she usually carried at her belt, and once it had been fitted to the mechanism at the helm post, she knew that the ship would hum with energy and that the sail
would fill and become almost rigid, buoyant. It only took a few moments to accomplish, but she noted the look on the mage’s face when he saw the ship resting there, and she realized straightaway that Norden was not familiar with airships. Perhaps she could use that to her advantage, should an opportunity present itself.

  “Captain! Come forward.” Norden sat atop a fine black horse. In fact, the only bad thing Ryla could see on the horse was its rider. She stepped forward and looked to the mage. “Prepare your craft and have your crew unload these wagons.”

  “Lord Mage,” she stated by way of answer. “Make ready the ship, lads.”

  Kipren, Galt, and Elmund all muttered and started toward the deck. How it demoralized men to be forced to work, coerced into doing one man’s bidding simply because he held some power and lorded it over them. Ryla despised the feeling, the very idea of it. Men were meant to be free, of that she was sure, and no one would ever convince her otherwise. She watched her crew as they took to the deck, moving slower than they would have normally, sullen looks on their faces. Norden had kept them locked up and hemmed in, and Ryla knew that was the one thing an airshipman hated more than anything else. If the mage was aware of it then he had deemed it a negligible issue. He could not have cared less about the attitudes of the men serving him, she realized; he simply sought after his own goal and used the people that interposed themselves between him and his goal as best he saw fit. For those he did not have a use for—like Pretty and Shiny, perhaps—he simply removed them from the arithmetic.

  She approached Norden as he rattled off something to his bobbing and nodding clerk. “Mage Norden, I’ll need my bronze ship’s key.”

  “Of course, Captain.” His eyes languished too long on her again as he swept his gaze down to her boots. “Oh, I should have found you a mount, Captain—your boots are a mess, I’m afraid.”

  “Where have all the gentlemen gone, eh? The sooner I get that key the better.” She held out her hand in emphasis.

  Norden let go a thin nervous chuckle as he fished it from his belt and passed it to her. “Thank you, Lord Mage,” she said perfunctorily. She met his eyes and gave him a sly smile. That should confuse him, she thought. Judging by his flummoxed expression, she had achieved her goal, at least in part. She turned and strode toward the now lowered gangway and made her way up to the top.

  “Captain on the deck!” Galt shouted as she stepped aboard. The others echoed him resignedly, but he was all smiles. Well, he should be, Ryla knew. The first to call out “Captain on the deck!” would have his meal and drink paid for by the other crewman at the next stopover, and Galt held the current record, having not paid for his own meals in close to a month. The short man would earn his pay today, though. There was much crane work to be done from the look of the wagons laden with their canvas bundles.

  “Report, all hands!” she cried. The lads finished their tasks hurriedly and then made their way back to the helm as she was fitting the bronze wand into the helm post. The ship hummed with energy as the mainsail began to raise. “Kipren and Galt, assemble the ship’s crane. Elmund, you go down and rig the loads.”

  “Aye, lady, aye.”

  Within the hour Galt and Kipren had pulled the disassembled crane from its place in the hold and rebuilt it on the deck. There was a small walking wheel beside the small crane. It was the type of crane that stonemasons used to lift items atop castle walls, only smaller, and Galt was just small enough to fit inside of the wheel and tread in it half-crouched. “The best wheelman alive,” he claimed to be. “Born to it.” It looked bloody uncomfortable to her, but she had to admit the man made quick work of loading and unloading cargo, especially with Kipren swinging the boom and Elmund directing. They were a good crew. Down a man as they were, they got the work done. She was proud of them. There was a definite precision to their work, and she had seen that same work done less skilfully at the hands of other crews. She had been given several candidates for crewmen when she had approached one of her fellows and asked if there were any members of their league who had experience sailing the skies, and of those candidates she had chosen Galt, Kipren, Dathe, and Elmund. She had brought them aboard the de-rigged vessel and asked them a series of questions and studied their ease with simple tasks like belaying a line or making something fast.

  The four she had chosen had the most experience, but they also had good demeanors. Except for Elmund, she chided herself. Misjudged his temperament. Still, she knew how to control a man like Elmund, and stubborn and willfull as he was, he listened to her when she spoke, for she was his captain and for whatever other faults he had, Elmund was ever respectful of her rank and her person. He was boorish to be sure, but under it all Elmund was a gentleman, and she respected him for that. He looked to her from the bed of the wagon as the last load was hitched to the boom arm and Galt began his awkward-looking pace at the wheel and hoisted the load above the hold.

  “That’s the last of it, Captain,” Kipren called out as he started for the hold. Dathe was usually there to pull and push the loads into ordered rows and stacks. Then all the loads would be made fast and secured, so they would not damage the ship or the other cargo should the airship get tossed about in the wind. Elmund and Dathe usually did that while Kipren and Galt broke the crane back down and stowed it away below.

  “Elmund, you and Kipren secure the hold. I’ll help Galt with the crane.” That should get them in the air faster, Ryla thought, as she pushed her hat off of her head and let it hang there down her back by the woven strap about her neck.

  She stood near the crane and waited until the small man emerged from within the walking wheel holding a steel pin about the length of his forearm. “Captain,” he said. “Can you help me pull this wheel down, lady?”

  She stepped forward as Galt removed another identical pin from the outside of the wheel. “Any news?” he asked her conspiratorily.

  “As soon as I know, you’ll hear about it.”

  He nodded and they lifted the wheel out of its carriage and laid it on its side on the deck. She stepped closer to the man and helped to hold the body of the crane as Galt went about the task of disassembling the gears.

  “What do you think is in those bundles?” she asked quietly.

  He did not look up from his work, but he also did not miss a beat. “Been wondering that myself, Captain. Heavy, I’ll say that much.”

  She was about to speculate further when Galt’s eye caught something, and he jerked his chin toward something behind her. “What’s this?”

  She turned and saw a rider approaching through the break in the woods, the same way they themselves had gone back and forth between the airship and Grannock in these last few harried days. He was one of the foreign horsemen. She could tell by the way he sat his horse and by his horse itself.

  He was speeding along at a rapid pace, and the other horsemen had noticed and called to their commander, who looked at Norden and then sought to remount his horse and meet the rider halfway out. Norden was looking at the approaching rider with a face full of apprehension, but Ryla made sure not to let him catch her noticing that and shifted her attention to Galt again. “Get down there close to the mage and his clerk and find out what the messenger is about.”

  “Aye, lady.” He set down his tools immediately and scrambled down the gangway and scoured the ground around the wagons as though looking for some bit of his rigging that had been lost. Galt was a gem of a man, she thought. She would finish taking down the crane. She knew every job on the airship and she could do every one on her own. Had she enough arms and legs, she would pilot the craft herself and sail anywhere in the world. She had often dreamt of doing just that, but she knew too well how hard it was for a woman alone in the world. She stole glances after Galt’s progress as she took the crane down, removing the gears and the pegs that locked the body to the base. He had sidled up beside Norden and his clerk and hidden behind one of the wagons. Norden had been settling u
p with the drivers as they were off-loading the wagons and stowing cargo into the hold of the Skyward it seemed, and now the drivers were all quibbling with the master teamster about their individual wages in a knotted huddle off the bow of the ship.

  She was removing the deck-irons from the base of the crane with a short pry bar as the messenger dismounted among his fellows and the Norandian captain pranced his horse up to the mage and his clerk. He bowed, and his horse bowed with him and she heard Norden’s shrill chuckle and his voice floating thinly on the wind as he exclaimed, “I love it when they do that, these Norandishmen! What news? Translate for me.”

  The clerk’s reply was spoken too softly for her to hear from this distance, but Ryla knew Galt would hear everything from his hiding place behind the wagon. The man’s ears were good for more than just ridicule, she reminded herself. She took one final look as the Norandishman addressed the mage and she stepped to the hold and shouted down at her crew.

  “There’s a crane here on deck that needs stowing!”

  “Aye, lady!” called Elmund.

  Whatever it was that was being said, Galt would relay it to her. For now it was hers to bide her time, so she set about her tasks out of habit. She readied the ship as she had done countless times before, her movements and thoughts economical, measured, meticulous, fluid, and rehearsed. She knew this well, this captain’s role. She executed it flawlessly.

  Moments later she heard Norden’s shrill voice let go a tirade of curses at the foreign cavalry officer. He swung his horse around and trotted him the short distance to the gangway and dismounted in a huff. He dropped his reins even though there was no one standing nearby ready to take them and started up the gangplanks. “Captain Dierns! How quickly can we get to Torlucksford? I have pressing business there.”

  She crossed the deck back toward the gangway. “Tor-lucksford? A few hours, if the winds are right. This weather is not favorable.” She looked at the skies for a long beat before adding, “Lord Mage.”