by Blooding, SM
—and wished I had a pair of goggles and a flight hat. The wind whipped my hair around my face, making it impossible to see. I closed the hatch and rose. “Goggles,” I yelled. “I need goggles.”
Joshua reached down beside him, picked up a leather flight hat and threw it over his shoulder.
It missed me by a couple of arm lengths.
He pulled the goggles off his face and threw them my way.
He at least got those closer.
I scrambled to put both of them on, and scurried back into my cubby hole. I could get claustrophobic quick.
This time when I pulled the hatch, my hair wasn’t the issue. Breathing was. I’d had plenty of experience breathing at high altitude, but not this high and not at this speed.
It was brutal.
But I didn’t really have time to worry about it. The birds were on us and buzzing around fast.
They made a few flybys without shooting at us. I wasn’t sure what their goal was.
That didn’t last long.
Joshua did a pretty good job dodging the bigger artillery. I didn’t recognize most of the stuff they threw at us. I’d never seen it before. There were big tubes that zoomed through the air so close I felt the wind of their passing. Then they would just explode in the middle of nowhere, hitting us with the repercussion.
The planes moved so fast. It was as if we were moving at super slow speed. I tracked one, but lost it before I could get a bead on it.
The world rocked and tipped starboard with another ricochet.
A second bird whizzed by. This time, I pulled the trigger—
—and nothing happened.
Crap!
“Joshua, what did you do?” I popped my head out of the hole and shouted. “Did you take the copernicium out?”
“No,” he ground out, pulling hard on the control wheel, trying to regain the altitude we’d lost. “I just reduced it. Find somethin’ else.”
There was nothing else. I slipped back into my hole, shook the pistol, and found another target.
There was more than just the one.
I pulled the trigger, ready to get out of there, when veins of lightning lava exploded from the weapon. It hit my intended target, then his wingman, and destroyed a third.
I released the trigger and blinked, the pounding in my head doubling.
Big gaping holes of molten metal scarred each of the planes as they fell toward the sea. Fast.
I popped my head out. “This is fantastic!”
“That’s bloody awesome, Synn, but get these things off me!”
I rolled my eyes and ducked back in.
There were dozens of them.
I picked them off by twos and threes. There were birds falling out the skies all around us, so I guessed that the others were just as successful. I grinned through the pain, watching my port for another target.
We tipped starboard again from another repercussion blast.
My window was empty.
Another blast knocked us down and starboard.
Dirt!
I closed my window. “They’re herding us!”
“You gathered. Get them off my tail!”
I set the pistol aside and pulled myself out of the tiny compartment. Picking my pistol up again, I ran to the tail of the plane where Keeley was. She stood at one of two open hatches, her multi-barreled gun pummeling the air behind us.
Come back to me.
I doubled over, trying to push Nix’s voice out of my head. How could I hear her? The pain increased as I straightened and headed toward Keeley again.
She glanced at me. “I can’t reach them!”
I rubbed my tearing eye, looked out the window and sighted down my pistol. There were eight birds behind us. They were sleek, slim of body, only able to hold maybe one person, and had wings that flapped smoothly, with a working tail.
Smoke plumed out from one of them. A black dart rushed toward us, skipped along the top of our plane. It toppled in front of us and exploded, sending us closer to the sea.
They were trying to take us to the lethara.
I sagged with relief.
They were guiding me back to Nix.
I wanted to go back.
I…needed to go back.
The pistol fell to my side.
Keeley glared at me. “What are you doing?”
“They’re trying to guide us to safety.”
“So we can be arrested and turned over to the Hands.”
“We’ll be safe.”
“No!” She shoved me hard, her red braid flapping wildly in the wind ripping through the tail. Another repercussion shell burst close, too close. “You’ll be safe. The rest of us will be dead. Will you be okay with that?”
I blinked and shook my head.
“Do you like being treated like that? Do you like what she does?”
No. I most certainly did not.
I closed my eyes and ground my teeth. Keeley was right.
They weren’t guiding us to safety. They weren’t. We couldn’t safely land this plane on the lethara without endangering the safety of the city living within it.
We could destroy the plane with us on board.
No!
We needed to find a safer place to drop, to land.
Joshua turned the plane port side, pulling up in elevation.
There. Land. I knew that continent. Safara. They had a desert.
Not a bad plan.
Which meant that we couldn’t allow the birds to herd us. They were trying to kill me and if I was dead, I couldn’t return to Nix.
I groaned inside, but nodded, the pain temporarily at bay.
I raised my pistol, sighted, and pulled the trigger.
We dipped starboard and down.
My liquid fire laced up and to port. I didn’t let go of the trigger. I had to take them all out. We were running out of time. We weren’t climbing like we had been before. If I couldn’t get these guys off our tail, we weren’t going to make it.
The lava raced from one plane to the other, broke off as they fell away, latched on to another and latched on to a fourth and a fifth.
The last two pulled away before I could get them as well.
“Stay here.”
Keeley nodded, glancing at me before turning her eyes back to the sky behind us.
I stumbled to the cockpit. I could almost hear Nix’s screams as pain exploded in my brain. Grinding my teeth, I ignored it and pushed on. “They’re gone.”
“We need to land.” The muscles in Joshua’s neck stood out as he struggled to keep his plane in the air.
I leaned over him, nearly falling, and pointed toward Safara. “There. It’s desert. We can land her leeside of a dune and bury her.”
I think I heard him groan.
But he tipped the wheel starboard at a heading that would take us inland, not back out to sea.
“Ye’re sure abou’ this?” Joshua yelled.
“Nope,” I yelled back. “Beats landing in water, though.”
The descent was long and slow. It was disconcerting to see land coming that close. It came at us faster and faster.
“Pull up, pull up.”
“You can drive, airhead!”
I held on to the back of his chair and shouted over my shoulder as loud as I could, “Hold on!” having no idea if anyone was able to hear me or not.
“I’m too hot!”
I glanced at all his gauges. “Let out some sail!”
“I don’t have any bloody rotten sail, ye buffoon.”
“Well, I’m sorry you didn’t design it well!”
The brown blob had become a desert ringed in green, which became dunes surrounded by trees. The trees became tall branches with leaves that clipped the underbelly of the plane with crunches, snaps and groans.
“Gaaaaaah,” Joshua yelled.
“Pull. Up!”
He did, with everything he had.
It wasn’t going to be enough.
I reached around his chair
and joined him, pulling up with all the strength I could find.
The nose rose, ran even with the impending dune.
And then we hit.
One bounce. Two.
And we were down, sliding beyond control, clearing the top of one dune, and charging down the other side, racing like wild horses.
We came to a stop half-way up the leeward side of a very large dune.
Joshua and I shared a look that said, “We didn’t die?”
My face split into a grin as the silence buzzed in my ears.
We’d escaped from Sky City and somehow survived. “We can take on anything.”
I didn’t mean literally.
CHAPTER 13
WE‘RE LUNCH
We met in the cargo bay.
“What’s the plan?” I asked, massaging my temple. Either I was getting better at dealing with the pain, or it was subsiding.
Everyone was quiet.
“You do have a plan, right?”
Joshua tipped his head with a sigh, and leaned against one of the few remaining crates, looking completely exhausted.
“My radio is on the airship,” Haji said. He was still on high alert, his dark eyes watching everyone with a level of unease.
Yvette crossed her arms over her chest. “He makes me nervous.”
I pressed a hard finger along my eyebrow. That seemed to help. “He’s my best friend.”
“What are we going to do about you?” Joshua leaned way back, almost lying down. “Ye’re compulsed. Anythin’ we try to do to get us out o’ here and not toward yer Nix, we’re going to have to literally go through you.”
I bit down on my reply. Why couldn’t I get away from her? More upsetting, though, was why I wanted to go back. What was wrong with me?
Keeley just watched me and said nothing.
“Well, I have no idea what we can do, then,” Yvette said, sitting down with a plop to emphasize her point. “Anything we plan, you’re going to sabotage.”
“No—”
Joshua held up a hand and yawned wide. “Don’ fret it, lad. It’s no’ yer fault, but at the same time, there’s nothin’ for it, but to move on.”
“Okay,” Yvette said, “then how do you propose we do that?”
“Make a plan and don’t tell him.”
I shook my head. “That’s not going to work.”
“No,” Haji said, emphasizing each Handish word, “it will work. You just don’t like it.”
“You’re right. I don’t like flying blind.”
Joshua peeked out from under his arm with one eye.
I gave him a dead pan look. “What was your plan, again, Haj? Weren’t you going to hail the Yusrra Samma?”
“Yes.” He shrugged. “With the radio I do not have.”
“We have one of those,” Keeley said indignantly. “What frequency do you need?”
I shook my head, running my thumb and forefinger along my forehead. “We don’t communicate via radio waves.”
“But you just said you needed a radio.”
Haji and I shared a look, the corners of his lips drawn down.
I held out my hands, dipping my head as I pushed off the crate. It slid behind me. “We call it a radio because it looks like one, but we use a slightly different type of…” I shrugged helplessly at my friend.
He shrugged back. “Frequency? We don’t have a name for it.”
“But it’s sound waves, right?” Keeley asked.
We both shook our heads.
“Then?”
“You know how when you hit a bell, and it vibrates?”
Yvette quirked her lips and leveled a look at me. “You know how when you hit a bell and it makes noise? The same noise we measure in frequency?”
“Technically, you measure it in volume,” I said, “but it also vibrates. We communicate through the vibration of sound.”
Haji stared at me incredulously.
“Did ye tell Nix tha’?” Joshua asked.
“No.” Though she’d tried. The memories flashed darkly through my mind, reminding me of how scared, embarrassed, belittled, and broken I was. Oh, she’d tried.
“Ye’re sure.”
I nodded.
Keeley turned to Haji. “What do you need to build one?”
He shrugged. “I could probably take what you have in your radio and modify it.”
“But then we’d be down a radio,” Yvette said, her voice laced with alarm. “Do we really think that’s a good idea?”
“Who are we goin’ ta communicate with?” Joshua asked. “The way I figure it, there’s the Hands and then there’s everyone else.”
“It might be nice to monitor their chatter,” I said quietly. “Being able to spy on them would be a good thing, I would think.”
“You mean a good way to sabotage our efforts to remain hidden,” Yvette said with a snort.
I turned to her. I’d had quite enough of her. “Look, you, I didn’t ask to be burned alive, or to be kept prisoner for not dying or—”
“Some prisoner.” She shot to her feet. “You were her whore!”
I reeled back like I’d been slapped.
Haji jumped between the two of us, his shoulders hunched, his hands clenched. “You take that back.”
“But he was.” She didn’t back down, and instead put her nose to his. “Everyone knows it.”
“No,” Joshua said, his tone bored, swinging his foot. “All we know is tha’ she had him locked up in a bedroom.”
She turned to me, one dark eyebrow raised. “So were you?”
My nostrils flared. There were some things I wasn’t willing to talk about. “No,” I managed to ground out.
“I don’t believe you.” She turned away. “Okay, let’s say we can get a radio, non-radio, whatever put together. What then?”
I swallowed the embarrassment and raised my chin, trying to forget the fact that she’d just told all of my friends I was something I wasn’t. Nix’s whore. Did the whole world think that?
“Hail the Yusrra Samma,” Haji said quickly. “Then go.”
“Yes, but where?”
“Where were you thinking of going when you planned to escape?” I demanded. “Did you think beyond getting off the city?”
Her violet gaze daggered mine. “Yes.”
I jutted my head, shaking it at her. “Like?”
“I—” She took in a deep breath. “I want to travel. I want to see the land cities and monuments, now that the waters have mostly receded. I want to discover—” She gestured to the room in general. “—the world.”
I snorted. “It’s already been discovered.”
“Synn,” Joshua said.
My heart leapt at the idea of being aboard the Yusrra Samma again, of being home. I ducked my head. “What are we going to do about me?”
The large space filled with silence. The only thing we could hear was sand settling over the plane.
Joshua sat up, placing both hands on either side of him. “We could find a way to fix you.”
I nodded. I liked that idea.
“But ye’d have to trust us, fly blind as you put it.”
I took in a shaky breath and let it out. I was disgusted with myself for wanting to be back in her presence, for needing to be with her so badly. “Okay.” I’d do just about anything to overcome the spell of Nix. “What do I have to do?”
“It’s goin’ ta take a great deal of mind to overpower the matter.”
“How does compulsion work?” Keeley asked, her voice quiet.
Joshua studied me for a long moment. “Varik said it’s a promise. After she breaks ye down, she forces a promise from ye.”
Keeley turned her bright green gaze to me. “Did you—” She stopped herself.
My mind recoiled from looking too closely at the details. “I don’t know. Maybe.” Yes. Many times.
“Maybe if you focus on what you promised,” Yvette started, “then you could—”
“I said I don’t know.” I was more forceful
than I’d intended.
She jerked away from me, her expression filled with confused hurt. “Sorry.”
“Ye have no idea,” Joshua said softly, “what she’s capable of, Yvie. So just drop it.”
Haji shoved his hands into the pockets of his pants. “Point me in the direction of your radio.”
Yvette paused, looking to Joshua for direction.
He tipped his head.
Haji and Yvette disappeared toward the cockpit.
Joshua turned to Keeley. “I want you to inventory the laboratory. List what survived and what you think we’ll be able to take with us.”
“We need to take everything,” she said.
I shook my head. “Our airships aren’t the same as yours. We fly with nature, not propellers. If the ship’s too heavy, we’ll sink.”
She turned a worried gaze to her brother.
He nodded. “Try keepin’ it light.” When she left, he turned to me and motioned for me to join him on the crate.
I did.
“So wha’ are we goin’ ta do with you?”
I shrugged. “It’s getting better. I don’t know if it’s distance or time.”
“Or that you’re lying to yourself, making yourself believe you’re going back to her?”
“Maybe.”
“Wha’ happens when it gets worse again?”
I dropped my gaze to the floor and licked my lips. “Then knock me out.”
Joshua didn’t say anything.
I closed my eyes, the images of all the things she’d done flashing behind my eyes; tying me to a chair and leaving me for days because I’d refused to speak only Handish, hanging me from the ceiling and whipping me because I’d met her gaze during dinner, drugging me and tying me to the bed—
I clenched my jaw and opened my eyes. How could I have allowed myself to become bonded to that? “If I start fighting you and can’t get my head back where it belongs, knock me out.”
“Okay,” he said, “I will. But wha’ happens when the Yusrra Samma finds us, if we can pull that off? What will you do then?”
“We need to stay out of way of the Hands, for sure.” My head exploded. I gripped my skull in one hand and squeezed. “We don’t know where Sky City is—”
