Within the Sanctuary of Wings

by Marie Brennan

  I can only thank heaven that we discovered it before we were even so much as a hundred feet off the ground. Had the engine of our caeliger failed later than that, we would have been in dire straits, with no choice but to land in Vidwathi or Tser-zhag territory and attempt to repair it ourselves. Even with that good fortune, we had more than a few heart-pounding moments as our pilot guided the craft to earth once more. And as easy as our landing ultimately was, Tom staggered out of the gondola with his face white as parchment and collapsed to earth, shaking.

  I knelt beside him. “Tom. If it is this hard for you—”

  His jaw tensed and his fingers dug into the dirt. “I am not turning back, Isabella. I will be fine.”

  To that I made no response. We both knew it was a lie.

  Finally Tom shook his head. “I’d hoped to avoid this, but—well. Is there any task for which I might be needed during flight?”

  “I don’t imagine so. If the pilots need aid, the rest of us can provide it.” If the hands of four others were insufficient, I doubted a fifth would make any difference.

  “Then I’ll just dose myself with laudanum.” Tom climbed to his feet, brushing his hands and knees clean. “Better to be useless in flight than to not be there at all.”

  Two days later he suited word to deed, after we had repaired the engine and loaded the caeligers one last time, in yet another distribution of weight—one which left rather more of our gear aboard a single craft than I would have liked. Andrew helped Tom into the gondola, then came back out to bid me farewell.

  “Are you certain I cannot come with you?” he asked. His tone was both anxious and wistful, as if he feared for my safety, and also regretted missing the grand adventure he imagined lay ahead.

  I forbore to remind him that he was even less of a mountaineer than I, or that we had no cold-weather clothing in his size, or any of the other practical objections. Instead I said, “You would be absent without leave, and I’m given to understand the army frowns upon such things. Besides, in a few months we may need you to ransom us back from the Tser-zhag government.”

  It made him laugh, as I had hoped it would. “You’re depending on me to rescue you from a diplomatic situation? Good God, you’re doomed.”

  That was not what my nerves needed to hear. Despite everything, though, I held to my course. The next morning Suhail looked at me and asked, “Any second thoughts?”

  “None I care to listen to,” I said. Having given him one final kiss, I straightened my shoulders and marched across the camp to the waiting caeliger.

  * * *

  Although I had been in the air before, there was a part of me that wanted to curl up on the floor of the gondola with Tom, for I had never been on a flight like this one.

  Suhail and I had never attained any tremendous altitude in our stolen caeliger, and much of our time had been spent over open water, where there are no features to threaten disaster or show you how far up you are. This time, we knew precisely where we were—especially as the lead craft carried a device called an altimeter which measured our vertical position, and the senior pilot, one Captain Adler, continually signaled to the others with flags when he decided to climb or descend. He did not test the upward limits of the caeligers, not yet; but we flew quite high in the air, the better to hide our presence from people below.

  Any such people were mere specks from that height, difficult to see unless heralded by a dark stream of yaks making their way across a high meadow. We saw settlements, but steered clear of them when we could. Below us, the ground rose and fell, rose and fell … but rose more than fell, and we climbed yet again to keep our distance.

  And ahead lay the mountains.

  Even though I knew better, I had thought of them in terms of the mountains I had seen before, during my first expedition to Vystrana. I thought of dark trees, and those were there; I thought of alpine meadows, and those were there, too, fringed with snow in areas too sheltered for it to melt.

  But in Vystrana, the peaks were little white hats atop the green beauty below. In the uplands of Tser-nga, life threaded through the valleys like branching fingers, clinging to the base of the mountains as if they might lose their grip at any moment. Above towered pinnacles of ice and snow and stark, unforgiving stone. There were fields of scree where nothing grew, passes which rose to sterile heights before descending once more to a level where humans might grudgingly be allowed to persist. I would never have guessed that so frigid a place might remind me of Akhia … but only in the Jefi have I encountered a landscape so indifferent to my presence. Men and women might easily die here—indeed, they have done so—and the Mrtyahaima would take no notice.

  The higher we went, the more likely that fate seemed. In order for the propellers to gain much purchase in the thin air, we could not fly too high; but flying lower meant subjecting ourselves to the fickle winds, sculpted into diabolical knots by the terrain. In the early stages of our flight Captain Adler had chatted casually with Suhail: now that gave way to silence and the occasional barked command for a new signal, which Suhail rushed to post. Watching the pilot’s hands (for I could not long keep my eyes on the nearby peaks and slopes), I saw his knuckles whiten from the force of his grip. Tom’s own knuckles were even whiter, gripping the nearest hand-holds, for the caeliger frequently jerked one way or another, slammed to and fro by the changing winds.

  I crouched next to him. “I can fetch more laudanum—”

  Tom shook his head in a tight gesture. “No. I may be needed after all, and quite soon.”

  In his shoes, I would not want to be drugged into a stupor either. It was obvious that matters were not going according to plan. Thu was nearby, clinging to the flapping edges of our map; he frowned and called out to Suhail in Yelangese.

  My husband shouted something back. I could not understand his words, but his tone was clear: whatever Thu had said, Suhail had short patience with it. He bent to speak to Captain Adler, and I made my way to his side. “What is it?”

  “We’re too far south,” Suhail said. “At least, Thu believes we are—who can be sure, with so little to go by. But there isn’t a damn thing we can do about it. Heading north would require us to fly directly into the wind, and the engines don’t have the strength for that, not at this altitude.”

  Ahead of us, the greenery ended in a forbidding wall of black and white: a range of peaks that might delight a dedicated mountaineer, but spelled death for us if we met them in flight. Below us lay the western fringes of Tser-nga, the scattered villages and herdsmen who fell under the authority of the Tser-zhag king only because there was no one else around to claim them. “What do we do?”

  “Look for a place to land,” Suhail said. “If we can.”

  My first two caeliger flights had ended in crashes. I drew in a deep breath, reminded myself of the later flights that concluded in perfect safety, and tried to believe they would be my model today. My heart, already racing from the altitude and thin air, kept up its pace.

  The caeliger lurched. Adler swore. I wanted to ask Suhail how far we might be from our destination, but kept silent. The answer was irrelevant. We would land where we could; only after we were safely on the ground did anything else matter.

  “There,” Suhail said, pointing.

  “I see it,” Adler said through his teeth.

  Up ahead lay one of those fields of scree. It was not exactly level—but given a choice between sliding on loose stone and risking our balloon’s integrity on a treetop, our pilot clearly chose the former. The only problem lay in the preposition: the field lay up ahead. To reach it, our caeliger would have to climb once more.

  Were it not for the cold, thin air, I might have thought myself back in the Keongan Islands. With the same blind faith as before, I followed the instructions of Suhail and our pilot, doing what little I could to assist. Our craft banked and rose, but not as quickly as the slope ahead drew near—and we were too far to starboard, I could tell. “If we keep on this way,” I called out, “we shall miss
it entirely!”

  “Wait—” Adler shouted back, intent on the terrain ahead. He could not spare the attention for more.

  Just as we drew abreast of our target, a gust of wind caught us and slammed us sideways. The caeliger’s frame crunched with bruising force into the scree, knocking us all off our feet. For one irrational instant, I was certain our landing had broken the gondola—but of course dragonbone is not so easily cracked.

  “Kill the lift!” Adler gasped, scrambling back to his feet. We were sliding on the scree, partly forward, partly down, and would soon come loose if we did not settle.

  Suhail made it to the valve before I did, and the caeliger’s movement lessened. I drew in a steadying breath. One of the other caeligers soon came to a halt above us on the slope; but the other overshot. Adler spat a curse, watching it go. We all stood, not breathing, until the third caeliger dropped out of sight behind a ridge.

  It was, of course, the one carrying the majority of our gear.

  But if only one caeliger were to suffer misfortune, I had rather it be the one with fewer people on board. In the meanwhile, as the lightest member of our brigade, I leapt from the gondola with a sack in hand and began to fill it with scree. The craft shifted ominously and slid several meters away as I turned to hand my bounty to Suhail, and I had to fill a great many more sacks before its position was secure.

  Finally both caeligers were settled into position. I was by then tired enough to lie down on the rocks and declare my day over, but of course we could not do so. Lieutenant Chendley immediately tightened his boots and declared his intent to hike in the direction of the third caeliger. “I’ll go with you,” Tom said, lurching to his feet.

  He clearly wished to be of use. I had no idea of how much laudanum remained in his body, however, and I was not at all certain he should be undertaking anything strenuous until his head had cleared. When I protested, though, he waved me off. “I am steady enough now that my feet are on the ground. And besides, they may need medical aid.”

  I could not argue that latter point, and he proved his fitness by scaling a nearby boulder. The sight alone was enough to exhaust me, for even a small exertion is utterly draining at such heights, and our flight meant we had not been given the usual chance to acclimate. It must have set Tom’s heart to pounding, for bright spots stood out in his cheeks against the general pallor of his skin; but the laudanum at least seemed to have loosened its grip, and so we sent him off with Chendley.

  The rest of us—myself, Suhail, Thu, and the four pilots allocated to the two remaining vessels—set about examining our craft for damage. I was relieved to see that while the canvas sides of the gondolas had torn in a few places, there was no harm that could not be mended.

  While I helped cut a few pieces of spare canvas into patches, I heard Suhail address Adler. “What are your orders now?”

  Silence followed this—apart from the wind, of course, which did not cease for even one minute during my time in Tser-nga. Then Suhail spoke again. “You cannot tell me, of course.” He sighed in frustration. Or perhaps he was only catching his breath; none of us could speak in more than brief bursts, as our lungs clamoured for more air. “Then let me rephrase. Should we empty the balloons? There will be much less risk of attention if we do so.”

  “No, we’ll keep them filled.”

  They had more than enough spare lifting gas to refill all three balloons and fly back eastward. If the pilot wanted them to stay as they were, it could only mean that they intended to fly onward, west across the Mrtyahaima—or at least as far as they could get. Could they return from their scouting mission the same way? I doubted it. In which case, how did they intend to get home? It was one thing for us to jest about the Tser-zhag taking us into custody and marching us back to the Vidwathi border. We were not in friendly territory, but neither were we at war with the locals. Every place the caeligers might plausibly reach, though, was either sufficiently inhospitable to life as to be uninhabited, or in Yelangese control. Unless the pilots managed to find and loot some caeliger supply depot over there, they could not hope to fly back. They would have to abandon the caeligers—likely destroying them first—and somehow sneak back to friendlier territory.

  It says something about my own temperament, I suppose, that such a plan seemed astonishing to me. To creep into a hostile environment for the sake of scientific study, I understand; to do the same for military advantage is too daunting to contemplate—even though most would call the latter purpose far more comprehensible.

  Had we landed without difficulty, I think the caeligers would have flown on as soon as they could repair the torn gondolas and unload our gear. But our pilots were military men, and would not so easily abandon their companions. Although they were clearly not happy with the delay (and concomitant risk of discovery), they settled in to wait for Tom and Chendley’s return.

  Our companions did not appear before dusk, which came shockingly early in that region, the sun vanishing behind the snowy rampart to our west. What warmth the air held—not remotely enough for my taste—vanished as if it had never been, and after some conference, we moved down to a more sheltered spot.

  I sat looking at the western sky, still brilliant with light, but cut by the dark knife of the mountains. Suhail sat next to me and said, “Even if the caeliger crashed, most of our gear will have survived. Though it may be scattered halfway to Akhia, and the gathering may be difficult.”

  It sounds heartless, when I recount such words and thoughts. Yes, our gear had been on that caeliger—but so had Marbury and Lowe, two corporals in the Royal Scirling Army. What of them? But it was easier for us to talk of inanimate objects, while the fate of two people was in doubt. Both Tom and Chendley were experienced in field medicine; if anyone were injured, they would do everything they could to help. Until we heard from them, we could do nothing to assist. Forming contingencies for our own expedition at least gave us something else to think about.

  Without our tents, the best we could do was to construct a makeshift shelter from stones and fallen branches, enough to cut the wind and hide our fire from eyes down below. Even in Gelis, which for that hemisphere is summer, the air was unpleasantly cold. I huddled next to the little flame, trying not to ask myself why I had volunteered for this lunacy, until Thu said, “I see light.”

  He had been keeping vigil since the shelter was done, watching in the direction the third caeliger had gone. We all scrambled to see. Sure enough, a fire twinkled in the distance. Then it vanished—and came back. And again.

  “They’re signaling,” one of the junior pilots said with relief. “Army code. One of them has got a broken arm, but they’re alive.”

  It is truly a wonder, how thoroughly circumstances can alter one’s perception of a situation. I will not claim I slept warm and happy that night, but knowing the others were relatively unharmed did much to improve my outlook. In the morning, when there was sufficient light to travel safely across the intervening ground, the four of them trekked back to our camp.

  According to Tom’s report, our equipment had taken a bit of a tumble, but nothing we could not redress. “Then we stay?” I said, looking from him to Suhail, to Lieutenant Chendley, to Thu. I knew my own inclination—but this was our last chance to change our minds. After this, we were on our own.

  They nodded. Adler said, “We can’t fly the third caeliger out of here, not when one man has a broken arm.”

  I must confess my heart leapt a little, before logic caught up and hauled it back to earth. There was no way they would leave the vessel with us, and the gas and fuel to fly it: the risk of it being captured was far too great, and we had no real piloting experience among us. “I expect you will want to destroy it,” I said.

  Suhail made a muffled sound. The caeliger represented a tremendous outlay of resources and effort on the part of Scirland; now I proposed to simply throw that away. But he understood my reasoning—and, more to the point, that my reasoning was merely a guess at the army’s.

 
; “We’ll cannibalize some of it for parts,” Adler said. “But yes. And we have to move quickly, before others find us here.”

  He meant what he said. Crossing back to the broken vessel took us what remained of the morning, but by mid-afternoon they had stripped it of whatever equipment and spare components they thought they could use. “Now what?” Tom said. “Try to start a rockslide to cover it?”

  “Too risky,” Adler said. “And we have something better.”

  I had taken no particular note of the small canisters among the caeliger supplies, assuming them to be oil or fuel or some such. Now, however, the pilots uncapped them and began to scatter the liquid within across key portions of the caeliger. It hissed when it struck dragonbone, and to my astonishment, the bone began to crumble and break.

  Standing beside me, Tom hummed low in his throat. “Of course they’d bring something like that,” he murmured to me. “They can’t let these vessels fall into enemy hands. I wonder—are they replicating the process that decays natural dragonbone, or is this something new?” But he pitched the question so it carried no further than myself and Suhail. Military men do not take kindly to civilians prying into military secrets.

  When this task was done, pieces of dragonbone yet remained; the pilots had not troubled to douse the entire thing, likely because they could not spare enough of the dissolving reagent. Nothing of any possible use was left intact, though. And bits were still disintegrating when the pilots gathered up the salvage and prepared to head out. “We’ll fly onward tomorrow morning,” Adler said to my group. “If something goes wrong—if you change your minds—light a signal fire before dawn, and we’ll wait.”

  I wondered how sincere the offer was. With one caeliger lost already, they would not be eager to spare another to fly us back east. Still, it was a kind thought. “Thank you, Captain,” I said, and the others echoed me.