by Travis Perry
“What in the name of Lowell…” Astrid muttered.
A vast shadow, like that of a dragon flying low overhead, spread across the field. She turned to see what had cast it.
“What is that?” Chaya squealed.
“No idea.” Pleated half-circle wings extended from the sides of a sailing ship, which carried a puffy bag atop it in a silver bowl. This was the metallic craft she’d seen flying out of the west.
But how could it fly? Its wings didn’t flap. Miracle? Magic?
“Focus, jockeys, focus!” Master Breiner marched down the line. “Calm down! Just some mechanical…thing. Nathan, get that bird under control.” He passed Ragnar. “Steady as a rock. Good.” Then on to the next. “She can’t race like that, Antonio, get her settled down!” And on he went.
Astrid could not take her eyes off that great, gleaming, flying…miracle.
• • •
Ian Kahoon rather enjoyed the squawking and growling his airship’s arrival provoked from the birds and dragons on the field.
A crisp female voice snapped behind him. “We aren’t late, I trust?”
Ian turned. “No, Your Ladyship. Right on schedule.”
“Very good.” Lady Eleanor Stuart, govnor of Noctis, a lean, middle-aged woman whose head only came to the middle of Ian’s chest, walked to the gunnel and looked over the side. “We can’t stop midfield. We must go to the other side of the aerie.” She wore a dark green brocade gown trimmed with white lace, which served as a backdrop for the glittering gold chain and amulet that served as her badge of office.
So much for giving her the grand entrance he’d planned. “Yes, Your Ladyship.” He returned to the bridge at the aft of the ship, and nudged the tiller a few degrees starboard. In another fifty meters they had passed over the low wooden building where the birds were kept and reached a broad lawn next to a large brick building.
“Here, Your Ladyship?” He called through the open door of the bridge.
“Yes, Captain.”
“Wings to breaking position,” he hollered. The stoker, Gaspar, relayed this to the hands on the mid-deck. Ian straightened the tiller. Then he returned to the deck. “Moor the ship!”
The hands could be heard below, descending the ladder to the lower deck. Meanwhile, he and Gaspar tossed down the mooring lines. Within minutes he heard the hands opening the aft hatch. From the deck he could see little until they emerged and ran out with stakes to fix the lines to the ground.
“Down another six meters,” Olivera shouted from below.
Ian nodded to Gaspar, who pulled a lever forward, then quickly shoved it back again. High above, a sound like the chuffing of a dozen dragons indicated the release of hot air from the airship’s envelope. The furnace fire had been damped almost an hour ago, and they’d been gradually losing altitude ever since. Now the ship sank suddenly.
Olivera called for the lowering of the gangway.
“May I see you down, ma’am?”
“Not necessary, Captain. I know the way.” Mr. Plasket, her aide, followed her below.
So…also no opportunity for him to escort her and possibly get a seat in the stands. He walked over to Gaspar, his voice low in case she should return. “How long to get the ship aloft again? Not cruising altitude, just—” He glanced at the roof of the aerie, which stood almost level with the deck of the ship. “Just high enough to watch the races.”
The stoker grinned. “Give me a few minutes, Captain.”
• • •
Astrid ached to get a better view of the flying ship. The lower part of it—what she had earlier mistaken for cargo—looked like the carracks she’d seen at Puerto Santa Lucia—the ones that carried the mail and other goods from Melas to Capri, at the eastern end of the Valles Marineris.
Master Breiner made his way back up the line, glaring in the direction it had gone, his face red. “Riders, take the field. Grooms, you’re dismissed.”
Astrid clasped Chaya’s frail shoulder. “God be with you.”
“And also with you,” she responded.
Chaya couldn’t understand how keenly her rote response struck. Race days were harder for Astrid than any other. “Thank you.” She patted Ragnar once more. “Fly well, old friend.”
He burred and cocked an eye at her.
While the others climbed the exterior stairs to the roof, Astrid walked through the aerie and out to the front lawn. As she stepped outside, she saw a noblewoman in a green gown with a billowing skirt. Govnor Stuart of Noctis. Cycles ago, they had met face to face. Would she remember? Astrid would never forget her.
A thin male attendant followed Lady Eleanor toward the stands.
Great iron stakes like oversized tent pegs driven into the ground held taut ropes that anchored the flying craft in place. As she approached, the canvas wings retracted with a great clatter from within. They folded alongside, not like a bird’s wing or a dragon’s, but like a lady’s fan.
Her boots crushed His Lordship’s fine lawn as she circled the craft, curiosity overcoming any fear of Master Breiner’s wrath. He wouldn’t look for her until after Ragnar’s race.
Long, thin gray rods on the gunnels supported a bowl-shaped thing rather like the keel of a second ship, but it gleamed like silver. Above that stretched an oval balloon of scaly hide. Dragon skin. Couldn’t be anything else.
Rounding the prow, she admired the figurehead, carved in the shape of a great bird with plumage like fire. On the side of the bow, just below the gunnel, was painted the name Phoenix.
On the off side—what sailors would call starboard—a hatch lay open, forming a ramp down to the ground. She peered inside, but could see only an empty, low-ceilinged room. Boarding without invitation would be ill advised, if the fellows manning this craft were anything like those who sailed the Melas Sea.
Aft, a rope ladder hung from a small hatch.
On the aft section, above the rudder, hung a four-pronged appendage like a windmill. She drew around to the port side. The carrack wasn’t large—she guessed six meters, stem to stern, and four meters across the widest part of the middle. But the hull-and-balloon-hybrid above it was at least ten times bigger.
How did it stay aloft in still air?
A handsome man in a dark blue jacket leaned over the gunnel. “What do you think, miss?”
“It’s beautiful.”
The man smirked. “So are you.”
“Huh.” She wasn’t in it for that. She turned and walked away to see whether he’d apologize or turn nasty.
“Wait, wait, miss…”
She paused.
“I am sorry,” he said. “Wait there, I’ll come down.” He withdrew from view.
She could hold her own against him just as she did the sailors. And that ship…Could one call it a ship if it wasn’t on the sea?
If only to get the answer, she waited, ogling the craft a bit longer. Strolling back to the starboard hatch, she studied every beam and bracing.
Inside, boots pounded wood. Shortly the man walked down the gangway. He made a little bow. “Ian Kahoon, miss. I’m the captain of this airship.”
What a lovely word. Airship. She bobbed her head. “Astrid Laakkonen.”
“You work here in the aerie?”
“Yes, sir. And you?”
“Lady Eleanor Stuart, govnor of Noctis, employs me to pilot this ship for her.”
“Ah. I should have guessed she was behind it.”
“How could you have?”
“I saw her walking to the stands. The airship came from the west, so it must have come from either Noctis or Ius. But Govnor Albani of Ius arrived two days ago.”
“You’re very clever.”
“Don’t you forget it.” Astrid moved around to the bow again. The figurehead bird’s wings swept back along the prow. Her eyes roamed up to the second hull and the great balloon. “It’s enormous.”
“Hah. That’s what a man likes to hear from a woman.”
“Oh! Honestly…” She turned and stalked t
oward the aerie.
He followed. “Admit it. That was an opening I could not ignore.”
She turned on him. “Yes, you could have.”
Astrid was almost two meters tall, but he stood a handspan taller than she. His wavy hair was chestnut brown, and dark green eyes shone from a face weathered by sun and wind and crinkled by his smile.
“Would you like a tour?”
“Oh, yes. Please.” Perhaps it was improper to accept such an invitation from a man, but how could she pass up the chance?
He waved his arm toward the gangway, and she climbed inside just as the trumpets signaled the first sprint.
• • •
Ian followed Astrid up the gangway. A rope of braided pale blonde hair ran down her spine across the backdrop of a threadbare sweater darned at the elbows. Shapely hips filled out her tan trousers, which were tucked into weathered black boots with low heels. She paused in the empty hold and looked back at him.
“We can’t carry much cargo.” He hauled on the rope that pulled the gangway into place. It closed with a bang and the clank of a latch. “Hard enough to get aloft with passengers and crew.”
“Passengers. Govnor Stuart and her aide?”
He walked past her to the corridor. “Exactly.” He gestured to narrow pine doors. “These are the cabins. Crew is two deck hands, stoker, cook, and myself.” The corridor opened up into a room that spanned the width of the ship. “Mess. Galley’s back there.” He pointed aft.
Cook, a short, plump matron twice his age, with graying brown hair, filled the galley doorway. “What are you on about, Captain?”
“Just giving Miss Laakkonen a tour.”
“Is she my new scullery girl?” Cook walked forward, wiping her hands on her apron. “She’s a bit old and big for the job.”
Astrid snorted and muttered under her breath, “I’ve heard that before.”
Ian shook his head. Astrid was tall, curvaceous, and fit. “This is no scullery maid. She works in the aerie.”
“Well, you need to get someone soon. You’re not paying me enough to do washing up and laundry and all. Not for four men.”
“You weren’t promised a fortune.” Ian turned to the ladder in the corner.
“Wasn’t promised slave labor, either,” she grumbled, and turned back to the galley.
“Enough, Cook!” He barked. “I won’t have insubordination, not even from a woman old enough to be my mother.”
She drew breath to reply, but hesitated. “Yes, Captain,” she sneered, and returned to her domain, banging pots more loudly than necessary.
Gritting his teeth, he pointed up the ladder. “Mid-deck this way.” He climbed up. Last thing he needed was a member of the crew dressing him down in front of a guest.
• • •
Astrid climbed up to the mid-deck. She put her arm up and touched the rough ceiling beams. Her eyes ran over iron gears and wooden cranks. She turned to Captain Kahoon with a wordless question she could express only by twisting her eyebrows.
“This is the apparatus for the wings,” he said.
“Oh.” Astrid walked around one of the great gears. “But they don’t flap.”
“They don’t need to. They provide stability, not lift.”
“Like a glider?”
“Yes, or sails. What do you know of gliders?”
“Only that the govnor’s knights have tried flying them off the cliffs between here and Candor. They claim it’s for aerial patrols, but that can’t work. A glider has none of the maneuverability or wits of a bird. You might as well use a dragon.”
His laugh was a warm sound that rose from deep within.
Astrid pointed aft, to an odd contraption of levers and handles. “What’s that?”
“Pedals for the propeller. In case we get stuck in doldrums.”
Few of those words made sense to her. “Sorry?”
“You saw the propeller.” He pointed aft.
“The windmill?”
“Yes, they’re propelling vanes. If we reach dead air, we can’t flap, as you noted. We can only glide.” He held onto the handles and tapped one of the levers with his foot. “Stepping on each pedal in turn spins this gear, and then all this”—he indicated the ropes running around pulleys—“transfers the motion to turn the vanes, and it pushes us forward. Like a windmill in reverse. It doesn’t produce any great speed. It’s only for emergencies. Generally, we fly more like a glider, with the wings angled to catch the wind as sails do.” He shrugged. “Well, near enough.”
“Did you sail ships before you became a…” What was the word he used? “Pilot?”
“Yes, I’m from Capri. Been a sailor all my life, until Govnor Stuart hired me.”
“I doubt you’ll ever go back to the sea now.” She walked forward, trailing her fingers across the wing mechanism.
“No, once you’ve been aloft, there’s no going back.”
“True.” He had no idea how true. Forward of the gears lay a pile of dusty gray sacks. “I thought you didn’t carry cargo.”
“This is charcoal. Fuel for the furnace.”
“What do you need a furnace for?”
“Lift.” He pointed to a ladder that reached up to a hatch in the ceiling. “Ready to go topside and see it in use?”
“Yes, thank you.”
She climbed the ladder from the dark mid-deck into the daylight. Overhead, the massive silver bowl hung over the main deck. She reached upward, but the underside lay a half-meter beyond her fingertips. “It’s warm.”
“It’s hot.” Kahoon strode forward. Amidships, a large black boxy thing was coupled by a funnel to the underside of the shiny hull-shaped thing.
She needed to learn the proper names of these parts. “Why?”
“It’s what carries the ship aloft.”
“How?”
“The hot air provides…you could call it a rising force.” He pointed to the box. “This is the furnace.”
A burly man nearly as tall as the captain stepped around the furnace. “Ready now, Captain. Just need the hands to close the hatch.”
“I already did it. Hands! Man your places.”
A couple of fellows who’d been lounging in the sun on the port side jumped up and ran to cleats near the focsle where ropes were tied.
The captain pointed to a cleat behind Astrid on the starboard side, near the quarterdeck. “Miss Laakonen, just untie that rope and let it out slowly.”
Burly man stepped between them. “Captain, I—”
“Giving you a break, Gaspar.” The captain took hold of a rope on the other side. “We’ll only let out ten meters. Just enough to get a better view.”
Astrid’s heart hammered. If she flubbed the job, it might mean disaster. She untied the rope. Below the gunnel, the rope ran through a pulley and down to an anchoring stake in the lawn.
Captain Kahoon called, “Ready?”
“Ready,” the hands replied, almost in unison.
“Ready,” Astrid said.
Gaspar moved closer, as if to jump in should she err.
She measured out a wingspan of rope, plus a bit. Two meters.
The captain called, “Go!”
She fed the rope out slowly, watching Kahoon for the pace. The ship rose into the air so gently she hardly felt it. Another wingspan of rope. Three. Four. Five. She held the rope. The deck was level side-to-side, but a bit higher in the back than in front.
“Tie off, Miss Laakkonen.” The captain tied off his own rope and then said to the hands, “Let out another…half meter.”
They did as he said, and the deck leveled.
Astrid crossed the deck. The ship now sat in the air at double the height of the aerie’s flat roof, where most of the workers stood to watch the races. The ship cast a huge shadow across the crowd there. A few people looked up. None of them seemed to notice her.
She turned her attention to the field. Six flyers were speeding out toward the finish line a thousand meters away. Feeling the barest brush at her elbo
w, she drew back.
“Miss Laakkonen.” The captain held out a device she didn’t recognize.
“Is that some kind of”—she took it and examined it from all angles—“double scope?”
“Exactly. Master Basil—he built the ship—calls them ‘binoculars.’” He trained an ordinary scope down the field.
She lifted the binoculars to her eyes and jumped. Their clarity was far greater than Master Breiner’s old scope. “Remarkable.” She watched as the racers tore across the finish line. “That’s Crispian in first place. His Lordship will be pleased.”
“One of yours, then.” Kahoon said.
“Yes. Crispian often wins the sprints.” She lowered the glass. “Not sure why the dragons bother. They never win the sprints.”
“Never?”
“Hardly ever. Their bones are too heavy. Birds almost always win the sprints. The dragons often win the long-distance events. Only the middle distance races are really a toss-up.”
The voice of the master of ceremonies blurted through a megaphone, but at that distance, there was no telling what he said.
But Astrid could guess. “It’ll be a while before the next race, while they move the markers out to the fifteen-hundred-meter mark.” She turned to the furnace. “Why is your furnace not hot?”
“It is quite hot, I promise you,” Kahoon said.
She turned on him, frowning. “I walked right past it.”
“Gaspar, show her.”
The burly man gestured for her to come closer. His short-sleeved gray tunic and bare, muscled arms showed a dusting of coal and a glimmer of sweat. Even his bald head was smudged. “Miss.”
She walked to the aft side of the furnace. He put on heavy gloves and used a big wooden scoop to draw a heap of charcoal from a nearby bin. Then he reached for the handle on the furnace door. He opened it and swiftly chucked the coal inside.
A waft of air, hotter than any oven, blasted Astrid in the face. She stepped back.
Laughing, Gaspar slammed the door shut again. “And that’s nowhere near as hot as it gets when we’re at cruising altitude.”
