Clockwork Twist : Trick (8 page)

“The ring is making the image?” Twist asked, seeing now that it was firmly held against the bottom of the glass in her hand.

“Yeah.  See, it's refracting the light,” Jonas began, pointing.

“Yes, the clefts,” Tasha said just a little more loudly than him. “There are three of them, and they each lead into a different part of the underground complex.  I had planned to slip in undetected and meet my contact inside, while my two allies here came in through the other two openings.”  Twist glanced at the two Egyptians sitting to the side.  They stared back at him.  Twist looked back to Tasha's glass, quickly. “The Cyphers are confident that no one could find the entrance on their own, so there should be no guards when we get there.  We will split into groups, cause a distraction, take what we each need, and leave before we are noticed.  My contact inside will facilitate and ensure that nothing goes wrong.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Jonas said, nodding. “You trust this contact?  Or these two?”  He nodded to the men by the tents.

“In case you haven't noticed, I'm not easy to lie to,” she said. “Besides, I'm paying them all handsomely.  There shouldn't be a problem.”

“How do we get there?” Jonas asked.

“Swallows,” Niko said, glancing at the large crates in the sand.

“Seriously?” Jonas asked, suddenly excited. “Why didn't you say that right away?”

“So, you can fly them?” Tasha asked, looking surprised.

“I can see air currents as clear as day,” he said with a grin. “I used to compete when I was younger and won enough races that a handful of trainers paid me to drop out of the circuit.”

“My word, but you're a convenient fellow,” Tasha said with a pleased smile.

“What's a swallow?” Twist asked.  Jonas looked to him with the same excitement at first but then paused and grimaced slightly.

“They will get us to Myra faster than anything else,” he said finally. “Don't worry, I'll handle it.”  Twist gave a sigh and tried in vain to ignore the uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach.

The last few details were worked out in the same fashion, until there was nothing left to do but wait for the dawn.  Tasha and Niko retired to one of the tents, and gave Twist and Jonas a few blankets.  The two Egyptians slipped into the other tent without a word, leaving Jonas and Twist to lay out under the stars, beside the fire, to rest and wait for the dawn.

Twist lay awake, stretched out on his blanket on the sand, watching the bright embers dance up off the fire, into the starry sky.  Jonas lay still and silent beside him, while Tasha, Niko, and the others were also perfectly silent inside their tents.  The desert wind had died completely, and the sand lay still and cooling all around him.  Twist had been assured that none of the desert animals would approach the fire, but all the same, he couldn't shake the feeling of unseen eyes out in the darkness.

All Jonas had explained was that they would be using flying devices that used warm air to rise without a balloon.  These devices were currently packed away in the large crates at the edge of the camp.  As unhappy as he was about the prospect of flying, and especially of doing so at a great speed, Twist was somewhat relieved to know that his new allies were so well prepared.  They had planned their attack well, and saving Myra was an easy addition to it.  He knew he should at least try to sleep, as they were leaving at dawn, but there was a darkness about him that had nothing to do with the location of the sun.

Twist had little experience with failure.  Whatever challenges he'd faced before, had been overcome with enough time and diligence.  But losing Myra was a new kind of challenge.  He would only have this one chance to save her, or he could lose her again forever.  The thought itself was cold, black, and bottomless.  Twist felt himself tumble helpless into it in the silence of the late hour.

“Twist,” Jonas said softly, drawing his thoughts back.

“Humm?” Twist replied, somehow not terribly surprised that Jonas was awake.

“Is that your first name or your last name?”

“I'm sorry?” Twist could just barely see Jonas turn to look at him in the dimness, his eyes glittering pale lilac in the shadows, through Twist's Sight.

“I don't even know if 'Twist' is your first name or your last name,” Jonas continued, speaking softly in the quiet. “What are your other names?”

Twist gave something of a laugh. “I don't have any other names.”

“What?  How could you not have any other names?”

“No one ever named me,” Twist offered with a shrug.  When Jonas didn't respond but to continue to stare at him with a dusty pale blue gaze, Twist reluctantly offered a little more. “I was found outside the orphanage as a baby in a basket, just like in all the novels.  Only, my basket was left on a rainy night and the note got wet before anyone read it.  All anyone could pick out of the running ink were a few pieces of words, and the most distinct seemed to read as 'twist.'  If I'd been adopted, then my new parents would have given me a better name.  But I never was.”

It was a few more silent moments before Jonas spoke again, and when he did, his voice was flat and hollow. “Wow.”

“It's all right,” Twist muttered, shifting uncomfortably on the sand. “It doesn't bother me.”

“You were left without even a name and that doesn't bother you?” Jonas asked, sounding perfectly astonished.

“The name I have is quite sufficient for my needs.  People usually only use one on a daily basis, you know.”

“But you don't even know if that was your intended name,” Jonas said. “It could have been part of another word, or a piece of a poem or something, and you can't … ever know...” Jonas's voice drifted off before the words were fully formed.

“Really, I don't care,” Twist said, rubbing at his brow. “I don't want to know who my real parents were, or anything like that.  Whoever they were, they didn't want me then and they won't now either.  Besides, they left me where I could be cared for, they tried to leave a note, and the watch got me started in my trade and helped me to make sense of my Sight when I was still very young.  I can't really complain.”

“The watch?”

“My pocket watch was also in the basket,” Twist said, absently touching it through the fabric of his pocket.

“Do you think they knew you'd have a Sight?”

“I don't think of them at all,” Twist said with a sigh. “Are you going to sleep or not?”

“Yeah,” Jonas answered softly, turning back to stare up at the stars too. “I'm sorry.  I didn't mean to pry.  I was just curious.  When I tried to introduce you...”

“You realized you only knew one name,” Twist said, nodding in the dark. “I'm not often introduced by anyone, but whenever I am this comes up.  I understand.”

“No, you don't,” Jonas said. “And that's kind.”

It wasn't the words as much as the tone of his voice—low, simple, and naked of all intent—that caught in Twist's mind.  People had told him all his life that he didn't see the world the same way that they did, and he'd never seen the problem in that.  But there was a subtle, unconscious compassion in Jonas's voice that rebounded off his own hardened realities like an ocean wave against the shore.

It was a long while of more stillness and silence before Twist heard Jonas's breathing change, growing deeper and smoother in sleep.  Twist closed his eyes and imagined the sound was of the sea, gently lapping at a calm beach he'd once seen in Indonesia.  He focused hard on the image, pushing all his fears and confusion away.  He focused on the moment when he'd opened his eyes to see Myra tending to him on that beach: brilliant, flawless, gleaming in the sunlight, happy and safe.  Sometime after that, Twist too found his way into his own shifting, meaningless dreams, which were filled with curling sea-green waves.

The sky was a rusty red, still dotted with stars even as the gold crept up from the horizon, when the swallows were unpacked and set up in the sand outside the camp.  Three identical bird-shaped contraptions made of blond light wood and thin steel—each one just over ten feet long from the conical glass front to the ends of the long split tail—sat nestled in the crook of a long band of very taut rubber.  The other end of the rubber bands looped around a steel pole planted into the sand so that the band was held at an elevated angle.  The birds' curved but stationary wings hung out from the hollow bodies with a twenty-five-foot wingspan as if already in flight.  Twist felt his stomach churn uncomfortably as he watched Niko, Jonas, and the two Egyptians complete their preflight checks.

“Here,” Tasha said, handing him a small black metal box that had a thin spike of copper sticking out of one side, a small button on another, and a circle of silver grating on its face. “You are going with Jonas, I'll go with Ali, and Niko with Mohammed.  We're going to attack them from three directions, so we'll need to be able to talk to each other to coordinate.”  While she spoke, Twist stared at the item in his hand and watched in wonder as his Sight explained it to him in perfect detail.

“Everything looks good,” Jonas said, walking closer to them as he put his goggles back over his eyes.

“This thing is magical,” Twist said, wide-eyed as he held the device up for Jonas to see. “It changes the sound waves of your voice into a light wave that is so slow you can't see it, and then throws it into the air to be picked up and translated back into sound by another one.  It's truly amazing!”

“How do you know that?” Niko asked, looking slightly alarmed as he came to join them.  He looked to Tasha, only to see her give him a shake of her head and a bewildered look. “I invented that,” Niko declared sharply. “No one else knows how it works.”

“Magic powers, remember?” Jonas said dismissively.

“Speaking of which,” Tasha said, “I assume you won't be wearing those goggles while flying.  These birds are expensive.”

“I'm not that good,” Jonas said, shaking his head with a smile. “What about you, Sparky?” he asked Niko. “Any magic in your senses?”

“Don't call me that,” Niko muttered darkly. “And no.  I'm normal.”  Tasha laughed and put a hand on his arm to say something to him in Serbian.  He smiled lightly as she spoke, but then seemed to decide to ignore her.

“You made this without the help of any kind of Sight?” Twist asked, gesturing to the radio transmitter in his hand.  Niko shrugged, though he might have looked somewhat pleased.

“Once we get there, you will follow my lead,” Tasha said to Jonas and Twist. “I know these men better than you do.”

“Granted,” Jonas said with a nod. “I'm good with that.”  Twist nodded as well.

“And here are your charges,” she said, handing Jonas a bag.  He took it and pulled his goggles up to look inside. “Remember not to place them until I give you the signal.”

“Twist, you've got to touch one of these,” Jonas said excitedly, holding out the bag to him. “Niko's got all the best toys.”  Twist looked inside to see a load of small, apple-sized silver balls, covered with tiny copper points, each with a single silver key protruding from one side.  Twist would have reached out to take one, but Niko drew his attention.

“So, the sun is already rising...” he said, nodding to the glowing horizon.

“Yes, let's get going,” Tasha said, pulling a tight leather cap onto her head.

Her sateen gown had been switched for tight brown trousers and a loose white blouse with long sleeves that gathered at the cuffs.  Niko nodded at her suggestion and took off his suit coat.  Beneath it he wore a black shirt without a waistcoat. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows to reveal two very complex arrays of copper wire, thin tubing and bands, tiny glass nodes and silver switches placed near his wrists, all wrapped tightly to his pale skin.

Twist was awash with curiosity as he wondered at the workings of the strange hardware on Niko's arms.  Jonas tossed the bag's strap over his shoulder and pushed his goggles up onto his brow as he gave a small sigh, looking at Twist.  He then took a step closer and looked him squarely in the eye, though there was a new softness in his gaze now.  When he spoke, Twist heard all the usual sharpness vanish completely from his voice.

“Twist, I have to tell you something,” he said carefully.  Behind him, Tasha glanced back. “These birds are going to be shot into the sky at an incredible velocity, and then cruse through the air with nothing but momentum and physics to keep them aloft.  When we start to lose speed, we'll go into dives to get it back.  Then, we'll catch up-drafts of warm air and rise, just to dive again.”  As Jonas spoke, Twist felt his own breath speed up, his heart thunder loudly in his ears, and his hands start to shake.

“That's horrific!” Twist said with a shudder.

Jonas gave him a tight smile. “Do you want to hold my hand?” he asked, offering it. “I love flying swallows.  I think they're brilliant.  And I know I'm good at it.”

Twist tried to get his breathing to settle, but he couldn't.  He stared at Jonas's offered hand and considered sending him off to save Myra alone.  Twist could wait in Suez and hope for the best.  Even before the thought was fully formed, he rejected it utterly.  It was only a moment before he reached out and took the other man's hand.

The instant their skin touched, a sun bright wave of blindingly white calm filled his mind and pushed all his anxiety away to the farthest corners of his attention.  When the fog cleared, Twist found only thrilling excitement and heady joy where all his fear had been.  He let out his tension in a long breath, suddenly wondering where it had all come from.

“Ready?” Jonas asked, smiling at him now, his eyes glimmering a soft blue.

“Absolutely,” Twist answered, his voice steady, and edged with anticipation. “Let's go save our princess.”

“Couldn't have said it better myself,” Jonas said, turning to hurry to their swallow and holding onto Twist's hand as they moved together.  Twist saw a strange look on Tasha's face as she watched them, and he couldn't imagine the cause for it.

Jonas took the front seat inside the hollow body of the wooden bird, his hands already buried in the controls that filled the front of the ship and his head positioned for the best possible view through the glass front.  Twist sat in the second seat behind him and slid the glass canopy closed over them both.  He was instantly grateful to be sharing this narrow and cramped space with the only living person he could touch without fear.

As he sat in his little wooden seat, surrounded on all sides by very thin wood and even thinner steel supports, leaning forward under the low glass canopy, Twist slowly came to realize what he was doing.  His heart began to beat quickly again and his stomach transformed itself into a solid block of ice.  His knuckles turned white as he clung to the tiny handles set into either side of the cockpit, and he realized that his fingers were starting to ache with the strain of trying not to let them shake.

“Okay,” Jonas said, flipping switches and levers up in the front, “we're just about ready.  Use that voice-throwing-thingy to tell Tasha.”

“I can't.”

Jonas tried to look back at Twist, but the cabin was too narrow. “Why not?”

“Can't m-move.”  His breaths were racing so quickly that it took three of them to speak the words. “I can't … everything … spinning...”

“Ready to launch,” Niko's voice said from Twist's pocket, sounding a little tinny and muffled, but clear nonetheless.

“Hold on to me,” Jonas said gently.

It took all the focus Twist had to pry his fingers off one of the handles and place them—shaking violently now—on the warm fabric over Jonas's back.  The warmth seemed to creep up Twist's arms with a dull slowness, while his vision blurred over and brightened.  He took back control of his breath, and his hands stilled to lay steady, after a pair of deep breaths.  In a moment, Twist had all but forgotten his crippling fear entirely and found himself wondering why his pocket was talking.

“Push the button on the side and talk,” his pocket said slowly, sounding rather annoyed.

“Only use one hand,” Jonas said. “Don't let go of me.”

Twist did as he was told, by both orders, and spoke into the device in one hand, while keeping the other hand on Jonas's back. “We're ready too,” Twist said to the little box, and then lifted his finger off the button on the side.

“Launch on my count,” the box said with Niko's voice, and began to count down.  Twist put it back into his pocket.

He felt a sudden thrill bubble up out of nowhere, as the count got to three, two, and then one.  There was a loud clunking sound and then Twist felt himself thrown so violently forward that it was all he could do to keep his head from snapping back on his neck.  He clutched tightly to a metal handle with one hand, and struggled to keep the other one on Jonas's back.

The primal thrill that filled his mind flew out of Jonas's throat in a delighted call that ended in a heady laugh.  Twist looked up over his friend's shoulders to see nothing but pale blue sky before them.  It felt like such a pure, endless freedom that it tingled on his skin and made him want to laugh too.  The wood around them shook against the rushing air but then stilled into an eerie quiet, empty of all sound but the wind itself.  As the momentum caught him too, and movement became easy again, Twist stretched his neck to see farther past Jonas.  His eyes found the desert so far below that it seemed to move slowly under them, but he could feel the speed of their flight in his blood.

The speed ebbed ever so slightly.  Jonas angled the straining wings into the wind, and Twist saw the glowing horizon slip ever so slightly up against the center line of the bird's flight.  Then the wings stilled completely and slipped through the air as smooth as silk.  Twist felt their speed increase again while the ground drew slowly closer and appeared to move faster and faster below them.

“There,” Jonas said softly. “Now I've got you.”

“Who's that?” Twist asked.

“Have I ever told you that I get on very well with the wind?  We've been dear friends for a long time.”

As he spoke, Jonas turned the bird into a sweeping arc that gave Twist a sudden and drastic sense of gravity.  The horizon spun before them and then dropped completely from view as the bird shot upwards into the sky, the wings complaining against the new strain.  Almost instantly, they leveled off again and flew towards the point just below the horizon, and again the wings relaxed into the gentle increase of speed as they edged closer to the ground from a new, much greater height.

“You're supposed to follow us,” the radio transmitter said curtly. “Slow down.”

“Why don't you speed up?” Jonas grumbled to himself.  He turned the craft sharply upward and their speed dropped quickly.  When he dipped forward again, Twist could see one of the other birds to their left now, flying a hundred feet ahead of them.

“Better?” Twist asked the box sourly.  Jonas laughed to himself.

Once the initial shock and the strange sensations of free flight had dimmed into the background of his thoughts, Twist came to thoroughly enjoy the pull of the turns, the playful currents of the open sky that threw them higher and higher, and the bone-deep thrill of the speed itself.  He knew, hidden somewhere deep inside his own thoughts, that he should be petrified with abject fear to be in such a reckless and precarious position, but he tried not to think about it.  For the moment, he was actually having fun.  As dangerous as the ground might be, they were far from it now, perfectly safe in the gentle grasp of the wind.

By the time the sun touched off the horizon and began its own flight through the sky, Niko started to point out features in the desert below.  A clump of trees by a shallow oasis, a formation of dark rock that broke the billowing dunes—they were getting close.  Niko told Jonas to loop around the far side of a small mountain of dry, broken rock—Twist recognized it from the wine glass the night before—and instructed him to set down nearby.

Twist felt the disappointment that Jonas didn't voice as he followed the direction, gliding slowly closer to the ground.  With a soft hop against the sand and then a jerking halt, the bird touched back down to earth quietly and easily.  Jonas gave a sigh as he let go of the controls and opened the canopy to let them out.

Twist followed him out onto the thin, pale sand, and didn't realize that he'd let go of Jonas in the process.  For a moment, there was silence.  Then, all the screaming terror he'd buried and ignored came at him in one gigantic, angry wave that stole the light from his eyes.  He didn't even realize that he'd fallen until Jonas was kneeling by his side, shouting his name.