Royal Airs (35 page)

“You’re a princess.”

“You’re royalty yourself.”

“Not royalty with a future.”

She shrugged. “You intrigued me long before I knew you were heir to a throne,” she said. “It’s not your sudden elevation that has made me admire you.”

“Maybe not,” he said. “But it’s made me feel more worthy of you. If only a little bit. Made me bolder.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Bold? You don’t seem to be anything of the sort.”

He tilted his head back and stared at her for a long moment out of narrowed eyes. “For an elay girl,” he said at last, “you certainly like to play with fire.”

“My father was sweela,” she retorted. She could feel herself smiling. “So I’m not afraid of flame.”

“Maybe you would be,” he said, “if you had any sense.”

That made her laugh. Keeping her eyes on his, she flattened her hands and pushed herself to a standing position. Trailing her fingers along the edges of the table, as if she needed contact with something solid just to keep her balance, she circled around till she was standing right next to him, her knees touching his thigh. Then she bent and kissed him.

He didn’t move, either to pull her closer or to push her away. His mouth returned the pressure of hers with a sort of guilty hunger, as if he had promised himself he would forgo all sustenance but he could not deny himself this one forbidden treat. She lifted a hand to touch his cheekbone, touch his jaw, run her fingers lightly down his throat to settle on his shoulder. His skin was hot as a sweela man’s; she felt his blood running riot just under his skin.

When she straightened up, she left her hand on his shoulder just to hold steady. She felt dizzy enough to fall. “We didn’t even play penta,” she murmured, “and yet here we are, collecting on our bets.”

He gazed up at her, somber as a man delivering news of death. “You might want to be careful,” he said, “about how you play this particular game. You’re gambling on my honor, but I’ve been known to cheat when the stakes were high enough. And I’ll wager that this is another contest where I have more experience than you do.”

“I’m sure you do,” she said. “Maybe that’s why I want you to teach me how to play.”

“Maybe you need to think about it a little longer before you make that kind of bet.”

She couldn’t help it; she rolled her eyes and flung both hands in the air. “You’re so exasperating!” she exclaimed. “Everything Alys said always made me think it would be easy to seduce a man.”

His grin was a little shaky. “Maybe she picked a different kind of man.”

“Well, one of them was Darien, and
he’s
not easy to influence.”

She was genuinely put out, which seemed to amuse him. At any rate, he seemed more sure of himself as he finally came to his feet. “Maybe he wasn’t worried about the harm he might do to her by accepting her offer,” he suggested.

“Darien worries about everything,” she said in a grumpy voice, which made him laugh out loud. She felt a reluctant smile tug at her mouth. “But I suppose I should be grateful that you don’t want to take advantage of—of the strange circumstances that have thrown us together.”

“And will keep us together for the foreseeable future,” he agreed. “You don’t want to cross some line with me, and then regret it, and then be forced to smile and flirt and pretend you are enamored of me when you’d rather see me thrown in the Marisi and drowned.”

She pretended to be much struck by this insight. “You’re right! How could I have been so stupid! And it’s not like I’ve spent any time with you in the past few ninedays—it’s not like I have any sense of your personality
at all
. I could so easily be mistaken about you!”

“Happens more often than you might expect,” he said, edging her toward the exit. “Now. Maybe you should seek your own room for the night and spend some time thinking about what you really want.”

She allowed him to herd her toward the door, but before he could open it, she turned and placed one hand against his heart. “For what it’s worth, this is all Nelson’s doing,” she said. “Remember what he said? How he can sense strong feelings? The sweela prime thinks we care about each other.” She leaned in and kissed him again, quickly this time. “And he approves.”

She opened the door and left him standing behind her, speechless.

EIGHTEEN

T
hough he had urged circumspection on her, Rafe was bitterly disappointed, the next four nights, to find that Josetta intended to exercise it. Oh, she left her apartment every morning when he left his, dutifully followed him to factory floor or training facility, shared dinner with him—and the guards—and lingered long enough to play a hand of penta or to talk over the events of the day. But she never again unsettled him with teasing kisses or half-articulated promises or even sideways, speculative smiles. He was left to wonder if he’d offended her or frightened her or mortified her so much she would never make the same overture to him again—and to curse himself for not taking her up on the offer when he’d had the chance.

It had seemed like the right thing to do. The honorable thing. But honor was vastly overrated late at night as he lay awake in his solitary bed, imagining what he could be doing instead.

During the daytime hours, training at least provided a distraction. His body had adjusted to the physical workouts, so most of the soreness was gone, and he could feel his arms gaining strength and flexibility. He had become adept at using the mock pilot’s box, smoothly managing takeoffs and landings and the occasional rush of simulated bad weather. He wasn’t sure what else he could do to prepare himself for actual flight—and when, near the end of that nineday, he said so to Kayle, the prime agreed.

“The LNR will be ready in a few days. I want you to take her up,” Kayle said. “Secondday—thirdday at the latest. Are you ready?”

“I think I am.”

So that was cause to celebrate with a bottle of really bad wine purchased from a street vendor. Josetta even presented him with a congratulatory gift—a pair of leather gloves and a jacket to help ward off the chill of altitude and the wind of passage.

“And I have a second present,” she said, handing over a small packet. Ruins of dinner littered the table that sat between them; she hadn’t even gotten close enough to touch his arm. “I thought you should have something elay with you since you are going to be defying the element of air.”

Inside the packet he found three slim rings stamped with blessing glyphs. He still couldn’t identify them by sight, but he could make a pretty good guess. “Yours?” he said. “Beauty and grace and joy?”

She nodded. “I thought you could wear them with all the others.”

He instantly unfastened his silver chain and slipped the new rings on alongside Corene’s blessings and his own extraordinary ones. It was fanciful, of course, but these three seemed to make the necklace lighter, not heavier, as if they really were made of air.

“Now I feel safe enough to fly,” he said.

“Are you afraid?”

He thought it over. “I’d have to be a fool not to be nervous. It’s a dangerous pastime, and so many things could go wrong. But I’m not actually afraid. Excited instead. I can’t wait.” He laughed. “So maybe I
am
a fool.”

“Maybe you have merely found your calling.”

 • • • 

B
efore Rafe could take the LNR out for its first flight, they returned to the Chialto slums, where Josetta buried herself in work at the shelter. She seemed to be overwhelmed with all the details she needed to take care of, from finalizing the rental deal with the tailor to reconciling accounts for the existing building.

“There’s no help for it,” Rafe heard her tell Callie one day. He was sweeping the main room and the women were in the kitchen, but he could catch every word. “You’re going to have to take over the bookkeeping. I’ve been gone too much.”

“It doesn’t seem right for me to choose how to spend your money.”

“Are you warning me that you might cheat me?” Josetta scoffed. “You, the woman whose blessings are loyalty, honor, and honesty?”

“Those might be my blessings, but I never lived up to them until I met you.”

“Well, if you won’t help me out, I won’t have any blessings. I’ll only have curses. Exhaustion and despair and lunacy.
Please
say you’ll handle the money like you handle everything else.”

Callie sounded like she was trying not to laugh. “Well, I will, but I’ll tally everything down to the last quint-copper.”

“Excellent. I know I can count on you.”

Of course, there was even less privacy at the shelter than there was at the rental unit in the port. The new building wasn’t ready to hold beds yet, so
everyone
was sleeping at the shelter—Josetta, Rafe, Foley, Callie, Bo, the six guards, and the couple dozen lost souls who had found their way to this safe haven and showed not the slightest inclination to leave. Rafe thought longingly of his room over Samson’s tavern, but of course he couldn’t spend the night there unless Josetta (and the guards) accompanied him, and he couldn’t bear to put her through that inconvenience. So he unrolled a mat under one of the dining room tables and spent an uncomfortable few nights listening to strangers around him breathing in the dark.

Rafe felt a little bad about how happy he was when it came time to return to the port.

And then how close to ecstasy he felt when it came time to fly.

 • • • 

T
hey practically required a caravan to travel from the port out to the giant facility where the aeromotives were housed. Kayle, Josetta, Rafe, Foley, Caze, Sorbin, a couple of Kayle’s mechanics, and the four other guards required three smoker cars between them. The day was clear and sunny—cool enough at this early hour, but bound to heat up to oppressive temperatures once the sun edged past noon. Rafe was wearing a thin silk overshirt for the drive, but his leather jacket and gloves lay on the seat beside him, and he was already dressed in leather trousers and thick boots. Ready to fly face-first into a punishing wind.

Rafe and Josetta were mostly silent during the trip, but Kayle, who was behind the wheel and driving with his usual disregard for safety, talked incessantly. Rafe supposed that the elay prime was, in his own way, as nervous as Rafe, and this was how he showed it.

When they arrived, the mammoth doors had already been pushed back, but the slim silver bird was still inside the hangar. A crowd of about thirty people had already gathered outside, and they raised a quiet cheer when Rafe stepped out of the elaymotive. He waved and grinned in their direction, then pumped his fist in a gesture of victory. He wasn’t displaying the kind of arrogance Arven had shown, not really; he just had to do something to relieve the tension gathering in his shoulders.

“Josetta, you wait out here with the others,” Kayle instructed. “If they move back from the roadway,
you
move. There is always some danger that the craft will fall from the sky, but if you follow the others, you should be safe.”

She gave him one expressive look. “Even if that’s true, you shouldn’t say so! Not right now!”

Kayle looked surprised. “But you
will
be safe.”

“No! That the aeromotive might fall!”

“But it might.”

She shook her head and turned to Rafe. “Is this my last chance to wish you luck, or will I see you again before you take off?”

“You’ll see me, but not to say anything.”

“Then good luck,” she said. She put her hand behind his head and pulled him down to press her mouth to his. When she pulled back, she was smiling. “An elay kiss for an elay venture.”

Kayle wore an arrested expression as he divided a look between them. “Well, that ought to keep you aloft,” he said. “Come along.”

Rafe gave Josetta one last sober glance before he followed Kayle across the paved entranceway into the cool dark of the hangar. There were maybe ten or twelve staffers in there, calling out numbers, checking fuel lines, checking rivets, checking struts. One—an elay woman with long silver-blond hair—merely stood at the front of the craft, rubbing her hands along its pointed nose and whispering to it as if reminding a fractious child that it had to behave nicely on a grand occasion. Rafe felt the skin prickle on the back of his neck, wondering if the machine might actually hear and understand her.

Finally, the chief mechanic approached Kayle. “Everything’s in order. The LNR is ready for takeoff.”

“Then let’s move it out.”

The workers positioned themselves behind the wheels and along the wings, cursing and grunting as they strained to budge the machine from its stationary position. Slowly, with the ungainly motion of a sea creature waddling across land, the slim silver craft creaked forward, gaining a little momentum as it crossed from the bottomless shadows of the hangar into the hard shellac of daylight.

The onlookers outside cheered again, more loudly. Rafe, strolling along beside the aeromotive—again, just like Arven—shot a quick look in their direction. Yes, there was Josetta, at the very forefront of the crowd, clapping and cheering like everyone else. He gave her a private smile and a quick wave and continued walking along at the LNR’s maddeningly slow pace.

“Here! Turn!” the chief mechanic called out, and the workers shifted their grips enough to adjust the machine’s trajectory. The goal, as Rafe could plainly see, was to line it up perfectly with the long, straight section of roadway. A few more shouts, a few more oaths, and the LNR was in position and at rest.

Kayle turned to Rafe and shook his hand. “Fly far and fast, and safely return.”

“Thank you. I will.”

He climbed into the pilot’s box and settled into the padded seat. The space was so familiar from all the hours spent in training that Rafe felt some of his tension melt and his confidence ratchet up. He pulled out a silk scarf—another gift from Josetta—and wrapped it around his face, then nodded down at the mechanics. A moment later, he felt the great machine purr to life beneath him, trembling with a barely suppressed eagerness to be set free.

“And—she’s—yours!” the mechanic bawled. There was a whirl of bodies at ground level as Kayle and the workers dashed for safety. Rafe waited long enough to be sure they were all clear, and then he slowly twisted the dial that would feed the machine more fuel.