The Floating Islands (25 page)

If Araenè was still there. The long flight had all blurred in Trei’s mind, but Tolounn’s attack on the Islands had begun, what, two full days ago? The Islanders hadn’t seemed to be mounting any kind of defense. Trei shook his head angrily, trying to think. Any little town in Tolounn would be ashamed to manage so little defense. The Islands had no
business
assuming the simple fact of their height would always be enough to hold back a determined enemy! One thing was becoming clear the more he thought about it: nothing
he
did could possibly make any difference—

A ripple in the smoke gave way to Genrai, swinging in and down to match Trei’s course and speed. He shouted, “The middle engine, yes? The place where the coal falls down? Let me take it, Trei! What you said to Tokabii was true: you could land somewhere hidden, rest, make your way back later!”

Trei realized that Genrai thought he’d frozen in terror, here on the edge of success. And, Trei also realized, the older boy was right. It was fear—not anything else—that underlay all his hesitation. He was afraid to try to reach those engines, so he’d just been making up reasons not to try. Even after he’d
promised
Genrai he would do it—after he’d promised
Araenè
he’d do it. Trei shouted, furiously, to himself more than to Genrai, “I
am
kajurai!” This time, he shouted loudly enough: the angry words seemed to echo in the wind.

He tipped sideways and dropped through the smoke. The smoke choked him, but he could see through it—he couldn’t
see
the engines, exactly, but he could see the waves of heat they flung out into the air. The smoke was hard to breathe, but it didn’t bother his kajurai eyes at all. He could see the intense heat that marked the entrance to the coal furnaces.

The middle engine: yes. Because if the one in the middle exploded, maybe the explosion would destroy both the other engines as well. Trust Genrai to think of things like that.

But of course the middle engine was the hardest one to reach. The gap between that engine and the next was narrow: Trei would have to come in at a steep angle. He thought at first he might come in slowly, but once he was below the worst of the smoke, he found that was impossible: there were too many men all around the engines. Spearheads flashed; they’d seen Trei—they were turning to face him—their shouts reached him, dimly—he did not slow, but instead put everything he had into speed and rushed by the soldiers, so fast they barely knew he was upon them before he was past.

Trei rode that wave of speed through the gap and right up to the middle engine, flung up his legs to take the shock of landing—he felt that shock not only in his legs but all the way up his back, and if he hadn’t tucked his chin, the force of the impact might have broken his neck. He flung his arms forward violently, pure reflex against a horrible landing, and felt every primary feather shatter. The force of the blow numbed his arms, and for a long, agonizing moment he was afraid he’d crushed the egg—or that he’d be unable to get it out of its sling—someone was shouting, much too close—Trei got the egg free at last and flung it, a good clean throw, down into the engine’s furnace, right along with the pouring coal.

The next moment, strong hands closed on his shoulders and hauled him back, spun him around, and slammed him back against the hot wall of the engine. Trei’s head struck the metal wall hard, and he sagged helplessly in his captor’s hold. It didn’t matter—he didn’t need to worry about escape—in a moment the egg would hatch, and the engine would explode, and then it wouldn’t matter at all that he’d been caught—

“Gods wept!” exclaimed a harsh voice, and Trei found himself lifted clear off the ground and handed from one man to another, and then another. His arms dragged, heavy—broken?—no, he realized: the weight was simply the weight of the wings.
Those
were broken. He wanted to ask the men to stop, help him with the straps, carry the wings more gently before they were damaged even worse. But he couldn’t make himself form words.

It didn’t matter. Because soon the engine would overheat and explode.

Blackness expanded and contracted around him—smoke, he was choking on it, or maybe it was steam; it was terribly hot. Trei, dazed, wondered whether the explosion had taken place and he’d missed it. But then they were out in cooler air, and he was no longer moving—oh, he was lying on the ground? But that was wrong: shouldn’t he be lying on the wind? With Genrai? No, that was wrong: he was on the ground and Genrai was still in the air.… Trei tried to lift his head, looking for Genrai. But all the sky he could see was empty. And the engines, when he turned his head to look for them, were still there.

He was surrounded by soldiers. And the engines were still in place, all three of them, producing billows of smoke and steam and power.

There had been no explosion at all.

All the time he was being freed from the wreck of his wings, and then all the time he was being carried away from the harbor by the soldiers, and even later when he was carried into a tall house and up flights of stairs and put down on a cot in a plain room … all that time, Trei expected an explosion to hammer through the town behind him. He waited for the shock of furious destruction. If even just one of the engines exploded … an engine that size … surely he couldn’t miss it?

But there was no explosion. Not in all that time.

Trei’s awareness faded in and out, so that while he was being carried, he sometimes knew he was in the grip of Tolounnese soldiers and sometimes thought he was in the air.… His arms hurt, though, especially his left arm, worse when he tried to move it. The soldiers spoke over Trei and around him. He thought they sounded rough and angry. Hearing the anger in their deep voices, he began to remember that he should be afraid. But the man who carried him was gentle, so then Trei was confused and wondered whether he might only be imagining the voices he heard.… That would explain why they sometimes seemed loud and sometimes faded almost to nothing. He tried to ask whether they could see Genrai in the sky, but could not hear his own voice at all and did not know whether he had made a sound.

The world steadied around him at last once the soldiers brought him to the house and put him down on a cot that did not move. But it faded, too, swathed more and more deeply in billowing black smoke and hot white fog.… He thought someone was asking questions, but Trei did not know whether he answered or not. He was falling through the high winds into a white stillness.…

He did not know how long he drifted in that blank quiet. But pain pulled him back to violent awareness. Pain shocked through him, from his hands and arms and splintering through his head. Trei shouted, convulsing—or he thought he shouted, he thought he tried to convulse: someone caught him; immense strength pinned him down when he tried to struggle. The pain sharpened; it gritted along his bones and knifed behind his eyes … and, unexpectedly, eased. The powerful grip fell away. Trei blinked, finding his sight blurred. Tears, he understood suddenly, and, ashamed, scrubbed his hands quickly across his face.

“There, you see?” said a light, calm voice. The words were heavily accented; it took Trei a moment to understand what he was hearing. The speaker went on, “Quite simple breaks, all of them. The concussion was the only dangerous injury. I expect the boy will have a headache for some time.”

“A headache!” said a rougher voice, and laughed. That voice was not so strongly accented, and not accented the same way.… It was deeper, too.… A soldier, Trei saw, his vision finally resolving. A Tolounnese soldier, a decouan, a squad leader. The man saw Trei looking at him and said, “So you’re back with us, are you, boy? Good, good—that was a brave attack you made. Are all Islander boys so brave?” He patted Trei on the shoulder, but his tone had gone angry and scornful on the last words.

Trei, knowing exactly why the decouan sounded that way, flushed. Struggling to sit up, he said quickly, “They didn’t
send
me. They wouldn’t send a boy my age—I’m just a
novice;
I wasn’t supposed to even leave the novitiate!”

The decouan gave Trei a surprised stare. “Well,” he said at last, “there’s a strange accent for an Islander boy: I’d swear you were from the north, the way you come down on the ends of your words.”

Trei flushed. He did not know what to say. He managed at last, “I was born in Tolounn, sir. In Rounn. But I
am
an Islander. I’m kajurai.”

“Well, you are that,” said the decouan, with another sharp look. “Aye, you are that, and no mistake. But what, by the good Gods, did you think you were
doing
?”

Trei didn’t answer.

“Ah, well,” said the decouan. He shrugged, stepped back, looked at the other man. “Master Patan?”

Trei followed his gaze. His eyes widened. The other man … Master Patan … was definitely not a soldier. He was thin, spidery; he had long hands and a narrow, angular face. He wore a plain blue robe, but the cloth was heavy and the dye rich, and he wore a chain of twisted gold links about his throat and a similar ring on his left thumb. His eyes were gray as the stone of the high northern mountains, his gaze neutral and remote as winter. He said, seeing Trei look at him, “You had five broken fingers, three broken bones in your left hand, your left ulna was cracked, and your left elbow was dislocated. You also had broken bones in both your ankles, and your left knee was quite badly wrenched. I gather you struck against the engine with your hands and feet. Surely that is not an approved landing technique?”

Trei had to pay careful attention to understand this man’s words. It was not at all a Tolounnese accent, certainly not the Islander accent that was so close to the speech of southern Tolounn. This was something else entirely. He answered at last, “You’re supposed to stall when you’re going to land. If you stall right, you can just walk out of the air.” He’d been so proud, the first time he’d managed that. He’d never have done it without Ceirfei’s arm-strengthening exercises. Trei winced away from that thought and added quickly, “I had to get past all the soldiers, so I had to go fast. Then there wasn’t time to stop. Are you … from Cen Periven, sir?”

Master Patan’s gray eyes glinted. “Hardly. I’m from Toipakom. Originally. What would you guess your velocity to have been when you struck the engine? Your injuries suggest you were moving at roughly the speed of a galloping horse. Assuming that you did slow just before you, ah, landed, your highest velocity must have been quite impressive. I gather that your … wings … provided some degree of protection to your hands and arms. Those are fascinating, ah, mechanisms. It is most unfortunate they were so badly damaged by your landing.”

Trei didn’t like to think of how badly he must have wrecked his wings. And that was
with
the extra Quei feathers! But he thought it was probably good he hadn’t provided a working set to this man. He said nothing.

“How fast can, ah, you flying people—what is the term? Kajura? What velocities can you attain? Greater in diving than in flat flying, I imagine? A mountain falcon can fly much faster than a horse can run. Can you fly so fast?”

“Kajuraihi,” Trei said, but then he thought probably he shouldn’t tell Master Patan anything about how fast kajuraihi really could fly. He shouldn’t tell him anything. But he was afraid simply to refuse to answer questions. He said, “I don’t know how fast the fastest kajurai could fly. I’m just a novice.”

“Yes, so I understand,” the man said. He regarded Trei for a long moment. Then he asked, “Do you know what I am, novice?”

“You’re a mage, sir. Aren’t you?”

“Not precisely in the Island sense, I believe,” answered Master Patan. “I am an artificer. Fortunately for you, I am also a healer. But I am primarily an artificer.” He studied Trei for another moment. “I wish to learn how to make wings such as you kajuraihi use to mount to the heavens. You will teach me.”

Trei said nothing. He did not precisely wish that he had died in a terrible explosion down at the harbor’s edge. But he knew he
should
wish he had. What had Lord Manasi and Prince Imrei said to him during that difficult interview? Something like,
Perhaps someone suggested you might try for kajurai training? Perhaps someone suggested that you should bring dragon magic back to Tolounn?
Something like that.

And now Trei had done exactly what they had accused him of. He knew he should declare that he wouldn’t help Master Patan. But he couldn’t bring himself to make any such declaration. The memory of pain and black confusion was too near. The decouan had called him brave, but Trei knew now that he wasn’t brave at all. The artificer’s wintry eyes and calm manner frightened him: he did not doubt the intensity of Master Patan’s curiosity. If Master Patan was determined to make him explain kajurai magic, Trei knew, probably he would not be able to refuse for very long at all.

Trei wanted to find his wings and fly so high and far he would never see the world again. He couldn’t do that. He wanted to tuck himself down on the cot and pull the blanket over his head and refuse to speak or move until everyone just left him alone. He couldn’t do that, either. His captors would do whatever they wished now and he couldn’t stop them … any more than he’d stopped the engines.…

There was a huge, shattering roar, so vast that it was beyond noise. The house rocked and creaked; a jug of water fell from a table and shattered. Outside the window, tiles plummeted from the roof and smashed on the cobbles below. People screamed and shouted; boots pounded across the ceiling and, not as loudly, on the streets outside. At last there was a great shrieking noise that cut through all the other commotion and went on and on above all the other screams, ending in a second crashing roar nearly as terrible as the first.

Then there was quiet. After the tumult, it was a stunning, oddly deafening silence. People were still screaming, but somehow their cries only seemed to counterpoint the great quiet rather than break it. Trei clutched his blanket and stared fearfully at the ceiling, where the plaster had cracked straight across; Master Patan supported himself against a wall; the decouan ran to the window and stared out. Then he turned to stare at Trei. He opened his mouth, and closed it again.