The Window and the Mirror

by Henry Thomas

  He said it as though it was meant to amaze her, but as she hefted it Ryla gave him a wry look. “It’s a bit light, to be honest. And I am still owed for the loss of my crewman.”

  He smiled, but the corners of his mouth were twitching nervously. She could tell that Norden was nearing the end of what he was able to bear. The man had to be pushed little before he broke, she noted.

  “Give Captain Dierns her silver,” Norden barked at his clerk. “Get us in the air below the cloud banks,” he said to her through his clenched jaw. He shoved the ship’s key at her and strode up the gangway, leaving the clerk fumbling with his coffer.

  “What a pleasant man,” muttered Kipren as he cleaned pie debris from his beard. Norden had not won any favoritism among her men.

  “Well, I don’t like it, boys, but let’s get her underway.” Ryla pushed back from the stall and turned toward the ship, passing the clerk counting out coins into his hand. “You can pay me on deck.”

  He looked up distractedly before muttering agreement and gathering his things together.

  “Fine pies,” Galt said, licking his fingers.

  After all of the necessary preparations had been made they lifted off into the sky above Torlucksford, a crowd that had gathered to see them take flight cheering and waving as their ship was pushed and pulled by the currents of the wind in the stormy skies. Airships were still relatively uncommon in most places, generally reserved for use by the wealthy and the elite. They were also a relatively new form of transportation, the first airships appearing in Oesteria in the lifetimes of her grandparents. They inspired feelings of adventure and awe wherever they were seen. Elmund would always say that if he had a silver for every lad who asked to take him with them outside of every skyharbor he had seen in Oesteria, then he would never have to fly another run in his life. Skies like these could change the minds of those adventure seekers and make them cry like babies for firm ground beneath their feet. They had seen that before also.

  It had been two hours of being told to circle here and look there, and Ryla was fed up with it and genuinely concerned at the weather she saw growing more and more severe all around them.

  Norden had remained on deck, much to her surprise. Although he still looked a bit sick every time the ship took a sudden shallow dive, he was half kneeling and bracing himself near the side and peering intently down and out at the landscape below. He was looking for signs of his riders and for any horse drawn carts with teams of six, Ryla had heard him tell his clerk to relay to the Norandians, all of them pressed up against the rails around the ship and trying to fulfill their master’s wishes. The crew had all donned their furs, as had Ryla, but the mage and his men had only their stout woolens and she knew it was not enough to allow them to bear the cold winds for long.

  The weather was bad, worse than it had been flying up from Grannock, but Ryla had found a comfortable current in the air that the Skyward seemed to be flowing along with, and she felt a distinct sense of relief. But the relief was short lived when she looked ahead of them and to the north and saw ominous-looking dark clouds heavy with rain and the bright flashes of lightning sparking in the distance.

  Now she decided to put the pressure back on Norden. “Lord Mage, what is our heading?” she shouted into the wind.

  “What?” he said, turning from the rail and looking annoyed.

  “I shall need a heading if I am to convey you and your cargo anywhere!”

  “We are looking for something along the roads, Captain!”

  She fixed him with a steely glare. “Lord Mage, you are looking for something along the road, and I am looking for a heading to deliver your cargo! I can’t simply fly about in this weather—it’s dangerous!”

  “Ha!” he laughed, “Dangerous? Surely this is just another market day for you!”

  “Lord Mage, I am advising you as an experienced—”

  She was interrupted by the clerk and two of the Noran-dishmen screaming and waving their hands excitedly and pointing at something in the distance. Norden broke away from her at once and went to investigate what they were on about. She tried to listen in, but she could hear nothing over the howling winds. Looking over the side and following their eyelines, she could make out something along the road. It was nothing more than a speck, but it may have been a carriage far in the distance on the northern road, the road to Kingsbridge.

  “Captain! Your heading is north.” Norden was quite pleased with himself. North would take them right for the heaviest darkest cloudbank, but the mage did not seem to think that weather was anything to be concerned about.

  “Can you not see that?” she asked him incredulously.

  “North, Captain. North to Kingsbridge.” He flashed a smile and then stalked off as confidently as he could on the pitching deck. She almost shouted for them all to get below decks, but after she had thought about it, losing Norden and his lackeys over the side would have eased all of her troubles. She raised her voice and called out so that her boys could hear her.

  “It’s going to get a lot colder, lads. Let’s see if we can’t fly over this storm.” Ryla made an adjustment to the bronze wand on the helm post and the Skyward began to climb slowly and steadily higher toward the mounting wall of storm clouds. They climbed and headed northward for the better part of three hours, battered by the winds and tossed about like rags, rising and falling on volatile currents through freezing cloudbanks and hair-raising lightning storms. Finally, Ryla made for the forecastle, where the mage stood huddled and she told him that she had to get out of the skies and make for land, and for once the man simply nodded and went back to looking ill.

  It had grown so dark that it may as well have been night, Ryla thought, as she and her crew brought the airship down through the cloud bank and tried to lay eyes upon some sort of landmark to get their bearings. It felt almost pleasant in the skies for a moment, but Ryla was not sure if it truly was calmer or if she had simply grown accustomed to the turbulence. The land was settling in under them, and Ryla could see firelight and its twinkling amber glow pouring from open barn doors and glazed farmhouse windows scattered across the hillsides below them. It was too dark to make out anything else, and her eyes failed to land on anything familiar. She was beginning to despair when Elmund called out. “Ho! There’s Kingsbridge off the starboard bow, lady!”

  They had been blown off course, but not too very far. There was a concentration of lights and the unmistakable feature of the trio of bridges that spanned the river that bisected the city’s two wards. It was one of the most recognizable cities from the air. The winds were buffeting the airship now, and the sense of calm that had presided for a brief moment vanished in a blink as the wind slammed them into a gut-wrenching descent that had all of them hugging the deck until the ship rose and fell again before finally evening out.

  Norden was crawling on the deck, inching out from the forecastle and trying to get her attention. She strode over to him. She was confident on the deck in a storm—she was the captain, and she had to be.

  “Captain! Don’t put this ship down in the town.” He was shouting to be heard.

  “Don’t worry, I can’t in these winds. We will have to drag-land outside the walls.”

  “Very good then, on the hills along the northern road! We shall await our quarry there.” He inched back toward the forecastle in a ridiculous fashion, half-crouched and using his hands to hold him steady as he crawled his way back. Ryla watched his progress for a moment and sighed inwardly. Getting shed of this mage was proving more difficult than she had hoped. She yelled out to Galt, who was belaying a line on the starboard side.

  “Tell Elmund to cast his eyes down to those hills there and bring us around for a drag-landing.”

  “Aye, lady, aye.” He sounded relieved. This was the worst storm they had found themselves under in quite some time, and the boys all knew that if she had any say in the matter that they would never
have been in the skies in the first place. The mage was too inexperienced in sky travel to fully understand the danger he had placed them in.

  It was rough and rainy and the wind caused the ship to bottom out and bounce on the turf as they pulled her in, the force with which it hit causing everyone to go sprawling across the wet deck. Ryla swore under her breath. If the ship was damaged, it would be one more black mark against the Magistry and the irascible Mage Norden. Elmund went down and wrenched his knee, now he was stalking about the deck grim-faced and limping.

  “All right, Elmund?”

  “Aye, lady, it’s nothing.”

  She watched him for a long beat before calling to Kipren. “Get below and make sure we didn’t smash open the hold.”

  He gave her an “aye” and headed for the forecastle, making way as the Norandian guard came tottering out onto the deck followed by the queasy-looking mage and his equally uneasy- looking scribe. They ambled about on the deck peering out into their new surroundings as the rain pelted them with its heavy drops. The rain made a tinny sound as it peened noisily off of their helms. The wind tearing at the billowing mainsail was causing the ship to list dangerously.

  Ryla called out to Elmund at once. “Storm lines on the double, Elmund!”

  “Aye, lady, aye!” He moved at once, barking out orders to Galt and Kipren as he pushed through the meandering Norandians and made for the gangway. Ryla eyed the sky warily as the crew staked the lines down with a mallet and cross-tied the ship where it rested atop the last low hill along the northern road from Torlucksford to Kingsbridge.

  After she saw the first stake driven in and the lines secured she felt safe enough to leave the deck. Ryla removed the ship’s key from the helm post and attached it to the hook she wore on her belt, smiling as she felt its familiar weight on her hip. She would not surrender it to the mage again, not without a fight. This ship was hers, and until she left the deck and put her feet on the ground, her word as captain trumped all comers. She left the helm and stepped down to the door that marked her quarters, the captain’s cabin, and pulled the key she wore round her neck from inside of her shirt. She gave a quick look round, but the mage and his lackeys were all looking off toward Kingsbridge sprawling over a convergence of rivers behind its stone walls. They were pointing at the road and the hill that lay across from them on the other side of it, arguing through the bony clerk who served as interpreter. She worked the lock open and went into the cabin, shutting the door behind her and bolting it quickly and silently. The cabin was not cramped, but one could hardly call it opulent. Most airship captain’s cabins were reputed to be grand, but in actual fact captain’s quarters were unusually uniform from vessel to vessel—the reason being that not all captains were owners, and not all owners were captains. The rich lord’s airship would have a lavish suite for its lord, but for its captain, who may share that duty with several other captains, the accomodations were typically a familiar, utilitarian cabin that could easily be evacuated and made ready for the next occupant. There was a bed and a chair and a stool and a small stove, and the bronze furniture in the room was crafted in swirling patterns and shapes that resembled those found in ship’s keys. She moved past the small writing desk that doubled as a dining table and sat down upon her bed. She let out a deep breath and put her head in her hands. That had been a harrowing day’s flight, and she had held all day without breaking her calm; but she had been sure they were going to fall several times, and had the crew not been there depending on her she would have broken into hysterics. Ryla had instead focused her anxiety into anger, which she directed at Mage Norden, and indirectly at his scribe and the foreign horsemen as well. His ignorance of air travel and desire to capture this girl had impaired his judgment so severely that they had all almost been killed.

  She rolled back over the bed and went to the desk and pulled the drawer out, a bottle resting inside atop some trade invoices and writs and other random parchment scraps. She pulled the cork stopper and had a long pull from the bottle. It was sharp and smoky tasting, and it warmed her throat to a point of burning, but she had a taste for Malvane Lightning and kept a bottle of it in her desk for occasions like these. That bloody fool of a mage, she thought, how am I going to ever shed him? Now she was expected to sit idly by while Norden and his soldiers planned an ambush. The blood of that young man would not be on her hands, she promised herself, nor the ill treatment of that girl. Courage now, she told herself, and find a way to get Norden alone and separated from his guard. Once she did that she could find out what she needed to know and then detain him until Joth and Eilyth had escaped his clutches. Elmund, Kipren, and Galt could hold off those soldiers if they tried to board the Skyward, and now that she had the ship’s key all she would need do is let go the storm lines and raise her up above the tree line. It would be a hell of a chance she would be taking in doing so, she knew; both in long-term problems with the Magistry and the weather at that given time there on the hill outside of Kingsbridge. Ryla thought for a moment and then removed the ship’s key from her belt and placed it in the drawer where the Malvane Lightning had been and closed it.

  When she emerged from her cabin a few moments later, the mage and his scribe were still in argument with the Norandian captain and paid her no heed. To her surprise, the rain had let up slightly and a break in the clouds let the moon shine through for a moment as it rose to its place in the heavens. As she was gazing skyward she heard the mage laugh derisively and launch into the Norandian captain.

  “Ha!” He spat and turned to his clerk. “I have a better idea, since our Norandian friend has shown me nothing but ineptitude thus far in this simple task that I’ve given him!” He turned and swept his gaze across the deck until his eyes came to rest on her. “Captain Dierns, have your men unload my cargo immediately!”

  “What, here?” she could not help but ask.

  “Immediately, Captain Dierns,” he said flatly. “I promised to show you what we carried, and I always make good on my word.”

  “I thought it was that you ‘always get your way’?”

  His jaw worked for a moment, but he resisted the jab. “Let us just do as I bloody say, Captain, and everything will be fine. Get my men some light to work by.”

  “As you command, Lord Mage.”

  He turned and tottered down the gangway. She could see in his eyes when he spoke to her that he was afraid, genuinely afraid, and she wondered whether it was the fear of failure or if there were a justifiable reason that Norden would wish to “silence” them as he had said? She still did not know, but perhaps she did not have to know. Perhaps she could simply choose an opportune moment and lift away into the moonlight. She could if the weather let up, she thought ruefully, but as it stood the weather had her in a tighter prison than Norden could ever have devised for her with all of his clever scheming. He had her, and he knew it, but he had been pushed past his ability to find satisfaction in that. He was exhausted and worried of failure that his quarry would escape him. Ryla had noted it well, and by her reckoning, Mage Norden was about to crack.

  She had the crew bring the crane out from below decks and after building it they unloaded the long, heavy, canvas-wrapped bundles that they had taken on in Grannock at the mage’s orders. The rain was spitting down at them as Galt lowered the last bundle and Elmund guided it onto the spongy turf of the hillside.

  “That’s the last of them, lady,” Kipren called from the hold.

  Galt clambered out of the wheel and stood next to her on the deck. “Shall I break her down now, Captain?”

  “No, stand down Galt. This bastard will probably want it loaded up again the next time the wind shifts.” It was not very ladylike, but she spat over the side of the airship.

  “Aye, lady. Looks like we’ll get to see what’s in those bundles now.”

  She nodded absently. Norden’s scribe was directing the Norandians at the task of untying and opening the bundles and remo
ving their contents. Elmund had passed around the ship’s lanterns, and now the light pooled out around where the soldiers gathered. There were four stacks of canvas-wrapped materials that the men were working at, and when the covers were pulled back Ryla saw beams of a dark, slick wood bound with bronze hardware throughout.

  “Seen anything like that before?” Galt asked her under his breath.

  “No. What is it?”

  “Can’t really say, lady.”

  They watched as the other canvas bundles were opened and their contents revealed. They all seemed to hold an assortment of beams of varying lengths, all of them alike in their bronze and wood construction, and beneath the beams a bronze carriage of some sort rested amid several gears and levers. The only exception was the largest and squarest of the bundles, which had ridden in the belly of the Skyward on her journey north and was comprised entirely of small barrels of a peculiar construction. That had been the heaviest, Ryla knew. The small crane had strained to lift it, and it was no wonder, now that she saw what lay beneath the canvas tarp. The mage had refused to split the loads any further.

  A less confident crane operator would have refused, but Galt knew the crane well and adjusted some of the gears and tried it again, testing it before giving her the nod. She had a good crew, she was thankful for that. They had all gathered near her now and all of them stood together in the swirling drizzle looking down at the Norandians being bossed about by Norden as he fussed and pointed here and there at his strange cargo. The clerk was interpreting rapidly, checking in with the mage often, verifying and reverifying his orders. Norden was wound fairly tightly at this point, and Ryla noted that his scribe was taking extra precautions not to set him off. One of the Norandians then held up a bronze rod and called to the clerk. Norden picked up the exchange at once.

  “Aha! Bring that to me!” He kept looking out at the road and back to the bronze and wood heaps that lay beside the ship. He trotted over and snatched the rod from his man and held it in the lantern light to examine it, as if to be certain that he had found the correct one. “Find the other one as well. There were two rods!”