Beneath Ceaseless Skies #201

by Gwendolyn Clare

  Issue #201 • June 9, 2016

  “Nothing But the Sky,” by Gwendolyn Clare

  “Blood Reckonings,” by Alec Austin

  For more stories and Audio Fiction Podcasts, visit

  http://beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/

  NOTHING BUT THE SKY

  by Gwendolyn Clare

  Dorial leaned against the rail of the port-side semaphore deck, flight goggles loose around his neck and the cold air sharp and welcome against his naked face. The airship Emergence hung just below the morning’s scattering of cumulus, so Dorial had a clear view of the old mining town he was tasked to protect.

  The town called Jagged Peak was not exactly the crown jewel of His Majesty’s vast and varied holdings. Centuries of mining had left its central sky island nearly depleted of aether, and it had sank so far that the lowest cliffs nearly grazed the ocean’s blue-gray swells beneath. The buoyant houses and shops and agricultural platforms were anchored around the island in a funnel-shaped web of rope bridges and ladders, as if the town might somehow hold up the island that shared its name.

  The townsfolk needed to cut loose the sinking island, or else risk being dragged down out of the sky and into the watery depths. They would wait, though, until the very last aether mine ran dry, risking their lives because of their livelihoods. They would probably wait too long. It was a doomed place, and a suitably dire sight to match Dorial’s mood.

  Behind him the door slid open, and a cabin boy announced, “He’s ready for you, sir.”

  Dorial nodded stiffly, steeling himself to face whatever fate awaited. He had broken no rules and received no reprimands from his squadron leader, and yet the captain summoned him.

  The boy escorted Dorial down the portside passageway to the captain’s cabin and, irksomely, held the door open for him. Inside, Captain Tarjun sat behind a heavy carved-wood table, a cup of red tea resting cold and forgotten near his left hand. Neglected tea was a sure sign of the gravity of the situation.

  “Ah, Ensign Dorial,” the captain said. “I have a temporary reassignment for you. His Majesty’s niece has run away from the palace, and he requires a rider to track her down and bring her safely home.”

  Dorial blinked. Despite all the scenarios he’d pictured, this one caught him off-guard. He could not even parse whether it was meant as an honor or a punishment.

  When he recovered his voice, Dorial said, “Forgive me, sir, but is there no one closer to the capital?” Jagged Peak was on the far western boundary of the kingdom, hence the strategic value of patrolling these skies despite the town’s diminished worth.

  Captain Tarjun said, “This is a matter requiring a certain degree of discretion.”

  “Discretion...?” That wasn’t a trait the battle squadrons were known for, generally.

  “His Majesty wants this situation resolved quietly and... without scandal.” Captain Tarjun gave him a significant look.

  Dorial finally took the captain’s meaning. Heat flushed up his neck, and his jaw tightened. “Ah. Indeed.”

  Dorial had been called for because he was arukai—a soldier who had once been a woman. Only he could be trusted alone with the king’s niece, because of all the pterather riders only he was incapable of compromising her virtue.

  * * *

  At the aftmost end of the gondola was the eyrie of the pterathers, where Dorial’s mount nested among the rest of the bevy. Scourge, big for his age, had earned the instant respect of his peers with a gimlet glare and a flick of wingbones; Dorial had worked slower upon those same pterathers’ riders, with restraint and respect and his ever-low expectations. His squadron mates were genial enough now, but Dorial doubted his absence would weigh heavily upon their minds, so he bade goodbye to no one.

  Dorial made a low rumbling noise in his throat—mimicking the sound of a pterather’s affectionate greeting—and Scourge came over, ambling clumsily on hind feet and the pads of his thumbs, with the elongated wing-webbed fingers tucked back along his forearms. Dorial reached up to scratch the pterather’s long, narrow snout, naked except for a double-ridge of feathers down the midline.

  “Time to work,” Dorial told him. “At least one of us will be pleased with this assignment. Any excuse to fly is good enough for you, eh?”

  Ever sensitive to mockery, Scourge huffed in Dorial’s face, but when Dorial brought out the flight gear all was forgiven. For this mission, he tacked up with a two-seated saddle, in anticipation of success. Scourge held his head low to take the bridle; Dorial carefully adjusted the bits to rest in the spaces between the pterather’s pointed teeth, then tossed the double reins over the pterather’s neck. The pre-flight ritual worked upon him like meditation, calming his anger and humiliation over the nature of his assignment.

  Scourge crouched low and Dorial mounted, kneeling in the front saddle and clipping his flight harness securely to the pterather’s tack. Together they moved toward the launch hatch, Scourge’s four-limbed ambling even more awkward with the added weight of a rider.

  “Release the hatch,” Dorial called to the waiting crewman.

  The double doors in the floor swung open, and Scourge leapt toward the square of open sky. Dorial’s heart surged up into his throat as they fell toward the sun-dazzled blue of the ocean far below, then Scourge’s wings snapped open to catch the air, and they were gliding.

  Just for a moment, Dorial threw his head back and closed his eyes, feeling the wind in his face and the ripple of powerful muscles between his bent knees. The cold nipped at his fleece-lined jacket, but heat radiated off Scourge’s back, and Dorial buried his hands—gloves and reins and all—deep in Scourge’s mottled brown plumage. There was no peace like flying.

  Dorial opened his eyes. The airship Emergence hung above them, sleek and pale as the clouds above, dignified in its quiescence.

  This posting had not been theirs for long, but Dorial found himself wondering when he and Scourge would see the Emergence again. Soon, if they completed their mission promptly and with discretion. Never, if they failed. He wondered if Scourge understood the cause-and-effect of their performance, or if such matters seemed arbitrary and inexplicable to the pterather.

  Dorial adjusted his flight goggles over his eyes, then gently flicked the reins against Scourge’s neck. The pterather began to pump his wings in earnest, picking up speed, and together they angled toward the rising sun.

  * * *

  The journey from Jagged Peak to the capital would have taken half a week for the Emergence, but Scourge covered the distance in a single day.

  True to its name, the enormous main island of Cloud City floated high in the sky. Centuries of tradition forbade the practice of aether mining within the capital, expressly for the purpose of maintaining its lofty elevation. Smaller sky islands trailed down from it in a loose spiral, hanging like a pterather’s tail. A web of ropes and scaffolding connected these islands to each other and tethered the multitude of floating structures that composed the city.

  Dorial released pressure on the curb bit, signaling Scourge to climb.

  The royal palace claimed the highest peak on the main island, the oldest portion built directly upon the stone with precipitous cliffs dropping away on all sides. Expanded over the centuries, the palace had grown into a miniature city in and of itself, surrounded by villas and gardens and temples on their floating platforms.

  Scourge spotted the landing platform first and tipped his head to pull the lower reins, asking permission to land. Dorial gave it, and together they shot down like a stone; Scourge backwinged at the last possible moment and touched down light as a feather.

  Scourge folded his wings smugly and crouched for his rider to dismount.

&
nbsp; “Show-off,” Dorial muttered as he unclipped his harness and slid from the saddle. He gave the pterather an affectionate smack on the shoulder before leaving him.

  He crossed the wide rope bridge that connected the landing platform to the palace proper and paused at the entrance where a servant stood ready, holding out a red silk cushion. Dorial unbuckled the willow-leaf blades he kept strapped to each thigh and placed them on the cushion. Only the royal guard were permitted weapons inside the palace.

  Dorial stepped into an airy, high-ceilinged chamber, unlit except for what natural luminescence crept through the filigreed windows to dapple across the slate floor. After a brief wait, he was met by a matron of the Hearth Crone, presumably the missing girl’s religious tutor. The matron came wrapped in layers of soot-gray robes with her hair hidden beneath a white headscarf, impeccably clean and modest, though she held a flamboyant green-and-gold kaftan pinned under one arm.

  “You are the one they sent for?” The matron looked Dorial over with a pinched expression, displeased.

  “I’m told I am... uniquely qualified,” he said. “Dorial, rider of Scourge, ensign aboard the airship Emergence—at your service.”

  “And what exactly are your qualifications, young man, that His Majesty should entrust the safety of his dear niece Navidha to you?”

  “I am arukai.” The admittance tasted like acid in his mouth.

  “Ah.” The matron raised her eyebrows, appraising him as if an entirely new person now stood before her. This response came as no surprise, but still it took all of Dorial’s inner strength not to clench his fists. He’d fought hard for respect, and now his superiors were using his assumed weakness as a virtue. But when His Majesty gave an insult—even by proxy—there was no choice but to accept it with grace.

  The matron stroked the green-and-gold kaftan as if reluctant to part with it. “I’m told those beasts of yours can track a scent.”

  “That is true.”

  “See if this will do.” She handed him the kaftan.

  “If Lady Navidha wore this recently, it should suffice.” He folded the kaftan respectfully over his arm. “I won’t return without her.”

  “See that you don’t,” said the matron.

  Outside, Dorial reclaimed his blades and crossed the bridge back to where Scourge waited more or less patiently. He tapped the end of the pterather’s snout and held out the kaftan, and Scourge flicked his forked tongue at the cloth, tasting the air around it. The hunt was on.

  * * *

  They flew in slow circuits around the main island, spiraling outward from the palace. Scourge skirted close over the rooftops, inhaling deeply to catch the scents below. Dorial frowned behind his flight goggles, anxiety writhing in his gut, as he considered all the ways this assignment could go wrong.

  It was a comfort, at least, that they could not take Scourge from him. A rider trained for years with his young pterather, and the bond was a close one. A pterather who lost their rider—whether it be to injury or death or dishonor—would, more often than not, abandon their post to fly wild, hunting for their old rider until they either found him or died of exhaustion.

  Dorial and Scourge could be reassigned, demoted out of military service, shamed in the eyes of their peers, but they could not be separated. And when it came right down to it, Dorial could live with humiliation so long as he did not have to live with it alone.

  Scourge was more than a mount—he was a partner, a brother. A better brother than Dorial’s own bloodkin had ever been to him.

  One more circuit around the island, and Scourge asked to land. They alighted on packed earth in front of a stately old edifice. Dorial had never been inside, but he recognized it as Cloud City’s renowned library.

  “Here?” Dorial eyed the stone façade doubtfully. “Are you certain?”

  Scourge twisted his neck to give Dorial a one-eyed glare, as if offended by his rider’s lack of faith in his skill.

  “All right, all right,” Dorial muttered and dismounted. “No need to get testy.”

  The air inside the library was cool and smelled of cedar and old leather. Behind a long curved desk sat a young man, scrawny and hardly out of boyhood, dressed as a disciple of the Scholar in a brown kaftan embroidered with black calligraphy. Dorial loomed over him until the boy looked up, startled. “May I help you?”

  “I’m looking for a young lady—high-born and unaccompanied—who may have visited here earlier this week.”

  “Seekers of knowledge fall under the Scholar’s protection,” the boy replied automatically, as if the words had been trained into him. “It is not my place to discuss the library’s visitors.”

  Dorial rested his hands suggestively upon the pommels of his willow-leaf blades. The scholar-boy swallowed.

  “I am here on official business,” Dorial said. “His Majesty’s orders.”

  “Right, of course, in that case...” The boy scrambled out of his chair, ready to serve. “I believe the young lady you seek was here three days ago. Would you like to see the books she requested?”

  “Please.”

  Dorial was a whole three days behind her—Navidha could be anywhere by now. But if he learned something about her interests, perhaps that would help him narrow the search.

  The boy led him through the maze of books and scrolls, selected a large volume from the shelves, and laid it out on a reading table for Dorial to examine. “She spent the better part of an afternoon poring over this one.”

  Dorial opened to the title page: the book was an old treatise on the nature and origins of aether. “Rather an odd selection, wouldn’t you think?”

  “On the contrary,” the boy enthused. “This is a classic. At the time of its writing, it was the definitive work on the subject.”

  Dorial cast him an arid look. “I meant, rather odd for a young lady.”

  “Oh. I suppose...?” The young scholar looked as if he were struggling to comprehend the possibility that anyone wouldn’t run away from home in order to read two-century-old densely worded academic manuscripts.

  Dorial shook his head and dismissed the boy, who scurried back to his post by the front entrance. Then he flipped through the book, muttering, “What were you looking for?”

  A sheaf of paper fell out of the pages, surprising him. It was folded like a letter but without the wax sealing. He gently uncreased the paper and looked over the neat black words calligraphed across the first sheet.

  My dearest pursuer,

  By the time you read this I will have moved on from the library and shan’t be returning there. I’m afraid your search must go on, for which I can only apologize.

  No doubt my uncle has conscripted you to perform this task against your better wishes. As recompense for the inconvenience I have caused you, please accept the enclosed tale, which I have composed especially for you.

  Your servant,

  Navidha

  Dorial might have crumpled the whole sheaf and left it behind but for the exceptional oddness of that signature. Your servant, the highborn lady had written to a soldier of low rank and little repute. He set the letter aside and looked to the extra pages.

  * * *

  Once upon a time in a faraway realm there lived a boy of pedigree and privilege. His father was a successful merchant with a fleet of seven airships at his command. His mother played the kanun and the tanpura and the kamancheh, and had done so for the Emperor’s pleasure on several occasions. The boy did not have a head for figures like his father, nor an ear for harmony like his mother, but he was gifted in his own way, for the boy had been born with a magic gemstone in his brow.

  The boy with the magic gemstone in his brow saw djinn everywhere, and the djinn saw the boy. He fascinated them, and they doted upon him like aunties with their favorite nephew. When he was little, the djinn would carry him in their arms and fly him in circles around the island that was his home. The boy learned to love the sky as ardently as his companions did, and nothing on his home island could hold his interest
when compared against the offer of flight.

  The boy’s mother worried about his safety every time he disappeared with the invisible djinn. The boy’s father, however, worried over the boy’s neglected education. The father’s three sisters had between them five sons, and he watched with envy as his nephews studied their figures, and practiced tying knots, and learned the care and feeding of pteravods. The eldest of the five eagerly accepted an apprenticeship aboard an airship in his trading fleet, yet his own son showed no such enthusiasm.

  The boy had little interest in trading. Traders prayed to the God of Winds for an uneventful journey, whereas the boy yearned for the opposite. When the boy grew heavier, the djinn stole an aether-lifted chariot so they could pull him along on their adventures.

  One day, as the boy and the djinn traveled through gray and storm-heavy skies at the edge of the Empire, they came upon an airship painted with Imperial gold and indigo. But this airship had no royal standard, instead flying the red flag of piracy.

  Look! the boy cried. The pirates have stolen the Emperor’s airship! We must steal it back.

  The djinn tightened their flying formation and muttered among themselves. All were in agreement: it would be highly amusing to steal from pirates.

  The pirates had spear launchers and flaming tar bombs, and every one carried a scimitar strapped to his hip, but they could not see the djinn. They fired spears at empty air and swung their scimitars wildly, cutting nothing.

  The pirates could see the boy, but even this did not help them much. The boy had stolen a bolt of lightning from the stormclouds above and stored it inside his magic gemstone. Every time the pirates attacked, he would zap them with a bit of lightning.

  Soon all the pirates were relieved of their weapons and locked up in the brig. The djinn ran wild through the gondola and explored all the crawlspaces between the aether bags inside the enormous envelope. The boy dressed up in fineries he discovered in the cargo hold and paraded about, pretending to be a prince. After a while, the boy and the djinn agreed this adventure must draw to a close, but what to do with the airship? The boy convinced the djinn they should return it to the Empire, so they set a course for the Capital.