The Floating Islands

by Rachel Neumeier

  Wingmaster Taimenai opened the door himself, tall and severe as always. But the fierce afternoon light revealed fine lines around his kajurai eyes, and Trei thought he looked tired. “Trei,” he said, and formally, “we are glad to find you again in your place among us.”

  Not knowing what to say, Trei nodded awkwardly.

  “Come in.” The wingmaster stepped back and held the door wide.

  To Trei’s surprise and relief, Ceirfei was already in the wingmaster’s office.

  “Your family affairs?” queried the wingmaster, returning to his place behind his desk.

  “Um … settled,” Trei answered cautiously. “My, um. My cousin has gone to my aunt’s sister’s family, in the country. And arrangements have been made to sell my uncle’s house and effects. So I … I was free. To come back.”

  To Trei’s relief, the wingmaster seemed willing to dismiss the topic of his cousin. He said instead, “We do not have so many kajuraihi that we wish to cast our novices back into the world. Once you have learned to see the wind, you will never again be blind.”

  Trei let himself glance over at Ceirfei.

  The wingmaster barely smiled. “Just so.”

  Ceirfei said to Trei, “I’m required to attend my uncle every third morning, and for a full day every senneri. But I am kajurai.”

  Wingmaster Taimenai gave him a nod. “I shall expect you to keep pace with the other novices. In that regard, I believe I shall waive the remainder of your senneri grounding—” He held up a stern hand to check Ceirfei’s surprised nod. “This is not by any means to be construed as acceptance of your disobedience, however.”

  “No, sir. And Trei?”

  “Waiving only your punishment would hardly be just,” the wingmaster said coolly, and nodded to Trei. “You have both missed several days’ training, however. You must work hard to meet the standards set by Novice-master Anerii.”

  “Yes, sir,” Trei and Ceirfei said together, and received a final dismissal.

  “I was grieved to hear of your new loss,” Ceirfei told Trei as they went down the stair side by side. “The sea is made of salt tears, we say, and the waves are made of the griefs of men, but I am sorry so many should fall upon you.”

  Ceirfei sounded sincere, even heartfelt; Trei felt awkward as he returned similar sentiments, for he could not manage such smoothness.

  “Your cousin is well? I have a brother remaining, and two sisters, and my parents are well, but I think you now have only your cousin?”

  Trei did not want to lie to Ceirfei, even by omission. He said only, “My cousin grieves, of course. But your aunt remains ill?”

  Ceirfei bowed his head a little. “The physicians think she may be saved. If she falls from us into the hand of the Silent God, my uncle—” But he cut off unvoiced whatever he’d meant to say about his uncle.

  His uncle, the king. Trei still found this a hard belief to hold in the forefront of his mind. Ceirfei certainly never said “the king, my uncle.” But even so … Trei said, “I’m surprised … if I may say so, I’m surprised your uncle didn’t hold you at his side.”

  “Ah, well, he might have done, but Taimenai is right, you know—truly, we do not have so many kajuraihi as we might wish.”

  “We,” as though Ceirfei felt himself already one of the kajuraihi; that was Trei’s first impression. But then he thought, Or “we,” as though he spoke for Milendri entire? Or for all the Floating Islands? Perhaps growing up a prince, one naturally took to a broader view. “Why not?” he asked. “I wondered that before. Why not more kajuraihi? Eighteen beds in the novitiate, and only six novices?”

  “Perhaps boys today dream of high court positions, not the heights of the wind.” Ceirfei’s tone was dry. “They say our dragons of wind and sky accept fewer boys than they used—that our dragons are fewer in number themselves. Though,” he added judiciously, “my father says that isn’t so, but fewer of the dragons stay close to the Floating Islands than once was true. That by itself is worrisome enough now, though certainly no one can say the Islands have dropped lower in the sky—ah, supper! Our timing is impeccable!”

  Then they had to meet the effusion of the other boys; though Trei knew this was directed mainly toward Ceirfei, he felt some of the others’ pleasure was for his own return. Since he was not able to meet their words of sympathy gracefully, he turned as quickly as he could to matters of more immediate importance to novice kajuraihi. “What have you been doing? Have you been flying every day?” he asked, and to his surprise found himself genuinely interested in the least details of the other boys’ days.

  “Rekei took notes for you,” Genrai told them both, with a shy duck of his head when he looked at Ceirfei.

  “Good ones! Well laid out!” Rekei assured them earnestly. “We’re into kajurai history and the history of the Floating Islands, so you probably know all that, Ceirfei, but Trei doesn’t. But we’re also deep into kajurai hierarchy and law, Gods! I didn’t think I’d land here and still end by studying law!”

  “We’re making our own wings,” Kojran told them, rolling his eyes at this talk of classes and study. “We make our own, did you know? But it’s going to take forever.” He sighed dramatically.

  “We all practice on little frames, with these ragged old feathers, but yesterday Linai let us start setting up the real frames for our real wings,” Tokabii added.

  “It’s finicky work,” Genrai said, glancing at Ceirfei and then away again. “I thought—that is, we hoped you might return. Linai gave us a framework and some gulls’ feathers so we could show you. After supper—”

  And for the next little while they could all forget everything else in learning the delicate technique of setting feathers in place in a wing. Ceirfei had steadier hands, but Trei was happy to find he seemed to have a natural feel for where in the framework any particular feather should be placed.

  Yet, though Trei had hoped … had wished … to slip back into the kajurai novitiate and pretend he’d never left it, he found himself, through the next few days, watching the other novices without feeling himself one of them. Though he attended classes and took notes alongside Rekei, and let Genrai help him with the demanding art of wingcrafting, and tried to make the resisting Kojran study properly, through it all he felt himself standing almost outside of all this. He almost felt he watched himself from the outside, as though he watched himself move and speak in the same way he might watch a street entertainer’s puppet going through the motions of life, as though a sheet of impenetrable glass stood between himself and the world.

  Trei knew this feeling was born of grief. He had almost forgotten this strange distance and separation, and had not realized he had almost forgotten it, and—worst of all—felt guilty for ever having forgotten, for beginning to feel once more that he belonged to life.

  He thought Ceirfei might join him in this dim, distant kind of half-life. Sometimes he saw him standing a little way from the other boys and looking at them with a kind of remote wistfulness, but then, Ceirfei might only be feeling set aside by his royal blood. Ceirfei never spoke of his brother who had died, any more than Trei mentioned his parents or sister, or Uncle Serfei and Aunt Edona.

  Only when he flew did Trei feel properly alive.

  The sky was filled with complex beauty. There was a clean, uncomplicated joy in flight, in threading a path through pearlescent winds and crystal-bright layers of pressure and temperature. Sometimes violent storms raced across the sea, and then the winds, tossing above iron-dark waves, seemed made of silver and dark pewter. When it was fine, gulls flew in and out of the shadows cast by the Floating Islands, white wings flashing. And sometimes the long forms of sky dragons coiled and rippled high above the Islands, the transparent feathers of their wings seeming as fragile and insubstantial as the wind itself. It was impossible to believe any creatures so beautiful could be related in any way to the terrible dragon of fire that had, in Trei’s dream or memory, shattered Mount Ghaonnè and destroyed Rounn.

  Their kajurai
instructors taught the boys how to land in the tight space provided by the deck of a ship, and what courtesies were owed a ship’s captain when they came down, and how to lift themselves from a ship’s deck back into the sky by wind magic alone when they had no height from which to leap. Their instructors taught them how to tack across the face of a violent storm, and how much height was enough when unpredictable winds suddenly threw them down toward the raging sea, and how the air above even a quite terrible storm was always calm. Trei wondered what the Island monsoons were truly like and whether they could possibly be worse than the terrible icy storms that locked northern Tolounn into ice and silence every winter.

  And the instructors began to teach the boys how to carry heavy stones aloft, and how to cast them down to strike targets bobbing amid the waves. This was harder than seemed plausible.

  “You can’t get within bow shoot, fool,” one instructor roared at Tokabii one morning not long after Trei had returned. “Get some height under you! You’ll find it hard to fly arrow-struck!”

  Trei shook his head about this later. “Why practice anything of the sort?” he asked. “When no one can attack the Floating Islands anyway. What defense can you possibly need, besides height?”

  Ceirfei glanced up. “Oh, well, you don’t yet know much Island history. In the reign of Komaonn the Elder, the Yngulin attacked our shipping and blockaded our trade. We might have been forced to become just a province of Yngul, but Tai Tairenaima invented clingfire and we drove them off.”

  “Trei?” called Rei, putting his head in the door. “There you are! The wingmaster wants you, so shake the iron out of your wings!”

  Trei shoved his chair back and stood up. His stomach clenched, remembering the last summons from the wingmaster—but no. This couldn’t be the same. Though if the wingmaster had found out about Araenè … His stomach clenched harder. He followed Rei, his steps dragging. And found Ceirfei at his elbow, uninvited.

  Wingmaster Taimenai wasn’t alone in his office, Trei found. Novice-master Anerii was also present, and so were two men Trei didn’t recognize. Not kajuraihi. Court nobles, he guessed from the style and fineness of their dress. Araenè—Trei didn’t want to think of his cousin, not now; he knew he would only look guilty if he thought of his cousin. He tried hard to think of nothing at all.

  But Wingmaster Taimenai’s grim expression was not reassuring.

  All the men were standing except for one of the strangers. That one was a tall man, neither old nor very young, with a long, expressive face and a tired, worried look in his eyes. He wore a white shirt and a violet sash. He had a narrow violet ribbon woven through his dark hair and a band of woven gold about his neck, another about one wrist. Trei thought he surely was a court noble. Trei’s heart sank as he tried to imagine what pressing interest could have brought a man like this to kajurai precincts to ask after a mere novice.

  “Trei,” said the wingmaster, and beckoned.

  Rei Kensenè, hovering uncertainly, received a dismissive wave from the novice-master and went away. Trei wished he could retreat so easily. But Ceirfei was still a supportive presence at his back. That was reassuring. He took a reluctant step forward.

  “If you please,” Wingmaster Taimenai said to the strangers, “allow me to make known to you Novice Trei Naseida, lately of Tolounn and now an Island kajurai.”

  Trei found it enormously reassuring to have the wingmaster put the introduction just that way. The seated man—surely he must be a court noble?—gave Trei a small nod.

  “This is my cousin, Prince Imrei Naterensai,” Ceirfei murmured in Trei’s ear. “And that is Lord Manasi Teirdana, first minister of finance and my uncle’s close advisor.”

  Trei blinked and tried to collect his scattering wits.

  “Trei,” said Prince Imrei. His voice was quiet and husky. He studied Trei with careful interest. “Tell me about your journey from Tolounn. Surely you did not leave Tolounn from the harbor at Rounn? That harbor is closed, I believe?”

  Trei hesitated. He hadn’t expected to be asked about Rounn, not now: even after learning who the prince was, he’d braced himself for questions about Araenè. He said at last, “No, sir. Your Highness. From Sicuon.”

  “You walked from Rounn to Sicuon? You went to Sicuon directly? How long did that take you?”

  Trei hardly remembered. That journey had been a dense nightmare of exhaustion and grief. He remembered the dust and ash that had veiled the sun, so all those on the road had traveled through a continual twilight. Ash had fallen like snow; they had all choked on the bitter taste of it. “Days,” he managed. But he did not know how many. At the time, it had seemed forever.

  “How was it you came to be outside Rounn when the mountain exploded?” asked the prince.

  “You can do this,” Ceirfei said, gripping Trei’s arm hard, and Trei, who had come within a feather’s width of turning on his heel and walking out of the room, explained instead about his summer visit to his uncle in Sicuon. He didn’t say anything about how it had felt to stand on the mountain road above Rounn and see the plumes of ash in the air, the shattered mountain rearing above, its internal fire glowing through the cracks in the stone. He didn’t describe the time he had spent just sitting at the side of the road, staring down at the lake of still-molten stone and billowing ash that had, so small a time before, poured down across the city.

  Prince Imrei wanted to know about Rounn, and then all about the journey back to Sicuon and from there to the Floating Islands. Trei didn’t tell him his uncle in Sicuon had sent him away. Maybe he knew, or guessed. But Trei wasn’t going to say anything about it.

  The prince was polite—was that Ceirfei’s presence?—but he went on and on. What ship had Trei taken south? Had it gone well out to sea before turning south, or had it hugged the coast? What ports had they touched on the way? Ah, they had landed at Tetouann? Why? To take on supplies, merchandise, passengers, all three? How long had the ship stayed at Tetouann? Oh, Trei had changed ships at Tetouann? Why was that? How many days had he stayed in Tetouann? Had his new ship—what was its name?—put in at Marsosa? At Goenn? At Teraica? How long had it taken to sail from Goenn to Teraica? How many days had they stayed at Teraica?

  Trei could give almost none of the answers to these questions. He remembered, dimly, that he had switched ships twice, and he thought that the second time had been at Goenn, but it might have been Teraica. He thought the ship that had carried him from Tetouann to Goenn (or Teraica) might have been called the Temenann, or maybe it had been the Temoinè? He didn’t remember the captains’ names. He didn’t even remember whether there had been other passengers. Most of the time during that long journey he’d felt like a disembodied ghost: one of the thousands of ghosts of Rounn. The taste of bitter ashes had been on his tongue the whole way, until the hammering heat of the southern sun had begun at last to burn out the memory of the dim, ash-ridden chill of the north.

  But he didn’t know how to tell Prince Imrei that.

  “A thin tale,” Lord Manasi said to the prince at last, shaking his head.

  “Too thin,” said Prince Imrei, sitting back in his chair and running his hand thoughtfully back and forth across its arm. “If the boy was a spy, or the agent of spies, he’d have a far better tale prepared.”

  A spy! Trei stiffened, trying not to show either shock or outrage. He looked quickly at Ceirfei, who touched his shoulder in reassurance and shook his head a little. Just wait, Trei thought that meant.

  “Every spy for the next forty years will be claiming to be a survivor of Rounn,” argued Lord Manasi. “It’s a Gods-given excuse to have no records tracing your past movements.”

  “Trei is from Rounn,” Ceirfei said quietly, and when his cousin looked at him, he added, “He dreams of it.”

  Prince Imrei’s eyebrows rose, and he nodded thoughtfully.

  “Well, but Tolounn’s spymasters are clever,” said Lord Manasi. “A half-bred boy heading to the Islands would be a gift to them. Perhaps someone picked up this one
at Goenn. That would explain those days ashore. It’s not plausible to suggest it’d take five days to find a southbound ship out of Goenn.”

  Prince Imrei held up a hand for silence and said to Trei, “Surely you hesitated to make so long a journey, and with no certainty of welcome at the end of it? Perhaps someone in Tolounn suggested you should come here? Or perhaps someone along your way suggested you might try for kajurai training? That if you brought any artifacts or knowledge of wind-dragon magic back for Tolounnese mages to examine, you might be well rewarded?”

  “No!” Trei exclaimed. He wanted to feel outraged. Furious. Instead he only felt frightened and ill.

  “Your uncle was a well-regarded minister,” Lord Manasi observed. “You might have had a good place in a ministry in a year or two—you might have looked to become a court minister yourself. Instead you came”—he gestured broadly, indicating not the wingmaster’s office but the wider kajurai precincts—“here.”

  “I wanted to fly!” Trei said, but even to his own ears this protest sounded weak and childish. He could not begin to put into words the deep longing that had struck him the first time he’d seen the kajuraihi soaring above the waves.…

  Lord Manasi tilted his head skeptically, plainly having no understanding at all of that longing and not really believing in it. “Valuable as Tolounn would find a spy in any of the ministries—and we may be certain there are some— Tolounnese artificers would be even better pleased to have someone bring them a sample of dragon magic. That’s something, so far as we know, that Tolounn has never accomplished. If we grow careless, we might find Tolounn far too closely acquainted with all the arts by which we protect the Islands—”