The Floating Islands

by Rachel Neumeier

  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 … f
rom 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.

  “Stay here!” Master Patan said sharply to the decouan, and went out himself.

  “Great generous Gods!” said the decouan, still staring at Trei. “Boy, what did you throw in there?”

  Trei said nothing.

  The provincar of Teraica, who, Trei gathered, had been intended to govern the Floating Islands after they were properly conquered, had a lot to say. He stormed back and forth in his great hall—there were cracks in its plaster and marble, too—and he said a great deal, mostly to the artificers who had built the engines and to the soldiers who had guarded them. Not even Master Patan, who was evidently the master of all the artificers in Teraica, tried to answer the provincar.

  Master Patan had come back to collect Trei, eventually. Trei had hoped he might have a chance to slip out into the confusion of the city; there seemed nothing out there but confusion now. Only, not at all to Trei’s surprise, the decouan had made sure no such chance came. He wasn’t unfriendly, but he was thoroughly professional.

  So Master Patan had brought Trei to the provincar’s palace. Evidently the provincar wanted to see with his own eyes the boy who had wrecked one of his beautiful engines. Trei tried to stand straight and hold his head up proudly before his captors, but he felt very small and young in the provincar’s grand palace, with the provincar himself cursing and shouting. Even Master Patan stood with his head bowed in the face of that fury.

  “The greatest weapon of the age, you assured me! Assured us!” the provincar shouted at the artificer. “Brought down by a brick lobbed in by a boy!” He had said this before; he had said a great many things. No one was trying to answer him. “One of my irreplaceable engines! Destroyed!” He gestured broadly in the direction of the harbor and glared murderously at Master Patan, hand half raised, clearly longing to hit him. He had, once. Master Patan had not said anything to that, either, but he had returned so outraged a stare that the provincar apparently hesitated to do it again. Trei wondered who Master Patan’s patron was, or who the artificer was related to, and wished he had such a powerful protector himself. Though the provincar hadn’t yet struck him. But Trei could guess he would. Or worse.

  “It isn’t irreplaceable at all. Everything that has been lost can be rebuilt,” Master Patan said calmly. “Two of the engines remain, and I am informed that most of the ships continue sound. We have experienced a setback, but the method itself has, I believe, proven itself.” His calm seemed almost a deliberate insult, set against the provincar’s fury. Another artificer standing close behind him put an urgent hand on his arm, and Master Patan, looking faintly surprised, stopped speaking.

  “A setback!” shouted the provincar. He was a big, florid man, now very red in the face. Veins stood out in his throat. “Rebuilt?” He stared at Master Patan, seeming for the moment beyond speech. Then he took a deep, deep breath and said, much more quietly, “You and yours, go out there and look well at what’s left of my harbor! And then you come back to me and tell me how long it will take to rebuild what we have lost.”

  Trei had been afraid of the provincar when he shouted. But he found he was more afraid of him when he stopped shouting. Even Master Patan seemed to feel the same; he inclined his head and turned obediently to go, taking all the other artificers with him.

  The provincar glared after them for a moment. Then he took in another deep breath and turned to Trei. He gestured sharply toward the soldiers. “And drop this boy down the deepest oubliette in Teraica!”

  Master Patan, nearly at the door, whirled back. “No!” he cried, sounding more outraged now than even when the provincar had hit him. “That is an Island flier; where are we to get another? We—”

  The provincar seemed to swell up with the force of his fury, until Trei half thought he might explode like one of his furnaces. “Out!” he roared. “Out! Do as you are told, or I swear before the Gods, I will drop you into an oubliette after this brat!”

  Trei had no doubt at all that he meant exactly what he said. Even Master Patan seemed to believe it. The
master artificer stared at the provincar for a long, suspended moment. But then he bowed his head, backed away, and disappeared out the door.

  “Take him out!” the provincar repeated, glaring at the commander of his soldiers. He added viciously, “If the harbor and my engines are beyond you, perhaps you can at least properly guard one Island boy!”

  The commander bowed his head stiffly and gestured to his men. The decouan put a hand on Trei’s shoulder and guided him out.

  Trei walked numbly beside the decouan, surrounded by soldiers, through the hot haze of sunlit dust and smoke that covered the city. He didn’t know whether to be glad that he had, after all, destroyed one of the engines—or dismayed that he had destroyed only one of them: had Tolounn’s invasion of the Islands been ruined? Or merely inconvenienced?

  The smoke-filled air made him hope he’d at least achieved something more than an inconvenience: that had been a really powerful explosion. But if two of the engines were left? Master Patan had said the destruction of one engine was just a “setback.” He’d said the “method had proven itself.”

  Trei doubted he’d have been willing to risk imprisonment in an oubliette just to destroy one engine—and he knew with great surety that he wouldn’t have done so just to inconvenience the Tolounnese. Though … maybe the technique of throwing dragon eggs into furnaces had also been proven. If Genrai told the wingmaster what they’d done … maybe they could find more dragons willing to give their eggs to kajuraihi to throw into furnaces?

  But he was still terrified of the oubliettes. He told himself he should try to escape, that this walk was surely the last chance he would have—but he knew that it wasn’t any chance at all.

  And there really wasn’t. The walk was not long at all. The oubliettes were not very far removed from the provincar’s palace, which was, Trei found, built into the hills on the far side of Teraica from the harbor. They walked uphill all the way, until they came to the place where the oubliettes had been dug down deep into the chalk of the hills. Trei stood beside the commander as the men levered the grating away from the first oubliette in the line. He did not watch their effort, but lifted his head and gazed up, into the wide and empty sky. Nothing moved except smoke. He could not even see any birds.