Reap the Wild Wind (19 page)

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“Fiches,” Joyn repeated, frowning in concentration. He held up two. “And I throw them?” this eagerly.
“No! Not yet,” Aryl ordered, making sure he obeyed before turning back to her own preparations.
These fiches were a far cry from the first crude versions she’d tossed from Costa’s window. Much of the change lay in their construction. At night and during the rains, she’d taught herself to braid threads teased from old clothing. Sore fingers later, she could reliably produce miniature ropes, strong yet light, that could be tied using a needle.
When dipped in vine sap and hung to dry, the tiny ropes became solid rods— perfect for bracing pieces of dresel wing. The wing itself was her limit. She’d found only one more, almost shredded, and her fiches shrank in size as she was forced to use smaller and smaller sections. Aryl had tried to sew or glue wing material together, but failed.
The rest of the change was in the design. Because of the small pieces of wing, the fiches were made of several supported pieces tied together. Through trial and error, they’d lost their simple triangular shape, becoming bent and angular. From a certain direction, Aryl squinted at one, they could be wastryls. She now had fiches that would soar in a straight line until hitting something— and there was always something. She needed open space to learn how far they really could fly.
As for landing? “Remember you asked me how to come down from the M’hir?” She turned over a fich and showed Joyn the tiny hooks dangling from its underside. “This is how. The hooks will catch on branches and hold.”
“So it won’t fall into the Lay.”
“So it won’t fall into the Lay,” Aryl repeated firmly. It wouldn’t be a soft or safe landing. But the fich wouldn’t vanish beneath the canopy and drop to sure death.
Nor would a rider . . .
She focused on today.
They’d climbed as high as Joyn could. Aryl had watched him slow as his inner sense responded to the contrary tug of his bond to his mother. He didn’t feel it as a leash; it was the awareness of
far enough
natural to an Om’ray. She imagined the edge of the world, beyond the outer Clans, would feel the same. This was, she thought with satisfaction, far enough for her as well.
This old rastis wove its fronds through the branches of an upstart nekis. The other plant was bare this season, its topheavy burst of leaves shed and new growth swelling in buds at every twig tip. Aryl had marked it before. The upper third away from the rastis was open to the sky.
And thick with twigs. She’d wasted time clearing them from her chosen perch, using her longknife to trim that growth as well as a hearty crop of thorn-ready thickles. Everything loved the sunward side. Joyn had cheerfully joined in, using his small blade to hack at a lump of bark that wasn’t remotely in their way. But it kept him busy. The end result was a natural platform, broad enough for the two of them.
Aryl was satisfied.
From this vantage point, the canopy top flowed down and away like a green-brown sheet tossed over a lumpy mattress. The expanse ended where the Sarc grove rose, its larger, full stalks blocking any view of the lands beyond. Aryl had hoped to show the child the smallness of the world; perhaps, she thought, he didn’t need to know quite yet.
Joyn had been impressed enough, particularly when he spotted flocks of flitters below, wheeling through the air. He’d wanted to send a fich flying after them, unaware how the open air tricked the eye with distance.
Aryl found herself enjoying his enthusiasm. At least, during those brief moments when Joyn kept it inside his own head and not hammering against her shields like the pending afternoon rain.
He was, she sighed, trying his best. She felt an unexpected sympathy for her own mother.
“Now?”
“Let me test the wind.” The M’hir had finished, but there was a perceptible breeze flowing over the canopy. Aryl turned her face until the sweat on her forehead began to cool. “That way,” she pointed, then added quickly, catching at his arm. “When I say and not before.”
The sky wasn’t the brilliant blue of her memories, but a more sullen hue, as if it harbored a grudge against the clouds already building toward Amna Clan. Those were tall and white. Joyn noticed her attention. “Buildings! Sky buildings!”
“Clouds,” she corrected absently. “Where rain comes from.” The child fell outwardly silent. Inwardly, his mind was a frenzy of questions.
Who lives there?
He also wondered what they ate . . .
was it air?
 . . .
how did it TASTE?
 . . . and how often they went to—
“Joyn,” Aryl interrupted, before too many details developed. “It’s time to launch the first one. Just like we practiced with the twigs.”
They both cocked their arms back, then threw them forward, releasing the little models at the extent of their reach. Aryl’s throw was longer and more powerful, but Joyn’s achieved a better angle as he let go. The two fiches floated off through the air.
“Look!!! Look at them!!!”
Aryl did, her heart in her mouth. The tiny craft caught the breeze and actually rose higher. At the same time, they traveled away, their easy flight mocking the full day’s journey along bridge and branch that lay between them and the Sarc grove—
She shook off the wonder of it and began paying closer attention, noting the tilt and self-correction of Joyn’s fich, how hers, a slightly different design, shuddered as it moved.
If they descended, it was imperceptible at this range. Soon, they were specks, eventually disappearing against the dark green of the grove.
With the power of the M’hir, she thought, they could fly across the world.
Joyn’s small hand slipped into hers and Aryl gazed down at him in surprise. “Can we throw another one?” he pleaded.
She smiled. “That’s why we’re here.”
They went through her bagful of fiches, all but one flight cheered as a resounding success— that one involving a too tight grip by very small fingers. He’d been so painfully sorry to break it
SO SORRY,
Aryl had to tease the child back to cheer or be unable to think a coherent thought the rest of the day.
She was crouched over her bag, digging out the last— having promised Joyn he could fly it— when she felt his sudden excitement.
“What is it?” Fich in hand, Aryl swiveled on her knees to look.
He pointed to the sky. “My fich! My fich is coming back, Cousin! It’s one of mine. I’m sure it is. Look! I threw it, so it comes back!”
MINE! LOOK! MINE! LOOK!
HUSH!
she threw against the joyful babble in her head. Joyn’s mindvoice disappeared; he whimpered. Aryl gestured apology, but didn’t lose her concentration. She tried to make sense of what she saw moving through the air. The child was right, it was coming in their direction. “There are sky hunters,” she began to explain, then paused. “But that’s too fast—”
Light slipped over a curved surface . . .
The fich dropped from her numb fingers. Aryl swept up Joyn and ran the wide branch back to the trunk. The child took hold without question, wrapping his arms and legs around her body to free her hands and arms. She kept moving, jumping to the branch below, then the next, and next, following the natural spiral of the nekis to put the massive trunk between them and what flew as quickly as possible. They crashed through leaves and vines, were whipped by twigs.
Finally, Aryl stopped, her back to the solid comfort of the trunk, and took shallow, silent breaths.
Safe?
a whisper in her mind.
No.
She stayed waiting and still. Joyn did the same, holding tight. This was the earliest training, to freeze at danger and trust the adult. Aryl brushed greenery from the hair sticking from his hood, wishing she felt like one.
Or was the calm assurance of her elders nothing more than this? she wondered suddenly. An outer shield, as effective as the inner at hiding fear and self-doubt.
Somehow, that wasn’t a comfort.
Biters found them. One of her leaps must have planted her right leg in the midst of a thickle, judging by the needle-stings coursing up and down her calf.
After a few long moments of nothing more threatening, Aryl became restless. And curious. What was it doing?
“Stay here,” she told Joyn, who obediently climbed down and took her place against the trunk. His eyes were dilated but calm. “I won’t leave you,” she added, startled by the intensity of her own promise.
To see it at such distance, she told herself, it must be larger than the device that had exploded during Harvest . . . much larger . . . but that glimpse? She’d swear it was the same design.
After pulling her hood’s gauze over her face, Aryl bent to strip off her boots. They were protection and grip on flat branches, but for this, she needed her strong toes. She pressed her body to the trunk, reaching out to explore the ridged bark, finding and avoiding areas soft with moisture and rot that would crumble under her fingers. Once her hands had found a solid grip, her feet did the same.
In this way, slow and careful, she climbed around and up the trunk. She kept to the shadows and, when she reached the branch below the one where they’d stood to launch the fiches, she laid herself on it. Pacing each move with a pause, keeping those moves random, she crawled forward. Biters feasted on her feet and ankles. At least, she thought wryly as she crushed a familiar plant beneath her, she’d already fired this thickle’s stock of weapons.
The shadow’s edge, where the sunlight first reached this branch and prompted a cluster of bud-tipped twigs, was her destination. From there, she should have a view of the sky, without being exposed herself. Aryl eased her hand forward.
The shadow grew.
Instantly, Aryl flattened against the wood. Her hand crept to the hilt of the longknife at her side and she tensed.
Instead of the fierce cry of a hunter, she heard something else.
Voices.

Chapter 16

V
OICES? ARYL SLOWLY TURNED her head to look up, straining to see past the obstructing branch and the plants growing along its sides.
Two voices. One low and steady, that reminded her of Cetto’s deep tone. The other was lower still. Every so often there’d be another sound, as if pieces of metal clicked together.
Something was wrong with those speaking. The cadence of sound, its complexity, suggested words. But the result was gibberish, as if flitters tried to repeat odd syllables of overheard speech.
The Tikitik communicated something to one another with incomprehensible hisses, she thought, entranced. Were these almost-but-not familiar sounds words of another kind?
The Tikitik— Aryl’s whirling thoughts kept coming back to them, the only non-Om’ray she’d met. Their Speaker had claimed the device belonged to strangers from another world.
What other world?
Her stomach lurched at the concept, and Aryl turned her attention to seeing who spoke.
She dared crawl into the new shadow. Once there, she found herself looking at the underside of a silvery metal platform, curved yet not all that strange— unless she considered that it was floating in air.
Aryl pulled the gauze from her face and head, dislodging a few biters who’d hung on in hope. The metal of the bottom wasn’t smooth. She longed to touch it, but it was too high above her. She counted six open tubes, evenly spaced, and noted a series of long bumps sloped from one end to the other. Between the bumps were small clear domes with moving parts within— proof, if she needed any, that the device spying on the Harvest had been made by the same hands.
If they had hands.
The voices had continued their utterings. From the changing volume, they were now closer to the trunk than she was. Aryl cautiously rose to her feet, poised to hurry back to Joyn at any sign she’d been discovered. But she had to see.
The second vine she tested took her weight. Aryl climbed hand over hand until she reached the swell of the branch. Its bark was too smooth to grip, but an empty stinger nest offered support for one bare foot.
Hopefully empty.
Her toes found their hold and she pushed upward, slowly. Slowly. She had to slide her head and shoulders through rootlets, then twist to avoid coming too close to a round dark hole that probably housed a nesting brofer or two. They wouldn’t bite unless disturbed. Hopefully, she repeated to herself.
At last she could see the rest of the flying machine.
Like a platform, the upper surface was open to the sky, but this wasn’t designed for standing or walking. There were seats, two of them, and an area behind those with some disappointingly ordinary boxes.
Though they weren’t, as far as Aryl could tell, made of wood or metal, but of something slick and white.
A sharp crack made her ease back down until she peered through twigs. The voices were returning to their craft. The giant branch vibrated, as if to the footsteps of something much heavier than an Om’ray. Something familiar passed by— her bag, swinging in the grip of . . .
Somehow, Aryl didn’t move or let out a sound.
Her bag was suspended from the dainty tips of an immense black claw— easily the size of Joyn. She knew better than to attract the attention of anything with that kind of armament. The claw, and her bag, continued past to the flying machine; the branch continued to complain until she worried it might snap.
She couldn’t make out more of the creature. Its back was a huge dome of gleaming black, completely blocking her view.
The owner of the second voice was approaching. Aryl held her breath, wondering what kind it would be.
A boot appeared in front of her nose. A black boot that might have been leather, with fastenings of metal. Her eyes traveled up a loose tube of brown fabric, finely woven, then stopped, riveted by four fingers and a thumb that carefully held a small object.
Her fich.
Held by a hand twin to hers.
Another boot and leg moved by. Then she was staring at the back of an Om’ray.
Someone on Passage? Aryl’s foot pushed against the nest as she hurried to climb up. At the same time, she instinctively
reached
to discover who this could be, wearing such clothes, keeping such company . . .
Nothing.
To her inner sense, the Om’ray standing above her didn’t exist.
The wrongness made Aryl dizzy, and she grabbed desperately to keep from falling. The rustle attracted attention at last. The not-real Om’ray turned and looked in her direction. The giant black creature left the flying machine with disturbing agility, its pair of claws snapping in the air as if seeking her throat.
The resulting violent sway of the branch drew a cry of protest from the other and knocked Aryl loose.
She plummeted.
Her hand shot out and wrapped around the vine she’d climbed before; her other hand joined it and she half-slid down to the safety of the branch below. Then, she was running.
Behind her, voices rumbled and spoke in urgent tones.
Not one word made sense.