First Flight
There were plenty of challenges with being the daughter to your people’s spiritual advisor, but right near the top of the list was not being able to win arguments. Not a single one of them, Sjora thought. She sat in the back of the assembly hall, watching as a dozen citizens of the floating citadel Jaaris B’kaan waited in their queue to address the Song Mistress. While she watched and waited, Sjora looked at each of the supplicants in turn, trying to imagine what wishes blossomed in their hearts.
Sick child, weather inquiry, cracks in their kitchen wall, changes in their work schedule, interpretation of the old tomes on flea prevention… she almost chuckled at the perceived silliness of it all. How her mother was able to listen to their various crises and not just throw something hard at them for not figuring it out on their own was a hidden talent Sjora could only hope one day to acquire. When the next person stood and announced they were concerned by a potential mis-translation of ancient creature care involving parasites, Sjora could contain her amusement no longer and laughed aloud.
She felt her mother’s gaze on her before she looked up and confirmed it. The Song Mistress made a simple gesture indicating Sjora join her beside her chair and, with the eyes of the room upon her, she had little choice but to submit. Slowly, she walked to her mother’s side and did her best to appear the humble and obedient daughter.
Initially, she kept her eyes straight forward as her mother had instructed her; not lingering too long upon another’s face lest it cause them discomfort, accompanying the casual glance with an undefined softness that reassured the other party freedom from condemnation. “There are no evil requests in the Tower of Harmony,” it was said. Sjora thought that while there may not be evil requests, there could still be an awful lot of stupid ones.
As if her mother could sense her thoughts, the Song Mistress leaned slightly in Sjora’s direction and whispered deftly without a single movement of her lips: “Please set aside your rebellious soul for a few moments, little one, and listen.”
To her part, Sjora was able to resist making a loud sigh or rolling her eyes in defiant frustration. She simply nodded her head and retained the same expressionless expression on her face. Her mother had been emphasizing the need for her to learn more about the responsibilities she would one day bear when she became the Song Mistress herself. That seemed like a lifetime away, Sjora reasoned, and her mother hadn’t taken the title until she was almost three times Sjora’s age. There would plenty of time for her to learn what she needed to learn. For now, Sjora just wanted to feel the wind on her face, play with her friend Parris and, when she had to practice fighting, beat up the insufferably annoying Tarik.
Her mother placed one hand on her shoulder, applying the slightest pressure on her collarbone. Sjora realized that her mind had been wandering again, just enough to bring attention to herself. The room had fallen silent and once again everyone was staring at her. She wasn’t even sure what she’d done until her mother adjusted her posture for her. She’d been slouching. Slouching! She bit her tongue at the thought of having committed one of the unforgivable sins. Gods forfend that she, twelve seasons of age, be mindlessly bored to tears by hearing people complain about rats. Or was it lice? Ticks? She hadn’t been paying attention; she didn’t know. She didn’t care.
After the Song Mistress gestured for him to continue, the man resumed his commentary on how he felt the proper solution for skin irritation ought to be managed, when another man standing a few paces back in line leaped forward to interrupt him. The two men began fighting with each other – they were apparently on different sides of the flea prevention debate – and Sjora decided that this would be as good a time as any to make her escape. Passing quickly behind her mother’s chair, she ran along the inner curve of the wall towards a pair of curtains that concealed a side exit never used by the main body of the Sky People’s citizenry. Sneaking past the sword masters at the main entrance, she slipped over the railing of the slight incline that led into the Tower of Harmony and dropped into one of the gardens below. The shrubs and vines provided ample natural cover for the girl as she sped away from the tower towards the stables.
The stables greeted her with the familiar scents of hay and other feed cultivated from the vertical gardens found on the south-facing slopes of the citadel. Protected from the harsh winds they faced while the citadel moved from one resting point to another, the crops were only part of the tribe’s resolution to live harmoniously with the land. Another prominent feature was in how they lived symbiotically with the creatures of Aerthos.
She had asked the stablemasters to stop curtseying and bowing as she entered. It was supposed to make her feel special, she figured, but it had the reverse effect. It made her feel like she didn’t belong here among the caretakers. At least, among the animals, she felt like they were on the same level: just beings struggling for survival, without other social cares or responsibilities. She did her best to both respond to and ignore the various good morning pleasantries, scratching the heads of a few of the creatures on her way back to the larger flying beasts, coming to halt at one in particular, her eyes widening at its relative emptiness.
“Parris?” she inquired, realizing that as the animal was not here, her question was more for the caretakers than the animal itself.
One of the caretakers passed her, pushing a tall wheelbarrow full of grain. “Sorry, miss Sjora – Parris hasn’t been back since last night.”
“But she’s always back by sunrise!”
The young man nodded, but continued on about his work, apparently unconcerned about the creature’s absence. Sjora growled, doubling up her fists in anger as she sought out the stablemaster.
She eventually found the woman in one of the smaller pens, caring for a pair of recent newborn vantrells. The whole citadel had been honored to have the pair hatch here – a feat normally only seen in the wild, and never as a pair of twin hatchlings. The vantrells were a traditionally secretive breed of fliers, generally nesting only in a secluded series of caves near the eastern cliffs of the continent. The mother had been discovered in one of the uninhabited storage areas near the base of the citadel and led up into the stables when they learned it was also tending to a damaged wing. The caretakers had braced and healed its wing and perhaps in response, the vantrell mother had remained here until the eggs had hatched. In spite of its genetic predispositions, it allowed the Sky People to tend to its young as well, returning several times a day to check on its young while it roamed further and further on its healed wings.
“Yes, miss Sjora,” the woman asked, not even turning to regard her. Sjora couldn’t quite decide if she approved of the difference in her disposition when compared with the rest of the workers or if it just annoyed her more. “I take it from your exclamations that there is a problem?”
“Parris,” Sjora said. “She hasn’t come back from her hunting last night. I think something’s wrong.”
“That is possible,” the woman replied, setting one of the infant vantrells down while the other climbed up into her lap. “The koravin are migratory, as you know. She may have decided it is time to move on and be with a different herd.”
“She wouldn’t do that!” Sjora insisted. “She loves it here. And…” The words couldn’t quite come to her lips; couldn’t quite get past the stiffening in her throat.
The stablemaster plucked the second vantrell from her lap and stood up, carefully walking towards the fencing that kept the small animals from wandering away. “And what, miss?”
“And she was my friend!” Sjora blurted out. She instantly felt embarrassed by the statement. She knew the law, she knew the creatures. The animals did not belong to the Sky People any more than the Sky People belonged to them. It was a partnership and an alliance, but casual in nature with the creatures free to leave of their own will, provided it was safe for them to do so.
“That may be true,” the older woman said softly, “but who is to say where one must fly? When one hears the song, they must follow the melody.”
Sjora fought back the threat of tears behind her eyes, holding up the crystal she wore around her neck. “But she always comes back to be with me,” she said with trembling lips. “She can’t be gone, I’ve known her forever.”
Seeing the young girl at the verge of tears, the stablemaster reached out and held Sjora to her breast. “It is all well,” she whispered. “I am sure she is well and you will see her again.”
“She can still find me, wherever she goes, right? Because I bound our crystals together so she will always know where I am, no matter where the citadel flies?”
The older woman nodded, patting Sjora’s head. “The crystals are bound forever, miss. She will always know where you are and will always be able to come back to you.”
Sjora could hear unspoken words in the woman’s sentence. “If she can.”
The woman did not respond, but after a moment made a gesture of smoothing out Sjora’s dark braided hair. “I believe these gentlemen are looking for you.”
The girl turned to see two of the sword masters standing in the doorway, looking back at her.
“Tell my mother I will talk to her later,” she growled.
They both looked uncomfortably at one another. “We, um… miss, she asked us to bring you to her straight away.”
“You should go,” the stablemaster said softly. “I shall send word when Parris returns.”
Clearly in opposition to her mandate, Sjora sighed, and began walking towards them. Only a few paces away, she opened her mouth to draw in a fair quantity of air and was satisfied to see them both take a half step back. But to their relief, she simply turned and thanked the stablemaster before turning back to them and gesturing for them to lead her to her mother.
The tower was just clearing out as they arrived. Sjora caught a few poorly-concealed expressions of frustration on some faces; she figured her mother must have cancelled the gathering as soon as she had become aware of Sjora’s absence. She felt a little guilty about that, but did her best to push it out of her mind. Yes, some of their concerns were valid and needed guidance, but so often she just wanted to grab them and shake them until they learned to think for themselves.
She stood at the back of the assembly area until the room was cleared out of everyone but the two men who had escorted her here, herself, and her mother. The song mistress gestured to the warriors, who bowed and left, closing the large doors behind them.
The wind whistled through the room, ruffling a pair of long tapestries against the walls. The sun was at its height in the sky above them, and sent prismatic illuminations cascading down through the stained-glass patterns set at even intervals into the walls and ceiling. It made Sjora think back on an evening she had snuck in to sit in her mother’s chair during a lightning storm and danced in mad circles until she was too dizzy to stand. She recalled laying on the floor, barely able to contain the laughter.
She didn’t much feel like laughing now, however.
“You may begin your apologies whenever you wish, child.”
Sjora’s mouth hung open. She might have been, on a better day or in a better mood, have been willing to at least bite her cheek and offer up a passable apology of some sort, but somehow the notion of being told to do so pushed the idea fully out of her mind. She felt her fingers curl into fists again as a pounding began to drum inside her ears.
“For what?” she heard herself say. She hadn’t thought her voice had come out so loudly, but the circular acoustics in the room must have surely distorted the sound as it came back to her ears. “For leaving?”
The song mistress remained calm and slowly nodded her head.
“You didn’t need me here, mother,” Sjora replied, even more loudly than before. “I didn’t want to be here, so I left. Or am I a prisoner here?”
Her mother’s eyebrows rose sharply. “No, little one, you are not a prisoner.”
“But I can’t leave.”
“Not when you are responsible for staying, no.”
“Well, I’m glad I went, anyway,” the girl said, full of righteous indignation.
“Why is that?”
“Parris is gone.”
“Gone?”
“Yes. She didn’t come back last night.”
“Sjora….” The song mistress shook her head. “Please speak as you have been taught.”
The girl took a deep breath and tried but failed to unclench her fists. “She did not come back last night.”
With a satisfied nod, the song mistress attended to the root of the presented problem. “Have you brought this to the attention of the stablemasters?”
“Yes, but….”
“But what?”
“They said that maybe she just decided to fly away and not come back.”
“And what do you think?”
“I…don’t – I do not know,” she answered, correcting her speech before her mother could say anything about it.
“You do not believe them?”
“I…no, mother. I do not.”
The song mistress remained silent for several moments, finally responding with a nod of her head. “Very well, then. Let us play a game. Imagine you are the song mistress, and a young woman brings this issue to your attention. How would you respond?”
Sjora hated this game, and she would not have been the least shocked to learn her mother was aware of that fact. She was already prepared for this favored game of her mother’s, however. “I would send out a team of trackers to go and find her.”
“So you think she is lost?”
“No, she has a crystal on her collar that’s attuned to the Compass. She always knows where we are.”
“So you believe she is unable to return?”
“Maybe…. I think? Perhaps.”
The song mistress held on to the silence for several more moments, but Sjora now realized that it was not her mother who was thinking so much as her mother was giving her time to think as well.
“This is our contract we make with the creatures of the wild, Sjora. They are free to come and go as they please, with the promise that we will never subject them to our citadel or our lives. One of every ten of them leave each handful of days, never to return, and their number is almost instantly replaced by another. It is a great balance and we are only a part of it, not its hand of destiny. And so we cannot force another to comply with our will nor restrain them to our path. I am sorry, little one, but perhaps it is simply time for your to let your friend go.”
“So we aren’t even going to look for her? What if she’s hurt? What if she’s dying out there, alone, and we never help her?”
“It is the way, little one. We must follow the path of the world. It is why our citadels float along the ley lines of Aerthos, pausing only when the energies of the world bring us to a halt. When the path ends, there we rest.”
Sjora could not bear to hear another page or sentence of their philosophy at the moment. The thought of losing her closest friend was too strong, too overwhelming. She turned and moved quickly towards the entryway doors.
“Sjora, where do you think you are going?”
Sjora spun briefly to dangle the crystal she wore at her own throat. “Does it even matter? You’ll just find me no matter where I go!”
She pushed open the doors with a low, almost feral growl, slipping past the guards and running home. She had been right, of course. It didn’t matter where she went, her mother would always know exactly where she was.
In her room, however, she wasted no time. She threw an old pack on her bed and threw an assortment of items onto the bed beside it. A few pair of clothes, some of her travel gear and camping supplies, as well as some traveling clothes which included rock climbing gloves and durable boots. She packed what she needed, and changed into clothes more suited to traveling in. She grabbed a brass sextant off her desk that she’d received as a gift from her old teacher Johen when she’d learned about the Compass and how ships moved differently than the citadel. She folded it down into its carrying case and slid this into a small pouch on her pack, and nearly ran down the stairs to the kitchen. She scurried between the busy cooks, grabbing some bread, cheese and dried meats, and filled a wineskin with fresh water, tucking these all into her pack and being on her way before anyone could ask questions.
The port was only a ten minute walk from their house, and Sjora made it in five. Three ships were parked on the platforms today; she ran over to the harbormaster, a young man about twice her age named K’vald. He had always been nice to her; he had a young daughter Sjora had sat for on a pair of occasions and he’d shown her a lot about ships that went beyond what she’d been able to learn on her own. He sized her up in the time it took her to walk over to him near his command shed.
“No flights out for you today, Sjora of the blue skies,” he smiled. “The Pathmaster and the Sentinel aren’t shoving off until the morning, and the Hundred Hawks is down for repairs. So I can show you around them, but there’s nothing to fly out on.” He clapped his hands off on his tunic, and tugged briefly on the straps of her pack. “Also, your mother already threatened me with a demotion if I ever let you fly out without a full complement of your protectors. So I’m going to have to pretend you’re not here and that I haven’t seen you all day.”
Sjora frowned. “We really need to have ships of our own,” she grumbled.
“Too much of a temptation,” he said. “Besides, we have a stable full of animals that can take us wherever we might want to go.”
“Well, maybe I will just do that, then,” she said. “I am old enough to face the wild on my own.”
K’vald stepped closer so his words would not travel beyond them. “You ought to take care how bold you are, Sjora. It’s not like life here in the citadels – out there, you’re as like to find pirates, poachers, or worse. There are creatures out there that don’t see us as allies, they see us as food. They take as they like, and don’t say please.”
“I could just steal one of these ships, too.”
“Don’t even joke about that, Sjora. It’s bad enough you even know how to fly them, but to commit theft of them… I don’t know if even the daughter of the song mistress could walk away from that. Look, I don’t know what’s got your eyes looking to the horizon, but I think it’s best you just get back to your normal rebellions and not try to destroy your whole world in the process.”
He placed his hand on her shoulder but she shrugged out of it, turned and left. She felt awful for doing it, but she was just too angry to try and apologize right now. She just wanted to go find her friend and nobody else seemed to care.
Her walking turned to running and even through eyes blurred by tears she found her way to her favorite place to be alone. At the fore of the citadel were lined a series of turbines, which caught the wind and channeled the force of its gusts into energy that fueled the Compass crystal at the heart of the citadel. From time to time, engineers came up this way to check on the turbines but aside from them, Sjora knew she could come here and be by herself. She climbed one of the lookout towers, took off her pack and buried her face in her hands until the tears at last gave way to a numb peace of mind. She felt only slightly better, but no more hopeful than she had before.
Sunset came and went, and Sjora realized that she had not brought nearly enough food for her trip, regardless of how long she thought it would have taken. She decided that this would make for a good learning opportunity for the next time she would need to commandeer a ship as part of a rescue-themed adventure. She had packed up and taken the first step down when motion outside caught her attention and froze her in her tracks.
It was a person, wearing a cloak to disguise their silhouette. They were moving quietly, too, and quickly. For a moment, her mouth hung open in preparation of calling out an alarm, but if the person continued moving in their current direction they were going to run squarely into the night watch anyway, and strangely all she could think of was the other voice in her head that kept her wondering how the person got onto the floating citadel in the first place. Trusting that the guards would make quick work of any sort of thievery or mischief the person might be up to, Sjora decided to solve one particular mystery before doubling back to keep an eye on them.
She waited until the figure had vanished before she snuck down the rest of the way to the ground. She moved towards the edge of the citadel and stepped over the short protective wall that stood a meter from the edge. A pair of pitons had been stuck deeply into the rocky surface and supported a rope ladder leading down over the ledge.
Taking another defensive glance to ensure the unknown person hadn’t turned back, Sjora knelt down and peered over to see what the ladder was connected to. A few dozen meters down, she saw one of the most beautiful things her eyes had ever seen.
It was an airship; a twin ballonet dirigible with an open canopy, two rear propellers and small enough to be piloted by one person. She had seen larger vehicles, loud filthy monstrosities powered by coal or oil that left thick grey smears across the sky. This, though, was small but elegant; floating with a small touch of power to urge its path from here to there. When she had dreamed of leaving the citadel – which was more often than she cared to admit – this was the sort of vehicle where she imagined herself at the controls. Aerthos had put her very wishes in the palms of her hands. Right here, down that ladder lay the key to her freedom.
She played out a series of quick scenarios in her mind – of cornering the pilot on their way back to the ship, and convincing them to take her along and search for Parris. No, she realized – if their intentions were nefarious, they certainly would be unlikely to entertain her request. Definitely not if they were discussing it here on the citadel soil. But, if she was already on the ship when they returned…
Before she had fully rationalized her actions, she was already a third of the way down the slick ladder. Even forcing herself to slow down lest she slip and fall the half-kilometer or so to the ground below, she descended quickly and took a moment to examine the deck.
Within a few moments she managed to examine the deck. The controls were locked, the ship ordered to follow the speed and direction of the citadel it had been lashed to. She gave the yoke a slight pull, but the ship would not respond. Sjora then noticed a small indentation on the control panel. A keyhole.
“Locked?” she grumbled. “What kind of person leaves their ship locked?”
At the rear of the ship, just in front of the engines, stood a small structure which turned out to be a hatchway leading down into the rest of the ship. She moved quickly but quietly, still concerned about the possibility of crewmembers belowdecks.
Her concerns of other inhabitants were brushed away in the minutes it took to explore the cabin. It consisted mostly of a cargo area, two small cabins and a common area. But the smell was the worst of it. Initially she thought it was just a toilet backed up, but when she more closely examined the common area and small kitchen, she realized just what it was the owner of this ship did for their living. Skins and bones and other animal traces were visible, laid out to dry and sorted into various components. Now it made sense – whoever this person was, they were a poacher. Hunting and killing animals just for the things they could make money on. Which was what they had come to the citadel for – their animals!
Sjora turned to run back up the stairs when something shiny caught her attention on the top of one of the small containers on the table in the common room. Without quite knowing why, she walked over to it, and saw what had caught her gaze: Parris’ crystal. Sjora picked it up, and turned it over in her hands to notice a dark smudge of dried blood marking one of the facets. A low humming began to fill her ears, but she gave it no heed. Instead, she walked to the cargo area and took a closer look than she had the first time, noticing the sealed crates and the occasional stain of blood here or there. Her hands trembled. Any thought she had previously entertained regarding politely asking the ship owner to ferry her here or there was gone.
On the other hand, she wasn’t sure what she would do. She only had her practice baton, keyed to a simple musical note; by itself it wouldn’t do much. Only being twelve seasons of age, she had yet to be taught any of the combat magics, either. But, on a pair of occasions, Johen had performed a few different war songs. She couldn’t remember all the notes, but she might know enough to help her. She remembered back, trying to draw the notes out of her memory, when she heard a pair of boots drop onto the deck above. She looked for a place to hide, but only moments later she felt the ship shifting to her left, and the propellers began to churn the air away from their previous course. It was more than just a small ship, she realized – it was fast!
She paced back and forth in the small cabin, trying to decide what her options might be, but the crystal in her hand moved her towards a choice she would never before have considered. She placed the crystal in one of the pouches of her pack and pulled out her baton. She stowed the pack beneath the cot in one of the rooms, mentally promising that she’d be back for it later. Then she made her way up the stairs and quietly peered out the main hatchway.
The shadowed figure was at the controls, peering out into the darkness as they flew. His cloak was gone, but then she saw what appeared to be a pile of cloth near his feet. Her blood boiled when she realized the bundle of cloth was moving.
Extending the baton, she felt the familiar vibrations of the practice melody – a tune of protection, little more – but she added the notes of one of Johen’s songs over the top of it. It was in the same key, and danced as a slight harmonic to the core tone. In her anger, she did not even pause to warn the person or declare her intent to bring them back to the citadel for their crimes. She wanted the entire scenario to be over. As the melody she hummed reached its crescendo, she drew the fully extended staff over her shoulder and down across the pilot’s head. A flash of lightning sparked across the staff and across the condensation of the flooring, temporarily blinding Sjora and sending her sliding back towards the rear of the airship. She could taste copper on her tongue, and loud notes were screaming in both her ears. She tried to find the staff with her hands, but they stung and tingled and wouldn’t move like she wanted them to.
Her vision was the first thing to recover. She could make out the pilot, crumpled in a pile on the far end of the ship. She wondered idly if they were even still alive, and wasn’t sure if she cared yet. Also, she made a mental note to remember that melody but never use it near wet or metallic surfaces.
The ringing had finally begun to fade when she noticed that the pilot was getting up. Not steadily at first, and though they seemed to have gotten the worst part of it, they were struggling to their feet and looking around. Sjora realized with horror that the pilot was looking at her.
She took a deep breath and rolled over to her hands and knees, finally spotting the staff at approximately the middle of the ship. Sjora started to crawl and managed to stand but by then the pilot was already past the staff and still moving her way. The dim lights from the control gave her her first look at the person. He was a man, but with pale tan skin like the people who lived in the Steel Cities on the northern continent. His beard was down to the collar of his shirt, and his expression was ferocious. He was not a man who would willingly submit to capture. He looked like a person who would not think twice about killing a troublesome little girl who got in his way.
Sjora was standing and waiting for him when he lunged for her.
All her years of defensive training came back to her in a flash. He had a knife in his right hand, presenting blade first; she knew how to handle that. As he thrust the knife towards her, she spun to one side, blocking his wrist and punching him in the muscles of his upper arm. He growled in pain, and the knife fell from his unresponsive fingers. She stepped on the hilt and slid it away from them both, dropping to her knees and punching him in the inner thigh to weaken his balance, and once between his legs to weaken his resolve.
Another punch landed in his soft belly and she launched herself back onto her feet, driving her head into his chin to send him sprawling. She heard the crunch of bones and teeth but knew she dare not let up for a moment. He grappled for her, but overextended. She dodged his attempt easily and gave him a swift jab to the rib cage to impede his breathing. Ducking her head and rolling, she grabbed her staff and spun back, ready to face him again.
Behind her, she heard a soft mewling sound that she recognized as the pair of vantrell hatchlings. “Well, now I know why you were in our home,” she whispered.
He spat a series of insults her way; she did not know the words, but she recognized blind prejudice when she heard it. She twirled the staff between her hands and sidestepped away from the bundle. Her plan was to keep him at arm’s length until he wore himself out and then knock him out and bind him. But his plan thwarted hers. He charged at her in a blind fury, taking a pair of strikes to the head and body but managing to pick her up and head for the railing.
The staff fell from her hands and she flailed blindly in her panic, finally feeling cold metal in the palm of her hand as she attempted to throw her over. She grabbed his tunic with her free hand and succeeded in pulling him off balance. Sjora felt her feet floating through the free air, realizing in her fear she had somehow gripped the railing instead. The pilot was not so lucky; she could hear his screams for several seconds as he fell, and then, silence.
She was able to pull herself back into the ship, mostly due to adrenaline, and curled up with the bundle of otherwise healthy vantrells until her body stopped shaking.
As the sun returned to the sky, she had learned the controls on the ship, and turned it around in what she had hoped was the direction they had come. She lowered the altitude and kept her eyes open for the pilot’s body. It took another hour to find him, and she set the ship down shakily on the ground, and set the anchor pitons to hold the ship steady so she could disembark.
The body had fallen in a grassy meadow at the edge of a small lake. Mountains stood up boldly around the horizon, and deep green trees dotted the landscape.
“Well, whoever you are, you certainly did choose a beautiful place to die,” she breathed.
He had fallen face up, she supposed, though the morbid image of his body bouncing once or twice before coming to rest as it had occurred to her briefly. She poked the body with her staff to make sure he was dead. It was not her first time seeing death; as the daughter of the song mistress, she attended every funeral ceremony of her people. But it was the first time seeing violent death. Reassured that he was not going to attack her again, she searched his body for clues to his identity or, for that matter, anything he was no longer going to need.
She found a pouch of coin from the Steel Cities, a weapon of some sort – it reminded her of a description Johen had once given her, something called a pistol – and a necklace with an odd pendant in which was resting a crystal not unlike the ones they used for tracking their animals. When she touched the crystal, a pale bean of light shone out in the general direction of where they had come from.
“This is how you found us,” she said softly. “You found a way to track our Compass.”
In a pouch he was still wearing across his shoulder, she found a pouch which contained a dozen more crystals, a pair of goggles and a box of small brass cylinders, tapered at one end. These she assumed worked somehow with the pistol, but there would be time later to examine them. For now, she realized that with the dawn her absence would be noted, and they would certainly come looking for her.
She also realized that she was not quite ready to be found. Her eyes returned to the ship, and she saw for the first time a word emblazoned at the bow. The Lamprey, it read.
Sjora looked back to the south and decided it was time for her to leave, just as the creatures with whom they were allied did. It was time for her to find her own path, free from the citadel, free from the inevitability of her inheritance. She removed all the items of any apparent value from the dead man, and returned briefly to the ship. Lifting the pair of vantrells into her arms, she returned to the broken body and, using strips of cloth from his cloak, fashioned a leash to connect the two creatures. Finally, she removed the crystal from her own necklace and tied it into a collar for one of the creatures.
A few moments later, she reboarded the Lamprey, retracted the pitons and slowly sailed away. In her mind’s eye, she could see the confused faces of her mother and the guards as they put together the uneven pieces of the story of her disappearance. She sighed. She knew she could not run forever, and someday she would return home and deal with the consequences of her actions.
But as she turned the ship north towards the unknown horizons, she told herself that forever was still a very long time.
To be Continued in Sea & Shadow: Tales of the Dead Man, book three