Windhaven

'Any flyer,' he said, the emphasis unvoiced.

'But I am not a flyer,' Maris said. She slumped into her chair. 'And Coll has renounced his wings, and Russ— even if he would see us — has passed them on. Corm would not honor our request. The word would not go out.'

'You could ask Shalli,' Coll suggested. 'Or wait up on the flyers' cliff, or…'

'Shalli is too much junior to Corm, and too frightened,' Barrion said. 'I hear the stories. She's sad for you, like the Landsman, but she won't break tradition. Corm might try to take her wings as well. And the others— whom could you count on? And how long could you wait? Helmer visits most often, but he's as hidebound as Corm. Jamis is too young, and so on. You'd be asking them to take quite a risk.' He shook his head doubtfully. 'It will not work. No flyer will speak for you, not in time. In two weeks Devin will wear your wings.'

All three of them were silent. Maris stared down at her plate of cold stew, and thought. No way, she asked, is there really no way? Then she looked at Barrion. 'Earlier,' she began, very carefully, 'you mentioned something about stealing the wings…'

The wind was cold and wet, angry, lashing at the waves; against the eastern sky a storm was building.

'Good flying weather,' Maris said. The boat rocked gently beneath her.

Barrion smiled, pulled his cloak a little tighter to shut out the damp. 'Now if only you could do some flying,' he said.

Her eyes went to the shore, where Corm's dark wood house stood against the trees. A light was on in an upper window. Three days, Maris thought sourly. He should have been called by now. How long could they afford to wait? Each hour brought Devin closer, the man who would take her wings.

'Tonight, do you think?' she asked Barrion.

He shrugged. He was cleaning his nails with a long dagger, intent on the task. 'You would know better than I,' he said without looking up. 'The light tower is still dark. How often are flyers called?'

'Often,' Maris said, thoughtful. But would Corm be called? They had already floated offshore two nights, hoping for a summons that would call him away from the wings. Perhaps the Landsman was using only Shalli until such time as Devin arrived. 'I don't like it,' she said. 'We have to do something.'

Barrion slid his dagger into its sheath. 'I could use that on Corm, but I won't. I'm with you, Maris, and your brother is all but a son to me, but I'm not going to kill for a pair of wings. No. We wait until the light tower calls to Corm, then break in. Anything else is too chancy.'

Kill, Maris thought. Would it come to that, if they forced their way in while Corm was still at home? And then she knew it would. Corm was Corm, and he would resist. She'd been inside his home once. She remembered the set of crossed obsidian knives that gleamed upon his wall. There must be another way.

'The Landsman isn't going to call him,' she said. She knew it, somehow. 'Not unless there's an emergency.'

Barrion studied the clouds building up in the east. 'So?' he said. 'We can hardly make an emergency.'

'But we can make a signal,' Maris said.

'Hmmmm,' the singer replied. He considered the idea. 'Yes, we could, I suppose.' He grinned at her.

'Maris, we break more laws every day. It's bad enough we're going to steal your wings, but now you want me to force my way into the light tower and send a false call. It's a good thing I'm a singer, or we'd go down as the greatest criminals in the history of Amberly.'

'How does your being a singer prevent that?'

'Who do you think makes the songs? I'd rather make us all into heroes.'

They traded smiles.

Barrion took the oars and rowed them quickly to shore, to a marshy beach hidden by the trees but not far from Corm's home. 'Wait here,' he said, as he climbed out into the knee-deep, lapping water. 'I'll go to the tower. Go in and get the wings as soon as you see Corm leave.' Maris nodded her agreement.

For nearly an hour she sat alone in the gathering darkness, watching lightning flash far off to the east.

Soon the storm would be on them; already she could feel the bite of the wind. Finally, up on the highest hill of Lesser Amberly, the great beacon of the Landsman's light tower began to blink in a staccato rhythm. Barrion knew the correct signal somehow, Maris suddenly realized, even though she'd forgotten to tell him. The singer knew a lot, more than she'd ever given him credit for. Perhaps he wasn't such a liar after all.

Short minutes later, she was lying in the weeds a few feet from Corm's door, head low, sheltered by the shadows and the trees. The door opened, and the dark-haired flyer came out, his wings slung over his back. He was dressed warmly. Flying clothes, thought Maris. He hurried down the main road.

After he was gone, it was a simple task to find a rock, sneak around to the side of the building, and smash in a window. Luckily Corm was unmarried, and he lived alone; that is, if he didn't have a woman with him tonight. But they'd been watching the house carefully, and no one had come and gone except a cleaning woman who worked during the day.

Maris brushed away loose glass, then vaulted up onto the sill and into the house. All darkness inside, but her eyes adjusted quickly. She had to find the wings, her wings, before Corm returned. He'd get to the light tower soon enough and find it was a false alarm. Barrion wasn't going to linger to be caught.

The search was short. Just inside the front door, on the rack where he hung his own wings between flights, she found hers. She took them down carefully, with love and longing, and ran her hands over the cool metal to check the struts. At last, she thought; and then, They will never take them from me again.

She strapped them on, and ran. Through the door and into the woods, a different road from the one Corm had taken. He would be home soon, to discover the loss. She had to get to the flyers' cliff.

It took her a good half hour, and twice she had to hide in the underbrush on the side of the road to avoid meeting another night-time traveler. And even when she reached the cliff, there were people — two men from the flyers' lodge— down on the landing beach, so Maris had to hide behind some rocks, and wait, and watch their lanterns.

She was stiff from crouching and shivering from the cold when, far over the sea, she spied another pair of silvered wings, coming down fast. The flyer circled once low above the beach, jerking the lodge men to attention, then came in smoothly for a landing. As they unstrapped her, Maris saw it was Anni of Culhall, with a message, no doubt. Her chance was here, then. The lodge men would escort Anni to the Landsman.

When they had gone off with her, Maris scrambled to her feet, and quickly moved up the rocky path to the flyers' cliff. It was a cumbersome, slow task to unfold her own wings, but she did it, though the hinges on the left wing were stiff and she had to snap it five times before the final strut flung out. Corm didn't even take care of them, she thought bitterly.

Then, forgetting that, forgetting everything, she ran and jumped into the winds.

The gathering gale hit her almost like a fist, but she rolled with the punch, shifting and twisting until she caught a strong updraft and began to climb, quickly now, higher and higher. Close at hand, lightning flashed behind her, and she felt a brief tremor of fear. But then it was still. Again, she was flying, and if she were burned from the sky, well, no one would mourn her on Lesser Amberly save Coll, and there could be no finer death. She banked and climbed still higher, and despite herself she let out a laughing whoop of joy.

And a voice answered her. 'Turn!' it said, shouting, hot with anger. Startled, losing the feel for an instant, she looked up and behind.

Lightning slashed the sky over Lesser Amberly again, and in its light the night-shadowed wings above her gleamed noonday-silver. From out of the clouds, Corm was coming down on her fast.

He was shouting as he came. 'I knew it was you,' he said. But the wind blew every third word away from her. '… had to… behind it… never went home… cliff… waited. Turn.' I'll force you down!

Land-bound!' That last she heard, and she laughed at him.

'Try, then,' she yelled back at him, defiantly. 'Show me what a flyer you are, Corm! Catch me if you can!' And then, still laughing, she tilted a wing and veered out from under his dive, and he kept on down as she rose, still shouting as he passed her.

A thousand times she'd played with Dorrel, chasing one another around the Eyrie, tag games in the sky; but now, this time, the chase was deadly earnest. Maris toyed with the winds, looking only for speed and altitude, and instinctively she found the currents and rose higher and faster. Far below now, Corm checked his fall, tilted up,