Sena looked at Maris. 'We have had this problem before,' she said. 'The children of flyer families know everything they need to when they come of an age to challenge, but we hear no flyer gossip, know little about who is strong or who is weak. What things I know myself are ten years out of date. Will you advise them, Maris?'
Maris nodded. 'Well, obviously, you want to find someone you can beat. I'd say challenge those from Eastern or Western. The flyers from farther away are usually the best from their regions. When the competition is in Southern, then the weaker Southern flyers are on hand, but only the most skilled from Western make the flight.
'Also, you'd do best to avoid the flyers from Big Shotan. They are organized almost in a military fashion, and they practice and drill endlessly.'
'I challenged a woman from Big Shotan last year,' Damen put in glumly. 'She hadn't seemed very good beforehand, but she beat me easily enough when it mattered.'
'She was probably being deliberately clumsy earlier, trying to lure a challenge from someone,' Maris said. 'I've known some who did that.'
'That still leaves a lot of people to choose from,' Kerr said, unsatisfied. 'I don't know any of them. Can't you tell me the name of someone I can beat?'
Val laughed. He was standing by the door, S'Rella close to him. 'You can't beat anyone,' he said, 'unless it's Sena here. Challenge her.'
'I'll beat you, One-Wing,' Kerr snapped back.
Sena hushed him and glared at Val. 'Quiet. I'll have no more of that, Val.' She looked back to Maris.
'Kerr is right. Can you tell us specific flyers who are vulnerable?'
'You know, Maris,' Val said. 'Like Ari.' He was smiling.
Once, not so very long ago, the suggestion would have filled Maris with horror. Once she would have thought it betrayal of the worst kind. Now she was not so sure. The poorer flyers endangered themselves and their wings, and it was no secret who they were for one privy to Eyrie gossip.
'I–I suppose I can suggest a few names,' she said hesitantly. 'Jon of Culhall, for one. His eyes are said to be weak, and I've never been impressed by his abilities. Bari of Poweet would be another. She has gained a good thirty pounds this past year, a sure sign of a flyer whose will and body are failing.' She named about a half-dozen more, all frequent subjects of flyer talk, reputed to be clumsy or careless or both, the old and the very young. Then, impulsively, she added one other name. 'An Easterner I met yesterday might be worth a challenge. Arak of South Arren.'
Val shook his head. 'Arak is small but hardly frail,' he said calmly. 'He would outfly anyone here, except perhaps for me.'
'Oh?' Damen, as ever, was annoyed by the implied slur. 'We'll see about that. I'll trust Maris' judgment.'
They talked for a few minutes more, the Wood-wingers eagerly discussing the names Maris had tossed out. Finally Sena chased them all away and told them to get some rest.
In front of the cabin she had shared with Maris, S'Rella bid goodnight to Val. 'Go on,' she told him. 'I'll stay here tonight.'
He looked a bit nonplussed. 'Oh? Well, suit yourself.'
When Val was out of sight, Maris said, 'S'Rella? You're welcome, of course, but why…?'
S'Rella turned to her with a serious expression on her face. 'You left out Garth,' she said.
Maris was taken aback. She had thought of Garth, of course. He was ill, drinking too much, gaining weight; it might be best for him to lose his wings. But she knew he would never agree to that, and he had been close to her for a long time, and she could not bring herself to name his name when speaking to the Woodwingers. 'I couldn't,' she said. 'He's my friend.'
'Aren't we your friends too?'
'Of course.'
'But not as close friends as Garth. You care more about protecting him than about whether we win our wings.'
'Maybe I was wrong to omit him,' Maris admitted. 'But I care for him too much, and it isn't easy — S'Rella, you haven't said anything about Garth to Val, have you?' She was suddenly worried.
'Never mind,' S'Rella said. She brushed past Maris into the cabin and began to undress. Maris could only follow helplessly, already regretting her question.
'I want you to understand,' Maris said to S'Rella as the Southern girl slipped under the blankets.
'I understand,' S'Rella replied. 'You're a flyer.' She rolled over on her side, her back to Maris, and said no more.
The first day dawned bright and still.
From where she stood outside the flyers' lodge, it seemed to Maris that half the population of Skulny had come to watch the competition. People were everywhere: wandering up and down the shores, climbing over the rugged cliff face to get better vantage points, sitting on grass and sand and stone alone or in groups. The beach was littered with children of all ages, running up and down kicking sand up in their wake, playing in the surf, shouting excitedly, running with their arms stretched out stiffly, playing at being flyers. Merchants moved among the crowds: one man decorated with sausages, another bearing wineskins, a woman wheeling a cart burdened with meat pies. Even the sea was full of spectators. Maris could see more than a dozen boats, laden with passengers, lying dead in the water just beyond the breakers, and she knew there must be even more beyond her sight.
Only the sky was empty.
Normally the sky would have been crowded with impatient flyers, full of the glint of silver wings wheeling and turning as they took some last-minute practice or simply tested the wind. But not today.
Today the air was still.
The dead calm was frightening. It was unnatural, impossible: along the coast the brisk Seabreeze should have been constant. Yet a suffocating heaviness hung over everything. Even the clouds rested wearily in the sky.
Flyers paced the beach with their wings slung over their shoulders, glancing up uneasily from time to time, waiting for the wind to return, and talking among themselves about the calm in low, careful voices.
The land-bound were waiting eagerly for the competition to start, most of them unaware that anything was amiss. It was, after all, a beautiful, clear day. And, atop the cliffs, the judges were setting up their station and taking their seats. The competition could not wait on the weather; contests in this sluggish air might not be as exciting, but they would still be tests of skill and endurance.
Maris saw Sena leading the Woodwingers across the sands toward the stairs leading up the cliffs. She hurried to join them.
A line had already formed in front of the judges' table, behind which sat the Landsman of Skulny and four flyers, one each from the Eastern, Southern, Western, and the Outer Islands.
The Landsman's crier, a massive woman with a chest like a barrel, stood on the edge of the cliff. As each of the challengers named an opponent to the judges, she would cup her hands and shout out the name for all to hear, and her apprentices would take up the cry all along the beach, shouting it over and over until the flyer challenged acknowledged and moved off toward the flyers' cliff. Then the challenger would go to meet his or her opponent, and the line would shuffle forward. Most of the names called were vaguely familiar to Maris, and she knew they were in-family challenges, parents testing children, or — in one case — a younger sibling disputing the right of her older brother to wear the family wings. But just before the Woodwingers reached the judges' table, a black-haired girl from Big Shotan, daughter to a prominent flyer, named Bari of Poweet, and Maris heard Kerr swear softly. That was one good target gone.
Then it was their turn.
It seemed to Maris to be quieter than it had been before. The Landsman was animated enough, but the four flyer judges all looked grave and nervous. The Easterner was toying with the wooden telescope that had been set before her on the table, the muscular blond from the Outer Islands was frowning, and even Shalli looked concerned.
Sher went first, followed by Leva. Both named flyers that Maris had suggested to them. The crier bellowed out the names, and Maris heard the shouts being repeated up and down the beach.
Damen named Arak of South Arren, and the judge from Eastern smiled slyly at that. 'Arak will be
