“Why were you awake?”
“I wasn’t tired, I guess. I don’t sleep much.” She wiped her eyes. “So where did you go?”
“Telegraph office.”
Ghanima smiled. “Yeah, that sounds familiar. Late night telegrams to my sister. Writing those little broken phrases on the form. Watching the clerk tapping it out. And then standing around like an idiot, thinking I’ll get an answer right then, straight away.”
Taziri laughed. “I was just going to say that.”
The first cannon shell exploded over a hundred yards in front of them, and the noise reverberated faintly through the airship’s hull. A dirty black cloud hung in the air, slowly expanding and then drooping as gravity and wind dragged it apart.
“What the hell was that?” Taziri leaned forward to peer down at the ground beneath them. “We’re barely into the mountains. It must be one of those watch towers.”
“You think they’re shooting at us? On purpose?”
“If they’re not shooting at us, then they must be really hungry for a taste of eagle, because that’s the only other thing up here.” She leaned back into her seat and began fiddling with her knobs and switches. The cabin lights snapped off, plunging them into a perfect darkness. Taziri slammed her good hand down on the console. “Damn it. We were scheduled to come through here yesterday. I never filed a new flight plan, and with the riots in Arafez and the Crake fiasco, they must be on high alert or something. We need altitude. We need to get above their range.”
“No time.” Ghanima shoved the controls forward and the Halcyon responded by promptly dropping her nose and beginning a rapid descent.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting inside their firing solution.”
“That’s exactly where we don’t want to be!”
“Wrong.”
A second shell whistled past the starboard window, and a moment later they felt the low crack of it exploding somewhere above them.
“Okay.” Ghanima pulled back and the airship began climbing to port. “We get about two minutes between shots. That’s good.”
“Turn us around, we need to get out of here.”
“Around? You mean back to Arafez? I thought we were going to get the doctor to Orossa?”
“So did I, but someone with a very big gun has other ideas. Turn us around!”
Ghanima squinted into the darkness. “I’m not going to run away from some speck on the ground throwing rocks up at us. This is an airship, Taziri, the sky’s the limit for us.”
“This is not a debate, we’re-” A third shell detonated just below them, sending a hard shudder through the deck beneath their feet. Taziri lurched up and leaned over her. “I’ve got better things to do tonight than die, Ghanima. Turn around!”
“Sorry, but you don’t outrank me, lieutenant.” Ghanima pushed the throttle up and felt the Halcyon surge forward as her propellers sang louder and higher.
“Where do you think you can go?” Taziri demanded. “The High Road canyons are the fastest, safest way to the capital. The winds over the mountains are murderous. Unless you know another way through?”
“Nope. I’m just not afraid of a little wind.”
Taziri kept both eyes on the inky patch on the ground where she thought the watch tower stood. As they flew across the canyon entrance, she saw the pinprick of light where the cannon’s muzzle flashed, and Ghanima pushed hard to port. The shell flew harmless to starboard and exploded so far away they didn’t feel the vibration. It left another dark cloud hanging in the sky like a bit of black wool caught in a spider’s web.
“All that gun did was force us up out of the canyon. If we had a little sunlight, I wouldn’t mind trying to sink back down into it,” Ghanima said
“You realize that’s crazy, right?”
“Of course. So we’ll just fly over the mountains. In the dark.” Ghanima swallowed. “Against the wind.”
Taziri leaned over her. “You’ve done this before?”
The young pilot shrugged. “I’ve done a lot of night flights and storm flights. I’ve seen all kinds of weather and never scratched the paint. How hard can it be?”
Taziri drummed her fingers on the back of her chair. “All right. But no crashing!”
Ghanima smiled. “Fine, no crashing.”
A quarter hour later, Ghanima was frowning into the darkness. The mountain peaks loomed out of the night and as the heavy clouds rolled overhead, their black-on-black shadows slithered over the jagged ridges and massifs, changing their appearances from moment to moment. “Taziri, flood lights?”
“Here.” She flicked the switch and a dull yellow glow appeared at the edge of the window at their feet. The view ahead remained pitch black.
“Wow, that’s almost entirely useless.” Ghanima smiled. “Here we go.”
As the Halcyon nosed out of the lee of the first peak, a sudden blast shoved them straight up several yards. Ghanima gripped the sticks tighter but managed a casual shrug. “It’s just an updraft. No worries.”
Taziri grimaced at the darkness. What happened to getting home in one piece? Why the hell am I letting her do this?
A few minutes later, the vicious drag of the high altitude winds grabbed the airship and they began to slide to port. Ghanima compensated. “It’s like sailing. You have to position the gas bag like a sail and force the wind to slide off and to the rear. It’s not efficient, but you can stay on course.”
“Huh.” Taziri swallowed. “A sailing airship? Isoke had some ideas like that. But the things she sketched up didn’t look like any sailboat.”
As the wind grew fiercer and whistled louder through the cracks in the hull, the Halcyon began sliding sideways even faster. They were still moving forward, but they were also gliding steadily to port. Taziri squinted into the distance on her left, wondering if the darkness concealed a mountain or just more empty night sky. Ghanima nudged the throttle up.
“Mountain.” Taziri pointed at the window. “Twenty points to port.”
“I see it.” The clouds parted enough to allow the starlight to play gently over the rough edges of rock wall to their left. It stood higher than they were flying, but it ended abruptly just a few hundred yards ahead. Ghanima pushed the throttle to full. “We’ll pass in front of it.”
And they did, barely. Ghanima kept her eyes on the eerie sea of cloud and shadow and the rocky islands rising sharply around them. Thunder rolled overhead like a thousand drums softly tuning up. “Weather?”
“Sounds like.”
“Anything I need to know? Anything special about this boat of yours?”
“Nope.” Taziri tapped at one of her waving needles. “We’ve never had any trouble in a storm before. A little rain isn’t going to-”
A sudden flash of lightning painted the Atlas Mountains in perfect black and blinding white, burning the landscape into the aviators’ eyes long after the charge vanished. An instant later, a deafening thundercrack shook the Halcyon.
“Whaa!” The doctor sat up sharply, clutching his chest. “Where? What?”
“It’s all right.” Ghanima glanced back at him. “Just a storm. Go back to sleep. We’ll be there in a little while.”
Evander nodded and lay back down, mumbling in Hellan.
Ghanima nudged Taziri with her elbow. “What about lightning?”
She shrugged. “Shouldn’t be a problem.” She froze. Oh no. How could I be so stupid?
“What is it?”
“Nothing.” Taziri blinked. “It’s nothing. Probably nothing. Almost definitely nothing.”
The cabin lights went dark.
Taziri swallowed loudly. “Uhm.” The cabin lights came back on. She exhaled. “See? Nothing to worry about.”
“What just happened to the lights?”
