like a regatta taking sail. From a muddle of grays, their dress took on brighter and brighter hues as they approached. The man wore blue and silver from his tricorn hat to his laced boots and woman was checkered in violet and pink from headdress to corset to bustle and skirts. Each of them carried a single small bag in one hand.
Taziri tapped on the glass to get the major’s attention, but the other Mazigh officers were too far away, still circling the hangar. Pulling on her gloves, she shouldered through the door and jogged across the lane to catch them. “Major! They’re here. Two of them, anyway. Kenan, get the engine running, please.”
The lieutenant snapped a quick salute with a grin and jogged into the hangar. Major Syfax Zidane frowned down at her. He was a huge slab of a man under his heavy orange coat, with a thick neck rising to a bullet-shaped head that he kept shaved. His eyes were always half-lidded, sometimes out of boredom and sometimes with squinting. His deep voice spilled out words with a slow and lazy cadence, ranging from rather bored to mildly threatening. She’d heard him laugh a few times, but it wasn’t much of an improvement. Syfax thumbed his nose and sniffed. “It’s about time.”
“Are you going to pat them down for weapons?” Taziri smiled as she led him back toward the gate.
“Out here? Hell no. I’ll do it when we’re in the air. If they’re carrying anything, I’ll drop them in the Middle Sea and let the sharks sort them out,” said Syfax. “Are we going to be okay in this snow?”
“I think so, as long as it doesn’t pick up much more.” Taziri glanced back at the office. “The local weather service wasn’t very helpful.”
“Oh yeah? What’d those jabber-jaws say?”
Taziri mimicked the Italian accent, “Maybe it snows more, maybe not.”
He grinned a little. “So who are we picking up this time?”
Taziri pulled the slip of paper from her pocket. Her scrawled notes were almost illegible. “A political advisor visiting the queen, a tourist from Eran, and a chemist of some sort.”
They reached the lane in time to meet the gaudily dressed passengers. The man tugged his scarf down and Taziri was amused to see that he was wearing a white mask painted in blue and silver flowers to match his costume. The woman wore a similarly painted mask with bright red lips and black-rimmed eyes. She inclined her head and spoke in an oddly accented Espani, “Good morning. I’m Shahera Zahd, pleased to meet you. I apologize for our dress, but my companion has a flair for the dramatic. Unfortunately, our carriage was unable to come down this icy hill and we were forced to walk, and well, I should probably stop talking so we can get out of the cold, yes?”
Taziri nodded. “Absolutely. I’m Captain Taziri Ohana and this is Major Syfax Zidane. If you’ll follow us, please.” She hustled back down the lane toward the front of the hangar.
“I’m very much looking forward to this journey, captain.” The man in blue had a rather high voice and quick step. “I’ve long admired the airships of Marrakesh. This will be my first voyage on one.”
Taziri smiled into her scarf. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, sir, but the Halcyon II is not an airship.”
“It’s not?” The man quickened his step to walk beside her. “Then what is it?”
They rounded the corner and stepped into the dark cavern of the hangar. Mazigh engineers had come from the south to build the massive structure over fifty years ago to receive the new airships from Marrakesh, but now it appeared completely empty except for the distant rumbling of an engine.
The machine that rolled out of the shadows was not an airship. If anything, it resembled an airship gondola with long metal wings. A single propeller spun in a blur on the machine’s nose, and its wheels were hidden beneath two long pontoons on struts. Taziri tugged her scarf away from her mouth and said, “It’s something new. For the moment, we’re calling it an aeroplane. If you’ll follow me.”
She led the two gawkers around the edge of the wing and into the tall door in the fuselage. She pointed the passengers to the upholstered seats and Syfax grudgingly helped them stow their bags in the rear compartment. Inside, the noise of the engine was a roaring drone that forced all conversations to take place in shouts and hollers. As Taziri slipped into her seat in the cockpit, Kenan hopped up and ran back to check on their passengers’ safety harnesses and to double-check that Syfax had stowed the bags properly. He gave her the thumbs up.
“All right,” she said over the engine. “Run out and take a look around for our third passenger. I don’t like the look of those clouds out there and I want to be above them before they get much closer.”
“Yes, ma’am!” Kenan snapped a little salute and hurried out the hatch and across the hangar floor, and then disappeared around the corner outside.
Taziri busied herself with preflight checks. The plane’s cockpit was twice as complex as the one Major Isoke Geroubi had designed for the first Halcyon over six years ago, and the new dials and gauges and meters spread across the console like children at a party, each one waving excitedly and demanding attention. As she ran down the checklist, Taziri let her gaze wander over to corner of the window where she had fixed the little portrait of Yuba holding their daughter Menna, both smiling for once. These days the portrait was more comforting than the homecomings. Yuba had grown brusque and formal when she walked into the house, and Menna stayed close to her daddy’s chair, always wanting him to play with her or to read to her or to put her to bed. Never her. Never mommy.
It’s just a phase, Isoke had told her. She’ll grow out of it.
Maybe. Hopefully.
Taziri set her clipboard aside and rested her eyes for a moment as she walked through the takeoff sequence in her mind. There was a dip in the field on the right side that the Italians never seemed to remember to fill, no matter how many times she reminded them. And then the swift climb above the city, and then over the water. The snow glare will be worse than usual. Mustn’t look at the ground. And the glare on those clouds won’t be much better. The tinted glass on the goggles should help with that, even if I can’t see the sun through that mess.
The sound of a gunshot snapped her eyes open and she spun to say something to Syfax, but the major was already out of his seat and sprinting toward the door of the hangar. Just as he reached the entrance, Kenan raced into view with a second man close behind them. Syfax shoved them both back toward the plane and Taziri watched them dash around the wing and leap inside the cabin behind her.
“What’s happening?” she yelled over her shoulder.
Kenan dropped into his seat beside her. “Four men with rifles. Shooting at him.” The lieutenant indicated the new passenger, a young man with a long nose and deep-set eyes gasping for breath in the rearmost seat.
“What’s the major doing?” she asked.
Kenan shrugged and pointed at the hangar doors. She turned and saw Syfax standing just inside the wall with his thick hunting knife in his hand. Suddenly a man with a rifle jogged into view and Syfax lunged out of the shadows to grab his head. The man struggled for a moment and then the major dropped him to the floor.
“Damn it, Syfax.” Taziri released the brake and shoved the throttle forward.
“What’s happening?” shouted the masked woman in the cabin.
Taziri ignored her and thumped Kenan on the arm. “Get ready. We’re going straight out and up, got it?”
“What about the major?” the young man asked.
“Get back to the door and yell at him to get onboard.” Taziri aimed for the edge of the hangar entrance as the plane accelerated across the smooth hangar floor.
Kenan hesitated, nodded, and slowly stumbled back through the shaking cabin to the hatch where he wound his hand around the safety straps on the wall. Taziri watched him in the little mirror she had just above her head so she could keep an eye on her passengers. She tried to imagine her co-pilot giving actual orders to the man who used to be his commanding officer, and she grinned, if only for a second.
Poor kid had a rough road to the Air Corps. Having his old boss tagging along on half our flights probably isn’t helping.
The plane roared faster and faster toward the doors and the bright white glare of the snow-covered airfield beyond them. Dimly, she heard Kenan yelling out the door but she kept her eyes on the major as he caught a second man with a rifle and pummeled him in the face until he fell to the floor. Taziri hoped the man was only unconscious.
Syfax looked up at the plane, took one last glance around the corner of the door, and then bolted toward the open hatch and Kenan’s outstretched hand. The huge man leapt onto the pontoon and grabbed the edge of the doorway as a third man in black rounded the corner of the hangar and took aim with his rifle. Syfax climbed inside and the bullwhip crack of the gunshot echoed across the empty hangar as the plane shot out across the snowy field.
