out of here, the better. 'I think you'd be foolish to give up your caste. The Lady granted you an exalted rebirth for a reason, and it would be sinful to treat it lightly.'
He fell silent, and she slipped on the armature and reached for her buckles.
'Do you like being an icarus?'
'Yes, exalted.' She tightened the straps. The cut on her shoulder was going to hurt on the way back up, but she was eager to leave. 'I wouldn't want to be anything else.'
'Then it would be foolish of the Council to take away your wings at the whim of an angry exalted. The city barely has enough icarii as it is. If you understood how valuable you were to Ondinium, you wouldn't be so intimidated by authority.'
She didn't answer, busy with her armature.
'I have to adjust this outside,' she said after a moment, sliding her arms into the wings long enough to lock them into tight-rest, which pressed them close to her body. She lost no time in escaping the small, noisy shop but, to her dismay, Cristof followed.
Outside, the light from the gas streetlamps washed the narrow street in black and white. Taya unlocked her wings and spread them out, testing the joints and tilt, making sure the feathers closed and opened correctly. Everything seemed to function.
'Go straight back to your eyrie until you can get your shoulder tended,' Cristof directed.
'I will.' His peremptory tone was grating, especially after he'd made such a fuss over icarii being equal to exalteds. She had to bite back the urge to point out his hypocrisy. 'I—'
The clocks in his shop began to chime, a hundred different bells ringing at the same moment.
A loud explosion ripped through the air and the ground trembled.
Taya whipped around and saw flames rising in the distance. She took a step forward.
'Don't!' Cristof snapped.
'They'll need—'
'Others will attend to it.' Cristof grasped her arm. 'Your armature is damaged and you've been hurt. You'll only be a danger to yourself and the rescue crew.'
Taya laughed humorlessly and pulled away from him.
'Sorry, exalted. Equal to equal, I've got a job to do, and I don't have time to argue with you about it.'
He cursed as she ran down the street and lifted her wings to catch the wind.
Chapter Four
he cook at Taya's eyrie brewed tea out of the bitterest black leaves ever exported from Cabiel. Normally the drink was enough to give the twenty or so icarii who lived at the boarding house the jolt they needed to face the day, but this morning Taya yawned over her cup and wondered if she could get away with going back to bed for a few more hours. Her muscles ached, her cuts throbbed, and her wings were in the smith's shop, being repaired.
'Hey, Taya!' Pyke burst in, waving a newspaper. 'You're awake!'
'Barely.' She grimaced as he sat next to her and spread out the pages of
The Watchman
The ink smelled fresh, and Pyke's fingers were smeared with black as he stabbed at the headline that blazed across the front page.
TERRORISM!
Torn Cards Attack Wireferry, Refinery
Night of Horror!
Taya frowned and skipped down the stack of headers to the story.
'You're in there,' Pyke said, pointing. 'Both of us get a mention, but you're the hero, see?'
'I don't remember seeing any reporters there.' She read further, then gasped. 'Look! They quoted me! I never said that!'
Pyke laughed and read the paragraph aloud.
''I was only doing my duty,’ the modest icarus said. ‘I'm grateful that Lady Octavus and her son are safe and that I was given this chance to serve my city.’ Like you wouldn't have said that if they'd asked.'
'I don't think Taya would have used that ‘serve my city’ line,' Cassilta said, breezing in and dropping into a chair at their table. 'It sounds so fake.'
'It's all fake,' Taya protested. 'The only person I talked to was Lieutenant Amcathra, and that was just to give him my statement.'
'Well, that's the glory of having a free press.' Cassi grinned at her. 'It's free to make up anything it wants.'
'You should be flattered,' Pyke grumbled. 'Nobody faked an interview with me.'
'You were just as important,' Taya assured him. Without his help, both she and Viera Octavus would have died, or at least been crippled on impact. But only another icarus was likely to realize that.
'I'd love to hear what you'd tell the papers, Pyke.' Cassilta pried the cup of tea from Taya's hand and took a sip. 'Ick, it's cold. Stay there. I'll get us fresh cups.'
'Believe me, I'm not going anywhere.'
'Late night at the wedding?' Pyke leaned back in his chair.
'Not really. But—'
'Don't talk about the wedding until I'm back!' Cassilta shouted across the dining room, balancing three cups in her hands. She wove back through the tables and rejoined them. 'Okay. How was it?'
Taya began to tell them about the ceremony. After a few minutes Pyke returned to his paper, leaving the discussion of food and dresses and babies to the two women. She didn't mention that she'd nearly been mugged. She didn't want to hear their lectures about walking alone through Tertius at night.
'Hey, Taya, did you see the fire last night?' Pyke interrupted, peering over the paper. 'It wasn't far from your old neighborhood.'
'I saw it.' Taya took a sip of the stomach-dissolving tea to collect her thoughts. 'I flew over in case I was needed, but they got everything under control pretty fast.' She'd lingered long enough to report the icarus-hunters to the lictors. They'd promised to look for the three men as soon as they had a chance.
'
The Watchman says the stripes think it was a bomb. Apparently they're suspicious because the refinery blew up right at the stroke of eleven.'
'Yes, it did.' Taya remembered the clocks ringing the hour in Cristof's shop. 'Did they find any bomb parts?'
'Not by the time the paper went to press.' Pyke turned a page. 'I'll pick up a copy of the
Evening Dispatch tonight. Maybe they'll know more by then.'
Taya looked at the ink stains on his fingers and remembered Cristof's fingers. She'd thought the repairman's dirty hands had meant he didn't care about cleanliness, but his workshop had been neat, and he'd been annoyed by the mess her bloody hands had made.
And he'd washed his hands as soon as he'd left the room.
So, why had they been dirty in the first place?
