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“I love it — and I’m terrified by it at the same time. I’m afraid I’m going to kill us all; but the pilot or another Trivigaunti might do so intentionally, and I certainly won’t. But…” His voice trailed away.
“Even if we had a pilot we could trust, you’d want to.”
He cleared his throat. “We do have a pilot we can trust — me. I’m not very experienced as yet, but there must have been a time when that woman wasn’t either.”
Chenille sat down next to Hyacinth. “You poke her glims?”
Hyacinth nodded. “She was going to shoot us, Chen.”
“No shoot!” Oreb sailed into the cockpit.
“Right,” Hyacinth told him. “That’s what I thought, but we had shooting anyway when Auk’s culls fought it out with the troopers watching the general.”
“Only Patera’s still sort of bothered by what you did to her. I can tell.”
Silk glanced at Chenille. “Am I so transparent as that?”
“Sure.” She gri
“I don’t know,” Silk admitted. “I would hope so.” From his shoulder, Oreb eyed him quizzically.
“You think I’m rough because I’m big, and you think those dells from Trivigaunte are because they don’t wear makeup, and they had needlers and slug guns. I never had to fight a lot at Orchid’s because I was the longest dell there. You know where Hyacinth comes on me?”
“I believe I do, yes.”
“Without those heels she always wears, the top of her head doesn’t even hit my shoulder. She’s beautiful, too, like you always say. The whole time she lived there, she was the best-looking dell Orchid had, and Orchid would tell you so herself. You know who looks the most like Hy now? It’s Poppy, and Poppy looks like Hy about as much as a sham card looks like a lily one. You know how that is? They look the same till you look hard, but when you do you know it’s not even close. The gold in the sham one looks brassy, and it feels greasy. You look at Hy, at her eyes and nose. Look at her chin. Just look! The first couple weeks I knew her I couldn’t see her chin without feeling like a toad in the road.” The huskiness that affects women’s voices when they speak of matters of genuine importance entered Chenille’s. “Poppy’s cute, Patera. Hy’s real gold.”
“I know.”
“So just about everybody hated her.” Chenille coughed. “I nearly did myself. The second or third day—”
“Second,” Hyacinth interjected.
“She came to the big room with a mouse under both eyes. Orchid threw a fit. But you know what?”
Silk shook his head; Hyacinth said, “That’s plenty, Chen,” and he swiveled his seat to face Chenille. “Please tell me. I promise you that I won’t hold it against her, whatever it is.”
“No talk,” Oreb croaked.
“I was going to tell you what happened next, but I’ll skip it. She doesn’t want me to, and she’s probably right. Only she learned fast. She had to, or she’d of been killed. A couple days after that I saw a dell shove her, and Hy tripped her and wrapped her with a chair. A lot of the other dells saw it too, and they left her alone. Are you wanting to ask something?”
Silk said, “No.”
“I kind of thought you were, that you were about to ask me if Hy and I ever got into it.”
Hyacinth shook her head.
“If I could’ve worn her clothes, maybe we would. Or if she could’ve worn mine. We weren’t a knot, either, I’d be lying if I said we were. For one thing, she wasn’t there long enough. I didn’t like her a whole lot, even, but there were things I liked about her. I told you one time.”
Auk said, “Sitting in that thing they got for the grapes back at your manteion, Patera. I was there.”
Silk nodded. “Yes, I remember. I could tell you what you said, Chenille, almost word for word — not because my memory’s remarkable, but because Hyacinth is so important to me.”
He turned away to scan the instrument panel and the cloud-smeared sky, then turned to Auk. “As a favor, would you please bring Sciathan?”
“Sure.” Auk rose. “Only I got to talk to you about those engines, see? I need you to tell me what you did to ’em, and if we’re going to lose any more.”
“I’ll get him,” Hyacinth said, and left the cockpit before Silk could stop her.
Chenille leaned nearer Silk. “She thinks you ought to be proud of her. I do too.”
He nodded.
“Only you’re not, and it hurts. The first time you saw her she had a azoth, and you had to jump out the window to get away. Isn’t that right? Moly told me.”
“It was terrifying,” Silk admitted. Although he was not perspiring, he wiped his face with the hem of his robe. “The azoth cut through a stone windowsill. I don’t believe I will ever forget it.”
Auk said, “You think she was just some village chit after that, Patera?”
“No. No, I didn’t. I knew exactly what she was.”
He was silent then until Sciathan came into the cockpit and bowed, saying, “Do you desire to speak to me, Calde Silk?”
“Yes. Have you flown an airship like this one?”
“Never. I have flown with my wings many times, but we crew have nothing like this save the Whorl itself, and that is flown by Mainframe, not by us.”
“I understand. Just the same, you know a great deal about updrafts and downdrafts and storms; more than I’ll ever learn. I’ve been flying this airship since a gust dispatched for our benefit by Molpe — or the Outsider, as I prefer to believe — returned us to the air. Now I want to leave the controls for a while. Will you take my place? I’d be extremely grateful.”
The Flier nodded eagerly. “Oh, yes! Thank you, Calde Silk. Thank you very much!”
“Then sit here.” Silk left his seat, and Sciathan slid into it. “There are no reins, nor is there a wheel one turns, as there is in a floater. One steers with the engines. Do you understand?”
Sciathan nodded, and Auk cleared his throat.
“A west wind is carrying us toward Mainframe. We could fly faster, but it may be wise to conserve fuel. These dials give the speeds of all eight engines; as you see, four are no longer operating.”
As quickly as he could, Silk outlined what he had learned of the functions of the levers and knobs on the panel; as soon as the Flier seemed to comprehend, Silk turned to Auk. “You wanted to know what I did to the engines. I did very little. I climbed up there into the cloth-covered body.”
Auk said, “Sure. I knew you must of.”
“Most of the space — it’s enormous — is occupied by rows of huge balloons. There are bamboo walkways and wooden beams.”
“I been on some.”
“Yes, of course; you’d have had to in the fighting. What I was going to say is that there are tanks and hoses, too. I’d found a clamp, a simple one such as a carpenter might use.”
Silk paused to glance at the bird on his shoulder. “It was then that Oreb joined me; I’d just picked it up. Anyway I put it on a hose, I suppose a fuel hose, and screwed it closed as tightly as I could. I doubt that it stopped the flow entirely, but it must have reduced it very considerably. It shouldn’t be hard to find when you know what to look for.”
Auk rubbed his chin. “Don’t sound like it.”
“For my conscience’s sake, I should tell you that I lied to Major Hadale — or anyway, I came very close to lying. She asked whether I could repair the engines; and I said, quite honestly I believe, that I could not. One speaks of repairs when a thing is broken. To the best of my knowledge, the engines we’ve lost aren’t; but if they were, I wouldn’t have the faintest notion how they might be repaired — thus I told her truthfully that repairing them was beyond my power. It was not a lie, though I certainly intended it to deceive her. If I’d said I might be able to set them in motion again, she would have had me beaten, I imagine, to compel me to do it.”