Windhaven

II One-Wing

The oddest thing about dying was how easy it was, how calm and beautiful.

The still air had come upon Maris without warning. An instant before, the storm had raged all around her. Rain stung her eyes and ran down her cheeks and ting’d against the silver metal of her wings, and the winds were full of tumult, pushing her this way and that, slapping her contemptuously from side to side as if she were a child new to the air. Beneath the wing struts, her arms ached from the struggle. Dark clouds obscured the horizon, while the sea below was frothing and troubled; land was nowhere in sight. Maris cursed and hurt and flew.

Then peace enveloped her, and calm, and death.

The winds quieted and the rains stopped. The sea ceased its wild heaving. The clouds themselves seemed to draw back, until they were infinitely far away. A silence fell, an eerie hush, as if time had paused to catch its breath.

In the still air, with her bright wings spread wide, Maris began to descend.

It was a slow, gradual descent, a thing of beauty, graceful and inevitable. Without a breeze to push or lift, she could only glide forward and down. It was not a fall. It seemed to last forever. Far ahead she could see the spot where she would hit the water.

Briefly her flyer’s instincts bid her struggle. She banked this way and that, tried to tack, searched vainly for an updraft or a current in the quiet sky. Her wings, twenty feet across, lifted and fell, and a sudden shaft of wan sunlight gleamed on the silver metal. But her descent continued.

Then she was calm, as calm as the air, her inner turmoil as still as the sea below. She felt the deep peace of surrender, the relief of ending her long battle with the winds. She had always been at their mercy, she thought, never truly in control. They were wild and she was weak, and she was foolish to have dreamed otherwise. She looked up, wondering if she would see the ghost flyers who were said to haunt still air.

The tips of her boots brushed the water first, and then her body shattered the gray, smooth mirror of the ocean. The impact of the cold water seared her like a flame, and she sank…

… and woke, wet and gasping for breath.

Silence pounded in her ears. The sweat on her body dried in the cool air, and she sat up, disoriented and blind. Across the room she could see a thin red line of banked coals, but they were at the wrong side of the bed to be the Eyrie, and too far away for her fireplace at home. The air smelled faintly of damp and sea mold.

The smell gave it away. She was at the academy, she thought with relief, at Woodwings; suddenly all the shadows resolved themselves into the mundane and familiar. The tension drained slowly from her body, and now Maris was fully awake. Pulling a roughly woven shift over her head, she moved carefully across the dark room to the fireplace, where she took a woven taper from the pile and lit a sand candle.

In the light she saw the little stone jug beside her low bed, and smiled. Just the thing to wash away the nightmares.

She sat cross-legged on the bed as she sipped the cool, woody wine, staring at the flickering candle flame all the while. The dream disturbed her. Like all flyers, Maris feared still air, but until now she had not had nightmares about it. And the peace of it all, the sense of surrender and acceptance—those were the worst parts. I am a flyer, she thought, and that was not a true flyer’s dream.

Someone knocked on her door.

“Enter,” Maris said, setting the wine jug aside.

S’Rella stood in the doorway, a slight, dark girl with her hair cropped short in the Southern fashion. “Breakfast soon, Maris,” she said, the slight slurring of her speech reflecting her origins. “Sena wants to see you before, though. Up in her room.”

“Thanks,” Maris said, smiling. She liked S’Rella, perhaps best of all the students at the Woodwings academy. The island in the Southern Archipelago where S’Rella had been born was a world away from Maris’ own Lesser Amberly, but despite their differences Maris saw a lot of herself in the younger girl. S’Rella was small but determined, with a stamina that belied her size. At the moment she was still graceless in the sky, but she was stubborn enough to give hope of quick improvement. Maris had been working with Sena’s flock of would-be flyers for nearly ten days now, and she had come to regard S’Rella as one of the three or four most promising.

“Shall I wait and show you the way?” the girl asked when Maris climbed off the bed to wash at the basin of water in the far corner of the room.

“No,” Maris said. “Off to breakfast now. I can find Sena well enough myself.” She smiled to soften the dismissal, and S’Rella smiled back, a little shyly, before she left.

A few minutes later Maris was having second thoughts as she groped along a narrow, dank corridor in search of Sena’s cubbyhole. Woodwings academy was an ancient structure, a huge rock shot through with tunnels and caves, some natural, others hollowed out by human hands. Its lower chambers were perpetually flooded, and even in the upper, inhabited portions, many of the rooms and all of the halls were windowless, cut off from sun and stars. The sea smell was everywhere. In the old days it had been a fortress, built during Seatooth’s bitter revolt against Big Shotan and afterward unoccupied until the Landsman of Seatooth had offered it to the flyers as a site for a training academy. In the seven years since, Sena and her charges had restored much of it, but it was still easy to take a wrong turning and get lost in the abandoned sections.

Time passed without a trace in the corridors of Wood-wings. Torches burned down in wall-sockets and lamps ran short of oil, and days often passed before anyone noticed. Maris felt her way carefully along one such dark stretch of corridor, nervous and a bit oppressed by the weight of the old fortress on her. She did not like being underground and enclosed; it quarreled with all her flyer’s instincts.

With relief Maris saw the dim glow of a light ahead. One last, sharp corner and she found herself back in familiar territory. Unless she had gotten turned around completely, Sena’s room was the first to the left.

“Maris.” Sena looked up and smiled. She was sitting in a wicker chair, carving a soft block of wood with a bone knife, but now she set it aside and motioned Maris to enter. “I was about to call for S’Rella again and send her looking for you. Did you get lost in our maze?”

“Almost,” Maris said, shaking her head. “I should have thought to carry a light. I can get from my room to the kitchen or the common room or the outside, but beyond that it is a less certain proposition.”

Sena laughed, but it was only polite laughter, masking a mood that was far from light. The teacher was a former flyer, three times Maris’ age, made land-bound a decade ago in the sort of accident all too common among flyers. Normally her vigor and enthusiasm cloaked her age, but this morning she looked old and tired. Her bad eye, like a piece of milky sea-glass, seemed to weigh down the left side of her face. It sagged and trembled beneath its burden.

“You sent S’Rella to me for a reason,” Maris said. “News?”

“News,” Sena said, “and not good. I thought it best not to talk about it at breakfast until I had discussed it with you.”

“Yes?”

“Eastern has closed Airhome,” Sena said.

Maris sighed and leaned back in her chair. Suddenly she too felt weary. The news was no great surprise, but it was still disheartening. “Why now?” she asked. “I spoke to Nord three months ago, when they sent me out with a message to Far Hunderlin. He thought they would keep the doors open at least through the next competition. He even told me that he had several promising students.”

“There was a death,” Sena said. “One of those promising students made a misjudgment, and struck a cliffside with her wing. Nord could only watch helplessly as she fell to the rocks below. Worse, her parents were there too. Wealthy, powerful people—traders from Cheslin with more than a dozen ships. The girl had been showing off for them. The parents went to the Landsman, of course, asking for justice. They said Nord was negligent.”

“Was he?” Maris said.

Sena shrugged. “He was a mediocre flyer even when he had his wings, and I cannot believe he was better than that as a teacher. Always too eager to impress. And he constantly overpraised and overestimated his students. Last year, in the competition, he sponsored nine in challenges. They all failed, and most had no business trying. I sponsored only three. This girl that died, I’m told, had been at Airhome only a year. A year, Maris! She had talent perhaps, but it was like Nord to let her go too far too soon. Well, it is too late now. You know the academies have been a drain, a useless drain to hear some Landsmen talk. All they needed was an excuse. They dismissed Nord and closed the school. End. And all the children of Eastern can give up their dreams now, and content themselves with their lot in life.” Her voice was bitter.

“Then we are the last,” Maris said glumly.

“We are the last,” Sena echoed. “And for how long? The Landsman sent a runner to me last night, and I hobbled up to get this joyous news, and afterward we talked. She is not happy with us, Maris. She says that she has given us meat and hearth and iron coin for seven years, but we have given her no flyer in return. She is impatient.”

“So I gather,” Maris said. She knew the Landsman of Seatooth only by reputation, but that was enough. Seatooth lay close by Big Shotan but had a long, fierce history of independence. Its present ruler was a proud, ambitious woman who was deeply resentful that her island had never had a flyer of its own. She had campaigned hard to make Seatooth the home of the training academy for the Western Archipelago, and once she had been lavish in her support. But now she expected results. “She doesn’t understand,” Maris said. “None of the land-bound understand, really. The Woodwingers come to the competitions almost raw, to vie with seasoned flyers and flyer-children who have been bred and reared to wings. If only they would give you time …” I

“Time, time, time,” said Sena, a hint of anger in her voice. “Yes, I said as much to the Landsman. She said that seven years was enough time. You, Maris, you are a flyer. I was a flyer once. We know the difficulties, the need for training year after year, for practice until your arms tremble with the effort and your palms come away bloody from the wing grips. The land-bound know none of that. Too many of them thought the fight was over seven years ago. They thought that next week the sky would be full of fisherfolk and cobblers and glassblowers, and they were dismayed when the first competition came and went and the flyers and flyer-children defeated all land-bound challengers.

“At least then they cared. Now they are only resigned, I fear. In the seven years since your great Council, the seven years of the academies, only once has a land-bound taken wings. And he lost them back again a year later, at the very next competition. These days I think the island folk come to the meets only to see flyer siblings compete for the family wings. The challenges from my Woodwingers are talked about as a kind of a comic interlude, a brief performance by some jesters to lighten up the moments between the serious races.”

“Sena, Sena,” Maris said with concern. The older woman had poured all of the passion of her own broken life into the dreams of the young people who came to Woodwings asking for the sky. Now she was clearly upset, her voice trembling despite herself. “I understand your distress,” Maris said, taking Sena’s hand, “but it isn’t as bad as you say.”

Sena’s good eye regarded Maris skeptically, and she pulled her hand away. “It is,” she insisted. “Of course they don’t tell you. No one wants to bring bad news, and they all know what the academies mean to you. But it’s true.” Maris tried to interrupt, but Sena waved her quiet. “No, enough, and not another word about my distress. I did not call you here to comfort me, or to make us late for breakfast. I wanted to tell you the news privately, before I told the others. And I wanted to ask you to fly to Big Shotan for me.”

“Today?”

“Yes,” Sena said. “You have been doing good work with the children. It is a real benefit to them to have an actual flyer in their midst. But we can spare you for one day. It should only take a few hours.”

“Certainly,” Maris said. “What is this about?”

“The flyer who brought the news about Airhome to the Landsman also brought another message. A private message for me. One of Nord’s students wishes to continue his studies here, and hopes that I will sponsor him in the next competition. He asks for permission to travel here.”

“Here?” Maris said, incredulous. “From Eastern? Without wings?”

“He has word of a trader bold enough to try the open seas, I am told,” Sena said. “The voyage is hazardous, to be sure, but if he is willing to make it I will not begrudge him admission. Take my agreement to the Landsman of Big Shotan, if you would. He sends three flyers to Eastern every month, and one is due to leave on the morrow. Speed is important. The ships will take a month getting here even if the winds are kind, and the competition is only two months away.”

“I could take the message direct to Eastern myself,” Maris suggested.

“No,” said Sena. “We need you here. Simply relay my word to Big Shotan and then return to fly guard on my clumsy young birds.” She rose unsteadily from her wicker chair, and Maris stood up quickly to help her. “And now we should see about breakfast,” Sena continued. “You need to eat before your flight, and with all the time we have spent talking, I fear the others have probably eaten our share.”

But breakfast was still waiting when they reached the common room. Two blazing hearths kept the large hall warm and bright in the damp morning. Gently curving walls of stone rose to become an arched and blackened ceiling. The furniture was rough and sparse: three long wooden tables with benches running the length of each side. The benches were crowded with students now, talking and joking and laughing, most at least half finished with their meals. Nearly twenty would-be flyers were currently in residence, ranging in age from a woman only two years younger than Maris to a boy just shy of ten.

The hall quieted only a little when Maris and Sena entered, and Sena had to shout to be heard above the din and clatter. But after she had finished speaking, it was very quiet indeed.

Maris accepted a chunk of black bread and a bowl of porridge and honey from Kerr, a chubby youth who was taking his turn as cook today, and found a place on one of the benches. As she ate, she conversed politely with the students on either side of her, but she could sense that neither had her heart in it, and after a short time both of them excused themselves and left. Maris could not blame them. She remembered how she had felt, years earlier, when her own dream of being a flyer had been imperiled, as their dreams were imperiled now. Airhome was not the first academy to shut its doors. The desolate island-continent of Artellia had given up first, after three years of failure, and the academies in the Southern Archipelago and the Outer Islands had followed it into oblivion. Eastern’s Airhome was the fourth closing, leaving only Woodwings. No wonder the students were sullen.

Maris mopped her plate with the last of the bread, swallowed it, and pushed back from the table. “Sena, I will not be back until tomorrow morning,” she said as she rose. “I’m going to fly to the Eyrie after Big Shotan.”

Sena looked up from her own plate and nodded. “Very well. I plan to let Leya and Kurt try the air today. The rest will exercise. Be back as early as you can.” She returned to her food.

Maris sensed someone behind her, and turned to see S’Rella. “May I help you with your wings, Maris?”

“Of course you may. Thank you.”

The girl smiled. They walked together down the short corridor to the little room where the wings were kept. Three pair of wings hung on the wall now; Maris’ own and two owned by the academy, dying bequests from flyers who had left no heirs. It was hardly surprising that the Woodwingers fared so poorly in competition, Maris thought bitterly as she contemplated the wings. A flyer sends his child into the sky almost daily during the years of training, but at the academies—with so many students and so few wings—practice time was not so easily come by. There was only so much you could learn on the ground.

She pushed the thought away and lifted her wings from the rack. They made a compact package, the struts folded neatly back on themselves, the tissue-metal hanging limply between and drooping toward the floor like a silver cape. S’Rella held them up easily with one hand while Maris partially unfolded them, checking each strut and joint carefully with fingers and eyes for any wear or defect that might become evident, too late, as a danger in the air.

“It’s bad about them closing Airhome,” S’Rella said as Maris worked. “It happened just the same way in Southern, you know. That was why I had to come here, to Woodwings. Our own school was closed.”

Maris paused and looked at her. She had almost forgotten that the shy Southern girl had been a victim of a previous closing. “One of the students from Airhome is coming here, as you did,” Maris said. “So you won’t be alone among the savage Westerners anymore.” She smiled.

“Do you miss your home?” S’Rella asked suddenly.

Maris thought a moment. “Truthfully, I don’t know that I really have a home,” she said. “Wherever I am is my home.”

S’Rella digested that calmly. “I suppose that’s a good way to feel, if you’re a flyer. Do most flyers feel that way?”

“Maybe a little bit,” Maris said. She glanced back to her wings and set her hands to work again. “But not so much as me. Most flyers have more ties to their home islands than I do, though never so many as the land-bound. Could you help me stretch that taut? Thanks. No, I didn’t mean that particularly because I’m a flyer, but just because my old home is gone and I haven’t made a new one yet. My father—my stepfather, really—died three years ago. His wife died long before that, and my own natural parents are both dead as well. I have a stepbrother, Coll, but he’s been off adventuring and singing in the Outer Islands for a long time now. The little house on Lesser Amberly seemed awfully big and empty with Coll and Russ both gone. And since I had no one to go home to, I went there less and less. The island survives. The Landsman would like his third flyer to be in residence more often, no doubt, but he makes do with the two at hand.” She shrugged. “My friends are flyers, mostly.”

“I see.”

Maris looked at S’Rella, who was staring at the wing she still held with more concentration than it warranted. “You miss your home,” Maris said gently.

S’Rella nodded slowly. “It’s different here. The others are different from the people I knew.”

“A flyer has to get used to that,” Maris said.

“Yes. But there was someone I loved. We talked of marrying, but I knew we never would. I loved him—I still love him—but I wanted to be a flyer even more. You know.”

“I know,” Maris said, trying to be encouraging. “Perhaps, after you win your wings, he could—”

“No. He’ll never leave his land. He can’t. He’s a farmer, and his land has always been in his family. He—well, he never asked me to give up the idea of flying, and I never asked him to give up his land.”

“Flyers have married farmers before,” Maris said. “You could go back.”

“Not without wings,” S’Rella said fiercely. Her eyes met Maris’. “No matter how long it takes. And if—when—I win my wings, well, he’ll have married by then. He’s bound to. Farming isn’t a job for a single person. He’ll want a wife who loves the land, and a lot of children.”

Maris said nothing.

“Well, I have made my choice,” S’Rella said. “It’s just that sometimes I get… homesick. Lonely, maybe.”

“Yes,” Maris said. She put a hand on S’Rella’s shoulder. “Come, I have a message to deliver.”

S’Rella led the way. Maris slung her wings over a shoulder and followed down a dark passageway that led to a well-fortified exit. It opened on what had once been an observation platform, a wide stone ledge eighty feet above where the sea crested and broke against the rocks of Seatooth. The sky was gray and overcast, but the wild salt smell of the ocean and the strong, eager hands of the wind filled Maris with exhilaration.

S’Rella held the wings while Maris fastened the restraining straps around her body. When they were secure, S’Rella began to unfold them, strut by strut, locking each into place so the silver tissue pulled tight and strong. Maris waited patiently, aware of her role as teacher, although she was anxious to be off. Only when the wings were fully extended did she smile at S’Rella, slide her arms through the loops, and wrap her hands around the worn, familiar leather of the wing grips.

Then, with four quick steps, she was off.

For a second, or less than a second, she fell, but then the winds took her, thrumming against her wings, lifting her, turning her plunge into flight, and the feel of it was like a shock running through her, a shock that left her flushed and breathless and set her skin to tingling. That instant, that little space of less than a second, made it all worthwhile. It was better and more thrilling than any sensation Maris had ever known, better than love, better than everything. Alive and aloft, she joined the strong western wind in a lover’s embrace.

Big Shotan lay to the north, but for the moment Maris let the prevailing wind carry her, luxuriating in the fine freedom of an effortless soar before beginning her game with the winds, when she would have to tack and turn, test and tease them into taking her where she chose to go. A flight of rainbirds darted past her, each a different bright color, their haste an omen of a coming storm. Maris followed them, climbing higher and higher, rising until Seatooth was only a green and gray area off to her left, smaller than her hand. She could see Eggland as well, and off in the distance the fog banks that shrouded the southernmost coast of Big Shotan.

Maris began to circle, deliberately slowing her progress, aware of how easy it would be to overshoot her destination. Conflicting air currents whispered past her ears, taunting her with promises of a northbound gale somewhere above, and she rose again, seeking it in the colder air far above the sea. Now Big Shotan’s coast and Seatooth and Eggland were all spread out before her on the metallic gray ocean like toys on a table. She saw the tiny shapes of fishing boats bobbing in the harbors and bays of Shotan and Seatooth, and gulls and scavenger kites by the hundreds wheeling around the sharp crags of Eggland.

She had lied to S’Rella, Maris realized suddenly. She did have a home, and it was here, in the sky, with the wind strong and cold behind her and her wings on her back. The world below, with its worries about trade and politics and food and war and money, was alien to her, and even at the best of times she always felt a bit apart from it. She was a flyer, and like all flyers, she was less than whole when she took off her wings.

Smiling a small, secret smile, Maris went to deliver her message.

The Landsman of Big Shotan was a busy man, occupied by the endless task of ruling the oldest, richest, and most densely populated island on Windhaven. He was in conference when Maris arrived—some sort of fishing dispute with Little Shotan and Skulny—but he came out to see her. Flyers were the equals of the Landsmen, and it was dangerous even for one as powerful as he to slight them. He heard Sena’s message dispassionately, and promised that word would travel back to Eastern the next morning, on the wings of one of his flyers.

Maris left her wings on the wall of the conference room in the Old Captain’s House, as the Landsman’s ancient sprawling residence was named, and wandered into the streets of the city beyond. It was the only real city on Windhaven; oldest, largest, and first. Stormtown, it was called; the town the star sailors built. Maris found it endlessly fascinating. There were windmills everywhere, their great blades churning against the gray sky. There were more people here than on Lesser and Greater Amberly together. There were shops and stalls of a hundred different sorts, selling every useful good and worthless trinket imaginable.

She spent several hours in the market, browsing happily and listening to the talk, although she bought very little. Afterward she ate a light dinner of smoked moonfish and black bread, washed down with a mug of kivas, the hot spice wine that Shotan prided itself on. The inn where she took her meal had a singer and Maris listened to him politely enough, though she thought him much inferior to Coll and other singers she had known on Amberly.

It was close to dusk when she flew from Stormtown, in the wake of a brief squall that had washed the city streets with rain. She had good winds at her back all the way, and it had just turned dark when she reached the Eyrie.

It hulked out of the sea at her, black in the bright starlight, a weathered column of ancient stone whose sheer walls rose six hundred feet straight up from the foaming waters.

Maris saw lights within the windows. She circled once and came down skillfully in the landing pit, full of damp sand. Alone, it took her several minutes to remove and fold her wings. She hung them on a hook just inside the door.

A small fire was blazing in the hearth of the common room. In front of it, two flyers she knew only by sight were engrossed in a game of geechi, shoving the black and white pebbles around a board. One of them waved at her. She nodded in reply, but by then his glance had already gone back to his game.

There was one other present, slumped in an armchair near the fire with an earthenware mug in his hand, studying the flames. But he looked up when she entered. “Maris!” he said, rising suddenly and grinning. He set his mug aside and started across the room. “I hadn’t expected to see you here.”

“Dorrel,” she said, but then he was there, and he put his arms around her and they kissed, briefly but with intensity. One of the geechi players watched them in a distracted sort of way, but his gaze fell quickly when his opponent moved a stone.

“Did you fly all the way from Amberly?” Dorrel asked her. “You must be hungry. Sit by the fire and I’ll fetch you a snack. There’s cheese and smoked ham and some sort of fruitbread in the kitchen.”

Maris took his hand and squeezed it and led him back toward the fire, choosing two chairs well away from the geechi players. “I ate not too long ago,” she said, “but thanks. And I flew from Big Shotan, not Amberly. An easy flight. The winds are friendly tonight. I haven’t been to Amberly in almost a month, I’m afraid. The Landsman is going to be angry.”

Dorrel did not look too happy himself. His lean face wrinkled in a frown. “Flying? Or gone to Seatooth again?” He released her hand and found his mug once more, sipping from it carefully. Steam rose from within.

“Seatooth. Sena asked me to come spend some time with the students. I’ve been working with them for about ten days. Before that I was on a long mission, to Deeth in the Southern Archipelago.”

Dorrel set down his mug and sighed. “You don’t want to hear my opinion,” he said cheerfully, “but I’m going to tell it to you anyway. You spend too much time away from Amberly, working at the academy. Sena is teacher there, not you. She is paid good metal for doing what she does. I don’t see her pressing any iron into your palm.”

“I have enough iron,” Maris said. “Russ left me well-off. Sena’s lot is harder. And the Woodwingers need my help—they see precious few flyers on Seatooth.” Her voice became warmer, coaxing. “Why don’t you come spend a few days yourself? Laus would survive a week without you. We could share a room. I’d like to have you with me.”

“No.” His cheerful tone vanished abruptly, and he looked vaguely irritated. “I’d love to spend a week with you, Maris, in my cabin on Laus, or your home on Amberly, or even here in the Eyrie. But not at Woodwings. I’ve told you before: I won’t train a group of land-bounds to take the wings of my friends.”

His words wounded her. She pulled back in her chair and looked away from him, into the fire. “You sound like Corm, seven years ago,” she said.

“I don’t deserve that, Maris.”

She turned back to look at him. “Then why won’t you help? Why are you so contemptuous of the Wood-wingers? You sneer at them like the most tradition-bound old flyer—but seven years ago you were with me. You fought for this, believed in it with me. I could never have done it without you—they would have taken my wings and named me outlaw. You risked the same fate by helping me. What has changed you so?”

Dorrel shook his head violently. “I haven’t changed, Maris. Listen. Seven years ago, I fought for you. I didn’t care about those precious academies you dreamed up—I fought for your right to keep your wings and be a flyer. Because I loved you, Maris, and I would have done anything for you. And,” he went on, his tone a little cooler, “you were the best damn flyer I’d ever seen. It was a crime, madness, to give your wings to your brother and ground you. Now, don’t look at me like that. Of course the principle mattered to me, too.”

“Did it?” Maris asked. It was an old argument, but it still upset her.

“Of course it did. I wouldn’t fly in the face of all I believed just to please you. The system as it existed was unfair. The traditions had to be changed—you were right about that. I believed that then, and I believe it now.”

“You believe it,” Maris said bitterly. “You say that, but words are easy. You won’t do anything for your belief—you won’t help me now, although we’re on the verge of losing all we fought for.”

“We aren’t going to lose it. We won. We changed the rules—we changed the world.”

“But without the academies, what does that mean?”

“The academies! I didn’t fight for the academies. Changing bad tradition was what I fought for. I’ll agree that if a land-bound can outfly me, I must give him my wings. But I will not agree to teach him to outfly me. And that’s what you’re asking of me. You, of all people, should understand what it means to a flyer to lose the sky.”

“I also understand what it is to want to fly but to know that there’s no chance of ever being allowed to,” Maris said. “There’s a student at the academy—S’Rella. You should have heard her this morning, Dorrel. She wants to fly more than anything. She’s a lot like I was, when Russ first began to teach me how to fly. Come help her, Dorr.”

“If she really is like you, she’ll be flying soon enough, whether I choose to help her or not. So I choose not. Then if she defeats a friend of mine, takes his wings in competition, I won’t have to feel guilty.” He drained his mug and stood up.

Maris scowled and was seeking another argument when he said, “Have some tea with me?” She nodded, watching him go to the kettle on the fire where the fragrant spiced tea steamed. His stance, his walk, the way he bent to pour the tea—all so familiar to her. She knew him probably better than she had ever known anyone, she thought.

When Dorrel returned with the hot, sweetened drinks and took his place close to her again, the anger was gone, her thoughts having taken another direction.

“What happened to us, Dorr? A few years ago we planned to marry. Now we glare at each other from our separate islands and squabble like two Landsmen arguing fishing rights. What happened to our plans to live together and have children—what happened to our love?” She smiled ruefully. “I don’t understand what happened.”

“Yes you do,” Dorrel said, his voice gentle. “This argument happened. Your loves and your loyalties are divided between the flyers and the land-bound. Mine aren’t. Life isn’t simple anymore—not for you. We don’t want the same things, and it’s hard for us to understand each other. We loved each other so much once…” He took a sip of the hot tea, his eyes cast down. Maris watched him, waiting, feeling sad. She wished for a moment that they could return to that earlier time, when their love had been so single-minded and strong that it had seemed certain to weather all storms.

Dorrel looked up at her again. “But I still love you, Maris. Things have changed, but the love’s still there. Maybe we can’t join our lives, but when we are together we can love each other and try not to fight, hmm?”

She smiled at him, a bit tremulously, and put her hand out. He grasped it strongly and smiled.

“Now. No more arguing, and no more sad talk of what might have been. We have the present—let’s enjoy it. Do you realize it’s been nearly two months since we were together last? Where have you been? What have you seen? Tell me some news, love. Some good gossip to cheer me up,” he said.

“My news isn’t very cheerful,” Maris said, thinking about the messages she’d heard and carried recently. “Eastern has closed Airhome. One of the students there died in an accident. Another one is taking ship to Seatooth. The others have given up and gone home, I suppose. Don’t know what Nord will do.” She disengaged her hand and reached for her tea.

Dorrel shook his head, a small smile on his face. “Even your news is of nothing but the academies. Mine’s more interesting. The Landsman of Scylla’s Point died, and his youngest daughter was chosen to succeed him. Rumor has it that Kreel—d’you know him? Fair-haired boy missing a finger on his left hand? You might have noticed him at the last competition, he did a lot of fancy double-loops—anyway, that he’s going to become Scylla Point’s second flyer because the new Landsman’s in love with him! Can you imagine—a Landsman and a flyer married ?”

Maris smiled slightly. “It’s happened before.”

“Not in our time. Did you hear about the fishing fleet off Greater Amberly? Destroyed by a scylla, though they managed to kill it, and most got away with their lives, even if without their boats. Another scylla, dead, washed up on the shores of Culhall—I saw the carcass.” He raised his brows and held his nose. “Even against the wind I could smell it! And up in Artellia, word is that two flyer-princes are warring for control of the Iron Islands.” Dorrel stopped speaking, his head turning as a violent gust of wind from outside rattled the heavy lodge door.

“Ah,” he said, turning back and sipping his tea. “Just the wind.”

“What is it?” Maris asked. “You’re so restless. Are you expecting someone?”

“I thought Garth might come.” He hesitated. “We were supposed to meet here this afternoon, but he hasn’t shown up. Nothing important, but he was flying a message out to Culhall and said he’d meet me here on the way back and we’d get drunk together.”

“So maybe he got drunk alone. You know Garth.” She spoke lightly, but she saw that he was truly worried. “A lot of things could have delayed him—perhaps he had to fly an answer back. Or he might have decided to stay on Culhall for a party. I’m sure he’s all right.”

Despite her words, Maris, too, was worried. The last time she had seen Garth he had obviously put on weight—always dangerous for a flyer. And he was too fond of parties, particularly the wine and the food. She hoped he was safe and well. He’d never been a reckless flyer—that was comforting to remember—but he’d also never been more than solid and competent in the air. As he grew older, heavier, and slower in his responses, the steady skills of his youth were becoming less certain.

“You’re right,” Dorrel said. “Garth can take care of himself. He probably met up with some good companions on Culhall and forgot about me. He likes to drink, but he’d never fly drunk.” He drained his mug and forced a smile. “We might as well return the favor and forget about him. At least for tonight.”

Their eyes met, and they moved to a low, cushioned bench closer to the fire. There they managed, at least for a time, to put aside their conflicts and fears as they drank more tea and, later, wine, and talked of good times from the past, and exchanged gossip about the flyers they both knew. The evening passed in a pleasant haze, and much later that night they shared a bed and something more than memories. It was good to hold someone she cared about, Maris thought, and to be held in turn, after so many nights in her narrow bed alone. His head against her shoulder, his body a solid comfort against hers, Maris fell asleep at last, warm and contented.

But that night she dreamed again of falling.

The next day Maris rose early, cold and frightened from her dream. She left Dorrel sleeping and ate a lonely breakfast of hard cheese and bread in the deserted common room. As the sun brushed the horizon she donned her wings and gave herself to the morning wind. By midday she was back at Seatooth, flying guard for S’Rella and a boy named Jan while they tried their fledgling wings.

She stayed and worked with the Woodwingers for another week, watching their unsteady progress in the air, helping them through their exercises, and telling them stories of famous flyers each night around the fire.

But increasingly she felt guilty over her prolonged absence from Lesser Amberly, and finally she took her leave, promising Sena she would return in time to help prepare the students for their challenges.

It was a full day’s flight to Lesser Amberly. She was exhausted when she finally saw the fire burning in its familiar light tower, and very glad to collapse into her own long-empty bed. But the sheets were cold and the room was dusty, and Maris found it hard to sleep. Her own familiar house seemed cramped and strange to her now. She rose and went in search of a snack, but she had been gone too long—the little food left in the kitchen was stale or spoiled. Hungry and unhappy, she returned to a cold bed and a fitful sleep.

The Landsman’s greeting was polite but aloof when she went to him the next morning. “The times have been busy,” he said simply. “I’ve sent for you several times, only to find you gone. Corm and Shalli have flown the missions instead, Maris. They grow weary. And now Shalli is with child. Are we to content ourselves with a single flyer, like a poor island half our size?”

“If you have flying for me to do, give it to me,” Maris replied. She could not deny the justice of his complaint, yet neither would she promise to stay away from Seatooth.

The Landsman frowned, but there was nothing else he could do. He recited a message to her, a long, involved message to the traders on Poweet, seed grain in return for canvas sails, but only if they would send the ships to get it, and an iron bribe for their support in some dispute between the Amberlys and Kesselar. Maris memorized it word for word without letting it fully touch her conscious mind, as flyers often did. And then she was off to the flyers’ cliff and the sky.

Anxious not to let her get away again, the Landsman kept her occupied. No sooner would she return from one mission than up she went again on another; back and forth to Poweet four times, twice to Little Shotan, twice to Greater Amberly, once to Kesselar, once each to Culhall and Stonebowl and Laus (Dorrel was not at home, off on some mission himself), once on a long flight to Kite’s Landing in Eastern.

When at last she found herself free to escape to Seatooth again, barely three weeks remained before the competition.

“How many do you intend to sponsor in challenges?” Maris asked. Somewhere outside rain and wind lashed the island, but the thick stone walls that enclosed them kept the weather far away. Sena sat on a low stool, a torn shirt in her hands, and Maris stood before her, warming her back by the fire. They were in Sena’s room.

“I had hoped to ask your advice on that,” Sena said, looking up from her clumsy job of mending. “I think four this year, perhaps five.”

“S’Rella certainly,” Maris said, thoughtfully. Her opinions might influence Sena, and Sena’s sponsorship was all-important to the would-be flyers. Only those who won her approval were allowed to issue challenge. “Damen as well. They are your best. After them—Sher and Leya, perhaps? Or Liane?”

“Sher and Leya,” Sena said, stitching. “They would be impossible if I sponsored one and not the other. It will be chore enough to convince them that they cannot challenge the same person and race as a team.”

Maris laughed. Sher and Leya were two of the younger aspirants, inseparable friends. They were talented and enthusiastic, although they tired too easily and could be rattled by the unexpected. She had often wondered if their constant companionship gave them strength, or simply reinforced their similar faults. “Do you think they can win?”

“No,” Sena said, without looking up. “But they are old enough to try, and lose. The experience will do them good. Temper them. If their dreams cannot withstand a loss, they will never be flyers.”

Maris nodded. “And Liane is the one in doubt.?”

“I will not sponsor Liane,” Sena said. “He is not ready. I wonder if he will ever be ready.”

Maris was surprised. “I’ve watched him fly,” she said. “He is strong, and at times he flies brilliantly. I grant you that he is moody and erratic, but when he is good he is better than S’Rella and Damen together. He might be your best hope.”

“He might,” Sena said, “but I will not sponsor him. One week he soars like a nighthawk, and the next he stumbles and tumbles like a child thrown into the air for the first time. No, Maris. I want to win, but a victory by Liane would be the worst thing that could happen to him. I would venture to bet that he would be dead within the year. The sky is no safe haven for one whose skills come and go with his moods.”

Reluctantly, Maris nodded. “Perhaps you are wise,” she said. “But who is your possible fifth, then?”

“Kerr,” Sena said. Setting her bone needle aside, she inspected the shirt she had been working on, then spread it across her table and sat back to regard Maris evenly with her one good eye.

“Kerr? He is nice enough, but he is nervous and overweight and uncoordinated, and his arms are not half as strong as they need to be. Kerr is hopeless, at least for the present. In a few years, perhaps…”

“His parents want him to race this year,” Sena said wearily. “He has wasted two years already, they say. They own a copper mine on Little Shotan, and are most anxious for Kerr to have his wings. They support the academy handsomely.”

“I see,” said Maris.

“Last year I told them no,” Sena continued. “This year I am less certain of myself. Without a victory in this competition, the academy may lose its support from the Landsmen. Then only wealthy patrons will stand between us and closing. Perhaps it is best for everyone to keep them happy.”

“I understand,” Maris said. “Though I do not entirely approve. Still, I suppose it cannot be helped. And it will do Kerr little enough harm to lose. At times he seems to enjoy playing the clown.”

Sena snorted. “I think I must do it. Yet I hate it. I had hoped you could talk me out of it.”

“No,” said Maris. “You overestimate my eloquence. I will give some advice, however. During these last weeks, reserve your wings solely for those who will challenge. They will need the seasoning. Occupy the others with exercises and lessons.”

“I have done so in past years,” Sena said. “They also race mock contests against each other. I would have you contest with them too, if only to teach them how to lose. S’Rella challenged last year, and Damen has lost twice, but the others need the experience. Sher…”

“Sena, Maris, come quick!” The shout came from the hall, and a breathless Kerr suddenly appeared in the doorway. “The Landsman sent someone, they need a flyer, they…” He panted, struggling with the words.

“Go with him, quickly,” Sena told Maris. “I will hurry behind as fast as I am able.”

The stranger who waited in the common room among the students was also panting; he had run all the way from the Landsman’s tower. Yet speech seemed to burst from him. “You’re the flyer?” He was young and obviously distraught, glancing about like a wild bird trapped in a cage.

Maris nodded.

“You must fly to Shotan. Please. And fetch their healer. The Landsman said to come to you. My brother is ill. Wandering in the head. His leg is broken—badly, I can see the bone—and he won’t tell me how to fix it, or what to give him for his fever. Please, hurry.”

“Doesn’t Seatooth have its own healer?” Maris asked.

“His brother is the healer,” volunteered Damen, a lean youth native to the island.

“What’s the name of the healer on Big Shotan?” Maris asked, just as Sena came limping into the room.

The old woman immediately grasped the situation and took command. “There are several,” she said.

“Hurry,” the stranger implored. “My brother might die.”

“I don’t think he’ll die of a broken leg,” Maris began, but Sena silenced her with a gesture.

“Then you’re a fool,” the youth said. “He has a fever. He raves. He fell down the cliff face climbing after kite eggs, and he lay alone for almost a day before I found him. Please.”

“There’s a healer on the near end named Fila,” Sena said. “She’s old and crotchety and doesn’t care for sea travel, but her daughter lives with her and knows her arts. If she can’t come, she’ll tell you the name of another who can. Don’t waste your time in Stormtown. The healers there will all want to weigh your metal before they gather their herbs. And stop at the South Landing and tell the ferry captain to wait for an important passenger.”

“I’ll go at once,” Maris said, with only the briefest of glances for the stew pot that was steaming over the fire. She was hungry, but it could wait. “S’Rella, Kerr, come help me with my wings.”

“Thank you,” the stranger muttered, but Maris and the students were already gone.

The storm had finally broken outside. Maris thanked her luck, and flew straight across the salt channel, skimming a few feet above the waves. There were dangers in flying so low, but she had no time to try for altitude, and scyllas rarely came so close to land anyway. The flight was short enough. Fila was easy to find but—as Sena had predicted—reluctant to come. “The waters make me sick,” she muttered sourly. “And that boy on Seatooth, he thinks he’s better than me anyway. Always has, the young fool, and now he comes crying to me for help.” But her daughter apologized for her, and soon after left for the ferry.

On the way back, Maris indulged herself, enjoying the sensuous feel of the winds as if to make up for the brusque way that she had used them to travel to Big Shotan. The stormclouds were gone now; the sun was shining brightly on the waters, and a rainbow arched across the eastern sky. Maris went in search of it, soaring up on a warm current of air that rose from Shotan, frightening a flock of summerfowl when she joined them from below. She laughed as they scattered in confusion, banking at the same time, her body responding out of habit to the subtle, shifting demands of the winds. They went in all directions, some toward Seatooth, some toward Eggland or Big Shotan, some out toward the open sea. And farther out she saw—she narrowed her eyes, trying to be sure. A scylla, its long neck rearing out of the water to snap some unwary bird from the sky? No, there were several shapes. A hunting pack of seacats, then. Or ships.

She circled and glided out over the ocean, leaving the islands behind her, and very shortly she was sure. Ships all right, five of them sailing together, and when the wind had brought her closer she could see the colors as well, the faded paint on the canvas sails, the ragged streamers flapping and fluttering above, the hulls all black. Local ships were less gaudy; these had come a long way. A trading fleet from Eastern.

She swooped low enough to see the crew hard at work replacing sails, pulling in lines and shifting desperately to stay on the good side of the wind. A few looked up and shouted and waved at her, but most concentrated on their labors. Sailing the open seas of Windhaven was always a dangerous business, and there were many months in the year when travel between distant island groupings was made flatly impossible by the raging storms. To Maris the wind was a lover, but to the sailors it was a smiling assassin, pretending friendship only to gain the chance to slash a sail or drive a ship to splinters against an unseen rock. A ship was too large to play the games the flyers played; a ship at sea was always in a state of battle.

But these ships were safe enough now; the storm was past, and it would be sunset at least before another one would be upon them. There would be celebration in Stormtown tonight; arrival of an Eastern trade fleet this size was always an occasion. Fully a third of the ships that tried the hazardous crossing between archipelagos were lost at sea. Maris guessed the fleet would make port in less than an hour, judging from their position and the strength of the winds. She wheeled above them once more, made very aware of her grace and freedom in the sky by their struggles below, and decided to carry the news to Big Shotan instead of returning immediately to Seatooth. She might even wait for them, she thought, curious about their cargo and their news.

Maris drank too much wine in the boisterous tavern on the waterfront; it was pressed on her by the delighted customers, for she had been the first to bring word of the approaching fleet. Now everyone was at the docks, drinking and carousing and speculating about what the traders might be bringing.

When the cry went up—first one voice, then many—that the ships were docking, Maris stood up, only to lurch forward as she lost her balance, made dizzy by the wine. She would have fallen, but the crush of bodies around her, rushing toward the door, kept her upright and bore her along.

The scene outside was wild and noisy and for a moment Maris wondered whether she had been right to stay; she could see nothing, learn nothing in this excited, milling crowd. Shrugging, she slowly fought her way free of the mob, and sat down on an overturned barrel. She might as well stay out of it and keep her eyes open for anyone from the ship who could supply her with news. She leaned back against a smooth stone wall and folded her arms to wait.

She woke unwillingly, annoyed by someone who would not stop pushing at her shoulder. She blinked her eyes several times, looking up into the face of a stranger.

“You are Maris,” he said. “Maris the flyer? Maris of Lesser Amberly?” He was a very young man, with the severe, sculpted face of an ascetic: a closed, guarded face that gave away nothing. Set in such a face, his eyes were startling—large, dark, and liquid. His rust-colored hair was pulled back sharply from a high forehead, and knotted at the back of his skull.

“Yes,” she said, straightening. “I’m Maris. Why? What happened? I must have fallen asleep.”

“You must have,” he said flatly. “I came in on the ship. You were pointed out to me. I thought perhaps you had come to meet me.”

“Oh!” Maris looked quickly around. The crowds had thinned and all but vanished. The docks were empty except for a group of traders standing on a gangplank, and a work-crew of stevedores unloading chests of cloth. “I sat down to wait,” she muttered. “I must have closed my eyes. I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

There was something naggingly familiar about him, Maris thought groggily. She looked at him more closely. His clothing was Eastern in cut, but simple: gray fabric without ornamentation, thick and warm, a hood hanging down behind him. He had a canvas bag under one arm and wore a knife in a leather sheath at his waist.

“You said you were from the ship?” she asked. “Pardon, I’m still only half awake. Where are the other sailors?”

“The sailors are drinking or eating, the traders off haggling, I would say,” he answered. “The voyage was difficult. We lost one ship to a storm, though all but two of the crew were pulled from the water safely. Conditions afterward were crowded and uncomfortable. The sailors were glad to come ashore.” He paused. “I am no sailor, however. My apologies. I made a mistake. I do not think you were sent to meet me.” He turned to go.

Suddenly Maris realized who he must be. “Of course,” she blurted. “You’re the student, the one from Airhome.” He had turned back to her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’d forgotten all about you.” She jumped down from the barrel.

“My name is Val,” he said, as if he expected it to mean something to her. “Val of South Arren.”

“Fine,” Maris said. “You know my name. I’m sure—”

He shifted his bag uneasily. The muscles around his mouth were tense. “They also call me One-Wing.”

Maris said nothing. But her face gave her away.

“I see you know me after all,” he said, a bit sharply.

“I’ve heard of you,” Maris admitted. “You intend to compete?”

“I intend to fly,” Val said. “I have worked for this for four years.”

“I see,” Maris said coolly. She looked up at the sky, dismissing him. It was nearly dusk. “I’ve got to get back to Seatooth,” she said. “They’ll be thinking I fell into the ocean. I’ll tell them you arrived.”

“Aren’t you even going to speak to the captain?” he asked sardonically. “She’s in the tavern across the way, telling stories to a gullible crowd.” He canted his head at one of the dockside buildings.

“No,” Maris said, too quickly. “But thanks.” She turned away, but stopped when he called after her.

“Can I hire a boat to take me to Seatooth?”

“You can hire anything in Stormtown,” Maris answered, “but it will cost you. There’s a regular ferry from South Landing. You’d probably do best to stay the night here and take the ferry in the morning.” She turned again and moved off down the cobbled street, toward the flyers’ quarters where she had stored her wings. She felt a bit ashamed of leaving him so abruptly when he had come so far in his desire to be a flyer, but she did not feel ashamed enough to turn back. One-Wing, she thought furiously. She was surprised he admitted to the name, and even more surprised that he would come to try again at a competition. He must know how he would be met.

“You knew!” Maris shouted, angry enough not to care if the students heard her. “You knew and you didn’t tell me.”

“Of course I knew,” Sena said. Her own voice was even, and her good eye was as impassive and fixed as her bad one. “I did not tell you earlier because I expected you would react like this.”

“Sena, how could you?” Maris demanded. “Do you really intend to sponsor his challenge?”

“If he is good enough,” Sena replied. “I have every reason to think he will be. I have serious qualms about sponsoring Kerr, but none whatsoever about Val.”

“Don’t you know how we feel about him?”

“We?”

“The flyers,” Maris said impatiently. She paced back and forth before the fire, then paused to face Sena again. “He can’t possibly win again. And if he did, do you think it would keep Woodwings open? The academies are still living down his first win. If he won again, the Landsman of Seatooth would—”

“The Landsman of Seatooth would be proud and pleased,” Sena said, interrupting. “Val intends to take up residence here if he wins, I believe. It’s not the land-bound who call him One-Wing—only you flyers do that.”

“He calls himself One-Wing,” Maris said, her voice rising once more. “And you know why he got the name. Even during the year he wore his wings, he was never more than half a flyer.” She resumed her pacing.

“I’m less than half a flyer myself,” the older woman said quietly, looking into the flames. “A flyer without wings. Val has a chance to fly again, and I can help him.”

“You’d do anything to have a Woodwinger win in the competition, wouldn’t you?” Maris said accusingly.

Sena turned up her wrinkled face, her good eye bright and sharp on Maris. “What did he do to make you hate him so?”

“You know what he did,” Maris said.

“He won a pair of wings,” Sena said.

She seemed suddenly a stranger. Maris spun away from her, turning her back on the older woman to avoid the blind stare of that white and hideous eye. “He drove a friend of mine to suicide,” she said in a low, intense voice. “Mocked her grief, took her wings, and all but pushed her off that cliff with his own hands.”

“Nonsense,” Sena said. “Ari took her own life.”

“I knew Ari,” Maris said softly, still facing the fire. “She hadn’t had her wings very long, but she was a true flyer, one of the best. Everyone liked her. Val could never have defeated her in fair flight.”

“Val did defeat her.”

“She talked to me at the Eyrie, just after her brother died,” Maris said. “She had seen it all. He was out in his boat, the lines out for moonfish, and she was flying above, keeping an eye on him. She saw the scylla coming, but she was too far away, the winds tore the warning from her mouth. She tried to fly closer, but not in time. She saw the boat smashed to splinters, and the scylla’s neck came craning up out of the water with her brother’s body in its jaws. Then it dove.”

“She should not have gone to the competition,” Sena said simply.

“It was only a week off,” Maris said. “She didn’t intend to go, that day she was at the Eyrie, but she was so forlorn. Everyone thought it would help cheer her up. The games, the races, the singing and the drinking. We all urged her to go, never dreaming that anyone would challenge her. Not in her condition.”

“She knew the rules the Council set,” Sena insisted. “Your Council, Maris. Any flyer who appears at the competition is subject to challenge, and no healthy flyer may absent himself more than two years running.”

Maris turned back to face the teacher once again, scowling. “You talk of law. What of humanity? Yes, Ari should have stayed away. But she desperately wanted to go on with her life, and she needed to be among her friends and forget her pain for a while. We watched over her. She was clumsy then, as if she often forgot where she was and what she was doing, but we kept her safe. She was enjoying the competition. No one could believe it when that boy challenged her.”

“Boy,” Sena repeated. “You used the right word, Maris. He was fifteen.”

“He knew what he was doing. The judges tried to explain things to him, but he would not withdraw his challenge. He flew well and Ari flew badly, and that was it. One-Wing had her wings. It was only a month later that she killed herself.”

“Val was half an ocean away at the time,” Sena said. “The flyers had no cause to blame him, and shun him so. And no cause to do what they did the year after, at the competition on Culhall. Challenge after challenge after challenge, from retired flyers and flyer-children just come of age, and the best and the most talented at that.”

“There was no rule against multiple challenges then,” Maris said defensively.

“I notice that there is such a rule now, though. Where was the fairness in that?”

“It didn’t matter. He lost to the second challenger.”

“Yes. A girl who had been practicing with wings since she was seven, whose father was the senior flyer on Little Shotan, was able to defeat him after he had already out-flown one other challenger,” Sena said. She made an angry noise and rose slowly from her chair. “And what incentive did he have to fly well against her? There was another waiting to challenge next, a dozen more after him. And you all told him he was only half a flyer anyway.” She moved toward the door.

“Where are you going?” Maris demanded.

“To dinner,” Sena said gruffly. “I have news to tell my students.”

Val arrived the next morning during breakfast. Sena sat spooning up her eggs in a grim silence while the students glanced at her curiously. Maris was seated well away from the teacher, listening to S’Rella and brawny young Liane try to convince a third student—a plain, quiet woman named Dana, the oldest of the Woodwingers—to remain at the academy. Last night at dinner, Sena had announced the names of the five she would sponsor in challenge. Dana, discouraged, was planning to return home and resume the life she had abandoned. S’Rella and Liane were not doing very well in their attempts to reconvert her. From time to time Maris would add a few words about the importance of desire, but she found it hard to care. Truth was that Dana had begun much too late and had never had real talent anyway.

All conversation ended when Val entered.

He took off his heavy woolen traveling cape and lowered his bag to the floor. If he took note of the sudden silence or the way the others stared at him, he gave no sign. “I’m hungry,” he said. “Have you any extra food?”

That shattered the spell. Everyone began talking at once. Leya fetched him a platter of eggs and a mug of tea, and Sena rose and went to him, smiling, and led him back to her table, to sit and eat at her side. Maris watched- in silence, staring and feeling uneasy, until S’Rella tugged at the sleeve of her shirt.

“I said, do you think he will win again?” S’Rella asked.

“No,” Maris said, too loudly. She rose abruptly. “No one has lost a brother lately. How could he possibly win?”

That afternoon, he made her regret her words.

Sher and Leya had been up all morning, flying practice circuits while Sena yelled instructions from below and Maris observed them from the air. In the afternoon, S’Rella and Damen were supposed to have use of the academy wings, but Sena had asked one of them to yield to Val, since he had been grounded for a month and needed the feel of the wind again. S’Rella had quickly volunteered.

It was crowded on the observation platform when he emerged, wings strapped to his back and folded. Most of the students had come to see him fly. Maris, still winged, waited among them—

“Damen”, Sena was saying, “I want you to practice skimming today. Fly as low over the water as you can. Keep your wings stiff and even. You wobble too much. You must improve, or someday you will fall in.” She looked at her other student. “Val, you’d be best to just unlimber now. Later there will be time for other exercises.”

“No,” Val said. He was standing stiffly while two of the younger students unfolded and locked his wings. “I fly better when I must fly well. Set me a difficulty.” He looked at Damen, who was flexing in preparation for flight. “Or give me a race.”

Sena shook her head. “You are premature, Val. I will say when the time has come for racing.”

But Maris pushed forward, possessed of a sudden urge to see how good the infamous Val One-Wing really was. “Let them race, Sena,” she said. “Damen has had exercise enough. He needs a competition.”

Damen looked from Maris to Sena and back again, clearly eager to race but unwilling to defy his teacher. “I don’t know,” he said.

Val shrugged. “As you will. I doubt you could give me much of a race in any case.”

That was too much for Damen, who was fiercely proud of his status as one of Woodwings’ best. “Don’t flatter yourself, One-Wing,” he snapped. He lifted an arm and pointed across the waters, to where the waves broke and foamed against a ridge of half-submerged stone. “When we are both aloft and Maris gives the word, three times there and three times back. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” Val said, studying the distant rocks.

Sena pursed her lips but said nothing. Hearing no further objections, Damen grinned and ran and leapt. The wind took him and lifted. He soared upward, did a stately circle over the shoreline, and passed above them, his shadow rippling across the stone. Val moved to the edge, his wings fully extended now.

“Your knife, Val,” S’Rella said suddenly. The rest of them looked. His ornate blade, obsidian with beaten silver edges, was still in its sheath at his hip.

Val reached down and pulled it free, looking at it curiously. “What of it?”

“Flyer tradition,” Sena said. “No blade may be carried into the sky. S’Rella, take it. We will keep it safe for you.”

S’Rella moved to obey, but Val gestured her away. “This was my father’s knife, the only decent thing he ever owned. I carry it everywhere.” He slid it back into its sheath.

“It’s flyer tradition,” S’Rella said, her voice puzzled.

Val smiled sardonically. “Ah. But I am only half a flyer. Move back, S’Rella.” And when she moved back, he threw himself into the air.

Maris walked to the outer edge of the platform, to stand beside Sena and S’Rella, all of them watching Val as he spiraled upward to join Damen. Behind her, she could hear the others talking about him. “One-Wing,” a voice said, Liane perhaps. Damen had called him that too, after Val had mocked him. The Easterner wasted no time making enemies, Maris thought. She said as much to Sena.

“The flyers wasted no time making an enemy of him,” Sena replied. Even her bad eye was turned upward, toward the sky, where Damen and Val now wheeled in great circles around each other, like two birds of prey-searching for a weakness. “You are to say the word, Maris,” Sena reminded her.

Maris cupped her hands. “Fly,” she shouted, as loud as she could shout it. The wind took it and carried it up to them.

Damen came out of his circle first, sweeping around and over the water in a slow, leisurely manner, as if he had all the time in the world. Val One-Wing came just behind him, wide silver wings weathervaning a bit, tilting first one way and then the other, as if he were not quite balanced. Both flyers kept low. Maris put a hand up to shade her eyes against the sunlight flashing from their wings.

Halfway to the first turn, Damen was widening his lead and Val began to rise. “The wind is picking up,” Sena commented. Maris nodded. It felt like a crosswind as well. They’d have to fly; it would be no simple matter of letting the breeze carry them where they wished to go.

Damen reached the rocks well ahead of his competition, and began his turn. A ragged shout went up from the Woodwingers; Damen was winning. But he lost time on his turn; he came around slow and too wide, faltering at one point when he faced head on into the wind, before he took command of it again. He seemed less steady coming back.

Val began to tack well before the turn, changing his course as he climbed, not all at once but in a series of small increments. He was much higher than Damen now, but substantially behind. When he came around at last, Damen was already halfway back. But Val’s turn was sharper and cleaner than his rival’s.

“Damen’s beating him,” Liane called out. Damen swept by above them. “Hey, Damen!” Liane bellowed, hands cupped around his mouth. “Go!” Damen came around slowly—again the turn was too wide—and dipped his wing to acknowledge the cheers, but the gesture cost him. He lost the wind for an instant and slid down sharply and dangerously and when he passed in front of them, suddenly the bulk of the great rock fortress was between him and the prevailing wind. He drifted lazily, losing speed, and had to struggle to pull himself back up again.

Val made no such mistake. He turned tightly, keeping high enough above them so he lost no portion of the wind, however small. And suddenly he seemed to be moving much faster as well.

“Val has won it,” Maris said suddenly. She hadn’t meant to speak aloud, but no sooner had it come to her than the words were out.

Sena was smiling. S’Rella looked baffled. “But, Maris, look. Damen is well ahead.”

“Damen is just riding on the winds,” Maris said. “Val is using them. He was searching for the right wind, and now he’s found it. Watch, S’Rella.”

It didn’t take long. Damen’s lead shrank steadily as the two flyers moved out toward the rocks once more, and the Woodwinger slid badly off course when he tried to come around more sharply than before. By the time he’d corrected himself, Val had reached the turnaround point. A few moments later, Damen seemed visibly startled as the shadow of Val’s wings fell upon his own. Then the shadow moved in front of him.

The students were quiet, even Liane.

“Give him my congratulations,” Maris said. She turned and went back inside.

Her room was cold and damp. Maris built a fire in the hearth, and decided to heat the kivas she had bought in Stormtown. She was on her third cup, relaxing at last, when Sena entered unasked, and took a seat.

“How do the practices go?” Maris said.

“He has them all racing,” Sena said. “Damen took it well enough, but he had no taste for another race, so he gave up his wings for the afternoon. They were all eager to try him.” She smiled, clearly proud of their eagerness. “He defeated Sher and Jan handily, humiliated Kerr and Egon. Egon almost fell into the ocean. S’Rella flew him a close race, though. Stole all the tricks he used to defeat Damen. She’s a clever girl, S’Rella.”

“He flew six races?” Maris said.

“Seven,” Sena said, smiling. “Liane almost beat him. The wind is gusting now, very turbulent. It knocked Val around a bit. He’s lean, not as strong as he could be. I’ll have him work on that. Pullups, pushups. And of course he was tired by then, but Liane insisted. Liane can handle rough winds. He’s muscled like a scylla. Sometimes, the way he wrenches his wings around, I think he’s yanking himself through the sky on sheer brawn. Val beat him anyway, though. Very close. Then Leya wanted to race, but the storm was about to break and I chased them all inside. What do you think of One-Wing now, Maris?”

Maris poured the teacher a mug of kivas while she thought.

“I think he can fly,” Maris said at last. “I still don’t like what he did to Ari. And I didn’t like that business with his knife today, either. Yet I can’t deny his skill.”

“Will he win?”

Maris tasted her drink, let the sweet warmth flow down and into her. She closed her eyes briefly and leaned back. “Perhaps,” she said. “I can think of a dozen flyers who don’t handle themselves as well as he did today. I can also think of a dozen who are better than he, who know all his tricks and more. Tell me whom he’s to challenge and I’ll tell you his chances. Beyond that—well, speed is only one skill of a flyer. The competition will judge grace and precision as well.”

“Fair enough,” Sena said. “Will you help me ready him?”

Maris stared down at the gray stone floor. “You place me in a difficult position,” she said. “And for the sake of someone I don’t even like.”

“So only those you approve of deserve to fly?” Sena said. “Is that the principle you struggled for seven years ago?”

Maris raised her head, meeting Sena’s gaze. “You know better. Those who fly best deserve the wings.”

“And you admit Val is skilled,” Sena said. She sipped at her kivas while she waited for an answer.

Maris nodded reluctantly. “But if he should win, the others will not forget the past. You call him Val, but he’ll always be One-Wing to them.”

“I am not asking you to fly guard on him for the rest of his career,” Sena said tartly. “I ask only that you help me now, help Val to get his wings.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Nothing more than you have already done for the others. Show him his mistakes. Teach him the things your years as a flyer have taught you, as you would teach a child of your own. Advise him. Push him. Challenge him. He is too skilled to gain much by pitting himself against my Woodwingers, and you saw today how little he is willing to listen to me. I am old and crippled, and I fly only in my dreams. But you are an active flyer, and reputed one of the best. He will heed you.”

“I wonder,” Maris said. She drained the last inch of kivas from her mug and set it aside. “Well, I suppose I must give him my advice, if he will take it.”

“Good,” Sena said. She nodded briskly and stood up. “I thank you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to tend to.” At the door she paused and half-turned. “I know this is hard for you, Maris. Perhaps if you knew Val better, you might feel some sympathy between you. He admires you, I know.”

Maris was startled by that, but tried not to show it. “I can’t admire him,” she said. “And the more I see of him, the less I see to sympathize with or like.”

“He is young,” Sena said. “His life has not been easy, and he is obsessed with winning back his wings—not so very different from you, some years back.”

Maris choked down her anger to keep from launching into a tirade about just how different Val One-Wing was from her younger self; she would only sound spiteful.

The silence lengthened, and then Maris heard Sena’s soft, uncertain footsteps taking her away.

The next day the final training began.

From sun-up until sundown the six challengers flew. Of those who would not compete this year, some went home to visit families on Seatooth or the Shotans or other nearby islands. The others, whose homes lay long, dangerous distances away, sat perched on bare rock to watch their fortunate companions and dream of the day when they, too, would have a chance to win their own wings.

Sena stood below on the launching deck, shouting up advice and encouragement to her fledglings, sometimes leaning on a wooden cane, more often using it to gesture and command. Maris, winged, flew guard; circling, watching, yelling cautions. She put S’Rella, Damen, Sher, Leva, and Kerr through their paces, racing against them two at a time, calling upon them to perform the sort of aerial acrobatics that might impress the judges.

Val was given a chance to use a pair of wings as often as any of the others, but Maris found herself observing him in silence. He had been in competition twice before, she reasoned; he knew what would be expected. To treat him as she did the other Woodwingers would be to condescend. But, mindful of her promise to Sena, she studied his flying closely, and that night at dinner she sought him out.

Only one hearth was lit in the common room, and the benches seemed strangely empty. When Maris arrived, one table was crowded with the students who would not be competing, and Sena sat at a second, talking in an animated fashion with Sher, Leya, and Kerr. S’Rella and Val were alone at the third table.

Maris let Damen fill her platter with his fish stew, then drew herself a glass of white wine and went to join them.

“How is the food?” she asked, as she sat down across from Val.

He looked at her evenly, but she could read nothing in his large, dark eyes. “Excellent,” he said. “But even at Airhome, we never had cause to complain about the meals. Flyers eat well. Even those with wooden wings.”

S’Rella, seated next to him, pushed a chunk of hook-fin across her plate with marked indifference. “This isn’t that good,” she said. “Damen always makes everything so bland. You should be here when I’m cook, Val. Southern food has a lot of spices.”

Maris laughed. “Too many, if you want my opinion.”

“I’m not talking about spices,” Val said. “I’m talking about food. This stew has four or five different kinds of fish in it, and chunks of vegetables, and I think there’s wine in the sauce. There’s plenty of it, and not a bit of it is rotten. Only flyers and Landsmen and rich traders would quibble about food like this.”

S’Rella looked wounded. Maris frowned and put down her knife. “Most flyers eat simply, Val. We can’t afford to get fat.”

“I’ve been served fish that stank, and I’ve eaten fish stew that was entirely fishless,” Val said coolly. “I grew up on scraps and leavings from flyer plates. I will be happy to spend the rest of my life eating as simply as a flyer.” There was an infinite amount of sarcasm in the way he said simply.

Maris flushed. Her own true parents had not been wealthy, but her father had fished the sea off Amberly and they had always had enough to eat. After his death, when she had been adopted by the flyer Russ, she had always had enough of everything. She drank some of her wine and changed the subject. “I wanted to talk to you about your turns, Val.”

“Oh?” He swallowed his last piece of fish and shoved the empty plate away. “Am I doing anything wrong, flyer?” His voice was so fiat that Maris found it difficult to tell if the sarcasm was still there or not.

“Not wrong, not exactly. But given a choice, I notice that you always turn downwind. Why?”

Val shrugged. “It’s easier.”

“Yes,” Maris said. “But not better. You’ll come out of a downwind turn with more speed, but it will also take more room. And you tend to roll more on a downwind turn, particularly in high winds.”

“An upwind turn is difficult in high winds,” Val said.

“It requires more strength,” Maris agreed. “But you need to work on your strength. You should not avoid difficulty. A habit like always turning downwind may seem harmless, but the time will come when you have to turn upwind, and you should be able to do it well.”

Val’s expression was as guarded as ever. “I see,” he said.

Emboldened, Maris raised a touchier subject. “Something else. I saw that you wore your knife again today during practice.”

“Yes.”

“Next time, don’t,” Maris said. “I don’t think you understand. No matter what the knife means to you, this is a matter of flyer law. No blades may be worn in the sky.”

“Flyer law,” Val said icily. “Tell me, who gave the flyers the right to make laws? Do we have farmers’ law? Glassblowers’ law? The Landsmen make the law. The only law. When my father gave me that knife, he told me never to put it aside. But I did put it aside, during the year I had my wings. I obeyed your flyer law. It did nothing but shame me. I was still One-Wing. Well, I was a boy then, and cowed by flyer law, but I am not a boy now. I choose to wear my knife.”

S’Rella looked at him wonderingly. “But, Val—how can you disregard flyer law, if you’re going to be a flyer?”

“I never said I was going to be a flyer,” Val replied. “Only that I intend to win wings, and fly.” His eyes moved from Maris to S’Rella. “And, S’Rella, you are not going to be a flyer either, even if you should win. Remember that, if it comes to pass. You’ll be as I was—a One-Wing.”

“That’s not true!” Maris said angrily. “I was not born of flyers, but they’ve accepted me all the same.”

“Have they?” Val said. He smiled a thin, ironic smile, and rose from the bench. “You’ll excuse me. I have to rest. Tomorrow I must practice my upwind turns, and I’ll need all my strength for that.”

When he was gone, Maris reached across the table to take S’Rella by the hand, but the girl gave her a troubled look and pulled away. “I have to go too,” she said, and Maris was left alone.

She sat for a long time, thinking, and it was not until Damen approached her that she remembered the half-eaten meal on her plate. “Everyone else is gone,” he said softly. “Are you going to finish, Maris?”

“Oh,” she said, “no, I’m sorry. I’m afraid I got distracted and let it get cold.” She smiled and helped Damen with the plates, then left him to clean up the common room and set off down the dank stone corridors in search of Val’s room.

She found it after only one wrong turning, and her anger grew as she walked; she was determined to have it out with Val. But it was S’Rella who answered her impatient knocking.

“What are you doing here?” Maris said, startled.

S’Rella hesitated, shy and uncertain. But Val’s voice came from within the room. “She doesn’t have to answer that,” he said.

“No, of course not,” Maris said, abashed. She had no right even asking, she realized. She touched S’Rella on the shoulder. “I’m sorry. Can I come in? I want to talk to Val.”

“Let her in,” Val said, and S’Rella smiled at Maris tentatively and opened the door.

Like all the rooms in the academy, Val’s was small, damp, and cold. He’d lit a fire in the hearth to drive some of the chill away, but so far it had been only partially successful. Maris noticed how bare the room was, completely lacking in the personal touches and trinkets that would tell a visitor something about the person who lived here.

Val was on the floor before the fire, doing push-ups. He’d thrown his shirt over the bed and was exercising barechested. “Well?” he said, without slackening his pace.

Maris was staring, sickened by what she saw. The whole of Val’s back was crisscrossed by lines and thin white scars, mementoes of long-ago beatings. She had to force her eyes away from them to remember why she had come. “We need to talk, Val,” she said.

He came bounding to his feet, smiling at her and breathing hard. “Hand me my shirt, S’Rella,” he said. Then, after he had pulled it on, “What do you want to talk about?” His hair, unbound now, fell to his shoulders in a rust-colored waterfall, softening the severity of his face and giving him an oddly vulnerable look.

“May I sit?” Maris asked. Val gestured toward the only chair in the room, and when Maris sat on it, lowered himself onto the backless stool near the fire. S’Rella sat on the edge of the narrow bed. “I don’t want to play games with you, Val,” Maris resumed. “We have a lot of work to do together.”

“What makes you think I am playing games?” he asked.

“Listen to me,” she said. “I realize that you are bitter toward the flyers. They made you an outcast, branded you with a mocking, insulting name, and stripped you of your wings, perhaps unfairly, with multiple challenges. But if you let that poison your feelings toward all flyers, forever, you will be the loser for it. Win your wings back in the competition, and you will be living with, competing with, and associating with flyers for much of the rest of your life. If you refuse to allow them to be your friends, then you will have no friends. Is that what you want?”

Val was unmoved. “Windhaven is full of people, and only a few of them are flyers. Or don’t you count the land-bound?”

“Why are you so determined to be hateful? You waste no time making enemies. Maybe you feel the flyers have wronged you, and maybe you are right. But quarrels are seldom one-sided. Try to understand that. What you did to Ari was not without wrong, either. If you want to be forgiven for that, then forgive the flyers for what they did. Accept and you may be accepted.”

Val smiled his thin-lipped smile. “What makes you think I want to be accepted? Or forgiven? I’ve done nothing that requires forgiving. I’d challenge Ari again. Unfortunately, she isn’t available this year.”

Maris was suddenly speechless with rage.

“Val,” S’Rella said in a small, shocked voice. “How can you say that? She killed herself.”

“Land-bound die every day,” Val told her, his voice softening a bit. “Some of them kill themselves too. No one makes a cause out of that, or sings about it, or avenges their squalid little suicides. You have to shield your own flank, S’Rella. My parents taught me that. No one else will do it for you.” His eyes went back to Maris. “I’ve met your brother, you know,” he said suddenly.

“Coll?” she said, surprised.

“He visited South Arren seven years ago, on his way to the Outer Islands. There was another singer with him, an older man.”

“Barrion,” Maris said. “Coll’s mentor.”

“They stayed a week or two, singing in the dockside taverns, waiting for a ship to take them farther east. That was the first time I heard about you, Maris of Lesser Amberly. You were my hero for a time. Your brother sings a pretty little song about you.”

“Seven years ago,” Maris said. “That must have been right after the Council.”

Val smiled. “It was the first we had heard of it. I was around twelve, just short of the age when a flyer child would be taking up his wings, but of course I had no hope of that. Until your brother came to my island and sang about you and your Council and your academies. When Airhome opened a few months later, I was one of the first students. I still loved you then, for making it all possible.”

“And what happened?”

Val half-turned on his stool, stretching his hands out toward the fire. “I grew disillusioned. I thought that you’d opened the world to everyone, where once it had belonged only to flyers. I felt such a kinship with you. I was naive.”

He turned back again, and Maris shifted uncomfortably under his intense, accusing gaze. “I thought we were alike,” he continued. “I thought you wanted to break open the rotten flyer society. I found out I was wrong. All you ever wanted was to be a part of the whole thing. You wanted the fame and the status and the wealth and the freedom, you wanted to party on the Eyrie with the rest of them and look down on the dirt-digging land-bound. You embrace what I despise.

“The irony of it, though, is that you can’t be a flyer, no matter how much you want to. No more than I can be a flyer, or S’Rella here, or Damen, or any of the rest of them.”

“I am a flyer,” Maris said quietly.

“They let you play at it,” Val said, “because you try so very hard to fit in, to be just like them. But both of us know that they don’t really trust you, or accept you as they’d accept one of their own. You have your wings, but you’re still suspect, aren’t you? Whether you admit it or not, you were the first One-Wing, Maris.”

Maris stood up. His words had made her furious, but she didn’t want to lash out at him, or lose her dignity by quarreling with him in front of S’Rella. “You’re wrong,” she said as calmly and quietly as she could manage. But then she found she had no words to refute him with. “I feel sorry for you, Val,” she continued. “You hate the flyers and you have contempt for the land-bound. For everyone who is not yourself. I don’t want your respect or your gratitude. It’s not just the privileges of flyer society you’re rejecting, it’s the responsibilities as well. You’re totally selfish and self-absorbed. If I hadn’t promised Sena, I’d have nothing more to do with helping you get your wings. Good night.”

She left the room. Val didn’t move or call her back. But as the door swung shut behind her, she heard him speaking to S’Rella. “You see,” he said flatly.

And that night the dream came to Maris again, and she twisted and fought and woke with the bedclothes wrapped about her, soaked with sweat. It had been worse than before. She had been falling, falling endlessly through still air, and all around were other flyers, soaring on their silver wings and watching, and not one of them moved to help.

Day after day the practice continued.

Sena grew hoarse and intense and short-tempered, and presided over all like a tyrannical Landsman. Damen sharpened his turns and heard long lectures every day on flying with his head and not just his arms. S’Rella worked on launchings and landings and acrobatics, looking for grace to match her stamina. Sher and Leya, already graceful, stayed in the air for hours at a time in high winds, trying to build endurance. Kerr worked on everything.

And Val One-Wing did what he would. Maris watched him from afar, as she watched all of them, and said little. She answered what questions he had, gave advice on the rare occasions that he asked for it, and treated him always with careful, distant courtesy.

Sena, absorbed entirely in the flying of her proteges, noticed none of it, but the Woodwingers picked up their cues from Maris, and carefully kept their distance from Val. He aided the process himself; he had a sharp tongue and no compunction about making enemies. He told Kerr to his face that he was hopeless, sending the boy into a fit of sulking, and he mocked proud, stubborn Damen endlessly, defeating him again and again in informal races. The students, led by Damen and Liane and a few others, soon began calling Val “One-Wing” openly. But if that bothered him, he gave no sign.

Val’s isolation was not quite total. If the others shunned him, he at least had S’Rella. She was more than merely polite to Val; she sought him out, asking for his advice, ate with him, and always, when Sena paired students off to race, S’Rella was the first to challenge Val.

Maris saw sense in her actions; pitting her skills against those of a stronger flyer would help her learn and overcome her weaknesses faster than anything else. And S’Rella, Maris knew, was determined to win her wings this year. There were other, less practical, reasons why S’Rella might be drawn to Val as well. The shy Southern girl had always been a bit out of place among the Woodwingers, all of whom were Westerners; she cooked differently, dressed differently, wore her hair differently, spoke with a slight accent, even told different tales when the students gathered together for storytelling. Val One-Wing, from Eastern, was similarly displaced, and it was natural, Maris told herself, that the two odd birds would fly together.

Still, it made Maris uneasy to see the two talking together. S’Rella was young and impressionable, and Maris did not want her picking up Val’s ideas. Besides, too close an association with One-Wing would make her unpopular among the other flyers, and S’Rella was vulnerable enough to be hurt by that.

But Maris pushed those worries to the back of her mind and did not interfere. There was no time now for personal fretting; she had to train these Woodwingers for the real thing.

At the end of every day of training Maris raced each student individually. On the second day before the scheduled departure for the competition, the wind was strong from the north, and its cold edge seemed to slice through the shivering students. It grew colder by the minute.

“You don’t need to wait,” Maris told them. “It’s too cold for standing around. After I race you, help the next student with the wings, and then you can go on inside.”

The exertion of flying kept Maris warm, but it also tired her. Finally, bone weary and beginning to really feel the cold, Maris saw that she was alone on the flyers’ cliff with Val.

Her shoulders slumped. She had not expected him to wait. And to race him now, when he was fresh and she was so tired… She looked up at the swirling purple sky and licked dried salt from the corners of her mouth.

“It’s late for flying,” she said. “The winds are wild and it’s getting dark. We can race another time.”

“The winds will make it that much more of a challenge,” Val said. His eyes rested coolly on hers, and Maris knew, with a sinking heart, that he’d been waiting a long time for this moment.

“Sena may worry,” she began weakly.

“Of course, if flying against the Woodwingers has worn you out…”

“I once flew thirty hours without a rest,” she said, stung. “An afternoon of play doesn’t wear me out.”

His smile mocked her; she saw that she had fallen into his trap.

“Get your wings on,” she said.

She did not offer to help him, but it was obvious that he was accustomed to putting on his wings unaided. Maris tried unobtrusively to flex some resilience back into her muscles, telling herself that a victory for him, with her as tired as she was and the winds so capricious, would mean nothing. And he must know that.

“The usual? Twice out and back?”

Maris nodded, glancing across the gray, churning waves to the distant spire of rock they all used as a marker. How many times had she flown out there today? Thirty? More? It didn’t matter. She would fly the last two laps as if they were the first; her pride insisted.

“Who will judge us?” she asked.

Val snapped the last two joints of his wings into place. “We’ll know,” he said. “That’s all that matters. I’ll launch first. You call ready. Agreed?”

“Yes.” She watched as, with a few swift steps, Val moved to the edge of the cliff and leapt outward. His body bobbed on the conflicting winds like a small boat on rough water until he took command, veered off to the right, and began to climb.

Maris took a breath and let her mind clear. She ran lightly forward and pushed off. For one brief moment she fell; then her wings caught the winds and she was buoyed upward. She took her time coming to Val’s level, climbing in a ragged spiral, needing those few moments to get the feel back, so her tired body would know how best to use the winds.

When she came up to him, the two of them circled warily, around and around each other, struggling to hold position amid the restless winds. Her eyes met his, and then she looked away, straight ahead, toward the rock that was their marker.

“Ready… go,” she shouted, and they were off.

The winds were strong but turbulent, the prevailing north wind interrupted by gusts from one direction, then from another. The whole eastern sky was a mass of darkening clouds, towering shapes that threatened a storm. Maris gave them an uneasy glance and started to climb again, looking for a steadier, faster wind in the heights. She fought constantly to keep on course; the gusts pushed her first one way, then another, demanding constant attention and frequent half-turns and corrections. She could not afford any detours.

Although she did not look for him, she often caught sight of Val. He sometimes flew below her, but more often he was beside her, disconcertingly close. He flew well, and it did not help Maris to reflect that he was using the advice she had given him. There would be nothing easy or simple about defeating him, she thought.

Then Val surged ahead.

A shock of adrenaline coursed through Maris and she flung her body to the left to catch the changing wind that had given him his push. They might call him One-Wing, but he knew how to use both wings in the air. Flying races against Woodwingers had made her soft, Maris thought. Her responses were dulled.

Ahead of her, just barely out of reach, Val’s wings swept around the spike of rock. He turned downwind, Maris noted, coming around wide and rocking just a little, but picking up speed as he did so. Then he was headed back toward the cliff.

Determined to overtake him, Maris flew dangerously close to the rock. Her wingtip grazed the spire and that slight scraping threw her sideways, off balance for a crucial moment. She sheared downward crookedly, the wind lost to her, stalling, her heart pounding in her throat, before she finally gained control again. Val had put more distance between them. She was only grateful that he hadn’t seen her blunder.

She had lost altitude, but she caught a strong updraft above the rocks, and suddenly Maris was rising again. She flew recklessly, thinking only of the immediate need for speed, searching and shifting until she found a steady current she could use.

It moved her close to Val, but she was so intent on passing him that she barely noticed the approach of land, and abruptly she was clutched by a sinker, a cold pocket of air that yanked her down like an icy hand from below. Val somehow flew clear of it, found some impossible lift that shoved him up and further ahead while Maris checked her abrupt descent and banked to free herself from the down-draft. He circled above the fortress, gauging the winds by the thin smoke rising from the academy’s chimneys, and was on his way back out again, higher and higher, before Maris had finished her recovery.

It was as if the sky itself favored Val this evening, Maris thought resentfully as she came around. The winds toyed with her and stalled her, gusting unpredictably every time she tried to ride them, but let Val fly them freely. He seemed almost unaware of the dangerous uncertainty of the gales, somehow finding, amid the constant shifting, the sure and fluid wind on which to glide.

Maris knew then that she had lost the race. Val was high above her, knowing that altitude often meant speed, and it would take her too long to reach his height, even if she should find the winds she needed to take her there. She tried to make up the distance between them, but the struggle against the ragged gusts wore her out, and the awareness that already it was too late took the heart out of her efforts. Val lost some time descending for his landing, but still passed above the cliff the second, final time more than a full wing-span ahead of her. Clearly, he had won.

Maris was too drained by the flight to smile at him when they had both come down in the soft sand of the landing pit, too depressed to pretend that it didn’t matter. In silence, she removed her wings as hastily as she could, her numbed fingers often slipping and fumbling uselessly at the straps. At last, still without a word having passed between them, Maris slung her wings over her shoulder and turned toward the weathered fortress.

Val blocked her way.

“I won’t tell anyone,” he said.

Her head jerked up, and she felt a hot flush of embarrassment rise in her cheeks. “I don’t care what you say—about anything—to anyone!”

“Oh?” His faint smile taunted her, made her realize how hollow her words rang. Obviously she did care.

“It wasn’t a fair trial,” she snapped, and instantly regretted the feeble, childish complaint.

“No,” Val agreed, his tone flat enough so Maris had no clue as to whether irony was intended. “You were flying all day, while I was well-rested. I could never have beaten you if we were both fresh. We all know that.”

“I’ve lost before,” Maris said, trying hard to control her emotions. “It doesn’t bother me.”

“I see,” said Val. “Good.” He smiled again.

Maris shrugged irritably, feeling the wings scrape her back. “I’m very tired,” she said. “Please excuse me.”

“Certainly.” Val moved out of her way and she trudged past him, crossed the sand wearily, and began climbing the flight of worn, moss-covered steps that led to the fortress’s seaward entrance. But at the top, some impulse made her hesitate and turn before ducking inside.

Val had not followed her. He still stood out on the sand, a gaunt solitary figure in the gathering dusk, his folded wings propped lightly on one shoulder. He was looking off over the sea, where a lone scavenger kite sailed in ragged circles against the clouds of sunset.

Maris shivered and went inside.

The yearly competition was a festive three-day affair. Once it had been only games and drinking, with nothing at stake except pride. In those days it was smaller, and traditionally held on the Eyrie. But since the challenge system had been instituted seven years ago, flyer participation had grown dramatically, and it had been necessary to move the competition to the islands.

The Landsmen competed for it eagerly, donating facilities and labor. It was a holiday for their own people, and brought crowds of visitors with good metal coin from other islands. The land-bound had few spectacles like it, and the flyers were still figures of romance and adventure to many of them.

This year the contests were to be held on Skulny, a mid-sized island to the northeast of Little Shotan. Seatooth’s Landsman had chartered a ship for Sena and the Woodwingers, and a runner had just brought word that it was waiting at the small island’s only port. They would sail on the evening tide.

“Setting out in the dark,” Sena grumbled, taking a seat beside Maris at breakfast. “Asking for trouble.”

Kerr looked up from his porridge. “Oh, but we have to leave on the tide,” he said earnestly. “That’s why we leave in the evening.”

Sena regarded him sourly with her good eye. “Know a lot about sailing, do you?”

“Yes, ma’am. My brother Rac captains a trading ship, one of the big three-masters, and my other brother is a sailor too, though he’s only a hand on a channel ferry. I thought that I—well, before I came to Woodwings, I thought I’d be a sailor too. It’s about the closest thing there is to flying.”

Sena shuddered. “Like flying without control, like flying with weights dragging you into the sea, like flying blind, yes, that’s sailing.”

She’d been speaking loud enough for everyone to hear, and there was widespread laughter around the room. Kerr blushed and concentrated on his bowl.

Maris looked at Sena with sympathy, trying not to laugh for Kerr’s sake. Sena, although grounded for years, had never lost the flyer’s almost superstitious fear of traveling by sea.

“How long will it take?” Maris asked.

“Oh, they say, winds willing, three days, with a stop in Stormtown. What does it matter? Either we’ll get there, or we’ll all drown.” The teacher looked at Maris. “You fly to Skulny today?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” Sena said, reaching across to take Maris by the arm. “Then everyone need not drown. We have two sets of wings we’ll be needing in the competition. It would be insane to take them in the boat with us—”

“Ship,” Kerr interrupted.

Sena looked at him. “Boat or ship, it would be insane. We might as well put them to use. Will you take two of the students with you? The long flight should be good practice.”

Maris looked down the table and saw how everyone within hearing distance had suddenly become still. No spoons were raised, no jaws moved as they waited for her answer.

“That’s a fine idea,” Maris said, smiling. “I’ll take S’Rella with me, and—” She hesitated, trying to decide who to choose.

Two tables down, Val set down his spoon and rose. “I’ll go,” he said.

Maris’ eyes met his across the room. “S’Rella and Sher or Leya,” she said stubbornly. “They need that kind of flight the most.”

“I’ll stay with Val, then,” S’Rella said quietly.

“And I’d rather go with Leya,” Sher added.

“It will be S’Rella and Val,” Sena said irritably, “and I’ll hear no more about it. If the rest of us die at sea, they have the best chance of becoming flyers and honoring our memory.” She pushed aside her porridge bowl and turned on the bench. “Now I must go see our patron the Landsman and be obsequious to her for a while. I will see you again before you leave for Skulny.”

Maris scarcely heard her; her eyes were still locked with Val’s. He smiled at her thinly, then spun and followed Sena from the room. S’Rella left soon after.

Kerr was talking to her, Maris suddenly realized. She shook herself back to attention and smiled at him. “Sorry. I didn’t hear you.”

“It isn’t so dangerous,” he said quietly. “Not just to sail from here to Skulny. There’s only a few miles of open ocean, when the ship crosses from Little Shotan to Skulny. Mostly we’ll hug the shores of the Shotans, with land never out of sight. And the ships aren’t as fragile as she thinks. I know about ships.”

“I’m sure you do, Kerr,” Maris said. “Sena is just thinking like a flyer. After the freedom of having your own wings, it’s a hard thing to travel by sea and trust your life to those handling the sails and the tiller.”

Kerr chewed his lip. “I guess I see,” he said, without conviction. “But if the flyers all think that, they don’t know much. It’s not as dangerous as she says.” Satisfied, he went back to his breakfast.

Maris grew thoughtful as she ate. He was right, she realized with a sense of vague unease; flyers were often too limited in the ways they thought, judging everything from their own perspective. But the idea that Val’s sweeping condemnation of them might have some justice to it disturbed her more than she was willing to admit.

Afterward she went to look for S’Rella and Val. They were not in their rooms, nor in any of the other obvious places, and no one seemed to know where they had gone after leaving the common room. Maris wandered through the dark, cool corridors until she was thoroughly lost, making her choice of turning according to whether or not there were torches for her to light in the wallsockets.

She was thinking of giving out a cry for help, and laughing at herself for being so helpless within the enclosure of walls, when she heard, very faintly, the sound of voices, and pressed on. One more turn to the right and she found them, together, sitting close in a small cul-de-sac with a window overlooking the sea. There was something in the way they leaned near to each other that spoke of intimacy, and it changed Maris’ mood to one of annoyance.

“I’ve been looking all over for you,” Maris said abruptly.

S’Rella half-turned away from Val and stood up. “What is it?” she asked eagerly.

“We’re flying to Skulny, you know,” Maris said. “Can you be ready to leave in an hour? Anything you wanted to take with you, you can pack up and give to Sena.”

“I can be ready to leave in a minute,” S’Rella said, and her smile put a damper on Maris’ pique. “I was so happy when you named me, Maris. You don’t know what this means to me.” Her face alight, she leaped forward and embraced Maris.

Maris hugged her back. “I think I do,” she said. “Now, go off and get ready.”

S’Rella bid a brief goodbye to Val and then was off. Maris stood watching her go, then turned back to him, and hesitated.

Val was still looking down the tunnel where S’Rella had disappeared, smiling, but there was something about him—the smile was real, Maris realized. That was it. He was smiling with something like fondness, and it gave him a softer, more human look than she had ever seen him wear.

Then his eyes snapped back to her, and the smile changed, subtly, a small twist at the corners, and now he was smiling for Maris and the smile was full of derision and hostility. “I haven’t thanked you for naming me,” he said. “I was so happy when you said I could fly with you.”

“Val,” Maris said wearily, “we may not like each other, but we have a long flight to make together. You could at least try to be civil. Don’t mock me. Are you going to pack?”

“I’ve never unpacked,” he said. “I’ll give my bag to Sena, and wear my knife. It’s the only thing that matters. Don’t worry, I’ll be ready.” He hesitated. “And I won’t bother you on Skulny. When we land, I’ll find my own quarters. Fair enough?”

“Val,” Maris started. But he had turned away and was staring through the cell’s small window at the moving, cloudy sky, his face cold and closed.

Sena brought the others out to the launching cliff to watch Maris, S’Rella, and Val depart. All of them were in the highest of spirits, laughing and joking, vying with each other for the privilege of helping Maris and S’Rella with their wings. There was a mood of wild and restless gaiety among them that was infectious; Maris felt her own spirits rise, and for the first time she was eager for the competitions.

“Let them be, let them be!” Sena cried, laughing. “They certainly can’t fly with the lot of you hanging on their wings!”

“Wish they could,” mumbled Kerr. He pushed at his nose, which had turned bright red in the wind.

“You’ll have your chance,” S’Rella said, sounding defensive.

“No one grudges you this,” Leya said quickly.

“You’re the best of us,” Sher added.

“Save it,” Sena said, putting one arm around Leya, the other around Sher. “Go now. We’ll wave goodbye and meet you again on Skulny.”

Maris turned to S’Rella and saw that the younger woman was watching her intently, her whole body tensed and ready for Maris’ slightest signal. She remembered her own earliest flights, when she had still not quite believed that she could have wings of her own, and she touched S’Rella’s shoulder and spoke to her kindly.

“We’ll all stay close together and take it easy,” she said. “The stunts are for the competitions—right now, we’ll concentrate on steady flying. This will be a long trip for you, I know, but don’t worry about it—you’ve got enough stamina for twice the distance. Just relax and trust yourself. I’ll be there watching out for you, but you won’t really need me.”

“Thank you,” S’Rella said. “I’ll do my best.”

Maris nodded and signaled, and Damen and Liane came out and unfolded her wings for her, strut by strut, pulling the bright silver fabric taut until her wings were spread twenty feet. Then she was off, leaping away from the cliff to a chorus of farewells and good wishes, into the cool, steady, faintly rain-scented flow of the wind. She circled and watched S’Rella’s takeoff, trying to judge it as if S’Rella were in competition.

No doubt about it, S’Rella had improved greatly recently. The clumsiness was gone, and she did not hesitate at the edge, but sprang smoothly clear of the fortress and, having judged the wind nicely, began to rise almost at once.

“I don’t believe your wings are of wood at all!” Maris called to her.

Then both of them swung through the sky in impatient, widening circles, waiting for Val.

He had been leaning against the door through all of the joking and the preparations, standing outside it all, his face blank and guarded. He was winged already, having strapped them on without help. Now he walked calmly through the group of students and would-be flyers, and stood perched on the brink of the precipice, his feet half-over the edge. Painstakingly he unfolded the first three struts, but he did not lock them into place.

Then he slid his arms through the loops, flexed, knelt, and stood again.

Damen reached to help him unfold his wings, but Val turned and said something sharp to him—Maris, circling above, lost the words in the wind—and Damen fell back in confusion.

Then Val laughed, and jumped.

S’Rella trembled visibly in the air, her wings shaking with her shock. From below, Maris heard someone scream, and someone else was swearing. Val fell, body straight like a diver’s, twenty feet down, forty…

And suddenly he was falling no more—the wings came out of nowhere, flaring, flashing silver-white in the sun as they sprang open almost with their own volition. The air screamed past them, and Val caught it and turned it and rode on it, and all at once he was flying, skimming the breakers with impossible speed, then pulling up, climbing, soaring, the waves and the rocks and death all receding visibly beneath him, and Maris could hear dimly the peal of his triumphant wind-blown laughter.

S’Rella had locked into a stall, still watching Val. Maris shouted commands at her, and she broke out of it, twisting her wings at an angle and slanting off back over the land. Above the fortress, its bare rock heated in the sun, she found a strong riser and sailed back up to safety. Below, Sena was cursing up at Val and shaking her cane in apoplectic fury. He paid no attention. He was rising, higher and higher, and from the Woodwingers on the cliff came the ragged, popping sound of applause.

Maris went after him, banking, breaking her circle, heading out over the sea. Val was already ahead of her. But flying easily this time, luxuriating in his stunt.

When she caught him, flying as near to him as she dared—above and a bit behind and to the right—she began to shout curses down at him, borrowing freely from Sena’s more extensive vocabulary.

Val laughed at her.

“That was dangerous and useless and stupid,” Maris shouted. “You could have killed yourself… a jammed strut… if you hadn’t flung them hard enough…”

Val still laughed. “My risk,” he shouted back. “And I didn’t fling them… rigged springs… better than Raven.”

“Raven was a fool,” she shouted. “And long dead… what’s Raven to you?”

“Your brother sang that song, too,” Val yelled. Then he banked and dove, away from her, abruptly terminating the conversation.

Numb, and seeing no use in further pursuit of Val, Maris wheeled around and looked for S’Rella, who was following several hundred yards behind and below them. She drifted down to join her, trying to tell her pounding heart to relax, willing her stiff muscles to loosen and get the feel of the wind.

S’Rella was ghost-pale, and flying badly. “What happened?” she cried when Maris approached. “I could have died.”

“It was a stunt,” Maris called to her. “Flyer named Raven used to do it. Val concocted his own version.”

S’Rella flew silently for a moment, considering that, and then a little color came tentatively back into her face. “I thought someone had pushed him,” she shouted. “A stunt—it was beautiful.”

“It was insane,” Maris called back. She was quietly horrified that S’Rella could possibly have thought one of her fellow students capable of shoving Val to his death. He has been influencing her, she thought bitterly.

The rest of the flight, as Maris had predicted, was easy. Maris and S’Rella flew close together, Val ahead and much higher, preferring the company of rainbirds, it seemed. They kept him in sight throughout the afternoon, but only with an effort.

The winds were cooperative, blowing them so steadily toward Skulny that they hardly needed to do more than relax and glide. It was at times a dull flight, but Maris did not regret it. They skirted the coast of Big Shotan, fishing fleets everywhere beyond the little harbor towns, bringing in as big a catch as possible in the storm-free weather. And they saw Stormtown from the air, its great bay in the center of the city, windmills turning all along the shores, forty of them, or fifty—S’Rella tried to count them, but they were behind her before she was half done. And in the open sea between Little Shotan and Skulny, near sunset, they spied a scylla, its long neck craning up out of the blue-green water as its rows of powerful flippers churned just beneath the surface. S’Rella seemed delighted. She had heard about scyllas all her life, but this was the first she had actually seen.

They reached Skulny just ahead of the night. As they circled before landing, they could see figures below setting up lanterns on poles all along the beach, to guide in later flyers. Already the small flyers’ lodge nearby was ablaze with lights and activity: the parties, thought Maris, began earlier every year.

Maris tried to make her landing an example to S’Rella, but even as she was on her hands and knees, shaking sand out of her hair, she heard S’Rella thump to the ground nearby, and realized the girl had surely been too busy with her own landing to notice how clumsy or adept her teacher was.

Whoops of pleasure and welcome surrounded them at once. Eager hands reached out to them. “Help you, flyer? Help you, please?”

Maris took hold of one strong hand, and looked up into the eager face of a young boy with wind-tangled hair. His face was alive with pleasure; he was here for the glory of being near flyers, and was probably thrilled by the thought of the coming competition on his own island.

But as he was helping her off with her wings—and another boy was helping S’Rella—suddenly there was the sound of wind-on-wings again, and another thump, and Maris glanced over to see that Val had come in. They had lost sight of him near dusk, and she had assumed he was already down.

He climbed awkwardly to his feet, the great silver wings bobbing on his back, and two young girls moved in on him. “Help you, flyer.” The refrain was almost a chant. “Help you, flyer,” and their hands were on him.

“Get away” he snapped, anger in his voice. The girls jumped back, startled, and even Maris looked up. Val was always so cool and controlled; the outburst was unlike him.

“We just want to help you with your wings, flyer,” the bolder of the girls said.

“Don’t you have any pride?” Val said. He was unstrap-ping himself, without help. “Don’t you have anything better to do than fawn over flyers who treat you like dirt? What are your parents?”

The girl quailed. “Tanners, flyer.”

“Then go and learn tanning,” he said. “It’s a cleaner trade than slaving for the flyers.” He turned away from her, began to fold up his wings carefully.

Maris and S’Rella were free of their own wings now. “Here,” said the boy who had been helping Maris, as he offered them to her, neatly folded. Suddenly abashed, she fumbled in her pocket and offered the boy an iron coin. She had always accepted the help without payment before, but something in what Val said had struck a chord.

But the boy just laughed and refused to take her money. “Don’t you know?” he said. “It’s good luck to touch a flyer’s wings.” And then he was off, and Maris saw as he darted toward his companions that the beach was full of children. They were everywhere, helping with the poles, playing in the sand, waiting for the chance to aid a flyer.

But looking at them, Maris thought of Val, and wondered if there were others on the island who were not so thrilled by the flyers and the competition, others who stayed home to brood and sulk and resent the privileged caste that flew the skies of Windhaven.

“Take your wings, flyer?” a voice said sharply, and Maris glanced over. It was Val, mocking. “Here,” he said, in his normal tone, and he offered her the wings he’d worn on the flight. “I imagine you’ll want these for safekeeping.”

She took the wings from him, holding one pair awkwardly in each hand. “Where are you going?” Val shrugged. “This is a fair-sized island. Somewhere there’s a town or two, and a tavern or two, and a bed to sleep in. I have a few irons.”

“You could come up to the lodge with S’Rella and me,” Maris said hesitantly.

“Could I?” Val said, his voice perfectly level. His smile flickered at her. “That would be an interesting scene. More dramatic than my launching today, I’d guess.”

Maris frowned. “I haven’t forgotten that,” she said. “S’Rella could have hurt herself, you know. She was badly startled by that fool’s leap of yours. I ought—”

“I believe I’ve heard this before,” Val said. “Excuse me.” He turned and was gone, walking quickly up the beach with his hands shoved deep in his pockets.

Behind her, Maris heard S’Rella laughing and talking with the other young people, sharing with them her delight in her first long flight. When Maris approached, she broke off and ran to take her hand. “How was I?” she asked breathlessly. “How did I do?”

“You know how you did—you just want me to praise you,” Maris said, her tone a mock-scold. “All right, I will. You flew as if you’d never done anything else in your life, as if you’d been born to it.”

“I know,” S’Rella said shyly. Then she laughed in sheer joy. “It was marvelous. I never want to do anything but fly!”

“I know how you feel,” Maris said. “But a rest will do us good right now. Let’s go in and sit by the fire and see who else has come early.”

But when she turned to go, S’Rella hung back. Maris looked at her curiously, and then understood; S’Rella was worried about the sort of reception she would find inside the lodge. She was an outsider, after all, and no doubt Val had been filling her with tales of his own rejection.

“Well,” Maris said, “you might as well come in, unless you feel like flying back tonight. They’ll have to meet you sometime.”

S’Rella nodded, still a bit timorous, and they started up the pebbled incline toward the lodge.

It was a small two-room building built of soft, weathered white rock. The main room, well-lit and overheated by a roaring fire, was noisy, crowded, and unappealing after the clean solitude of the open air. The faces of the flyers seemed to blur together as Maris looked around in search of special friends, S’Rella standing nervously behind her. They hung the wings on hooks along the walls, and began to fight their way across the room.

A heavy-set, middle-aged man with a full beard was pouring some liquid into the huge, fragrant stewpot hung over the fire, and roaring insults at someone demanding nourishment. Something about him drew Maris’ eyes back after they had passed over him, and with a strange little shock she recognized the overweight cook. When had Garth grown so old and fat?

She started toward him when thin arms went around her from behind, hugging her fiercely, and she caught the faint whisper of a flowery scent.

“Shalli!” she said, turning. She noticed the rounded stomach. “I didn’t expect to see you here—heard you were preg—”

Shalli stopped her lips with a finger. “Hush. I get enough of that from Corm. And I tell him that our little flyer has to learn about flying from the very beginning. But I am careful, truly. I took the flight slow and easy. I couldn’t miss this! Corm wanted me to take a boat. Can you imagine?” Shalli’s beautiful, mobile face went from one comic expression to another as she spoke.

“You’re not going to compete?”

“Oh, no. It wouldn’t be fair, me with the extra ballast!” She patted the small mound and laughed. “I’m to judge. And I’ve promised Corm that after this I’ll stay home and be a good little mother ’til the baby comes, unless there’s an emergency.”

Maris felt a pang of guilt, knowing that the “emergencies” Shalli had to fly were caused by her own absence from Amberly. But after the competition, she swore to herself, she’d stay home and tend to her duties.

“Shalli, I’d like you to meet a friend of mine,” Maris said. S’Rella was hanging back shyly, so Maris pulled her gently forward. “This is S’Rella, our most promising student. She flew here from Woodwings with me today, her longest flight so far.”

“Ooh.” Shalli arched her brows.

“S’Rella, this is Shalli. From Lesser Amberly, like me. She used to fly guard on me, when I was just learning how to use the wings.”

They exchanged polite greetings. Then Shalli, giving S’Rella a measuring look, said, “Good luck in the competitions. You’d better not beat Corm, though. I think I’d go mad if he was around the house every day for a year.”

Shalli smiled, but S’Rella seemed to take the jest in earnest. “I don’t want to hurt anyone,” she said, “but someone has to lose. I want to win as much as any flyer.”

“Mmm, well, it’s not quite the same,” Shalli murmured. “But I was only joking, child. You wouldn’t want to challenge Corm, really. You wouldn’t have a very good chance.” She glanced across the room. “Excuse me, please—I see that Corm has found a cushion for me, and now I suppose I must go and sit on it if I’m not to hurt his feelings. I’ll talk to you later, Maris. S’Rella, it was nice to meet you.”

They watched her moving easily through the crowded room, away from them.

“Would I?” S’Rella asked, her tone troubled.

“Would you what?”

“Have a chance against Corm.”

Maris looked at her unhappily, not knowing what to say. “He’s very good,” she managed finally. “He’s been flying for almost twenty years now, and he’s won prizes in lots of these competitions. No, you’re probably not his match. But that’s no disgrace, S’Rella.”

“Which one is he?” S’Rella said, frowning.

“Over by Shalli—see—the dark-haired one in black and gray.”

“He’s handsome,” S’Rella said.

Maris laughed. “Ah, yes. Half the land-bound girls on Amberly were in love with him when he was younger. They were all heartbroken when he and Shalli wed.”

That drew a small smile back to S’Rella’s face. “On my home island, all the boys used to dream about S’Landra, our flyer. Were you in love with Corm too?”

“Never. I knew him too well.”

“MARIS!” The bellow rang from the rafters, attracting attention all over the lodge. Garth was yelling at her from across the room, gesturing her closer.

She grinned. “Come,” she said, pulling S’Rella after her through the press, nodding polite hellos at old acquaintances as she went.

Garth crushed her in a formidable hug when she reached him, then pushed her back to look at her. “You look tired, Maris,” he told her. “Flying too much.”

“And you,” she said, “have been eating too much.” She jabbed a finger into his stomach where it hung over his belt. “What’s this? Are you and Shalli going to give birth together?”

Garth snorted with laughter. “Ah,” he growled, “my sister’s fault. She brews her own ale, you know. Got a right little business going. I have to help her out, of course, buy a little now and again.”

“You’re probably her best customer,” Maris said. “When did you grow the beard?”

“Oh, a month ago, two, something like that. I haven’t seen you in a half-year, it seems.”

Maris nodded. “Dorrel was fretting over you the last time we were at the Eyrie together. Something about a date to get drunk, and you didn’t make it.”

He frowned. “Ah,” he said, “yes, I know all about it. Dorrel goes on endlessly. I was ill, that’s all, no great mystery.” He turned back to the fire and gave his stew a stir. “There’ll be food soon. Hungry? I made this myself, Southern style, with lots of spices and wine.”

Maris turned. “You hear that, S’Rella? You’ll get some decent food, it sounds like.” She ushered the girl forward to face Garth. “S’Rella’s a Woodwinger, and one of the best. She’ll be taking some poor soul’s wings this year. S’Rella, this is Garth of Skulny, one of our hosts here and an old friend.”

“Not that old,” Garth protested. He smiled at S’Rella. “Why, you’re as beautiful as Maris used to be, before she got thin and tired. Do you fly as well?”

“I try to,” S’Rella said.

“Modest, too,” he said. “Well, Skulny knows how to treat flyers, even fledglings. Anything you want, you tell me about it. Are you hungry? This will be ready soon. In fact, maybe you can help me with the spices. I’m not really from Southern, you know, maybe I didn’t get it right.” He took her by the hand and drew her closer to the fire, then forced a spoonful of stew at her. “Here, try this, tell me what you think.”

As S’Rella tasted, Garth glanced at Maris and pointed. “Look, you’re wanted,” he said. Dorrel was standing in the doorway, still holding his folded wings, shouting to her above the din of the party. “Go on,” Garth said gruffly. “I’ll keep S’Rella occupied. I’m the host, after all.” He pushed her toward the door.

Maris smiled at him, then began to work her way back across the floor, which had grown even more crowded. Dorrel, after hanging up his wings, met her. He threw his arms around her and kissed her briefly. Maris found herself trembling as she leaned against him.

When they broke apart, there was concern in his eyes. “What’s wrong?” he said. “You were shaking.” He looked at her hard. “And you look worn out, exhausted.”

Maris forced a smile. “Garth said the same thing. No, really, I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not. I know you too well, love.” He put his hands on her shoulders, his gentle, familiar hands. “Really. Can’t you tell me?”

Maris sighed. She did feel tired, she realized suddenly. “I guess I don’t know myself,” she muttered. “I haven’t been sleeping well this past month. Nightmares.”

Dorrel put an arm around her and led her through the press of flyers to a wide wooden table against the wall, covered with wines, liquors, and food. “What kind of nightmares?” he asked. He poured them each glasses of rich red wine, and carved out two wedges of a white, crumbly cheese.

“Only one. Falling. I fall through still air, hit the water, and die.” She bit off a mouthful of cheese and washed it down with a gulp of the wine. “Good,” she said, smiling.

“Should be,” Dorrel replied. “It’s from Amberly. But you can’t really be worried about this dream, can you? I didn’t think you were superstitious.“ ‘ “No,” Maris said, “that’s not it at all. I can’t explain. It just—bothers me. And that’s not all.” She hesitated.

Dorrel watched her face, waiting.

“This competition,” Maris said. “There could be trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Remember when I saw you at Eyrie? I mentioned that one of the students from Airhome had taken ship for Woodwings?”

“Yes,” Dorrel said. He sipped at his own wine. “What of it?”

“He’s on Skulny now, and he’s going to challenge, and it isn’t just any student. It’s Val.” Dorrel’s face was blank. “Val?”

“One-Wing,” Maris said quietly. He frowned. “One-Wing,” he repeated. “Well, I understand why you’re upset. I would never have expected him to try again. Does he expect to be welcomed?”

“No,” Maris said. “He knows better. And his opinion of flyers is no better than their opinion of him.”

Dorrel shrugged. “Well, it will be unpleasant, but it needn’t ruin the competition,” he said. “He’ll be easy enough to ignore, and I don’t imagine we have to worry about him winning again. No one has lost a relative lately.”

Maris drew back a little. Dorrel’s voice abruptly seemed so hard, and the gibe sounded so cruel from his lips—and yet, it was almost identical to what she’d said at the academy on the day Val had arrived. “Dorr,” she said, “he’s good. He’s been training for years. I think he’s going to win. He has the skills. I know, I’ve flown against him.”

“You’ve flown against him?” Dorrel said.

“In practice,” Maris said. “At Woodwings. What—”

He drained his wine and set the glass aside. “Maris,” he said, his voice low but strained. “You’re not going to tell me you’ve been helping him too. One-Wing?”

“He was a student, and Sena asked me to work with him,” Maris said stubbornly. “I’m not there to play favorites and help only those I like.”

Dorrel swore and took her by the arm. “Come outside,” he said. “I don’t want to talk about this in here, where someone might hear.”

It was cool outside the lodge, and the wind coming in off the sea had the tang of salt to it. Along the beach, the poles were up and the lanterns had been lit to welcome night-flying travelers. Maris and Dorrel walked away from the crowded lodge and sat together on the sand. Most of the children had gone now, and they were alone.

“Maybe this is what I feared,” Maris said, with a tinge of bitterness in her tone. “I knew you’d balk at that. But I can’t make exceptions—we can’t make exceptions. Can’t you understand that? Can’t you try to understand?”

“I can try,” he said. “I can’t promise to succeed. Why, Maris? He’s no ordinary land-bound, no little Wood-wings dreaming of being a flyer. He’s One-Wing, half a flyer even when he had his wings. He killed Ari. Have you forgotten that?”

“No,” Maris said. “I’m not happy about Val. He’s hard to like, and he hates flyers, and there’s always the specter of Ari peering over his shoulder. But I have to help him, Dorr. Because of what we did seven years ago. The wings must go to those who can use them best, even if they are… well, like Val. Vindictive, and angry, and cold.”

Dorrel shook his head. “I can’t accept that,” he said.

“I wish I knew him better,” Maris said, “so I could understand what made him the way he is. I think he hated the flyers even before they named him One-Wing.” She reached over and took Dorrel by the hand. “He’s always accusing, making venomous little jests, when he isn’t shielding himself in ice. According to Val, I’m a One-Wing too, even if I pretend that I’m not.”

Dorrel looked at her and squeezed her hand tight within his own. “No,” he said. “You are a flyer, Maris. Have no fear of that.”

“Am I?’ she said. “I’m not sure what it means to be a flyer. It’s more than having wings, or flying well. Val had wings, and he flies well enough, but you yourself said he was only half a flyer. If it means… well, accepting everything the way it is, and looking down on the land-bound, and not offering help to the Woodwingers for fear they’ll hurt a fellow flyer, a real flyer… if it means things like that, then I don’t think I am a flyer. And sometimes I wonder if I’m not beginning to share Val’s opinions of those who are.”

Dorrel let go her hand but his eyes were still on her. Even in the dark she could feel the anguished intensity of his gaze. “Maris,” he said softly. “I’m a flyer, born to my wings. Val One-Wing surely despises me for it. Do you?”

“Dorr,” she said, hurt. “You know I don’t. I’ve always loved and trusted you—you’re my best friend, truly. But…”

“But,” he echoed.

She could not look at him. “I wasn’t proud of you when you refused to come to Woodwings,” she said.

The distant sounds of the party and the melancholy wash of the waves against the beach seemed to fill the world. Finally Dorrel spoke.

“My mother was a flyer, and her mother before her, and on back for generations the pair of wings that I bear has been in my family. That means a great deal to me. My child, should I ever father one, will fly, too, someday.

“You weren’t born to that tradition, and you’ve been the dearest person in the world to me. And you’ve always proved that you deserved wings at least as much as any flyer’s child. It would have been a horrible injustice if you’d been denied them. I’m proud that I could help you.

“I’m proud that I fought with you in Council to open the sky, but now you seem to be telling me that we fought for different things. As I understood it, we were fighting for the right of anyone who dreamed hard enough and worked long enough to become a flyer. We weren’t out to destroy the great tradition of the flyers, to throw the wings out and let land-bound and would-be flyers alike fight over them like scavenging gulls over a pile offish.

“What we were trying to do, or so I thought, was to open the sky, to open the Eyrie, to open the ranks of the flyers to anyone who could prove worthy of bearing wings.

“Was I wrong? Were we actually fighting instead to give up everything that makes us special and different?”

“I don’t know anymore,” she said. “Seven years ago, I could think of nothing more wonderful than being a flyer. Neither could you. We never dreamed that there were people who might want to wear our wings, but reject everything else that makes up a flyer. We never dreamed of them, but they existed. And we opened the sky for them, too, Dorr. We changed more than we knew. And we can’t turn our backs on them. The world has changed, and we have to accept it, and deal with it. We may not like all the results of what we’ve done, but we can’t deny them. Val is one of those results.”

Dorrel stood up and brushed the sand from his clothes. “I can’t accept that result,” he said, his voice more sorrowful than angry. “I’ve done a lot of things for the love of you, Maris, but I can see the limits. It’s true that the world has changed—because of what we’ve done—but we don’t have to accept the evil with the good. We don’t have to embrace those, like Val One-Wing, who sneer at our traditions and seek to tear us apart. He’ll destroy us in the end, Maris—with his selfishness and his hatred. And because you don’t understand that, you’ll help him. I won’t. Do you understand that?”

She nodded without looking up at him.

A minute passed in silence. “Will you come with me, back to the lodge?”

“No,” she said. “No, not just now.”

“Good night, Maris.” Dorrel turned and walked away from her, his boots crunching on the sand until the lodge door opened for him with a burst of party noise, then closed again.

It was quiet and peaceful on the beach. The lanterns, burning atop their poles, moved weakly in the breeze, and she heard their faint clattering and the never-ending sound of the sea rolling in and out, in and out.

Maris had never felt so alone.

Maris and S’Rella spent the night together in a roughly finished cabin for two not far from the shore, one of fifty such structures that the Landsman of Skulny had had erected to house the visiting flyers. The little village was only half full as yet, but Maris knew that the earliest arrivals had already appropriated the more comfortable accommodations in the lodge house and the guest wing of the Landsman’s own High Hall.

S’Rella didn’t mind the austerity of their lodgings. She was in high spirits when Maris retrieved her at last from the dying party. Garth had stayed close to her throughout the evening, introducing her to almost everybody, forcing her to eat three portions of his stew after she had praised it incautiously, and regaling her with embarrassing anecdotes about half of the flyers present. “He’s nice,” S’Rella said, “but he drinks too much.” Maris could only agree with that; though it had not always been so: when she’d come to find S’Rella, Garth had been red-eyed and close to staggering. Maris helped him to the back room and put him to bed while he carried on a slurred, unintelligible conversation.

The next day dawned gray and windy. They woke to the cries of a food vendor, and Maris slipped outside and bought two steaming hot sausages from his cart. After breakfast, they donned their wings and flew. Not many of the flyers were in the air; the holiday atmosphere was a contagion, and most were drinking and talking in the lodge, or paying their respects to the Landsman, or wandering about Skulny to see what there was to see. But Maris insisted that S’Rella practice, and they stayed aloft for close to five hours on steadily rising winds.

Below them, the beach was again choked with children eager to assist incoming flyers. Despite their numbers, they were kept busy. Arrivals were constant throughout the day. The most spectacular moment—S’Rella looked on with wondering, awe-struck eyes—was when the flyers of Big Shotan approached en masse, nearly forty strong, flying in a tight formation, gorgeous against the sun in their dark red uniforms and silver wings.

By the time the competition began, Maris knew, virtually all the flyers from the scattered reaches of Western would be here. Eastern would be heavily represented too, although not quite with the unanimity of Western. Southern, smaller and farther, would have fewer still, and there would be only a handful of competitors from the Outer Islands, desolate Artellia, the volcanic Embers, and the other far-off places.

It was afternoon, and Maris and S’Rella were sitting outside the lodge with glasses of hot spiced milk in their hands, when Val made his appearance.

He gave Maris his mocking half-smile and sat down next to S’Rella. “I trust you enjoyed flyer hospitality,” he said flatly.

“They were nice,” S’Rella said, blushing. “Won’t you come tonight? There’s to be another party. Garth is going to roast a whole seacat, and his sister is providing ale.”

“No,” Val said. “They have ale enough and food enough where I’m staying, and it suits me better.” He glanced at Maris. “No doubt it suits us all better.”

Maris refused to be baited. “Where are you staying?”

“A tavern about two miles down the sea road. Not the sort of place you’d care to visit. They don’t get many flyers there, just miners and landsguard and some less willing to talk about their professions. I doubt they’d know how to treat a flyer properly.”

Maris frowned in annoyance. “Do you ever stop?”

“Stop?” He smiled.

All at once Maris was filled with a perverse determination to erase that smile, to prove Val wrong. “You don’t even know the flyers,” she said. “What right have you to hate them so? They’re people, no different from you—no, that’s wrong, they are different. They’re warmer and more generous.”

“The warmth and generosity of flyers is fabled,” Val said. “No doubt that’s why only flyers are welcome at flyer parties.”

“They welcomed me,” S’Rella said.

Val gave her a long look, cautious and measuring. Then he shrugged and the thin smile returned to his lips.

“You’ve convinced me,” he said. “I’ll come to this party tonight, if they’ll let a land-bound through the door.”

“Come as my guest, then,” Maris said, “if you refuse to call yourself a flyer. And put aside your damned hostility for a few hours. Give them a chance.”

“Please,” S’Rella said. She took his hand and smiled hopefully at him.

“Oh, they’ll have a chance to show their warmth and generosity,” Val said. “But I won’t beg for it, or polish their wings, or sing songs in their praise.” He stood up abruptly. “Now, I would like to get some flying in. Is there a pair of wings I might use?”

Maris nodded and directed him to the cabin where his wings were hung. After he was gone, she turned to S’Rella. “You care for him a lot, don’t you?” she said softly.

S’Rella lowered her eyes and blushed. “I know he’s cruel at times, Maris, but he’s not always like that.”

“Maybe that’s so,” Maris admitted. “He hasn’t let me get to know him very well. Just—just be careful, all right, S’Rella? Val has a lot of hurt in him and sometimes people like that, when they’ve been hurt a lot, get back by hurting others, even those who care for them.”

“I know,” S’Rella said. “Maris, you don’t think—they won’t hurt him tonight, will they? The flyers?”

“I think he wants them to,” Maris said, “so you’ll see that he’s right about them—about us. But I’m hoping that we’ll prove him wrong.”

S’Rella said nothing. Maris finished her drink and rose. “Come,” she said. “There’s still time for more practice, and you need it. Let’s get our wings back on.”

By early evening it was common knowledge among the flyers that Val One-Wing was on Skulny and intended to challenge. How the word had gotten out Maris was unsure. Perhaps Dorrel had said something, or perhaps Val had been recognized, or perhaps the news had come in from Eastern with some flyer who knew that Val had taken ship from Airhome. It was out and flying in any case. Twice Maris heard the epithet “One-Wing” as she and S’Rella walked back to their cabin in the flyer village, and outside their door a young flyer Maris knew casually from the Eyrie stopped her and asked point-blank if the rumor was true. When Maris admitted that it was, the other woman whistled and shook her head.

It was not quite dark when Maris and S’Rella wandered up to the lodge, but the main room was already half-full of flyers, drinking and talking in small clusters. The promised seacat was roasting on a spit above the fire, but by the look of it still had several hours to go.

Garth’s sister, a stout plain-faced woman named Riesa, drew Maris a mug of her ale from one of three huge wooden casks that had been set along one wall. “It’s good,” Maris said after tasting. “Although I confess I’m no expert. Wine and kivas are my usual drinks.”

Riesa laughed. “Well, Garth swears by it, and he’s drunk enough ale in his time to float a small trading fleet.”

“Where is Garth?” S’Rella asked. “I thought he’d be here.”

“He should be, later,” Riesa said. “He wasn’t feeling well, so he sent me on ahead. I think it was just an excuse to avoid helping with the barrels, actually.”

“Wasn’t feeling well?” Maris said. “Riesa, is everything all right? He’s been ill frequently of late, hasn’t he?”

Riesa’s pleasant smile faded. “Has he told you, Maris? I wasn’t sure. It’s only been the past half-year. It’s his joints. When it gets bad, they swell up on him something terrible, and even when they aren’t swelling he’s got pain.” She leaned a little closer. “I’m worried about him, in truth. Dorrel is too. He’s seen healers, here and in Stormtown too, but no one has been able to do much. And he’s drinking more than he used to.”

Maris was appalled. “I knew Dorrel was fretting over him, but I thought it was just his drinking.” She hesitated. “Riesa, has Garth told the Landsman about his troubles?”

Riesa shook her head. “No, he’s—” She interrupted herself to draw a mug for a craggy-looking Easterner and resumed only after he had drifted away. “He’s afraid, Maris.”

“Why is he afraid?” S’Rella asked quietly, looking from Maris to Riesa and back again. She had been standing silently by Maris’ elbow, listening.

“If a flyer is sick,” Maris said, “the Landsman can call together the island’s other flyers, and if they agree, he can take the wings from the sick one, lest they be lost at sea.” She looked back toward Riesa. “Then Garth is still flying missions as if he were well,” she said, with concern in her voice. “The Landsman isn’t sparing him.”

“No,” Riesa said, chewing on her lip. “I’m frightened for him, Maris. The pain comes on so suddenly sometimes, and if it should come while he’s flying—I’ve told him to speak to the Landsman, but he won’t hear of it. His wings are everything to him, you know that. All you flyers are alike.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Maris said firmly.

“Dorrel has spoken to him endlessly,” Riesa said. “It does no good. You know how stubborn Garth can be.”

“He should lay down his wings,” S’Rella blurted suddenly.

Riesa gave her a hard look. “Child, you don’t know what you are saying. You are the Woodwinger Garth met last night, are you not? Maris’ friend?”

S’Rella nodded.

“Yes, Garth spoke of you,” Riesa said. “You would understand better if you were a flyer. You and I, we can only watch from outside, we can never feel as a flyer feels about his wings. At least Garth has told me so.”

“I will be a flyer,” S’Rella insisted.

“Certainly you will, child,” Riesa said, “but you are not now, and that is why you talk so easily of laying down the wings.”

But S’Rella looked offended. She stood very stiffly and said, “I’m not a child, and I do understand.” She might have said more, but just then the door opened and she and Maris both glanced in that direction.

Val had arrived.

“Excuse me,” Maris said, taking Riesa by the forearm and giving her a squeeze for reassurance. “We’ll talk more later.” She hurried to where Val stood, his dark eyes sweeping the room, one hand resting on the hilt of his ornate knife in a pose that was half nervousness and half challenge.

“A small party,” he said noncommittally when Maris and S’Rella joined him.

“It’s early,” Maris replied. “Give it time. Come, let’s get you a drink and a bit of food.” She gestured to the far wall, where a lavish table had once again been spread with spiced eggs, fruit, cheese, bread, various shellfish, sweetmeats, and pastries. “The seacat is the main course, but we’ll be waiting hours for that,” she concluded.

Val took in the seacat on the spit and the table covered with other edibles. “I see the flyers are eating simply once again,” he said. But he let himself be led across the room, where he ate two spiced eggs and a wedge of cheese before pausing to pour a goblet of wine.

Around them the party went on; Val had attracted no particular attention. But Maris did not know if that was because the others had accepted him, or simply failed to recognize him.

The three of them stood quietly for a few moments, S’Rella talking to Val in a low voice while he sipped at his wine and nibbled some more cheese, Maris quaffing her ale and watching the front door a bit apprehensively each time it opened. It had grown dark outside, and the lodge was rilling up rapidly. A dozen Shotaners she knew only vaguely swept in all at once, still in their red uniforms, followed by a half-dozen Easterners she knew not at all. One of them climbed atop Riesa’s ale casks; a companion tossed him up a guitar, and he began to sing flyers’ songs in a passably mellow voice. Beneath him the crowd grew dense, and listeners began to shout up requests.

Maris, still glancing at the door whenever it opened, drifted a bit closer to Val and S’Rella, and tried to listen to them above the music.

Then the music stopped.

In mid-song, suddenly singer and guitar both grew silent, and the silence flowed across the room, as conversations ceased and all eyes turned curiously to the man perched atop the ale keg. In less than a minute, everyone in the lodge was looking at him.

And he was looking across the room at Val.

Val turned in his direction and raised his wine glass. “Greetings, Loren,” he called, in his maddeningly flat tones. “I toast your fine singing.” He drained his wine and set the glass aside.

Someone, taking Val’s words for a veiled insult, snickered. Others took the toast in earnest, and raised their own glasses. The singer just sat and stared, his face darkening, and most of the flyers watched him, baffled, waiting for him to resume.

“Do the ballad of Aron and Jeni,” someone called out.

The guitarist shook his head. “No,” he said, “I’ve got a more appropriate song.” He played a few opening bars and began to sing a song unfamiliar to Maris.

Val turned to her. “Don’t you recognize it?” he said.

“It’s popular in Eastern. They call it the ballad of Ari and One-Wing.” He poured himself more wine and raised the glass again in mocking tribute to the singer.

With a sinking feeling, Maris realized that she had heard the song before, years past, and what was worse had enjoyed it. It was a rousing, dramatic story of betrayal and revenge, with One-Wing the villain and the flyers the heroes.

S’Rella was biting her lip in anger, barely holding back her tears. She started forward impulsively, but Val restrained her with a hand on her arm and shook his head. Maris could only stand helplessly, listening to the cruel words, so very different from those of her own song, the one Coll had composed for her. She wished he were here now, to compose a song in answer to this. Singers had a strange power, even amateurs like the Easterner across the room.

When he was finished, everyone knew.

He tossed his guitar down to a friend, and jumped down after it. “I’ll be singing on the beach, if anyone cares to hear,” he said. Then he took his instrument and left, followed by all of the Easterners who had arrived with him and a good many others. The lodge was suddenly half-empty again.

“Loren was a neighbor,” Val said. “From North Arren, just across the bay. I haven’t seen him in years.”

The Shotaners were talking softly among themselves, one or two of them giving Val, Maris, and S’Rella pointed looks from time to time. All of them left together.

“You haven’t introduced me to your flyer friends,” Val said to S’Rella. “Come.” He took her hand and led her forcefully to where four men were clustered in a tight circle. Maris had no choice but to follow. “I’m Val of South Arren,” he said loudly. “This is S’Rella. Fine flying weather today, wasn’t it?”

One of the four, a huge, dark man with a massive jaw, frowned at him. “I admire your courage, One-Wing,” he rumbled, “but nothing else about you. I knew Ari, though not well. Do you want me to make polite conversation with you?”

“This is a flyers’ lodge and a flyers’ party,” one of his companions said sharply. “Do you two have business here?”

“They are my guests,” Maris said furiously. “Or do you question my right to be here too?”

“No. Only your taste in guests.” He clapped the big man on the shoulder. “Come. I have a sudden urge to hear some singing.”

Val tried another group, two women and a man with ale mugs in their hands. Before he had quite reached them, they set down their mugs—still half-full—and left.

Only one party remained in the room, six flyers that Maris knew vaguely from the far reaches of Western, and a single blond youth from the Outer Islands. And suddenly they were leaving too, but on the way to the door one of them, a man well into his middle years, stopped to talk to Val. “You may not remember, but I was among the judges the year you took Ari’s wings,” the man said. “We judged fairly, but some have never forgiven us for the verdict we handed down. Perhaps you did not know what you were doing, perhaps you did. It makes no difference. If they were so reluctant to forgive me, they will never forgive you. I pity you, but we’re helpless. You were wrong to come back, son. They will never let you be a flyer.”

Val had been calm through everything else, but now his face contorted in rage. “I do not want your pity,” he said. “I do not want to be one of you. And I am not your son! Get out of here, old man, or I will take your wings this year.”

The gray-haired flyer shook his head, and a companion took him by his elbow. “Let’s go, Cadon. You waste your concern on him.”

When they left, only Riesa remained in the lodge room with Maris, Val, and S’Rella. She busied herself with her ale mugs, gathering them up to wash, and did not look at them.

“Warmth and generosity,” Val said.

“They’re not all—” Maris started, and found she could not go on. S’Rella looked as if she were about to cry.

Then the door crashed open, and it was Garth standing there, frowning, looking puzzled and angry. “What is going on?” he said. “I stumble up from home to host my party, and everyone is out on the beach. Maris? Riesa?” He slammed the door and started across the room. “If there was a fight, I’ll break the neck of the fool who started it. Flyers have no business quarreling like land-bound.”

Val faced him squarely. “I’m the cause of your empty party,” he said.

“Do I know you?” Garth said.

“Val. Of South Arren.” He waited.

“He didn’t start anything,” Maris said suddenly. “Believe that, Garth. He’s my guest.”

Garth looked baffled. “Then why—?”

“I’m also called One-Wing.”

Comprehension broke across Garth’s face, and Maris knew how she must have looked the day she had met Val on the Stormtown docks, and had a sickening realization of what it must have felt like to Val.

Whatever Garth felt, he struggled to control it. “I wish I could bid you welcome,” he said, “but that would be a lie. Ari was a sweet, fine woman who never hurt anyone, and I knew her brother too. We all did.” He sighed and looked to Maris. “He is your guest, you say? What would you have me do?”

“Ari was my friend as well,” Maris said. “Garth, I don’t ask you to forget her. But Val is not her killer. He took her wings, not her life.”

“They are one and the same,” Garth grumbled, but it was half-hearted. He looked back at Val. “You were a boy then, though, and none of us knew that Ari would kill herself. I’ve made my own share of mistakes, though none as big as yours, and I suppose—”

“I made no mistake,” Val interrupted.

Garth blinked. “Your challenge was a mistake,” he said. “Ari killed herself.”

“I would challenge her again,” Val said. “She was not fit to fly. Her death was her mistake, not mine.”

Garth was always gentle and genial, even his infrequent angers full of bluff and bluster; Maris had never seen his face as cold and bitter as it looked now. “Out, One-Wing,” he said, his voice low. “Leave this lodge and do not enter it again, whether you wear wings or not. I will not have you.”

“I won’t be back,” Val said evenly. “Nonetheless, I thank you for your warmth and generosity.” He smiled and headed toward the door. S’Rella started after him.

“S’Rella,” Garth said. “I don’t—you can stay, girl, I have no—”

S’Rella whirled. “Everything Val says is true. I hate you all.”

And she followed Val One-Wing out into night.

S’Rella did not return to their little cabin that night, but she was there just after dawn the next day, Val with her, both ready for practice. Maris gave them the wings and accompanied them up the steep, twisting stone stairs to the flyers’ cliff. “Race,” she told them. “Fly above the coastline, using the sea breeze and staying low. Circle the entire island.”

It was not until they were out of sight that Maris took wing herself. They would take several hours to complete the circuit, and she was thankful for the time. She felt tired and irritable, in no mood for even the best of company, and Val was never that. She gave herself to the healing embrace of the wind and angled out to sea.

The morning was pale and quiet, the wind steady behind her. She rode it, letting it take her where it would; all directions were the same to her. She wanted only to fly, to feel the touch of the wind, to forget all the petty troubles below in the cold, clean air of the upper sky.

There was little enough to see: gulls and scavenger kites and a hawk or two near the shores of Skulny, a fishing boat here and there, and farther out only ocean, ocean everywhere, blue-green water with long bright streaks of sun upon it. Once she saw a pack of seacats, graceful silver shapes whose playful leaps took them twenty feet above the waves. An hour later, she caught a rare glimpse of a wind wraith, a vast strange bird with semi-translucent wings as wide and thin as the sails of a trading ship. Maris had never seen one before, though she had heard other flyers speak of them. They liked the higher altitudes where humans seldom flew, and almost never came within sight of land. This one was quite low, floating on the wind, its great wings scarcely seeming to move. She soon lost sight of it.

A deep sense of peace filled her, and she felt all the tensions and angers of the land drain away from her. This was what it meant to fly, she thought. The rest, the messages she flew, the honor paid to her, the ease of living, the friends and enemies in flyer society, the rules and laws and legends, the responsibility and the boundless freedom, all of it, all of it was secondary. This, for her, was the real reward; the simple feel of flying.

S’Rella felt it too, she thought. Perhaps that was why she was so drawn to the Southern girl, because of the way she looked when she came from flying, cheeks flushed, eyes glowing, smiling. Val had none of that look about him, Maris realized suddenly. The thought saddened her. Even if he should win his wings, he would miss so much; he took a fierce pride in his flying, came away from it with a sheen of satisfaction, but he was not capable of finding joy in the sky. Whether or not he ever won his wings, the peace and happiness of the true flyer would always be denied him. And that, thought Maris, was the crudest truth about Val’s life.

When she saw by the sun that it was nearly noon, Maris finally banked and swept around in a long, graceful arc to begin the flight back to Skulny.

Maris was resting alone in her cabin late that afternoon when she was startled by loud, insistent pounding at the door.

Her visitor was a stranger, a short, slight, hollow-cheeked man with graying hair pulled back hard and tied in a knot at the back of his head. An Easterner: his hairstyle and fur-trimmed clothes told her that. He wore an iron ring on one finger and silver on another, testimonials to his wealth.

“My name is Arak,” he said. “I have flown for South Arren these past thirty years.”

Maris opened the door wider and let him in, gesturing him toward the one chair. She sat on a bed. “You are from Val’s home island.”

He grimaced. “Indeed. It is Val One-Wing I would speak to you about. Some of us have been talking—”

“Us?”

“Flyers.”

“Which flyers?” His self-centered intensity made her hostile; she did not like his presumption or his tone.

“That doesn’t matter,” Arak said. “I was sent to talk with you because it is generally felt that you are a flyer at heart, even if not flyer-born. You would not help Val One-Wing if you knew the sort of man he is.”

“I know him,” Maris said. “I do not like him, and I have not forgotten Ari’s death, but still he deserves his chance.”

“He has had more chances than he ever deserved,” Arak said angrily. “Do you know the stock he springs from? His parents were vicious, dirty, ignorant. From Lomarron, not South Arren at all. Do you know Lomarron?”

Maris nodded, remembering the time she had flown to Lomarron three years before. A large, mountainous island, soil-poor but metal-rich. Because of that wealth, warfare was endemic. Most of the land-bound there worked in the mines. “His parents were miners,” she guessed.

But Arak shook his head. “Landsguard,” he said. “Professional killers. His father was a knife-fighter, his mother a sling.”

“Many islands have landsguard forces,” Maris said uneasily.

Arak seemed to be enjoying this. “On Lomarron they get more practice than on other islands,” he said. “Too much, finally. His mother had her sling hand lopped off in an engagement, severed clean at the wrist. Not long after that there was a truce. But Val’s family didn’t take to truces. His father killed a man anyway, and then the three of them had to flee Lomarron in a fishing boat they stole. That was how they came to South Arren. The mother was a useless one-handed cripple, but the father joined the landsguard again. Only for a short time, though. One night he got too drunk and told a mate who he was, and word reached the Landsman, and then Lomarron. He was hanged as a thief and a murderer.”

Maris sat silent, feeling numb.

“I know all this,” Arak went on, “because I took pity on the poor widow. I took her in as housekeeper and cook, never mind that she was clumsy and slow with the one hand. I gave them a place to live, plenty to eat, and raised Val with my own son. With his father gone, he should have looked up to me. I set him a good example; I gave him the discipline he lacked. But it was wasted—his blood was bad. The kindness was wasted on both of them, and anything you do for him is going to be wasted as well. His mother was lazy and shiftless, always whining and complaining about how she felt, never getting her work done on time, but expecting to be paid for it all the same. Val used to play at being a knife-fighter, and killing people. Even tried to drag my own boy into his sick games, but I stopped that soon enough. He was a terrible influence. Both of them stole, you know, him and his mother. There was always something missing. I had to keep my iron under lock and key. I even caught him handling my wings once, in the middle of the night, when he thought I was asleep.

“Give him a chance to win wings fairly, and what does he do? Attacks poor Ari, who hadn’t a chance, and as good as kills her. He has no morals, no code. I couldn’t beat it into him when he was a boy, and now—”

Maris rose, suddenly remembering the scars on Val’s back. “You beat him?”

“Eh?” Arak looked up at her in surprise. “Of course I beat him. The only way to lick some sense into him. A blackwood stick when he was small, a touch of the whip now and then when he was older. Same as I gave my own.”

“Same as you gave your own. How about the other things you gave your own—did Val and his mother eat at table with you?”

Arak stood up, his sharp face twisted in dismay. Even standing, he was a small figure, and had to look up at Maris. “Of course not,” he snapped. “They were help, hired land-bound. Servants don’t eat with their masters. I gave them all they needed—don’t you imply that I starved them.”

“You gave them scraps,” Maris said with angry certainty. “Scraps and refuse, the garbage you didn’t want.”

“I was a wealthy flyer when you were a land-bound brat digging for your dinner. Don’t try to tell me how to feed my household.”

Maris stepped closer, looming above him. “Raised him with your own son, did you? And what did you say when you were training your son, and Val asked if he might try on the wings?”

Arak gave a choking snort of laughter. “I whipped that idea out of him fast enough,” he said. “That was before you came along with your damned academies and put notions in the heads of the land-bound.”

She shoved him.

Maris had scarcely ever touched another person in anger, but now she shoved him hard, with both hands, wanting to hurt him, and Arak staggered backward, the laughter dying in his throat. She shoved him again and he stumbled and fell. She stood over him, seeing the nervous disbelief in his eyes. “Get up,” she said. “Get up and get out, you filthy little man. If I could I’d rip the wings from your back. You foul the sky.”

Arak rose and moved quickly to the door. Outside, he was brave again. “Blood will tell,” he said, glaring through the doorway at Maris. “I knew it. I told them all. Land-bound is land-bound. The academies will close. We should have taken your wings early, but we’ll take them late, just the same.”

Maris, shaking, slammed the door.

Suddenly a terrible suspicion hit her, and she wrenched the door open again and ran out after him. Arak, seeing her coming, began to run, but she soon caught up with him, and knocked him flat on the sand. Several astonished flyers watched, but no one moved to interfere.

Arak cringed beneath her. “You’re mad,” he shouted. “Leave me alone!”

“Where was Val’s father executed?” Maris demanded.

Arak got clumsily to his feet.

“On Lomarron or South Arren?”

“On Arren, of course. No sense shipping him back,” he said, stepping away from her. “Our rope was just as good.”

“But the crime was committed on Lomarron, so the Landsman of Lomarron had to order the execution,” Maris said. “How did that order get to your Landsman? You flew it, didn’t you? You flew the messages both ways’.”

Arak glared at her and broke and ran again. Maris did not go after him this time.

The look on his face had been all the admission she needed.

The wind off the sea was brisk and cold that night, but Maris walked slowly, not eager to leave the solitude of the sea road for a conference with Val. She wanted to speak with Val—she felt she had to—but she wasn’t certain what she would say. For the first time, she felt she understood him. And her sympathy disturbed her.

She was angry with Arak; she had responded to him emotionally and, she now thought, irrationally. She had no right to that anger, even if Val did. A flyer could not be blamed for the message he or she flew—that was common sense, as well as the stuff of legend. Maris herself had never flown a message leading directly to anyone’s death, but she had carried information once that had resulted in the imprisonment of a woman accused of theft—did that woman bear a grudge against Maris as well as against the Landsman who sentenced her?

Maris shoved her hands into her pockets and hunched her shoulders against the bite of the wind, scowling as she turned the problem over in her mind. Arak was an unpleasant person, and he might well have taken pleasure in the idea of being the instrument of revenge against a murderer, and there was no doubt that he had taken advantage of the situation. Val and his mother had been cheap labor to him, however sanctimoniously he might speak of his generosity.

As she neared the tavern where Val was lodged, Maris still argued with herself. Arak was a flyer, and flyers could not refuse to carry messages, no matter how unwelcome or unfair they might sound. She couldn’t let her dislike of the man trick her into blaming him for the execution (deserved or not) of Val’s father. And that was something that Val, if he was ever to be more than One-Wing, would have to understand, too.

The tavern was a shabby place, its interior dark and cold and smelling faintly of mold. The fire was too small to heat the main room properly, and the candles on the table burned smokily. Val was dicing with three dark-haired, heavy women in landsguard brown—and-green, but he came away when Maris asked him to, a wine glass in his hand.

He nursed his wine as she spoke, his face closed and silent. When she had finished, his smile was faint and fast-fading. “Warmth and generosity,” he said. “Arak has them both in abundance.” After that he said nothing.

The silence was lengthy and awkward. “Is that all you’re going to say?” Maris asked finally.

Val’s expression changed just a little, the lines around his mouth tightening, eyes narrowing; he looked harder than ever. “What did you expect me to say, flyer? Did you think I’d embrace you, bed you, sing a song in praise of your understanding? What?”

Maris was startled by the anger in his tone. “I—I don’t know what I expected,” she said. “But I wanted to let you know that I understood what you’d been through, that I was on your side.”

“I don’t want you on my side,” Val said. “I don’t need you, or your sympathy. And if you think I appreciate your prying into my past, you are wrong. What went on between Arak and myself is our business, not yours, and neither of us needs your judgments.” He finished his wine, snapped his fingers, and the barkeep came across the room and set a bottle on the table between them.

“You wanted revenge on Arak, and rightly so,” Maris said stubbornly, “but you’ve changed that into a desire for revenge against all flyers. You should have challenged Arak, not Ari.”

Val poured himself a refill and tasted it. “There are several problems with that romantic notion,” he said more calmly. “For one, Arak did not have wings the year Airhome sponsored me. His son had come of age; Arak was retired. Two years ago, the son picked up some Southern fever and died, and Arak took up the wings again.”

“I see,” Maris said. “And you didn’t challenge the son because he was a friend.”

Val’s laugh was cruel. “Hardly. The son was an ill-bred bully who grew more like his father every day. I didn’t shed a tear when they dropped him into the sea. Oh, we played together once, when he was still too young to comprehend how superior he was, and we were whipped together often enough, but that made no bond between us.” He leaned forward. “I didn’t challenge the son because he was good, the same reason I would not have challenged Arak. I am not interested in revenge, no matter what you might think. I am interested in wings, and the things that go with them. Your Ari was the feeblest flyer I saw, and I knew I could take her wings. Against Arak or his son I might have lost. It is that simple.”

He sipped at his wine again, while Maris watched, dismayed. Whatever she had hoped to accomplish by coming here was not happening. And she realized that it would not happen, could not happen. She had been foolish to think otherwise. Val One-Wing was who he was, and that would not change simply because Maris understood the cruel forces that had shaped him. He sat regarding her with the same cool disdain as ever, and she knew then that they could never be friends, never, no matter what might come to pass.

She tried again. “Don’t judge all flyers by Arak.” As she heard her own words, she wondered why she had not said us, why she spoke of the flyers as if she were not one of them. “Arak is not typical, Val.”

“Arak and I understand each other well enough,” Val said. “I know exactly what he is, thank you. I know that he is crueler than most, flyer or land-bound, and less intelligent, and more easily angered. That does not make my opinion of other flyers any less true. His attitudes are shared by most of your friends, whether you care to admit it or not. Arak is only a bit less reticent about voicing those views, and a little more crude in his speech.”

Maris rose. “We have nothing more to say to each other. I’ll expect you and S’Rella tomorrow morning for practice,” she said as she turned away.

Sena and the other Woodwingers arrived several hours ahead of schedule the day before the competition was to open, putting in at the nearest port and trekking twelve miles overland along the sea road.

Maris was up flying and did not know they had arrived for several hours. When she found them, Sena immediately asked after the academy wings, and sent Sher and Leya running for them. “We must take advantage of every hour of good wind we have left,” she said. “We were trapped on that ship too long.”

Her students gone, Sena beckoned Maris to be seated and looked at her keenly. “Tell me what is wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

Sena shook her head impatiently. “I noticed it at once,” she said. “In years past the flyers may have been cool to us, but they were always polite and patronizing. This year the hostility hangs in the air like a bad smell. Is it Val?”

Briefly, Maris told the older woman what had happened.

Sena frowned. “Well, it is unfortunate, but we will survive it. Adversity will toughen them. They need that.”

“Do they? This is not the kind of toughness you get from wind and weather and hard landings. This is something else. Do they need their hearts toughened as well as their bodies?”

Sena put a hand on her shoulder. “Perhaps they do. You sound bitter, Maris, and I understand your disappointment. I too was a flyer, and I would have liked to believe better of my old friends. We’ll survive, flyers and Woodwingers both.”

That night the flyers enjoyed a boisterous party at the lodge, so noisy that even in the village Maris and the others could hear it. But Sena would not let her charges attend. They need rest tonight, she said, after one final meeting in her cabin.

She began by discussing the rules. The competition was to last three days, but the serious business, the formal challenges, would be restricted to the mornings.

“Tomorrow you name your opponent and race,” Sena said. “The judges will rate you according to speed and endurance. The day after they will look for grace. On the third day, precision: you will fly the gates to show your control.”

The evenings and afternoons would be filled with less serious contests, games, personal challenges, singing contests, drinking bouts and so on. “Leave those to flyers not involved in the real challenges,” Sena warned. “You have no business with such foolery. They can only tire you, and waste your strength. Watch if you will, but take no part.”

When she had finished talking about the rules, Sena answered questions for a time, until she was asked one she could not answer. It came from Kerr, who had lost some weight during the three days at sea, and looked surprisingly fit. “Sena,” he said, “how do we decide who is best to challenge?”

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 so pleased,” she said.

Kerr named Jon of Culhall. Maris was not happy with that. Jon was a weak flyer, a likely opponent, and she had been hoping that he would be challenged by one of the academy’s better prospects—Val, S’Rella, or Damen. Kerr was the poorest of their six, and Jon would probably escape with his wings.

Val One-Wing moved to the table.

“Your choice” rumbled the Outer Islander. He was tense, as were the other judges, even the Landsman. Maris realized she was on edge as well, afraid of what Val might do.

“Must I choose only one?” Val said sardonically. “The last time I competed, I had a dozen rivals.”

Shalli replied sharply. “The rules have been changed, as you very well know. Multiple challenges have been disallowed.”

“A pity,” Val said. “I had hoped to win a whole collection of wings.”

“It will be unfortunate if you win any wings at all, One-Wing,” the Easterner said. “Others are waiting. Name your opponent and move on.”

Val shrugged. “Then I name Corm of Lesser Amberly.”

Silence. Shalli looked shocked at first; then she smiled. The Easterner chuckled softly to herself, and the Outer Islander laughed openly.

“Corm of Lesser Amberly!” the crier thundered. “Corm of Lesser Amberly!” A dozen lesser voices echoed the call.

“I shall have to disqualify myself from this judging,” Shalli said quietly.

“No, Shalli,” said the judge from Eastern. “We have confidence in your fairness.”

“I do not ask you to step aside,” Val said.

She looked at him, puzzled. “Very well. You con-tribute to your own fall, One-Wing. Corm is no grief-stricken child.”

Val smiled at her enigmatically and moved off, and Maris and Sena accosted him instantly. “Why did you do that?” Sena demanded. She was furious. “I have wasted my time with you, clearly. Corm! Maris, tell him how good Corm is, tell this willful fool how he has just thrown away his wings.”

Val was looking at her. “I think he knows how good Corm is,” Maris said, meeting his eyes. “And he knows Shalli is his wife. I think that was why he chose him.”

Val had no chance to disagree. Behind them, the line had moved on, and now the crier was shouting out another name. Maris heard it and whirled, her stomach twisting. “No,” she said, though the word caught in her throat and no one heard. But the crier, as if in answer, shouted the name once again. “Garth of Skulny! Garth of Skulny!”

S’Rella was walking away from the judges, her eyes downcast. When she looked up at last to see Maris, her face was reddened, but defiant.

Two by two they flew off into the morning sun, struggling against the heavy air—the calm had broken, but the winds were still sluggish and erratic—with wings grown suddenly awkward. The flyers wore their own wings, the challengers pairs lent them by judges or friends or bystanders. The course would take them to a rocky little island named Lisle, where they would have to land and collect a marker from the waiting Landsman before proceeding back. It was a flight of some three hours under normal conditions; in this weather, Maris suspected, it would take longer.

The Woodwingers and their opponents launched in the order in which they had challenged. Sher and Leya got away well enough. Damen had more trouble; Arak abused him verbally while they were circling, waiting for the shout to start, and flew dangerously close to him as they veered out over the ocean. Even from a distance, Maris thought Damen looked shaken.

Kerr did even worse. He botched his leap badly, almost seeming to stumble from the cliff, and a cry went up from below as he plunged down sharply toward the beach. Finally he regained some control and pulled himself up, but by the time he sailed out over the sea his opponent had opened up a substantial lead.

Corm was cheerful and smiling as he prepared for his match against Val, joking and flirting with the two land-bound girls who helped him open his wings, calling out comments to the spectators, waving to Shalli. He even threw a grim smile in Maris’ direction. But he did not speak to Val, except once, before he launched. “This is for Ari,” he shouted, his tone deadly, and then he was running and the wind took him. Val said nothing. He unfolded his own wings in silence, leaped from the cliff in silence, swept up and around near Corm in silence. The crier gave the shout, and the two of them broke in opposite directions, both coming around cleanly, the shadow of their wings passing across the upturned faces of the children on the beach. When they moved out of sight, Corm was ahead, but only by a wingspan.

Lastly came S’Rella and Garth. Maris stood with Sena near the judges. She could look down on the flyers’ cliff and see them both, and watching them she felt heart-sick. Garth was somber and pale, and from a distance he appeared far too stout and clumsy to have much of a chance against the slim young challenger. Both of them prepared quietly, Garth speaking only once or twice to his sister, S’Rella saying nothing at all. Neither got off to a good start, Garth having a bit more difficulty with the thick air because of his weight. S’Rella moved in front of him quickly, but he had closed the gap by the time they reached the horizon and vanished.

“I know you wanted to help your Woodwingers, but couldn’t you have stopped short of the betrayal of a friend?”

Dorrel’s voice, deceptively calm. Feeling heartsick, Maris turned to face him. She had not spoken to him since that night on the beach.

“I didn’t want it to happen, Dorr,” she said. “But it may be for the best. We both know he’s sick.”

“Sick, yes,” he snapped. “But I wanted to protect him—this will kill him if he loses.”

“It may kill him if he wins.”

“I think he’d prefer that. But if that girl takes his wings from him—he liked her, did you know that? He mentioned her to me, how nice she was, that night after Val wrecked the party in the lodge.”

Maris, too, had been sick and angry over S’Rella’s choice of opponent, but Dorrel’s cold fury turned her feelings another way.

“S’Rella hasn’t done anything wrong,” she said. “Her challenge was perfectly proper. And Val didn’t wreck the party, as you say. How dare you say that! It was the flyers who insulted him and then walked out.”

“I don’t understand you,” Dorrel said quietly. “I haven’t wanted to believe how much you’ve changed. But it’s true, it’s as they say. You’ve turned against us. You prefer the company of the Woodwingers and the one-winged to that of true flyers. I don’t know you anymore.”

The unhappiness on his face hurt her as much as the harshness of his words. Maris forced herself to speak. “No,” she said. “You don’t know me anymore.”

Dorrel waited a moment, waited for her to say something more, but Maris knew that if she opened her mouth again it could only be for a scream or a sob. She could see anger warring with sadness on Dorrel’s face, and anger finally won. He turned without another word and stalked away.

She felt, as she watched him walk away from her, that she was bleeding to death, and she knew it was a self-inflicted wound.

“My choice,” she whispered, and the tears ran down her face as she stared blindly out to sea.

They had flown away two by two; they returned, hours later, one by one.

Crowds of the land-bound waited on the beaches, their eager eyes scanning the horizon. They had engaged in their own games and contests as well as in eating and drinking as they waited for the results of the flyers’ contest.

The judges watched the skies through telescopes made for them by the finest lensmakers in Stormtown. On the table before them were a number of wooden boxes, one for each match, and piles of small pebbles: white pebbles for the flyers, black pebbles for the challengers. When a race was completed, each judge tossed a pebble into the wooden box. In a particularly close match, a judge might choose to vote for a tie by putting one stone of each color into the box. Or—but this was rarely done—if the winner was especially obvious, two white pebbles or two black could be cast.

The first flyer was sighted from the boats before anyone on shore saw him, and the shout went rippling over the water. On the beach, people began to stand and raise their hands to shield their eyes from the sun. Shalli lifted her telescope.

“See anything?” another judge asked.

“A flyer,” Shalli said, laughing. “There”—she tried to point—“below the cloud. Can’t tell who it is yet.”

The others looked. Maris could barely see the speck they were straining at; it might have been a kite or a rainbird to her, but they had their telescopes.

The Eastern woman recognized the flyer first. “That’s Lane,” she said, surprised. The others looked impressed as well. Lane had started in the third pair, Maris recalled, which meant that not only had he outflown his own son, but four others who had started ahead of him as well.

By the time he had landed, two other flyers had come surging out of the clouds, one several wingspans ahead of the other. The first pair to depart, the judges announced. One of the Landsman’s attendants passed two of the wooden boxes down the table, and Maris heard the small clicks as the stones were dropped.

When the boxes were set aside, she drifted closer. In the first box, she counted five black pebbles and one white; four judges ruling for the challenger, one for a tie. The other, the box representing the race in which Lane had flown, had five whites in it, but as she watched the judges dropped in three more—two more flyers had appeared, far apart, but neither one was Lane’s son. When he finally did appear, some twenty minutes later, five others had preceded him, and Lane’s box had ten white pebbles in it. A formidable margin; the boy had probably lost already, Maris knew.

As each incoming flyer was recognized, the judges announced the name to the crier, who shouted it out for all to hear. Ragged cheers went up for some of the announcements from the land-bound thronging the beaches, and now and again Maris heard a loud groan as well. She suspected that most of the cheering was for financial reasons rather than personal. Most of the land-bound did not know flyers from other islands well enough to like or dislike them, but it was traditional to gamble on the outcome of the races, and she knew that a lot of money was changing hands below. It would be difficult, however, for S’Rella. This was Skulny, Garth’s home island, and he was familiar and popular with many of the spectators.

“Arak of South Arren!” the crier yelled.

Sena swore softly. Maris borrowed a scope from Shalli. It was Arak, sure enough, flying alone, ahead of not only Damen but of Sher and Leya and their opponents as well.

One by one the Woodwingers and their rivals struggled in.

Arak came first, then the man Sher had challenged, then Damen, followed by Leya’s rival. Minutes later, three flyers appeared bunched close together; Sher and Leya, inseparable as always, and close to them—moving ahead now—Jon of Culhall. Sena was swearing again, her face screwed up in disappointment. Maris tried to think of something reassuring to say, but nothing came to mind. The judges were dropping pebbles into the boxes. On the beach, Damen was down and getting out of his wings, while the others approached for a landing.

The sky was clear for a moment, with nothing to see. Kerr was losing badly too; Jon of Culhall had landed now, and Kerr was nowhere in sight. Maris took advantage of the free moment to see how the judges had scored her students.

She was not cheered. Sher’s box had seven whites in it, Leya’s had five, Damen’s eight. Kerr had six against him at the moment, but the judges were dropping in more as minutes went by and he did not appear. “Come on,” Maris mumbled under her breath.

“I see someone,” the Southern judge said. “Very high, angling down now.”

The others lifted their scopes. “Yes,” one of them said. Now people on the beach had spotted the incoming flyer as well, and Maris could hear the buzz of speculation.

“Is it Kerr?” Sena said anxiously.

“I’m not sure,” the Easterner answered. “Wait.”

But it was Shalli who lowered her telescope first, looking stunned. “It’s One-Wing,” she said, in a small voice.

“Give me that,” Sena said, snatching the telescope from her hands. “It is him.” She passed the instrument over to Maris, beaming.

It was Val, all right. The wind had picked up quite a bit, and he was using it well, slipping from current to current, riding with a veteran’s grace.

“Announce him,” Shalli said numbly to the crier.

“Val One-Wing, Val of South Arren!”

The crowd was hushed for a moment, then erupted into noise; wild cheering, groans, cursing. No one was indifferent to Val One-Wing.

Another pair of silvered wings sliced into view from above. Corm, Maris guessed, and a glance through Shalli’s telescope confirmed it. But he was behind, too far behind, with no chance of catching up. It was by no means a humiliation for him, but it was clearly a defeat.

“Maris,” Shalli said, “I want you to see this, so everyone will know that my judging is fair.” She opened her hand, and a single black pebble rested in the hollow of her palm, and as Maris watched she dropped it into the box. Four others followed it.

“Another one,” someone said. “No, two.”

Val had landed, and was calmly taking off his wings. As always he had refused the help of the land-bound children who crowded around him. Corm came sliding over the beach and cliffs, then swept around in an angry predatory circle, reluctant to come down and face the fact of his defeat. Corm did not take defeat well, Maris knew.

All eyes moved to the two new flyers. “Garth of Skulny,” the Outer Islander said, “and his challenger. She’s close behind him.”

“Yes, it’s Garth,” the Landsman put in. He had not been happy when S’Rella challenged one of his flyers; the prospect of losing a pair of wings was something no Landsman relished. “Fly, Garth,” he said now, openly partisan. “Hurry.”

Sena grimaced at him. “She’s doing well,” she said to Maris.

“Not well enough,” Maris said. She could see them clearly now. S’Rella was one, two wingspans behind. But with the beach in sight, she seemed to be faltering. Garth began his descent, cutting sharply in front of her, and the turbulence created by his passing seemed to shake her. Her wings seesawed for a moment before she regained stability, giving him a chance to open his lead a bit wider.

He passed over the beach about three wingspans ahead of her. The pebbles began to clatter into the box. Maris turned to see. It had been a close race, credible, spirited. Perhaps some of the judges would score it a tie.

One did, but only one. Maris counted. Five white pebbles for Garth, one lonely black for S’Rella.

“Let’s go down to her,” Maris said to Sena.

“Kerr hasn’t come in yet,” the teacher replied.

Maris had almost forgotten about Kerr. “Oh, I hope he’s safe.”

“I should never have sponsored him,” Sena grumbled. “Damn his parents’ iron.”

They waited five minutes, ten, fifteen. Sher, Leya, and a very dispirited Damen all wandered up to join them. Other wings appeared on the horizon, but none of them was Kerr. Maris began to grow seriously afraid for him.

But finally he was there, the last of all those who had left that morning, and coming from the wrong direction too; he had been blown off course, he explained, and overshot Skulny. He was very sheepish about it.

By then, of course, ten white pebbles had been cast against him.

The crowds of land-bound were breaking up below, going off in search of food or drink or shade. Flyers were preparing for the afternoon games. Sena shook her head. “Come,” she said, throwing an arm around Kerr. “Let’s find the others and get some food into them.”

The afternoon passed quickly. Some of the Woodwingers went off to watch the flying games—an Outer Islander and two Shotaners won the individual prizes, and Western came away with the medals in the team races—while the others rested, talked, or played. Damen had brought a geechi set, and he and Sher spent hours bent over it, both of them trying to recoup some of their lost pride.

In the evening the parties started. The Woodwingers had a small party of their own outside Sena’s cabin, in a halfhearted effort to lighten dampened spirits. Leya played the pipes and Kerr told sea stories, and all of them drank from the wineskin Maris had brought. Val was in his usual mood, cool and distant and invulnerable, but everyone else remained glum.

“No one has died,” Sena said at last, her manner gruff. “When you lose an eye and shatter a leg as I did, then you will have a right to be morose. You don’t have that right now. Get out of here, the lot of you, before you make me irritable.” She waved her cane at them. “Off now, and to bed. We still have two more days of competition, and all of you can win your wings if you fly well enough. Tomorrow I expect more of you.”

Maris and S’Rella walked along the beach for a while, talking and listening to the slow restless sound of the sea, before heading back to the cabin they shared. “Are you angry with me?” S’Rella asked quietly. “For naming Garth?”

“I was,” Maris said wearily. She did not have the heart to speak of her break with Dorrel. “Maybe I had no right to be. If you beat him, you have a right to his wings. I’m not angry now.”

“I’m glad,” S’Rella said. “I was angry with you, but I’m not now. I’m sorry.”

Maris put an arm around her shoulders. They walked in silence for a minute, and then S’Rella said, “I’ve lost, haven’t I?”

“No,” Maris said. “You can still win. You heard what Sena said.”

“Yes,” said S’Rella, “but tomorrow they’ll be judging grace, and that’s always been my weakest point. Even if I win at the gates, I’ll be so far behind that I won’t be able to catch up.”

“Hush,” Maris said. “Don’t talk like that. Just fly as best you can, and leave the rest to the judges. It’s all you can do. If you do lose, there’s always next year.”

S’Rella nodded. They had reached the cabin. She darted ahead to get the door, and then drew back. “Oh,” she said. Her voice was suddenly frightened. “Maris,” she whimpered.

Alarmed, Maris hurried to her side. S’Rella stood trembling and looking at their cabin door. Maris looked too, and felt sick.

Someone had nailed two dead rainbirds to the door. They hung limp and disheveled, bright feathers dark and stained, the nails driven through their small bodies, blood dripping slowly and steadily to the ground.

Maris went inside for a knife and came back to take the grisly warnings from the door. But when she pried loose the first nail and the dead rainbird thumped to the ground, Maris discovered to her horror that it had not only been slaughtered, but mutilated as well.

One wing had been ripped from its body.

The second day was chilly and overcast. It was raining at dawn, and although the rain stopped by the time the morning contests got under way, the day remained damp and cold, the sky heavily overcast. The landbound spectators were fewer—sitting on the beach was not so pleasant now—and the choppy seas carried only a few boats of observers.

But all that mattered to the flyers was the wind, and the wind on the second day was strong and steady, promising the possibility of some excellent flying.

Maris pulled Sena apart from the Woodwingers on the beach below the cliff, and spoke to her quietly.

“Who would do a thing like that?” Sena demanded, her voice shocked.

Maris put her finger to her lips. She didn’t want the others to overhear. S’Rella had been badly frightened by the incident, and there was no sense in alarming the others.

“A flyer, I would guess,” Maris said grimly. “A sick, bitter flyer. But we have no proof of anything. It could have been done by a flyer who was challenged, or the friend of someone we challenged, or simply some stranger who hates Woodwingers. It might even be some local land-bound who lost money on a bet over Val One-Wing. My own suspicions fall on Arak, but I can’t prove that.”

Sena nodded. “You were right to keep it quiet. I only hope S’Rella wasn’t too disturbed by it.”

Maris glanced at where S’Rella stood among the other students, talking softly to Val. “She needs to do well today, or it is all over for her.”

“They’re starting,” Damen called, pointing up at the cliffs.

The first pair of contestants had taken to the air and were moving quickly over the beach. They would circle over the water, Maris knew, and each would go into a sequence of stunts and maneuvers designed to demonstrate flying skills. The specific stunts were the choice of each individual flyer; some satisfied themselves with performing basics as flawlessly as possible, while others tried to be daring and ambitious. Seldom were there clear-cut winners or losers; it was in this event that the judges wielded the most power.

The first two pairs were nothing special, merely long sequences of launchings, landings, and graceful, sweeping turns, all done skillfully but not spectacularly. The third match was something else. The flyer Lane, who had raced so well yesterday, was a splendid stunter as well. Leaping from the cliff, he plunged down low over the beach, skimming so close to the sand that land-bound had to duck to be out of his way. Then he found a riser and swooped up, up, soaring through the overcast and out of sight before he came diving down again, with reckless speed, only to pull out at the last possible instant. He attempted vertical banks and a full loop, and only went into a stall once—he broke out quickly—and Maris found herself admiring his verve. His son was no match for him; the poor boy would be waiting a long time for wings, unless he challenged out-of-family next year. After they had finished, Maris counted eighteen white stones in the voting box, eight new ones added to the ten Lane had won yesterday.

Sher was the first Woodwinger to try the air. It was a good effort; a clean launch, almost perfect but for a slight wobble, followed by a standard sequence of turns, circles, dives, and climbs, all performed smoothly. Sher seemed lithe and buoyant in the air, compared to the stolid competency of the opposition. Maris would have given the judgment to Sher by a slight margin, but when she looked she found the judges had been more critical of the Woodwinger than she. Two had given the victory to the flyer, two had called it even, and only one had cast for Sher, who was now down eleven stones to three.

Sena sighed when Maris told her the count. “I’ve grown used to it. I always hate the stunting. Perhaps the judges try to be fair, but the bias creeps in nonetheless. Nothing can be done about it, except to have our Woodwingers fly so well that they can’t be denied their victories.”

Leya was next, with the same sequence Sher had flown, all basic, but with less luck. The wind shifted during the match, robbing Leya of the fluid grace that Maris had so often seen her display, giving her flight a ragged appearance. And several times gusts threw her sideways, breaking up what had been well-executed turns. Her rival had trouble as well, but less. Four judges gave him their stones, and only one made it a tie, leaving Leya behind ten to one.

Damen was more ambitious than either of them. Today, when Arak threw insults at him, Damen spat them right back, which brought a smile to Maris’ lips. And he began with a passable imitation of the spectacular swoop-on—the-beach that the flyer Lane had used. Arak tried to shadow him, to fly so close that Damen would be forced to break off his glide clumsily, but Damen twisted away with a graceful bank and vanished into a cloud, losing the older flyer. One of the judges, the Outer Islander, grumbled about Arak’s tactics, but the others only shrugged. “Whatever else he might be, he is still the better flyer,” the Easterner insisted. “Note how tight his turns are. The boy is spirited, but slipshod.” Maris had to admit that she was right; Damen habitually slid wide on turns, especially downwind turns.

When they scored it, four judges cast for Arak, only the Outer Islander for Damen.

“]on of Culhall, Kerr the Woodwinger!” the crier bellowed. The wind was gusting, and Kerr was as clumsy as ever.

After a few minutes, Sena faced Maris. “Even with one eye, this is painful to watch,” she said.

Jon of Culhall accumulated another eight white pebbles, and Maris felt sorry for Kerr.

“Corm of Lesser Amberly” announced the crier, “Val One-Wing, Val of South Arren!”

They stepped into view on the flyers’ cliff, wings strapped in place but folded, and Maris could feel a ripple of excitement go through the onlookers. People along the beach were making noise, and even the lands-guard and attendants who stood near the Landsman moved closer to watch.

Corm was not laughing or joking today. He stood as silently as Val, his dark hair tossing in the wind, while his wings were unfolded and locked by others. Val, as usual, waved away the help.

“Corm can be quite graceful,” Maris warned Sena. “Val may have trouble today.”

“Yes,” Sena agreed, glancing at Shalli’s seat among the judges.

The crowd was growing impatient; the two flyers still had not launched. Corm’s helpers had stepped back from him, and he stood with his silver wings fully extended, but Val had made no move to unfold his own. Instead he kept examining the joints of one wing, as if looking for something wrong. Corm said something to him, sharply, and Val looked up from what he was doing and made a broad gesture.

“All right,” Corm said clearly, and then he was running and an instant later he was aloft.

“There’s Corm,” Shalli said. “Where’s One-Wing?”

“Doesn’t he know that this will cost him?” Sena muttered.

Maris gripped Sena tightly by the elbow. “He’s going to do it again,” she said urgently.

“Do what?” Sena said, but even as she spoke a light broke over her face and Maris knew she understood.

Val jumped.

It was a long way down, and only sand and spectators below; trickier and more dangerous than the same stunt over water. But he was doing it, falling, his wings flapping behind him like a silver cape. Shalli and the Southern judge jumped to their feet, two of the landsguard rushed to the cliffside, even the crier gave a grunt of surprise. Maris heard people screaming, somewhere below.

Val’s wings took flower.

For an instant it did not seem to be enough. He still fell, speed increasing, even with the wings fully extended. But then he yanked himself to one side and that did it; suddenly he was veering up sharply, angling over the beach and out toward sea. People were dropping to the sand, and someone was still screaming, but there was shouting as well.

Then silence, a hush, a long indrawn breath. Val skimmed the waves, gliding as if over ice, and smoothly began to rise. Serenely he flew out to where Corm, almost unnoticed, had just performed a difficult loop.

The applause began, and the cheering, and all along the shore land-bound began clapping and chanting the refrain, “One-Wing, One-Wing, One-Wing,” over and over. Even Lane’s spectacular plunge had not thrilled them as Val had.

The judge from Eastern was laughing. “I never thought I’d see that again,” she exclaimed. “Damn, damn. Even Raven never did it better.”

Shalli looked miserable. “A cheap trick,” she said. “And dangerous as well.”

“Probably,” the Outer Islander agreed, “but I’ve never seen anything like it. How did he do it, anyway?”

The Easterner tried to explain, and the two of them fell to talking. In the distance, Val and Corm were going through their stunts. Val flew well, though Maris noted that his upwind turns were still not all they should be. Corm flew better, matching Val stunt-for-stunt and doing each of them just a little more gracefully, with the skill that comes with decades of flying. But he flew hopelessly, Maris thought; after Raven’s Fall, no amount of finesse was going to redress the balance.

She was right. Shalli was the only exception. “Corm was much superior overall,” she insisted. “One foolhardy stunt does not change that.” She dropped a white stone into the box with an emphatic flick of her wrist.

But the other judges just smiled at her indulgently, and the four pebbles that followed hers were black.

“Garth of Skulny, S’Rella the Woodwinger!”

S’Rella and Garth, though totally different in appearance, looked almost alike this morning, Maris thought as she watched them prepare. Garth should have been elated by his victory yesterday, and the likelihood that his wings were safe, but if anything he seemed paler and more aged today. He hardly spoke to Riesa, and went about the motions of donning his wings with a wooden deliberateness. S’Rella bit her lip as she let the helpers unfold her wings, and looked as if she were holding back tears.

Neither of them attempted anything spectacular on launching. Garth banked right, S’Rella left, and they passed above the beach and the boats with approximately equal ease. A few of the locals waved to Garth and shouted his name as he sailed by overhead, but otherwise the crowd was silent, still breathless over Val’s leap.

Sena shook her head. “S’Rella was never as pretty to watch as Sher or Leya, but she can fly better than that.” She had just stalled and lost altitude on a rather routine upwind turn, and Maris had to agree with the teacher’s assessment. S’Rella was not flying well.

“She’s just going through the motions,” Maris said. “I think she’s still shaken by last night.”

Garth was taking full advantage of his opponent’s lassitude. He soared with his usual quiet competence, performed graceful, languorous turns, and slid into a loop. It was not an especially good loop, but S’Rella was attempting none at all.

“This one will be easy to judge,” the Landsman of Skulny said with relief. He was already looking about for a white pebble. Maris could only hope that he would not drop two.

“Look at that,” Sena snorted with disgust. “My best student, and she’s wandering all over the sky like some eight-year-old on her first flight.”

“What’s Garth doing?” Maris wondered aloud. His wings were moving out to sea, tilting first one way and then the other, almost shaking. “That’s an awful wobble.”

“If the judges notice,” Sena said sourly. “Look, he’s righted it now.”

He had; now the great silver wings had straightened, and Garth was sailing steadily away from them, riding on the wind, sinking slightly.

“He’s just flying,” Maris said, puzzled. “He isn’t doing any stunts.”

Garth continued to move off, toward the deep waters beyond the breakers. He flew gracefully, but so straight; it was no great task to be graceful when yielding to the wind. Gradually he was descending. Now he was about thirty feet above the water, and still he sank. His flight seemed so calm, so peaceful.

Maris gasped. “He’s falling,” she said. She turned to the judges. “Help him,” she shouted. “He’s falling!”

“What’s she yelling about?” the Easterner asked.

Shalli put her telescope to her eye, found Garth in it. He was skimming the waves now. “She’s right,” she said, in a small voice.

Instantly there was chaos. The Landsman jumped to his feet and began to wave his arms and shout orders, and two of the landsguard went sprinting off down the stairs, and the others all started running somewhere. The crier cupped her huge hands and shouted, “Help him! Help the flyer! People in the boats, help the flyer!” Down on the beach other criers repeated the chant, and spectators ran for the shore, shouting and pointing.

Garth hit the water. His forward motion sent him skipping over the surface, once, twice, and sheets of spray fanned out from his wings, but he lost speed rapidly, slowed, stopped.

“It’s all right, Maris,” Sena was saying, “it’s all right. Look, they’ll get him.” A small sailboat, alerted by the shouts of the criers, was moving in on him rapidly. Maris watched it apprehensively. It took them a minute to reach him, another minute to fish him out in a net they tossed over the side. But from this distance, she had no way of telling whether he was dead or alive.

The Landsman lowered his telescope. “They got him, and the wings too.”

S’Rella was flying low above the sailboat that had rescued Garth. Too late she had realized what was happening, and started after him, but it was unlikely she would have been able to help in any event.

The Landsman, grim, ordered another of his landsguard down to find out Garth’s condition, and walked back to his seat. The judges talked nervously among themselves and Maris and Sena shared an anxious silence until the man returned, ten minutes later. “He is alive and recovering, though he swallowed some water,” the landsguard announced. “They are taking him back to his house.”

“What happened?” the Landsman demanded.

“His sister says he has been ill for some time,” the man replied. “It seems he had an attack.”

The Landsman swore. “He never told me any such thing.” He glared at the four flyer judges. “Must we score this?”

“I’m afraid we must,” Shalli said gently. She picked up a black pebble.

“Her?” the Landsman said. “Garth outflew her easily, until he was taken sick. You mean to give the girl the victory?”

“You can’t be serious, sir,” the big man from the Outer Islands said. “Your Garth fell into the ocean. He might have stunted as well as Lane and he’d still lose.”

“I must agree,” the Easterner said. “Landsman, you are not a flyer, you do not understand. Garth is fortunate to be alive. If he had fallen while flying a mission, with no ship to save him, he would have been food for a scylla.”

“He was sick,” the Landsman insisted, frantic not to lose the wings for Skulny.

“It does not matter,” the quiet Southern judge put in, and she cast the first pebble into the voting box with a flick of her thumb. It was black. Three other black stones followed in quick succession, Shalli placing hers with obvious dismay, until the Landsman defiantly added a white.

Garth’s fall intensified the bitterness of flyers and Woodwingers both. The afternoon games, stunts conducted in an increasingly dark and stormy cloud, had little zest to them. An Easterner from Kite’s Landing was the grand winner, but she had scant competition, as many of the flyers decided to drop out at the last moment. A few of those not directly involved in challenges were even seen taking wing for their home islands. Kerr, the only Woodwinger who bothered to attend the games, reported that the spectators had grown sparse as well, and all their talk was of Garth.

Sena tried to encourage the students, but it was a formidable task. Sher and Leya were philosophical about their chances, neither expecting to win, but Damen was in a dismal condition and Kerr seemed ready to slink off and throw himself into the sea. S’Rella was nearly as despondent. She was tired and withdrawn for most of the afternoon, and that evening she quarreled with Val.

It was just after dinner. Damen was setting up his geechi board and looking for an opponent, and Leya had gotten out her pipes again. Val found S’Rella sitting with Maris on the beach, and joined them uninvited. “Let’s walk down to the tavern,” he suggested to S’Rella, “and celebrate our victories. I want to get free of these losers and hear what people are saying about us, maybe even get down some bets for tomorrow.”

“I’ve got no victory to celebrate,” S’Rella replied sullenly. “I flew horribly. Garth was much better than I was. I didn’t deserve to win.”

“You win or you lose, S’Rella,” Val said. “What you deserve has nothing to do with it. Come on.” He tried to take her by the hand and pull her to her feet, but S’Rella yanked loose of him angrily.

“Don’t you even care about what happened to Garth?”

“Not particularly. You shouldn’t either. As I recall, the last thing you said to him was how much you hated him. It would have gone better for you if he’d drowned. Then they would have to give you his wings. As it is, they’ll try to find some way to cheat you out of them.”

Maris, listening, began to lose her temper. “Stop it, Val,” she said.

“Keep out of this, flyer,” he snapped. “This is between us.”

S’Rella jumped to her feet. “Why are you always so hateful? You’re cruel to Maris all the time, and she’s only tried to help you. And the things you’ve been saying about Garth—Garth was nice to me, and what did I do, I challenged him, and now he almost died and you’re saying awful things about him. Don’t you say another word! Don’t you!”

Val’s face became an expressionless mask. “I see,” he said flatly. “Suit yourself. If you care so much for flyers, go visit Garth and tell him to keep his wings. I’ll celebrate by myself.” He turned away and began to stride across the sand, toward the sea road that would take him to his tavern.

Maris took S’Rella’s hand. “Would you like to visit Garth?” she said impulsively.

“Could we?”

Maris nodded. “He and Riesa share a big house a half mile up the hill road. He likes to stay close to the sea and the lodge. We could go see how he is.”

S’Rella was eager, and they set off at once. Maris had been a bit afraid of the reception they might receive when they arrived, but her own concern about Garth’s condition was great enough that she was willing to take the risk. She needn’t have worried. Riesa beamed at them when she opened the door, and all at once began to cry, and Maris had to take her in her arms and comfort her. “Oh, come see him, come see him,” Riesa kept saying through her tears. “He’ll be so glad.”

Garth was propped up in bed against a mountain of pillows, a shaggy woolen blanket thrown over his legs. His face was frighteningly pale and puffy, but when he saw them in the doorway his smile was real enough. “Ah,” he boomed, his voice loud as ever, “Maris! And the little demon who’s out to take my wings.” He waved them to his side. “Come and sit and talk to me. Riesa does nothing but fuss and fret, and she won’t even bring me any of her ale.”

Maris smiled. “You don’t need any ale,” she said primly as she walked to his bedside and kissed him lightly on the brow.

S’Rella hung back by the door, however. When he saw that, Garth’s face turned serious. “Ah, S’Rella,” he said, “don’t be frightened. I’m not angry with you.”

She came forward to stand by Maris. “You’re not?”

“No,” Garth said firmly. “Riesa, bring them seats.” His sister did as he asked, and when they were seated, Garth resumed. “Oh, I was furious when you challenged me—hurt, too—I can’t deny that.”

“I’m sorry,” S’Rella blurted. “I didn’t want to hurt you. I don’t hate you—what I said that night at the lodge.”

He waved her quiet. “I know that. And you needn’t be sorry. The water was terribly cold out there, but maybe it woke me up a bit, and I’ve had all afternoon to lie here and think. I’ve been a fool, and I’m lucky I have the breath to say so. I did wrong to keep it secret, the way that I was feeling, and you did right to name me when you knew.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t accept being land-bound, you know. I love the flying too much, all my friends, the travel. But it’s over, my little swim proved that, the only question is whether I’m to be a live land-bound or a drowned flyer at the end of it all. Before today, I’d always managed to shrug off the pain, get where I was going. But this morning—ah, it was miserable, shooting pains in my arms and legs. But I don’t want to talk about that. Bad enough it happened.” He reached across and took S’Rella by the hand. “What I mean to say, S’Rella, is that I can’t compete tomorrow, and I wouldn’t if I could. Riesa and the sea have brought me to my senses. The wings are yours.”

S’Rella could hardly believe him. She stared at him wide-eyed, and a tremulous smile broke across her face.

“What will you do, Garth?” Maris asked.

He grimaced. “That depends on the healers,” he said. “Seems to me I have three choices. Maybe I’ll be a corpse, and maybe I’ll be a cripple, but if I can find a healer who knows what he’s about, I thought I might try my hand at trade. I’ve got enough iron put aside to buy myself a ship, and I could travel that way, see other islands—though I’m half scared out of my wits at the idea of traveling by sea.” He chuckled. “You and Dorr used to kid me about being a trader. You remember, Maris? Said I’d trade my wings if the deal was good enough, just because I liked to swap a little now and again. Well, some trader I turned out to be. Here S’Rella gets my wings and doesn’t give me anything.” He laughed, and Maris found herself joining him.

They talked for over an hour, about traders and sailors and finally flyers, relaxing as they laughed at Garth’s jokes and exchanged gossip. “Corm is livid about your friend Val,” Garth said at one point, “and I can’t say I blame him. He’s a good enough flyer that he never considered that he might lose his wings, and here it seems he’s lost them, and to One-Wing of all people. Did you have anything to do with that, Maris?”

She shook her head. “Hardly. All Val’s idea. He’ll never admit it, but I think he wanted to beat a flyer of the top rank to make them forget about Ari. The fact that Corm’s wife sits among the judges just added an extra flair to the feat, and of course it gave him a convenient excuse if he lost. He could blame a defeat on flyer prejudice.”

Garth nodded and made a rude joke about Corm, then turned to his sister. “Riesa, why don’t you show S’Rella our house?”

Riesa took the hint. “Yes, do come see,” she said. S’Rella followed her from the room.

“She’s nice,” Garth said when they were gone, “and she does remind me an awful lot of you, Maris. Do you remember when we first met?”

Maris smiled at him. “I remember. It was my first flight to the Eyrie and there was a party that night.”

“Raven was there too. That was where he did his trick.”

“I’ve never forgotten it,” Maris said.

“Did you teach it to One-Wing?”

“No.”

Garth laughed. “Everyone is certain you did. We all remember how impressed you were by Raven. Coll even made a song about him, didn’t he?”

Maris smiled. “Yes.”

Garth started to say something else, then thought better of it. For a long moment the room was filled with silence, and the smile slowly faded on Garth’s face.

He began to cry, fighting it and losing; he reached out his big hands for her, and Maris came and sat on the edge of the bed and hugged him, and ran her hands across his brow. “I knew—I didn’t want S’Rella to see me—ah, Maris, it’s so damned rotten, so damned—”

“Oh, Garth,” she whispered, kissing him lightly and fighting to hold back her own tears. She felt so helpless. Briefly she thought of what it would be like if she were in Garth’s place. She trembled and pushed the thought away and hugged him again all the harder.

“Come and see me,” he said. “I—you know how—when you don’t fly, you can’t go to the Eyrie—you know—bad enough to lose your freedom, and the wind—but I don’t want to lose you too, and my other friends, just because—oh, damn, damn these tears—visit me, Maris, promise, promise.”

“I promise, Garth,” she said, trying to keep her voice light. “Unless you gain so much weight that I can’t stand to look at you.”

Beneath his tears, he laughed. “Ah,” he said. “Here—and just when I thought I could get fat in peace. You—”

Footsteps sounded outside, Riesa and S’Rella returning, and Garth quickly used the blanket to dry his tears. “Go,” he said, smiling again, “go, I’m tired, you’ve exhausted me. But come back tomorrow when it’s all over and tell me how the games went.”

Maris nodded. And S’Rella came up to her side and bent to give Garth a quick, shy kiss before they left.

They walked the half-mile back to the village slowly, talking as they went and savoring the cool wind that moved through the night. They spoke of Garth, and a little bit of Val, and S’Rella mentioned the wings—her wings—with wonder in her voice. “I’m a flyer,” she said happily. “It’s really true.”

But it was not that simple.

Sena was waiting for them inside their cabin, sitting on the edge of a bed and looking impatient. She rose when they entered. “Where have you been?”

“We went to see how Garth is,” Maris answered. “Is anything wrong?”

“I don’t know. We have been summoned up to the lodge house by the judges.” She gave S’Rella a meaningful look with her good eye. “All three of us, and we’re late.”

They left at once. On the way, Maris told Sena what Garth had said about giving up the wings, but the old teacher did not seem pleased. “Well, we shall see about that,” she said. “I would not go flying off with them just yet.

The flyers were not partying tonight. The main room of the lodge was sparsely populated, only a half-dozen Western flyers Maris knew vaguely sitting and drinking, and the atmosphere was anything but festive. One of them stood up when Maris and the others entered. “In the back room,” he said.

The five judges were squabbling around a circular table, but they broke off in mid-argument when the door opened. Shalli stood up. “Maris, Sena, S’Rella, do come in,” she said. “And close the door.”

They took seats around the table, and Shalli folded her hands neatly in front of her as she resumed. “We summoned you because we have a dispute, and it involves young S’Rella here, and you have a right to state your views. Garth has sent word that he will not fly tomorrow—”

“We know,” Maris broke in. “We just came from him.”

“Good,” Shalli said. “Then perhaps you understand our problem. We must decide what to do with the wings.”

S’Rella looked stricken. “They’re mine,” she said. “Garth said so.”

The Landsman of Skulny was drumming his fingers on the table and frowning. “The wings are not Garth’s to give,” he said loudly. “Here, child, I will ask you a question. If you are given the wings, will you promise to make a home here, and fly for Skulny?”

S’Rella did not flinch under his intense gaze, Maris noted with approval. “No,” she answered bluntly. “I couldn’t. I mean, Skulny is nice, I’m sure, but—but this isn’t my home. I’m going to return to Southern with the wings, to Veleth, the little island where I was born.”

The Landsman shook his head violently. “No, no, no. You may return to this Southern rock if you wish, but if you do it will be without the wings.” He looked at the other judges. “See. I gave her a chance. I insist.”

Sena thumped a fist on the table. “What is this? What is going on? S’Rella has a right to the wings, more right than anyone else. She challenged Garth and he has failed the test. How can you speak of not giving her the wings?” She looked from judge to judge furiously.

Shalli, who seemed to be the spokesman, gave an apologetic shrug. “We have a disagreement,” she said. “The question is how tomorrow’s contest should be scored. Some of us feel that if Garth does not fly, S’Rella must be given the victory by forfeit. But the Landsman is of the opinion that we cannot vote on a contest in which only one flyer flies. He insists that the decision be made on the basis of the two legs already completed, and on them alone. If that is done, Garth is presently ahead six stones to five, and would retain the wings.”

“But Garth has renounced the wings!” Maris said. “He can’t fly, he is too ill.”

“The law provides for that,” the Landsman said. “If a flyer is sick, his wings are given over to the Landsman and the island’s other flyers to dispose of, provided he or she has no heir. We will give the wings to someone worthy of them, someone who is willing to take up residence in Skulny. I offered that chance to the girl here and you all heard her answer. It must be someone else, then.”

“We had hoped that S’Rella would consent to remain on Skulny,” Shalli said. “That would have resolved our differences.”

“No,” S’Rella repeated stubbornly, but she looked miserable.

“What you propose is a cheat,” Sena said bitterly to the Landsman.

“I am inclined to agree with that,” put in the big man from the Outer Islands. He ran his fingers through unkempt blond hair. “The only reason Garth stands ahead now is because you cast a stone for him today, even after he fell into the ocean, Landsman. That was hardly fair.”

“I judged it fair,” the Landsman said angrily.

“Garth wants S’Rella to take his wings,” Maris said. “Don’t his wishes matter in this?”

“No,” the Landsman said. “The wings were never his alone. They are a trust, they belong to all the people of Skulny.” He looked around at his fellow judges, imploring. “It is not fair to give them away to this Southerner, to reduce Skulny to only two flyers without cause. Listen to me. If Garth had been well, he would have defended his wings ably against any challenge, and it never would have come to this. If he had been sick and had come to me and told me, as your own flyer law requires, then by now we would have found someone else to wear the wings, someone capable of retaining them for Skulny. It is only because Garth chose to conceal his condition that we are in this predicament. Will you punish all the folk of my island because a flyer kept a secret?”

Maris had to admit that there was some justice in the argument. The judges seemed swayed too. “What you say is true,” said the small woman from Southern. “I would be glad to see a new set of wings come south, but your claim is hard to deny.”

“S’Rella has rights too,” Sena insisted. “You must be fair to her.”

“If you give the wings to the Landsman,” Maris added, “you will be taking away her right to challenge. She is only down one stone. She has an excellent chance.”

Then S’Rella spoke up. “I didn’t earn the wings,” she said uncertainly. “I was ashamed of the way I flew today. But I could win them fairly, if I had another chance. I know I could. Garth wants me to.”

Shalli sighed. “S’Rella, my dear, it isn’t that simple. We can’t start the whole competition over for your sake.”

“She should get the wings,” the Outer Islander grumbled. “Here, I cast tomorrow’s pebble for her already. That makes it six to six. Will anyone join me?” He looked around.

“There are no pebbles here to cast,” the Landsman snapped, “and you cannot have a contest with only one flyer.” He crossed his arms and sat back, scowling.

“I fear I must vote with the Landsman,” the Southerner said, “lest I be charged with unfairly favoring a neighbor.”

That left Shalli and the woman from Eastern, both of whom looked hesitant. “Isn’t there some way we can be fair to all?” Shalli said.

Maris looked at S’Rella and touched her on her arm. “Are you truly willing to fly again in contest, to try to earn the wings?”

“Yes,” S’Rella said. “I want to win them right. I want to deserve them, no matter what Val says.”

Maris nodded and turned back to the judges. “Then I have a proposition for you,” she said. “Landsman, you have two other flyers on Skulny. Do you think them able enough?”

“Yes,” he asked suspiciously. “What of it?”

“Only this—I propose that you resume the match. Keep the score as it stands, with S’Rella down one stone. But since Garth cannot fly, name a proxy for him, another of your flyers to bear wings in his place. If your proxy wins, then Skulny retains the wings and you can award them to whomever you choose. If S’Rella wins, well, then no one can dispute her right to go south as a flyer. What do you say?”

The Landsman thought it over for a minute. “Well,” he said, “I could accept that. Jirel can fly in Garth’s stead. If this girl can outfly her, then she has earned her place, though it will not make me happy.”

Shalli looked immensely relieved. “An excellent suggestion,” she said, smiling. “I knew we could count on Maris for good sense.”

“Are we agreed, then?” the Easterner said quickly.

All of the judges nodded except the Outer Islander, who shook his head again and muttered, “The girl should get the wings. The man fell into the ocean.” But he did not dissent too loudly.

Outside the lodge in the cool night air, a thin rain had begun to fall. But Sena stopped them anyway, looking troubled. “S’Rella,” she said, leaning on her cane, “are you certain this is what you want? You might lose the wings this way. Jirel is said to be a good flyer. And perhaps we could have won the judges to our side, if we had argued longer.”

“No,” S’Rella said gravely. “No, I want it this way.”

Sena looked her in the eye for a long time, and finally nodded. “Good,” she said, satisfied. “Let’s get you home, then. Tomorrow there is flying to be done.”

On the third day of the competition, Maris woke before dawn, confused by the dark and the cold and aware that something was wrong. Someone was pounding on the door.

“Maris,” S’Rella said from the next bed. “Should I get it?” Maris could not see her; it was well before dawn, and none of their candles were lit.

“No,” Maris whispered. “Quiet.” She was afraid. The pounding went on and on, without letup, and Maris remembered the dead rainbirds that had been left for them and wondered who was on the other side of the door at this hour, trying so angrily to get them to open it. She climbed out of bed and padded across the room, and in the dark she managed to locate the blade she had used to pry free the birds. It was nothing, a little metal table knife, not a fighting blade at all, but it gave her confidence. Only then did she go to the door. “Who’s there?” she demanded. “Who is it?”

The pounding stopped. “Raggin,” said a deep voice she did not recognize.

“Raggin? I know no Raggin. What do you want?”

“I’m from the Iron Axe,” the voice said. “You know Val? The one who’s been staying with me?”

Maris felt her fears drain away, and she hurried to open the door. The man standing in the starlight was gaunt and stooped, with a hook nose and a dirty beard, but he was suddenly familiar to her: the barkeep from Val’s tavern. “What is it? Is something wrong?”

“I was closing up, and your friend hadn’t been in yet. Thought he’d just found some pretty to sleep with, but then I found him outside, lying in the back. Somebody hurt him bad.”

“Val,” S’Rella said. She rushed to the door. “Where is he? Is he all right?”

“He’s up in his room,” Raggin said. “I dragged him up the stairs, and it wasn’t easy. But I remembered he knew people up here so I thought I better come and ask around, and they sent me here. You gonna come down? I don’t know what to do for him.”

“Right away,” Maris said urgently. “S’Rella, get dressed.” She hurried to collect her own clothes and slipped into them, and shortly they were hurrying down the sea road. Maris had a lantern in one hand. The road ran along the seaside cliffs for part of its length, and a misstep in the dark could be fatal.

The tavern was dark and shuttered, the front door braced from inside with a heavy wooden beam. Raggin left them standing in front of it and vanished around back to enter by what he called his “secret way.” When he opened the door from the inside, he said, “Got to lock up good, lots of hard types around here. I got customers you wouldn’t believe, flyers.”

They hardly listened. S’Rella ran up the stairs to the room she had sometimes shared with Val, and Maris came close behind. S’Rella was lighting a candle by Val’s bedside when Maris caught up with her.

Flickering ruddy light filled the small room, and the shape huddled beneath the blankets moved with a small animal whimper. S’Rella set down the candle and pulled off the blankets.

Val’s eyes found her, and he seemed to recognize her—his left arm clutched at her hand desperately. But when he tried to speak, the only sounds he could make were choking, pain-wracked sobs.

Maris felt sick. He had been beaten savagely about the head and shoulders, and his face was an unrecognizable mass of swelling and bruises. A gash along one cheek was still bleeding, and he had dried blood all over his shirt and jaw. His mouth was bloody too, when he opened it and tried to speak.

“Val!” S’Rella cried, weeping. She touched his brow and he shrank away from her hand, trying to say something.

Maris came closer. Val was holding S’Rella tight with his left hand, clutching at her, pulling. But his right arm just lay still along his side, and there was something wrong, blood on the sheet beneath it. The angle at which it lay was impossible, and his jacket was ripped, bloody. She knelt by the right side of the bed and touched his arm gingerly, and Val shrieked so loudly that S’Rella jumped away, terrified. It was only then that Maris saw the jagged edge of bone peeking through his skin and clothing.

Raggin was observing them from the doorway. “His arm’s broke, don’t touch it,” he said helpfully. “He screams when you do. You shoulda heard the noise he made when I carried him up here. I think his leg’s broke too, but I’m not sure.”

Val had quieted, but his breath came in painful gasps. Maris was on her feet. “Why didn’t you call a healer?” she demanded of Raggin. “Why didn’t you give him something for the pain?”

Raggin drew back, shocked, as if those ideas had never occurred to him. “I got you, didn’t I? Who’s gonna pay a healer? He’s not, that’s for sure. Don’t have near enough. I went through his things.”

Maris balled her fists and tried to control her fury. “You’re going to go and fetch a healer right now,” she said. “And I don’t care if you have to run ten miles, you’re going to do it fast. If you don’t, I swear I’ll talk to the Landsman and have this place closed.”

“Flyers.” The barkeep spat. “Throwing your weight around, eh? Well, I’ll go, but who’s gonna pay this healer? That’s what I want to know, and he’ll want to know too.”

“Damn you,” Maris said. “I’ll pay, damn you, I’ll pay. He’s a flyer, and if his bones don’t heal right, if they aren’t taken care of, he’ll never fly again. Now hurry!”

Raggin gave her a last sour look and turned for the stairs. Maris went back to Val’s bedside. He was making whimpering noises and trying to move, but every motion seemed to wrack him with pain.

“Can’t we help him?’ S’Rella said, glancing up at Maris.

“Yes,” Maris said. “This is a tavern, after all. Go downstairs and find the stock, bring up a few bottles. That should help a little with the pain, until the healer arrives.”

S’Rella nodded and started for the door. “What should I bring?” she asked. “Wine?”

“No, we need something stronger. Look for some brandy. Or—that liquor from Poweet, what do they call it?—they make it from grain and potatoes—”

S’Rella nodded and was gone. Shortly she returned with three bottles of local brandy and an unmarked flask that gave off a pungent, potent smell. “Strong stuff,” Maris said. She tasted it herself, then had S’Rella hold up Val’s head while she dribbled it into his mouth. He seemed anxious to cooperate, sucking down the drink eagerly as they took turns pouring it into him.

When Raggin finally returned with a healer more than an hour later, Val had passed out. “Here’s your healer,” the barkeep said. He took one look at the empty bottles on the floor and added, “You’ll pay for those too, flyer.”

When the healer had set Val’s arm and leg—Raggin had been right, it was broken as well, though not as badly—and splinted them, and treated his swollen face, he gave Maris a small bottle full of a dark green liquid. “This is better than brandy,” he said. “It will numb the pain and let him sleep.” He departed, leaving Maris and S’Rella alone with Val.

“It was flyers, wasn’t it?” S’Rella asked tearfully as they sat together in the smoky, candle-lit room.

“One arm and one leg broken, and the other side not touched,” Maris said angrily. “Yes, that says flyer to me. I don’t think any flyer could have done this personally, but I suspect it was a flyer who had it done.” On a sudden impulse Maris moved to where Val’s bloodstained, torn clothing had been piled, and rummaged through it. “Hmm. Just as I thought. His knife is gone. Maybe they took it, or maybe he just had it in his hand and dropped it.”

“I hope he cut them, whoever it was,” S’Rella said. “Do you think it was Corm? Because Val was going to take his wings tomorrow?”

“Today,” Maris said ruefully, glancing toward the window. The first blush of dawn was visible against the eastern sky. “But, no, it wasn’t Corm. Not that Corm wouldn’t gladly destroy Val if he could, but he’d do it legally, not like this. Corm is too proud to resort to beatings.”

“Who, then?”

Maris shook her head. “I don’t know, S’Rella. Some sick person, obviously. Maybe a friend of Corm’s, or a friend of Ari’s. Maybe Arak or one of his friends. Val made a lot of enemies.”

“He wanted me to go with him,” S’Rella said guiltily, “but I went to see Garth instead. If I had gone with him like he wanted, this wouldn’t have happened.”

“If you had gone with him,” Maris said, “you’d probably be lying there broken and bleeding as well. S’Rella, love, remember those rainbirds they left for us. They wanted to tell us something. You’re a one-wing too.” She glanced out toward the dawn. “And so am I. Maybe it’s time I admitted it. I’m half—a-flyer and that’s all I’ll ever be.” She smiled for S’Rella. “But I guess what matters is what half.”

S’Rella seemed puzzled, but Maris said, “No more talk. You still have a few hours before the competition opens, and I want you to try to get some sleep. You have to win your wings today, remember?”

“I can’t,” S’Rella protested. “Not now.”

“Especially now,” Maris said. “Whoever had this done to Val would be delighted to know that it lost you your wings as well as his. Do you want that?”

“No,” S’Rella said.

“Then sleep.”

Later, while S’Rella slept, Maris looked up again at the window. The sun was half-risen, its reddened face streaked with heavy dark clouds. It was going to be a good, windy day. A fine day for flying.

The competition was already well under way when Maris and S’Rella arrived. They had been delayed in the tavern when Raggin demanded immediate payment of Val’s bill, and it had taken a long argument to convince him that he would get everything due him. Maris made him promise to tend to Val’s needs, and allow no one else up those stairs.

Sena was at her usual station by the judges, watching the early contestants fly the gates. Maris sent S’Rella off to join the other Woodwingers, and hurried up the cliff. Sena was relieved to see her. “Maris!” she exclaimed. “I was worried something was wrong. No one knew where you had gone. Are S’Rella and Val with you? It will be time soon. Sher is next up, in fact.”

“S’Rella is ready to fly,” Maris said. She told Sena about Val.

All the strength and vitality seemed to drain from the teacher as she listened. Her good eye clouded over with tears and she leaned more heavily on her cane, and suddenly she was very old indeed. “I did not believe,” she muttered weakly. “I did not—even when that terrible thing happened with the birds, even then—I could not think they would do such a thing.” Her face was the color of ash. “Help me, child. I must sit down.”

Maris put an arm about her for support and led her to the judges’ table, where Shalli looked up, concerned. “Is everything all right?”

“No,” said Maris, easing Sena into a seat. “Val will not fly today,” she continued, swinging around to face the judges. “Last night he was attacked and beaten at the tavern where he had a room. An arm and a leg were broken.”

All of the judges looked shocked. “How terrible,” Shalli said. The Easterner swore, the Outer Islander shook his head, and the Landsman of Skulny rose. “This is dreadful. I won’t allow this on my island. We’ll find whoever did it, you have my promise on that.”

“A flyer did it,” Maris said, “or paid for it, anyway. They broke his right arm and his right leg. One-Wing. You understand.”

Shalli frowned. “Maris, this is a horrid thing, but no flyer would do such a thing. And if you mean to imply that Corm would—”

“Do you have proof a flyer was involved?” the Easterner interrupted.

“I know the tavern where Val One-Wing was staying,” the Landsman said. “The Iron Axe, was it not? That is a very bad place, with the worst sort of patrons, rough people. It could have been anyone. A drunken fight, a jealous lover, a gambling quarrel. I’ve seen many beatings come before me from that place.”

Maris stared at him. “You’ll never find who did it, no matter what you promise,” she said. “That isn’t what concerns me. I want to take Val’s wings back to him tonight.”

“Val’s—wings?”

“I’m afraid,” the Southerner said, “he must wait and try again next year. I am sorry he was hurt when he was so close to winning.”

“Close?” Maris looked the length of the table, found the box she sought, picked it up and rattled it at them. “Nine black stones to one white. That is more than close. Val had won. Even if he lost five to nothing today, he had won.”

“No,” Shalli said stubbornly. “Corm deserves his chance. I won’t have you cheat him of it for One-Wing, no matter how sorry I feel for him. Corm is very good at the gates. He might have won ten to nothing, two stones from each of us, and then he would have kept his wings.”

“Ten to nothing,” Maris said. “How likely is that?”

“It is possible,” Shalli said.

“It is,” echoed the Easterner. “We can’t give the victory to One-Wing. It would not be fair to Corm, who has flown well for many years. I think we must declare Val forfeit.”

Heads were bobbing up and down the table, but Maris only smiled. “I was afraid you might take this position.” She put her hands on her hips and defied them. “But Val will have his wings. Luckily there is a precedent. You set it yourselves last night, with S’Rella and Garth. Let the score stand and the match continue. Summon Corm.

“I will fly proxy for Val.”

And she knew they would not deny her.

Maris got her wings and joined the mill of contestants, impatient and increasingly nervous.

The gates had been erected during the night, nine flimsy wooden constructions planted firmly in the sand, in a course demanding a series of difficult turns and tacking maneuvers. The first gate, straight out from the flyers’ cliff, consisted of two tall blackwood poles, each some forty feet high, set fifty feet apart in the sand. A rope had been tied from the top of one pole to the top of the other. To score, the flyer had to glide through that gate. Easy enough, but the next gate was only a few yards farther down the beach, not straight ahead but off to one side, so the flyer had to angle quickly before shooting past it. And the second gate was smaller, the poles just a little bit shorter and set just a little bit closer together. So it went, the course wandering out into the shallows and then veering sharply back onto land, a twisting, wing-snapping course, with each of the nine gates smaller than the one before, until the ninth and final gate, two poles barely eight feet off the ground, set exactly twenty-one feet apart. A flyer’s wingspan was twenty feet. No one had ever flown more than seven gates. Even that was no mean task; of all the flyers to try the gates this morning, the best score was six, and that had been flown by the phenomenal Lane.

Challengers traditionally flew first in this test; the flyer was given the courtesy of knowing what score he had to beat. Wings on her shoulders, Maris watched the Woodwingers make their attempts.

Sher dove straight from the cliff through the first gate, coming in barely under the rope, banked sharply toward the second but continued to descend, fast, too fast. Panicking, the young Woodwinger leveled off quickly to avoid hitting the ground, and suddenly started to rise, passing over the second gate instead of through it. The flyer that Sher challenged managed only two gates, but that was enough for the victory.

Leya, watching Sher, chose a different strategy. She leapt from the cliff to circle widely above the beach, dropping down gradually so that she’d pass through the first gate level instead of in a descent. She began her turn well before she entered the gate proper, so that she actually swung around one pole gracefully, already heading for the second gate. She sailed smoothly through that as well, again beginning her turn early, but this time it was a sharper turn, more demanding, upwind. Leya made it well enough, and the third gate with it, but had nothing left to wrench herself around afterward. She flew peacefully out to sea, missing the fourth gate by a wide margin. A few of the spectators applauded her anyway, and her flyer rival could only manage two gates before he landed roughly in the sand. So Leya had her first triumph, though it was not enough to win a pair of wings.

Damen and Arak were announced by the crier. Both of them had trouble. Damen took the gates too fast, and couldn’t recover after the second in time to turn for the third. Arak passed through the second gate too high; the upper edge of a wing grazed the rope, and it was enough to send him off balance and far off course. But even with the two-gate tie, Arak easily retained his wings.

Kerr, surprisingly, also managed a tie. Imitating Leya, he entered the first gate leveled and starting his turn, and handled the second easily enough. But like Leya he had trouble veering upwind into the third, and unlike Leya, he did not manage it. He thumped to a halt in the sand a few yards short of the gate, and the land-bound children rushed in from all sides to help him out of his wings. Jon of Culhall tried to avoid Kerr’s fate by maintaining a higher altitude, but passed over and to the right of the third gate.

“Corm of Lesser Amberly,” the crier was announcing, “Val One-Wing, Val of South Arren,” Then a brief pause. “Maris of Lesser Amberly, flying proxy for Val, Maris of Lesser Amberly.”

She stood on the flyers’ cliff, helpers unfolding her wings, locking each strut in place. A few dozen yards away, Corm too stood and let them work. She looked over at him, and his eyes met hers, dark, intense. “Maris One-Wing,” he called bitterly. “Is this what you’ve come at? I’m glad Russ is not alive to see you.”

“Russ would be proud,” she threw back, angry, and knowing Corm had wanted to make her angry. Anger brought carelessness, and that was his only hope. Seven years ago she had outflown him, in a much fiercer contest. She was confident she could outfly him today as well. Precision, control, reflexes, a feel for the wind; that was all it required, and she had them in full measure.

Her wings were wide and tight, metal humming softly in the wind, and she felt utterly serene and sure of herself. She reached up, wrapped her hands around the grips, ran, jumped, soared. Up she flew, up and up, and she did a loop for the sheer joy of it and then dove, sliding down and down through the air, riding and shifting with the little eddies and currents, angling toward the gates. She was banked sharply and wheeling as she went through the first gate, her wings drawing a silver line from the top of one pole to the bottom of the other, but she stabilized gracefully and swayed the other way for the approach to the second, slid through it fluidly. It was the feel of it, the love of it, not the thought; it was instinct and reflex and knowing the wind, and Maris was the wind. The third gate was next, the difficult upwind turn, but she snapped around easily, quickly, cleanly, then looped above the water to correct her angle on the fourth gate, and she was through that too, and the fifth was a wide lazy downwind turn, and the sixth was almost straight ahead, not a difficult angle at all, but small, so she dropped a little and skimmed low over the sand, her wings taut and full, and the spectators were shouting and cheering.

In a heartbeat it was over.

Just as the sixth gate loomed ahead of her, she hit a sink, a sudden cold downdraft that had no right being there. It pushed at her, clutched at her, just for an instant, but that was long enough for her wings to brush the ground, and then her legs were trailing through the wet sand and she slid along bumpily before finally jolting to a halt in the shadow of the gate.

A small blond girl ran up to her and helped her to her feet, then began folding up her wings. Maris stood breathless and exhilarated. Five, then, five it was. Not the best score of the day, but a good score, and it was enough. Corm trailed Val by such a margin that it would not be enough for him to beat her. He had to humiliate her, crush her, collect two pebbles from each of the judges. And that he could not do.

He knew it too. Disheartened by her flight, he did not even come close. He failed on the fourth gate, a decisive victory for her, for Val. She felt elated as she trudged across the beach, wings folded on her back.

Criers’ calls ran up and down the shore. S’Rella stood poised on the precipice, the sun shining off the bright metal of her wings, and behind her Maris glimpsed wiry, black-haired Jirel of Skulny.

S’Rella leaped, and Maris stood to watch, her heart flying with her, hoping, hoping. S’Rella banked and circled, a leisurely approach instead of the wild rush Maris had employed, and came gliding down smoothly on the same tack Leya and Kerr had used in their turns. Through the first gate, turning, leveling, wheeling now in the opposite direction—Maris felt her breath stop for a minute—and through the second gate, and now a very sharp turn upwind, a clean knife-thrust of a turn as if the wind itself had changed direction at her command, and through the third gate, still in control, and another hard veer and she was through the fourth gate—people began to rise and cheer—and the fifth was as easy for her as it had been for Maris, and now it was the sixth that she was moving in on, the sixth on which Maris had failed, and her wings were swaying a bit but then they stilled and she came in higher than Maris, and the sink shook her but didn’t ground her, and then she was through the sixth gate too—shouts everywhere—and the seventh demanded a split-second bank at just the right angle, and S’Rella did that as well, and she came around toward the eighth—

—and it was too narrow, the poles set too close together, and S’Rella was just a bit too far to one side. Her left wing hit the pole with a snap, and the wing-struts shattered even as the pole did, and S’Rella went sprawling on the ground.

And Maris was only one of dozens running toward her.

When she got there, S’Rella was sitting up, laughing and breathing hard, surrounded by land-bound who were shouting at her, yelling hoarse-voiced congratulations. The children pressed close to touch her wings. But S’Rella, her face reddened by the wind, couldn’t seem to stop laughing.

Maris pushed her way through the crowd and hugged her, and S’Rella giggled through it all. “Are you all right?” Maris asked, pushing her away and holding her at arm’s length. S’Rella nodded furiously, still giggling. Then what… ?”

S’Rella pointed at her wing, the wing that had struck the gate. The fabric, virtually indestructible, was undamaged, but a support strut had broken. “That’s easily fixed,” Maris said after she’d looked it over. “No problem.”

“Don’t you see?” S’Rella said, jumping to her feet. Her right wing bobbed with the motion, taut and vibrant, but her left hung limp and broken, silver tissue dragging on the sand.

Maris looked and began to laugh. “One-Wing,” she said helplessly, and they collapsed into each other’s arms again, laughing.

“Jirel didn’t disgrace you,” Maris said to Garth that night, as she sat with him by his fire. He was up and about again, looking better, and drinking ale once more. “She was an admirable proxy, flew five gates, as good as I’d done. But five isn’t seven, of course, and it wasn’t enough. Even the Landsman couldn’t call it a tie.”

“Good,” Garth said. “S’Rella deserves the wings. I like S’Rella. Make her promise to come visit me too.”

Maris smiled. “I will,” she said. “She’s sorry she couldn’t come tonight, but she wanted to go straight down to Val. I’m to join her after I leave here. I don’t relish it, but…” She sighed.

Garth took a healthy swig of ale and stared into the fire for a long moment. “I feel sorry for Corm,” he said. “Never liked him, but he knew how to fly.”

“Don’t fret,” Maris said. “He’s bitter but he’ll recover. Shalli’s pregnancy will soon be too advanced for her to fly, so Corm will have the use of her wings for a few months, and if I know him he’ll bully her into sharing even after the baby comes. Next year he can challenge. It won’t be Val, either. Corm is cleverer than that. I’ll wager he names someone like Jon of Culhall.”

“Ah,” Garth said, “if the damned healers ever cure me, I may name Jon myself.”

“He’ll be a popular choice next year,” Maris agreed. “Even Kerr wants another chance at him, though I doubt Sena will sponsor him again until he’s a lot more seasoned. She’ll have better prospects to choose from next year. With the double victory by S’Rella and Val, Woodwings is suddenly thriving again. She’ll soon have more students than she knows what to do with.” Maris chuckled. “You and Corm weren’t the only flyers grounded, either. Bari of Poweet lost her wings in an out-of-family challenge, and Big Hara went down to her own daughter.”

“A flock of ex-flyers,” Garth grumbled.

“And a lot of one-wings,” Maris added, smiling. “The world is changing, Garth. Once we had only flyers and land-bound.”

“Yes,” Garth said, gulping down some more ale. “Then you confused everything. Flying land-bounds and grounded flyers. Where will it end?”

“I don’t know,” Maris said. She stood up. “I’d stay longer, but I must go talk to Val, and I’m long overdue on Amberly. With Shalli pregnant and Corm wingless, the Landsman will no doubt work me to death. But I’ll find time to visit, I promise.”

“Good.” He grinned up at her. “Fly well, now.”

When she left, he was shouting to Riesa for another ale.

Val was propped up awkwardly in bed; his head raised just enough so that he could eat, he was spooning soup into his mouth with his left hand. S’Rella sat by his side, holding the bowl. They both looked up when Maris entered, and Val’s hand trembled, spilling hot soup on his bare chest. He cursed and S’Rella helped him mop it up.

“Val,” Maris said evenly, nodding. On the floor by the door she set the wings she had carried, once belonging to Corm of Lesser Amberly. “Your wings.”

The swelling in his face had subsided enough so that Val was beginning to look like himself again, although his puffed lip gave him an atypical sneer. “S’Rella told me what you did,” he said with difficulty. “Now I suppose you want me to thank you.”

Maris folded her arms and waited.

“Your friends the flyers did this to me, you know,” he said. “If the bones mend crooked, I’ll never use those damn wings you got me. Even if they heal properly, I’ll never be as good as I was.”

“I know that,” Maris said, “and I’m sorry. But it wasn’t my friends who did this, Val. Not all flyers are my friends. And they aren’t all your enemies.”

“You were at the party,” Val said.

Maris nodded. “It won’t be easy, and most of the burden is on you. Reject them if you like, hate all of them. Or find the ones worth knowing. It’s up to you.”

“I’ll tell you who I’m going to find,” Val said. “I’m going to find the ones who did this to me, and then I’m going to find whoever sent them.”

“Yes,” Maris said. “And then?”

“S’Rella found my knife,” Val said simply. “I dropped it in the bushes last night. But I cut one of them, well enough so I’ll know her by the scar.”

“Where are you going, when you heal?” Maris said.

Val seemed thrown off-stride by the sudden change of subject. “I had thought Seatooth. I’ve heard the stories, about how much the Landsman there wants a flyer. But S’Rella tells me that the Landsman of Skulny is anxious as well. I’ll talk to them both, see what they offer.”

“Val of Seatooth,” Maris said. “It has a nice sound to it.”

“It will always be One-Wing,” he said. “Maybe for you too.”

“A half-flyer,” she agreed. “Both of us. But which half? Val, you can make the Landsmen bid for your services. The flyers will despise you for it, most of them, and maybe some of the younger and greedier will imitate you, and I’d hate to see that. And you can wear that knife your father gave you when you fly, even though you break one of the oldest and wisest flyer laws by doing so. It is a small point, a tradition, and the flyers again will despise you, but no one will do anything. But I tell you now, if you find who ordered you beaten, and kill them with that same knife, you’ll be One-Wing no longer. The flyers will name you outlaw and strip your wings away, and not a Landsman on Windhaven will take your side or give you landing, no matter how much they need flyers.”

“You want me to forget,” Val said. “Forget this?”

“No,” said Maris. “Find them, and take them to a Landsman, or call a flyer court. Let your enemy be the one who loses wings and home and life, and not you. Is that such a bad alternative?”

Val smiled crookedly, and Maris saw he had lost some teeth as well. “No,” he said. “I almost like it.”

“It’s your choice,” Maris said. “You won’t be flying for a good while, so you’ll have time to think about it. I think you’re intelligent enough to use that time.” She looked to S’Rella. “I must return to Lesser Amberly. It’s on your way, if you’re going back to Southern. Will you fly with me, and spend a day in my home?”

S’Rella nodded eagerly. “Yes, I’d love—that is, if Val will be all right.”

“Flyers have unlimited credit,” Val said. “If I promise Raggin enough iron, he’ll nurse me better than my own parent.”

“I’ll go, then,” S’Rella said. “But I’ll see you again, Val, won’t I? We both have wings now.”

“Yes,” Val said. “Go fly with yours. I’ll look at mine.”

S’Rella kissed him and crossed the room to where Maris stood. They started out the door.

“Maris!” Val called sharply.

She turned at the sound of his voice, in time to see his left hand reach awkwardly behind his head, under the pillow, and come whipping out with frightening speed. The long blade sliced through the air and struck the doorframe not a foot from Maris’ head. But the knife was ornamental obsidian, bright and black and sharp, but not resilient, and it shattered when it struck.

Maris must have looked terrified; Val was smiling. “It was never my father’s,” he said. “My father never owned anything. I stole it from Arak.” Across the room their eyes met, and Val laughed painfully. “Get rid of it for me, will you, One-Wing?”

Maris smiled and bent to pick up the pieces.