I let her flying speak for both of us.
I got part of the frame secondhand from a salvage and recyc yard, and it took me a solid year of sneaking away to put her together. Saelis did a lot of legwork for me, and Miri a little as well—neither of them has much interest in aeronautics except as a means of transport from island to island, but they never minded walking into a junkyard with a shopping list, if I told them exactly what I needed.
It’s her engine that makes her special. It’s unique, cobbled together out of pieces of tech that I’ll freely admit I only half understand. The key, though, is that they allow me to gain altitude without relying on thermals like everyone else, which means I can outmaneuver the rest of them with one hand tied behind my back, and my glider and I can slip in underneath the city to our launch bay doors at the end of each outing, leaving everyone else wondering where we went.
“Did they ask for a demo?” Miri asks, hurrying forward, grinning. Her curls are pink today, the glitter at her cheekbones blue. “We got here as fast as we could. I tell you, it was a challenge—Saelis found this antique shop, and he’s such an old man, you know what he’s like when …” Her voice dies away when she sees my face, and she halts, uncertain.
“North?” Saelis asks from behind her, only just audible above the thrum of the engines.
“They didn’t ask for a demo,” I say, grim. “But they’re going to get one.”
“Oh.” Miri’s face falls. “Well, crap.”
“You have no idea,” I mutter. But I don’t want to think about it now. I want to get into the air. The skies will be full of gliders as the sun sets, and I want to use the last of the light to show my mothers and everyone who matters just how much better and easier and faster the Skysinger moves. They might not be watching at first, but word will reach them quickly enough, and now that they know what they know, they’ll be watching a minute after that.
“Are we in a hurry?” Saelis asks, studying my face with the gentle, thoughtful expression he always wears.
“Little bit.”
He simply nods and turns toward the launch straps as I stride over to pull on my flight suit.
“We’ll go down to the promenade and watch,” Saelis says, yanking the first of the launching straps over to the winch that’ll stretch them taut.
The barometer looks good, the pressure even, and I rummage for my goggles and my flight suit. I hop on first one foot and then the other as I jam each leg into it, zipping it up my front over my clothes, and then pulling on my jacket.
Meanwhile, Miri helps Saelis yank the next launching strap into place. The straps work just like my slingshot used to when I was small, before Anasta confiscated it because treasury advisors aren’t for target practice. They creak as we secure the last one, and then we haul on the lever that starts the machinery to stretch them tight.
Once I’m ready, I slither into my seat, which is perfectly fitted to my shape. I sink down until only my head’s visible above the sides.
Miri slides the duraglass windshield into place, and I’m safe behind my bubble, the sound blocked out. In front of us, Saelis is sliding up the launch bay door, giving me a clear view of the sky.
I give them the thumbs-up, and they each return it, Miri taking Saelis’s place by the edge of the door, one arm wound carefully around the safety strap we tied there as she checks for obstructions, the wind making grabs for her hair and clothes.
Saelis disappears behind me, to the strap release. Miri’s holding her hand out, palm flat, angled toward the ground. It’s the signal for hold, and he does. Then a gaudy red-and-gold glider sails past the opening of the garage, yellow streamers whipping in the wind behind it. They’ll be shredded soon enough, but they’ll last for at least a little of tonight’s aeronautics show.
That must have been what she was waiting for, because the next moment she switches to give Saelis a thumbs-up. I feel a warning thump vibrate through the tail, and then another, as the countdown begins.
Three, two, one …
The glider shoots out into the gray sky, trying to push my stomach backward through my spine in a quick rush.
I tip my head back to get a look at my surroundings, but Miri was right, and I’m clear. I tilt the controls gently to the left and catch the thermal that’s always there in good weather, wheeling around and offering the pair of them a wave as they check that the garage door’s secure, leaving it open for my return. And then I’m climbing, climbing, until the whole of the island’s spread out below me.
The streets make neat grids, lit by sparkling streetlamps that blur together as I sail overhead. The brightest lights of all are the palace, and I wheel around the edge of the exclusion zone, just another glider out for tonight’s show, part of the celebration marking the beginning of council deliberations at the palace. The eastern park’s below me now, a long strip of dark green, the edges nibbled in by new construction, a constant source of debate in the council.
At least a hundred other gliders are wheeling around like newly fledged hawks playing in the wind, almost all of them brightly painted and decorated, much more interesting to look at than mine.
But I’m the one everybody’s going to be watching tonight.
My heartmother used to tell me bedtime tales about the lost sky-cities, other ancient archipelagos that we once knew, but forgot in the centuries since the Ascension. Whenever I’m in the Skysinger, I find myself imagining that they’re real, just beyond the horizon. That somewhere out there in the vast, blue ocean of the sky is another prince, in another glider, looking back across the expanse at me and wondering if Alciel was ever real.
Below isn’t a myth, though. It’s real, and it’s within reach, if only we’ll try. If only I can make them see that we have to be more than we are—we have to search, and discover, and keep making ourselves better, not just because our engines might need it, but because our souls do.
I skirt the eastern edge of the island, close but not too close to the edge of the main thermal, letting the updraft increase my altitude as I head for the main flight. This is what I come for—these moments when I’m one with the Skysinger, and in perfect control. Citizens will be watching from the boardwalk below, and I’m about to give them the show of a lifetime. Conditions are perfect. The sky is an unbroken blue dome all around me, and the lower layer of clouds between us and Below is thick and stable.
I could almost—
There’s a pop behind me, and a quick shudder runs through the glider. It’s nothing dramatic, but I know instantly that something’s wrong. My gut’s churning as I tilt the controls experimentally to the left … and nothing happens.
I yank them to the right, quicker, and again, nothing.
No steering.
Skyfall.
There are few things that can go more wrong than this, and my gaze flicks forward, my chest already tight with fear. If I’d been facing the other way, I might have hoped to gradually lose altitude, to come down with the cool of the night air and land on a distant island.
But this way, there’s nothing but the palace, and then the empty sky beyond. Empty sky all the way to eternity.
And I have no way to turn the Skysinger around.
I lean as far as I can against my restraints, craning my neck around and pressing my cheek to the windshield, so I can just make out the curve of the glider’s body that houses the steering controls—and my heart stops.