Her eyebrows shot high. “And did you design it too?”
“Not entirely.” He circled away from his machine; impatience glinted in his eye. He didn’t like questions. He expected Safi and everyone else to board without argument.
And Safi would board. Eventually. “Whose design was it then?”
“A friend,” he snipped. “This was her idea, but I expanded upon it.”
That friend, Safi thought, was a lie. Her Truth-lens told her as much. And for the thousandth time, she wished she had her full magic back. Despite its failings, it at least let her see more deeply into a person’s heart. It let her sense both lies and truth—and in instances like these, truth was so much more important than lies. Who was Leopold the Fourth? Who was this person she’d always called Polly and considered a childhood friend?
She was trusting him with her life. She was trusting a machine she hadn’t known he was capable of building, and it wasn’t only her own neck on the line. It was the Hell-Bards’, it was her uncle’s, it was Iseult’s.
Then again, he had tricked her throughout their lives, playing a part she’d always believed and her magic had never questioned. Two months ago Safi had told Merik that her magic was not as powerful as people assumed. That she was easily confused by strong faith. So long as a speaker believed their words to be true, her magic could detect no falsehood.
She was beginning to realize it was not merely strong faith that fooled her, but masks that ran so deep they’d become inseparable from the truth.
Safi reached for the Threadstones in her pocket. Her fingers brushed against the warm rubies. I’m coming, Iz.
“How do we get it aloft?” Zander asked.
“It will roll.” Leopold knocked a wheel with his boot. “And once we are on board, it will lift off its wheels and take flight.”
“What about landing?” This came from Lev.
Leopold’s smile cracked slightly. “Yes, well, landing is never particularly pretty, but as long as we find a large enough space, we should have no trouble.”
Caden and Lev exchanged grimaces.
“Eridysi?” Zander asked. He pointed at a small name painted on the tiller.
“Yes.” Leopold plastered on a fake smile. “The machine’s name.”
“After the Lament?” Caden asked.
“After the old Sightwitch for whom the Lament was named.” Leopold spoke in a manner that allowed no more questions, and now his gaze had settled on Safi. It razed over her as if he saw something he hated.
She quickly whirled away, pulling again at her collar and sleeves. “Let’s go,” she called. “There’s no time to waste.”
* * *
With the Hell-Bards’ help, Safi and Leopold rolled the flying machine into the final dregs of night. Their breath fogged; they had to fight drifts to get the wheels through; snow fell around them. But after much heaving and groaning, they had the Eridysi fully outside and far from any trees.
The deck on the Eridysi, if it could even be called that, was no larger than a river raft. And the balustrade around its edges was entirely too short to do much good.
“You will want to sit,” Leopold said after hopping on board with the Hell-Bards. He handed Safi a pair of flying spectacles like the ones Windwitches wore. He did not offer any to the Hell-Bards. He also did not wait for Safi to pull on the lenses before clasping the tiller and shouting, “Fly!”
The machine obeyed immediately. One moment, the Eridysi was on the ground, surrounded by snow. The next, a great gust of wind barreled into it. The machine jolted. Safi caught herself on her hands. The machine jerked. Safi landed on her back.
The machine flew. A great eruption of air and power that punched through the spiral sail and set it to spinning. Fast as a pinwheel, fast as a tornado. Treetops blurred past and the world expanded around them. Higher, higher. Safi’s ears popped. Cold sliced into her. But the wind never calmed, and the sail never stopped spinning. Snowflakes clattered and clawed.
Safi fumbled on her spectacles. Already, her fingers were going numb.
Despite the snow, the flying machine ascended smoothly. The earth shrank into a white-draped miniature, then vanished from view entirely as gray storm light clotted below. By the time the machine had stopped rising, Safi was upright. Zander too, and she staggered to his side at the balustrade. Steps away, Caden and Lev were huddled close, cheeks red and eyes wide.
“He’s afraid of heights,” Lev blurted at the same moment Caden also said, “She’s afraid of heights.”
“Praga,” Zander called, pointing west, and sure enough, when Safi squinted that way, she could see the faintest darkness sprawled across hills of white. To the east, the Ohrins rose. Craggy, snowcapped, and impossibly high—yet not too high for the Eridysi.
“Hold on!” Leopold ordered. His curls ran wild in the wind. His cloak flapped and billowed about him. When he pushed the tiller to his left, the machine lurched east. No more vertical gains, only a sideways flight that tipped the wooden raft and sent Safi and Zander leaning.
Her pack fell. She and Zander both grabbed for it. “Slow down!” she shrieked, but either Leopold didn’t hear or Leopold didn’t care. She had no choice but to cling to the balustrade with one arm while her other arm clung tightly to her pack.
Leopold’s pack, she realized, had been tied down. How very convenient that he had forgotten to mention such precautions to her.
And hell-pits, if she’d thought it was cold being in the snow below, it was nothing to the cold of the storm. Wind and ice clawed into everything. Up her nose, down her throat, into her clothes and through her skin. For a time, she forgot the doom. For a time, her muscles were wholly consumed with the strength needed to stay on board. Shadowed lines of cleaving seemed a thousand miles away.
The Hell-Bards fared no better. Only Leopold seemed at ease with a preternatural grace to stay on his feet.
Eventually, the Eridysi leveled out. Safi didn’t release the balustrade. The Hell-Bards, she noticed, did not either. Leopold, however, bared a smile and abandoned the tiller to stroll toward them. “How is everyone?” he asked in a way that suggested he hoped they were terrible.
“Shouldn’t you be steering?” Safi asked through chattering teeth.
“No.” He bobbed a bored shoulder. “The Eridysi can fly herself now. We are headed in one direction for quite a while.”
“Still.” She glared at him. “I’d feel much better if you kept your hand on the tiller.”
He snorted and crooked forward to pat her head. “Don’t you worry your pretty little—”
Safi grabbed his hand, flipped it up, and twisted his wrist toward his rib cage. “Hold,” she snarled at him, “the tiller.”
Leopold grunted, but if it was in pain or surprise, Safi couldn’t say. He kept his fake smile glued to his face the entire time. “Of course, my Empress,” he murmured. “Anything you wish, my Empress.”
The Truth-lens scratched against her chest. She released him. Let him be a petty child. Let him be a foppish prince. She was in charge here, whether he liked it or not.
He gave her a mocking bow when he reached the tiller, and in that moment, Safi decided she hated him. She was tired of masks. She was tired of games.