She’d changed into a new dress, though there were still snarls in her hair. She smelled of flowers.
And her eyes were terrified.
He’d traveled the darkness with her. Had faced nightmaws. Had seen her near to death, and she had not looked this worried.
“What?” he asked, finding his voice hoarse.
“We found instructions in the machine,” Vathi whispered. “A manual on its workings, left there as if accidentally by someone who worked on it before. The manual is in their language, but the smaller machine I have…”
“It translates.”
“The manual details how the machine was constructed,” Vathi says. “It’s so complex I can barely comprehend it, but it seems to explain concepts and ideas, not just give the workings of the machine.”
“And are you not happy?” he asked. “You will have your flying machines soon, Vathi. Sooner than anyone could have imagined.”
Wordless, she held something up. A single feather—a mating plume. She had kept it.
“Never move without asking yourself, is this too easy?” she whispered. “You said it was a trap as I was pulled away. When we found the manual, I… Oh, Dusk. They are planning to do to us what… what we are doing to Patji, aren’t they?”
Dusk nodded.
“We’ll lose it all. We can’t fight them. They’ll find an excuse, they’ll seize the Aviar. It makes perfect sense. The Aviar use the worms. We use the Aviar. The Ones Above use us. It’s inevitable, isn’t it?”
Yes, he thought. He opened his mouth to say it, and Sak chirped. He frowned and turned back toward the island. Jutting from the ocean, arrogant. Destructive.
Patji. Father.
And finally, at long last, Dusk understood.
“No,” he whispered.
“But—”
He undid his pants pocket, then reached deeply into it, digging around. Finally, he pulled something out. The remnants of a feather, just the shaft now. A mating plume that his uncle had given him, so many years ago, when he’d first fallen into a trap on Sori. He held it up, remembering the speech he’d been given. Like every trapper.
This is the symbol of your ignorance. Nothing is easy, nothing is simple.
Vathi held hers. Old and new.
“No, they will not have us,” Dusk said. “We will see through their traps, and we will not fall for their tricks. For we have been trained by the Father himself for this very day.”
She stared at his feather, then up at him.
“Do you really think that?” she asked. “They are cunning.”
“They may be cunning,” he said. “But they have not lived on Patji. We will gather the other trappers. We will not let ourselves be taken in.”
She nodded hesitantly, and some of the fear seemed to leave her. She turned and waved for those behind her to open the gates to the building. Again, the scents of mankind washed over him.
Vathi looked back, then held out her hand to him. “You will help, then?”
His corpse appeared at her feet, and Sak chirped warningly. Danger. Yes, the path ahead would include much danger.
Dusk took Vathi’s hand and stepped into the fortress anyway.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks go to my Writing Excuses cohosts: Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Howard Tayler. And to my writing group: First of the Olsens, Danielle Olsen, Alan Layton, Kaylynn ZoBell, Kathleen Sanderson, The Inserted Peter Ahlstrom, Karen Ahlstrom, Isaaç Stewart, Kara Stewart, and Emily Sanderson. I’d also like to give a special thank you to Kekai Kotaki. I’ve always loved his Magic: The Gathering art, and I asked Isaac to contact him first on my list of potential artists for this illustration. Having a Polynesian illustrator for this story is distinctly cool.
Thanks go to this volume’s community proofreaders: Aaron Ford, Alice Arneson, Aubree Pham, Bao Pham, Bob Kluttz, Brian T. Hill, Gary Singer, Jakob Remick, Lyndsey Luther, Maren Menke, Mike Barker, Steve Godecke, and Trae Cooper.
Each of the artists deserves a special shout-out for working with us on such a tight deadline and for providing top-notch illustrations. Many thanks to Jorge Jacinto and Kekai Kotaki.