Page 47 of Wings of War

“I didn’t get my dacha’s hair either, though my hair doesn’t frizz as much as most curly hair.” Pip rubbed a hand over her chin. “Nor did I inherit the mythical and magical properties of beard hair. And as much as I love my muka, I’m elven enough that I can’t be too sad about that.”

Fieran tipped his head back as he gave a full-throated chuckle, the kind of laugh that made everyone around him want to laugh along. “I can’t imagine you with a beard.” He paused and glanced at her. “But you didn’t answer my original question. What’s up with the hyphenated last name?”

“You distracted me with all your talk of magical hair.” Pip rolled her eyes right back at him. “A dwarf’s last name refers to their clan, which is one large, extended family. But it’s more than just a statement of familial relationship. A clan lives in one mountain, which is named after the clan, and the clan head acts as something of a mayor. Groups of clans form the next tier of government, and so on and so forth all the way up to the dwarf king.”

“That’s neat. So your mama is from Mount Detmuk?”

“Yes. My great-great-uncle is the clan head.” Pip rolled her shoulders in another shrug. “I don’t really know him. But Clan Detmuk does have a decent amount of influence since Mount Detmuk serves as one of the main railroad terminals between the dwarven mountains and Tarenhiel.”

“Was that how your parents met?” Fieran glanced at her before facing the night once again, peering outward as if taking in the view of village lights crawling past below.

“Yes.” Pip smiled, remembering the looks on her parents’ faces whenever they talked about falling in love. “My dacha traveled to Mount Detmuk to negotiate a renewal of the various treaties and trade agreements, and he and my muka fell in love.”

“Sounds like your parents should have legends told about them.” Fieran’s smile turned lopsided, his face both highlighted and shadowed by the lights from the gondola. “I’m sure my parents wouldn’t mind sharing the spotlight.”

“Everyone knows elf-dwarf romances aren’t as widely celebrated as elf-human ones.” Pip shook her head and nudged Fieran again. “Besides, my parents got married before yours in the time when Tarenhiel was more insular. My parents’ marriage was far more frowned upon back then.”

“I’m glad my parents helped make things better for your parents.” Fieran’s smile faded again to that soft, sincere expression of his that darkened his brilliant blue eyes.

“Well, somewhat. My dacha’s parents still make snide remarks when we make a rare trip to visit them.” Pip rubbed a hand over her jaw again, her chest aching slightly. “They routinely inspect me to make sure I haven’t sprouted any beard hairs yet. I don’t even want a beard, and it still makes me feel prickly. My machasheni barely even acknowledges my muka.”

“I’m sorry. That’s hard.” Fieran leaned his elbows on the railing, which put his head level with hers, even though he was bent over. “I never knew either of my grandfathers. They were both dead long before I was born. As was my machasheni on my dacha’s side. But my grandmother on my mother’s side experienced a long life for a human, and I had the chance to get to know her before she died. I also have my dacha’s machasheni, who fills that role for all of us. But neither my grandmother nor great-grandmother ever showed any scorn to either my dacha or mama. What about your dwarven grandparents?”

“They’re better about it than my elven grandparents, though they still occasionally hassle my dacha for his lack of beard.” Pip leaned against the rail, though she propped herself up on her hands rather than her elbows like Fieran. She didn’t want to bend over and make herself any shorter than she already was. “We don’t get to see them often, though, because it’s a long trip, and it isn’t easy to get someone to cover our duties at the western rail terminal.”

“I can see that.” Fieran gestured out at the dark landscape spreading below them. “My parents split their time between Tarenhiel and Escarland while I was growing up, so I was able to know both sides of my family well. Even now, Dacha and Mama still travel back and forth frequently. I don’t always go with them, but I know I always have a home in both places.”

“That’s nice that you were able to experience both sides of your heritage growing up like that.” Pip swallowed the lump in her throat. “That’s actually the reason for my hyphenated surname. Since my parents lived exclusively in Tarenhiel with only occasional visits to Mount Detmuk, my parents didn’t want us to lose all sense of connection to our dwarven side. So they hyphenated my muka’s clan name with dacha’s elven title. Perhaps we could have used only our dwarven name when visiting Mount Detmuk and only Dacha’s name in Tarenhiel. But that always felt like denying half of ourselves, you know?”

“Yeah, I understand that.” Fieran stared straight ahead, a weight to his words. “There can be such a pressure to be one thing or another. To be all elf or all human. People don’t really know what to do with someone who doesn’t fit into their little boxes.”

Time to bring back a little bit of levity. Pip leaned into him again, nudging him with her shoulder. “I fit into quite little boxes.”

He laughed, nudging her in return. “True. I wedge myself into aeroplane cockpits that are quite small, especially for my long legs. But there are some boxes I don’t want to wedge myself into, even if it means I need to work extra hard to forge my own way.”

“I think we’re making a good start there.” Pip waved at the night sky and dark land below them, dotted with pinpricks of life.

“Nothing wider than the open sky.” Fieran grinned, his straight white teeth gleaming in the faint light from behind and beneath them.

“Exactly.” As they lapsed into silence, Pip breathed in the comfortable peace of standing there with him. Despite her earlier awkwardness around him because of his dacha, Fieran was one of those strangely comfortable guys to be around, as long as a girl didn’t read too much into his smiles.

Fieran stood along the rear bulkhead of the pilothouse with the rest of his small group. An airman walked all of them through the steps of flying an airship, even as they stayed out of the way.

Unlike a flyer, which was simply a matter of the rudder and the stick with only a handful of gauges, an airship flew through the precise working of speeds for the two engines, flaps along the sides, dumping ballast or moving ballast between the tanks, and venting air. Watching it all, Fieran could see why the dirigibles were called airships. This truly ran more like a ship in a sea of air rather than the aeroplane he was learning to fly.

Through the broad windows at the front of the pilothouse, the setting sun highlighted the far distant smudge that was the Whitehurst Mountains. Almost directly in front and below them, Fort Charibert stood in the center of a section of forest that covered this part of Escarland.

Unlike Fort Linder, Fort Charibert had been an army fort for hundreds of years. It sprawled in all directions, strangely higgledy-piggledy despite the army orderliness of the rows of barracks made from a variety of materials, including wood, cement, brick, and stone. The fort’s age showed in the shabbiness of many of the buildings.

The airship eased lower as the captain gave orders to shift ballast forward and vent the hot air trapped in some of the balloons. This air was regular air, not helium. These balloons were vented on descent rather than venting any of the harder-to-procure helium.

Gracefully, the airship drifted downward, then leveled off twenty feet above the ground. Orders were given, and airmen hurried to toss ropes off the bow and stern.

Fieran braced himself, and he barely swayed when the airship jerked to a halt, caught on the ropes the ground crew must have secured to something sturdy. Beside him, one of his fellow flyboys stumbled.

As the airship steadied at the end of its ropes, Fieran sighed and turned to Merrik. “I guess our little airship cruise is at an end.”

Merrik elbowed him. “Not so loud. If someone hears you, our reprieve from PT will also be at an end.”

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