Page 7 of Magick and Lead
The man’s eyes narrowed. “And who are you?” he asked.
I started to answer, but my throat suddenly felt tight. I stooped and drew my saber out from beneath the golenae’s body, then stood.
“I’m someone who loves her,” I said. Then I turned and strode back to my waiting plane.
4
CHARLIE
The relief I felt when my wheels touched down on URA soil was so strong I could have melted. I’d survived another mission. Another search. And though I’d returned without Essa, surviving meant I’d live to search again.
The plane jounced across the furrows as I decelerated, then turned and taxied between the rows of corn, across the lane, and toward the wide-open doors of the big barn.
The family farm always gave me a feeling of peace. It evoked summers spent running between corn rows, jumping from the hayloft with my cousins, twirling in the glittering spray as my father made it rain with the hose, eating fresh blueberry pie on the porch with my grandparents—rest their souls—as sunset painted the whole world in oranges and pinks. Those people were all lost to memory now, all except my cousin Bo, but the feelings of safety and nostalgia remained.
I’d had to fly hard to keep from losing daylight, and it was close to sunset now. The air had that early-summer sheen to it, making everything seem clearer, more in focus, and the vast sky above stretched out above me, deep lavender streaked with golden clouds. I loved the sky at the farm, so broad and expansive compared to the chopped-up heavens that hung overthe city. Even when I would come out here as a kid, looking up at all that grandeur had made it feel like anything was possible. I wanted to be a part of that sky. Maybe that was why I’d become a pilot in the first place.
Many times over the past few months, I’d imagined finding Essa and bringing her back here. Living here together. Sitting on the porch in those rocking chairs my grandparents had sat in. Staring out at the distant point where the fields met the sky, the only sound the wind and the clinking of ice in our glasses of lemonade. At ease together. At peace.
If I ever found her…
If she didn’t hate me…
And if she decided she’d rather live on a farm in the middle of nowhere in Admar instead of being queen of an enemy nation…
As I taxied to the barn, my cousin Bo emerged from the saddle shop, a wood-sided outbuilding painted red to match the barn. He wore paint-spattered overalls and was wiping his hands with a cloth and smiling. Damned if I wasn’t happy to see him, too.
I passed into the earthy darkness of the barn and killed the engine. The hush of the barn settled over me like a bedsheet. The place seemed overflowing with floating dust and weary peace, its rafters alive with darting sparrows, its hayloft full of memories of my youth.
Along one wall ran Bo’s workbench, filled with an impressive array of tools. Next to it, a stable of half a dozen motorcycles stood. They’d all been damaged or broken in some way, and Bo had bought them for next to nothing. But he’d tinkered and fussed until one by one, he had them running better than they had off the factory line. He’d done the same with this damned plane when I’d flown it here, shredded and half falling out of the sky. After that terrible battle. After that bastard Carter Blaize had shot down Essa’s mother…
I pushed back my goggles, pulled off my gloves, and undid the chin strap on my leather flight helmet. Bo was there a moment later, blocking the plane’s wheels and running a hand along her underbelly, feeling for damage. I climbed out of the cockpit, groaning with pain and stiffness, and my boots thumped down on the ancient floorboards.
Bo must’ve heard me groan when I landed, because he immediately spun to face me. My cousin might have been blind, but he didn’t miss a thing. “Where did they get you?” he asked, coming toward me.
“I’m fine,” I grunted, but his hands were already on my flight jacket, his fingers running over it.
“Bullshit, man. I smell blood,” he said, and his eyebrows went up when his fingers found the slashes in my flight jacket. “What did you do, jump into a blender?”
“Something like that,” I muttered, shrugging away from him. “I’m fine though, really.”
“And how’s my Ruby?” he asked, turning back to the plane and tracing his fingers along one of the wings.
I grunted. “As if anything could make that shit-bucket any worse.”
“Charlie,” Bo chastised me. “You’ll hurt her feelings.”
I chuckled at that. “The damage is on the upper wing,” I said.
“Dragon?” Bo asked.
“Golena,” I said.
I watched as Bo continued to examine the plane with his hands. Though we were cousins, nobody would have guessed we were related. He was five years older than me and a few inches shorter, with the tan skin and almond-shaped eyes he’d inherited from his father, who had been a cobbler from Admar’s west coast—before he’d been drafted and killed in a trench on Dorhane when Bo was only seven. His mother was my mother’s sister. We hadn’t been terribly close growing up, but we hadspent a couple of weeks together every summer here at our grandparents’ farm.
And of course, he’d been the first one to take me flying, back when he was a young ace in the air force, before he lost his sight. He’d been good, too—had taught me a lot of dogfighting skills that had helped me excel in flight school. Now that he couldn’t fly anymore, he’d fallen back to his second love—machines.
“And your lady love?” Bo asked now. “I don’t smell any perfume on you…”
