illness when he was young left him with permanently damaged lungs and pain that he doesn’t like to discuss. It never seems to dampen his energy, but then again, he’s only been fighting the rest of the council for a couple of years. They have a long time yet to wear him down.
Right now, he’s grinning openly, enjoying the commotion—but he knew what I was going to say. My mothers might have raised me, but it’s my bio-donor, a man who wasn’t even supposed to be identified, who really understands me. At least on this. For years I didn’t know him—he was allowed to pass on birthday presents, but never his name.
When I was five, a model glider started my forbidden fascination with flight. When I was ten, a sci-fi vid about an impossible cloudship that landed Below, on the actual surface, sent a thrill through me that never went away—though the animated beasts the shipwrecked explorers fought gave me nightmares for weeks. By the time he was outed as my bio-donor when I was fifteen, I felt like I already knew him.
Now, Talamar nods, lifting his inhaler again, eyes creased in a smile. Go on, his gaze says. You can make them see what you see.
So I draw a breath and raise my voice to cut through the arguments around me. “Esteemed council members,” I try, which catches a few of them. “Your Majesty,” I continue, just as loud. “Your Highnesses.”
The last of them—Damerio, a sinking skeptic—falls silent, eyeing me beadily. Just waiting for his chance to launch back into his favorite argument. I hustle on with it before he can try.
“You’ve all been to the air festivals here on Freysna. You’ve all seen the stunts and the races. And you all know that the best of the gliders is the Skysinger. It’s faster and more nimble than any of the others, its pilot more skillful, and its design simply better. And perhaps you know that half the engineers at the academy would give up their tenures for the chance to meet that pilot and spend an hour looking over his machine.
“Well, I know that pilot. And I know why the Skysinger is so much better than anything else in the air. It’s because his engine uses tech salvaged from the sky-engines.”
Beatrin’s voice is very quiet when she speaks, very dangerous. “That would be illegal,” she points out. “The engines are not to be touched.”
“It’s not illegal, it’s practical,” I retort. “We don’t know what half the parts of the engines are even for, or whether they’re necessary. The pilot’s been working on a new kind of engine, and with the tech from the Skysinger, he could build a cloudship capable of landing a pilot on the surface Below and returning him safely to Alciel. With funding, and with academy support, he could do it as quickly as this time next year.”
“Impossible!” Councilor Damerio finally loses his temper and shouts his reply, standing and puffing himself up like a yellow-tailed sparra trying to impress a mate. His puffed-up hair has always reminded me of feathers, his pouched cheeks and pursed mouth doing nothing to detract from the impression of a self-important little bird. “Your Highness, with respect, the very idea that we would endanger the engines over a perfectly natural fluctuation in altitude, that we would trust a renegade glider pilot to tinker with our engines—”
“Indeed.” Finally, my grandfather speaks, and the king’s voice silences Damerio instantly. “Tell me, North,” he says slowly. “How did you come to know this pilot?”
I can see in his steady gaze that he already knows the answer.
Trust me, I beg silently, looking back at him. Listen to me. I can do this.
If this doesn’t work, I’m about to give up the thing that matters most to me in the world.
But it will work. It has to work.
I take a deep breath.
“I know it can be done,” I say. “Because I’m the pilot and the engineer of the Skysinger. I can build you that cloudship, and I’m volunteering to pilot it.”
The room erupts into chaos, councilors coming to their feet, voices raised, hands lifted, half a dozen displays from their chronos jostling for room in the projection square atop the table.
“There have been years like this before,” Damerio’s shouting, gesturing wildly at his bar graph. “We are not sinking!”
Talamar stands shoulder to shoulder with Gabriala, a councilor from one of the other small islands, their voices tangling with one another.
“The small islands are sinking