far too thin to sustain her body weight. The interlacing rods that kept the apparatus together also looked so terribly fragile she was sure she could snap them in half over her knee. “You sure that’s going to be enough to keep me up?”
“I didn’t want to add too much to your weight. The rods are as slender as they’ll go. Any heavier and you’ll sink.”
“They could also break and send me plummeting to my death,” she pointed out.
“Have a little faith in me.”
“It’s gonna hurt you if I crash.”
“I know.” He sounded far too giddy for her comfort. “Shall we go try this out?”
They found an open clearing up on the cliffs, well out of range of anything that was remotely flammable. Kitay had wanted to test his invention by pushing Rin off a ledge, but reluctantly agreed to let her try levitating over level ground first.
The sun was just beginning to rise over the Red Cliffs, and Rin would have found it exceptionally lovely if she weren’t so terrified that she could hear her heartbeat slamming in her eardrums.
She stepped out into the middle of the clearing, arms raised stiffly over her sides. She felt both exceedingly scared and stupid.
“Well, go on.” Kitay backed up several paces. “Give it a try.”
She gave the wings an awkward flap. “So I just . . . light up?”
“I think so. Try to keep it localized to your arms. You want the heat trapped in the air pockets under the wings, not dispersed in the air.”
“All right.” She willed the flame to dance up her palms and into her neck and shoulders. Her upper body felt deliciously warm, but almost immediately her wings began to smoke and sizzle.
“Kitay?” she called, alarmed.
“That’s just the binding agent,” said Kitay. “It’ll be fine, it’ll just burn off—”
Her voice rose several pitches. “It’s fine if the binding agent burns off?”
“That’s just the excess substance. The rest should hold—I think.” He didn’t sound convincing in the least. “I mean, we tested the solvent at the forge, so in theory . . .”
“Right,” she said slowly. Her knees were shaking. Her head felt terribly light. “Why do I let you do this?”
“Because if you die, I die,” he said. “Can you make those flames a little larger?”
She closed her eyes. Her leather wings lifted at her sides, expanding from the hot air.
Then she felt it—a heavy pressure yanking on her upper body, like a giant had reached down and jerked her up by the arms.
“Shit,” she breathed. She looked down. Her feet had risen off the ground. “Shit. Shit!”
“Go higher!” Kitay called.
Great Tortoise. She was rising higher, without even trying—no, she was practically shooting upward. She kicked her legs, wobbling in the air. She had no lateral directional control, and she couldn’t figure out how to slow her ascent, but holy gods, she was flying.
Kitay shouted something at her, but she couldn’t hear him over the rush of the flames surrounding her.
“What?” she yelled back.
Kitay flapped his arms and ran in a zigzag motion.
Did he want her to fly sideways? She puzzled over the mechanics of it. She could decrease the heat on one side. As soon as she tried it she nearly flipped over and ended up hanging awkwardly in midair with her hip level with her head. She hastily righted herself.
She couldn’t drift laterally, then. But how did birds change direction? She tried to remember. They didn’t move straight to one side, they tilted their wings. They didn’t drift, they swooped.
She beat her wings down several times and rose several feet into the air. Then she adjusted the curve of her arms so that the wings beat to the side, not downward, and tried again.
Immediately she careened to the left. The swift change in direction was terribly disorienting. Her stomach heaved; her flames flickered madly. For a moment she lost sight of the ground, and didn’t right herself until she was mere feet away from the dirt.
She jerked herself out of the dive, gasping. This was going to take some practice.
She flapped her wings to regain altitude. She shot up faster than she’d anticipated. She flapped them again. Then again.
How far could she go? Kitay was still shouting something from the ground, but she was too far up to understand him. She rose higher and higher with each steady beat of her wings. The ground became dizzyingly far away, but she had eyes only for the great expanse of sky above her.