Chapter Two

Courier—

In Which Audrey Falls into Disgrace, After Avoiding a Fall of a More Serious Nature

Air World

Audrey studied her half brother’s pale face, torn between sympathy and impatience. “You have to tell him.”

He grimaced. “I know, I know, it’s just—” Grady ground to a halt both verbally and physically in the middle of the cramped airship corridor. “How can I? He’s the Admiral.”

“And you don’t want to disappoint him. I know. But—”

“No, you don’t know.” He rounded on her, expression fierce under his mop of red hair. “You can’t know. You’re not his son, or his bastard.”

Audrey recoiled. Not from the indelicate word—she knew quite well what bastard meant and had for years—but from Grady’s anger. Hurt arrowed through her. Her three-years-younger half brother was also her best friend.

Her mother would be horrified to learn that she’d ever so much as spoken to Grady.

She stared down at her gloves. “I’m well aware that I’m just a useless daughter. You know I’d give anything to be in your place.”

“I’m sorry, Audrey.” He touched her elbow. “But I can’t tell him. Most noblemen don’t acknowledge their by-blows. This posting is the opportunity of a lifetime for me. I can’t risk jeopardizing it.”

His lower-tier mother and half siblings depended on his meager salary as a midshipman.

“Fine,” Audrey said. “You can’t tell him. So what are you going to do?”

His face paled again, turning almost chalk-white in contrast to his red hair and freckles. “Deliver the message. It must be important if he’s sending it by courier so I’ll just…do it. Somehow.”

Audrey swallowed her skepticism. Grady needed confidence right now, not doubt. “How can I help?”

He smiled tightly. “Just keep me company.”

“Of course.” There wasn’t much else she could do. Audrey had already asked Zephyr, the Harding family wind, to watch over him.

They went aft down the swaying corridor. Grady slid down the pole to the lowest deck of the airship while Audrey climbed down the ladder-like stairs in her heavy skirts. The deck was open to the wind and deserted. A row of cabinets lined one wall.

Grady pulled a green flight suit on over his uniform and donned a leather harness studded with carabiners. He strapped the message tube to his chest and signed out a grappler-gun. Audrey helped him untangle the rope ladder. He opened the round hatch—and stopped.

They were still traveling in formation: a patrol of five dirigible-class and one zeppelin-class airships and three merchant ships. The HMS Artemis would soon detach to take on escort duties to the convoy while the rest of the patrol turned back at the edge of Donlon territory. Right now, Artemis underflew the HMS Queen Winifred. Its 150-foot oblong balloon envelope was dwarfed by the shadow cast by the larger flagship’s 500-foot blimp. The rope ladder would bring Grady close, followed by an easy drop of fifteen feet.

But if a wind gust caught the ladder at the wrong time and he missed the Artemis, it was three thousand feet straight down. A death sentence three times over, once from the fall, once from the poisonous white fog that covered the marshy ground below, and a third time from starvation being lost so far from civilization.

Grady stumbled back. “I can’t—I just can’t,” he wheezed. Sweat darkened his red hair.

Audrey patted his back sympathetically.

“How can I be afraid of heights?” he asked miserably. “I’m his son.”

And Admiral Harding had one of the strongest long-winded talents in Donlon. Combined with his noble station, the ability to Call the winds to do his bidding and thus direct an airship had earned him command of Donlon’s Fleet.

Grady hadn’t received the long-winded gift. Ironically, Audrey, the unimportant daughter, had.

“Just tell him. He’ll find you another post, I promise,” Audrey said, exasperated. “You’re his son.”

“His bastard, you mean.” Grady shook his head. “Even if he does find me another post, it’ll never be as good as this one. An apprenticeship with a butcher doesn’t have the same prospects for a commoner as the navy.”

“But you’re scared of heights,” she protested. “Is this really a career you want to pursue?”

Grady shook his head, stubborn as a goat. “I’m good at navigating, best in my class. And navigators work in the pilot house behind glass windows. I like flying well enough, as long as there’s something solid under my feet.”

Unwilling sympathy rose. She could see that he’d given this a lot of thought.

He approached the hatch again. “Push me out. If I close my eyes…”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Audrey said shortly. “You’ll hit your head or break your arm.” And fall to his death. She straightened and held out her hand. “Give me the message. I’ll do it. I’ll play courier.” Excitement fizzed and bubbled inside her. She’d always wanted to fly the Grand Current.

The Grand Current was the biggest wind in existence, a half-mile-wide river of air that wrapped around the world like a belt. It flowed from Donlon’s lonely mountain to Sipar and the other countries on the continent. Without its swift, strong winds to shorten flight times, Donlon would have been an uninhabitable rock, an island in the vast sea of marshes, too far from the grain fields of the continent to survive. With it, Donlon’s long-winded captains had the best navy and merchant marine in the world.

Grady protested, of course. She was a girl and an untrained civilian. It was dangerous. She shot down his arguments. She’d spent more time on airships than he had, the wind didn’t care about her gender, and she was older than he was, seventeen to his fourteen.

While Grady guarded the stairs, she shucked off her dress and petticoats, stuffed them in the cabinet, and pulled the bright green flight suit overtop her chemise. Then the harness.

The suit had been too big on Grady. On her it was tight, squashing her breasts flat and showing two inches of ankle. Audrey slung the courier pouch across her chest to disguise her breasts. She studied her reflection in the back of a brass wind gauge. Except for her hair, she looked like a boy!

Removing the military-issue knife from the holster attached to the harness, she fanned out the blades until she found the scissor attachment. Without giving herself time to think about it, she sheared off her hair. The wind blew the loose curls overboard. Mother would be horrified, of course, but Audrey had been dying to try out the new style anyway.

Dismay threatened when she finished—her hair looked nothing like the cap of bobbed curls popular with the stylish set. She did, however, look more like a boy—a ragged, beanpole of a boy. She lifted her chin defiantly. Her hair would grow out eventually.

Grady gaped at her when she called him back down. “What did you do?”

“It’s the latest fashion,” she told him haughtily. She picked up the end of the rope ladder and fastened two carabiners to the third lowest rung.

“The latest style is looking like you’ve a mop on your head?” he asked. “I’ll never understand you noble folk.”

Audrey glared at him. “Do you want my help or not?”

He groaned. “This is such a bad idea.”

“No, it isn’t.” She put on her goggles. Hers were a ladies’ pair, with oval rather than round lenses, but shouldn’t attract too much notice.

He blocked her way. “This is crazy. I can’t let you do this. If he finds out, the Admiral will kill me.”

Audrey felt a spurt of panic. “Don’t funk out on me now!” Couldn’t he see that she wanted to do this? Craved the adventure?

If she’d been born a boy, this would have been her midshipman posting, her job. Determination flooded her. She would never get a chance like this again.

Grady stood determinedly on top of the hatch, preventing her from unlatching it and using the rope ladder. She backed up and assumed a hangdog look. “But I cut my hair!”

Grady winced. “I didn’t know you were going to do that. It was cowardly of me to agree to this, but it would be even more cowardly if I let you do this.” His chin lifted. “I’ll deliver the message.”

While he spoke, she had continued backing away until she was leaning against the deck wall. It reached her hips but was open above it. The breeze tugged her short hair and whispered in her ear as if urging her on. She glanced over the edge and saw that the currents had pushed The Artemis slightly to the east. It was no longer centered directly below them.

The Grand Current wrapped around both ships, but there were smaller eddies and subcurrents within the half-mile-wide river of air. Navigating them took talent.

Grady would have had to call the bridge for a course correction, but she could still make it, because the winds favored her.

Grady held out his hand. “Give me the message tube.” His lips were colorless, pressed together in a thin line. He’d rather die trying to be a courier than admit to their father that he lacked the family talent.

Boys could be so stupid.

“No.” She grabbed the bottom of the rope ladder, to which she was still latched, and flipped backward over the rail into the huge wind stream.

The Grand Current immediately caught and buffeted her, blowing her out behind the flagship at the end of the rope ladder like a long tail. Her arms lost their grip, and her harness jerked, but the carabiners held, arresting her fall.

She grabbed hold of the sides again and made a seat of the bottom rung of the ladder. Audrey allowed herself to glory in the thrill of swinging on it for a few minutes before getting on with the business of playing courier.

Because she’d gone over the rail instead of through the hatch, she was off-center, and the ladder didn’t dangle down as far. She couldn’t simply drop from where she was.

She Called the wind. “Zephyr, heed my voice and answer.”

A medium-strong breeze answered at once. Audrey wasn’t allowed to Call the more powerful winds, but her father had taught her how to Call Zephyr years ago.

The friendly Air spirit swooped and swirled around her.

Air spirits were ageless, but Zephyr always reminded Audrey of a mischievous child. Despite that, the wind was generally reliable, a good choice for passing messages, though she would wander off if bored.

“Are you playing a game?” Zephyr tugged at Audrey’s hair.

“Yes, and I need a push. Toward that ship.”

Zephyr obliged, giving her a solid sideways shove toward the Artemis. Audrey let the rope ladder swing out and back in a curving arc, then Called, “Again!” Two more pushes from Zephyr and the ladder was swinging through a dizzying arc. At the end of the arc, the Artemis’s large white balloon lay below Audrey.

She unlatched her harness, waited until the last possible moment, then let go.

Free fall. For a moment, she felt as light as a feather blown in the wind, as free as an unhooded falcon, and her heart soared, but it was an illusion. She weighed considerably more than a feather. She was falling.

The Artemis rushed up at her, too fast.

She missed the top of the smaller dirigible’s balloon envelope and bounced off the pillowy side, falling again before she could latch on.

A spike of fear hit her. This was harder than it looked—and Grady still had the grappler.

Frantically, she Called again. “Zephyr!”

The wind shoved her toward the moving airship. Audrey grabbed a strut and swung jauntily into the basket. Terror and elation made her giddy. Ha! A girl could do a courier’s job.

A tall officer with dark blond hair approached her, handsome in a green uniform. She couldn’t help grinning up at him.

He looked stern. “Cutting it a little close, weren’t you, midshipman?”

Her disguise was working. Audrey dipped her head and struggled to look chastened. “Sorry, sir.” She spoke in a low, hoarse voice. If she was unmasked as a girl, the consequences would be terrible for both her and Grady. She unslung the courier pouch and took out the document tube. “From Admiral Harding to Captain Dennis.”

He didn’t take it. “New to courier duty, are you? Protocol is to hand the message over directly to the addressee.”

Audrey’s face flushed. She should have realized that. Simple orders were conveyed by signal flags; only complex or secret messages were couriered over. Of course such a message would need to be directly handed over.

“Sorry, sir. Uh, where can I find Captain Dennis?” She tried frantically to remember if she’d ever met the man. Admiral Harding often had officers over to dine at their Donlon townhouse or in the spacious family quarters on board ship. The name sounded familiar. Would he recognize her?

The lieutenant sighed. “On the bridge, of course. Come along. I’ll escort you.”

She lowered her goggles to around her neck and fell into step beside him.

“Any idea what our orders are?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Rumor has it we’re being sent to spy on the Sipars,” he probed. “They’re supposed to be building a fleet of new airships.”

Audrey made a noncommittal noise. In truth, she hadn’t paid much attention to the mutters of looming war between Donlon and Sipar—there were always rumors. For the last ten years, the Siparese Empire had been swallowing up the northern free states one by one. Sipar resented the way the Donlon merchant airships overflew their embargo and continued trading with the embattled nations. But as long as Donlon maintained air superiority thanks to their long-winded air force, there was little Sipar could do except fume.

There was no land route from Sipar to Donlon. Donlon was a lone mountain poking out of the sea of marshes and poison fog. It had begun its life as a way-stop for pirates and had grown over time into a small nation. Its convenient location as the third point in a triangle between Sipar and the northern free states had made it a center of trade.

If war had truly been looming, her father would never have allowed her to join him for this patrol cruise down the Grand Current.

Captain Dennis was older than her father, with white mustaches and a weather-seamed face. She had met him before at least once. She held her breath and proffered the document tube.

Captain Dennis barely glanced at her. He casually unrolled the message and scanned it. “Since you’re here, you might as well take a reply.” Curiously, he already had one penned and ready that he inserted into the document tube and handed to her. “I’ll overfly the Queen Winifrid and have you back aboard in time for supper.”

Audrey let out a little sigh of relief and dutifully followed the handsome lieutenant back to lower deck.

In the hallway, something bumped her arm. Turning, she glimpsed movement, but it vanished too fast to see. “What was that?”

“What was what?” the lieutenant asked impatiently.

“Something bumped me,” Audrey said, still unnerved.

“Don’t tell me you believe in phantoms,” he sniffed contemptuously.

She blinked. “Phantoms?”

“The midshipman on night lookout swears one stole his lunch.” The officer rolled his eyes in disgust. “As if a phantom would have any use for his egg salad on rye. He probably fell asleep on watch, and a magpie ate it.”

Birds rarely braved the Grand Current, and Audrey had never heard of a magpie doing so.

A jolt of excitement sizzled through her. She’d heard of phantoms, of course—one of her favorite childhood books had featured one. Phantoms were said to be the children of air spirits and people, able to soar on the wind like birds and go invisible. In the story she’d read, the phantom had saved the life of a princess and asked for her hand in marriage as a reward. Which implied they were flesh and blood. She suspected the lieutenant was confusing phantoms with ghosts. Ghosts were the spirits of the dead and could pass through walls. They didn’t eat.

Her father said stories about phantoms were hogwash, a fanciful explanation for how Donlon’s nobility came to possess their long-winded gifts.

“Did anyone die on board?” Audrey asked. They resumed walking.

“Of course not.” They reached the top of the ladder to the flight deck. “Go down and wait. A bell will ring when we’re in position.”

She nodded and descended to the lower deck alone. While strolling over to the rail, she started to stuff the document tube into its carrying case, but something plucked the roll of paper from her grasp.

She fumbled after it, but it hit the polished wooden floor and rolled across the deck. A freak gust of wind picked up the tube.

No, not a gust of wind. Something. Someone.

The phantom.

Audrey could see the barest outline of a boy holding the tube. In the next instant, he swung his leg over the deck rail and climbed outside.

She dove after him, but his sleeve slipped through her fingers. “No!”

The phantom vanished around the corner, walking on air as casually as if it were a road.

Shock and despair ricocheted through her system. Captain Dennis had implied the message was routine—but he’d had it ready to send before reading the message from the Admiral. It must be very important to rate being stolen. What if it contained critical information that could cause a war if it fell into the hands of the Sipars? She would be to blame. She should’ve forced Grady to admit the truth to their father and turn the message over to an experienced courier. Instead the message had been lost, because she’d felt envious and wanted to play—but being a courier wasn’t a game; it was deadly important.

She had to make this right.

She leaned over the rail and squinted into the wind, trying to find an invisible phantom.

Her eyes teared up, and desperation and guilt thrashed inside her chest. This was hopeless. Phantoms were the children of the air.

She put on her goggles and Called Zephyr. “Show me where he is.”

A gust of wind blew a lock of hair in her eyes. She turned her head and saw a blurry outline clinging to the cargo cage. And, there, the document tube tucked into his own carrying case, both also near invisible.

A door from the flight deck led to the mostly empty cargo space. She crept through, trying to be silent and surprise him from behind. The cargo cage was made up of a lattice of struts. It had no floor. If her foot slipped, she’d fall to her death.

Audrey crouched down and started crawling across, testing each slender strut before committing her weight to it. Latching and unlatching her carabiners.

Fifteen feet away, then ten. Five.

The strut under her hand creaked, and he turned his head.

The phantom was too pale to make out more than a few features: a nose, mouth, colorless eyes and hair. She had the impression he wasn’t much older than herself.

He cocked his head. “Can you see me?” He sounded curious, unafraid.

“Of course I can.” She held out her hand. “Give me back the message.”

“There’s no ‘of course’ about it. Very few people can—” He broke off sharply, suddenly intent. “What’s a girl doing wearing a courier’s uniform?”

She roughened her voice and emitted a coarse laugh. “I ain’t no skirt. You take that back.”

He crossed his arms, as nonchalant as if he stood on solid ground instead of perched three thousand feet up in the air. “I know a girl when I see one. Boys don’t have curves like yours.”

Audrey blushed crimson, suddenly aware of how formfitting the flight suit was—designed to prevent snagging—compared to her usual dresses and petticoats.

“It doesn’t matter if I’m a girl,” she said bravely. “What matters is that you give me the message back. Now.” She extended her hand, but he casually moved the carrying case out of reach. Fiend.

She unlatched her carabiners to give herself more freedom of movement but kept tight hold of the strut with one hand. The metal edge creased her palm.

He chuckled. “Sorry. As much as I like to please the ladies, I’m going to have to decline. Someone paid a pretty penny for this message, and The Phantom always delivers.” He said “The Phantom” as if it were a title.

He ducked under a high strut and stepped over a lower one so that he stood on the outside of the cargo cage. One leg hung out over empty space.

For the first time, she wondered where he’d come from. The obvious answer, that he’d simply stowed away on board the Artemis and hidden since the airship’s departure from its last port, didn’t quite ring true. Perhaps he could have hidden for a few days—and subsisted on stolen sandwiches—but airship cruises usually lasted three months at a stretch. Plus, the dirigible-class Artemis was much smaller than the flagship; it would be too hard not to be trapped in a corner or bumped into in a corridor.

Had he come from Sipar? But he didn’t have a Siparese accent. That was good, surely? Not a spy then, but a hired thief.

“There’s nowhere for you to go,” she told him. “You might as well hand it over.” She crawled closer, reaching the cage wall.

He smiled at her, the movement more visible now that she was closer. It seemed as if the light and wind bent around him. “It’s jolly kind of you to worry about me, but I’ll be fine.”

He gave a cheery wave, then stepped off into nothingness.

Audrey lunged through the cage window after him and tore the carrying case off his shoulder. She felt a moment of triumph before she overbalanced, and her body somersaulted through the space between the struts outside the cargo cage. She screamed as she suddenly found herself dangling from one hand and facing outward. Her full weight hung from one awkwardly bent arm. The steel bit in like jaws.

She flailed her free right arm but couldn’t find anything to grab. Her body didn’t bend that way. “Help! Help!” With icy certainty, she knew her voice would never carry far enough for anyone on board the Artemis to hear her. And the Queen Winifrid still flew alongside them, not yet below.

Her goggles fell down around her neck, and the wind whipped tears into her eyes. Her hand throbbed. Blood trickled down her arm and made her grip slippery. Terror dried her mouth and clogged her thoughts. She knew she had only seconds before she fell to her death.

Crazy thoughts spun in her head:

Grady would be devastated. He’d feel so guilty.

Their father would blame Grady, but her mother would blame the Admiral, and the divorce that had loomed over Audrey’s whole life would happen. The scandal would force her mother into seclusion—

All because Audrey had been an idiot.

Crying, she Called Zephyr. Knowing as she did so that the breeze simply wasn’t strong enough to help.

The loyal wind swirled around her. “Hold on. He’s coming,” the wind whispered.

He who?

She saw a blur, a ripple in the air, and then she made out the figure of The Phantom. The Grand Current streamed into her face, but he somehow rode a counter-current back to her, floating as easily as a swimmer in water.

Awe and hope blasted through her.

He scooped her up in his arms, taking the excruciating weight off her arm and allowing her to let go. She cradled her bleeding hand against her chest.

He smiled at her. “I believe you have something of mine?”

Her stomach dropped. The message. He’d come back for it, not to save her. “It’s not yours,” she said, then could’ve kicked herself. She should’ve been bargaining with him. The message wasn’t worth her life.

Fortunately, he seemed more amused than angered.

He deposited her back in the cargo cage. Tears ran from the corners of her eyes and were whipped away by the wind. She clung to a strut with her good hand and tried to latch on with the other, but her injured hand shook too badly. After her third unsuccessful try, The Phantom did it for her.

Snip.

He pulled the document case away, having neatly cut the strap holding it to her. Her position was too precarious to even try to grab it. She glared at him instead, hot enough to incinerate paper. “Give it back.” Her anger steadied her hands.

He grinned. “Not even a thank you?”

He had saved her. The manners Lady Bethany had instilled in her insisted she acknowledge the deed. “Thank you,” she ground out.

He tipped his head to one side. “A poor effort,” he judged. “I expect you’re all choked up. Not to worry. Since words have failed you, I’ll let you thank me a different way.” Holding the document behind his back, out of reach, he leaned forward and kissed her.

Her mouth parted in outrage, and she tasted peppermint.

Before she could react, he dropped down to hang by his hands like a monkey. “Farewell. I hope we meet again Lady Courier.”

He waved, then let go, and vanished into the gray sky, leaving her fuming.

Back on the flagship, Audrey raced to change as fast as she could, struggling to do up the dress hooks behind her back. Her fingers felt cold and useless, and her palm hurt.

Grady had looked so white-faced and terrified when she’d confessed the loss of the message. She’d told him to wait for her, that they would report to the Admiral together, but he’d refused. “It’s my responsibility.” He’d bandaged her hand then run off.

Done. Audrey took the stairs up to the next level, boots ringing on the metal. The aghast look on a passing crewman’s face made her remember her newly shorn hair. She detoured to the suite she shared with her father, jammed on a straw hat, and tied the wide red ribbon firmly beneath her chin.

She hastened to the bridge, chafing under the restriction to be ladylike and not run.

Raised voices reached her ears from the corridor. When she peeked in, the lieutenant on duty shook his head slightly, signaling that now wasn’t a good time. She ignored him and entered the glass-enclosed bridge at the airship’s nose.

The view outside was spectacular—the sky a lovely silver with pink streaks—but Audrey’s gaze zeroed in on her brother’s white face. He trembled and sweated, near to fainting.

Admiral Harding loomed over him, in a towering rage. Audrey had seldom experienced that temper directed at her, but she’d seen her father come down hard on crew or servants who failed to meet his rigorous expectations.

“What. Is. This?” he bit out. Black eyebrows slashed down over his eyes. “You dropped the message and now expect me to believe some nursery tale of phantoms? You don’t even have the courage to tell me the truth?”

“Father!” Audrey raised her voice, heart beating loudly in her chest. She hid her bandaged hand behind her back.

He glared first at her and then Grady. “And now you hide behind your sister.”

Grady flinched.

Audrey spoke quickly. “It’s true about The Phantom. I saw him, too.”

Her father crossed his arms. “Your loyalty is commendable, but your brother claims he encountered this phantom on the Artemis.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Grady said. His lower lip wobbled.

“I’m giving you three demerits for dropping the message and five for lying about it. That brings your total to eight. If you receive two more for anything in the next two weeks, you’ll be drummed out of the service.”

Audrey exchanged horrified glances with her brother. Grady looked like he’d been hit in the stomach. He already had two demerits, one for failure to make his bed properly and one for being two minutes late.

She couldn’t let this happen. “There was a phantom,” Audrey insisted. She lowered her voice so only her father could hear. “Please, don’t punish Grady. I’m the one who lost the message. I was the courier.”

Grady groaned.

Her father’s eyes widened, and his head whipped around. “Off the bridge!” he barked to Lieutenant Morris. The officer fled.

“Is this true?” The Admiral grabbed Grady’s shoulders, shaking him. “Did you send your sister in your place? Coward!”

“Stop it! He didn’t send me! I wanted to go.” Audrey blinked back tears, trembling. “He doesn’t have the long-winded talent, but I do!”

Her father barely spared her a glance. “That doesn’t excuse his actions.”

Audrey’s ears rang. “You knew Grady didn’t have the talent, and yet you sent him out as a courier anyway?” The realization stole the breath from her lungs.

“Unlike you, he never Called the wind to bring his lost kite back to him at age five,” her father snapped. “But the talent isn’t required to act as courier, only nerve. I held the ship steady over the Artemis for twenty minutes. It was an easy jump. Sending you in his place was cowardice.”

Her father made no allowances for weakness. But Audrey had seen Grady’s face. He’d lacked the confidence to make that jump. “I’m not sorry. If he’d jumped, he would be dead,” she said flatly.

Her father’s expression remained implacable. “That would be better than having a son who’s a coward.”

Grady gave a hoarse cry of despair and fled the bridge.

Stomach hollow, Audrey started after him, but her father caught her shoulder. “Oh, no, you don’t.” And then it was her turn to endure a blistering lecture, featuring words like “irresponsible” and “national security.”

But nothing he said could be worse than the realization that, in trying to help, she’d ruined her brother’s life.