Windhaven

"He has word of a trader bold enough to try the open seas, I am told," Sena said. "The voyage is hazardous, to be sure, but if he is willing to make it I will not begrudge him admission. Take my agreement to the Landsman of Big Shotan, if you would. He sends three flyers to Eastern every month, and one is due to leave on the morrow. Speed is important. The ships will take a month getting here even if the winds are kind, and the competition is only two months away."

"I could take the message direct to Eastern myself," Maris suggested.

"No," said Sena. "We need you here. Simply relay my word to Big Shotan and then return to fly guard on my clumsy young birds." She rose unsteadily from her wicker chair, and Maris stood up quickly to help her. "And now we should see about breakfast," Sena continued. "You need to eat before your flight, and with all the time we have spent talking, I fear the others have probably eaten our share."

But breakfast was still waiting when they reached the common room. Two blazing hearths kept the large hall warm and bright in the damp morning. Gently curving walls of stone rose to become an arched and blackened ceiling. The furniture was rough and sparse: three long wooden tables with benches running the length of each side. The benches were crowded with students now, talking and joking and laughing, most at least half finished with their meals. Nearly twenty would-be flyers were currently in residence, ranging in age from a woman only two years younger than Maris to a boy just shy of ten.

The hall quieted only a little when Maris and Sena entered, and Sena had to shout to be heard above the din and clatter. But after she had finished speaking, it was very quiet indeed.

Maris accepted a chunk of black bread and a bowl of porridge and honey from Kerr, a chubby youth who was taking his turn as cook today, and found a place on one of the benches. As she ate, she conversed politely with the students on either side of her, but she could sense that neither had her heart in it, and after a short time both of them excused themselves and left. Maris could not blame them. She remembered how she had felt, years earlier, when her own dream of being a flyer had been imperiled, as their dreams were imperiled now. Airhome was not the first academy to shut its doors. The desolate island-continent of Artellia had given up first, after three years of failure, and the academies in the Southern Archipelago and the Outer Islands had followed it into oblivion. Eastern's Airhome was the fourth closing, leaving only Woodwings. No wonder the students were sullen.

Maris mopped her plate with the last of the bread, swallowed it, and pushed back from the table. "Sena, I will not be back until tomorrow morning," she said as she rose. "I'm going to fly to the Eyrie after Big Shotan."

Sena looked up from her own plate and nodded. "Very well. I plan to let Leya and Kurt try the air today.

The rest will exercise. Be back as early as you can." She returned to her food.

Maris sensed someone behind her, and turned to see S'Rella. "May I help you with your wings, Maris?"

"Of course you may. Thank you."

The girl smiled. They walked together down the short corridor to the little room where the wings were kept. Three pair of wings hung on the wall now; Maris' own and two owned by the academy, dying bequests from flyers who had left no heirs. It was hardly surprising that the Woodwingers fared so poorly in competition, Maris thought bitterly as she contemplated the wings. A flyer sends his child into the sky almost daily during the years of training, but at the academies — with so many students and so few wings — practice time was not so easily come by. There was only so much you could learn on the ground.

She pushed the thought away and lifted her wings from the rack. They made a compact package, the struts folded neatly back on themselves, the tissue-metal hanging limply between and drooping toward the floor like a silver cape. S'Rella held them up easily with one hand while Maris partially unfolded them, checking each strut and joint carefully with fingers and eyes for any wear or defect that might become evident, too late, as a danger in the air.

"It's bad about them closing Airhome," S'Rella said as Maris worked. "It happened just the same way in Southern, you know. That was why I had to come here, to Woodwings. Our own school was closed."

Maris paused and looked at her. She had almost forgotten that the shy Southern girl had been a victim of a previous closing. "One of the students from Airhome is coming here, as you did," Maris said. "So you won't be alone among the savage Westerners anymore." She smiled.

"Do you miss your home?" S'Rella asked suddenly.

Maris thought a moment. "Truthfully, I don't know that I really have a home," she said. "Wherever I am is my home."

S'Rella digested that calmly. "I suppose that's a good way to feel, if you're a flyer. Do most flyers feel that way?"