Windhaven

"No," Maris said, too loudly. She rose abruptly. "No one has lost a brother lately. How could he possibly win?"

That afternoon, he made her regret her words.

Sher and Leya had been up all morning, flying practice circuits while Sena yelled instructions from below and Maris observed them from the air. In the afternoon, S'Rella and Damen were supposed to have use of the academy wings, but Sena had asked one of them to yield to Val, since he had been grounded for a month and needed the feel of the wind again. S'Rella had quickly volunteered.

It was crowded on the observation platform when he emerged, wings strapped to his back and folded.

Most of the students had come to see him fly. Maris, still winged, waited among them-

"Damen", Sena was saying, "I want you to practice skimming today. Fly as low over the water as you can. Keep your wings stiff and even. You wobble too much. You must improve, or someday you will fall in." She looked at her other student. "Val, you'd be best to just unlimber now. Later there will be time for other exercises."

"No," Val said. He was standing stiffly while two of the younger students unfolded and locked his wings.

"I fly better when I must fly well. Set me a difficulty." He looked at Damen, who was flexing in preparation for flight. "Or give me a race."

Sena shook her head. "You are premature, Val. I will say when the time has come for racing."

But Maris pushed forward, possessed of a sudden urge to see how good the infamous Val One-Wing really was. "Let them race, Sena," she said. "Damen has had exercise enough. He needs a competition."

Damen looked from Maris to Sena and back again, clearly eager to race but unwilling to defy his teacher.

"I don't know," he said.

Val shrugged. "As you will. I doubt you could give me much of a race in any case."

That was too much for Damen, who was fiercely proud of his status as one of Woodwings' best. "Don't flatter yourself, One-Wing," he snapped. He lifted an arm and pointed across the waters, to where the waves broke and foamed against a ridge of half-submerged stone. "When we are both aloft and Maris gives the word, three times there and three times back. Agreed?"

"Agreed," Val said, studying the distant rocks.

Sena pursed her lips but said nothing. Hearing no further objections, Damen grinned and ran and leapt.

The wind took him and lifted. He soared upward, did a stately circle over the shoreline, and passed above them, his shadow rippling across the stone. Val moved to the edge, his wings fully extended now.

"Your knife, Val," S'Rella said suddenly. The rest of them looked. His ornate blade, obsidian with beaten silver edges, was still in its sheath at his hip.

Val reached down and pulled it free, looking at it curiously. "What of it?"

"Flyer tradition," Sena said. "No blade may be carried into the sky. S'Rella, take it. We will keep it safe for you."

S'Rella moved to obey, but Val gestured her away. "This was my father's knife, the only decent thing he ever owned. I carry it everywhere." He slid it back into its sheath.

"It's flyer tradition," S'Rella said, her voice puzzled.

Val smiled sardonically. "Ah. But I am only half a flyer. Move back, S'Rella." And when she moved back, he threw himself into the air.

Maris walked to the outer edge of the platform, to stand beside Sena and S'Rella, all of them watching Val as he spiraled upward to join Damen. Behind her, she could hear the others talking about him.

"One-Wing," a voice said, Liane perhaps. Damen had called him that too, after Val had mocked him.

The Easterner wasted no time making enemies, Maris thought. She said as much to Sena.

"The flyers wasted no time making an enemy of him," Sena replied. Even her bad eye was turned upward, toward the sky, where Damen and Val now wheeled in great circles around each other, like two birds of prey-searching for a weakness. "You are to say the word, Maris," Sena reminded her.

Maris cupped her hands. "Fly," she shouted, as loud as she could shout it. The wind took it and carried it up to them.

Damen came out of his circle first, sweeping around and over the water in a slow, leisurely manner, as if he had all the time in the world. Val One-Wing came just behind him, wide silver wings weathervaning a bit, tilting first one way and then the other, as if he were not quite balanced. Both flyers kept low. Maris put a hand up to shade her eyes against the sunlight flashing from their wings.

Halfway to the first turn, Damen was widening his lead and Val began to rise. "The wind is picking up,"

Sena commented. Maris nodded. It felt like a crosswind as well. They'd have to fly; it would be no simple matter of letting the breeze carry them where they wished to go.