Flight of the Fallen (Volume 2) (Magebike Courier, Band 2) - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Hana Lee is a biracial Korean American writer who also builds software for a living. She has an undying love for fantastical stories in all their forms, especially video games, and a habit of writing to moody indie rock playlists. Her short writing has appeared in Fantasy Magazine and Uncanny Magazine. She lives in California with her partner and two beloved cats.

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Chapter One: First Hour of the Storm

CHAPTER ONE FIRST HOUR OF THE STORM

Observation #520: Storm prediction is a frustrating, imprecise science. Nature always follows a pattern, but this one evades me.

Hypothesis: No true randomness in nature. Storms artificial? —O

Third Age of Storms, 1st Summer, Day 63

Kerina Sol – House of Steel Heavens

Deep in a dream, Yi-Nereen floated through the streets of Kerina Rut in a palanquin. Her city hummed around her; temple bells rang out, deep and sonorous. It was worship day. She was on her way to light bowls of fragrant oil and make her sacrifices to Rasvel, the Giver of Blessings.

The crowd outside her palanquin was unruly. She glimpsed faces contorted with anger, heard voices rising in a muted roar. What were they saying? It was like they were speaking a different language. Her people needed something from her, but she couldn’t understand what it was.

The low, musical sound of the bells climbed higher, frantic, stirring panic in Yi-Nereen’s blood. Her palanquin bearers struggled to make headway through the crowd. The platform jerked and tipped—Yi-Nereen tried to scream, but her voice was gone.

The bells! They were tearing through her head.

Now her people were swarming her fallen palanquin, shouting and reaching for her. They were going to tear her apart.

And she still didn’t know why.

Yi-Nereen opened her eyes, a gasp caught in her throat. Moonlight bled through a crack in the drawn curtains of her bedchamber, painting the furniture in shades of soft gray. It came back to her in a dizzying rush: she was lying abed in the House of Steel Heavens. In Kadrin’s home, far from the streets of Kerina Rut.

But the bells went on ringing. Those were real.

In Kerina Rut, she had been trained to fly from bed the instant the storm bells chimed their first note, ready to serve before she was fully conscious. But Yi-Nereen wasn’t yet accustomed to Kerina Sol’s storm bells; their timbre was different from the ones she’d been conditioned since childhood to obey. It was like dancing to a familiar tune and finding the chorus had changed. Her body stumbled over the missing steps.

Get hold of yourself. It was likely just another drill.

All they’d had in Kerina Sol for the past month were drills. The city had been in the grip of a bizarre storm-drought ever since the Second Storm of Centuries had torn through the city’s shield and destroyed two districts. Most people were grateful for the reprieve. Rasvel’s Mercy, they called it.

Yi-Nereen found it chilling. She was one of only three people in Kerina Sol who knew the truth about the Second Storm of Centuries. She had been the storm, its fury embodied, and she’d come within a hair’s breadth of destroying everything.

She’d learned to never trust good news. A reckoning was coming; she felt the certainty of its approach in her teeth, in her bones.

Yi-Nereen dressed quickly. The whole point of a drill was to act as if it were real. No time for ornaments, makeup, or even to comb her hair; she slept in braids so she would be ready at a moment’s notice. In Kerina Rut, an untimely arrival at her post would have meant a beating—after the storm was over, of course.

Opening the door to the hallway, she blinked against a sudden flare of candlelight.

Kadrin. He’d had no more time to rouse himself than she had, and he looked it. His hair was a dark mop of curls, rumpled from sleep, and he’d tied his robe too hastily; it gaped open, revealing an unseemly triangle of skin. Yi-Nereen averted her eyes. Her heart drummed in her chest.

A month of living under the same roof as Kadrin, and she still wasn’t used to it.

“Reena. I was coming to wake you. Can I walk you to the Wall?”

Yi-Nereen nearly shivered. If a voice could sound half-dressed, in this moment Kadrin’s did. It was a far cry from the way he spoke to her in the daylight with his parents and siblings watching: bright, warm but proper, respectful and a touch distant. They were so rarely permitted to be alone together, now that Kadrin’s mother was making official arrangements for their wedding.

Wedding. Just the thought of that word made Yi-Nereen’s stomach swoop, and not in an altogether pleasant way.

“If you wish,” she said, trying to sound casual, as if walking through the streets with Kadrin in the middle of the night were of no great consequence—as if she were used to going where she liked at any hour, with no escort at all, a free woman of Kerina Sol.

She hardly felt free at all. Quite the opposite. She felt bound, tongue-tied by all she wanted to say and couldn’t find words to express. Perhaps it would be easier to write them down. But wasn’t it ridiculous, the idea of writing a letter to a man whose house she lived in?

They walked through the dark, hushed halls of the House together, a handspan apart. Close enough for Yi-Nereen to feel Kadrin’s warmth, but not touching. She thought of taking his arm. But part of her balked, unwilling to risk shattering whatever fragile balance existed between them.

They’d kissed exactly once, on the balcony of a castle trembling in a storm. It had felt like a beginning, a prelude to the life Yi-Nereen had always longed for but never allowed herself to contemplate. But in the weeks since that kiss, Yi-Nereen had come to doubt everything. This new life of hers felt hollow, incomplete.

She knew exactly what was missing—or rather, who—but what could she do about it?

Yi-Nereen stepped over the House’s threshold and tensed.

“It isn’t a drill,” she said.

The storm bells went on clanging, louder than ever. Kadrin frowned up at the dark sky. “How can you tell?”

“I just can.”

The air felt charged and sharp; the hair on Yi-Nereen’s arms stood on end. She could taste the approaching storm on the wind. It felt closer than it should. Had the stormwatchers given less warning than usual?

Kadrin was Talentless. He didn’t have the connection to the storms that a shieldcaster or a sparkrider had; he couldn’t sense them coming until they were upon him. Yi-Nereen’s skin crawled at the thought, but she chastised herself for it. She had to unlearn the prejudices Kerina Rut had instilled in her, even the ones that were unconscious. Especially those.

“I need to get to the Wall,” she said. “Quickly. Go inside, Kadrin.”

She didn’t wait to see whether he would do as she asked. Her assigned post was on the sector of Wall around Orchard District, seven minutes away from the House at a flat run. From the acrid, electric taste of the air on her tongue, Yi-Nereen sensed the storm would be here sooner than that.

By the time she reached the Wall, puffing hard, a stitch burning in her side, the shieldcasters had already raised the dome without her. The sky glowed blue; the city fell still, like the kerina was holding its breath. The bells had stopped.

Kerina Sol’s Wall was a raised stone walkway that encircled the city, connecting the barbettes: circular platforms, one per district, where shieldcasters positioned themselves in a storm to raise the dome over the city. Three shieldcasters stood atop Orchard District’s barbette, arms outstretched...