Dru Pagliassotti - Clockwork Heart

Taya cupped her wings and fanned them, slowing as the iron struts of a wireferry tower loomed before her. The massive construction blocked the gusting winds, and she sighed with relief as her thick boot soles hit the girder. Bending her knees to absorb the impact, she crouched and folded her arms, ducking into the safe harbor.

The wind in the wires sent vibrations thrumming through the metal under her feet, and the tower swayed. She took a moment to lock her armature into tight-rest, tailfeathers snapped up and wings tucked in. With a wriggle, she pulled her arms out of their leather straps and ran a safety line from her harness to one of the narrow girder struts. She made a short loop around the iron bar and locked the line back to her belt.

Oh, that's better, she groaned, rubbing her shoulders. After a moment, she pulled off her flight goggles and wiped them against her sleeve. The glass was smeared with dead bugs and the inevitable greasy soot that collected whenever she flew past the city's refineries.

Usually, the trip up from Tertius was easy. Thermals from the smelting factories provided plenty of lift, but today the late autumn gusts of the diispira the winds that blew over the Yeovil Range every year right before winter made soaring risky. For a few minutes, when one of the winds had stolen her thermal away and sent her into a stall, Taya had been forced to flap like a foundering duck. Her shoulder muscles were still twitching, and the sweat from her efforts was drying beneath her flight leathers.

How much longer until she was off-duty, anyway?

She slipped her goggles back on to keep protect her eyes from the wind and surveyed the mountainside spread beneath her. Terrace upon terrace of closely placed buildings descended into the dark haze of factory soot that perpetually mantled the lowest sector of the mountain. That was Tertius, the sector where the famulate caste labored in the mines and manufactories, providing the metals and goods that maintained Ondinium, the capital of Yeovil. Tertius where she'd been born and where her sister was about to get married.

Thick stone walls ringed the mountain, dividing the major sectors from each other: Primus, for the exalteds; Secundus, for the cardinals; and Tertius, for the plebeians. Gates pierced the walls at regular intervals, but each portal was guarded by stern-faced lictors whose job was to prevent the indiscriminate mixing of castes.

Only icarii like Taya and the occasional authorities who rode the suspended wireferries could pass freely from sector to sector. And even wireferry passengers were checked at waystations whenever they changed cars, especially at Primus.

Taya searched the soot-blackened towers that rose at regular intervals along the sector walls, looking for a clock.

Seeing one, she smiled. Another hour before she could go home and prepare for the wedding. With a little luck she could deliver the report from the College of Mathematics and linger long enough at Oporphyr Tower to avoid picking up another job. As long as the decatur didn't give her another message to carry, she'd get to the party in plenty of time.

The metal beneath her feet jolted and shuddered. Taya grabbed the strut next to her with one heavily gloved hand. Usually she loved flying, but today's winds were the worst she'd

The girder jolted again, and the high-pitched shriek of straining metal cut across the whistling wind and humming cables. Chilled, Taya jerked her head up, looking for the source of the noise.

There. One of the wireferry girders, suspended in midair several yards away from her, was starting to bend under the weight of an approaching car. Gears ground and began to spin as the heavy wire cables slipped, loosening as the girder started to buckle.

Taya leaped to her feet, banging her head against a low strut. She winced, looking around. Didn't anyone else see the danger?

Yes wireferry workers were racing up the tower ladders from a nearby station, alerted by the sound of straining metal. But they were far away; too far away to do the people in the car any good.

The people in the car!

Oh, Lady, she groaned, unsnapping her safety hook and tucking the strap back into her harness. Even though the rational part of her mind was screaming warnings about the danger of flying next to a collapsing girder, of maneuvering around wires that could snap at any moment, she was already dredging up memories of old aerial rescue drills, calculating wind direction and target height, her best angle of attack and the loadbearing capacity of her ondium armature.

Heart pounding, Taya slid her arms back into her wingstraps and crouched.

It had to be done. Her armature tugged her upward, its buoyant ondium straining against the weight of her compact body. Shifting to put her head into the wind, Taya threw herself into the air, her boots smacking the girder for extra thrust.

Metal girders shot past as she plunged through their deadly network. As soon as she was clear of the support structure, she threw her arms wide, snapping her metal wings to full extension.

Broad ondium feathers closed as she swept her arms downward, propelling herself up toward the endangered ferry car. She kicked her tailset down and slid her ankles behind its bar. A gust of air tugged her and she rode it aloft, then swept her wings again as the gust veered off, broken by an obstruction current from the girders around her.

Metal shrieked again. Wires snapped and twanged.

Time was running out. Taya strained forward, flying up and over the ferry car to get a clearer grasp of the situation.

Two passengers clutched the car's leather-covered seats an adult and a child. The adult was wearing robes and a mask. An exalted.

Scrap! Taya swore and wheeled around, searching for assistance. Engineers were scrambling over the breaking girder, but she could tell from their hand signals to each other that they weren't in any position to help. A small group was trying to string another support wire through the struts to keep the straining girder from crashing hundreds of feet to the streets below, but that wouldn't help the passengers if the car cable snapped.

One person at a time

, she counseled herself. The wind was suddenly icy on her face as sweat trickled down from her hairline.

Just concentrate on rescuing one person at a time.

She circled back to the ferry and began to brake, her tailset down and her wings cupped. She kicked her feet free.

Momentum and uneven winds sent her crashing into the side of the car. Taya's knees buckled against her chest and she gasped, twisting one hand out of its wingstraps to grab a service handle on the side of the car.

An arm reached through the window and caught the harness straps along her shoulder. Taya looked up and saw a woman staring at her, her dark eyes wide but her ring-covered hand gripping the leather harness like iron.

Taya breathlessly nodded her thanks, then took a tighter grip on the door handles. The woman released her and Taya yanked the ferry door open, grabbing the sides of the door frame. Her ondium wings scraped against the sides of the ferry car and she flinched.

Take Ariq, the lady said, her voice shaking. She swept up the little boy at her side. Save him.

Ariq screamed, staring at Taya's goggle-masked face, and tried to kick away. He couldn't have been any older than four, his round face still free of castemarks.

I've got him, Taya said. She braced the edges of her feet against the door frame to steady herself as she took the boy from his mother. Ignoring the child's shrieks, she pressed him against her stomach and snapped safety cords between his legs and under his arms, just like the practice drills had taught her. It wasn't as easy with a squirming child as it had been with a stuffed dummy. I'll be back as soon as I can.