Read Online Masks of Scorpio by Alan Burt Akers - Free Book Online Page B

the deck I looked down on the opposite side. At once I was galvanized into fresh action.
    Down there, snugged in alongside the vorlca, the slender petal-shape of the voller lay quietly waiting for me to leap down and take her into the air.
    “Ros!”
    She ran up. “Yes?”
    I nodded over the side. Dayra looked.
    “Oh, yes!”
    The flying sailing ship moved under me. Duty personnel were at the levers of the silver boxes, drawing them closer together so that the power inherent in the minerals in one box and the mysterious substance cayferm in the other could exert their force and lift all that solid bulk up into the air as light as thistledown.
    The raffle of masts and rigging clattered and groaned as it swung inward and upward as we rose. That could all be cut away later.
    Without hesitating I jumped onto the bulwark and took a flying leap out into thin air.
    I hit the deck of the voller and staggered and was up, sword in fist, searching for guards.
    Dayra landed beside me, fleet, sure-footed, her Claw a diamond-glitter.
    “No guards.”
    We were alone on the voller — then half-a-dozen folk dropped down. A lad looked about wildly. I said to Dayra: “We’d better—”
    She was into the small steering cabin amidships before I’d framed my thought. The aerial sailors might know how to fly a sailing ship; they might not know how to pilot an airboat.
    We lifted away as Dayra manipulated the control levers. Down below on the parade ground soldiers were running out, many of them. They were foreshortened figures, glinting with steel and bronze, and they could not touch us.
    A girl wearing a Claw came across to me. She wore precious little else; but on the scrap of red cloth over one shoulder the embroidered representation of a rose glowed in colored silks.
    “I can fly an airboat,” she said. There was no blood on the talons of her Claw. “Do you know Ros the Claw?”
     
    When folk ran below to sort out their possessions and to make sure the ship was sound, this girl had seized up her Claw from its hiding place. No doubt she was sorry the fight was over before she could use it.
    “Yes. You do?”
    She drew herself up.
    “I am the lady Royba ti Thamindensax.”
    “Then Llahal and Lahal, lady. Pray, tell me the name of your Ship-Hikdar and what happened to your Jiktar.”
    She eyed me. That she felt puzzlement was clear. I did not know her. Of her town, yes, I had heard but never visited. By Vox! An emperor can hardly visit all his towns in one lifetime. We were lifting up now, matching speeds and courses with Val Defender . The breeze had veered in the night and we floated along splendidly. Then Dayra popped out of the steering cabin, and through the ports I could see a lad at the controls. I hoped he knew what he was doing! Dayra walked up to us, and she was smiling.
    She began unstrapping her Claw. She nodded to the lady Royba’s steel bright Talons. “I see you didn’t have a drink, Royba.”
    “That Sosie!” Royba was obviously in a truculent frame of mind. “She beat me to a weapon — but I did kick a damned Pandaheem where he will be sore for a sennight!”
    The ships sailed on, suspended between earth and sky.
    Royba gave me that puzzled look again. “This great hulk tells me he knows you, Ros. Is that—?”
    “Jak? Oh, yes, he knows me — or thinks he does.”
    I said, “I was inquiring after the name of the Ship-Hikdar and what happened to the captain—”
    “That lady was Vylene Fynarmic of Fallager.”
    I knew of Fallager, it was a prosperous town up in Turko’s kovnate of Falinur.
    “As for the captain, Vanli Cwopanifer was — was—” Here Royba glanced around as though seeking the right words. “We were caught in the gale and a spar fell and crushed his head. He was — he was insistent upon maintaining command. Yet it was clear to all of us that he was makib, and this insanity led him into strange actions.”
    This is, as any first lieutenant, any ship’s officer will tell you, a