Bram Möller's Arc

Chapter 44 of 63

The corridor stayed clear for twenty minutes. Then the light changed. Bram watched the west go flat and gray, the way it did before a front dropped. He had no hawk to send ahead. The compass hawk was east with the harbormaster, filing paper against Kesh. Without a scout, one bad squall could ice the bag and put them on the rocks. Cora crouched by the rail with the mechanical owl in her lap. She had the belly plate open and was tightening a gear with the small driver from her belt. The brass vents ticked steam against her sleeve. She looked up when Bram did not answer her first question. "How far to the next pin?" she asked again. "Forty minutes," Bram said. "The front's closer than that." Omondi bumped the rail and caught his glasses before they slid. He squinted west. "That's a hard line. We can't fly through blind." Bram opened his journal on the wheel. He read the margin notes for this stretch. There were two marked rock pins six miles ahead on the south face. He had used them once, four winters back, to wait out a front. "We moor," Bram said. "South face. Two pins." "And sit under the front?" Omondi said. "Under it, not in it." Cora closed the owl's belly plate. "Send him," she said. She held the owl out on both hands. "He can fly a short line. Half a mile. He comes back with wind." Bram looked at the owl. Its right wing joint was still stiff from the last repair. A long flight would break it. A short one might not. "Half a mile west," Bram said. "Read the pressure. Come back." Cora wound the key three turns and set the owl on the rail. It lifted off with a soft cough of steam and cut west low over the ridge. Bram counted. At ninety seconds the owl banked and came back hard, riding a push of air that hit the bag a breath later. The gust shoved them south. Bram fought the wheel and held course. The owl landed on Cora's glove. She read the dial in its chest. "Pressure's dropping fast," she said. "He hit sleet at the turn." "Pins," Bram said. "Now." He cut the throttle and let the bag slide south toward the face. Omondi worked the mooring lines. Bram brought them in low along the rock. Cora threw the first line and it caught. Omondi got the second on the third try. The bag pulled hard against both pins as the front's edge crossed above them. Sleet rattled the envelope. The pins held. They were down. Not landed, not moving, but tied to stone under a storm they had not flown into. Bram set his hand on the brass ring and let his shoulder unlock. The owl steamed on Cora's glove, wing joint stiff but whole. West of them, the sky closed.