Sable Ashwick crouched on the townhall roof and counted the shapes in the clouds. Four kites, maybe five, sliding through the mist above Mosswood. Scavengers. They had found her map, or found her mouth, and now they meant to beat her to the wreck. She pressed flat against the shingles. The townhall was the tallest thing for a mile, stone base, timbered gable, arched windows glowing from the council meeting below. She had climbed up to catch the wind she needed. Instead she caught competition. Her family's sky-galleon had gone down in the storm belt above these woods twelve years ago, taking her father with it. She had spent every coin since on charts, fuel, and a patched glider strapped to her back now like a folded wing. The lead scavenger kite dipped lower. A hooked grapple swung from its belly. They were not hunting her. They were marking her. Once she launched, they would follow her glider straight to the wreck and strip it before she touched the deck. Sable pushed her goggles down. She could not outfly five kites. She could not hide a glider in open sky. So she would not fly to the wreck at all. Not yet. She unclipped the glider and shoved it behind the roof's stone chimney. Then she pulled the map from her vest, tore off the true coordinates, and swallowed them. The rest of the map she left weighted under a loose shingle, the false bearing circled in red ink. Her father had taught her that a decoy only works if the hunter finds it himself. She climbed down the arched window frame, dropped into the alley, and ran. Halfway across the square she stopped, cupped her hands, and shouted up at the clouds. "North ridge! Past the falls!" Her voice cracked on purpose. She let them see her look up, look scared, then bolt for the north road. She ran until the timber gable was small behind her. Then she cut sideways into the trees and doubled back low through the ferns. From the brush she watched two scavengers drop onto the townhall roof. They found the map. She heard one laugh. The kites peeled off north in a tight line, grapples swinging, chasing her lie. Sable waited until the sky above Mosswood was empty. Her hands shook. She had bought maybe a day, no more, before they hit the north ridge, found nothing, and came back angrier. She climbed the drainpipe, pulled the glider from behind the chimney, and buckled the straps across her ribs. The true coordinates sat wet in her stomach. East, not north. Into the storm belt her father had never come out of. She stepped off the roof before she could think about him. The wind took her east.

The wind that took Sable east turned on her within the hour. The storm belt swallowed the last clear light. Rain hit her goggles sideways. The glider bucked under her ribs and the left wingtip shuddered in a way she had never felt on any test flight above Mosswood. She pulled the control bar close and tried to angle down out of the worst gusts. A crosswind slammed her sideways. Her stomach lifted. One of the rib struts cracked with a sound she felt in her teeth. She was losing the sky. Below her, through a tear in the cloud, she saw color. Tall mushroom trees pushed up out of the mist, their broad caps glowing with small points of light. A grove. Shelter. She aimed for it the only way she could, by dropping. She cut the tension on the right wing and let the glider spiral. Branches raked her legs. A cap the size of a wagon wheel took the brunt and folded under her. She hit stem, then moss, then ground. The glider crumpled around her like a broken umbrella. Sable lay still. She counted her fingers. She counted her ribs. Nothing gone. The rain barely reached the forest floor here. The stems above her caught the storm and shook it off in fine drops. Sparks of light drifted down through the caps. Something small landed on the broken wingtip. Sable froze. A fairy stood on the strut. Dark green braid over one shoulder. White wings folded flat against the wet. She was no taller than Sable's forearm and looked, at first glance, like a child. Her eyes said otherwise. They moved over the glider like a mechanic pricing a wreck. "Your left rib is snapped," the fairy said. "Two spars. You will not fly out on that." Sable pushed up on her elbows. "I have to." "You don't." "There are people behind me. A day, maybe less." The fairy's wings twitched once. She looked east, into the dark of the storm, then back at Sable. "I am Sylvara Greenweave. Someone stole a seed cache from the Deepwood. The thief went east through this storm. I need to catch him before sundown." She stepped off the strut and hovered level with Sable's face. "You need a wing. I need eyes above the cloud. Fix the glider. Carry me. I will show you a pass through the worst of the wind." Sable looked at the snapped rib. She looked at the small sharp face in front of her. Behind her, a day. Ahead of her, her father's wreck. "Deal," she said. She dragged the glider under the nearest wide cap and started stripping stem fiber for splints. The storm kept howling above the grove. Sable was on the ground, in one piece, with a partner she had not planned on and a route she did not yet know.

Sable worked under the wide cap while the storm kept beating the tops of the grove. She had splinted one spar and was lashing the second when the falcon dropped through the mist and landed on the broken strut. Her father's bird. Red as a coal, wings edged with orange like fire caught mid-flap. She had let him fly free above the storm belt, sure he would find her. He shook rain off his back and screamed once, low in his throat. Sable stopped tying. He only made that sound when something was coming. Sylvara Greenweave lifted from the moss and hovered by the falcon. "How far?" The falcon turned his head toward the dark between the stems. Sable stood and listened. Something heavy was moving through the grove. Not fast. Steady. A cap thumped to the ground somewhere behind her as a body pushed past its stem. Then another, closer. "I need more time," Sable said. "One spar isn't lashed." "You don't have it," the fairy said. "Whatever that is, it followed the crash." Sable looked at the glider. One good spar. One half-tied. She could not fly it. She could not outrun what was coming on foot either. She had a knife, a coil of stem fiber, and a bird who hunted rabbits. She made the choice fast. "Draw it off the wing. I finish the lash. We launch together or not at all." Sylvara's wings snapped open. "How." Sable pointed at the falcon. "He'll go with you. Noise. Light. Anything. Give me sixty counts." The fairy did not argue. She shot up between the caps, and the falcon lifted after her, wings cracking hard against the wet air. A moment later Sable heard the bird scream again, farther off, and then the crash of something big turning to follow. She counted. She worked. Her hands shook and she made them stop. She wound the fiber twice around the spar, pulled it tight with her teeth, tied it off. Thirty. She dragged the glider clear of the cap by its nose. Forty. She pulled the wings taut and checked the rib. It held. Fifty. The crash came back. Closer this time. Behind her, low, a wet snuffling breath. Sable did not turn. She threw herself under the bar, ran three steps down the slope of moss, and pushed off into the gap between two stems. The glider dropped, caught, lifted. A branch tore her sleeve. The wingtip cleared a cap by a hand's width. Sylvara dropped onto her shoulder as the glider climbed. The falcon fell in beside them, one long wingbeat, then another. Below, something roared in the grove they had left. Sable did not look back. The storm belt was still ahead. Her father's wreck was still ahead. But she was in the air again, and the thing in the grove was behind her, and the fairy on her shoulder was already pointing east.

The grove fell behind them. The storm belt opened ahead, a wall of gray cloud stacked to the top of the sky. Sable pushed the glider east and climbed. The falcon flew off her right wingtip. Sylvara Greenweave, the fairy who had bargained passage in exchange for storm guidance, rode on her shoulder with one small hand fisted in the collar of her flight vest. The first gust hit like a shove. The glider tipped. Sable dropped her weight and leveled it. Rain came sideways. She pulled her goggles down over her eyes. "Left," Sylvara said in her ear. "Now. Hard." Sable banked. A knot of black wind punched past her right wingtip. She would have flown straight into it. "Good," the fairy said. "Up next. Ten counts." Sable climbed. They cleared the shear. For a stretch it worked. Sylvara read the currents ahead and called them out, and Sable moved the glider by her voice. Then the belt swallowed them. The wind changed pitch. It stopped whistling and started to roar, low and flat, the way a river sounds under a bridge. Sable felt Sylvara's mouth at her ear, felt the shape of words, heard nothing. She turned her head. The fairy was shouting. The roar ate every sound. "Louder," Sable yelled. Sylvara shouted again. Her voice did not carry an inch. A downdraft caught the nose. The glider dropped. Sable hauled the bar back and felt a rib creak. She had no warning. She would keep having no warning. She could fly the storm blind for another minute, maybe two, and then it would kill her. She looked at the falcon. He held his line off the wingtip, steady in the chop. Her father had trained him to work weather. He read air the way a hound read ground. "Sylvara," Sable shouted. "Ride him. Point with him." The fairy understood at once. She let go of the vest and dropped off Sable's shoulder into the wind. Her wings caught. She shot forward and landed on the falcon's shoulders, small hands buried in his neck feathers. The falcon screamed once and pulled ahead. Sable watched him. He banked left. She banked left. He climbed. She climbed. He tucked a wing and cut hard right around something she could not see, and she cut hard right after him and felt the shear pass under her belly. She did not need to hear Sylvara now. She only needed to keep the red bird in front of her. They punched through the worst of it in a long, ugly climb. The roar dropped a step. The rain thinned. Ahead, through a break in the cloud, she saw dark shapes on a ridge far below. Broken masts. A hull split open on stone. Her father's wreck. The falcon circled it once and started down. Sable followed him in.

The falcon led them down through torn cloud and set his wings on the ridge. Sable brought the glider in behind him. The skids hit stone, skipped, and stopped. She climbed out onto the wreck of her father's sky-galleon. Broken masts lay across the deck. The hull had split along one seam and spilled crates onto the rock. Sylvara Greenweave slid from the falcon's back and landed on a shattered rail. Sable went straight for the captain's locker. She had waited twelve years to open it. The lid gave on the second pull. Inside lay a bundle of oilcloth. She unwrapped it on the tilted deck. Charts. Her father's charts, the ones he had flown with the day the storm took him. She spread the top sheet flat. The lines did not make sense. Coastlines she knew were labeled in blocks of letters and numbers. Headings were written as pairs. Landmarks were marked with symbols she had never seen. "He wrote it in cipher," she said. Her voice cracked. "He wrote the whole thing in cipher." She turned the sheet. She turned it again. The rain started up on the ridge and beaded on the oilcloth. She had crossed the storm belt for a book she could not read. Sylvara stepped onto the chart. Her bare feet stood on a coded heading. She bent and studied the marks. "Substitution," the fairy said. "Two layers. The second one shifts every line." Sable stared at her. "You know this." "Deepwood wards use the same trick. I broke one last spring." Sylvara walked along the edge of the paper. She tapped a symbol. "This is a number. This is north. This one is your father's mark for a landing." "Show me." Sylvara crouched. She traced the first line with one small finger. "Read what I say. Write it under." Sable dug a nub of charcoal from her vest. She wrote as Sylvara called out letters. The fairy worked fast. She did not stop to explain. She named a heading, a distance, a depth. Sable's hand shook and kept moving. The first page came clear. It was not a map to the wreck. It was a map from the wreck. Her father had marked a second site, further east, past the ridge. A cache. He had written a word beside it that Sylvara read aloud. "Hull," the fairy said. "He hid a second hull." Sable sat back on her heels. The galleon under her was a decoy. The real ship was still out there. A whistle cut the air above the ridge. She looked up. Three kites banked against the cloud, high and circling. The rival scavengers had followed her through. Sable rolled the charts and shoved them into her vest. "Get on," she said. "We move now." Sylvara was already climbing back toward the falcon.

Sable shoved the charts deep into her vest and ran for the glider. The three kites dropped through the cloud above the ridge. Sylvara Greenweave landed on the falcon's shoulder and gripped its feathers. The red bird lifted off the broken deck in a burst of ember light. Sable threw herself into the seat and kicked the launch bar. The glider dove off the ridge. Wind caught the wings. She banked east, away from the wreck, and pushed the nose down for speed. The kites came after her in a loose line. She counted them over her shoulder. Three. Their sails were smaller than hers and cut the air cleaner. They closed the gap with every gust. "They're faster than I thought," Sable said. Her voice fought the wind. "I can hold a lead for a minute. Maybe two." Sylvara flew up beside the cockpit. Her white wings beat hard against the current. "They will catch us before the next ridge." "Then we lose them another way. I need cloud. I need cover." "There is no cloud low enough." A hook-line hissed past the port wing. It missed the strut by a hand's width and fell away into the drop. The next one would not miss. Sylvara flew close to Sable's ear. "I can move us. Once. Not far." Sable turned her head. "Move us how?" "Fairy trick. I do not use it in front of others. It takes what I have." "Do it." "Pick a place you can see. I cannot send us blind." Sable scanned the eastern sky. A dark shelf of rock stood out past the storm belt, half-hidden under a shredded cloud. She pointed. "There. That shelf." Sylvara nodded once. She climbed onto the glider's frame and pressed both palms flat against the wood. Green light ran out from her hands. Small sparks lifted from her braid and spread over the wings, the falcon, Sable's arms. The air went thick. The wind cut out. The ridge behind them vanished. The shelf slammed up under the skids. The glider hit hard and skidded across wet stone. The falcon shrieked and flared its wings to brake. Sable braced against the crossbar until the glider stopped an arm's length from the drop. She looked back. The kites were gone. The storm belt sat between her and the scavengers now, a wall of black cloud she had crossed in a single breath. Sylvara lay on the frame. Her wings had lost their shine. Her eyes were half open. She did not move when Sable touched her shoulder. "Sylvara." "Still here," the fairy said. Her voice was thin. "Cannot do that again. Not for days." Sable eased her into her vest pocket, where the charts pressed warm against the cloth. The falcon settled on the strut. East of the shelf, the second hull waited. Between them and it, Sable now had no fairy to read the wind.

Sable climbed off the rock shelf with the glider strapped to her back and the falcon riding her shoulder. Sylvara Greenweave lay curled in her vest pocket, breathing but silent. The shelf gave onto a goat track that wound down through pines. Sable walked. Her legs shook. The charts pressed against her ribs, and the second hull waited somewhere east, but she could not fly without wind sense and she could not read the wind alone. Hours passed. The pines thinned. Smoke drifted up through the branches. Sable came out above a village tucked into a bowl of the mountains. Slate roofs. A crooked chimney. A painted sign swung over the largest building, a tavern with a tall loft under its eaves and lantern light in the windows. She read the name burned into the wood. Mosswood. She stopped on the path and laughed once, short and dry. She had flown east for two days to end up in a place that shared her own town's name. She needed water and a guide. She pushed open the tavern door. The room was warm and half full. Heads turned. Sable kept her hand near her vest pocket and scanned for a table. A woman behind the bar was already watching her. Red curls. Green eyes. An amber tail flicked once against the barrel behind her, then stilled. "Glider on your back," the woman said. "Fairy in your pocket. You came out of the storm belt." Sable froze. "How do you know that." "Only place that spits people out onto my ridge. Sit down before you fall down." Sable sat. The woman poured water and set it in front of her without asking. Up close her hands were scarred across the knuckles. "Ire Taverness," the woman said. "I run this place. I also track things. You look like something's tracking you." "Scavengers. The belt is between us now." "For a day. Maybe two." Ire's tail flicked again. "What do you need." Sable drank. Her throat opened. She decided in one breath. "A guide east. My partner can't fly. I can't read the wind alone. There's a ridge past the next belt I have to reach." Ire studied her. "East is where I lost a child's trail two nights ago. Something's out there taking things. Goats. Then a boy." She leaned on the bar. "I go east tomorrow either way. You want a guide, you ride with me and we watch each other's backs." "Done." "Sunrise. Loft upstairs is empty. Sleep." Sable climbed the stairs with the falcon on her arm and the fairy still warm against her chest. She laid the charts on the loft boards and stared at the eastern mark. She had lost the sky for now. She had bought a road instead, and a partner with claws.

Sable set the falcon on the loft rail. It folded its red wings and watched her with one bright eye. She spread the decoded charts on the floorboards under the lantern. Sylvara Greenweave lay in a nest of folded cloth on the pillow, small as a doll, her white wings dim. Ire Taverness had sent up bread, water, and a spare blanket without being asked. Sable meant to use the quiet hours to read what she had. The charts covered half the loft. Sylvara's cipher work filled the margins in neat green ink. Sable traced the eastern route with her finger. Ridge. River bend. A mark she did not know. Past the river bend the notes broke into symbols Sylvara had not finished translating. A cluster of them ringed the second hull like a fence. Sable leaned closer. She tried the key Sylvara had shown her on the ridge. The first symbol matched nothing. The second matched nothing. She flipped the page and tried again. The ink swam. "Sylvara." She kept her voice low. "I need one word. Just this mark." The fairy's eyes cracked open. Green, but pale. Her braid had come loose against the pillow. "Show me," Sylvara said. Sable held the page down at pillow height. Sylvara lifted one finger, touched the symbol, and let her hand fall. "Warning," she said. "Not a place. A warning." "Warning for what." Sylvara's eyes closed. "Something that hunts. Father wrote it three times. Means he saw it three times." A pause. "The rest I can't do tonight. Sable. I can't." "I know." "Wake me at sunrise. Not before." Sable folded the blanket corner over her. The wings settled. The breathing evened. She sat back on her heels. The unread symbols stared up at her. She had wanted a map to the hull. She had gotten half a map and a warning she could not read past. She rolled the charts, tied them, and slid them under the pillow beside the fairy. Boots on the stair. Ire pushed the loft door with her shoulder. She carried a second lantern and a whetstone. Her amber tail curled once around the doorframe. "You're still up," Ire said. "Charts. There's a warning on them. Three times, past the river bend. My father drew it." Ire set the lantern down. She looked at the rolled charts, then at the sleeping fairy, then at Sable. "The goats," Ire said. "The boy. Same country." "You think it's the same thing." "I think your father saw what I've been tracking." She sat on the loft boards and drew a knife across the whetstone. One clean pass. "Sleep. We leave at first light. You ride behind me until the river bend. After that we walk quiet." Sable lay down beside the pillow. The falcon shifted on the rail. She had not read the last mile of the charts, but she had learned what waited on it. That would have to be enough until morning.

Sable blew out the lantern and lay on her side, one hand on the pillow near Sylvara. The falcon shifted on the rail. Rain started on the tavern shingles and stayed light. She listened to the fairy's breathing until it slowed and deepened. Then she slept. She woke to gray light in the loft window. The rain had stopped. Sylvara sat up on the pillow, small and straight, her braid re-tied. Her wings caught the window light and threw it back clean. The pale had gone out of her eyes. "You slept," Sable said. "I slept." Sylvara stretched one wing, then the other. "I can finish it." Sable pulled the charts from under the pillow and spread them on the floorboards. She set a mug of water beside Sylvara and broke off a corner of bread. The fairy ate two bites and bent to the page. "Read them to me," Sable said. "I'll write." Sylvara touched each symbol in the ring around the second hull. Her finger moved slow but sure. Sable wrote in the margin as the fairy spoke. "Water," Sylvara said. "Deep water. Not the river. A pool he cut himself. The hull sits under it." Sable's pen stopped. "Under." "He sank it on purpose. The mark here is a lift-line. Rope and pulley. He left the gear in a hollow tree at the pool's north edge." She touched another mark. "This one is the hunter. It drinks at the pool at dusk. He drew it three times because it came three nights." "So we reach the pool before dusk." "Before dusk. Raise the hull. Be gone before it comes to drink." Sable finished the last note and sat back. She had the map now. The whole map. Twelve years of waiting collapsed into one page of ink. Boots on the stair. Ire pushed the loft door open with her hip. She carried two packs and a coil of rope over her shoulder. Her tail flicked once at the doorframe. "Horse is saddled," Ire said. "Light's up." "The hull's sunk," Sable said. "In a pool past the river bend. We need to raise it before dusk or the thing that hunts comes to drink." Ire set the packs down. She looked at the charts, then at Sylvara sitting upright on the pillow. Her mouth pulled to one side. "Dusk gives us the day and no more," Ire said. "Rope in your pack. Tell me the shape of the pool on the way." Sable rolled the charts and tied them. She lifted Sylvara into her vest pocket, careful with the wings. The falcon dropped from the rail to her shoulder. She had the last mile now. She also had a clock. Sundown at the pool, and whatever her father had seen three nights running would be walking down to the water.