Bright landed with a soft thump, his talons clicking on the wooden planks of the launch platform. Mary rushed forward to grasp his harness and lead him away from the platform to allow Greyquill to land.
On his back, Erin released the reins and stuffed her hands beneath her arms, hugging herself as she waited for the warmth of her body to warm them. Even just a small flight had exposed her to the chill winds, and she felt the cold in her bones.
Once back inside the roost, Bright came to a halt and she climbed down, with the aid of Mary who ignored Erin’s nod of thanks and set about her work removing the harness and brushing Bright down.
“I can do that,” Erin protested, but Mary waved her back and gave her a sullen glance.
“T’is my job,” she said, and promptly turned her back on the other girl.
Erin watched her for a moment before shaking her head and turning away. She had not intended to deprive the other girl of her chance to fly, and she wouldn’t apologise for something not entirely in her control.
She sympathised with Mary, but her sympathy was rapidly cooling and in its place was a growing irritation at the other girl’s manner.
“Give her time,” Lady Sarah said, voice soft and low, for Erin’s ears alone.
Erin, startled by the sudden voice behind her, turned and looked up at the noblewoman who smiled gently back at her.
“You flew well, girl.” Lady Sarah shook her head, hands running through her tangled mess of hair. “I’ll accept you as apprentice and note your name on the rolls. Notice will be sent back to the guild to add you to the roster.”
Dumbfounded, Erin simply blinked, not knowing what to say. It was more than she had ever dreamed would have been possible.
Then it hit her.
She would be starting her apprenticeship at seventeen. She would be twenty-five before she became journeyman. An old maid by anyone’s standards. It would be with the widows and spinsters with whom she was contending for a husband.
No apprentice was legally allowed to marry, and children outside of wedlock were frowned upon by all polite society. She had never truly dreamed of a home and hearth with a husband and children. But she had expected it to happen, one day.
Now that day was suddenly six years further away and, despite herself, she wasn’t quite sure what to think of that.
Lady Sarah watched the confused welter of emotions cross the girls face. She was young, and innocent, and not used to hiding them. She wore her thoughts openly, which was not always a good thing.
“Your time as a handler will be taken into account,” she said, sparing the girl some of the stress that was rapidly building. Tension immediately left her, shoulders dropping as she unclenched her jaw and Sarah smiled, not unkindly. “Though you will still spend a few years learning your new role.”
“But it won’t be six!”
“No,” Lady Sarah agreed. “You know your mount, and you’ve flown solo. You’re at least as far along as a third-year apprentice.” She paused and looked critically at the young woman. “Or at least you would be if you’d had the same book learning.”
“Huh?”
Lady Sarah nodded abruptly, coming to a decision. “I have some books, mostly of the histories of the guild. Mary used them, and you will too.”
“I will?”
“Yes.” She brushed her hands together and then set them on her hips as she thought. “You’ll need at least two hours a day. There will be written assignments, and then there is the blade. I assume you’ve no weapons training?”
“What… no?” There had been no need for a gryphon handler’s apprentice to know how to wield much more than a shovel and broom.
“A visit to the armoury then, I think.” She turned and headed to the roost door and Erin scrambled to keep up with her. “Sergeant Hayes is a good man. He will assign someone to teach you the basics.”
“Ah… thank you, milady.”
Lady Sarah waved away the thanks. “Save them,” she said. “For the next three days you will fly a patrol over the farms in the morning. In the afternoon, you will learn the sword and pistol, and then in the evening, you will be assigned lessons on guild history and gryphon care.”
Erin gulped; eyes wide as she scrambled after the long-legged woman. It sounded incredibly daunting, and she wondered at the purpose of the weapons training. She was five foot four, and anyone she faced with a blade would be bigger, and stronger with a longer reach.
“Where are you staying?”
“Thomas and Maud Cobham have graciously allowed me space in their home.”
Lady Sarah nodded approvingly. “Good folk, that will do well enough then. You will have room for the books, and I shall see you have pen and paper aplenty.” She laughed, not unkindly. “You will need it.”
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
They stopped as a group of men and women went past talking quietly and with a frown, Sarah turned to watch their passage. She caught the attention of a young woman with rosy cheeks and a sorrowful expression.
“You, girl. Where is everyone going?”
“The Edge, milady,” the girl said, making a brief curtsy. “The sailors are holding a ceremony for their dead.”
Lady Sarah watched the group go before turning her attention back to Erin. She lifted a hand to touch her breast, or Erin realised, something hanging from the silver chain around her neck.
“Are you a follower of the Remnant or the Lost?” she asked, voice low.
Erin followed neither, and while she did not want to offend the noblewoman who had just given to her the greatest gift she had ever received, that of a place in the Rider’s Guild, she also didn’t want to lie.
“My family follow the Lost,” she said, and Sarah nodded thoughtfully.
“No judgment, girl. Not at all. There are followers of both here, and others besides. The sailors tend to follow the Lost, I gather.”
Erin could only shrug. She’d not known any of them well enough to know such things about them, though she’d not seen signs of a priest or chapel on the ship. Which lent credence to that.
“Go,” Sarah said. “Your afternoon is your own. I shall make arrangements for your training and that will begin tomorrow. Be at the roost at dawn to see to the gryphons.”
“Thank you, milady.”
A sharp nod and Lady Sarah spun on her heel and marched away, stiff backed, her hand pressed against whatever hung from the necklace, tucked beneath her shirt. Erin watched her go, confused for a moment, before she turned to follow the group headed to the ship.
While she hadn’t known them for long, she had an urge to find out what had happened to the friends she had made on the ship. Geoffrey too, for she had much to share with him and as her trainer, he would need to know.
Hurrying, she caught up with the group as they turned a corner and stepped out into the open space beside the two houses that had been crushed as the ship crashed. Two separate crowds had gathered beside the ship, the sailors standing close to the island’s edge, and the settlers clustered loosely close by.
The settlers were few in number, and Erin guessed them to be followers of the Lost there to pay their respects and offer their own prayers.
Officer Letterford stood off to one side, while Officer Ballard stood at parade rest beside a line of linen wrapped bodies, tied with rope, laid side by side, half hanging off the Edge and held in place only by the rope.
Erin pushed through the crowd of settlers and then crossed the small gap between to join the sailors. A few looked around as she joined them, and she received nods of greeting and a smile from Old Man Uric.
The old sailor had a black eye swollen almost shut, and a bump the side of a robin’s egg that was poorly concealed beneath the black wool cap he wore but otherwise seemed hale and whole. Though the same could not be said of the rest of the crew.
Several had burns on their hands and arms, even more wore bandages and two had arms that had been splinted and hung in a sling. One man rested on a crutch, his right leg lifted, the ankle swollen so much so that he couldn’t wear a shoe.
One and all, they were exhausted, with skin pale and faces haggard. They had lost friends, and almost their ship, and they were bruised and battered from the fall. Yet they still stood, and they waited in silence for the officer to speak, so their respect could be given to the fallen.
As if on cue, Officer Ballard spoke, her voice filling the open space beside the ship easily.
“We stand, as we have before and as we will again, to bid farewell to those who sailed beside us. They were our comrades, our brothers of the sky.” She paused, gaze moving across the crowd. “They worked as we worked, fought as we fought, and they gave their lives to ensure we kept flying.”
“The winds bore them high, the sky knew their names, and now the void will be their home until they land in the Black Beneath.” A shiver passed through the crowd at that, and Officer Ballard’s voice bore the faintest of hesitation before she continued. “We commend them to the depths, not as strangers, but as kin.”
She turned her head, looking down at each of those lonely, wrapped bodies in turn.
“May the stars guide them, may the winds sing their names, and may the Lost find them.” She snapped out a smart salute, bringing her heels together and hand, palm down, pressed up to her temple. “Crew, to the ropes.”
At this command, two sailors stepped forward and took hold of the ropes. They moved slowly, and with reverence. The two men stood, heads bowed, saying their final prayers for the dead.
Beside Erin, Old Man Uric lifted his head, tears shining in his eyes as he began to sing. His voice was low, bearing in it the loss he felt, the words carried on the wind over the Edge.
“The wind it screams, the sky turns black,
No guiding star to lead them back.
A brother’s voice fades on the air,
Gone where none may fare.”
The sailors around her picked up the chorus, their voices joining his as they sang that mournful song. The pain and sorrow in their voices almost more than Erin could bear to hear.
“Lost to the void, where the cold winds roam,
Ne’er shall their boots touch stone.
Raise up a glass, let the memories last,
For the Black now claims its own.”
As the voices fell silent, the two crewmen holding the ropes each pulled a knife from their sheath. A simple, working man’s knife. A sailors knife.
Old Man Uric, tears rolling freely down his cheeks, sang on.
“The lightning flashed, the cables tore,
They slipped into the howling storm.
No grave to find, no earth, no keep,
Just silence in the deep.”
Many were the faces that bore the passage of tears as they crew joined in, their voices accompanying Old Man Uric’s as they repeated the chorus.
“Lost to the void, where the cold winds roam,
Ne’er shall their boots touch stone.
Raise up a glass, let the memories last,
For the Black now claims its own.”
Erin shivered as the last words drifted off on the winds, taken out over the Edge. The crewmen sliced through the rope, and the linen, wrapped bodies slipped over the side and out into the void. There, they would fall until they hit the Black.
She whispered a prayer, her family’s beliefs not her own, but still, she hoped that out there, in the void, the Lost would hear and guide those sailors’ souls back home.
Old Man Uric wiped at his eyes and sniffed. When Erin looked up at him, he smiled back at her, unashamed of the tears for his fallen brothers.
“Thank you for joining us, lass.” His voice regained some of his usual warmth. “You do them honour.”
The image of Hughe falling past her, had seared itself into her mind-his arms flailing, mouth open in a silent scream, the wind swallowing his terror as he tumbled into the abyss. She squeezed her eyes shut, but the vision remained, burned into her memory like a scar.
Erin shivered, wrapping her arms around herself, the finality of it all sinking into her bones.
She turned to Old Man Uric; his weathered face streaked with his tears and saw the quiet acceptance in his eyes-the same acceptance she now felt.
Her voice was barely above a whisper, but it held the weight of the moment.
“No,” she said, wiping her face with her sleeve. “The honour is all theirs.”
