I tapped on the glass with a pound coin. Cyan jumped and looked all around, saw me beaming at her. She grinned and reached up to raise the latch and swing the window out. “Jant!”

I gave her a hug but she pulled away from my cold skin. “Sorry to scare you, little sister.”

“I’m not scared. Are you looking for Daddy?”

“Yes. Where is Lightning? Where is everyone?”

“They went out to the boat. Mist’s red carnival. Caravel. She sailed it into the bay…I saw it. I wanted to go on it but Daddy wouldn’t let me. He’s ill.” Cyan sat back on her heels, hazel eyes wide.

“He’s awake? How is he?”

“That old woman said he’d be okay. I don’t remember her name.”

“Rayne?”

“Yeah.” Cyan reached for my feathers and I gave her a wing to stroke. She often pestered me to fly carrying her, although at twelve years old she was far too big. “Governor Swallow told me about the battle at the Castle and there are loads of men coming into town who don’t like Eszai…” Cyan made an effort to remember. She forgot the book of natural history that lay open on her knee but her finger still pointed, holding down a page with a gray watercolor of seals reclining on a shingle beach. “Swallow said she…Um, she ‘couldn’t guarantee their safety’ so Mist took them aboard. Are you going to fly after them? You’re not going to stay?” She sounded resigned.

“Where is Swallow?”

Cyan sighed. “Governor Fatbottom is trying to get rid of the men who don’t like Eszai. She wants them out of Awndyn. She says they’re troublemakers. I was supposed to go to bed, but I didn’t want to, so I hid.”

“Fatbottom?” I giggled.

There was a wicked gleam in Cyan’s eyes. “I keep thinking you’re the same as the rest, but you aren’t.”

“I can’t be.”

Cyan complained, “Swallow tries to teach me the harpsichello. The piccoloboe. Loads of instruments…I hate them. She says, ‘You think you’re good because you’re Saker’s kid.’ I feel like I’ve always done something wrong. I don’t belong here.”

That sounded like me at her age. “You don’t have to do what Swallow says! You’ll be a governor when you’re twenty-one.”

“When I grow up. Yeah, yeah.”

“It’s not a long time to wait. Take it from me; I’m twenty-three.”

“Hmm. That’s reallllly ooooold,” she said thoughtfully.

“Isn’t it?” Cyan had everything she could possibly want, but her fortune was just a spacious cage, as Lightning had planned out her life. Swallow, her guardian, knew of nothing apart from music and she found the child an obstruction to her obsession. Swallow may well never succeed in joining the Circle but she was determined to spend her whole life trying. I thought that if the bitterness set in, she wouldn’t stand a chance. “Remember that you can do anything you want.”

“I want to grow wings-it’s like having four arms. And to fly like you.”

“Within the bounds of possibility. Cyan, lots of people who live in Awia don’t have wings. The Emperor doesn’t, either; it’s not important that you take after your mother.”

She gave the concept serious consideration. “I like it when Daddy teaches me archery. I wish he was here more, but he’s very busy and now he’s hurt. Everything’s collapidated again. I like talking to him-he brings me presents-but he says I should do what Swallow tells me.”

I waved my hands emphatically. “You don’t have to believe anyone, no matter who they are-not Lord Daddy and not Diva Fatbottom. Think things through for yourself instead. Swallow isn’t teaching you the right subjects, for a powerful governor-to-be, so you will have to observe and question. Remember, brother Jant is at your command; all the Eszai are. Governors don’t seem to realize their power, and we need you to keep us in check with Zascai reality. That’s what’s been going wrong recently.”

She scowled, slightly resembling Lightning. Her tattered socks were rucked round her ankles and her shoes were scuffed with the gray-green mold found on tree trunks. She clenched her jaw to stop her teeth chattering; her breath hung in the cold night air.

“Goodbye, Cyan; look after yourself.”

“Are you going to fly? Why can’t I fly?”

“Because you’re normal.”

“Why can’t I see this island?”

“Soon you will, sister. Soon everybody will.” I ran on the wet grass and took off, bound for the harbor.

Many humans envy wings. A few years ago, a serial killer murdered only Awians, chopped their wings off and wore them. But it doesn’t matter whether one has wings or not when none of them can get off the ground. Cyan was more perspicacious; she envied flight. I worried about her as I remembered the Carniss saying: Wolves track lonely people.

When I was her age, in 1807, I was solitary too. No child wants to be left alone, but Rhydanne children grow up quickly. When they fall, they don’t cry; when abandoned, they’re independent.

My childhood in Darkling came to an abrupt end in my fifteenth year. Eilean insisted we remain every winter in our scanty summer dwellings in the high peaks. She said it was for my own protection that we did not go down to Scree pueblo with the other herders, although winter storms brewed and raged in the cirque every night.

Eilean Dara, my grandmother, was forty years old. She was a good runner; she had only ever let herself be caught by one man, who married her and treated her gently, but he died shortly after their daughter was born-my mother inherited a very fast speed indeed. I never understood how my rapist father could have caught her and Eilean wouldn’t say.

My presence forced Eilean to change from her beloved hunting way of life to herding. She built our shieling herself, although it looked as if it had grown, part of the uncompromising mountains; an antlered hillock with moss on the roof that the goats ate in summer when the ice thawed. The shieling was a one-room box with bedding on the floor. Every wooden surface was covered in pokerwork designs, my grandmother’s pastime in our desolate world. She burned board games into the low table top-a checkered square for solitaire and trapper’s luck, brown teeth for backgammon, and rectangular patches where packs of cards were placed for telling fortunes. When hunters visited they played games that were fast and simple compared to those I learned later at the Castle.

I discovered the rules of flight from trial and error; no child was ever as covered in cuts and bruises. Eilean made me look after our eight goats; I was good with a sling but I was never taught the bolas so when hunters came to poach them, I had to call her for help.

I left the goats tethered while I improved my gliding, soaring too far to hear their bleats and bells clacking. A pack of white wolves attacked the herd. The goats panicked, leapt high and strained at their ropes but the wolves devoured them in a leisurely fashion. When I landed hours later I found a pile of bones, tethers and bells. I hid from Eilean for days before she gave up trying to throttle me. She then steadily reverted to her previous life, chasing ibex and swigging whiskey to forget the strain of my existence.

I sat cross-legged in front of the hearth and stared at the flames. After a while the door was nosed open and two massive tame wolves slipped through, padding solemnly. I relinquished my space on the mat for them; they lay down and sighed simultaneously. Compacted snow sticking to their pelts became translucent as it melted and dripped. Thunder tumbled down Darkling valley; there was a great sense of waiting in the air. Eilean Dara kicked the door back on its leather hinges and strode in. She hung up her bolas, reclined on the rugs, resting an elbow on the table, and looked around vaguely for me. “Look at you, Jant; why are you still here? You should have left home by now. Have you no sense of shame whatsoever? I think you’re determined to slow me down like powder snow. First, I can’t even marry you off because how do I find someone who wants a deformed Shira as a husband? Second, you remind me of what those vile Awians did to the daughter I loved. Third, then you killed her, with your chunky body and wings trapped in her belly. We had to cut you out with an axe.”