Yes. Treble had it. Treble knew.

Gradually the music slowed, sliding over the outstretched wings above the bird. Finally only baritone rumbled in the glimmering wake of soprano’s fading glory. The last notes vibrated in the alcove and died.

Jato stood frozen, afraid to move lest it rouse Soz to reveal her reaction. Yet the silence was also unbearable. What did she think? That was him in that music, the vulnerable part, without barriers or protections.

Her head was turned toward the console, so he saw only her profile. A glimmer showed on her cheek. Something was sliding down her face.

He touched the tear. "Why are you crying?"

"It’s so beautiful." She looked up at him. "So utterly sad and utterly beautiful."

Beautiful. She thought his music was beautiful. He tried to answer, make a joke or something, but nothing came out. So he drew her into his arms and laid his cheek on top her head.

She didn’t pull away. Instead she put her arms around his waist and held him. The fresh scent of her newly washed hair wafted around him. Softly she said, "What place do you like best in Nightingale?"

"The Promenade."

"Will you take me there?"

He swallowed. "Yes."

Bathed in starlight, the west edge of the plateau dropped into the jagged immensity of the Giant’s Skeleton Mountains. Its crevices cut deep into the planet’s crust, the tormented remains of a planetoid impact that had brutalized Ansatz in a long-vanished eon. Spires jutted up like skeletal fingers on walls between the chasms.

Natural bridge formations tried to span the kilometers-deep fissures, but most spans were incomplete, their broken ends hanging in the air.

The plateau itself claimed one of the few unbroken bridges. The Promenade. It rose up from the plateau’s southern corner, spanned its length, and ended high in the northern cliffs. Two kilometers long and averaging only two meters wide, the bridge curved out from the plateau over a great chasm. Spires on the chasm walls supported it with columns of rock.

The Dreamers had tooled the Promenade’s upper side into a path, giving it meter-high retaining walls on both sides. They laid down a courtyard at its southern base, with undulating lines enameled into the geometric design of gilded tiles.

As Jato and Soz crossed the courtyard, wind grabbed his jacket and tossed her curls around her face. She said something, but he couldn’t hear her over the blustering wind, so he leaned down. "Say again?"

Her breath tickled his ear. "It’s exhilarating."

"It’s even stronger on the Promenade."

"Beat you there!" She took off and sprinted up the bridge, leaning forward against its steep cant. Laughing, he tried to catch her, but she ran like a rocket.

They raced the entire kilometer to the apex. At the top, Soz threw out her arms and spun around, her hair whipping about her head. She spoke and the wind kidnapped her words. When Jato shook his head and pointed to his ears, she shouted, "How far to the bottom?" Then she leaned over the wall, staring into the void below.

"Three kilometers!" He pulled her back to safety turning her around, his bird pressed against her back, his pulse beating hard as the bridge vibrated in the rushing gales. She looked up at him with a flushed face. The wind, the night, the danger-it brought her alive. Without stopping to think, he pulled her into an embrace.

Sliding her arms around his neck, she drew his head down into a kiss. He returned the favor with pleasure, making up for eight years of solitude. He couldn’t believe this, that she wanted him. Who would have thought it?

Jato paused. Why did she want him? Lifting his head, he looked down at her. He was trapped on Ansatz for life and they both knew she would soon leave. What was this, take advantage of the love-starved convict, then go back to her life where she didn’t have to worry about him?

Soz watched his face, her eyes alternately visible and hidden as the wind threw around her hair. She touched his cheek with fingers as gentle as the smile that kept emerging and hiding behind those glorious curls. Jato decided the "why" didn’t matter. He wanted to tell her things, how good she felt, how lovely she looked, but he couldn’t think of anything that wouldn’t sound clumsy. So instead he kissed her again.

The bridge’s vibrations were increasing, making it pitch like the deck of a sea-ship. It gave a particularly inspired heave and knocked Soz and Jato apart, separating them as if it were their chaperon. They stumbled back from each other, both flailing their arms for balance. Jato laughed and Soz spread her arms wide as if to address the Giant’s Skeleton itself with her protest.

Then something on the plateau caught her attention. She went back to the wall and peered toward Nightingale. "What are those?"

Looking out, Jato saw what she had noticed, the familiar statues, massive and tall, halfway between the plateau’s edge and the city. Sometimes those gigantic stone beasts were lit and other times they stood in the dark, like now, their mouths forever open in silent roars.

"Wind Lions," Jato said. Coming to stand behind her, he put his arms around her waist. "Wind machines. If they were ever turned on, the cliffs would magnify their effect."

"No wonder it’s so windy up here."

He bent his head and spoke against her ear. "This is normal wind. The Lions aren’t on."

When his breath wafted against her ear, she closed her eyes and sighed. With her back against his front, she raised her arms and slid them around his neck. The motion pulled up her breasts, making her nipples point at the stars. He kissed her ear, and she rubbed her head against his cheek like a cat. Then she murmured, a soft noise audible only with his head so close to hers, one of those sounds he had forgotten a woman made when she liked the way a man touched her. Maybe it was the eight years of solitude, but he couldn’t remember any woman on Sandstorm feeling this fine. He wondered how it would be to make love up here in the wild gales, three kilometers above the Giant’s chasm.

"Why not?" she asked.

He smiled. Why not indeed? "Why not what?"

She lowered her arms and turned in his embrace. "Why aren’t the Lions ever on?"

He tilted his head toward the courtyard. "Do you remember the design in the tiles back there? The curving lines?" When she nodded, he said, "It’s a plot of the vortices for a single-degree oscillator with an undamped torsional flutter." He stroked her blowing curls back from her face. "Wind makes the Promenade twist. If it ever blew hard enough, the vortices in its wake around the bridge would drive a self-induced resonance until the Promenade tore itself apart."

"What would ever possess them to set it up like that?"

Jato smiled. "Because they’re crazy." As he bent his head to kiss her, the bridge gave a violent shudder and threw them to the side. They stumbled along the wall, lurching from side to side as they struggled to regain their footing. It didn’t work; they finally toppled over and hit the walkway with a thud.

"Hey!" Soz laughed, struggling to wriggle out from under Jato’s bulk. "It’s mad at us."

"I’ve never seen it this windy." Jato managed to get up to his knees, but when Soz tried to do the same, the agitated bridge knocked her over again. She finally succeeded by moving with an unnatural speed, as if she had toggled a switch that activated an enhanced mode of her body. They knelt there face to face, Jato holding her shoulders, she with her hands braced against his chest. The Promenade kept moving, more than he had ever felt it do before, rippling almost. It moaned in the assault of air as if the Giant were waking from his mountainous grave.

Soz wasn’t smiling any more. "The Lions are blowing."