* * *

  Ever-worsening winds tossed Kera's small airship with such violence that at times she was sure the keel would snap, or the envelope would tear from its supports.

  But as she wrestled the helm steady, and the hull quaked and shuddered, some other part of her was at peace.

  Invigorated, even. An electric excitement out-competed mortal terror, even while she clung white-knuckled to the wheel’s wooden spokes just to keep her footing. And so their vessel bored into the atmosphere, and Kera loved its speed and its danger. Still, indeed, she feared death. But failure more, as she willed the ship faster onward, and stood tall against the storm’s battery.

  The aft hatch clattered open, and the strange white-coated soldier pulled himself above deck. Kera fumbled at the clasp of her pistol’s holster, wincing at the pain lingering in her freshly-healed shoulder.

  But the man only gave her what seemed a nod of deference, in the space between the vessel’s quakes. Trading grips hand-over-hand down the deck siderail, he worked his way over.

  “Your bindings?” She gestured to his untethered wrists. Dark soot ringed the cuffs of his uniform coat, matching the momentary flare of an unfamiliar vis she’d sensed minutes ago.

  “Burned away them,” he said. “Do not be fear. We must work now, together. Not as enemies, now.”

  She sized him up. Her comrades had warned her of the man’s fearsome vis and the hot-burning fire of his spear and wings. He could impale her with his totem in an instant, if she let her guard down, they’d said.

  But it wasn’t as if she had much of a choice, except to trust him, she realized.

  Either he’d betray her, or they’d need to cooperate to the utmost. If she were somehow not already doomed, then hesitating to trust him would seal the deal.

  At last the man pulled himself into the pilot’s shelter surrounding the helm, and Kera prepared to be incinerated, or cut in two. But he did nothing more than slide into a brace against the backstop.

  If his expression of weary, distant concern was just a ruse designed to make her lower her guard, then he was an excellent actor, she thought.

  “What’s… your name?” she managed, after building up the courage for almost a minute.

  “…Roskvir.”

  “Roskvir,” she repeated. It was awkward to pronounce so many consonants following one after another, but the name fit him.

  “Your?”

  “My name is Kerauna.”

  They hadn’t even known each other’s names, until then. Her panic surged, overpowering all else.

  “Karana…” said the man, frowning as it left his tongue. “…Kerana?”

  She forced herself to breathe.

  He was so human.

  He had ten fingers, and probably ten toes. And he’d wanted to say her name the right way. He’d even seemed a little embarrassed, when at first it sounded so wrong.

  “Yeah… ‘Kerana,’” she nodded. Close enough.

  The deck bucked as they clipped a rougher patch. Her rest of her panic drained away, if only because wrestling the helm demanded all of her attention. Roskvir grabbed the wheel as well, and together they forced the swift back level.

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  They shared another nod, once the vessel was steady once more.

  So human, she thought again.

  And he and this army had come to their land, and killed a million of her people before as much as a message in greeting.

  “…Roskvir? What made you… do this? Offer to help us, I mean.”

  “You wouldn’t… believe. Wouldn’t understand.”

  “Try to tell me, Roskvir. Please.”

  He stared into the clouded night, for a time saying nothing.

  “...I am soldier for my people. Long… have I been soldier. And… I have been… lost, in that place. Also… for long.”

  He scowled, as he struggled for words.

  “I am good… at fighting. At killing. I learned this young. I thought… it is thought, that this makes good soldier. But… I am not soldier inside, I think. I don’t know well. But I am not soldier, I think.”

  It wasn’t just his poor grasp of Setetic — shame, too impeded his speech, Kera sensed.

  “For a long time I felt — a way, that, I don’t know the word. Even in my language. That… nothing is matters. Slowly, when I was a soldier… everything, slowly… stop mattering. It was hard… to keep things mattering.”

  He looked at her, then, his gaze of piercing candor.

  “But one day — by luck, I think… something came to my path… new thing. It felt important… and mattering. Mattered. Like when everything else was… more… gray… it was some little color. Just little. But… color. And so I decide… I would hold on to… to what ever thing that matter… that I find. For as long as can hold on. I want… hold onto it, until… until it stop mattering, too. If that will happen, maybe.”

  He shook his head, and shrugged.

  “And so, this… it is… holding on,” he said.

  Kera couldn’t tell if it was the wind bringing moisture to her eyes, then, or something about his story, however little she understood of it. All while still she despised his people for what they’d done, and so despised him, as well.

  “...You say… you were good at killing?” She felt she had a duty to ask him that, at least.

  “Yes,” he said. “Many lands, and many… marches. And… here, too.”

  “And the city…?”

  Roskvir closed his eyes.

  “That was secret, even from me… from many. I learned of, that, my superior ordered of it… later. And that sight, of that… was part, of what I say about. It made… all things I do, even of before… look more… gray. And what I found after… matter even more. When I learn of that… some part change.”

  He wavered.

  “I know how maybe you think… but… my people… they are not bad.”

  Kerauna said nothing.

  “Many other of my people… would feel as me… wrong, about knowing of that. If they found to know,” he said. “That is why… probably — why to keep secret…”

  Kera at last detected falseness from him. Not that he was lying outright. But perhaps that he was saying what he hoped or wished to be true, rather than what actually was.

  “You should probably take the helm,” she said, stepping aside. “You know better where we’re going. And the controls are foreign to me.”

  He traded places with her, taking the wheel, and at once fought to keep it steady. But she lingered in the pilot’s shelter, sensing he wanted to say something more.

  “It would be… much dishonorable, if I not tell of you… be careful, to not make mistake… about how I am decide of things. I am not… change sides. I am not… go on your side now. Defect. I have not… betray my people. At least, not more than… maybe… what has to.”

  Kera didn’t quite buy his sudden cold austerity, but believed him nevertheless. All of his earlier vulnerability had vanished.

  “I don’t want betray of you. So I will not… unless that is what must be for her. I will act for her… not one other else. What anything that will mean.”

  “If it's anything you’re doing for the sake of the princess, then we’ll be working together,” she said.

  “Just be ready... for change.”

  “I think I understand. Honorable of you, to warn me.”

  It was more than fair, she supposed.

  Gods above. What had she gotten herself into?

  “See clouds there?” He pointed past the prow.

  A tall sheaf of silver like a great granite mesa had massed far to the northeast. Since she’d first seen it from the helm, it had perhaps tripled in size, spread out by the winds of the high atmosphere.

  “The big ship, where we go to, that I said of… it will come of clouds there. It was move slow when I was on before. Over there, those clouds… we will go to on it, from this ar-ship. We go in clouds, wait, and it come of near us. Then we go on. The white uniform… you should put on, now.”

  “I tried it earlier, and I think it's a good fit, at least,” Kera said, as she started along the siderail to the hatch belowdecks. “But what about with my skin? You lot seem much paler…”

  “We can say, you have… too much sun time. Too much. Make color dark.”

  “Will people believe that?”

  “...You have idea better?”

  "A cumulonimbus incus is a cumulonimbus cloud that has reached the level of stratospheric stability and has formed the characteristic flat, anvil-shaped top. It signifies a thunderstorm in its mature stage [...] These clouds are commonly associated with severe weather, including heavy rain, downbursts, tornadoes, and lightning."

  Wikipedia