The Flying Barons of Egriponte

Chapter 1

Faster. Now I can go faster.

The small, white-washed cube of the old Saint Elijah's chapel appeared from among the rock outcrops, marking the eastern end of the Chalcis Pass; as soon as her gondola emerged into the open, Ikaria knew, the mighty winds of the Euripos Strait would start buffeting the tiny vessel from all sides.

She reached for the brass valve, painted red, on the side of the Sublimation Engine, and turned it by a fingernail to the right. The conduit hissed, releasing a few drops of the Inhibitor into the Aludel. A bubbling of the indicator liquids mixing in the retort showed the decrease in production of Azoth. She felt the hull tremble; the Transenna membrane fluttered, reacting to the change in buoyancy. With a sharp lurch, the boat dropped a few dozen feet until the surrounding pressures equalised.

What she was doing was counterintuitive, and dangerous. In the thinner air, the gondola became unbalanced, more susceptible to sudden drafts and gusts, prone to capsizing; this close to the sea, the breezes were unpredictable. Her rivals would have by now slowed down, struck their sails and increased the concentration of Azoth in the air in preparation for the difficult crossing. This was Ikaria's chance to catch up. She knew she could glide the currents without such hindrances, without relying on the air-oars, with the sail hoisted tall and filled with wind. She had done it here before. Once.

She threw away the last of the ballast sacks. The gondola rose again, though not by much. Ikaria stared at the two hilltops in front of her; beyond them, the mouth of the pass opened wide onto the green plain below, stretching for the final couple of miles before the finish line. Shimmering in the afternoon haze, the tall sandstone mooring towers of Egriponte rose high over the city's battlements.

Before Ikaria could feel the breeze, she saw its effects: where a bend of the Euripos Strait carved an arch deep into the land, the sea water was brown-green from the churning tides, pock-marked with white dashes of the billows rushing against the beach. She braced herself as the gondola passed between the final two hills, its keel almost touching the roof of the Elijah's chapel. A gust struck from the portside first; the stern lurched to starboard, the entire boat heeled at a threatening angle. Ikaria countered with the steering oar, but with the air so thin, she had little to push against. Wrong, she scolded herself. She acted on instinct, but this was no place for instinct; this was science. She turned the sheet winch, slackening the sail until the turning boat picked up the new gust. The hull turned upright again.

Ikaria wiped the sweat from her brow. She had barely enough time to see one of her rival gondolas float past above, her sails neatly trimmed, her pilota busy with the air-oars; she couldn't spot the crest on the sail from below, but it didn't matter. The remaining racers in the regatta were all veterans of the sport, wealthy aristocrats who lavished gold on their court alchemists and engineers to be provided with the finest, fastest, most agile anemogondolas, so that they could then race each other for the sheer exhilaration of victory, rather than the pursuit of reward. Ikaria built her boat herself from scratch – and she has just moved into the third place of the Theban Regatta, with the final two opponents in sight – and only one mile left to go.

The crosswinds eased up as the boat flew out onto the plain, and Ikaria could now straighten the boat and further reduce the pressure on the Azoth valve. It was a delicate, precise moment; she moved the steering lever forward, increasing the density in the front of the gondola. The bow leapt upwards; Ikaria glanced back – she could now see that rare, faint line, which only showed when a gondola raced at full speed, tearing through the mystical elements swirling underneath the hull: the anemo wake, a gleaming, rainbow-coloured ripple of condensed steam and alchemical vapours.

She passed another boat, its sail painted azure with a golden band: the crest of Saint-Omer, Lord of the Thebes. This surprised her; the master of the Thebes was a favourite to win every year – after all, the regatta started in his home town, and the route ran mostly through his land. Something must have gone wrong – she could glimpse the pilota struggling with the sheet, the sail fluttering in the side wind. This meant that the boat in front of her, the last one left to pursue, belonged to the Baron of Egriponte himself, William da Verona.