Serpents and Stairways

Chapter V - Part 1

Wearing rough wyvernskin gloves, Tamara was wrangling the bolts of Catalog's elevator cabin—a struggle that required not as much technical knowledge as raw physical strength, and the girl was silently cursing, trying with each new bolt to come up with a curse more vicious and exquisite than the one she used as lubricant for the last.

Were Dinah not sitting right next to her, absorbed in her bizarre touch-reading, Tamara would have long ago (about a bolt and a half ago) asked Servantes to take her place. Or Georg... Or even—basilisk's ass be damned—Pasha. There would've been nothing extraordinary in a small physical favor, only a reasonable redistribution of resources, if not for that phony aristocratess, null be her divisor, sitting here under her damn parasol! Tamara couldn't show weakness in front of her. Why did she have to sit here, of all places? So that her fingers saw better in sunlight? What difference did it make for her where to read?

Although, Tamara's irritation was mostly shallow. Over the past (almost) five days since they'd met, she had (almost) accepted this stranger, and had (almost) forgiven Dinah for those tactless words she had said back in her father's workshop. It was hard to avoid becoming closer with someone over the long hours of tedious mountain treading. Besides, Dinah had earned a bit of her respect without even trying that hard—simply by not embodying the stereotypes of those gauze damsels, so refined they're practically water, born to the other side of the veil. It's said, they possess a cute steady tendency to spontaneously assume horizontal position—which is to say that they faint. Or that they blush at the mention of secants and cosecants, never run, drop belladonna in their eyes on a dare, drop dead one after the other out of love or angst, and fall in love exclusively with childhood friends, while in a permanent state of prince-awaiting. Do they even learn to count on the other side? By the pigeonhole principle, the princes simply lack the holes to fit all of them in. At least, in countries with monogamous marriage.

So, factoring it out, Tamara's opinion of Dinah was almost positive. Almost. She couldn't simply forget the way this ironed maiden had yelled at Arman, daring to question his competence. Sure, unlike mom, dad wasn't a grandiose genius—at thirteen she herself had already surpassed him at splitting and stitching aether flows and manifestos, to be completely frank. So what? The older you get, the harder it becomes to master new technologies. Does this ostentatious wench, as irrational as pi, and just as normal, expect everyone to be talented at everything? Let's see her try!

But, being completely frank, it wasn't just righteous rage that stirred her, but banal anxiety, too. What if she asked for help, and Dinah would get in her head that Tamara can't handle this job? Little miss manticore's malice doubted her from the very start, just because of her age, and didn't want her in this expedition... No, she's not giving her the satisfaction!

And Tamara continued to ply the fastening off the deck, pulling not only with her muscles, but also with some tightwound twine somewhere in her abdomen, about existence of which she used to have no idea. Sweat condensed on her neck and forehead, her shirt became drenched, and her arms screamed louder than yesterday's roaring lamb from the coffin. Disgusting. Like the fact that 51 is divisible by 17.

The spirits of the rest had sunk, naturally speaking, below zero. Wave-like Georg (a foolish name) oscillated around the ship like the only photon in existence, Pasha sat on the other side of the deck and gloomily blew soap bubbles—probably still sulking about being caught in a lie. All the same—he only had himself to blame (oh, look at that, a rhyme, he'd love that.) Why claim you know how to sail an airship, when the pinnacle of your aviation skills is throwing paper planes off a bridge? And even those would immediately dive. Or was he worried about his squandered inheritance? That Tamara could understand—Catalog's autopilot was really beautiful.

Should she have asked him to join in their plan after all? Could cheer him up...

The plan which, by the way, Tamara had come up with on her own, and was quite pleased that no one attempted to challenge it.