The Phoenix Thief

NINE

THE WIND GRABBED the Girl between ice-clawed paws and dragged her across the sky, slamming Kilter's back against her harness one moment and trying to tear them apart the next. Metal screeched. The fwup-fwup-fwup of loose canvas filled Kilter's head. Snow forced into his eyes and mouth, choked him, slid down the back of his coat and up his sleeves. Blindly he pulled at the Girl's levers, attempted to pull her out and get her flying smooth once more, but each change in the wings' position just played into the wind again.

It flung the Girl upwards once more, tossing Kilter straight through a band of the Phoenix fire, and he cried aloud at the sudden shock of warmth as his vision was wiped out by glowing white and green.

He couldn't see anything at all. The Girl's levers didn't respond like part of his own body any more. He spun and flailed as she twisted against him, trying viciously to be free with the wind again, even as it made it clear that neither she nor Kilter were welcome. They flipped over. There was a sharp crack, and Kilter's stomach jolted as he suddenly became aware of the weight of the Girl, and his own body. They were falling.

This was no clean, pulse-thrilling dive, though. One of the Girl's wings collapsed against Kilter, striking him again and again in the legs and the side of his face, and the other flailed over his head, spinning them so that, except for the ever-strengthening downward pull, Kilter had no idea which way was which.

Suddenly, dark shapes streaked through his vision. Before he could guess what they were, one caught on the Girl's wing and then she was plowing through them. Everything crunched, snapped, splintered. Jutting pieces of the dark shapes lashed Kilter's face and body. After one final flail, the Girl jerked to a halt with a loud, sharp noise of tearing and cracking all at once, and Kilter swung forward and crashed against something. Pain exploded in his vision as flashing red and white. Then everything went black.

When Kilter opened his eyes again, the pain had not faded. It throbbed in his lower leg like fire-heated metal so he hardly noticed the needle-like prickling in the cuts on his arms and face. He was dangling by one arm, as well, and the strain felt like the limb and his body were about to separate. Bracing himself with a deep breath, Kilter set his free hand against the rough surface before him, and pushed against it enough to turn his head.

He was hanging halfway up one of the huge, shaggy trees on the mountainside, the Girl punctured by branches and twisted like a piece of scrap. For a moment he could only stare. Then he set his forehead against the tree's rough skin and closed his eyes.

No. Only two nights of searching, and already you've failed!

Tears threatened at his eyes, but he blinked them away and forced himself to look around again. His shoulders and the back of his head were covered with several inches of puffy snow, and the moonlit drifts on the ground below looked deeper than they had been. There was almost no sign of the stumps of the blackened trees. Overhead, patches of the far, flickering lights were visible between the clouds, which still released scattered bouts of snowflakes on the wind, but behind the mountain directly before Kilter the storm was still boiling. What remained of the Phoenix fire in the open sky was faint and wobbly, as if it too had been beaten and clawed up by the wind.

But everything was blurry. The pain in Kilter's leg and arm seemed to swell with each throb of his chest. He needed to get down. Pulling off his glove with his teeth, he unbuckled the satchel on his chest with his bare hand and fumbled around in it until his fingers met the smooth wood of the knife handle. Once he had it out of its sheath, he reached up and with slow, breathless movements cut away the leather straps holding his trapped arm in place.

His arm dropped and the Girl shifted and rattled, making him grab the nearest limb as his body jolted with alarm. Agony shot up his leg and he grit his teeth, pressing his head against the tree's broad trunk again.