June 1st, 1929

Sunrise was still an hour and then some away, with just a hint of paler night sky on the eastern horizon, when Fex followed the uniformed soldier out of his apartment and to a waiting car. It wasn’t a frantic summons to the hospital for Vano like Fex’s last pre-dawn rousting had been. There was less urgency but more purpose in this soldier’s manner. He strode towards the gleaming hulk of a vehicle idling at the curb, opened the rear passenger door, and stepped smartly back. Fex thought it was just politeness, but when he ducked down to actually enter the car, he realized it was probably a judicious retreat.

Nicoletta was already ensconced in the soft grey velvet of the vehicle’s rear passenger bench. She looked about as put together as Fex felt, with her hair slipping free of its scarf, the collar of her blouse askew, and the traces of a pillow crease still on one cheek. She gave Fex a narrow and not particularly welcoming look.

He dredged up a, “Good morning,” for her, tucked himself onto the bench beside her, and bit back a yawn with poor success. She mirrored him almost immediately, hiding her mouth behind one gloved hand. The door slammed shut, the car lurched forward, and they went rolling… somewhere.

“Did they tell you anything?” Fex asked her.

Glowering irritation glinted under Nicoletta’s lowered brows. “Do they ever tell me anything?” she grumbled. “What did they tell you?”

“‘You have ten minutes, dress for travel,’” he said. “And, ‘I don’t know the answer to that. I’m sure you’ll be briefed,’ when I asked what the fuss was all about.” He leaned back against the seat and watched the street lights flicker as the car sped past them. “Some new exercise, I imagine. I’m glad it wasn’t the hospital, this time.”

Nicoletta sat forward, a little more alert, but still scowling. “What? Why would it be the hospital?”

“Because the last time they dragged me out of bed in the middle of the night it was to treat a special asthmatic at the hospital,” Fex told her. “The only other time, that is.” An important clarification, before she decided to jump to dire conclusions about her brother’s health and Fex’s forthcomingness about it. He shrugged his shoulders against his suspenders in an abortive attempt at a stretch. “So at least it’s not that.”

“Oh. That time.” She settled stiffly back again, fully committed to her bad mood. “No, I suppose at least it’s not that.”

Fex fell silent. They both wanted to be in their own beds and pajamas, sleeping peacefully, not dressed for a day that hadn’t yet dawned and being driven who knew where by the Army. Long experience with partners past had taught Fex that in the absence of someone to finger for their predicament, he was likely to get the undeserved blame. He knew his irritation at Nicoletta’s grouchiness was just as undeserved. Wisdom told him to shut his mouth, shut his eyes, and try to snatch what sleep might be left to him during this ride to…

Where were they going? Somewhere farther than the training fields, and in the opposite direction, it seemed. The car rocked gently as they sped down the otherwise deserted road. If he’d been a little more awake, he’d have been paying better attention to the turns they’d already taken. Was that going to be part of this exercise? Figure out where they were, and how to get back? But if this was to be an orienteering exercise they’d have said dress for work, not for travel, surely?

Nothing to do now but forgo that precious sleep and try to pay attention to landmarks as they passed by. Maybe Nicoletta had been blessed with the presence of mind to track their early course. He thought about asking her, glanced at her uninvitingly turned shoulder, and thought better of it.

After a few miles, it was obvious this was not going to be a simple ‘find your way’ exercise. Wherever they were going, it was too far from the base to be expected to hoof it back. They weren’t more than an hour’s drive from the Capitol—maybe they were going to Union Station to catch a train somewhere. That would explain the ‘dress for travel’ instruction.

Maybe this was to be a mission, not an exercise. But they hadn’t been briefed, and there was nothing that looked like a file folder in the passenger compartment. Fex leaned forward and rapped on the glass that separated front and back seats.

The soldier in the passenger seat slid the window open. “Yeah?”

“Is there any briefing material for us that we should be reading?”

“Nah,” the soldier said. “You’ll get it when we get there.”

“Where is there?” Fex asked.

“The Field.” The glass slid shut with a click.

The field. How enlightening. Which field? The field.

Nicoletta chimed in with a sleepily disgruntled, “They’ll tell us when they want us to know, which, in my experience, has been at the most inconvenient time.”

“True,” Fex agreed. He sighed, yawned so hard he groaned involuntarily, crossed his arms over his chest, and settled down into the seat. With nothing better to do, he would sleep.

It seemed like less than five minutes had passed before the car slowed to a stop outside a razor-wire topped fence. It had to have been longer, though; the still-hidden sun had begun to tint the eastern sky in shades of peach and mauve. They seemed to be at some sort of high-security perimeter, about to cross through a manned checkpoint. The Army guards looked like they meant business, armed with rifles as well as sidearms. One of them saluted someone inside a guard house and opened a large, wheeled section of fence in front of the car. As soon as the car was through, Fex twisted around to see the boy push the gate shut again.

If this was ‘the field’ it was well named. Nothing but rich green timothy and a few scattered elms and maples graced the rolling hills around them. Soon the terrain flattened out, and they passed through another guarded checkpoint, this one with an even higher perimeter fence. After that, they came around a bend in the road and Fex caught sight of a flash of orange fabric. A flag? No, a wind funnel ruffling in the breeze. Fex gasped.

“Nicoletta, look,” he said, pointing in his astonishment like an ill-mannered child.

Moored in a portion of the field was an enormous, silver-skinned dirigible.

Nicoletta opened one eye to squint her displeasure at being awakened, but sat up as soon as she saw what Fex was pointing at. She stared at it for a long moment, sniffed audibly as if she could catch its scent, and stared some more with a consternated set to her jaw. Finally, when it was clear they were getting closer to the thing and she had no choice but to react, she said, in flat tones, “What is that?”

“An airship,” Fex said. “I’ve seen photos in the newsweeklies. I had no idea they were this big.”

She climbed partway across Fex to get a better look, propriety playing second fiddle to the remarkable sight in front of them. She scanned it up and down, with a deepening frown. “It can’t be.”

“It can’t?” Fex asked. He obliged her by leaning as far back into the seat as possible, so she had plenty of space to access the window. “Why can’t it? It is.”

“Well, it—” Still staring out the window, she gestured at it a little wildly. “It—just—” Her flailing hand nearly grazed Fex’s cheek. “It just can’t!” she finished. Her voice had taken on a slightly hysterical quality.

Was she afraid of it? Why?

The car slowed to a stop, the engine cut off, and the driver and other soldier both got out and opened the passenger doors, one on either side of the car, so Fex and Nicoletta could exit.

Fex climbed out and stood to the side to wait for Nicoletta and the driver to come around to him. He didn’t take his eyes off the dirigible. It was absolutely mammoth. Colossal. There wasn’t an English word adequate to describe how huge the thing was, and there wasn’t one in French, German, Italian, Icelandic, or Polish, either. Not even in Feylish, the language of his people, was there a word that really encapsulated the sky-filling massiveness of the airship.

“Big, ain’t she?” said the soldier, whom Fex had almost forgotten was standing there.

“Yes,” Fex said. “Big.” It was like calling a seven-foot man named William ‘Tiny Bill.’

Behind them there were indistinct sounds of heated conversation, followed by a raised voice as the driver stood back up. “Sir? Would you please ask your partner to exit the car?”

That finally got Fex to take his eyes off the airship. “What?”

“Ask your partner,” the driver repeated, “to exit the car.”

“What do you mean?” Fex asked, genuinely baffled. Was this some new protocol that required him to escort Nicoletta out of the vehicle? He turned around and found that indeed, Nicoletta was still seated inside the car, with an intractable air of immobility.

The driver gestured irritably at Nicoletta, and shook his head at Fex, indicating his conviction that this was Fex’s problem to solve.

Fex leaned down and put his head back inside.

“I’m not getting out of this car,” Nicoletta declared. She was braced with stiff legs and rigid arms, as if the driver, or Fex, were about to try to drag her out by force.

There was something at play here that probably did need Fex to defuse it. He crouched down so he was eye-level with Nicoletta.

“It’s… It’s just like a balloon, only larger,” he said. “It isn’t dangerous.”

She narrowed her eyes at him like he was playing a trick on her, and leaned over to close the gap between them. “Do you know what that smells like, Mr. Woodward?” she asked crisply. The ‘Mr. Woodward’ took Fex by surprise. How upset was she?

She jabbed a finger toward the dirigible without looking at it, then quickly put her hand back down. “It smells like people falling out of the sky. On fire.” Her eyes bored into Fex’s. “Screaming. And do you know what balloons do, Mr. Woodward?” Her glare intensified. “Balloons pop.” She leaned back and raised her voice to carry. “And I can smell that deer carcass out there!”

“The hell is she talking about?” the soldier asked someone with him, not the driver, because he was still standing outside the open car door next to Nicoletta. Fex stood up and sniffed at the air. Grass. Dirt. Hot metal. Something like machine oil. And faintly, if he concentrated, the nauseating scent of decay.

“Shot at a coyote last night, over that way,” said a new voice. “It got away though.” They had an audience now of soldiers in fatigues, some wearing the berets that marked them as members of the air corps. Fex followed the line the coyote-shooter indicated and there, partly hidden in the tall grass, was what looked like something from a butcher’s shop. Ribs, purplish muscle, blood…

He ducked back down to talk to Nicoletta again. “There’s a dead deer, like you say. But the other things… Not.” He frowned, then climbed into the car and sat next to her.

“Oh hell, not him now, too,” the driver complained. Fex ignored him.

“Nicoletta, are you afraid it could happen, or are you prognosticating?”

She looked at him blankly for half a blink, then gave him a narrow, suspicious look. “Who said anything about being afraid?” She bit her words out so hard she practically left them bleeding. “I’ve done everything they’ve asked—every blessed thing—but this is too much!” She jabbed an accusatory gesture at the airship. “If you get too high in the air,” she told him with gritty seriousness, “the air around you stops working properly and you stop breathing. And what’s to keep that thing up, anyway? It’s not like they have a flock of birds tucked into that balloon! No!”

Absolute, uncompromising refusal. Before Fex could even try to find an angle to use on her, she jutted her chin out to clad her argument in iron chains. “I’ve driven in dark trucks, I’ve dressed up like some high hat Jane, I even chased you down, but I am not getting into that death trap!”

She seemed to run out of steam then, or think she’d proven her point. Pressed back against the car bench, with her arms crossed over her chest and a mulish glower on her face, she snorted out a sharp breath.

But—this was a key point in Fex’s mind—she didn’t turn her head away or shut her eyes. She watched him like a cat watched a snake, bristling with defensive alarm, waiting for him to say something. He’d have to navigate these waters carefully.

Point out that no one had said they were getting “on that thing”? A fool’s argument. Why drive them out to this airfield at the crack of dawn, through multiple layers of security, right up to the dirigible’s mooring berth, if they weren’t about to be told they were expected to board it?

Mention that her idea that the air would ‘just stop working properly’ was a superstition based on a misunderstanding of science, and she’d probably picked it up from one of those sensational Sunday afternoon radio programs? Not only would that insult her intelligence, but she wasn’t entirely wrong. The air was thinner at elevation—anyone who’d attempted to scale a mountain over 10,000 feet high could attest to that. The fact that birds flew that high and higher would probably do nothing to persuade her.

He could, he supposed, appeal to her fear that they would take her refusal to cooperate out on Vano, but that would make Fex little better than their coercers were. Plus the soldiers were watching this little drama play out—the less they knew about Fex’s understanding of that situation, the better.

At least there was something he could do about that. He put his head out of the car, looked at the closest military man, and said, “Give us just a few minutes, eh?” Then ducked back in and pulled the door shut behind him without waiting for permission. The driver was still staring in from the open door behind Nicoletta. Fex caught the young man’s eye and mouthed, ‘women’ at him, and mimed shutting the door. The driver rolled his eyes at Fex, but he did shut the heavy door with a sharp click.

Immediately, Fex raised an illusion of silence around the two of them. He gave Nicoletta the little four-fingered wave they’d worked out as a signal for when he was creating a glamour she needed to know about, then leaned back in the seat next to her, as if they had all the time in the world.

“You know,” he said in calm tones, “when they first started running the railroads, the very first ones, there were a lot of people who wouldn’t go near them. It wasn’t the soot or the noise or the size of the locomotives. Or even the fact that the big boilers sometimes blew themselves up. It was the speed. They said—swore it was fact—that going anything over a horse’s top speed would yank a person’s internals right out through whatever avenue was closest. Brains out the ears, intestines out the—well, you get the idea.”

Nicoletta graced him with a venomous look. “Are you comparing me to one of those fools?”

“Not at all,” Fex said. “I was going to tell you I was one of those fools. At first. I had to have proof that it was safe before I’d even get within a half mile of the tracks. It was only after they’d shipped cattle and sheep to and from my village without any eviscerations that I finally allowed my friends to persuade me to ride. And even then I was, shall we say, a little keyed up. It took half a bottle of brandy to get me calm enough to board.”

She didn’t interject, but the incandescent ire on her face, if anything, intensified. She tugged at the chain around her throat as if it were suddenly tight, or she might be able to unlock it without the little key Dunfre’s guards used to free her from it.

“I guess I didn’t really think it would help,” Fex said. “But I hoped… Hang it, never mind what I hoped.” He turned his whole body towards her. “Nicoletta, listen. If I had half a bottle of brandy I’d split it between the two of us right now, and wish it had been full. But you know what’s going to happen. If they want us on that airship, either we get out of the car and walk on board under our own power, or they’ll do whatever it takes to get us there. There are at least twenty of them out there, all of them armed, and I don’t doubt at least one of them has chloroform or some other knockout drug to hand.”

Nicoletta’s face took on the greeny-white tinge of sour milk. Her mouth twisted in a tooth-baring snarl, revealing canines that grew longer and sharper in front of Fex’s eyes. Her jutting jaw deformed into the beginning of a snout. The skin on her nose turned black, dark whiskers and pale fur sprouted from her upper lip, over blackening lips. Her ears took on long points like but unlike Fex’s natural ears, and a rank, animal scent filled the air inside the car. Black nails raked the upholstery, and she growled, sending a chill right down Fex’s spine.

As she transformed, the chain around her thickening neck strained; she instantly made an effort to claw it away, eyes going wild as she turned her head from side to side in obvious distress. Wolf and human features fought with each other, but in the end she managed to mostly regain her human form.

Her harsh breathing was almost as loud as Fex’s heartbeat was in his own ears, as they both sat frozen. Eventually, she lifted her head and met Fex’s eyes, but for only a second. Then she exploded into motion, kicking the door open so hard it recoiled on its hinge, and flung herself out of the car.

“What the— Oh shit, what is that thing?” one of the airmen yelped.

Fex dove out after Nicoletta in time to see a widening circle of soldiers surging around the two of them, several with pistols cocked and aimed. Nicoletta’s not-quite human eyes rolled wildly as she snapped her fanged jaws at the threats.

Fex slammed a glamour together so fast he tasted bile on his back teeth. Fog. No, smoke. Acrid, tear-inducing, yellowish smoke. It hid him and Nicoletta from prying eyes, and added a level of panic to the pandemonium, as the guards and airmen choked on the illusory chemical. A siren from somewhere nearby started to wail.

“Gas! Gas attack!” someone shouted, and other voices took up the cry. “Masks on!” a deep voice commanded.

“Get on the ground,” Fex shouted at Nicoletta.

She was ahead of him, already on her knees, with her hands clamped over her ears as she struggled to keep her human form. The instant the transformation started to get away from her, she’d choke on the tight chain around her throat, and, coughing and snarling, shift back again. The first two times Fex tried to get close to her, she lunged at him, but the third time he called her name she seemed to recognize him. He got close enough to say softly, “The smoke is a glamour. Can you keep yourself in human form? One of them is about to find what he thinks is the gas canister.”

As if on cue, a coughing voice shrilled, “Got it… Got it, Sarge! It’s a training round.”

Nicoletta still had her hands over her ears. “Yes!” she blurted. “Tell them to shut off the sirens!” She winced and ducked at every shout and clang from the soldiers.

“Order! I will have order!” That was undeniably the voice of authority. A chorus of “Yes sir”s echoed back. The siren whimpered into silence, replaced by the hiss of water from a fire hose someone was using to clear the ‘smoke’ away.

Fex picked at the threads of his glamour and let it unravel naturally, to fall from each soldier’s vision in its own time. Before the air could clear completely, he tried to pull Nicoletta behind the shelter of the car door, but she jerked sharply away with a snap of teeth.

Footsteps approached, and Fex was running out of options. He hated to use force. She’d never forgive him if he did, but if she didn’t calm down, what choice would there be?

But it didn’t come to that.

“Mr. Woodward, Miss Heron seems to be in need of medical attention.” Fex looked up to see a thin-faced man he didn’t recognize in a captain’s uniform. He carried a little black satchel, like a visiting doctor on rounds.

Nicoletta lunged at the captain, shifting in and out of the extent of her wolf form that the collar allowed. One of the soldiers in fatigues tackled her back before she could tear out the man’s throat. She snarled and spit and yowled through a series of inhuman vocalizations that might have been attempts at words, thrashing against the man without seeming awareness of anything but her deep-seated desire to end the captain’s life.

There was a flash of silver in the captain’s hand as he jabbed Nicoletta with a glass syringe and depressed the plunger. She sagged in the soldier’s grip and quit fighting.

“Thank you, corporal,” the doctor said. He gestured toward a pair of men in fatigues and berets. “Airmen Menzies and Hall will see you aboard, Mr. Woodward.”

He didn’t wait for a response from Fex. Nicoletta was fully human-appearing now, with her hair wild and her dress askew, drooping in the soldier’s grip. She whimpered like a child—or a puppy, Fex thought—and turned glazed eyes on him.

“Nicoletta?” He almost whispered her name, afraid to startle her again. Her half-closed eyelids flickered, but she didn’t seem to have the power of speech. Her muscles went lax, her eyes fell shut, and the soldier holding her grunted as he took her full weight.

“Mr. Woodward?” one of the airmen said. “Please come with us.”

Fex held a hand up, waiting to watch another soldier approach carrying a furled stretcher. Under the captain’s supervision, the new soldier and the man holding Nicoletta loaded her onto the canvas and started towards the infernal airship.

“Mr. Woodward?” the airman prompted again. Fex followed him.