The Blackwing War by K.B. Spangler

Author:K.B. Spangler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: magic, technology, deep, teleportation, psychic powers, lancaster, logistics, deep witches, stoneskin, tembi stoneskin
Publisher: K.B. Spangler

SIXTEEN

If Bayle had come along, it would have been a different kind of trip. Bayle would have fidgeted all over the cab of this short-range zipcraft, pretending they weren’t awash in rotting food and the stench left behind from what could have been livestock. She never could convince anyone that she didn’t mind substandard cleanliness, but it was always entertaining to watch her try. Sadly, her students and her schedule couldn’t keep without asking the Deep to break even more laws of physics, so today it was just Tembi and Gallimore rocketing through the stars.

Gallimore was violently embarrassed.

“Again, I am sorry,” Gallimore said, as they bustled around the cab, sweeping trash into a bin.

“Don’t clean up on my account,” Tembi replied. She had moved her chair so she could rest her head against the ship’s hull and listen as the sounds from its engines purred along the curves of her skull. The song of an FTL ship was a toneless substitute for the Deep, but it was a kind of music nonetheless. An image of the Deep flying alongside the zipcraft as it cut through spacetime appeared against the backs of her eyelids: she wondered if it was her own imagination, or if the Deep was truly playing with the ship, swooping around and above it in great invisible arcs.

“I bought this craft new three years ago,” Gallimore said, followed by the sounds of more garbage being stuffed into the bin. “Brand-new. I knew it wasn’t to be mine, and I bought it with Cendo’s purse, but my hands were the first on the sticks. I coaxed it through its maiden flight, heard its body creak as it came to life… This—this!—is what has become of it?”

“Are all smugglers so prissy?”

Gallimore snorted, and Tembi opened her eyes to see them toss the bin into a corner still ankle-deep in trash. “Obviously not.” They sighed and kicked the nearest chair, which rocked on its antigrav rollers before bobbing upright. Gallimore sat, and pushed against the floor until their chair came to rest beside Tembi’s. “We should take pride in what we do and what we own, don’t you think?”

Tembi reached up to touch her ears, where shards of dyed ceramic had replaced her usual gold rings. She felt a vague sense of loss, even now, even when all she needed to do was ask the Deep to exchange clay for gold. “Sometimes.”

“What would you do, if you had not become a Witch?”

Kalais rumbled through her memory. “Probably live and die on the corner,” she grumbled, half to herself.

“You?” Gallimore laughed. “No. Some are born for the street, and others for the stars. Luck might start you on your way, but I feel you would have made your own luck and made it there regardless.”

“Perhaps.” Tembi thought of her own family, her first mother and her three older sisters, all of them living in an old tatty shipping box which rested within a stack of other tatty shipping boxes, the four of

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