Chapter 24
The Raven House common room was crowded; in fact, Levi hadn’t yet met several of the students in the room. He saw Glint, his friend waving him over and holding out a tray of cubes. Levi declined silently, though he did accept a goblet and tentatively sniffed it. When the smell of apple cider and cinnamon hit his nose, he smiled wide—it wasn’t a flavor he had realized was present on Taryl. He sipped the drink as he turned to look at Tawny. The house mistress stood by the large fire, and for once she was dressed in something other than a power suit; a dark blue dress clung to her frame with a charcoal corset laced tight over top. A black apron-like skirt was wrapped around her hips and held a number of potions and a small red book. Her smoke-gray hair had been pulled behind her head and twisted into a bun, accentuating her long ears and elegant features. She had a black leather bracer woven around each forearm and shin, but her feet were bare. Levi realized she looked quite intimidating. He liked it.
“Students, I know rumors are already circulating. Let me start by saying we are not under attack, nor is Taryl at war with the Costilian Empire. At this moment we are not sure why the Empire has brought several airships to the Academy, but they have signaled the intention for peaceful discourse. For the moment I ask that all of you prepare for a potentially unpleasant situation, but remain cautiously optimistic. The Academy has had envoys arrive before; this could be an unexpected diplomatic mission. The other house mistresses and I will be meeting with the landing party momentarily. I’m going to send locations to your emblems, as well as teams I’d like you to join. These groups will be made up from students of several Houses, so play nice.” She spoke in a smooth, steady pace. The entire time she’d been speaking, she had been touching a slim silver wand that rested in a sheath on the back of one of her bracers.
She gave them a once over, nodded, then she left.
Levi looked over at Glint and his small friend shrugged. Glint’s ears were flapping violently on either side of his head and Zuzan was chittering softly in Levi’s ear. Levi sipped his drink for a moment, then he drained it and sighed. “Well, this should be interesting,” he murmured as he felt a tingle run over his forearm. The entire common room shifted as each student reached for the tattoo etched onto their skin. He closed his eyes to take in the information. Levi Walker, please report to the eastern arc of the outer wall—House mistress Tawny Goldenrod “Okay, looks like I’ve got a position on the catwalk of the uppermost wall,” he said, looking down at Glint.
Glint straightened and picked his walking stick up from where it had rested on the floor. Levi saw that several new pipes and crystals had been woven around its shaft and the lantern head had been seriously refined; it was smaller and looked absolutely lethal. “Me too. We’re together, I think,” his friend said and Levi grinned.
“Just like old times, right?” he joked, though Glint shook his head rapidly from side to side.
“I hope not. The last thing I want is to see more Horrors!” he protested and Levi just shrugged with a smile. The pair did a quick sweep of their rooms to make sure they had the gear they needed, then they headed out of the tower. It was quite a walk to get to the outer walls, since the Academy was huge. Levi could have gone faster, but he wasn’t going to leave Glint behind. For one thing, his friend knew the grounds a lot better than he did. For another, Glint amused him with his complaining. The swamp imp was maintaining a steady monologue of profanity about races that felt the need to construct every floor out of stone, and finally Levi had to tease him.
“Do you really think they could carpet an entire castle with moss and grass?” he asked.
Glint just shrugged and looked at him from behind his silver goggles. “I don’t see why not; my people have done it, as have others. It makes dealing with spills easy, since the plants just absorb what you drop. Though, only savages use that method to deal with their bathroom needs,” he muttered.
Levi decided to drop the conversation—he didn’t want his head full of images of gremlin-like creatures taking a piss in the middle of a classroom because they were watering the grass. “That’s gross, man,” he agreed. Glint nodded vigorously, and then the pair of them pushed open a large iron-bound door leading out onto the wall.
The outermost wall was about fifty feet tall and over eight feet wide. The actual catwalk was only about four feet wide, because the blocks that made up the wall were two feet thick. As far as Levi knew, the space under the catwalk was filled with some kind of enchanted sand meant to absorb impacts and make it harder for the big stone blocks to crack. Some of the towers between this wall and the next poked above it, but this was the shortest area of the Academy. The walls reminded him of a wedding cake; each ring inward was fifteen feet taller than the next, outermost, wall.
His thoughts on the architecture fled when he saw who was standing on the walls waiting for them. Elizabeth Zephyr, Darren, and one of Darren’s cronies. Glint came to a stop alongside of him and Flix slid up on his shoulder until she was perched on her clawed feet, ready to take to the air at a moment’s notice. She trilled a sharp, angry sound and her amber eyes narrowed to slits. Levi had to reach up and scratch her between the horns just to make sure she didn’t launch herself at Darren. He felt a churning anger inside his companion. Zuzan wasn’t nearly so discreet—she climbed onto his head and began to chirp and squeak angrily, waving a small clawed fist in the direction of Crane House. The squirrel went so far as to reach into one of her cheek pouches and pull out a peeled nut, then she lobbed the tiny missile at Darren with a disgusted squeak.
“No, Zuzan, I can’t just blast him off the wall and watch him hit the ground. I’ll keep it in mind if he gets out of line though,” Levi consoled his friend as he walked forward. He didn’t blame Glint for hanging back a bit. The swamp imp wasn’t meant for direct combat, and his magics weren’t offensive in nature, though Levi was betting Glint had a few unpleasant surprises waiting in his staff. He heard dials turning and faint whistles as mana vapor was released into the air. He could feel energy pulsing behind him, which was new. Did working with Nox increase my sensitivity? he wondered. He set that aside for the moment as he tightened his fingers around the head of his cane, then stood up straight before the Crane House students.
“Are we going to have problems?” he asked. Levi didn’t see a reason to beat around the bush—he wanted to know right now if he had to deal with Darren. He really didn’t want to give the asshole a chance to do something sketchy like shove Glint off the wall if the Costilian Empire attacked. Darren didn’t strike him as a guy with a working moral compass; the needle was stuck on asshole.
Darren puffed up like a balloon and Levi braced himself for the explosion. To his surprise, the tall canid let out a curse and turned his back on them. The dark-haired man in his designer uniform crossed his arms over his chest and stared out over the wall. The sycophant beside him tried to pull off a disdainful sneer, but he just wound up looking confused. Levi wasn’t even sure what the guy was—he had three eyes and two-fingered hands. The red skin wasn’t that odd after some of the people Levi had seen—it was the fish-like fins on either side of his head that confused him. Overall, the man looked like a red version of the mutated fish from a cartoon show he’d watched.
“No, Levi Walker, we won’t be having any problems. We have no intention of squandering this chance to prove to everyone the superiority of Crane House,” Elizabeth said. She sounded like she was talking down to him, but Levi saw anxiety in her eyes and her fingers twitched like she was trying to avoid petting Zuzan. He thought he spotted the beginning of tears in her eyes when he nodded. She offered a shaky smile and turned away from them. Levi saw her features compose themselves once more into the mask of disdain she so often wore in the cafeteria. He looked down at Glint, but the imp was staring fixatedly at Darren’s back.
“Hey Glint, tell me about these airships, would you?” he asked. Levi wanted to distract his friend, but also he wanted to learn about the ships above them. The huge things were just hovering in the sky above the Academy, yet he didn’t see anything that was letting them maintain their position, aside from the propellers that had turned to angle down the length of the ships.
Glint lit up with a mania that almost had Levi groaning. He could tell his friend was about to launch into lecture mode, so Levi braced himself. “Sure!” Glint began. “Those are imperial cruisers—not the biggest ships, but on the larger side. They have seven engines according to the designs I’ve seen: three are in the front and maintain the gas balloons and the turning props. Two are in the midships and are responsible for the internal systems that keep the ship livable. The last two engines are completely dedicated to the props in the back, and they produce the thrust that lets the ship move even under bad winds. The hull is actually three layers. The outermost layer is armoring, lightweight but tough and layered like scales. Under that you have a special kind of foam that reduces the weight of the ship inside. That foam covers the middle hull, which has the levitation and anchoring runes etched in place, and it houses the mana vapor piping that runs all over the ship. Those runes let the ship hover; it also allows them to hold a stationary position when navigation demands it. There are all sorts of maintenance tunnels and shafts in that hull for the engineers to move through. There’s another layer of foam, and then the inner hull. That hull is tougher, but usually more vulnerable to piercing, since it’s meant to protect the people inside in case of a crash, flexible despite its durability. Inside that hull you get the runes for heating, cooling, things they need to survive high altitudes. Despite how big the ship looks from down here, the inside is probably only two-thirds as big when it comes to cargo and the ability to house people. Some areas contain cargo spaces with their own armor, or in the case of a cruiser, hangars for drop troops and bombs. There are probably also weapons systems hidden behind all those ports. I’ve heard the Costilian Empire favors heat cannons and piercing rifles that use built-up mana vapor to send jets of superheated plasma or incredibly dense metal spikes at their enemies.” Glint’s ears folded down against his head. Levi watched the swamp imp stare up at the ships and he looked himself. The idea of those weapons was… imposing.
Levi noted that despite their attitudes, the Crane students were listening intently to his friend. He smirked—Glint was showing them all up with his knowledge. “How vulnerable are the balloons holding those ships up?” he asked. Levi couldn’t help but think that depending on a gigantic balloon to keep a vessel that size in the air was risky. He saw Darren and his thug turn to stare upwards as they took in the balloons.
“A lot of people wonder that, and I get why. When they first started building airships they used a single balloon, but that was a terrible idea. When the balloon tore, that was it, everything came crashing down. Some races were even stupid enough to use flammable gas—can you imagine the horror? Then they started designing the balloons in what is called a grape cluster, which is twelve high-strength balloons in a sack. Those sacks have a flexible pipe system inside and a sensor that controls the gas inside each balloon. The sensors connect to something called a vine, which is a sack of sacks. Each balloon is a row of vines, which means while you can pop several of the grapes, it takes a lot more damage than people realize to drop the whole ship. The ships are usually overdesigned in terms of lift, because nobody wants to risk an airship crash,” his voice dropped as he whispered. “Those big mana vapor engines can do a lot of damage if they rupture the wrong way.” Glint shivered as he said the last. Glint blinked his huge eyes several times, then shook his head. He looked calmer as he resumed his lecture. “Each of those ships can probably stay in the air with half the balloons on their vines, but the bigger problem is balance. If you destroy all the port-side balloons, the ship is going to roll. That’s why warships have a system that lets them shift individual vines from one side to the other. It’s a slow process though, and it’s best done on the ground, because a lot can go wrong—still, it has saved lives.”
Levi pictured that: crews desperately trying to move bundles of heavy balloons inside the giant bags while the wind tore around them because the ship was going down. He stared up at the ship and noticed something, a seam which split a portion of the ship’s lower section. As he watched, the vessel’s hull spread as the doors to the hatch slid inward to reveal a large bay inside. Levi couldn’t make out what was inside the bay, since it was far too high up, but raised a hand to shield his eyes from the sun and squinted. “Anyone able to see what is going on up there?” he asked.
Glint touched the side of his goggles, and the lenses produced a whirring sound. His eyes seemed to grow larger inside the silver frame, then he said what they’d all been waiting to hear:
“They’re launching a ship to come down. Looks like the Empire is going to visit.”
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