#ailbhe cfd

~

The sun was setting over the waters of the bay. Vaska sat with Ailbhe on the deck, hand in hand, enjoying a rare moment of peace.

“It's not bad,” Vaska was saying, stroking her thumb over the back of Ailbhe's hand, “I just didn't think it would be this hard.”

“You're not regretting it, are you?” Ailbhe said. She narrowed her eyes against the distant sun and rested her head on Vaska's shoulder. There was a slight teasing note in her voice.

“No,” Vaska said. “You know me, I'll whine about anything.” The subject of her current complaints was her apprenticeship. Of course she'd expected it to be challenging, but she hadn't expected everything else. “But, seriously,” she went on, “I'm fairly sure that feeding the cats isn't a part of my training, Luke's just too lazy to do it themself.”

Ailbhe snorted. “That's what being an apprentice is like, Vaska. You basically become an errand boy for your teacher. Be thankful that all you have to do is feed the cats.”

“I will not be thankful,” Vaska said, smiling. “That horrible floracat almost bit my hand off yesterday. Look!” And she raised her other hand, revealing several claw marks and a couple of puncture wounds.

“Looks like a good opportunity to practice healing magic,” Ailbhe said mildly.

“Oh, um...” Vaska glanced around the deck, to make sure no one was listening in. The other dragons seemed to be minding their own business, but she lowered her voice anyway. “I still haven't – I still can't bring myself to... actually heal anything...”

Ailbhe's warm golden eyes were full of understanding. She nodded, tightening her grip on Vaska's hand. On this side of the ship, the view north was almost uninterrupted. The southern coast of the Starfall Isles curving away from the setting sun, outlined by orange light.

A hollow thud sounded, like distant thunder.

“What's that?” Ailbhe said quietly, frowning. Vaska followed her gaze, for a moment not totally sure what she was looking at. Just at the mouth of the bay, close to the Starfall Isles, was a plume of smoke, like a bonfire. It rose from the cliffs facing the water.

A wave splashed against the side of the ship, tilting it dramatically. Vaska grabbed onto the rigging, clinging onto Ailbhe with her other hand. Shouts of irritation rose from elsewhere on the deck. Slowly, the ship righted itself.

As Vaska searched the calm water for whatever had produced the wave, she saw it – a distant flash of light from the cliffs, followed in seconds by another thud. She leant over the railing and scanned the water, but the setting sun had cast that area into shadow, so that only the cliffs showed against the violet sky.

“There's something there,” she said, tugging on Ailbhe's hand. “Right? Under the cliffs...”

The thing on the cliff flashed again, and this time it seemed to find its target in the waters below. Flames exploded from a part of the water where there should not have been anything at all, let alone a ship. But there it was, invisible but wreathed in a halo of flame and sparks. It was a ship, but Vaska had never seen one that big before, or that strangely-shaped.

The Cú na Mara's alarm bells began to ring, calling the dragons of the clan to attention. Tadhg, the lookout, fluttered down from the topmast and made straight for the sterncastle.

The artillery on the cliffs fired and missed again. The flames were already going out, leaving nothing but a pall of smoke. For a moment there was silence, and the strange ships were invisible again.

Leo had made it onto the deck, pulling on a shirt as Tadhg trailed after him and narrated what he'd seen by the cliffs.

“I don't know why you bothered me,” Leo sighed, scrubbing sleep out of his eyes. “If it's just two people going at it in the distance, who cares? As long as they don't get any closer.”

Abruptly, the invisibility of the ships cut out. There were three of them, all long and low like barges, each four times the size of the Cú na Mara. Each flew a dark purple flag from the stern. But, strangest of all, each carried structures hundreds of paces long, enormous cylinders that lay along the length of each barge, cylinders that almost resembled-

Vaska's eyes went wide. She tried to yell out a warning, but she wasn't fast enough. With a blast like a volcano erupting, one of the enormous cannons fired at the cliff. There was a flash of light that would have blinded any given non-Light dragon, and under this harsh glow the cliff simply disintegrated. Chunks of rock broke apart in ringing silence, raining into the water, forcing up waves that didn't seem to budge the cannon-barges.

The Cú na Mara tipped again, rolling in the water with terrible slowness. The deck became steeper and steeper, and Vaska shouted but all she could hear was her heart pounding in her ears. She grabbed for a rope, slipped, and found herself facing a fall down a deck that was now almost vertical. Ailbhe caught her by the wrist, hooking her other arm into the rigging.

Someone ran past, arms out for balance. Vaska just about recognised the odd shape of Tiberius the water guardian before he dived off the edge of the ship. Just as Vaska was considering simply transforming and abandoning ship, a huge scaly paw appeared over the side of the ship. It gripped the wood, splintering the railings and severing ropes, and pulled. The ship shuddered, then started to tip back. The deck became horizontal again.

Tiberius didn't release his hold. The choppy waves were dying down, but the cannons on the barges still faced the decimated coastline.

Sound gradually returned to the world. Everyone was shouting at once, scrambling with the sails and cut ropes.

“Wait, stop!” Leo waved for everyone's attention. “They haven't noticed us yet. We need to stay as still as possible. Put out those torches – if they see us they will kill us.”

There was no way of telling whether or not the clan had been noticed. The barges continued to drift along the coastline, moving south. Vaska held her breath, her heart pounding, as they drew closer and closer. She saw what she should have noticed much sooner – that there was a fleet of smaller ships accompanying the barges, hidden among their bulk. A quarter of Rezann's army was in the bay, approaching the Cú na Mara. She closed her eyes and tried to think of something else, anything else, but all her mind would show her was that terrible moment in the old clan camp, when the army had come through the trees and left the clan in ruins. An echo of pain ran along her side, where she'd narrowly avoided being hit that day.

She bit her lip until she tasted blood.

One of the approaching vessels fired on the Cú na Mara. The thud of the carronade was followed almost instantly by the sound of a cannonball splashing into the water. A warning shot.

“What do we do?” someone asked Leo in a tiny, strangled voice.

“I don't... I don't know,” he said.

He delayed just a second too long. The next shot hit the Cú na Mara's foremast and blew it to splinters. Ailbhe shoved Vaska down, shielding her from the rain of splinters and shards of wood. Almost instantly, the Cú na Mara fired back; dragons in the gun-decks must have been prepared for it. It was a mistake, of course.

Engaging an entire fleet of ships and three enormous barges was folly at its finest. Vaska flattened herself to the top deck and clamped her hands over her ears, hating that her biggest fear was that she would be called to heal, rather than that there would be people who required healing in the first place.

There was a short lull. Then one of the Commander's smaller ships simply blew itself to bits. A corona of pink light shredded sailcloth and wood alike in a soundless explosion. The ship went down almost instantly, leaving a scattered trail of debris on the water's surface.

Before Vaska had a chance to absorb this, another ship blew up. When it happened a third time, she saw it – a burning neon rune appeared on the ship's hull, spitting out sparks and steam before simply exploding. She turned on the spot, terrified that some third party had come to complicate things, but the surrounding waters were empty and quiet. She did see John, though. He leant against the rigging while he aimed, his cane upright at his side, both his hands joined as if in prayer. He formed an aperture with his fingers and a new rune flickered into life in the gap.

Leo stood beside him. “Can you get the barges?” Another cannonball whistled overhead and Leo ducked, but John didn't seem capable of much movement. Steam rose from his waistcoat.

“If I know Commander Rezann,” John said, taking aim again, “he will have placed wards on the cannons. But I can aim for the boats, instead...” He spread his hands, making room for a larger rune this time. Vaska could only stare, feeling thoroughly inadequate and useless.

A sparking pink rune appeared on the side of one of the barges, right above the waterline.

“Get down!” John called. Vaska fell to her knees, gathering up Ailbhe in her arms and squeezing her eyes shut. Ailbhe trembled slightly, her breaths harsh on the side of Vaska's face.

The great flash of pink light burned through Vaska's eyelids. Heat grazed the back of her head. This magic was strangely familiar to her – despite its colour, it almost resembled her own Light spells, but was just alien enough to raise the hairs all over her body. She cracked an eye open and glanced across the water. The barge had been halved, and dragons swarmed over its surface, trying to hoist up the cannon before it sank with some success. Some kind of flotation device had deployed under the cannon, so even as the barge broke apart around it, it did not sink.

John was panting now, his clothes burnt in large patches. One of his eyes was bleeding. But he took aim again, this time for the cannon itself. In the split second before the inevitable explosion, Vaska caught sight of his face and shuddered, an instinctive wariness rising in her at the sight of his eyes, one gold and one magenta.

Then the entire world exploded, and Vaska didn't duck in time.

She woke to a terrible ringing and a blur of gold; Ailbhe was leaning over her, tapping her cheeks, trying to rouse her. Vaska blinked and sat up with a groan that she did not hear, and brushed aside the spell tag that had been stuck to her forehead so that she could see. The deck was in chaos, dragons sprawled out on the cracked wood. Two of the masts were in ruins, but somehow the ship was moving at a fast clip, away from the burning smudge on the horizon.

She peered over the edge of the deck. Nothing remained of the fleet except a scattering of burning debris and the end of one of the cannons, still sinking under the surface. Within a couple of seconds, all three of them had vanished under.

“Ow...” Vaska shook her head, trying to clear it. “What – how are we moving?”

“Tiber's pulling us,” Ailbhe said. “But we need to get somewhere safe so that we can recover.” She nudged Vaska and pointed. “Should you, um, should you be helping them?”

A few paces away, all three of the clan's healers were kneeling around John, Fiach directing the other two, who wrote onto the same scroll in relative silence. Zeta looked like he'd been crying, Luke looked like they'd only just woken up; they wore one of Rúth's shirts, back-to-front.

Vaska approached. Most of John was hidden under a pile of spell tags. But the deck around him looked as if it had been hit with a mallet, cracks radiating out from where John lay. And in those cracks in the wood was something shiny and mottled yellow and pink.

“Hey,” Vaska said, clearing her throat. “Do you... need help?” Please say no, please say no...

“No, Vaska,” Fiach said, pausing his writing for an instant. “This is too advanced for you. But you can tend to the rest of the clan, so long as their injuries are minor.” He glanced down at Luke. “She can, can't she?”

“If she's been paying attention, yes,” Luke said. Vaska frowned for a moment, indignant. Of course she'd been paying attention.

She glanced back, at the various bruised and scraped-up dragons on the deck, then snatched up a stack of empty spell tags and a pen.

“Did we win?” she said, before going to do her job.

~

After fleeing the market in disgrace, the Cú na Mara had found another safe port a little further north. Morning dawned bright and breezy, as wind from the interior of the Windswept Plateau cleared away the oppressive heat rising from the Ashfall Waste.

Vaska stood at the crow's nest, gazing out at the coastline with wide eyes. It was so rare to see such a nice view without having to bother with flying. Leaning against the wooden railings, she stared off into the distance, trying to catch a glimpse of the Cloudsong. The cloud-scudded sky was empty of any tell-tale flash of orange.

“Hey! Hey, Vaska!”

She turned to see Lehine and Ailbhe pull themselves up into the crow's nest. Vaska studiously avoided looking at Ailbhe. Lehine was waving a couple of large green glass bottles.

“Check it out,” Lehine said excitedly, producing a corkscrew from somewhere in her clothing. Handing one bottle to Vaska, she set about starting to uncork the second.

Vaska turned over the bottle, searching for a label. “What is it?”

“I don't know,” Lehine said, “but it was the cheapest shit I could find at the market. The shopkeeper said it would burn my mouth out!” Apparently very enthusiastic about this thought, she gave the corkscrew a final inexpert tug and succeeded in opening the bottle.

“I've been telling her we shouldn't,” Ailbhe said, in a vaguely pained tone. “We can't be getting drunk when there's work to do, right? Why don't we wait until this evening?”

“Don't be silly,” Lehine said, taking a sip directly from the bottle. Lowering it with a gasp, she went on rather hoarsely, “there's nothing going on, Leo and the others are out looking for another market. We just have to hang out here until he gets back.” She elbowed Vaska with a grin. “Tell her, Vaska.”

Vaska bit her lip. Both of them raised good points, but disagreeing with Lehine would seem cowardly, and disagreeing with Ailbhe just didn't sit well with Vaska. But, at the same time, Vaska didn't want to look churlish in front of Ailbhe.

“It should be fine,” Vaska said. “We can just stay up here.”

Ailbhe thought about it for a good few seconds, a tiny, adorable frown on her face. Then she nodded and smiled, flashing her stubby tusks. Vaska felt herself blushing and quickly turned away again.

It was nice. Just the three of them and two bottles of unspecified alcohol that may or may not have actually been floor cleaner. They sat together, Lehine complaining loudly about how the market trip had been cut short the night before, Ailbhe visibly struggling not to gag every time she raised the bottle to her lips. Vaska sat directly beside her, thigh-to-thigh.

Ailbhe's hand lay, unsuspecting, on the floor. Vaska stared at it. The conversation – both Lehine and Ailbhe were now sharing stories about their childhood in the Sunbeam Ruins – had started to pass right over Vaska's head. Someone passed the bottle to her and she took it without really paying attention, almost spilling half her mouthful of drink down her front.

“Vaska, are you okay?” Ailbhe had turned in to face her; Lehine had wandered off and was trying to climb one of the innumerable ropes running from the mast.

Vaska nodded quickly. “I'm fine. Um. How are you?”

Ailbhe smiled. Vaska literally felt her heart skip a beat.

“I'm fine! Can't complain – I got a letter from my parents a couple of days ago, it was really sweet.” Her golden eyes were so warm. Any more drinking and Vaska would probably start composing poetry about them. She hastily set down the bottle.

“That's really great,” Vaska said, stumbling over her words a little. “I remember them from my training, your mother is so sweet. Your father, is, uh...”

Ailbhe laughed. “I know, I know, but you get used to it.” She sighed wistfully and reached for Vaska's hand all on her own. Abruptly, Vaska didn't know whether she was supposed to be happy or horrified, surely her hand was all awful and sweaty, why would Ailbhe ever want to hold it-

“I heard about the healing thing,” Ailbhe said, apparently blissfully unaware of the minor mental breakdown Vaska was going through. “That you can't get a proper tutor. That sucks!”

This was a good distraction. Vaska nodded. “I really wanted to be a healer, too, I thought it was, like... my whole future... but no one wants to teach me.” She squeezed Ailbhe's hand for support. “What's wrong with me? Luke was fine with it before but now I think I've done something wrong and I don't know what... maybe I should apologise...”

“Well, I don't know about that,” Ailbhe said. “I don't think you did anything wrong? Everyone is really busy and maybe the healers don't have time to take on an apprentice. It's probably not your fault.”

Vaska nodded, reassured. “Yeah... yeah, maybe I should just try in a couple of months, or when Fiach isn't so busy with Tadhg.”

“That's a good idea,” Ailbhe said encouragingly. She glanced away briefly, almost bashfully. “To tell you the truth, I really like hanging out with you and, um, it would suck if you had to have healing lessons all the time... but that's kind of selfish, I guess.” She shrugged limply. “Sorry.”

Do something, Vaska's inebriated mind screamed at her. Kiss her! But what if Vaska was reading the signals wrong, what if Ailbhe really did just think they should be friends, what if-

Oh, shit, she was still waiting for a response. “Uh,” Vaska stammered out, “don't be sorry. I feel the same way. This is... fun.”

Ailbhe was getting kind of close. Really close. Vaska couldn't move for a moment, and then it all just sort of came naturally to her, her awkwardness and anxiety scrubbed away by Ailbhe's warm presence.

They were inches apart, Vaska's eyes drifting shut in anticipation, when Lehine fell. The rope simply gave way, and with a yelp Lehine was gone.

“Oh my gods!” Ailbhe leapt to her feet, releasing Vaska, and ran to the edge of the crow's nest. Vaska followed, her heart pounding, and leant over.

Lehine had fallen once before from the top of the mainmast but that time she'd managed to catch a roll of sailcloth and break her fall. She'd had no such luck this time. Far below on the swaying deck, a small ring of dragons stood around Lehine's still form.

It was a mad rush to get down to the deck, Ailbhe hot on Vaska's heels, the rope ladders burning at their palms. Vaska reached the deck in record time, staggering slightly as she attempted to keep her balance.

“Is she okay?” she called, pushing through the dragons to reach Lehine.

Lehine was breathing, but her breaths were tight and shallow. She clutched at her calf, where – oh, gods, Vaska could hardly look. There were shards of bone tenting the skin, poking out in places, leaking golden blood. Vaska turned away, nauseated.

“Lehine!” Ailbhe threw herself down by Lehine's head. “Hey, stay awake. We'll get a healer.”

Lehine groaned something indecipherable.

“What was that?” Ailbhe said, concerned.

“Ha... ha,” Lehine said weakly. “you guys are so... fucking gay...”

“Ssh, don't speak,” Ailbhe said. She glanced up. “Someone get a healer!”

No one moved. Tadhg, the youngest in the crowd, raised his hand as if he was answering a question in class. “Um,” he said in a tiny voice, “dad and Luke are out... I think Zeta went with them.”

Vaska forced herself to look at Lehine's injury again. It was a broken leg. Just a broken leg. But the sight of it brought back horrible, blood-soaked memories of the clan camp burning around her, Faolín bleeding out... Vaska had been unable to help out then. But now she could. Before refusing to teach her any further, Luke had taught her how to mend broken bones.

How difficult could it be?

“They'll be back soon, right?” Ailbhe said.

Tadhg only shrugged.

“No, it's okay,” Vaska said, “I know this. Someone get me some paper and ink.”

“My hero,” Lehine gasped, as Tadhg ran off to plunder Fiach's supplies.

Now armed with paper and a pen, Vaska set about cutting the paper into spell tags, running through her limited knowledge in her head. There was the healing rune, the depth modifier, the time – well, she didn't know how long it would take, so she could leave that out. This was a bigger heal than the minor cuts and fractures she'd attempted in the past.

“Ailbhe, Ailbhe-” Lehine grabbed at Ailbhe's hand as Vaska started to write. “If I die here... promise me... you'll actually kiss Vaska-”

Vaska finished the first line of her spell and quickly placed the tag onto Lehine's leg. Blood began to soak into the paper.

“Shut up,” Ailbhe said, with a faint, shaky grin, “it's just a broken leg, you're not going to die.”

Lehine snorted in amusement. “On second thought, maybe... climbing the ropes was a mistake...”

The bleeding was stopping. Vaska added another script to the tag, this one focussing on drawing the fragments of bone back together into a whole. Heat radiated from the paper as the spells took effect.

Vaska was just finishing up the second tag when Lehine froze. A deep shudder ran through her body. Then she started to cough.

“Uh... that shouldn't happen,” Vaska said quietly. She glanced back at her tags, reading through the spell scripts, trying to spot the mistake. Lehine was hacking and retching now, blood running down from her lips. It looked like she was trying to cough up a lung. Ailbhe tried to hold her still but Lehine was shuddering, bringing up bloody mucous and... something else.

Tadhg, who'd hung around to watch, abruptly turned and waved. Vaska sat back, numbly reading and re-reading her spells, feeling increasingly faint. She'd done something wrong, but she didn't know what.

“Dad!” Tadhg called. “Hey, Lehine's hurt!”

Vaska turned. The exploration party had returned, just in time to catch her in the act of killing one of her best friends. Fiach was with Leo, showing off a new pen he'd just bought. Luke and Rúth were both burdened by heavy rolls of paper, chatting animatedly.

Fiach's smile fell away and he started hobbling over, but Luke got to Vaska first. Dumping the paper unceremoniously on the deck, they snatched the pen off Vaska and got to work. They didn't talk to her. They didn't even look at her.

Vaska sat aside, nausea tugging at her guts. Luke discarded her spell tags and instructed Ailbhe to tear up some of the fresh paper to make new tags. They wrote without hesitation, and within a minute Lehine's chest was plastered with glowing spell tags, her leg ignored for the time being. Slowly, she stopped coughing. Her breaths turned into a weak wheeze.

Rúth leant over the scene curiously, apparently the only person present who wasn't particularly concerned about Lehine.

Finally, Lehine's breaths evened out. She remained unconscious, but the sound of her steady breathing was enough to bring tears of relief to Vaska's eyes. Luke turned their attention to Lehine's broken leg, writing a short and very simple spell that served to make Vaska feel even more embarrassed.

“Is she going to be okay?” Ailbhe said softly.

“She'll live.” Luke rose to their feet and stretched, discarding their pen. Then – just as Vaska had been dreading – they faced her for the first time.

“Luke,” Vaska said faintly, “I-”

“Come with me.” They grabbed her by the upper arm and practically dragged her away from Lehine, towards the edge of the deck. Vaska scrambled upright and allowed herself to be led, her head low, her face on fire. Luke shoved her against the railings and released her, watching her expectantly.

“There was no other healer around,” she said quietly. “I thought she was going to bleed out. Otherwise I'd have waited, I really would...”

“Well, you're not wrong,” Luke said. “Blood loss is a major concern with compound fractures.”

Vaska frowned. “So... what did I do?”

“You didn't limit the speed,” Luke said. Amazingly, they didn't even seem angry. “It went too fast and caused some neoplasia, which metastitised... you can always tell when they start coughing like that, it's when you know it has spread to the lungs.”

“Oh.” Vaska stared out at the gentle sea, then quickly glanced back at them. “Was she... was she going to die?”

“Yes. And even now, her lung function might be impaired for the rest of her life.” Luke met her eyes. “Vaska, this is very serious magic. You know enough to be dangerous, and that's my fault, I suppose. Not that you're completely free of responsibility, because, honestly, one of the very first things I told you was that you have to place limitations on a spell. So that one's on you.”

Vaska nodded, accepting this.

“Look,” Luke said. “If you come down to my room later I'll show you what exactly you should have done back then. And then... well, I guess then I should teach you how to reverse the neoplasia... and then how to restore lung function...”

Vaska's eyes widened. “You mean-”

Luke made a bad-natured noise, then nodded. “Yeah. Fine. I'll be your... your teacher. And you'd better appreciate it, I have a busy schedule and it's not my decision to train someone how not to kill people. But I don't have a choice.”

A shaky, delighted grin appeared on Vaska's face. “Oh my gods – do I need, like, equipment or anything? How early in the morning should I visit? I can-”

“On second thought,” Luke said, cutting her off with an upraised hand, “how about I go to you when we have a lesson. Or whatever. Anyway, I'll be busy looking after your friend so I suppose you can shadow me for that.”

“Right,” Vaska said, nodding eagerly. “Thank you so much, uh, sir? No, professor – doctor?”

“It's just Luke.”

“Of course, duh – um, I'd better go and check on Ailbhe... and apologise to Lehine. Is that okay?”