The entire platform groaned as the blimp finally docked to the side with a screeching hiss. Bodies rushed forward in a wave, unfazed by the sudden clash of blades and shouts. A whistle rose above the din as the aircab’s metal doors slid open and more bodies spilled out onto the platform. Risa watched this new surge of people take a few steps before their eyes turned hazy and confused, most stopping inches from the Sanguines’ fight.
El Gib’s machete struck the aircab with a ding, though it made no visible dent on the machine and did not deter the patrons who pushed forward past their dazed counterparts.
Javi seized Risa’s shoulders and steered her around toward the entrance. Then his hand reached for hers, fingers slipping in the spaces between her own. Her heart was on the brink of total failure, and holding his hand was making it worse.
Amina appeared on Javi’s other side, also holding his hand, Brunie clinging to the princess’s cloak for dear life. “We run on the count of three,” Amina ordered. She faced the steel doors, biding her time as the last few stragglers struggled to fit in the packed car. A high-pitched whir began, and the doors rattled. “One…”
“Three,” Javi shouted, running.
They rushed into the car before the steel maws slid shut, leaving the Sanguines on the other side.
The machine moaned as it lifted into the air and tipped a fraction to the left, rocked by an errant gust of wind that rattled the steel wall panels. Everyone fell clumsily, bodies pressed against others, and Brunie scrambled onto Risa’s shoulders in search of a higher perch. Risa almost lost her footing when a pair of strong, familiar hands gripped her shoulders and steadied her.
Javi’s breath stirred the hair around her ears. She didn’t have the chance to investigate the unruly way her heartbeat pounded in her ears, or why she felt her whole body flush in response to the ghostly remnants of his fingertips against her skin. He let her go and quickly reached for the neck of Amina’s cloak to haul her back to her feet.
“Be careful,” he admonished the princess.
Risa was not a stranger to jealousy. She was well aware she suffered greatly from it, but never had jealousy felt quite like this: white-hot and furious, a roiling sea in her belly, a painful pulsing behind her eyes.
Something was very,verywrong with her. She had no reason to be jealous of Amina or of Javi; she didn’t want to be a supposed-dead princess, nor did she want to be the might-be-dead-soon prince.
When the machine rocked the other way, presumably to balance itself on the precarious line it hung on, Risa figured her jealousy might in fact be motion sickness. It certainly didn’t help to look out one of the small portholes of the aircab and watch the world grow smaller and smaller.
“You look ill,” Amina noticed, eyeing Risa with wariness.
Javi leaned over for a closer look at her face. “Did you break something else?”
For a moment, Risa was conflicted. She wanted to bash her forehead into his nose. She wanted to grab his face in both hands and—
There was another rocking motion. A woman carrying a screaming toddler howled as she careened backward, stopped only by the immovable force that was more patrons, squished against one side of the steel panels.
“Watch it, lady,” someone snapped.
“I’m carrying a baby here!” the woman shouted at no one in particular—perhaps to the universe at large, or the airship gods.
Unfortunately, her fellow patrons were unsympathetic. “And I’m carrying my depression!” shouted someone in response.
Risa gripped her stomach and tried to think of something else, like how hurtling toward the sky in a steel-trap monster was a great way to tempt her curse into taking things into its own hands. A malfunction that sent them to their fiery deaths below wouldn’t beunexpected, if a little dramatic.
Before her curse could work its magic and the three met their violent end, however, the aircab slowed and groaned again, the pulley system screeching as they docked in the carved-up insides of a larger airship.
“To those returning home to San Cirilo, welcome back.” A tinny voice echoed throughout the ship. Above them, a metal tube fed into the hull and vibrated with sound. “To those visiting us from afar, why? We ask you to mind the gap and your business. Our airship technology is patented and wewillarrest you if we catch you trying to steal our tech. Thank you, and don’t feed the pigeons.”
The steel doors slid open and the three stumbled onto a steel platform with ticker signs designating different areas and additional platforms, where people milled and bustled about trying to reachtheir next destination. Across the parallel platform,OLD TOWNflashed across the ticker sign.MAIN STREETflashed across another.
There didn’t seem to be one that pointed toward the Flying Palace.
“Where do we go now?” Amina whispered. Other confused travelers stood at the center of the platform in search of direction.
Javi shrugged, then pointed at the largest airship, labeledBUSINESS DISTRICT.
Reaching it was a different matter altogether. It seemed every citizen of San Cirilo was on a mission that could not be derailed for anyone, least of all a prince being chased by mercenaries intent on killing him. Commuters huffed and sighed and outright shouted if anyone got in their way. Someone muttered “No, please go slower, I have absolutely nowhere to be” as Amina stumbled past. Somehow, through sheer determination or divine intervention, they made it onto another airship just before its doors closed.
This airship did not seem aware of its size as it zigzagged through the air, managing to avoid careening into its steel brethren through luck that Risa was undoubtedlynotresponsible for. Risa’s breakfast was about to become everyone else’s concern as she tried to swallow down the rising bile. Amina fared no better, her skin turning a shade that matched her eyes.
“Have neither of you ever ridden a boat before?”
Risa was surprised by the venom in Amina’s glare at Javi, no less poisonous than her own.
