Painting the Sky [9]

Vaska took the canvas off the easel and she turned it toward Ingrid. There was a new splash of lavender, the moon on the horizon as the first of the lightning bolts struck the desert floor. It captured that sense of ominous anticipation just before the storm started.

"So how did you do it?" Ingrid asked.

"Do what?"

"Steal the contract crystals."

"I am bonded to Erika the Firstborn, the High Daughter of the Queen of Darkness. She is very adept at moving around the Domain of Darkness."

"What does that mean?"

"Do you want to see it?"

"Sure."

The portal Vaska created was solid black, without any light emanating from the other side. She bravely stepped through and vanished into the darkness. Ingrid followed and Ashe trailed behind, curiously silent.

Beyond the portal was a familiar sky, the roiling clouds in the Domain of Darkness as seen from the ground. It was as if they were inside a shallow chasm made of bone-white stone marbled with veins of black which were themselves marbled with veins of red, blue, and green. Various types of fungi grew in the chasm and they filled the air with white spores which accumulated in a snowy blanket on the ground.

All of these wonders were just out of reach, forever exiled from touch. The space immediately around Ingrid, for several paces, was a second world, devoid of these features. A foggy black bubble that followed her around as she moved, causing the world outside to vanish if she got too close. Within that bubble of nothingness she could see Vaska's studio in the palace, or at least a dark reflection of it. She could see the easel and all the painting supplies and the platform where a model could stand, all translucent against the blackness, framed in pale copper lines but otherwise colorless, without substance.

"You can see the physical realm from within here," Vaska said. "Or rather, a projection of it. There is no sense of verticality here, it is all projected down to our level."

The bone-white walls of the chasm, the fungi, the blanket of snowy spores, and the projections of Vaska's studio all rapidly shifted at blinding speed around them. Suddenly it all stopped, and they were surrounded by the ghostly image of the lodge outside House Varelion.

Vaska opened the portal once more and they stepped out into that familiar chamber. With the emperor gone it was empty and quiet, but Ingrid was absolutely certain it was the same lodge. Out the windows the summer forest was blooming with verdant flowers.

"We are in Taisia!" Ingrid said.

"Yeah," Vaska said. She collapsed on the couch and sighed.

"Tired already?" Ashe asked.

"That's very exhausting."

"You can travel anywhere in the world like this?" Ingrid asked.

"No. I can only go to places that I'm very familiar with."

"So how did you get into the banks?"

"My father appointed me to collect the contract crystals from the other houses when needed. I had spent years going back and forth to the various banks in Kanti and Ayaru."

"Can you take us back?"

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"Just let me rest my eyes for a minute."

Ingrid crawled onto the couch with Vaska and she wrapped her arms around her waist. Soon Vaska was napping so Ingrid closed her eyes and at some point she fell asleep as well. Vaska jostled her awake.

"I'm done, we can go back now."

"What did you do?"

"I went to visit the Goddess of Wishes." She rubbed her eyes. "I don't exactly remember the trip but I feel better now. Come."

The black portal opened again and they went back to Vaska's studio.

"Ashe," Vaska said.

"Yes?" the child asked.

"Do you think you are strong enough to reshape your realm?"

"Maybe. Actually yes, I think so."

"I have an idea for a new feature on our fighter jets, however I want to keep it a secret even from the other members of the society. Anything we work on could end up being spotted by spies and I have a feeling this new design will be such a dramatic improvement that it justifies additional precautions."

"Ah, you want to build a workshop in my realm," Ashe said.

"If possible, yes."

"But there are portals to my realm!"

"What portals?" Ingrid asked.

"The portals to the Domain of Darkness and the Domain of Light do not require contract crystals," Vaska explained. "They were created by the Queen of Light herself and they are always open. Eight portals spread out across the four great houses."

"So anything you build in my realm will be vulnerable," Ashe said.

"Not if you make the place inaccessible except through Erika's projection."

"What about the airspace overhead?" Ingrid asked. "You will want to test airplanes at your workshop right? That means the airspace near the workshop also needs to be inaccessible."

Ashe frowned. "I can try."

She vanished in a puff of black smoke. She did not appear again for several hours.

In a broad, shady valley in the Domain of Darkness, the rivers of blood and forests of fungi had been cleared away to make room for the workshop grounds. A small, serene lake of clean water occupied one side of the valley. At the edge of the lake, the bone white ground had been flattened into a perfect, shining black crystal runway. Several buildings, made from the same dark crystal, were organized into a campus beside the runway, complete with two large hangars. From within the compound, Ingrid could not see the floating cities in the sky.

The marines hauled carts of materiel, instruments and tools through Vaska's portal. Each had been vetted by Titania for loyalty before being allowed to see the campus, as had a select number of the society engineers.

Ingrid stood at the edge of the runway and looked out over the water. It was flat and mirrorlike, reflecting the inverted ocean of dark clouds high above. The mountains all around the valley were capped with snow, providing a lovely reminder of home. "I like this better," Ingrid said.

"I hate it," Ashe said. "You mortals are boring."

A familiar sound approached from behind them, high-heeled sandals clattering on the crystal runway. "I'm ready to begin work on the new design," Vaska said. "Take a look."

Vaska offered her notebook and Ingrid took it. It depicted three engines, vague cylinders each with a turbine inside. For the first engine, the exhaust port was straight and the exhaust itself was straight, indicated with an orange colored pencil. For the other two diagrams, one depicted the exhaust port angled up and the other down, with matching thrust vectors.

"Nobles have gardens," Vaska said. "And gardens need to be watered with hoses. Pressurized water flows through the hoses, usually fed by gravity through an ancient iron tube or stone aqueduct. Either way, the gardeners have tricks, you see. They manipulate their thumbs, covering the opening of the hose, to spray the water over the plants. By covering most of the opening to the hose, they can make a very fast, very thin spray. Relaxing their thumb, the spray becomes slower and thicker."

"So you want to create a 'thumb' that can cover part of the engine exhaust?"

"That's right. I'm calling it… thrust vectoring! It should be trivial to train a blueberry orb to automatically vector the thrust along with the elevator motion. This would allow you to point the nose at the ground in a flat spin, gain airspeed, and recover."

"I understand," Ingrid said.

"This changes everything!"

"What are you going to call it?"

"I'm glad you asked!"

Vaska flipped through the notebook to a different page. It depicted a figure-eight pattern, except the pattern continued on down the page.

"I've devised a new airshow maneuver," Vaska explained. "You start by intentionally initiating a flat spin. Then, you recover, and you initiate a second flat spin in the opposite direction. It creates this falling leaf pattern. So I've decided to name it the HY-11 Falling Leaf."