Chapter 400: Gold Feathers

Chapter 400: Gold Feathers

It took the real Flicker three days to stop overshooting the perch.

On Wednesday morning, she flew down the yard and Jin signalled Crosswind Turn where he used to call for braking. The gust carried her neatly around the bend and straight past the perch. She landed on the far fence, glaring back as if the perch had moved.

"It didn’t move," Jin told her. "That one’s mine."

He shifted the marker and tried again after a rest. She turned cleanly, but kept her speed when she needed to lose it. This time she circled wide and landed without using the skill again.

His old cues were built around the time she spent slowing down. Now he had to allow for a much quicker turn and give her a separate approach to the landing. He used fewer signals, leaving her room to judge the final wingbeats.

They kept the bursts short. After several turns her breathing quickened, and he put the target away. Ordinary flight was enough for the rest of that session. She objected when he offered his arm instead of another run, then climbed onto it and began rearranging his sleeve.

By Friday, she’d started to judge it.

She came down the yard and into the turn, and this time she let the gust take her round. She held the new line, came out facing the target post and had time to place her shot.

The Ember Shot hit it square. The post rocked on its weighted base, and she swept up and over it and onto Jin’s arm.

He didn’t say anything. He just stood there with her on his arm, grinning like an idiot.

She was still small. She was still Rank 1, still not Glitch, still not anything like the bird she’d one day be. But she was fast.

Ottilie’s message came on Saturday, a little over two weeks after the commission.

Ready. Come and hold it.

He went that afternoon, with Glitch, and Ottilie brought it out from the back wrapped in a length of oiled cloth.

It was plain: a straight ash shaft dark with oil, metal fittings and a steel head as long as his hand, secured in its socket by two removable pins. The rough leather grip sat exactly where the chalk mark had been. He picked it up.

It was heavier at the front than the borrowed one. Ottilie had warned him, and he’d still not expected it. The head wanted to dip.

He had to hold it differently, his rear hand a little further back, his front hand looser, the way Lucian had shown him when the borrowed point kept getting knocked away.

Ottilie took them to the clear space behind the forge. Jin turned beside Glitch, slowly at first. The butt cleared the horn, and the head came back into line.

"A few sets," she said. "Then check the grip."

He worked through turns and recoveries while she watched. With the real weight on it, the shaft tugged at his fingers differently. Once his hands were damp, he adjusted his hold and tried again. The leather stayed firm.

"Any rubbing?" she asked.

He checked the web of his thumb. "No. The front end’s going to take practice."

"That’s what the borrowed one was for. Now you learn this one." She brought him back to the counter.

[Payment: 24,000 Credits — Ottilie’s (balance: short spear)]

[Paid in full]

"Oil the shaft once a week," she said. "When you break the head, and you will, bring it back. Don’t let anyone else fit a new one."

"I won’t."

She fitted a cover over the edge before returning it to him. "Keep that on when you’re carrying it. Bring it back if the socket works loose."

Jin checked how the pins sat one last time. Now that it was his, every small part seemed worth knowing.

He took it home to Coldwell on Sunday, wrapped in its cloth, because Elsa had found out and demanded to see it.

Arthur and Elsa were both at the kitchen table when he came in. Elena was at work. Breeze was under the table, and the moment Jin set the long bundle down on the table, he came out to sniff it.

"Is that it?" Elsa said. "Is that it?"

"That’s it."

"Unwrap it, then."

He unwrapped it.

Nobody said anything for a moment. Elsa leaned in to look at the head. Breeze put his front paws on Jin’s knee to see better.

Arthur didn’t lean in. He waited, and then he held out his hand.

"May I?"

Jin gave it to him.

Arthur held the spear across his knees and turned it slowly, giving it the attention Jin had seen him give a hazard form before signing.

He ran his thumb along the leather and pressed it. He looked at the pins in the socket, and at the fittings, and down the length of the shaft against the window light to see if it was straight.

"Replaceable head," he said.

"She said I’ll break it."

"You will." Arthur turned it again. "Leather grip. Not wrap."

"Lucian told me wrap goes slippery."

"It does." Arthur ran his hand down the shaft one last time and then held it out to Jin, carefully, butt first. "It’s a good one. Somebody made it properly." He looked at his son. "And somebody chose it properly."

Jin took it back and didn’t know what to say. So he said, "Thanks," and felt his ears go hot.

Elsa was watching him with an expression he recognised. It was the one she’d worn when she caught him eating the last of the biscuits.

"You bought something for yourself," she said.

"It’s a weapon. It’s for work."

"It’s for you. Look at your face." She turned to Arthur. "Dad. Look at his face. He’s been carrying it round all day, I bet. He’s been touching it on the transit."

"I have not."

"You have." She was grinning. "Good. It’s about time. You always find something someone else needs first." She poked his arm. "Can I hold it?"

"Carefully."

She took it, tipped the covered head alarmingly close to the light fitting, and lowered it at once. Arthur put a hand under the shaft until she’d found its balance.

"Okay," she said. "It’s heavier than it looks."

"Everyone says that," Jin said.

Breeze, who had been ignored for at least two minutes, sneezed on the butt end.

Back at the academy on Monday, he took it to Yard Three. The head was secured inside a padded practice guard, and he began alone, checking how the extra weight affected each movement.

Ottilie was right. The weight at the front changed everything. It came round further and faster than the borrowed spear when he stepped out. When he tried to bring it back in line, it overshot.

It was the same thing Flicker had been doing all week with her turns.

He laughed out loud in the empty yard when he realised that.

Both of us, he thought. Same problem. More than we’re used to.

He went back to the beginning. Step out. Point comes round. Stop it. Hold it.

He stopped when his forearms began to tire, shook out his hands and had some water.

Lucian turned up during the break, with Kite on his arm and his own stave, and stopped at the gate to look.

"That’s it? That’s the one?"

"That’s the one."

Lucian came over, weighed it in his hands, and gave it back with a low whistle. "She did a good job." Then he picked up his stave. "Show me what it does after."

They ran Crowe’s drill: Lucian attacking, Jin stepping out, Lucian coming again at once from a new angle. The first three times, the heavier head swung too far as Jin brought it round, and Lucian walked in past it.

The fourth time, Jin loosened his front hand the way he’d learned, let the shaft slide and caught it with his rear hand at the leather. The head stopped where he wanted it.

Lucian, coming in off a Stormstep, had already changed direction to go round the point. He did it cleanly this time, with no stumble, and a second short burst took him past Jin’s left side. But he’d had to go round. He couldn’t go through.

"Okay," Lucian said, a little out of breath. "That’s annoying."

"You got round it."

"I had to think about it." He tapped the shaft with his stave. "Last month, I didn’t."

They worked in short sets until the light began to fade. Jin still lost most of the exchanges, but twice he recovered the point soon enough to make Lucian abandon his second attack. He remembered those two all the way back to the stables.