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flying during the Jenny's desperate final descent. The batteries had gone flat at two hundred feet up, forcing Meralda to
dump the whole remaining charge of her nearly-spent holdstones through the flying coils without any way to control the flow.
She'd plunged through a driving rain, buffeted by powerful winds, down through a sky so dark she wasn't sure what was ground and what was sky.
    In the end, she'd simply shoved the levers to their back stops and hoped for the best.
    The Jenny struck a barn roof, careened off that and onto the top of a chicken coop, and from there she'd simply fallen onto the ground, four hundred miles from the Palace, on the farm of a butter-maker named, oddly enough, Falhen Boatsmage.
    "I see you're all nearly recovered," said Meralda, winking at the children, who broke into fits of giggles. "It's wonderful to see you up and about, Mr. Ghote. I must admit I had my doubts."
    "Call me Otis. And if it weren't for you, and my good wife too, we'd still be up there, lost and frozen."
    "Frozen stiff!" chorused the children. "Frozen stiff as boards!"
    "Shush." Mrs. Ghote sighed. "I trust you've seen the papers, Mage Ovis?"
    Meralda's face went red. "Oh yes," she said. "All of them. I don't even own dresses like that. And I certainly wouldn't wear them in public."
    "That's the press for you," agreed Mr. Ghote. "Penswifts. They'll say or draw anything to sell papers. Is the Captain speaking to you again? I did notice the papers left out your refusal to obey a Royal writ."
    The Captain had still been furious upon his arrival at the Boatsmage farm. Meralda remembered the long coach ride back to Tirlin -- the man had barely spoken half a dozen words.
    Mrs. Ghote elbowed her husband gently in his side. "Otis. We're in public."
    Meralda laughed. "Ignoring the occasional Royal writ is a prerogative of my office," she said. "It's almost expected, as long as one doesn't do it too often, or too publicly. Yes, the Captain is speaking to me again. He knows I was right."
    "Good. We're buying a new airship, by the way. A bigger one, with two screws, and a small salon. You'll have to go flying with us, one clear day." He grinned a bruised but impish grin. "We hear you're quite the pilot."
    Mug's cage, its flying coils buzzing, dipped down level with Meralda's window. "She's not a bad flyer," he said, waggling his eyes at the Ghote children. "But for serious aerobatics, you'll want Mugglesworth Ovis, Terror of the Skies!"
    The Ghote children squealed in delight. Mug shoved his levers forward, and his cage darted away, up and up, into the rising sun.
     
     
    THE END