Under Two Moons

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Jad Dal felt the tremor in the flyer before he heard it. The starboard vane shuddered
beneath his hand, and the radium drive answered with a thin, uneven thrust that told
him the damage had not improved with distance. He corrected without hesitation,
holding the craft low as it cleared the outer towers of the city and took the open air
beyond the wall.

Behind him lay the city’s lights, already sinking into shadow. Ahead stretched the Far
Quarter, dark and broken, where the land rose in jagged folds and the old canals lay
dry and choked with ruin. He had flown that country once before, under escort and in
daylight. No man chose it willingly at night.

The trail lay plain to him now. He had seen the other flyer lift silently, hugging the
wall, its course bent southward where no lawful traffic passed. That was enough. Jad
Dal had followed spoor thinner than this with his blade alone.

The controls grew hot beneath his palms. The vane shook again. He gritted his teeth
and held the course. If the craft failed, he would go down among rocks where even
the green men did not hunt—and if he turned back, Tara Solin would be lost beyond
all reckoning.

The moons rose behind him as he crossed the last canal bed and entered the
broken air. The wind came hard from the hills, tearing at the wounded flyer like a
living thing. Jad Dal leaned his shoulder against the bucking windscreen and drove
on, harder than before.

He did not think of the jed’s men scouring the city, nor of the mad jed Ostron Khel
whispering treason behind closed doors. Those were matters for later days. Now
there was only speed, direction, and the dark before him.

He set his jaw and forced the damaged flyer onward after Tara Solin's abductors,
straight into the Far Quarter, from whence no man had ever returned.