Page 5 of Winds of Death (War of the Alliance #4)
Chapter
Three
P ip trotted at Louise’s heels as they followed the orderly up the hospital’s stairs to the second floor. She tried to pretend she wasn’t fidgeting, her stomach churning. How would Fieran react to seeing her? Would he be more awake than he had been when she’d last seen him?
Once they reached the second floor, the orderly led them down the aisle between the beds lined up on either side of the room. Most had their curtains drawn, but Pip caught glimpses of men still sleeping.
Perhaps Fieran would still be asleep. After all, she and Louise were coming rather early to squeeze the visit in before heading back to the AMPC to start work for the day.
The orderly halted in the middle of the room by a bed still hidden behind curtains and gestured to it. “This one.”
Pip froze in the aisle. Well, Fieran was still asleep. They’d come all this way, and she wouldn’t even get to see him.
Instead of turning to leave, Louise marched to the end of the curtain and gripped it, though she didn’t fling it open right away. “Fieran, you had better be awake and decent.”
“Louise?” Fieran’s voice came from behind the curtain, rather more awake and alert than Pip would have expected. “Yeah. Come on in.”
Louise shoved the curtain aside and stepped closer to the bed, leaving Pip little choice but to follow.
When Pip peeked around the curtain, Louise was bending over, giving Fieran a hug as he lay on the bed. “I’m glad you’re all right.”
Pip hesitated again. Perhaps this had been a bad idea. Was she intruding on what should be a family moment?
“Good to see you too, Weezer.” Fieran grinned at his sister as she pulled back and gave him a light swat on the arm. Likely because of the use of her nickname.
Then Fieran’s gaze swung past Louise to focus on Pip. For a moment, his grin dropped, and he reached for the blanket with one hand while trying to shove himself more upright with the elbow of the arm encased in a splint. “Pip. Uh, hello. I...”
Pip crept closer, trying to work up a smile. “You seem to be feeling better.”
“Yeah.” Fieran stopped trying to push himself upright and instead ran a hand over his hair, as if to smooth it. Not that the gesture did much good. His red hair stuck up in all directions and was especially flattened and sticking at odd angles in the back, likely from lying down for so long.
He wore a hospital gown, and he seemed determined to keep the thin hospital blanket pulled all the way up his chest.
All three of them lapsed into silence. Louise edged toward the chair set beside the bed, then glanced at Pip as if wondering if she should offer the chair to her instead. It was the only one. If both of them were to sit, one of them would have to sit on the edge of Fieran’s bed.
Louise was currently closest to the chair, and Pip would have to edge awkwardly around her to take it.
Besides, this was Fieran. Pip had held his hand most of the train ride from Fort Defense.
She’d braved the awkwardness of facing his dacha to see him after he crashed.
She’d whispered with Fieran during moving pictures and fixed aeroplanes with him.
If Louise hadn’t been there—if things hadn’t been so unsettled between them—Pip wouldn’t have thought more than twice about sitting on the edge of his bed.
Before Louise could offer the chair, Pip boosted herself onto the edge of Fieran’s bed next to his legs. The metal framed hospital bed sat high enough that her feet didn’t touch the floor anymore once she was settled.
Something in Fieran’s expression eased, and not just because his grin finally returned. He relaxed against his pillow again. “Have you settled in at the AMPC?”
Louise glanced between the two of them before she sank onto the chair, as if putting the pieces together of just how she’d ended up the third wheel on this visit.
“Somewhat. It was overwhelming yesterday. But I’m eager to get to work today.” Pip forced herself to look away from Fieran to include Louise in the conversation. “Louise has been making me feel welcome.”
Louise smiled back, though something searching remained in her expression. “I think you’ll fit in great at the AMPC.”
“Yeah, Pip is amazing.” Fieran held her gaze for a moment before he blinked and looked away. “I mean, her magic is amazing.”
Pip’s face felt hot, and she stared down at her hands in her lap. Was Fieran still hopped up on drugs and healing magic? How much could she really trust anything he said at the moment, no matter how lucid he looked?
With the squeak of a wheeled cart, a nurse pushed aside a curtain. “Pardon me. I have breakfast for Capt. Laesornysh.” The nurse picked up one of the trays from her cart and bustled past Pip and Louise to set the tray on the table beside Fieran. “Will you need help eating?”
“No.” Fieran’s ears turned red, and he struggled to sit up. He couldn’t quite bend at the waist, and the nurse hurried to plump the pillows behind him to hold him somewhat upright.
Pip slid off the bed and glanced at Louise. “I think we should be going.”
If she’d been there alone with Fieran—if their relationship had been more than it currently was—then Pip might have stayed. Perhaps she would have taken over the nurse’s job and helped Fieran eat his breakfast.
But they weren’t at that point, and right now, Fieran would find it more embarrassing than anything. The best thing they could do was gracefully bow out and let him retain some of his dignity.
Louise rose to her feet and stepped out of the nurse’s way. “Yes. We don’t want to be late on Pip’s first day.”
“I’m glad you came.” Fieran glanced between them, not reaching for his food just yet. Perhaps it was her imagination, but his gaze lingered longer on Pip than on Louise, as if he, too, was aching with all the words that needed to be said.
“We’ll come again as soon as we can.” Louise gave Fieran one last hug.
Pip forced herself to turn away and follow Louise around the curtain into the aisle of the hospital ward, all while trying to pretend that visit hadn’t been more than a little disappointing.
Pip sat on a table with her back to the brick wall.
While she and Louise had been visiting the hospital, a work crew had rigged two spools of the large cables so that one spool would wind onto another spool.
The machinery to turn the spools was fueled by a magical power cell and controlled by a foot pedal.
She pressed the foot pedal with her right foot, easing the cable forward beneath her hands. As she did so, she rested her fingers on the cable and infused it with her magic bit by bit.
The magic and repetitive motion was soothing after the emotional turmoil of the morning. She desperately needed to talk with Fieran. But she couldn’t while he was in the public ward of the hospital with so many people around.
When would she have a chance? If she wanted to visit the hospital alone, she’d have to tell Louise…and Louise was bound to have questions. If Pip waited until Fieran was discharged, he would be sent home and constantly surrounded by his family.
It seemed the only way she’d get a chance to talk to him alone would be to admit to his family that they were something more than just friends. And that seemed far too presumptuous when Fieran would likely break up with her the moment they had a chance to talk.
Pip blinked, shook herself, and shoved those thoughts away. Her magic flared through her, and she poured the excess of magic and emotion into the cable.
This was so frustrating. If she could only resolve things between her and Fieran one way or the other, she could finally stop obsessing over it. Being stuck in this limbo was worse than just hashing it out.
“Pip?”
Pip started, and her foot pressed harder on the pedal. The machine whined as it tried to ramp up the speed on the spool containing the heavy wire. She hurriedly relaxed her foot before she burnt out the mechanics of the machinery. “Yes?”
Louise stepped around one of the other spools of cable that waited for Pip to infuse with her magic. “Do you have a moment? I’d appreciate a fresh pair of eyes.”
“Sure.” Pip stood, awkwardly stepped over the cable, and hopped from the table to the floor. Any chance to get out of her own head was more than welcome.
After they’d returned from the hospital, both of them had shrugged into sets of brown coveralls over their clothes, with Pip rolling up the sleeves and pant legs of hers.
The rolls made her wrists and ankles bulky, but she could manage.
Pip had tied back her hair, but Louise had left hers long and flowing around her shoulders, as if daring grease to get into her elven hair.
They rounded the spools, both empty and full, and approached the half-assembled aeroplane.
It perched directly on its belly on the ground so that Louise and the other inventor—the young man Bennett Marion—could work on the engine compartment without having to stand on a ladder.
The wings were also missing, making it easy to reach the cockpit.
Bennett glanced up at their footsteps. A broad, open smile lit his face as he scrambled to his feet. He stuck out a hand to Pip. “You must be the new girl. I’m Bennett Marion.”
Louise huffed and rolled her eyes. “You met her yesterday.”
“I did?” His grin dropping, Bennett glanced at Louise, his hand still remaining in the space between him and Pip.
“Yes.” Louise shook her head, as if she was resisting another eyeroll.
Bennett winced and shrugged as he turned back to Pip. “Uh, sorry. I honestly don’t remember.”
“I know what it’s like to be so wrapped up in a project that you don’t pay attention to anything else.” Pip shook his hand firmly. “I’m Pippak Detmuk-Inawenys, but you can call me Pip.”
Bennett’s grin returned as he withdrew his hand. “Good to meet you again, Pip.”
Pip nodded and strode closer to the aeroplane. “So, your mechanical problem.”
“As I mentioned yesterday, we’re trying to improve the rudimentary interrupter gear we reconstructed from the pieces we were sent from Mongavarian aeroplane wreckage.
” Louise pointed as she halted next to the open engine compartment.
“We’ve rigged this particular gun so that the trigger is on the control column.
All the newest aeroplanes are rolling out of the factory with this new firing mechanism.
So the problem is that we need to synchronize the spinning of the engine with the firing mechanism. ”
“I’m assuming you’ve tried out various gear configurations?” Pip peered into the engine compartment, taking in the configuration of gears and connecting rods that Louise and Bennett had rigged.
“Yes. One gear. Two gears. Several gears in lots of sizes.” Louise sighed and poked at one of the gears.
“It’s just…fiddly. Just when we think we have it figured out, the gears bind up or one engine spins faster than another engine or a different type of aeroplane has a different sized engine compartment which throws our calculations off. ”
Of course. Any variation in engine size, propeller type, distance from the engine to the gun would change how the mechanism functioned.
“There are a lot of moving parts with this.” Pip reached into the engine compartment to turn the gears, letting a little of her magic flow into her fingers to study the inner workings.
“And it needs to be simple enough for the army mechanics to maintain and replace. Hardy enough to take a beating in battle.”
“And the army really wants it to be universal for all aeroplane models and engine types.” Louise’s sigh was more frustrated than annoyed as she nudged a discarded gear on the floor with her boot. “It’s no wonder the Mongavarian version is somewhat unreliable.”
As Louise and Bennett started a brisk discussion of gears and engines, Pip relaxed further. This was where she was most at home, among gears, grease, wires, and metal. For a while, at least, she could set aside all thoughts of Fieran and romance.