Her primaries were bent. She looked at them with dismay, flexing her arm and rolling her shoulders, testing to see how much damage her body had sustained.
"Be careful. You rolled when you fell." Cristof frowned. "Nothing's sprained? Broken?"
"No." But her arms and shoulders ached, and she gasped as she stretched them over her head to lock the wings upright. Both Cristof and Alister grabbed a wing to help. Taya grimaced as she twisted her arms out of the struts. "I think I pulled some muscles."
"You're lucky it wasn't any worse." Alister flexed the crooked feathers. "I don't think these are going to work anymore, Cris."
"Don't touch my wings!" Taya glowered up at him. Alister dropped his hands.
"We're going to have to cooperate to get off this gear," he pointed out, mildly.
Taya gave him a hard look.
"You should tie him up," she said, to Cristof.
"I should, but he won't sit still for it."
"And chasing me across the gears would be dangerous," Alister pointed out. "This time we wouldn't have our brave icarus to save us."
"Then I'll—" Taya started to stand, but both brothers protested. Cristof dropped back to his knees and pressed his hands against her shoulders.
"Wait," he insisted. "You can't fly anywhere with bent feathers, and you need to rest and let us bandage that bullet wound before it gets any worse."
"You two are obsessed about wounds, aren't you?" she griped, but she settled back down again. Part of her was glad that she didn't have to prove herself yet. She felt weak and nauseous, although she didn't want to let Alister see her vulnerability.
"We still have a few things in common," Alister said. "Cris, hand me your knife."
"No." Cristof pulled the utility knife off his harness and shifted his weight. "I'm sorry, Taya, but either you need to take off the suit, or I'll have to cut the leg open."
Taya made a face. "Cut it open. But one of you owes me a new flight suit."
"I'll see you get it, my swan," Alister promised. Taya didn't miss the annoyance that crossed Cristof's face.
"Stop calling me yours," she snapped, as Cristof lifted the leather by the bloodstained bullet hole and slit it open.
Alister looked offended, but she saw Cristof's lips quirk in a small smile as he worked. Blood seeped through the cut on his face.
"You're still bleeding," she said. He dabbed his face with his flight suit sleeve, wincing.
"It won't kill me. There." He stood. "Let Alister look at it. I want to see if I can repair your armature. I don't think he'll hurt you."
"Of course I won't!" Alister took his brother's place. Taya gave him a dark look as Cristof pulled out his small repair kit and stood behind her. She could feel the vibrations through her armature as he shifted her wing feathers.
Alister shrugged off his two outer robes. "This may hurt," he cautioned, taking her leg in one hand and wiping away the blood with one of his robes. Taya tensed.
"When Cris and I were boys," he said as he worked, "one of the estates in Primus was being remodeled, and the family had moved out while the work was being done. The two of us decided to explore it. Of course it was dangerous, and of course I got hurt. I was climbing over a pile of scrap wood and fell. I gashed my arm. We bandaged it up and left and didn't tell anyone, because we were afraid we'd get into trouble for trespassing."
Taya flinched as Alister probed the wound, his fingers around her calf.
"Unfortunately, the cut began to fester and I grew feverish, and it wasn't long before our servants noticed the blood on my sheets and found the torn robe hidden under my bed. Our parents called in the family physician, who did everything but scour the wound out with a bristle brush. He lectured us about dirt and infection and amputation and basically put the fear of the Forge into us. And after he left, our parents lectured us all over again. We were both in tears by the end of the day. We honestly thought my arm was going to be cut off."
Cristof laughed once, startling her. Taya glanced up. Had she ever heard him laugh with real amusement before? This seemed like a strange time for it.
"The wound healed, of course, but it left a scar, and neither of us ever forgot the lesson." Alister lifted his arm and pulled up his sleeve. The scar was old and pale against his dark copper skin, but long and uneven.
Taya discarded the few uncharitable comments that leaped to mind and just nodded.
"I'm afraid this is going to leave a scar, too," he said.
"How bad is it?" Cristof asked. Taya looked up at him again. He was removing one of the intact primaries from his own broken wings.
"Not as bad as it could have been," Alister replied. "It looks like the bullet went straight through the muscle. You were lucky, my swan."
"I told you to stop that. I wouldn't have been shot, if it weren't for you."
Alister's jaw twitched.
"You'll need a physician's attention. Cris, if you'll give me your knife, I can cut up one of my robes for bandages."
"I don't trust you with a knife, so stop asking."
"You don't think I'd attack you, do you?"
"Yes," Cristof said. "Right now, I think you're capable of anything."
Alister rocked back on his heels, stone-faced. "You're going to have to trust me eventually. Taya shouldn't fly with a hurt leg, and you'll only get yourself killed if you try it in her armature. I'm the only one here who can get help now."
"More likely you'll get one of the lictors’ rifles and come back to finish us off," Taya retorted. "I can fly well enough to get out of here. Flying's mostly arms and hips, anyway."
"Landing isn't. And what will you do when you get to the top of the Engine Room? Do you plan to limp all the way up the stairs to the Tower, and then even farther up to the signal flags?" Alister's voice was gentle. "Neither of us wants you to suffer like that. It has to be Cristof or me, and you know how hopeless my brother is in the air."
"Cris, can't you hit him or something?" Taya asked, irritated.
"I am hopeless in the air," Cristof pointed out. He looked down at her, holding a metal feather. "But I'll hit him, if that's what you want. I'm reasonably talented at fisticuffs."
"You can barely see me," Alister scoffed. "And that's another thing. Without your glasses, you'd never be able to maneuver past all the cables running to the Engine."
"Stop it, Alister." Taya felt one of the feathers slide out of her wing, and then Cristof handed it to her as he replaced it. "Neither one of us trusts you, and neither of us is going to let you go free."
"So you'll go get help and leave us down here, alone together?" Alister raised an eyebrow. "Blind as a bat, light as a feather — I could throw Cris between those gears and watch him get crushed to death."
"Don't believe him." Cristof was tightening the screws against her back.
"I don't," she said. A flash of annoyance crossed Alister's face and he stood, walking to the edge of the gear and looking out at the chasm as they rotated.
"Here." Cristof took the feather from her, sliding it into his bundle of broken feathers, and then picked up one of the robes Alister had left behind. With effort, he hacked out a chunk of the heavy silk with his utility knife and packed it between her suit and her wound. "Do you really think you can fly?" he asked, in a low voice.
"I'll do what I have to do. We can't let him go up there on his own."
Cris combed his dark hair with his fingers, leaving it standing on end. "We could
I don't trust him not to escape, but he'd probably send out a distress flag before abandoning us. He has that much honor."
"Do you want him to get away?" Taya searched Cristof's angular face. His eyes narrowed, but she knew his irritation wasn't directed at her. He was irritated with himself.
"Part of me does. If he hadn't killed anyone… if he hadn't killed Caster…" His jaw tightened. "I can put on your armature and fly up. It doesn't matter if it's not a good fit or if I can't see well. All I have to do is get up to the nearest catwalk, and then I can find stairs, or a lift. You don't need to go."