Heart and Soul by Sarah A. Hoyt Page B

grasped the flight field, making sure the carpetship stayed in the air, he lifted the saber to parry the assault, just as his attacker’s saber came descending upon his head. The blades met, echoing in a clash of metal.
    Through Nigel’s head, almost as if it were a story he had heard long ago, went the memory of his flight some months ago in which the only amusement to while away the time when he’d not been on duty on deck, had been to learn saber fighting from a colleague and underling of his, a magician from Morocco who plied his rounded scimitar with vicious ability.
    Now Nigel was glad of that training as he parried and counterattacked and parried again. Not that he could fight like the Chinese pirate. But he fought like a man desperate not to dishonor himself, not to lose the most important objects in the world. He could see in the pirate’s expression the bewildered look of the expert meeting a confused but determined opponent, who might do anything at all. There is nothing as scary as the armed amateur, he remembered his sword master in England saying.
    He was conscious of a couple of slashes, one to his shoulder and one to the front of his body. He assumed that they had not touched his skin, as he felt no pain. He couldn’t understand why the ground was growing slick under his feet, unless he was sweating so much that the sweat pouring out of him was making his footing unsteady. But it could not be that, he thought, as he stepped backwards to avoid a series of savage slashes from his opponent.
    If he was sweating that much, surely his eyes would sting, and they did not. They felt only slightly unfocused, as though someone were projecting a vision, but not very well, so the edges faded and distance didn’t seem to matter.
    His opponent swept the saber from side to side, and only Nigel’s quick reflexes prevented his being disemboweled. He heard something fall to the floor and frowned. His innards could not be hard. They could not make that sound as they hit the floor. And then he remembered the jewels and put a hand down. It met with soaked fabric. And he looked up again, realizing he’d lowered the saber and expecting to meet with a lethal strike from his enemy. But the man had stooped to pick something up and was running madly toward the violated glass front of the ship.
    The jewels. He must have picked up a jewel. Had he picked up both jewels? Nigel could only remember the sound of one hard object hitting the floor. Nigel looked down and realized he was bleeding. He must have bled a lot, because the front of his clothes were soaked, as well as his legs. And he must be dying, because as he looked up, he saw an angel.
    She was the most unlikely angel he’d ever beheld, insofar as she was definitely Chinese, with long blue-black hair and the heavy-lidded eyes of the kind. But her lips, her nose, the whole of her oval face were so beautiful that he couldn’t think of her as anything but angelic. And her clothes, wild and colorful, might be Chinese in cut and design—a short jacket and loose pants—but suited her so exactly that they could only be celestial raiment.
    Her gaze, turned to Nigel, was alarmed—panicked, perhaps—and she spoke in perfect, accentless English. “Did he get both jewels? Answer me!”
    Nigel tried, but his tongue would not obey him. He felt the saber fall from his hands. He felt his knees hit the deck. He tried to mumble the prayer his nurse had taught him, when he had been a very young boy carefully watched in a nursery in the Oldhall estate in the England he would never again see.
    “Now I lay me…” he said. His last thought was to cast renewed magical force at the flying spells, willing them to fly the carpetship where it needed to go, to not let it fall. It took what remained of his facing strength, but it must be done. Just because he was going to die didn’t mean he was willing to let those he was responsible for perish.
    “…down to sleep.” And darkness