It wasn’t one of Grandmother’s good days, and Maynard was not quite sure why he’d decided to visit her. Probably because few others had time for her. Not anymore. 

At last she seemed to realise he was in the room. 

‘Be a dear boy,’ she said, her eyes everywhere, and tell me what that grandfather of yours is up to.' 

Grandfather? Surely running most of Clee, as usual. Oiling the wheels of the city, was what Father used to call it. 

‘Grandfather is down tinkering in the laboratories, I think.’ Safest to tell her what she expected to hear. ‘Working on some new way for the airships to signal.’ He knew, at least, that the graf had two teams of technologicians competing to be the first to perfect a system. 

Grandmother, the Countess Sabra, was a masterpiece of paper-pale skin and fire-red curls, propped up on a mattress softer than clouds. The maid, Moni, straightened the bedclothes and fussed about, while Maynard perched on a hard chair as far away from the ridiculous ship-shaped bed as was polite. The lifetime of collected furniture, trinkets, and paraphernalia sent Maynard’s brain spinning. There was a brooch out on the dresser, clear crystal and gold lace, and it drew his attention. He focused on it mainly to avoid watching her darting eyes. 

‘And your father,’ she croaked, as if there had been no pause. ‘Why won’t Fortrenn visit his poor mother?’ 

Maynard fell into the trap, and into her eyes, grey as the lake in a storm. Waves seemed to move in them, as though to smash him onto the shores of her madness. A minute of his life might have disappeared, and a tiny smile touched the corners of her rose-red lips. 

‘Father is at sea, Grandma. He’s been gone a year.’ Maynard missed him.

‘You are not like him, Maynard. Your heart is in the air.’ 

‘And Father is a pirate.’ 

‘Alas,’ she said, but it was with a smile of pride. 

Grandmother’s eyes followed something moving in the room, and Maynard followed them. What was it she thought she saw? The family couldn’t openly admit it, but she was touched. Some called it ‘the sight’, as if the unfortunate afflicted were privy to some secret reality, as if it was a gift, but Maynard believed his own eyes, and understood enough of his lessons of science and technologics to know that if you couldn’t prove something, it did not exist. She whispered to the unseen presence. Maynard tried to read her lips, but it might have been a foreign language. 

‘No!’ she cried, with a force that shook her too-red curls out of position. 

Truly, sadly, Grandmother was mad. He forced his eyes back to that brooch; the clarity of its large crystal drew him like the clear skies. 

His heart was in the air, in that much she was right. Grandfather urged him to attend to his studies of technologics and industry, grooming him as the future Graf. Rhan Caelis threatened the fires of Ashe if he did not study the Way, saying idleness and dreams were the spawn of the evil puka, but ever since his first airship flight Maynard was up there with the birds. Right now, he was literally itching to commandeer an airship and have it take him out over the coastline. He scratched his jaw. Anything to avoid her eyes. The room felt suddenly crowded, even though there was only Grandmother and Moni. He had to leave. 

‘I’ll send your respects to Grandfather,’ he said. 

‘Eh?’ she said, and blinked. Her eyes were now just watery, grey, and old. 

‘To Grandfather,’ Maynard repeated, but she didn’t hear him. One look from Moni conveyed her frustration and resignation. Maynard shook his head and smiled in sympathy; at least he could leave.