Artum’s wings would not fit quite right, and during three weeks of training for the Trial of Magnificence the resulting pain intensified from dull to acute, searing like a blade dragged across the width of his back.

 

Now he suffered the damnable device further as he marched with the other flyers into the stadium. They stepped in unison, three dozen in all, wings contracted in advance of the race.

 

In the arena sat thousands, gathered from across the continent, dressed in gilded jackets and silk robes, chattering in electric anticipation of the race. Their applause cascaded down the tiers of seating as the flyers appeared at the arched entrance and strode onto the stadium’s central field. Above them, banners of the seven Houses flapped in a steady wind and regal airships crossed the skies in choreographed patterns.

 

Artum peered toward the seating behind the Empress's box. There, thirty rows back, he found them: his mother, wrapped in a sparkling robe with braided hair piled high, primping and studying the fashion of the ladies nearby. His father, in a mud-brown cloak with high collar — the garb of the government technocrat — and that pinched, unrelenting scowl. The sight made Artum's back ache further. "Do not embarrass us," he recalled his father warning at the start of the training. "My standing is too precarious."

 

Thankfully, the last contest — a race to the peak of Mount Dellen and back — had arrived. One by one, the flyers readied on their pedestals and deployed their wings. Artum took his assigned stand, spying the snide grins of those near him. He inserted two tubes of condensed steam into receptacles on the brass control box at his waist, activated four levers on the box’s front, then snapped goggles across the bridge of his nose.

 

He cursed the suit's tailor, who had sewn the wings into the canvas body wrap a hand's-length too low, so they hung under his shoulder blades, not above, and gouged into his back. He cursed his parents, who had hired the inept fool. Too frugal to use an expert seamstress, they were. He cursed his fellow flyers, too fiercely competitive to offer friendship or even a modicum of solace at his anguish. He had grown numb to their incessant mocking.

 

A fanfare sounded and the audience rose. The flyers extended their wings, the metallic musculature of the appendages expanding nearly in unison. From an ornate stage at the center of the audience, the Empress commanded: "Flyers, begin!" The chorus of suddenly beating wings boomed like a cannonade, yielding to a crescendo of cheers as the flyers — Artum among them — rose into the sky.

 

He took a deep breath. His feet served as rudders, adjusting the angle of his flight in minute degrees. After taking a moment to steady his rise, he looked ahead and saw the others, clustered in a pack, already tens of meters away. The jockeying for prime positions to ride the currents of those in front was underway.

Almost immediately, Artum struggled to gain altitude. He fumbled with the levers, but the wings refused to move in unison, responding with a troubling sluggishness, and his body swung side to side like a storm-tossed vessel.

 

His ascent continued past the line of hovering airships, but the gap between Artum and the rest of the flyers grew, a distance he was certain his parents, equipped with monoculars, could easily gauge.

 

He rotated the levers forward, then back, grimacing as he struggled to gain speed. The wings continued their torment, digging fully into his back, the pain so intense that even with goggles, tears formed in the corners of his eyes.

 

Artum shook his head. It was futile. He let go of the controls and the levers snapped back, instantly reducing the wings' movement to mere flutters, halving his velocity with a rapidity that he knew would culminate in a swift descent and impact.

 

It did not matter.

 

Yet as he slowed, Artum felt a powerful air current seize his struggling frame and lift him forward. The wings caught the sudden stream, and in an instant, they began to move in harmony.

 

The sun from the south warmed him as he was carried further. The oxygen thinned, the temperatures cooled, and the sky turned grey. A calm brushed over him. He doubted the current could last. Surely it would dissipate, and his rapid drop to the earth would begin.

 

Yet the current strengthened, his ascent accelerated, and the distance between him and the pack of jockeying competitors narrowed. In mere seconds he darted past the mob. The flyers' gaze jerked toward him, and he sensed their confusion, even anger. Artum grinned, his glee tempered only by the knowledge that the altitude would prevent his parents from witnessing the moment.

 

He flew higher, approaching the mountain's peak, into clouds dense as brush. Still higher — and now he saw dots of light: stars, faint but unmistakable. The wings barely moved.

 

I do not need these.

 

Artum reached to his chest and unfastened the clasps of the suit to which the reviled wings were affixed. As the last hook let loose, the suit buffeted behind him and the winds snatched it away.

 

He peered to his right and glimpsed the garment tumbling in the sky, the metallic musculature collapsing upon itself, snapping in sections, no longer curved wings but a tangled mass. It whipped end over end and then disappeared behind him. In that moment the pain in his upper back, sternum, and rib cage was finally gone.

 

Artum tossed off his goggles and exhaled. His arms relaxed at his sides. He rose and fell in the shifting draft with slight movements of his legs. The current surged, bringing him higher still, beyond the peak, beyond any altitude he'd achieved during months of training, beyond his father's scowl. Above him, more stars, thousands now, wondrous, radiant as flames.

 

Still rising, trajectory steady, he flew toward their brilliance.