The pilots started with pulling crates or knocking coats off the shelf. Easy enough, but when they had to move one another, that was a different story.
Revna could feel the Weave if she concentrated. It ran through the whole world, thick threads and thin ones, passing through mountains and cities and people all the same. She could see a glimmering of threads, but they felt greasy and slick between her fingers, like warm butter. Revna and Katya joined hands. She could lift herself a few inches straight up, but Katya’s weight was too much, and the threads slipped away from her before she could get a good grip. The Weave disliked human meddling.
The others didn’t have much luck, either. Pavi was the quickest to pull her partner off the ground, but she couldn’t manage more than a couple of seconds before she flopped back down again, wincing as her tailbone smacked the dirt.
Come on, Revna thought to herself after the fourth failed attempt. You’ve done this before. As a child, she’d played with the Weave all the time. Had she forgotten how? Maybe pulling herself and a Skarov away from a falling building had been a fluke.
Maybe the secret was not thinking. She watched the others’ techniques and the way they stumbled over thin air. Then she tightened her hand around Katya’s sweaty fingers and yanked.
They whipped forward, lifting halfway off the ground. Then her prosthetics dug in. She hissed as she came back down hard.
“Are you all right?” Katya said, face pinched in concern. “Maybe I should try.”
“Give me a minute,” Revna said. Through her residual limbs she could feel her prosthetics tremble. The last time she’d used the Weave this way, she’d thought she was going to die. Did her prosthetics remember, or were they afraid of something else now? Of getting thrown out and letting her family down again? Of getting arrested and sent north? The Weave was illegal, after all, and as the propaganda posters said, THE LAW COMES FOR EVERYONE.
There’s nothing you can do about it now. Her powers were no secret. The best she could do was make use of them for Mama and Lyfa, and hope the Union didn’t arrest her anyway.
She yanked herself forward once more. Her hands slipped on the thread and she tumbled into Katya. Her shoulder knocked hard into Katya’s nose, sending Katya’s head flying back. For one glorious moment Revna was in the air. Then she came down, chin-first onto the hard dirt.
Pain exploded in her abdomen and phantom feet. Across the warehouse someone shouted, and the girls scrambled over to them. “Ooh,” Katya groaned next to her. “I think I’m seeing colors I’ve never seen before.”
Someone ran for a drink of water. “Sorry,” Revna said to Katya, wincing as she pushed herself up. She wanted to check on her prosthetics, comfort them and try to massage the ache out of her calves. But all the girls were watching, and then Tamara came over.
“We’re fine,” Revna said before Tamara could ask. She didn’t need to be pitied the way she had been in Tammin. And she couldn’t afford to be the weak one of the Night Raiders.
Tamara looked at Katya. “Don’t worry,” Katya said, touching her nose. “It’s not even bleeding.”
Tamara didn’t seem convinced, but she nodded. “The brute force is good, but as you can see, you need to be versatile with how you use it. Don’t rely on the same tricks every time.” She folded her arms and said pointedly to the other pilots clustered around them, “Keep practicing. It will come.”
It didn’t, not for any of them. Revna didn’t try any more violent pulls, but working slowly and carefully yielded no results. Her arms burned and gave up. She almost groaned in relief when Tamara called them in. “It’s no easy task, what I ask of you. But if you do not possess the strength to do this, you do not possess the strength to handle the Strekozy in battle.” Her voice held the steel core Revna had heard when Tamara had rescued her from her Skarov interrogation. “If we cannot fly, we cannot even the odds. If we cannot fly, we’ve lost the war. And that’s why we’ll come back tomorrow and we’ll get it right.”
“How could Tamara possibly have learned?” Revna asked Katya as they left the warehouse for dinner.
“She’s got her own special magic,” Katya replied. She leaned in and lowered her voice. “With Commander Vannin.” Revna snorted. Katya was a little frivolous, but at least she wasn’t party line.
The crisp air and the bitter scent of oil hanging over the field couldn’t dispel their fatigue. All the same, as they opened the mess door, every back straightened and they lifted their chins as one. No matter how tired the Night Raiders might be, there were some places they had to go looking as fresh as ever.
They shared the mess with the 146th Day Raiders—also known as the boys. Tamara said they would have the chance to promote friendliness in the regiment and get the men used to having some “sisters.” But everyone had witnessed Hesovec and Tamara arguing over who got the Strekozy, and as far as the boys were concerned, superior planes meant nothing if they had to wait to fly. They’d been training for weeks and had yet to see their promised aircraft. The friendly burble of conversation dropped as the girls entered.
Revna shuffled in between the chattering Katya and Elena. Elena always looked solemn and mournful. She had the sort of long face required for it, with a hooked nose and eyes that seemed faraway, as if she were weighing each word that went through her mind. “Do you need assistance?” she asked.
“I’m fine,” Revna said. “Thanks.” She was too tired to even think about rolling her eyes, even when she had a small tug-of-war with Katya over who got to carry her tray.
“What did you do today?” she asked Linné, who was in line in front of her.
Linné gave her a blank look. “I worked.”
“Never mind.” Revna wasn’t quite sure what to make of Linné. She hadn’t made any comments about Revna’s legs, but anything she did say was terse and unhelpful.
Revna followed her fellow pilots over to the end of a long table, and together they dug their spoons into a less than delectable dinner of pale yellow carrots, barley, and greasy fowl. It was the first meat she’d gotten since Papa was taken away. She’d expected to savor it more. The Union really could ruin anything.
“How was your day?” Magdalena dropped her tray next to Revna, spraying them both with gravy. She’d come in laughing with the other engineers.
There wasn’t much point in spoiling Magdalena’s good mood. “It was fine.”
“We took apart explosives,” said another engineer. “Magda almost got us killed.”
“I wanted to see how the mechanism worked,” Magdalena explained. “Someone mentioned to us that the Strekozy had sticky release triggers.”
“Like it matters,” said Elena, raising her ponderous eyes heavenward. “We’ll never even get them in the air.”
“Don’t say that,” Katya told her, leaning around Pavi. She waved her spoon at the other side of the mess. “If the meatheads over there can do it, why can’t we?”
“Because we’ll be thrown in prison?” Revna suggested. Tamara had promised her that the Weave was acceptable now. But in the Union, truth seemed to wriggle and squirm like an angry snake, hard to pin down and keep hold of.