Pip blinked, shook herself, and shoved those thoughts away. Her magic flared through her, and she poured the excess of magic and emotion into the cable.
This was so frustrating. If she could only resolve things between her and Fieran one way or the other, she could finally stop obsessing over it. Being stuck in this limbo was worse than just hashing it out.
“Pip?”
Pip started, and her foot pressed harder on the pedal. The machine whined as it tried to ramp up the speed on the spool containing the heavy wire. She hurriedly relaxed her foot before she burnt out the mechanics of the machinery. “Yes?”
Louise stepped around one of the other spools of cable that waited for Pip to infuse with her magic. “Do you have a moment? I’d appreciate a fresh pair of eyes.”
“Sure.” Pip stood, awkwardly stepped over the cable, and hopped from the table to the floor. Any chance to get out of her own head was more than welcome.
After they’d returned from the hospital, both of them had shrugged into sets of brown coveralls over their clothes, with Pip rolling up the sleeves and pant legs of hers. The rolls made her wrists and ankles bulky, but she could manage. Pip had tied back her hair, but Louise had left hers long and flowing around her shoulders, as if daring grease to get into her elven hair.
They rounded the spools, both empty and full, and approached the half-assembled aeroplane. It perched directly on its belly on the ground so that Louise and the other inventor—the young man Bennett Marion—could work on the engine compartment without having to stand on a ladder. The wings were also missing, making it easy to reach the cockpit.
Bennett glanced up at their footsteps. A broad, open smile lit his face as he scrambled to his feet. He stuck out a hand to Pip. “You must be the new girl. I’m Bennett Marion.”
Louise huffed and rolled her eyes. “You met her yesterday.”
“I did?” His grin dropping, Bennett glanced at Louise, his hand still remaining in the space between him and Pip.
“Yes.” Louise shook her head, as if she was resisting another eyeroll.
Bennett winced and shrugged as he turned back to Pip. “Uh, sorry. I honestly don’t remember.”
“I know what it’s like to be so wrapped up in a project that you don’t pay attention to anything else.” Pip shook his hand firmly. “I’m Pippak Detmuk-Inawenys, but you can call me Pip.”
Bennett’s grin returned as he withdrew his hand. “Good to meet you again, Pip.”
Pip nodded and strode closer to the aeroplane. “So, your mechanical problem.”
“As I mentioned yesterday, we’re trying to improve the rudimentary interrupter gear we reconstructed from the pieces we were sent from Mongavarian aeroplane wreckage.” Louise pointed as she halted next to the open engine compartment. “We’ve rigged this particular gun so that the trigger is on the control column. All the newest aeroplanes are rolling out of the factory with this new firing mechanism. So the problem is that we need to synchronize the spinning of the engine with the firing mechanism.”
“I’m assuming you’ve tried out various gear configurations?” Pip peered into the engine compartment, taking in the configuration of gears and connecting rods that Louise and Bennett had rigged.
“Yes. One gear. Two gears. Several gears in lots of sizes.” Louise sighed and poked at one of the gears. “It’s just…fiddly. Just when we think we have it figured out, the gears bind up or one engine spins faster than another engine or a different type of aeroplane has a different sized engine compartment which throws our calculations off.”
Of course. Any variation in engine size, propeller type, distance from the engine to the gun would change how the mechanism functioned.
“There are a lot of moving parts with this.” Pip reached into the engine compartment to turn the gears, letting a little of her magic flow into her fingers to study the inner workings. “And it needs to be simple enough for the army mechanics to maintain and replace. Hardy enough to take a beating in battle.”
“And the army really wants it to be universal for all aeroplane models and engine types.” Louise’s sigh was more frustrated than annoyed as she nudged a discarded gear on the floor with her boot. “It’s no wonder the Mongavarian version is somewhat unreliable.”
As Louise and Bennett started a brisk discussion of gears and engines, Pip relaxed further. This was where she was most at home, among gears, grease, wires, and metal. For a while, at least, she could set aside all thoughts of Fieran and romance.
Chapter
Four
Fieran blinked at the ceiling above his bed, pulling himself from the haze of the light doze he’d fallen into after all the work of eating breakfast. Who knew the simple chore of eating could be so tiring?
With his curtain drawn mostly around his bed, he couldn’t see much of the rest of the ward. Which was a bother. It left him with nothing interesting to look at, only a white ceiling overhead and an off-white curtain around him.
Worse, his mind seemed to be actually clearing. It hadn’t been so bad, just lying there on and off sleeping when he’d been too drugged to care. But now his brain was functioning enough to get bored.
Footsteps sounded outside the curtain before Nylian strolled into Fieran’s view, his mouth tugged into his resting frown. “Fieran. I see you are awake.”
Fieran struggled to sit more upright, winced at the pain throbbing through him at that much movement, and flopped back onto his pillow. “Feeling more awake than I have in a while.”
