He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

She thought through the possibilities out loud. “We have no good options. If we defect to the south, we’re dead.”

“And if you leave Arlong, then the Hesperians will hunt you down.”

“But if we stay loyal to the Republic, we’re just building a cage for ourselves.”

“And none of that even matters if we don’t survive the day after tomorrow.”

They stared at each other. Rin heard a heartbeat echoing against the silence; hers or Kitay’s, she didn’t know.

“Tiger’s tits,” she said. “We’re going to die. None of this even matters because Feylen is going to wreck us under the Red Cliffs and we’re all going to die.”

“Not necessarily.” Kitay stood up abruptly. “Come with me.”

She blinked up at him. “What?”

“You’ll see. I’ve been meaning to show you something ever since you got back.” He clasped her hands and pulled her to her feet. “I just haven’t had the chance. Follow me.”

Somehow they ended up in the armory. Rin wasn’t entirely sure they were supposed to be there, because Kitay had kicked through the lock to get in, but at this point she didn’t care.

He led her to a back storage room, pulled a bundle wrapped in a canvas sheet out from a corner, and dropped it on the table. “This is for you.”

She peeled the sheet back. “A pile of leather. Thank you. I love it.”

“Just unfold it,” he said.

She held up the contraption, a confusing combination of riding straps, iron rods, and long sheets of leather. She peered at it from all angles but couldn’t make sense of what she was looking at. “What is this?”

“You know how none of us have been able to defeat Feylen?” Kitay asked.

“Because he keeps flinging us into cliff walls? Yes, Kitay, I remember that.”

“Listen.” He had a manic glint in his eye. “What if he couldn’t? What if you could fight him on his turf? Well, turf doesn’t really apply, but you know what I mean.”

She stared at him, uncomprehending. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You’ve got far more control of that fire now, yes?” he asked. “Could probably call it without thinking?”

“Sure,” she said slowly. The fire felt like a natural extension of her now; she could extend it farther, burn hotter. But she was still confused. “You already know that. What does that have to do with anything?”

“How hot can you make it?” he pressed.

She frowned. “Isn’t all fire the same temperature?”

“Actually, no. You get different sorts of flames on different surfaces. There’s a difference between a candle flame and a blacksmith’s fire, for instance. I’m not an expert, but—”

“Why does that matter?” she interrupted. “I couldn’t get close enough to burn Feylen anyway, and I don’t have that kind of reach.”

He shook his head impatiently. “But what if you could?”

“We’re not all geniuses like you,” she snapped. “Just tell me what you’re going on about.”

He grinned. “Remember the signal lanterns before Boyang? The ones that would have exploded?”

“Of course, but—”

“Do you want to know how they work?”

She sighed and resigned herself to giving him free rein to talk as much as he wanted. “No, but I think you’re about to tell me.”

“Hot air rises,” he said gleefully. “Cool air sinks. The balloons trap the hot air in a small space and it lifts up the entire apparatus.”

She considered this for a moment. She was starting to understand where he was going, but she wasn’t sure if she liked the conclusion. “I weigh a lot more than a paper balloon.”

“It’s about the ratio,” Kitay insisted. “For instance, heavier birds need larger wings.”

“But even the largest bird is tiny compared to—”

“So you’d need even bigger wings. And you’ll need a hotter fire. But you have the strongest heat source in existence, so all we had to do was get you an apparatus to turn that into flying power. The wings, if you will.”

She blinked at him, and then looked down at the pile of leather and metal. “You’ve got to be joking.”

“Not in the slightest,” he said happily. “Do you want to try it on?”

She gingerly unfolded the apparatus. It was surprisingly light, the leather smooth under her hands. She wondered where Kitay had found the material. She held it up, marveling at the neat stitching.

“You did this all in a week?”

“Yeah. I’d been thinking about it for a while, though. Ramsa came up with the idea.”

“Ramsa did?”

He nodded. “Half of munitions is aerodynamics. He’s spent a long time figuring out how to make things fly right.”

Rin was somewhat wary of gambling her life on the designs of a boy whose greatest passion in life was watching things explode, but she supposed that at this point she had very few options.

With Kitay’s help, she fastened the strap over her chest as tightly as she could manage. The iron rods shifted uncomfortably against her back, but otherwise the wings were surprisingly flexible, greased to rotate smoothly with every movement of her arms.

“You know, Altan used to give himself wings,” she said.

“He did? Could he fly?”

“I doubt it. They were made of fire. I think he just did it to look pretty.”

“Well, I think I can give you some functional ones.” He tightened the straps around her shoulders. “Everything fit okay?”

She lifted her arms, feeling somewhat like an overgrown bat. The leather wings looked pretty, but they seemed far too thin to sustain her body weight. The interlacing rods that kept the apparatus together also looked so terribly fragile she was sure she could snap them in half over her knee. “You sure that’s going to be enough to keep me up?”

“I didn’t want to add too much to your weight. The rods are as slender as they’ll go. Any heavier and you’ll sink.”

“They could also break and send me plummeting to my death,” she pointed out.

“Have a little faith in me.”

“It’s gonna hurt you if I crash.”

“I know.” He sounded far too giddy for her comfort. “Shall we go try this out?”

They found an open clearing up on the cliffs, well out of range of anything that was remotely flammable. Kitay had wanted to test his invention by pushing Rin off a ledge, but reluctantly agreed to let her try levitating over level ground first.

The sun was just beginning to rise over the Red Cliffs, and Rin would have found it exceptionally lovely if she weren’t so terrified that she could hear her heartbeat slamming in her eardrums.

She stepped out into the middle of the clearing, arms raised stiffly over her sides. She felt both exceedingly scared and stupid.

“Well, go on.” Kitay backed up several paces. “Give it a try.”

She gave the wings an awkward flap. “So I just . . . light up?”