Free The Emerald Storm by William Dietrich

Aquilera flew from the highest part of the castle of Coruña del Conde just ten years ago.”
    “What happened to them all?”
    “Oh, they crashed. None died, however. A few broken bones for the early ones and just bruises for Aguilera.”
    “I suppose that’s progress.”
    “I’ve studied bird wings and learned from my predecessors’ failures, which included the lack of a tail. I believe we can launch from Fort de Joux and glide for miles, far outdistancing any pursuit. All it takes is courage.”
    “There’s a fine line between heroism and idiocy.” I’m an expert.
    “My test models suggest curved wings provide more lift, just like a bird, and the knack is adjusting the weight. The real problem is stopping. I’ve yet to duplicate the legs and talons of a raptor.”
    “So you’re proposing a controlled fall down the side of a mountain and a crash at high speed? Just to be clear what we’re planning.”
    “No, I’m proposing that we aim for a lake for our landing.”
    “Landing where there is no land? End of winter? Freezing water?”
    “Frozen water, perhaps. It will take the French entirely by surprise, won’t it? Ingenuity against élan, Ethan, that’s the English secret. This is just a first step. Someday ordinary men will fly everywhere in luxurious comfort, in enormous padded chairs in floating cabins, attended by beautiful servant girls feeding them courses worthy of a Sunday dinner.”
    Obviously the man should be packed off to an asylum, but what stopped me from laughing is that while we had a plan to get into L’Ouverture’s prison, we didn’t have one to get back out. Or, if we did, we could expect the entire angry garrison to hunt us down. The French would spare no effort to recapture the Black Spartacus, and Cayley was the only person with a scheme to give us a head start.
    When every other option means imprisonment or execution, lunacy becomes attractive. So I’d signed us on.
    Cayley called his artificial bird a glider. “Unfortunately, it can only descend, not ascend,” he said.
    “I can do that already, by myself.”
    “But not with the gentleness of a feather, right?”
    “Frankly, I don’t like falling at all.”
    “It will be like sliding down a banister.”
    Our strategy was threefold. The glider for escape, I to crack open our prisoner’s cell, and Astiza laying the groundwork with womanly charm. L’Ouverture had a reputation as a prodigious womanizer that left me, frankly, a little envious. He’d had black, white, and brown wives and concubines, and Astiza had approached the French commandant by posing as one of these. She suggested to the French that she might solicit treasure secrets with warmth where cold wouldn’t do, seducing L’Ouverture for his secrets in return for a share of any treasure. She’d fled the war-torn tropic colony and was trying to make her way in cruel France, she explained.
    I wasn’t entirely happy at her calm confidence in being able to pull this charade off. The less innocent a man is, the more innocent he hopes his wife will be. But I knew better than anyone just how irresistible Astiza could be when she put her mind to it. I was sending her into the lion’s den and hoping she could persuade L’Ouverture to join our lunatic escape without too many objections. Worse, I knew she’d likely achieve the coup. She’d be seductive and ruthless, persuasive but distant, winsome but steely, with hardly an extra breath. Women are by natural law inferior, Napoleon insists, except that every time I meet one I’m forced to doubt the truth of his maxim.
    We had two reasons for this seduction. One was that Astiza as pretend mistress could demand that the viewing port into Toussaint’s cell be closed for conjugal privacy, giving me time to break out L’Ouverture from the roof. The other was to alert the imprisoned general that he was about to be rescued and to prepare him for being hoisted through a hole and catapulted into space. There’d be no