Syncing the Pulse

The burst of thermal air drove Klaasje back half a step, the heat pressing hard against her face and singeing the fine wool of her cuffs.

Above her, Lord Joris van der Meer was no longer merely trembling. The three-foot drop of the sky-gondola had ripped away whatever frail composure the dried mango had bought. His golden wings beat the air in wide, frantic arcs, throwing off showers of bright, stinging sparks that hissed against the mahogany woodwork and settled into the charred damask drapes.

A second drop rattled the brass luggage brackets along the ceiling.

Klaasje did not shout, nor did she duck away from the falling embers. Panic from a handler invited catastrophe from a beast, and a sun-falcon in the throes of altitude terror was capable of superheating an entire cabin bulkhead in under a minute. Instead, she planted her heavy leather boots squarely on the vibrating floorboards, dropped her center of gravity, and let her satchel swing back behind her hip.

"Steady," she said, pitching her voice low, into the chest resonance that had calmed everything from thunder-panicked draft oxen to spiteful cliff-badgers across the northern provinces. "You are on solid oak, Lord van der Meer. The timbers are sound."

The falcon shrieked, a sharp, ringing whistle that set the glassware vibrating on the sideboard. His talons gouged deep grooves into the brass rod as his body torqued, his head darting side to side in pure, blind disorientation. To an avian nervous system traveling at five thousand feet, the sudden loss of barometric pressure did not feel like weather. It felt like falling through the sky without air under the wings.

Klaasje stepped straight beneath the down-draft of his wings.

The heat radiated down in suffocating waves, smelling of ozone, hot copper, and scorched pine resin. If she hesitated, the ambient temperature would trip the gondola's emergency steam vents, flooding the suite with scalding vapor and alarming every passenger in first class.

She raised both hands, palms open and empty, ignoring the prickle of heat blistering the skin of her wrists.

"Look down," she commanded softly. "Right here."

The sun-falcon's golden eyes snapped down toward her face, pupils blown wide and black with terror.

Klaasje did not break the line of sight. With slow, deliberate precision, she lifted her right hand and pressed her bare palm firmly against the center of his feathered breastbone, right over the thrashing flutter of his avian heart.

The heat bit deep into her skin, sharp enough to bring tears to her eyes.

His heart was running at an impossible, lethal tempo, a fluttering blur that vibrated like a plucked wire. Klaasje locked her shoulder, braced her legs against the rolling heave of the ship, and pulled her own diaphragm down into a deep, slow rhythm.

She closed down every stray thread of her attention, narrowing the room to the heat under her hand and the pace of blood through her own chest.

This was the bio-empathic sync. It was not a spell woven from words or a command enforced by will. It was an involuntary biological mirror, a deliberate imposition of mammalian calm onto a runaway nervous system. She forced her own pulse into a heavy, four-beat count: slow inhale, three beats held, slow exhale.

The falcon violently stiffened under her hand.

His beak parted, a hot hiss escaping between his mandibles, but he did not snap at her fingers. She felt his instinct to flee fight against the steady rhythm of her heartbeat vibrating through his sternum. The bio-empathic wave traveled outward from her palm, carrying the chemical signatures of safety, weight, and stillness.

Thump... thump... thump.

For three agonizing seconds, the bird's runaway pulse fought the tether. The fiery glow along his wing coverts flared brighter, scorching the hem of Klaasje's linen waistcoat. The air grew so hot her lungs burned with every breath.

Then, with a shudder that rippled through every golden feather, the falcon's heart hitched.

It skipped, slowed, and fell into the cadence of her own.

The effect was instantaneous and profound. The blinding golden glare suffusing his plumage dimmed to a soft, ember-like warmth. The frantically flared wingtips drooped, their rigid primary feathers softening as the adrenaline washed out of his bloodstream. The ringing screech died down into a rough, dry rasp.

Klaasje maintained the pressure of her hand, deepening her breathing, refusing to let the rhythm slip even as a fresh shudder shook the bird's entire frame.

"That is it," she murmured, her voice steady and quiet. "Down from the sky. Back to the ground."

The shift began with a crackle of displaced air.

The golden feathers did not fall away; they folded inward, dissolving into a shimmering corona of amber light that rapidly elongated and broadened. The brass curtain rod groaned under the sudden shift in mass, bending sharply in the center before giving way with a metallic screech.

Klaasje stepped back just in time as Lord Joris van der Meer tumbled from the ruined drapery mount.

He hit the thick wool carpet on his hands and knees, gasping for breath, surrounded by a drift of singed velvet and cooling ash.

The sun-falcon was gone. In its place knelt a tall, broad-shouldered nobleman with sun-streaked golden hair falling across a pale, sweat-slicked brow. He was entirely, undeniably human—and entirely, undeniably devoid of clothing.

Klaasje immediately reached down, caught the edge of a relatively unburned velvet curtain that had torn free from the wall, and tossed it over his bare shoulders.

"Breathe through your nose, my lord," Klaasje said in a crisp, matter-of-fact tone, stepping back to give him space while discreetly checking her palms for second-degree burns. "Your heart rate is still elevated, but the acute molt has passed."

Joris clutched the heavy velvet around his throat, his knuckles turning white. The mortification that washed over his features was far hotter than the panic-fire had been. He looked up at her through tangled hair, his sharp, aristocratic jaw tightening into a line of brittle, furious pride.

"Who..." His voice was hoarse, scratched raw by his avian screaming, but dripping with haughty indignation. "Who gave you permission to enter my private quarters?"

Klaasje adjusted her cuffs, looking him squarely in the eye. "Mevrouw Roorda, my lord. Unless you preferred to let the first-class deck burn down around your ears."

Joris drew the velvet drape tighter around his chest, struggling to stand before abandoning the effort and remaining seated on the ruined rug. He glared at the singed velvet near his knee, then up at Klaasje.

"I do not require a handler," he bit out, his voice shaking with the effort to sound commanding. "I am the Envoy Plenipotentiary of the Sunlit Marches. What occurred here was a momentary... thermodynamic irregularity."

"Of course, my lord," Klaasje replied without a flicker of judgment. "Most thermodynamic irregularities do not eat dried mango straight from my palm."

Joris's golden eyes flashed, caught between searing embarrassment and the lingering, humiliating tremors of his vertigo. Outside the reinforced suite door, the faint murmur of concerned voices drifted through the corridor.