Cracking the Windtraps

[Unseelie]

These were old-model triangle-sail windtraps. No frame or tower, the fabric was spread from a single vertical mast, toward, ideally, an aqueduct leading to the cistern on the base. These, the aqueducts were buried under centuries of dust, and the sails bent straight around the masts, backwards from the prevailing wind.

The fabric was stiff, but not brittle around the mast, where some moisture was still being caught. Though the edges were frayed, there was still just enough material at the tips to attach bucky-cables to the groundside corners, to pull the sand-plated sheets forward on great pulleys, to just above the aqueduct. This took days of slowly pulling and then cinching the cables where any faster the fabric would crack. A pilot couldn't afford even one new sheet, the corsair empire as a whole could barely afford enough new sheets to replenish those lost in storms.

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