by Jean Lee
Skin crinkles as though this abomination could smile.
Liam brings his sword down upon the trunk and splits it in twain as he falls, the oil spilling out, pooling near Campion’s feet—
The Incomplete’s head falls with a pathetic plop to the ground. The oak-body teeters over Campion as he evades Liam’s sword once, twice, thrice.
Liam’s own mark spreads its pain across his arm and chest, but still he lands upon his feet, blood sword in defensive position before his face. Blood trickles from his neck down his back. Breathing is a labor as he steps back for Dorjan, now back on two legs, his blue eye joyous for battle.
Campion dodges Dorjan’s punch and head butts the princeborn to the ground. “You pathetic piece of shit,” he says as he dips his hands in the oil and sucks his fingers clean. “You could’ve been worth something in The Pits. But even that pwecious widdle Jenny from the borderland’s got a more desirable heart than you.”
This is the wrong thing to say.
Dorjan leaps and slams Campion into the Wall. He presses his arm into Campion’s neck, cracking bone. “Aw, did you forget the Wall’s got no power over widdle ol’ me?”
Campion raises his oily hand. “Nope.” A shadow falls over the two of them—the remaining branch of the Incomplete’s thorned tree is now raised just like Campion’s. The tree is now the traitor’s giant, poisonous puppet.
Campion slams his hand downward.
A thorned branch plummets in kind.
Dorjan flings Campion to the ground and dives clear.
A small cloud of dust billows, fades.
The thorned branch twitches on top of Campion’s body as its points pierce his legs and back.
Liam drives the blood sword through the branch’s base, and it bursts to ash. Only then does he dare stagger past the hole and fissure to be far enough from the Wall for his mark to shy away from his chest. He collapses beside Arlen and Aine to see Dorjan walk into the ash, the soles of his boots hissing, and step with his full weight upon one of the many thorns in Campion’s back.
“Who’s the piece of shit now?” he asks.
Campion spits a mouthful of oil. The thorns liquify and coat his charred body. He’s dark as volcanic rock, and just as hot. “Still you.” He rolls over, throws Dorjan off his balance. Now the traitor’s body itself is changing, losing fingers and gaining thorns surely tipped with poison—
But Dorjan kicks Campion’s wrist, dives, rolls and throws a fistful of dirt at Campion’s eyes. When Campion launches himself with a mouthful of thorns instead of teeth, Dorjan rams his full weight into Campion’s belly again, the neck again, again. He blocks every thorn’s strike, even kicking a few clean off the traitor’s body. Campion may rise up, swing both hands of thorns like daggers, but Dorjan’s green eye is too clever, the blue eye too bloodthirsty. Dorjan wrenches one of Campion’s arms and snaps it across his knee before driving his own head into Campion’s nose bridge. And still he does not let Campion drop. Dorjan holds him close despite the traitor’s poisonous skin and says with slow, biting words, “No more children.”
Dorjan’s fist shatters Campion’s ribs.
Campion’s eyes roll toward the princeborns in the treeline. His lungs press against Dorjan’s fist as he pulls in one last breath, even as his heart’s fire douses. “She won’t let you live. Any of you.” His eyes bob back to Dorjan. “She is coming from the dark. And Jenny will be her first taste—”
Veli and blood, oil and bile burst from Campion’s chest as Dorjan rips his heart out. It beats once, twice. Hardens.
Just another stone.
“It is done, Dorjan,” Arlen’s voice is hoarse. “We need to get back.”
But Liam sees Dorjan measure the weight of the heart. He knows what’s about to happen. He turns, not without some degree of pain, and tells Arlen, “You best get started.”
A pause. Arlen nods. “We won’t be far.”
Liam takes care that Aine cannot see around him. He remains near the tree line, his cursed mark still pricking his throat, so that only he can watch Dorjan crush Campion’s skull with the stone heart over, and over, and over again, French curses frothing between his teeth.
16
Regroup
“Feel better?” Liam asks only after Dorjan throws the heart against the Wall. Ash flies in all directions.
“Much.” Yet Dorjan winces as he stands up. He barely makes it twenty feet before he starts vomiting.
Liam sheathes his blood dagger and holds out a hand to help. “Arlen must have something useful back in his satchel. He always does.”
“Oh, shut it, Perfect Pecs, I’m fine.” Dorjan spits up some more wood. “Biting Campion tasted as bad as that giant thorn thing on the beach.”
Liam doesn’t like the paleness in that green eye, though, let alone how Dorjan’s whole frame shudders. The granach poison had all but killed Charlotte her first day in River Vine. Only Liam’s own blood mixed with a wealth of herbs and magic pulled her through. “Perhaps you need some clean blood, as Charlotte did.”
Dorjan’s face turns cute. “Aw, Liam, I didn’t know you cared.”
“Shut up and let me try something.” He tears open the last of Dorjan’s buttons, revealing an olive-skinned chest of muscles taut against subtle rib bones. Blue-green bruising rings the heart.
Dorjan gasps at the intrusion, of course. “Liam, really, that’s very flattering of you, but I don’t—”
“I swear, Dorjan, I will find a way to melt your mouth if you keep that up. Arlen’s going to need all the herbs we have. If I,” he whips the blood dagger out and guides one side of the blade across his own palm. A thin line of Velidevour blood, crimson with a hint of sparking lavender, trails in the blade’s wake, “can at least help you fight the poison until a supply of velifol is restored,” he spins the dagger until its tip rests lightly in the center of the bruise ring, “then that’s what I’m going to do.”
Dorjan looks down. A single spark dances as Liam’s blood travels along its feathered grooves. “Well.” He looks up, mischief blooming once more in his green eye. “Be gentle with me, Sweet Sire.”
Liam glares and presses the point in. Dorjan doesn’t make a sound when the blade enters his flesh, though the light emanating from the wound rather than blood is, at that moment, a touch disconcerting. His blue eye reflects the light…and his curiosity. “How often have you done this?”
“Including today?” Liam makes a cut about as long as his thumb. “Once.”
Dorjan snorts. “Smashing.”
Liam slowly, gingerly, pulls the blood dagger out. Half a dozen sparks flashing gold, crimson, and lavender follow the blade’s exit and fly as dandelion seeds, but Liam catches them in his bloody palm. “Let’s not lose the good embers.” He flattens his hand across the cut, then presses his blood dagger’s blade on top. Liam sings the spell of healing as fast as his own heart’s fire allows. His arm grows cold as he channels his blood into Dorjan, just as it did when he bled into Charlotte. Warriors both fighting for Liam, both poisoned by the Lady Orna in her pursuit of Liam…It is only right I shed my blood in kind, Liam thinks as steam begins to curl around the blood dagger. He lifts it, revealing a dark red scab across Dorjan’s chest. Already the blue-green ring is fading.
Dorjan blinks a little color back into his face and stands upon his feet without trouble. “My gut still feels Pits-awful.”
Liam sheathes his blood dagger and wipes his hands. “To Arlen, then.”
They find their teacher amidst broken pine needles, where he kneels to inspect the other dead Incomplete. Only dried blood rings his neck now, though his arm still twitches a bit from his cursed mark—a painful reminder that the Wall is not far.
“Arlen, have you any more betony?” Liam calls as he helps Dorjan to the ground. Aine limps over, but Dorjan waves her back with a sad whimper in his throat. “I gave him some of my blood to clean his heart’s embers, but he’s surely ingested more of Campion’s poison.”
Arlen breaks fro
m his investigation and holds Dorjan’s mouth wide for study. “Well,” he says with careful scrutiny of the green eye, then blue, “it isn’t killing you, so there’s that.”
“What a comfort,” Dorjan says flatly.
Arlen studies Dorjan’s chest next. “No coloring around the abdomen. Not enough time to do real damage, perhaps. Juniper will help drive any remaining poison out. I’ll slip into Rose House—”
“Are you mad? You could barely walk by the Wall. You need rest, Uncle, as does Aine.”
“I could fly in,” offers Liam.
“Because a glowing eagle is so bloody stealthy. And yet I’m tempted if it means you can get us both proper shirts.” Dorjan tries in vain to button his coat, but one button can only get him so far. “Just, hang on, let me think. And stand over there, Liam, you’re making my torso feel inadequate.” Dorjan scratches his head with both hands as he stares at the Incomplete’s ashes caught up in a little whirlwind. “We’ve almost no velifol, and it’s for Arlen, and shut up, Uncle, it is for you, your skin’s as purple as blackberry jam. Liam’s not the only one who can righteously starve himself.”
“Hey!” Liam crosses his arms. By Aether’s Fire, I am still…I still have strength, power, I can feel it burn readily in me without hunger. How to explain what I myself cannot understand?
Arlen waves his hand between their faces while Aine decides for whatever reason that her father must at this moment be climbed like a tree. Arlen lets out a small gasp—Liam doubts those claws are kind on skin—but does not stop her. “You cannot get far without treating yourself, Dorjan.”
“Liam’s already performed triage. Then there’s a mouthful of velifol on the Blair farm’s wishing well—not to mention old shirts in their basement—and juniper aplenty in the wilderness along the road.” Dorjan yanks the last shreds of his shirt out from under his coat and throws them upward. The wind lifts them, and they fly like a wounded kite, their threads and magic unweaving and dissipating into dust. With a pert snap of his coat flaps, Dorjan adds, “I’ll be all right, Uncle. I’ll keep close to the borderland, and ensure my pack does the same for Jenny’s protection. With Campion dead there is no commoner left under The Lady Orna who can cross the Wall without incurring attention. Then when Devyn and Ember return with more veli for us, martyrs included—”
Liam rolls his eyes.
“—we can finally send the lot back to The Pits where they belong. Again. Ahem.”
“Look, I sent her as far down as I knew,” Liam says as he kicks a shriveled pinecone into the dead Incomplete tree. “I never accompanied Orna on an excursion into the depths, much as she wished it. Those tunnels are too…” he pauses, shivers, “tangled.”
“The problem,” Arlen winces as he plucks Aine off his shoulder before she attempts a climb downward, “is that Orna knows more of the Pits than you, me, or any of us. Whatever she knows has also given her an impressive repertoire. See here.” He takes them to the Incomplete tree. His fingers hover over the thread-like roots that had attached the Velidevour’s body to the trunk. It doesn’t take long to see why Arlen does not touch them: the very, very ends of the roots are turning in slow circles like worms with mouths open, hunting new flesh. “The magic required for this sort of fusion has not been seen since the time of the kingborns.”
“Queen Avo said the same of the bind that kept Aine in the water.” Liam crosses his arms and closes his eyes. The hint of Velidevour ash in the air toys with his inner vision of that first generation. “Magic’s most passionate offspring.” Liam hates to quote his mother, but he knows no other way to describe the Velidevour ancestors.
“Passionate.” Arlen seems to test the word, his mouth moving soundlessly as his fingers twitch over the root-worms. “Yes. You could say that.”
Dorjan’s lips grow thin in Arlen’s thoughtful silence. “Right. So, I will track you in the Wild Grasses. I’ve brought many packs to the northern border through the years, so the land is not strange to me. Especially with a smelly little cousin scruffling about.” He tickles Aine’s throat and makes that curious little throat-growl the cub loves to return.
Liam turns around to test the growl in his own throat. Surprisingly hard for a seemingly simple sound.
Then Dorjan’s hand pinches his shoulder and spins him back. The eyes of two seasons stare. Hard. Dorjan’s voice tumbles down into a near inaudible whisper as Aine whines to climb Arlen yet again. “You will look after them. Won’t you?”
Liam does not hesitate. Nor does he wish to. “I swear.”
The thin lips slowly spread and turn upward. “Maybe Charlotte’s right about you, Prince of the Pectorals.” He hugs his coat flaps tight. “M-m-maybe.” He pulls back and, as he turns, falls down on all fours, a wolf once more. One quick cough and he’s able to run smoothly once more, out of the pines and over the Wall with one brief howl in farewell.
Aine barks and tries to toddle off in Dorjan’s path, but Arlen manages to scoop her up. “Liam?” Arlen’s voice carries such a strong calm to it, even after all they just went through. “Cairine and Charlotte are waiting.”
Charlotte. The very mention of her name brings a smile to Liam’s face. “Let’s risk a bit of speed,” he says, and his arms vanish among feathers. The little cub hides its face against Arlen’s neck, but Arlen remains still so Liam can circle, aim, and grip him with his talons to carry both father and child off the ground.
How does one child make so much noise? Aine’s barks constantly distract Liam during tricky low flight. Maneuvering through uneven clusters of trees with annoyingly uneven branches is hard enough. Heart’s Fire preserve me, carrying Charlotte out of The Pits was easier than hauling some clawing whelp treating Arlen like a step-ladder. Aine’s claws rake Liam’s belly—she even bites one of his talons, the uilleagan! Arlen chides gently, then not so gently, then at last says, “Aine, calm down before we crash, please.”
17
Poppy’s Complaint
Charlotte watches until Liam and Dorjan run out of sight, then turns back towards Cairine. “Let’s go back by the lake so we stay on Captain’s radar.”
“Radar? I do not understand.” Cairine lumbers along with Charlotte away from the thicket anyway.
“It’s…” Yeah, double-dog-dare you to explain radio waves to a bear, Charlie. “It’s a way of saying we’re in her sights.”
“Ah.”
After the heat of battle, the Wild Grasses are a welcome sight. Cairine remains on the beach while Charlotte walks a dozen or so feet into the Wild Grasses, her palms out on either side to feel the reed tips soft and light as a bird’s feathers. The ground slopes upward, but so gradually one would only notice if walking north. Charlotte spots a slim grey ribbon running atop the field…
The Wall.
Cairine grunts, pained. “A moment, Miss Charlotte, if you please.” She sits with one leg protruding at a strange angle. Charlotte jogs over and catches sight of the angry gash she’d made in that inlet when Cairine fought Liam.
Jeez, who have I not hurt here? “Is your, you know, your leg. Is it okay?”
Cairine heaves a sigh. “It mends.”
Charlotte pokes at the sand with her shoe. “I’m sorry about that. Your leg. We were only over there because I wanted to get your cub out.”
Muscles twitch in Cairine’s neck as small choking sounds whimper in her throat. “I thought you like him. That you would kill my Aine.” She lifts a paw of sand into the air. Feeble streams trickle and dissipate as they fall between her claws. “We were so helpless, Arlen and I. We could never be close enough to touch her, to comfort her. She learned to sleep and eat like an otter to survive. And after all this, to be taken again…” Another moan rumbles deep in her gullet.
“Hey.” Charlotte’s hand vanishes into Cairine’s shoulder fur and tries to mimic the curious scruffling Arlen had often given her above her ears. “They’re gonna come back, and then we’re going to crush The Lady and end this crap. Okay?”
For the first time, C
harlotte sees a rich brown glow in the mother bear’s eyes. “Be honest, girl. Do you really trust the princeborn Liam Artair?”
Charlotte pokes the sand again. What I wouldn’t give for a few skipping stones.
As if they heard her call, some small, rounded stones come to the sand’s surface.
Charlotte thinks nothing of their sudden appearance, even though Cairine grunts and asks, “Where did those come from?”
No, Charlotte’s trying to avoid a simple “Yes!” to trusting Liam because she knows this woman, Arlen’s wife, has been cursed by Liam’s parents. Cairine deserves more than some lame exclamation. “I know he can be jealous as shit. Selfish, too.” She swallows, counts her breaths, and strokes the leather of Arlen’s satchel to steady herself. “But so can I. And, I guess this’ll sound crazy,”—unlike talking to a bear— “but I don’t, you know, smell the evil on him like I have on The Lady, or Cein, or any of the monsters back where I come from.” So bloody strange, talking about her nose. But by Cairine’s nod, perhaps this is the right way to explain herself after all. “Any time Liam’s gotten angry, his smell changes, but it’s never malicious or anything like that. And I know what Dorjan’s said. Ember’s talked to me, too. I know he’s done some nasty stuff. But maybe all those years left for dead let his family’s evil kinda bleed out.”
Silence.
The sunlight makes it impossible to see whether or not Captain swims close to Lake Aranina’s surface. Charlotte risks hooking the stone and whipping it out anyway. Light and water scatter in all directions. “Ugh, I just can’t get more than two skips without Liam around.”
Cairine chuckles. “All these years after living with Arlen, and the boy still skips stones?”
“Yup.” Another stone, another try. Just one skip. “Dagnabit. Were you any—”
“Hush.” Cairine’s ears twitch as she rises up onto two feet, eyes locked onto the tree line. “Someone’s running.”