His face paled but he let go of my arm.
“Where are you headed?” the man from behind the barricade asked.
“The Oriole Fountain west of here,” I said.
“You can pass,” he said grudgingly. I hurried to scramble over the tangle of wood before the boy could stop me. To my surprise, he followed me.
“You’re going to need help getting there,” he said.
“I can manage myself.” I kept my words curt. The last thing I wanted was someone tagging along. Someone I didn’t know. Someone I didn’t trust. Someone with a hot head.
He whistled – long and piercing – and there was a flurry of sounds – the noise of multiple people moving clumsily. I glanced around me and had to clench my jaw to keep from cursing. Three other boys my age hurried toward us, gripping impromptu weapons – kitchen knives, the leg of a chair, a fire poker. Their awkward grins told me they weren’t attackers. This was getting worse.
“I don’t need anyone coming with me.”
“You said we weren’t starting a revolution the right way,” the original boy said, “so maybe if we follow you, we can change that.”
“Let me be clear,” I said shortly, hurrying now that I’d made it over the barricade and into the busy street ahead of me. People here hadn’t seen the scourge of fire or Claws yet. They were busy boarding up doors and windows and barricading their street. I saw buckets of water being lined up along the street in case of fire. Someone here had a little common sense, at least. “I don’t want anyone coming with me. You’ll get yourself killed.”
“We can handle ourselves,” my unwanted companion said, his chest swelling out as he spoke. “I’m Oman. Of House Whiskeyjack.”
“Good for you.” I bit my words off. “But people around me die. Messily. You should stay here and help fill buckets. Make yourselves useful.”
“You’re a real revolutionary, aren’t you?” Oman said, undeterred. “Even though you don’t have a wing on your wrist.”
“Not all of the Single Wing have their tattoo on their wrist,” I corrected. I didn’t even know why I was bothering to respond, but I couldn’t help but fight him on that detail. In my mind’s eye, I was seeing a single wing tattooed behind an ear. A very nicely formed ear. I felt my cheeks growing hot. “But I don’t have a tattoo anywhere.”
He nodded sharply. “Sometimes we need to hide who we are so we can strike at the right time.”
I shot him a sideways glance wondering at his sudden seriousness, but it immediately faded into a puppy-dog grin again.
I sighed. “Please, all of you go back.”
We were nearly at the barricade that had been erected at the other end of the street. I needed to lose these boys here in this safe place before they all got slaughtered because of me – and drew the attention of the Claws at the same time. I was not recruiting a militia. I was just trying to go read an old book.
They didn’t even respond. They just formed up around me like they thought they were my Claw escort.
“Please.” Now I was begging. “I don’t want to watch you all die.”
“Death is better than being beaten into the ground day after day by the Winged Empire.” Oman said and for the first time since he started talking, he sounded sincere.
And there was no denying it, so I stopped pleading with him and saved my breath for running. I’d just have to try to slip away from them on a busier street.
I reached the next barricade and vaulted over it, into the horrors beyond.
Chapter Fifteen
The barricades had been a little oasis of peace in the middle of a war. The moment I reached the next street, the oasis was gone. People ran in schools like fish, clutching possessions, or supporting the injured, their eyes wild and faces drawn. They looked often over their shoulders as screams ripped through the air to the north and south of the street. I couldn’t make out enough to know who was screaming or what was happening, but I knew that I couldn’t stop any of it. It was like a moving ship on the high seas – no anchor could bring us back to peace.
We plunged westward.
I kept my eyes focused on where I was going, dodging people and barriers as they came. I didn’t dare let myself feel what the people were feeling or think about their situation. I didn’t dare imagine what might happen to this city in the hours and days to come. Every time I slipped and my mind went there, my heart plummeted. I must only focus on what was ahead of me.
My vision began to darken.
No! Not now! Forbidding take it!
And then I was lost in the vision again. I was hovering just over Osprey’s shoulder. He was on the street. A Claw’s fist shot out, about to hit a woman in the side of the face. She wasn’t even looking. Osprey’s hand shot out lightning-fast and caught the fist in his grip, his muscles bulging as he shoved the Claw back a pace.
“Enough!” he roared. “Peace, you fools! These are citizens!”
But no one was listening. Beside him, Ivo coughed, doubling over, but his arm was held out sword brandished as he swung in defense of an elderly couple stumbling by. He stood toe to toe with my pursuer, attempting to help Osprey quell the conflict. They were situated squarely between a line of Claws and a line of citizens, arms up, faces grim as they tried to hold them in place.
It took me a moment to realize they were at the port side of the city. Behind them, a row of ships’ boats was bobbing over the waves as they hurried toward the city from the ships anchored further out. The wind was against them, but the men in the boats pulled on their oars with vigor.
“Enough!” Osprey roared again and his bird smashed in between the two lines of enemies, flaring in purplish-white light. I was blinded for a moment and when I blinked my vision back, I was seeing through my own eyes again, panting as I tried to regain my balance.
The boys on either side of me had shoulders under my arms, dragging me – stumbling – through the street. I could hear the march of feet behind us.
“Hurry, revolutionary girl,” Oman whispered. “They’re almost upon us. You had some kind of fit.”
They pulled me with them into the doorway to a building – a bakery, I thought. It was recessed, leaving just enough room for the four of us to huddle together in the shadows.
“They came out of nowhere,” he said in hushed tones. “So fast. All we had to warn us were the screams.”
“Shhh!” one of the other boys said – a lanky fellow with a kitchen knife and hair so long that even his forehead band couldn’t keep it out of his eyes.
We shrank deeper into the shadow at the same time that we heard the Claws issuing orders and the screams of citizens as they were hacked down by the line of marching Claws. They were getting closer. They were on our street.
Fear seized my heart. I wanted to draw my short sword, but even that would be too loud right now. I clung to the grip, hands growing clammy as the marching steps drew closer and closer. They stopped outside our alcove and my breath hitched in my throat. I could see the merest glimmer of blue and white from my vantage point. The edge of a uniform.
A roar of voices filled the air.
A bottle crashed on the cobbles in front of us, igniting immediately with flames.
“No quarter!” the Claw outside our hiding space roared.
There was an answering roar from down the street.
“Prepare to hold the line! Hedgehog formation!” the Claw officer’s voice boomed.
The other roar was getting closer. They were going to clash just outside our hiding space. My breath was coming so fast I couldn’t slow it. Someone deeper in our shadows whimpered. I didn’t blame him.
The sounds of feet pounding on cobbles grew louder and louder and then we saw them – faces matching in grim determination were their only uniform but they pounded forward, makeshift weapons raised. Some of these rebels even brandished real weapons. They roared with one wordless voice, throwing themselves into the fray.
My breath caught in my throat at the horrific sounds that fol
lowed.
“Forward. One. Pace!” the Claw officer ordered, and the ground seemed to shudder under their boots as they stepped into my full sight, flinging adversaries before them in their steady, cut, jab, step, cut, jab, step.
A second wave of rebels smashed against the solid rock of the Claws washing across their shield formation like a wave on the rocks. One of them fell headlong into our alcove, clutching his throat, coughing and hacking on his own blood. Oman reached down to help him, and I caught the rebel’s wide eyes as they glazed over. A second rebel stumbled in, eyes wide, mouth a rictus of pain. He slashed out with a homemade polearm and one of the boys with me screamed.
Like lightning striking, the end of the Claw line spun and lunged, three of them reaching into our alcove. They grabbed Oman and two of the others by their shirts, ripping them out of the alcove. I drew my short sword, hot on their heels, but I wasn’t fast enough.
The first boy went down, throat slashed open in a wicked line. He didn’t have time to scream. The second was run through at the same moment that I leapt from the alcove. I barely got my sword up in time to deflect the strike at Oman’s chest. It rattled awkwardly off my defense, sending a shudder up my right arm so that I almost dropped the weapon. I gasped, thrusting my left hand out and manifesting my bees.
The Claw in front of me screamed as they swarmed him, and I reached down and tugged Oman up. His teeth chattered as he tried to speak.
“Run, you fool,” I breathed, barely managing to pull him along as the bees distracted the attacking Claws. They wouldn’t hold them for long. I knew that much. Their stings were too mild, and they had no other weapon.
The last boy fled the alcove – the one with the long hair and the kitchen knife.
“Dahn,” Oman said through chattering teeth as the boy threw an arm under him and began to drag him along the buildings behind the Claws and back the way we came.
If the Claws weren’t busy fighting the line of rebels, they would have already turned and slashed us to pieces, but they were busy at their work – efficiently shredding one human after another as they marched down the street.
Only the ones who had confronted us in the alcove seemed to notice we had escaped.
“There was an alley back there,” Dahn said with a grunt. He was struggling under Oman’s weight.
“Walk, Oman,” I hissed, grabbing his other arm and helping to drag him. He seemed to shake himself and find his feet just as it looked like Dahn might stumble to the ground.
Two of the Claws detached from the group, starting after us.
We dodged into the alley just as I heard a stern order call the Claws back. But we weren’t safe here.
“You boys need to run home,” I said breathlessly.
“Those were bees!” Oman gasped. “Bees! You’re ... are you a Wing?”
“No,” I growled, sticking my head back around the corner.
The Claws had stopped their march forward. The officer was speaking with one of the ones who’d fought us. My bees were hurrying back to me, and he pointed at the cloud of them as they fled. Forbidding take it!
“We don’t have time for this. You need to go!”
“You don’t know the city,” Oman said breathlessly. “And we do. You need us.”
“You’re going to die if you stay with me. Just like your friends did.” I hated being so blunt. Hated how it made it sound like their friends didn’t count. But that was the thing. They did count. And so did these two. I didn’t want them all dead because of me.
“Reed and Farlo are already ... dead.” Dahn stumbled over the word, face pale. “We can’t change that. Come on.”
I followed him – but mostly because it was the only way we could go. Down the alley and deeper into the city. Always deeper.
Before the first turn, we heard boots on cobbles following us. We ran as fast as our lungs could stand.
Chapter Sixteen
Minutes faded into hours in a steady grind of flee and hide.
“If we were walking straight there, it would have taken an hour,” the boys kept saying. But it was poor comfort when every turn saw our route blocked again by sword or fire or screams. It was impossible to say who was winning in the maelstrom of the city. All we knew is that it wasn’t us.
We were coated in soot and grime, throats burning from running so often. We’d caught a drink in a fountain, but we hadn’t even drunk our fill before that square was filled with fighting and we’d had to run again.
“Almost there, almost there,” Dahn was breathing from our spot huddled against the door of a dye merchant.
His chest heaved with every gasp. He’d lost the kitchen knife hours ago and he held his left arm close to his chest. I was pretty sure he’d broken it when he fell in that same encounter. The Claw chasing us had scraped his back with snatching fingers. We’d barely escaped – wouldn’t have except for a shoal of rebels who filled the square at just that minute, launching rocks from slings at us. It had been enough to buy our escape – but Oman had been clipped in the back of the head with one of the stones and blood still flowed steadily from the wound. I didn’t like how his eyes kept going out of focus.
They were adamant about staying with me.
“Bees,” was all they said when I tried to convince them to go. “Never seen bees before.”
Perhaps Ivo and Osprey weren’t wrong about the bees. Just seeing them once had an effect on these two.
I swayed. I could feel the vision coming this time. I hadn’t seen one in so long that I almost longed for it. If only I’d thought to send a bee with Retger or Zayana. I still could – but I didn’t even know where to send it. I could send them through the whole city. But then I’d blackout even more and it was already happening too often.
Darkness crashed over me at the same moment that I heard Oman curse. I could feel my body being dragged as I slipped into my vision.
I was seeing from a perspective that didn’t feel like my bee.
I was on the docks as the boats landed. Dozens of them. Filled with Claws armed to the teeth. I stormed down the dock as they fanned out around me. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a huge shining metal brazier and in its brass side I saw Juste Montpetit, striking a brazen pose, his shirt completely unbuttoned so that I could see his gleaming chest and the hexagons of my honeycomb in his belly. His snake looped around his neck and rolled down his outstretched hand as he pointed toward the city.
“Raze it to the ground. We’ll have no rebellions on the soil of the Winged Empire.” His words were ice and fire and they seared through me.
Raze the city? He was mad. I could barely catch my breath as his Wings and Claws surged forward, blades spinning in front of them like they thought they were on parade, but beauty did not dull the edge of their measured attack. As soon as they left the docks, their spinning blades hit flesh, and sprays of red splashed across snowy embroidery, staining blue coats purple and dark. In the middle of it, the eye of a storm, the calm before murder, Juste strode past the brazier, his face as still and beautiful as it was on the coin. He was the opposite of Osprey in every way – cruel and cold where Osprey ran hot and passionate. Ambitious and self-serving where Osprey would stab knives into himself to spare me. They faced different directions in this world.
My vision snapped back to my body. Oman towed me along behind him, grunting at the weight.
“I can stand,” I gasped, clawing my way to my feet. When did my hands get so dirty?
“We’re there,” he said, tiredly. “The Oriole Fountain.”
I looked up, gasping in relief. We’d made it this far. Beside me, Dahn sagged as we took a moment to try to drink from the fountain.
“The monastery should be near,” I managed but I was distracted. Was that what the coin had meant? That Osprey and Juste faced opposite directions even though it seemed like they were on the same side? The image of Juste’s cold face flooded my mind – his big blue eyes as pitiless as the sea. But then my eyes narrowed as another face filled
my mind – another set of hard blue eyes, but these ones were ravaged by pain and guilt.
I froze.
Beside me, the boys were gasping, catching their breath, bathing their faces in cool fountain water, but I was stunned into rigid silence. How could I have failed to see it?
He’d given me the coin so desperately – as if it was a message. And that was because it was a message. It was the story of the two brothers. Twin brothers and one of them would rule. I’d been distracted by the different color of their skin. But they were the same age, weren’t they? And they had the same blue eyes. One gave the orders. One received them. But Juste had never treated Osprey like a normal Wing in the time I’d seen them together. He’d never just ignored him or ordered him around – it had always been with purpose.
What if the Emperor had two sons born to him the same year? What if one was legitimate and one was not? Tradition said he’d kill the other heir or let his son do it. But maybe he was waiting to see what might happen. And then one of them had Hatched. And he’d been immediately tied up with the souls of children and told that any deviation from his orders would bring their deaths.
Of course. No one would do that to just a normal boy. But they’d do it to a potential heir to the throne, wouldn’t they? To keep him in line. Because he was the spare. And when Juste was crowned, he would be killed like every other sibling to an emperor had been.
An icy chill tore through me.
And I would be there to see it all because the crown prince was intent on making me his bride. And Ivo thought he’d done that just to torment Osprey further.
The blood drained from my face. Suddenly, everything made sense to me. But knowing wasn’t enough. I needed to act. There had to be some way to pry the rest of that feather from Osprey’s chest. There had to be some way to free him from this.
“There it is,” Dahn said, wincing as he tried to point at something. I shook myself and followed his gesture to see a low stone spire. “The monastery.”
Wing Magic Page 11