“Perhaps there wasn’t a reason,” Tsam says. “It’s not just burns, the bodies have other wounds too. These people were slaughtered. Perhaps it was just for fun.”
Alyssa glances at the horizon. It will be dark soon.
“We should bury them,” she says. Her eyes are moist and, as she wipes at them with the back of her hand, it makes me wonder where she and Tsam left Garrett.
When he’s finished with the boy, Kole agrees with Alyssa and with Maya’s help, we move the bodies of twenty-eight villagers into rows and bury them beside a cluster of birch trees that used to be white but are now tainted with grey. By the time we have finished, the moon is high in the sky and our foreheads are glistening with sweat. My breath billows in clouds as we move the last of the soil back into place and, when the final grave is finished, Tsam and Alyssa stretch their wings out and lift their hands up towards the sky, as they did for Garrett. Kole and I follow suit. Maya lifts her trunk.
Niri is still with the boy and it feels wrong to light a fire, so we huddle in the shadow of one of the smouldering buildings. Every now and then, the wind whips through the decimated village and the flames ignite a little more. Each time they do, I lean towards their warmth and feel instantly guilty for appreciating it.
Kole and Tsam take the first watch while Alyssa and I sleep. After an hour or so, we swap. Then, just before sunrise, the boy wakes up. Opening his eyes to find a baby elephant mopping his brow, he frowns as if he is dreaming.
I touch the boy’s arm and ask his name.
“Jamiyl,” he croaks.
“Jamiyl, I’m Émi. Do you remember what happened?”
Jamiyl coughs, then winces. “I was playing with my sister,” he says. “They came from nowhere. Shouting, with torches.”
“Who did, Jamiyl?” Alyssa steps in. I frown at her not to be too pushy but she continues, “Do you know who they were?”
“They said they were soldiers of Mahg. They said we had a choice – join them, or…” The boy begins to sob and the tears sting his cheeks, which makes him sob more. “My Pa said ‘No, I won’t go with you. None of us will.’ So they chased us. They had swords, and the houses were on fire. I lost my sister, and my Ma and Pa fell down…” Jamiyl’s words are jumbling together and he is breathing so fast he looks as though he might faint.
“It’s okay,” I tell him. “You’re safe now, try to breathe.”
Jamiyl manages to calm himself. “A couple of people said yes, so they took them. But everyone else…”
“Jamiyl, you’ve been a big help, so you just rest now. My friend, Niri, will look after you.” Jamiyl looks at Niri, and moves his hand to touch the calf’s foot. Then he closes his eyes. He is sleeping again.
“It doesn’t sound like Mahg was here. Just the soldiers, trying to force the villagers to join them,” says Alyssa.
The three of us mumble our agreement. Then there’s the sound of someone else’s voice. A fifth voice. From the remains of the building just behind us.
“We missed someone!” I cry, charging towards the sound.
“Émi, be careful,” Tsam warns, using my full name as if to indicate he’s still not friends with me.
The charred wooden beams are still hot so I pull my jacket off and wrap it around my hands. Tsam and Kole do the same and we tug at the wreckage until, eventually, we see a booted foot.
“There’s someone here,” I call.
Gently, we pull the figure out into the open. He is groaning and clutching his upper arm with his opposite hand. He doesn’t look badly burned, but he has a bloody wound on the side of his face and scratches on his hands.
“Is his arm broken?” Alyssa asks.
“Let me see,” says Kole, reaching for the man’s arm. Whoever it is groans loudly and wriggles away, hugging his arm to his body. Kole frowns. “Don’t be afraid. Show me.” His tone has sharpened.
“Kole, go easy,” Tsam says. “He may not have seen a Taman before.”
But Kole doesn’t go easy. He grabs the man’s hand and jerks it away from the arm that it’s cradling. He holds it there, hovering midway between the man’s chest and his chin, then launches himself forwards, wrapping his fingers around the man’s throat and squeezing. Tsam and I grab for him, trying to pull him off.
“He’s one of them,” Kole growls, releasing his grip and stepping back, panting, unused to losing control. “Look at his arm.”
I lean over. The man doesn’t try to resist this time. Kole is right – emblazoned just beneath his shoulder is a tattoo. It’s a black pair of wings, wrapped in thorns. From his position on the ground, the man spits in Kole’s face, then grins at him. Kole slowly wipes the spittle from his cheek and I see his hand hover next to the baton on his belt, but he doesn’t draw it.
I put my hand on Kole’s arm. “We can’t kill him, he’s unarmed.”
Kole nods at me. “Find something to tie him up,” he says. “We’ll take him with us.”
Leaving the village, we continue north. Every now and then, I’m certain I see the flint walls of Nhatu glinting on the horizon. But I know I’m mistaken. There is too much distance between here and there and, even if there weren’t, the Alder Woods would obscure the city from view. It has been twenty days since I left. Twenty days since the Cadets captured my mother. She may not be alive. She may have been sent to the camps, like my father. Perhaps I will never find out. Perhaps we are walking to our deaths.
As if he can sense my despair, Kole nudges me to look at Niri. Jamiyl is on Maya’s back and, beside them, Niri is watching Jamiyl intently, as if for fear he will disappear.
“I’m worried that Niri is bonding too much with the boy,” Kole says.
“Is that a bad thing?”
“It is unusual for a calf to lose their Taman so early. If he becomes close to the boy and the boy dies, or leaves…”
“Niri’s heart will be broken twice,” I finish.
Kole nods, looking at the calf as if he’d do anything to prevent that from happening.
“Maybe it’s fate we found Jamiyl,” I murmur, more to myself than to Kole. “The boy has no one. Maybe they need one another.”
Kole looks at me, his dark eyes tracing the lines of my face. When we met, I wished he wouldn’t look at me because I thought he wanted to kill me. Now, I wish he wouldn’t look because it makes me want to kiss him.
Mahg’s soldier makes a choking sound that brings me back to myself and I turn around. We don’t know the man’s name. So far, he’s refused to speak to us. His wrists are bound with a rope that is also tied to Tsam. He coughs again and scratches out his first word.
“Water?”
Back in the village, we found some charred travelling flasks that we filled with water from the ashen trough, but our supplies are already running out and we’re entering more and more sparse terrain.
“None to spare,” says Tsam, tugging on the rope so that the soldier trips over his own feet. Alyssa narrows her eyes, as if she’s unsure whether it’s right to withhold water, but Tsam ignores her and continues walking. His face set and wings stiff, he is almost unrecognisable from the boy I grew up with. The person who came to fetch me from Nhatu was sensitive and charming. He glistened with cheerful confidence, and smothered me with concern. I hated that he faffed over me so much but I’d put up with any of that now, if it brought the old Tsam back to me.
The terrain between the cities is a savannah that floods with one season and crumbles with the next. This is the crumbling season – dry, arid and brown – and we are walking along the cracked remains of a riverbed. Tsam and Alyssa have been taking it in turns to scout ahead, looking for signs of more soldiers, but the heat and the limited water supply mean they both need to rest. When we stop, we look at the map.
“Not far to go,” says Tsam, darkly. “If Mahg’s there, we should see them soon.”
“I think you should stop flying,” I tell him. “Mahg will be watching the skies.”
Tsam looks like he wants to argue with me, but
he knows I’m right. Tsam and Alyssa are our best chance of stopping ourselves from walking straight into a trap, but they’re also our biggest giveaway.
“We’ll walk a bit further,” says Kole, “then I’ll go ahead while you all stay out of sight.” I want to tell him no but when he sees the expression on my face he adds, “I’ll be careful.”
We continue along the riverbed until it begins to curve and dip down. We can’t see clearly what lies around the bend, so Kole tells us to wait. He jogs ahead, quietly, biting through the pain in his leg. Soon, he’s out of sight. He seems to take an eternity to return and Maya is starting to get anxious. When he does, he is breathless. “It’s him. Mahg. Ahead.”
My heart flips over in my chest. “Did you see Ava?”
Kole shakes his head. “I daren’t get any closer. In the wet season there must be a waterfall. It’s dry now but it dips down into a canyon. There are tents, lots of them. He’s there, I can feel it.”
The soldier, who is now tied to a tree, tips his head back and bares his yellow teeth in a guffaw. Spittle drips down his chin as he shouts, “Master, I’m here!”
His voice is too scratched by smoke damage to reach an intimidating volume, but Tsam wrestles to keep him quiet, reaching to cover his mouth. As he does, the soldier bites down on Tsam’s forearm, drawing blood. His hands spring free of the rope and, too late, we realise he has worked loose the knot. He pushes Tsam back and starts to run but Alyssa swoops down on his back like a bird clawing its prey. She kicks him to the ground and Kole grabs him, forcing his arms behind his back and knotting them tightly with the rope. He ties his feet too and yanks hard. There will be no more escaping.
“Leave him here,” says Alyssa, tending to Tsam’s arm. “We can’t take him any further.”
Kole agrees, then turns to Maya. “We can’t take you any further either, Maya.” The elephant flaps her ears but Kole continues. “If this was a battle, you’d be at my side. But we need to be quick and quiet here. I love you, but quiet… It isn’t your strong point, is it?” Maya blinks as if she is truly considering the question, then nudges Niri with her trunk. “Yes, Niri too. Take Jamiyl back to Tarynne. Émi, where’s the map?”
I hand it to him and he asks for my charcoal, scribbling a note onto the back. “Give this to the Elders, alright?”
Maya flaps her ears and kneels down so that Kole can secure the map in Jamiyl’s pocket. I hug her leg and she ruffles my hair with her trunk. I hug Niri too and can’t stand the thought of the two of them journeying back all that way, alone, but I make myself pull away.
Instead of following Kole’s path through the exposed riverbed, we dip into the spiky undergrowth surrounding it. Even so, the feeling we are being watched grows stronger with every step.
I try to think of Ava, to ask myself where she is and what she’s doing. I feel that I should know, that I should be able to conjure a vision to help us prepare for what we’re walking towards. But there is nothing. She is gone from me. Not even a whisper.
Eventually, Kole suggests we stop. “The canyon’s up ahead, but there aren’t many places to hide.”
“We should wait until dark,” I say, thinking of the Cadets, raiding when we least expected it. The others agree, so we crouch in the bushes and wait. The sun seems to take an eternity to set. Gradually, the sky turns orange, then grey, then navy blue, then black, and, before the moon even has a chance to rise, clouds sweep in to obscure its glow. As quietly as we can, we creep closer to the rim of the canyon.
On our bellies, flat in the dirt, we peer down at the tents. There are, perhaps, fifty of them with thorny black wings emblazoned on their canvases. The same symbol we saw on the soldier’s arm. They have been pitched in a ring surrounding a large black tent with a black flag raised at its main pole. Next to it is a smaller but identical tent, also of black canvas.
At regular intervals between the tents, fires have been lit and soldiers with loud crackling laughs sit drinking and playing the stone-throwing game that Tsam and Garrett showed me in the Alder Woods. These games are less friendly. Every now and then they erupt into a flurry of punches and profanities, until the soldiers calm down and start all over again.
“Mahg must be in there.” Kole points to the large black tent.
“You think Ava’s with him?” I ask.
“Maybe. Maybe in the smaller one,” Kole says.
“So what’s our plan?” asks Alyssa.
They’re all looking at me. I take a deep breath. Try to think. “The four of us can’t defeat Mahg on our own. I think we should just get Ava out of there. If we’re right – if Mahg wanted the two of us here, at this spot, then the best we can do to stop him is make sure neither of us is here. Right?”
The others nod. Tsam wriggles closer. “We need to go down there. Figure out where she is.”
“Tsam,” I say, touching his arm and trying to make him look at me, “you and Alyssa are going to have to stay here.”
Tsam blinks at me.
I gesture to their feathers. “Your wings. They’re too bright, too easy to spot.”
They know I’m right and exchange a worried glance. “Alright,” Alyssa says. “We’ll watch from here. Go down there, see if you can find Ava. If you can grab her easily, do it. If not, come straight back here and we’ll figure out what to do.”
I nod. “Alright.”
“Ém,” says Tsam, “if you get in trouble, you send up a spark. We’ll come get you out.” I tell him I will and he smiles. For a moment, just one brief moment, he forgets that he’s angry with me. Then he remembers. “Okay, then. Good luck.”
I haven’t really thought about how Kole and I are going to descend the rocks into Mahg’s camp. Keeping low to the ground, we trace the rim of the canyon until we find a spot that slopes down less violently than the other sides. Then we start our descent. There’s nothing to hold on to and we have to walk sideways on, to stop ourselves from breaking out into an uncontrollable run. Beneath our feet, the rocks and shingle keep shifting, sending cascades of dirt down towards the canyon floor. Each time a stone dislodges, we pause and flatten ourselves back against the rock, certain we’ve given ourselves away. By some miracle, we don’t.
We make it to the bottom of the canyon in one piece and linger in the shadows for a moment to catch our breath. Then, one at a time, we dart forwards and hide ourselves behind a tent in the outer circle. We choose our path carefully, weaving through the shadows and moving only when the soldiers are shouting raucously at one another, certain they are distracted.
Eventually, we reach the small black tent. I lean closer to the canopy and strain my ears to hear noises from inside – nothing. Then, my fingers tingle and a firefly-sized dot of light ignites and sizzles in the centre of my palm. I squash it before it grows. That energy can only have come from one person. Ava.
“She’s in there,” I tell Kole. “I can feel her.”
We move to the back of the tent and find a place where the canvas overlaps, knotted together with a length of twine running between eyelets. Then we crouch down and, with shaking hands, part the walls of the tent, just the tiniest amount, so we can see inside.
We were right. She’s there.
The floor of the tent is covered in a deep red carpet that reminds me of the blood on Garrett’s chin. In the centre, there is a wooden bed draped with blankets. Ava paces in front of it. Her hands are naked, gloveless. She is trembling and beads of sweat glisten on her worried forehead. Her hair is damp with it, and the black veins bulge at her throat. She is muttering something to herself, over and over, as she paces. But I can’t hear what she’s saying. Occasionally, she looks up, as if she’s heard something, but then looks away and continues to mutter to herself.
“Right, she’s alone,” Kole whispers. “What are we waiting for?”
Twenty-Five
Before I can answer, Ava swivels towards the tent’s entrance and hurriedly drops to one knee. The door flap twitches to one side and Mahg strolls in, smiling. Ava d
oesn’t dare look up until Mahg is stood in front of her, his wings spread and his shoulders tensed.
“Ava,” he says, his voice thick and slimy.
She lifts her head. “Master,” she says. “I’ve been lonely.”
Mahg's neck twitches, irritation flashes into his eyes but he swallows it down and reassures her. “I’m here now,” he says, tweaking a finger under Ava’s chin and guiding her to her feet.
Ava’s top lip begins to quiver. A tear rolls down her cheek. The black veins on her neck throb and Mahg’s ebony feathers bristle.
“Come now,” he soothes, stroking the side of her face. “You’re not still upset about yesterday, are you?”
Ava sniffles and her breath catches as she speaks. “You told the soldiers to… the… village. They didn’t do anything wrong.”
Any pretense at sympathy is dropped. Mahg rounds on her. “They were heathens!” he snarls. “Enemies! They refused to join our noble cause so they were punished.” Ava flinches and takes a step backwards. Mahg throws out his arms in disgust. “You think they were innocent?”
“You said—”
Mahg doesn’t allow her to finish. He knocks her off her feet so that she cowers on the ground and he is standing above her. Slowly, he reaches down and wraps a hand around her neck. He squeezes. Ava pulls at his hand but he lifts her whole body by the throat, until her feet are dangling in the air. Then he releases her and she falls to her knees, crying quietly.
“Never challenge me again. Do you understand?”
She nods fervently, rubbing the skin at her throat.
Mahg turns and sweeps back towards the entrance. With his back to her he says, “No treats until after. I need you to behave.”
Ava stretches out her hand as though she’s about to beg him not to leave. Then, once he’s gone, she rocks back on her heels and collapses into a heap of sobs.
“After what?” I whisper to Kole.
He shakes his head. “I don’t know. But if there’s an after, then this is the before. We won’t have another chance to get her out of here.”
Fire Lines Page 24