“Shhh,” Osprey said, and he leaned his shaking forehead against mine, pinning me against the rough wall behind me with both hands on my upper arms. “Shhh. Calm down.”
“I see that and you want me to calm down?” I felt like I was going to fly apart in every direction. “Why do they let it happen? Why is no one rising up against this?”
“Good,” he said firmly. “Ask the right questions. Why do you think they aren’t fighting? Stop being ruled by emotion and answer that question – and trust me, it’s not because those poor wretches are more dear to you than they are to them.”
“They aren’t doing anything because their weapons were stolen and they feel powerless. Something that you helped with!”
He flinched but he didn’t remove his hands or his forehead from mine. He spoke in a fierce whisper.
“Maybe that’s true for some people, House Apidae, but not for all of them. Some people want to fight. But what can you do if it’s just you running in there, even with your prodigious bees? Hmm? Could you take out all those Claws guarding those men yourself? And then what? How will you get them somewhere safe? What will you do when reinforcements arrive from the barracks or the gates? What if you’re so lucky that you manage to defeat them? And you know you won’t. You’re just one girl. You’ll be overwhelmed in minutes. But even if you did it, then you have one city in rebellion. One. Your supplies cut off. Winged Empire ships sailing toward you full of Claws and Wings ready to rip your heart out and feast on it. No plan for what comes next. No supplies. No fortifications.”
“But I have to fight!” I sniffed back my tears, forcing myself to calm down. Even if he was right, I refused to surrender. “Why make me vow to join you if you weren’t going to fight?”
“I am going to fight, House Apidae. We all are,” he said, voice shaking now as if emotions were overcoming him, too. “But we’re going to be smart about it. We’re going to set up proper supply chains and a militia and have people ready with their tasks already in mind before we raise the flag and start this. We’re going to find a proper general to lead the action and we’re going to have a Forbidding-taken plan instead of going off on a rampage like a carabao in heat. Do you understand that?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
“You can do this, House Apidae,” he whispered, his forehead warm against mine. “You’re tough enough to survive giant snakes in the jungle. You’re tough enough to survive your father’s murder. You’re tough enough to survive nearly being drowned.” His voice broke slightly there. “You can withstand this, too.”
He pulled back, though there was still barely inches between us in the tight alley.
“Why did you bring me to see this?” I asked, lip trembling, arms wrapping themselves around me protectively.
“That wasn’t what I was bringing you to see,” he said quietly, his toothpick bobbing wildly again as he chewed the life out of it.
He pulled a lacey handkerchief from his sleeve – the same one from his pack, I thought, and – looking awkward, his eyes full of some emotion that was close to pain, he dabbed at my tears before offering the handkerchief to me. I shook my head. He should keep it – whoever it was from.
“Lace,” I said, offering him a slight smile. “What would the lady who gave you that think of you standing here right now?”
He swallowed and a look of nervousness passed over his face. “Skies only know.”
So, there was a lady.
I swallowed, too, feeling foolish suddenly. No wonder he’d turned my kiss away.
You have bigger things to worry about, Aella. Keep your head together.
“Let’s go see that solution,” I said, raising my chin defiantly. I would not be a fool girl. I had a fight to win against the biggest empire in history and I didn’t have time to be distracted.
“As you say,” he agreed, slipping back out of the alley into the pouring rain.
So, why did I feel so disappointed to leave this stinking alley with him?
Chapter Sixteen
HE WORKED HIS WAY THROUGH back alleys, avoiding the main squares and streets – likely to spare my feelings, though I looked hungrily at the main streets whenever I got the chance. Karkatua was gorgeous. Tall spires rose through the city with brass wings or birds attached to the tops of the spires. Weathervanes, I thought, or possibly just decoration, but some of the birds would be as large as I was if they were on the ground and they were very elaborately done. Some were polished and bright as the sun and others had aged with green clouding the surface and filling the dips and cracks.
There were totems here, of course. There were bird totems in every town and at every home in the Far Stones, but there were just so many here it was almost like a forest inside the city. Totems stood outside every shop and home, proudly displaying the Bird House of those within or perhaps wishing for wisdom and prosperity. They made me feel at home, like these were my people. And that made what was happening to them hurt even worse.
Finally, we found a blue door that Osprey liked the look of. He paused outside it, leaning against the door as a tremor rocked his lean, muscular body. His dark face was paler than usual, the sweat across his brow was getting more profuse. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his brow.
“Getting worse?” I whispered.
“It comes in waves.” He popped a toothpick between his lips instead and leaned close to me so I could hear his faint whisper. “I want you to watch but to be silent. There are things you need to see but even among our own we must be circumspect.”
He waited for me to nod before he opened the door and led me through a dark corridor to an inn common room beyond. We made the sign of the bird politely as we entered the bright room. Windows were opened to the streets beyond and the sounds of hawkers in the streets filled the background behind the clink and clang of breakfast being served hot and steaming to the patrons filling the common room. They conversed quietly together, filling every seat of the wide room. There were sailors in wide-bottomed trousers, farmers in from other towns in Far Stones with the mark of fighting the Forbidding etched into the lines around their eyes, and merchant guards with broken noses and hard eyes. They paid us no mind at all.
The scent of acorn porridge and fresh lavender tea with honey made my stomach rumble, but Osprey didn’t stop, leading me instead through another door to a tiny room beyond with its own window and a long bar under the window. There was an assortment of stools under it. Three people hunched over steaming tea at the tiny bar. This window had panes of clouded glass – impossible to see through clearly – but even closed in, they whispered as if afraid of being overheard.
The door squeaked behind us and they looked up in alarm, only sagging in relief when they saw Osprey.
“Forbidding take it, Osprey!” one of them said as he practically deflated with relief.
There were three of them.
Per – a successful fisherman with five boats who had lived in Karkatua all his life and was barely older than my brother Oska. How he’d been so successful so quickly wasn’t explained to me and I didn’t ask. Judging by his sour expression at the mention of the Empire, I could guess he’d inherited the business. Possibly because his parent or grandparent had been taken from him. He stared intently at his tea, only speaking if he had a sharp point to make and then making it in as few words as possible.
Brielle was a Claw. She wore her uniform like it was a part of her body, but the defiant look in her eyes when my gaze wandered over it told me she didn’t want questions asked. She eyed me with suspicion, never taking her eyes from me.
The third was a bulky man in a blacksmith’s apron named Ames. He was friendlier, but his gestures were nervous, and he looked often at the door.
They spoke in what appeared to be a code. I couldn’t puzzle out what they meant even as I ate the pielets and clover ale that Osprey ordered from the inn’s serving girl.
Eventually, Osprey asked me to show one of my bees.
“Show our friend
s what you have with you, House Apidae,” he said tightly, giving me a brief smile when I held out my palm and allowed a single bee to erupt from it.
My bee had a mind of its own, buzzing energetically around the solemn group. They eyed it with wary fear – and then eyed me the same way when it landed on the shell of my ear and stayed there.
“Bees,” Brielle said almost as if it was a judgment, but though the others licked their lips nervously, it was hope that I saw in their eyes, not fear. “All we need now is a real general. Don’t look at me like that, Osprey. You know you can’t lead us. You know that all the roots and channels we’ve been forming are nothing without someone competent to lead. Ivo is a warrior beyond measure – and there are others like him – but none of them have campaign experience. None of them can lead a real action when the time comes. And we need that, or we will fail. Can you not –”
Osprey cut her off. “No. Don’t ask again.”
The tension was so thick between them that I scrambled for some way to ease it. “I know of a general.”
Osprey shot me a furious look but Brielle squinted with a mocking smile. “You do? Your accent is Far Reach and by your big-eyed looks, I’d say you’ve rarely left that hay-eared place. What generals do you know?”
“One with two ravens,” I said defiantly.
I saw Osprey scrunch his nose with irritation out of the corner of my eye. His toothpick snapped.
Brielle snorted. “Victore? You’ve been listening to wild stories, girl. The man is long dead. Taken by the Forbidding over a decade ago. If you want to dream dreams, do it on your own time and don’t waste mine.”
“He’s –” I began, but Osprey stepped on my foot. A reminder to be quiet.
“Bees or no bees, she needs tempering, Osprey,” Brielle said to him. “I trust we can leave that to you?”
Osprey’s eyes glittered with irritation, but I didn’t know if that was directed at her or at me. “We all have our roles to play, Brielle.”
He was quick to wrap up after that, speaking in their code so rapidly that I couldn’t hope to guess the meaning and then handing off a few small missives for them to deliver.
“Soon,” he said as he turned to leave. “The dawn comes soon.”
Their fierce nods at least agreed on one thing – we all wanted revolution.
Chapter Seventeen
WE WERE SILENT AS HE led me through the city – by a different route this time. He was likely irritated with me – but I was just as irritated with him. My bee buzzed around my head, showing my displeasure. Why had he silenced me and made me look like a fool to those other people? I wasn’t a fool. I’d seen the general taken and imprisoned by the snake people.
At the thought of them, my vision blackened for a moment, and instead of seeing Osprey speed walking down the alley in front of me, I was seeing Ixtap through a shaky, skittering view. He was in a dimly lit room with earthen walls – a tunnel? Arranged in front of him were some of his masked men, their spears held over their heads. Just as quickly as I’d seen them, they were gone.
I staggered, gasping.
Osprey spun around, taking my arm with more irritation than solicitude. “Would you dismiss that bee already? If anyone sees, you’ll be the talk of the city and that won’t be good for either of us.”
“Are you so determined to see me fail?” I hissed.
“What?” he looked genuinely surprised, shaking his head.
“Those people were part of the Single Wing weren’t they? And that means I’m supposed to be your symbol to them. But all you did was make me look like a fool.”
He raised his eyebrows. “I brought you there to show you off – to let them see that we’d found you and that you’re everything we hoped for and instead ...” He drew in an irritated breath, trying to control his temper. “If you looked like a fool, it’s only because you acted like one. The first thing out of your mouth was a wild theory! You need to learn to think before you speak and act, Aella. I forget how young you are. I forget how little experience you have with anything off your homestead. But this requires careful planning and smooth orchestration.”
“And it requires courage. And inspiration,” I argued crossing my arms over my chest. I didn’t like that he was saying I was too young and too inexperienced. It stung. Hadn’t I proved my courage and quick thinking? I would get experience. “Which, incidentally, I have! I think I’m going to go find that general and free him and bring him here to help us.”
Osprey’s jaw clamped shut so fast I heard it click together. He closed his eyes, breathing through his nose as if trying to control his temper.
“You’re going to go find someone you think is a general. In a place you’ve never seen before that could be anywhere in the world. So that you can ask him to lead an army you don’t have. On the assumption that he will be on your side and want to fight for you. And you’ve just told all this to the person most likely to try to stop you.” He ran a hand through his hair, his face screwing up in pain for a moment before he whispered to himself. “What are you doing? You really have gone mad. It’s put you over the edge.”
I didn’t care if he wanted to mutter to himself. He couldn’t just act like I was a naïve little girl and then be done with the conversation.
“When your fight is gone, you might as well just roll over and die. I still have fight in me, Osprey. I’m not like you. I don’t drown people I call my allies. I haven’t come to accept my chains.”
His eyes snapped open. “What makes you think I have?”
“You never try to get creative. You never try to work around them.”
“There are lives on the line,” he hissed. “Precious lives. Hundreds of them. I can’t afford to be so immature and cavalier as you are.”
I felt my cheeks heating. “Yeah, you’re so mature and wise, Osprey, holding my head underwater until I nearly drown and then whisking me away as if nothing happened for a tour of this city. Maybe I’ve never left the Far Stones.” I was still stinging from Brielle’s comment about my wide eyes. “But lack of experience is something that can be easily changed. Lack of courage can’t be. I’m not going to accept an Empire that sentences my family to death and shuts people up by cutting out their tongues and gouging out their eyes!”
He hissed between clenched teeth, looking frantically down the alley in both directions. He ran a hand over his face. “Please, for the love of open skies and fresh air, would you please be quiet before you ruin everything.”
I closed my mouth and glared at him. But the glare had guilt in it, too. I might have gone too far. It might not have been prudent to yell all my intentions at him in an alley. I suddenly felt very small.
“I’m going to get you out of here,” he said, shaking his head. “It was a mistake to bring you here. I thought it would help but ... you’re not ready for this.” He shook his head, turning to the wall beside him and hitting it with the palm of his hand – not hard, but as if he was trying to physically release frustration. He hit it again. “We’ll get you to Ivo and he’ll leave right away. You’ll be out of this mess and gone.”
“I want to fight. I’ve been telling you that!” I hated being dismissed like this, as if I somehow wasn’t worthy of fighting with him just because I was urging him to action.
“You’re too young for this.”
“You’re barely older than I am!” He wasn’t making any sense.
“Exactly.” He turned back to me, his face firm as if he had made up his mind. “But I’ve seen something of the world. I know that courage isn’t enough. That good intentions aren’t enough. That you need to be patient and wait for the right time. That you have to accept things you hate in order to make progress bit by bit. You can’t just run headlong into things and hope they turn out okay. That’s how you get people killed.”
“You standing by and listening to orders is what nearly go me killed.”
He clenched his fists, his face twisting in pain and guilt and when he met my eyes his expression w
as raw. “You’re right. It did. You’re right.”
“Maybe some idealism isn’t the worst thing in the world.” I crossed my arms protectively over my chest.
“Or maybe being around me is the worst thing for you, Apidae,” he said, looking me over as if he was seeing me for the last time and he wanted to remember the sight. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything and for dragging you into this. If I’d left you alone, none of this would have happened. I’ll get you back to Ivo and he can take you somewhere safe – somewhere far from here and far from the revolution.”
“You don’t get to make decisions for me.” I felt my jaw trembling. I’d gone through all of this and he thought I should just walk away now because ... what? I hadn’t been subtle enough in a meeting? I had shown too much emotion when seeing people tortured?
I shook my head in disbelief.
“Come on,” he said gently, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes now. He turned on his heel, stalking down the alley as he jammed one of his Forbidding-taken toothpicks in his teeth. He didn’t even turn to see if I was following him.
I walked behind him, stinging with embarrassment and an undercurrent of rage. But I wasn’t giving up. And I really did think that I could make a difference. No one else had seen that general. If I concentrated hard on the memory of him in the tower, I was sure I could find enough details in the landscape to find the tower. Once you were close, you’d be sure to see it. And it had to be in Far Stones or the snake people wouldn’t have had it as part of their collective knowledge or history or whatever that awful stream of visions they’d given me was.
I would find him. And of course, he would want to fight with us. After all, he’d been left to rot in that tower by the Winged Empire and the snake people both. And then I’d show Osprey how wrong he was and how maybe my way wasn’t so bad after all. It was certainly better than cowering and accepting everything the way he did.
I was so smug in my thoughts that I hardly noticed we’d reached the docks. We came out of the alley into a main street that led through the city wall, descending into broad stone steps that led to the port where the river met the ocean. Seabirds screamed through the air and white-wood totems bore their images everywhere.
Hive Magic (Empire of War & Wings Book 2) Page 10