“We need to give her a rest, Wing Ivo, or she will overdo it and collapse,” Zayana warned.
“If she falls, we all fall, apprentice,” Ivo said wearily. He was at the edge of the short wall and based on his arm gestures, he was directing his eagle. “Back in, girl. See for us.”
“They’re coming for our tower here,” I gasped. “They’re gathering at the base.”
Wing Ivo looked over the edge and cursed.
“We can’t stay here. The Claws are pulling back from the wall and abandoning the post below.”
“Why would they do that?” Zayana asked.
“House Frigatebird must be abandoning the walls,” one of the Claws helping us said. “Our contingency is to flee to the ships.”
“And the population of the city?” Zayana asked in horror.
The Claw shrugged. “We’ve been told the security of Le Majest is our top priority. Anything else is not our concern. If the city can’t be held, we’ll take him to safety.”
“This is insane!”
“Gather the flags,” Ivo ordered. “You’re staying with us.”
“It’s too late,” I gasped. The snakes below were climbing the wall, warriors flinging themselves onto the backs of the spirit snakes and holding on for dear life. We had minutes at most to abandon the tower top.
Harpy dove from above shrieking and Ivo grabbed my arm, pushing me toward the ladder.
“Climb down. You two watch the Hatchling!”
I tried to climb down, tried to block out the visions I was seeing, but I slipped, falling the last three steps to the top of the wall. I heard Zayana’s worried cries, but my mind was filled again with visions.
I saw people in plain clothes, armed, forming up across the city, leaping out in small knots for a surprise attack here, or to take back a square there. If we could just get word to them, they could coordinate.
“Can the militia read the flags?” I asked, gasping as Zayana pulled me to my feet.
“We’ll need somewhere high up. An upper floor of a building or somewhere similar,” Wing Ivo said as he shoved me toward the stairs leading down from the wall. “But yes, they can read them.”
“They’re forming up. But there aren’t enough in any one place to make a difference. They need to work together.”
“Then we need somewhere high.” He hurried me down the steps, giving curt orders to the Claws. “Give Hatchling Zayana all the flags. No, she can carry them, it isn’t far. Draw on your bird, girl. Take from him the lightness of flying things and the speed of a bird on the wing. No, no! Not that way. Can’t you see that the Claws are going that way? We need somewhere unexpected.”
Twice he grabbed me by the collar and pulled me along when the visions overwhelmed me. We were on the streets by the time we broke free of the retreating Claws and were in the city, hurrying between the homes and businesses as Ivo stared up at their upper levels.
“Somewhere high,” he muttered. “Somewhere easy to see.”
We were close to where Osprey and I had entered the city mere hours ago.
“The tailor,” I gasped. “There is a bridge between the rooftops.”
He nodded as I pointed vaguely toward it.
Another vision rocked me, making me stumble and my sight go dark.
Ixtap plunged through the city like a knife, his snake beside him, lashing out in every direction as citizens fled screaming. It came to the place where the men were rotting in their stocks and the snake reared up, crashing toward the poor victims of the Empire with its jaws wide. I gritted my teeth against their screams.
When I blinked my eyes open Ivo had me over his shoulder as he climbed the steps up to the rickety walkway.
“Perfect choice,” he muttered. And then, louder, he said, “The brown flag, Zayana. The moment you get there, start waving it!”
My vision darkened and now all I saw was flames as the east gate was lit. Beside my bee, men with grim faces and the clothing of workers gathered together. One wore a floury apron, streaks of flour on his face. He brandished a huge poker from his bakery ovens, no doubt. Another wore the leathers of a carter, a carabao horn in each hand. There was a boy Alect’s age holding a cast iron frying pan in trembling hands. It dripped grease as if it had been pulled hot off the fire. They’d had to make do with what they could find. But anything could be a weapon when need and desperation made it so.
“Do we have a chance, Bruit?” the baker asked and an older man missing one of his eyes drew a sword from his belt. The scabbard was worked with woodpeckers. He must have hidden it away somehow.
“We’ll keep tapping until they fall. That’s the motto of House Woodpecker,” the old man said with a frown. “Hold your nerve boys. Wait for my sign.”
“The flag!” the boy cried. “It’s brown.”
“That’s for militia. Now’s our time,” the old man said. “And if any of you lives until tomorrow, Pendre here will cook them eggs and wing toast, won’t you boy.”
The boy nodded, but he couldn’t seem to stop trembling.
“Don’t worry boy. Just watch our backs,” the old man said, softening. “Go, Baker!”
And then they were charging toward the enemy, weapons raised, a battle cry in their throat.
“War and Wings!”
I blinked back to where we were, balanced on the narrow catwalk.
“The militia is fighting,” I gasped.
“Signal a counter-attack from the Wings,” Ivo ordered. “They’ll need back up.”
My vision blurred and then I saw the Healer struggling over Le Majest. He lay on the cobbles, eyes rolled back in his head. Osprey kneeled beside him, head bowed. He was struggling along with the prince. They’d made it almost to the docks.
Behind them, one of the ships went down at anchor, a snake wrapping around it and crushing it to splinters. Os plunged through the air to tear another snake to pieces before it could crush a second ship.
I babbled what I was seeing to Ivo and he relayed orders to Zayana and the Wings.
I saw and saw and saw until I was so tired my eyes would barely stay open.
The tide was turning. We’d taken back the wall. We’d closed the breach in the gate. We’d stopped the snakes before they could crush more than two ships.
Ixtap ravaged through the city, hunting for something. But why? What reason would he have to attack now with only part of his forces? I could tell this wasn’t all of them. I’d seen many more at the Cobra Temple. Besides, he was allied with Le Majest. They had spent days together. Was all that only a ruse?
But no.
As his party swept into the square where the ring of Claws stood around their fallen prince, he took one look at them, at the massive purplish-white Osprey hovering over them, and he quickly turned, speeding in the other direction.
My vision shifted and I was back with the militia, watching as the Baker fell to a spear through the throat. The old man was on his knees, still hacking with his woodpecker sword. Behind him, the boy stepped forward, tears streaking his face as he brought the frying pan down on the head of one of the snake warriors and snatched the spear from his hands.
I blinked and for a moment I thought I was looking with my bees, but no, these were my real eyes. Below the catwalk we were on, Ixtap and his snake stood quietly looking up at me. His mouth slowly curled upward at the corners.
“They’re right below us.” I hardly recognized my own voice, it was so raw.
Zayana gasped.
“The door!” Ivo ordered and the Claws hurried to Osprey’s round door, jiggling the handle.
“Key,” I gasped as the delicate stairway began to shake with weight. The snake was slithering upward. “In my pocket.”
Zayana’s hand dipped into my jacket pocket and then they were fumbling with the lock.
My vision flickered and then I was looking up at myself from Ixtap’s shoulder. I was watching as the Claws burst into the round door. Watching as they dragged my senseless form behind them.
Ixtap clicked his tongue. As if it was some kind of a signal, the snake began to draw back.
“Drawing back,” I said through thick lips as the door slammed behind us, the lock clicking back into place. I was past tired. Past thirsty.
“Easy,” Zayana’s voice was comforting as she helped me to the pallet in the corner. I collapsed heavily into it. It smelled of Osprey and just like that, my vision was back to him.
In my mind’s eye, I saw Osprey clamber to his feet in shock. The color was back in his cheeks. His movements were strong. Before him, Le Majest rose to his feet in front of the dock gates. His shirt was off and his too-pale skin reflected the brightness of the sun. My honeycomb was still in his belly, but he looked strong now, his face pink and flushed. He leaned on the smiling healer and began to speak, a pleasant smile on his face.
A look of horror flooded Osprey’s face.
“Le Majest is healed,” I muttered.
My vision flickered. The last snake slithered from the north wall.
I reported it dutifully, but though my vision continued to take everything in, my mind was haunted by that look in Osprey’s eyes.
I watched the boy with the skillet standing tall over his friends as the last snake retreated before him. He kneeled to touch the old man, but his friend’s eyes were glazed with death. The boy’s shoulder’s slumped.
I began to shake on the pallet. I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore.
“Don’t fade yet, Bees!” Wing Ivo called to me. “It’s almost done!”
My vision flickered again and I watched a Claw snatch a child from the street moments before a spirit snake slithered by at full speed. The Claw dashed into an open doorway, depositing the sobbing child into the arms of his mother. They fell to the floor together in cries of relief.
And we really were done.
My bees watched Ixtap as he and his men fled through the breach in the wall, my solitary bee fleeing with them.
And every vision was one of relief and rescue, of friends pulling friends out from the rubble of fires tamed and tears of joy.
But why attack in the first place if they weren’t willing to see it through? We hadn’t beaten them back. Our losses far outweighed theirs. It was as if they’d done their job and then left. But what, exactly, had that job been?
Exhaustion rolled over me like a cloud over the sun and with it came the darkness of unconsciousness.
Chapter Twenty-One
I WOKE TO GENTLE HANDS lifting me – which seemed at odds to the almost panicked tone in Wing Ivo’s voice.
“It doesn’t make any sense. She won that for us. She saw everything, Osprey. Those bees – they’re better than you could imagine on a battlefield! Not a secret maneuver, not an enemy action, not so much as a blink that we missed, and it was all her manifestations. And – of course, Zayana – and her quick hands on the ropes. You’re a master with those scarves girl! A real master, caster, raster of a High’un and I’ll take you into the breach and back with me on any day of the Forbidding-taken week!”
I moaned as I struggled for consciousness.
“She ran, Ivo.” Osprey’s voice was nearly a whisper.
“To battle, Osprey. Not away from it. Without her, we would have lost the city. She was glorious!”
“She took her bees. She left Le Majest to die.”
“Is he dead?” Ivo sounded mulish. “No? Then I’m guessing she didn’t leave him to die. I’m guessing she left him with you – who, by the way, would have been a lot of use in a battle against massive spirit snakes rather than tied to a princeling like a pretty sash. She went off to do the real work of defending innocents and saving this city. She’s exactly what we hoped for, Osprey! Exactly what was prophesied. A turning point. And a turning point with heart. A turning point with power. Those bees are going to change everything for us. The possibilities have me tingling. Tingling.”
I could feel my bees returning to me a little at a time. I was gaining strength with every one that returned to my core. My eyes fluttered open.
Ivo smiled down at me. “Nice work, bees. You did good. Keep up the meditation and who knows how high you’ll buzz.”
I tried to speak but all that came out was a groan.
“Leave her here and I’ll tend her,” Ivo said, still grinning proudly like a mother with a new baby.
“It’s like you aren’t listening to me, Ivo,” Osprey said through gritted teeth. “I’m here for her on the order of Le Majest.”
“Don’t tell me the boy prince has come to his senses and is ready to thank her properly,” he still sounded triumphant, but my heart was sinking. The tension in Osprey’s shoulders, the way his face was outlined with stress – this wasn’t good. This wasn’t thanks at all. Wait. Was I in his arms?
I struggled to try to get my feet under me, but I barely shifted in his grasp. I’d used every shred of energy in the battle.
Osprey growled low in his throat. “If she lives through the night, we’ll both be lucky. Le Majest is slathering for blood. You should have had better sense than this Guide.”
The blood drained from Ivo’s face and he reached for me, but he was too late. Osprey turned so quickly that nausea washed over me and then he stepped, and the familiar weightlessness washed over me. The feeling of being borne up into the sky over updrafts and through swirls of breeze was almost becoming usual. I tried to think only of that and not of how I could barely lift my eyelids or of what new horror awaited me at our destination.
“When they tied every thread of my being to the lives of innocents and told me to dance, I thought that was the only hell I’d have to suffer through until my eventual death, but you bring me to greater depths of agony,” Osprey was saying as he carried me. I didn’t know if he knew I could hear. He seemed almost to be speaking to himself. “The monks of the Golden Spire say that through suffering we are redeemed. If that is true, then I have been redeemed from every vein of evil running through my heart, but I don’t believe it’s true. What is suffering when it has no point? What is agony if it has no end?”
“There’s a point,” I whispered.
He startled. He must really have thought I was not able to listen.
“I don’t know if I believe that anymore.” He sounded so lost. “I’d hoped to change things – to help someone else bring in a new brighter future, even if I could never be a part of it, even if I would have to watch from the sidelines wearing the face and hands of a traitor, even if my death would eventually water the seeds of a new nation. But you wear my hopes to tatters, you grind me down and hollow my bones.”
“Thank you for the key to your home.” I could afford courtesy at the very least.
He grunted. “It’s not the only key you’ve given me.”
I was having trouble focusing. I tried to pull on my bees, searching for the energy to speak.
“I know why you’re saying all of this,” I said grimly. My belly felt like water was sloshing in it as I spoke my worst fears. “You’re about to torture me for him, aren’t you? Just like you did to my father. And you want me to believe that your coming actions are my fault and not yours. You want to blame them on someone else because doing that will make it easier for you to live with yourself when you’re done.”
“No.” His word was like a plea.
“Don’t lie to me,” I said weakly. My whole body felt like someone had stuck a tap into it and left it running until it was dry. The magic I’d used for my bees had sucked me dry. None of them buzzed around me now. I couldn’t even hear their hum. “You’re trapped. You’re owned. And you are flailing, trying to think of a way out of it one moment and then just accepting it the next. You’re too terrified of the consequences of outright rebellion but you still have too much hope to give up. So, you’ll torture me for your master and you’ll hate yourself for every minute of it.”
“What else can I do?” he asked weakly. “There is no way out. I’m trapped until I die. I just ... I’d hoped for a minute ... I don’t know why I was such
a fool as to hope.” He snorted grimly. “There’s never a point in hoping. We’re all as entrapped as a rabbit with its neck in the snare. Move at all and it will kill us. Fail to move, and we’ll die just the same.”
“I refuse to believe that,” I whispered as we began to descend into the city. “I refuse to believe this has all been for nothing. I refuse to let it be that way. I will find a way to make the Empire pay and to cut this land free of their grasp. And I’ll find a way to cut you free, too.”
“I wish I could believe that,” he breathed. “I wish you could save me. But, House Apidae, I fear our time has come. Our tragedy nears its end.”
His bird twisted in the air and we sailed down in tight spirals, landing on the balcony of a fine house close to the docks. The balcony was carved to look like a swooping bird, its wings wrapping up to form railings on either side of it.
Osprey stepped from the back of his bird, still gripping me tightly. His voice was husky as he said.
“For what I do next, I hope I can be forgiven.”
“Don’t do anything that requires forgiveness,” I said. “And then you won’t have to worry.”
But my heart was in my throat. I wasn’t ready for torture. I hadn’t had an easy life, but the regular difficulties and sacrifices of my days hadn’t prepared me for actual misery and now that I knew it was coming, it was all I could do to avoid losing my breakfast.
Osprey’s grip never slackened as he carried me in his strong arms. He stepped into the fine house – a place where his feather-trimmed cuffs and lace-edged handkerchiefs fit. He’d been born into this world and if he’d never Hatched, never been bound, then maybe he would have lived a soft comfortable life in a home like this one. I couldn’t imagine Osprey as soft. Especially not now, with the implacable look of the executioner setting his mouth in a grim line. He wasn’t even chewing a toothpick. Had he cracked them all in half?
I needed to think – needed to come up with some way to escape him, but I was just so tired. My eyes felt heavy. I reached for my bees and felt nothing.
I was going to have to kill him, wasn’t I? Not Juste – well, maybe him, too – but Osprey. Because every time I came a little bit close to freedom or saw some opportunity for it, he was there, ready to drag me back into slavery. Which left me with only two choices – I either had to rescue us both or kill him so he’d stop dragging me back. And I couldn’t figure out how to save him from his fate any more than he could, so that only left killing him.
Hive Magic (Empire of War & Wings Book 2) Page 13