Crown of Feathers

by Nicki Pau Preto

  She wavered, her gaze flicking from Sev and the bondservant to the cabin, as more sounds drifted out to them: the clatter of items being carelessly tossed around, followed by indiscernible mutters and curses.

  Before any of them could make another move, something drew Sev’s attention to the forest behind her. A ripple of energy or movement. He thought it might be an animal, but before he could figure it out, the branches to the right of the girl shook and creaked, and something fluttered forward to land protectively on her shoulder.

  It was an animal—a bird, bright red, with long tail feathers and the beginnings of a spiky crown atop its head. It stood out like fire in the darkness, like the moon on a cloudless night. This was no ordinary animal; this was a creature of magic, its presence pure and powerful and tingling against Sev’s skin.

  A phoenix.

  The bondservant shoved Sev roughly aside, gaze fixed on the firebird. The girl’s muscles tensed, but this was no attack. The bondservant stopped and pressed a hand to his chest, a gesture of reverence and respect, and bowed his head. The girl looked up at him, at the chain hanging heavy on his neck, and it seemed that she knew what he was. An unspoken understanding passed between them. They were both animages—only someone with animal magic could hatch and bond with a phoenix, and only animages were forced into bondage in the empire—and that seemed to unify them in a way that left Sev feeling cold and disconnected despite his own magic, standing in the shadows cast by their warm glow.

  She gently stroked the phoenix, perched on her shoulder, and a hesitant glance seemed to invite the bondservant to do the same. He took a halting step forward, hand outstretched, when the loud smack of the door against the frame brought them all sharply back to reality.

  “Captain’ll have our hides if we don’t get moving . . . ,” Ott was saying, as a second smack of the door told Sev that Jotham was following just behind, as usual. They’d round the side of the cabin at any moment.

  Sev’s brain rang with alarm bells, and he couldn’t seem to untangle his thoughts and form words. “Bushes,” he managed, gesturing frantically for the girl and her phoenix to take cover in the trees. His sudden movement caused the phoenix to squawk and spread its wings in a defensive stance, but luckily, Ott chose that exact moment to speak.

  “Kid?” he called, heavy footfalls crunching on dried leaves. “Where are you?”

  The girl glanced at the bondservant, clearly trusting one of her own kind over Sev, and after the bondservant’s reassuring nod, she dove into the cover of the leaves, her phoenix flapping behind her. After making sure both were hidden from view, Sev whirled around.

  The two soldiers approached, Jotham as stoic as ever, while Ott’s round-cheeked, pockmarked face scrunched in disapproval. “What’s this one still doing here?” he demanded, speaking to Sev about the bondservant as if he weren’t even there, gesturing carelessly at him with his crossbow.

  Sev’s mind was still ringing, his hammering heart making it difficult to focus. “He . . .”

  “I was looking for this,” the bondservant said, stepping forward. In his palm was a bent piece of metal that looked like it belonged on a buckle or strap. “From one of the saddles.”

  Ott’s eyes narrowed, before shifting to stare into the trees behind them. Had he seen the girl, or was he searching for the end of the llama train?

  “Listen, mageslave,” Ott spat, stepping into the bondservant’s personal space, though all this did was highlight the considerable height difference between them. “We’re the soldiers”—he gestured to Sev and Jotham—“and you’re the servant. Got it? Next time do exactly as I tell you, else I’ll fill you full of bolts and leave you for the crows.”

  The bondservant lowered his hand in acquiescence, but Sev could feel the hatred radiating from him. Ott smiled at his subservient posture, too convinced of his own authority to notice.

  “Now get outta here—and make sure that broken saddle gets fixed,” he ordered, before returning his attention to Sev. As soon as Ott’s back was turned, the bondservant met Sev’s eyes for an instant before staring meaningfully at the place where the girl and her phoenix hid. Then he left.

  It was all up to Sev now.

  “They’ll never respect your authority if you don’t exercise it every now and again,” Ott was saying in his oily voice, slinging an arm around Sev’s shoulders conspiratorially. Sev held his breath to avoid the stench of sweat and unwashed skin. “And if they don’t respect you, they best fear you. Eh, Joth?”

  Jotham nodded placidly, his attention focused on picking his grimy fingernails. Then Ott shoved Sev roughly aside, laughing loudly as his gaze swept the area.

  Sev remained perfectly still as Ott looked about, as if his own stillness could help the girl in the trees achieve the same. They were very nearly in the clear. . . .

  “What’s this, then?” Ott demanded, squinting at a point just behind Sev’s shoulder.

  Sev kept his features as blank as possible as he turned, though his gut clenched in dread.

  Ott pushed past him to pick up a woven basket from where it lay on the ground, a collection of bulbous vegetables scattered around his feet. The girl must have dropped it when she’d first arrived.

  As Ott held the basket up expectantly, awaiting an answer, Sev did the only thing he could do. He shrugged. While he was a decent liar, sometimes it was better to just say nothing at all. Stupidity—feigned or otherwise—could explain away any number of strange occurrences.

  Ott peered around them, then back into the basket. He snorted.

  “Some lookout,” he said, tossing the basket back onto the ground in disgust. “Wouldn’t notice a swarm of wasps until one stung him on the ass.”

  “Time to leave,” Jotham said, his tone bored. For every ten words Ott spoke, Jotham said two. If Ott was the Fool, short and round and blustering, Jotham was the Scarecrow, his silent, lanky counterpart. Jotham’s gaunt face and long greasy hair added to the effect, while his leathery brown skin was crisscrossed with a maze of jagged, poorly healed scars.

  The Fool and the Crow had been one of Sev’s favorite shows as a child, along with Princess Pearl and The Conman’s Bluff. Sev would squeeze through the legs of the crowds outside the theater on Mummer’s Lane and watch from between people’s knees as the actors performed. While most of the Arborian Comedies were still allowed, the Epics and Tragedies had been banned. They were popular and, since the war, controversial, featuring many famous warriors and notable figures from Phoenix Rider history—and that was exactly why they were forbidden. Rumor had it that some of the underground theaters and gambling halls in Aura Nova paid extra for the players to perform them in secret for the after-hours crowds, charging twice as much admission to make up for the risk.

  As Jotham stalked away, Ott considered Sev.

  “Since you’re no good as a lookout, you can make yourself useful and carry this,” he barked, dropping his crossbow into the dirt before grinning smugly and sauntering away.

  Sev watched him and Jotham leave, not daring to breathe until the sound of their departure was swallowed by the forest.

  He took a shaky breath, unsure what to do or say, when the girl stood up. She had surely overheard them and knew that he was no regular raider, but a soldier. The phoenix remained somewhere out of sight, and now that the danger had passed, Sev’s mind was free to face the knowledge of its existence for the first time.

  They were supposed to be things of the past, snuffed out just like the rebellion they had symbolized. Once the war was over, the empire’s governors had deemed the creatures too dangerous to remain and too loyal to animages to be trusted. Phoenixes had been hunted into extinction within the borders of the empire, and in the early years following the war, poachers had tracked them into Pyra as well. While the empire’s laws didn’t exist in the Freelands, with the fall of Avalkyra Ashfire, there was no one in the now-independent country to defend them or their lands. No government, no soldiers or infrastructure remained. Each village governe
d itself and didn’t have the population or resources to unite with the others under a common banner or purpose. Pyra’s people might be free of the empire’s laws, but they were free of its protections, too.

  Sev had often wondered why the empire didn’t march into Pyra with its full army and retake the lost province, but according to what he’d overheard, the answer was simple: It wasn’t worth it. The land was too wild and vast to easily reclaim and would require spreading the empire’s forces thin. Besides, Pyra wasn’t a rich country—its economy had all but collapsed during the war, when travel and trade became dangerous—and the cost of rebuilding would be too high.

  But then Sev had to wonder—if there was nothing in Pyra the empire wanted, what were he and the other soldiers doing here?

  He looked at the girl again. Maybe the Riders weren’t gone after all. Maybe this was why they had come.

  “Is that . . . ? Are you a Phoenix Rider?” he asked, his voice soft. He hadn’t spoken the words “Phoenix Rider” in a long, long time. Since his mother and father had died. What if this girl was part of some new rebellion?

  The girl crossed her arms, her expression stony. He might have saved her from detection, but he was still a soldier standing between her and her home.

  The phoenix chirruped from somewhere behind her, and her harsh features softened somewhat. She crouched down and scooped up one of the tubers from her upturned basket and tossed it into the trees. There was a great crunch and a crackle and an erratic stirring of leaves as the phoenix devoured the treat.

  The girl grinned—and Sev smiled too.

  There was a moment of camaraderie between them, a heartbeat of relaxed tension, before her breath hitched and her dark eyes widened in alarm.

  Sev understood a second later when the air stirred behind him, cooling the sweat that dotted the back of his neck. Before he could react, there was pressure at his hip, a barely audible snick, and then a rough hand jerked his chin to the side while another pressed the blade of his own knife against the exposed flesh of his throat.

  I promised her the throne would not come between us. Nothing would. How I long for the foolishness of youth.

  - CHAPTER 6 -

  VERONYKA

  VAL HELD THE KNIFE in a steady hand, a savage smile on her lips and murder in her eyes.

  With her long red hair blowing in the breeze, she looked like a deathmaiden, one of Nox’s guides into the dark realms, and this poor soldier had been ensnared like a lost soul on a battlefield.

  “Val, no—wait!” Veronyka shouted, her hand outstretched. “Stop.”

  Val stayed her hand, though she didn’t remove the blade. She breathed deeply, and the boy shuddered. “He smells of the empire.”

  “He saved my life!” Veronyka blurted, stepping closer again. The gravity of the situation hit home when she realized that Xephyra was still about, somewhere in the trees. If Val was mad now, she’d be a raging volcano if she knew Veronyka’s phoenix was out in the open . . . if she knew that this soldier—and that bondservant—had seen the phoenix.

  If Val used her shadow magic to interrogate this soldier, she would learn the full truth, and he wouldn’t make it out of here alive. Even though he was an empire soldier, Veronyka didn’t want to see him die because of her.

  She had to keep her sister distracted.

  “He was here with three others,” Veronyka said, speaking fast, playing her advantage. Val was probably exhausted after a long day in the village, overusing her magic and pushing herself to her limits. If Veronyka stuck mostly to the truth and made sure to hide incriminating details deep down in the corners of her mind, Val might just take her words at face value. Veronyka was capable of lying to her sister if she worked hard at it, but it required intense focus. Val usually found her out eventually, but if she kept her wits about her, she could save this boy’s life.

  “They were armed and came here looking to steal from us,” Veronyka continued. “He helped me hide in the bushes and didn’t give me up to the others. He saved my life,” she said again.

  Val considered. “He also robbed us.”

  “You know there’s not a damn thing worth stealing,” Veronyka said, using the other soldier’s words. The boy darted a glance in her direction, but Veronyka kept her focus on Val.

  She considered the boy. “I can sense the coward in you,” Val murmured, her body shifting, her movements liquid as she moved the edge of the blade along his neck, almost like a caress. The boy’s throat bobbed in a tense swallow, and the tip of the knife bit into his skin. “She’s a sweet young thing,” she said, eyes flicking to Veronyka. “All alone in the forest, where no one could hear her scream . . .”

  Veronyka almost groaned, realizing that her words had somehow become twisted in Val’s dark mind. She was inventing trouble now, looking for any excuse to hurt this soldier.

  “Val, the others,” Veronyka said hastily. “They’re waiting for him. If you kill him, they’ll come looking—who knows how many. They’ll come back, and you can’t fight them all.”

  “I can try,” Val said. But Veronyka saw a frown crease her forehead, and her face lost some of the fierce intensity that had come over it.

  “He didn’t hurt me, never even touched me. He means us no harm—do you?” Veronyka asked, turning her question to the boy.

  He was wild-eyed and panicked, and his olive-brown skin had lost its color like painted shutters in the sun. When Val loosened her grip, he slowly shook his head.

  She looked bored all of a sudden, as if the joy had gone from the day. She removed the knife and gave the soldier a hard shove in the back. He stumbled and turned around, rubbing a hand across his neck, smearing blood from the small wound Val had opened there.

  Smiling her most beautiful, most terrifying smile, Val raised the dagger and pointed it at him. “If I see you again, empire rat, there won’t be words between us. Only this knife. And just like this time, you won’t see it coming. Not even a sweet story from my sister will save you. That’s a promise.”

  The boy bowed slightly as he nodded his head, then stumbled, looking around for the crossbow his companion had abandoned. He held it out, showing his finger was far from the trigger, before backing into the trees. His footfalls were heavy, uneven things, as if he tried to run forward and look backward at the same time.

  After several tense moments, the forest became quiet again.

  Val slid the boy’s knife into her belt.

  The cabin looked much the same as they’d left it, except that their box of food stores was open, their sleeping pallet turned over, and their ceramic cooking pot was laying on its side, a crack running from the rim to the chipped handle. The soldiers were right: There was nothing of value here.

  Val began storing the supplies she’d gotten from her day in Runnet. The village was a few hours south at the edge of the Foothills, a popular stop for valley traders. Veronyka stood in the doorway, her basket of garlic and potatoes in hand, uncertain of what would happen next. The events of the afternoon were finally catching up to her, and her hands shook. The rapid succession of emotions—shock, fear, panic—had now receded, leaving her body an empty, quaking shell, and she had the horrible feeling that the worst of it was yet to come.

  Surely Val was angry—surely she had something to say, some reprimand or warning. But her sister only poked at the smoking embers of the fire, placing several pieces of wood on top from the basket near the hearth, and then settled the chipped pot on the edge.

  “Close the door, Veronyka,” she said without looking her sister’s way. The words were simple, direct—and yet the hairs on the back of Veronyka’s neck rose.

  She took her time, mentally calling Xephyra in from outside, hoping that Val’s preoccupation would allow her bondmate to return without notice. As Xephyra flew through the door, some of the anxiety that filled Veronyka’s chest eased. Her sense of safety had been shattered, but as long as she and her bondmate were together, everything would be all right.

  Veronyka clos
ed the door behind her as Xephyra fluttered to the ground, poking her curious beak into the contents of their food stores before flitting off again.

  Val watched the phoenix, expression unreadable. Then she drew the soldier’s knife from her belt and held it out to Veronyka.

  Veronyka frowned, uncertain. Then Val nodded down at the basket of vegetables she’d gathered.

  “Careful,” Val said when Veronyka wrapped her fingers around the hilt. “It’s sharp.”

  Veronyka didn’t know if it was the lasting tension from the confrontation outside, but the words sounded closer to a threat than a caution. She looked down at the shining blade, its edge catching the waning evening sunlight that filtered through the shutters. She was startled to discover it was stamped with the crossed-dagger symbol that marked it as Ferronese steel, the finest blade money could buy and rare in the mountains. All the best metalworkers came from the province of Ferro, where the iron ore used for steel was mined. The weapon was more suited to a ranking officer than a lowly foot soldier, and it was strange using the instrument of war to cut up vegetables. It was like using a shovel to stir soup.

  They prepared their meal in silence. They’d have to talk about the soldier at some point, but Veronyka was in no hurry to broach the topic. It would mean addressing the fact that she—and Xephyra—had left the cabin against Val’s wishes, and it was a fight Veronyka knew she would lose. They might be sisters—equals, in theory—but Val was always in charge. Veronyka was always meant to fall in line behind her, no matter how much Veronyka resented it.

  Still, the silence made her uneasy. The only time her sister was ever truly still was when she was plotting.

  “I’m going away for a couple of days,” Val announced, stirring the contents of the pot, causing great tufts of steam to swirl about her face.

  Going away?

  “Where?” Veronyka asked, putting down the knife and scooping up handfuls of vegetables to toss inside. Next to her, Xephyra nibbled at a potato skin, lifting the oversize piece into the air, only to shake her head, spit it out, and try another one.