by Jodi Meadows
“What was wrong with those men?” Connor winced as he dabbed a damp cloth on his throat where the glowman had cut. “They looked human, but they were wrong.”
“They were huge,” Ezra added. “And strong.”
“They were glowmen.” The tiny room was packed, three sitting on the bed and two in the only chairs. I perched on the windowsill, ignoring the way the old wood creaked. Muffled shouts and thumps came from the lower stories; the inn stank of waste and smoke and sweat.
Connor finished inspecting his neck in a tarnished silver mirror he kept in his pocket; he’d fallen hard for the whole mirror-and-wraith superstition. With a frown, he set the mirror aside. “What are glowmen? And are there glowladies?”
“There are women like that, but the term is just glowmen.” I raised an eyebrow at Quinn—Ezra was her younger brother, after all—and she nodded. We couldn’t keep the younger boys sheltered forever, especially now that they’d faced a pack of glowmen. “Sometimes people use wraith to make themselves feel happier, stronger, whatever. Like people once used magic.”
“Wraith isn’t magic, though.”
“Wraith was magic. Once.” Quinn shook her head at the boys. “Haven’t you been paying attention to your lessons?”
Both boys slumped. “Yes,” said Ezra. “If magic is like fire, then wraith is like smoke. Magic isn’t created or destroyed. It just gets changed.”
“That’s right.” I leaned against the window, the glass cool on my spine. “Wraith is another form of magic—a toxic form.”
“Wait.” Ezra held up a hand. “We’re not finished. We did study.”
“People once used magic for everything, from building to farming to war.” Connor parroted the history papers we’d written for the younger Ospreys. “Radiants had even built a railroad system for transporting goods and people. Magic was useful, and families with a lot of radiants became powerful and rich. There was always wraith, but never enough of it to be a danger.”
Ezra took up where his friend left off, his voice pitched to mimic Quinn’s: his impression of her giving lessons. “But just over a hundred years ago, the western kingdoms noticed the wraith accumulating, obscuring sunlight, and making storms worse. It’s been creeping across the continent ever since, destroying everything in its path. Liadia was the most recent victim.”
“When the wraith was first discovered as a problem, King Terrell Pierce the Second, sovereign of the Indigo Kingdom, forced most of the surrounding kingdoms to sign the Wraith Alliance, making magic illegal, and now radiants are persecuted and hunted. People call them flashers now, to be rude. The once-powerful families and businesses who’d used magic to gain their wealth were replaced by those who could produce similar results without magic. Lots of people went into ruin, even in Aecor, which didn’t sign the treaty. But Aecorians did change their methods of industry, and the kingdom became a safe place for radiants to hide. Until the One-Night War.” With a chuckle, Connor snapped and thumped his chest at Ezra—the Osprey salute.
“I’m glad your studies amuse you so much,” said Melanie.
Connor turned back to me. “But what does history have to do with glowmen?”
I shook my head. “Wraith isn’t magic like people are used to, it manifests physically. But wraith is still magical. Sometimes people add certain chemicals to wraith mist and sell it to others to drink or inhale. That’s called shine. A little will make people feel however they want to feel. Stronger. Braver. Bigger.”
The boys exchanged glances and raised eyebrows. “That doesn’t sound bad.”
“It’s dangerous. If you take too much, the changes become real and permanent. You don’t just feel amazingly tall or muscled. You are. Those people will never be normal again.”
“When they’re caught, glowmen are exiled to the wraithland.” Melanie placed her bag on the small desk and fished out a notebook and pen. “I’ve seen the prison wagons. The glowmen are sedated, loaded like sacks of grain, and taken as far west as horses are willing to go.” Almost nonchalantly, she shook a bottle of ink and twisted off the cap.
Both of the boys were silent.
Theresa nodded. “It’s true. They’re dumped while they’re still unconscious. Sometimes soldiers in West Pass Watch can see the glowmen waking up, if it’s still light out. If the wraith beasts don’t find them first, the glowmen usually attack one another and—”
“That’s enough.” Quinn twitched her little finger at Theresa, who just smirked at the rude gesture and unfolded enough bandages for everyone’s wounds.
Sufficiently frightened, the boys shuddered and turned toward creating a paste from the powdered herbs I’d brought. While they were engaged with treating cuts and bruises, Melanie and I wrote a quick report to Patrick, the leader of the Ospreys.
When we got to the glowmen, Melanie paused. “What was Black Knife doing there?” Her voice was low.
“Hunting the glowmen, I assume.” I turned a pen in my hands. “He doesn’t know what we were doing, and he didn’t follow us. That’s all I care about.” I glanced back at Connor, who was helping Theresa put away the last of the medical supplies. Hard to believe I was grateful to Black Knife for something. “Did the boys realize who he was?”
“Oh yes.” Melanie hunched, hiding a smile. “Ezra made fun of Connor for getting rescued by Black Knife, of all people. Connor made fun of Ezra for getting knocked unconscious almost before the fight began. Then they punched each other.”
“Clearly, they’ve made up,” I muttered. The boys now wore matching bandages around their heads and on their necks.
“Clearly.” Melanie smiled and shook her head. “Maybe you were right about him being a problem. At least he was more interested in the glowmen than us.”
This time. “We see him too often,” I muttered. “Maybe he’ll trip and fall on his knife.”
“Say it again.” She glanced at the others, all engaged with their tasks throughout the room. “Hopefully, we can stay clear of him for a while. We have a lot more work to do before our masquerade begins.”
I covered a shiver by folding our report. “Now that we have the right paper and ink, our masquerade may actually happen.”
She grinned and poured a glob of melted wax onto the folded paper, and I pressed my thumb into it as it cooled. “You’ll make a lovely refugee duchess,” she said, making room between us as Quinn approached.
“As long as I’m a convincing refugee duchess.”
“I wonder if you’ll meet the crown prince,” Quinn mused. “I hear he’s very handsome.”
“I won’t be there to admire the royal scenery.” I dropped our report into the bag with the stolen ink and paper. “I’ll be there to learn about the occupation of Aecor so we can reclaim the land and go home.”
“I know.” Quinn’s mutter hardly carried. “That doesn’t mean you can’t have a little fun while you’re working. Admiring the royal scenery might do you some good.”
The room grew quiet, everyone looking between Quinn and me.
“In case you forgot,” Melanie said, voice roughening, “the royal scenery is why we’re trapped in a crumbling old castle in the Indigo Kingdom, scraping for food and stealing all the time. If it wasn’t for the royal scenery, we’d be in Sandcliff Castle overlooking the Red Bay. We’d be with our parents.”
There was a long pause. Melanie had seen her parents murdered in their beds, the fate of so many of Aecor’s high nobility. My mother and father had been dragged into a courtyard and beheaded in front of everyone; their deaths meant the kingdom had been conquered. Afterward, King Terrell sent one of his younger brothers to rule the puppet state.
My kingdom. In their hands.
I couldn’t allow those murderers to continue ruling my land. Reports from our Aecorian contacts indicated my people were suffering hunger, oppression, and crippling taxes, not to mention the sudden disappearances of all known flashers. It wasn’t right. I had been born with the responsibility to lead the people of Aecor, and I could not f
ail them.
“I know.” Quinn dropped her gaze. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” I stood and handed her the bag. “It’s hard to remember sometimes.” Quinn was fifteen; she’d been only five during the One-Night War and could barely recall it.
My memories of that night were crystalline, and sharp. I would never forget the horror of blood and fire and steel, or that King Terrell and his family were why I was left without a home, and my kingdom was a handful of orphans. With only them and a few rebel groups in Aecor who opposed the foreign military presence, I was expected to resurrect an entire kingdom.
Queen Wilhelmina Korte. It sounded a little ridiculous.
“Why don’t you take these back to Patrick? Melanie and I will stay the night in Skyvale to gather more supplies.” Food, clothes, and other necessities were hard to come by in the old palace, and it was already autumn. With winter coming, and Melanie and me leaving soon, the rest of the Ospreys needed everything we could bring them.
Quinn apologized again, saluted, and then took Theresa and the boys from the inn. Their footsteps thudded on the floorboards and stairs, all traces of their training vanished like they didn’t even know the word stealth.
Melanie rolled her eyes. “Ready to get back to work?”
“As long as Black Knife doesn’t show up.”
“Say it again.” She tossed me a backpack, and a minute later, we were out the window.
THREE
BLACK KNIFE DIDN’T make another appearance, but we saw evidence of him all over Skyvale. On balconies and in yards, we found discarded hoods and masks, left over from children’s games. Everywhere, there were knives carved into fences and walls, smeared with pitch or black mud.
Ugh. Eventually, he’d do something horrible enough that the city would stop worshipping him.
Melanie and I worked the remainder of the night, collecting enough supplies to last the Ospreys three or four weeks, if they were frugal. After sleeping for a few hours in the inn, we left Skyvale, picked our way through the refugee camps that huddled outside the city, and headed east toward the old palace in the mountains, where the Ospreys had lived for almost nine years.
We ascended into cooler air and patches of heavy mist, which softened the carpet of leaves on the worn road. Birdcalls and wind in the trees obscured any sounds we might have made.
Half an hour later, mist gave way to the moss-covered stone walls of the old palace. East Pass Watch was an ancient fort-style castle, with several towers and tiny windows meant to be defensible on the cliff side. Kings of the past had tried to build additions to the castle several times, until it was an awful mishmash of eras, pieced together with pride and sweat and contempt. No wonder it had been abandoned almost two hundred years ago in favor of the newer palace in the valley. Sometime in the last century, a section of the south wing had collapsed, and now ivy crawled into every crevice, camouflaging the castle as it destroyed it.
Drafty and dirty, heavy with the weight of age-old battles, this was the only home we’d known since Aecor. Most of the Ospreys didn’t even remember Aecor or the orphanage. Just . . . this.
“Glad to be home.” Melanie hiked her bag into a better position on her shoulder, then spent a moment tugging free pinned strands of hair.
But this wasn’t home, no matter how long we spent here.
I whistled the four-note signal as we approached the castle wall, and high up in the ramparts a shadow slipped away.
The last few minutes of trudging through the main curtain and bailey seemed unusually long, thanks to my heavy load, but a silhouette in the entrance to the state apartments urged us onward. Patrick Lien waited with his hands behind his back and his shoulders squared. “I got your report,” he said as we approached. “I can’t believe you let Black Knife live.”
“I’m not a murderer.”
“You know that doesn’t make a difference to him. He’d capture you if he had the chance.”
Patrick was the oldest of the Ospreys, and while I was the heir to Aecor, he’d become the natural leader of the group. He didn’t know about my magic—I didn’t think—but that didn’t make his statement any less true. Black Knife would gladly arrest any of the Ospreys. We were thieves, after all. That we’d witnessed our parents’ murders, been kidnapped, and wanted only to take back what was ours would be inconsequential to his judgment of us.
When I didn’t respond, Patrick’s expression grew harder. “Anything else?”
“We checked the guard routes around the King’s Seat,” I said. “They’re the same as before. Sneaking out and back in won’t be a problem.”
“Good.” He glanced at the bags we carried and gave a sharp nod. “Put those away and clean up. We’ve been working on your documents all morning. They should be ready for your inspection.” He held open the heavy door for us before vanishing into the hall.
I pretended not to notice as Melanie gazed after him. Like General Lien, Patrick cut an imposing figure. Unlike his father, he’d never hit anyone out of anger. Of that he’d always been very careful.
But would it have killed him to help carry our supplies?
Biting back weary grunts, we hefted our bags and headed toward the general supply room. This whole wing was ours; we’d appropriated and restored—as much as we could—a large section of the state apartments nine years ago. But there were so few of us, we took up only a small portion of what was once a spectacular and prestigious place to live.
After we unloaded and washed the worst of the grime from our hands and faces, we walked to the common area, lively with the other ten Ospreys’ chatter.
The windows had been thrown wide to invite in as much light as possible. The upper frescoes were darkened with age, and peeling, but we’d given the lower walls a fresh coat of white. It made the chamber seem brighter, especially when the sun shone directly through the east-facing windows. When it got cold, we shuttered all the windows and stuffed rags into the cracks, but these days of early autumn were still fine.
The others were huddled around a big, round table with papers strewn across the old wood like memories. Seven boys and five girls: we were a small group, all that was left of Aecor’s high nobility.
Ronald and Oscar Gray—the eighteen- and seventeen-year-old sons of a now-dead duke—waved and went back to discussing whatever medical notion had caught their attention this week. Connor sat beside them, wide-eyed and attentive while words such as arteries and blood clots were used.
Across the table, Paige Kendall, Theresa Markham, and Kevin Walton, the other older Ospreys, were working with Ezra Bradburn and Carl Darby over a handful of maps, asking the younger boys to point out the locations of various lords’ holdings.
Melanie and I took seats at the table, both of us restraining relieved groans. Last night’s fight had left bruises.
Patrick didn’t glance up from the document he was studying. “Now that you’re back, we’ve got a lot to cover and I’ve just received word of a new hunt.” He looked at Quinn. “This one’s yours and your brother’s.”
Quinn sat up straighter. “What is it?”
“In a moment.” Patrick stood and Quinn shrank a little, but the excited light didn’t leave her eyes, even as everyone else quieted and looked up. “Now that Wilhelmina has returned, we’ll finish these documents and go over the plan. I want everyone to be absolutely clear on their parts in this, especially Wil and Melanie.”
I pulled a pile of forged documents closer. “Good job on these,” I muttered to anyone, everyone. The papers still required a few finishing touches to make them appear as authentic as the true residency papers we’d found; that was my job.
“Wil and Mel will infiltrate Skyvale Palace as refugee Liadian nobility,” he said. “King Terrell won’t be able to turn them away, not with the Wraith Alliance still in effect. Once they’re in place, we’ll check for their reports at Laurence’s Bakery every three days. If you need supplies delivered to the drop or if there’s an emergency, we’ll check when
ever we see the signal. Which will be?” He raised an eyebrow at Melanie.
“A red ribbon in our window.” She pulled the silk length from her hip pouch. “We’ll tie it up the first day, so you know we’re successful and where we’re located.”
“Very good.” Patrick gave a clipped nod. “We’re on a deadline for the ten-year anniversary of the One-Night War, so I want us all to have clear goals for this mission. That way, if anything goes wrong, we know who to blame.”
His narrowed-eye glance at me meant he counted last night’s encounter with Black Knife as something “going wrong.”
“Goal one: intelligence. We know the Aecorian terrain and we have people willing to fight for us, but we can’t risk them until we know where the Indigo Army bases are located in Aecor, how many troops they have, and what kind of weapons they’re using.
“Two: we suspect King Terrell’s people also have a list of resistance groups in Aecor—groups just waiting for the opportunity to fight back. We need that list, both for our own purposes, and to keep our potential allies out of enemy hands.”
“We already know of a few resistance groups,” Oscar said. “And our contacts in Aecor have been scouting for more.”
Patrick gave a brisk nod. “But if we’re to take back an entire kingdom and defend it, we need to overwhelm the Indigo Army. A force of a thousand people won’t be enough. Not against an army that’s had a decade to establish its hold.”
Everyone looked somber.
Patrick pulled a sheet of paper from the pile in the middle of the table and slid it toward me. “Of course, they’d notice if their list went missing, and they’ll have multiple copies. Wil and Mel, your job will be to replace their list with ours, which holds false information. Send ‘updated copies’ to the forces in Aecor if you can, but regardless, they will spend precious time discovering the problem and reverifying all of their information.”
“Meanwhile,” I said, “we’ll have our contacts reach out to these resistance groups, warn them of the Indigo Army’s attention, and recruit them for our purposes.” I glanced at the paper he gave me. Names, numbers, locations, all no doubt meant to lead the Indigo Army into a trap.