by Keri Arthur
His gaze flashed to mine; once again I saw the questions in his eyes. Once again, he didn’t give them voice. He simply moved forward, the knife held at the ready. He ducked under the injured wing, carefully avoiding the broken phalanges and dripping blood. I shifted slightly to keep him out of sight. The drakkon moved with me, and her wing claw dug a trench into the ground only feet from him. I crooned softly, and her clawing stopped. Kaiden waited another second and then edged to the back of her leg. “The band is a good two inches thick—I’m not sure the knife will be strong enough to break it.”
“It will. Just find the clasp point and pry it apart.”
He grunted—a disbelieving sound if ever there was one—but nevertheless stepped closer. After another brief pause, he shoved the knife’s slender point into the band’s seam. Blue lightning flew across the metal’s surface, though whether it was in response to Kaiden’s actions or whether the Mareritt were simply trying to force the drakkon back into action, I couldn’t say. I had no idea if the device was simply one of control or whether it gave them an electronic version of the mind link we kin were born with. Either way, she groaned and twitched, forcing Kaiden to jump out of the way or risk being gored.
He tried again; this time, the knife went deeper, and with a grunt of effort, he managed to twist the blade sideways and force the edges of the band apart. Then, with a loud click, the bracelet fell away, freeing her from its evil.
Kaiden clipped it to his belt and then retreated. I attempted the mind meld again. This time, there was no static, only pain, confusion, and hatred. The latter wasn’t specifically aimed at me but rather everyone and everything. But that was unsurprising if she’d known nothing but pain and submission since the day she’d hatched.
Can you hear me? I silently asked.
Yes. Her reply was uncertain and filled with confusion. Why?
I’m kin.
Know not kin.
No surprise, but the admission still cut deep. Kin are women who bonded with the drakkon and rode them to war.
Ah. Kaieke.
Kaieke was a Mareritt slur for kin that basically meant “daughters of trulls”—a trull being the term for a lady who sold her wares on the streets. They held none of the esteem of the Danseuse, many of whom could count royalty amongst their clients, and who used a mix of sensuality and dance magic to pleasure. In the Arleeon I’d known, there hadn’t been many active Danseuse, though I had no idea why that had been.
Interestingly, the way she used the term was in no way derogatory—quite the opposite, in fact.
Yes, and I’m here to help you.
You shot me. She paused. Not you. Others.
Yes, and I’m sorry. I can fix the damage but only if you do not attack.
Attack is all they want.
They no longer control you. The decision is yours to make.
She considered this silently, her mind a myriad of conflicting thoughts and emotions.
Mental pain has gone. They are gone. Relief and wonder mixed with disbelief. For that, I will not attack.
Thank you, little one.
Oma. I am Oma.
Do you wish the blind left on your eye, Oma?
No. Wish to see. Have been blind too long.
Meaning mentally, I knew, not physically. I pulled my jacket from her eye, then gave the ridge a final scratch and slipped from her cheek to the ground. She raised her head and turned to follow my movements.
I ducked under her injured wing and then held out my hand. “I need the medikit.”
Kaiden warily walked closer and handed it me. “I think this is the first time in a very long time a field kit has been used on a drakkon.”
I grunted, concentrating more on finding what I needed than what he was saying. “We used to carry specialized kits with us whenever we went out. Ah, here we go.” I plucked out the bone straps and a bottle of wound sealer, then handed the kit back to Kaiden and glanced at Oma. “I’ll have to spread your wing out to patch it. It’ll hurt.”
Uncertainty flashed through her thoughts, followed swiftly by the heat of fear. But she gave none of it voice and silently assented.
I returned my gaze to Kaiden. “I’ll take the shoulder area—you take the wing tip.”
“If she flames me, me and my burned butt will come back to haunt you.”
“That threat might or might not be worrying.” I walked over to her shoulder and gently placed my hands either side of her wing claw. “Depending on whether or not said butt is a good one. I haven’t actually had the time to notice.”
He snorted, a sound that was a mix of amusement and disbelief. “I’d prefer it if you didn’t stop to do so right now. This drakkon is giving me the evil eye.”
I glanced across at her. She was indeed studying Kaiden rather intensely, but not with any immediate intention of flaming him. “You’re safe. She’s fascinated, not annoyed.”
“I’m not sure I like the sound of that, either.”
I smiled, even as an odd sort of uncertainty ran through me. Something pretty drastic really had happened in Arleeon for drakkons to become such an unknown quantity—something other than the Mareritt gaining control of Zephrine’s aeries. Even if they’d lost all their drakkons, they should still have had the libraries as well as those who’d retired from flight and could still remember… The thought died. Those who retired most often ended up working in the aeries alongside the older drakkons, keeping the eggs safe and warm and the drakklings under watchful eyes.
But even if they’d all fallen victim to the ice, did no one read anymore? Did no one share the knowledge of what once had been?
The wing clicked into full spread. I glanced across to Kaiden. “Hold her steady while I repair the broken phalanges.”
He nodded. I released her wing claw and moved into the center of her broken wing, avoiding some but not all of the blood drips. While its strong metallic scent had my nose wrinkling, its dark staining did at least erase some of the uniform’s brightness.
Three vital sections of her wing were broken—two along one phalange, one on the other. I carefully pushed each one back into position, aware of her restless stirring and the haze of pain running through her mind, then placed and activated each of the bone straps. Once the broken sections were braced, I flipped off the sealer’s lid and began to patch the bigger sections of torn membrane. Even with the force each sweep of her wing would place on the repairs, they should hold long enough for her to find somewhere safe to rest and recuperate. Drakkons, like those of us who rode them, healed extraordinarily fast; she wouldn’t be out of action for very long.
“It sounds like they’ve brought in machinery to clear the rubble,” the soldier stationed near the exit said. “We need to get going.”
“You finished?” Kaiden immediately asked.
I nodded. “I’ll join you in few minutes. I need a final word with her.”
He hesitated, then handed me the knife and cautiously retreated. I shoved the knife back into its sheath, then ducked under her wing and walked over to her head. She shifted slightly, presenting her eye ridge for a scratch. I obliged.
Your wing should hold long enough to get free from this place. Find somewhere hidden and safe to recover.
And you?
The Mareritt come after us. We must run.
Mareritt?
Those who held you prisoner.
Deep in her chest, thunder rumbled, and fire rolled briefly around the edges of her nostrils. A hint of what waited for any frost scum who tried to recapture her.
I leave. She paused. Owe you.
No. Be free and be safe. With that, I stepped away, giving her the freedom to move.
With a grunt of effort, she dug her patched wing into the ground and dragged herself upright. Then she pushed to her feet and started beating both wings, slowly at first and then with more confidence as the patches held. She crouched and leaped, her wings pumping but her body dipping a little to one side, thanks to a few remaining tears in her wing. Gradu
ally, though, she gained height and speed.
Then, with a joyous bellow, she was gone.
Free.
Her thought, not mine.
Once again, tears stung my eyes; once again, I blinked them away. She might be free, but many more drakkon were still in the hands of the frost scum. But until I knew just what had happened—to Arleeon, and to me—there was really nothing I could, or even should, do.
I spun around on a heel and marched across the clearing. Kaiden was waiting at the edge of the forest. His two companions were nowhere in sight.
“This way.” He returned one of the rifles to me and then led the way into the trees.
“Where are the other two?”
“They have tasks elsewhere.”
“So we’re on our own?”
“For the moment, yes.”
“And do I call you Kai or Kaiden?”
He glanced around, the half smile on his lips doing little to counter the coldness in his eyes. “Kaiden when alone. Kai when we’re in Mareritten cities or towns.”
“And do you have a last name? Or is that to remain a secret until you trust me?”
“Guess.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“I’ll share once you start sharing.”
I snorted softly but didn’t bother replying. The darkness closed in as we entered the forest. Leaves crunched under our feet, the soft sound echoing around us. But there was little other noise to be heard—if there were night creatures here, they were in hiding. Even the shrill, shrieking noise made by spittlebugs was absent, and that was unusual in a forest this dense.
The spicy citrus scent of the blacknut trees became more intense the deeper we moved into the forest, overriding the metallic stink that covered my uniform. Many of the trees had begun their autumn shed, allowing moonbeams to filter through half-cloaked branches, highlighting the deep furrows of black in the trunks of the older trees—such staining was an indicator of age. The fact that there was so much suggested this area had not seen much in the way of drakkon fire, and that meant either the resistance had been more successful in breaking other prisoners out than they had us, or simply that the freedom had never lasted past the exit gates or open field. Perhaps if I’d studied the ground between the gate and the trees a little longer, I might have spotted the cindered patches of soil that spoke of past escape attempts.
I flexed my fingers and said, “Where are we going?”
“We’ve transport waiting on the other side of this forest.”
“Once we get there, what then?”
He half hitched a shoulder. “Not sure yet. Depends.”
“On what?”
“On you answering a few more questions.” He glanced over his shoulder, suspicion darkening his expression. “I want to know who you are. I want to know why you know so much about drakkons and yet so little about Arleeon.”
“Trust me, I probably have as many questions needing answers as you. But until my memories come back fully, that’s not going to happen.”
“Amnesia is a pretty convenient excuse.”
“It’s not an excuse, and it’s not amnesia.” I hesitated. “Not exactly.”
“Then what is it?”
“This is going to sound strange, but it almost feels as if portions of my brain are covered in a sheet of ice that’s slowly thawing out. I know some stuff, I’m remembering other random bits, but a whole lot more remains locked behind that ice.”
“Perhaps the first thing we need to do once we escape is find a reader and see if they can get past this ice of yours.”
Reader was the common term for those gifted with the ability to slip into the minds of others and uncover their thoughts and memories via a simple touch. Earth and air mages might be somewhat rare in Arleeon, but those gifted with psychic abilities—or even personal magics such as healing—were not. Kin might naturally heal fast, but even we couldn’t heal major injuries in a matter of hours, and that’s where healers came in handy.
“There’s a reader at Zephrine—” I stopped. Zephrine didn’t exist—at least, not as I’d known it.
“And there’re plenty within Esan.”
“Is that where we’re heading?”
He snorted—a sound of disbelief if ever I’d heard one. “Would you take me there if our positions were reversed?”
“Yes, because you’d be strapped to the leg of a drakkon and unlikely to cause any problems until we got answers.”
He stopped so abruptly I had to do a quick step sideways to avoid running into him. His expression, when his gaze met mine, was angry. “That is exactly the reason I don’t trust you.”
I frowned. “I don’t understand what you mean—”
“Drakkons—fighting drakkons who bore kin aloft—no longer exist—”
“Yes, but—”
“There are no buts,” he went on relentlessly. “The day the graces made their futile attack against the coruscations was the day the Mareritt stole both our strength and the will to fight. It was the day Arleeon became a Mareritten territory.”
I let his words wash over me and simply stared at him. My heart raced, and the pounding in my head increased until the ache was so bad it felt like my brain was about to explode. Not because of what he’d said, but what he hadn’t.
Part of me wanted to cover my ears—to run from whatever else he was about to say. But I needed answers, however unpleasant. I swallowed against the dryness in my throat, but it didn’t really help.
“And?” I asked, my voice hoarse.
“And,” he replied heavily, “it all happened over two hundred years ago.”
Four
I stared at him for several seconds, his words echoing but making no sense. Two hundred years? If anything was impossible, it was that.
“You can’t have ridden a fighting drakkon, Red, because they haven’t existed for two hundred years. No matter what you believe to the contrary, that is simply the truth.”
His expression remained grim, but there was an undertone of anger in his voice now. It wasn’t aimed so much at me but rather at history itself. At the events that had led to so much loss, and at the woman who’d been central to it all—my sister.
“No—” I somehow ground out.
“You can deny it all you want, but that doesn’t change a thing.” His voice remained relentless. Ungiving. “I don’t know what’s happened to you. I don’t know why your memories seem stuck in a time long past, but there’s no possible way I’m taking you anywhere near the last free city until we uncover who you truly are and what’s happened to you.”
The last free city… Four words that had me reeling even more. The drakkons all but gone, Zephrine destroyed, Esan standing alone, and the Mareritt in control of the majority of Arleeon? How was all that even possible?
How could everything I did remember be so totally and utterly out of step with this reality? Or was there a far darker purpose behind those memories?
Was he the problem and not me? Had he been placed in my path to confuse and subvert? But even as that thought rose, I rejected it. There was simply too much about this world that was very obviously different to the one I remembered for it to be a part of some gigantic charade. Besides, every instinct within suggested I trust this man, and given the lack of recent memory, instinct was all I really had.
I shoved a gloved hand through my short hair. “I think, perhaps, we need to find a reader ASAP.”
“With that, I agree. Let’s move.”
He continued on, striding through the trees with an assurance that suggested familiarity with this area. I followed silently, barely watching my steps, my mind awhirl with so many conflicting emotions it was hard to think. And maybe that was a good thing, because I really didn’t want to dwell on the fact that everyone I’d ever known was not only dead but not even dust on the wind, given the length of time that had elapsed.
So how did I get here?
What had happened within the coruscations to throw me
—and no one else—two hundred years into the future?
What was the ice hiding?
Or was the ice itself nothing more than a deliberate attempt on my part not to confront painful memories or shocking truths?
I didn’t know, and that was both frustrating and frightening. I flexed my fingers and said, “I take it you come from Esan?”
“Yes.”
It was curtly said, but I ignored the unspoken warning within it. He might not want to talk right now, but I needed to.
“Are you of kin blood? Because you don’t smell like it.”
He snorted. “I wasn’t aware kin came with a specific smell.”
“When you hang around drakkons long enough, their musk becomes somewhat entrenched.”
“We have no drakkons to hang around, remember. I’ll also point out that for all your words about being kin and riding drakkons, you don’t hold such a musk.”
I didn’t? Given I certainly should, it was yet another question needing to be answered. “You said Esan was the last free city—but Esan is a fortress. It was never designed or meant to be a city.”
“Well, it’s both now.” Again, that mix of grimness and anger rode his voice. “We had little other choice.”
It was a statement that chilled, if only because it suggested Esan and Arleeon had both been caught unawares. But if Zephrine had fallen first, why would that be the case? None of this was making much sense.
“How much of Arleeon do the Mareritt now hold?”
“Too damn much.” He glanced over his shoulder, his blue eyes glittering. “Can we hold the questions until we get out of this forest? They do run patrols through this area—the last thing we need is your chatter alerting them to our presence.”
A smile twisted my lips, though it contained little in the way of amusement. The possibility of Mareritt patrols—while no doubt valid—was simply a means to avoid answering my questions. The truth was, the crunch of leaves underfoot was probably making more noise than anything I was saying.