Wings Unseen

by Rebecca Gomez Farrell

  “She will be excited to hear you have it in Sellwyn already.”

  “How are her seeds faring with this weather?” Janto smiled at the memory of searching for dark seeds among the black sands of Braven.

  “Thriving. Her stocks have nearly doubled since I left for the Murat. She cannot keep up, but nonetheless, she will not tell me where she plans to sow them all.”

  “She will not tell anyone where you went, either?”

  “Oh no.” Hamsyn clasped his arm. “You can trust me on that, Janto.

  She would never—never—give away something that could endanger me. Though I hope I am not in too much danger?” Hamsyn’s brow raised in question.

  Mertina wore a well-practiced nonchalance, but she perked up slightly at Hamsyn’s question—she had not been briefed on the details of their quest as yet. The fewer people who knew, the better for keeping their travels secret from the Guj’s men, but this task required much of them both. Janto could not ask them to take it on blindly.

  “You are in danger. So are we all. But that would be the case whether we stay at this Crossing forever or we continue on to Rall’s home.” He rubbed a hand over the Old Girl, the curve of her bow comforting. Then he looked up, sheepish. “We are saving Lansera. I hope you will come.”

  Hamsyn merely nodded his head before heading off to claim his horse.

  CHAPTER 44

  VESPERI

  Five days. They had been traveling on horseback for five days, and as far as Vesperi was concerned, her companions needed to show more gratitude that she hadn’t used her talent on a single one of them, nor even raised a finger their way. The last time she had used it, two nights ago, was to cleanse the shack Janto’s friend had called a home. How was she to know the whole thing would flare up like a firecracker? Yes, she and Serra had barely made it out unscathed, so she understood the concern, she did.

  But the princeling could only push her so much further.

  He rode by her side, rambling on and on about how she should practice more, how they would deal with the Guj’s men if they had to, but she needed to respond right away if Serra saw one of those creatures again—right away, without killing anyone. Details.

  “Vesperi.” Janto’s frustration rose with each consecutive repetition of her name. “Vesperi, have you been practicing at all?”

  “You have been blathering in my ear for two days straight. Maybe I would practice if you’d let me alone for a few minutes.” She would not perform just because he asked, just because anyone asked. She had done enough performing to last a lifetime, and where had that gotten her? Riding on horseback for five days with a group of Lanserim, knowing whatever this companionship was would only last as long as it took for them to rid their precious towns of the claren.

  And by Saeth’s fist, that Serra annoyed her with her high-brow aloofness and her waifish charms. Janto wouldn’t shut up about her on the ride to Callyn, and now she was here in the flesh, had been every day for a week, and Vesperi had expected someone a little more exciting. Even her clothing, that drab sheath, had no color to it. The way she cocked her head while scanning for claren trails made Vesperi want to knock a few thoughts into it.

  That was not fair, and Vesperi knew it—the girl was smart. But Vesperi hated the glares she sent her way. They only intensified with Janto nearby, demanding Vesperi pay attention.

  “I did practice,” she finally admitted. “During my watch when the rest of you slept.” She was surprised Janto had given her a watch last night, but he insisted on it over Serra and Napeler’s protestations, because he wanted everyone as well rested as possible. Vesperi hoped they’d sleep for a week once they reached the temple up ahead.

  It was so different from Mandat Hall. A few rows of huts curved around its northern side, but the whole thing took up so little area. Mandat Hall loomed over the hills of Qiltyn, like a koparin waiting to pounce from the heights. How did Lanserim priests inspire awe and obedience with such a simple dome and no one around to see it?

  “Rynna Gemni,” Serra called to a slender woman running toward them from the temple. She wore the same boring clothes as Serra. Great, more thrilling companions. But there must be something else at hand, because Serra dismounted.

  “What’s wrong?” Serra handed her reins to Nap, the cocky Wasylim, and began toward the other woman.

  “No, no, get back on!” The woman spoke firmly, and Serra obeyed. “You have to go to the lake. We have had word of more bodies like the ones you described. Lourda confirmed it. You are needed there, Serra. Ryn Cladio instructed me to send you as soon as I sighted your group.”

  “He knew we were coming?”

  “Of course he did. Madel’s hand does not grasp at air. Go!”

  Vesperi liked her. No need to beat around the bush with that woman. But she was tired, and more riding was not welcome. The others felt the same based on their slumped stances.

  Janto sighed but nodded. “We will go. Serra, lead the way.”

  They secured handkerchiefs and masks and went, and though Vesperi’s thighs would ache a while longer, being needed was a little thrilling. She blew a kiss to Esye, the moon full in the morning sky.

  The colossal lake was the most beautiful thing Vesperi had ever seen, including the expression on her father’s face the day she told him he could stop holding her virginity over her head. The midday light reflecting off it nearly blinded her.

  “They have to be in the village.” Serra steered them toward an enclave of huts Vesperi could barely make out—they stood hardly taller than the reeds. The seer spurred her horse to a faster pace. They reached the first of the huts about ten minutes later. “I don’t see any traces of claren here.”

  There was no one outside, and the day was so humid, Vesperi would not have forced herself inside for anything.

  “Ryn Cladio?” Serra yelled louder than Vesperi would have thought the waif could manage. “We’re here!” She galloped to the nearest hut. “It’s me. It’s Serra. Where are they? Where are the claren?”

  A door opened several yards away and an ancient man dressed in another of those sheaths stepped out. White hair fell past his waist, and he held a cane. Definitely not an adver. None of them would dare hold a cane.

  “Serra! Thanks be to Madel.” His voice was pleasant. “Ryn Cladio,” Janto greeted the man with raised elbows. “I hate to meet you this way, but are the villagers here all right? Where are they?”

  “Most of them are fine, slayer”—Ryn Cladio raised his elbows as well—“boarded up in their huts to keep the claren out. The Rasselerians know what to do when such things stir. They brought the body of an elder who had fallen silent yesterday morning to us at the temple.”

  Serra examined the huts intently. “Which one is his?”

  He pointed to a far grouping. “You need handkerchiefs wrapped around your faces. And the weapon. His home is the—”

  “Fourth one from the end. I see their trail.” Serra beckoned Vesperi to follow. “You heard him. Let’s get this over with, Meduan.”

  Shock shone plainly on the ryn’s face. He must not have known his cherished weapon was a dirty Meduan. This Madel did not explain things to Her people very well.

  Janto rode up beside her, speaking softer than Serra had. “Come on, you get to play. Let’s go.”

  “But you don’t need to come. I do not know if I can control—” “If you think for a moment I am leaving you and Serra alone in another room full of the creatures that did that to Mar Pina, you’re crazy.” He shook his head, but fondness lit up his features. “Besides, you have been practicing. I trust you.”

  “A bigger fool you are for it.” She laughed and trotted her horse after his. They paused to dismount, and Serra and Janto pulled scarves over their faces outside the front door. “Here.” Nap, the nubbin, drew close. He extended a clean gray cloth to her. She had burnt her last one at Rall’s home. “Take mine.”

  Vesperi was already tying the cloth before she realized she’d uttered a “thank yo
u” in reply. These people have made me weak. The aggravating thought sparked her skill into life, and she rushed inside as Janto pushed the door closed behind them. The air was stifling and smelled worse than soured milk wine.

  Serra’s fingers clasped her arm, and her nails dug in to Vesperi’s arm, sharp as thornberries.

  “Focus. Channel. Aim.” Janto’s whisper gained him a huge eye roll, but Vesperi did as told. She had grown used to his particular brand of obnoxiousness.

  “Fast.” Serra’s eyes were vacant. “They have not sensed us yet.”

  Focus. There was no window left uncovered in this place, so Vesperi imagined the moon instead, how it appeared at Sellwyn through the rusted metal bars of her tiny window. Serra shifted her arm to the left then a smidgen to the right.

  Channel. Vesperi drew on the imagined moon’s silvery light within her mind. Eyes closed, she grabbed at the energy that spilled from it, pulled it as though the reins of a troublesome horse until she could feel it inside her, flowing beneath her skin. The curls of her hair lifted up and straightened into tight barbs, and she knew she had it.

  Aim. She unrolled her clenched finger, pointed, and released.

  The strength of the magic’s expulsion forced her eyes open, and only Serra’s hands on it kept her arm up and finger pointing in the right direction. She steeled herself again and felt immense satisfaction at the crackling that filled the silver-tinged air. Energy whirled in her palm, and Vesperi released enough to extend to where the claren smoked and no farther, Serra nudging her arm back and forth all the while. When Serra finally let her hand fall away, Vesperi nearly jumped for joy. There were no scorch marks on the opposite wall.

  “You did it.” Janto inspected the same wall, disbelieving. In a moment, his arms were around her, pressing against her, and it felt almost as good as the energy fading to a hum in her ears. “You did it, Vesperi!”

  She had. She really had. She sunk into his arms and hugged back. Her view was obscured, but she did not miss Serra’s quick, hurried exit from the hut, her eyes flying anywhere but back at Vesperi and Janto, except for the moment when they’d glanced on hers.

  Vesperi had seen that expression once before, when one of the advers had taken her to court from the convent. She had been deposited in a waiting room with the other playthings. The man left her there and Vesperi had grown livid, having expected to be paraded on his pasty, floppy arm for at least a few minutes. She had wanted to see the king.

  “Ralion has thirty women lying at his feet,” she had screamed at the adver’s retreating back. “Leave me in that pile—I will gladly stroke his cock if I’m not good enough for yours!”

  A nearby courtier was on her in an instant. The leather of his gloves left a red mark that did not fade for two days. He was a tall man in tight black pants and a crimson tunic, wavy hair the color of dried chicory. His manner had been composed, but his eyes swam with anguish in the moment she glimpsed them before he disappeared in the same direction the adver had gone.

  “I’ll suck yours too, if you bring me in,” she had yelled at his retreating form, not caring if it bought her a matching mark on the other side.

  “Not an appealing offer for him.” One of the other women in the room had spoken up. “That was Rapsca Unger.” She said his name as though it was all the explanation needed.

  “The king’s advisor?”

  The woman laughed and patted her stomach in merriment. “Something like that.”

  Vesperi understood, once she’d been long enough at the convent to hear more rumors of court, but why Serra would feel the same torment as Rapsca Unger was a mystery, especially when Vesperi’s every cell reverberated with victory.

  CHAPTER 45

  JANTO

  Janto held a glass shard up to the sunlight and wiggled his blurry fingers behind it. The shard was dark blue, about an inch thick, and the sunlight exposed a pearlescent sheen on one of its faces. Tilt it any other way, and the sheen disappeared. That was how he knew this shard came from the oldest days, the ones when only Rasselerians had lived in Lansera and Madel’s hand had not needed to reach so far. The Rasselerian sorters had described its qualities when they brought a barrel full of glass and emptied it at his feet no more than a day after they had rid the elder’s hut of claren. Many piles of glass surrounded Janto now, the colors as varied as the feathers had been on Braven.

  He sat on a bench in the sticky air, grateful for every wind gust from Lake Ashra, a mile to the north. Each breeze dispelled the jocal flies, if only for a moment. His party had traveled throughout the marshlands for the past four days, following news of other villagers who had been subsumed. Janto’s patience with flies and the wet heat wore thin. The hut he sat in front of was a meeting place for the Rasselerians who scoured the swamps for the glass and other artifacts. They had more chances to hear news and rumors here than anywhere else the marshfolk gathered.

  Their team was six now. Flivio had arrived last night with two rynnas guiding him. He sorted glass now with Janto, Hamsyn, and a handful of Rasselerians. He peppered their silence with the occasional insult at Vesperi’s expense, although she was not around. “Practice,” Flivio had called it, admiration for her laced in with his sarcasm. It had taken all of ten minutes after his arrival to begin a heated exchange that had brought a genuine smile to Vesperi’s face.

  She and Serra were a few miles away, investigating another report of a villager gone silent, with Sar Mertina and Nap as their guards. Janto had resisted when Vesperi insisted she try to control her magic without him there to prod her, but he acquiesced. Just yesterday morning, she had destroyed a tiny swarm. Ten charred shells had fallen from the sky, and no thistle on the surrounding reeds had so much as sparked. So he agreed, knowing with the surety that fixed his frown to his face that they would be fine without him. At least sorting glass to pass the time was something useful he could do.

  “This piece is the sickliest green I have ever seen, aside from that Meduan’s disposition.” Flivio tossed the offending glass onto a pile of old, but not old enough, shards. A Rasselerian picked it up and nodded before letting it fall back down again.

  “And apparently, I am not trusted to tell if these things have a sheen or not.” Flivio brushed specks of glass dust from his pants, making the mud beneath him sparkle. Janto lifted another shard from his own pile to the sun, pink with a pearlescent surface. It also bore a broken sigil of the distinctive Xantas heraldry, a bear raised on its haunches. The shard went in yet another pile, hopefully to be reunited with its mates that held the rest of the sigil from when it had once been a vase or a plate.

  “Come on, Janto.” Flivio tossed another shard onto the pile from which it had come. “There has to be something else we can do while waiting for your women to come back—”

  “They are not my women.” His voice came across bitterer than intended. One of those women should be his, and he hated that she wasn’t. They should have been doing this together as husband and wife, and he did not understand why they weren’t. Serra would not speak with him for longer than courtesy allowed, and she avoided it half the time regardless. Vesperi, on the other hand, was not his woman at all.

  “Calm down, little child.” Flivio mimicked Sielban’s voice so perfectly both Hamsyn and Janto laughed. “All I meant is you three are in this together, from what I understand. Your bedroom is none of my concern.”

  Janto rolled his eyes with good humor, refreshed to be around his friends again despite the circumstances. Three weeks of living in a forest with them during the Murat made this almost seem normal. And it would be for quite a long time if the claren had spread nearly as far as they feared. Janto was not certain they would ever gain the advantage. They could ride through all of Lansera for years eradicating them, but if the claren kept breeding in Medua, his people would never be safe. Janto’s face fell again, and he reached for another piece of glass.

  As he did, the Rasselerians among them lifted their heads in unison. They turned toward each other t
hen rose and walked off in the same direction, away from the hut and toward the road that led north from Wasyla.

  Hamsyn, Janto, and Flivio exchanged glances.

  “They are little Sielbans, aren’t they?” Hamsyn blinked with surprise. “Do you think they have been in our minds, too? I hope I haven’t thought anything too offensive.”

  “Right.” Flivio snorted. “Like you have worries. I only grace you with the tamest opinions that run through my head. I am fairly certain I was pondering the sex lives of frogs a few minutes ago.”

  Janto was too fascinated by the Rasselerians’ movement to give Flivio the shove he deserved. Two others approached from the road, and they wiggled with what might have been excitement, one of them reaching into a bag slung over his shoulder. The Rasselerians leaned in as one, and an excited hum spread between them.

  “What are you staring at?” Someone breathed into his ear then laughed mercilessly as he jumped.

  Vesperi’s amusement lightened her face, then she smiled. “We did it.”

  His pride soared, and he forgot the Rasselerians entirely.

  “And she only lit a curtain on fire.” Serra sounded just as satisfied, coming around the cabin’s side.

  Janto dropped the glass in his hand and pressed an arm around each woman in a hug. “That’s amazing.” He had been so focused on the Rasselerians, he had missed their party coming up behind them.

  Janto directed his next statement to Nap, who was helping Mertina tie up the horses. “Come now, Nap. They left a trail of burned huts and reeds in their wake, did they not?”

  Nap startled, the color draining from his face. “No, they speak the truth, of course.”

  Janto laughed. The Wasylim had yet to develop a sense of humor, but in a group with Flivio in it, that might be a survival instinct. The Meditlan had enough humor for them all.