Wings Unseen

by Rebecca Gomez Farrell

  Gnawing doubt grew in Janto as the flames from Mandat Hall died down. But it lessened when a unit of Lanserim arrived from the west within the hour. Brown-and gray-clothed dots on the horizon multiplied from one to five to twenty and many more as he watched them come. A whoop of joy built in his throat as the feathers sticking out of the vanguardsmen’s caps sharpened into view, but he let it die away. The milling advers could not know he’d been uncertain his father’s men would come. By Madel’s hand, Sar Mertina had ridden swiftly, and Janto prayed the words he’d soon speak would do likewise throughout Medua, along with news of Lanserim soldiers who had met no resistance.

  Their small crew sat together in an exhausted lump, far enough from the destroyed hall that they could tolerate the heat from its ruins. The advers granted Janto and the others a wide berth, which he would have found funny if he wasn’t so tired. The prince of Lansera was in their midst, and the Meduan leaders did not dare harm him for fear of the female company he kept.

  The people of Qiltyn had gathered on the eastern slope of the hillside as the tower burned, men coming from their quarters to the west, women and children from the rest of the town. The latter group was smaller than it should be, and they kept plenty of space between themselves and the men. The crowd watched as the largest presence in their lives dwindled to nothing. Heads poked out of domed buildings’ windows, enraptured with the sight. No shouts came up the hillside along with the cool breeze, merely shocked silence. When Janto spoke, he would have the attention of all Qiltyn. Without the manpower to spread the message, it would have accomplished little. His tired, exhausted sortie of six could not do it on their own.

  But a unit of his father’s cavalry, nearly on them now, could. They were perhaps a hundred soldiers, but they would do. It was enough to show the Meduans below that the Lanserim had returned.

  Lord Sydley dismounted, leaning on his cane, and bent his knee. “My prince.” Janto did not normally entertain such formalities, but it was essential now, and he was glad Sydley had discerned that.

  “Rise.” Janto clapped the elder liege-lord on his shoulder. The advers regarded them intently, some daring to creep closer, the allure of news too much to resist. “How many men follow you?” Janto spoke loudly enough for all nearby ears to hear.

  “A hundred at your command. There are three hundred more on our heels, and a company makes its way over the mountains now.”

  Better. Hamsyn’s death would not be pointless but a lasting testament to peace, if Madel’s hand was with them. “My command is for the cavalry to follow me down this hillside and spread the words I speak to every home in Qiltyn. There will be some violence, I do not doubt it, but I have a feeling it will not last.”

  Lord Sydley whispered his doubts, “How can you know that? These people have been our enemies for years.”

  Janto’s gaze went to Vesperi, of course, and to Lorne also, who had proven as essential to Madel’s plan as the fabled bird. “I think we will find most of our enemies died years ago. Lead our soldiers down the hillside. I will soon follow.”

  Flivio groaned when Janto insisted they get up to join him. “A speech? Janto, we just saved their asses and ours. Can’t these ‘inspiring’ words of yours wait until tomorrow?”

  “No excuses. We have to do this now if we have any hope of being heard.”

  With his friends behind him and the Lanserim cavalry around him, Janto did not need to fake his confidence.

  “People of Medua.”

  Heads turned toward him in a wave, rippling inward instead of out. “We have destroyed Mandat Hall, and the Guj is dead.” The silence continued, but many mouths opened in surprise and stayed that way. “I am Janto Albrecht, son of Dever Albrecht, king of Lansera. And I am here to reclaim this land for Lansera. I am not certain what histories you have been told, but I know they are not truthful. Nor is the one we tell over the mountains, not entirely.

  “During the war, your forebears, some who endure among you, decided they did not want to live within our society. They wanted to take rather than give, to dominate rather than abide in peace and justice. So they rose against us and fought to steal as much land and wealth as they could. Civil war came, and it was brutal and hard on our people. They grew tired of fighting, tired of losing brothers and sisters for the sake of forcing those who did not want it to stay with us. Because of that weariness, we did the worst thing we could, far worse than anything your people have inflicted on each other. We let you go.

  “Thus, we sentenced you—the young, the not-so-young, and the old who did not truly understand the need to flee before those criminals were given these lands—we sentenced you all to servitude. You lost your rights, though you did not know it. You lost your self-worth, though your advers never let you learn it. You lost the knowledge you were Lanserim, and Lanserim need never fear the lash of a liege-lord, nor be forced to do anything they would not do freely. We let them blind you to those truths. The horrors you have had to endure because of it … we can never make up for that.

  “So I am here today to say I am sorry. On behalf of the Albrechts, my family, and the Lanserim, my people, we are sorry. And we want you back. We want to help you remember you are more than shadows in a hall. My soldiers will aid you if you want to leave these lands and start afresh over the mountains. We will teach you how to make use of your skills, find you jobs where you can take pride in your work. But you must decide fast, because there are men who will want to take this choice away from you. They will rise up soon enough, some of them behind me on this hill, no doubt. They will try to reforge the hold the Guj and his advers had over you. There are always those who will yearn for that power, but I am telling you today, you do not have to submit to it. You are not less of a person than anyone else in this world, and we will fight for you to know it. All you need to do is come home.”

  There was no great stirring when Janto stopped talking. He did not expect one. This society and its sicknesses had been built up over decades. It would not become healthy in a day. He instructed the soldiers to go out into the cobblestoned streets and repeat the message to whomever they could find. When the first rider returned with a slyph of a woman on his mount and a tiny child in her lap, Vesperi slipped her hand into Janto’s and they went to greet them. The child, a girl no more than two, giggled when Serra came up behind her and tucked a blue feather behind her ear.

  EPILOGUE

  SERRA

  They had been back from Thokketh for a fortnight, but Serra still felt cold. It was nearly spring again, the second since the fall of Mandat Hall. Thokketh did not have a spring from what she could tell, though the guards had called it breeding season just as her mother had once done. The waters surrounding the ice fortress teemed with sheven and streaks of dark red blood eddied near the surface. The occasional fin or chunk of purple flesh had been flung onto the snow banks beside the moat as the fish frenzied. But the eyes of the Deduins who lived outside Thokketh’s walls had been more unnerving. Serra had scanned the night sky over their encampment in her seekings, and many dots of plum-colored light stared back from the dark, reflecting the cold of their environs unlike the warmth she had felt from Ryn Cladio’s gaze. Yet the Deduins had been friendly, at least friendlier than the other people who remained in Medua by choice. Still, interactions with them left a foul taste in her mouth. She would never understand the men who had banished their women to such places as Thokketh for the crime of not submitting to their will. She would never understand a lot about Meduans.

  Including the one who lounged beside her on the flat roof of his one-roomed home in Callyn. Lorne was among the first to move back to Lansera. Many other Meduans had followed, though King Albrecht had no intention of making them vacate the lands on that side of the mountains. Yet most did not consider staying where they were. Who would want to live where they had been imprisoned? Only the older Meduans and those who refused to relinquish their holdings resisted rejoining with Lansera. Lorne’s father was one of them. He had vacated Lord Rali
on’s court and retreated to their manor on the Yarowen plains, likely sculpting Uzziel Sellwyn to take Lorne’s place as the Granich heir. He was welcome to it, Lorne often claimed, but Serra knew the arrangement sometimes made him jealous. Wanting power and a title was a hard habit to break.

  Janto had offered him a room in the castle, of course, but Lorne rejected it. Living within the walls of influence was a temptation he did not trust himself to resist. He wanted to change, to become whomever it was the Brothers thought he was. Helping his countrymen do the same was his eventual goal, but Lorne was determined to prove he could become civilized first, as he put it. If the way he stared at Serra with roving eyes and open desire was any indication, it would be an arduous journey. Such attention flattered only when wanted, and Lorne did not restrict his appreciation of women to one. But he will.

  Thousands of vinum blossoms waved their heavy peach heads on the banks of the River Call. Serra could smell them from where she stood at the edge of Lorne’s roof, the scent of warm caramel, peaches, and home. She should have done this years ago, relaxed on a morning like this, close enough to the blossoms to make out each ragged-edged petal. From the castle, they appeared as a massive puddle of orange beneath the bridge. So much detail was lost from that vantage point.

  The three-headed bird had migrated far in the last two years. After culling them at Mandat Hall, hunting the claren had begun to be sport. At least until they returned to Callyn, often finding their next assignment waiting for them in the form of another family with grief writ plain in their defeated statures. With the Meduans, the tells were more pronounced. Some people who had been attacked were so angry they quaked as they yelled, shaking fists at the sky and Madel. Others collapsed, not having the strength to do anything more than reach Dever Albrecht’s court. It sometimes took days before they could describe what had happened. After trips to more towns than Serra had known Lansera contained, the reports grew less frequent. But each death was one too many. The murders all brought an ache to her chest that hurt like failure. Yet she knew they could not cover the realm from Thokketh to Elston or predict where the remaining claren, those that had survived the blast, would migrate. Three heads were no better equipped to see the future than one, and the Brothers had vanished.

  Someday, though, they would track them all. She, Vesperi, and Janto would eradicate each and every one of the vermin. She dreamed of the satisfaction when the smells of burning copper and ash faded away for the last time.

  The air was full of more pleasant scents today. Vinum blossoms, her necklace of cloves, and … lemon. Lemon? Lorne rubbed a cream into his arms then joined her, resting his elbows on the roof’s wall.

  “Citrus?” She watched as he ran a hand through his lengthy blond hair, wishing her own was as radiant. “That does not smell like Meduan perfume.”

  “It’s a balm the other students have been using to soothe their skins in this dry weather. All the rage at market.”

  She laughed at him, though with fondness and a good deal of finger pointing. “You are following a Lanserim fad? Oh, I must tell Vesperi of this.”

  “I’m young.” He shrugged. “My mind is malleable by my contemporaries. Did you think I could resist their suggestions?”

  She laughed again, bringing a smile to his lips. “Oh no, I am quite certain you cannot.”

  He gave no defense but gestured to the blanket where he had poured them both glasses of wine. It came from a vat bearing her family’s sigil. Under Aunt Marji’s competent winemaking, the Gavenstone vines were on their way to their first good harvest in years, but older vintages were rare. It was touching he had sought one out.

  He smoothed a spot for her on the blanket. She lay down and stared at the sky. All four moons were out, Esye the most visible.

  “You should come with us next time.” One hand shielded her eyes and the other played with the rope that kept her blue and green raiment wrapped. She stayed with Rynna Hullvy when in town, practicing meditation so her sight would remain sharp and clear. Returning to Callyn rather than Enjoin or Gavenstone allowed her to be close by so she could leave with Janto and Vesperi as soon as they learned of a new attack. Besides, Callyn’s rynna dressed so much better than the others. Serra could not imagine going back to those boring old sheaths. “You might learn something about resisting fads. Some of the styles in the smaller villages—”

  Lorne laughed this time. “I am past learning about resistance, don’t you think? Our trip back from Leba last fall taught me not to believe in it.”

  Serra cast him a disapproving glance. “You are only eighteen. I’m certain you have plenty yet to learn on the subject.”

  “And you are only twenty,” he teased. “Tell me again about my slowed maturity when you have proven to have none of this resistance you so cherish? You swore you would never come see me again after the last time.”

  She scoffed. “I was bored. There are only so many hours I can spend in meditation before I need a break. You are a distraction.” An incredibly attractive distraction. “And you lack maturity in so many areas, it would be cruel of me to recount them.”

  “You should not expect me to get everything right, you know. I am not certain I ever met a real woman before I met you. There is a considerable learning curve.”

  Serra blushed over every square inch of her skin, having expected a quick retort full of the sarcasm she had grown used to from him and Vesperi. Sincerity was not their chosen mode of communication. But sometimes it sneaked in and caught her unawares. “That is ridiculous. Vesperi is woman enough for twenty men, and I know you are well familiar with her.”

  She waited for a chortle, but Lorne remained serious, taking her hand. She kept her eyes on the landscape, all too aware of the man beside her. He was one of them, one of the people who had killed her brother, who had victimized each other daily. But he was also Lorne, the man sitting beside her on a rooftop in Callyn, admiring a rainbow of reflected sunlight from the quartz bridge, same as her. And he was learning.

  “You are right.” He rubbed a thumb over her palm. “But she was not a true woman then, when I first knew her. I do not think any of our women could have been what you are, not how we treated them. They had no chance. Someday I may know what it is to be a man, but not yet.”

  His earnestness was breathtaking, and she had to look upon him. The pastel blue of his eyes spoke of new tomorrows, ones free of expectation, and she took his other hand. His skin was smoother than Janto’s, warmer too. But that was the last thought Serra had of her former betrothed that morning. “Well then, I hope I have been a good teacher.”

  “The best,” Lorne agreed, meeting her lips. She knew this was right for her at this time, this place, this now. She did not know what the future held. No one did. The Brothers had only known what could be, not what would be. Maybe the reunification would be a failure five, ten, a hundred years from now. Maybe the Meduans would again tire of tempering their desires and a new horror would arise from their actions. But it did not matter on a morning like this, with the taste of lemon and Lorne on her tongue and the scent of vinum blossoms in the air. It did not matter at all.

  Acknowledgments

  The first glimmer of a silver stag came to me in college, over fifteen years ago now. As you can imagine, a great number of people have contributed to Wings Unseen since, and I apologize in advance for everyone I’m about to forget. I also apologize for thinking Feathered Heads was a reasonable name at some point in the process.

  I can never fully express my thanks to my husband, Ben, for giving me the weapon needed to chase my dreams. To my poet mother, Sue, I attribute a deep love of storytelling, stemming from the horror novels she age-appropriately retold me as a young child. Thanks to my father, Gil, for leaving a dusty collection of genre fiction in the garage, including the 1970s edition of The Lord of the Rings. I’m sure he’d be very proud to have a writer for a daughter; I know all my Gomez family is. To my sister, Christa, I forgive you for chasing me around the house with spider
s in Dixie cups, as I put those tortures to good use now. I’m sorry I ate the toes off your Crystal Barbie (and He-Man!).

  To my first critique partners in North Carolina, who saw many versions of Serra, Vesperi, and Janto over the years, and who were smart enough to know that Lanvel was not a good name for the prince of Lansera, thank you: Dee Marley, Sarah Woods Doolittle, Conni Covington, Liz Thompson, and Susan Olson. To Ben (again), Paul Richards, Jessen Langley, Sarah Woods Doolittle (again), Dan Campbell, J. L. Hilton, and Ada Milenkovic Brown, thank you for beta reading the full book, whether or not your notes survived the wilds of your vacations.

  My thanks to Kevin Davis of the blog Bull City Rising for a particularly well-timed post on the different approaches Raleigh and Durham, North Carolina, take toward addressing their crime and poverty issues. The tension between turning a blind eye and shining a spotlight helped me tackle the social and political dynamics at play in Lansera and bring them to a resolution … for now.

  To Tricia Reeks, Bernadette Geyer, and the whole team at Meerkat Press, thanks for being a small publisher that kicks booty in terms of quality and author support.

  To the mosquitos of North Carolina, thank you for testing the bounds of my hatred.

  And final thanks to my cats—Loki, Mazu, and the dearly departed Verdandi—for being the best (and furriest) coworkers a writer could want. Please, no more congratulatory presents.

  Rebecca Gomez Farrell

  In all but one career aptitude test Rebecca Gomez Farrell has taken, writer has been the #1 result. But when she tastes the salty air and hears the sea lions bark, she wonders if maybe sea captain was the right choice after all. Currently marooned in Oakland, CA, Becca is an associate member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Her short stories, which run the gamut of speculative fiction genres, have been published by Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Pulp Literature, the Future Fire, Typehouse Literary Magazine, and an upcoming story in the Dark, Luminous Wings anthology from Pole to Pole Publishing among others. Maya’s Vacation, her contemporary romance novella, is available from Clean Reads. She is thrilled to have Meerkat Press publish her debut novel.