by Lizzy Ford
“You want my word,” he said.
“I do. I have given you mine that I will help you face my father.”
It was Diving Eagle’s turn to reflect. A tiny instinct, of whose accuracy she was uncertain, whispered that sparing the people had never been Diving Eagle’s plan.
“Please,” she said. “They are my people. They have suffered more under my father’s madness than anyone outside the city.”
“Our concern,” he said slowly, “has always been the Hanover’s, although, it would be easier for us to wipe out the city all together.”
“Is that the kind of man you are?” she asked, genuinely confused and angry. “The kind of chief you will become? One who rules as my father does, with a knife in one hand a torch in the other?”
“Tiana, this war –”
“– is about to be over. You have an entire life to lead afterwards, to continue your father’s legacy of peace. Do not make the mistake of becoming like my father instead!” she said with emotion she was certain would draw his criticism.
Diving Eagle said nothing for a long moment, gazing at her in what she took to be judgmental silence.
“I ask for this promise for your sake as well as the sake of everyone in the city. You can end this war and walk away from all of it. I cannot. Ever. The magic of the Hanover’s runs through my blood as does the madness. If it costs me my mind to save your people from my father, I will give it gladly. I only ask that you spare mine!” Speaking to him often left her close to tears, and today was no exception.
Diving Eagle said nothing. Taking his quiet as a negative sign, Tiana spun and walked away before he saw her cry.
“Tiana,” he called more softly. “I give you my word.”
She stopped, suspecting she had heard wrong.
“As long as they do not impede me, I will spare them,” he stated.
She faced him again, startled.
He approached once more. “I care nothing for your people, but I do not want you to view me in the same light as your father.”
“You are better,” she seconded.
“In truth, I am not, but I want you to believe I am.” His rare, faint smile left her wondering what she had missed.
This time, the quiet stretching between them was charged in a way she did not entirely understand. Wanting to break the tension, Tiana reached into the pouch and withdrew the white spirit wolf with a black star on its belly.
“This will help you find your way,” she said and held it out.
Diving Eagle hesitated, as if accepting the pup was to admit he was not so different from the Hanover’s he loathed. Finally, he reached out to take the pup from her.
Tiana turned away once more and entered the tent. Rocky stood near the entrance, smiling. She assumed he had been discreetly watching over her, as usual.
“I told you he liked you,” he teased.
“You would be wrong,” she replied.
This time, she almost understood why he thought so. Diving Eagle, in few words per usual, had admitted to wanting her to think of him in a good way. He had also made her a promise he clearly did not want to make. She recalled Rocky’s claim, that the Native had followed her into the forest and confronted a skinwalker without any concern for himself. She had seen this as yet another act of bravery, one she was not likely to mirror, given her cowardice.
What if Rocky’s insight was correct, and Diving Eagle had pursued her not because bravery was in his nature, but because he was concerned? Was it possible for him to care for her, a Hanover? Or was he wary of her power, should he refuse to promise to protect her people?
Further, was his promise a lie? Would he keep his oath, once he reached the city?
“How do people do this?” she expressed in frustration.
“What?” Rocky asked.
“Survive this world. Believe anything anyone else says. Trust someone. All of it!”
“You learn and have faith,” he replied.
She shook her head. Maybe it was better she was destined to go mad. Maybe then, she would fit into the world.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The only concern in the world that could override the Hanover leader’s persistent message in Aveline’s mind was discovering her mother was alive.
The older woman slept fitfully. Aveline’s head lifted from her paws each time her mother shifted or thrashed. Her tail flicked of its own accord, and her senses were filled with the pungent scent of refuse and smoke that filled the streets. Smells had never been this strong as a human. Every once in a while, Aveline caught a whiff of something that made her gag.
She sneezed and tossed her head. The sounds were another issue all together. Somewhere in the decrepit building where they took refuge, a family of rats scurried. Cockroaches tap-danced in the walls, while the movement of any person or animal within the ward filled her head with an even more intense pounding than before. Every movement sounded as if it was right beside her, though, after two days as a panther, she had begun to understand sound – like smell and sight – had nuances and depth she never needed to understand as a human.
Even so, she was unable to sleep, and it was not only the quiet chaos of her surroundings filling her senses. In this form, it was easier to touch the mind of another or perhaps, the mind of someone like her.
Her mother’s mind was … messy. Too messy for Aveline to pick up specific thoughts, unless Walks With A Limp steered specific thoughts towards her. Images too brief to make out, unfamiliar scents, noises, loud discordant music and other seemingly random fragments of memories swam in her mother’s mind.
Aveline could make no sense of it and wondered if her mother could.
Of all the questions she had, she wanted to know most of all why her father had lied all those years about her mother.
The frail Native tossed and turned and then stilled again. Earlier in the day, Aveline had dragged in half a carcass of a goat from a butcher’s nearby for food while they hid. The animal was left hanging in back of the butcher’s shop while its blood drained into the street.
Her mother had eaten the entire thing – without transforming into an animal to do it – and then fallen into a restless sleep for the rest of the day and into the night.
Aveline rose and shifted forward, following the scent of blood remaining on her mother. She licked her mother’s hands clean and the clothing and blood from the floor. Her mother did not stir.
Aveline shook the voice of the Hanover leader out of her head once more and paced to the door. She nudged it open and stepped out onto the collapsed porch, pausing to let her senses gauge the danger in creeping out into the night.
No heartbeats pummeled her brain, though her sensitive nose picked up on the scent of humans in the next ward. This one was abandoned, partially burnt out and partially collapsed.
Easing out the door, Aveline glanced towards the sky, which was blocked by thick smoke, before sliding into the shadows. Her stomach growled, but her destination was not food. She loped instead through familiar streets towards the pyramid. When the pounding of heartbeats in the populated wards became too much, she altered her course to take a different route.
Her tactic worked – until she realized the wards surrounding the center of the outer city were where everyone else had fled to. Forced to retreat by the noise in her head, she backtracked to the point where she could bear the pain.
The top and one side of the pyramid were visible. Her eyes went to the top, and questions filled her once again.
Why did you lie to me, Father? She asked and looked toward the smoke obscured sky. Was he watching her? Was he ashamed of his lie or proud she had learned the truth on her own? And what did he think of the woman he loved? Had he known she was imprisoned?
Aveline sat on her haunches, ears flickering in response to movement. The chill and drizzle could not penetrate her fur, though the scent of wet animal made her nose wrinkle. Her thoughts went to Arthur, who was in prison or dead in the pyramid, and to Tiana, who was l
ost in the forest. How had the Hanover children turned out differently than their father?
What of Karl? Was Arthur in a cell next to the man she blamed for her father’s death?
She focused hard on trying to change her form and released a frustrated growl. Tiana’s father had transformed her with a touch, and she could do nothing to turn back into a human.
“Because you are only half skinwalker, you will never be able to transform on your own.”
The sound of her mother’s voice was quiet. Aveline had known she approached without any of her senses picking up on physical cues. It was more of a shift within her, a spark of energy in her mind that warned her about her mother.
Her mother stopped to stand beside her and rested a hand on Aveline’s head.
“What are you doing here?” her mother asked. “You cannot think to face the Hanover leader on your own.”
Aveline yowled softly in protest.
“Concentrate on the words,” her mother advised.
In this form, I can take him, she replied.
“Then why are you not there?”
Aveline looked up at her. Why were you there?
Her mother’s eyes were on the pyramid. A strange light burned within them, one Aveline did not believe was healthy.
Why did my father lie? She asked more loudly through her mind.
“He had no choice. Your father …” The light in Walks With A Limp’s eyes faded, replaced by affection. “… he was the most honorable man I had ever met. He raised you well, as I knew he would.”
I need to know, Aveline insisted. What happened that he could never tell me? Why the secrets about you?
“What did he tell you about me?”
That he fell in love with you on sight and bought you at a slave auction.
“He was always a romantic.” Her mother smiled, the first genuine smile Aveline had seen. “I loved him and he loved me. If I did not believe him to be the man he was, I would not have left you with him. Isn’t that enough for you?”
Aveline shook her head vehemently.
“Very well. Let us find more food first. I will reveal everything.”
Her mother started forward, towards a building Aveline sensed was crammed full with people.
Aveline voiced her objection again.
Hurts, she said.
“There is much you need to learn about what you are,” her mother said over her shoulder. “Stay here. I will find us food.”
Aveline paced unhappily, concerned for her mother in her frail state. Walks With A Limp disappeared around a corner, and Aveline waited.
Moments later, her mother reappeared with a sack thrown over her shoulder. She hunched at the weight. Aveline smelled no blood, though the dirty sack contained too many scents for her to judge what it contained.
“Come with me,” her mother said.
Aveline trailed her through the city and back to the abandoned ward. The moment Aveline put distance between her and the nearest human, she relaxed. Her mother’s own presence in her mind was one of energy, coupled with a faint, fluttering heartbeat Aveline could not quite make sense of. Her mother had solid form; why was her heartbeat erratic? Was this, as well as her messy mind, an indication she was ill?
They reached the building and entered. Aveline needed no light to see her surroundings as clear as day. Licking her lips, she sat in the room.
Her mother settled the bag in the middle and lit a candle.
“You fed me earlier. You are welcome to the first bite,” Walks With A Limp said and motioned to the sack. She tugged the tie loose.
Aveline nudged and pawed the sack open.
Her mother laughed.
“That is a human way,” she said. “Tear through it. You are an animal.”
Aveline’s nose wrinkled. The sack smelled of years of use – dirt, excrement, spoiled foods and too many other unpleasant scents she found unappealing. She pawed it off the food inside and stopped cold. Her breath caught.
What is this? She asked and looked up at her mother.
“Food.”
Aveline gazed at the unmoving body of a child around the age of four. Blood marred his neck from two puncture wounds. He was dead but still warm, a fresh kill. Aveline stared, stuck in the memory of the children she had seen being hauled off for meat when she was taken to a brothel.
Her mother shifted forward with a knife and gripped the boy’s wrist.
Aveline swiped her hand away with a growl.
You eat humans? She demanded.
“I eat anything,” her mother replied. “A human is meat like any other.” She reached for the boy again. “This is what you are, Avi. You are an animal.”
Aveline hesitated before swiping her mother’s hand away again.
Exasperated, Walks With A Limp looked at her. “You’re not one of them. What do you care if we eat him? He is already dead.”
Aveline gagged at the thought, repulsed by the images in her head of eating a person. She coughed and then took two steps over the dead boy’s body to protect him from her mother.
Is this what you are? She asked, baffled and horrified. Is this what a skinwalker is? An animal with no respect for life?
“In my two hundred and twenty years, I have loved one man and learned one lesson. Survival knows no boundaries.”
Aveline gazed into her mother’s eyes. The strange light was back, and her mother’s mind was chaotic. A new thought entered her mind, one she would never have considered before.
Perhaps her father did not tell her about her mother, because her mother was a monster. As Aveline thought, the inconsistent versions of events regarding her family’s checkered past began to fall into place.
The Devil’s Massacre. It was not my father who committed it, was it? She asked, mind racing.
Her mother looked away and sat back. “We agreed to tell you it was. It supported his reputation among his kind and hid the truth from everyone, including you.”
What truth? Aveline did not leave her protective position over the dead boy.
“Of what you were. Of what happened. Of how I ended up in the hands of a Hanover twice.”
Tell me!
Walks With A Limp sighed. “Your father may have fallen in love with me on sight, but he did not buy me at an auction. He found me in the street. I had escaped a Hanover, with the help of a Hanover. I lived a hundred years in that attic, enslaved to four consecutive Hanover’s. When I was freed, I knew nothing of the world, for it had changed in the century I was hidden away. I panicked and I ran into the inner city. Your father found me. He was kind and fair, and he took me in.”
Aveline listened in breathless anticipation to hear the secrets she had always yearned to understand.
“He hid me away for a couple of years. You were born during that time, and we adopted a little boy named Rockwell. How is he? Is he alive?”
He became the best assassin, second only to my father, Aveline replied.
“I knew he would. He was a tough little boy and sharp,” her mother said, smiling again. “It is the only time in my life where I was truly happy. But it didn’t last. I slipped up. I didn’t hide my presence in the city from the Hanover leader well enough, and he sent his Shield members after me. When I saw them coming to take everything from me, I lost control. I massacred a thousand people in three days. The Hanover leader cornered me in a building, and I destroyed everyone who came for me. Until the Hanover wizened up and sent your father with a message. My children would be spared, if I turned myself in.”
My father did not betray you to the Hanover leader, did he? Aveline demanded, anger trickling through her.
“No. Your father agreed to deliver the message and wanted me to help him kill the Hanover leader. But I knew what he did not, that no one could protect my children from the Hanover leader, not even the top assassin in the city. I told your father I would work with him to destroy the Hanover leader, and then I surrendered in exchange for your safety.”
Sorrow replaced
Aveline’s anger.
“Your father was heartbroken, I am certain. But my deal with the Hanover leader saved your life. It is said skinwalkers are selfish creatures, but what else was I supposed to do? I could not trade your life for mine.”
Aveline studied her mother. While true affection existed in the mind of Walks With A Limp, it was a drop of water among a lake filled with fractured emotions, thoughts, and images. The woman her mother had been no longer existed.
He cares for no one’s life, not even his own daughter. Why did he agree to spare two children from the inner city? Aveline asked.
“The mind of a Hanover is not one even I can understand,” was the soft response. “But here you are, my beautiful daughter. Your father raised you well.” Her mother drew a deep breath. “I no longer sense him. What happened?”
He was poisoned. Aveline replied carefully. Aveline did not want to find out how unstable her mother was by revealing the full truth.
“By Karl.”
Aveline’s mouth dropped open.
Her mother was not surprised. “The Hanover leader planted Karl to work with your father long ago. I believe your father managed to sway his loyalties, but a man with fickle loyalties will not always remain true to anyone for long.”
Father knew Karl was loyal to the Hanover chief?
“He did. This was how the Hanover leader kept me from trying to escape again. He had someone close to you.”
When my father decided to go after the Hanover leader …
“Karl acted.”
With the blessing of the council, so it did not look as obvious whom he worked for.
Aveline’s loathing of her father’s betrayer grew. She had dissected Wilhelm – Karl’s brother’s – tale of what happened many times and always felt something was missing. That Karl was already working for the Hanover chief both secured his place as her enemy and filled the gap her instincts had been trying to explain away. Wilhelm had not been in a position to understand the relationship between Karl and the Hanover leader, but Walks With A Limp was.
Karl had spent his years befriending Aveline while knowing he could be called upon to murder her at a moment’s notice.