The Sentry

by Lyssa Morasey

  Then we moved on to flying lessons: learning flips and dives and aerial acrobatics, the best ways to ride the wind, what kinds of bird shifts are best in what conditions. We practiced flying for speed and flying for distance, flying at low and high altitudes, flying with a headwind and a tailwind. Once a week we had to fly in the simulator room, an enormous indoor chamber where the flying coach had erected a fake forest and positioned sprinklers and fans to mimic wind and rain and snow, so that we could practice flying in conditions other than barren desert wasteland.

  To cap off the day, we had three combat classes broken up by a quick dinner after the first. They proceeded in order from least dangerous to most. First was hand-to-hand combat; next was weapons-based, which involved sharp blades and lots of body pads; and last was shifting combat, where we were paired off and pitted against each other in the forms of sharp-fanged predatory carnivores. The combat coaches broke up the fights that got too nasty, but a lot of shifters came out of that class every night looking pretty banged up. There was an on-site infirmary for a reason, after all.

  I had been skeptical about Cass’s pendant actually conferring any sort of blessing upon me; I wore it just like I’d promised her, of course, but I figured that even if it had supernaturally blessed her dying mother, that wouldn’t be transferring over to me. But I soon found that whenever I was tied up in a vicious fight or my lungs were aching from flying too long, the pendant would grow warm around my neck and take away my pain. I wasn’t sure how real its effects were—the pain would always come right back as soon as the pendant cooled, just as bad as before—but like we all heard over and over again at the trials, half of everything is mental.

  Asreil the lieutenant popped in to observe our class every once in a while, slinking around the fringes of our group like a wolf in search of prey. He picked out the weakest—the ones who couldn’t shift fast enough, the ones without any bird forms, the ones who couldn’t tell a vamp from a dustie—and sent them away to be disposed of. When Asreil showed up, every blue card suddenly became twice as competitive. The runs were longer, the flights were faster, the fights were fiercer. But you didn’t have to be great to not get tapped out of the trials. You just had to be able to keep up with the crowd.

  After the day’s classes and lessons were over, we were sent back to our dorms—girls in one and boys in the other. For the first few nights I had to wait until midnight to take a shower. The girls’ dorm bathroom was huge, but there were seven hundred of us and everyone seemed to need half an hour to clean and primp themselves up, at least for the first week or so. After that, the showers were used to wash off the sweat and blood of the day and not much else.

  Delphi came over to the girls’ dorm on the first night while I was waiting for a shower to open up. He was an orange card, so I didn’t have the chance to see him during classes. He had a book tucked under his arm and a green apple in his hand.

  “Thought you might want this,” he said, tossing me the apple. “I saved it from dinner.”

  “Thanks.” I caught it and threw it onto my bed.

  “I brought you this, too.” He held up his book and showed me the cover—The Catcher in the Rye. “It’s about a sulky teenager who likes to whine about how awful his life is.”

  “So it’s relatable, then.”

  “Exactly.” He handed me the book and plopped down on my bed. “I expect you to read two chapters a night, no exceptions.”

  “So I need to sleep so that I don’t flunk out of the trials from exhaustion doesn’t count as an exception?”

  “Nope. You flunking out of the trials would be great for me, actually.” I punched him, hard, in the chest; he laughed it off.

  I did read two chapters of The Catcher in the Rye a night, and Delphi quizzed me on them afterwards to make sure I wasn’t lying. Once I finished it, we moved on to another Sen book, then another, until we ran out.

  Delphi also took it upon himself to teach me about other bits of Sen pop culture: music, sports teams, celebrities, and whatever else teenagers were supposed to care about. He even lent me his Solas phone for a couple of nights. We talked about other things, too—Delphi told me about his Shade camp, where he’d worked as a furniture maker’s assistant, and I told him about life in New Fauske. We complained about our coaches and swapped stories about our classes.

  It was nice having another shifter to talk to for once. Neither of us knew any of the other shifter candidates very well—Delphi’s camp had no other shifters in his year—so we wound up as friends pretty quickly. Some nights we stayed up talking so late that the girl sleeping next to me had to yell at us to shut up. I probably didn’t get as much sleep as I should have, especially considering the demanding days, but at least I had Cass’s pendant to keep me feeling my best.

  Every day the dorm grew quieter and quieter, and more and more beds opened up. I tried not to think too much about what that meant.

  But every night I made it back to my bed in one piece, and so did Delphi. The night before our final trial, the two of us snuck outside as birds after the outdoor lights had been shut off to look at the stars from the roof of the Sonoran building. I’d been stargazing with Cass before, but this was different. The sky was so open, one hundred percent clear of clouds and trees, going on and on and on. And Delphi knew the names and stories of all the constellations; the Shade he used to live with had a telescope, apparently. The entire time he talked, I was painfully conscious of his arm brushing mine, his knuckles pressed against my own.

  “I think you should come to New Fauske after the trials,” I said to him when he’d finished telling me everything he knew about Scorpius. “You’d like it there. You could speak French with my Nixan lady.”

  “J’aimerais,” he replied.

  My heart rate sped up, just the slightest. “What does that mean?”

  “It means that New Fauske sounds a whole lot better than Greenland. Even if it is just as cold.” His mouth twisted into a dry smirk. “That is, assuming both of us make it through tomorrow, of course.”

  I sighed. “Let’s not talk about tomorrow.”

  “We should. What if we’re paired together?”

  “If we’re paired together,” I said, “you’ll be dead in seconds.”

  Delphi gave a weak laugh. “Oh, it would take a few minutes at least.” He turned to look me in the eyes, his lips tight. “You know, the other two provinces don’t have a final trial. They let every candidate who makes it through all the classes become a Sentry.”

  I raised my eyebrows at him. “Guess we have too many shifter babies being born over here,” I said. And Fenris wants to make sure all his Sentries are willing to get blood on their hands, I added silently.

  We spent another two hours up there, just us and the stars and Delphi’s crazy stories about bears in the sky. We didn’t mention the final trial again, but I found my thoughts drifting back to it every few minutes, whenever Delphi’s stories started getting a little too long. Just one day from now, all the shifters asleep underneath us would either be dead or murderers.

  I knew that it would be smart to go back to my dorm and try to get some rest. It was more important than ever for me to be well-rested. But Delphi and I didn’t leave the roof until the wee hours of the morning, and even after we got back to our dorms I spent another hour awake in bed, begging Nixa and my body not to let me give in to sleep.

  3 October: Cassatia

  Our flight takes us up through Canada and over Greenland to Svalbard, steering completely clear of Warden territory. Flying over Warden land is just as dangerous as passing through it on foot; the last time some Nixans took a flight over southern Europe, their plane disappeared mysteriously over the Mediterranean.

  For Novans, Europe is the most volatile and dangerous part of the world. Both Nixans and Wardens have their global headquarters here: ours with King Aknes in Svalbard City, and theirs with Gwen Revana, chief of the Chief Wardens, down in Rome. The borderlines here are always changing, with the Nixans pushi
ng down from the north and the Wardens coming up from the southern countries. There’s constant fighting all across the continent; fortunately, in our flight to Svalbard, we stay away from the mainland entirely.

  Our plane lands on a strip of earth cleared of ice on Nordaustlandet, an island completely uninhabited by Senex. It’s still dark out, probably just before sunrise, but the moon and starlight glancing off the icy ground is enough for me to see outside by. A large, gilded sleigh waits on the ice beside our landing strip, pulled by four Katyran horses. And behind the sleigh there is only ice, sky, and, far out, the silhouette of Austfonna Castle.

  “Wow,” I breathe. I’m used to snow and ice and castles, but not like this. Looking down at the scape from my plane window, it seems like we’ve landed on an alien planet.

  One of the hatch doors yawns open—Caphian waits for us beneath, bundled up so that only his eyes are showing. My father and Evana get off first; Phoebe approaches me from the corner she’d spent the trip in, combs out my hair a little, and follows me off the plane, shivering. I should’ve given her one of the coats from my closet—the threadbare one she’s wearing doesn’t look anything near sufficient for a non-Nixan in Svalbard.

  I take my father’s arm, and he guides me around the plane to the sleigh. The Sentry in the coachman’s seat, wrapped in as many layers as Caphian, dismounts and bows to our party, helping me, Evana and my father into the sleigh. Just like before, the shifters change into birds for the trip in, Phoebe becoming a red-beaked Arctic tern. At least she has a good bird shift for the cold.

  The coachman turns the horses towards the castle silhouette, and with a flick of the reins he sends them charging forward, galloping over the ice as easily as if it were packed dirt. I drape my arm over the side of the sleigh and try to take it all in: the dry wind nipping at my face, the jagged shards of glacial ice flying past us, the tails of the Katyrans swishing back and forth in tandem, the trio of birds over our heads struggling to keep up in the wind. Even in the dark, everything I see is white, white, white. No wonder this is Nixa’s holy land.

  The gates to Svalbard City, manned by Sentries in watchtowers like New Fauske’s, are wrenched open by their guards as we approach; behind them waits a massive crowd of Nixans and shifters who’ve abandoned their vigil-quiet homes to come greet us. They bow deeply as our sleigh flies past, ignoring the bits of ice and snow kicked up in the Katyrans’ wake. Svalbard City is bigger than New Fauske—there are almost a hundred thousand Nixans here, and at least half of them have come out to see us, their bodies pressed together into winding trains that snake through the city.

  The sleigh comes to a stop before the front entrance of Austfonna Castle. Giant sculptures of kings and priests lead up marble steps to the biggest, tallest set of double doors I’ve ever seen, tapering off into a snowflake-studded point at their top. The coachman Sentry helps us from the sleigh and guides us up the steps and through the doors, Caphian and the servants following behind.

  The doors draw shut behind us, and the clamor of the city is cut off with a resounding bang. I scan the enormous foyer as the echoes die out; there seems to be no one else inside, just tall columns marching down to an empty silver throne.

  The coachman, unraveling the scarf wrapped around his neck, shows us into a large marble banquet room, ringed by windows on three sides and a giant tapestry on the fourth. A long table set for fourteen fills the room, headed by a throne-like seat at the far end. Beside it stands the king, Aknes Heilagur himself, dipping his head to us as we enter. I gawk at him openly for a second—he looks just like he does in his pictures and paintings, bearded and lined with piercing blue eyes. The silver crown resting on his head sits as comfortably as if it had been implanted there. For me, it’s like coming face-to-face with a celebrity.

  “Bow,” Caphian breathes in my ear. I do, holding the pose as long as I can.

  “Welcome, Fenris,” the king says. His voice is deep, rumbling like thunder: the voice of a king taught from birth how to speak like one. “I’m glad you made it in time for our sunrise feast.”

  “We are honored to be here, Your Majesty,” my father says with another bow. “Thank you.”

  A slew of formal introductions follows: the king and queen, Aknes and Daphne Heilagur; their son, Prince Iven, my age; the king’s High Priest and Sentry commander, Haizel and Adryen; Saffron Carasten, my mother’s older brother, duke of the Eastern Province; his wife, the Duchess Apphia; the ally delegates, a Shade and Sylvan and llyre. Of the group, I’ve only ever met Duke Saffron before—he came to New Fauske when I was six to pay his last respects to my mother—but I know all except the delegates by name and face.

  I am introduced last, by Caphian: “Lady Cassatia Loraveire, daughter of Fenris and Elise of the Western Province.” I curtsy, trying for a smile.

  “Your daughter has grown up nicely, Fenris,” King Aknes remarks. I blush. “It’s fortunate that she has been spared the stresses of warfare.”

  My father bows again in thanks, but this time he is noticeably stiffer. “Quite fortunate,” he echoes. The fact that we’ve been involved in very little combat with the Wardens since my birth has always been a sore spot for my father.

  “The sun is about to rise,” Queen Daphne says, gesturing to the windows behind her. She’s right: the horizon is starting to brighten, the stars fading away.

  “Let’s eat, then.” The king snaps his fingers, and the banquet hall’s back doors fly open, revealing servants with platters of food and bottles of white wine. The food is set out in the middle of the table, every glass is filled with wine, and then the servants leave, as quickly and quietly as they had come. Phoebe and my father’s manservant follow them back to the kitchens; the rest of us take our seats. I want to sit beside the llyre—I’ve only seen a llyre once before, at a special ball in New Fauske—but he stays with the other delegates, so I take the seat between Evana and the prince instead.

  I grab a chicken leg from the platter that’s been placed right in front of me, and am about to bite into it when Evana lays a hand on my arm. “Wait,” she says. “The High Priest has to speak first.”

  “Sorry,” I mumble, putting down the chicken. The prince gives a little laugh beside me; I quickly duck my head, going red with embarrassment.

  Haizel the High Priest rises from his seat and taps his glass to get our attention. “We feast here today to celebrate the sun rising on this year’s Arrival Day—the day of the coming of Nixa,” he begins. “On this day, twenty-two hundred and thirty-six years ago, the Goddess descended from her home in the sky atop the winged wolf Katyri to land amongst a village of farmers a thousand miles to our south, in the midst of the land we now call Norway.”

  “Avtalte,” everyone says in unison.

  “She proclaimed the villagers her chosen people, and bestowed upon them the gifts of ice and snow,” Haizel continues. “She called them the Nixans, most blessed of the Novan orders, destined to join her in her homeland after death.”

  “Avtalte,” everyone says again.

  “She chose Anakei, the best and strongest of the villagers, and named him Heilagur, the first king. She then went to Eira, the oldest of his sisters, and had her pledge her chastity and loyalty. And so she was made the first High Priestess, and Nixa gave to her the gift of Old Magic to use in her name.”

  “Avtalte.”

  “The villagers pledged their lives to the Goddess, and asked how they could best honor her,” Haizel says. “In reply she gave them the laws of Nixa’s Trinity: the first, to harm no Senex, and to use her Old Magic to hide from the Senex their gifts and nature; the second, to honor the laws of their king and the words of their priests; and the third, to spread her teachings and her Trinity to every order of Novans they encountered—the Novans blessed by her with their abilities, but yet unaware of her gift and graces.”

  “Avtalte,” we reply.

  “And so it is for her that we fight Nixa’s War against those who refuse to see the goodness of the Goddess and adopt
her Trinity, who condemn themselves to eternal damnation rather than accept their rightful place amongst us in Nixa’s blessed homeland. And every year we celebrate the coming of the Goddess, and enjoy this sunrise feast in her holy name. We pray that she bless our days and aid us in our eternal mission to spread her words.”

  “Avtalte,” we say, and Haizel returns to his seat, allowing the feast to begin. By now the sun has mounted the horizon, its light bouncing off the metal plates and wine glasses laid out before us.

  The meal is good and filling; I eat until I can’t hold down any more. After the feast is over and the servants have taken away the platters, everyone turns to each other to engage in polite conversation. I find myself instead studying the huge tapestry on the wall in front of me: it shows four trees, or rather iterations of the same tree in different seasons. At first it is a flowering spring tree, with a little towhead boy dangling from its branches. The next image is of the tree in summer, with a young couple laughing together under the shade of its dark green boughs. Next is a fall tree, its leaves red and brown and gold; an old man stands beside it, leaning against the trunk for support. The final tree is bare, covered in icicles and haphazard clumps of white. Underneath it is a gravestone, half-buried in the snow.

  “One of my ancestors wove that tapestry,” Prince Iven says beside me. “The first king to live in this castle, actually.”

  For the first time since I sat down, I turn to examine the prince. He looks as much like a prince as his father does a king: handsome, strong features, tidy vanilla locks, perfect teeth. He speaks his English with a trace of an accent, just enough to label him as foreign.

  “It’s beautiful, Your Highness,” I say politely.