by Evie Manieri
Panic sat just below the surface of her thoughts; she had no idea what her next move should be. Every idea she tried to form just spun away. Had she come this far, only to get no further? She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to let the heavy silence calm her mind, leaning back into the warmth of a thick spray of thaw-vine and soon falling into a fitful half-sleep, where she dreamed of walking in endless circles.
The whir of the blue bird’s wings startled her awake again as it alighted on the top of the wall just opposite.
“Go away,” she said to it in Shadari.
The bird walked a few steps one way and then walked back again, watching her all the while. Isa tore off a little strip of the dried meat and tossed it toward the bird, who flew up after it and snapped the morsel right out of the air. Then it returned to the top of the wall to gulp it down before cocking its head at her again, clearly waiting for more. She put the meat between her teeth to tear off another piece—but a familiar sound intruded on the silence: triffons, sweeping across the sky, then turning and going back the other way. They were close. She counted two full wings and each of the twelve beasts was carrying a pair of riders. If only she could get hold of one for herself. She could almost feel those muscles straining underneath her, those wings beating the sky as she urged it on toward Ravindal.
Then she saw that they were not just close but getting closer, and that the precise and methodical pattern of their flight could only be a search pattern: those triffons were looking for something—or someone.
Isa dropped down behind the wall, tugging her cowl down to cover her face while she wondered how to let the people below her know about the danger. Then a scratching sound came from the top of the wall above her and she twisted around just enough to see the bird strutting back and forth again, puffing out its blue-feathered breast. Its bright plumage shone like a beacon.
“Go away,” she whispered, but the bird stood up taller and flapped its wings, scattering the snow around it.
The light dimmed as one of the triffons passed just above her; she bowed her head and counted the gray shadows, waiting for them to go by—then a greedy cry from the bird pulled Isa’s nerves as taut as a bowstring. At the sound, one of the triffons broke formation and swung back around just as the bird hopped down off the wall and right in front of her. She tried not to move, even though it was pecking at her cloak. She could see the triffon’s massive head coming toward her, changing the snow to mist with its warm breath.
Isa stood up and drew Blood’s Pride. She didn’t know how she was going to fight them, and she didn’t care; she only knew that she would not cower before them. She screamed out loud, the effort ripping her throat to shreds, but she was sure her sister and everyone else below had heard her. The closest rider called out her presence to the others and the formation shifted, but no one came to engage her. She sheathed Blood’s Pride and picked up the largest rock she could find, and then flung it at the nearest triffon, cracking it on the base of its tail. It bellowed in annoyance, but it was too well trained to buck. Isa ran across the battlement as the rest of the formation broke apart and three or four triffons wheeled back around toward her.
They flew off, leaving Isa alone on the battlement. The moment they’d moved off she ran to the stairs and half-climbed, half-fell down to the floor below. She pounded along the half-floored gallery, but Cyrrin’s people were already running frantically, shouldering bundles and helping those less able. She saw Dara the cook; she held a frightened child by the hand as she followed others Isa had met earlier—Weldsin, with a foot lost to cold-creep; Erlis with the twisted nose; blind, cloudy-eyed Petra, and Thora, whose scars she never saw …
But not Trey; she saw him standing back in a corner of the gallery, watching the people scurry about below him. It was impossible to tell where her hatred for the Norlanders ended and his began.
The cold spark inside him twitched, bright and eager.
Isa followed him down the opposite stairs to the ground level of the empty side of the building, leaping down over the last three missing steps. She could see the triffons overhead now, fanning out, and she and Trey waited in the shelter of a pile of rubble, watching to see where they would land.
Lahlil stood just outside on the other side of the building, tensed like a cat ready to leap. She could do nothing to stop them from over there.
Isa called to her as the triffons began landing all around Valrigdal in a wide circle.
Trey broke for the woods, and Isa pelted after him as fast as she could, running with a wild freedom as if a rope holding her back had just been cut. She skated across the icy stones, darting through the pillars, then leaped through a gap in the jagged line of the old back wall and into the trees. As soon as the triffons started their descent she followed the path back to the spring, willing herself not to slip and fall.
She burst through into the clearing. Mists from the hot springs were drifting over the ground, and a triffon had landed on the open space between two of the steaming pools. The two riders were already dropping down from the saddle and Isa froze: both guards were carrying imperial swords and she had only Blood’s Pride. Then branches snapped behind her and Trey charged straight for them. Isa clenched her teeth, remembering Cyrrin telling Trey he would never fight again, and she couldn’t help but remember all that scarred and knotted flesh she’d seen as he rose up out of the pool.
But if he could do it …
With furious resolve, she drew Blood’s Pride and charged out to meet the man coming for her.
His black-bladed sword flew toward her, already shining from the falling snow, and she came on guard and blocked his first two cuts, moving instinctively, though Blood’s Pride felt as slow and stupid as a cudgel in her frozen fingers. Her heels skidded on the ground. The Norlander guard forced her back past the pool and into the clinging branches. She had already lost track of Trey’s position, but she could hear the sounds of combat.
She had to focus: her position went from bad to worse among the trees where she risked lodging her blade in the black bark of some looming pine. She would never get anywhere like this, weaving backward over the unfamiliar terrain, fighting the grasping bushes and tangled patches of ivy as much as her enemy’s sword. Several times she tried taking the offensive, but the guard had his block up the moment her arm changed direction; he was just too fast for her.
Then the inevitable disaster happened: she stumbled into a thicket where a host of thorny branches stuck fast in her borrowed cloak, pulling it open and pinning down her sword-arm. Her opponent slashed his way in after her and she could feel his loathing like fetid breath in her face as he caught sight of her missing arm. Good. She didn’t want his compassion. She wanted to be the monster he knew her to be; the contagion that was going to deliver Norland into the twitching, feverish fingers of the cursed.
She pulled herself away just in time, and his blow sliced through the spindly thorn branches instead of her shoulder. Her shirt ripped as she twisted around, but she had him now: too close to cut him, so instead she rammed the pommel of her sword into his shoulder as hard as she could manage, and he fell back, jus
t as she had intended, leaving the way clear for her to thrust the point of Blood’s Pride just under his chest-plate and into his stomach. His weight nearly pulled the blade out of her hands as he teetered there, then she yanked it back and watched him pitch face-down into the slush.
Wicked jabs of pain pulsed down her missing arm as she ran for the nearest gap in the trees, but she set her teeth against it. But just as she had almost reached Trey, she lost her footing on a bit of sloping rock and went slithering down. Black bark and bristling green branches flashed by; she was sliding completely out of control, and not toward a bush or a tree but straight at Trey. She tried snatching at a clump of gnarled roots, but she didn’t dare let go of Blood’s Pride and they just grazed her freezing fingers, rubbing them raw without even slowing her progress. Her boots collided with the backs of Trey’s legs and knocked him on top of her, but not before he had grabbed hold of the guard’s cloak and brought him down too.
The next few moments were a hideous confusion of boots, blades and cloaks and Isa tried to roll free, only to find herself throttled by her own cloak as it caught underneath Trey’s leg.
He managed to roll over on his side to free her, and she and the guard sprang up at the same time.
The guard was still off-balance from the pile-up, but his instincts were fast and he whirled to face her anyway. She saw the silver eyes beneath his hood slide to her missing arm and she felt his disgust roll over her like the stench of rotten meat. The cold cracked through her shirt like a whip, but her muscles worked smoothly as she rushed him, playing on her opponent’s horror. Moving faster than she had ever moved before, she soon had him backed him up toward one of the massive trees. He stumbled on roots hidden by the snow, so Isa leaped at the chance to slash at his exposed side. The sharp blade slid through skin and muscle and she jumped back, but not before a gush of bright blood marked her trousers with a wide wet streak.
She turned away from the dying man, expecting to see Trey climbing into the saddle, but the triffon was still standing calmly with the warm mist swirling around its feet, sniffing at the bushes.
the woman said. Her words swung at Trey’s head as if they could cave it in.
Isa felt Trey’s bright red rage unfurl behind him like a cape in a strong wind.
Isa sheathed her sword and vaulted up onto the triffon, snatching at the pommel to keep from sliding right across the smooth leather saddle and over the other side. She slid Blood’s Pride into the saddle’s sheath as the startled triffon swung its head and side-stepped into the pool, splashing up the warm water and sending a cloud of mist into the air. Isa didn’t have time to manage the buckles with her only hand, so she wrapped the straps around her arm as best she could, then took up the reins.
It felt strange to have any other triffon except Aeda beneath her. She brought them up as high as she dared until she had a better view of the situation. The guards had landed all around the castle and were closing in, obviously intent on driving anyone they found into the middle. Five of the guards charged into the pillared yard from different directions, but none of them had any prisoners in tow, nor were there any waiting to be taken. Cyrrin’s escape plan must be working.
Trey and Vrinna had fought each other to the edge of the clearing; from her vantage point their blows were so quick that she could hardly see their black blades flicking through the air. The snowy trees ate up the clanging as if feeding on their animosity. Trey’s fluid footwork and skill took her breath away, but she could see the tremendous determination he needed to move all of that stiff scar tissue. As difficult as it was for Isa to admit it, that fight was only going to end one way.
She turned the triffon and dived straight toward them.
They both saw her battle-trained triffon coming for them, but neither of them broke off the fight—finally she gave them no choice but to dive out of the way, each leaping in opposite directions. She drove Vrinna back to the trees, flying so low that the end of the triffon’s tail skated through the snow. She didn’t veer away until the last possible moment, forcing her mount to turn almost sideways to avoid the trees, remembering too late that she wasn’t properly strapped in. She gulped down a panicked breath as she hooked her arm around the pommel and held on until they levelled off again. When she looked back, she saw Vrinna clutching her chest and thought she saw blood: only then did she realize that one of the triffon’s needle-sharp back claws had caught the captain as they turned.
She flew back around and slid into a landing just behind Trey.
Trey fumed, rage lighting him up like a beacon.
She tried to thread the buckles faster as she saw the bleeding woman stagger up and come at them at a run.
He looked off in the direction of the ruined castle.
Finally he climbed up in front of her and strapped himself in with a few practiced tugs. He took up the reins while the triffon stretched its wings to take off, keeping the charging woman at bay. He turned east as soon as they were in the air.
The ruined castle shrank beneath them as they spiraled up, leaving behind the strider, Jachad, Lahlil and her last links to the Shadar. Isa could not go back the way she had come. The only way home now was to go forward.
Chapter 30
Isa squeezed her knees tighter and tried not to think about the deep dusky green forest beneath them. She had never flown so fast before; she didn’t think Aeda was even capable of such speed. Her arm and shoulder ached with every bounce, and suddenly the terror she had felt that long-ago day as she watched her mother fall, right in front of her, held her once more in its claws. Trey was saying something to her, but she couldn’t make it out over the memory of her mother’s scream. She shut her eyes and tried to use the icy touch of the snow to keep her in the present. A tug came from around her waist: Frea, with a knife in her hand—but no, it was Trey, tightening the buckles for her now.
They flew on through the empty sky, leaving the ruins far behind them, and Isa eventually stopped clutching the lip of the saddle every time they pitched up or down to take best advantage of the wind. Snow quickly piled up on her cowl and shoulders, even sliding through the eye-holes of her hood. The forest was endless, interrupted by white plains or snow-dusted hills before the trees crowded back in again. Trey was avoiding habitation and Isa saw towns or manors only in the distance: great stone houses with spik
ed towers and parapets and concentric walls, with hot springs hidden under clouds of vapor; towns and villages of little houses made of stone or wood. The closest one they passed had a tall tower wedged into a chink between two rocky cliffs. Her family owned an estate somewhere, not that she ever would see it now.
She strained her eyes, trying to see through the driving snow, and thought she could see towers in the distance. The gray sweep behind it must be the sea.
he said. Two triffons, flying just south of them. One of the triffons had armored plating covering its head; the other was missing the tip of its tail. It was too late to fly high enough to pass over them.
She thought his handling of the reins nothing short of brilliant as he forced their pursuers to throw themselves around the sky, teasing out a little more distance with each maneuver. Isa gritted her teeth and did her best to endure it without distracting Trey, but even with his adjustments, her harness wasn’t tight enough to keep her backside from sliding across the saddle and smashing her hip into the curved side with every sharp turn.
She waited for him to argue with her, but he said nothing, just brought their triffon round into position—his movement caught the soldiers by surprise and the man on the back had no time to readjust his harness for fighting. He tried to take the offensive anyway, slashing at her as the triffons passed, but he wasn’t able to stand tall enough to extend his arms properly. She parried, and though her muscles were stiff from the long ride and the snow was blinding, still her thrust found its mark past the soldier’s block and into his shoulder. She tightened her grip on Blood’s Pride and used the momentum of the triffon’s movement to pull the blade out again.