by Beth Cato
A branch, a vine, something wrapped around Octavia’s chin and pulled her mouth wide open. The Lady’s fingers touched her lip, the texture cold like roots on a winter morning. Octavia shivered. The seed was pressed onto her tongue. Octavia immediately tried to shove it out. The Lady tsked and rested her hands on Octavia’s throat. The muscles contracted.
Octavia swallowed the seed.
I don’t want this, I don’t want this, I don’t want this. She wanted to chant the words endlessly, as the branch used to speak, but sudden dizziness overwhelmed her. Even restrained as she was, the world swam for a moment.
Her legs and back impacted on the floor, the satchel smacking heavily beside her. The chair was gone. She rolled to stare up. The lichen draped and swayed. She felt the seed in her gut. It wanted to grow. The potential was so there, like the taste of rain before a storm. She just had to acquiesce—ha! This wasn’t acquiescing, as a patient did in a circle. The seed needed her to give up.
Octavia. Pain stabbed through her head again. I imagine you’ll fight awhile more, so I must preserve my energy until you root. Bless you, Octavia Leander, and blessings to our land.
The Lady was gone. Gone in her human form, in any case.
Leaf faintly chirped.
“Leaf?” Octavia whispered. She rolled to her side to find him. He crawled closer, his song battered but still strong. Concussion, bruising to the membrane of his wing, bloodied nose.
“We have to get back to the settlement. We need to get to Alonzo. I wanted . . . I should have given him a proper good-bye before. Now’s the chance. I can get you to Miss Percival, little one. She’ll set you right. I . . . I don’t think I’m up to healing anyone right now.”
Nausea didn’t adequately describe how she felt. Her gut seemed strangely full, as if she’d starved all day in the bustle of the wards and then eaten a full loaf of bread at the end of her shift. That sense that she didn’t feel sick yet, but she would suffer very soon.
Here I thought Miss Percival’s betrayal was the worst that could happen. That was like stubbing a toe; this is an amputation. Of the foot, leg, everything.
Octavia crouched. Her head still swam a little, but she no longer felt like she was on a crazed buzzer ride. Her fingers clumsy, she opened the main pocket of her satchel. “Here, Leaf.” She scooped him up. The tips of his ears trembled. “I know. We were both betrayed. You worked hard for her. We both did.” She tucked him inside the satchel. Leaf emitted a soft chirp.
Walking took extreme focus. Left foot, right. Left foot, right. Rest. Walk. The dark passage didn’t seem quite so impenetrable with the gray of the outside world directly ahead. She stepped outdoors, drenched with sweat.
Screams lit up the path ahead. The girls, idling beneath the rotting redwoods, stared at Octavia in utter horror.
“Glad to see you, too,” she mumbled.
“How are you here?” cried the yellow-haired girl.
“I walked.” Chocolate and Doxy stared at her, ears perked. “I might need help mounting.”
“You shouldn’t be here!” shouted the shortest girl.
“Did the Lady tell you that?” asked Octavia.
“She doesn’t say much anymore,” said another girl. “But we know she’s dying. We know you’re the new Tree, but you’re still walking around!”
“Terribly sorry to disappoint.” Octavia leaned on Chocolate. She pressed a hand to her face. The skin felt sweat-soaked and rough, even through her gloves. The gloves—how pointless now. She discarded them. Mottled green and brown bark covered the backs of her hands, her palms discolored but still flexible. She touched her face again and felt the fissures. A low moan escaped her throat.
Octavia gripped the saddle horn. She managed to get one foot into the stirrup, but weakened as she was, she couldn’t lift the rest of her body. Chocolate danced sideways and almost sent her face first into the dirt. She scrambled up, panicked. No. I don’t want to touch the dirt. “Help?” she whispered to the girls.
They were gone. Fled down the path.
“Well then. What now?” In the deep shade, it was impossible to tell the time of day. Leaf pried himself partially out of the satchel. A loud chirp erupted from his little body, then another.
“Leaf, what is it?”
Flapping wings and murmured songs filled the air overhead. The sky turned green with gremlins. Huge gremlins and small, full chimeras and natural-born ones. Their bodies told the strain of days of flying, hours of hunger. All to come here, to help me. They hovered to grab her robes, her arms, the backs of her legs. Octavia was lifted upward, and her screech of alarm turned into a wild laugh.
“What, am I made of silver instead of wood?” she asked.
A scarred gremlin the size of a four-year-old child cradled Leaf in her arms, her broad wings fanning Octavia with each mighty stroke. Like Prime back in Tamarania, her wings and arms were separate.
Octavia rose higher and higher. Some of the little gremlins even gripped her satchel so that she didn’t feel its weight. She twisted to check on her bag and found that someone had even shut the top flap for her.
They hovered as high as the lower branches of the Lady’s Tree and flew forward. She could see the winding footpath she had followed with Kethan. Doxy and Chocolate galloped with dust in their wakes. Cold wind blasted Octavia’s face and reminded her of the open windows on the Argus. Though I won’t be pushed out a window this time. In fact, she had no worries of falling at all. Treetops passed just feet below. Birds cried greeting. Smoke rose from the settlement ahead.
“Dis.” It took Octavia a moment to realize the large gremlin was speaking. Through the fog of bodies and songs, she made herself focus. This gremlin had vocal organs like Prime and a bowed pelvis that indicated that she had borne offspring. “Dis dank you.”
The cold air blasted tears from Octavia’s eyes. “And thank you.” The gremlin grunted and turned away, Leaf cradled to her chest. Thick seams lined the protruding ripples of her vertebrae.
They all came from afar. Leaf’s work—maybe Chi’s as well. If we had still been at the homestead, or farther away, I imagine they would have guided or carried us all.
The gremlins cried out en masse. From the distance came an answer—another flock, green specks against a cloud. Gratitude welled up in her chest—no, not gratitude. Love. The pressure filled her chest as if with a life debt, but she knew this was something more.
“I bless you. I bless you all. Every gremlin,” she whispered to the wind, willing power into the words as if she were an aether magus. The gremlins shivered, though their hold on her never weakened. She heard their weariness, their aches, as it all faded. A cry came from afar—an acknowledgment.
She closed her eyes as if falling into her Al Cala meditation, but this time she didn’t see the Tree. Now she knew the map of Caskentia and the Waste and how the current of her thanks flowed over the plains, eddied around and over the Pinnacles like a tidal wave, dipped into the saltiness of Nennia Bay, coursed through the smoke-thickened skies of Mercia. Her gratitude swirled among the towers of the southern nations to those alcoves above the clouds, and north to Frengia, where gremlins numbered few, but still mewed their thanks in a small chorus.
They said her name, whatever it was in their speech. She knew by the way the sound made her head throb.
“To me, you’re all living creatures. Yes, you were created out of cruelty, but that makes you no less valid,” she whispered.
A lightning bolt of pain shot through her abdomen. She screamed. The world wobbled again, dismayed cries of gremlins all around.
The seed is sprouting. By using the potential of its power, I gave in a little without it even being a conscious decision. Oh . . . balderdash. She didn’t even know how to call on a higher power now, without the Lady to rely on.
Octavia breathed through the pain as she had asked wo
men to breathe through labor, and soon it faded back to a dull ache. “We’re almost to the village. Set me down in the woods. I know how men treat gremlins, and this lot’s ready to fight. There. The path.”
She alighted on the trail with surprising grace—grace that vanished the instant they let go. Her rubbery legs dropped her straight to the grassy earth.
Whereupon her blood tried to burst out of her skin.
It was like the urge to bloodlet, but it welled up wherever her body touched the ground, even through cloth. Screaming, she shoved herself upright and grabbed hold of a sapling. The pressure in her skin abated. Her boots, at least, granted her an adequate buffer. The gremlins fluttered around her like oversize green butterflies.
I need a walking stick. Octavia looked around and breathed in the glorious fragrance of jasmine. She was steps away from where her mare had joined the forest. There had been long sticks there among the horse’s bones—likely created to reinforce the structure as the flesh failed. Carefully, she staggered to where the jasmine mounded as if it had flourished for years. From the blooms, she pulled forth a curved green stick that resembled a spine. It quivered in her hand but didn’t speak.
Her power is fading quickly. When she manifested and acted physically, it sped her end all the more. Octavia couldn’t help but look back toward the looming Tree. Evening light cast it in pale yellow.
Evening light. Alonzo. I can still see the Tree.
“Oh no. Oh no. I have to get back. Gremlins, you need to go away, far away. Don’t try to steal any silver from here. I—if I—there might be a battle here. You don’t need to be caught in it. Please, go!”
At the word, the flock took off. She felt a backlash of dread, wondering if the order to the gremlins carried a consequence, but she didn’t feel another direct pulse of pain.
The gremlins had listened because the request came from her, not because of the will of the Lady.
Two gremlins remained: the large one and Leaf.
“Leaf, you need to go, too,” she murmured as she started to walk. The large gremlin picked up Leaf and waddled alongside Octavia. “I love you, little one. I don’t know what will happen here. It’s enough that Alonzo is here and at risk. Go southwest. Go to Mrs. Stout in Tamarania. She’d love to see you. There’s a lovely cheese shop there. Oh, Leaf . . .” He chirped and held his arms out to her like a babe. Leaning on her stick, she scooped him up from the other gremlin. He cuddled against her shoulder and mewed, his long ears rubbing and bending against her jaw. The pain in his song broke her heart. “I want to heal you, but I’m afraid to. I’m afraid of what would happen if I drew on . . . that power right now. I’m glad you have a friend to help.”
The older gremlin returned Octavia’s grin with a fang-tipped smile.
Octavia could see men and horses on the full street ahead. She stood at the edge of the woods. “You might be able to fly in a few hours, but take it easy.” A pause. “This is where we need to say farewell.”
His little catlike mouth pressed against her neck in what was clearly a kiss. Her throat burned with checked tears as she passed Leaf down to the mother gremlin. The big gremlin chirped and took to the air. Blinking, Octavia walked on. She didn’t look up as she heard his mews, his battered song, as they faded away.
As she entered the village, men slowed in the midst of loading wagons. Machinists froze as they leaned into the engine compartment of a steam car. Horses stopped, ears perked, not responding to the goads of heels and spurs.
“Be nicer to that horse,” she snapped.
“Yes, m’lady. Of course, m’lady,” the Waster stammered, shame coloring his song and speeding his heart.
The throb in her gut worsened. I imagine the Caskentian soldiers poisoned by the Waste felt like this as their symptoms began. If only my ailment could be treated by a scoop of bellywood bark.
She sensed the approach of Lanskay and an aether magus before they emerged from a building. Lanskay froze, shock evident on his face, before he continued forward. He waved the other magus away.
“I’d appreciate it if you could tell me where Alonzo is,” she said.
“Good God. What happened to you in there?” he whispered.
“You’re a married man. You should know better than to say something like that to a woman.”
“Have you seen yourself?”
“I didn’t stop to look for a mirror in the woods. And no, I don’t want to see myself.” If I look that bad, how will Alonzo react? As much as she wanted to see him, she was suddenly terrified. What if he looked on her with horror? Like some monster? I am a monster. A chimera made of old magic.
“I’ll take you to him. Come. Do you want me to take your satchel? To help?”
She laughed, weakly. He cast her an odd look. “Medicians never surrender their satchels. Mr. Drury never could comprehend that.” She leaned heavily on her stick as pain warbled through her ribs. “You know what? I don’t suppose it really matters anymore. Here.”
They continued down the boardwalk. Lanskay carried her satchel against his chest with the reverence of a page bearing a king’s crown.
“The settlement is emptier than it was before,” she said.
“Our front lines at the pass fell. Caskentia is on the way. We expect a bombardment within hours.” He sighed. “We were prepared for winter, not this. Too many of our airships are to the far east.”
She heard nearby concentrations of songs and suddenly knew where everyone had gone. “Wise use of the wyrm tunnels. Hide there for a few days and then launch a surprise attack, hmm?” There would be a lot more tunnels now, with the roots rotting and retracting.
Lanskay’s expression was somewhere between awe and terror. “How do you know where they are? If Taney heard you . . .”
“He has better things to do right now I’m—” Pain erupted through her gut, a fiery porcupine with all quills extended. She wanted to call on the Lady, on God, on anything, but it took all her concentration to breathe and remain conscious. Heat pulsed through her stomach and across her skin. Gasping, she leaned all her weight on the branch and gritted her teeth. I used the seed’s power without even trying. It just felt . . . natural.
“Miss Leander . . . ?” His words echoed strangely against a high buzz in her ears. He hovered close but seemed scared to assist.
Sweat coursed down her temple and jaw. Her vision, narrowed to a tunnel, began to return to normal. “You were fine with burning me, but you won’t actually touch me when I need the help.”
He hesitated. “You’re not the same now.”
She was reminded of why she despised the man, even as she allowed him to carry her satchel. “You’re the same. You’re a coward. You burned people alive as you stood up on an airship deck. You burned me right after I saved your life, and it wasn’t to honor me as a worthy enemy soldier. It was to save your own pride after you choked to death on your own plug of tobacco. You don’t understand honor.” She thought of King Kethan with a wave of grief.
Lanskay didn’t anger; instead, his song altered in a way she could only translate as shame. “As you say.”
She released a long breath. Since I was young, I hated how people feared me. I never expected that fear to cow one of the highest commanders of the Waste, and an infernal at that.
The Lady might fascinate him, but he’s still Taney’s man through and through. He burned me. He’ll burn Alonzo.
Lanskay opened a door for her. Men saluted as they passed. By the anxiety in their songs, she knew it wasn’t because of Lanskay.
Alonzo stood by a blacked-out window as she entered. The marching-band brasses nearly made her weep in relief. Her breath, her heart, froze as he turned to face her.
No hesitation. No terror. He crossed the room with his long strides and met her with an embrace. The stick fell to the floor. She buried her face against his shoulder, both arms ho
oked around his back. Octavia sobbed softly as she breathed in the dust and sweat of half a continent. He felt so good, so right.
Agony spliced through her stomach like repeated stabbings, the blows fast, the blade deep. She tried to scream but managed a whimper.
Alonzo held her as her legs gave out. “Right here,” he said over her shoulder. One of the other guards shoved a chair beneath her. Alonzo lowered her as if setting down a porcelain rose. His hand touched her cheek and she flinched. Not from pain, but that he touched her skin as it was now.
The two other guards exited. Lanskay shut the door behind them and remained, his presence a furnace in the corner of the room.
“What happened?” Alonzo asked.
She studied him as if she could paint him later—if she had the skill. Strands of his kinky, thick hair had worked free and framed his brown-skinned face. His broad, strong lips pressed in a tight line of concern. His icy-blue eyes sparkled with tears, not mischief. Tight scruff lined his jaw and lips.
“I think I prefer you clean-shaven,” she said.
“I could endeavor to get a razor, if I am permitted.”
Octavia smiled. “I wanted to see you again. I needed to.”
“What happened out there? Is he . . . ?”
“Grandfather crossed the river.”
Alonzo bowed his head. “Godspeed to him.”
Someone knocked at the door and it opened a crack. “Lanskay, sir,” came a soldier’s voice. “Taney sends word that it’s sunset and he sees the Tree.”
“Wait a few minutes. I will relay a reply.” Lanskay closed the door again.
Octavia’s gut pulsed. She pressed both hands to her stomach. “Give me a few minutes and then you won’t be able to see the Tree. I just need the chance to say farewell.”
“Octavia, I must know what is the matter, what you have tried to hide from me.”
How can I put it into words? She looked down at her hands. “The Lady . . . is not what I ever expected. The seed? It’s here.”