Flight of the King

by C. R. Grey

  “Why do you ask the impossible?” she’d said. “Sitting still for five whole minutes! I’ll turn to stone! You couldn’t do it, I’d bet a set of claws.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” his nineteen-year-old self had said from his place behind the camera. It was a pity, he thought now, that she hadn’t smiled. But then, a smile was hard to keep for five whole minutes while the image set into the film. It was almost as hard to keep a smile in one’s memory for over a decade, but somehow Tremelo had managed to do it.

  His fingers grew cold. He placed the photograph back in his pocket. A few yards ahead, Fennel stood as still as a statue. She crouched, and the fur along her back stood on end. Her nose sniffed the air. Tremelo tightened his grip on his walking stick and moved toward her, climbing over a large boulder that reflected the full moon overhead. When he arrived at Fennel’s side, Tremelo could sense it too—something had happened here. The snow up ahead showed signs of a struggle: scattered footprints and what looked like a large animal dragged on its back and side. Tremelo’s heart began to pound. Fennel circled the area, her ears twitching back and forth.

  There were claw marks in the nearby trees: so deep they tore through the bark and exposed the raw wood of the trunk underneath, and as wide as a grown man’s hands—even wider.

  “Taleth,” Tremelo breathed. He looked again at the snow-covered ground, and saw the huge cat’s paw prints.

  Fennel whimpered. Tremelo looked to the nearby slope of the southern hills, just once. Then he ran back toward the school.

  ON THE OTHER SIDE of the spiderweb bridge, the terrain quickly became rockier. Gwen’s shoes slipped on the stones, and she had to crawl across sharp formations jutting up from the ground. Without her pack, she missed something soft to lay her head on at night, as well as her dry socks and packaged food inside. She’d had a few loose matches in her coat pocket, but they wouldn’t even last her a week, and she’d never learned how to start a campfire using only stones and tinder. She was hungry and cold, and she agonized over the bird flying away with the Seers’ Glass.

  After two more days of climbing, she decided to take shelter for the night against a stone wall. Although she was high in the mountains, the land had flattened here into a rocky plain, with patches of wild thistles. The sun began to set, and the color of the rocks deepened to purple, then finally to dark, midnight blue. The landscape was bleak and empty, and Gwen felt lonelier than she ever had in her life. She wished she could have stayed at Fairmount, with her new friends. She wished the Elder still lived. She wished to feel the weight of the heavy Seers’ Glass in her hands.

  But wishing would not bring anything back. Tremelo had given her one task: to keep the Glass safe. And she had failed. The prophecies in the Loon’s book could only be read by using it. What if now they were lost forever, undeciphered?

  If only she had gotten a closer look at the bird that had swooped in and grabbed the Glass, she thought. It might have been a vulture, like Sucrette’s—or even worse, one of Viviana’s horrifying Clamoribus birds, all clockwork and menace. But she knew better than to follow it and risk running into its kin. Her only choice was to continue to the highest peak, as the Elder had instructed her, and find the Instrument of Change.

  At least the wild thistles were familiar to her. They were similar to the cast-off roots she’d cull from the market sidewalks as a child, and she remembered how to boil them down into a gruel that was filling, if not very tasty. She used one of her precious matches to light a fire and cooked herself a small supper of thistle-root gruel in the small metal bowl she’d tied to her belt.

  The gruel was warm, at least—though she wished she had a pinch of sugar or something sweet to liven up the tastelessness of the thistle root.

  The sun set over the mountains, and a bitter cold set in quickly—a harsh reminder that winter was not over, though Gwen had noticed some early-blooming berries at the edge of the plain. As she walked over to the bushes, the smallest of the owls half hopped, half flew to the berry bushes and hooted.

  Gwen plucked one of the small red berries from its branch and sniffed it. She hoped they were sweet. She squeezed it carefully, splitting its red skin. Orange-pink flesh burst from it and trickled down her fingers. The small owl screeched, surprising her.

  “What was that for?” she asked. She looked around the grove nervously. For the last two days she’d sensed she was being followed, but nothing stirred around her camp.

  She lifted her hand to her mouth to taste the liquid from the berry. The owl suddenly leapt from the ground and batted its wings in her face.

  “What are you doing?” she cried.

  Then something extraordinary happened. Her vision clouded, and was replaced by an image of herself—but not as she was now, standing in the mountain plain, holding a burst berry on her fingertips. She saw herself lying on the ground, motionless, with traces of red juice on her lower lip. She realized that she was looking at herself from the owl’s perspective as it hopped around her face, trying to revive her. The berries, the owl knew—and now Gwen knew as well—were poisonous.

  Gwen gasped as the vision disappeared. The little owl, who was still sitting on the ground between her and the berry bush, hooted at her.

  “How did you do that?” she whispered. Her hands shook. She had never been so connected to her kin that she could see through their eyes. Even stranger, she saw something in her kin’s eyes that had not yet happened. Frightened and awed, she threw the crushed berry to the ground and carefully wiped her hand on her pant leg. She wrapped herself in her cloak and waited, unsleeping, for the dawn.

  THE BOYS TRUDGED THROUGH the forest, making a wide loop away from the school. Taking the rigimotive from Fairmount was far too dangerous, Hal had decided—they’d immediately be recognized as students. Also, Hal’s pocket money would only take them so far. Their plan was to board the rigi in the village of Stillfall, midway between Fairmount and the Gray City. A colony of bats rallied around them for most of the night, emitting a constant buzz of flapping wings. Occasionally, a few would dive down to alight on Hal’s shoulders and head.

  In the morning, they hiked down the side of a cliff to the village, carefully negotiating the series of switchback trails that led to the low river valley. Once there, they boarded a cramped rigimotive departing for the city that afternoon.

  On board, Bailey tried to catch an hour’s sleep, but he could see that Hal, who sat alert and staring out the window, was agitated.

  “What are we going to do, once we find Taleth?” Hal whispered when Bailey asked what was wrong. “We’re just a couple of kids. The people who have her…They might be like Sucrette.”

  “We’ll just have to be smart,” said Bailey. “We’ll try to sneak her away—and if that doesn’t work, we might have to fight. But if we can free her first…”

  “We don’t know who’s got her,” said Hal. “Or where. Do you think we’ll just come up on her tied to a tree? I doubt it’ll be that easy.”

  “We’ll figure it out once we find her,” said Bailey.

  Hal frowned and went back to staring out the window at the Fluvian rushing past.

  Bailey thought to say more, but instead he rubbed his eyes. He craved sleep.

  By the time they disembarked at a shambling platform in the Gudgeons, next to the shipping docks, Bailey was exhausted and more than a little worried. He hadn’t felt a connection to Taleth since they’d left Fairmount.

  “This is perfect,” said Hal as they stepped down from the ramshackle rigi platform. He gestured to the docks. A few ships and barges floated motionless and unmanned in the deep river.

  “If Taleth’s going east through the Red Hills, then the rigi will take us too far north,” explained Hal. “We’d have to backtrack south. But these barges go to the south side of the hills. Much closer, and much faster. We just need to figure out which one of these is going in our direction.”

  Bailey scanned the harbor. Several docks stretched out into the river, connected by
a wooden pier covered with ropes, crates, and cast-off buoys. A commotion brewed next to one empty dock—Bailey heard the sound of baying dogs echoing above the shouts of the men who stood gathered in a circle.

  Hal’s dark eyebrows furrowed. “I’m going to find the shipping master’s office, and see if I can learn anything useful—will you survey the ships in port? We’ll need a list of their names.”

  “Sure,” said Bailey, though he was distracted by the hurly-burly on the pier.

  “Don’t attract attention,” ordered Hal.

  “Of course not,” Bailey answered.

  As Hal took off toward a clapboard building with windows facing the port, Bailey scrambled over the mess of ropes and sea-worn boards that made up the docks. He heard growling and snarling as he drew closer to the huddled group of men, and what he saw made his stomach turn.

  Two dogs circled each other in the middle of the crowd. An old sailor with a face full of gray stubble sat off to the side, holding his fingers to his temples.

  “That’s right, get ’im!” shouted a man.

  “Go on, Macon! I’ve got two snailbacks on the black one,” yelled another man, who patted the bristly sailor on the back. The dogs fought, howling as their sharp teeth and claws tore into each other. There was blood everywhere—matted in their fur and streaked across the ground below them. With each wave of aggression from the dogs, Bailey could see that the man, Macon, concentrated harder.

  “He’s making them fight!” he whispered to himself, wishing that Hal was still by his side to witness this. He knew that this was the work of the Dominae. The students in Lyle’s Science Club were just experimenting, but these men along the pier were using Dominance for fun, which made it even more sickening.

  One of the two dogs, a slim, light brown mutt with short, smooth hair, yipped pitifully as the other dog bit fiercely into its ear. The men hollered. Some cheered, while others, who were clearly Animas Dog as well, groaned.

  “Ninnies!” yelled the man, Macon, at those who looked like they might be ill. “If you’re feeling the pain, then you ain’t doing it right! It’s all in your head! See, watch—”

  Bailey felt like he needed to sit down—or to scream at someone. Fury built inside him.

  The short-haired brown dog attacked, sinking its teeth into the other dog’s glossy black hide. They both yelped and barked in pain. Bailey couldn’t take it anymore. He fought his way into the crowd with his fists clenched.

  “STOP IT!” he shouted. The circle of men turned to look at him. “You’re hurting them,” he continued, looking at the man they called Macon. He hoped he’d kept his voice even.

  The men grumbled. One shouted: “Whose boy is this? Get him out of here!”

  Macon rose from his seat, and the two dogs slunk away, whimpering. The men, watching them go, became even more angry.

  “I had five snailbacks on that terrier!” shouted one sailor.

  “What’s this? Can’t handle a little game?” Macon said, approaching Bailey until the man towered over him. He was very tall and broad-shouldered, and the lines on his weathered face and his gray hair showed him to be fairly old. He could still knock me flat, Bailey thought.

  “It’s not a game,” Bailey said.

  “Oh, no?” said the sailor. “We were all having a fine time, before you barged in here.”

  “Maybe the boy’d like to take their place in the ring, eh?” someone shouted, prompting uproarious laughter from the seamen.

  “Two snailbacks he’s out in the first round!” another man continued.

  “I wouldn’t even wager one on that,” said Macon darkly. “Little shrimp of a thing, thinks he can rumble with real men. Go home to your mother, boy, or to whatever soft furry you’re bound to.” The sailor turned around. “Now, who wants to see my dogs in a real fight? Got two more in yon crate ready for a licking!”

  “Those animals don’t understand why you’re hurting them!” Bailey yelled.

  Macon turned back to Bailey and regarded him like he was a cockroach who’d just crawled across his dinner table. Then he swung up with a heavy right fist, and punched Bailey right under the chin. Bailey fell backward, splayed on the wooden planks of the dock. He could hear the other men laughing and exchanging bets now—it really was all a game to them.

  “Little boy—don’t think you can come onto my dock and tell me what’s good in the eyes of the world,” Macon growled. “Unless you want worse next time.”

  Bailey groaned and lay back on the dock. The men stepped around him, spitting mockingly in his direction as they dispersed to their posts.

  Suddenly, Bailey saw Hal’s concerned face looming over him, upside down.

  “Are you all right?!” Hal asked.

  “Don’t say ‘That was stupid,’” Bailey said.

  Hal shook his head. He bent down, put both of his arms under Bailey’s, and helped him to his feet.

  “I wouldn’t dare,” Hal said, “because you already knew that. Anything broken?”

  Bailey shook his head.

  “I don’t think so…just sore.” He thanked Nature that Macon and the other men had decided to leave him alone when they did. He could have gotten worse.

  Hal smiled sympathetically and put a hand on Bailey’s shoulder.

  “Look, you can’t just rush into fights like that. Who knows whether the people who took Taleth are watching for us? We start pulling tails, and we’re liable to get bit.”

  “You’re starting to sound like Tremelo,” said Bailey.

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” said Hal. “Now, while you were busy getting the ants beat out of you, I listened in on two of the men there talking about their next shipment going out tonight—on the Sly Lobster, headed up to The Maze by special order of Viviana Melore.”

  “What’s The Maze?” asked Bailey. He leaned against a lobster crate as a fresh jolt of pain flashed down his side.

  “It’s the last city before the Red Hills and the Dust Plains! We can find out more about the Dominae’s plans and follow Taleth.”

  Bailey nodded at the plan as he breathed in deeply, which caused a thudding ache in his ribs. The thought of being so close to Viviana’s operations made his blood speed up in his veins. This was what he’d hoped being the Child of War would bring: the chance to make a difference against the Dominae.

  “So, we’ll be traveling by boat, then?” he asked.

  “Just us, a bargeload of Dominae goods, and what are sure to be some pretty nasty-tempered guards,” Hal said. “But it beats another day on the rigimotive!”

  Bailey scouted the Sly Lobster at its mooring as Hal ventured to a nearby market for some food. As he waited for Hal to return, Bailey thought about what would be said back at Fairmount. Was Tremelo back? What would happen when the teachers and students noticed he and Hal were missing? Tori couldn’t tell Shonfield or Finch. Or Bailey’s parents, for that matter. At this thought, Bailey felt an immense guilt settle in his stomach. The school would notify the Walkers that he was missing, and they’d be worried sick. But they’d be more worried if they knew where Bailey had actually gone. He wondered if Tremelo—when he returned, if he returned—would tell Hal’s uncle Roger where he and Hal were. Roger sold myrgwood, and he might even have connections in the Red Hills who could help them. But Bailey wasn’t sure whether he could truly be trusted. On top of all that, Bailey couldn’t help but worry about Tori. Could he be sure that Graves wouldn’t go after her, with Tremelo not there to help her? And what would Phi think when she returned from her trip home to find that he had left on an adventure without her?

  Hal returned from the market with some dried slices of apple and pear. The sun had nearly finished setting, and the Fluvian river seemed to glow orange and red in the last light.

  “There wasn’t anything heartier at the market,” Hal said, joining Bailey behind a stack of shipping crates. “But this will have to tide us over until The Maze.”

  Bailey bit into one of the thin slices of dried apple, a sna
ck his mother used to pack when he and his dad would load up the wagon with grain for a long delivery ride. Make them last, she’d say. It’s a long road. He savored the second bite, finishing the slice.

  “We need to get a note to our families,” Bailey said. “Otherwise they’ll come looking for us.”

  “I hope Roger won’t be too mad,” Hal said. “My mom and dad hardly keep track of me as it is, but I guess Roger would have to tell them. He’d go crazy if he knew what we were really doing the past few months.”

  “Can we use a bat to fly a note home?” Bailey asked.

  Hal pursed his lips, thinking.

  “Maybe,” he said. “But what will it say? ‘Decided to run off to the Red Hills. Promise not to get captured by traders. Much love!’”

  “I don’t know,” said Bailey. “Tremelo would know what to do. But we don’t even know where he is!”

  “But what if Tori’s right about him just being out on his own? He could be back already,” said Hal. “It’s our best shot.”

  They scrounged a piece of paper—an old cargo boat schedule—and a pen from the shipping master’s office, and composed a short note.

  We’re okay—please let our parents and Roger know. B & H

  Hal managed to coax a fuzzy brown bat down from the eaves of the shipping office. Squinting behind his glasses, he held it carefully in one hand, and tied the note to its delicate foot. Bailey watched with awe—the little bat was so patient and unafraid in Hal’s hand. Nothing like communing with Taleth: overwhelming emotions, but little understanding. It would take practice for him and the tiger to truly be able to communicate if he managed to find her. He couldn’t bear to think of how empty he’d feel if he never saw her again.

  “That was amazing,” Bailey said as the bat took off from the dock, along with a cloud of about thirty of its fellows. They fluttered across the river and south toward Fairmount. “I remember last fall, when Taylor had me come to the clock tower, you weren’t nearly as connected.”