Lost Crow Conspiracy (Blood Rose Rebellion, Book 2)

by Rosalyn Eves

  “Could you not simply flee?”

  Hunger’s eyes caught mine, holding them for a long moment until I flinched and looked away. “Would you give up your own home so easily?”

  I imagined the rolling green fields in Dorset and smelled the salt tang of the sea; I saw cranes circling the fields near Eszterháza. “No.” Chill settled around my heart, ungainly as the cranes I had pictured.

  Hunger was silent, watching a pair of the mushroom-like creatures swing clubs at one another, both missing before falling on the ground in giggles. Then he said, “We have not lived in this world for a long time. It does not remember us, or perhaps we do not remember it. The praetheria are weak—weaker than they should be, as weak as they were when the Binding spell sapped our power. We need roots to this world to return our strength. In two generations, maybe, if we could be left in peace, we could establish our own roots. Sooner, through blood sacrament, through the consummation of marriages with humans who are rooted in this world.

  “If we had time, we might attempt that. But your kind will not give us time. So we will establish those roots through war. If enough blood is spilled—yours and ours together—we can remake this world for praetheria.”

  “And where will humans fit in this world of yours?” I set my hand against a nearby trunk, picking at flaking bark with my fingers.

  “Where have we fit in your world?”

  That was no answer. “I am human. Nearly everyone I love is too. Most of them are innocent. Would you kill them too?”

  “Most of us were innocent too. That did not save us.”

  I had only once been truly terrified of Hunger—when his veneer had slipped inside a bloody garden in the Binding, and he had tried to keep me there. But that terror was a snowflake compared to the ice spreading slowly through my body. I had watched the praetheria slaughter Austrian soldiers in Buda-Pest last fall: Hunger would visit that same destruction on everyone and everything I knew.

  “You promised me a favor if I spoke for you to the Congress. Please, won’t you show mercy?”

  He smiled, a feral slash of teeth and lips. “And who defines mercy? The victor or the victim? Is it merciful to spare human lives and let generations of praetheria die?”

  “There has to be another answer.”

  “I don’t think there is.” There was a curious note in his voice—in anyone else, I would call it regret.

  I looked away from Hunger, away from the clearing and the creatures preparing for war. Somewhere nearby, late linden trees were blooming, their distinctive honey-and-lemon scent as bright as the sunlight filling the small meadow. It was the smell of Eszterháza in summer—the smell of home.

  I can never go home again.

  The centaur cantered up and bowed his head to Hunger, murmuring something in a language I did not know, with rounded syllables, vowels drawn out and liquid. Hunger answered him in the same language, and then the centaur bowed again and trotted off.

  “I should go,” I said. “I’m of no use to you—and right now I’m only in the way. I might even be a danger. The Red Mantles will be hunting me.”

  “They will not take you from us.”

  Something in the hard edge of his voice gave me pause. I had begun retreating from the clearing, but at that I stopped. “I do not belong to you.”

  “I saved you. You owe me a debt.”

  “No. These past months I have put myself at risk for you, defending you before the Congress. My life is forfeit because I set you free! There is no debt.” There must be somewhere, far enough from the Hapsburg influence and politics, that I might be safe. Egypt. Or Arabia. Perhaps India.

  Hunger nodded shortly, his gold eyes glinting. “Very well. No debt. But you will stay.” My skin shriveled away from the strength of the order. He must have seen that in my face, because he softened his next words. “You are safe here for now.”

  But I knew his words for a lie:

  I was not safe anywhere.

  For a people in hiding, the praetheria were not as cowed as I might have expected. That night, as the sun fell and shadows crept across the earth, the praetheria set aside their weapons and their defensive plans. There were no instruments that I could see, but the wind soughed through the tall grass and leaves shook overhead and dry branches clattered together and something like music emerged.

  Not all the praetheria danced—the centaur stood vigil at the far edge of the wood, and several times I caught the rasping overhead of heavy wings. But enough did: fae no larger than my handspan spinning through the air in globes of light, the tree-men swaying to a tune only they could hear, a little man with a fox face whirling with a squat, toadish creature.

  Hunger invited me to join, but I refused him. Already my longing for my quiet room in Catherine’s town house overwhelmed me: I wanted Noémi and Gábor and even Catherine. If Hunger touched me, I might dissolve into salt tears.

  I munched on an apple and watched the dancers. At the far edge of the dance, a woman with hair limned gold by the firelight rocked gently to the music. Her back was turned to me, but something about her—the way her hands moved carefully and controlled through the air—reminded me of Noémi.

  I looked away, the sweetness of the apple gone sour in my mouth. I dropped the half-eaten core on the ground and retreated to my moss-covered hollow.

  I meant to sleep, but sleeping proved elusive. Thoughts chased through my head, each one sharper than the last. I wondered where Noémi was, if she had found anything but mirages in pursuit of Mátyás. I hoped she was safe. What would she think, when she heard of my fate? That I had been imprudent, that I deserved it. My thoughts drifted to Gábor.

  He had claimed he loved me, but he never asked me what I wanted before cavalierly deciding my future for me. My anger warmed me briefly before turning wistful. Where had he gone on Kossuth’s errand? Did he miss me at all? Was he well?

  I pictured Catherine alone in her sitting room, her hands on her belly. Did she mourn me? Was she angry that I had so intemperately risked her social status? Or was she merely grateful not to have to witness my execution? I thought of William bleeding on the ballroom floor. Did he still live? And Vasilisa—where was she, if not here?

  So many questions, none of them comforting.

  All I had wanted was to matter: to salvage Mátyás’s death and do some good in the world. I had broken the Binding and failed to save the praetheria I set free. Everything I touched seemed to crumble: the tentative peace between Hungary and Austria, my friendship with Noémi, my romance with Gábor. And Mátyás, dead in the gap between our world and the Binding.

  I had used my chimera gifts to shatter the world and then recoiled from the aftermath. I had suppressed who I was—and that had not saved me. I had been condemned for what I had done as chimera anyway.

  I had nothing left, no reason to hide what I was. If I ever managed to escape to safety, I would embrace my chimera self—the pain and the glory of it, all together.

  *

  I woke to voices sometime in the silver-lined hours of middle night.

  “Tell the others we leave when I give word,” Hunger said. “And remind them we must be careful. This must look like an isolated rescue, not part of anything larger. The humans must believe we’re frightened, incapable of planning any large coordinated attack.”

  I opened my eyes to slits, but I could not see him. He must be somewhere just beyond the screen of trees.

  “I’m sick of hiding,” another voice growled.

  “It will not be long,” Hunger said. “If we go to war now, we might win, but at a cost we cannot afford. The Austrians are already set to invade Hungary on the heels of the Croatians, and Svarog has the tsar convinced that if he but waits for Hungary and Austria to ravage each other, he can rule half of Europe. Once the human armies have decimated each other, we will act. Within a year, our home will be ours again.”

  Fully awake now, I rubbed the gooseflesh along my arms. Svarog. That was the name of the golden
-haired count always with the tsar—and Pál. At the ball, his face had seemed to split into four. I had thought it an illusion, but what if the impossibly beautiful human face were the illusion and the four-headed creature underneath the reality? For months a praetheria had held the ear of the tsar.

  A thin wind hissed through the trees, blowing grit against my cheeks.

  I pressed my knuckles against my lips, my head spinning. All this time in Vienna I had misread the praetheria. I had liked them, sympathized with them, defended them, nearly given my life for them. I had not liked the idea of praetherian violence, but I had understood it as defense against human cruelty.

  But this.

  This was no reactionary war in self-defense. Planting one of their own in the Russian court spoke of long planning, perhaps from the moment I had set the praetheria free. All these months, while the Congress droned on, oblivious, the praetheria had spun their own plot, the archduchess and Dragović playing right into it. Not all the praetheria, surely, but enough.

  “Nothing is certain until it happens,” Hunger said. “We will use stealth. Ba—Vasilisa would not forgive us if we betray our strength in rescuing her.”

  I swallowed down nausea and curled on my side, my arms pressed tight against my stomach. Beneath the covering of moss, the knobs and whorls of the tree roots rubbed raw against my ribs.

  I had counted Vasilisa and Hunger as—well, if not exactly friends, something like that. Allies. And yet, looking back, it was Vasilisa who drove my sympathy until I betrayed myself to the Congress. Witness, she had said—and I had, my own tongue witnessing my crime. And Hunger had driven the wedge between Noémi and me. Had he also said something to Gábor? I could not seem to breathe.

  “And the girl?”

  “She comes with us to Vienna. We may need her.”

  They had never wanted to help me, only to use me. And now they planned to destroy nearly everything I cared about.

  The faintest sound of footsteps, and then Hunger’s moon shadow fell across me. I did my best to stay limp as he lifted me into the air.

  Any understanding I thought I had dissolved in the night air, the footing beneath me like grasses in a marsh—solid until I stepped forward, then unable to support my weight. I had never wanted the praetheria in the sanctuary Congress proposed—still did not wish that—but what was I to believe? All my efforts these past months had been toward a mirage, to build a future out of a present that never existed.

  From the midst of my aching uncertainty, only one thing seemed clear: I could not let the praetheria overturn my world. As an abstract moral equation, for praetheria to kill and enslave humans as they had been killed and enslaved might seem fair and just. But I could not live according to moral abstractions, not when my family and friends were involved. I would fight the praetheria if I had to. Warn the human governments what they planned.

  But first I had to escape.

  It was an instant’s work for Hunger to transform, after shaking me awake, his shape billowing upward and outward like an ink spill in water. His sárkány self was sleek in the moonlight, all dark lengths and muscle, with gold lining his scales. His wings, webbed like a bat’s, unfurled once before he tucked them at his sides and knelt, so I could climb.

  Another of the praetheria secured a harness and light saddle between the joints of Hunger’s wings, and then backed away, waiting for me. When I hesitated, one of the demi-giants waiting in the clearing simply plucked me off the ground and set me on the saddle, my dirty skirts hiking up past my knees. The scales beneath me were surprisingly smooth.

  I glanced around at the rescue team. A griffin, his beak savage in the moonlight, looking as though he’d stepped out of the Eszterházy crest. A pair of giant eagles. A winged horse with a long, wickedly curved horn. A lizard-like creature with the head and wings of a rooster. I had a nagging uneasiness that I ought to know what the last was.

  The others were airborne first. Hunger whipped his head around to stare at me, his golden eyes slitted beneath a knobbed ridge, perhaps assessing the harness. Satisfied, he sprang aloft to join the others. My stomach merged with my heart in my chest.

  The woods and waterways below us were a miniature crafted by a master, tiny shapes carved by moonlight, shadows crossed by silver ribbons. The wind rushed past me, and I gripped my hands tight around the harness. I could not entirely suppress a flicker of excitement, though I suspected I ought not enjoy a flight like this on the back of my enemy.

  My enemy.

  I could feel the bunch and release of the great muscles powering Hunger’s wings just beneath me. I had not ridden astride since I was a small child (and Mama caught me at it), and it felt at once powerful and exposing. Despite everything I knew of Hunger, of his odd sense of humor, his quicksilver moods, his amoral outlook on the world, I could not seem to understand his betrayal.

  It was not long—perhaps a half hour—before I spotted the walls of Vienna rising in the distance. Hunger barked something at the others, and they lifted higher, until the city was so small I could have cupped it in my hands: a ring of wall surrounding the inner city, the rest splayed wide beyond the glacis. This high, the air was clear and cold and thin. Dizziness rushed over me, and I leaned in low toward Hunger, praying I would not fall.

  A second barking order and they descended, dropping so suddenly I let out a small screech, and Hunger rumbled beneath me.

  The wind shifted, bringing with it the smell of smoke. A searching glance across Vienna revealed orange flames devouring rooftops all throughout the inner city. Black-and-grey billows smudged the horizon where the cityscape met the night sky. My fingers tightened around the harness. Was Catherine safe? An unchecked fire could gut a city in a night.

  The fire was densest just ahead of us, near the prison set south and east of the glacis, beside the army barracks. As the praetheria descended into a quiet courtyard, I could hear the toll of warning bells and the thunder of carriages, probably part of a fire brigade.

  “What’s going on?” I asked as Hunger landed with a muffled thud.

  “An uprising in the city. Not our concern.” Hunger’s voice emerged deep and gravelly from his dragon throat.

  The timing seemed awfully convenient. It would only take a little praetherian glamour to convince already restless students and citizens to take to the streets. I rubbed my cold arms, then pulled myself out of the saddle and slid down. It was a long way to the ground: I had to drop the last few feet, and the impact reverberated up my legs.

  The rooster-lizard creature stalked to the heavy wooden doors leading to the street beyond and set its wing against the wood. The wood flashed to stone, then crumbled apart.

  “Don’t look directly at her,” Hunger advised me, and I realized what the creature was. Cockatrice.

  I edged closer to Hunger. He might have betrayed me, but at the moment a familiar danger seemed infinitely safer than an unfamiliar one. Hunger shifted back into human shape.

  The praetheria crept out into the street. Feet pounded the pavement nearby, soldiers streaming down an adjacent road. Called away to the fire, no doubt. Let Catherine be safe. Let the city survive this night.

  I thought of the soldiers on guard in the prison, already distracted by the fire, utterly unprepared for the small army approaching them. Death stalked them, and they did not know it.

  Shadows from the close-pressed houses seemed to pull away from the walls and gather around us, cloaking us from view. Our footsteps too seemed unnaturally hushed against the cobblestone street. I glanced around at the intent faces of my captors, all of whom seemed focused on the task at hand, and slipped backward two steps. I had to make sure Catherine was all right.

  Without looking in my direction, Hunger reached back and snagged me, his fingers closing over my arm like a vise.

  “Stay with us,” he said. A smile crawled across his face. “I promise you will not like it if we have to hunt you down when this is over.”

  We reached the prison moment
s later. I did not see what happened to the guards who stood sentry, but I heard the half-voiced cries and swallowed hard. Poor devils.

  “Be vigilant,” Hunger warned. “These guards are only commoners, but they are sure to have spell-casters posted nearer to Vasilisa.”

  We entered the building, the cockatrice folding her wings close, the griffin compressing his large body in the curiously flexible way cats have of moving through tight spaces. The Shadowing and Muffling spells continued inside the stone building. Lumen lights glimmered along the wall, proof of the presence of magicians.

  We startled a sentry, whistling as he walked. I looked away, not wanting to see which of the praetheria took him down, or how. I heard the crunch of bone and was nearly sick, but Hunger hauled me forward.

  “You cannot be ill here.”

  I glared at him. How, precisely, was I supposed to exercise that degree of control over my stomach if they were going to slaughter people?

  It crossed my mind to scream, to warn the guards and give them a fighting chance. But as soon as the thought occurred, I dismissed it. I did not know if the Muffling spell would stifle my scream—but if I drew attention to myself, I’d only find myself silenced in ways I did not like: trussed up like a Christmas pig. Or killed.

  Instead I followed silently, hoping that when we at last found Vasilisa, I might discover some route for escape.

  Another twisting corridor and then a third. Finally, a wider hallway crowded with men, their voices reaching us even before we’d turned the corner.

  As the first curl of shadow stretched down the hallway, one of the guards pulled a whistle from his pocket. At the shrill sound, the others sprang to attention. There were only a half dozen or so—either the Hapsburgs did not rate Vasilisa a great threat, or the others had been called away to the fire.

  “Stay,” Hunger commanded me, and I did, my feet freezing in place. I tried to feel for the threads of the spell, to snap them, but I could not seem to grasp them before the fighting was over.

  The cockatrice led the attack, her eyes flashing. The first of the guards rushing to meet us, hands waving wildly in a spell, halted suddenly. His face seemed to freeze, eyes unblinking, before he toppled over, quite dead. The griffin followed the cockatrice, his beak slashing and tearing. The winged unicorn speared another guard as casually as I might slide a needle into silk. Unicorns were supposed to personify peace and purity: the red blood now staining its horn and dripping to the floor had the sick wrongness of an orgy in a church. Half the guards were down before they had time to do much more than draw their swords.