Lost Crow Conspiracy (Blood Rose Rebellion, Book 2)

by Rosalyn Eves

  I sang a song to the youngest of the children, a little girl who fidgeted restlessly on the bench beside me. My thoughts spun off, lured elsewhere by the warmth and the hum of music, when something large jostled the side of the ferry.

  The farmer’s wife screeched and clapped plump hands around her two eldest children. I hauled the youngest onto my lap.

  A second bump, more forceful than the first, and the ferry tipped upward, sending everyone sliding toward the far side. A loud splash: someone had fallen off.

  I peered at the water. It seemed placid, innocuous—only a few ripples skating across its surface. A large, dark shape hung just below the surface. As I watched, it shot toward the ferry. I tightened my arms around the little girl, just as a third jolt shook the boat.

  A brief second where the shock jangled in my teeth, then a flash of blue, blue sky, and everything upended. The air filled with screams, and the cool water of the Duna swallowed the wagon and everything on it.

  Water filled my nose and ears, a brackish taste on my tongue. The wagon dropped out beneath me, banging my hip as it went. I thrashed blindly for the child, grateful when my fingers closed over wet fabric. I pulled the child to me and pushed up to the surface, gasping in relief as the warm air kissed my cheeks.

  The little girl in my arms was limp: I had to get her to shore and push the water out of her. I’d never done it before, but I’d seen a fisherman do it once, on a visit to the seashore when I was a child.

  Something caught around my right ankle, hooking me back under the water. My arms tightened reflexively around the girl, and I blinked through the water to see a greenish masculine face grinning up at me. Bubbles escaped through gill slits at his neck.

  Praetherian.

  Panic spiked in me. I kicked at the face with my free leg, but he only laughed and caught my other ankle. I was going to drown, and the little girl with me. With a mighty push, I shoved the child up toward the surface, hoping someone would spot her and haul her out. Better the uncertainty than a slow death with me.

  We were nearly at the bottom now, silt rising in small clouds around us, water plants pressing clammy strands against my legs and wrists. Black shadows crept across my vision and my lungs burned with the effort of holding my breath. My fingers spread wide in search of something I might use as a weapon, but the water plants broke off in my hands, and the fish that slithered around me were too small to hurt anyone.

  The water was cool, welcoming. I might let go—release my breath, swallow the water, and wash away.

  What would it matter, that I was chimera, that everything I touched crumbled to ruin, if I were dead?

  Two things kept me from releasing my breath. One: a fierce stubbornness to live, even if I had nothing left to live for. Two: a small, cold doubt that the creature meant to kill me—he might intend to give me to Vasilisa. Or pull me into another world entirely.

  Fire burned through my lungs, spreading through my head until I thought it might unmake me. What had Vasilisa told me, all those weeks ago? I was chimera: my dual souls ought to double my power, could I but accept them.

  I was dying: there was no reason, here in the cool blackness with that fey face grinning up at me, to deny what I was.

  My two souls, both frantic, swirled around each other. Reaching into the quietness at the very heart of myself, I tugged my souls together.

  I needed something to startle the creature into releasing me. But the spell would have to be simple, and I knew so few of them. And it was so dark….

  Light.

  “Lumen,” I whispered against the water swirling around my lips, waving my hands weakly through the motions of the spell.

  Brilliance exploded before me, as if the sun circling overhead had plunged into the river. The creature released my ankles, his hands shooting up to cover his eyes. I swallowed water and, choking, thrust myself up from the silt, swimming as hard as ever I had.

  “There’s one more!”

  As I broke the surface, strong arms grabbed my flailing hands, pulling me steadily from the water even as clawed fingers scratched one last time at my trailing feet.

  *

  After I had vomited up the entire river—and then some—I lay on the sun-warmed grass, pulling in shuddering breaths.

  When I could sit, I found that the others from the ferry were still gathered, crying and squabbling, on the bank. To my fervent relief, the farmer’s wife and all her children had survived, even the littlest one I had shoved to the surface. Some debated whether anything was to be salvaged. Others spoke of sending for help to a nearby village. The farmer’s wife said nothing, only sat on the verge and hugged her children to her, her cheeks still wet. The little girl sobbed in her arms.

  I got to my feet, every muscle in my body feeling brittle as untempered glass. Pain shot through my vision, clustering at my temples. But I was alive.

  As the others began dispersing, I stood apart.

  One of the roads alongside the ferry landing stretched toward Buda-Pest. I wished I could follow it and dance at one of Karolina’s balls and listen to students arguing at Café Pilvax, or attend a dramatic rendition of an illfated Hungarian king in the National Theater.

  But I was not yet safe, so I turned east once again.

  Water squelched defiantly in my boots as I went, the knotted laces still dripping.

  *

  I woke just before dawn to a rain shower, fat drops sliding down the leaves and into my face. I had slept wedged in a tree again, and my entire body ached. Sighing as I began my trudge in still-damp shoes, I wiped the water from my eyes. It could be worse: at least it was July instead of November. Or January. Though, as I tried to count backward on my fingers, it might be August now.

  For three days I walked steadily eastward. The rain passed, the dark clouds rolling back across the sky like a scroll. The heat that set in was worse: my clothes stuck to every part of my body, and sweat stung my eyes. I smelled rank.

  The flat horizon shimmered in the heat. Sometimes I thought I saw water in the distance, and I would hurry forward, desperate to replenish a canteen I had stolen and—if no one was around—to bathe and wash the filth from my clothes. But almost invariably the water was only a mirage. Once I thought I saw a castle, rising above the flat land, but it was only a fata morgana, one of those rare mirages that seem to float in the air. Generally, I found water when I wasn’t looking for it—when an unwary step ended in a squelch rather than a firm tap.

  The plains stretched as far as I could see, their expanse broken only occasionally by clumps of trees or, more rarely still, the uneven roofline of a village with its church spire piercing the sky like a stone prayer. Sometimes I would see cattle: not the domesticated cows of England, but a rangier, wilder sort with long, wicked horns. Usually a blue-and-black-garbed horseman rode alongside them, kicking up a cloud of dust, a pair of dogs behind him. Most of the herding dogs looked to be made entirely of rags, but once I saw a vizsla so like Oroszlán my heart contracted with homesickness.

  I wondered where Noémi was, if she was safe.

  I pictured my parents’ reaction to Catherine’s news of my disgrace, how Papa would grow silent and stiff and retreat to his study and Mama would weep, though more for the damage to her reputation than any real concern for me.

  When I was tired, as day edged on toward evening, I thought about Gábor. Had he reached the King of Crows yet? Would he still be there when I arrived? What would I say to him? But these thoughts were more painful than the others, so I gave in to them only when exhaustion lowered my defenses: even if I found him, he would never truly be mine again. He had made that quite clear.

  My thoughts brought me little comfort, but occasionally, elusively, when I stopped thinking and just moved, my feet finding their own rhythm through the grasslands, I was surprised by a kind of bone-deep peace. Hungary spoke to my soul, even here in her wildest, most desolate region. Or perhaps particularly in her wildest region.

  I watched herons fly l
ow across the fields, and a falcon circling high above. I listened to the wind sighing through the dry grass, and the tension that had chased me for so many days began to melt away.

  I forgot to be vigilant.

  At dusk on the fourth—perhaps fifth?—day since the ferry accident, I crossed a river much wider than the handful of smaller streams I’d crossed in previous days. Near the far side, a rock slid beneath my foot and I fell, banging my hip, still sore from its collision with the wagon, and soaking my clothes. I cursed and pulled myself onto the shore and into the shelter of a stand of trees.

  I stripped down to my undergarments, glad for the warmth of the August night, and hung my wet clothes over nearby branches to dry.

  My fingers ached from the cold water. I tried gathering a few fallen branches together and glowered at them for a moment. Then I forced my stiff fingers through the ritual of the Fire spell I’d seen my father and Catherine perform.

  I had cast a spell only days before. I could do it again. As traumatic as my near drowning had been, there had been a moment of power and peace in the darkness of the river. When the first fire-casting failed, I tried again. And again. I sought for the clarity I’d felt when I held my two souls together, but it eluded me, and the wood remained stubbornly dry.

  At last, exhausted, I drifted to sleep.

  *

  The party of songbirds above me was raucous, pulling me out of sleep. I yawned and stretched, reaching for my shirt.

  My fingers closed around empty air. Thinking I had only aimed my hand poorly, I blinked to focus my still-bleary eyes.

  I found myself staring into a face I recognized: a girl with two dark braids hanging down her back, a long hooded cloak lined with red around her shoulders despite the dawning warmth of the day.

  One of Dragović’s Red Mantles.

  She handed me my shirt. In German, she said, “Get dressed. I am taking you back to my father.”

  “Your father?” I pulled my shirt on, then my trousers, watching her carefully. She was only a girl, if a soldier, and she appeared to be alone.

  “Josip Dragović.” She stood in a swift, elegant movement and dropped a mock curtsy. “Emilija Dragović, at your service.”

  I stared at the girl, my heart thudding. “Dragović is your father?” I remembered how derisively he had looked at me for my championing of the praetheria, how eager he’d been to take on Archduchess Sophie’s command for my arrest. And now he had found me. Or rather, his daughter had.

  Well, I would not surrender so easily. I slipped my boots on and made a show of adjusting the laces. When I straightened, I charged toward Emilija, bending my head at the last moment so my crown struck her chest. Caught off guard, she dropped to the ground. Still a little dizzy with the impact, I ran past her, my feet crushing the dried grasses beyond the small stand of trees.

  Emilija raced after me. She whistled once, and I heard, too late, the barking of a dog.

  From the corner of my eye, I caught a blur of black and white streaking toward me. I pushed myself to run faster, my lungs burning, but the dog plowed me down just as Emilija caught up with me. She was scarcely winded.

  I spat dirt out of my mouth and tried to shift the dog from my back, but the low growl rumbling even through its paws persuaded me to stop moving.

  Emilija fastened rope securely around both my wrists before calling her dog off. She yanked me up from the ground. The dog, a lovely Dalmatian, sat quietly at her side.

  “I’m not sorry,” I said.

  “I should think poorly of you if you were,” she said. “Come. We’ve some ways to go.”

  “How far?”

  “My father’s men tracked you as far as the Duna. They thought you had gone on to the Bükk Mountains, but I knew better. I tracked you alone.” She sounded smug.

  “Yes, but how far must we go?”

  “My father said to take you back to Vienna if I found you. He has gone to the Balaton region to meet the Croat army coming up from Slavonia.”

  An army. Less than a year after I had broken the Binding and Hungary had broken away from Austria, and already my poor Hungarians were to be at war again. This is what Hunger and Vasilisa want. Would this girl believe me if I said as much?

  Emilija led me back to where her horse was tied. She gave me a severe look. “You can either ride with me or walk behind my horse. Your choice. But if you wish to ride, you must cooperate when I help you mount.”

  My feet ached from the miles I’d come on foot. “I’ll ride.”

  She nodded and cupped her hands together to make a step for me. I swung up onto the saddle, grasping the pommel with both bound hands. The mare twitched beneath me, and I had nearly tapped my heels to her flanks, to ride off without my captor, when Emilija said, “I wouldn’t. Vatra is superbly trained. She would stop as soon as I called her, and then you should be forced to run behind us.”

  I stilled my feet, and Emilija swung up behind me. She seemed much more comfortable astride than I was.

  We crossed back over the river I had forded with such difficulty the night before and rode for some time beneath the blazing sun, cutting across the rolling prairie grass like a schooner through the seas. I watched water mirages appear and disappear and plotted wild ways to escape, before settling on the most likely: waiting until she slept and then trying to work loose my bonds.

  As a captor, Emilija was not unkind. She stopped at regular intervals for food and water (in truth, I ate better as a captive than I had as a fugitive); she allowed me to relieve myself in relative privacy, though she kept the long end of the rope binding my hands as a kind of leash.

  She was not much of a conversationalist either. Though perhaps the fault was mine, for choosing poor topics of conversation.

  “You know they mean to kill me in Vienna?”

  “Yes.”

  “You feel no guilt for leading me to my death?”

  “No. I am a soldier, and you broke the law.”

  “There was no trial—no proof!”

  “You killed a man and used his death to power a spell.”

  I used his death to break a spell. I swallowed the correction. “I broke the Binding. It was an unjust spell, and I am not sorry for what I did.”

  I wondered if that were still true. I was not sorry the Binding was gone, but I wished Mátyás were not dead. I wished Grandmama had not died to allow me entrance to the spell. And now that Hungary was on the brink of war, and the creatures I had released from the Binding spell were preparing to incite even further destruction, a cold swell of doubt settled in my stomach. Had I done the right thing?

  Yes, I thought, remembering Gábor and the soldiers we’d released from the prison, the celebrating in the streets when the Hungarians learned the head of the Austrian Circle had resigned. Whatever had happened after, I had been right to act. I was not responsible for what others had chosen in the aftermath.

  Perhaps, if I could get Emilija to sympathize with me, she might let me free. At least, she might not watch me so closely. “They would have killed the man I loved.” Pain wrenched through me at the thought of Gábor. I had loved him—loved him still, despite the anger that burned through me at the memory of our last meeting. We had not had enough time together for me to know if I could have sacrificed everything for him. I believed I could, if the love was deep enough, true enough, enduring enough. But Gábor had never given me the chance to find out.

  When she did not answer, I asked, “Have you never been in love?”

  “No,” she said. “And before you pity me, you should know I have never wished to be. I am a soldier, and a good one. I would not have broken the law, not even for love.”

  So much for sympathy.

  But falling in love had never been a conscious choice. I had been well in it before I realized what was happening.

  I sniffed. It didn’t seem possible that all the energy and ardency I had thrown into the Congress, into protecting the praetheria, could end in this: capture by a gi
rl-soldier and death—by gunfire, if I was lucky. By a noose, if I was not.

  Perhaps I should have let Vasilisa take me. Then I might have survived long enough to escape again. Perhaps I should have let myself drown.

  I shook myself. I would find a way out of this yet.

  “Can you tell me,” Emilija said, breaking in on my thoughts, “what it was that attacked you several nights past? I found the remains of the horse you had ridden and a pack with clothes and some money—at least, I believe it was yours. My dog certainly seemed to think so.”

  “Your father’s men are not the only ones hunting me. The praetheria have been following me too.”

  “Your friends have turned on you so soon?”

  Had they ever been friends? I had thought so, once. But Hunger, who had told Noémi the only secret I kept from her, was not my friend. Vasilisa, hunting after me with wolves, was not my friend.

  I didn’t answer.

  We crossed a thin stream as ink bled across the sky, only a narrow band of gold on the horizon. Emilija drew to a halt and helped me dismount, securing the end of my leash to a tree before rubbing down her horse and turning it loose on the grasses. The Dalmatian flopped on the ground beside me, puffing happily. For a soldier’s dog, he seemed entirely too good-natured.

  A bird shot from a nearby tree and zoomed past, startling me. I caught only a glimpse of the banded face, the narrow falcon tail, and froze.

  Emilija laughed. “Are you frightened? It’s only a kestrel. They’re common enough.”

  “I know what it is,” I said, fear making me irritable. “But that bird—I think it belongs to the praetherian who’s hunting me. We need to leave. Now.”

  In the grass nearby, Vatra pricked up her ears. Emilija’s dog was on his feet beside me, fur bristling, his entire body vibrating with a low growl.

  Emilija glanced from her animals to the disappearing speck of the falcon in the darkening sky. Her eyebrows drew together, and she tugged on the end of one braid. “You’re spinning stories.” But a note of uncertainty hung in her voice.