Stain

by A. G. Howard

  He and his lieutenant exchanged awed glances. “Weren’t they said to be extinct?” Cyprian asked under his breath.

  “Either the scribes were misinformed,” Vesper answered, “or this is a breed yet undiscovered.”

  The beast pressed forward, intensifying Vesper’s need to get closer. The gold-plated flesh in his torso, arm, and leg vibrated, as if being hammered flat. He ground his teeth and took a step.

  “Your Majesty, no!” Cyprian tugged him back. His first knight struggled to brandish his sword, but he couldn’t risk their own mounts skidding around them through the ash. Their barding wouldn’t stand up to the slash of a silver blade.

  Vesper’s lungs filled with dust and smoke. He coughed, shaking himself out of the trance. He captured Lanthe’s reins and backed up the horse, putting himself between the stallion and their winged attacker. Vesper’s veins stung, as if his blood rebelled against moving away from the Pegasus, but he continued, indicating Cyprian do the same. It was a maneuver the mounts were familiar with, having learned it to escape cadaver brambles along cramped trails.

  Once Lanthe’s tail reached the path’s opening, Selena handed off the wriggling Nysa to Luna, who was seated on a horse behind her. Selena then coaxed Dusklight’s head down and vaulted herself onto Lanthe’s hindquarters. She scooted into the saddle, then reined him in and backed him all the way onto the small trail where the others made room. Without losing a beat, she did the same for Cyprian’s horse. She then motioned to everyone to back up farther, allowing space for Vesper and Cyprian to enter the path on foot.

  Snorting black soot from its nostrils, the Pegasus whipped one wing down to hide the smoke-filled passage that led out of the clearing and into the ravine, then used its body to force Cyprian onto the other trail with the waiting troop. The first knight dropped his sword, but he hadn’t time to retrieve it before the Pegasus pawed it with a front hoof; the blade spun atop a spray of cinders and ash, coming to rest a few feet from Vesper.

  The Pegasus lifted its head high. A flame huffed from its mouth and nostrils. Cyprian turned his back and barely had time to drive everyone farther inside before the fire engulfed the front of the path. More vines fell and shut off the opening.

  Vesper turned back, cornered by the Pegasus. The beast’s movements were agile and precise, not ravening and mad. From the other side of the thorny wall, Nysa barked and Vesper’s troop shouted, but he couldn’t make out their words.

  The Pegasus reared and whinnied—a threatening and victorious sound. It was a male. Perhaps he was territorial, and they’d stumbled upon his den. The beast dropped his front hooves into the ash beneath him, raising a clap of dust that mingled with the fresh smoke.

  His eyes ignited with sentience and strategies far beyond instinct. Rearing again, the Pegasus came down within inches of Vesper’s head. The prince dove, rolled through the ash, and dropped his knife in exchange for Cyprian’s fallen sword. He brought the long blade up and felt a jolt. In the same move, he twisted his torso so the beast’s hooves came crashing down upon his ossified abdomen.

  Every bone in Vesper’s body reverberated like a metal gong being struck. His rib cage hummed, shaking his heart, but he spun to his feet. He stood, panting. Sweat beaded the edge of the eel-skin hood fitted snug over his hair. He lifted the sword high to fend off another attack. A fiery sludge drizzled along the blade’s edge, so hot it melted the silver. Vesper realized he’d made contact in the same instant the Pegasus did.

  The beast grunted and backed up, plugging the one way out of the clearing. His left wing hung limp where it joined his muscular shoulder. The black feathers shimmered with the same molten ooze that coated Cyprian’s sword: blood.

  A moan of sympathy shuddered through Vesper’s throat.

  Glancing once at his wound, the Pegasus’s eyes lit to a furious red, and he lifted his head high, prepared to release a rain of fire.

  Vesper crossed his arms over his head, having nowhere to run. His eyes closed instinctively to shield from the brilliant flash of light. But instead of being engulfed in flame, he heard a small crash to the left.

  The prince’s eyes snapped open to see a gangly boy plunge out of a fresh-made gap, breeches ripped up to his knees and shirt hanging in shreds beneath a vest. His dingy skin and even his buzzed, dark hair sported punctures where thorns had gouged him on his way in. Blood slicked his unshod feet, yet he seemed oblivious to any pain as he shoved Vesper back and stood between the prince and the Pegasus.

  The beast stomped and grunted, a froth of cinders flecking his mouth.

  “Step back, son,” Vesper said, grasping the boy’s scrawny elbow and readying the sword. “This is no ordinary creature.”

  The boy shook him off and tramped forward three more steps, eyes locked on the winged horse. There was a mental tug-of-war taking place; Vesper had been on the outside of enough silent conversations over the past few years to recognize one.

  With an ear-shattering bellow, the Pegasus spun and thundered down the path he’d been blocking, swallowed by smoke. The boy stood frozen, watching after him. Vesper stepped up, and the lad’s head barely came to his chest. So small to be so brave.

  “Thank you, son.” Vesper placed a gloved hand on his slender shoulder. “Let me help you now. We have food . . . water . . . clothing and shoes to spare.”

  The boy grabbed the prince’s wrist with his own gloved palm, spun, and slammed his head into Vesper’s chest. The prince’s golden shin gave out and he fell backward. He struggled to catch a breath as his attacker pried the melting sword from his fingers and flung it aside.

  The boy’s lips, strangely pretty beneath their smudges, were pressed tight—as if holding in screams. He used his hands, signing to Vesper: I am no one’s son. And I don’t need help from one who makes a living of savagery. Then he scrambled back toward the path to pursue the Pegasus.

  Intrigued by the boy’s knowledge of the ancient language, Vesper lunged and caught his ankle. His hand slipped in the blood smears, but managed to hold on and topple his opponent onto his back. The boy landed, a gush of breath bursting from his lungs. He struggled—kicking, biting, scratching.

  “Hold still!” Vesper gritted his teeth as he dragged him closer. He’d had an easier time taking down the cadaver bramble. Of course, he didn’t wish to break or harm this particular adversary, so he reined in his full strength. But what the boy lacked in brute strength he made up for in speed and wiles. He was matching the prince move for move.

  Vesper took a cuff to the chin that left his skull ringing. “Would you stop? I simply want to talk to you!”

  The boy snatched Vesper’s half-buried knife. A toothy grimace glared white against his grungy face as he lashed out with the blade. A canine snarl broke from the smoky pathway. Vesper only had time enough to leap to his feet as a red fox dashed in, fangs bared. The boy stood and tucked the knife in his vest. Growling quietly at his side, the fox backed toward the path. Sooty clouds hung heavy in the opening, a black fog waiting to swallow them. As the lad ducked in beside his pet, he cast a final glare at Vesper.

  The prince couldn’t move. Those eyes, peering out from the darkness, shifted to an amber so bright they illuminated a thousand lashes, a quality the prince had failed to notice earlier during the chaos. Now the lashes were all Prince Vesper could see: so long and feathery they resembled the lacy, crystalline deposits of water vapor frozen in mid-drizzle upon branches and shrubbery in Nerezeth.

  No one in the day realm had eyes like that.

  “You don’t belong here,” Vesper murmured.

  Huffing, the boy kicked a plume of ash toward him, then sprinted into the dark passage, the fox following at his heels.

  Vesper stood in the floating ash. Awareness came back in increments: the scent of the beast’s blood—metallic and scorched along the melting silver sword; a slight itch across his skin where the golden plates slowed their thrumming; the taste of ash coating his lips; the nicker of horses, the call of jackdaws, and Nysa’s grow
ling barks; the sound of his troop hacking at their thorny enclosure.

  Dolyn, Leo, and Luna broke through first with axes in hand. Next, Nysa scampered out alongside Selena and Alger, with Thea and Tybalt close behind. Black soot smudged everyone’s silvery-white hair, eyebrows, and pale flesh.

  “Are the others all right?” Vesper asked, lowering a hand to scratch the spaniel behind her ears.

  “Cyprian was burned,” Selena answered.

  Vesper cursed and started toward the opening.

  Selena stopped him. “He’s all right. Luna is wrapping the wound.”

  Vesper nodded. Luna had bandaged his own wound earlier. Her experience as a field nurse was already proving beneficial.

  Selena managed a self-deprecating smirk. “Cyprian will be furious that I told you. He hopes to hide his injury. He wanted me to find you, so I’d stop fussing over him.”

  Vesper shook his head, attempting an answering smile. “I highly doubt that’s true. Since when has Cyprian balked at your attention?”

  She bit her lip and her white lashes fluttered down. Vesper wondered what had happened between the two during the interim while he was separated from everyone.

  “And the horses?” He dragged off his hood and released his dark hair. Right now, he was more than Selena’s brother. He was their leader in this foreign land, and they’d almost all ended up as kindling.

  “They’re good enough. Just spooked.”

  He watched Nysa snuffle around the clearing. “Did any of you see what took place in here?” He lifted the sword that had disintegrated to half its size.

  Leo stepped over. “Cyprian won’t be happy about that.”

  Vesper fought a bout of sympathy. The sword had been a gift from Sir Andrian. Cyprian’s father had recently passed away of the same sickness that killed Vesper’s own. When the molten blood started oozing toward his hand, Vesper dropped the blade again.

  Luna nudged the sword’s handle with her boot toe. “We were watching as best we could through the slits. A Pegasus?”

  Vesper raised his eyebrows. “It would seem.”

  “And who was that poverty-stricken child?” Luna asked, weaving loose silver hairs back into her braid and wiping smudges from her neck.

  Vesper rubbed his bruised chin, still mystified by the lad’s courage. I am no one’s son, he’d signed. “An orphaned stripling. Unable to use his voice. His wrists and ankles were as small as twigs, yet he staved off my death by simply standing there.”

  The boy had proven himself a worthy sparring partner as well. There was a spindly confidence to his movements, like the small luminous spiders that occupied places of honor and reverence alongside the crickets in Nerezeth’s castle. Vesper’s family and subjects always took care not to step upon the royal bugs. Yet here was this boy who appeared to have been trampled again and again and somehow kept going. Finespun as glass and tough as iron. A mix of qualities that intrigued Vesper beyond reason.

  “What’s this?” Selena wandered over to the jagged opening the boy had made. She lifted a pouch that was dangling from one of the vines. “Must’ve slipped off in his struggle to plunge through.”

  Vesper took it. Opening the flap revealed two jars. Upon seeing their contents, his mood turned somber. “That was no common boy. He walks through brambles without shoes; he faces flame without cowering; he commands untamable beasts and signs in the ancient language. And then this . . .”

  Selena took the pouch back and looked for herself. “Shadows and crickets, smuggled in from Nerezeth?”

  Vesper tensed. “He stole my knife, but it looks like that’s the least of his crimes.” He waved Alger, Leo, Thea, Tybalt, and Uric over. “Follow his trail. Go on foot and we’ll see to your horses. He had the eyes of a Nerezethite, which means he can see in darkness. Perhaps he’s a scout, paid to lead smugglers into the night realm.”

  “You think he has something to do with the stags?”

  Vesper didn’t want to think ill of the child. “He saved me from being burned to death—even while under the impression I was an assassin. There’s good in him. I can’t see him as the one who fatally wounded our gatekeepers. He was furious that I harmed the Pegasus. Still, it’s possible he knows something.”

  Alger, Thea, and Leo started toward the opening that led out to the ravine where Tybalt and Uric already waited. At last the soot had cleared away.

  “Wait.” Vesper scooped up his sister’s pet. “Take Nysa; she can scent the fox. I suspect if you find it, you find the boy.”

  Selena reached for her pet, but Vesper passed the dog off to Leo. “I need you here, Selena. We’ll set up camp . . . surround it with rocks to stave off quag-puddles and gather some twigs for a fire. Cyprian can use some nourishment, and the horses have earned oats and rest. There’s a cascade of fresh water running down a steep embankment of rocks, just on the other side of that passage. It leads to a small tarn where we can fill our skins. There are even fish we might roast for dinner.”

  “How do you know all that?” Selena asked, but before Vesper could search for an answer within himself, Leo interrupted.

  “What of the witch?” he asked. Distracted by the dog’s licking tongue, he hadn’t heard the question on the table.

  “Thana is watching over her,” Vesper answered. “If you happen to run across them, try to apprehend the witch and bring her to camp for questioning. But do not cross the threshold to her home. According to Dyadia, it’s accursed with violent magical wards. Whatever happens, be back by the cessation course. We’ll resume the mission when the denizens are sleeping.”

  “So, the boy is our priority for now?”

  “Yes. Let Nysa concentrate on the little thief, before his scent is gone.” Vesper chose his words carefully, trying to justify his sudden change in priority. Truth was, he needed to find the orphan for himself, to absolve the confusing emotions awhirl within him. “The boy might offer aid in what’s happening at the Rigamort, considering his smuggled items. I intend to know who he is, what he’s about, and where he’s from, before this day is over.”

  Leo nodded, bid his wife good-bye, and left with his group.

  As others guided the horses through the clearing and into the exit passage, Cyprian joined the prince where he crouched beside the sword handle—all that was left of the blade.

  Vesper gripped his friend’s shoulder, careful to avoid his neck and collarbone where bandages covered his burns. “I’m sorry, Cyp.”

  His friend did an admirable job suppressing his disappointment as he sheathed the handle. “I’ve never seen a beast like that. What other mystical secrets does this forest hold?”

  Vesper had no answer, for he was keeping a secret himself: the effect the Pegasus had on him; how the beast had beckoned to his own blood, how even now he could feel that telling prickle spread through his left arm. Like golden vines, the metallic shimmer expanded where his wrist and the back of his hand showed between his sleeve and glove. He would have to make an incision and drain the poison before it petrified and left his fingers completely useless. Vesper’s dagger had been stolen, so he needed Selena’s, and he’d need her assistance closing the incision—too private a procedure to ask help of anyone other than family.

  He’d soon have a new scar.

  Vesper clenched his jaw against the brittle, creeping sensations, determined to understand how the Pegasus had the power to affect him. Since the orphan stripling seemed to have a mental connection to the beast . . . he might be key to that as well.

  Vesper assured himself these were logical reasons for this urgency to retrieve his small rescuer—to prioritize this vexing fascination for those lips and eyes, for that fighting spirit, over finding the witch and getting to the castle.

  Madame Dyadia would say the fates had set the boy in their path for a purpose; that there was no such thing as an accidental meeting where the prophecy was concerned. But what role could a ragamuffin thief possibly play in reuniting the sun and the moon?

  15

&nb
sp; Charitable Secrets and Merciful Lies

  In any other part of Eldoria, a man carrying a bleeding, bedraggled boy who wriggled to break free would raise eyebrows. In the ravine, it was little more noticed than having the same “man” run alongside that boy’s ankles moments earlier as a fox. A metropolis filled with villains had a unique code of ethics: apathy was a courtesy everyone extended without question, in hopes the same would be passed on to them. So, as Luce carried Stain past men and women going to and from market, or off to spend their lucre at the Wayward Tavern—located in the hollowed-out trunk of the forest’s widest tree—no one even glanced their way.

  Upon their escape from the labyrinth, Luce had morphed into his human form and, without a warning, lifted Stain and pinned her between the edge of his rib cage and his hip bone—much like he toted large sacks of ash from their home after Crony had swept the floors. Luckily, he’d kept Stain facing the same direction as him.

  Put me down. Signing from this awkward position wasn’t easy. She jostled with his every step, causing her shoulders to jerk and making it difficult to form her fingers into anything legible.

  “I will not.”

  She sighed at the resolve in his voice, resigning herself to his brisk, bumpy stroll over ambling tree roots and around quag-puddles. Urgency gnawed behind her sternum, so much more agonizing than the ache in her shredded feet. She needed to get to Scorch. She’d wounded his pride, and that lesion would fester and spread even faster than the slash to his wing if she didn’t find him soon.

  I wish to walk on my own beside you. This is humiliating. Please.

  Luce directed a grimace her way. “You were fool enough to go gallivanting about without your boots, but I’m not fool enough to turn you loose just so you can chase your fancy donkey.”

  His mention of Scorch pricked Stain’s heart deeper, as if a thorn had wedged within it during her tear through the labyrinth. Her eyes stung, but no relief would come. Much the same as her hair wouldn’t grow, she hadn’t shed a single tear since she’d first awakened on the lumpy mattress in Crony’s house, no matter how sad, confused, or brokenhearted she felt at times. Perhaps she’d cried so hard on that day someone tortured her and left her to die that she had no tears left in her body. Yet that didn’t stop her soul from weeping when someone she loved was in pain.