by Adi Rule
“He’s meditating,” he says, out of breath.
I poke my head out. The huge, glowing warrior swings his translucent sword, lopping off the top of an ornamental tree and causing the heavy branches to fly at a knot of palace guards. “Huh,” I say. “I thought meditation was less … exciting.”
Zahi’s eyes meet mine for just a moment. “Sometimes,” he says.
Corvin rolls to a stop next to us. “Hello, kids,” he says as Zahi shoots him a venomous look. “So, Lord Zan, any thoughts about taking on an enormous, slightly invisible soldier from what looks to be roughly”—he cranes his neck over the top of the flower bed—“a thousand years ago?”
“I certainly have some thoughts about beefing up security in the Temple dungeon,” Zahi says sardonically.
A thousand years ago. I peer through the flowers at the giant soldier. And then I know him—he is the warrior from the fountain in High Ra Square. “That’s Dal Roet,” I say. “Why?”
“Advanced meditation can produce visions of the past, as you know,” Zahi says.
“That vision just tossed a man ten yards,” Corvin says.
“The Onyx Staff is a powerful priest.” Zahi risks a glance over the top of the flower bed and ducks as a piece of twisted metal zings by his head. “His vision is—well, it’s real. Sort of. I think this Dal Roet is fighting the War of the Burning Land, right here. He’s enormous, I’d guess, because he’s so legendary. Or something.” He stands. “Look, redwing, I need to stop this one way or another.” And he is off into the confusion of moonlit bodies.
I look at the towering warrior, then at Corvin. “But why? Why would the Onyx Staff summon—or meditate on, or whatever it is—why would he call forth Dal Roet?”
Corvin wipes Fir’s saber on the grass. “I don’t know. The Onyx Staff isn’t known for making logical decisions.”
I shake my head. “They’re logical to him. And he wouldn’t call forth Dal Roet.” My stomach lurches. “He would call forth Bet-Nef.”
And then it makes sense. But can it really be true? Is the striking warrior whose elegant marble face gazes dispassionately over the most powerful temple in Caldaras not the hero Dal Roet—but the monster Bet-Nef?
Suddenly, the warrior turns his massive head toward me and fixes me with a burning gaze. The adrenaline surging through my body numbed my awareness of everything else, but now I start to feel again. Not only the sparking at my center, but a terrible burning throughout the scars on my back. It’s all I can do not to curl up on the ground.
Corvin leans in. “No one can fight this thing. We should help get people to safety, figure out what to do next. Start to evacuate the city.”
“Go,” I say, craning my neck to make out the features of the now towering man. “I have to talk to him.”
“You have to talk to him?” Corvin’s eyes widen.
“Go!” I snap, and I start to run. Most of the guards have fled. I see Zahi—a prostrate shape, unmoving in a bed of trampled flowers.
My breath stops for a moment. But I can do nothing for him, so I keep running.
“Bet-Nef!” I shout to the enormous warrior. “Monster that you are! Over here!”
The Onyx Staff turns to me from inside Bet-Nef’s glowing boot. He clutches Mol’s Heart, which glows red between his fingers. He frowns at me. “I remember you. Did I not have you put down?”
“Not quite,” I say. Now his expression turns to one of horror, as a searing pain rips through my back and forces me to my knees.
“Sweet Rasus,” he murmurs. “A redwing.”
My vision is hazy with agony, but I manage to snort at him. “Yes. A goddamn redwing. The lies you told my sister? Turns out they were all true. Surprise, you bastard.” And all at once, the pain is gone. The Onyx Staff takes a step backwards, and Bet-Nef finally looks down at me.
“Surrender, Dal Roet.” His voice booms through the grounds, rattling windows and bending flower stalks.
I look up. “What? Me?”
“Surrender, Dal Roet. I shall not be merciful.”
“Get away,” the Onyx Staff barks. “I’ll give you one chance, you uncrushable flea. Run away before I bestow this heart upon Bet-Nef, and you may be granted a third life.”
“Give him Mol’s Heart?” I say. “He is only a memory!”
The Onyx Staff smiles. “For now. But when I give him the beating heart of a god, he will live again.” And he throws his hands into the air and releases the Heart, which starts to float upward.
I gape at him. Nara was wrong. The Beautiful Ones didn’t just want to bring back Bet-Nef’s ideals. They wanted to bring back Bet-Nef himself. And it’s happening.
The giant warrior has me in his gaze still, and for a moment, all I can do is stare. As Mol’s Heart rises, it glows more fiercely with each passing second.
“Lin!” A hand finds my shoulder. I turn. Corvin remains after all, and is staring at me with wide, shimmering eyes. “Look at you!”
I stare back at him. My chemise hangs from my body by threads, and I’m suddenly off balance. Corvin steadies me with his hand. I twist my neck, and freeze in shock. Behind me, I can just see a glimmering curve, a spiderweb of red that illuminates Corvin’s face and everything around me, shuddering in the light breeze.
“Lin,” Corvin says. “They’re—”
But I know what they are. Four of them, just like the redwing in High Ra Square. I know the pattern of those glowing red spiderwebs; I have known it my entire life. Not scars after all. Lying dormant. Just waiting to peel away from my back.
So redwings have wings after all.
Inhaling, I flex these new muscles. The night breeze lifts me, slides over my skin like silk, as the humans on the lawn watch in astonishment. I tilt and ride and ascend, the insect wings that reach into the sky from my raw back bathing the grounds of the Copper Palace in vivid red light.
Bet-Nef gives a roar and swings his fiery sword, but I dance away from it, propelling myself over his shoulder with little effort. I do not feel like the raptors, gliding with the air currents, negotiating. Nor am I reminded of the thick weightlessness of water. I ride the light, the red radiance from my own wings.
I am free.
“Redwing!” the Onyx Staff bellows from below, pointing. “See it there, you who did not heed my warnings!”
The crowd watches, rapt. But I keep my focus on the giant Bet-Nef, who lunges at me again, the rush of air from his translucent sword swirling my ragged clothes. He becomes more solid with each second.
I fix my gaze on the pulsing Heart within him. If only I had destroyed it when I had the chance … but my own heart wouldn’t let me.
I dive behind a copper tower, Bet-Nef’s blade nicking my arm with cold fire. I have no weapons, only the blaze at the center of my body that longs to lash out in lightning fury. But maybe that will be enough against a memory?
He coils his muscles again, ready to swing. I have to time it right. Too early and his first slice will connect. Too late, and his second will. I hover at the edge of his reach. He draws back his enormous blade, its white glimmer making the walls of the Copper Palace gleam against the night.
He swings and I dive, shooting straight for his chest. The ancient sword misses me by inches, singeing the cuff of my pant leg, and he draws it back for another go. But I am through him, arms outstretched. I am through his glowing armor, his translucent flesh. The cold memory of his blood surrounds me, suffocating, and I push through until I feel the small warmth of Mol’s Heart at my fingers. I grasp it and clutch it to my chest as my body keeps going, shattering through the massive, glistening spine and back out into the balmy air.
The warrior drops his sword, pressing his hands to his chest. With a force that makes Roet Island tremble, he falls. The Onyx Staff falls with him.
Bet-Nef follows my progress with great, luminous eyes, until I alight. I stare at my hands, now empty. Where is the Heart? Did I drop it? Destroy it?
And then I know. I feel. A tiny pulsing in my chest
, a new glow to my skin.
Mol’s Heart is mine.
“I would speak with you,” the echoing voice of Bet-Nef calls to me across the grass.
“And I would speak with you,” I say. “This city is under my protection.”
“You fight well, Dal Roet.” Bet-Nef’s voice is becoming fainter.
“Why do you call me by that name?” I ask. Beyond the palace walls, the looming summit of Mol gleams soft orange in the darkness.
Bet-Nef regards me. “You do not know me, brother?”
Brother. I remain still, casting my red light onto the wide lawn. I sense the people around me watching, holding their breath. “I know you only as a monster,” I say.
The vision of Bet-Nef blinks slowly. “Humans are many things, brother. Monsters all. Angels all.” He surveys the grounds. I can’t tell if his gaze is with us or in the past. “You have the best of me this day. My army is in ruins. The city is yours. And yet…” He smiles.
“Out with it,” I say. Mol’s Heart thrums lightly in my chest, sending tingles through my veins.
Bet-Nef breathes deeply. “And yet, I will have the best of you. My name may be hated henceforth and yours will be glorified. But even now, my followers burrow into this city. They come not with swords, but words. Tales. Legends.” He closes his shining eyes. “In a century, no one will remember what you were, my brother. I have sown the seeds of history, and the harvest will bring nothing but misery for your kind.” He laughs. “Enjoy your victory, redwing.”
And then he is gone, the light of memory faded once again into the gray wash of time.
seventeen
Caldaras City at night always carried with it a unique combination of gloom and menace. But now that the Deep Dark is upon us, the citizenry has embraced the black fog and strange noises. We prod the night with glittering candles and bright fabrics. We walk the streets at all hours.
With the poultry living out what will probably be the most confusing year of their lives, we awaken each day to bells instead of crowing. Ornate old things, the bells’ dusty voices sing over the city from forgotten cupolas and bell towers, with the most resonant, imposing song coming from the highest dome of the Temple of Rasus.
It is fitting that when we learned the true nature of our storied heroes, day became night. So many hearts and words were turned upside down the evening of Crepuscule. Bet-Nef, both a monster and a human. Dal Roet, his twin brother and our savior, a redwing. Yet now a rightness pervades the city that wasn’t there before. At least for me.
As soon as Master Fibbori’s team had made the Copper Palace grounds beautiful again, it was time for official words to be spoken. When the Empress declared me a hero, Papa fell to his knees in the middle of the crowd on the Copper Palace lawn. And when the Salt Throne pardoned all redwings, past and future, he wept for three days. I had so much fear and guilt bottled up in my veins, I never realized how much my father had been keeping in his own heart.
“It’s damned chilly,” Fir says, her hair a dark tangle against the night sky. “Can’t you set something on fire with those crazy spark-fingers of yours?”
I rest my chin on the aviary’s metal railing. Below us in High Ra Square, the priests are just finishing their morning meditations. Without the sunlight interfering, we can see the muted rainbow of the glowing visions much more distinctly. “I could melt this railing,” I say, “but I’d probably burn your face off in the process.”
“Cute,” she says, shivering so intensely in the breeze that it borders on theatrical.
“Some Fog Walker you are, Fir,” Corvin pipes up from my other side. “Ten degrees’ difference, and your blood turns to ice water.”
“More like twenty,” Fir grumbles, rubbing her hands together. “Thirty, even.”
“It’s only a year,” I say. “Then we can steam like vegetables all we want.”
The priests begin to disperse, but the three of us remain. Is it comfort or simply inertia? Or something else?
“How’s your garden taking to the darkness?” Corvin asks me.
“Better than expected.” I watch a few storefronts and offices flicker to life in the streets below. “My father constructed a spectacularly odd arrangement of mirrors and lamps that seems to be doing the trick. It’s based on some Roet Island designs.”
Corvin smiles in the dimness. Then he asks quietly, “Still no word from your sister?”
“Tactful,” Fir says.
I laugh over the pang in my heart, and both the pain and the joy are real. “That’s all right. If you can’t ask awkward personal questions of your friends, who can you?”
Corvin looks out across the twinkling square. “She should have come for your ceremony.”
“She’ll come eventually,” I say.
The railing clangs as Fir gets to her feet. “Can’t waste the day up here.” She leans over, her hair streaming in the dark breeze. “It’ll take us until lunchtime just to climb down.” Now she looks over at me. “Those of us who can’t fly.”
I rest back on my elbows. “I’m not just going to fly everywhere, you know.”
“Not even for our enjoyment?” Corvin gives me a cheeky smile. Then he says softly, “I’ll never forget the way those wings peeled away from your back and sent you dancing into the air. They were there the whole time, and nobody knew.”
Fir takes an echoey step toward the little window we climbed out of. “Oh, keep it together, will you? Ver’s green ass, Corvin. Come on, Lin. The Empress will be expecting us.”
I get lazily to my feet. “The Heart is fine. I can feel it inside me, humming along.” I gesture to the volcano that watches over us from beyond Lake Azure Wave, still glowing faintly from the inside. “Mol doesn’t seem to be complaining, at any rate.”
“She wants reassurance,” Fir says. “You can’t begrudge her that.”
“If we must.” I stretch down a hand and pull Corvin to his feet.
Fir pulls open the creaking window frame. “You’ll be fine. He won’t even be there. They say he left before the mess was even cleared up. Won’t even help his brother hunt down the Beautiful Ones.”
In truth, I still don’t know which of us betrayed the other. Zahi is gone, and I can hardly blame him. But all I say to Fir is, “I don’t know who you mean.”
Fir laughs, but Corvin is silent. We crawl through the window one by one, descend into the quiet shadows of the old aviary. In some ways, I have traveled this path many times, as my sister and I came together to watch the morning meditations, or separated afterwards, she to her life and me to mine. But today, in the new darkness, I am no longer Jey with the wrong eyes and the wrong blood. I am me. A redwing. With all as it should be. I am Lin.
Discover a world of dark secrets, music, and romance in Adi Rule’s
Strange Sweet Song
Read on for more.
Available now from St. Martin’s Griffin.
Copyright © 2014 by Adi Rule
one
If you had been there that night, the night it happened, you might not have even noticed. The strings and woodwinds shone fat and glossy in the concert hall’s perfect humidity, and the brass instruments sparkled in the gentle light of the chandeliers. The music itself shimmered as well, lighting up dark places people hadn’t even known were there.
You might not have noticed the small movement. It fluttered the fading sunlight stretching in through one of the high, arched windows that encircled the room like a crown. You would have been staring at the orchestra, or at the polished floor, or at the blackness inside your closed eyelids, as the music swirled around you. Had you opened your eyes or broken your fuzzy-glass gaze and looked up at the fluttering light, you would have seen the silhouette of the crow. But you wouldn’t have heard it, because the crow didn’t make a sound.
At least, not at first. It alighted on the ledge of the little window and folded its wings, flexing its toes as though it meant to be there awhile. Some of the windows still held their colorful panels, but the crow h
ad chosen one through which tendrils of ivy had pushed their way, dislodging the glass with a long-forgotten drop and shatter.
The crow seemed comfortable, somehow, and not just because it was a crow adorning a remote Gothic hall surrounded by dark pine trees; not just because St. Augustine’s was a natural place for a crow to be. It seemed to be listening, cocking its head and stretching its black neck as far into the room as it could.
At intermission, the grand piano was wheeled onto the stage, black and sleek and curvy. The crow looked at the piano with one eye and then the other and ruffled its wings. As the audience applauded, a middle-aged woman lowered herself onto the bench and placed her hands on the gleaming keys, stretching and bending her fingers. The crow twitched its own knobbly gray feet experimentally.
Then the conductor waved the orchestra to life again—a romantic piano concerto well known to the concertgoers, who settled in their seats and breathed.
When the woman at the piano began to play, when the first smooth, icy notes reached the small, broken window in the ceiling, the crow froze. It stared, its dingy feathers raised just a little. It was listening again, but now it listened with its whole body. As the concerto progressed, the crow remained utterly still. It might have been a stone gargoyle, except there was something too bright about its eyes. They were fixed on the woman’s hands.
If you had looked, then, into the crow’s eyes, if you had been a ghost or a puff of smoke and had floated up to the ceiling to look deeply into those shiny black eyes where the brilliant white keys were reflected, you would have seen a despair bigger than those eyes could hold, bigger than the hall itself.
And you would have heard the faintest hiss—an ugly, crackling hiss, as different from the pure, clear tones of the piano as it could possibly be. You might then have noticed the grubby beak was open very slightly. And you might have realized with a start that the crow was trying to sing.
But perhaps you were there. Perhaps you already know this story.
two