“But I won’t tell about you! I promise!”
“You’ll have no choice. We’ve heard stories about the king, about what he does to the children who desert him.”
“No worse than what your lions will do to me!”
“They’ll do what they need to. They’ll do what’s best for all of us.”
“For all of you. Not for me.” Crestman’s voice broke across his harsh whisper. “You know they’ll kill me.” His eyes brimmed with tears.
“I know nothing of the sort. Father Nariom has taught my little owls well. They’ll think on this and decide what is right. Now, are you going to eat or not? I need to sweep the floor.”
For a moment, she thought that Crestman would send her away. Then, the boy’s belly rumbled, loud enough that she could hear it in the close room. “I’ll eat.”
She fed him the bitter gruel, using the spoon to wipe spilled porridge from his chin. She ignored the tears that trickled down his cheeks, silver against the scar from his missing tattoo.
The sun was setting by the time the other children returned to the cottage. Shea heard them before she saw them; their voices bounced off the trees. When the group emerged from the forest, they were in high spirits, singing and whooping. Four of the children held strings of fish – lithe, silver trout that danced in the dying sunlight.
Shea crowed praise for her charges, lavishing compliments as Tain cooked supper. She longed to give some of the flaky fish to Crestman, but she dared not. She had replaced his gag at the first sound of the other children, and now she tried to ignore the guilt that tugged at the back of her mind.
Hartley turned to her when everyone had finished eating, after the children had sucked the sweet flesh from heads and tails and fins. Shea’s belly tightened at the grave expression on his face. “We’ve decided. Crestman must die.”
“No!”
“We have no choice. If we let him go, he’ll likely be caught by King Sin Hazar’s men. When they’re through torturing him, they’ll come after us. At the very least, they’ll take Serena and conscript my lions. They might take all the boys. They might burn down the house. They might kill us all.”
“So we’ll keep him. We’ll make him one of us!”
“We can’t trust him, Shea, and I don’t have enough lions to watch him every day. The owls finally agreed. We’ll take him down to the stream and drown him. It will look like an accident, in case any of King Sin Hazar’s soldiers come through here later.”
“He’s just a boy!” Shea exclaimed in anguish, and the words sounded oddly familiar, as if she had wailed them in the past.
“He’s a soldier.”
“Did all of you agree to this?” Shea rounded on the other children. Tain returned her stare placidly. Some of the younger suns looked abashed, but the lions all stared back without blinking. Shea caught a couple of the owls tilting their heads, studying her as if she were some curious specimen.
Torino stepped forward and nodded deferentially. “All of us discussed it. We owls debated it for the better part of the day. There are no alternatives – the soldier must die.”
“Crestman! Say his name, at least.”
Torino shook his head. “His name has no meaning. He’s the enemy. His death will enable us all to live.”
Shea looked at her charges. Hartley gazed back with the solemn expression he used when he assigned his lions their guardposts. Torino blinked hard, but his face betrayed no emotion.
I want things the way they were. Shea thought. I want my own son and daughter. They were good children. They would know right from wrong. Shea raised her chin and announced, “I want this brought before the swan.”
“What!”
She had surprised Hartley. “I want to take this to the swan. Let the swan make the decision.”
“Shea, you know that the Swancastle is empty. King Sin Hazar came through there first of all, when he began assembling the Little Army. You told us yourself that your own daughter was taken.”
She set her jaw against the memory. “We have our own swan. We’ll ask her.”
“Serena?” Hartley almost snorted his surprise.
“Serena.”
“Don’t be ridiculous! She’s a child –”
“Serena,” Shea repeated firmly, feeling the rightness of what she demanded.
“Fine.” Hartley squinted in the dim light and nodded to Tain. “Fetch her downstairs.”
Only a moment later, the oldest sungirl led Serena into the room. The little swan’s pale features were creased into a frown, and her nose twitched at the lingering aroma of trout. She had eaten her share, along with the better part of Tain’s portion, before she had gone up to her room.
Crestman was hustled upright, his hands bound tight behind his back. His mouth was still lashed tight with the gag. Hartley appointed two lions to stand beside the soldier. “The prisoner is to stay silent,” Hartley snapped. “If he so much as sneezes, kill him. Do you understand?” The last question was directed at the trussed-up child-soldier, not the guards. Crestman merely glared at the older lion.
Hartley turned back to Serena. “Swangirl,” he said, and he made a stiff, formal bow. “We would have you decide a matter of justice.”
Serena sniffed again, but a light of power kindled at the back of her eyes. “Aye?”
“The lions and the owls have concluded that this prisoner must die. The sunwoman thinks his life should be spared. What do you say?”
Serena’s voice went soft with wonder. “You want me to decide?”
Hartley responded gruffly, but his words were laden with ingrained respect. “You’re the swan. The only one we have.”
Shea forced herself to step forward. She must speak out against her lion. Hartley was wrong; Torino was wrong. Tain too. They were only children. She was an old woman, and she knew what was right. Shea swallowed hard and worked her throat to get past a lifetime of belief. “Serena, Crestman does not deserve to die.”
“Crestman,” Hartley’s voice grated over the lionname, “is a traitor to his people. He came to kill us. He raised steel against the sunwoman as the children gathered berries. He belongs to King Sin Hazar. We have no idea what deviltry he learned in the Little Army’s camps. He probably knows a dozen way to kill you, swangirl.”
“He’s just a boy!” Shea cried, and now she remembered the first time that she had wailed those words. She remembered receiving the terrible news that Pom had been cut down in King Sin Hazar’s camps. Her only son had been murdered in the barracks of the first corps of child-soldiers, killed when he refused to go along with some brutal Little Army training regimen. Learning of her loss, Shea had cried out even before she realized that she was alone, that she had lost both Pom and Larina, and Bram so long ago. For just an instant, she had pictured herself kneeling in the middle of King Sin Hazar’s camps, on her knees among the children who served the king’s cause. She had seen herself holding Pom’s body, stretching out his boy-arms and his boy-legs.
But she had never seen him. She had never learned what King Sin Hazar’s troops did with Pom’s body, although she had heard the rumors about archery practice and the children’s ravenous hounds. Shea swallowed hard, knowing that she needed to plead her case, knowing that she needed to make Serena understand. The words would not come, though. Shea could only manage, “Serena, he’s a child.”
“We’re all children!” Hartley spat. “We’re all children, and if you let that one live, then all the rest of us will die.”
Serena looked from Hartley to Shea and back again. A look of wonder brightened her pinched face. “You’ll do whatever I say?”
“Aye,” Hartley vowed promptly.
“Aye,” Shea managed after a much longer pause. Serena was a swangirl. Swans must be obeyed. That was what Shea had always believed, before the Uprising. Before the Little Army. Before children had their tattoos carved from their faces.
“Then I say the soldier ... dies.” Serena’s eyes grew wide at the release of pent brea
th from the children. She smiled as if she’d just discovered a new game. “Kill him at dawn.”
All through the night, Shea lay on her cot, listening to her own slow breathing. She had been a fool to bring the matter before Serena, before a six-year-old child who had no concept of life and death. What had Shea been thinking? Why had she thought that Serena would have the maturity, the grace, of a grown, trained swan? Certainly, Serena was not evil, she just did not recognize the power that she held in her silver-winged tattoo. She had had no swans to teach her, to show her the way.
It had taken Shea hours to get the excited children into bed, to calm them after the confrontation on the hearth. She had finally resorted to brewing a posset, surreptitiously adding a fistful of slumberleaf to the dregs of the day’s thin milk. She covered the taste of the sharp herb with a generous dollop of honey, the last in the bare pantry. Even Tain had not suspected her duplicity.
Now, Shea dragged herself to the door, grabbing her ragged shawl against the night’s chill. The Lion was low in the sky.
Sunchildren gave way to the sky in all things. So many suns were born, born to toil in the daylight hours. Born to a hard life of labor, simple, good labor, like the simple, good light of the sun.
Sun, then Lion, then Owl, and Swan, that was the order of the stars, the order of the world. That was the truth that Shea had lived since she was a girl. She had taught that truth to Hartley and Tain, to Pom and Larina, to all her skychildren.
Another star rose on the horizon, the first tip of the Swan’s wing unfolding into the night. Shea closed her eyes and took a deep breath. As she exhaled slowly, she turned back to the cottage. The floor creaked as she walked toward the hearth, but she knew that the drugged children would sleep through any disturbance.
Crestman was watching her, his eyes glinting above his gag. His scar stood out against his pale flesh, glistening reminder of King Sin Hazar. As Shea knelt beside the youth, she could smell the sweat on him, the cold, adult fear that slicked his flesh beneath his bonds.
“I can’t let you go back to the king,” she hissed into the still night. He blinked, as if he understood. “I can’t let you lead that man to my babes.”
Shea thought of the river that flowed through the woods, the cool, clear water that could steal this boy’s life. Her hands shook as she knelt beside him. She could not trust him alone in the world; he’d surely bring King Sin Hazar’s men. Even if the boy did not intentionally seek out the king’s soldiers, he’d be found, tortured.
He needed help. He needed Shea.
The lion’s eyes were bright as she tugged at his bonds, and she shook her head as she slipped off his gag. “Silence, boy,” she hissed. Then, almost to herself, she muttered, “It’s time we changed things.”
Change. So much would be different. The other children would be on their own. Alone. Abandoned.
No, she told herself. Not abandoned. Shea had trained Tain and Hartley. She had raised her oldest sundaughter and lionson to protect her other children. She had prepared them, in case she died in the night. Shea’s brood could survive without her.
If the king’s men did not come and take them. If Crestman did not harm them.
Shea had no choice.
She would have to decide which road to take. She would have to decide when they should eat, when they should move, when they should lie low. So much would be frightening, and terrible, and necessary.
Shea picked free the last knot, and then she helped the lion to his feet. She steadied him as the blood flowed back into his legs. “Wait a minute. Wait until you can feel your feet.”
Ignoring her, Crestman bolted for the door. He stumbled on his blood-starved limbs, though, and she caught him before he fell. Her fingers were tight on his arm as she jerked him around to face her. “I’ll have none of that, lionboy! If we’re going to survive on the road, you’ll listen to me.” Shea swallowed hard and raised her chin. “You’ll do as I say.”
Crestman stared at her for a long minute, and she read the emotions on his face as clearly as if they were stars in the sky. He wanted to speak out. He wanted to remind her that he was a lion, that she was only a sun. He wanted to put Shea in her place, a laborer, a worker. Not a thinker. Not a soldier.
Shea stood her ground, though. She tightened her grip on the lionboy’s arm, her fingers pinching until she felt bone. At last, Crestman nodded, a single, taut bob of his head that told her he understood. He knew that things had changed.
They disappeared into the forest as the Swan crested over the horizon.
Chapter 3
Rani stood on the deck of the ship, looking out at a shoreline that seemed a lifetime away. As the ship pitched forward, Rani was forced to grab for the railing to keep her balance. For the past three days, whenever the sailors had bothered to speak to her, it seemed that they commented on how smooth the ocean was. In fact, the wind had been still enough the previous day that the captain had been forced to employ his sweepers, teams of four men who walked giant, hinged oars back and forth across the deck, driving the boat forward through the water. The shuffle of the seamen’s feet had been drowned out by the songs they sang, stirring chanties like soldiers at their drink.
Today, though, the wind was back, and the ship lurched up the coast with a renewed speed. Rani’s belly turned as the craft crashed down into yet another ocean trough. The salt smell of the ocean spray hung at the back of her throat, sharp and caustic.
That morning, Mair – despite her broken arm – had forced Rani to gnaw on a slice of rough bread. Rani had given in after only a few minutes of cross argument. Despite the agony of being tossed on the ocean, she was hungry. She had even managed to keep her rebellious belly under control as she chewed the tough crust. Managed, that was, until Mair passed her a slice of ripe cheese. The creamy texture of the stuff made Rani’s skin crawl, and when the musky odor hit her nose she scrambled out of the tiny cabin, desperately climbing hand over hand for the deck and the railing and the open water that carried away her meager breakfast.
Now, Rani stared into the freshening breeze and forced herself to take deep breaths. Seven days, Bashi had said. Seven days from Moren to Amanth, the capital of Amanthia far to the north. They had already been traveling for three – they were nearly halfway there.
“Feeling any better?”
Rani turned to see that Mair had crept up behind her. That was another problem with this cursed ship. It creaked so much, and the wind thumped against the sails so loudly that Rani could not hear anyone approach. “Not much,” Rani admitted. “I can’t understand why you aren’t as sick as I am.”
“You sound as if you’d like me to be.” Mair sounded exasperated, but Rani only shrugged. The motion was easier than speaking. There was a long pause, and then the Touched girl said, “I thought it would be cooler up here. It’s so close in that cabin, I thought I’d faint.”
Rani turned to look at her friend sharply. The cabin had been warm, but the deck was actually chilly. Immediately after being sick, Rani had settled a cloak over her shoulders, and she was alarmed to see that Mair bore no protection against the stiff breeze. “You’ll catch cold.”
“Not I.” Mair grimaced.
Rani brushed the back of her hand across the other girl’s brow, ignoring her own angry scab from Maradalian’s talon. “You’re burning up!”
“I’m better than I was.” Mair shrugged off the attention like a restless child. “It’s just a bit of fever. Nothing important.”
“Nothing important!”
“It’s just because of my arm, you know.” Mair shrugged with one shoulder, only to make a face against the obvious pain that the movement caused her.
“It’s still hurts, then.”
“A little,” Mair conceded.
“I knew that cursed soldier didn’t know what he was doing! How could you let him set your arm?”
“What else was I supposed to do? You don’t have the strength to have done it, especially when your own palm was still bleedi
ng. ‘That cursed soldier’ may not have known the first thing about medicine, but at least he did what I told him to do.”
Rani’s belly flipped again as she remembered their rest stop at the edge of the River Yman. At least Bashi had been true to his word – he had let them stop and set Mair’s arm. But even he had not been prepared for the pain the injury caused her. The prince had blanched almost as white as Mair when the girl cried out, and he had nervously scooped up water from the river to bathe her face. Rani had pushed him aside, though, before he could provide that service. She did not want him anywhere near her friend, anywhere where he could work more harm. She did not want to hear that he had not meant to hurt them. He had not meant for everything to spin out of control.
“But will it heal properly?” Rani asked, forcing her voice to a calmness that she did not feel.
“How can I know?” Mair let her voice shrug and spared her shoulders. “I’ve done all I can. After all, I’m just a Touched brat from the City streets, not a chirurgeon. Maybe Bashi will let us see a healer in Amanthia.”
“Something to look forward to.” Rani spat into the water. “That and getting off this miserable boat.”
“We might be wishing for this boat, before all this is over.” Mair looked back at the coastline, at the shore that unrolled beside them. It was odd, Rani thought. They were close enough to see the land, close enough to see the distinct line where earth met sea. But they might as well be leagues and leagues away for all the good it did them. They could not make out any settlements along the water’s edge, and they were too far away to see any people. They were as lost as if they wandered in a forest.
As if to underscore their isolation, the seamen took that opportunity to sluice down the deck of their creaking craft. Bashi had explained to Rani the first night that they had boarded the boat – the ocean water made the wood swell, tightening the joints and keeping the craft seaworthy. Rani understood the logic, but she deplored the need. The tang of the ocean water, fish and salt, was enough to raise acid again at the back of her throat. The water seemed to leach out the stench of the tar that sealed ropes and joints about the craft. Resignedly, Rani clambered onto a coil of rough hemp, trying unsuccessfully to keep her leather soles dry. After she had helped to steady Mair against the sea bath, Rani turned back to the deck and the railing.
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