He didn’t look for the Hunter; that would have been a waste of time. Instead he looked for signs of the earth sylph who’d just left, and the walls of the hive she and her kind would raise. When it was ready, he and Fareeda would go there and wait it out. After all, pride and bravado were nothing compared to the safety of the woman he loved.
“Damn!” Devon swore. “Damnit, damnit, damnit! I am such a failure!”
No, you’re not, Airi told him.
“Devon!” Zalia gasped and blushed, looking embarrassed at actually having called him by his first name; then she firmed herself and said it again. “You did nothing wrong, Devon.”
Xehm nodded in agreement. “She knows of the danger now. The Hunter will be found and killed, and until then, we’ll be safe in Shasha’s hive.” He nodded again decisively. “You’ve done very well.”
Devon tore his hands through his hair, Airi squeaking as he disrupted her careful mess of it. “I didn’t do anything! She didn’t even hear me. Airi said that the battlers couldn’t hunt the Hunter. Shasha said it too! And who gets to go into this hive they’re going to make? Is everyone going to agree to it? Or will it be just the sylph masters and to the grave with everyone else? And that’s just the most immediate problem. This whole city is falling apart and no one’s taking responsibility for it.” He glared up at the palace, floating so far over their heads that he couldn’t make out any detail. Was Eapha safe up there? Devon had no way of knowing. He just knew the rest of them weren’t and he had to force away a very real shudder at the thought that the Hunter could be right in front of him and he wouldn’t see it.
Xehm looked uncomfortable at his outburst. “She said that the sylphs were in charge,” he started to argue.
“That’s the whole problem!” Devon wailed, aware that he was starting to sound hysterical. They were back in the master section of the city, behind the great wall, though not in the crowded square they’d been in before. Still, people passing on the street looked at them curiously, those who weren’t huddled in doorways or walking in a mindless daze. “Sylphs can’t be in charge of anything!” He dipped his hands over his shoulders, into Airi’s pattern. I’m sorry, he whispered to her silently. I’m sorry. “People don’t get this. Sylphs are hive animals. They’re like godsdamned bees. They do what they’re told, they don’t think independently. In the whole damn Valley, Heyou is the only sylph who does anything without direction. Even Ril has to have the threat of Leon’s boot up his ass to do something without a handbook, and gods forbid that Mace do anything that’s not for the good of the hive.”
I’d be offended if I didn’t agree with you, Airi said, giggling.
They gaped at him. “That stupid idiot,” he continued, pointing up in the direction of the palace, “is supposed to be giving the orders and she isn’t!”
Even Gel and Shasha were staring now. The earth sylph had been rubbing her master’s hands, kissing them gently every once in a while as he looked down at her. He was definitely awake now and he stared at Devon, his jaw hanging open.
“Maybe you should have told her that,” Zalia said hesitantly.
Devon spun on her and sagged. She was so beautiful and kind. He really did love her, he decided, even if he had just met her and the whole idea was crazy. It didn’t matter. He loved her anyway. “I really don’t think that would have gone over well. They tossed me out for disobeying one of those useless women there. How would they react to ‘Hi, Your Majesty. You’re a dolt.’ The battle sylphs probably would have torn my head off.”
A faint smile tugged at Zalia’s lips.
“Maybe I should just rip your head off now,” a gleeful voice said from behind him.
Airi shrieked in Devon’s ear, turning into a visible swirl of screaming sand as the surprise of it jerked him forward and he tripped over Xehm’s feet, stumbling against him. The old man staggered under his weight and they both fell over, landing painfully on the stone ground.
A beautifully chiseled battle sylph stood where Devon had been standing, his hands on his hips as he grinned down at them. He laughed and looked at Zalia.
“That was fun!” he cheered. “He’s easier to scare than most people!”
Zalia blinked at him, her huge eyes filled with an expression Devon couldn’t quite recognize. “Don’t scare them,” she whispered, her hands trembling slightly.
Immediately, the battler’s full attention was on her. “But it’s fun!”
She shook her head. “You could have hurt my father!”
“Okay, Zalia,” he sighed.
“You know him?” Xehm managed as he and Devon untangled themselves from each other. He looked understandably horrified at the thought.
Zalia ducked her head as the battler walked over to stand beside her, pausing a moment to sniff her hair as he did so. Xehm’s breath caught in his throat. Devon wasn’t breathing at all.
“His name is One-Eleven,” she admitted. “He’s the one who defended me against Orlil, and got me better working hours at the restaurant.”
Xehm hesitated for a long moment and then stepped forward, his hand outstretched. “Thank you for helping my daughter,” he said.
One-Eleven looked at the hand for a moment and then finally shook it with what was probably more gentleness than his norm. “Welcome,” he muttered.
“Why are you here?” Zalia asked. “I thought you were all sent out to hunt for that thing?”
One-Eleven grinned at her in a way that made Zalia blush and Devon start to feel very uncomfortable. Finally the battler’s face sobered. “I’m supposed to make sure the earth sylph doesn’t have problems getting the wall set up.”
With everything that had happened, Devon managed to forget that Shasha was supposed to be raising a ten-foot-thick wall to protect everyone. Standing up, he looked back at her.
She still seemed tired—Gel was utterly exhausted—but that didn’t matter. While the rest of them had been interacting with One-Eleven, she’d obviously put out a call. Hundreds of earth sylphs were trudging heavily down the street toward them, some little more than stumpy pillars of mud, others as delicate and finely formed as Shasha herself. She turned toward them, drawing herself up to her full height, and Devon could only imagine what she was telling them in that silent mind speech the sylphs used.
It was obvious what it had to be. The earth sylphs looked at her and then at each other, their expressions—those who had them—nervous. Finally, they reached out to hold hands, the entire mass of them.
The earth shook.
Zalia screamed, One-Eleven catching her when she stumbled. Devon just fell down again. The ground heaved, rumbling so loudly that he could barely hear the screams of people caught in the quake all around them.
A wall erupted out of the ground. The leading edge of it was only fifty feet beyond the group of them and Devon stared at the hugely thick stretch of stone as it blasted upward, easily ten feet thick and dozens high in seconds. He could only see the edge closest to them for the first few seconds, but it grew fast, the earth continuing to rumble and groan as it fed the growth, the swirling patterns of different types of stone rippling as they fled past to their right. The entire thing was rotating as it grew from the ground, he realized, corkscrewing itself into the sky. Deafened by the sound, he felt Airi clinging to him and wanted to hold Zalia, only she had her face buried against One-Eleven’s chest while he held her, looking calmly up at the wall. Devon felt a sudden surge of jealousy and the battler turned to him, his eyebrow lifting. Terror flooded through Devon.
The roar of the growing wall became even louder, the length of it suddenly rising high enough that it blew past the height of the buildings, casting its shadows over the city as it continued to corkscrew upward, starting to curve inward now, far over their heads. It had to be dozens of blocks across, Devon thought in horrified amazement. The energy of it had the hair on the back of his neck rising and Airi
was shivering against his neck, frightened by it all. Surely it could keep the Hunter out. Even a battle sylph wouldn’t just be able to blow through that much rock.
How many people were still outside? Everyone who hadn’t been a feeder? How were the rest of them going to survive in here? How much food was there? Water? Sanitation? How much planning had gone into any of this beyond “put up a wall”? Devon lay sprawled on the ground, watching that massively thick stone wind upward, the ground growling and shaking like a live thing as it was birthed under the control of the earth sylphs, and felt a great deal of trepidation. Perhaps even worse, he felt relief as well, that he and Airi and Zalia and the others were safe, even if no one else outside that wall was.
The shadows deepened, unnatural night falling across the buildings. The screams of people in the sudden silence that fell once the stone closed overhead echoed with horrific loudness, until a dozen or more glowing dots shot upward, gathering at the peak of the dome. They swirled together, flaring into light, and Devon squinted at the tiny sun provided by the fire sylphs.
He let his breath out in a long, shaky sigh. There was even a breeze starting in the enclosed air, keeping the air moving.
We’re safe now, Airi said quietly.
Devon rolled over and sat cross-legged, his hands dangling in his lap and his head hanging. “Yeah, we are,” he mumbled and closed his eyes, trying not to think of anything for a while, especially not about how many people weren’t safe at all.
The Hunter roused as it saw the dome closing over part of the city.
It wasn’t surprised, but it was irritated as it saw a large percentage of its food supply wall itself away. That annoyance was tempered by all the rest of the food still walking around.
It had dropped in altitude during its doze, lowering fifty feet or more back toward the ground. It was still high enough that it would need to unravel its tentacles to almost their full length to reach the ground. That was fine. It was still tired despite its sleep and didn’t want to hunt. Nor did it want battlers stumbling across it just yet. They were hunting for it, spreading over the city in their hundreds, but none were high enough to be any sort of threat, not that they ever were. They’d always hunted for it close to the ground, since that was where it fed from. Even the heavy tentacle it used for an anchor was wrapped around the roof of a building above the level where they searched.
The Hunter twined its tentacles closer to its core and settled down to watch them complete the hive. The walls looked thick and solid, stronger than it could smash through. Still, it had found its way into more than one sylph hive in the past. For the time being, it would concentrate on the food still wandering around unprotected. The solid human creatures weren’t as nourishing as the sylphs, but they had a certain flavor to them that was almost addictive. If only it had known that human energy held it in the world, the same way a master held a sylph.
It would need to husband its feeding, it knew. It still didn’t like the look of those great deserts as something to cross and it had no good memories of those oceans. If it ate all of the food here, then it would have no choice but to try the deserts and had no great hopes for how successful it would be. And then what? Another city if it was lucky, followed by another quest for food? This world was much sparser than its home had been.
Below it, battlers ranged through the city, searching for it and calling out to each other. The only way they could find it was by having one of them stumble into its tentacles and the others realize that he’d been eaten when he stopped calling. It was an inexpert science, but they had no other choice. Finding it wouldn’t do them much good, since they wouldn’t be able to do much damage to the tentacles they always targeted, but fear of a lucky strike to its body had driven it away from more than one hive. It watched a battler fly directly below it, passing obliviously within only a dozen feet of its anchoring tentacle, and let the creature pass unmolested. It was only starting to get hungry and wasn’t in the mood for the taste of angry battlers anyway. It wanted some of these funny-tasting humans instead. Too bad none of them were close. It could sense them though, and there were more of them outside that protective dome than within. It cast a hundred eyes upward at the floating palace, hovering high enough that the Hunter’s crest was actually even with it. There were humans there as well, all tasty, helpless, and conveniently easy to reach.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
They owed a great deal to the battle sylph One-Eleven.
Zalia wandered across the floor of her new home to look out the window at the artificial sky. To simulate nighttime, or perhaps just to take a break, only a few fire sylphs were up there and the sky was a lot like the normal night sky, except with only a few, larger than normal stars lighting it. Or perhaps it was better to compare the sylphs to small moons. They gave just enough illumination for those on the streets to see by, but not to interrupt anyone’s sleep, and the air wasn’t as cold as it usually was either. It wasn’t anywhere near as hot as during the day, but it wasn’t frigid either. She felt comfortable standing there at the window with her arms wrapped around herself.
It was more a tremendous sense of uncertainty that had her hugging herself. In her entire life, she’d never lived in any place larger than the hovel she and her father used to share. Now she was alone in a suite so large that it took her a dozen steps just to cross the living room she was in. Her father had one just like it all to himself across the hall and Devon was two floors down. Whoever once owned this place, they were gone now, leaving more opulence in the apartment than she would ever have imagined. It had everything she ever could have dreamed of, and she didn’t have to share it with anyone. All because One-Eleven brought her and the others here and essentially gave them the apartments.
Zalia rubbed her arms, her skin covered in goosebumps even though she wasn’t actually cold. Perhaps she wasn’t going to be living here alone. She couldn’t imagine just being given a home like this for nothing and she already knew what One-Eleven wanted. She’d seen it in the smile on his face and the twinkle in his eye, along with the anguish in her father’s when he’d looked at her for a moment before accepting the apartment. It meant that he wouldn’t be sleeping in the cold sand hoping a snake or scorpion didn’t try to curl up with him for warmth. It also meant his daughter wouldn’t be living her life out in abject poverty and that they could stay in this safe place that was apparently only for sylphs and their masters.
She hadn’t looked at Devon’s face. She hadn’t dared.
Now she stood at the window and waited, not sure if she was waiting at all, or what exactly she was waiting for, though she had her suspicions.
Those suspicions made her tingle, her nipples hard against the arms she had crossed over them, and she swallowed, remembering the sensations that One-Eleven was able to invoke in her. What he’d done to her in her employer’s office, how he’d made her feel when he found her bathing at the stable…She was still a virgin, she told herself. She wasn’t sure that what they’d done was anything less than sex, but her maidenhead was still intact.
How much longer would she be able to say that, she wondered with something that might have been despair, or could have been excitement.
Zalia closed her eyes, not sure what kind of decision she was making and if she had any choice in it. Then again, what kind of choice did a woman in Meridal ever have? All the freedom she had now was due to One-Eleven. She had a debt there, even if the sight of him didn’t make her toes curl and her breathing speed up.
She was falling in love with Devon Chole, she had no doubt of that, but part of her loved One-Eleven as well, with all the fiery passion within her, and she knew already she couldn’t be shared. Even if either of them were inclined that way, she didn’t want to be that kind of woman. Did she? She thought of Devon’s warm brown eyes, his nervous determination, and his smile, and sighed. If she was going to be completely mercenary, and she wasn’t sure that was the best way to look at
affairs of the heart, what could he give her that One-Eleven couldn’t? Devon had nothing except the coins in his purse and his air sylph. He couldn’t even gain an audience with the queen to do what he’d come for and eventually he’d have no choice but to go home. He might even leave sooner, to warn his own people of this Hunter. He had no reason to stay, she thought miserably, while One-Eleven had no reason to leave.
Was every woman faced with this sort of choice? she wondered and wished for the first time in a long while that her mother was there to talk to. Her mother had been beautiful, so achingly beautiful, and when she hadn’t been able to pay her debts, she’d ended up sold to the harems. She would have understood what it felt like to have the attentions of a battle sylph, Zalia thought bitterly, and how nearly impossible it was to say no.
Her mother was long gone though, and when the slaves were freed, she hadn’t returned. Zalia didn’t expect her to anymore.
Would One-Eleven remember her mother? she wondered. Would he remember a single beautiful woman among all the hundreds he’d had access to?
None of whom he was with now, she thought with a sudden blush. Out of everyone in the harem, out of everyone in the city, he’d chosen her.
“You’re blushing.”
Even though she’d been expecting him, Zalia jumped. Outside her window was a ledge only about a foot wide that circled the entire building. Elaborate architectural details she had no name for were sticking out from them at intervals and One-Eleven stood on the end of one, leaning on one foot with most of his weight. Zalia’s first thought was that he’d fall, but that was silly. He’d just change shape if he did, though she doubted he’d fall. He was far too graceful for that.
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