by JANRAE FRANK
Talons approached him cautiously, looking from her prisoners to Birdie's prone, unmoving form. "Who are you?" she repeated.
"The Rose Warrior," he replied enigmatically. Dynarien snapped his fingers and vanished in a shower of blue rose petals of every shade that could be imagined.
Talons scooped Birdie into her arms, tears running down her otherwise impassive face. "Forgive me. I should have kept a closer eye on you."
A shout went up from the roof above them. Sparkling silver nets hurtled from the roof toward them, clinging like spider silk to Talons' victims, imprisoning them. The harder they struggled, the tighter the nets held them.
Ropes dropped next. Six children scrambled down, followed by Zarim, their sire. They quickly secured their captives.
"Birdie?" Zarim questioned anxiously.
Talons slid a significant glance over the other children. "Not here."
Zarim nodded grimly. "At the house..."
Talons nodded.
"There's more of them," Birdie murmured, reviving in Talons' arms.
"They're off chasing Lizard, Jysy, and Arruth," Talons said as Birdie slid away into the darkness again. She settled Birdie against her shoulder; they had to get out fast.
"Birdie?" Zarim asked again, touching Talons' arm.
"I can't tell yet, we need to get out of here." She seized the nearest rope, going up quickly.
* * * *
Talons got a field dressing on Birdie's wound in the concealing shadows of a large chimney. Organs and entrails bulged against the parted flesh. Talons pressed them back inside as she tightly wound a length of bleached linen around Birdie's waist, grateful that only the skin had been cut. Then she noticed the torn sleeve and the blood there. She ripped it completely, casting the cloth aside. The puncture wound and the longer scratch rising from it. "Shit!" She parted the lids of Birdie's eyes, saw they were dilated and the whites had an odd yellow cast. The assassin knew of at least one drug and two poisons that could do that. Talons pulled the small vial of blue crystallized powder from her belt pouch, pouring a tiny bit into her hand. She rubbed some of it into Birdie's gums and nostrils where the membranes could absorb it. If it were a drug, the Amphereon would help her shake it off. If it was poison – with the Grand Master's quarantine on Armaten – Talons doubted she could find the antidote in time. "Pray it's not poison," Talons muttered, shifting the youth into her arms and starting on. Only Lizard could tell them that.
* * * *
Lizard chased everyone out before he sat down to Read Birdie's wound. His face was typically Sharani bronze skinned, with a wide forehead and high, broad cheekbones, tapering down a delicate jawline to a small dimpled chin, and not a sign of facial hair. A Reader, he had gotten some training from an itinerant herb-healer who had begged Blackbird to give Lizard to her as her apprentice, but Lizard had refused and Blackbird accepted that: he wanted to remain with the Urchins and Birdie. Now he was the main healer to the ills that periodically afflicted the Urchins.
Talons had told Lizard and only Lizard about the rape. He would have known anyway when he cleaned her up. It brought tears of anger to his eyes, but he had fought them back, ushering Talons out with the others. He found no poison, just a wound and something else he had never sensed before, it beckoned him, called his awareness deeper. Slowly it dawned on him just what he had found. He laid Birdie's wrist down, drawing back and sucking a deep, shaking breath. At least the embryo seemed too well nestled in its place to have been the result of the rape.
"Lizard?" Birdie reached for him and he moved away. "What's wrong with you?"
Lizard kept his back to her, fighting for his voice, feeling hurt, angry, and worried all in the same moment. "Should I kill him? Or step out of his way? Or did you kyndi for a friend?" No, he felt that the last could not be true; the kyndi would have left traces.
"Who?"
"The sire, Birdie. The SIRE!" Lizard spun back to face her, tears streaking his face. "If you wanted a child ... you could have asked me!"
"Dynarien is the sire," Birdie said quietly.
"Never heard of him... Who is he?" Lizard's voice grew a little steadier.
"I can't tell you. Make any assumptions you like."
"What do you mean? Did he force you?"
"No. But I can't tell you unless I have your word no one will ever know... It's a – a priestly secret."
"Dynarien?" Lizard's eyes grew huge, his quick mind catching the similarity between Dynanna and Dynarien. "Dynarien's a God? Isn't he?"
Birdie nodded. Lizard sank to his knees beside her bed, listening in wonder to what happened in that very room. Somewhere in the middle of the tale, he picked up her hand, holding it to his lips, kissing it distractedly while she spoke. What neither of them realized was that there was a second child only hours old, hidden behind the special one, not yet presence enough for Lizard's limited experience to detect. The kyndi's protection, disrupted by the God's fertility, had failed her and she had conceived a second child in that alley where she was nearly killed.
* * * *
When Lizard did not reappear by supper, Blackbird began to pace and worry. Talons insisted on being the one to go up. Talons opened the door, stepping quietly into Birdie's room: if Lizard was fighting for Birdie's life, she did not want to interrupt him. She did not see Lizard anywhere. Puzzled she moved closer, noticing that there seemed to be two bodies under the blankets. A smile stole over her usually grim face. She moved to the side of the bed to affirm her suspicions: Lizard and Birdie were asleep in each other's arms.
"Old enough to fight and die, old enough to love," Talons quoted the Sharani proverb under her breath. She withdrew as quietly as she entered, going quickly down the stairs. Blackbird accosted her at the base. "My daughter?" she asked anxiously.
"Just fine," Talons answered, smiling enigmatically.
"Then why hasn't Lizard come down?"
"Have a look," Talons replied, inclining her head. As Blackbird mounted the stairs, Talons' called after her "Quietly. Very quietly."
* * * *
"They'll come tonight," Blackbird said, hammering the shutters closed on the front windows, then bracing them with a strong iron rod. The children held the shutters in place while she hammered, moving from window to window.
"Aren't we going to do Birdie's?" Zarim asked, coming down from the second floor.
"Nah," Blackbird said, giving him a wink. "Dynanna told Birdie to stay up there with the window open. Got a surprise for them."
"They'll come in the hours just before dawn," Talons told them, "when folks sleep the deepest."
"Rather thought that," Blackbird remarked.
"I'll go out now," Talons pulled her cloak around her and slipped through the front door into the night. "I don't know how many there will be, so you had best be on guard in case any of them get past me."
"You can count on that," Zarim said grimly and Blackbird nodded.
* * * *
They descended on the big house in the poor quarter from every side in groups of threes and fours. Secrecy was no longer necessary: Birdie's touch to Sorrow's face had revealed their nature to the crowds, who were already figuring out what it meant. Once done here, they would return to Dragonshead while Margren and Mephistis figured out if this effort could be salvaged.
A first floor window in the rear looked badly sealed. The tallest of the trio, a broad-shouldered Waejontori male got his hands solidly on the bottom corner of the rotted boards, ripping it open. The smaller of the other two was a Sharani woman with a long facial scar and the second a tall, lean Vorgeni man who had once been the go-between for the Golds in Vorgensburg and their Waejontori masters.
Scar Face entered the room quickly as the others followed. She crossed to the door and had her hand on the knob when she felt the hard, steel-like fibers crawling up her legs. "What the fucking shit?" She reached down to touch it, knowing it was too late in the season for snakes, and the fibers leaped to snag her hand. "Holy Mother of Hell!"
&n
bsp; She staggered, ripping her hand loose, feeling skin and muscle torn away as the price of a moment's freedom. She tried to run, falling instead as the fibers lashed around her thighs and tightened like slender chains.
The sa'necari raised his hand, calling light. It filled the room and he saw his companions downed by silvery nets crawling as if alive over their bodies. His foot was still inches from the first one, standing in the small cleared area immediately around the window. He cried out every word of command he knew as a casual magic user, as so many of his people were. Laughter made him look up. Straddling the ceiling beams were three small children, none of them more than nine-years-old. They held more of the silvery nets, twirling them expertly. "Stupid children!" he shouted, calling fire to burn their small bodies to char. The nets met the spell as they dropped, turning it back on him and he screamed as his flesh crisped beneath the silver bonds pulling him to the floor.
* * * *
Birdie curled up in the middle of her bed with the blankets pulled to her chin. She patted the comforting chunkiness of the hard-rock maple cudgel lying alongside her thigh. This was definitely not her kind of fight, there was very little room to move around in the tower, and certainly not enough to escape if need be. On the street she always had her retreat planned, just as she had when she grabbed Ladonys' pouch that day. Her tactics had always been strictly hit and run, not stand and fight unless absolutely forced. With Blackbird's crippling and Paunys' degenerative disorder, there had never been anyone to teach Birdie the hardcore arts of combat. Zarim could fight in a pinch, but, to her knowledge, he had not been trained either.
Birdie's fears, heightened by her wounding and rape earlier that day, were swiftly accelerating into outright terror when she heard the soft chink and scrape of a grappling hook catch her window.
"Dynanna?" she whispered nervously, her eyes darting everywhere. "Where are you?"
A soft chuckle answered. "I do love surprises."
Birdie looked again, but there was no other sign of the yuwenghau – the young rogue god. Then she saw the hands on the sill as two tall myn with strange violet eyes heaved themselves in.
Birdie yelped, snatching her cudgel out.
"That's the kid burned the captain," the first one muttered, drawing a long bladed knife.
The second one climbed in behind him. "Kill that one," the second said. "I'm going down stairs to get the rest of them."
The room filled suddenly with the scent of roses. The pair halted, glancing quickly around them.
"Hello!" said a bright male tenor.
The Gold Ravens spun, drawing and lunging.
Dynarien wore golden armor as bright as his long red-blond hair, the device on his breastplate, an eagle rampant with blue roses in its claws and circling it.
"Weren't expecting me, were you?" Dynarien laughed, pulling a long golden sword from the sheath at his shoulder.
They moved apart, forcing Dynarien to split his attention between them. With a laugh, the godling lunged full out, skewering the nearest one. The second man took that opportunity to stab at Dynarien's back. The godling leaped high, spinning and coming down behind his foe. He straightened instantly, turning calmly on the assassin. "Over here!"
The assassin turned. "Shit! What the hell are you?"
"Ooooh, now that would be telling," Dynarien chuckled. The assassin turned to flee and Dynarien's golden blade plunged to the hilt into the assassin's back. As the mon fell, Dynarien muttered distastefully. "I'm not a back stabber as a rule, but turnabout is fair play, they say."
A low moan from the window drew his eye. A third Waejontori hung limp half-in half-out of the window, his head a bloody ruin. Birdie stood over him with her cudgel, blood and scalp tissue clinging to it. "Got one," she gritted grimly.
"So you did," Dynarien said proudly, stepping toward her.
Birdie dropped her cudgel, throwing herself onto Dynarien. The godling nuzzled her soft hair, murmuring, "Dear sweet Birdie, I've earned my reward, don't you think?"
"Yes."
"After what happened... I was a continent away... I came as fast as I could."
"I know."
Dynarien bent, pressing a tender kiss to her young lips and was just starting to embrace her when a splintering crash made the entire house shake. He drew back from her, heading swiftly for the door. Birdie grabbed her cudgel and followed him. At the head of the stairs he turned, ordering her firmly, "Stay here."
"Yeah, right," Birdie gave him a defiant sidewise glance.
"So be it," he said, his voice heavy with resignation and concern, "but stay behind me."
* * * *
Blood and gore coated her claws, two blades were missing from her bandoleer, as she stalked the next small band, she would go back for her blades when this was ended. By her count there were six left and one of those was Sorrow. Ahead of her four scouted the house, looking for their way in.
"Something's out there," whispered the nearest one. "I can feel it."
"You're just nervous!" muttered the next one. "Imagine, Torys is scared of children and a cripple!"
Talons smiled coldly, coming silently behind Torys. One hand snaked out, clamping vise-like over Torys' mouth as her claws took out the mon's throat. She lowered her quietly to the ground, fading back as her companion returned.
"Torys?" this one whispered, "Where are you?" Her foot connected with her late companion's body and she stumbled, going to her knees. She stared at the dead face of her companion, limned in moonlight.
"Shit! There's someone back here. She got Torys!"
"Yes, I did," whispered Talons in the mon's ear. The mon started, drawing steel. Talons took her eyes first, letting her cries escape to draw her companions. Then she slashed her throat, nearly taking her head off.
One came forward, sword drawn, the second stayed back to strike a light and set a torch flaring. Talons faded back still more, waiting in the shadows of a corner building.
"Children didn't do this," the third one muttered, kneeling beside her two dead companions. "Neither did that cripple Blackbird."
"This is like that one got the others in the Market Square... They've got a pro helping."
Yes, they do. Talons sheathed her claws, drawing a pair of blades. The first caught the torchbearer dead center, a clean kill. She keeled over, the torch guttering out.
The fourth turned to run, but Talons' matchless night vision let her put her next blade in the woman's back. The woman staggered against the wall and Talons was on her, taking her eyes and then her throat.
"Now there's just Sorrow," the assassin muttered as she turned back toward the house. A resounding crash shattered the night, coming from the direction of the front door. In any other part of Armaten that noise would have brought armed people crowding from their houses in response to their neighbor's danger; but in the poor quarter, no one emerged, if the denizens reacted at all, it was to cower down and hope whatever it was did not turn in their direction.
Talons threw caution to the winds, thinking only of the children and the debts she owed them for their aid, which had placed them in this danger. Moonlight limned the giant form in the shattered doorway. Talons recognized it from drawings and the descriptions of others: nearly nine feet tall, bending to enter through the twisted remnants of the door frame, stood a broad, long muzzled, blue-green skinned stone troll.
"Hadjys Nine Hells! How do I fight that thing?"
"They regenerate," said a small voice beside her. "Gotta give'em a wound kills faster than they can mend."
Talons, repressing a startled movement before it took form in her muscles, looked down: two of the children stood there, accompanied by a third that she sensed was not a child despite its diminutive size. Mysten, one of Blackbird's "add-ons," war-orphans never officially adopted and Tomlyn, the one of her twins, extended a long rope of braided spell cords to Talons.
"Thought this might help," the third small person said, doffing an over-large slouch hat to expose his red hair and enormous pointe
d ears. "Pieface at your service, military attaché and advisor," he said seriously. "I'm an observer, not a participant. Now you'd best take that cord and get in there before they all get killed."
"Badree Nym!"
"Yup! Now get movin'."
* * * *
Blackbird did not know what the enemy might throw at the house, but from hard learned experience during the war, especially the incident that crippled her, the old campaigner preferred to assume that whatever it might be would be equal to the best they could block it with, Talons included. Therefore a little over compensation might be called for.
Most of the children she sent to the root cellar with Paunys, knowing any she kept with her would probably die: Paunys had not yet regained her full strength, but had been a noted swordsmon in her day. Blackbird prayed that Paunys would be able to deal with anything that got past those in the front room.
In point of fact, she grimly counted everyone in the front room with her as already dead: her crippling and the war had evolved a hard philosophy in the woman, that of assuming you were dead and then trying to take the enemy with you.
She stood before the front door, wearing a shield bound like a breastplate around her chest and useless right arm, holding the sword that matched it at the ready, both taken from the gift hoard of Dynanna. Blackbird would never be as good with her left hand as she had been with her right, but she had worked hard for many years to compensate.
Zarim, displaying an unusual stubbornness, stood behind her with a large spiked club, insisting he had trained with one as a child before being captured and sold into slavery. Blackbird loved him intensely as did Paunys. Although they had purchased him as a mere love slave, the quick witted, glib black man from Jedrua had found a deeper place in their hearts – deep enough that they risked losing him by setting him free. He had promptly moved into a separate bedroom and made the two women court him formally, after the Sharani fashion: the result had been Birdie.
Blackbird tried not to think about all of that, but could not quite suppress it. "It's a good day to die."
Lizard, who had taken up another of the paired swords and shields, held a position near the long table in front of their tattered couch. Before his sister's death in the war, she had trained him a little; just the basic moves, not enough to call himself a swordsmon, but for years afterward he had practiced those small movements in secret; and while one part of his mind said it would not be enough, another part prayed it would be – for Birdie's sake and the child he had claimed as his own.