by Sarah Remy
Drem rolled onto its knees and then all the way upright, balancing on the edge of the crater over the cliff face as if it planned to sprout wings and fly. Fingerling breezes picked at the edge of Desma’s kilt, made the blue feathers in Desma’s long hair dance, brought goose pimples to lean arms. The desert woman had been lovely, a wild but earthly creature. Drem wearing the woman’s skin was frighteningly preternatural.
“By the Aug!” Everin croaked. “Get down before they see you!”
“They won’t,” Drem said. “Look, point the tube there, do you see? It’s there.”
Everin clenched his jaw to keep from swearing but did as Drem asked, aiming the double lens at the southwest corner of the army.
“What am I looking for?” He held his breath to keep the lens from shaking. Ripening evening softened the landscape. Dusk pooled in the alleyways between tent walls, softened the jagged lines of three-armed cacti, stained sporadic rock formations indigo.
“You’ve survived amongst us longer than any other mortal the elders favored,” replied Drem in oblique answer.
“Hidden in plain sight,” Everin hazarded. On first inspection, the southwest corner appeared no different than any other stretch of desert. Until he noticed a patch of rock and cactus where twilight flickered subtly in and out of existence, and eventide shadows slipped sideways across the sand only to reform and dissolve again. If he squinted, the sidhe glamour thinned to a gauzy veil. Beneath he glimpsed white stone and a soft, rosy glow.
“Too many blades,” Drem diagnosed. “So many sand snakes wielding iron fangs. The glamour is failing. Or it started to collapse all on its own and in doing so drew unwanted attention. The gate is there.”
Everin took the lens from his eye. Drem ignored his sudden scrutiny.
“There are no sidhe in the desert,” Everin said slowly. “Magic does not thrive east of the mountains. Most tribesmen discount sorcery entirely. They should not recognize that glamour for what it is, even less so understand what it hides.”
“There is more going on here than I first thought.” Drem rolled bare shoulders in a resigned shrug. “Best hope your king gets out of Faolan’s charge what information he can. I fear you and I will be of little use to him now.”
Drem pivoted and pointed, not in the direction of the army, but over Everin’s shoulder in the direction of the lake, the watchtower, and the western mountain path. Everin turned and caught a glimpse of fat ponies coming up over the rise, lean riders bristling with spear and scimitar. Then Drem struck him hard in the side, knocking him off his rock and onto his back on the stony ground. Breath left his lungs in a painful gust. The gloaming sky whirled overhead. A sharp blade pricked his ribs through the fabric of his tunic.
“You’re late,” said Drem to the newcomers in the guttural desert tongue while Everin gasped for air. “I had begun to think you weren’t coming after all and I’d have to haul him down the mountain myself.”
Chapter 5
Liam was outside the armory, carefully chopping Old Pumpkinhead and his straw brothers into manageable pieces with a borrowed hatchet, when Morgan and Arthur found him. Bear noticed the two lads first, drawing Liam’s attention with a sharp bark, rising from her haunches. Long strings of drool puddled in the dirt. Her wagging tail sent bits of straw and burlap every which way.
“Bear,” Liam scolded. “Sit.”
The brindled hound obediently sat but her tail continued to buffet the dirt.
“Captain Riggins wants you, sir,” Arthur called as the lads approached. His features were screwed up in excitement, his dark hair sweat-damped and matted to his skull. It was no longer so unbearably hot outside as to excuse Arthur’s swelter nor Morgan’s more subtle flush, and both pages were panting as if they’d just run a foot race ’round the bailey. Liam immediately set aside the hatchet and reached for his sword. Bear, alerted, began to growl.
“What’s happened?”
“Naught, yet.” Morgan, the young earl of Wythe, nudged a butchered piece of burlap with the toe of his boot. He tossed an envious glance Bear’s way but knew better than to pet her wedge-shaped head, no matter how he itched to do so. “But if you don’t come now, Riggins is threatening to shoot your bird out of the Mabon tree.”
“Parsnip’s trying to talk him down,” Arthur added, bouncing in excitement. “Not the bird. Captain Riggins, I mean. Captain’s in a right rage and Parsnip’s stayed behind to calm him, but you know how he is about that particular tree, and he said iffin’ you don’t hurry he’ll be having crow for his supper tonight. Begging your pardon.”
Liam didn’t waste time on a reply. Hatchet and straw men forgotten, he raced away across the practice yard, around the backside of pages’ dormitory, and down a grassy incline toward the thick wood edging the Royal Gardens. Bear ran at his side, tongue lolling.
Summer had begun the slow turn toward autumn, but the birch and maple in the wood were not yet displaying harvest colors. The Mabon tree, transplanted from the king’s scarlet woods as a sapling by a gardener long forgotten, was easy to spot even from a distance, its needles a brilliant orange amongst all the green.
“Captain!” Liam shouted, spotting Riggins with his compact bow poised beneath the old tree, arrow nocked, string drawn. “Sir! Don’t shoot!”
“He promised to wait!” Arthur gasped, running hard on Bear’s heels.
“Riggins!” Morgan passed them all in a burst of speed. “Stay your hand, man!” He managed to sound every inch the nobleman even as he slid to an unwieldy halt at the base of the tree, almost crashing into the wide trunk. “I say, stop!”
Riggins, a temperate man who rarely broke to anger, was wild of eye and quivering. He glanced at Liam then lowered his bow, inclining his head Morgan’s way in grudging acceptance.
“My lord. I’m sorry. But that crow’s a fiend disguised, shrieking and screaming like a mad thing, and all up in the branches of the Mabon tree.”
“Liam,” Parsnip called from up the tree where she clung to a low branch. Bear, suspecting a game, snapped playfully at her limbs. “You didn’t tell me someone’s taught it to speak. And the vilest things you can imagine.” Even half upside-down with twigs caught in her short hair, she sounded censorious as an old maid.
“He doesn’t—” Liam said. “You must be mistaken, Jacob doesn’t speak.”
“Fire!” screeched the topmost boughs of the tree. “Bring the torch! At once!”
“Doesn’t speak?” Parsnip wrinkled her nose at Liam. “What’s that bloody noise, then?”
Captain Riggins had his hand on his bow again. “You won’t burn this tree!” he shouted. “This is His Majesty’s tree! His Majesty’s Mabon tree!”
“I’ll have his head for this!” shrilled the branches. “Bring the torch!”
“Treason,” Riggins muttered, fingers clenching arrow and brace. Morgan soothed him with a murmur. Bear growled low in her throat.
“Liam,” the young earl demanded. “Is that your bird?”
Baffled, Liam approached the Mabon tree. Parsnip peered down at him from her branch.
“Climb up. You can’t see him from down there. He’s sitting in the very crown, way up at the top.”
Liam craned his neck. The tree was a healthy specimen, blessed with a spreading canopy and plentiful branches of every size. A man could easily hide himself up against the trunk, shielded by fanning orange needles. A bird might reside in its branches indefinitely.
“Jacob!” he hollered. “Is that you? Come down!”
“The torches!” retorted the tree in shrill tones. “I’ll make a chalice of his head bones!”
“By the Virgin,” sighed Liam, sighting a promising-looking branch. He toed off his boots and, shedding his new squire’s tunic, slung an arm over bark. He braced his feet against the trunk, and began to climb. Parsnip, lounging astride her branch with the same ease she sat a horse, watched his progress with interest.
“Keep close to the trunk,” she counseled. “The branches are strongest there
.”
“I’ve been climbing trees since before you were whelped,” Liam said, stepping from limb to limb, choosing toe and finger holds with care.
It wasn’t a fib. His first clear memory was of scaling the single tall tree in Stonehill, an ancient pine that had somehow learned to thrive on the inhospitable Downs. He remembered clambering to the very top, laughing at the cold on his cheeks. Joy had turned to terror when he’d reached the pinnacle and glanced down to see how far he’d come. He’d sat in the old pine for a day, embracing the trunk tightly to keep from falling, listening to the sound of birds and squirrels in nearby branches and, later, a family of marmots digging for truffles near the base of the tree. His shouts for help had gone unheard. Alone and wracked with self-pity, he’d watched lights kindled in nearby Stonehill against the coming night. It had been dark when he’d finally found the courage to climb down again, but he’d managed without falling.
After, the Widow had scolded him for being late to supper and smacked him for the rips in his trousers. But he’d never been afraid of heights again.
“You climb like a cat,” Parsnip allowed. “Or a sidhe. Have you claws on the ends of your fingers in truth?”
Liam said a rude word he’d recently learned from a grizzled Kingsman in the dining hall and purposefully shook a waterfall of needles down onto Parsnip’s upturned face. Parsnip squealed. Liam could hear Arthur’s resounding laughter from down below.
Scars disfigured the tree’s otherwise smooth trunk, old wounds where branches had been cut away for Mabon. Liam hadn’t been long enough in Wilhaiim to witness the harvest celebration, but he knew that the burning of carefully selected, bright orange branches was an important part of the ritual. The tree had been moved from the scarlet woods for just that purpose; the forgotten gardener had been acting upon royal decree. It seemed a foolish thing to Liam, the transplanting of a tree from forest to city for the color of its foliage, but he was coming to understand how dearly the theists valued ceremony.
Something moved in the branches overhead, causing Liam to stop and look up. He glimpsed a flutter of black behind bright needles. Hugging the tree for balance exactly as he had done as a child, Liam bent backward for a better look.
“Jacob!”
A mess of twigs rained down from above. A chestnut struck the top of Liam’s head. The Mabon tree bore no fruit; the chestnut had to be a purposeful weapon gathered from deeper in the woods. Suspicion woke in Liam. He climbed more quickly, ignoring Parsnip’s cries of caution.
The Mabon tree was taller than any other within the confines of the Royal Gardens. Liam doubted anyone had expected it to grow so high or spread so wide, or why not give the tree pride of place at the center of the king’s flower field? Away from the palace its beauty went mostly unnoticed. The soldiers who looked upon it every day soon grew used to the tree’s startling height and color, its charm overlooked in the daily routine of barrack life.
Liam climbed above the garden canopy and into bright sunlight. He paused while his eyes adjusted to the new brilliance. When he could see again, the sky overhead was a blue to rival the deep sea off The Cutlass Wind’s bow. The palace towers pierced the horizon across the gardens, dwarfing Wilhaiim’s housetops. Only the temple was as impressive, levered roof open wide to receive the day.
“Burn him,” muttered Jacob in surly greeting, peeking at Liam from a hole in the tree trunk. “Cast him out.”
“Look at you. That’s a nice home you’ve made yourself, you churl. Have you been here all this time? Avani’s worried sick, you know.”
Jacob turned his head sideways to better regard Liam with one black eye. The raven was not a small bird, but he appeared somehow diminished, hunched deep in a nest of needles and old sticks. He seemed disinclined to move, even when Liam stretched out a gentle finger and stroked his inky head.
“You’re full of tricks, aren’t you?” Liam praised. Relief made him grin. “I never knew you could talk.”
“Tricks,” agreed the bird. Jacob clicked his beak, and rattled his feathers, and it was only then Liam noticed the raven was injured. One wing drooped from his shoulder, useless. The wing was missing great clumps of feathers in patches; the exposed flesh looked raw.
“God’s balls!” Liam blanched. Avani called Jacob her goddess’s avatar, and whether there was truth in that claim or not, Jacob always seemed unusually wily and resilient. Liam had grown used to believing the raven was invulnerable and took his presence for granted. He saw now that he’d been indulging in a lad’s happy superstition and regretted that the time had come to let that comfort go.
“It’s fine.” He soothed the wounded raven. “It will be fine. Is the wing broken, do you think? Poor fellow, you must be hurting.”
In his nest Jacob grumbled and sighed. He watched Liam attentively. A breeze came up, rustling the crown of the Mabon tree. Liam heard Riggins and Arthur calling from below but didn’t dare answer for fear of startling Jacob deeper into the tree.
“Come down with me,” Liam coaxed. “We’ll get you help. Avani will know what to do.”
Jacob retreated deeper into the trunk, away from Liam’s hand.
“Tricks,” he scolded, pecking dully at a clutch of needles.
Parsnip popped her head above the canopy, making Liam squawk and Jacob croak. The raven backed into the tree as far as he could go, disappearing but for the gleam of one watchful eye.
“Sorry,” said Parsnip, although she didn’t look it. Ducking around one branch and shimmying across two more, she reached Liam’s side. “Isn’t this a grand view! Heard you talking,” she confessed, peering into the trunk. “That’s him, is it?”
Parsnip, instead of being cowed by their shared experience in the Bone Cave, had instead grown newly bold as to be almost cocky. Liam appreciated bravery so long as it did not ripen toward stupidity. In the small handful of days since Avani and Baldebert had rescued Liam and Parsnip from Lane’s grasp, she seemed intent on proving her mettle. She’d been the first to volunteer when the king’s constable called a hunt on Holder and his rogue straw men, even though Liam knew she was terrified of the magically quickened dummies. She’d tendered her name when Beaumont had passed his hat for extra patrols on the king’s road even though Beaumont was looking for commissioned soldiers and Parsnip was not yet made squire.
“I can ride as well as anyone,” she’d argued when Beaumont balked. “I’m stout and, now I’ve got my ax back, I’m deadly. His Majesty needs Kingsmen on his road. I’ve proven my worth. Let me help.”
“His Majesty requires Kingsmen,” returned the old soldier, “not pages still in uniform.” But Parsnip had insisted on tossing her ax in demonstration, hitting her target dead center at twenty paces. Beaumont had been grudgingly impressed. His Majesty’s army was stretched thin after plague season, and so in the end Parsnip was awarded a place on daylight patrol.
“Has he hurt his wing?” she asked now, leaning close. Jacob clacked his beak but Parsnip ignored the warning. “We might send for the royal falconer. She’s the only one I know who can splint a bird with doing it more injury.”
“We need to convince him to come down,” Liam said, exasperated. “The royal falconer is of no use up here. Jacob, come out and let us help you.”
“Tricks,” retorted Jacob. And then, “Torches!”
“I met a man with a talking bird, once,” Parsnip said. “A sailor on break come through town, and he’d taught his parrot to say a few words for pieces of apple. ‘Row harder!’ and ‘cut the jib,’ and the like. Birds are smart. Yours found his way up here, built himself a cozy hidey hole. He looks healthy but for the wing. He found his way up. I suppose he’ll find his way down when he’s ready.”
Liam stared at Jacob. Jacob stared back, unblinking.
“He’s safe up here,” Parsnip added. “Riggins has terrible aim.” She winked. “And naught but you and I are daft enough to climb so high above the world.”
Riggins waited for Liam to grab up his boots and tunic then
marched him back across the practice yard into the pages’ barracks. He strode ahead, waving for Liam to follow, not up the stairs into the dormitory as Liam expected, but straight out again onto a swathe of grass at the backside of the armory. Bear trotted after but kept her distance. She’d assessed Riggins and decided he wasn’t a threat.
“Sit,” the captain ordered, jerking a thumb at the grass. “Put on your boots before you step on a thorn.” He’d slung his bow across his back but still fiddled with one arrow, passing it from hand to hand.
Bear sat first. Liam pulled on his boots one at a time. Riggins wasn’t an unfair sort, nor did he take any pleasure in pulling rank.
“What’s yon bird doing shouting insults from His Majesty’s tree?” he demanded of Liam. A vein pulsed in his forehead. “What does it want?”
“I don’t think he wants anything especially.” Puzzled, Liam looked up from lacing his boots. Then he recalled that many theists believe black-feathered birds were ill luck. He chose his words with more care. “Jacob is Lady Avani’s pet, sir. He’s a rascal, but not dangerous. I wager he’s atop the tree for shelter; one of his wings has been badly wrenched by the look of it.”
Some of the tension eased out of the captain’s shoulders. “Lady Avani’s pet, you say? My lady’s a good sort, for all her strangeness. I’ve no doubt she means well. Still.” His scowl returned. “A talking bird. Those were not benedictions it was screaming from on high.”
“Ah.” Liam scratched his nose. “Birds are clever mimics, sir. I believe as a wee hatchling, before my lady took him on, Jacob belonged to a Black Coast raider.” Silently he thanked Parsnip for the lie. “He doesn’t know what he’s saying.”
“Aye, of course it doesn’t. It’s just a bird, after all.” Riggins furrowed his brow. “There’s been carrion birds above the city lately, looking for a last fat mouse before the fields go fallow. Mayhap yon crow ran afoul of one of them. Poor thing. Shall I send a runner, let my lady know her pet’s up the Mabon tree?”