Amazon Queen

by Lori Devoti

  The bird son snapped his lips together. I could tell he didn’t like my answer but also saw the wisdom in what I said.

  “Who wouldn’t they be looking for?” I asked, glancing around the room.

  Tess raised her hand again. “Who would you least suspect?”

  Hearth-keepers, the most likely of any of the talent groups to be entrusted with the care of a child, but the least likely to be given something others would kill for. And Andres wasn’t a child to these Amazons, he was something to kill and kill for.

  Thea would never expect me to send him with unaccompanied hearth-keepers. She wouldn’t be watching for them; she’d be watching for me or Mateo.

  Maybe not the perfect plan, but the best we had.

  We sent Dana and Tess off in one of Mel’s cars. No one at the safe camp, or Padia had seen the vehicle. Dana, like Mel, had a cell phone so we would be able to contact them when everything was over.

  With them gone, the rest of us got ready for battle.

  Mel closed her shop, telling her office manager a family emergency had come up and asking her to call the shop’s clients to reschedule—from home.

  With the shop empty and no fitness or fortune-telling customers on the property, we got to work.

  Bubbe and Mel set wards. If anything bigger than a seagull entered Mel’s property, they would know it. The person or animal wouldn’t, however, know that we knew. Sitting in the middle of a city like Madison, we couldn’t just zap trespassers. Which meant no deadly force—Mel insisted and I let her win.

  I doubted she would have set the wards I wanted anyway, making my arguments rather pointless.

  We set up watch and central command in the gym. But knowing the basement or living quarters of the main shop was where they would expect to find the baby, Jack and I hid there. I took the basement, Cleo’s workout room. Jack took the living quarters, Mel’s bedroom.

  Then we waited.

  I have never been good at waiting. Playing sentry is an important part of warrior training but not one I’d excelled at . . . but, then, queens didn’t have to be good at waiting and guarding; our role was usually more active. Pursue and defeat, that was my preference.

  After three hours I was battling myself to keep from climbing the walls. I’d given up on just sitting, waiting, and listening, and allowed myself the luxury of lifting the occasional silent weight as I paced.

  At four hours, I began to wonder if somehow I’d missed something, if there might be a battle raging or one already raged, that hidden in the basement, I’d somehow missed. Bubbe’s and Mel’s wards were supposed to notify me. I wasn’t sure how that notification was to come, but I hadn’t felt so much as a twinge or seen anything that could be taken as a message.

  At five hours, I crept out of the room and up the stairs. First I checked the front doors. There was no sign of anyone, friend or foe, on the front lawn, which meant either my group was staying hidden as ordered or they’d all been killed and toted off while I paced alone in the basement.

  I kept going, past the shop level to the upstairs where Mel lived and Jack was supposed to be waiting too.

  I checked the kitchen and living room as I walked past . . . empty. I didn’t open the rooms with doors, not until I came to Mel’s.

  The door wasn’t latched; I pushed it open with my foot. The room was small and sparsely decorated—just a few childhood scribbles of Harmony’s taped to the walls, a staff hanging over the bed, and a bag that I guessed contained either priestess or artisan tools hanging from a peg behind the door. The room had a second door too, one that led to the fire escape. It was open.

  I cursed softly, sure now that I’d missed something.

  I grabbed Mel’s staff, hoping I’d find someone on my side who could still use it.

  Then I stepped out into the noon sun and was blinded by the flash of steel.

  My practice with Jack, fresh in my mind and my instincts, I ducked and kicked. My foot found its target; I was rewarded with a grunt. I grabbed blindly for the head I knew would be low now and pulled it toward my stomach. Then, falling backward, I used my leg to catapult my attacker up and over the low railing of the fire escape.

  Back on my feet, I prepared to jump down on the body lying on the ground below . . . the male body . . . Jack.

  Mateo stepped from behind a tree, looked down at the son I’d just thrown two stories, then up at me.

  With a curse, I vaulted over the railing, landing on the ground beside them in a crouch.

  “Now you see the benefits of wings over teeth.” The bird son nudged Jack with his boot.

  Jack rolled over, blood streamed from one nostril. He touched two fingers to his nose and groaned. “Again,” he muttered.

  I held my breath of relief, then covered my reaction by prodding him with the staff. “I didn’t cheat this time.”

  He grunted.

  Feeling generous, I looked away, leaving him to get back to a stand-alone, unobserved and with at least a pretense of dignity.

  I addressed Mateo. “What have you seen?”

  “Nada. Until Jack tried to fly without wings.” He glanced over my shoulder, to where Jack was still struggling to stand. His expression was a mix of mocking amusement and disappointment.

  “And the others?” I asked.

  He glanced at me, his brown eyes annoyed. “I have seen no one, heard nothing.”

  Jack was standing now. He walked to the fire escape and scuttled up the stairs. In a few minutes he was back, four knives shoved into his belt and two in his hands. Blood was smeared across his face where he had wiped at it. His shoulders were squared and there was a determination in his stride.

  “I haven’t seen or heard a thing . . . except you,” he said. His eyes held a challenge, a request for a rematch. Something I’d gladly give him when all this was over and settled.

  We split up. Mateo took the west side of the property line; Jack and I headed east. At the walkway between the two buildings we split again, Jack going between the two, me past and around the far side of the gym.

  I found Bern there, silent and still as a statue. She didn’t look as if she’d moved an inch in hours, didn’t move more than her eyes when I approached, but at my signal she fell into line beside me.

  We walked the full eastern length, out to Monroe Street, then cut across the front yard and made our way back to the shop.

  Mateo, Lao, Mel, Jack, Kale, and Bubbe were waiting on the shop’s steps.

  No one had heard or seen anything in the six hours that had passed.

  “Do you think Tess heard wrong? Perhaps the attack wasn’t planned for today,” Mel offered, but I could see the unease in her eyes and I understood it. I’d ordered us to come here rather than storming the camp and taking Padia.

  “Perhaps the plan is not real.” Bubbe held a smooth stone in her hand; she rubbed it in a circular motion with her thumb as she spoke.

  “When did the birders attack?” Jack reminded us. “When would you plan an attack?”

  Night . . . the answer to both.

  I sighed. Which meant we had to wait more.

  Accepting this, we downgraded our status and left Jack and Bubbe outside this time to watch for signs of the tribe. Bubbe went to the front yard and proceeded to work through a variety of yoga poses . . . a strange sight given her age and choice of clothing—a bright red full-length dress with lots of embroidery. As she hiked the skirt to her knees to perform one pose, I turned and watched Jack climb the large oak that grew alongside the shop. Once in the branches, he was completely hidden, at least from my point of view.

  With our lookouts positioned, the rest of us went inside, to the shop level. Mateo headed to the phone.

  Placing my hand on top of the receiver, I stopped him. “What are you doing?”

  “Calling to check on my son.”

  Realizing we did need to let Tess and Dana know what had happened or not happened here, I removed my hand.

  Dana must have answered. He asked about Andre
s, then cursed in Spanish.

  “How long?” His complexion darkened. “Sí, find them.” He glared at me.

  I jerked the phone from his hand.

  Dana was on the other end blathering something about a diaper change and going to the bathroom now. Then she whispered, “They aren’t here. I know this is where she said she was going, but they aren’t here.”

  It took five minutes to figure out what had happened.

  They’d left Mel’s and driven to a truck stop between here and Illinois. They’d been there the entire time. At first they had stayed together, Dana following Tess when she took Andres for a diaper change or even once to buy a can of formula, but as the time went on and there was no sign anyone had followed them, they’d relaxed some too.

  When Tess had said she was going to buy diapers and then change Andres, Dana, busy feeding her own son, had let her go alone.

  That had been ten minutes earlier.

  While we waited, Dana searched the truck stop and came up empty. Then she checked the lot and saw the car was gone too.

  I slammed down the receiver.

  Mateo was already moving; by the time I got into the front yard he’d already shifted and was flying toward the truck stop.

  Yelling for Bern and Mel to follow me, I ran toward the truck.

  Chapter 22

  Mateo beat us to the truck stop; I could see him circling overhead. A few locals saw him too.

  Binoculars and rifles with scopes were out and pointed at the sky. A fight almost broke out when someone, thinking he was an endangered species, threatened to call Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

  I stood in the open, in clear view, hoping Mateo would see we had arrived and back off.

  He did, but not before plummeting toward the building, shrieking as he fell. Ten feet from the ground he pulled back abruptly and soared back into the sky.

  As I watched, he flew south. He’d be waiting for us, and he was pissed.

  And I couldn’t blame him.

  I went looking for Dana.

  She was sitting in a stained faded-blue booth with two baby carriers and one baby: Pisto. And she was crying. Not horrible gulping sobs, worse—steady slow drips.

  And that was before she knew I was there. She was looking down, holding a pacifier to her son’s mouth when I walked in. Her chin and the hand holding the pacifier were both shaking.

  Mel stopped me from going further, cutting me off and approaching the distraught hearth-keeper herself. Dana fell against her.

  “I know you told us to stay together, but it had been so long and we had all this stuff . . . and it’s hard, but that’s not an excuse—”

  Mel shoved the girl’s face against her chest, cutting off whatever other blubbering admittance she had to make.

  I turned on my heel and left the building.

  When I got outside, the rest of our group was waiting. They were in a four-door domestic that looked like it got about five miles to the gallon.

  Mel stepped into the parking lot, loaded down with a baby bag and empty carrier. Dana trailed behind her, with the other carrier and her son.

  “Makis’s,” Mel commented, looking at the car. “He doesn’t drive it much. Left it with us to watch while he was gone. I didn’t realize anyone knew where I kept the keys.” She glared at Bubbe, who was barely visible behind the wheel.

  She looked like every old lady you curse when trying to make it across town in a hurry. Except as Mel marched forward, she gunned the engine in warning.

  Mel rapped on the window.

  While she and her grandmother argued, I addressed Dana. Her tears were gone, or at least they weren’t flowing down her cheeks now. I took the baby carrier and led her to a park bench that sat in the grass a few feet from the parking lot.

  “What happened?”

  She told me pretty much what I’d heard on the phone. “Th-they must have followed us, b-been waiting for us to separate,” she stuttered.

  Jack walked up behind me. I glanced at him over my shoulder. His gaze flitted to mine and I saw my thoughts mirrored there. Maybe, but why wait? It wasn’t like a priestess of Padia’s rank would fear taking on two run-of-the-mill hearth-keepers.

  We, I suspected, had been had. What I didn’t know was by whom.

  It was a long drive back to Illinois. Felt long anyway.

  There had been some discussion of returning to Mel’s, but none of us thought that attack was going to happen, not with Tess and Andres already missing.

  No, the battle was in Illinois, probably had been all along.

  It was time to return to my camp.

  We left Dana and Pisto at Jack’s neighbor’s house.

  The rest of us split into two groups.

  Lao, Kale, and I would approach the camp directly, walk in like we had every right to be there . . . which we did. We would try talking first, see if Kale’s story convinced the Amazons that Padia had misled them, and that the high council they were following wasn’t the high council at all but a rogue portion of it.

  While we talked, the rest would come through the woods. They would search the outdoor areas, including the barn, for Cleo, Tess, and the baby. They would also be there to jump in if a battle broke out.

  I couldn’t imagine words would fix this, though, couldn’t imagine a battle wouldn’t break out.

  I packed the truck and my body accordingly.

  Lao drove. Kale and I rode in the back, ready to jump out and fight without doors slowing us down.

  It was a silent trip down the bumpy drive, a drive I’d traveled too many times to count, but only one other time as an outsider.

  An outsider among Amazons.

  There was a time I’d have chosen death over that.

  Things were quiet outside the safe house, but not normal, not completely.

  The horses were in the paddock, looking as if they hadn’t been ridden or groomed since we left. The gardens looked unkempt too. Nothing horribly noticeable, we hadn’t been gone that long, just small things . . . a watering can left turned over on its side in the middle of a row of beans, mud caked in a few of the mares’ tails, and no smells of cooking coming from the kitchens. It was after one on a Monday, bread baking day; the yard should have smelled of baking yeast and wheat.

  As we climbed out of the truck, I glanced at Lao. She was frowning. She’d noticed too.

  There were signs of life, however. Someone had set up a loom on the front porch, and there was a stack of spears fifty or so feet from the house plus a target hanging on a tree.

  And then there were the two men in cable uniforms walking out the front door.

  Thea was behind them. One man held a clipboard out for her signature. She signed it and watched them get into a white truck before turning to me.

  “Zery, you came back.”

  She seemed unconcerned. She was studying Kale, who had walked a few feet away, and had her back to the priestess.

  “Where is the tribe?” I asked.

  Thea’s eyes jumped, her focus shifting from Kale to me. “Inside. We’ve been doing some upgrades. There is a lot to learn.” With a frown, she looked back at Kale.

  I bristled at her disregard and the idea that she was bringing technology into my safe camp without my permission, but knew stating that now would get us nowhere.

  Instead, I stepped forward. “You’ve met Kale.” I stated it as fact. We’d found Kale at Artemis’s obelisk. Whether she remembered it or not, she had to have come from camp. I hoped her intense scrutiny of the place now meant the visit was coming back to her.

  I glanced at the council member who was staring at the house.

  “Kale . . . ” Thea glanced around.

  At her name, the warrior turned. As her eyes passed over Thea, her lips moved slightly. She spoke, but I couldn’t make out her words.

  Lines formed on Thea’s forehead; she pressed fingers to them. “Why are you here, Zery? I don’t know anyone named Kale.”

  After closing her eyes briefly
, she took a breath and looked back at me. “Are you here to say you’ve decided to follow the high council’s directive, to beg for a place back in the tribe?”

  My hand lowered to my belt. I’d placed one of Jack’s knives in a sheath there earlier. It was in clear view. I wasn’t trying to hide that I was prepared to fight. “I wasn’t aware I had left the tribe, only this house.”

  “Hmmm. Is that how you see it?” Thea shifted her eyes over the three of us and seemed to miss Kale’s presence entirely. “How about you, Lao? You’d really choose one weak queen over the tribe you’ve helped to birth and raise?”

  Tired of Thea’s passive-aggressive insults, I touched the knife’s handle. “Where are Tess and Andres?”

  The priestess sighed. “Tess I know, but Andres?” Her voice was bored, almost condescending.

  “The baby, the one you want to kill.”

  Her eyes flashed, but her body posture remained nonthreatening. “You mean the one the Amazons want to kill, the one the high council ordered us to kill?”

  “That would be the one. Have you seen him and Tess?”

  “If I had, the job would have been done.”

  Kale stepped forward. “We know Padia’s here.”

  Thea looked at her as if she’d forgotten the council member was standing next to me. “Padia here?” There was surprise in her voice.

  Tense, I responded. “The visiting priestess. We know she was here. Does she have Tess and Andres?”

  Thea growled. “I know who Padia is. She isn’t here. You would know if she was. I would—”

  I cut her off. “We have a new enemy, Thea, and it isn’t the sons.”

  She laughed. “Not the sons? Don’t tell me, you’ve been seduced like your friend? Have you been visiting her? Associating with sons?” Her voice rose, incredulous. “I knew you’d fallen, that you were too weak to carry out the council’s orders, but I wouldn’t have thought that of you.”

  I jerked Jack’s knife from its sheath and held it under her chin. “We are here to get Tess, Andres, and Cleo. Turn them over.”

  Her eyes sparked. “I already told you Tess and the baby aren’t here. Maybe she took the little mutant. Maybe she has the strength to do what you didn’t.”