Leon went home before he headed out of the city, unprepared as he was for any coming long journey. He rode his horse to the small stable of his manor and dismounted, holding Ril up out of the way of the stableman who stepped forward to take the horse. Ril glared, but the stableman was used to his hate and bowed to both the battler and Leon before the hawk was shifted to Leon’s shoulder and Leon headed toward the house.
His estate was on a patch of land inside the city that was barely half an acre in size, surrounded by a huge stone wall. The house was made of the same material, square and forbidding. It was centuries old, originally from his wife’s family, as his ancestors had never had any money, and he loved it. It was home.
As he walked, he planned out what he would have to pack and take, and where he would look for the girl. He didn’t know much about her, but she wouldn’t have been brought from far away, and with a battler she’d attract attention. She shouldn’t be difficult to find. It was getting past her battler that would be the hard part.
The front door of the manor opened at his approach, and a trio of girls ranging from three to twelve ran out, yelling for both him and Ril. Leon had no doubt that Ril loathed him most if not all of the time, and he’d always regretted that, but he couldn’t begrudge his daughters their affection for the battler. The hawk shifted on his shoulder, wings spreading, and Leon chuckled. “Go to them, Ril.”
The bird immediately took flight, swooping over to the girls. He arced around them as they danced in circles, laughing, and finally he alighted on the eldest daughter’s arm, cooing. The three converged on the bird, gently stroking his wings and back.
“No hugs for me?” Leon asked. Giggling, the girls ran over to hug him as well, the twelve-year-old walking with exaggerated care so as not to disturb Ril. They hugged him and Leon laughed, letting them lead him into the house.
His wife, Betha, waited there, smiling at him and stroking Ril’s head when her oldest daughter held him up. “I wasn’t sure when you’d be home,” she murmured, leaning forward to kiss her husband.
“I’m afraid I won’t be here long,” he assured her, thinking again about the girl with the battler. Home was his sanctuary. Ril never blasted out with his hate here, not once he’d discovered it made the girls cry. Leon had peace here, and he did need the break, though he wouldn’t get one for long.
“Do you have to go so soon?” Betha asked with a frown.
“I’m afraid so. The king’s ordered it himself.” He turned and put a hand on his eldest daughter’s head. “Okay, Lizzy, Ril needs some serious play. Are you three up to it?”
“Yes, sir!” she called, saluting. Her little sisters started giggling, and all three ran for their bedroom, taking Ril with them. Leon looked after them and shook his head. A girl with a battler.
“Sometimes I wonder if Ril thinks he belongs to the girls instead of me,” he mused. “I certainly wouldn’t have to worry about boys sniffing after them if he did…” Not that he had to worry yet. Once he did, he’d be sure to meet them at the door with his battler on his arm. That should scare them away. Or it would prevent his daughters from ever being married, he admitted ruefully.
“Lizzy’s asked for him already,” Betha spoke up, and leaned her head on her husband’s shoulder. “But any talk of that’s years and years from now.”
“Years and years?” Leon smiled.
“Decades. At least six.”
Leon laughed. “Yes, ma’am.” Then, putting his arm around his wife, he led her toward their bedroom, having learned years ago to take his opportunities when they presented themselves.
Ril relaxed, considering himself to be home. Shoved into a baby bonnet and tumbled over onto his back, he snatched gently at Cara’s fingers with his feet, trying to keep her from cramming a little wooden pacifier in his beak. The three-year-old, Nali, sucked her thumb and pulled on his tail, while the baby cried from her crib, wanting attention.
“Don’t hurt him, Nali!” Lizzy protested, dragging her sister away. The young girl started to cry, which only encouraged the baby. Cara giggled, giving up on inserting the pacifier and settling instead for throwing it at Ril’s head. “Cara!” Lizzy gasped. “You’re so mean!”
Stuck in this bird shape at his master’s order, Ril flared his wings and started to sing. All four girls silenced immediately, staring at him in wonder. Ril had been ordered to never speak, just like all sylphs, just as he’d been ordered never to change shape. He’d never been told not to sing, though, and Leon didn’t know he could. He sang for the girls alone, when his master and his master’s wife were elsewhere.
Ril had been insane when Lizzy was born, lost in the horrible memory of his master killing his queen while she stared up at him in terror, her round face covered in freckles. He’d still be insane now, if it hadn’t been for the child. He’d been overwhelmed by Betha’s birth pains and screams, hysterical in the hall he’d been left in, and he’d crashed into the birthing room before Leon even realized how upset he really was, ready to kill whoever was harming the only female in the house. He’d been just in time to see Lizzy’s birth. He saw the babe come through that fleshy gate into this world, like his own arrival through the gate, and he’d been lost to her. She’d saved him, and he’d not wanted to leave her or her sisters’ side since, and his master had been kind enough to let him see all their births and to let him be with them. Ril had to keep telling himself he still hated the man, remembering those freckles on a round face every time he was tempted to forgive Leon because of his daughters, but he was grateful for this.
He sang to the girls, singing songs he remembered from his time before the gate, before he was trapped by the hope of a queen, and he sang of her, she who’d left him before he had time to do more than fall in love with her. Cara and Nali settled down sleepily, dozing off from his lullaby, and the baby slept as well, little Ralad in her crib. Only Lizzy stayed awake, her eyes soft.
Once the other girls were asleep, she took the bonnet off Ril. “They’re poopheads,” she whispered, though he didn’t agree. Lifting him up, she carried him to the corner of the nursery she considered hers. Opening a trunk there, she dug out the box of lettered blocks that was their greatest secret. Cautiously looking around, she dumped the lot out on the carpet, careful not to wake her sisters.
Ril stepped forward, looking the blocks over until he found the one he wanted and pulled it to him with his beak, rolling it so the correct side was pointing up. Grabbing the next, he laid it alongside, then followed with six others.
Lizzy peered at them. “ ‘I…love…you,’ ” she read. “Aw, I love you, too!” She kissed his forehead and the battler ruffled his feathers. He reached for more blocks. This was their secret: that he could talk to her through the blocks, so long as her father never found out. Be my queen, he spelled out.
“You always ask me that,” she laughed, grabbing his beak and waving it from side to side. “Of course I am!”
Ril sighed, opening and closing his beak sharply to make a clapping sound. He knew he repeated the request too often, but he always wanted to hear the answer. Her father had killed his first queen, but Lizzy had been his from her birth. He’d asked her to be his queen since she first taught him the blocks, and she always said yes. One day, she would be his queen for real, and he would love her forever. All that had to happen first was for her father to die. Then they’d both be free.
Airi soared high on the wind and back to her master, following her permanent awareness of where he was. It had been the longest she’d been away from Devon’s side since she was given to him, but she found him anyway, sitting in his quarters in the barracks used by single men with sylphs and sharpening his knife. She flowed in through the open window, and he lifted his head with a relieved smile.
“Airi! You’re back!”
Hello, she said into his mind, blowing around him and then forming into a face made of the loose dust balls he’d left on the floor. He never was much of a cleaner.
“It’s good to se
e you,” he told her. “I was getting worried. What happened?”
The battler took her to a valley of hot springs, and then to a village south of us. The one you were born in. Devon started in surprise. They’re at my old master’s house, on the edge of the village.
“What? They’re with Father?” His grip tightened on his knife, his face frightened, and she danced a sigh, pretty sure she knew what was coming next. Devon would deny it, but he really was the type to run to the rescue. Donal Chole was an old man now, but a battler would still see him as a threat. It actually bothered Airi a bit as well, if not in the same way. As long as that battler was left alone with his female, everyone else would be fine. If someone threatened him—or worse, her—he would turn the village into a crater.
Donal had worked around battlers. He knew better than to threaten them, provided he was aware of what he had in his house. But he might not realize he’s got a battler, Airi admitted.
That did it. “We’re going there,” Devon decided, standing and grabbing his pack.
You plan to fight a battler?
Devon almost gagged. “Oh gods, no! I just want to make sure Father’s okay.” He grabbed his sword and buckled it on. “I have time off coming to me. Let’s go rent a horse.” Airi could carry him if she must, but such a trip always terrified him and exhausted her. She knew he was really worried whenever he asked her to carry him.
Devon went to let his superiors know he would be away for a while. Airi drifted along behind him, dancing around a few other sylphs in the hall as she did, communicating through touch and motion, since they weren’t allowed to speak. After centuries of slavery, though, they’d found ways around the rules, and she reacquainted herself with her friends, whether originally from her hive or not, before following her master out the door, headed for the main road that led east and then north.
Leon carried his saddlebags outside, his sword strapped across his back along with his bow. With Ril he didn’t really need weaponry, but he’d never been a man to risk being unprepared.
The bird sat on Lizzy’s shoulder, preening her hair while the girl looked up tearfully at her father. “Do you have to go so soon?” All of her sisters had been left inside, their screams of protest too loud for Leon to handle. He’d given them his good-byes and his hugs, but they were still screaming. Betha put a hand on Lizzie’s back, shaking her head.
“You know I have to leave,” he told Lizzy wearily, tying on the saddlebags. “Don’t whine.”
“But—”
“I mean it,” he warned, and went to lift Ril off her shoulder.
The battler snapped at him, and Leon jerked his hand back with a curse. “Ril! Behave!” The bird hissed but let himself be taken. Perhaps, Leon thought, he shouldn’t let the battler play with his daughters; Ril got more unruly each time he was taken away from them. But when Leon saw his daughter’s tearful face, he relented. She’d never forgive him if he took her pet away.
“I’ll be back soon,” he promised her, then kissed Betha. “A few days only, I hope.”
Turning, he mounted his horse and rode out the gate, waving back at his wife as he went. She waved in return.
Lizzy ran alongside her father’s horse until he left the grounds, but then he coaxed the animal into a canter. With the manor behind him, Leon again felt Ril’s stare and felt the hate, the blistering, terrible loathing the battler harbored for him. Sometimes it lessened. Sometimes, when they were alone in the woods and no one else was there, it was gone, and Leon could almost be sure he felt other emotions from his battler, but now it was as bright and sharp as ever.
His horse whinnied in fright, trying to leap sideways, and Leon sighed wearily. “Thanks, Ril,” he grumbled sarcastically. “It’s always good to have you back.”
Climbing down from the attic, Heyou listened to the men’s voices at the front of the house. Mr. Chole was saying Solie wasn’t there, but he was a terrible liar. Heyou heard him stammer and walked up beside him. The old man yelped and jumped back, stumbling against the wall and nearly falling.
Heyou ignored the old man, focusing on the other two. Solie’s father was only a little taller than himself, his balding head sparsely topped with bright red hair. The second male was even taller but overweight, nearly the same age as Solie’s father, and he was frowning.
“Go away,” Heyou growled, trying not to use his aura in case it woke his queen. Not unless he had to.
“You,” her father snapped, pointing. “You’re the one who was with my daughter. Where is she?”
The second man gaped. “She has a lover? I didn’t pay your bride price for Solie to have a lover!”
“She doesn’t!” the father assured him frantically. “She’d never do that. She’s a good girl.” He shot Heyou a hateful look. “Who the hell are you?”
Heyou snarled. It still felt good to say his name, but these men angered him. They had no rights when it came to his queen. “Go away. Solie is mine.”
Both men wore identical looks of shock. It would have been laughable if Heyou was amused at all. His real form itched under his skin from an urge to hit them with the aura of his hate, to flex it the same as animals showing plumage to drive away their rivals. Their own hatred was nothing. They couldn’t even be food to him. But his queen was asleep. He didn’t want to wake her.
“You…,” the father started to say, his face flushed with anger. “You lousy little—”
“Don’t,” Mr. Chole gasped. He pushed himself away from the wall, clutching his chest below a white face. “Don’t provoke him. He’s a battle sylph.”
The fiancé gawked, not understanding fully, while the father barked a laugh. “That’s a sick joke!”
“It’s not,” Chole promised. “I felt his hate. I worked for years with an air sylph. I felt the battlers many times. She told him to hide it, but I felt it anyway. He’s a battle sylph.”
“That’s impossible,” the father snarled. “How could my daughter get a battler?”
“I don’t know,” Chole wheezed. “But I beg you, don’t anger him.”
“Saml,” the fiancé whined to Solie’s father. “I didn’t buy into this.”
“It’s all lies!” Saml snapped. “He’s no battler, he’s some reject, sniffing after her. Well, I’m going to march in there and drag her home. I’ll make her regret defying me!” He went to push past Heyou, shoving with a farmer’s strong muscles, and was surprised when his opponent didn’t move. Pausing, Saml blanched.
It was too much, endlessly too much. Threaten his queen? Attack his queen? Every instinct Heyou had flared, and the rage burst out, his aura of hatred expanding. Minor sylphs would run from this. Other battlers would prepare for bloodshed. Named males would prepare to kill. Entire hives went to war over a battler’s temper, unless the queen said no.
His eyes changed from the gray-blue Solie found attractive to a searing battler red. Heyou heard the old man wailing, running out past Saml and after the fleeing fiancé, but Solie’s father still gaped at him, frozen. Heyou snarled, and lightning filled his mouth as he spoke. “Stay. Away. From. My. Queen.”
Saml screamed then, stumbling backward out the door and falling over the step, landing on his back in the dirt. He stared up in terror, with Heyou already losing his shape. The battler advanced and changed to smoke and lightning, his aura flashing out over the town as he himself expanded, suddenly as big as the cottage as he flared his mantle and spread his wings. His voice boomed across the village, and he felt the tiny humans in it scream with fear. This territory was his—nothing could defy him—and he roared, his scream echoing through the valley and up into the hills.
Other battlers answered, screaming their own challenges back. The gate! He remembered it suddenly. There had been other battlers at the gate, males older than he was. The gate was a reasonable distance, though. He had a few minutes to finish this if he hurried. Then he’d have to take his queen and run, before one of the others decided to take his challenge personally.
He bent
over Saml, his fanged, burning mouth larger than the entire man. “SOLIE IS MINE!” he roared. There was no defiance in the human at all anymore, his rage turned into panic…but it would still be easier to destroy him. Solie wouldn’t have to worry about her father at all if he were dead. Heyou opened his mouth wide, fully intending to devour the father whole, when he felt a touch to the edge of his mantle that had him shimmering back into his human form, reappearing in the tunic that he’d swallowed inside of himself as he changed.
Solie stepped up behind him, shaking even as she pressed herself against his back and wrapped her arms around his chest, palms flat against his body. Heyou tilted his head back, closing his eyes and relaxing. He could smell her and he purred, trying to remember there were other battlers who might be coming and that he was too untried to be sure of winning against even one.
“Don’t hurt my father, Heyou. Please.”
For her, anything. He moved his arms back, laying his hands against her hips. “Yes, my queen.”
She hugged him, and all his anger vanished. His aura dropped and the tension that had covered the village eased.
“S-Solie…?”
Snarling, Heyou dropped his head and hissed down at her father who was frozen on the ground where he’d fallen, staring up with an ashen face. There was no sign of Chole or the other man, though different villagers stood a distance away, gawking and armed with whatever weapons they could find. Heyou growled at them and they flinched.
“Heyou,” Solie admonished, hugging him. “Don’t.” She loosened her grip for a moment and then tightened it again. “Go away, Father,” she begged in a tiny voice. “I don’t want Heyou to hurt you.”
“B-but…,” he gasped.
Her arms stayed around Heyou, her body pressed against his. Heyou let his eyes close again, just relaxing against her. His queen’s smell was making him drunk.
“He won’t hurt me,” Solie told her father. “He saved my life.”
Somewhere, Heyou realized, the man was finding courage. Perhaps it was that Solie embraced him, keeping him contained. Heyou resented that the man recognized this, even as he leaned back against his queen, desiring her. He’d take her right there if she let him, other battlers be damned.
The Battle Sylph Page 6