The Deepest Night tsd-2

by Shana Abe

  The others had rallied around the cannon, round-eyed, fingers on triggers, scanning the sky.

  “Listen to me! Listen to me, all of you!”

  The horsey-faced woman was standing in the doorway of what looked to be a decrepit granary that had been long forsaken to the woods, medieval thick-cut stones eaten over with moss and wild ivy. She was holding up both arms, her raspy voice gone strident.

  Armand couldn’t discern much beyond her. He had the impression of bodies crammed in the space past the doorway. Of children sniffling, old men with creaking bones, women in kerchiefs, babies squirming. The stench of fear and feces rippled out, engulfing him. He cupped a hand over his nose, then forced himself to lower it.

  “We have been saved,” the woman announced, solemn now, and backed up so that Armand could take her place.

  He took a step forward, straining to see through the darkness. Why was it so opaque?

  Whoever was in there, they were quiet as a tomb. All he heard was breathing, theirs and his own. The rise of nervous heartbeats. An infant suckling. Blood pulsing through veins—

  “Who are you?” called a woman, and as if her question had lifted the shadows from his eyes, he could see her now, see all of them, in a clear blue, almost otherworldly illumination. The darkness melted back and he was faced with close to fifty people of all ages and shapes and sizes. All of them filthy. All of them greasy with sweat.

  But for one. There was one face that didn’t match any of the others. A girl in the far back, half hidden behind her grandmother, perhaps. She had long reddish gold hair and a face as white and clean as—

  “Sweet mercy! His eyes!” cried someone.

  “What is it? What is that light?” whimpered someone else.

  “Is it witchcraft?”

  “The devil!”

  “Not the devil, but angels!” claimed the horsey woman at his shoulder. “Do not fear! I told you God would deliver us!”

  “No.” Armand was tired and jittery and his skin felt like it’d been crisped with hot coals and he couldn’t think of a single good reason to lie. It was too late to pretend now, and anyway, what these people wouldn’t witness firsthand, they’d hear about over and over. “Not angels, not devils. We’re English. We are dragons.”

  “Drákon,” gasped the redheaded girl, and slammed back hard against the wall behind her before she disappeared into thin air.

  Disappeared. No smoke. Only gone.

  In the twinkling of an eye, he thought absurdly, exactly as the crowd flared into panic.

  Here’s the thing about cannons.

  They’re worthless without their shells, aren’t they? Without the bombs to fire, they’re just big, bulky, useless contraptions of metal.

  I Turned into a girl behind the crates, lifted a pistol one of the deserters had dropped, and began to unload rounds into the wood.

  Chapter 22

  I found the village men trapped in a large stone building with a waterwheel attached, a river running brown and stagnant beside it. It was a mill, about a mile from where I’d just taken care of the rest of their company, and the dozen Huns guarding it had obviously heard the commotion. All those shells exploding at once—it might have been heard all the way to Prussia. Even as smoke, it felt like my ears were still ringing.

  They were armed to the teeth, these blokes, rifles pointing in every direction, bayonets flashing. I became a dragon in front of them, plain as you please, and whacked my tail against the ground.

  It was almost as earthshaking as the shells going off.

  Only one of them thought to charge me. The others, happily, simply scattered. A couple actually jumped into the river.

  As soon as the lone soldier noticed he had been abandoned, he skidded to a halt, halfway between me and the potential shelter of the mill.

  I stalked toward him, twitching my tail. He was stocky and short, a patch of blond whiskers on his chin. I opened my wings and reared up, and he was too dumbfounded to even fire; he only stood there with his mouth hanging open, gawking up at me.

  So I flicked him with a claw. It knocked him back to the dirt in a stir of dust, his rifle jarred free. His helmet rolled away down the lane, hollow as a tin can.

  He was out. I Turned to girl, ran to the millhouse door, and strained to hoist free the heavy slab of wood that sealed it shut.

  “Bonjour,” I called breathlessly through the door. At that point it was the only French my scrambled brain could remember. “Bonjour, bonjour!”

  As the first of the village men began to edge past the doorway, some small, shamed remnant of Iverson flushed through me; I was young, I was nude, they were all males, and I was supposed to be a lady.

  I Turned to smoke.

  Their fields were burned, their village was rubble, and even behind those stone walls I had no doubt they’d heard all the ruckus. Surely they’d figure out for themselves that it was time to flee.

  Besides, I had a strong and uneasy feeling it was time for me to return to Armand.

  I followed the fragrance of his blood.

  In my smoke form, I didn’t have what I’d term an actual sense of smell, yet I could recognize certain aromas. Like everyone, Armand had his own unique scent (sea salt, pine woods, lemon and clouds and spice) … yet what I chased now wasn’t that. It was him but not him, more an essence than a scent.

  It had a heat to it, a coppery tang, which felt to me like urgency.

  I flew first to the last place I’d seen him, that anonymous spot in the woods where we’d run into the women, but of course he wasn’t there. So I floated around until I felt him again: a dull tugging to the west. That ominous sensation that I needed to hurry.

  Ash settled upon the crowns of the trees twitched upward as I passed, an acrid dry flurry. I dropped down lower, into the heart of the forest, weaving swiftly around trunks and boughs, because he was down there somewhere and I was getting closer, closer—

  I found him. He was slumped against a log, head down, along with a pair of girls with messy braids and patterned skirts. One was holding his face. The other rifled through the knapsack, half its contents strewn along the ground.

  Blood stained his forehead, his cheek. Blood made a scarlet river down his neck.

  The sight of it did something to me—and that scent, that dreadful scent, so copper-hot. Rational Eleanore vanished; animal Eleanore swelled with rage.

  He was hurt. He was bleeding. They were hurting him—

  I became a person at his side and backhanded the girl nearest me, the one holding him. She sprawled flat, red palms to the sky.

  “Stay away from him,” I hissed, and lunged for the second girl.

  She squealed and dropped the knapsack, clambering backward on her hands and heels like a stranded crab, but before I could reach her my ankle was caught.

  “Lora! No! They’re helping!”

  I was snared, hopping in place. When his hand fell away I stumbled forward to my knees, catching myself with both hands. I glanced back at him with my hair in eyes; he’d collapsed against the log again. He was breathing hard, watching me. The blood was flowing from a gash above his left eyebrow.

  “They’re helping,” he repeated, making certain I understood.

  I got up, pushed the hair from my face. I brushed the leaves from my body, then walked over to the girl I’d hit and pulled her to her feet. She was younger than Armand and I. Both of them were. I’d guess they were around twelve or thirteen, bony thin and fragile like the pleading woman had been.

  Her cheek was pink. I hadn’t struck her as hard as I could have, but I’d still meant it. She stared up at me with her lips compressed and something that might have been hatred in her eyes. Or terror. Or awe.

  “Sorry,” I tried. “Er … je m’excuse.”

  “Pardon,” she answered, short, and pushed by me to return to Armand.

  “What happened?” I asked Armand, following her. The second girl slunk cautiously closer, picking up the knapsack again. “Who did this?”
r />   “Do you remember, once upon a time, telling me never to let anyone see me as a dragon?”

  I stopped probing at the gash, shocked. “You Turned?”

  Without me? Without me being there or knowing it or feeling it—

  “No. But I told them what we are.” His lips smiled; it looked ghastly. “They didn’t appreciate it much. Bit of a riot ensued. Somebody has rather good aim with a rock.”

  “You told them we’re dragons. Come to help. And they stoned you.”

  “Dragon,” sighed the red-palmed girl, as deeply and irrevocably besotted as only a twelve-year-old could be. She stroked her hand down his cheek and smudged the blood to his chin. “Un prince de dragons.”

  “Well, my prince, it looks like you made at least one friend. Good thing you haven’t lost your touch with the ladies.” My voice sounded harsh even to me. The skin around his wound was shiny hard and swollen. Beneath all that gore, it was turning a nasty shade of beet.

  If he lost too much blood, if the blow had injured his brain—

  I kept talking so my fear wouldn’t show.

  “Why’d they even believe you?”

  “My eyes.”

  “Oh. And then you … what? You fought them off?”

  “Then,” he said dryly, “I ran.”

  “You still have the pistol. Why didn’t you shoot them?”

  He gave me an incredulous look. “Because I’m not like those soldiers. I am a nobleman. I don’t shoot unarmed people.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Right gallant of you, your grand magnificence! Do be sure next time to remind them of how principled you are as they beat you to death—”

  “Ici,” interrupted the girl with the knapsack. She lifted up the cotton wool, along with a roll of bandage, and trotted over. I took them from her with blood-sticky fingers and realized a few things at once: that I was the eldest and presumably most responsible person here unharmed; that despite my exasperation with Armand, my body was sapped and my reason gone to mush; that I had no clue what to do next.

  Bind the wound, my mind instructed. That’s what I’d seen Deirdre do over and over, wasn’t it? Bind the wound, stop the bleeding.

  I pressed the pad of cotton in place, seized the besotted girl’s hand, and made her hold it there while I wrapped the linen bandage tight around his head.

  As I worked I felt something soft settle over my own shoulders and back. Jesse’s shirt, the one I’d slept in. The knapsack girl had crept up and draped it over me. I’d completely forgotten I was nude.

  “Merci,” I grunted, not looking away from what I was doing.

  “Vous êtes une princesse dragon?” she whispered.

  A princess. Hardly.

  “No.” I met Armand’s gaze, finishing up. “Paysan.”

  I would have shot those stoning bastards for certain.

  “You’re not a peasant,” he protested, but it was weak. If I’d thought him pale before, it was ten times worse now. The red on his face stood out like war paint.

  “Nothing wrong with being from the gutter. At least we’re raised to know the odds.” And when to keep our bloomin’ mouths shut about monsters in our midst. I stood. “The odds are now well stacked against us, I’d say. So I’m the peasant who’s going to get us out of here.”

  We’d have to fly. Somehow he was going to have to hang on to me and we’d fly, because if the people here had been willing to stone him once, they’d do it again. Now that I listened carefully, I actually heard them. Footsteps not that far off, the forest floor crunching. Voices calling names—Bibiane! Yseult!—edged with frenzy.

  I gathered everything back into the knapsack as quickly as I could, then shrugged out of the shirt and stuffed that in, too.

  “Think you can still carry this?”

  “Yes.”

  He climbed to his feet, supported instantly by either Bibiane or Yseult. Whichever was the moony one.

  “Get ready,” I said to him, assessing the girls. They reminded me far too much of the paper skeleton boy from Moor Gate, but I hoped they were more resilient than they looked. “It’s one thing to imagine a dragon, and quite another to see one. They might come undone.”

  “Lora.” His fingers were tracing the bandage across his brow. “Give them something.”

  “Like what? Money? They can’t spend pounds out here.”

  “Food. Give them some tins.”

  I wanted to protest, then bit back the words. No matter what trouble swept these woods next, we were going to leave. These girls would be trapped here for a while to come. Maybe months. Maybe years.

  I stuck my hand into the knapsack and dug around until I found the tins. I grabbed a few without looking to see what they were and passed them to the whispery girl.

  “Bonne chance,” I said. Good luck.

  She clutched the tins to her chest, brown eyes alight. “Et vous.”

  I stepped back and Turned into a dragon, and to my absolute wonder, neither of them screamed or bolted or did anything but make O’s of their mouths and squint at me like they’d just accidentally looked straight into the sun.

  Then, together, they smiled.

  We were fortunate the day was so overcast. Otherwise, we would have been forced to escape in plain view of anyone on the ground.

  And, as I now knew, plenty of those anyones were armed.

  I ascended as fast as I could, my wings beating hard, so that by the time we reached the bottom of the clouds I was drawing the air past my teeth because it was so cold and I wanted it so badly.

  When you’re earthbound, clouds look fluffy and soft, like dreamspun pillows, but the truth is that they’re wet. And not soft so much as dense. Choking. I blinked away the drops that pearled my lashes and climbed higher, knowing it’d be harder for Armand to breathe the soupy mix of air and water than it was for me.

  Breaking free was like exploding into a new day. We went from a world of cool, murky gray to brilliant sunlight and blinding azure sky. I had to narrow my eyes against it.

  I had no inkling of which way to go. The sun was not quite directly above us—I thought it might be shortly before noon—but north, south, east, west … who knew? All I could really tell was up and down. Everything before me was either boundless firmament or white-crested clouds. There weren’t even any birds this high.

  Armand inched forward along my spine. From the corner of my eye I saw his hand lift, a finger pointing to our right. I didn’t know if he still had the compass or not, since he’d lost his coat somewhere in the forest. But it seemed as good a way to go as any.

  I tilted us to the right. Our shadow zoomed sharp below us, boy on dragon on clouds.

  I couldn’t keep him up here for long. In just his shirt and trousers Armand was going to get very chilled very quickly, and besides, I was worried he might pass out. We needed shelter and we needed it soon.

  Yet the cloud cover remained uniformly opaque. I wasn’t going to be able to see a good place to land. I’d have to use my other drákon senses as best I could to perceive it.

  We couldn’t come down near a town, obviously. Or a village, either. I hoped for more woods, a nice heavy stretch of them. Someplace with another barn, perhaps, or an abandoned farmhouse. Even a shepherd’s hut would do.

  I supposed I should try to sniff out some livestock. Sheep or cows.

  Stupid, stupid, you’re not that good, my mind scolded.

  But I had to be.

  I closed my eyes. Stupid! my brain reprimanded, unyielding, but I could tell I was flying straight, and again, there were no birds or anything. Nor were there any aeroplanes or zeppelins. They were loud—you could hear them from the ground, even—so I was positive I’d notice one up here before it was upon us. Closing my eyes helped me to concentrate on everything beyond sight: the touch of the wind against me, how it jostled me this way or that. The silence of this bright heaven, where the only two living creatures within miles made the only noise.

  The taste of sunshine and vapor.

  The s
cent of … nothing but clouds.

  Try harder.

  There was land below me. I knew that without doubt, so I concentrated on it. I knew how trees smelled, and how soil smelled. I recalled with acute precision the powdery black pungency of gunpowder, how it parched my tongue and burned my nostrils and clogged the back of my throat.

  We passed through a whiff of that, then more than a whiff. I sneezed and shook my head and angled beyond it.

  Trees, yes. Fields, very dry wheat or something like it. Woodsmoke suddenly, apples. Were we over an orchard? Orchards tended to be dense and mostly empty of people. That might be good—

  Horses. Unquestionably horses, or rather, the product of them. I was from the city; I tried to remember if horses went with orchards …

  And then, quite abruptly, Armand made the decision for both of us.

  His hands loosened. He fell backward. He slid down my side but by some miracle didn’t fall off. I realized my wing was holding him in place, but only barely, because he was sliding again—

  I twisted my head around and managed to grab him by the cuff of his trousers just in time. His eyes flashed open and he struggled to get upright, but the wind was so strong. Slowing down would mean we’d descend, but I didn’t have a choice.

  The cuff began to rip. The bandage blew off his head, a graceful, looping ribbon that danced down and down and became swallowed by the clouds.

  His hands slapped against my neck until he found my mane. His fingers dug in. I opened my jaws and he clambered up into place just as we plunged into the gray.

  It no longer mattered what lay below. I had to get us to land.

  Blind again, beads of water spangling my lashes again. My brain was now commanding, Hurry! Hurry! but I was so afraid of suddenly materializing in the open air. What if I was wrong and we were above a town? What if we were above the front? What if we were above just some farmer with a rifle and frayed nerves and a keen eye?

  Armand wilted once more, this time forward. Then the mist streaked away and all I could see were trees, rows and rows of them, bright rosy dots of apples. Birds erupting from the branches and leaves, flinging themselves every which way.