The Wings of War: Books 1-3: The Wings of War Box Set, Vol. 1

by Bryce O'Connor

  Always the bird skulls and lizard jaws had turned out favorable signs for the Arros, promising a good year of trade. It was a quick tell, one that needed usually only be thrown once or twice to make the signs clear. But not this year.

  This year the bones offered nothing.

  Gathering them in her hands once more, the Grandmother tossed for a fourth time, scattering them wide. Sometimes space made the telling clearer, easier to decipher.

  After a full minute of staring, though, the old woman frowned again.

  Nothing.

  She was at a loss. Never before had she thrown the bones and not found a single sign. Always there was something. Not necessarily clear enough to tell her anything distinct, but at least enough to offer her some minor glimpse of what she was looking for…

  Now, though, it was as though the bones had been scattered aimlessly, like toys a child had forgotten to clean up after play.

  The cart was momentarily filled with a flood of bright sunlight. Agais grunted, heaving himself into the narrow space. Replacing the skins carefully behind him, the man stood up, blinking in the sudden shade.

  “Anything interesting?” he asked after his eyes adjusted, noticing the bones and crouching down on the other side of the table.

  “Not in the least,” the old woman replied with a huff, rubbing her temples. “I’ve nothing for you, Agais. I see no signs.”

  To her surprise, the man laughed

  “You don’t find it odd?” she asked. Agais shrugged, looking around at the odd baubles of glass and crystal that hung from the Grandmother’s ceiling.

  “I suppose I find it odd, but what’s the point in concern? We’ve yet to be led astray following our own path.”

  The Grandmother didn’t reply, looking back at the table.

  “Our path… yes…” she said after a moment, frowning. “But our path was always advised…”

  “Well, then the telling will come eventually,” Agais grunted, standing back up. “For now, though, we’re less than four days from Karth, so I doubt the Twins will oppose a visit to the place, even if it is a dump.”

  He made for the front of the wagon and pulled the flaps aside, bathing the hide walls with light once more.

  “Send for me if you find anything,” he told the Grandmother, shading his eyes with a hand. “And stop worrying.” He smiled. “A little hard work will do this family good after the lazy few years we’ve had.”

  As he leapt down and let the flap fall back into place behind him, he heard the Grandmother chuckle.

  Moving across the circled wagons, enjoying the give of the sand beneath his feet, Agais made a mental count of everyone he came across. Ovan had been the only loss the Arros had suffered at the hands of an animal attack in thirty years, but the memories of burying the man’s broken body hadn’t faded in the least over thirteen summers. Agais had formed a habit of making sure everyone was accounted for anytime something similar occurred. Most of the clan had been around the horse while Raz dealt with the scorpion, but the clanmaster knew he wouldn’t be satisfied until he’d seen everyone well and whole.

  Achtel and Iriso had been at the scene, but their young son Razi had not. The twelve-year-old boy was childishly sly to a fault, much like his namesake growing up, but Raz had been far too young at the birth to realize the honor Iriso was giving him. Sure enough, Agais found Razi under his father’s cart, filling the pockets of an unfortunate someone’s spare pants with sand.

  Chuckling and leaving the boy to his games, Agais moved on, nodding to Karren and her husband Sios, the pair of them helping Tolman shift the yoke of his now one-horse cart. Karren, like so many before and after her, had come to the Arros looking for some measure of protection. In the years after Raz’s name became known throughout the clans, more than one wanderer had approached Agais in the hopes of joining his family. Almost all of them he’d turned away at once, insulted upon realizing that a majority of them wished only to be backing the strongest party if civil war ever broke out across the South. It was a sad reality that the loosely united governing bodies of the separate cities were only weakening while the underground grew stronger. Slavery, despite being a banned practice, had always had a blind eye turned on it by the authorities. Now, though, the criminal rings were developing quickly, gaining power in the real sense of the word.

  Regardless, Agais wouldn’t hear of turning his family into a war pack, not from anyone. Those that didn’t leave quietly generally didn’t put up much of a fight once Raz and Jarden made themselves known.

  Karren, however, had been one of the few exceptions. When the Grandmother ruled her a good-hearted person, Agais had listened to her story. It was a lie—something about her father beating her—but the badly hidden, poorly healed scars on her wrists and ankles told the clanmaster all he needed to know. She lived with Trina and Kâtyn for some time before marrying Sios, a merchant from another caravan who’d joined with the Arros, cart and all. They’d had a child in the following year, but the poor boy died in a wave of fever that claimed the life of old Kosen as well.

  “Damn you, ya’ blasted, useless, Sun-cursed excuse of a limb.”

  Agais stopped and poked his head around the corner of the oldest and most worn wagon of the lot. A man was kneeling there, struggling to secure a series of boxes to the wall with rope. He had only one hand, the other cut down to a blunt stump just where his wrist might have been, a fact that wasn’t making his task any easier.

  “Want some help?” Agais asked, pulling himself into the cart.

  “Agais,” Sameyl breathed in relief, slumping down and leaning back on his good hand, letting Agais take over the knot tying. “Yes, please. I’m still figurin’ the details of how to work with this thing.” He waved the stump, then smirked as he watched the clanmaster’s fingers tie the boxes down in quick succession. “Advice from a friend? Hold onta’ those. They come in mighty handy. Eh? Eh?” He laughed at his own joke .

  Agais laughed along. Sameyl, Jenie, and their three children—Samso, Tessa, and Johva—were the other group of outsiders to have been adopted by the Arros. The family had been on the run from slavers, though they’d never been caught, and the story they told Agais was true the first time around. Sameyl, a stone mason by trade, had lost his hand in a work accident, nearly giving up his life in the process. He’d pulled through in the end, but no sane man hires a crippled laborer, so to survive the family had been forced to borrow crowns and food from the worst kinds of people. Eventually the debt had piled up so high they couldn’t see over it. When men came to collect, carrying chains and shackles, Sameyl and Samso had killed them, and the rest of the story was one of flight.

  “You’re a handsome and bless’d man,” Sameyl joked in thanks once Agais finished the knots, sitting up to examine the work.

  “So my wife tells me often,” Agais responded with a snort, and with that he hopped off the back of the cart, heading for the edge of the wagon ring to help Raz and the others finish burying the horse.

  CHAPTER 14

  Karth spread like a faint shadow in the distance, swelling from the rippling line that was the horizon as all fourteen wagons crested the last of the desert’s high dunes. Seeing a city wasn’t a new experience for any of them. Not even seeing Karth specifically. But, regardless, there was always something about spending any amount of time rolling through the hot sands of the Cienbal that made the prospect of mingling with cultured civilization more than a little enticing.

  Especially if it meant you got to mingle in the shade.

  “Finally,” Grea breathed, shielding her eyes with a hand. “We’re late. I doubt we’ll manage to circle in anywhere near the markets.”

  “The walk will do us good,” Agais told her with a smile, the crinkling around his eyes deepening. “And between Raz and Jarden, I’m sure we’ll make it back and forth safely enough.”

  “More pressure on him,” the woman sighed, glancing back into the cart where Raz sat at the edge of his broad bedroll, long legs and tail
trailing over the rear edge of the wagon, slim fingers toying with his panpipes. Jarden had made them for him when he’d turned twelve and, though it had taken a long time for him to learn, Raz played nearly as well as his uncle now. With one hand he moved the instrument across his lips, the music sadly lost to the wind and grinding wheels, his other stroking his little sister’s dark hair. Ahna was fast asleep, her back to the front of the cart, small head resting in her brother’s lap.

  “I don’t think he minds,” Agais said with a shrug, clucking the horses into a canter once they rolled onto the first truly flat ground they’d seen in months. “Raz will always pull his weight. Besides, I’m getting the feeling he prefers the cities to the sands.”

  Grea smiled, leaning her head against her husband’s shoulder.

  “Ahh, so there is a way the son differs from the father… Who would have guessed?”

  Agais chuckled, listening to the clatter of the wagon, the city growing a little more distinct with every knock of the axles.

  “Let him be a city merchant, if that’s what he wants. In more ways than one it’s a better life than this.”

  “True, but there’s no scorpions to bash around in town.”

  Agais and Grea both jumped. Raz had climbed to the front, his footsteps masked by the wheel sounds. He crouched behind his parents now, one muscular arm extended to balance himself against the wooden wall of the cart. He was grinning, or doing the best imitation his serpentine face would allow, which mostly involved his higher lip twisting a little at the corners, pulling it up to reveal the gleaming points of slim teeth that had long outgrown their infancy. Faded but still visible, the three parallel scars that ran down the right side of his snout stretched the slightest bit, making them more pronounced. The only true-tell sign that he was, in fact, smiling was the minute spread of his orange-tinged, sky-blue ears.

  Something only his family noticed.

  “How many times have I told you?” Grea laughed, reaching back to smack Raz’s knee. “Don’t do that!”

  Raz chuckled. “I heard you talking about me.” He eased himself down to sit cross-legged behind them. “Being a shopkeeper would be a bore. There’s nothing to do except eat and sleep and yell. I like the towns, but not the dullness of the life.”

  “There’s other things to do,” Agais said, twitching the reins. “I don’t think there’s a captain anywhere who would say no to you joining the city guard.”

  Raz made a face. “No. Never. I’d run off to the North before I joined the guard. They’re corrupt and cruel.”

  “Only the rare few,” his father told him. Although by now it might just be all of them, he thought privately.

  The truth was that Agais had purposefully held his family back a few days this year. Being able to camp close to the market districts had its advantages, that much was true, but at a cost. The place was one of the central hubs of the city, the heart of trade and economy. It was the sort of environment that attracted hundreds of honest merchants and traders every week, along with thousands of Karth’s residents, looking for anything from food to weapons to horses.

  Unfortunately, the opportunity to cash in on a healthy flow of coin always drew the attention of a different sort of businessman. The slave rings now controlled most of the desert’s intercity commerce, Karth being no exception. Circling in past the slums, closer to the wealthier estates in the east districts, meant a long daily walk carrying the goods to sell, but it also meant security. The Arros wouldn’t have to deal with slavers or corrupt law officials telling them that they had to pay a “residential tax” out of their daily revenue.

  At least we can hope not, Agais told himself.

  “You could apprentice somewhere, when you’re older. Jerr’s Hammer might even take you. The smith there is the best in the northern fringe towns. Or with a stonemason, or architect! Or—”

  Grea and Raz had continued their discussion, unaware of Agais’ wandering mind.

  Raz was laughing. “I feel like you’re trying to get rid of me, Mama,” he told her, swaying, the cart thumping over a lump in the sand. “Angling to sell me off to the highest bidder, maybe?”

  There was a moment of silence, and the change happened very suddenly. Raz’s face, cheery and smiling one moment, froze, registering what he’d just said. His neck-crest twitched, rising slightly. His mouth opened less than a finger-width. His eyes dimmed, growing vacant, the edge of conscious intelligence ebbing away.

  “Raz…” Grea began, concerned and about to reach back to touch his face, but Agais stopped her, his eyes on his son.

  Raz jokingly called it “slipping out of humanity,” and Agais supposed the phrase fit well enough. There were times, occurring less and less often with every passing year, where something would trip Raz up, ripping his thoughts away from what was going on around him and fixating on what was going on in his head. It was, Agais assumed, the part of him that was atherian. Sometimes the triggers were small things, like some motion in the corner of his eye or the wind battering the wagon sides particularly harshly.

  Right now, though, it was something else. Agais watched Raz’s hands move together, first rubbing the scars on one wrist, hidden by the silver bangles, then the other, covered by the wooden bracelet.

  Atherian had a long memory. “Sell me off” had probably not been the wisest choice of words…

  Raz’s tongue flicked out from between his teeth, tasting the air. His tail slithered forward along the wagon floor. His split pupils didn’t flinch, staring out across the desert, seeing something much farther away than the sands and sky.

  “Raz?” a quiet voice asked.

  The change was just as sudden this time. Raz relaxed, blinking away the primal look that had taken over his golden eyes. His mouth closed, and his crest flattened down the back of his neck. He looked around, the chain on his face swinging.

  Ahna had gotten up and made her way to the front of the wagon. One small hand pressed the wall, helping her balance against the sway of the cart. The other clutched a little cloth doll to her chest. Her dark wavy hair bounced with every bump, and her pretty gray eyes, tinted with just the strangest hint of emerald green, were wide as she looked at her brother.

  “You’re making scary faces again…”

  There was a tense moment, Agais and Grea looking on, letting the horses stray from the path as they wished. Raz, for one, seemed at a loss for words. Then he smiled, grinning ridiculously at Ahna. Abruptly he threw his arms up, falling back onto his folded wings, legs still crossed.

  “Don’t-cha’ know my face always looks like this?” he asked her, grinning and crossing his eyes. On a human it would have looked silly.

  On Raz it looked ridiculous.

  Ahna giggled, smiling and jumping to sit in her brother’s lap once he sat up again. At not quite nine summers old, the top of her head barely reached his neck.

  Relaxing, Agais and Grea turned their eyes back to the desert. Karth had bloomed through the heat, towers rising from the richer eastern parts of the city, their thick forms shimmering against the cloudless sky. Somewhere behind them they heard a man, probably Jarden or Tolman, yell “Hyah!,” trying to maintain a good pace in this closing stretch.

  “Maybe the city isn’t such a good place for me, Mama…”

  Grea looked over her shoulder. Raz was gazing off at the western distances, his eyes on the space just above the horizon. He had one arm wrapped loosely around Ahna just to make sure she didn’t step too close to the wagon edge, but apart from that he had the look of a mind carried elsewhere.

  This time Grea did reach back. She ran her fingers gently across his cheek, marveling, as she always did, at how smooth the scales were. Once, years and years ago near the Garin, she’d grabbed a viper thinking it was dry wood. She’d been lucky enough not to be bitten, but the feeling lingered in her memory, that cool, lethal softness.

  Raz’s cheek felt the same.

  Cupping the bottom of her son’s snout in her hand, Grea pulled his face around
to look at her.

  “You are a better man than you think,” she told him with a smile.

  Raz averted his eyes. “The trims don’t like me.”

  “They don’t know you,” Grea insisted, letting go and patting him under the chin. “I recall Iriso felt the same at first.”

  Raz’s ears perked up. “Aunty?” he asked, perplexed. “She didn’t like me?”

  Agais snorted, earning a smack on the arm from his wife.

  “You could put it that way,” he said over his shoulder. “Let’s just say you have a talent for getting on people’s good sides.”

  Raz didn’t say anything, but he looked a shade happier. If his favorite aunt could learn to fawn over him as much as she did, then maybe others could change as well.

  It still bothered him, though.

  Raz looked down at his sister, blissfully oblivious to the conversation, jumping her doll from one of his knees to the other. It was troubling, how people could be so prejudiced. The Garin was one thing. Everybody there knew him. Raz felt at home, felt safe. He could go from camp to camp with his family to exchange stories and trade, and only the littlest ones of most clans would stare at him in open awe or fright.