by Jenn Polish
After rescuing us from the Hands that chased us to the border of the Grove where we could claim sanctuary, Mama healed her. And me.
My growns.
“I guess everyone’s got growns, huh?” Artem frowns with his mouth but grins with his eyes. He swishes his mead around in his mug before taking a swig and giving me a pointed look. As always when I’m Jayden, I move in part truths, part terrors.
“My mom’s amazing. A healer, and not like one of those ones who just relies on faerie myths. She does the whole package. My dad’s trash. Wish I could say I never met him, but what can you do, right?”
My heart tugs, calling that non family, not mentioning Mama, not bringing up Aon. But Jayden’s heart swoops at the look of understanding in Artem’s eyes, the way he runs his thumb over his growing chin stubble and nods at me sympathetically.
People don’t look at me like this when I’m just Sadie. Not strangers, anyway.
Except Evelyn. I wonder, not for the first time, why I didn’t use my spy name with her the first time we met.
“What about you, Artem? Family?”
The Head Slicer heaves a heavy sigh and signals Ruth for another round. I remind myself that he’s not some nice person buying me mead. He’d never buy mead for me as Sadie—he’d just cut into my skull if he found out I haven’t been Sliced.
“I had family. A big one. I suppose they’re still my family, but…”
“But?” I brace myself for blood boiling.
“It was fine, if a little strained, as families can be. You know. But—oh, I guess it was what, ten harvests ago now—you’d have been no more than seven or so harvests, you probably won’t even remember this—” I wasn’t seven. I was just a newly born, but he can’t know about my slightly faeric growth rate—“the king retaliated against the Grovian dragons for spreading the risk of blood plague infection. Good thing too, if unfortunate for the poor souls, because their blood, you know, is the key to granting immunity to the thing.”
I watch him as he drinks deeply and fight off a smile. He leans in and points a casually uncoordinated finger at me.
“I have some of that lifesaving blood in a case in my room, just upstairs, you know. Funny, isn’t it, how the lifeblood of such magnificent creatures can be the key to saving the lives of an entire civilization?”
He stares at me with big eyes, and I realize he wants an answer.
“Yeah.” I think of Mama’s hatchling dragon, Xamamlee. He was slaughtered in the so-called retaliation Artem’s talking about. The first massacre. Zaylam’s screams during the second send me deep into my mug for more mead even though it isn’t affecting me.
Artem grins sadly at me. “I’m doing it again. You didn’t ask me about dragons and blood! Growns! I have them. But they chose the wrong side of this whole thing. Good people, my growns. They just never understood the value of doing what needs to be done. Understand me, Jayden?”
“Yes, sir.”
His smile reaches his eyes this time, and he reaches over to clap me on the shoulder.
“Sir is what they call me at my labor, Jayden. Artem. It’s Artem.”
I return his grin, hoping it doesn’t look like a grimace.
“If that boy had sympathy for the faeries he was supposed to arrest, I understand. Initiations are hard. Especially that first round we had to do, of all the growns and young ones—we started with the humans, and then later mandated it for other creatures—growns had to submit to the surgeries, and wouldn’t always accept the anasthetics.” We both shudder. Mom hadn’t. I don’t know if Mama had—I never asked. Mom’s muffled shrieks and tears were more than enough.
“I’m sure your mom gave you a great anesthetic, though. When you were a young one.”
Artem’s eyeing the Slicing scar on my right temple. I squirm, hoping he doesn’t recognize it as a tattoo, faded white ink on light brown skin. Mom had done the tattoo herself—when I was a newly born, not a young one like Artem’s imagining—when she convinced the man she worked for that she’d Slice me herself, being a healer and all.
“Yeah,” I half lie. “She held my hand through the whole thing.” Sort of. I was in her arms, anyway. A fully non newly born wouldn’t remember something like that. I do.
I wonder if he knows that it’s not only the older ones whose minds he’s butchered, whose hatchling connections he’s severed, that remember hearing his scalpel cut into tender flesh and newly formed bone.
I stand abruptly and, remembering myself, sway a little on the spot. Then I sway a lot.
Ruth, passing near me, lets out a throaty laugh. “Seems like you’re too young to handle that mead after all.”
I exaggerate another stagger, careful not to overdo it. I want to look young and in need of help, not pathetic in Artem’s eyes. And sure enough, he steps around the edge of the table to me. “You all right, son?” His voice is concerned, but his eyes are mischievous. “Maybe we indulged too quickly, hm?” He puts his arm around my shoulders, and I’m glad for my thick layer of muscles carved out by labor. “Ruth! Can you get this nice young boy a room?”
I almost smirk at my own cleverness, but I just nod gratefully with a bemused grin on my face. “I’ve drank more than this before. Maybe ‘cause I skipped dinner,” I mutter in my own defense, but I’ve already won. I feel the vial Kashat took from Jax so acutely it’s like the thing is burning in my pocket.
He supports me on my left side all the way up the rickety tree flesh stairs, winking at Ruth as she tells him which room to plop me in. I swallow my embarrassment as Maeve and her friend, now with the group playing darts on the other side of the bar, giggle at my retreating back. Artem takes on both the dead weight from my limp and the stumbling uncertainty of my fake intoxication surprisingly well; his reedy body doesn’t look particularly well built, but I guess you have to be of a certain kind of strength to tug at the Energies like he must as a healer.
The Head Slicer leans me against his shoulder as he fiddles with a door just above the stairs to open it. It occurs to me that other than Jax and P’Tal, I’ve never had this much physical contact with a man before. It feels strange. I wonder if he’d be touching me any differently if he knew I was a woman. Or a faerie.
Artem looks around the empty room for a moment and stokes a small tree flesh flame in the fireplace before laying me gingerly onto the solitary mattress, stuffed with dried up plant carcasses.
“You rest here for a bit, and I’ll have Ruth bring you up some water soon. She says you can have the room as long as you need, no charge. All right, Jayden?”
I let my neck wobble loosely like Lerian’s did last Lunamez, when we smuggled some mead from Rada’s stash and drank it deep into the nighttime celebrations. “Mmhmm.” Artem chuckles and brushes a couple stray, curly hairs from my forehead before leaving the room, closing the door softly behind him.
The moment the door closes, I’m bolt upright on the mattress, my ears straining. I hear his footsteps thud down the stairs and back into the bar area, and I immediately crouch on my haunches, pressing my ear to the door, straining to hear any movement in the corridor.
I don’t have much time.
Hearing nothing but the rustling from downstairs, I slip out of the room quietly and tiptoe to my left. The biggest room—the one reserved for the most esteemed passers-through—is in the left corner wing of the corridor.
I’m starting to sweat despite the chill in the air as I tug softly at the Energies around me, tugging and twisting until I hear a small click in the doorknob. The tree flesh door swings open with a slight creak and I flinch, frozen. But there’s still no movement but my own.
I slip inside the room, hoping against hope that it’s Artem’s. I poke into a soft sack full of clothing, and sure enough, a change of Head Slicer clothing is folded neatly underneath some sleeping wear. I picked the right room.
He doesn’t seem to have many possessions here. For a moment a swirl of panic flares up in my belly, but then I notice the hard case sticking out sli
ghtly from under the mattress. It looks like what Jax attaches to the back of his chair when he goes to heal someone who can’t make it to the infirmary. A classic healer’s case.
I lick my lips. This is it. I steady my hands so I can flip the catch of the case open. My eyes fall immediately on two vials. They’re full of deep golden liquid, the color and consistency of Lunavad tree sap.
Dragon blood.
I shudder and wonder whose veins this blood used to run through. Before I was born, Mama’s hatchling dragon, Xamamlee, died saving one of his friends in the massacre of the Plains. Mama says before the massacre, all Lunavic skies were always full of dragons and their songs. After Xamamlee and the others were killed, the Lunavad trees magicked the barrier around the Plains and with rare exception, the dragons don’t leave their confines anymore.
I hope this blood is too new to be Xamamlee’s. Mama still cries about him sometimes in the Plains with Baml, her hatchling tree, but only when she thinks I’m not watching.
My ears strain for movement in the corridor, but I can’t hear anything beyond the cheers and shouts of the ever-rowdier crowd of Letheans downstairs. I slip the vial out of my pocket and remember what Kashat had told me— mixing its contents with the dragon blood will hopefully allow the Slicing to do whatever it supposedly does to prevent the plague, but will still allow the Sliced newly born to Dream.
My heart slams as there’s rustling on the stairs. I freeze, helpless, but another door opens all the way down the other side of the corridor. I release the breath I didn’t know I was holding and work faster.
I open the vial and twist off the stoppers for the dragon blood with my teeth, one at a time. I drop an equal amount of the liquid Kashat gave me into both vials before closing them up and giving them a swift shake. They glow for a moment, the whispy golden color of banned soul keeping magic, and then still. The blood looks the same as they did before I touched them, no trace of the sabotage I’ve attempted.
I wipe the vials carefully on my tunic to remove any smudges from my fingers or mouth and slip them back in the case, exhaling shakily as my eyes try to avoid looking at the carefully wrapped set of scalpels. I swallow vomit and seal the clasps of the case, placing it back against the wall in the same slanted position I’d found it in.
More movement on the stairs. I launch myself out of the room, silent as Osley, and slip into the room at the top of the stairs. I throw my body onto the mattress and remember to look intoxicated.
A soft knock at the door precedes a small sliver of light from the corridor glowing off my face. “Jayden,” Ruth calls gently. “I brought you water.”
I am absolutely alert, but force my body to move blearily, even with my heart beating wildly. I accept the water with a murmur of thanks and hold it with both hands as I drink it all hurriedly. Some slips down my chin onto my tunic. I don’t care. I need something to do with my hands, my mouth, to keep my entire body from shaking.
Ruth’s staring down at me with her head cocked to one side, her wide gray eyes narrowed as she looks down at me. “Want me to send for anyone to come get you?”
I shake my head and drag myself up, careful to stumble less than I had on the way up here. “No, no. But I uh…I should be getting back to town.”
Ruth scoffs. “Town’s a ways away. What’re you gonna do, fly to get there?” She chuckles and I force a laugh.
“I’ll be okay. Just needed to lie down a bit. Tell Artem uh…tell Artem thanks for the drinks. And the help.”
Ruth sighs, her eyes looking at my face hard. Then she tosses up her hands slightly as the voices of young men yelling for more mead travel up the stairs.
“Duty calls,” she tells me with a twisted smile. “You get home safe now, all right?”
I nod and wait until I hear drunken cheers rise up downstairs at her return. All eyes will be on her, I know. I descend the stairs at a crouch, my eyes seeking out Artem. He’s staring thoughtfully into the bottom of his mug. I swing myself from the stairs to the back door and slip out into the night.
The cold air hits my sweaty skin like a sheet of ice, but Osley’s bright eyes are waiting for me at the edge of the Forest. I force myself not to run, and I thank Lunara that the cold has forced the lingering men from earlier back into the inn.
“Mission accomplished, Os,” I tell quer, bending down to stroke quer gray-white fur after seeking and receiving permission from the grass to step into the Forest again. Que nuzzles into my hands, and we both turn to look back at the inn.
I wonder if the people who were kind to me in there would have even hesitated to send for the king’s Hands if they’d caught a glimpse of my wings.
I wonder what Artem would say if he knew the near he’d befriended tonight only talked to him to destroy his means of making a living. Because his means of making a living is destroying my life.
Chapter Eight
I’M TOO EXHAUSTED to make it to the Underland. I collapse in Jorbam’s branches as the moon is just starting to disappear under the Forest’s canopy, and Osley leaps away to tell a probably very anxious Kashat that I got back all right.
I’m asleep immediately after stripping out of the non clothes, before I can even answer Jorbam’s rumbled inquires as to where in Lunav I’ve been.
I’m too wiped out to even Dream, but when the sun starts to invade my outer eyelids what seems like only moments after I’ve laid down, my groggy arm flails out as I shift to try to get away from the light. Zaylam grunts loudly—I’ve smacked her face as she sleeps perched on Jorbam’s trunk just beneath me.
My outer eyelids drag open reluctantly, exhaustion heavy on my body like a weighty mist on and inside each of my limbs. The top layers of Zaylam’s eyelids disappear into the top of her triangular head as they open immediately. Though I can’t see her crystalline, Flowing green eyes with her bottom two layers of eyelids closed, I know she can see me. Her snout, circular and scaly, twitches back and forth sleepily when she recognizes my apologetic face staring down at her. I groan internally. —Zaylam likes her sleep.
“Sorry, Zay,” I croak. “I guess I forgot you were down there.” Her snout is twitching like she’s trying not to elongate it. I narrow my bleary eyes at her. She’s only pretending to be irritated. I don’t have to pretend. I just want to go back to sleep. She raises her head and sings to me.
Faeries have such small remembrances
With those small little bodies.
Does the little one not remember
Anything?
I grin groggily, still after all these seasons getting used to having a dragon sing directly at me. Usually, they sing right out to the Energies, not to any one person in particular, but with their hatchlings, it’s different.
“I’m tired,” I moan, and she imitates me in singsong. I laugh at her antics despite myself.
My laugh turns into a cough, though, as I plummet deeper into Jorbam’s branches. A strong wind pushes me forward, and the rush of wind from Zaylam’s takeoff fills my ears. She’s pumped her broad wings and flown herself away from Jorbam’s canopy backwards, probably so she could watch me lose my balance from the force of her flapping.
She’s roaring with laughter, and Jorbam rumbles with lethargic amusement.
And then Zaylam is shrieking.
I disengage myself, exhaustion abruptly gone. I scrape the side of my face on Jorbam’s branches as I speed toward Zay, but Mom’s hatchling dragon Gimla beats me to it; the Lunavad leaf-style spines that lie the center of his back are too sharp for him to catch anyone there, and as I turn I see him rolling over in midair so that he can break my screeching hatchling dragon’s fall with his enormous, soft underbelly. His unfurled tail helps his wings slow their descent, and lifts straight up into the air, seemingly of its own accord.
I squint, and I realize that Harlenikal—with her earth-brown wings and body—has taken Gimla’s tail into her toothless mouth, flapping her thick, smooth wings hard, holding up Gimla so he can slow down enough to avoid splattering spine-fi
rst onto the ground below. Semad and Kamid watch, silent for once, alongside a stunned-looking Archa. The entire Plains seems to be holding its breath.
The procession of falling dragons—Zaylam caught by Gimla, Harlenikal trying to hold them both—stops just before they splatter on the earth. Gimla rolls over gently, Zaylam’s limp body slipping off of his belly and onto the ground. I land as Zay sprawls out, wings and limbs askew. I take a deep break and exhale onto her underbelly to comfort her. She groans. I ready myself to pull the Energies into Healing.
This has happened a lot since the Kinzemna massacre, when her underbelly was sliced through by the enchanted bones of fellow dragons and her air bladder was cut into shreds. For the most part, she’s healing all right, but sometimes—like now—her scar crusts open and leaks thick blood.
Seasons-old screams from the massacre flood my mind. I shudder as I remember the sickening sounds of the palace’s invisible, enchanted blades tearing through dragon flesh, cutting the wings off of some and puncturing the underbellies of others, like Zay. Each newly cut-off set of wings in turn came to life and sawed off flesh and bone from more dragons. So many were permanently sea dragons now—assuming they didn’t bleed to death—and Zaylam, now, is permanently an air dragon. With her air bladder shredded as it was during the massacre, she’ll never get to swim to Qathram on the Izlanian side of the Flowing. It’s not something we really talk about, but I know it weighs heavily on her. I can feel it.
To distract myself as much as to distract her, I put on a horrible Highlander non accent while my hands work over her. “You are aware, are you not, dragon, that an injured specimen is not fit to serve the king? How very inconsiderate of you to just drop out of the sky like that. And at such an inconvenient hour!”
She laughs softly, deep in her long throat, and more golden blood leaks out of her scar. I twist the Energies harder.