The Unfinished Song: Sacrifice

by Maya, Tara

  “I would be glad to stretch your mask for you,” Dindi said quickly.

  “Really? Why?”

  Believe me, you don’t want to know. You’d feel compelled to keep my secret, and if I were ever caught, you might be punished too. Dindi felt guilty, but she couldn’t tell Gwenika the truth. “You’re my friend. I’m glad to help.”

  Gwenika held out the mask as if it were a poison snake. “You have to put it on yourself. Then I can help you lace the back.”

  It was an exceptionally ugly mask, but Dindi was not in a position to be picky. It seemed designed to fit on more snugly than the usual Tavaedi mask, but, she reflected, that might be a good thing, if she were to try to wear it while leaping out of treetops. She smiled to herself. A quick tuck, and she coiled her braid up under the back of the mask, then smoothed the front piece over her face. There was an open seam in the back, with leather laces. Without a word, Gwenika yanked those tightly together. It pinched.

  Dindi felt the knot. “Mercy, that might be a little too tight. I’m not sure I can undo the leather strips if they set that way.”

  Gwenika looked at her so bleakly that Dindi felt a chill.

  “But that’s the point, to stretch it, right?” Dindi said to reassure her. “I’ll be fine. Gwenika, you don’t look well. You haven’t been making yourself sick again have you?”

  She swallowed and looked away. “I do make myself sick, Dindi.”

  “You should rest,” Dindi said. “You beat it once, you can do it again. Should I stay with you?”

  Gwenika shook her head.

  It was selfish of her, but Dindi felt relieved. She promised herself she would check in on Gwenika after practice that evening.

  “Thank you, Gwenika,” Dindi beamed.

  Around them, for some reason, a crowd was gathering. Dindi didn’t know why, but she knew she had to escape it if she were to meet with Kavio in time. She started walking, quite fast, and plucked a pixie out of the air as she moved.

  “Hey,” she murmured to the pixie. “I bet you can’t knock that whole tower of baskets over.”

  “Bet I can!” cried the pixie.

  A moment later, a hundred baskets spilled between Dindi and the crowd, a pile of dust billowed up in a concealing cloud, and Dindi took advantage of the chaos to sneak under the narrow wedge of a crooked log in the palisade.

  Chapter Four

  Hunt

  Tamio

  “This way,” Tamio said, leading the other man through the woods.

  “This had better not be a waste of my time,” grumbled War Chief Vultho. “I’ve been hunting Kavio’s secret a long time, and I’ve been offered false leads before. Those men were punished.”

  “I assure you, this hunt will not result in the prey escaping the snare,” Tamio promised. “I know exactly where Kavio will be.”

  Kavio

  Kavio had to laugh when he saw the mask Dindi had chosen.

  “That has got to be the ugliest mask I’ve ever seen,” he said.

  She shrugged, laughing with him. “You didn’t leave me much time.”

  “It’s perfect.”

  “I think it will even stay on when I jump,” Dindi said, toggling the knot at the back.

  But when she would have started climbing the tree, he stopped her with a light touch on her arm. His smile faded. “Today we are going to do something different.”

  She paused and faced him, uncertain what he required.

  Ask her, fool, he told himself. Let her explain in her own words what Zumo wanted with her.

  He stood in front of her, arms crossed over his chest. The words did not come.

  What if she was a spy? If he confronted her without proof, she would flee back to her true master.

  At the periphery of his hearing, leaves rustled. It might have been nothing but an animal in the ferns beneath the sequoias.

  “I want you to show me the Cat,” Kavio said.

  “What?” She looked at him wide-eyed.

  “One of the basic animal positions. I assume you haven’t forgotten.”

  “No. I thought you didn’t want me to do that one around you.”

  “I do now.”

  Obediently, she crouched on her hands and knees. Aware of the rustling bushes, Kavio stood behind her and placed his hands on her hips.

  “Go through the movements,” he commanded.

  Her hips began to rise and fall rhythmically under his hands.

  The suggestive movement made his breath come quicker. Struggling to control his reaction, he ordered her to repeat the motion again while he counted out the sets.

  “Now the stork,” he said, after she completed three sets. “Lying on your back.”

  She lay down on her back and lifted her legs into the air. Kavio held her ankles as she opened and closed her legs. He began to count.

  “Why are we doing this?” she asked. She spread her legs and brought them together again.

  He kept counting softly.

  “Kavio?”

  He kept counting.

  Dindi pulled her knees in to her chest. “Enough. You are acting strangely. Everyone has been acting strangely lately, but now you too? Tell me what we are doing. Because we are not dancing.”

  Kavio listened. The scuffling grew fainter, as if something was moving away in the underbrush, back in the direction toward the tors.

  “Are you expecting an attack?” Dindi asked, more quietly.

  “Something like that. I believe we just had a visit from one of Vultho’s spies.” He held out his hand to her. “I think we’ve fooled our onlooker. You can stand up now.”

  “Fooled him how?” she asked as she stood.

  “Vultho knows I spend a great deal of time in the woods, doing something I’d rather not do in full sight of the tribe. If he knew I was training the Maze Born, he would have justification to have me killed, along with all the Maze Born.”

  “You are a Zavaedi! You are supposed to be training the warriors.”

  Kavio shook his head. “If Hertio were War Chief, I could talk him around. But not Vultho. He will use any fracture in the rock to undo me.”

  “But then, if his spies saw us together, aren’t we in danger?”

  “Not now. The spies will think they know what I do in the woods. And as you said, it did not look like dancing.”

  He could tell she still didn’t understand. Then a flush crept over her face, and he saw she did.

  “You deliberately made me do things that would make it look like we were…”

  “Yes.”

  “You used me,” she said slowly. “Everyone will think I…”

  “They won’t know who the woman was,” Kavio said quickly. “That’s why I had you wear the mask. You could be any woman, as far as they are concerned.”

  “What about as far as you are concerned?” she asked, with a catch in her voice. “I really don’t matter to you at all, do I? Zumo was right.”

  He went cold. “What does Zumo have to do with it?”

  “He told me you weren’t capable of really loving anyone because you were half-fae. I didn’t want to believe him, but now…. I’ve seen you, Kavio, with your ‘thinking stones.’ You move people around as if they were no more than rocks in your pattern. If it’s convenient for you to push a rock here or there, you do it. Even if it means using a person in a shameful way, you just don’t care!”

  His nostrils flared, but he held himself stone still. His command dripped ice.

  “Go home now, Dindi. We’ve accomplished what we needed for the day.”

  Tamio

  Tamio tried to quell the nervous tremor in his gut. He hadn’t expected Vultho would want to spy on Kavio in person. They hid behind a scraggle of brush and rock, regressed from the tree line. From here, they could not hear Kavio talking to his honey, but they could clearly see the girl’s bare legs pointing skyward while Kavio gripped her thighs and moved over her. Tamio wondered who the pretty quail was, and if he had hunted her himself in the last fe
w months. There had been quite a few, and they all looked the same with their ankles in the air.

  Vultho watched with lascivious glee. “Who would have guessed Kavio sharpens his spear on the side? He seems stone-cold.”

  Tamio wondered what he would do if Vultho decided to confront Kavio here and now. Tamio did not mind playing both sides against the middle. He despised Vultho, as most of the Maze Born warriors did, and he liked training with Kavio behind Vultho’s back. But if it came to a fight, would it really be wise to side with Kavio against the War Chief? Maybe it would be better to rat Kavio out for real.

  On the other hand, Tamio had a feeling that betraying Kavio might be a dangerous mistake, the kind of error a man only made once…because there would be no second opportunity.

  His stomach churned with acid. Mercy, he should never have volunteered for this job. Not that he had so much “volunteered” as he had mouthed off to Kavio, speculating openly about Kavio’s extracurricular activities. That had inspired Kavio to take Tamio aside and give him this assignment. One of these days, Tamio told himself, he would learn to keep his big mouth shut.

  Kavio and the quail finished their smash in the grass. He helped the girl stand up.

  “Who is she?” Vultho demanded. “I can’t see her face. Fa, the girl must be so ugly, Kavio can’t stand to look at her. He makes her wear a mask while he ruts her.” Vultho grew thoughtful. “Maybe I should try that.”

  Tamio squinted at the girl. If she were a Tavaedi, he could narrow down her identity because the color of the mask would tell him her Chroma. She walked away from Kavio, and he finally caught a clear view of her mask.

  He recognized it at once.

  The Duck.

  Muck and mercy.

  Now he knew who Kavio’s honey was. This was very bad. A little surprising too—Tamio had subtly sounded Dindi out about her relationship with Kavio when he’d brought her to be a water-server at the quarry, and from her response, Tamio had gathered there was nothing there. Otherwise, he would not have dared to put into play his own quail hunt. Pretty little Dindi had seemed the perfect target for a little scheme he liked to call “duck-turned-quail.” First, make sure an undefended, yet bodacious female was targeted as this year’s Duck. (Gwenika would have worked too, but he’d come up with another net to nab her.) When the other Initiates turned on her, he would step in and offer his protection. In her gratitude, he was sure that Dindi would have gladly… well, just say he had imagined her shapely legs in the air but with another lucky buck between them.

  Muck, muck, muck. Tamio panicked in silence. If Kavio finds out I aimed an arrow at his doe, he will kill me.

  Unless Tamio helped Vultho.

  Vultho is the only one who could realistically protect me from Kavio’s wrath. Tamio glanced sidelong at the War Chief, pondering options and opportunities.

  “Good, she’s leaving him now,” Vultho said. “I can attack. You will help me.”

  The acid churned again in Tamio’s stomach. If only Vultho weren’t an idiot. “Maybe it would better to confront Kavio in your courtyard on the Tor of the Sun…”

  “I have no intention of confronting Kavio,” said Vultho.

  Good. I think. “But you said…”

  “We’re going to rape his woman.”

  Rthan

  Nargano was right, Rthan reflected as he knelt to pick up the bloody head that had been tossed at his feet. Nothing but brute force will bring these traitor clans back into formation.

  His lips pressed together into a thin line. He could hear shuffling feet and the clicking of weapons behind the bone palisade that surrounded the clanhold. They had closed their gate to him, even knowing full well who he was. That alone shocked him. The head they had thrown him belonged to the previous messenger, sent by Nargano to threaten them back into submission. Apparently they had heard already that Nargano had executed one of their kinsman.

  How had it come to this? Just a few moons ago, these clans would have killed a Yellow Bear envoy on sight. Now Rthan heard they were sending invitations to the enemy envoy to come treat with them! How many traitors were there in Blue Waters? Were there really that many clans who wanted to let the Shunned become full Tavaedies? Or had Kavio’s daring rescue of the Shunned from the heart of Sharkshead itself merely convinced many clans that Nargano was weak?

  A warrior in full war paint appeared over the top of the bone wall. “Now we are even. Go away, envoy of Nargano, before we incur a debt with your carcass.”

  Rthan retreated, nursing his injured pride. With a few septs of warriors, he could have easily thumped sense into the recalcitrant clan. With enough Tavaedies, he could have scoured all the clanholds to find those who were secretly mollycoddling Shunned, and thus susceptible to the blandishments of the enemy. With enough men, he could have ensured loyalty to Nargano, but all the warriors who would normally “encourage” wavering clans were preparing for the invasion of Yellow Bear.

  If I cannot bring force to bear on the clans, I must attack the weakest point.

  The envoy.

  Kill the envoy, and Yellow Bear would not be able to tempt away other clans.

  Rthan knew where the envoy was now: safely inside the palisade of the clanhold that had just rebuffed him. But the man must leave eventually, to journey to the next clanhold. When that happened, Rthan would stalk him, capture him, and cut off his head.

  Nargano would appreciate the gift.

  Brena

  Kavio was right, Brena thought when she noticed the canoe. Nargano had sent someone to follow her, probably to assassinate her. The canoe was too far away for her see the warrior’s face.

  Brena paddled faster. The rushing waters seemed to laugh at her, and she wondered how many blue fae observed her passage, ready to sabotage her boat at the worst time. She was in the enemy’s element.

  Something dark moved in the water beside her canoe.

  She tried to hit it with her oar. A flipper smacked her oar out the way, then a seal poked its furry head over the keel.

  The seal spoke clearly in a female voice that sounded familiar. “Stop that, Brena, I’m trying to help you. Give me your tie rope.”

  Bemused, Brena tossed the rope, which was tied to the prow, into the water. She tried to place the voice. Was it one of the Shunned from the coastal clanhold she had just left? The seal grabbed the rope between her teeth and started swimming at a crazy speed that could have only been the result of magic.

  Brena placed the voice. She had not recognized the Golden Lady because Brena thought of her as a bear, not a seal. But the faery had more than one shape. Fae were pure light. Physical form was only a mask for them.

  At this speed, she should have been able to leave any human rowed boats behind. Instead, the canoe following her also sped up. White bubbles spewed behind the boat. The wake from her own canoe, and from the enemy canoe behind her, looked like roads of churned up snow on the glassy sea. The spray filled her hair with sparkles. She ducked her head to keep her mouth and eyes out of the sting of the wind. It was hard to breathe. Salt caked her throat.

  Both boats hurled like arrows skipping the ocean. An outcrop of rocks jutted out ahead. The seal yanked the rope and the boat careened to one side as it cut a crescent moon around the rocks. The other canoe reeled just as fast around the rocks.

  Brena jerked a peek behind her. The enemy gained on her. The sea itself seemed to spit his canoe at her. There was no doubt the Blue Lady herself helped him.

  That meant two things.

  She knew who hunted her.

  She knew he would catch her.

  Shivering from more than just the wind, Brena pulled her bow out of her pack. She faced backward, with her legs braced against the sides of her canoe. She reached again into her pack. Under her hand, she felt the long, slender object, wrapped in oilskin. She unrolled the skin and grasped the shaft.

  The enemy boat ate away the distance between them. She could see his face now, though if she had not known who it was, she might
not have recognized him. He was still too far away to shout to over the roar of the speeding boats. But he was not too far to shoot.

  Her leg muscles flexed, holding her steady despite the forward rush of the boat. She notched her bow with the Black Arrow and aimed it at Rthan.

  Dindi

  Still furious with Kavio, Dindi yanked at the mask as she trudged home. The stupid thing itched and stank of sweat. The feathers made her sneeze. However, the sinew cords lacing up the back had been knotted so tightly she could not wrangle them free. In the woods ahead of her, branches cracked, as if a large but clumsy animal, like a boar, staggered through the brush. It was unlikely to come closer, but she angled her path to veer around the disturbance, just in case. Her agitated efforts caused the mask to slip askew, but it was no closer to coming off, and now she could hardly see through the slits in the leather.

  Another crash of branches, closer now, and a rumble of thudding feet. Could it be more than one animal? A herd of deer or elk? Even wild horses might come this way to reach the river.

  She straightened the mask. Sunlight filtered through the leaves, to draw puzzle pieces of shadow on the floor of needles and dead leaves.

  A whistle pierced the air. Because it was not the right season for the call, it took Dindi a moment to place it as a duck call.

  The thunder and crash of feet stamping through the forest grew louder. The hunters were human.

  She tried again to rip off the mask. Cursing under her breath, she yanked harder. She would tear it off if she had to.