“We should leave.”
“Yeah, but first we have to help him.” Ky crouched to meet her gaze, and she flinched from the question in his eyes. “Birdie?”
“Help him . . .” As if it had simply been waiting for the thought, the Song welled up within her, and she knew that she could heal him.
The Song was willing.
Footsteps scuffed around her as the runners crowded in, pushing and cramming in an effort to get close. A glance over her shoulder revealed an even more ragged bunch than before. Most sported gashes and bruises along with the weapons in their fists, but they ignored them, watching her with a sort of fearful awe, mouths agape.
Beyond them, the woods loomed thick and foreboding now, where before they had seemed clean and welcoming in the blooming freshness of spring. Danger lurked out there. Just out of reach, perhaps, but not gone. She knew it with a dreadful certainty in the pit of her stomach. She could not sing here, not where there might be enemies about who would be drawn to the music. Not when all the runners were watching, afraid of her, afraid of what she might do. Not when Slack already regarded her as some sort of a witch.
“Ky!” Gull pushed to the front, bow slung over one shoulder. Blood trickled from a split lip, but he was grinning wide, oblivious in the rush of the aftermath of battle. “What do we do?”
Ky cocked an eyebrow at Birdie.
She shook her head and turned her eyes down, unwilling to bear his scrutiny. The Song might be willing. But she was not.
The rustle of leather and shifting leaves told her when Ky pushed up to his feet. “Combine the supply sacks. We’ll need at least four empties and some stout branches to make a stretcher.”
“A stretcher?” Gull snorted. “What on earth for?”
“Bringing him back to camp. We’ll tend to him there.”
There was no question in his voice this time. Just a hint of disappointment.
7
A rabbit fell from the sky when Ky walked into camp. Of all the things he might have expected to be greeted with, a falling carcass wasn’t one of them. He jerked back, and it narrowly missed his head and landed at his feet, snapping against the ground and then flopping up onto his toes. Still warm. His sudden halt jarred the wounded man on the stretcher and brought complaints surging his way from Gull and the other two runners on the poles.
“Steady on!”
It wasn’t every day a fellow almost got brained by a flying rabbit—or a falling one, as the case might be. As far as unexpected things went, he reckoned it ranked somewhere near the top. Then again—as a screech drew his eyes skyward—maybe it was normal behavior for a griffin displaying his hunting prowess.
Gundhrold dropped from the ledge that overlooked the clearing, falling like a stone until he snapped his wings out only a few yards above their heads and glided to a crouch beside Ky. “Meat, youngling. Dune rabbits, a brace of them.” He dropped the carcasses as he spoke. “And a pair of karnoth birds. Should hold you until you learn to fend for—” He broke off. “Fresh blood. I smell it upon you.” The griffin’s head jerked toward the stretcher. “Who is this? And where is the little Songkeeper?”
“I am here, Gundhrold.” Birdie spoke up from the back of the line. She sounded weary. He hoped that was all it was. Something had to account for her odd behavior in the woods. “We’re safe. It was a pair of Khelari slavekeepers and hounds, but we fought them off.”
“They are dead, then?” The griffin turned to Ky for confirmation.
He nodded.
“Come, little Songkeeper, you must tell me where.”
The griffin trotted away, leaving Ky’s path clear. Just in time. His arms felt about ready to be pulled from their sockets by the weight of the stretcher. Add to that the burn of lash marks and the gnawing ache of hunger in his gut, and he was more than ready to declare it a day, take a nap on the creek bank, and let someone else take charge.
Pity there was no sign of Slack in the camp. She would have enjoyed that.
“Oi!” Gull jostled the stretcher. “Where’re we puttin’ him?”
“Cave.” Ky started off, but the stretcher shook again, forcing him to halt and adjust his grip to keep from dropping it. A hand latched onto his wrist. He glanced over his shoulder into the wide, staring eyes of the injured man.
“No . . . caves . . .” The man squeezed his wrist with a grip that was painfully strong, and then his eyes drifted shut again and his arm went slack.
“Oi, Ky? Any day now?”
“Scratch that.” Ky altered course to the makeshift fire ring in the center of the clearing. “Set him down now. Easy does it. Easy, Gull!”
The stretcher landed with more of a thud than he would have liked, prompting the wounded man to groan again. Free of the weight, Gull and the others scattered, leaving Ky alone. He worked his shoulders, wincing as his jacket pulled across the lash marks, courtesy of the Khelari slavekeeper. Protected by the animal hide, the skin hadn’t broken, but it was still sore and there was plenty of work to be done yet. In his mind he ran through the day’s remaining tasks, sparing a moment to nod at Birdie when she approached. He couldn’t help staring.
She looked a fright.
In the midst of all the chaos earlier, he hadn’t really taken it in. The red tunic she had been given in the desert was torn, and there were rips in her leggings as well. She held one bloodied arm—injured, from the look of it—supported in the other, but she just nodded back at him as if nothing was wrong. “Gundhrold went to take care of the bodies. Said we ought to have known better than to leave any signs behind. He said we should keep careful watch until he has finished laying false trails.”
Ky scrubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand. He should have thought of it himself, along with about a dozen other things. But life out here was nothing like in Kerby. There they could escape a brush with the enemy through a hidden trapdoor and disappear into the caverns beneath the city from a dozen points at once. Here, they had the creek to disguise their scent from hounds and sentries to watch for danger, but if danger pursued them, where could they go?
Maybe the griffin could help him solve that problem. For now, the best he could do was keep the camp running and see to the necessities like food and water and posting sentries. The meat of Underground leadership.
Already turning to leave, he gestured at the slave. “Can you make him comfortable?”
She hesitated. Actually hesitated. Only for a moment before she knelt beside the stretcher. But it was long enough for Ky to see the uncertainty hiding behind her eyes. Yet another puzzle to ponder while he dispatched runners to fetch fresh water from the creek and sent Gull and the two other stretcher bearers to replace the day’s sentries. Given the power to heal, he couldn’t imagine not leaping at the chance to free someone from pain. Then again, she hadn’t healed herself, so maybe that wasn’t how it worked. Odds were he would never know.
On his way back through the clearing, he collected the game Gundhrold had brought in and set off in search of Dor and her cookpot. He intercepted her at the cave entrance, earning both a scowl and a tongue lashing.
“Did you lot find any food? Or were you too busy hunting down more mouths to feed?”
Oh, she and Slack made a fine pair. Always complaining, the two of them. He bit his tongue to keep from speaking until he could trust himself to be civil. Mostly. “We got food, Dor. Plenty of it.” He tossed one of the rabbits to her, but she didn’t bother trying to catch it. It landed at her feet. “See. Meat.”
“Oh, that’s just grand. Because all I need to cook a solid meal is pulverized rabbit.”
“And gatherings. Plenty of roots and herbs and such. We put the sacks in the cave.” Ky shoved the rest of the game into her hands and wiped his bloodied hands on his trousers. “Slack here?”
“Am now.”
The sudden voice behind made him shiver. Of all the folks to have sneaking up behind you, Slack was the worst. A fellow just couldn’t help imagining her sinking her hatchet into
his skull and having a grand old laugh while doing it.
“Missed me, did you, Shorty?”
Gritting his teeth into a grin, he turned to face her. “Slack! Where’ve you been? Thought I asked you to keep an eye on camp.”
“Thought you knew I wouldn’t listen to a word you said.” With a grunt, she slung a sack down from her shoulder and tipped it to spill at his feet. A dune rabbit and a petra slid out, already gutted and skinned. The wet pelts hunt from her belt, and the sticky, sweet scent of fresh blood flooded his nostrils. She stepped closer and poked his chest with one finger. “But you’d do well to listen to me for once. I’m the best hunter in this camp, and you know it. Don’t you dare go putting me on watch and letting us all starve just to suit your cursed pride.” She jabbed him again for emphasis, and then a third time for good measure—all things considered, Ky counted himself lucky that she used a finger and not a fist—and then stomped away.
A snort drew his eyes to Dor. “Guess she told you!” She uttered a coarse laugh as she gathered Slack’s contribution into her armload, and she was still laughing when Ky left to check in with the sentries who had been posted during his absence. Her attitude irked him, but not as much as Slack’s words. There was no truth in what she had said. It wasn’t pride that kept him from recognizing her as a fellow leader. It was common sense.
Wasn’t it?
The question nagged at him throughout the rest of the afternoon and into the evening when the Underground finally set aside their tasks and gathered around the fire to eat their fill of roasted dune rabbit and rustshrooms. He went up last and got the leavings and settled down a little ways off to strip the meat from the bones with his teeth. Setting aside the matter of his pride or common sense or whatever you wanted to call it, Slack had issues of her own. She would always be itching to lead. She wanted it more than he ever had. Needed it, more like. Maybe he could use that somehow.
Turn it to his advantage.
He finally had the chance to learn about the Takhran’s slave camps from the eyes of an insider. There was no telling where that could lead. Maybe to pursuing his promise to find Paddy. Maybe even Dizzier, if he got lucky. Given the opportunity to repay his debts, would handing over leadership of the Underground—even to Slack—be such a bad thing?
His gut told him that it would.
But maybe that was his pride talking. He sighed and cast it aside from his mind. Through the shimmer of heat rising from the embers of the fire, he saw Birdie still sitting beside the injured slave. She had not moved since he asked her to care for him, but she hadn’t healed him yet either. Just sat there, knees drawn up, chin resting atop her folded arms. She looked such a small thing to wield such power. Such a frightened thing too.
Ky frowned and tossed aside the bones. Puzzles, the lot of them. And he was too weary to solve any of it tonight.
•••
Dying firelight flickered across her palms, tinting her skin first red and then blue as it came and went. She studied her hands. Dried blood marked the bite wound on her left wrist. It hung slightly crooked. Broken, she thought. She could feel the bone grating inside when she moved it, more alarming than painful, but she hadn’t yet bothered with bandaging or splinting.
That required caring.
And caring required too much effort.
Gundhrold passed by on his way to the upper lookout post, drifting through the clearing on padded feet that made no more sound than a shadow. Oddly enough, most things in the world had a melody—creatures, trees, stars, wind—but a shadow was silent.
Nothing more than a ghost.
The griffin, on the other hand, was very much alive. She could feel his gaze like a knife slicing beneath her skin. For a breath, he halted beside her, touching his wing to the top of her head. A benediction, it seemed. Or a comfort. But there was nothing comforting about the words he whispered in her ear. “Tell me, little one, when did you allow fear to become your master?”
Then he was gone. And the cold of the night settled around her.
One after another, the runners dwindled away to seek their bedrolls within the cave. But while sleep tugged at Birdie’s eyes, rest seemed as far away as the hope she had felt when the voice of Emhran sang to her on the mountainside. Beside her, the injured slave tossed on his stretcher, gasping in his sleep. His melody called to her. A voice that pleaded for her help. And when she finally nodded off, in her dreams the voice became that of Amos begging for mercy, while the cool, hard voice of the Takhran promised an end to the pain that never came . . .
She startled awake with a high, thin wail of music fading from her mind.
The slave was awake and staring at her, eyes glinting in the firelight. “You have seen it.” He spoke in slow, broken, heavily accented words. But the words were unmistakable. “You have been to the Pit.”
“Yes.”
Silence.
“I too have seen it.” His voice dropped off, and Birdie thought that he had drifted to sleep. But after several minutes of nothing but the crackle of the fire and the soft wailing of night moths in the treetops, he spoke again. “I followed a friend through the dark paths. Years ago. He was supposed to save us. But he took the yoke of the Takhran instead and left us to our doom.”
Pain blossomed in his song, and Birdie nearly wept at the depth of it as his words became clear. “You were with Inali when he sought Tal Ethel?”
“Yes.” A fit of shivering seized him, and his voice slurred. “Nah Obasi was my name. The eldest son of Nah Tarkil of the Sigzal tribe. I was with Dah Inali . . . when he betrayed his kind . . . and delivered his brethren to slavery and death. I have seen . . . evil.”
Evil.
The world was full of it.
One did not need to travel to the Pit to know that. From the casual cruelty she had witnessed in the hold of the pirate ship, to the unsettling madness that stirred within the Takhran and led him to bleed her people and innocents alike for the sake of power, to the cursed selfishness that urged her to look to her own safety first and care for others later, she had seen much evil. And yet she had also experienced much good. A good that had sung to her upon the hillside of a power capable of swallowing the evil without being tainted by it.
A promise that had woven its way into the depths of her being. Even here, confronted with the depth of this man’s suffering, she could not escape it. For the first time since discovering the army surrounding the Caran’s fortress, the blackness seemed to release its hold on her. The Song stirred within her soul, and she could feel the power rising, beckoning her to yield, and in the yielding to find strength.
She set her good hand on Obasi’s brow and began to sing.
There was no burst of power, no rush of dizzying light, but she could feel the fever leeching from his skin. Wounds began to close before her eyes, forming rigid scars across his skin. His melody buoyed and strengthened. Then his eyes drifted closed, and he fell into a calm, deep sleep.
“Yes.” Birdie whispered into the night. “I have seen evil. But I have known good.”
Somehow the spoken words shored up her courage. She sat back, cradling her injured hand to her chest. For whatever reason, although the Song had chosen to heal Obasi, it had done nothing for her wrist. Or for his scars. From the rags of her tunic, she tore a strip of bandaging and wound it around her wrist, between her thumb and forefinger and back again, until the wrapping was sturdy enough to provide support.
She would need to heal, and soon. She could not wield an axe or a sword one handed, and wield she must. For somehow, in this quiet moment beside the dying fire with this man who would always bear the marks of slavery, she had decided to fight. Perhaps not as Gundhrold wished, perhaps not as a Songkeeper should, but in the only ways that she knew how.
What more could one do?
Part Two
8
A ripple of unease greeted Ky that morning. He could sniff it in the air—a sort of sharpness that raised his hackles and brought him scrambling from his bedr
oll, certain that all was not well with the world. That was one thing he had learned on the streets. When it came to danger, a fellow’s first instinct was often all he had.
Pausing in the cave entrance, he scanned for enemies. Instinctively, his gaze jumped to the tree line, while his hand went to his sling and dwindling pouch of sling-bullets.
All clear. No sign of Khelari or hounds. Or any immediate danger. He eased his hand away from the sling.
Within the clearing itself, instead of the usual hustle and bustle of morning meal preparation, he found only a sense of heaviness. Of subdued fear and restlessness. The runners already awake sat huddled in groups, whispering and pointing toward the center where Birdie knelt, stoking the fire back to life. Beside her lay the stretcher. Empty. The wounded man . . . Had he died?
Ky scrubbed the sleep from his eyes, and that’s when he saw him. The man sat upright across from Birdie with his knees drawn up, elbows resting on top and long-fingered hands dangling near his ankles. Through the rips in his vest, Ky could see that the wounds had closed, leaving what appeared to be old scars behind.
Healed.
As Ky approached, pushing his way through the press of runners, sparks flew up from the embers and caught the fresh tinder that Birdie had placed in the fire ring. She didn’t look up at him, just kept working awkwardly one handed. The other hand was bound in bandages and rested in her lap. Still injured, then.
At his elbow, Gull whistled through his teeth. “Saints alive! That girl is a witch.”
Ky shot him a glare that clearly did nothing to subdue his spirits. Gull was a decent runner and the best bowman in camp now that Cade was gone, but he had a tendency to overdramatize things. A knack for conflagration, as it were. And the last thing the Underground needed right now was a spark for that tinder.
He squatted across from the stranger and cleared his throat. “You made it through the night.” Well, that was obvious, but it didn’t garner so much as a nod from the stranger or any indication that he had heard. “We weren’t sure that you would. You were pretty beat up. You remember what happened?”
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