On Wings of Bone and Glass

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  “And they don’t now,” the first scoffed.

  “No.”

  “Then how did you—”

  “Look,” the second guard said, “this isn’t our business. They told us to bring up the prisoners. Let’s bring up the prisoners.”

  “Fine,” the first said and approached me a rope.

  “Is that necessary?” I asked, tired.

  “No,” he replied, smirking. “But I want to.”

  I suffered myself to be bound, hands and neck, only because Amhric’s patient gaze reminded me that we would have an easier time convincing these humans of our good intentions if we didn’t protest.

  From our cellblock, once no doubt used to keep humans when elves were ascendant, we were led up the stairs and through what appeared to be kitchens, out into what would have been a courtyard in any other city. In Nudain, it was a fantasy. An enormous cavern that swept downward toward a rocky lip to the ocean, its stalactites and stalagmites extended into arches and carved and painted and inset with precious stones. These arches proceeded up an incline, and as they rose the roof slowly peeled back to reveal the sky and a grassy sward, framed in palms.

  From this enormous space led halls, both deeper into the cliffs and higher toward the buildings I could just espy above ground. At the lowest elevations, the halls were replaced with canals, surging and hissing with the tide as the sea filled them. It was breathtaking, and I had little leisure to enjoy it before we were propelled with little kindness toward a door at the end of the cavern.

  Nudain’s audience chamber had been delved from the sea cliffs and overlooked both the ocean and the courtyard, by way of twin balconies. It may have once been a beautiful and gracious place; it was now cluttered with the ruins of shattered columns and furniture, and there were suspicious smears on the walls. If there had been a throne, or something like one, it had been destroyed; the people awaiting us were standing, and two of them, I was relieved to see, were Ivy and Kelu.

  “Finally!” Ivy exclaimed in Lit, and started for me, only to be stopped by two people with spears. “For God’s sake, don’t be ridiculous. That’s my fiancé. Morgan, these people don’t understand me. Or they’re pretending not to understand me. Kelu, tell them!”

  Kelu said dryly in the Gift, “You’re manhandling her betrothed.”

  “Her fiancé,” a man standing apart from the others said in response to this. “Really.”

  “He doesn’t believe you,” Kelu reported to Ivy.

  Ivy’s frustration was nearing extreme proportions, as anyone could tell from her voice even without understanding the words. “As I’ve been trying to tell them since they dragged us here—”

  “Enough,” a second human, a woman, said to Kelu. “Tell your human to be silent.” Without waiting to hear if Kelu did, she approached me and gave me a look that made her seem remarkably akin to an elf: as if I was something to be sized up and dismissed as inconsequential. “So. Come to put down the little rebellion, have you.”

  “Ironically enough, no,” I said. “I came to liberate you and the genets.”

  She laughed. “Oh, ripe one! Please, tell me another!”

  I glanced at Kelu. “I presume you two have been explaining our mission at length and they aren’t interested in listening.”

  “To be fair,” Kelu said, “we did arrive with Tchanu, who’s responsible for the humans here being food. This isn’t exactly Erevar.”

  “Where is Tchanu, anyway?” I asked.

  The woman slapped me. “When you are allowed to ask questions, elf, you’ll be told.”

  Ivy’s growl was not encouraging. When my headache permitted the formation of distinct words, I said in Lit, “Don’t kill them yet, my love.”

  “If they hit you again, I’ll do worse than kill them.”

  Kelu offered in the Gift, “She’s going to hurt you all if you aren’t more careful with her property.”

  “Her property!” The woman facing me laughed. “You have her well and truly indoctrinated, don’t you. Did you take a fancy to her? Separate her from the herd? She doesn’t know how the rest of us live.”

  “She doesn’t know how the rest of you live because she wasn’t born here,” I replied. “She speaks a wholly different language, you’ll note. And doesn’t understand the Angel’s Gift.”

  “She is pretending,” the woman said.

  “You really are stupid,” Kelu interrupted.

  “For a genet,” one of the guards said, “You are incredibly insolent.”

  “I was the first genet,” Kelu said. “They fixed that in all the next versions.” She folded her arms. “And those are my elves, and this is my human, and I want them back.”

  This development gave them pause. If they’d worked for the liberation of both humans and genets, then they could not fail to accommodate Kelu… but it was plain that they considered all elves their enemies and that nothing would satisfy them but the complete extirpation of the race from the Archipelago.

  “All right.” Kelu lifted a furred hand. “You think that’s asking too much. I’ll compromise. I want my two elves,” she pointed at me and Amhric. “My human,” now Ivy. “And my friend, Emily. You can keep the rest.”

  “Kelu!” I exclaimed.

  “It’s the best I can do,” Kelu said in Lit. “Tchanu was personally responsible for using a lot of these people. Her guards—the ones that lived—either were in on it too, or they’re from other blood-flags and have no one to protect them. I can get you all free or no one.”

  “She may be right,” Ivy said. “They are full of rage, Morgan. As I imagine they have the right to be.”

  “And you.” The woman had moved on to Amhric, where she stopped, arrested by him in the way that all were when they moved to consider him. I could well imagine the gentle compassion in his eyes, and how unwelcome it would be to her. “No defenses?”

  “I am his defense,” I said.

  She snorted. “Until you decide you need to sacrifice him to your ambitions. I know how elves work.”

  “Do you?” I said. “How old are you? You can’t be over twenty years.”

  “She’s seventeen. But I’m not.” The man, who’d been silent up until this point, joined her. He was no graybeard, but there were lines beneath his eyes that suggested he was older than he looked. He regarded Amhric with reluctant interest; well I could read the distaste in his movements. “I don’t recognize you. You’re not one of Nudain’s.”

  “I belong to no blood-flag.”

  “That doesn’t happen,” the girl said.

  “It does for the king,” Amhric replied.

  “A king of elves?” The older human hesitated.

  “Excellent,” said the girl. “Let’s kill him and behead their nation.”

  “It doesn’t work that way,” Kelu said from behind them. “Until now he hasn’t had the power to do anything. He’s here to bring all the elves under his rule, so you’re better off making friends with him and convincing him to hear your cause than you are killing him outright.”

  “She’s right,” I said. “Do you kill him, your descendants will be forced to bear the burden of surviving while the Archipelago erupts into power struggles that will make your own quest for freedom far more difficult to bring to fruition.”

  “Our descendants.” The girl folded her arms.

  “Yes,” I said. “Because if you kill him, I will kill you. I accept that your guards will slay afterwards, but they won’t reach me before I reach you.”

  “Are you not going to tell your aggressive guard-cat to stand down?” the man asked Amhric.

  “I would not. He loves me, saved me from slavery in Suleris, and has warded me through multiple battles with the walking dead and a fight against demons.” Amhric glanced at me and smiled, rueful. “To counsel him against violence in my defense would be….”

  “Cruel,” I said.

  “A waste of breath,” Amhric said.

  “Very pretty,” the girl said. “Fine show of loyalty wh
en we know that you people have none, nor finer sensibilities either.”

  The older man was watching the interplay between us with a furrowed brow. Noticing it, I said, “Have we perplexed you? Not fitting into your preconceived notions of how elves behave, are we? What if the genet is right? What if befriending us is your best chance for liberty?”

  “Is it?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “For reasons I would be glad to explain if you would stop treating us like prisoners.” I grimaced. “And allow my beloved to see to my head.”

  “That for your head!” the girl exclaimed, and cuffed me on the temple.

  The world erupted into noise and motion; Ivy’s scream of rage, the scuffle of boots, the floor meeting my ribs an instant before it met my head.

  When I could see again there were four guards on me, and four on Amhric. Ivy had been added to our number, wrenched to her knees and imprisoned by another three people; while Kelu remained free there were two men before her with spears, watching her warily. And there, I thought, we might have come to a gruesome end had it not been for purest luck, for as the yelling in two languages finally began to die down, a handful of genets entered the room: yellow-coated and brindled and silver and sable, they came with the apparent intention of reporting something to our captors when they espied Amhric.

  Nearly as one, they stopped in shock as the magic in them recognized the magic that had made them. Their tails trembled, and their ears, and their eyes grew round... and then they cried out and ran for him. As his astonished guards watched they pushed into my brother’s lap, throwing their arms around him, rubbing cheeks against his and purring and lapping at his skin.

  “What the hell?” said the girl. “What are you all doing! Pepper? Moonlight? Marzipan!”

  “What, did you name them all after dogs?” Kelu said, disgusted.

  One of the genets clinging to Amhric looked over her shoulder at the girl, and her confusion was plain on her face. “But Diantha! It’s the Sire! Don’t you know him?”

  “The Fount!” agreed a second, who leaned back to look at him, then let her gaze rise to the guards. Incredulous, she said, “Why are you holding him down? Let him go!”

  “Let him go!” said the girl—Diantha. “He’s an elf!”

  “He’s our father,” said a third genet.

  This revelation astonished our captors into silence. Capitalizing on it, Kelu said, “They’re right. Amhric was imprisoned in Suleris and used to fuel the magics that made the genets. The elves raped him just like they did you, and for the same reason.”

  Ignoring her, the older man said carefully, “He… lay down with you?”

  All of the foreign genets stared at him, ears sagging: as one would look at a madman, or someone who’d committed a horrible solecism. Their disgust was manifest in the voice of the first when she exclaimed, “No!”

  “Then how do you… you call him father?”

  “He is a part of us,” the third genet said. “We would know him anywhere.”

  “Even if some of us hadn’t seen him escape from Suleris,” agreed the first. She looked past Amhric at me. “It must have been you who helped him? But you look like an elf now. You were human when I saw you.”

  “I was apparently always an elf,” I said. “My mother, wanting to save me from the depredations of our kind, bore me among humans and enchanted me to resemble them.”

  “Oh,” whispered one of the genets. “She was smart!”

  I couldn’t help my laugh.

  “There are no good elves,” Diantha said stubbornly, with a brittle anger I found ominous.

  “A lot of them are rotten,” Kelu said. “Some of them aren’t. These two would help you, if you let them.”

  “They were seen with e Nudain,” the man murmured.

  “Yes, well, they didn’t know her well.”

  “Kelu!” I said.

  “It’s true,” Kelu replied, unrepentant. “Can you vouch for her behavior prior to knowing you?”

  I grimaced.

  The genets had resumed murmuring to Amhric, obviously distressed at his state. The first stood finally and said, “Ikaros, this is our father! You can’t treat him this way.”

  “Your father the king,” Kelu added.

  “We could be princesses!” exclaimed one of the genets, much to the amusement of the others. My brother, I saw, was very happy… had his nose in the fur of the golden genet, who had an arm around his neck. I saw the seep of tears off his auburn lashes.

  “Shall we be your princesses?” added the golden one, leaning back to look at him.

  “You will always be kin to me,” Amhric said. “And my daughters.”

  22

  This is how we came to sit at a parley table with the new leader of Nudain: solely at the insistence of genets who now teasingly called one another princesses. I saw Kelu’s incredulity with their behavior and could not blame her for it: we were both accustomed to the slavish obedience of the genets, and while these genets remained biddable and naïve, they showed far more agency than either of us expected. Observing them, I thought a great deal of it could be laid at the feet of their new human ‘masters’, who did not think to act toward the genets as keepers; lacking the discipline of their former lives, they defaulted to an innocence that seemed uninterested in the future. They did their best to serve humans who wanted no service, and kept to themselves—and now to Amhric, to whom they clung with gleeful abandon.

  “Nudain,” Ikaros told us, “is ours. There is no elf here who is not dead or imprisoned.”

  We had been allowed to leave the first audience chamber, to eat and refresh ourselves, and—most importantly for me, to have Ivy see to my head. Afterwards, new human guards had escorted us to a smaller room with a table, where Ikaros alone was seated; the remaining humans stood against the walls, watching us with unfriendly eyes. Amhric’s cloud of foreign genets had accompanied him and draped themselves near him; he had, I thought, at least two heads on his lap.

  “What happened to our guards?” I said.

  “We killed them.”

  He and I stared at one another as I digested this and sought some reaction to it that made sense: anger. Confusion. Grief. What I felt mostly was numbness—and resentment—and fortunately Kelu rescued me before I said anything regrettable.

  “You,” Kelu said. “Killed ten elven guards. Even with a hundred humans, or whatever it was you attacked us with, that doesn’t seem likely.”

  Ikaros leaned back in his chair, arms folded. “Our ability to use magic lacks subtlety compared to the elven mode, but it’s amazing what surprise will do for you. Thus far no elf has expected either our defiance or our magic. That has been sufficient to guarantee us victory.”

  Emily, who stood at Ivy’s elbow, was serving as translator. Listening, Ivy said, “Victory, but for how long?” At Ikaros’s quizzical look, she clarified. “You have conquered Nudain, or so you say. But Nudain is only part of the Archipelago. What will you do now? Sweep through the remainder of the islands and set up your own new human dictatorship? One with elven slaves?”

  Emily winced. “Mistress Ivy, this is a bit harsh....”

  “Tell him,” Ivy said.

  Once she had, Ikaros stared at her, then said, “Some of us would, perhaps. Many more of us would set up a human nation without elven slaves. Because there would be no elves.”

  Kelu sighed. “Well, I see how this is going to go.”

  “Have you heard from other blood-flag territories?” I asked. “Have there been rebellions elsewhere?”

  “All over Serala, humans have been fighting their elven captors,” Ikaros said. “Some places are still contested. Others, completely pacified.”

  “And Erevar?” I said.

  He paused.

  “No fine answer for Erevar, I see. Have Kemses’s humans rebelled against their elven ‘captors’? Have they destroyed or enslaved the elven population of the city? How has it fared there? Have you sent messengers?” I lifted my brows. “Or
have you sent armies yet?”

  Ikaros shook his head. “They are our enemies.”

  “Some of them are,” I said. “Some of them aren’t.”

  “That remains to be seen.”

  “A situation that will obtain permanently if you kill every elf you meet.”

  This startled a guffaw out of him. “Are you always so dry of wit, elf?”

  “My name,” I said, “is Morgan Locke. And you find me at somewhat of a disadvantage. My wit is usually even drier, but a turn in your dungeons has fatigued me and I find myself a trifle more pedantic than normal.”

  “Morgan Locke. Not an elven name.”

  “As I said—”

  “You weren’t born here.” He studied me. “You do speak Gift with an atrocious accent.”

  “It’s true,” Kelu said. At my askance look, she said, “It’s not as if I haven’t tried to train it out of you, but you have a Lit accent.”

  “I think it’s precious,” Emily murmured, and we all stared at her.

  “He is what he says he is,” said one of the foreign genets. “Ikaros, you must listen to these emissaries. We cannot continue to live like this, killing everything, wary of everything. Eventually we will die.”

  “You always counsel peace,” Ikaros said. “Because you hate conflict.”

  “Do we not all long for peace?” Amhric said, quiet. He had a hand on the shoulder of one of the genets. “Is it virtue to love conflict?”

  “It is virtue to love conflict if the alternative is slavery,” Ikaros said.

  “And if the alternative is to water the Archipelago with blood until there is no one left?”

  Ikaros’s brow furrowed. “Hyperbole.”

  “Philosophy,” I offered. “You speak to a king who cannot offer violence to anyone.”

  “To anyone,” he repeated, skeptical.

  “He can’t raise a hand to a single person, even if they threaten him with worse than death,” I said. “It is how he came to be trapped in Suleris’s clutches. His magic won’t serve a violent end either.”

  “And how does this paragon of pacifism go on?” Ikaros asked.