The Endless Skies

by Shannon Price

  “What is your point?” I ask.

  “No point,” she replies. “Only a recommendation, from two lives who have seen more death and more life than most of your people. In tying yourself to the words of your histories, you are ignoring what is before you.”

  I frown. “And what is that?”

  “Change.”

  The two bow their heads, and I let them leave without another word. If I open my mouth, it will not be diplomacy that comes out. My body radiates with anger. How insulting of them … but is my fury coming from somewhere else? We Leonodai pride ourselves on knowing our place in the world and among one another. The order our ancestors established holds up through today. There is no need to change it. There is no need to question it.

  Or is there?

  Lady Alys and Lord Rhys are right, I realize, the pit in my stomach growing. What we always called order is turning out to be stagnancy—and our people are dying because of it.

  25

  ROWAN

  “The cure,” I say. “It’s here.”

  Excitement sends me practically flying to the cabinets to double-check them for more.

  Now all we have to do is get back to the Heliana. Everything’s going to be fine—the prince will live, and all the children will be safe. I’ll be safe, too, though in a different way. Like Callen said, helping bring back the cure will have to absolve me.

  But my search inside turns up empty. I curse. “I’ll start looking outside.”

  “Take something warm,” Seth replies. “Ox, check the other rooms.”

  I follow Ox to a tidy bedroom. “This your size?” he says, holding up an obviously too-large coat.

  “However did you know?” I reply. He hands it to me, stepping closer as he does.

  “Rowan,” he says. “What are you not telling me?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You went outside when Sethran told you not to, and you took Callen with you,” Ox says, an edge in his tone. “You bring up the urgency of this mission a least half a dozen times a day even though we all know what’s at stake. What’s going on?”

  “Callen followed me,” I say. I lower my voice. “And I just don’t want to get off course. I can’t get off course.”

  “Kind of feels like you are already,” he says.

  “Ox, wait.” He lingers in the door. “This will all make sense soon,” I say. “I promise. Just trust me.”

  There’s more I should say. My heart feels split in two parts, as opposite as night and day—and it’s not my heart I’m supposed to be caring about.

  He nods. “I trust you.”

  “Thank you,” I say, and we walk back to the main room as if nothing happened. Pulling the human’s coat tightly around my shoulders, I head out the door.

  * * *

  Sinking to my knees, I push my hands into the muddy dirt, ready to scream. Nothing. We’ve looked for hours now under a pale gray sky, and we haven’t seen any more of it. Seth salvaged the one flower we did find and pressed it into a pocket of his satchel.

  “Its powers may already be spent,” he had said sullenly. “We have to keep looking.”

  Back in the present, I take in the silhouettes of Ox, Callen, and Seth searching in their own sections a few hundred feet from me. We divided the area around the house into four, and I’m in the most inland section near the cypress trees.

  The human had a horse. That expands the area we should be searching tenfold. What’s more, he could have bought it in Ramsgate and we are wasting time out here.

  At least the rain has let up. The sky is now a patchy gray and blue, which makes spending all this time searching a little more bearable.

  Then the earth beneath me begins to tremble. I scan the horizon, my fellow fighters doing the same. Swearing under my breath, I get up from my exposed position on the ground and dart for the nearest patch of cypress trees, keeping low. Their gentle scent engulfs me, and I turn, waving for the others to join me.

  Seth is shouting, but I can’t make out the words. He draws his longsword just as a group of six riders rises from the sloped beach, their mounts headed for Seth, Ox, and Callen. Even from here, I can make out a black and silver insignia on their clothes. Their regalia and sleek-coated horses tell me whoever they serve is no beggar.

  Responding to commands, Ox and Callen turn their backs to me, and the three of them form a circle. Very quickly, I realize what’s happening. The humans have spotted them, but they haven’t seen me.

  My heart drops as I realize what is about to unfold. If I run to them, I will only give myself away. A desperate, frustrated groan fights its way out of my throat. If Seth were beside me, he would tell me to stay, to hide and give myself the chance to escape while the others fought—but it still feels so wrong.

  In the distance, the three of them raise their weapons.

  26

  CALLEN

  “To me, now!” Sethran bellows.

  I ready my axe, its grip as familiar to me as my wings are to my lion form. There’s a resounding snap as Ox notches an arrow.

  “Fire the moment they are in range,” Sethran says, lifting his shield. “We won’t get a second chance at this.”

  “What about Rowan?” I ask.

  “If she has any sense, she’ll run.” He turns. “We fight.”

  Battle-born excitement floods my veins. Heart quick, muscles ready. The humans ride closer. Ox sends his blue-fletched arrows flying, quick as lightning striking the ground. The humans break their formation. Two of them change course abruptly to ride northwest … straight for the cypress trees.

  “Ro,” I gasp, but then the thunder of hooves is at my side, and I raise my shield high as a bullet skims off its thick metal.

  Sethran lets out a war cry, his sword colliding with the flank of the horse closest to us. Hot blood sprays across my legs as the animal falls. Its rider dismounts and lunges toward me with murder in his eyes. I dodge the first slash of his sword and bring my axe swinging down. His own shield meets it, but just barely. The human is twice my weight, but untrained. Meanwhile, I’ve lived for this, waited for this.

  I throw myself into the battle.

  27

  ROWAN

  “No, no, no.” My heart plummets in a free fall through my body, into the ground and into whatever lies below. We have to live. We have to live to save the prince, to save the city. I want so badly to help, but—

  “Surviving is something,” I whisper under my breath.

  Pivoting, I run in the opposite direction. I don’t have to look behind me to recognize the sharp clash of metal against metal, the high-pitched whinny of a horse. It’s only when a pointed thunder of hooves starts to get louder that I spare a frantic look over my shoulder.

  Two riders race toward me. Suddenly, one of the horses swings sideways, legs flailing. Its rider falls to the side, trampled underfoot with their hands caught in the reins. As the human’s body hangs limply to the side, I spot a pair of arrows sticking out neatly from the human’s back. Thanks, Ox.

  I pump my legs and arms as hard as I can, ducking under weighty branches. Sharp cracks fill the air as I crush fallen sheets of bark under my feet. Skies, I pray. Skies keep them. Keep me, keep me, keep me …

  My fingertips scrape against the trunk of a tree as I swing myself around it and into a shadowed thicket—but I misjudge, and just beyond the undergrowth, the ground drops off into open air. Gasping, I stumble back, now gripping the tree trunk more tightly. Far below the cliff is a wide, rocky beach dotted with debris. I push back from my vantage point as the sandy soil slides away under my feet.

  The human shouts something, and I turn. Taking two knives in my hand, I crouch low until I see the human in question. He makes a rude gesture that doesn’t need to be translated. My heart pounds as more dirt and earth and sand loosen. The sturdy tree I am hidden behind begins to move.

  Skies. I leap from the edge of the cliff to a new spot by a neighboring tree, drawing the human’s gaze to me. As he opens his
mouth for what I imagine would be another threat against my body, I loose two knives and grin as one sinks itself surely in the hand that gestured, and the other in his leg. The human howls in pain just as his horse rears, but I realize quickly that the animal isn’t reacting to his rider’s sudden movement … but to the edge of the cliff surrendering to gravity.

  Roots pop and snap as they’re torn from the ground. As the tree tumbles, it smashes into others. I blink furiously as a blast of dust and pollen billows around me. The human grabs his gun from his side and points the barrel at me. I dive as the bullet embeds itself in the branches just above my head.

  Desperately, I climb up and onto the thickest of the trees that I can reach. Finding a branch, I grab onto it. It snaps immediately, and instead, I reach for the knot of wood where it stuck out from, the best I have as I fall and slide toward the beach below us.

  The human fires again, just as the ground gives.

  I wing a prayer skyward, hoping once and for all that the Endless Skies will still take a deserter like me. Sandy earth, splintering branches, and the heavy thud of trees colliding with one another swallow me in their jaws.

  Rowan An’Talla, they’ll say. She left and died on Balmora, without her friends. Without honor.

  I close my eyes and scream.

  28

  CALLEN

  Wiping the sweat and dirt at my brow, I whip around toward the cypress trees. One of the riders is out of sight. The other’s horse paws idly at the ground, a body swinging idly from its side.

  She got away. She must have. But that scream …

  “Callen, behind!” Ox shouts.

  I duck just as another rider comes up behind me, his sword meeting the empty air where my heart would have been. I duck around his right side, swinging my shield behind me so that it collides with the human’s knee. He howls in pain as his horse carries him in a wide arc away from me.

  One rider shouts above the others, and the remaining humans retreat, forming a line out of range of Ox’s reach. Sethran spits on the ground, blood coming with it.

  “You okay?” I ask.

  “Human got me with a punch,” is his reply. “He could have shot me.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “That weapon is fire and lightning—yes, he had the shot,” my commander says. “But he didn’t take it.”

  I step back, panting heavily. “Which means they don’t want us dead.”

  Ox takes Sethran’s other side, eyes fixed on the remaining humans.

  “Stay on guard,” says Sethran. He adjusts the grip on his sword. Ox whispers something, but I can’t make it out. The last rider, the one that followed Rowan to the trees, comes around behind us. I swivel, trying to read his gaze, but his face is masked in pain and his hand bathed in blood. One of the humans moves his horse forward slowly, hands raised and away from his weapons.

  “Peace,” the human says.

  For a moment, I think Seth or Ox must have whispered it. But then the human says the word again, and I can feel the shock set in like a bitter frost. He’s speaking Leonodai.

  “We would like to speak,” the human goes on. His pronunciation is childish, but I understand him. I understand a human.

  “This doesn’t make sense.” The humans can’t possibly speak our language. I try to think of a logical answer and come up empty. It’s like a nightmare, only we’re not waking from it.

  I take a slow breath. We need to live. But how do we get out of this? I don’t know. And when a warrior is in a situation where they do not know what to do, there is only one option.

  “Commander?” I mutter so only he can hear. Sethran’s calm expression fails him. He’s as out of his element as any of us. Every muscle in my body is ready to follow whatever his next words are.

  “Speak,” Sethran says.

  “You are Leonodai,” the human replies. I hate the way our name sounds on his tongue. “Why are you here?”

  The rest of the humans around us wear grim expressions. They’re wary of us. We’re their stories, and they’re ours. They’ve heard rumors of us, and now here we are.

  “We are looking for medicine,” Sethran says. “We mean no harm. We are trying to help the sick.”

  The first human translates for the others, and recognition seems to dawn on them. How? I want to scream. How do you know our language? “Why do you have swords?” asks the leader.

  “We will still defend ourselves,” Sethran says plainly.

  Without warning, the leader draws his weapon and fires a bullet at the ground in front of Sethran. It could have hit him. It should have hit him.

  He makes a movement like drop. “No weapons.”

  Seth’s shoulders slacken as he lowers his sword. “Stand down. We need to stay alive. For the prince.”

  Ocean mist settles onto my skin, a cold veil that keeps my senses sharp.

  Warriors aren’t meant to feel in battle. They are meant to obey. I drop my axe as the humans close in around us, their guns pointed at our hearts.

  29

  ROWAN

  I drift between death and dreams. I see my mother as I’ve often imagined her—happy, dancing with my father long after Shirene and I had gone to bed. I see Callen as a boy climbing trees, waiting for me to catch up and offering his hand.

  I see one of the Storm’s End girls, though I can’t place which one. Her large eyes look at me sideways as if trying to see the ground as I’m seeing it.

  The taste of dirt and the ocean’s roar bring me back to my senses. I assess my body, wiggling my toes and fingers first before daring to sit up. Every part of me aches. The tree I clung to rests inches from where it should have crushed my skull. I remember hitting the ground, my grip slipping. I must have fallen off at the last moment.

  I cough grossly, spitting metallic blood, and fragments of my tooth come with it. Instinctively, I reach for the place where it should be, now soft and unnatural, shock coursing through me. It must have fallen out when I hit the ground and my jaw slammed against itself. My left eye is swollen to the point that I can’t open it, and my head throbs as if someone were using it as a drum, but I’m alive.

  For a moment, I forget my body’s pain and turn my head to look up the cliff where I’d fallen.

  “Ox,” I say, voice barely a croak. With great effort, I turn my head, looking for any sign of the others. “Callen?”

  Collapsing, I start to shiver. It’s then that I notice something by my hand. Sitting back up, I examine the small drawstring bag. I hold the side down with my thumb to keep the wind from stealing it. The bag is kept closed by a faded blue thread, and there’s something familiar about it. I undo the tie.

  The sight that greets me makes me laugh from sheer surprise and relief. Pain ripples through me, but I can’t stop. A pair of wilted red flowers. The cure.

  I don’t ask how. I don’t think to wonder where they came from.

  “Prince Tabrol,” I whisper, somehow cognizant that this amount will save him. Closing my fingers around the delicate blossoms, I tug on a few of the precious petals and bring them to my lips.

  Instantly, the dormant heat in my chest flares to life, the sensation not unlike what I feel when calling to birds. Magic recognizing magic.

  As relief sweeps over my limbs, I clutch the remainder of the cure to my heart. Death hasn’t come for me yet. I still have time, in every sense of the word.

  30

  CALLEN

  They force us to trail behind the horses, walking in their stench and filth. Sethran tried to talk to us at first, but the leader of the humans shouted at him when he did. The second time he tried, a human punched him across the jaw. The metal studs on his glove left brutal cuts across our commander’s cheek.

  As if on cue, Seth spits onto the ground, his saliva still coming up crimson. Our commander got a few words out, though. “If you see a chance to free yourself, take it.”

  There is so much to think about, and yet my mind can’t focus. Failing our people. Captured by humans like
fish snared in an osprey’s talon.

  And Rowan. The human she fought with cradles his hand against his chest—if he is wounded, that tells me they at least fought. If they fought, she could have gotten away. But my fears sing to me, giving life to only the worst possible scenarios.

  Without warning, tears well up in my eyes, and when I blink, they slide down my face like rain. I swallow back my pain as much as I can, but it’s Rowan.

  Ramsgate’s city walls are made of a dark gray stone with an unfamiliar sheen. The streets are made of broken-up stones, so unlike the Heliana’s welcoming, paved paths. As we’re led beneath the city gates, townsfolk stop their conversations to gawk.

  A soldier in the same attire as the others kicks his horse and brings himself over to us. He says something to the humans leading us, and the latter gestures angrily as they respond. After some discussion, the city soldier grabs the end of the rope from his compatriot, and we’re yanked toward a stately building with tall, thin windows.

  In one of them, I spot the silhouette of a man watching us. A spark catches by his face, followed by a wash of gray smoke. Smoke pours from his nostrils as he exhales with a smile of a hunter who’s found his next kill.

  The doors of the building open directly to a descending staircase. A thick, heady smell pours out, and I gag. Closed, with no room to breathe or move. Just what every Leonodai dreams of.

  With one last determined look at the sky, I send my heart and hope up and into the clouds. If I am to die in this wretched place, I hope the skies saw fit to let Rowan live.

  31

  ROWAN

  When I wake, I take a few breaths to brace myself before I sit up. The movement should hurt—but it doesn’t. Nothing does. Heart quickening, I check my body for bruises, cuts. Anything. I touch the pads of my fingertips to my eye. Even that swelling has gone down. The only thing the cure didn’t fix was my missing tooth.