Silence again.
“Well,” Wick blurted. “I had better be going.” He turned to walk away.
“Do all messengers have bags like that?” the seraph boy asked.
Wick spun around. His heart thundered inside of his chest. Stay calm. He forced himself to look casually down at the bag. “Yes, most of us. The centaurs give them to us when we're put into the bigger circuit around Aro. They're good for carrying things in. Very handy.” He was talking in short bursts of words. Fragments. Why couldn't he just act natural?
The seraph boy took in Wick's nervousness, his hands clutching the strap of the bag, then met his eyes again, unflinching. “Do you ever get worried? Out here, in the wilderness, by yourself? Carrying valuable messages and. . . whatever else they have you carry?”
He knew. Somehow or another, he knew that Wick had the Oak Leaf.
Still, Wick tried to convince himself that he was safe. He tightened his hands on the strap of the bag to stop their shaking. “Not really. I don't have any enemies, and I don't think anyone would attack a messenger. Most people know better.”
Here, the seraph boy frowned and cocked his head. “Really?” He paused. “Interesting.”
Then he made a sudden move toward Wick.
Wick darted.
He heard the quick footsteps of the seraph boy racing behind him, trying to catch up. Wick was taller and had longer legs, but for all he knew, the seraph boy could be much faster than him. Or cleverer.
He ran through the trees toward the river delta. Maybe he could lose his pursuer in all the mud.
But no. Only a few more steps told him that he wouldn't make it. The seraph's footsteps were growing closer. He would never beat the thief to the river delta.
He made a new plan. Wick wove through the trees, turning quicker and taking a serpentine pattern to try to keep out of reach just a little longer. Rounding the trunk of a huge oak, he yanked his bag off his shoulder. As the seraph boy rounded the trunk behind him, Wick swung the bag up as hard as he could. It slammed the seraph boy in the face.
The seraph boy slapped straight down backward and landed heavily in the dead leaves covering the ground. As he tried to recover, Wick slung the bag back over his shoulder, picked up a sizable fallen tree branch to use as a weapon if he needed to, and disappeared into the trees.
He walked quicker than before, scanning the skies just in case the seraph boy's mangled wing was any good after all. If Wick was lucky, he could still make it to the nearest nixie outpost without having to encounter the thief again.
But he had no such luck. Wick had barely started his slog across the muddy miles of the river delta's many streams and rivulets before he glanced around and found the seraph boy behind him once more.
Wick jumped a little and made a threatening swing with the tree branch. When the seraph boy made a move, Wick swung it as hard as he could, knocking the boy backward. But even as he went, the seraph boy latched onto the stick, using his weight to jerk Wick to the ground.
The seraph boy's eyes were furious. He yanked the stick out of Wick's hand and growled, “Stop hitting me with things!”
For a moment, Wick was afraid he would be beaten to death with the stick, but instead, the seraph boy sat up and tucked the stick into his lap, wrapping his arms around his knees. Wick couldn't get the stick back now if he tried.
“Listen here,” the seraph boy said. “Getting the last two stones was almost too easy, I'll give you that much, so I should have known that sooner or later I'd hit some kind of snag and I would have to explain myself to somebody. I just didn't expect it to be this quickly, and I definitely didn't expect to be beaten over the head with a stick by. A. Tree.”
“Leshy aren't trees,” Wick said before he could stop himself. “We just look like them in the way that forest animals camouflage into the foliage.”
“Whatever.” The seraph boy tightened his grip on the stick. “Tree or not a tree, if you'd stop trying to break my face and let me talk, maybe this would go a little better.” He suddenly stopped speaking. He tucked the bag back at his side and gave himself a few quick cuffs to the side of the head. “Why does your voice sound so weird? It sounds like–” His jaw dropped. “Why don't you have a mouth? Where's the rest of your face?”
Wick couldn't even begin to muster an explanation. “It's telepathic.” How was it even possible that anyone existed who wasn't fully studied on everything about their fellow countrymen?
“So you're in my head right now? That's so rude!” The boy sounded indignant, so Wick finally had to sum up the energy to tell him that it was only the leshy's voices that projected into other people's heads. They couldn't read minds, they couldn't make anyone do anything they didn't want to, they could only talk and be heard. The thief still didn't like it, but he accepted the explanation.
“Whatever,” the seraph boy said finally. “Now will you let me talk?”
“You're a thief,” Wick said. “You don't have any authority here.”
“Stop interrupting me,” the seraph boy snapped. “It's rude.” He let out a long-suffering sigh. “Let's start with names. I'm Archer.”
Wick hesitated. “Wick.”
“All right, Wick,” Archer said. “You're a messenger and you seem pretty pretentious. . . Do you know what this is?” He held out a satchel made of smooth, dark leather. “Do you recognize it?”
A faint memory niggled at the back of Wick's mind, but he couldn't recall. “No.”
Archer flipped open the bag's top flap. “How about now?”
Stamped inside the flap of the bag was a symbol of a mountain, with eight star shapes hovering above the peak.
“I've seen that in historical documents. It refers to our ancestors using the Heather Stone to stop the Scorch. They saved Aro from destruction,” Wick said. Realization hit him. “That's the bag that the centaurs made. It was stolen centuries ago.”
“And now he's on track again,” Archer said with fake praise in his voice. He caught Wick's skeptical look and rolled his eyes. “No, I wasn't the one who stole it. Think rationally; I'm not nearly old enough. I probably would have stolen it if I could have, but someone else already stole it, ages ago.”
“So how do you have it?” Wick asked, still looking for the lie.
Archer's eyes locked onto Wick's for a long, uncomfortable moment, and Wick couldn't help but feel that somewhere in Archer's mind, he was being slowly analyzed and filed into categories.
“As I was saying,” Archer continued after much too long. “It's my bag now, but I didn't steal it. It was given to me by some centaur older than dirt who got it from someone else.”
“Why did he give it to you?” Wick asked.
Archer met Wick's gaze, expressionless. “Because he was about to die, and there was no one else for miles, so I was the worthless piece of dead meat that he gave it to. Any other questions?”
“Not yet.”
“Good.” Archer settled back into a more comfortable position, spreading his good wing out across the grass. “He said that it couldn't be filled, but only so long as I kept to the sacred duty of the bag. Now, I don't do sacred duties. Who does sacred duties? That's just one of those things no one says anymore because there's no way to take it seriously.”
Wick thought about when the centaurs had given him his messenger's seal of trust. The words sacred duty had involved several times. Still, Wick said nothing.
“Apparently,” Archer continued, “whoever has the bag is supposed to watch the skies for the next big disaster. You know, something like when 'our ancestors had to stop the Scorch'.”
Wick could feel the mockery.
“If the person with the bag sees the special scary thing coming, that person is supposed to gather all the pieces of the Heather Stone, go to the mountain in the middle of the centaur's territory, and save the country from imminent disaster. Apparently.” Archer shrugged. “But that wasn't any of my business, and I don't do 'sacred dutie
s'. So I just skipped that part. I thought I'd keep the bag and ignore all other warnings of doom and gloom and go along my merry way. But about a month ago the bag stopped working.”
“What do you mean, it stopped working?” Wick asked.
“Interrupting. . .” Archer muttered under his breath. “It's an unfillable bag, remember? It stopped working. It stopped being unfillable. I couldn't put anything in it anymore. It wouldn't hold more than a few pieces of fruit. After a while, I remembered he said it would only be unfillable so long as I kept the 'sacred duty'. I figured if I wanted the bag to work again, I would have to do what he told me.”
“So you just started stealing all the pieces of the Heather Stone to. . . what? Be ready for when something is about to happen?” Wick asked, skeptical again.
“No. Not at all. I forgot to mention. . . ” Archer tucked the strap of the bag back over his shoulder. “He also said that he'd had a vision about the Scorch or whatever it's called. It'll be back five months from now, and if we're not ready this time, it'll be the end. Everything we know will be destroyed, and if we're lucky, we'll all be dead too.”
Archer sat there, nodding, waiting for Wick to respond. When Wick didn't, he said, “Well? What are you going to say, Tree?”
Wick left the tree comment alone and stood up, brushing his hands off on his legs. “I say that I really should go now. I still have something to deliver to the nixies. But thank you for that very interesting story.”
Archer said nothing. Wick glanced at him and saw that his mouth had dropped open in disgust.
Chapter Five
A Smattering
of Failed Plans
“YOU HAVE GOT to be kidding,” Archer hissed under his breath.
Not the tree. Anyone but the tree. Well, maybe not anyone, but hadn't he put up with enough from this guy already?
Wick was still staring. “What?”
Archer's mouth snapped shut. “Nothing. So even a centaur prophecy won't convince you that I'm telling you the truth. Huh.”
But inside, Archer's mind whirred. Thinking about the other thing the centaur had said, the part he'd blown off. The part where the centaur had said Archer would fail without just the right partner.
“He'll thank you for the story.”
“What?”
“He'll say 'I really should go now. But thank you for that very interesting story.' And he'll want to come with you, before the end. You can't do it without him.”
Younger Archer had been indignant. “I don't need help. I'm done with help.”
“It doesn't matter. Without him, you will fail.”
The centaur had even brushed his hands off on his legs the same way the tree had just now.
Wick stood a little taller, stuck-up tree that he was. “If the centaur was here to prophesy for himself, that would be a different story, but telling me a tale of doom and woe isn't enough. You don't have nearly enough proof.”
Seriously? Archer's mouth quirked in irritation. “So when you hear thunder, but you can't see the clouds, do you just assume there's no storm coming? I'd hate to see how often you get caught in mudslides.”
“If you can come up with some more solid proof, I'll be happy to hear it,” Wick said evenly. “If you can't, I'll be going now.”
No, Archer decided, Wick wasn't the one that Caihu had been talking about. It didn't matter that he said the exact thing Caihu said he would say, it didn't matter that he seemed to fit all the boxes. Wick wasn't it.
Archer made an irritated noise and watched him walk away. Now what? He still needed to pinch the stone Wick was carrying, but the centaurs enchanted messenger bags like Wick's so they couldn't be stolen. Archer had tried to dismantle them in the past, but centaur magic was strong, and he had been unable to even budge the flap.
Archer's fingers tapped against the stick in his lap. He needed a different approach. He could always jump Wick and make him open the bag, but somehow, he couldn't bring himself to do it now that Wick was part of the whole prophecy thing.
No, the tree wasn't part of anything! Archer had already decided that much. He didn't have to adhere to anything he didn't want to.
But he still didn't want to attack the tree. Not yet, anyway.
For the moment Archer opted to follow him.
Like before, he had to keep out of sight if he wanted to keep the trail. The tree was paranoid and kept looking behind him like he thought someone was following him.
Which, of course, someone was, but that wasn't for him to know.
As he tracked Wick across the river delta, Archer had plenty of time to scheme.
He couldn't take anything out of the bag, and even if he knew how to dismantle the magic on the bag, he wouldn't be able to take it away from Wick to do so. But maybe, he realized as he walked, maybe he could take the bag when Wick wasn't holding onto it. Maybe if Wick set it down somewhere, or if he let go of it in his sleep.
Archer's brow furrowed. Did leshy sleep? Wick had done that thing where he sat in the sun forever. What was that, exactly? Was that sleeping?
Wick had gone out of sight. Archer picked up the pace. He soon found the tree trying to avoid him by walking down the side of a steep stream bank.
Or maybe he could scare the bag out of Wick's grip. That would work, wouldn't it? Even if he still couldn't take anything out of it right away, at least then he'd have the bag with him, and he could try to take it apart.
He waited for another half mile, then snuck up behind Wick and leaped at him from the shadows.
Wick jumped, but he kept a firm grip on the strap of the bag. He didn't try to flee and didn't fall over. In fact, if Archer was trying to read that empty face of his, Wick just looked mildly annoyed. He pushed past Archer and kept walking toward the coast.
Archer scowled after him. It had been a stupid plan, but he had hoped it would work. Now he had to think of something else.
The sun slid across the sky as Wick and Archer tried to outsmart one another. Wick seemed to be trying everything he could think of to shake Archer– changing direction, taking a zigzag pattern, trying to hide in the brush and wait until Archer went past– but Archer spotted him again in minutes every time. Archer tried his fair share of schemes too. He tried to slip his hand inside the bag to grab whatever he could find, he tried to knock it off Wick's shoulder using branches. But no matter what he tried, the bag couldn't be opened, wouldn't fall off Wick's shoulder, refused to budge at all.
Centaur magic was strong stuff. Archer cursed the day it was invented. It was unfair that the centaurs got things like visions and the strongest magic and still got to be in charge. Sure, no one seemed to mind them, and they seemed nice enough, but Archer had long ago decided not to like them.
The sun slipped down toward the horizon, and Archer stewed. There had to be some way to get the bag away from Wick. Archer hadn't come all this way and gone to all this trouble just to get stopped by a tree. A tree. And the tree was smart, but he couldn't be smarter than Archer. No one was smarter than Archer.
No, somehow or another he was getting that bag. There had to be a way. He just needed to keep thinking.
Shortly after the sun had set, Wick's pace slowed. He picked out a small clearing and lay down under a bush, using the messenger bag as a pillow. He took one more look around before he laid his head down, but Archer was a good stone's throw away, shielded by a tree. There was no way Wick saw him.
Finally, Wick laid his head down on the bag, and the glowing orbs of his eyes blinked out.
So unsettling.
Archer nearly snuck over for another attempt at filching the bag, but something about the whole situation seemed fishy. Did leshy sleep? He didn't know, but something nagged at him. Something about it felt like a setup. Maybe the tree was just lying there trying to hide. Or maybe he was waiting to hit Archer with another stick as soon as he approached.
Archer rubbed the growing bruise on the side of his face. He did not want to b
e hit with another stick.
He entered the clearing, stepping softly across the crunching pine needles. He didn't approach Wick. Halfway across the clearing, Archer stopped and narrowed his eyes at the figure under the bush. Even asleep, Wick was still holding onto the bag for dear life. There was no way Archer would be able to get it out of his grip, not with all the magic that was on it.
Again, he questioned himself. Was Wick really sleeping, or was it a trick? Everything slept, right? Archer couldn't think of any way anything could survive without it. Wick had to be sleeping. And if Wick was sleeping, at some point surely he would let go of the bag.
Fine. If it was a waiting game, Archer was willing to play.
He climbed up in a nearby tree, onto a large, broad limb. The bark wasn't too comfortable, but maybe the roughness of the bark would keep him from falling asleep. Tucking his wings behind him, he settled back to wait.
WICK WAITED.
Staying still wasn't the hard part. The hard part was not knowing if the plan would work. Wick's whole plan rode on Archer knowing nothing about the leshy. If he knew that leshy didn't sleep, didn't even rest at night, everything would fall apart. The plan was a gamble, but this seemed to be the only thing he could do to shake the thief. He had run out of ideas.
So far, all was well. He had heard the soft crunch of footsteps and the pause as Archer took in the scene. It had taken all of Wick's willpower not to freeze. But then the footsteps moved off again. Archer hadn't called Wick's bluff. He hadn't told him get up, I know you're faking. Instead, Archer seemed to take in how tightly Wick was holding the bag, and after a moment his footsteps moved away again.
A faint scrape and a rustle came from across the clearing, and Wick cracked open a curious eye. Archer had climbed up into one of the trees and sat spread out on a branch to watch for Wick to wake up.
Wick could wait. He stayed there, eyes shut, clamped tight around the bag, not moving.
He had to get rid of Archer. He knew that just keeping the seraph away until he got to the coast would not be enough. Archer had already stolen two pieces of the Heather Stone, and his coming after Wick could only mean that he had already been to the museum and found out for himself that the leshy piece was no longer there. How he had found out that Wick had the stone and where he was going with it was a mystery, but Wick now knew enough about his enemy to know that he would need some means of losing the thief for good before he got to the coast.
Robbing Centaurs and Other Bad Ideas Page 4
