I gasped, clawing at his hand. My bees faltered, retreating to his belly. I didn’t dare ask them to come to me. I knew what would happen if I did – death for Le Majest swift execution at the hand of Osprey for me.
“Le Majest,” Osprey said with a deep bow and the sign of the bird – one clawed finger to each shoulder and then one to his head. “Her bees keep you alive. We cannot kill her without killing you.”
Juste Montpetit fell away and I scrambled backward, clutching my bruised throat. He slumped, cradling his belly in his hands and watching it with utter horror.
“We must find another way,” he said with a small tremor to his words. “I want to be rid of these abominations.”
Was he afraid of my bees? The thought made me oddly triumphant. He only survived due to my mercy. I could remove it and render him useless. And then I met his gaze and all thought of triumph fled as I saw the cold calculation in them. If Osprey hadn’t warned me before, it was easy to see it now – Le Majest would kill me as soon as he could do it without killing himself.
His eyes drifted down to where my hand clutched my throat and narrowed as they settled on the exposed cuff there.
One of his eyes flickered, almost like a flinch, and then a ghostly snake uncoiled out of his eye – there but not there – drifting down to his shoulder.
His eyes fluttered and his head arched back as a low moan escaped from his lips. I swallowed, ready to remove my bees if that snake looked like it might lunge toward us. But the power was too much for him. He fell bonelessly to the ground.
Zayana rushed forward, checking his eyes and listening to his heart. “He needs a real healer. And he needs one quickly. I’m not an expert, but I’ve been with ailing relatives before. I would guess we have days – at the most – before he dies. These bees holding him together are not enough. ”
Osprey and Ivo exchanged a look that seemed to be full of a question I didn’t understand. Neither of them had moved. Their birds hovered above them like banners.
“Tend to the prince, Hatchlings,” Ivo said. “I need a word with Osprey.”
I clenched my jaw. Whatever they were going to say, I wanted to hear.
Zayana’s eyes widened as she looked at me as if she was trying to tell me something with just a look.
“What?” I hissed as the two Wings walked down to the water’s edge and crouched together on the riverbank, their birds shielding them from view.
“You have an opportunity here,” she whispered as she put a balled-up cloak under Juste Montpetit’s head and began to lay him out gently. “This morning, I awoke to a blue cloud passing over a white one. A sign of change and portents.”
Her hands avoided the swarm of bees over his belly, holding his guts together with their spirit honeycomb. I shivered, looking at them. Imagine what it would feel like to have moving, creeping bees inside my belly. Even though they were mine, the thought of that gave me the creeps.
She glanced over to the murmur of Osprey and Ivo’s voices before laying a hand on Le Majest’s head for a moment. “You could win his favor. His life depends on you right now. Which means you can’t change your bees to a bird the way he hoped. But maybe you can make him your friend. Nurse him to health. Make yourself invaluable. When he recovers he’ll remember and reward you.”
“Like he rewarded your family for their loyalty?” I hissed. “Your father was slain!”
“Not by the crown prince.” She frowned. “Listen, I know he killed your father. I know that is hard to bear. But he has good intentions for the Winged Empire. He wants to make it a place of peace.”
“Then why all the bloodshed?”
Her frown deepened. “He confiscated all the weaponry from the people to keep us safe. Once he gets back to the continent, he’ll send for more Claws and they will make the people here safe, too.”
I shuddered. The idea of more Claws flooding across the Far Stones made me ill.
“He manifested a snake and tried to kill me.”
“He wasn’t in his right mind. He’d just seen horrors no man should see.”
I shook my head. Did she really believe that? Or was she just convincing herself of it because following a maniac was too much to stomach?
“I think he should be honored that you are caring for him,” I whispered. “But I do not think that he will feel that way about me. I’m going to tend the fires.”
She looked worried, but I avoided her gaze as I toed in the nearest fire, pushing the fuel into the center as we let it burn down. No need for another forest fire. I tried to look casual as I made my way slowly toward where the Wings were whispering together. Whatever they were talking about involved me. I shouldn’t be kept out of their conversation.
“...want to leave now. While I still can,” Ivo was saying. “You know as well as I do that the Quills will be growing anxious. We need to get word to them.”
“You can do that when we reach the coast and find a healer,” Osprey said in response. “Until the prince is ...” His words were whipped away in the wind. I strained to hear more. “...so she must stay with him until then.”
“The moment those bees are out of his belly, you’ll be forced to fall upon her and destroy her, friend. I want to spare you both – and spare the Far Stones. We need her bees.”
“I’ll find some way,” Osprey said grimly. “Give me time to think of what that way might be.”
“You have until we reach the coast,” Wing Ivo agreed. “But after that, I must flee with her if you haven’t found a way – and risk the chance that you might follow.”
They made the sign of the bird grimly and I focused twice as hard on the fire I was toeing in, trying to look absorbed in the task.
Osprey met my eyes as they broke their huddle and he frowned, his toothpick moving from one side of his mouth to the other with almost frantic intensity as his gaze burned into me. He had his belt knife out and he was carefully cutting white toothpicks from a length of sapling. The way he went through those, he must have to do that a lot.
I tore my gaze away from him and back to my work. Ivo wanted to split off from him – a solid idea. And Osprey wanted to find a way not to kill me but still stay with us – a risky plan at best. But what did I want to do? I needed my own plan to get out of this tangled mess.
“Working on your meditation, Hatchling?” Ivo asked as he gathered up his few things. The sun was over the trees and it was time to get back on the boat.
“Yes,” I said, but the thing I was meditating on was how Osprey could feel like my ally and my enemy all at once and if there was any way to get away from the crown prince now that my bees were tangled up with his life.
“Good thinking. We need to be moving. No sense wasting any more daylight.”
We loaded the boat with the unconscious crown prince and what little we had. Between Osprey and Ivo’s packs, there had been two bedrolls. Both were being used now for the comfort of Juste Montpetit. There were also two waterskins, a few small items like woods knives, flint, rope, string, some bandage rolls, a little hardtack, some dried meats. In Osprey’s bag – to my surprise – there had been a tiny pot of honey and a lace-edged handkerchief. He’d blushed when Zayana found those, and I wondered if there was a lovely lady back on the continent worrying over her handkerchief and the person to whom she had given it.
The sun was bright as we launched the boat onto the deceptively calm water of the river.
I perched in the bow, keeping an eye out for rocks just under the surface or rapids ahead.
“We’ve been lucky so far,” Ivo said. “But rapids are bound to be somewhere on this river. Every river has them.”
He had the tiller, Zayana had the care of the crown prince and Osprey was talking to his bird.
“I’ll scout ahead when I can,” he said quietly before he put his forehead to the bird’s and began to whisper to it, his hand gently caressing the bird’s feathers. I couldn’t help the stab of jealousy that shot through me as he rested his cheek against the bird,
running a hand gently over its feathers.
I should know better than to let myself watch that. Osprey was a threat to me not a ... what? A friend? That felt too weak to describe the tang of emotions I tasted when I watched him with his bird. It also didn’t explain why I kept glancing over my shoulder at him even while I returned to my job, trying to hide my furtive glances. I couldn’t deny my attraction to him – as much as it made my cheeks grow hot. I tried to tell myself that there was a good reason I was curious. After all, since I first met Osprey he had flown everywhere on the back of that bird – almost obnoxiously so. It was strange to me that he wasn’t flying ahead or getting help, just whispering to this bird. It was almost as if he was staying here on purpose to be near us. That was a good reason to be curious, right?
The boat jostled as the hull lurched across a rock.
“Are you blind, girl?” Ivo asked me from the back of the boat. “Or are you meditating so deeply that you can’t do your job?”
“Apologies!” I called back, focusing again on watching for rocks, but I couldn’t help obsessing over what had changed that bound Osprey to the boat. Was it the hurt crown prince? Or had he lost so much energy that now his bird could not bear him?
I focused on the water, my gaze drifting from time to time to the riverbanks. Many snake carvings decorated the edges of the river. At one point I thought I saw an old, crumbled footing of what had once been a bridge made of thick stone snakes. At another, someone had carefully etched them into an overhanging rock. I tried to ignore the creeping sensation that rolled over me. There was nothing I could do about ancient relics.
As we traveled downriver, the Forbidding grew thicker and more intense, twisting the trees and rocks along the edges of the river, sometimes right down to the water. Was I imagining things, or was it moving? Writhing and wriggling like snakes?
I shivered.
But the feeling did not leave, and after an hour I began to worry.
“Have you spent a lot of time in Far Stones, Wing Ivo?” I called back.
“I have a home in Astar Harbor,” he called back, but he sounded distracted, too.
“Have you ever seen the Forbidding look so ... alive?” I asked, trying to keep my voice calm.
Ahead, the river narrowed, suddenly. Rock walls rose on either side of the river. There was no way to go but through the narrow channel between them where the water sped up, tumbling over itself as it rushed between the rocks. I looked around, desperate for somewhere to beach the boat, but everything was thick with the Forbidding, tiny strands of it waved out over the river as if searching for prey.
“Hold on to your heads!” Ivo cried from the back. “It’s going to be rough!”
We plunged into the rushing water at the same time that a bright purplish-white bird burst out over my head, rushing before our boat.
“Os will see if there’s a waterfall ahead,” Osprey called over the roar of the water reverberating off the stone walls.
A solid plan. He might be able to stop our boat with help from Ivo’s golden eagle. Or maybe they could help bear it down the falls gently so that no one was hurt or killed. I clenched my jaw and braced myself against the boat, wishing for the first time that my bees were fully under my control so I could send them to look for me.
The net dropped out of nowhere.
Chapter Five
IT FILLED THE GAP IN the rocks in front of us, unfurling so quickly that I only had time to give a wordless cry of warning.
Ivo swore and his eagle sailed into the air like an arrow loosed from a bow.
There was an odd, wailing sound.
I looked over my shoulder to see figures dropping down from the side of the rock, holding ropes.
No – not ropes. Glowing, spirit snakes.
Zayana screamed as one of them snatched her up, his snake twisting around her body and binding her arms to her sides.
Five more attackers were in our boat already as I struggled to my feet, feeling for the short sword that wasn’t there. I pulled my belt knife instead, lunging toward the nearest figure. This was why you didn’t take a girl’s sword no matter how “violent” you thought she was.
The man nearest me had stone-grey skin and he was dressed entirely in snakeskins and emerald-colored scale armor. His green eyes glittered in the light as he lunged toward me, his snake darting beside him as if it might sink its teeth into me.
I slashed at the snake and it dodged back. I lunged after it, but the snake’s manifestor grabbed my arm, pulling it behind my back and wrenching it up so high that I yelled in agony. I tried to kick back, but he increased the pressure, pinning me in place.
My eyes flicked over to the others. Osprey’s bird dove down between the rocks, snatching up one of our attackers in his talons and flinging him against the rocks. He hit hard, falling lifelessly to the water with a splash.
Osprey pulled his short swords, leaping up with a growl in his throat. He leapt at the same moment that his osprey dipped under him. Os spun slightly as Osprey landed on his back, eyes up. A look of shock flooded his face a half-second before a silver net landed over him and the bird, dragging them back to the floor of the boat.
Another craft rushed down the river behind us, sealing the route out of the narrow chute in the river. Men and women dressed in scale armor stood in the bow of the boat, their expressions grim and their long polearms pointed toward us.
Ivo’s bird reared up, its powerful wings knocking three of the warriors from the prow of the boat.
“Surrender!” the man holding my arm yelled out across the boat. “Surrender and you may yet live.”
A pair of snakes rushed down from above, snatching up Juste Montpetit from the bottom of the boat. They curled around him, rising slowly into the air with his unconscious body cradled in their embrace. His eyes flickered open slightly and his own snake emerged – this time, coiling out from his ear. It curled around the other snakes almost affectionately and their glow brightened with the touch.
My stomach flipped at the sight.
“No moving!” my captor barked, jamming my arm harder behind my back.
I grunted in pain, sweat breaking out across my brow. My vision went black for a heartbeat and then returned in time for me to see Osprey shoving his swords back into their sheathes with a sour grimace on his face. He met my gaze and winked – one of those harsh winks that I was starting to think were his way of saying “hang in there” more than anything playful or secretive. He jammed a new toothpick in his mouth. Would he ever run out of those things? Os rose from his shoulders and passed through the net. He rose, up, up, up past the rock faces and the snakes and high into the sky as if to escape all of the chaos.
Behind Osprey in the rear of the boat, Ivo’s hands were raised, a dozen polearm blades tickling the edge of his neck.
A long snake manifestation slithered down, dangling in front of him, its tongue darting in and out of a too-large mouth. I swallowed and then it struck, wrapping itself fiercely around his waist and shooting upward into the tangled trees above the river.
“Please,” I said, worried now. “Please don’t say we all have to go up that way. We don’t mean any harm.”
I was starting to hate snakes almost more than the Forbidding.
A snake dropped down beside us and my captor moved so quickly that I gasped. He released my arm, wrapping his arm around my waist and grabbing the snake in the other hand. My feet were ripped from the ground as we rose into the air so fast that my breath caught in my lungs. The boat was below me, the net holding it in place as white water frothed around it. A glowing yellow spirit-snake dipped downward toward Osprey.
I opened my mouth to scream but the harsh voice behind me said, “No screaming or I’ll hit you over the head.”
And then we were stumbling onto the ground above in a single slash of open space between waves of Forbidding. The land twisted on either side of us, splitting into ribbons and curling or spiraling in every direction as if infuriated by our presence. Th
e man holding my waist released it, moving his grip to my upper arm so he could direct me forward. He stepped toward the Forbidding and I froze.
His harsh laugh sounded sincere as he dragged me toward the tangle, his spirit-snake sliding before us like a rolled out rug. The moment his snake met the Forbidding, it stilled, seeming to part for him.
I tried to look back, to see what they’d done with Ivo and Osprey or where they had taken Juste and Zayana, but my captor pulled me roughly forward.
“Where are we going?” I asked him.
Was he taking me away from the group? What was he planning to do?
I tried to feel my bees, but everything was a blur mixing with the buzzing in my chest.
“You have one of ours in that boat. And we keep what is ours,” my captor said roughly.
“And the rest of us?”
“He’ll tell us what to do with you.”
I almost snorted at the irony. Even when Juste wasn’t conscious, what he wanted ruled. Even when crazy grey-skinned people emerged from the wilderness dressed in the skins of snakes – it was still what he wanted. There was just no winning with him.
Chapter Six
I HARDLY HAD TIME TO gasp and a blindfold was jammed over my eyes. I shivered. It was probably more snakeskin.
My hands were lashed together, and I was pulled by the arm through the woods – with what I could only imagine was the Forbidding or more of those horrific snakes tangling around my legs. My stomach lurched at the thought. Something snagged my foot and a spike of fear shot hot through me. What were they going to do to us? And who in the world were these people? My captor spoke with a strange accent and his clothing was unlike any I’d seen before. Wouldn’t we have heard if the Far Stones had been invaded?
“Aella?!” the call sounded far away.
“Zayana!” I called back. “Are you hurt?”
Hive Magic (Empire of War & Wings Book 2) Page 3
