The Boi of Feather and Steel

by Adan Jerreat-Poole

  Tav started to cry. Eli tilted her head back and stared up until the seam was once again invisible, a bluegrey sky marred only by bloodied clouds.

  Slowly, the reality sunk in: Cam was gone, and they had no way of knowing where he was, and no way of going after him.

  Twenty-Four

  THE HEIR

  “Do you like it?”

  “I love it.” Tears pooled in Clytemnestra’s wide, sapphire eyes and then spilled over her angelic face. “It’s just what I wanted.”

  The made-assassin was tall and lean, with brown skin and a few freckles like spots of bleach on her left cheekbone. She had coyote ears and her eyes were mismatched — one golden-brown human eye, one pure-white and cloudy.

  “Ooh, what’s that one do?” Clytemnestra reached out and poked her in the eye. The white rippled, like water disturbed by a fish. The assassin didn’t flinch, but Clytemnestra let out a yelp like she’d stuck her finger in a light socket.

  “I believe it absorbs magic and uses it to regenerate her own body,” said Kite. “A really ingenious design; too bad the witch who made her was repurposed for treason. Something about trying to use her daughter to steal the Coven’s magic.”

  “So she’s ours now?” Clytemnestra stuck her finger in her mouth and sucked on the burn.

  The assassin turned to look at Kite, tilting her head slightly.

  “She’s agreed to join us,” said Kite. “For a price.”

  Clytemnestra’s eyes lit up, and Kite smiled behind her curtain of hair that today flowed like a waterfall across her face. Clytemnestra loved haggling.

  “Let me guess.” The little witch clapped her hands together and narrowed her eyes. “You want your freedom?”

  The assassin’s left ear flicked, and a slow lazy smile spread across her face, showing her wolfish canines that ended in glittering points. “Not just mine.”

  No one knew how many assassins operated in the City of Eyes. They were supposed to answer to the Coven, but any witch with enough power and insanity could stitch together a girl from beetle shells and eyelashes. Most of them didn’t live long enough to do any damage, or to be of any use, but a few did. Those that were caught by the Coven were repurposed, broken down into their parts and fed to the living walls of the witches’ fortress.

  “The three of us the Heir found and remade rose up against our makers,” said the assassin. “But there are others, all over the world. I want you to swear that you will free us all.”

  Clytemnestra nodded eagerly, saliva beading at the edges of her lips. “If you help us tear down the Coven, I will help you track down every made-daughter in the world and liberate them.”

  “Make an agreement with me, then,” challenged the assassin, staring down the tiny Warlord.

  Clytemnestra tore a strip off her pinafore and offered it to the girl. The girl shook her head and stepped back. “I know how this works, witch. None of your tricks. I want a fingernail.”

  Clytemnestra picked at her thumbnail and offered the calcium-studded flake to the girl. The assassin placed it in her mouth, chewed once, and swallowed. She gave Clytemnestra one of her nails in exchange and Clytemnestra sucked it up noisily.

  “It is done,” said the assassin.

  The tension in the room cracked like a crème brûlée, leaving only sugary sweetness and hunger in its place. Clytemnestra floated over to the assassin and started scratching behind her coyote ears.

  “What should we call you?” asked Kite.

  “We are the unnamed,” she said. She seemed to like the scratching. “We were not born, we will not die, and we will not answer to any name.”

  Kite nodded. “Your maker is dead,” she said. “But the others still have mothers. Their witches will come for them.”

  “Let them come,” she said. “Lead them here, and let your little witches eat them.”

  “I like the way she thinks,” said Clytemnestra. “This will be so much fun!” She raised her arms to the sky and lightning flashed like a jagged scar.

  “And they will fight for us?” Kite let her eyes linger on the sinew and tendons on the body of a girl made to kill.

  She turned to face Kite. “We will fight to destroy the Coven. After that, we don’t promise our allegiance to you, Heir.”

  The Beast nuzzled against Kite’s skirts, and she reached out to scratch his chin. It was hard sometimes for her to feel the intensity that these human and part-human creatures felt, the drive for freedom, for revenge, for love, as if these things were not always shifting and changing and breaking and rebuilding. Maybe it was their short lifespans.

  A touch from the Beast always reminded her to live now, and not in a thousand years. It was so easy to lose track of time when you might live forever.

  “That’s all right,” she said gently. “I don’t need your allegiance.”

  The assassin nodded.

  “She’ll stay here, with you.” Kite turned to the Warlord.

  Clytemnestra clapped her hands together. “I can’t wait for the children to meet her! They will love to play with you!” She twisted her mouth into an approximation of a canine snarl and growled. Then she knocked politely on the closest wall, and it melted away. “Go get your friends and meet me for tea,” she told the unnamed girl with coyote ears and a thief ’s eye. “We will welcome you with a true party.”

  The girl growled her assent and left.

  Clytemnestra turned to Kite. “So, you found a way to put them back together. You are a naughty Heir! Mommy won’t like that.”

  “I did as you asked,” said Kite. “Have you heard from Eli?”

  Clytemnestra ignored her. She tapped her cheek thoughtfully. “If I’m too rough with my new playthings, you can just fix them again, won’t you?”

  “The Coven was feeding on their lifeforce. If you break one, she’s broken.”

  “It’s just a thing.” Her eyes glittered maliciously.

  “Go meet your new allies.” The tips of Kite’s hair twisted. “I have reading to catch up on.”

  “You always do that.” Clytemnestra pouted. “One day you’re going to miss something exciting. Or someone.”

  Kite parted the hair falling over her eyes and let the strands float to either side of her body. “Remember, little one — you don’t touch her.”

  “I remember our bargain. But what if she comes to me? She’s very special.” Awe and greed fought for mastery in her voice.

  “She’s always been special.”

  “And you were always sentimental.” Clytemnestra spun a pirouette.

  “You’ve never been punished before for being naughty, have you?” Kite’s melodic voice drifted through the space like warm rain. She leaned forward and caught Clytemnestra by the hem of her pinafore, her sharp fingernails puncturing the fabric. Clytemnestra struggled like an insect caught in a web, but Kite held fast. “I don’t think you’d like it very much.”

  She released the dress, the fabric crusted with salt. Clytemnestra floated up, like a balloon released by a child at a birthday party.

  A single pink drop fell to the stone. Salt could burn through flesh.

  Then Kite smiled brightly, inclined her head, and slipped out of the room and toward her own chamber, leaving the Warlord to greet the other made-daughters. With any luck, the tomes she had managed to smuggle out of the library would be in a generous mood.

  As she walked under stone archways and climbed up marble steps, she thought about the gleam in Clytemnestra’s eyes and sighed. Kite hadn’t given up her birthright, denounced her kin, and fled her home just to lose her love to a spoiled witch babe.

  She was sorry she had to hurt the little witch, but sometimes soldiers needed to be reminded that readers were dangerous.

  Twenty-Five

  THE HEALER

  Tav was born angry. They had been born on stolen land in a nation that grew strong on blood and sap, devouring the bones of its elders. Their ancestors had been slaves. Anger and hurt were in their DNA.

  Fury burn
ed bright inside them, lit up their eyes like gold lanterns; it had made them bold, and sometimes reckless; it had made them an apprentice to a witch runaway and carried them across worlds.

  Tav’s magic couldn’t be separated from their anger. Maybe they were one and the same. Maybe they could use it to save their planet. Eli believed they could. So did Cam, and Clytemnestra, and all those little witches. Tav was the Healer now, a bridge between worlds, an opener of doors.

  But sometimes they wondered if the Earth was worth saving.

  When cops marched in Pride and Tav’s dead sisters were left in dumpsters, when the land was slowly being peeled back, layer by layer, and forest fires burned like a vigil to the god of death, Tav sometimes thought that humanity deserved to be destroyed. Maybe it was better to let the world be destroyed by the witches, sacrificed to a magic that neither loved nor hated, but treated every object and animal and body with the same uncaring indifference.

  And now Cam was gone. Cam, who had created a drink he christened “The Tavengers” for their nineteenth birthday (grenadine, whiskey, and olives, served in a Thor pint glass. It was horrible). Who sucked at Mario Kart but was amazing at DDR. Who had filled in the cracks of his broken heart with glitter and gold, and who had showed Tav how to live with grief. Who had crossed between worlds for them.

  They hadn’t saved him.

  “We try again tomorrow,” said Eli, cleaning one of her blades.

  Tav glared at her. “I need to rest.”

  “We don’t have time to rest. You didn’t see what I saw, the Earth —”

  “Is dying. I get it.” Tav took a sip of bitter tap water and then set their glass down on the table too loudly.

  Eli looked up. “You don’t understand.”

  “Death? What, only murderers get it?”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “Assassin. Whatever.”

  “I’m not an assassin anymore.”

  “Then what are you?” Tav spun around, letting some of their fury trickle into their words. “Why are you still here? You got your freedom. I thought you’d be gone by now.”

  Eli leaned forward, crocodile eyes never blinking. Pearl blade clutched with tense fingers. “I’m here because you need me.”

  “We don’t need you. We just need the Heart.”

  Tav was picking a fight and they knew it. The old Eli had been quick-tempered and would have lashed out or stormed off, leaving Tav alone. (They wanted to be left alone. They didn’t want to be left alone.)

  Eli, this Eli, the one who sometimes turned into light, who spoke to the moon on cloudless nights, this Eli stared at Tav for a long moment. She leaned back and lovingly slid the blade back into its sheath.

  “I miss the forest,” she said finally.

  Tav said nothing.

  “It’s the weirdest part about being this new person, how much I miss the forest. And the Labyrinth. And the wastelands. It’s not like missing a childhood home, it doesn’t feel like nostalgia. It feels like … like a wrongness. Everything feels wrong. And the magic — it feels weak. Like it’s dying. Like I’m dying. I don’t think the Heart is supposed to be here. God, I miss the forest so much it hurts.”

  Sometimes it was easy to forget that Eli, who looked the same as when Tav met her — the same freckles, glasses, and long bangs — was no longer just the made-thing with a spine of thorns raised to kill and to survive at all costs. Eli was the Heart of another world.

  It was hard, having to get to know Eli all over again.

  “The humans are killing this world all on their own,” Tav’s voice, harsher than they’d intended, broke the silence. “Do we save it just to let them kill each other, kill the land, burn everything? Maybe we should let it die. Maybe we should end it now, before things get worse.”

  Silence. This thoughtful, quiet Eli made Tav uncomfortable.

  “You should listen to the ghost,” she said. “He understands what we can’t. He’s seen a world die.”

  “He talks to you?” Somehow that hurt Tav. The ghost had come to them, had followed them. Besides, Eli — the old Eli, who broke through the surface now and again — hated ghosts.

  “Neither of us belongs here.”

  And where do I belong? Bitterness and hurt pulsed under their fingertips. Again, Tav wished Cam were there, with his jokes and his jazz music and his twirly moustache. He always made them feel better, or at least less alone.

  But they had let him down, and now he was gone.

  “I thought you said the ghost was dangerous.” Tav pushed away their grief.

  “He is. But he’s also … sad.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He showed me.”

  Envy flared up again. Why did the ghost speak to Eli and not Tav? Why was everyone abandoning them?

  “Cam will be fine,” said Eli quietly. “He’s made of stone. He’s part of the wall.”

  The grief poured back in, thick and syrupy. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

  Eli nodded. “Okay. I don’t know if he’ll be fine. But I do know that we can’t help him right now.” She stood up and walked to the window, pressing her fingertips to the glass. The blades glittered at her hips like planets orbiting a sun.

  That was the truth, and, like most truths, it bit down on the vulnerable part of Tav’s heart and wouldn’t let go. Tav’s hands curled into fists. They were ready for a fight. They were ready to be held. They waited for Eli to turn around and look at them.

  But Eli slowly faded out of existence, leaving only a few fingerprints on the windowpane to prove she had been there. Then it was just Tav alone in an empty room.

  Just what I wanted, they thought miserably.

  Tav was dreaming again.

  The smell of engine fuel and something sharp and green. They rubbed their fingers together and brought them to their nose — they had been picking cilantro.

  “I’m afraid,” they said. “The world is dying and I don’t know what to do. I need your help.”

  Their mother smiled, her face reflected in the chrome of the bike. “Every teenager thinks that. I thought that. Nuclear destruction, climate change; the planet is more resilient than you think, love.”

  “The threat of nuclear destruction is real. And so is climate change.”

  “I know, baby. But we can’t live in fear all the time. Here, help me.” She tossed a rag at Tav, blocking out the light, blocking out everything.

  Like a magic trick, when Tav lowered the rag, the scene had changed. Smell of cinnamon and coffee.

  “I’m afraid,” they repeated. “The world is dying, and I don’t know what to do. I need your help.”

  “I have helped. And now you owe me.”

  “Don’t you care that the world is in danger?”

  “There is no safety in this life, youngling.” The leaves of an aloe plant brushed their cheek. Tav shivered from the contact. Don’t run, they told themselves. Don’t panic. “Only winners and losers. Living and dead. Which side of that battle do you want to be on?”

  “What do you want?”

  “You know what I want.”

  “I said I’ll get it for you. Just not yet.”

  “I hope I can trust you, youngling.” The Hedge-Witch’s eyes swirled yellow-white and muddy black. Staring into them made Tav dizzy. “You had so much potential once. But now you’re very close to becoming a traitor.”

  They woke on the sofa drenched in sweat. Sun still streamed through the window — it was hard to believe it was the same day they had failed. The same day they had lost Cam. They squinted into the light and thought about the dream. Was it a dream? Or was it a message?

  Traitor.

  Tav almost laughed. They were definitely a traitor, but sorting out which loyalties they owed would take some time. Did they owe their allegiance to the humans? The human world that only half claimed them, that had made them who they are, forged in fury and pain? To the family that birthed and raised them? The family that adopted them? To the magi
c world they had barely seen? To Eli?

  Tav had already let down the one person they owed loyalty to.

  Who cared about anyone else?

  It’s someone else’s turn, they thought. I’m tired. I don’t want this anymore. They squeezed their eyes shut and wished their magic away. Give it to someone else.

  They rolled over, pressing their forehead into the back of the sofa, and fell back into a sickly sleep, as light and distressed as a worn-out T-shirt.

  Twenty-Six

  THE HEIR

  “Your army is growing,” said Kite. “The unnamed daughters have reached out to their contacts. More assassins are fleeing their mothers to join you. The daughters will strengthen your numbers.”

  “It’s not enough,” sulked Clytemnestra, a paper crown askew on her brow. The flimsy hat had been pulled from a Christmas cracker. The smell of sulfur still lingered in the air.

  But the party was over.

  “Greedy child,” said Kite.

  “You’re a child, too.” Clytemnestra held a party horn to her mouth and blew half-heartedly, the stream of air rippling along the metallic ribbon.

  “Yes,” agreed Kite, eyeing the shiny material.

  A gleam shimmered in Clytemnestra’s eyes, the whites thinning to show a blueblack galaxy underneath. Then the whites thickened again, and the doll’s eyes returned, with painted irises and dilated pupils.

  She adjusted her crown. “You missed the celebrations, but I saved you a party favour.”

  “A whirligig?” Kite guessed. She recognized a game when she was in one.

  Clytemnestra started chewing on the horn. She shook her head.

  “A used Band-Aid?”

  Another shake.

  One more guess. Kite studied the witch girl: Clytemnestra was nibbling eagerly on the plastic toy. Her eyes kept thinning to the consistency of raw egg whites. Kite opened her mouth and let her tongue explore the air. She tasted old blood.

  “Something that doesn’t belong here,” said Kite.

  “Yes!” Clytemnestra spat out mangled plastic and giggled. “Just like you, Heir.” She waved her hand and the air thickened, swirling around her wrist. Before it was fully summoned, Kite could smell the death and hurt, a heavy stench that made her eyes water. Kite leaned over, choking on the smell, and tadpoles fell from her eye sockets. When she sat up, wiping the slimy trail from her face, there it was.