by Kate Elliott
Uncle took a long, curved brush knife. After giving each of his children and grandchildren a kiss he went out the gate to the garden by the road.
Mum handed Papa his ax, her expression so cold that Lifka shivered to see it. No kisses from her! She tapped Lifka on the shoulder. “You have reach so I want you behind me.”
The other adults were rolling barrels into a line alongside the gate. Nanni dragged the table out to make an obstacle at the gate that would force the soldiers into two narrow files. By now they could all hear the tramp of feet. Lifka whispered a prayer to Kotaru the Thunderer that these soldiers hadn’t seen her land outside the compound. Denas whistled. From inside the house her cousin Nonit braced herself in the open window with the family’s only crossbow, once Aunt Ediko’s.
“Heya! Is this Five Roads Clan?” called a brusque voice from the road.
Uncle took his time answering. “Sheh! Doesn’t it say so right above the gate? Didn’t you lads learn to read and write at Sapanasu’s temple? Aui! A sad day when a man can carry a weapon and not even a little bit of knowledge in his head.”
Death struck with an ordinary grunt: a blade’s impact into flesh, a man’s surprised gasp at the blow. Cloth rended. A spray of liquid spattering the earth. A thud as a body’s weight hit dirt.
Inside the compound no one moved or spoke as they accepted the desperate struggle that must follow on this emphatic statement. Lifka knew she had been right to come: No mercy today.
Two soldiers trotted in through the open gate, clearly expecting no resistance.
A quarrel took one in the throat, and Mum used the turn of her hips to power her staff into the neck of the second. They both dropped like stone.
“Two,” she said, dropping down behind a barrel as the next group of soldiers shouted from the gate and pushed forward. Again the two in the lead had to split apart because of the table and again Nonit shot. This time the bolt slammed into the man’s shoulder. Lifka thrust the tip of her staff into his midsection, doubling him over, as Alon tripped the soldier beside him with a sweep of his staff and with a quick loop cracked the shaft down over the man’s head.
Swords came out in a hiss. Shouts poured off the path as a shadow swept down from the heavens over the men crowded outside the gates. A man screamed, thrashing as Slip lifted from a strike carrying the man like prey, talons digging into human flesh.
Mum said, “Five.”
But now a press of soldiers kicked down the upended table and pushed into the compound, yelling with the fury of men whose blood has been roused. Using the barrels to dodge around, giving her reach against their swords, Lifka used her staff as a pole, jabbing bellies and chests to send men stumbling so the others could hit them while they were unable to parry.
Nanni staggered back as a sword slashed across his leg. Lifka poked the swordsman in the eye. There was cousin Darit, hidden behind their little granary, leaping out to clobber a man on the head with her staff and jumping back out of sight.
Grunting, twisting side to side, Lifka parried blows, hit a blow across the man’s knees, then torqued back to crush his throat.
Soldiers broke past the barrels to run for the shed where the wagon waited. Papa wasn’t much of a fighter and Lifka was stuck with Alon and Nanni still defending the gate, but there went Mum, raining down blows as she worked the staff down their ranks, each time spinning away before their swords could touch her.
Swords had cutting edges but staffs had reach. Stay out of reach, and you stay alive.
Lifka lost count of who had gone down and how many remained. Three barged through the gate and right at her. A shadow shivered over them. Slip plummeted, thudding at a dive into two of the men so hard that everyone heard their bones break and their horrific shrieks. The tip of the third man’s sword raked past her nose as she threw herself back. The metal stank of death, and blood flicked from its edge to spatter her lips. Uncle’s blood.
Denas cut in front of her and pounded the man into the dirt with a series of hammering blows from the sledgehammer that shattered the man’s skull and spewed gray tissue and blood everywhere.
She spun, staff extended and ready, sucking in air as she struggled to catch her breath. No one attacked. A footstep scraped along the ground and she whirled to confront, but it was Nanni dragging his injured leg. A man moaned, and a child cried fearfully. A voice panted in pain. Ailia darted out from the wagon and slashed the throat of a man trying to rise from the ground.
Silence fell horribly over the compound, its dusty courtyard and wood house with three rooms and a roofed shelter that served as a kitchen. The granary and the shed made up the rest of it, with the latrine outside the walls. Not much of a place, but it had been theirs, the only home Lifka remembered.
Slip chirped in that oddly soft voice he had. Alon stood frozen, close enough that the raptor could tear his head off. She stepped between her brother and the eagle.
“Alon…” Because she was still out of breath it was hard to talk, and he, too, was breathing shallow and fast. “Move back one slow step at a time. Nanni, how bad is it?”
Nanni had taken a deep wound in the thigh, and it was he who was panting with the pain of it. Papa had an arm around Mum; he peeled back her torn vest to reveal a bloody cut scored along her ribs.
“It’s shallow, thank the gods,” he rasped.
“Eh, giving birth hurt the hells worse than this scratch,” said Mum, but she winced when she moved. Blood oozed in trails down her torso.
Denas helped Nanni limp to the wagon, where his wife cut up lengths of a faded cotton taloos to bind wounds. Alon ventured out the gate and she followed to see four soldiers running back toward River’s Bend.
“No use trying to catch them on foot,” she said.
Alon grabbed her arm. “Let them go. You can’t take them alone on the eagle. Let’s wrap up Uncle.”
Tarnit circled overhead, signaling a temporary “All Clear.” Lifka and Alon cut apart tabards to make a shroud for Uncle and slung his wrapped corpse into the back of the wagon. Alon kept watch from the wall while Lifka counted off: Mum and Nanni injured; Denas had sprained an ankle and his right hand had gotten smashed. Saloa began cramping, never a good sign in a woman midway through pregnancy. Everyone was speechless. Nonit and Darit were frantically gathering pots and utensils from the kitchen, weeping for their father but moving fast.
In his raspy old voice Grandfather said to Papa, “We picked a good wife for you, Geron. Always good to have a woman in the house who can beat the brains out of thieves and bandits and train the children to do the same.”
“Where can we go, Leaf?” Ailia’s voice jolted Lifka. Beside her, the young man stood stunned, gray with fear. “Jonon and I left Iliyat because the archon there announced a new law that every clan owes a labor tax they must pay in coin or serve in labor. We didn’t have the coin and we wouldn’t give the labor.”
Lifka turned to her parents. “The family got coin for my reeve’s service. Is there enough to travel to another region and set up a new compound?”
Mum said in a strained voice, “Two days after a reeve brought the coin, the archon here demanded coin as a fine for not having a license to cut wood. Then more coin as fees for your Papa having been brought before the assizes, not that it ever used to cost anything before. And he fined the family for not giving you the slave mark, but I don’t want you for a moment to blame yourself for that, Lifka.”
“You’re saying all the coin from my reeve’s portion is gone.” The stink of blood was beginning to nauseate her, and she wanted to get Slip out of the way before he decided to tear into one of the corpses although she had been assured that eagles did not eat people. “It doesn’t matter. We have to go. For now we can hide in the Weldur, at least until we figure out what to do.”
Papa shook his head. “We may seek refuge in the Wild as it says in the tale—under these trees let the innocent shelter—but refugees have to move on after one passage of the moon or the wildings take a tithe. We’ll ru
n out of rice sooner than that anyway.”
“We can eat for a week with what we’ve got in the wagon.” Mum had her back to the rest of them, arms raised, while Nonit bound her ribs with cloth cut from a soldier’s tabard. “Take all their weapons, their belts, what cloth you can easily cut away. We can sell that. Search them for coin and anything else useful.”
“If we set up a drop point I can bring in supplies.” Queen Dia’s talk of fortunes danced in Lifka’s mind as a lure but she dismissed it. She couldn’t go back to the palace now. The Runt cowered by Slip’s huge talons as if he trusted the raptor more than the frantic activity as everyone made ready to abandon their home. She and Alon shoved the barrels aside so the wagon could get out while her cousins and the older children looted the corpses and dragged them off to one side. She actually felt she had been ripped into two people: the calm reeve sorting out an escape, and a girl recoiling from the mayhem, mind racing as images from the skirmish piled through her head over and over again. They had torn lives from living people and chased their spirits through the spirit gate that led to the other side.
Finally they sprinkled oil on wood shavings in the shed and house and set them alight. The family set out across the rice track through neighboring fields, flames rising behind them. As it got dark they had to bring out their one lantern and its precious oil. Tarnit landed in a field so she could guard the eagles overnight while Lifka escorted her family to the north ferry. No one could sleep. Papa did not say a word, Alon talked nonstop in a low voice, and Lifka kept wiping her mouth thinking Uncle’s blood was still on her lips.
They crossed the river at dawn, paying the charge with coin they had taken from the dead soldiers.
She kissed Mum and Papa last of all. “I’ll come as soon as I can.”
When she walked away the Runt ran after her, whining, and after all they did not need another mouth to feed so she scooped him up and he licked her face ecstatically.
Aloft, she and Tarnit circled until the ragged line of people and their mules and wagon and dogs vanished under the canopy of the great forest, heading for a towering redheart grove where they could hope to find water. A small clearing beyond the redheart grove would be their drop point.
In the distance smoke marked burning. She and Tarnit flew back the way they had come to find soldiers following the track through the fields along which the family had fled. The compound was still smoldering.
Tarnit flew north to the Ili Hills and brought them down in a tiny eyrie perched on the rocky crown of a thickly forested knoll. After they hooded the eagles and the Runt went sniffing off to explore, Lifka scrambled up a slope of loose rock to the top. Wind buffeted her, and she wished she could turn into wind if only the transformation would obliterate the heart-crushing dread and confusion eating up her insides. Tarnit climbed up behind her, puffing.
“What if they run out of food? What if they can’t find water? What if they’re caught—”
“The sun sets and rises every day, Lifka. Every day we are alive is a day we can act. You and I were given two errands to run. One is accomplished.”
“But they’re not safe!”
“No, but for the moment they are alive.” Tarnit wrapped strong fingers around her wrist. “Come down to the shelter with me; it’s cold up here. We need to eat and rest before we go on tomorrow.”
She led Lifka down and around to the less windy side of the hill where a crude rock wall turned an overhang into a shelter, with a hearth. The Runt was probing a stack of firewood for rodents, tail wagging madly, paying no attention to their return.
“We have a second task. As we fly I need you to pay particular attention to our route and the landmarks. Knowing the land as intimately as a lover’s body is what gives reeves an expertise no one else has.”
Lifka rubbed her eyes, by now so gritty with exhaustion and fear that they might as well have been coated with sand. “Last month I was happy. Now I’m a killer and my clan is outlaw. Why did I have to be chosen as a reeve? What if I walk away from the reeve halls?”
“Being jessed changes you in a way you can never leave behind. You’ll always be a reeve, Leaf. Until the day you die. Nothing can alter that. Nothing.”
“I can’t believe it happened.”
Tarnit sat right next to her, almost touching, her presence like balm. “Do you want to tell me about it?”
She did! She told her about the entire skirmish in detail as Tarnit listened, doing nothing but nodding and occasionally saying, “Ah!” or “Oh!” or “Eiya!”
That night Lifka slept in snatches, jolting awake and then, exhausted, falling asleep again.
In the morning they flew south, skimming the shore of the Weldur Forest before they reached the River Istri. The great river, lifeblood of the richest farmlands in the Hundred, flowed southeast into Istria Bay. On the way Tarnit pointed out eyries where a reeve could shelter for a night.
The delta of the River Istri sprawled in a network of water and islands and tremendous numbers of birds flocking. Fishermen poled back channels of muddy water. They did not land at Copper Hall, the reeve hall set within the island city of Nessumara. The city itself was a skein of bridges, boardwalks, canals, and houses perched on stilts, dazzling in its complexity, like a puzzle that needed solving. Even preoccupied as she was, Lifka was thrilled when Tarnit had them circle the city in a lazy glide so Lifka could pick out a few of the most prominent landmarks.
Turning south along the shore of Istria Bay, Tarnit brought them to the westernmost peak of the Ossuran Hills. An old hearth and stone shelter marked an eyrie. At the top of the hill stood a tower with firewood laid beneath a tile roof.
“It’s a coastal beacon, to be lit in times of trouble,” Tarnit explained after they’d released the eagles and gone up to explore the old tower with its cracked tiles and dusty corners.
Lifka poked at the wood with the tip of her baton and found spots decayed to rot beneath ancient spiderwebs. “This thing hasn’t been touched in years. That cut on my cousin Nanni’s thigh was deep. I hope it isn’t festering.”
“Turn around.”
The cloudless day and the sinking sun washed the waters of the bay to a deep glossy shine.
“Oh,” said Lifka.
“It’s always beautiful if you stop to look, and it will be beautiful long after we are gone from here,” said Tarnit. “Sometimes people ask me how I can stay so cheerful. But how can you not feel joy when you see so much beauty?”
“Last night I dreamed the forest turned to knives and hacked my family to death.”
Tarnit took her hand, and Lifka found the gesture surprisingly comforting. “Does your clan follow the old traditions? Did you apprentice for a year with one of the seven gods?”
“Yes. Kotaru the Thunderer.”
“I was an ordinand of Kotaru for a year, too. That makes us both daughters of the god, and thus sisters in His worship. We’ll leave an offering to Kotaru to pray for their safety.” She released Lifka’s hand and pointed with her elbow toward a distant headland beneath which Lifka could just see a tiny cove tucked into the rocky shoreline. “That’s where we’re going tomorrow. Marshal Dannarah’s mother, Queen Zayrah, kept an estate there. Can you see the fields? There should be a vineyard, too. And an extensive herb plantation. I don’t know what we’ll find there, but I do know that if I deem it safe I’m going to leave you there for a few days while I return to the palace to report. You haven’t been sleeping, and you need to rest.”
“Every time I close my eyes I can’t stop thinking about them.”
“About your family? Or the people you killed? As a reeve you need to find a way to make peace with the violence and the fear and the ugliness. It will never go away, not truly. Reeves who try to bury it find it keeps crawling back up their throats. It’s part of who you are now.”
“Partly it’s knowing I have killed someone—that’s horrible enough, but really we had no choice. It’s more that I can’t stop thinking about everything my clan needs to
survive. They only have enough rice for a week, and there are sixteen of them, and the dogs and the mules, and two goats, and the chickens—”
“I know where the drop point is. I’m going to fly back to the palace and let the marshal know. You have to stay away because you’re so recognizable.”
“If only I hadn’t argued with Prince Tavahosh at the assizes. If I’d just let him put the slave mark on me and put me in the work gang this wouldn’t have happened.”
“No, the prince is the one who did the wrong thing. You mustn’t be angry at yourself, Lifka. You did what was right.”
“Wouldn’t it be wiser for me and safer for you and Marshal Dannarah if I abandon the reeve halls? If I release Slip I could walk into the Weldur and no one would see me.”
“You don’t understand what it means for a reeve to desert the reeve halls. It does happen sometimes. A reeve will go rogue and vanish with their eagle. The thing is, you can never leave your eagle behind, and although you have learned the basics incredibly fast, you’re still very inexperienced. Your eagle may well sicken and die, and then you’ll die.”
The words struck Lifka to silence.
Tarnit went on, her steady gaze the one thing Lifka could focus on. “Abandoning the discipline of the halls, not to mention your duty as a reeve, is not going to help your family.”
“But I can’t be a reeve if it means taking orders from Prince Tavahosh. Aui! I’m being selfish! What about you, Tarnit? I didn’t mean for you to get caught up in this.”
“Don’t worry about me. They can’t prove I was involved even if they suspect me. Marshal Dannarah has her own feud with Prince Tavahosh, so you can be sure she will protect her people. But you have to do your part and right now that means you must lay low and trust me. Heya!”
She shaded her eyes, to follow the glide of one of the eagles. Already Lifka could tell it was River, not Slip. Just then the bird pulled in her wings and stooped, plummeting so fast Lifka gasped out loud. A hill cut off their view.
