by Ford, Shae
Eveningwing nodded slightly. “You’re doing the right thing,” he whispered back. “Any good hawk protects his nest from serpents.”
Kael didn’t feel like a good hawk. He didn’t relish killing a man in cold blood, no matter how wicked that man might be. It didn’t feel like a brave thing … but he supposed it had to be done.
They saw Bobbin from a long ways off. He spent most of his time in the eastern Fields, so Kael didn’t know much about him. Though he did have a very peculiar gait, and that was precisely how they recognized him.
As Bobbin traveled across the Fields, he seemed to jump or skip every few steps, wandering along like a man with a wounded leg. Every now and then, he would come to an abrupt halt and sling his whip at the grass — sending a blast of wind that parted it straight down the middle. He leapt back at nearly every sound; his head twitched away from the soft gusts of wind.
He was so worried about the noises around him that he wandered straight into their trap. Bobbin’s odd, skipping gait made it difficult to find a clear shot. But when he stopped to inspect another clump of grass, Kael saw his chance.
The curved knife left his hand, glinting as it spun end over end towards Bobbin. He heard a faint gasp and a thud as the mage toppled over.
“Wait —!”
Eveningwing left the ditch like a shot, and Kael had no choice but to follow. Even wounded, Bobbin could be deadly.
He sprinted for the grass clump and prepared himself for a fight. But when they arrived, he saw the danger was over. Bobbin wasn’t moving. Eveningwing knelt beside him and plucked the knife free.
“A clean hit!” he said excitedly. “I was worried about your weak human eyes. But you killed him perfectly.”
The stench of Bobbin’s blood was making Kael’s vision slightly hazy. He pulled his shirt over his nose and grabbed the mage around the legs. “Get his arms — let’s bury him quickly.”
*******
By the time the minceworms were finished with them, all that remained of the Grandmot’s goats were a few horns and a pair of hooves. The worms couldn’t burrow into the valley’s denser soil. So when the sun came up, they shriveled to ash — taking every remnant of Kyleigh’s mischief away with them.
The Grandmot made some long-winded speech about how it had been Fate’s will to send the minceworms into her lands, and Kyleigh couldn’t have been happier: she thought she might actually get away with it.
But by the time Nadine returned from her shift that afternoon, she was fuming. “I have been given the entire night’s watch — and I must watch from the northern brazier. Its fire is out,” she explained impatiently, when Kyleigh looked confused. “I hope you are happy, a’calla. Because of your meddling, I am going to spend my nights in the freezing cold!”
“At least you’re willing to admit that it was because of my meddling that the Grandmot’s punishing you, and not some great act of Fate,” Kyleigh said lightly. “We’re not going to let you freeze to death. I’ll take the watch with you.”
So that night, she followed Nadine up to the top of the mountain. The northern brazier was indeed burned out. And when the last of the day’s heat faded, the cold slipped in.
Kyleigh’s strength had been steadily coming back. She feasted on cavefish and wild goat whenever she could, and she was careful to stay in her human form — giving the dragon in her a much-needed rest.
The cold did not chill her as it once had. Her blood was getting its fire back, and her body put off enough heat to keep Nadine warm. At the middle of the night, Nadine sat down, claiming that she was only going to rest her legs, but it wasn’t long before she fell asleep. Kyleigh sat next to her and kept a lookout for the Grandmot’s guards.
With the brazier’s fire burned out, there was nothing to veil the brilliance of the stars. They blanketed the whole sky, piercing the darkness with dots of quiet, shining colors. Their haunting light changed the desert: the burning dunes looked like drifts of new snow, the deep ravines became gentle rivers. The Red Spine was nothing more than a quiet shadow in the distance.
The mountains were closer than she’d ever hoped they would be. She thought they might’ve wandered so far off course that it would take a week to reach them. But from where she sat, she wagered it was only a day’s journey over the dunes — a day and a half, at the very most.
“Hello.”
Kyleigh tried not to look too startled when she noticed the young man sitting across from her. Had she not been so focused on the Spine, she might’ve noticed him sooner.
Fortunately, he didn’t look as if he meant her any harm. He was bare-chested and wore a pair of black breeches. The dark crop of his hair shadowed his eyes, but didn’t quite hide them. She saw through the amber rings and recognized their particular sharpness immediately.
“Hello, fellow sky-hunter,” she said, smiling when she saw how the halfhawk’s eyes brightened at her greeting. “What brings you to these Fate-forsaken lands — and at such a peculiar hour of the night?”
She liked talking with other winged shapechangers: they saw the world from the same angle she did. And so few creatures were able to take to the skies that it was always nice to be able to talk with someone who understood.
This little halfhawk was no exception. He shifted his weight excitedly as she smiled at him, moving from one side of his rump to the other. “I’ve been speaking to the crows. They’re always good for rumors.” His smile flashed by as quickly as his words. “They told me I might be able to find you up here.”
“I see,” she said, though she was more than a little confused. “Why were you looking for me? And what’s your name, by the way?”
“Eveningwing. Yours?”
“Kyleigh.”
“A human name? That’s good.” He stared over Kyleigh’s head for a moment, as if he was trying to think of how to arrange his next words. He scratched at his elbows, and she saw that a number of gray feathers sprouted from them.
A breath of air left her lungs, and her stomach dropped. “You were a slave of Midlan,” she said, reaching for his arm. “The curse left its mark on you.”
He watched calmly as she ran her fingers through his feathers. “Yes — though I was lucky to be freed before my two shapes got twisted together. That tickles,” he added.
Kyleigh pulled her hand away, but it wasn’t because she was tickling him — it was because she’d suddenly figured it out. She realized … and yet, she almost didn’t dare to say it. She didn’t think she could bear it if she was wrong.
But she forced herself to ask: “Kael freed you, didn’t he?”
Her heart leapt when Eveningwing nodded. She wanted to grab him around the shoulders and squeeze all of the air from his chest. She wanted to take to her wings and fly into the night, to let out a roar that would shake the entire Kingdom with her joy and relief — but she didn’t. Instead, she clasped her hands tightly and bit down on her lip.
Eveningwing read the desire in her eyes, and he grinned. “Would you like to hear his story?”
“More than I’d like to draw breath, yes.”
He laughed. “Very well. I’ll tell you …”
Eveningwing’s tale stretched late into the night. Kyleigh hardly breathed as he spoke of Kael’s life among the giants, his battle with the mages, and his daring plan of escape. It sounded as if he was using every ounce of cleverness in that brilliant head of his, and as Eveningwing spoke of him, her chest swelled with pride … even though she knew it shouldn’t have.
Kael wasn’t hers, after all. And he’d made it clear that he didn’t want to be. She shut her eyes tight against the painful light of that memory. Be proud of him as your friend, she thought to herself. It’ll only hurt worse if you miss him as something he’s not.
Though he must have talked for hours, Eveningwing’s story ended far too quickly. As the sun’s bright shadow crept towards the edge of the horizon, it began to hide the stars from view.
“You knew Bloodfang, then?” Kyleigh said, watching th
e sky brighten. She wished she could hold back the sun.
Eveningwing nodded. “He was a good flockmate — he taught me everything.”
“Well, if Bloodfang was in my pack and your flock …” Kyleigh smiled. “I suppose that makes you my little brother.”
He grabbed his knees and pulled them to his chin — as if that could somehow stop his grin from being so ridiculously wide. “I’d like that. I’ve missed having a family.”
“Then it’s settled.”
They watched the sunrise for a moment more. Neither one of them wanted the night to end, but it ended all the same. Eveningwing got to his feet.
“I should go back — Kael needs me to watch the skies.”
“There’s nothing else you can tell me?”
Kyleigh’s heart sank down when he shook his head. Somehow, it seemed to sit even lower than it had before. One final question weighed on her. It leaned heavily as she struggled to her feet.
“Why did you come find me tonight? Kael didn’t send you … did he?”
Eveningwing shook his head again, and she immediately felt like a fool. She should’ve known better than to ask. This disappointment was all her own fault. Would she ever learn?
“I came here because …” He scratched at the feathers sprouting from the base of his skull for a moment, his fingers moving in a blur. “Kael’s a good human,” he finally said, leveling his chin at Kyleigh. “He’s different from the others. And I just wanted to make sure that you weren’t going to hurt him.”
Kyleigh bristled at the thought. “I would never hurt him. I’d rather die than cause him any pain.”
Eveningwing nodded. “I believe that,” he said softly. He held a hand out to the horizon. “I believe it even more than I believe in the sunrise.”
He left, then — promising that he would return if her friends needed her … or if Kael fell to harm.
Chapter 27
A Monster in the Shallows
For some reason, Eveningwing’s visit only made Kyleigh more anxious.
She was impatient to get back to her journey. Jake’s head wasn’t healing nearly fast enough, and she was afraid that they’d be stuck with the mots forever, just waiting for his stitches to come out. She knew she was being ridiculous, but that didn’t make the time go by any faster.
It certainly didn’t help when she discovered that everything in the motlands revolved around a strict set of rules. There were laws about where Kyleigh could be, when she could be there, and who she could be with. Every time she turned a corner, it was only to run into a pair of snarling guards. They’d cross their spears over her path and shout at her for breaking the rules.
Finally, Kyleigh could stand it no longer — and she swore that she’d trounce the head of the next little person who screamed at her. The guards gave her a wide berth after that, but Nadine still made her behave. So she sighed and resigned herself to her duties.
On bathing days, it was Kyleigh’s job to walk Nadine down the long staircase to the bath. She was supposed to walk two steps ahead of her — so that if Nadine fell, she would land on Kyleigh and not on the stone steps.
She had a feeling that the mots used their slaves for a soft landing pretty frequently, if it happened often enough to be written into their laws.
The bottom of the stairway led into the underground portion of the mots’ domain. It spilled out into something like a grand, circular hallway. The stone floor was cool against Kyleigh’s bare feet as she stepped to the side and allowed Nadine to take the lead.
The air was moist and smelled of earth. Kyleigh breathed it in as they walked, listening to how her breathing echoed softly against the ceiling. They passed an arched doorway, which Nadine said led into the Grandmot’s chambers. A small company of male soldiers stood outside of it.
They nodded to Nadine as she passed. Kyleigh felt the soldiers’ eyes flick across her body before they went back to staring purposefully at the opposite wall.
“I think you confuse them,” Nadine whispered to her. “All they hear are tales of the a’calla’s dark soul, and his hunger for red flesh. Your beauty has taken them by surprise.”
Kyleigh imagined it would have been quite confusing, just to look at her. Perhaps if she strolled past them with a leg of goat clamped between her teeth, they might go back to thinking more about her dark soul — and less about her backside.
She had to bite her lip to keep from laughing at the thought.
The second archway they came to had a pair of female guards standing outside of it. When they caught sight of Kyleigh, one of them disappeared into the tunnel. She emerged a moment later, crossing her spear with the second guard in a protective X.
“You can enter when all the others have gone.” Her gaze was rather flinty as she added: “They do not wish to share space with the a’calla.”
It didn’t matter which pair of women guarded the door, they said the same thing every time. Kyleigh was beginning to think that they were more interested in shaming Nadine than they were in being informative.
The women came out of the bath in a steady trickle. Most didn’t even glance at Kyleigh, though a few threw haughty looks in her direction. Many of the younger women wore their hair in long, loose pony’s tails, clamped down every few lengths by thick silver clasps. But most kept their hair cut short, trimmed to just under their ears. Hardly any of them had hair of medium length, like Nadine’s.
Kyleigh wondered about it. But in the end, she decided not to ask. The length of Nadine’s hair was likely some mark of shame, and she didn’t want to risk upsetting her.
Several of the women had slaves in tow — Kyleigh recognized them by their white dresses. “Sometimes, if a family loses their fortunes, people are forced to become slaves,” Nadine had explained once when Kyleigh asked. “They give up their freedoms, yes. But their masters are charged by law to keep them fed. So they do what they must to survive.”
Blazes, even the other slaves looked at Kyleigh as if they’d very much like to throttle her. She waited patiently beside Nadine until the last scornful woman stepped under the archway. Then they went inside.
The area the mots used to bathe was nearly the size of Roost’s dining room. The stone floor had a number of holes broken out of it: some were about the size of tubs, but most were large enough for four or five people.
There were small braziers glowing on the ground between the pools, and they produced enough light to show the bathers which paths were safe to walk along. Nadine wound her way down the path towards the back wall.
The water that filled the baths came from a slow-moving, underground river. The river flowed from the back of the room to the front, which meant that the waters furthest from the door were always the cleanest.
Because the mots’ laws declared that only the Grandmot could wear black, Kyleigh wasn’t allowed to wear her armor. She’d been forced to don one of the white slave dresses, instead.
Normally, she loathed dresses. She found them itchy, revealing in an insulting sort of way, and far too frilly. Not only did they offer no protection to her important bits, the skirts had a nasty habit of getting tangled around her legs. In fact, she thought she had a better chance of winning a fight naked than in a dress.
But she was surprised to find that the desert dresses were rather comfortable. They weren’t frilly or itchy, and they were cut short enough that she didn’t have to worry about them getting tangled. She supposed if she had to wear a dress, it wasn’t too terrible. But she still couldn’t wait to get it off.
The second they reached their bathing spot, Kyleigh pulled the dress over her head and flung it to the side. Then she leapt into the bath.
Warm water covered her ears as she sank to the bottom of the pool. She let the air out of her lungs in a stream of bubbles, making her body sink faster. Kyleigh loved the quiet comfort of the water, and envied the fishes for being able to breathe it like air.
She thought it might be worth the risk of winding up in some fisherman’s n
et, just to know the underwater world as they did.
But Kyleigh was not a fish, and eventually she had to come back up. “This is, and without a doubt, my favorite bit of motdom,” she said, pulling her hair out of its pony’s tail. She arched her neck back and felt her muscles tremble as the warm water teased her scalp. “Though I don’t understand why we’ve got to wear our undergarments to bathe in. It seems a bit odd.”
Nadine dropped from the edge of the pool gingerly into the bath. The pale green glow from the water danced across her skin. “Only our husbands are allowed to see us unclothed, outlander.” She crouched to scoop up some of the black mud from the riverbed and began scrubbing it on her limbs. “According to our law, if a man sees a woman unclothed and she is not his wife, his eyes must be plucked from his skull. They also cut out his tongue, so that he can never tell of what he has witnessed,” she added. “Perhaps you might disrobe yourself for all who wish to see it. But beauty is sacred to us.”
Kyleigh saw the tiny smirk on Nadine’s lips and realized she was teasing. So she propped her elbows on the pool’s edge and let the water carry her legs to the top — which put her feet squarely in Nadine’s face. “I don’t disrobe for everyone, I’ll have you know. Just a special few.”
She wiggled her toes, and Nadine lost the fight against her smile. She shoved Kyleigh’s feet away. “Such insolence. I should have let the Grandmot split you open.”
Kyleigh was about to retort when a familiar smell drew her eyes to the wall behind Nadine. She stared into the shadows, breathing in. The scent crept up on her, burning her nostrils like the spice of desert rice.
“Care for a swim, Elena?” she said to a patch of shadow that she thought looked suspicious. And to her delight, she guessed correctly.
Elena sauntered out of the darkness. She pulled down her mask, revealing the disappointed look underneath. “How do you know? How do you always know?” she muttered as she sat at the water’s edge.
“I just get lucky,” Kyleigh said.
Though she hated to admit it, Elena was turning out to be quite a useful ally. Her uncanny stealth and affinity for the shadows meant that she could lurk around nearly every corner of the motlands without being spotted, and she could turn any crevice into a hiding spot. She’d once dropped down from the ceiling and nearly frightened Silas out the window.
