Skyfire

by Skye Melki-Wegner

  That catches me off-guard. I’m about to respond when Lukas steps forward, his words coming in a rush. ‘Lord Farran’s got firestones. He’s got firestones, Father, and they transmit magic.’

  Silence.

  ‘You have to retreat,’ Lukas says. ‘You have to fall back into the borderlands. It’s not too late to stop this war. Once you’re back in neutral territory, where you can both use alchemy, Farran might think twice and –’

  The king laughs. It isn’t a pleasant laugh. It’s cold and false, a ring of bitterness behind each breath. ‘You really think I’d believe that, boy?’

  ‘It’s true. We’ve seen them.’

  King Morrigan shakes his head. ‘Lukas, we’re sitting in the Magnetic Valley. Have you forgotten already? No matter how talented an alchemist Farran might be, he can’t rely on magic inside a magnetic field.’

  ‘He’s found a way to scorch Curiefer into the firestones,’ Lukas says. ‘They’ll work in the Valley.’

  The king shakes his head. ‘Impossible. You can’t imbue Curiefer into other objects. Do you think I haven’t set my own team of alchemists onto the task – that I haven’t tried applying Curiefer to bombs, to biplanes?’

  ‘But Farran’s more talented than –’

  King Morrigan cuts him off with a wave of his hand. ‘Don’t you dare, Lukas. Don’t you dare imply that man’s talents – whatever they may be – can outrank my own resources.’ His voice is almost a hiss. ‘For centuries, our forefathers have passed down the knowledge of Farran’s treachery. For centuries, we’ve prepared for his return. We’ve developed weaponry. We’ve conquered other lands, conscripted other soldiers. We’ve kept the entire nation under control – ready to defend ourselves against the prisoner.

  ‘Farran is just a scoundrel. A traitor. A sack of muck on the outskirts of proper society. If he thinks his firestones will work in the Valley, let him try! I have no qualms about fighting a fool. Makes it easier to trample his guts into the mud.’

  Silence.

  ‘And speaking of fighting,’ the king says, ‘I believe this war is almost upon us. I need a way to raise my soldiers’ spirits. A way to ramp up their bloodlust. To teach them the glory of fighting in my name – and the punishment for rebelling against me.’

  His gaze slips away from Lukas. It flits across the rest of us, landing finally on me. He points at my face. ‘You’re the Glynn girl, aren’t you? The one who shot down Lukas’s biplane.’

  ‘No,’ Lukas says quickly. There’s fear in his voice now. Not just the tightness that has plagued the whole conversation, but something more. ‘She’s not. This is just a girl we met – her name’s Tindra. Danika Glynn drowned in the catacombs.’

  But the king isn’t listening. He crosses the tent and retrieves an enormous wooden chest. A swipe sends the remains of his dinner skittering off the table, spilling duck bones and crimson wine. He slams the chest down and opens the lid.

  Inside, I see the papers. Posters. Arrest warrants. Sheets of newspaper, flashes of headlines. Danika Glynn: Wanted Fugitive. Traitor on the run.

  ‘I’ve kept a close eye on you,’ the king says. ‘The girl who kidnapped my only son.’

  I don’t deny it. There’s no point. I can see it now, in his triumphant posture. The ring in his voice. He knows damn well that I didn’t kidnap Lukas – that Lukas ran away with us. But that doesn’t matter. Not to the monarchy’s publicity machine.

  ‘No!’ Lukas says, his voice panicked. ‘No, it’s not her! She’s just a random girl. You don’t –’

  King Morrigan holds up a crumpled poster, and my face stares back at me. Wide eyes, rumpled hair, a neck-scarf to hide my proclivity. A face stained with soot, about to scale Rourton’s city wall. I look oddly young in the picture. It was taken not long ago, and yet it looks like a snapshot of another life. Another Danika. A part of myself that I’ve lost, never to be retrieved.

  ‘Danika Glynn.’ The king says it slowly, tasting every syllable. ‘All my soldiers know your name. They’ve seen the wanted posters. They’ve heard about the reward. The whole country has been waiting for your execution. And here I was, wondering how to get my soldiers’ blood pumping before the fight.’

  A nasty smile folds onto his lips. ‘And do you know what, Danika? I believe they could do with some target practice.’

  I am to be executed at sundown.

  The air isn’t just cold now, but piercing. Every whip of wind feels like ice upon my cheeks. By the time they tie me to the pole, I can see the first hints of evening grey. Night, I think. Night is coming.

  But it won’t do me any good. Not here in the Valley. No proclivity, no alchemy, no illusions. My power remains locked inside me, as pointless as an appendix. And by the time the night comes, my magic will be as silent as my heartbeat.

  I take a deep breath. I refuse to buckle. I refuse to beg.

  Teddy and the twins stand near the entrance to King Morrigan’s tent. Their mouths are stuffed with gags and soldiers hold them tightly in place, but they keep straining. They’ll be next, I’m sure. The idea makes my chest tighten and I want to rush over and hug them, to grab their warm bodies and never let go.

  But I can’t. My limbs are bound to the pole, and the crowd is growing. First a dozen soldiers, then fifty, then a hundred. They keep arriving, as news spreads around the camp like melting butter. Danika Glynn. The fugitive. They’ve got her!

  If I close my eyes, I can hear the whispers.

  I lean back against the pole. It’s cold and hard behind my scalp. The whole damn world is cold. Is this the last thing I’ll feel? I wish Lukas were beside me. I wish I could touch his face one last time. That I could feel his lips upon mine.

  Lukas stands just ten metres away. No one is touching him, but half a dozen guards stand in tight formation around his body. I know they’re concealing blades beneath their cloaks: holding them out in a threatening circle. If Lukas moves, they’ll gut him like a fish.

  His eyes are straining; every so often he closes them, as though focusing on something far away. He’s trying to summon the sólfoxes. But here in the Valley, his proclivity is useless. No creature will hear his call.

  King Morrigan is speaking to the crowd about Lukas’s great return. The prodigal son. He speaks of the honour and dignity of the Morrigan name, and the joy of welcoming his beloved prince back into the fold.

  The other soldiers can’t see the blades. They can’t see that Lukas’s anxiety is anything other than excitement at his return.

  And when Lukas looks at me, his face wild with terror, I know what they’re thinking. Our prince is looking at his kidnapper. He longs to see her die.

  And there’s no shortage of soldiers ready to please their prince.

  I keep my eyes fixed upwards, towards the sky. I don’t want to look at Lukas. I don’t want to look at my friends, or the crowd. Each of those sights hurts in its own way. But the sky is neutral. I think of flying. As I fight to control the quiver in my limbs, I think of our flight upon the sólfox. Just me and Lukas, shooting up into a whirl of clouds and stars …

  ‘Ready!’

  The word snaps me back to reality. I glance down before I can stop myself, and see the soldiers notch their arrows. They raise their bows with trembling fingers, and I swallow back a mouthful of bile. They aren’t expert archers. It won’t be a single arrow through the heart. I imagine a wound in my arm, my thigh, my belly. I picture myself buckling, blood in my mouth, hot pain shooting through my limbs as they try again …

  I close my eyes. No. Don’t think it. Don’t –

  ‘Aim!’

  I force my eyes open. A dozen arrows stare back at me. I can’t even focus on the soldiers behind them any more. All I can see are the arrows themselves, taut against the strings.

  King Morrigan takes a deep breath. He’s watching Lukas, not me. He doesn’t need to watch me die. I mean nothing to him. What he wants to see is his son’s reaction. He wants to watch his son’s collapse: the moment when Lukas, the rebe
llious brat of the family, realises he has been defeated.

  He’s about to say it. He’s about to say ‘Fire!’ I hold my breath and wait for the pain to hit. I turn my gaze to the sky and try to focus on the darkening clouds. The coming of night. The arch of the higher slope, cupping the Valley, with dark shadows charging down towards us. Are they our sólfoxes, finally coming to Lukas’s call? If they are, they’ve come too late. Too distant. Too far away to save me.

  It won’t be so bad, I tell myself. A little bit of pain and it’ll be over. It’ll all be over.

  And then, the blow.

  But not the blow of an arrow. It’s the blow of a body crashing into my own: a collapsing figure, a smash of limbs and desperate breath.

  ‘Stop!’ King Morrigan cries.

  My eyes fly open and I’m staggering sideways, the ropes burning against my wrists, the pole yanking me back up into an upright position. My side throbs from the impact, but another figure stands in front of me, hands out, his breath coming in ragged gasps.

  Lukas.

  And then I see the blood.

  It spreads across his shirt: a crimson stain, like his father’s wine on the tablecloth. There are shouts from the soldiers – accusations, shrieks – and I know someone has stabbed him. He must have burst through that ring of blades, ignoring the slash of steel into his flesh …

  ‘Lukas!’

  He teeters a little, like a tree about to topple. But he stays upright, fighting, one hand clapped against his wound. I let out a cry and fight against my restraints. I have to stop the blood. I have to press my hands against that wound, to hold back the flow of life as it slowly leaks from –

  ‘You fool!’ King Morrigan is shouting. ‘You bloody little fool! After all I gave you, after all I –’

  And the Víndurnic army charges into the fray.

  Chaos.

  The camp erupts in a torrent of sound. Shouts, screams, cries. A blur of motion around me: soldiers scattering, cursing, running to unchain their foxaries.

  And the arrows begin to fall.

  They rain like hailstones from higher up the slope, fired from the backs of charging sólfoxes. The Víndurnics must have galloped along the Valley’s sloping shoreline, just as we did. The foxes can’t bear the entire army, of course – they’re just an advance attack. But with two sólfoxes from every village in Víndurn, and at least three armed riders crammed onto each beast, it’s enough to stain these slopes with blood and screams. An arrow skewers the dirt beside me, bare inches from my feet.

  But all I can see is Lukas.

  He collapses slowly. A broken concertina, wheezing down to close upon itself. His limbs buckle and his lips fall open. And then he’s lying in the dirt, blood pouring from the gashes in his belly. I spot the source of the blood: a knife wound on either side, as though he shoved through two soldiers’ blades to reach me.

  Someone scrabbles at my bonds. I blink, trying to clear my head, and realise it’s Maisy. Teddy and Clementine bend down to Lukas’s body, pressing desperate hands against his wounds. Soldiers hurtle past us on foxaries, a blur of snarls and claws.

  Maisy unties the ropes around my wrists. I stumble away from the pole and collapse, rope slithering around my forearms. Then I’m at Lukas’s side, my lungs frantic, my throat tight.

  ‘Lukas!’

  He’s alive. Barely. I can see it now, in the rise and fall of his chest. He looks at me with wild eyes, and then a weak smile twists his lips. ‘They didn’t shoot you.’

  I don’t know what to say. A thousand emotions are tumbling inside my belly and I can’t cope with this. I’m just a scruffer from Rourton. Homeless. Alone. Orphaned. I never expected anyone to do something like this for me, to make this kind of sacrifice.

  And now, I’d give anything to take it back.

  I press a hand to his lips. ‘Save your strength.’

  Arrows fly around us. We don’t seem to be targets – perhaps our Víndurnic cloaks have marked us as allies – but Taladian soldiers scream and topple as arrows strike their faces. Their comrades fire back wildly, shots going astray.

  The sólfoxes flare out their wings. A few wear metallic plates buckled across their wings, forming enormous walls of feather and metal. Víndurnic troops take cover behind them, firing arrows over the top of their flapping shields. I catch glimpses of firestones glinting at their belts, but there’s no sign of magic being transmitted through the stones. Perhaps Lord Farran is saving them, conserving their power for something else.

  Something deadly.

  A volley of arrows punctures a sólfox’s head, and the great beast tumbles down the slope in a writhing mess of blood. Its rider crawls away from the carnage, bones broken, face pale – and before I can move, a mob of Taladian soldiers cuts him down where he lies.

  ‘They’ve all gone bonkers!’ Teddy says, horrified. ‘Off their rockers, the lot of them.’

  ‘It’s war.’ Lukas’s voice is weak. ‘This is what war does to you.’

  ‘They should be working together – it’s their leaders who want to fight, not them!’

  Lukas opens his mouth to respond again, and a trickle of blood spills over his bottom lip. He lets out a quiet gasp and falls silent. My own breath catches in my throat.

  ‘Lukas.’ I wipe the blood away, fighting to keep my voice steady. ‘You’re going to be okay. We’ll find a way to heal you.’

  I stare around the camp site, desperate. No sign of King Morrigan – he fled into his tent as soon as the arrows began to fall. There must be healers somewhere, perhaps a medical tent …

  A few Víndurnics are dismounting now: leaping from their sólfoxes and hurling their bodies into the throng. The sólfoxes are large targets, hard to manoeuvre, and the Taladians have finally figured out where to aim. Enormous furry bodies topple down the slope, their throats pierced by arrows, wings snapping and breaking beneath the weight of metal plates.

  Fighting on all sides. A clash of metal, shrieks and sobs. The stink of urine as a nearby soldier wets his pants. Mud and blood and terror. The scrabble of claws, the tearing of teeth upon flesh.

  And here in the middle, Lukas is dying.

  No. I won’t think it. I won’t let it happen.

  ‘Come on,’ I say, looking up at the others. ‘We’ve got to get him to safety.’

  Their eyes are hopeless, but they don’t argue. I know they think it’s too late. Clementine opens her mouth, and I know what she’s going to say before the words leave her lips. ‘Maybe we shouldn’t move him. It might hurt … Danika, it’s too late.’

  ‘Don’t,’ I say, just as her lips twitch. ‘Don’t you … don’t …’

  I don’t know what I’m saying. I don’t know how to form words. A terrible choke rises up inside of me, threatening to burst into a sob, and this is not the time for hysterics. Not now.

  ‘I’m going to save you,’ I say to Lukas. ‘You hear me? I’m going to save you. But I have to move you first, get you away from all this.’

  Teddy helps me lift Lukas. He doesn’t weigh much. None of us do, after weeks of hunger on the road. Lukas cries out as we lift his torso, pulling against the wounds. I curse under my breath, hating myself for causing more pain. But it has to be done. If we stay here, we’re going to die.

  We carry Lukas into a nearby tent, struggling not to jostle his wound. I’m relieved to find camp beds inside: this must be a tent for officers, not just lowly soldiers. Clementine rushes to grab a jug of water from the table and we peel up Lukas’s shirt to inspect his wounds.

  ‘No,’ I whisper.

  It’s bad. His abdomen shines with blood: wet and thin, dribbling across his skin. There’s an almighty slash on each side of his belly, where the soldiers tried to constrain him inside their circle.

  ‘Bandages! We need bandages …’

  Teddy locates a chest full of clothes and yanks out a clean shirt. I just have time to spot the ‘Captain’ rank emblazoned on its sleeve before we start wrapping it around Lukas’s torso. He groans an
d arches his back, allowing us to slip the fabric underneath.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Clementine says. Her voice is more frantic than comforting, but I doubt mine would be any better. ‘It’s all right. We’re fixing you.’

  Teddy yanks the shirt tight and begins to tie it, pulling Lukas’s wounds shut. The fabric pools with red, but I think the bleeding is slowing.

  Slowing, but not stopping.

  ‘What do we do?’ Clementine says, voice low. ‘We need a healing charm or something.’

  I think of Lukas’s grandmother dying in the borderlands. Of the necklace of charms around her throat, and a healing charm in the shape of a bone. It was too late to save her – her wound was too severe – but I’m sure that charm could save Lukas now. But I left her body lying there, charms still hanging from her neck …

  And now they hang from the neck of her killer.

  I clench my fists and close my eyes. Stupid. I was so stupid. My breath feels like acid in my lungs. I should have taken the charms myself – but in the shock of Silver’s death, I was too flustered and overwhelmed by grief. And now Quirin has them. I think bitterly of the necklace around his throat – just a glittering ornament among hundreds of others at the Ball.

  ‘Wouldn’t work, anyway,’ Teddy says. ‘Not in the Valley.’

  I open my eyes. He’s right. Even if I’d thought to retrieve the healing charm, it wouldn’t work here.

  ‘What do we do?’ Clementine says again. ‘I don’t think …’ She glances down at Lukas, then up at me. ‘Danika, I don’t think he’s going to –’

  ‘We’ll find help,’ I snap, cutting her off. ‘The Víndurnics know how to heal people. Deníel used those herbs to fix my shoulder, didn’t he? I’ll find someone to help.’

  I take a deep breath. I can’t ask anyone to come with me – to step back out into that hell of blood and screaming. ‘Look after him,’ I say, and my voice cracks a little. ‘Don’t let him …’ I trail off, unable to say the last word. ‘Just look after him, all right?’