Flight of the King

by C. R. Grey

  The familiar voice jolted Tremelo out of his anger—it was Gwen, running across the causeway. To his amazement, Phi was at her side. Tori let out a yelp of surprise, and ran forward and hugged Phi as Fennel bounced toward them, ears happily perked. Gwen rushed to Tremelo.

  “Thank Nature you two are all right!” he said, clasping Gwen’s shoulders and grinning. “Where have you two been? Are you hurt? Where’s the Glass? Is it safe?”

  “We’re fine, and so is the Glass,” she said. She patted her rucksack. “I have so much to tell you!”

  Phi was looking around anxiously.

  “Where is Bailey?” Phi asked. “And Hal?”

  “They took off on their own, weeks ago, and were captured,” Tremelo explained. “But they’re here, somewhere, in need of help.”

  “Well, we’ve come with help of our own.”

  Gwen looked up into the sky, where Tremelo saw a huge black shape circling.

  “Is that Carin?” he asked Phi, but even as he asked it, he knew that what he was seeing was too large, its movements too steady. This was no real bird—it was a Clamoribus.

  “It’s your messenger,” Gwen said. “The Velyn received it, and they’ve answered.”

  She led them through the scaffolding and past the motorbuggy, where the fairgrounds backed up to the woods surrounding the Gray City. Here the sounds of the fair became muted, and the crowds seemed far away. Gwen pointed to the trees.

  Men and women began to emerge from the shadows between those trees, and out into the light of the fairgrounds. The Velyn, led by Eneas Fourclaw, crossed the threshold of the forest and approached Tremelo.

  “You came,” Tremelo said, hardly believing what he saw. “I didn’t know if I would reach you.”

  Eneas stepped forward and shook Tremelo’s hand.

  “Not all of us did, I’m afraid,” he said. “There are many Velyn who aren’t ready to be seen by the rest of the kingdom yet. But I was beckoned by the True King. We’re ready to follow you.”

  Tremelo was dumbstruck; he was hardly ever at a loss for words, but at this moment he could barely speak. His heart swelled with gratitude.

  “I don’t believe it,” said Graves, who stood with his jaw hanging open. “The Velyn—they’re here. They’re alive!”

  “Well, while you all are getting acquainted,” Tori piped up, “some of us have friends to find!”

  “We don’t even know where to begin looking for the boys,” said Tremelo.

  “I think I can help with that,” said Graves.

  His nostrils flared as he breathed in. “I am not the Dominae spy you’re after, but I just might know who is. We find them and we find the boy.”

  BAILEY AND TALETH CROUCHED together in a metal cage covered by a canvas tarp. Outside sat two of the Jackal’s mercenaries from the Dust Plains. The Jackal had not exaggerated when he’d described his army of outlaws; these men dressed in shabby clothes and carried large knives for weapons. They’d been hired to keep watch for members of the Dominae—or anyone else who might try to take Bailey—while the Jackal and his usual guards patrolled aboveground.

  They had set out from the compound in a caravan of motorcars a few days before. Bailey had caught his first glimpse of Hal since the day they’d been taken: the Jackal’s guards were strong-arming him into a separate motorcar while he and Taleth had been shoved into a trailer for livestock. Hal had looked thin and haggard, with deep bags under his eyes.

  They had arrived at the fair many hours ago, and Bailey sensed that he and Taleth were underground. From above came a steady rumble of music and footsteps, and he could smell damp earth all around. During several hours that morning, he could have sworn he heard the sounds of a Scavage match being played above him—running, and the sound of cheering. He curled against Taleth’s side, feeling her breath in his ear. She hated being in the cage: every few minutes she would shudder and adjust her position, breathing out her apprehension in a wet huff. She jostled against Bailey, forgetting that she could easily crush him if she wasn’t careful. For his part, Bailey had never been more exhausted or afraid.

  But now everything was coming to a head: at any moment, Bailey and Taleth would be led from this tunnel to a stage. There, Taleth would bow before the Jackal, or they would both be killed, as well as Hal. He could see no way out for any of them. Even Taleth had become resigned to her part in it, though the sight of her bowing before the Jackal made Bailey feel guilty and sad. He’d wanted a close connection with her, his bond. But all he felt from Taleth as a result was confusion and fear. What worried him most, though, was the thought of what would happen once they’d done as the Jackal asked. He would have no use for them.

  “Hello, chaps.”

  Bailey heard a cheerful voice enter the alcove where his cage was hidden. He lifted his head, and felt Taleth flex her muscles. This was it.

  But then he heard one thud, and another, and then the sound of two large men falling to the floor. He held his breath, and pressed his body against Taleth. One footstep, two—and then the sheet that covered Bailey’s cage was whipped away.

  A thin man wearing a pair of brass spectacles smiled down at him. It was Jerri, Shonfield’s assistant. In his hand, he held an elaborately carved blunderbuss with a stag and a crow on the side. At his feet, two gray squirrels jittered and squeaked with fear at the sight of Taleth.

  “Thank goodness,” said Jerri, looking from Bailey to the tiger. “You’re both safe!”

  “Jerri?” said Bailey. “How did you find us?”

  “It’s a long story,” said Jerri. “I’m just glad I did!”

  He bent back the latch on the cage door and stood aside to let Bailey crawl out. Taleth followed, sliding her furry white side against the bars as she padded forward. Jerri stepped back as she passed, eyes widening as she showed her full size.

  “This way,” Jerri said, starting up the tunnel. The squirrels dashed ahead.

  “Does Shonfield know you’re here?” asked Bailey.

  Jerri glanced over his shoulder at him. “Of course—she and Tremelo have been worried sick.”

  “How did you know I was here?” Bailey asked.

  “Saw some sketchy types loitering near the stage—Dust Plains, from the looks of them.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Bailey. “What about Graves? He’s been working with the Dominae—he tried to attack me at the school.”

  “I know,” said Jerri. “I was there. I’m sorry I couldn’t do more.”

  Jerri’s squirrels jumped ahead of them; their chattering bounced off the walls of the tunnel.

  “It was you, that night!” said Bailey. “Your squirrels kept Graves from kidnapping me!”

  “Any good dean’s assistant would do the same.” Jerri smiled. “Unfortunately, I didn’t catch him. He’s still on the loose. But at least you’re safe now!”

  Bailey struggled to keep up as Jerri led him farther into the tunnel. At last, his nightmare was over—as long as Hal was all right too.

  “Where’s Hal?” Bailey asked. “I don’t know where the Jackal put him. Are we going to find him?”

  “He’s safe and sound,” Jerri assured him.

  Bailey felt as though an anvil had been hoisted from his shoulders. Hal was safe, and soon he and Taleth would be too. He turned around to put his hand on Taleth’s side, but she wasn’t there. She was hanging back by the cage and the fallen guards, rubbing her flank nervously on the open door. A rumbling growl rose from her throat.

  “Come on, Taleth,” Bailey said.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Jerri, turning back.

  “Taleth won’t come; she’s too nervous,” Bailey said.

  Taleth bared her teeth.

  “Something’s not right,” Bailey said.

  Jerri retraced his steps.

  “There are Dominae soldiers all over this place,” said Jerri. “We’re beneath the fairgrounds. She probably senses how much danger we’re in. We have to move fast.”

  Jerri reached out t
o Bailey as if to guide him forward. Taleth ran toward them and swung her left paw, claws extended, at Jerri. He jumped back and lifted the blunderbuss he’d been carrying.

  “Nature’s teeth,” he cursed, aiming the weapon at Taleth.

  “Don’t!” shouted Bailey. “She didn’t mean it.” But as soon as he said this, he knew that Taleth had meant to attack. A terrible feeling began to grow inside him.

  “Who sent you, Jerri?” Bailey asked, backing away. Taleth stayed at his side, growling and crouching, ready to attack again at any moment.

  “Plan A clearly isn’t going to work,” Jerri said, still pointing the blunderbuss at Taleth. “But to spend all semester searching you out, just to shoot you? For Nature’s sake!”

  “You’re the spy,” Bailey whispered. Dread filled his mind. It had never been Graves.

  “At your service.” Jerri tipped his head. “Or rather, at the service of my lady. Viviana will be very happy to know I’ve found you; so happy that she’ll forget I was mistaken, before, about which one of you truly was the Child of War. I’d been watching your friend Phi, until she disappeared. Once I’d figured out it was you, the school’s lockdown made it impossible for me to send word. Viviana’d have my head for that mess-up, but now! Here you are. A welcome surprise to place me back in my lady’s favor. Come along.”

  Bailey didn’t move. His hands had formed into tight fists. Taleth could easily kill Jerri, he knew, with one swipe of her paw. But Jerri’s weapon was pointed directly at her, at too close a range to miss. If she pounced, he would fire.

  “If you won’t come,” said Jerri, “then I guess I don’t have much of a choice but to dispose of you here and now.” He cocked the blunderbuss. “A shame—I know Viviana would have wanted the honor all to herself.”

  BAILEY SHRANK BACK AGAINST Taleth’s flanks, searching the tunnel for a means to escape. There was nowhere to run—behind him was only the cage, and the two guards who would wake up at any moment. He felt Taleth arch her shoulders. She roared.

  “Jerri, please. You don’t need to—”

  But Jerri suddenly jumped, looking down at his feet.

  “What the—!”

  A pair of black snakes were winding around Jerri’s ankles and slithering up his pant legs. Jerri kicked his left foot, then his right, trying to throw the snakes off. Just then, a falcon—Carin—flew in front of Jerri and grabbed the blunderbuss. She hoisted it away from him, flapping hard to take it out of his reach.

  “Hey!” Jerri stumbled after her, still trying to shake off the snakes. Bailey stepped back just as a pair of arms reached out of the darkness and caught Jerri from behind, tackling him to the ground.

  “Gwen, get his legs!” yelled Phi, whose arms were wrapped tight around Jerri’s middle. Gwen appeared and seized Jerri’s kicking feet, quickly binding them with rope. Tori emerged from the shadows behind them and collected her snakes.

  “You found me!” Bailey shouted. He joined them, holding Jerri down by his shoulders as Gwen fastened the knots. Taleth paced around the scene. As Jerri struggled, she purred.

  “Let me go!” shouted Jerri.

  “No way,” muttered Bailey. He helped the girls drag Jerri into the cage, where he shut the door with a slam.

  “You’re only making things worse for yourselves,” Jerri spat. “Viviana will be looking for me!”

  “Won’t you be embarrassed, then, when she finds you like this?” said Tori.

  With Jerri out of the way, Bailey rushed forward, nearly tripping over his own feet, to greet his friends. Phi flung her arms around his neck, and Bailey hugged her back tightly. He laughed.

  “How did you find me?” Bailey asked.

  “It was Graves!” said Gwen. “He suspected Jerri all along. All we had to do was track him, and he led us right to you. Graves was never with the Dominae—he’s with the RATS, and he’s gone to find them now! They’re going to come and help us!”

  “Are you okay?” asked Tori.

  “Depends on what you mean by okay,” Bailey said.

  “I should never have let you leave,” Tori replied. “I might’ve known you boys would get yourself into this kind of mess.”

  Taleth stepped forward and touched her nose to Tori’s hand.

  “We’ve got to get you back to Tremelo,” continued Tori. She paused. “Where’s Hal?”

  Bailey felt as if a heavy stone had just been dropped from his chest to his belly. Hal.

  “The Jackal separated us,” he said. “I don’t know where he is.”

  “What?” Tori yelled. Around her wrist, a slender black snake coiled and stuck out its tongue. “We have to find him!”

  “I have to find him. This is my fault,” said Bailey. “He came to keep me safe, and I got him captured.” He didn’t want to tell them what Hal had been through. Part of him wanted them never to know just how close he’d let Hal come to death.

  “When did you see him last?” Gwen asked.

  “Yesterday, but only for a second,” Bailey said. “We were separated, back at the Jackal’s compound. Now he could be anywhere!”

  Tori nodded. “I can ask the snakes to search for him,” she said. “And maybe the falcons and owls!”

  “The Reckoning is starting soon,” Gwen said. She looked into the darkness of the tunnel. “We can’t trust our kin to help us.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Bailey.

  “The Reckoning…” Gwen trailed off. “I saw it. Viviana is going to set everyone’s kin against them, using that machine. We need to send our kin away.”

  Bailey thought back to the conversation he’d overheard in his travels, about the poor Animas Swallow named Miriam. Didn’t those men on the cargo ship say her kin wouldn’t come near her? Was this the effect of Viviana’s Reckon, Inc. machine—that it made people’s kin turn against them? He knew that Viviana was capable of such hatred. And the Reckoning was set to begin at any moment.

  “How do I get to the stage from here?” he asked.

  “But what about Hal?!” Tori shouted. “You know, Hal, our friend?”

  “The longer I play along, the longer Hal stays alive,” said Bailey. “I’m going to show up onstage, just as the Jackal planned. Plus, it’ll get me closer to Viviana. And I have a feeling she’ll be keeping her Reckoning machine close. Maybe I can find it, and stop her.”

  “You can’t, it’s too dangerous!” said Phi. “Tremelo has the machine that will counteract it. Just come with us and you’ll be safe!”

  “I can’t,” Bailey said, pushing past the group and motioning for Taleth to follow. “The Jackal expects Taleth and me to join him. What will stop him from killing Hal if I don’t show? And how else will we possibly get close enough to Viviana?”

  All at once, the sound of applause and cheers came rolling over their heads from above ground.

  Bailey felt Tori take his hand. Her eyes were brimming with tears. Phi too looked at him with worry and sadness written on her face.

  “We don’t want you to go,” Tori said, looking down at the dusty floor. “But it’s Hal. What can we do?”

  “Go with Gwen, back to Tremelo,” he said. “I’ll find Hal.”

  “Viviana will find you first!” came Jerri’s shrill voice from the cage. He was hunched against the bars, his bound arms at an awkward angle. His glasses hung, broken, from one ear. “You won’t leave this Fair alive!”

  Taleth retorted with a roar that reverberated through the tunnel. Jerri and his squirrels squeaked in fear.

  “Maybe not,” said Bailey. “But that’d be better than dying down here.”

  With that, he followed his friends out of the tunnel.

  VIVIANA OPENED HER ARMS as though she were preparing to embrace her audience all at once. Today, she would show them what real power was.

  “This is for you,” she said, indicating the sprawl of the Progress Fair around her. Behind the stage, three concrete pillars, just over four feet tall and topped with torchlike fires, provided a dramatic backdrop to her speech
. “My father, King Lionel Melore, believed that with ingenuity and unity, we could build a brighter future—and that future is on display today.”

  She took a breath and smoothed her hands over her coat—black, with multicolored embroidery that depicted thorny vines. The crowd below was bubbling over with excited energy, though they had no clue what was about to occur. Behind her stood the clockwork tiger, flanked by two guards on either side in gray uniforms.

  “Many of you remember the last time my father, King Melore, stood on these grounds. His brutal assassination cast Aldermere into mourning, but it awakened an anger too—an anger that has been living in your hearts for over twenty-five years, as it has lived in mine!”

  From the crowd came cheers and waves of applause. These people had loved her father. They’d suffered in his absence. But she knew what made her different from him: he had been weak. She had grown strong.

  “Today I have prepared a special Military and Defense presentation in honor of him,” she continued. “Never again will enemies of Aldermere overthrow the name of Melore. Never again will anyone be so foolish as to question the absolute power of your ruler.”

  This pronouncement was met with staggered clapping and whispers. Viviana breathed deeply and retrieved the brass, ruby-buttoned controller from her coat pocket, ready to show her kingdom how indestructible she truly was.

  But then a collective gasp rose from the crowd, and more than one frightened scream. A troop of soldiers marched through the main thoroughfare, directly toward the stage. Viviana’s fingers trembled with anger—whoever had organized this had clearly underestimated her. On either side of her, guards stood at attention, hands on their swords and rifles. Then the man leading the charge walked forward, and Viviana drew in her breath.

  The very face of her nightmares—the man who had caused her years of terror, who had stolen her life by taking her father’s—now stood in front of her, leading a company of ragtag bandits, all armed with swords, knives, clubs, and blunderbusses.

  “No,” she whispered.

  “Surprised?” The Jackal grinned. “I had hoped so!”