Lost Crow Conspiracy (Blood Rose Rebellion, Book 2)

by Rosalyn Eves

  One of the guards broke away and raced down the hallway, likely for reinforcements. With a snarl, the griffin followed. Another raised his hand above his eyes, his saber held awkwardly before him, the flat side reflecting the cockatrice’s fowl aspect. The cockatrice screamed only once before charging at her reflection. Hunger called after her, but she ignored him, eyes fixed on the crested beast seeming to challenge her. A scant foot from the guard she stopped, frozen, a cold grey creeping across her body.

  The hussar lowered his saber, trembling, and Hunger ran him through with a sword salvaged from a dead guard. As the soldier dropped, Hunger tossed the blade aside, then crouched over each fallen guard in turn, searching through their pockets. After a moment he stood, clutching a narrow ring of keys. He tried two in succession in the lock of the rather plain door before one gave.

  Hunger wrenched the door open, then leapt back, swearing.

  He glanced back at me, irritation plain across his features. “Come here, Miss Arden. I need your help.”

  The spell binding my feet released me, and I stumbled forward. “Why?”

  “Because the room has been spelled against any kind of praetherian influence: running water, iron-washed walls, garlic strands, holly root, and a devilishly complicated spell that I haven’t time to pick through right now.”

  “You want me to break the spell?”

  The crease between his eyes deepened. “Not unless a simpler approach fails. Just walk through the door and carry her out. The Hapsburgs didn’t plan for human aid when they set their prison.”

  “If I help you, will you release me?”

  He bared his teeth at me. “If you help me, I might not let the griffin eat you. Besides, I know where your cousin is.”

  “Noémi?” What had she told him before she fled? “If I help you, you’ll tell me where she is?”

  Hunger dipped his head.

  Still, I hesitated. If Hunger and the others were willing to risk exposing their plan to rescue Vasilisa, she must be critical to its completion. How much would this rescue cost those I loved? On the other hand, if I did not do as they wished, I would likely die—and then who would warn the others? There was Noémi to think of as well. Better to free Vasilisa, then try to escape.

  I walked into the cell, conscious of a curious pulling sensation, as though my skin were too tight on my body. A narrow walkway ran the perimeter of the oblong room. In the center, on a small stone island surrounded by its own moat of flowing water, crouched a woman.

  It was not Vasilisa.

  This woman was old, so old the wrinkles in her cheeks had their own runic system. Her back was hunched a little, but she did not seem particularly weak, only ancient, her white hair straggling along her spine obscuring part of her face.

  “I think this is the wrong room,” I said, retreating from the doorway.

  Hunger gave me a little shove, back into the room, and I had to wave my arms to keep from tumbling into the water. The water appeared normal, but I could not be sure the guards hadn’t slipped something poisonous into it.

  “That’s Vasilisa. The spell prevents her from using her magic, so she’s lost her glamour.” He laughed at my surprise. “You thought a creature who has existed for hundreds of years inside your Binding spell has always been so young and lovely?”

  “I did not think she was so old,” I muttered, but in truth I had not thought about it very much. I had accepted her at face value—at her own valuation. A mistake, I began to see, I had made with a great many people. Who was she, really?

  “There,” Hunger said, gesturing at a wooden plank near the door. “Use that.”

  I set the plank across the rushing water and crossed carefully. Vasilisa’s eyes were closed, and she crooned to herself, as though she were cocooned in her own world.

  “Vasilisa?” Was that even her true name? I braced myself against some irruption of her quicksilver moods.

  But her eyes only flashed open, and she stood, reaching out to stroke my cheek. “You always were a delicious child. Thank you.”

  I stepped back a fraction so her hand fell away. I was not entirely certain she meant delicious as a compliment. “Can you walk?”

  “Of course I can walk. Though not, precisely, across the water.” She sighed. “I had hoped a thousand years was enough for people to forget that particular weakness of mine. You shall have to carry me.”

  My heart sank. Still, Hunger was watching. I turned my back to Vasilisa and crouched. Her wiry arms slithered across my neck like gallows rope. She was heavy, much heavier than I’d expected of someone so old and slight, and when I tried to stand, my thighs burned and I nearly pitched us both forward into the water.

  “Careful!” she screeched, hauling back on my hair as though it were the reins of an unruly horse.

  Clasping my hands underneath her knees to keep her steady on my back, I crept forward across the plank. It groaned beneath our combined weight.

  “Quickly!”

  “If I go any more quickly, I’ll fall off the plank.”

  She grumbled and pulled my hair for good measure but did not complain again until we were across the water.

  Hunger had not been able to cross the threshold, and I suspected Vasilisa could not do so unaided either. Though my arms burned and my legs trembled, I did not set her down but plodded forward toward the door.

  At the doorway, something seemed to catch us, nearly wrenching Vasilisa from my back.

  “You’ll have to break the spell,” she said.

  I wondered how far I would make it if I dropped her and ran. Glancing at Hunger’s intense face, I suspected it would not be far.

  Sighing, I resettled Vasilisa on my back. Plunging toward the doorway again, I slammed into the same catching sensation, as though I were a child who had mistaken a glass door for an open doorway.

  This time, though, I could feel the buzz from the magic. Burdened as I was, the spell seemed to bend and twist around me, evading my reach. At last, however, I grasped a thread of it and pulled it toward me, bracing myself for the release of magic. A momentary flash of heat, and then a blaze of light as the spell snapped.

  I caught the magic as it slithered free. I imagined it as a wall and shoved it away from me. The spell was not particularly elegant, but the force of the magic sent Hunger and the others sprawling on the corridor floor.

  I dropped Vasilisa on the threshold of the room and ran.

  Following the path I thought I remembered through the prison, I reached a door to the outside within moments. It was not the door we had entered, so my recollections had not been entirely accurate, but I was out of the building, and I was free.

  My side burning from the unaccustomed exercise and the corset too tight about my ribs, I stumbled across the street toward one of the dark alleyways.

  I had nearly reached the shadows when something coiled around my ankle and jerked. I fell, scraping my hands across the cobblestones and banging my elbow. Pain sizzled up my arm.

  Hunger hulked behind me, back in dragon form, two claws of his powerful foreleg wrapped around my ankle.

  Vasilisa hobbled up behind him, cackling. “You should never run from immortals, child.” She helped me stand, but I jerked away from her touch as soon as I was upright.

  So close. I wanted to weep.

  Hunger barked twice, sharply, and after a few moments, the griffin and the winged unicorn emerged from the prison. The great eagles, who had circled above the prison keeping watch, fluttered to the ground beside us.

  Hunger repositioned his claw around my waist. The saddle and harness went to Vasilisa, who was still weak from her time in the prison. When she was secured, Hunger gave the signal, and we lifted into the air.

  A string of epithets chased themselves through my head. Some of them may have escaped my lips, because Vasilisa laughed from her perch on Hunger’s back. My legs dangled above the cobblestones, and I swallowed a bubble of panic. Hunger had only to lose his grip and I’d plummet to my
death.

  I was well and truly caught.

  Why was Hunger so insistent that I stay with them? If he were worried about my betraying the location of the praetherian camp, he might have killed me after Vasilisa was free. He must have wanted something else. My shadow self whispered, chimera.

  I pushed that thought away, to attend to when I wasn’t dangling a hundred feet in the air, and the street exploded in light.

  The griffin fell with a terrible shriek, its feathered wings a conflagration. Hunger’s claws tightened reflexively around my waist, their cruel tips digging through even my corset. I screamed too, but he did not seem to hear me.

  The spell-casters had come at last. A half dozen men and women stood on the streets below us, shooting spouts of flame and ice into the smoky air. A blast hit one of Hunger’s wings and he flinched, sending a shower of ice shards onto my head. He swung up, out of range, and my heart shrank.

  If the praetheria escaped, my own escape would be harder. If they did not—the Hapsburg magicians would deliver me to the archduchess’s execution.

  Something enormous rose up behind the spell-casters, a creature of metal and fire. Likely it was powered as William’s mechanicals had been, by magic and machinery. The vast wings pumped once, twice, and, with a squeal of metal on metal, it lifted up. Electricity buzzed across its body like a miniature lightning storm as it careened through the night air toward us.

  Hunger’s own wings sliced down, whipping my hair into my face. He was more maneuverable than the machine, but he was hampered by his live passengers. He dove, trying to drop beneath the machine’s trajectory, but the metal monster clipped his enormous, thrashing tail.

  Vasilisa shrieked, though she sounded more angry than terrified.

  Electricity burst across Hunger’s back, triggering pulsing shocks through me. Hunger writhed midair, and his claws opened.

  I dropped like the free weight I was.

  A second metal monster shot into the sky like a star, but I barely saw it. The ground was rushing up to meet me, and all I could feel was a great blaze of anger.

  This was how I was going to die? The injustice of it burned through even the bitter taste of terror.

  I slammed into something solid. Pain crackled through my body with breathtaking intensity. Everything went dark.

  They say you learn new things every day.

  I learned that my shifted form does not hold when I fall unconscious, as I woke to find myself human—and naked—my hands trussed behind my back. The pain was so intense that black spots swam in front of me, and I wished I were still insensible. The gunshot in my forearm still wept blood, and I was fairly sure the bone beneath it had shattered. My leg burned with the saber wound, and I could not breathe too deeply or my ribs—broken or badly bruised, I couldn’t tell—sent spikes shooting through me. My right ankle had swollen to twice its normal size. I could scarcely see from my right eye.

  Here lies Eszterházy Mátyás. He was too stupid to live. (Again.)

  Bahadır groaned beside me, blood dried and crusting around a hole in his shoulder. Like me, he was tightly bound. Also like me, he could not seem to sit upright. Unlike me, he still possessed his clothes.

  “Hold on,” I murmured, though I was not entirely sure if I was speaking to Bahadır or myself. Louder, I said, “Have you a doctor?”

  The leader grunted. “If I had, I’d not waste him on you. If you die, you’ll save us the trouble of killing you.” He nudged the fallen giant with his toe, an expression of distaste on his face. “So rumor was right: you’ve assembled a misbegotten band here.”

  “They’re living creatures, same as—” I began, but one of the soldiers cuffed me across the chin with the butt of his gun. I reeled back, pain shooting up my jaw, radiating into the rest of my broken body.

  Varjú croaked overhead, chiding the soldier. Another hussar sent a casual shot into the tree, and Varjú lifted off in a flutter of feathers and leaves. Go home, I sent at him. It wasn’t safe here.

  “I don’t believe we asked you to speak,” the soldier continued. “You’re a criminal. We’ll take you back to Debrecen to hang soon as we’ve dealt with these creatures.”

  “What will you do with us?” The lidérc’s voice was uncommonly subdued, muffled a bit by the blood still trickling from her nose.

  “All praetheria are to be interned in a camp near Vienna.”

  “Another Binding?” The lidérc spat on the ground. “I’d rather you shoot me now.”

  One of the soldiers lifted his rifle. “That can be arranged.”

  Gábor’s voice sounded near my right ear, though I could not turn far enough to see him. “Stay calm. You’ll do your friends no good if you antagonize the soldiers.”

  “And the rest of my men?” I tried to keep my voice flat, nonprovoking, showing nothing of the growing dread that threatened to choke me. Still, I flinched when the soldier with the gun mock-lunged toward me. The soldier laughed.

  “Hanging’s good enough for them,” the soldier with the gun said. He patted his hip, where a coil of rope swung by his side. “Happen to have the goods right here.”

  “They’re due at least a trial,” I said.

  “How about a trial by noose? We hang ’em—if they live, they’re innocent.” The soldier laughed again.

  “And you,” the leader said, stepping close. “I’ll string you up with your own guts.” He kicked me in the side, and I lost the rest of his words.

  I curled around my burning ribs, pain pulsing through me in waves. I’d dreamed he’d say as much—had that dream been a prophecy? Or something else? I fought through my agony: I still had to try to save my men. “You cannot simply hang us,” I gasped, pulling on my haughtiest, plummiest accent. “I am an Eszterházy—hang me without trial and there will be a public outcry.”

  For the first time, the leader looked vaguely uneasy. “Why would a Luminate be leading bandits on the puszta?”

  I shrugged. “Why does any spoiled nobleman do anything? I was bored, of course.” I grinned, forcing a lightness I did not feel. “It’s quite a rush.”

  “Damned Luminate,” the leader muttered.

  “He’s lying,” the gun soldier said.

  I started to shrug, then stopped—it hurt too much. “I suppose that is a risk you take. I’m wearing my father’s signet ring, if you doubt me.” I wiggled my fingers, feeling the weight of the griffin ring.

  “Better not risk it,” the leader said. He nodded at a pair of his soldiers. “Bind the creatures together, then the men. We need to get moving.”

  The soldiers began hauling the surviving praetheria upright. One of them pulled Zhivka to her feet, and I let out a slow, hissing breath. I had not known she survived the night. Her face was pale and scratched, her side smeared with dried blood where a bullet had grazed her, but her chin was high and her shoulders back. The soldier put a dirty hand to her cheek and bent close to whisper to her.

  Zhivka bit him. He released her with a snarl, shaking his fingers, and she darted to the center of the camp. The fire in her hair brightened, her features taking on the incandescent sheen of her glamour. My heart seized.

  The last time she’d tried her glamour, she’d been shot. They wouldn’t be so gentle this time. Already, the hussar leader was swaying toward her, his eyes glazing. The soldier who’d been bitten dropped to his knees before her, holding his gun out like an offering.

  “Cut me free,” she whispered, her words hanging in the wind like a caress.

  Bound and broken as I was, I strained forward in response to the appeal in her words, even though the movement set every cell in my body on fire.

  A high, far-off birdsong hung in the still air. The sun, just cresting above the limitless horizon of the puszta, shafted the world through with gold.

  A gunshot cracked through the camp.

  Zhivka’s face blazed with inhuman brightness—and then the bullet struck her knee, spraying bits of blood and bone into the grass beneath her, and
Zhivka’s glamour vanished like a snuffed candle. She dropped to the ground with a cry.

  The leader shook his head and stalked toward the fallen samodiva. “What have we here? The camp whore?” His eyes traced over her face and body in a way that made me itch to punch the teeth from his smug grin. He bent to brush a fire-red curl from her face. “Praetherian? A bit of a perversion, but I can see the temptation. Put her on my horse and tie her down. Wrap some iron around her wrists to be sure.”

  Two of the soldiers obliged, hauling a shrieking Zhivka between them. It took a moment for her screams to resolve into a word: Mátyás.

  The hussar leader’s gaze slid back to me. “It’s a long, lonely ride to Vienna. I’ll need something to keep me warm at nights. The praetherian’s good enough for that, and if I use her a little too roughly—well, no one will care.”

  I’d meant to wait for a better moment to shift and help the others escape. Preferably after dark. But at the leader’s words, something snapped inside me. My pain morphed into anger, and I began shifting, responding to an impulse I barely understood, my body swelling upward and outward, my skin darkening and hardening, leathery wings sprouting from my back. A massive pain seized me, as though my head were splintering into a million pieces, and then I was seeing from seven pairs of eyes, from seven draconic heads. Already, my shattered bones were healing, a gift peculiar to this shape. The shape I’d taken when Hadúr challenged me was primal and powerful beyond anything I knew.

  And it was ravenous.

  I plunged down, one of my mouths bared wide, and bit the leader in half, cutting off his terrified scream. The snap of bones and tang of blood in my mouth only set the craving for flesh and blood flaring higher.