The Sacred Band a-3

by David Anthony Durham

  Kartholome shrugged. “Why not? Riches beyond imagining…”

  Geena jumped off the railing. She stepped close to Melio, took hold of his arm at the elbow. “I want to do this because Dariel would do it. Don’t you think he would? He’d do it for you. For Clytus. I’d like to think he’d do it for me. Let’s do it for Dariel. If we die… what’s it matter? We’d die in style.”

  She was so close and so attractive in a boyish, playful way that he remembered her kiss on the boat after they had both almost drowned, tangled together as close as lovers. And that reminded him of the pledge he had made to Mena. If he lived, he had sworn he would do anything for her. Everything for her. If he had the chance, nothing would stop him. That was what he had thought in his last moments of consciousness.

  “All right,” Melio said, “but only because Dariel would do the same for us.”

  “We’ll need harpoons,” Kartholome said. “Lots of them.”

  “Harpoons?”

  Geena said, “A whaling outpost has plenty of those. Come, Melio Sharratt, let’s get to know our new ship. Welcome to the order of brigands.”

  Melio pulled back. “No, no. Welcome, you three, to the proper service of the crown.”

  “Call it what you will,” Geena said. “Let’s go. No use waiting for a patrol to stop by. I’m done being bait.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The first day she arrived with baskets of fruit for Elya’s children, Corinn stepped through the corridor opening onto Elya’s terrace to the sight of the redheaded dragon flapping its silken wings, maintaining a jolting, unsteady hover a few feet above the patterned tiles. Po, she called him. He grew inches every day. How much of that was natural and how much was accelerated by the Giver’s tongue she had used on them while still in the eggs she could not measure. She knew some of it was her doing, but the young ones already had traits distinctly their own. In hatching, in reaching out to touch her, in flight-in everything so far-Po had always been first. He would be the first to take a rider also. She was sure of it.

  Elya stood, watching him, her eyes wide and her mouth opening and snapping shut, as if she were on the verge of shouting encouragement but was too nervous. Two of the other young ones flanked her. These also had names-in Corinn’s mind at least. With Mena away, who else would give them names? The brown one with the yellow stripes down her back was Thais. The sky-blue male, hopping from foot to foot at the moment, was Tij. The completely black one lounged atop the balcony railing, a drape of long, sinewy curves. She opened an eye and watched Corinn. Kohl, Corinn called her.

  It took her a while to figure out how she had identified their sexes. None of them had any visible genitalia. Neither did Elya, for that matter. But Corinn had no doubt about her guesses. They did look a little different. The males were more vibrantly colored and thicker in the jaws and neck, with crest feathers that bunched behind their heads and erupted out to either side down their necks. The two females were more modestly hued, a little longer in their limbs, and more serpentine. Their crest feathers flared straight up when they lifted them, thin and high. The females had the same citrus scent in the oil on their feathers as Elya did. The touch of it always left Corinn’s fingers tingling. The males-Po in particular-had a musky, burned fragrance. When touched, their oils did not so much tingle the flesh as heat it. Still, it was not unpleasant. Just potent in a different way.

  “Hello, beauties,” Corinn called. “I have fruit for you.”

  She stepped forward with a jaunty enthusiasm she would never have let human eyes witness. She held the basket out before her as if it contained treasures, which is just how the young dragons reacted. Po froze midflap and fell to the stone tiles. Thais and Tij snapped their heads around, recognized her, and scrabbled forward, going down to all fours and slither-crawling. Kohl was slower to rise. When she jumped from the wall, her wings spread out and slowed her descent. She landed gracefully, retracted her wings, and scurried forward to join the others.

  They crowded around Corinn’s legs, making it hard for her to walk. They dipped and bobbed and circled her. They climbed over one another, nipping and hissing on occasion. Tij clawed at her velvet skirt, as if he would climb right up her. Corinn reprimanded him playfully, and made a mental note to wear sturdier garb in the future.

  She sank down among them, setting the basket of fruit in front of her. For a few moments, she held herself still, the center of a squirming ball of raucous, attention-hungry children. They fought for her touch. They pressed their crowns against her outstretched palms, rubbed her legs and back, and leaned into her chest. Corinn knew this could not last. She had wanted to make them love her, and she had. Soon she would have to break them out of childhood. She would need to harden them for the struggles to come.

  Soon, she thought. Soon, but not today.

  Thinking this, Corinn looked up at Elya, who had moved away a little distance, to a corner of the terrace. She paced several quick circuits of the space before settling her backside against the stone, lowering herself with a comically avian motion, a bird settling onto a nest. Only when she was situated did she deign to look back at Corinn. Was that annoyance in the squint of her left eye?

  You don’t trust me, Corinn thought, but you don’t exactly think I’m a threat either. But I am, Mother Elya. I am. I want your children for my own.

  She repeated that: I want your children for my own. She watched for any sign that Elya heard her, but the creature sat, watching. Nothing in her demeanor changed. Corinn often tested Elya this way. She explained her desires in taunting interior language that she held within her head, all the time looking for signs that Elya could read her thoughts. Mena believed so, but Corinn, after weeks of uncertainty, had concluded that Elya could not. For all the ways she dilated her pupils or blinked her eyes or bobbed her head, it was only the human eyes watching her that construed intelligence in her actions. The gifts Mena endowed Elya with were Mena’s own creations. It was a relief, really. Elya would be easier to deal with, harshly if necessary.

  They can’t be both of ours, Corinn went on as she stroked the fine feathers along Po’s neck. If they were yours, they would eat fruit and be playthings for children. They would fly circles above the palace and make people gasp with pleasure. No harm in that, but those are such small goods. If they are mine… well, then they can be warriors for the empire. They can be creatures for the ages, new symbols of Acacian power. Don’t think me evil, Elya. I want only the best things for my family, for the empire, and for the people of it. That’s why I want your children to be my warriors. It’s already begun, anyway. They started being mine when I sang to them in their eggs. I’ve only to sing to them again to seal them to me, to help them grow into the weapons I need them to be.

  Corinn stood and looked around, feeling as if somebody were watching her. She turned a slow circle but saw nobody. She caught a scent in the air and recognized it at some level that she was not interested in reaching down to. With a few whispered notes of the song, a breeze brushed past, freshening the air and clearing her mind. No need to give in to the illusions her use of the song stirred into the world.

  The fruit consumed and their greeting enthusiasm spent, the young dragons moved off one by one to find other distractions. Kohl unfurled her wings and leaped up onto the terrace wall and stretched them wide, absorbing the mild winter sun. Thais stood on her hind legs, head craned, studying the nubs that housed her wings. She had not, as far as Corinn knew, spread them yet. Tij lifted his snout, half opened as he watched condors circle high above the island.

  Only Po stayed beside Corinn a little longer. He rested one arm against Corinn’s thigh, and pushed her other hand-as delicate and expressively fingered as his mother’s-through the peels and the few remaining orbs of fruit.

  “You want something more than fruit, don’t you?” Corinn whispered to him.

  The dragon slid his head toward her, mouth open as if awaiting an offering. The yellow of his eyes shone with a wavering intensity, as if his
irises were a thin foil of gold and a fire burned just behind it. Corinn stroked his crest feathers. They rose at her touch.

  “Soon I’ll get you something more. Something to make you grow strong.”

  She began to pull her hand away and rise. Po’s head dipped, his eyes on Corinn, and then his serpentine neck snapped up. His jaws opened, and when the blur of motion ended, he had Corinn’s wrist pinched in his mouth. He did bite down, but his teeth only dimpled her flesh. The movement had been so swift that Corinn jerked her arm, causing the sharp, tiny teeth to scratch her skin. She and Po both froze.

  Staring down at him, unsure whether to be frightened or angry or amused, Corinn spoke with a sharp-edged calm. “Not me, Po. Not me.” She reached around with her other hand and tugged his upper jaw. She slid her wrist free. Just a few scratches, thin white lines like the tracks of kitten claws. She pinched Po’s jaws shut with her fingers and tilted his face toward hers. “Never put those teeth on me. Never. If you do, I won’t love you.”

  With that, she snapped her fingers and strode for the corridor. Just before she stepped into the shadows, she glanced toward Elya and met eyes already watching her. Really, she thought, I have to do something about her.

  W ith that in mind, she spent the next several days trying to convince Elya to fly north to retrieve Mena. She stood before the creature and spoke simple directions to her. Elya puffed through her reptilian nostrils. She pulled her eyelids back and then squinted. She answered with a variety of bodily motions and quirks, quick bouts of preening, her gaze often darting away toward one of her children. None of it showed any sign she comprehended Corinn in the slightest, or cared to.

  Recalling how Mena had explained it, Corinn formed her directions in her mind and offered them. When that did not work, she stood on the balcony, pointing and waving, shooing Elya away. Once, she pressed her palm against the gray plumage and shoved. This got her a hissed rebuke. Through it all, Elya watched her with narrowed, skeptical eyes. When she did finally decide to leave, the event did not seem to have anything to do with Corinn’s orders.

  A morning several days into her efforts, Corinn found Elya waiting for her on the terrace that had become the avian nursery. Her young huddled close to her. For a second Corinn thought they looked like children gathered around a storytelling nurserymaid, but then she saw the dangerous slant of Elya’s head. She pushed through her children, jostling them behind her as she moved on Corinn. She lowered her head and dropped to all fours. She covered the short distance in a burst of speed, her shoulder joints pumping. Her head rose so close to Corinn that the air blown from her nostrils stirred the queen’s hair. Standing tall, she hissed down at Corinn, her neck feathers jutting out in an instant bristle.

  Corinn breathed through her mouth. She moved only her fingers, which she flexed out of a need to move something, to steady herself somehow. Resolutely submissive, she just stood. Inside, however, she had a spell dancing, ready to be released should Elya strike. It would rip her apart and leave them all splattered in feathered gore. She would do it if she had to.

  She didn’t. The mock attack was Elya’s version of a parting discourse, perhaps for her young’s benefit as much as a warning to Corinn. She curled away and returned to her agitated children. A few moments spent soothing them, touching them each with the soft spot below her jaw, and then Elya stood back from them. They tried to stay with her, but she huffed them back. Her wings unfurled from the knobby protrusions on her back. They snapped into place with a rapid clacking sound, the flowing motion of it almost liquid until it was complete. Then the finger-thin bone framework went rigid, only the silky membrane hung throughout rippling before the touch of the air. Elya leaped backward onto the terrace railing. She glanced from her young to Corinn once again, then twisted around and dropped out of sight.

  Corinn raced the young dragons to the wall. They reached the railing together. Tij leaped up first. Kohl scaled it like a lizard. Thais scurried to a section with flowers carved in the stone. She stuck her head through a leaf. Po released his wings and flew up, almost overshooting the wall and having to flap back for a moment.

  Elya’s wide-winged shape soared beneath them. She skimmed down toward the lower town wonderfully fast, then shot out low across the green waters of the harbor. Her shadow danced on the waves below her, like an aquatic companion. Then she turned to the north and beat her wings to rise higher. Her audience stayed transfixed until her shape faded into the northern horizon.

  Only then did Corinn acknowledge the bubbling excitement inside her. Her abdomen tingled with it. She had her babies all to herself. She spoke to them softly at first. “You’ll be my greatest warriors.”

  Kohl nipped the fabric of her sleeve in agreement.

  “You’ll be the weapons your mother wasn’t cut out to be.”

  Tij slammed the crown of his head against her left shoulder.

  “You won’t be beautiful like her. You’ll be exquisite terrors instead.”

  Thais brushed against her side.

  “You want that, don’t you? To fight for me?”

  Po chirruped, flapping his wings and lifting himself up off the stone.

  Of course they did. Corinn read it in their eyes. “You were only waiting for it, weren’t you? Let’s begin.”

  Corinn undid all the venom of the spell she had woven and held loaded against Elya. She lured her babies down from the railing and began a new song for them. She moved through them, touching them, lifting their chins and meeting their golden eyes. She whispered out the words and notes and sounds that lay behind the fabric of the world. She felt them slither in the air around her, and she let the young dragons hear them, too. No need to hide the serpentine scaly friction the ribbons of the song sliced through air.

  Once the spell she wanted was strong, she began to release it into them. She stroked them as she sang, one after the other as they jostled and vied for her attention. Each of them vibrated with a sort of pleased purring. With each touch she felt the power of the song passing from her into them. Beneath her fingers and palms she felt the bulging pressure as they changed, as they truly became her babies, as they grew beneath her touch. End of Book One

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Mena awoke, knowing that something was in her room, standing at the foot of her bed. Her thoughts flew to ghosts, to angry spirits, to the Tunishnevre. She was lying on a floor bed that had once belonged to Meinish royalty, in a room that may have been Maeander Mein’s. She had gone to sleep, thinking of the last time she had seen him, as his prisoner on a ship bound for an Acacia ruled by Hanish Mein. The knotted irony of it all had slithered around her all day. That was why she was sure it was the anger of the Meins that stood breathing just beyond her feet. She sat up, faced it, and gasped at what she saw.

  “Perrin?” She knew his tall physique even in the partial light. She stretched for the lantern in a stand beside the bed and opened the vent to increase the flame. Yes, it was Perrin. Clothed only in his underlayers. His hair, as ever, kicked about in a small chaos atop his head. “What are you doing?”

  Something was wrong with him. His eyes were open. He was awake, standing, but his face wore the limp flaccidity of sleep. He swayed. His arms hung straight down at his sides. He was asleep on his feet.

  “Do you think me here to warm your bed, Mena?” Perrin’s mouth said. The voice was his but not only his. “What would Melio think?”

  “Are you mad?” Mena asked. “Perrin, I am true to Melio. We are-”

  “I won’t tell him, of course. Who you bed is your business, Sister.”

  Then she knew the second voice, the one that created the words that Perrin’s mouth spoke. “Corinn?”

  “You cannot avoid me, Mena. You should not try.”

  “I haven’t,” Mena said. She put a hand to her chest, a gesture that looked like modesty, but that she made to quiet her heart and rate of breathing. “I never would. You have… taken Perrin’s body?”

  “You are closed to me, Sister. Don’t
you find that strange? Of all the people in the world to whom I can dream-travel, the two closest to me will not answer my call. When I search, I can never find you or Dariel. I could find fine-looking Perrin, though. He has brought me to you. A pleasing form, is he?”

  Mena could think of no response. His was a pleasing form, but not like this. He might as well have been a reanimated corpse.

  “Why did you abandon my orders? Mena, stop gaping like that! It’s me, Corinn, talking through this man’s mouth. Now, answer me. Why did you abandon our plan?”

  “Our plan did not include sacrificing the entire army before ever seeing an enemy,” Mena said. “That’s what would have happened.”

  “You exaggerate.”

  “No, I don’t. If you had been there, you would have seen. To wait up there would have been a slow death. We would have been weakened by cold and in no shape for when the Auldek come. I had to make a decision in the field. I did. Military matters are my area, Corinn. If you don’t trust me, take away my command.”

  “I trust you, but… Tahalian? Do you do that to taunt me?”

  Suddenly feeling uncomfortable sitting up in the bed, Mena yanked her covers off and folded her legs under her, back straight. “Tahalian is the perfect place to settle,” she said. “We can train in frigid conditions, hike the Black Mountains, work on navigation and communication in the worst of conditions. But we can also return to a warm base. We can run maneuvers in the Calathrock. We can learn from men like Haleeven, who know war in the north better than anyone. Instead of huddling in frozen hovels, struggling to survive, we’ll be fit and prepared. I was sure that you would agree if you knew all the facts, so I acted on that.”

  Perrin’s eyes stared at her a moment before answering. “You have done well,” Corinn said. “I myself could not have made that choice. I could not have set foot in that place. It’s good that you could.” Despite the strangeness of hearing this from Perrin’s lips, it warmed Mena to hear the vulnerability in her sister’s voice. “You should know something else. Our brother has returned.”