by Nhys Glover
I helped him back to the fireside and laid him down. Then, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to do, I sat with his head in my lap and fed him what he needed. And there was no lust in the action, only tenderness and love.
By the time he'd finished suckling he was crying; silent tears I hadn't even been aware had started. They slid from his closed lids and trekked down his dark cheeks. Such different tears to mine, but no less painful. But I had no idea if acknowledging them would make it worse or better for him. In the end, I ignored them and focused instead on stroking his little braids back from his face.
Chapter Nine
FLEA
I hadn't slept in two nights. And yesterday I'd spent all day trapped inside while the others went looking for Airsha. All to no avail. No one had found any trace of her. It was as if she'd vanished clear away.
But I rose from my crumpled bed again this morning, ready to do my part yet again. And I knew I wouldn't be alone. None of us were willing to give up on her.
Calun kept saying in his mind, 'I'd know if she were dead. I'd know if she were dead.' But I knew he was using the words as a mantra to keep the madness at bay a little longer, not because he believed them.
Rama had had a meltdown yesterday evening when he returned from journeying all the way to his old home. The Airluds had been covering places Airsha knew, hoping against hope she had somehow found her way there. Jaron had gone to the cavern, Rama to their old home, while Calun had sent raw airlings to the Airling Training Centre in case she went back there. No one mentioned the unlikelihood of her being able to travel such huge distances so quickly without an airling. If she had been riding, the airlings would have known. And they knew as little of her disappearance as the rest of us.
Rama had returned with blood in his eye, just looking for a fight. And he'd found it when some hapless rebel soldier asked if the Goddess would make it rain, because they really needed it for the spring sowing.
"She's not your personal fraggin' servant, here to meet your every fraggin' whim!" Rama had snarled as he lifted the man off his feet by the front of his tunic and thrown him across the room.
"Rama," Darkin had cautioned him half-heartedly.
Rama had turned on him then. "What brother? Do you want a piece of me too? I have enough fury to go around."
Darkin had enough frustrated rage of his own, so he lunged at his brother. They fell to the ground, hitting and punching furiously. It was just the way brothers fought when they were childlings: with all of their hearts. And when neither Jaron nor Calun made a move to break it up, I gathered it was better to let them blow off some of their steam this way rather than some worse way.
We all needed a way to blow off steam. Zem had been driving me crazy with his counting and his obsessive need to keep going back to the stable to check it yet again.
Last night, when he went back down there after dinner, I followed him. He'd been out on Storm all day and, instead of resting when he came back, he'd fruitlessly started searching the stables again, attracting more suspicious looks from the rebels not in on the secret.
I'd followed him because I was itching for a fight like Rama had with Darkin. While he lit a lamp and prepared to undertake his useless, insane task, I exploded.
"Leave off, you fraggin' idiot! She isn't here. She isn't anywhere in the stronghold. All you're doing is exhausting yourself for nothing!" I yelled.
He burst into tears. One look at my angry face and he burst into tears. His pale face splintering into a thousand pieces as a loud sob broke free. His hands fell away from the lamp like limp seaweed. I have never seen anyone look so devastated. Not even the Airluds.
I promptly burst into tears too.
How we ended up clinging to each other like babes, bawling our eyes out, I don't know. But it surely felt better to just let go like that, letting the pain and helplessness wash over us, than holding it in as we'd been doing.
I absently wondered why we felt such grief over the loss of someone we'd known so briefly. Maybe we were crying for more than just Airsha. Maybe we were crying for all else we'd lost. I don't know. But we cried and cried until neither of us had water left inside us. And then we collapsed on a pile of straw and fell asleep in each other's arms for a few short 'turns.
When we awoke, without acknowledging what had happened, we headed off to our own beds. To toss and turn and worry away the long hours until dawn came around once more.
So I dragged myself from my bed again this morning and headed down to begin my assigned task anew. Darkin had wanted me to listen in on every thought in the stronghold, looking for possible traitors in our midst who could shed light on Airsha's disappearance. I was also to monitor the kinds of rumours spreading about the unusual searches and questions being asked around the stronghold and beyond. Did the rank-and-file rebels suspect the Chosen One had been taken?
Yesterday I'd discovered no traitors and a great many rumours, none of them about Airsha, thank the Goddess. But I was going to listen in on the higher-ups today, who did know what had happened and may know more about it than they were willing to share.
Moyna, an Elemental Mistress and one of the principal leaders of the rebellion, had called the Airluds to a meeting this morning. Darkin didn't know what it was about, but being Moyna it might only be to give a formal update on yesterday's searches. Or so he thought.
All the brothers but Darkin had left to search the township and road out of town yet again. That left me and Darkin to face the rebel leaders alone.
I trailed Darkin into the big airy Meeting Room, which immediately reminded me of the sleeping apartments. But instead of containing beds, this one had seats formed in a semi-circle around the walls and tiered upwards so all could see what was happening at the front. Right now about half those seats were occupied. Probably because the other leaders were engaging the Godling's troops somewhere in the kinglunds.
"Airlud, thank you for coming," Moyna welcomed, as soon as the doors were closed behind us by the two monstrous guards who had ushered us in.
Darkin nodded a bow in acknowledgement but said nothing.
"Who is the lad with you? Was he not the one who came to tell you about the wagon the other night? One of your recruits?" she asked.
I'd expected to be ignored, in much the way I'd been ignored all my life by my 'betters'. Though his thoughts were closed to me, I thought Darkin had expected much the same thing. I was supposed to be a nobody, who could move like a ghost around the stronghold, collecting information.
"Aye, one of the recruits. Flea," Darkin introduced me.
"Why is he here? You know these meetings are for leaders alone. We cannot share sensitive information with those who may inadvertently pass on what they have heard."
"Would it make you less concerned if I were to tell you that Flea is actually a girl and an Air Mistress?" Darkin said, dropping the lightning strike into the room and watching it explode.
It was laughable to watch the expressions on the faces of the men and women present. They had been so haughty and superior only moments ago. Now they looked like children seeing something shocking for the first time. Almost every mouth in the room had fallen open at the news. And every wide-eyed gaze was turned to me. Suddenly, I had gone from insignificant youth to a precious resource.
I listened in to the thoughts nearby. Only the first row was within range of my hearing. Darkin had told me he would ask if I could be seated in the leader's midst, giving me more access to all their thoughts. I hadn't understood how outrageous that idea was until I'd entered the room. These superior types would never allow a lowly airling recruit to take a seat among them. But they might let an Air Mistress.
Darkin had this planned all along, I realised with a start. I wasn't sure how I felt about that. Betrayed? Surely he knew that once my secret was out I wouldn't be able to be a lowly airling trooper anymore. Maybe it was his way of assuring my safety.
"But she is... common," Moyna said, her nose twitching as if she were
smelling something bad.
"Aye, that she is. But it doesn't make her any less magical."
"That... That is not what I meant. Magic is only gifted to the upper-classes. The nobility of the kinglunds, to be precise. It is unheard of for a... a commoner to have magic. Not real magic."
"You mean, as it is unheard of for magical daughters to exist at all, and certainly not fathered by anyone save the Godling?" Darkin answered dryly.
Oh, that stirred a few feathers in the room. When Airsha spoke of magic being available to all, these people had assumed she meant available to all the upper-classes of the kinglunds. Not to commoners like me. They'd expected to improve their positions by taking part in the rebellion, not share their power with lesser beings. And I was a lesser being in their eyes.
"What I mean to say is that it is biologically impossible. Magic is a trait that runs through certain noble bloodlines. Your wife's bloodline, for instance. My bloodline."
"Well, that might well be true if noble men didn't sow their seed in fields less noble. Or that the whores they impregnated weren't actually disowned nobility or even royalty."
"W... What are you suggesting!" A little man with a pointy beard exclaimed indignantly.
"Airsha has a theory. And I will add at this point that Flea here has real magic, which I will share with you by the end of this meeting. Flea, will you take a seat over with the leaders while I explain?" He gestured to a seat in the middle row.
Before any could voice their displeasure, I hurried up to take the seat he suggested. I was inundated with angry expletives from people whose outward expressions were closed and their voices silent. I hoped they'd settled down a bit so I could get some valuable information, rather than just expanding my repertoire of swear-words.
Darkin went on. "Airsha explained her theory to me this way. When she was in the Godling's harem the wives were very careful to explain how children with eye colour other than the Godling's blue could be born to him. It seems certain traits, like eye colour, run through families, and some traits are stronger than others. A dark-eyed parent and a blue-eyed parent would likely have a dark-eyed child. Two blue-eyed parents would likely have a blue-eyed child, but if a grandparent had dark eyes the child might have dark eyes −"
"This is a common enough phenomenon," Moyna interrupted.
"So Airsha believes that magic is not gifted in the way the Godling and the priests say it is. The Gods, or even the Goddess, doesn't enter the male as he is copulating so he can produce a child with magic. Magic is a trait passed through the blood, just like the colour of a person's eyes. The Goddess gave magic to the first people and they passed it on through their bloodline."
"Again, we know this. No one here believes divine beings incarnate through the Godling, or..." Moyna shut her mouth, suddenly aware just what a political gaff she'd been about to make. Half of Airsha's appeal was the fact she was supposedly the Goddess Incarnate. The human Embodiment of the Goddess of all Creation. If Moyna denied Airsha this distinction she would be calling the Prophesy nonsense and undermining the whole rebellion.
Darkin offered her a save. "And we're all aware the Goddess didn't incarnate just to have magical childlings, she came to lead a Holy War against those who had misused Her magic for millennia."
And Moyna took that save. "Precisely. No one believes a divine being would incarnate for the sole purpose of producing magical children. That is what I meant."
"So, if magic passes from one Godling to the next through his blood, then others with his blood, like his own father or brothers, as well as his sons, should carry that magic too. So why don't they all produce magical childlings?"
Darkin paused for only a moment, and I took advantage of the silence to quickly read minds nearby. There were no thoughts inconsistent with the rebel's agenda. Nor any condemning Airsha in any way.
"They do, just not as consistently as the Godling's direct line," Pointy-beard put in.
"Airsha believes the priests have long understood about blood traits, have studied the noble families, and chosen women with the strongest magic running through their veins as wives for the Godling. That way he has a higher chance of producing magical offspring, and therefore maintaining his powerbase, than any other.
"But as you already know, he isn't the only one who can produce magical childlings. Some of you here have Magic from other sources. But why does it miss a generation? Airsha thinks it requires both the male and female to have latent or overt magic for a childling to have a chance at being magical."
He paused again, letting these revolutionary ideas settle in. I could read the knee-jerk rejections giving way to the consideration of the possibilities. They were all looking at their own bloodlines in a new light. And the idea that women might carry latent magic certainly appealed to the women in the group.
"As some of you may be aware, when a noble or royal offspring commits the offense of marrying outside their class they are often disowned. May even be declared dead in the eyes of the family and their people. But it doesn't nullify their blood. What if one or more of these magically latent women ended up as whores, and what if nobles carrying the latent magic in their veins impregnated one or more of these poor women. The offspring might be magical. That's what happened with Flea."
Eyes turned to me, and I fought the urge to shift lower in my seat. I wouldn't let them see my discomfort. I'd appear as confident as they were trying to be. But I knew different, about myself and them. I knew how many felt they were little more than pretenders. How few believed they had a right to their position here, or even that the rebellion had the right to success. They all wanted it to be so, but they just didn't believe it could be so. Unless Airsha was with them. Unless this one powerful Elemental Mistress, who may or may not be the Goddess Incarnate, could lead them to victory. Everything hinged on her. And nobody knew what had happened to her. They were close to hysterical in their fears for her. Not because they cared for her personally, but because they knew the Godling would destroy them all if she wasn't able to lead them to victory.
No traitors here. Only normal, petty people wearing masks and posturing, hoping to convince others they were what they seemed. The more I read minds, the more honest being a conster seemed to be. At least a conster admits to wearing masks and trying to fool people.
"You say she is an Air Mistress. What can she do?" Moyna challenged, addressing her question to Darkin as if I couldn't answer for myself.
Darkin looked at me as he lowered his mental barriers and let me read his thoughts. 'Is anyone here a traitor or knows something about Airsha's disappearance?'
"No," I answered aloud.
"No? Is that no, you can do nothing? Or no, you will not tell us?" Moyna deigned to speak to me directly.
"No, there is no one here who is a traitor to the rebel cause, though many consider themselves unworthy of their place among the leaders of the rebellion," I answered confidently, sticking out my jaw.
The exclamations and whispers started immediately. Darkin spoke over them.
"Flea has the gift of mind-reading. Or hearing thoughts. I brought her with me today expressly to read yours, in case there was a traitor in our midst. How could there not, if Airsha could be stolen out from under our noses? But Flea was answering my unspoken question: was any here a traitor? Her answer was no."
Every leader was hastily reviewing their thoughts since I joined them. What had they given away? What did the short-haired peasant girl know that she shouldn't? It was funny, but I schooled my face not to show my humour. Two could play their game.
"So I have given you plenty of food for thought, may we now return to the essential task of finding our Goddess Incarnate?" Darkin said into the silence.
"We... We brought you here for a reason," Moyna announced, being the first to gather her wits. She was one of the few who believed she deserved her place here. Her magic was powerful. Few could better her. That alone gave her political influence.
Darkin tilted his head to the si
de, inviting her to go on. I could see the tension in his muscles now. He'd enjoyed the last few minutes, getting the upper-hand with these nobles, but now his worries for Airsha had rushed back in.
"It is imperative that Airsha's disappearance remain a secret. You know this as well as we do. If you and your brothers continue to search for her, people will begin to talk. They will want to see her again, to assure themselves she is safe. Thousands have joined the cause in the day since she gave her demonstration and speech. Thousands more are expected today and again tomorrow. We need every one of them, if we are to win this war. Already we have sustained huge losses. The rulers of the kinglunds teeter. Unless we have Airsha we are lost. Unless we are seen to have Airsha we are lost."
"So we find her!" Darkin snarled.
"And we will. In the interim, you and your brothers must act as if she is with you. You must go to the new location we have found for you and your centre and continue training your airlings and their riders. We have twenty new recruits ready to join you now. The sooner you get back to your task, the sooner we will have our airling army, which will finally swing the war in our favour."
Darkin's mouth dropped open. "You want us to give up looking for our wife?"
"Not give up, hand over her search to our specially chosen team. You can include your little Air Mistress with them, if you wish. She is clearly useful."
"I stay with −" I began, feeling light-headed at the very idea of being separated from all those I had come to love: Calun, Spot, Zem, and the rest of the Airluds.
But I saw the sense in the plan, even if I didn't like it.
"Airlings are needed to spot the movements of the possible kidnappers," Darkin argued, drawing his panicked mind to order.
"And a few can remain to do just that. Like this Flick's one, and mayhap another. There is no need for more."
