by Lori Devoti
Zery flinched when I first touched her, but then relaxed. I watched her shirt for any increase in blood but there wasn’t any. As I’d guessed, she was meant for me-I was the only one who could choose what to do with this gift, the only one who could save her. But I was also the reason she was staked out like a cowboy on an anthill.
I couldn’t congratulate myself for saving my friend, not without accepting that I was the reason she was targeted to start with.
Slowly the ink disappeared. As it did, Zery’s lips began to part. With them still halfway sewn together, she mumbled, “Feet.”
That answered my question about the pain. The drawn-on stakes hurt more than the chains. How much did they hurt? I didn’t want to know or, at least, didn’t want to think about it right now.
“I need you to tell your crazy warriors you’re going to live-not to skewer you like Sunday’s chicken.” I rubbed harder, partially to get the ink off faster, partially to get out my frustration.
“Sunday’s chicken?” she mumbled, and half her mouth, the half I’d freed, lifted in a smile.
I loved her right then. As much as I’d loved her before the whole ugly blowup. And my anger fled. So, she’d chosen Alcippe and the tribe over me. It didn’t matter. I’d never had a friend like Zery, someone who understood me and accepted me as well.
I needed to accept her too. She’d made her choice. It was part of who she was. She wouldn’t be Zery if she hadn’t.
Her mouth clean of ink, I knee-walked to her feet, rubbed the heel of my hand over my eyes as I did. Then, while she barked out orders like the queen she was, I scrubbed away the killer’s marks and planned how I’d scrub him or her away too.
I tried to stay with Zery after that, but the Amazons moved in, and the looks they shot me were far from thankful or trusting. I could have stayed anyway, had enough rage simmering inside me to challenge the lot of them, but Zery was tired. I could see it in the dark circles that had formed under her eyes and the way her lower lip seemed to pull downward when she spoke.
She was using every ounce of her reserves to reassure her troops she was the titanium-clad superwoman they’d always known. She didn’t need me mucking everything up by acting all concerned and caring-or by letting my pent-up aggression run free. So, I finished my job, clamped my mouth shut, and pointed my body toward my shop.
Tonight I’d go back to bed, stare at the ceiling, and think about how I was going to find the bastard who was doing all this. I already knew what I’d do to him when I did.
The next morning my resolve was just as strong, but the strain of balancing my Amazon espionage with regular life was taking its toll too. My soul was ablaze, but my body and mind were tired. Two pieces of pumpkin pie helped perk up the body, and knowing Harmony would be starting art class that afternoon eased some tension in my overtaxed brain.
I’d sorted out the details of Harmony’s enrollment last night before all the excitement. I had talked with Makis on the phone after discovering he had no Web site or email address, was apparently as much of a Luddite as my grandmother. Harmony was a little distressed that Rachel’s parents hadn’t yet agreed for her to attend too-they valued things like time for homework on school nights. But in ever-confident teenage fashion, my daughter and her friend had worked out a plan to wear them down.
As long as Harmony was accounted for, I didn’t care. Rachel’s parents could worry about battling their own determined teen. May Artemis bless them all.
With Harmony off to school and my belly full of starch and sugar, I headed to the gym. I needed to hear Zery’s version of her attack. I hoped the warriors were giving her some distance today.
The day was colder-one of the freaky pleasures of living in southern Wisconsin. Day-to-day temperature ranges of thirty degrees were not unheard of. I wrapped a ratty hoodie around my body and bulldozed my way through the wind.
Zery was in the gym, pummeling a weight bag with her staff. When I entered, the temperature in the room dropped another thirty degrees, at least. And I had thought it was an outdoors thing.
Shrugging off the warriors’ icy stares, I pulled back my hood and strutted across the battered wood floor.
“I could never decide if you were the bravest person I know or the dumbest.” Zery spun and whacked the bag with her foot.
I waited for it to slow its erratic jumping, then grabbed hold. “Cliché,” I said, trying to look nonchalant, like seeing her there so healthy and strong didn’t affect me, didn’t make me want to pull her in for a hug.
She stopped, her chest moving up and down from her exertion. “Don’t you mean touché?”
“Nope.” I grinned at her, my way of apologizing for the horrible things I’d thought of her in the past.
She grunted. But the corner of her lip edged up a little.
She dropped the staff and slammed a fist into the bag. I held on.
“So, you going to tell me what happened?” I asked.
“I could ask you the same thing. I’ve heard some pretty crazy allegations already. And I haven’t seen Pisto yet. She went on a run, but I hear she’s pissed.”
“Pisto pissed? I can’t imagine.”
Zery slammed the bag with another kick, knocking me back a few steps. I tightened my grip and grounded my stance.
“You’re a smart-ass too. I’d forgotten that.” Another kick, then a laugh. She shook her head. “I take that back. I hadn’t. How could I?”
“Someone had to keep your big old ‘I am queen’ head in line.”
She took a step back and folded her arms over her chest. The laughter left her face. “But then you left, and I had to fend for myself.”
“Yeah. Bad times.” I patted the bag, pretended to take extra time slowing it to a complete stop.
She heaved out a breath and stared at me like she could see inside me. Which wasn’t far-fetched. There had been a time I’d thought Zery knew what I was thinking before I did. “Okay, Mel. Let’s talk. I’ll tell you what happened to me, but you have to give something too. I need to know what you’re hiding-all of it.”
I curled my fingers against the bag and scratched the surface of the ancient leather.
Tell Zery what I am hiding. I wished I could-I did. But if I told her I’d known about the girls for weeks, had hauled both of them off without coming to the tribe…She was queen. I’d gotten angry at her before for being who and what she was. I wouldn’t again, but just like I wouldn’t blame a bull for goring me, I wouldn’t stand in front of it with a red cape either. Not unless I had a pretty fancy dance worked out, which I didn’t, not yet.
I stared at my hand. Tiny flecks of red were embedded under my short-cropped nails.
I met her gaze. “I’ll tell you what I did last night.”
“That’s not what I asked for.”
I shrugged. “It’s all I’ve got.”
She dropped to a squat, picked up her staff, and swung it toward my feet, all in one graceful motion. Without thinking, I somersaulted forward in a tiny leap that propelled my body over the staff and back on my feet.
Also on her feet, Zery placed the end of her staff on the floor. “It’s not all you’ve got-not by a long shot, but it’s all you’ll give me. Fair enough-for now.”
Chapter Fourteen
We went to the cafeteria to talk. It was the closest thing we had to neutral ground. And since it was almost nine by this point, the place was empty. I made myself at home, grabbing us coffee and cream.
“You thinking of adding hearth-keeping to your list of skills?” Zery took a sip of her coffee, black, of course.
In the process of adding cream to mine, I smiled. “I might. Just to annoy Mother, if for no other reason.”
She tilted her head. “When are you going to stop competing with your family?” The question was light, but it hit home. Still, I decided to keep my answer equally light in tone.
“Have you met my family? I have no hope of ever beating them. I might as well get some fun out of annoying them.”
I looked at her, surprised and a little frightened, but she kept talking.
“Believing you were in your family’s shadow is the only thing that ever stopped you. You could have been queen. Maybe should have.”
I laughed, spewing coffee across the tabletop. That was a good one. I looked up, thinking to share the joke with Zery, but her expression was set. She was serious.
“Yeah, so what happened yesterday…” I prompted.
She flicked her gaze from her coffee to me and back. For a second I thought she was going to push the whole “living in the shadow of your family” thing, but she didn’t.
“It was a pretty normal day. I went for a run. Spent a few hours practicing. Took a shower. Went to bed. Woke up staked to your front yard.”
That was helpful. “Any details in there you’d like to add?”
She twisted her lips. “I had some drink called wheatgrass for lunch. One of your grandmother’s clients made it. You think there was something in it?”
Besides the green gunk most people cleaned off their lawn mowers?
“How’d you get to the yard?” I asked, ignoring the wheatgrass. For now I had to assume anything approved by Bubbe was safe-magically speaking.
“I walked, I think. It’s pretty fuzzy. I remember feeling like someone was calling me, though. Part of me didn’t want to listen, but it was like I had a thread tied around my heart…tugging me forward.”
“Zery, how’s your givnomai?” Last night blood had stained her shirt over the tattoo, but I couldn’t see the bulge of a bandage through her tee.
She placed her fingers on the spot. “Fine. Why?”
My brows lowered. “It was bleeding. Don’t you remember?”
She tapped the spot again. “Was it? I wondered why my shirt was bloody.”
“You didn’t feel it?”
A hollowness appeared in her eyes. “I was feeling so much. It was hard to sort one ache from another.”
I dropped my gaze to my coffee. Gave her a minute to push past whatever was going on in her head.
“Anyway, when it was all said and done, I was fine. No cuts or bruises even. Pisto didn’t have it as lucky.”
Pisto hadn’t had her lips sewn shut or her feet staked through. Although the magic hadn’t done physical damage to Zery, I could tell there were emotional marks. She wasn’t used to being helpless, to fighting a foe she couldn’t see. It would be hard on anyone, but an Amazon queen?
She covered it well.
“Pisto had welts, but me?” She held up a wrist. Her skin was smooth and bruise-free. “Why is that?”
“Wrong Saka to ask. I’m not the priestess.” I took a drink.
“Mel…”
I set the cup down and jerked up the leg of my jeans. Red, raised stripes marked where the silk had lashed around my bare skin when I’d slipped from spider and almost been caught in the web. “Different kind of magic. The web was priestess magic. It’s elemental, but real. Real wind, real fire, water, or earth. But what was done to you…it was something different.”
“What?”
I took another swallow. “Bubbe’d never seen it before.”
She wrapped her hand around her mug, waited.
“Artisan. It was artisan.”
Her hand moved, jostling her cup. Coffee slopped onto her fingers. She made no move to wipe it away. “Artisan magic can only enhance what already exists. This was something else. Those spikes-they weren’t enhancing anything inside me. Or the stitches.” Her fingers wandered to her lips. I wondered if she was even aware of the action.
“I know. I told you Bubbe’d never seen it before. I hadn’t either.”
She flattened both palms against the table and leaned forward. “Are you saying an artisan tied me out last night? Made me feel like metal was piercing my flesh, like a needle was tugging its way through my lips?”
“Someone with artisan skills, but they’d have to have priestess powers too. The web was pure priestess.”
“No one is that strong in more than one area, except…” The anger in her eyes changed to suspicion. “You got me out when even your grandmother couldn’t. You got past both spells. And in the gym, the way you leapt, and the other day when Pisto went for you…?” She leaned closer; her next words were a low growl. “How many skills do you have, Mel? What have you been doing while hiding up here? Did you really leave because of your son, or did you have some other agenda all along?”
The distrust on her face hurt. It shouldn’t have. We hadn’t trusted each other for a long time, but just as I was ready to forgive her, admit I’d been wrong, she was accusing me of…what?
“I wouldn’t hurt you, Zery.” I expected her to laugh at the very idea. Me be able to hurt her, the Amazon queen? It was ridiculous. But she didn’t. Instead, she stared at some spot beyond me.
“Why would I save you, if I had lured you out there?” I added.
She kept her face turned for another second, then covered it with one hand. When she looked back at me, the wear of everything she’d been through last night, with the dead girls, all of it showed on her face.
“If not you, who?”
I didn’t let my relief that she was willing to let her suspicions go, at least for now, show. “I don’t know. It could be a priestess. Bubbe doesn’t think so, but it could be.”
“Don’t accuse Alcippe.”
Her vehemence startled me.
“I didn’t, but why-”
“If you even make a hint of accusing her, it will backfire on you. I told you, the tribe already suspects you. If it looks like all of this is an opportunity for you to get Alcippe…” She drummed the table with her fingers. “Don’t do it.”
“Even if I think she’s guilty?”
“If you think she’s guilty and you get some real proof, come to me.”
It was a fair answer, but not what I wanted to hear-not now or ten years ago, but this time I swallowed my ire.
“It did kind of ache yesterday.” Zery rubbed her chest, where her givnomai lay hidden under her tee. “I hadn’t thought about it a lot, but now that you mentioned it…”
“How about your back? Your telios? Did you feel anything there?”
A line formed between her eyes. “Maybe a twinge, in the afternoon, but I’d been working out pretty hard that morning.”
I took a breath, pressed my hands flat on the table, and used my best coaxing voice. “Can you go through your day again…with a little more detail?”
“Really, nothing special happened. I told you: breakfast, exercise, spar, lunch, spar some more, then…” She looked at me sideways. “I’ve had a team watching the bar-the one the girls were going to. I had a meeting with them in the afternoon. I had to pull them off. They were…they weren’t getting along with the locals. I needed a new plan. I was thinking of going myself or sending Pisto, but I don’t know that either of us would pass for a twenty-year-old human.”
Like it mattered. Zery could look sixty and college-age men would still flock to her.
“After that meeting, I needed air and went for a walk. That’s where I was when you got back.”
I’d wondered but hadn’t asked. To be honest, I hadn’t wanted to see Zery yesterday. I’d wanted time to sort out my day by myself. If I had searched her out, would I have stopped what happened later?
She interrupted my guilty thoughts by sliding her cup to the side and tacking on, “Oh, and there was the dog too. Maybe he did it.”
I frowned. “Dog?”
“A hound, black and tan-kind of skinny. He followed me home from my walk. I offered him some of the mix we feed our dogs, but he wouldn’t take it. He liked fries, though.” She smiled.
Just a dog. Sounded like the stray I’d fed chips to earlier in the week. He’d run off that day. Curious what had happened to him, I asked, “How long did he stay?”
She held up one hand. “A while. He followed me into the shower. I thought he was going to stay for
good, but after I toweled off, he asked to go out and he hasn’t been back. Not that I know of.”
I nodded. Probably out hunting for his next meal. Maybe he’d come back again-if someone didn’t call the city on him.
“So, the dog saw your givnomai. Anyone else?”
She arched a brow. “What are you thinking?”
I explained my theory that the killer was using the power of the givnomai to control the victims. “Who else knows your givnomai, Zery?”
Her expression was guarded. “You.”
I didn’t bother protesting my innocence again. I’d said it. She was either going to accept it or she wasn’t.
“No one else here,” she added.
She was leaving someone out-Alcippe, I guessed.
“Anyone who knows priestess and artisan skills?” I asked.
She didn’t answer, which was answer enough. I didn’t think she was protecting Alcippe, just asserting her power as queen. Her next statement sealed that opinion.
“Let me worry about who has seen my givnomai, but thanks for the tip.”
Sensing this line of discussion was going nowhere else, I turned the conversation to my day at the camp, filled her in on what Dana and the others had told me, which really wasn’t anything Zery didn’t already know. I could have been annoyed that she hadn’t volunteered the information herself, but I was the one who had asked to go to the camp in exchange for talking with Reynolds. Zery had kept her deal with me without betraying any trusts. Plus, from her point of view, there was always the chance I would learn something she didn’t know. It just hadn’t worked out that way.
What I didn’t tell her was that I’d had a run-in with Alcippe. I could have told her the high priestess had questioned her authority, challenged it almost, but after Zery’s warning, I knew anything else I said would just be seen as attacking the high priestess. If Alcippe was involved in any of this, I’d figure out a way to nail her myself.
We were pretty much done and just waiting for the other to realize it when the outside door opened-the one that led to the sidewalk between the gym/cafeteria and the school building.
