Song of the Sword

by C. R. Grey

  Behind her was a fleet of ships—at least, that’s what they looked like. White sails, nearly twenty of them, billowing in the desert breeze. Bailey squinted his eyes against the hot sun. The hulls of the ships were hooked onto the rails of the old rigi tracks. They glided slowly, pulled by the wind in their powerful sails.

  Phi gasped.

  “It’s true—you are real,” Phi said, smiling.

  “Who are they?” asked Tori.

  “I apologize if I startled you,” said the woman. “Perhaps welcome isn’t the right word, as in our settlement we move where we please, instead of staying in one place. But welcome is what you are, if you’re in need of help. We are the town of Defiance.”

  THE IMPOSING WOMAN STRODE past Bailey and his friends, knelt, and retrieved her knife from the dead smuggler’s chest. After wiping it on her pant leg, she cut the ropes binding the girls’ hands, then Hal’s, and finally Bailey’s, before returning the knife to her left boot. Two long-eared jackrabbits hopped over to play in the sand next to her. Bailey immediately stood, still wobbly, and stumbled over to Taleth. Her heavy eyelids began to flicker.

  “Tell me,” said the strange woman, “what a group of children are doing wandering the eastern Plains on their own.”

  Bailey glanced around at his friends, as though any of them might know exactly how to address a strange woman from a desert ship who’d just killed a man right in front of them. He realized how very dry his mouth was.

  Phi stood up and stepped forward.

  “We’re traveling to the Bay of Braour,” she said.

  The woman settled her eyes on Taleth, who opened her own. Taleth rolled into a sitting position and shook her heavy head. Bailey felt the cloudiness begin to lift from his own mind, and he wrapped his arms around her neck.

  “Traveling to Braour, in the company of a legendary beast,” the woman said, looking at Taleth, not with awe but with deep respect. Bailey had the sense that this person never showed surprise, no matter what. “I look forward to hearing more.” She smiled. “My name is Annika. Come, I’ll show you where you can wash the dust off of you.”

  Taleth emanated a pleasant energy. Unlike before, she felt comfortable, happy even, in the presence of this woman. Bailey knew they could trust Annika. They stood and followed her lead as she led them to the strange, rail-riding ships.

  Defiance was like no “place” Bailey had ever seen before. The land ships were cobbled together with what looked like scrap wood and metal. In addition to sails, they sported chimneys and windows, doors and steps, like moving cabins. He saw heavy-bolted wheels connecting the ships to the rigi tracks, but tucked into the undercarriages of the ships were wooden wheels as well.

  “Do those lower?” he asked, pointing to heavy levers adjacent to the extra wheels. “Can you sail on the sand, too?”

  Annika nodded. “We need to be able to move in order to protect ourselves, and others.”

  She led them from ship to ship, showing them where the citizens of Defiance kept their collective food, met for council, stored weapons, and slept. As they passed, faces peered at them from the decks and windows of the strange caravan, staring especially at Taleth. All of the faces were female. Jackrabbits hopped out of one structure and scampered alongside Annika. She was clearly Animas Jackrabbit, which made Bailey think of his dad, Animas Rabbit. When he finally saw his mom and dad again, he knew he’d have trouble describing the strange place he found himself in now.

  “You’re all women,” said Gwen.

  “Many of us were slaves,” Annika said. “And some are here after escaping their families. We’re safer out here together.” She seemed to Bailey to be the obvious leader, but she claimed that there was no such person in Defiance. “All of us are in charge of our own lives here—for many, it’s the first time that that has been so. The Dust Plains are very cruel, especially for women. Which is why I did what I did back there, by the canyon.”

  She stopped and looked pointedly at Tori. “Those men you were speaking with are known slave traders. And nothing fetches as high a price out here as a young, strong girl.” Tori swallowed, and opened her mouth as if to say thank you. But the words must have seemed insignificant, for she said nothing.

  Annika touched Tori’s shoulder, indicating that she understood, and then she reached into her pants pocket and removed a brass pocket watch. She flipped it open and showed it to them.

  “My mother’s,” Annika said. “She lived her entire life in slavery, traded from camp to camp in the Plains. She died trying to escape—but many other women with her managed to make it out, including me. We vowed never to let it happen to us again. Some wanted revenge.” She shook her head. “But that’s no way to live, either. We just want safety. And here, we have it.”

  She led them to an area where some women were busy setting up a table made from long planks of wood and an old door laid on some sawhorses. Others tied a fabric canopy to tall posts to keep the dust away. Annika gestured to a set of barrels strapped to the nearest ship.

  “Our water,” she said. “Use it sparingly, if you please.”

  Bailey and the others washed their faces and arms with water from metal taps stuck into the sides of the barrels, taking care not to spill too much on the dry ground. The water felt so cool and good on Bailey’s skin. He tried not to think too hard about how long it had been since he’d had a proper bath.

  When he entered the tent with Taleth, he found that a whole group of women and even some kids had gathered around the table to eat with him and his friends. They whispered and gasped as Taleth padded in, not as adept as Annika at containing their surprise. Bailey caught the eye of one woman with silver-and-black-streaked hair already sitting at the table. She smiled widely and nodded in deference to him, as though she knew him. Next to her stood a little boy with Annika’s same tan skin and reddish hair.

  “You can call me the Tully,” the woman said. “And this is Lukas, our son.” Annika sat down next to the Tully and squeezed her arm. The boy, Lukas, hid behind Annika and poked his head out only slightly. Bailey guessed he was six or seven.

  “Sit,” said Annika, indicating a wide-open spot at the table for them. Bowls of fruit and plates of chickpea mash and cactus blossom were brought out along with loaves of warm bread. The citizens of Defiance sat around the table or leaned against the tent poles, warily watching Bailey and his friends eat. Annika bit into a cactus blossom.

  “So tell me—in more detail, perhaps—why it is that you’re traveling to Braour,” she said.

  Bailey locked eyes with Hal, who chewed slowly on a piece of melon. He trusted Annika—at least, he wanted to. But were they wise to be speaking so openly in front of the whole camp? He wondered what Tremelo would think.

  Phi nudged Gwen to speak.

  “Because it was fated,” she said.

  “Fated?” asked the Tully. She smiled, revealing a large gap between two of her right upper teeth. “One look at your tiger and I’d almost believe that.”

  “We’re building an army,” said Phi.

  Bailey felt his cheeks growing hot.

  “An army against whom?” asked Annika. She drew her shoulders back defensively. “Who would ask children to fight for them?”

  “We’re fighting against Viviana Melore and the Dominae,” Bailey said. He saw a flicker of recognition in Annika’s eyes. “She can control animals’ wills, and has already done terrible things with Dominance. She’d lead an army of people’s own kin against them. The Animas bond would mean nothing. It would destroy the kingdom.”

  Annika’s dark-red eyebrows rose, but her face remained calm.

  “The kingdom’s destruction has little to do with us,” she said. “The powers of Aldermere didn’t help us when we were enslaved to traders, or beaten by our husbands and brothers. You say Viviana Melore is behind this movement?”

  Bailey nodded.

  “Then you should know whom you’re speaking to—I wouldn’t be alive and free if it were not for her.” She stoo
d, and her hand reached deep in her pocket to pull out the brass pocket watch once more. Her thumb moved over the ornate engraving; the gesture seemed familiar and full of emotion. “My mother may have died that day, but it was Viviana who helped the rest of us escape.”

  “But she’s not like you.” Gwen spoke from the other end of the table, cautiously. The eyes of all the women listening turned to her. “You said you’re interested in safety, not revenge—Viviana wants revenge, but not against one person. She wants to destroy an entire kingdom that failed her. An entire world. She wants to enslave it, as it did to her. No one would be safe. Not even you.”

  Annika lowered her scarf. Her dark-auburn hair tumbled down around her shoulders as she studied each of them in turn.

  “I wonder if you know just how large a task you’re taking on. An army? You won’t find loyal soldiers out here—there are too many people out for themselves. Or who believe, as we do, that we owe Aldermere nothing.”

  “But we have to try,” said Bailey. “And if enough people follow us, then we can make Aldermere better, not just safe. You’d be fighting for the True King, and he wouldn’t forget that.”

  “Another king,” scoffed Annika. “One’s just the same as the next, if you ask me.”

  “That’s not true—” began Tori, but Annika cut her off.

  “We’ll help you get closer to the Bay, though I have doubts about this army of yours,” she said. “You can stay the night. No one will harm you while you’re under our protection.”

  “Thank you,” said Bailey. He was relieved that Annika would let them stay, but he felt a strange shudder when he thought of Annika’s gratitude toward Viviana. Ever since he’d learned what Dominance was, he assumed that only humans with hearts as dark as Viviana’s own could feel anything but disgust and pity toward her. But he was wrong.

  “We are headed across the canyon tomorrow,” Annika continued. “You may ride with us if you like.”

  “Across?” said Hal. “How? The rigi tracks don’t go that far.”

  “With difficulty,” Annika answered. “Ours is a dangerous passage. And the kingdom you are so eager to defend has never done anything to help ease that journey—or to stop the reason we choose to go. We cross the canyon because it’s the only way we can bring others who have escaped the traders to safety. We make the trip as often as we can. If Aldermere wished, it could repair the tracks, or build a bridge. But we fend for ourselves, and we do well enough.”

  “Why not travel farther east, where the canyon ends?” Tori asked. “I’d rather do that than plunge to my death. Seems obvious.”

  “Where the canyon ends in the east is where the Otherlands begin,” said the Tully. She leaned her elbows onto the table. Her eyes lit up with the enjoyment of telling a good story. “And no one goes there. Impassible rocks, dust, and caverns. Only know one woman ever ventured to the Otherlands and lived, and to do it, she had to turn into her own kin. No one could survive as a human out there.”

  “She became her kin?” Phi said. “How?”

  The Tully shook her head.

  “Hard choice, that. I tried to talk her out of it. But in the end, I was overpowered.”

  Hal and Tori glanced at each other, clearly skeptical. Gwen tightened her sweater around herself as if she were cold. When Bailey met her eye she looked away quickly.

  “She’s telling the truth,” said Lukas, who had been watching all five of them, and Taleth, since they’d entered the tent. “Mam can do all kinds of things like that.”

  The Tully patted his arm.

  “That’s enough, my little lizard,” she said.

  The conversation faded as Bailey and his friends tucked into their meals, enjoying the food that was so much more satisfying than the dried fruit Digby had been able to smuggle to them in the tunnels. Phi and Tori were sitting next to each other, and Bailey figured they’d made up—if he could even call it that, since they hadn’t fought in the tunnels so much as vented to each other. Looking at them, he got the sense that Tori was still all right. Smiling, laughing, comfortable in her skin. Hal, too, looked in his element as he discussed the auditory benefits of the tunnels with a woman who was also Animas Bat. But Gwen seemed distant still, while Phi picked lightly at her food and stared—until she caught Bailey looking—at the Tully.

  After the meal, the women of Defiance prepared their fleet for the next day’s journey. Bailey and the others helped to repair holes in the ships’ sails and replace frayed ropes. As he worked, Bailey could not stop thinking about Annika’s assertion that the kingdom did not deserve her help, as well as her past with Viviana. Out here in the Dust Plains, things like loyalty and allegiance were not as easy to grasp as he had once thought. He hoped that when he found the army the Loon’s book had spoken of, they would be easier to convince.

  At the end of the day, Annika took them to a ship lined with narrow cabin berths. She dug around in a trunk for some extra bedrolls and carried them up to the exposed upper deck for Bailey, Hal, and the girls. Around the ship, women sat talking in low voices at flickering campfires. Above, a thousand stars looked down. Bailey settled in and tried to sleep, but his eyes stayed open, and his mind active. One by one his friends’ breathing became slower and deeper. Hal began to snore.

  Taleth hadn’t followed them onto the ship. Wide-awake, she had padded off to take in the night. Without her by his side, Bailey didn’t feel entirely safe. He rose and climbed down a thick rope ladder that hung on the side of the ship, and searched for Taleth in the light of the campfires. She sat a ways from the camp, looking out over the canyon that they would cross in the morning. Her fur shone pale blue in the evening light. She turned to watch him approach, and as her eyes met his, he suddenly felt sad. She was so beautiful and powerful, but she was the only one left of her kind. The world seemed to him to be growing darker and darker. It was more full of evil, as well as things like evil, but not so easy to understand: neglect, hurt, vengeance. Taleth was beautiful and good, but when she was gone, the white tigers would be gone forever. Like King Melore, or the Elder, who both would have fought against Dominance willingly, if they’d known how.

  Bailey sat down a few feet from the edge of the canyon and looked up—he could see constellations like Nature’s Twins and the Backward-Facing Otter. Off in the distance, unseen, lay the mysterious Otherlands that the Tully had spoken of. He leaned against Taleth and felt calmed by the steady rhythm of her breathing. The kingdom was so much larger than he’d ever known, in so many ways. He felt a deep stirring within him, and that was the moment when Taleth roared.

  He felt a feeling building in his chest and lungs—his own noise—that had to come out. He opened his mouth and let out a loud, guttural yell, which he heard echoed back to him across the canyon, again and again, growing even louder until it faded like the dying sun. Taleth roared again. Their two noises mixed together and echoed back to them. Bailey smiled. He still felt confused, and the vastness of the Plains around him still felt undeniably empty, but that sound of defiance, multiplied, gave him hope.

  TREMELO’S CAPTOR HAD NOT spoken for two days—not once. The bag around Tremelo’s head made it impossible for him to see, and now, with the sun setting, sound was all he could rely on to give him any clues as to where he was and who had taken him. The kidnapper had tied a rope around both his wrists with some slack length between them, giving Tremelo a small range of movement. But that rope was tied to another, by which his captor led him over the craggy rocks and boulders of the Peaks. The air was thinner here, and colder.

  He’d thought about escape, but then what? Run blindly into the mountains? He had no way of knowing which direction to go, or who might be waiting for him. He could sense, too, that many animals prowled along the mountain paths nearby. He heard the snaps of twigs and branches against their hides; he could smell the mineral stench of fresh carnivorous kills. The foxes of these woods lived in fear of predators that could easily overpower them. If he ran, he had no knowing whether these animals woul
d avoid him or seek him as prey.

  The rope around his hands slackened, and he heard the person who had been leading him through the Peaks busy himself with making a fire. They had stopped to make camp.

  “I’d like to sit, please,” Tremelo said. He heard footsteps and felt a hand on his chest guiding him backward.

  “Behind you,” a voice said.

  Tremelo kicked behind him and felt what seemed to be a fallen log. He eased himself down, sighing with relief. His knees and feet were on fire with pain.

  “So you do speak,” he said. “Any chance you’ll tell me where we’re going?”

  All that answered him was the crackling of dried leaves in the newly made fire.

  “Not that this little stroll through the mountains isn’t a pleasure,” Tremelo mumbled.

  All was silence until a few minutes later, when the mysterious person crouched close and lifted the bag over Tremelo’s head just high enough to hold a spoon of warm food up to Tremelo’s mouth. As Tremelo slurped what tasted like turnip mush, he counted himself lucky that at least he was being fed. He’d have given almost anything for the bag to be taken all the way off, however. It had become greasy with neck-sweat, and he could smell his own breath inside it.

  He swallowed the last bits of his meager meal and, trying his best to sound cavalier and unconcerned, attempted conversation once more.

  “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me who you are,” he said.

  “Don’t matter who I am,” said the man who’d been leading Tremelo in silence for two days. Although he mumbled, his words might as well have been shouted, they were such a shock to Tremelo’s ears. “Matters more who you are.”

  “Is that so?” Tremelo answered. His left arm itched, but there was nothing he could do with his arms behind his back. “And just who do you think I am?”