Bloodtraitor

by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

  “Nathaniel sent me.”

  “You made Nathaniel send you,” the sakkri said. “He does not know yet that she is here.”

  Keyi cleared her throat, clearly irritated that we were speaking around her in a language she didn’t understand.

  “I apologize,” I said, switching back to the falcon tongue. “I needed to explain the situation. As for my loyalty, I am as loyal to Midnight as you are to Ahnmik.” Her eyes widened, and I saw the instinct to protest, but I didn’t let her continue. “Charis was your leader, wasn’t she?”

  I could see her weighing the risks of answering honestly, and considering the treason I had spoken myself, before she said, “Yes. Alain sent her to Midnight as punishment for her treason…or for getting caught, anyway. He thinks a poor, powerless peasant like myself will be too grateful for his royal attention to hold a grudge and too stupid to realize he will get rid of me the same way when I cease to be useful. Is she alive?”

  The falcon royal house made Jeshickah’s arrogance look like nerves. Then again, they made her power look like a child playing house, too.

  “Alive, yes,” I answered. “I do not know if she is well, but I think I can bring her here.” Of the sakkri, I asked, “How quickly can you get a message to Nathaniel?”

  “Within moments,” she answered. “He is carrying a talisman of ours.”

  “Tell him to bring Charis here,” I said. If Charis wasn’t broken, she would surely tell Keyi that the last thing the world needed was a Midnight-falcon alliance. And if it was too late for Charis, that too would make the point I wanted.

  While we waited for Nathaniel and Charis, I looked for Kadee. I wished Keyi would stay behind with the sakkri, but wasn’t surprised that she followed the one person she had found who spoke her language.

  I found Kadee practicing her archery with some of the Shantel hunters. When she saw me, she dropped her bow—causing quite a few winces from the Shantel around her—and ran to my side.

  “I’ve been losing my mind waiting for word from you and Vance!” she snapped. “I feel like I’ve been put out of the way. No one tells me anything.” She grabbed my hand and pulled me toward her campsite, and out of the range of the others’ hearing. Only belatedly, she seemed to notice Keyi. “Who’s your friend?”

  “This is Keyi. She’s on our side, or will be soon,” I answered. “I think Nathaniel meant to put me out of the way, too.”

  If he hadn’t known about Keyi, the only reason he would have sent me to Shantel land was to get me out of Midnight so I wouldn’t get in more trouble. I intended to have a few words with him on that subject.

  Kadee looked equally determined to address the matter when the messenger arrived to tell us Nathaniel was waiting for us. Despite the current alliance, he wasn’t allowed in the Shantel village, so we met him and the falcon at a clearing in the woods.

  Charis’s downcast eyes were the deep violet of the more powerful members of her kind, but her dark hair must have come from her crow heritage. She was quemak, like me, but so powerful it made my teeth ache.

  Keyi’s gaze lit up when she saw her once friend and mentor, and greeted her with a rapid series of questions and exclamations; Charis’s impassive, emotionless response to the other falcon’s warm greeting clearly hurt her.

  “How is she?” I asked Nathaniel.

  “Jaguar says Alain did something to her magically that left her…inconsistent. All I’ve seen is a fine example of a trainer’s work, though.”

  After a few excited attempts at conversation, Keyi spun to me to demand, “What is wrong with her? She is worse than a criminal released by the Mercy.”

  The Mercy were Ahnmik’s elite police and torturers. The things they were capable of doing to a person’s mind in the name of the Empress were legendary. “Midnight’s trainers…” I had to stop, because I didn’t have a word for “trainer.” All the words that came to mind failed to encompass the evil of Jeshickah’s brood. “The blood-drinkers who rule Midnight have their own version of the Mercy,” I said. “Their job is to take someone like Charis, and turn her into someone perfectly obedient, without any will of her own. It is a very thorough process.” Usually. I thought of Alasdair.

  I saw the fury in Keyi’s eyes, and knew there was no danger of her siding with Midnight now.

  “The sakkri says you’ve found us a falcon ally?” Nathaniel asked me, while sizing up Keyi with obvious skepticism. He was familiar enough with their kind to recognize her limitations as easily as I had.

  “She found us,” I answered. I quickly explained what I knew of Keyi’s background and her relationship to Alain.

  “I hope Vance is having better luck with the Azteka,” Nathaniel sighed. “Having her will help, but only if we can fool the others into thinking she is more powerful than she is. More importantly, if she’s with us, we’ll know she isn’t with Jeshickah.”

  I examined Keyi critically. I couldn’t do anything about her eyes except hope that most people wouldn’t realize what those mossy green irises meant. Most shapeshifters had more variety in their coloration than the falcons did, so that wasn’t entirely a fool’s hope. A falcon’s “blue,” however, the marks of power that streaked the hair, was a well-known distinguishing mark that even a casual observer would notice was missing.

  “I can’t make her pass anything more than the most cursory magical inspection,” I told Nathaniel, “but I can make her a bit more convincing to a more mundane observer.”

  Nathaniel nodded. “It will make a difference with Shevaun, and some of the others. They’re primed for a fight, but don’t want to start it unless they’re sure we’ll win.”

  Keyi looked at me as if she already didn’t like what I was saying, even without having the words translated.

  There was one question, though, which would make or break this whole plan.

  I turned to Keyi and asked, “Can you lie?”

  Many pureblood falcons couldn’t. The god Ahnmik who supposedly gave them their powers was also the god who held vows true and judged the honesty of words. My white-viper blood seemed to have spared me from that particular curse, but many falcons found it physically painful or outright impossible to speak anything but the truth as they understood it.

  Keyi didn’t hesitate. She nodded, with a slight smile spreading on her face, and asked, “How do you think I convinced Alain to send me here?”

  “IT’S NOT THE SAME!” Ashley protested. Why wouldn’t the cobra stop pushing? “When I remember who I was, I remember a mother who didn’t know my name. Some days she didn’t even know she had a second daughter. I remember being told it wasn’t ladylike to cry and it wasn’t safe to even ask why—”

  No tears. She hadn’t been allowed to cry then, and she wasn’t allowed to cry now. Tears were not permitted in Midnight.

  Her voice cracked, and Hara pulled her forward, wrapping her arms around her. “That wasn’t all your life held, even if it’s all the trainer lets you remember.”

  “You don’t know,” Ashley whispered.

  “I remember hearing about Lorelei’s illness,” Hara said.

  “Illness,” Ashley echoed, pulling away. “Madness, more like.”

  “They say Midnight did it.”

  Ashley shook her head. No one knew why Midnight had seen fit to make an example out of her mother, Tuuli Thea Lorelei, only that they had. Her sister, Miriam, had come to the throne early, and Alasdair had faded into the background.

  “You were put here by your enemies,” Ashley whispered. “I was put here by my own foolishness.”

  —

  Living among the Shantel felt like standing in the eye of a storm. The king and princes avoided me, though I wasn’t sure if it was out of respect for my beliefs or general distaste for my existence. As royals, they would have known both Alasdair and Hara, and perhaps had been friendly with them.

  I hadn’t told Nathaniel that I intended to get Alasdair out during the attack because he would only tell me not to, but as often as I could, I
used my power to peer into Gabriel’s rooms to observe the two women there.

  Nathaniel still refused to involve the avians in his plan, claiming that he couldn’t trust them. Listening to Alasdair’s description of her mother’s decline, I understood why he thought Lorelei’s people might be too frightened to risk involvement.

  “It’s time,” Nathaniel said to me now, startling me from an attempt to scry into the serpiente palace. In addition to Alasdair and Hara, I tried to keep an eye on Misha, but her power made doing so difficult.

  With a little over a month left until the equinox, Nathaniel had once again summoned our allies to Shantel land, this time without magic concealing our identities. The nighttime air was crisp, and the fog was lighter than it had been the last time I was in this clearing, but the sliver of waxing moon above seemed to create more shadows than it cleared.

  The sakkri was deep in conversation with Keyi, who had used a combination of lemon juice and woad dye to lighten most of her hair and then add the blue streaks that would help her pass as a more powerful falcon. The sakkri had helped expand the aura of magic from Alain’s token so it seemed to encompass the otherwise powerless falcon—an illusion that would pass most superficial magical examinations. They still sometimes struggled, but a week of practice had improved the sakkri’s ability to make sense of the falcon’s language.

  Not far away, Theron’s fledgling Shevaun was laughing at a comment Adjila had just made. Powerful and not squeamish, Nathaniel had called that witch. If either of them were nervous, they hid it well.

  The Macht witches were both visible this time, the blond Sara who had offered Aislinn a home if she was willing to disobey Nathaniel and another witch with dark hair and blue eyes. They stood furthest back, their postures anxious but determined. Sara looked up and scowled as she caught me staring.

  Who were the others? There were two more vampires in the group, one man and one woman, both unfamiliar to me. They stood together, the woman shielding herself from the witches’ view with her companion’s body. Unless there was someone else we hadn’t heard from yet, he had to be the representative from Silver’s line who had needled Nathaniel at the previous meeting.

  There was also a man I was pretty sure was a shapeshifter, who occasionally exchanged words with the others as he paced the dark forest.

  The only face still hidden was the cloaked figure I had noticed last time, who had to be Nathaniel’s employer. Who had been bold enough—and wealthy enough—to hire Nathaniel for such an incredible mission?

  When Nathaniel stepped into the clearing, all eyes turned toward him. He looked around the crowd, took a breath, and greeted each individual by name.

  “Sakkri of the Shantel. Shevaun, daughter of Kendra, and Adjila, student of Pandora. Sara Vida, and Averill Arun—”

  Averill protested, “There is no need—”

  “There is absolute need,” Nathaniel argued. “I allowed you to maintain your anonymity last time because some of you were unwilling to commit to our cause until you knew we could win. It is now too late to back out…and any one of us who is discovered after today is likely to be hunted down and visited with a most grisly demise. Since I wear my name openly, it seems only right that you do as well.”

  “Get on with it,” Sara sighed. “I don’t want to be here longer than I need to.”

  Nathaniel continued.

  “Kral, of the Mistari and the Bruja guilds,” he greeted the pacing shapeshifter, “and Malachi Obsidian.” When he said my name, I felt a pulse of power. Nathaniel wasn’t just introducing us; he was binding us in some kind of spell. At this point, I had no option but to hope it was a spell for our benefit. He greeted the other vampires as “Jager, of Silver’s line, and the good lady Lila, of Macht and Kendra’s lines.” The two witches, Averill and Sara, both tensed and exchanged sharp whispers. A witch turned vampire—no wonder they were so disturbed by her. Nathaniel turned to Keyi to say, “And finally, shm’Ahnmik’la’Keyi’jaes’oisna’ona’saniet.”

  Indigo Choir and Empress’s Mercy; quite a title to falsely claim for our powerless friend. The sakkri, aware of our ruse, was silent at the lie.

  “And who is that?” Averill’s voice rang out across the clearing as she pointed toward the hooded figure.

  “Witch,” Shevaun snapped, “I am in the mood to bloody my hands tonight. Shut your mouth and stop delaying this infernal meeting if you do not want that blood to be yours.”

  “Thank you, Shevaun,” Nathaniel sighed. He looked toward the sakkri. “Are we still expecting one more?”

  “Any moment,” the sakkri answered. “I have stretched time and space to make this circle secure. Her magic resisted, so her travel was somewhat delayed.”

  That sounded promising. “Azteka?” I asked Nathaniel. “Is Vance back?” He knew Kadee and I had been anxiously awaiting Vance’s return.

  Nathaniel gave me an enigmatic smile, but refused to confirm my guess. I bit my tongue only because now was not the time to shake the information from him.

  “You know how much I hate being bored,” Shevaun called. “Can we get on with this?”

  Nathaniel’s calm expression never broke, but I could sense his nervousness as he said, “We should be—” He straightened, and I followed his gaze through the trees, where a feline too dense to be one of the lithe cougars and leopards of the Shantel had just come into view. The jaguar was followed by a small bird whose long green tail trailed after him like a pennant—Vance.

  Seeing him safely returned, I let go of tension I hadn’t even realized I was holding in my shoulders. I reached a hand into my pocket and grasped a carved sigil, thinking, Vance is back. He’s safe. Thanks to the magic of Shantel witches who were fond of and anxious to take care of our half-serpent friend, the thought would find its way to Kadee. Nathaniel wanted to limit the number of people directly involved in his plan, and refused to accept a fifteen-year-old half serpent as one of his fighters, but I wasn’t willing to keep her ignorant of our plans.

  The jaguar with Vance returned to human form. Her body was lean and powerful, and the russet skin on her arms was decorated with the ritualistic scars of a powerful bloodwitch. I recognized her immediately. The last time I had seen her, she had just executed the Shantel witch who had nearly killed the trainers. The act saved my life, along with Vance’s and Kadee’s, but if she had only stayed her hand another day, who knew what would have happened?

  “Vance Ehecatl of the Obsidian guild, and Lady Alejandra, priestess of Malinalxochitl,” Nathaniel said formally, binding them both into the spell with us. Vance came to my side as Alejandra stayed to speak with Nathaniel. “You are with us?”

  “I am,” Alejandra replied. “The priesthood and royal class still insist Midnight is not a significant threat to our nation, and they do not want to risk a true bloodwitch falling into the vampires’ hands, but I am able to act alone because I can claim kinship.”

  “Kinship?” I asked Vance, struggling to keep my voice from revealing my selfish dismay. If Vance had discovered blood relatives among the Azteka, would he still want to stay with Obsidian?

  Vance shook his head.

  “If he survives the assault,” Alejandra continued, still speaking to Nathaniel as if the rest of us were not present, “I claim the right to take custody of Jaguar de Fiaro. We share parentage.”

  Nathaniel’s brows raised, and I could tell he was trying to suppress laughter as he answered, “If he survives, I’ll see that none of our people fights you for him.” Who would want to? I could see him thinking.

  “Share…he’s your brother?” I asked, after replaying her words through my mind twice. “How is that even possible?” Everyone knew Jaguar had Azteka heritage, but he was also hundreds of years old. Would Vance live that long? And if Jaguar’s sister was a bloodwitch, shouldn’t he have been, too?

  Alejandra looked past me to speak to Vance, clearly more concerned that another born bloodwitch might be more upset than she was about a half falcon’s curiosity. “Our
magic can be used to extend life by many years. Untrained, you will have a more normal life span.”

  “Jaguar is half human,” Vance replied. “Or, was.”

  Alejandra nodded slightly. “As am I. It is why I am not able to pass my magic down to my children—though it does not in any way limit my own power,” she added, turning her attention to the group around us for the first time. “I regret I’ve been so hesitant to address the problem of Midnight before now, even though it took my own blood relative from me long ago. I am honored to stand with you all now.”

  The two Macht witches nodded as if they admired and agreed with Alejandra’s proud sentiments. Shevaun snickered. I was beginning to like the irreverent vampire, though I suspected she wouldn’t hesitate to kill me if the whim came to her. I wished I were bold enough to laugh at what I knew we would soon face.

  “Now we are ready,” the sakkri said. “Nathaniel, tell us your plan.”

  I already knew some of Nathaniel’s plan, and could guess which of our allies would object to it. Adjila would be fine, and Shevaun and the other vampires wouldn’t hesitate, but the Macht witches wouldn’t want to sacrifice their once-kin. The Shantel already executed escaped slaves on sight, believing they couldn’t be trusted; the sakkri probably already knew what Nathaniel would say. I wasn’t sure about Kral, Alejandra, or Keyi.

  Nathaniel bowed his head, and spoke softly, not looking toward any of us.

  “Midnight has allies in every major civilization—yes, including the witches who say they exist purely to fight Midnight,” Nathaniel said, with a pointed look to Sara and Averill. “If we want to strike Midnight through the vampires, we would be looking at killing over a dozen of them, at least, in order to ensure Midnight does not rebuild. In the process, we would need to cross creatures with enough power to wipe any of us entirely off the map, who would avenge those deaths in a mass slaughter that would make Midnight’s reign look like Eden.”