I’m still a bit small for that, though I am growing back to my proper size.
He was right. He was almost half again as big as he had been when he leapt from the inn roof just a half a turn ago.
The sound of leather creaking below me reminded me I needed to do something. Now.
Could he at least carry me as far as the inn to warn them all?
Better to carry you into the night, little hawk. You have no cloak, but I can be your warmth in the night until we get you to a cache.
Run away? Was he kidding? I would not leave those who needed me. I hadn’t thought he would, either.
You are my Flame Rider now. My allegiance is to you.
What about Judicus?
He seemed to almost shrug. I like the boy, but your safety is more important.
No. No, that simply wouldn’t do. I stood on the thatch, wobbling in a way that made my belly twist, but I refused to back down. I planted my hands on my hips.
We were not abandoning my family and town. We were not abandoning the boy who had worked so hard to save Kazmerev’s Veela. I felt his twinge of pain at her name, but I pressed on. We just weren’t going to abandon them.
I felt the hot tears tracking down my cheeks before I could stop them. I was so powerless. Even now, even with this new friend, I couldn’t help anyone.
He ducked his head, shying away from me, a feeling of hurt in his thoughts.
It’s just too soon. I can’t lose you, too.
My heart melted within me.
He wasn’t cruel and heartless He had a wound like Judicus’ but Kazmerev’s was in his heart.
It hurts so much. I can’t do it again. Please.
I swallowed, my gaze flicking between the raiders creeping down the streets like an army of beetles and the bright burning bird trembling in front of me.
If I was going to save everyone else, I needed to find a way to give him courage again. But how did I do that? I’d been scared my whole life. Scared that people wouldn’t understand me. Scared that no one would marry me, and my cousins would tire of me and I’d have no home or family or place in this world. Scared that nothing I did would ever be enough.
How did you give someone else courage when you had none of your own?
He was my first true friend. The first to ever truly hear me. The first to know the fears that blossomed in my heart. I didn’t want to lose him either. But I also didn’t want to hide in the shadows – and I didn’t want that for him. He was a flaming, bright light. He was majestic and powerful. He shouldn’t be reduced to cowering in the shadows. He should soar.
The raiders moved further up the street. Just a few more buildings and they would reach the inn.
Kazmerev spread his wings, shrugging them as if to shake out the feathers and I felt a swell of something inside him.
He could do this. He could be strong again.
The raiders paused, making hand signals to one another. They were readying themselves to charge.
I wouldn’t leave Kazmerev when he left this place. I would do exactly what he asked and go with him, without a coin or proper cloak or anything else, I would still go.
But first I had to make sure my people made it through this night.
I could feel him softening to me – but I wouldn’t ask him to go with me. He was right. He’d already lost his best friend. I shouldn’t ask him to give more than that.
I gave his wing one last caress and then slipped down the thatch toward the edge of the bakery roof. Just because I wasn’t asking him for help didn’t mean that I wouldn’t act. I could still warn them. Even if it meant risking myself.
I leapt from the edge of the roof, landing on the dirt road below in a crouch. My ankles and knees hurt from the drop, but I was fine. Sucking in a deep breath of air, I sprinted toward the inn.
I was halfway to the raiders when a voice called in my mind.
I will give you what I can, little hawk.
My heart leapt.
I was just beginning to smile when ahead of me, the men on the thatch called out a warning and the inn door opened spilling orange firelight across the street like a washerwoman emptying her cauldron.
“We have what you’re looking for!” Aunt Danna’s voice rang out.
Oh no. What had she done?
Chapter Fourteen
They spilled out of the inn, weapons held high, Judicus propped up between Uncle Llynd and Gandy. My breath was caught so hard in my throat that I felt like I might choke.
No.
They shouldn’t be doing this.
I sprinted down the street. There had to be a way to tell them that they were making a huge mistake.
I wasn’t a quiet runner, and yet none of the raiders turned. They were as riveted by the scene coming from the inn as I was. Upon the roof above the tableau, two townsmen held their bows, arrows strung and drawn, pointed at the raiders. The shutters were closed, windows nailed shut, but the inn door stood open. It felt like they’d constructed a shield with a big slot down the center. What was the point?
But the bravado in my aunt Danna’s voice told me what the point was. She was certain this gamble would work.
“I have hot soup and cider. Take what you came for, eat, and then go. You don’t need to kill us. You don’t need to take anything else. We’re welcoming you here,” she said firmly, as if they were just more of her children and if she spoke with authority they would buckle at her words.
There was silence for the space of a heartbeat and then one of the raiders stepped from the shadows and into the light. He was swathed so deeply in hood and cloak that I could only make out the outline of a man under all that cloth. He could have been any age. He could have been something utterly inhuman.
He spoke like a human, though. And he spoke our language in a low voice not much louder than a hiss.
“We aren’t here for the rope worker. We can find one like him anywhere. Besides, with the blow Leedar struck, he won’t live the week out. He’s dead and he just doesn’t know it.”
The way Judicus’s head lolled from where he was propped up, his analysis seemed justified. But I knew better. His wound was not infected. It would heal – provided no one cut him open again.
“Then why are you here?” Aunt Danna’s voice didn’t shake, but I knew she was holding on by her iron will alone. It was probably why she was speaking instead of our head man. She refused to bend for anyone. She was stronger than anyone in our town – even now after the death of her oldest boy.
“Ai’sletta. We seek the ai’sletta.”
“And we’re offering him to you,” Aunt Danna said, shaking Judicus as if to emphasize her point. He flopped bonelessly and I flinched. All that movement wasn’t good for his healing wound.
The laugh of the raiders was like something waiting for you in the dark. It spoke of pain and fear, of brutal killing and leaving the remains for the ravens. I shivered at the sound.
The raider spread his arms wide as if he was making a proclamation. “Little chicken hiding in your chicken coop, we will draw back and let you talk. In one hour, we will return and then you give us the ai’sletta or we kill you all down to the last child.”
Did they know what they were looking for? They hadn’t been fooled by Judicus, but could something else fool them? I had a bad feeling that they knew at least as much as he did – that they were looking for a “she.”
I pressed myself to the nearest wall as they melted back into the shadows. The hardened mud of the cooper’s walls was dusty against my grip, but I squeezed my eyes closed as tightly as they would go, my breath coming out of me in little gasps. The raiders were going to find me here.
I dared to open my eyes just a tiny bit. What if they saw the gleam of my eyes reflected in the moonlight? What if they stopped to dispatch me on their way to wait the hour out?
What if they didn’t, and I waited with my family only to watch everyone I’d ever known butchered before my eyes?
I felt a pang in my heart as if it were burning and I
didn’t know if it was the fear or the phoenix doing it.
It’s me.
Dark shadows slipped down the street, passing me by narrowly as they whispered in their own language. I caught the word ai’sletta and nothing more.
They had only just passed when Kazmerev landed on the dirt street in a burst of golden sparks. He’d grown again.
I flinched at the sight of him. He was so bright – and so beautiful with his dark feathers edged with a cherry red glow and little golden flames licking up and down them hungrily. How could it be possible that no one saw him but me?
I’ve changed my mind. If I do not help you, it’s clear that you will kill yourself trying to do this without me.
How could he help? He’d already said he could not.
I can help you. All the things you’d hoped I could do – those are your powers, your grim duties, your heavy burden to bear.
Heavy burden?
You want to throw fire and watch your enemy burn. Is that not a burden? You want to fly into a mass of men with weapons and swords. Is that duty not grim enough for you? Battles are not games. Death is no friend to any man, no matter what he says on the matter. It’s no friend to me, though I dance with it every dawn.
I swallowed. He was right, wasn’t he? It was fighting these raiders that had left Judicus so ill and Veela dead.
And even when you are not the one torn apart, you are doing the tearing – and that is just as bad in its own way. But I relent. Sorrowful as my heart is, I will not wound it again with your needless death. Come, call on my strength, and craft your grim workings.
Hope burst in my heart at the thought of standing in that spill of orange light and defending my people and town. I could do it. He would help me. I just needed him to tell me how to do it.
That knowing is not for me but for the Flame Rider.
That was not very helpful.
I do not know how you channel my heart of fire to make me visible to others or how you harness my strength to fling flames or make pillars of fire.
My heart – soaring a moment before – crashed to the ground.
Then there was nothing for it but to go and die with my people. It was a nice thought that he might help me – a kind gesture – but it was no good.
Swiping hot tears aside, I stepped out, walking right past the glowing scarlet phoenix and down the street. It was hard to act like he wasn’t there when sparks kept popping and sizzling from the ends of each of his feathers and flames roared up in little gouts when he moved, bathing him in waves of fire. But I was wasting the hour of life I had left in talking to him. He either could not or would not help me. He was only a distraction from the real choice ahead of me.
Should I tell the town about Mally or keep that to myself? That was the question, and I needed an answer before I got to the inn door.
Somehow, the thought of betraying her only made my tears flow hotter and faster than ever.
Chapter Fifteen
Wait. Wait, little hawk!
I ignored him. I felt betrayed that he’d known this the whole time and never mentioned it. He knew I was wasting my time asking him for help and instead of just telling me that he strung me along letting me hope he’d change his mind and help me. I could have been spending that time doing something useful.
It’s possible that I regret that.
I ran into the pool of orange light, skidding to a stop in front of my Aunt Danna. She stood with her spine straight, looking out into the darkness as the other townsfolk dragged Judicus back into the inn.
“Should we take him back to bed?” Gandy called.
“Just leave him on the floor behind the bar,” Aunt Danna said in a calm, almost sunny tone. I knew that tone. It was the one she used when she was trying to disguise despair. “He won’t be any safer in a bed.”
And he wouldn’t live long enough for it to matter. That’s what she was thinking. Her eyes focused on me, narrowing, and her mouth formed a thin line. There was a note of warning in her voice.
“Where have you been, Sersha?”
I signed to her that I’d been down the street.
She shook her head but there was a gleam in her eyes that made my heart speed up. Those were the eyes of someone looking for a way out. Any way out.
“You wouldn’t happen to know who this ai’sletta is that they want so much, would you, niece?”
I was not lulled by the false note of cheerfulness in her voice. This was a challenge. I felt the blood rushing to my cheeks. Because I did know. And I couldn’t keep my own body from betraying that secret.
“I thought you might,” she said, her voice growing even sunnier. “I thought to myself, ‘Who doesn’t quite fit in our village? Who here is just a little bit different? Who has a tormented past? Who comes from somewhere else? Who might be the one they are searching for?’ And one name came to mind.”
I shook my head, desperate to deny her words.
What was she thinking? She had raised me herself! But grief did strange things to people and her son’s body was still warm in its grave.
She grabbed my shoulder in a hand like a vice and leaned in calmly, friendly, as if we were just chatting in the night while raiders waited for an answer.
“And even if I’m wrong, what is one life for sixty?” she whispered. “And which one life is worth spending on this?”
I looked her directly in the eyes and I saw the purpose there. My aunt Danna was not a bad woman. But she was a practical one. And cold certainty washed over me as I realized she was right. I was the correct sacrifice for this. I was the perfect choice to be offered in exchange for the village. I had no future. I had no clear purpose. But in this, I could give all the rest of them a future. It was cold and heartless – and logical.
And she didn’t even know that it meant saving the life and future of her own beloved daughter. If she did know, she would give me up even quicker. Because while my aunt was kind to me and generous in her own way, there was nothing and no one she loved more than her natural-born children. And she’d already lost one today.
Ice flowed through my veins.
I did not fight as she turned me toward the inn.
What are you doing?
I was letting them give me up.
Crimson light danced across the wall and door of the Hog’s Head Inn in front of me. But it was light only I could see – the light of a phoenix flapping his wings with irritation.
He should just go away. He couldn’t help me. He should spend the rest of his night flying and letting the wind soar past his feathers one last time.
I was wrong.
It was too late for regrets. Perhaps someone else would pick up his ashes. Maybe one of the raiders.
It doesn’t work like that.
There was a note of anxiety in his voice now and it ached with a strong burn in my chest.
It had worked like that for me.
His reply sounded desperate.
It needs to be the right kind of person, the right kind of heart. Like a seed in soil, the ashes will not hatch in just any heart.
Then he’d better hope that someone in the village had that heart. Maybe Judicus would take the ash. He knew what it was.
He’s a ropeworker. They can’t be Flame Riders, too.
Either way, it was no longer my problem. I needed to set my mind toward death. It was all I had left.
Chapter Sixteen
Aunt Danna brought me into the inn and sat me on Fon’s usual chair behind the bar.
“Watch her,” she said to Mally, tossing a meaningful look at her daughter. “Don’t let her get up from the chair.”
Mally nodded. She was no fool. She knew exactly what my aunt was doing.
My cheeks felt hot. They were already talking about me like a thing and not a person. That’s what you did with people right before you did something terrible to them. I knew that. I’d seen it before. You called someone “that woman” right before you kicked her out of the house into the world with no money
or chances. You said, “that old man” right before you swindled him into selling something valuable for a pittance. You called a woman a filthy name before you tried to take advantage of her. I lived in an inn. I’d seen it all.
I choked on the thought, coughing intensely. I was already a thing.
You aren’t a thing to me. If you would just calm down and listen! I can help you.
Everyone else was packed in the common room like fish in a barrel. The air felt close and thick. I struggled to breathe it. It didn’t help that my heart wouldn’t stop galloping like a horse that jumped the fence. I should run. I should just jump up and run.
But I knew I wouldn’t even if I hadn’t been put on this chair and watched over by a thoughtful Mally with a barrel stave in her hand. I didn’t hate my town enough to want to see them die violently. Not even if it meant I would be the one to die.
I shivered and then forced that thought away. I tried to think instead of the twins delivered yesterday. They would be upstairs probably sleeping or nursing and utterly innocent. I was doing this for them and all the children sleeping above me. For them, it was worth it.
I have never met someone so quick to throw herself into the flames!
As if she could read my earlier thoughts, Mally came over to me with a length of baling twine.
“I think maybe it would be better to tie those hands,” she said, her mouth twisting with distaste as Gandy dragged Judicus across the floor and dropped him at my feet. I tried to look down at him but Mally gripped my chin between her fingers and pulled my face up. “It’s you that they’re after and it’s you that they’ll get.”
I shook my head and she rolled her eyes. She was just like her mother. All the confidence in the world on the outside to hide that she was shaking underneath.
“Don’t roll your eyes at me, Sersha. If they’re here for someone who doesn’t fit, then mama is right. It’s you.” She pulled the twine tight around my wrists and it bit into my skin. I bit down on my lip against the pain.
It wasn’t me that the raiders were looking for. Maybe she should know that.
Phoenix Heart: Episode 1: Ashes Page 6
