Daughter of Dusk

by Blackburne, Livia

  Still no luck in the house, so Flick ran outside. Mercie’s house was slightly set off from the road, between two farms on either side, with the forest at the back. He had a clear view of the neighboring farms as well as the road in the distance. He saw no one.

  “Flick,” called Idalee from the forest. “She’s over here.”

  There was an odd tone to Idalee’s voice. Flick found her just a few trees into the forest. Idalee pointed to the ground in front of her, and Flick looked down to see Lettie curled up…asleep…between two demon kittens.

  “Lettie, what are you—” Flick strode toward them, but Idalee yanked him back.

  “I don’t think you want to surprise those two,” she whispered.

  Fair point. The two of them stood watching for a while, unsure what to do. Then the larger yellow kitten stirred. It sneezed, opened its eyes, and fixed them on Flick and Idalee. The next moment, it was on all fours with legs splayed out and hair standing on end. This woke the other two. The gray kitten opened its eyes and stared. And Lettie’s face took on a perfect mask of guilt.

  “Lettie,” Flick said again, keeping his voice low lest he startle the kittens more. “What are you doing?”

  Lettie shrank down and leaned a little closer to the gray kitten. “They wanted to play.”

  Play? These kittens were as big as she was, and their fangs looked sharp. “You’ve been playing with them?”

  “When you and Idalee were busy around the house,” Lettie said, raising her eyes to his reproachfully.

  “How long has this been going on?”

  “Today, yesterday, and the day before.”

  Flick took a step back, ran a hand through his hair, and forced himself to take a few deep breaths. Lettie was safe. She didn’t look to be missing any limbs. But what by the three cities had the girl been thinking?

  “Come here, Lettie.” He took the girl’s skinny wrists in his hands and rolled up her sleeves, then spun her around in front of him. She had a scraped elbow and a few bruises on her other arm. Her dress was torn at the bottom.

  He opened his mouth to berate her when a familiar voice spoke from the forest. “She has been in no danger. I’ve been watching.”

  Flick supposed he was getting used to seeing Adele pop out from between the trees. The clanswoman seemed more sure of herself this time, less shy. “Flick, Idalee,” she said in greeting.

  “Lady Adele,” said Flick, wondering briefly what the proper way to address a Makvani lass was. The day just kept getting stranger and stranger. Though he had to admit that part of him was glad to see her. The clanswoman intrigued him.

  “The kittens mean no harm,” said Adele. “It’s play for them. That’s all.”

  “Lettie’s rather scratched up for a bit of play.”

  Adele cast a glance at the girl. “How do your small ones grow strong if you don’t let them tumble?”

  “I’ll wager our small ones don’t heal as quickly as yours,” said Flick.

  Adele held out her arm to Flick and traced a faint scar on her skin. “These marks make me a better sibling to my litter-mates, and a better fighter for my clan. But I know that your young are more delicate than ours. I made sure that Libena and Ziben were careful.” She crouched next to the kittens and rubbed each of their heads in turn. “The kittens are curious about humans,” she said.

  “As are you,” said Flick.

  Adele looked at him, taken aback. Flick was beginning to notice that she startled when he stepped too close, whether physically or in conversation, though she recovered more quickly each time.

  “Our elders mixed more with humans before Leyus pulled us out of the slave trade,” she said. “But we younger ones have only been among our own kind.”

  She mentioned the slave trade without any self-consciousness, as if it were just a matter of fact, which Flick supposed it was. Kyra had mentioned something of the sort. “And what do you think now that you’ve spoken to us?” he asked.

  “You are weaker, in some ways. But you are not helpless. And you solve your problems by very different means.” Well, that was certainly honest. Flick got the impression that Adele rarely lied.

  Adele looked up then, to some sound Flick couldn’t hear. “One of my kin is close by. Stay here, and stay quiet.”

  She untied her tunic and let it drop to the ground as she walked to the trees. Flick caught a glimpse of her (admittedly shapely) backside before propriety prompted him to avert his gaze. Well, propriety and the fact that Idalee was smirking at him. In theory, the prospect of shape-shifting women who shed their clothes at a moment’s notice had very few downsides. Of course, theory didn’t include two younger sisters watching his every reaction—Idalee with noticeable amusement, and Lettie with her usual wide-eyed interest.

  “Just try not to get yourselves killed, all right?” said Flick, trying his best to hold on to his dignity.

  Idalee was still smirking. Flick raised an eyebrow at her, though it warmed his heart to see Idalee’s spunk returning. The girl hadn’t really joked around with him since the beating.

  Adele returned in her fur, and this time accompanied by a larger brown cat. They stopped a few paces away and changed back to their skin. The brown cat was a muscular young man, and this time it was Idalee’s turn to blush. The only thing keeping Flick from shooting her a wide grin was the presence of the two Demon Riders. He did keep his eyes averted as they dressed themselves, and this time Adele noticed.

  “We change in front of you to show our trust, but you look away,” she said. “Does it frighten you?”

  “I, uh…it’s not that. We just don’t customarily go without clothing.” Sometimes honesty was the best approach.

  Adele cocked her head, then seemed to dismiss the idea as strange. “This is Stepan, my clan mate. He wanted to meet you.”

  Stepan came forward and extended a hand, which was a relief because Flick didn’t really know how the Makvani greeted each other. He had seen a few variants of bows, but had a feeling that there was much more complexity to them than Flick could figure out. The Demon Rider’s handshake was firm.

  “Idalee,” said Flick, catching her eye. “Mayhap you could bring out some food to share.”

  Idalee tilted her head, trying to discern if Flick’s request was a real one or a signal to run for her life. Flick gave her a subtle nod. If the Demon Riders were being friendly, they would be friendly as well.

  As Idalee gathered her skirts and hurried back to the house, Stepan looked around and inhaled deeply. “Livestock,” he said.

  Flick froze. “You’re not going to…”

  “What would you do if we were to raid these farms?” asked Adele.

  Flick swallowed and took some time to consider his response. Was Adele testing him? She was certainly watching him with interest, and he didn’t think she was bluffing about raiding the farms. But neither did he think she was toying with him.

  “I suppose there’s not much I could do,” he said. “I can’t outrun you, so I wouldn’t be able to warn them, and I can’t fight you without any weapons. I might follow, to see if I can help get the farmhands to safety.” He watched the Demon Riders’ expressions carefully, alert for any sign of offense. “I wouldn’t try to stop you, but it would sadden me. I’ve enjoyed your company, and I imagine it would drive a wedge between us, if you were to raid the nearby farms.”

  Adele cast her gaze down as she thought this over. “Are most humans like you, using their words to fight instead of their claws?” she finally asked.

  Despite the tension, or perhaps because of it, Flick had to laugh. Kyra would have appreciated that description of him. “Can you blame me, since I don’t have claws?” Flick curled his hands, with their stubby nails, into his best claw impression and showed her. He thought he saw the corners of her mouth creep up. “But no. There are many in Forge who prefer ‘claws’ over talk.”

  “We won’t take anything from the farms,” Adele said. She seemed to be talking as much to Stepan as to Flick.
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  Idalee arrived just then with a platter of bread and cheese and a wool blanket to spread over the snow. Flick hoped that the girl didn’t pick up on his residual nerves from that last exchange. Adele and Stepan took their time with the food, savoring each bite and stopping to inhale the bread’s aroma. “We have not been able to cook in the past year, since we’ve been traveling,” said Stepan.

  “Czern tells me that we used to have cheese often, back when we raided more villages,” said Adele.

  Idalee choked on her bread, and Flick himself had a hard time keeping a calm demeanor at yet more talk of raids. Again, Adele noticed.

  “It bothers you to speak of raids,” said Adele. Flick would have laughed at the magnitude of the understatement, but Adele looked genuinely concerned.

  He wondered how to respond. “A good friend of mine, like a mother to me, was killed in a raid. It’s hard for me to think about them.”

  To his surprise, Adele’s features softened in understanding. “I lost two brothers and a sister to raids. It saddens me still.”

  Idalee looked up from her bread, dropping a piece of cheese on the blanket. “Your clan was raided?”

  Adele nodded, surprised at Idalee’s surprise. “By another clan.”

  “Did this happen often?” asked Flick.

  “There were many of us over the mountains,” said Stepan.

  “And you were constantly at war?”

  “There were many of us,” said Adele again, as if that were the answer to his question.

  Flick chose his next words carefully. “Did anyone try to put a stop to the fighting? I imagine it would have been taxing on your people.”

  Adele and Stepan looked at each other for the length of several breaths. “That is not the way we do things,” said Adele.

  At that moment, both the Demon Riders looked toward the road. Flick had been around Makvani enough times now to realize that they were hearing something he couldn’t. He turned and saw a rider in official Palace colors coming from the city. News from the Palace, and it must have been important if a herald had come to announce it. Flick exchanged glances with Idalee. The last courier to be sent out like this had borne a description of Kyra and an announcement for the bounty on her head.

  “Mercie will know the news when she comes back,” said Idalee.

  “It might be too late by then,” said Flick. Idalee didn’t argue, and Flick stood. “I’m very sorry, but I must go.”

  “I understand,” said Adele. The two Demon Riders dusted the bread crumbs from their clothes and left with little ceremony.

  Flick looked back toward the city. The heralds traveled the main roads, stopping to announce their news at crossroads, squares, and inns along the way. “There’s an inn up the road,” he said. “If it’s important news, the people there’ll be talking about it.”

  “Will you go by yourself?” asked Idalee.

  He nodded. “I’ll be careful.”

  The fields were quiet, and every farmhouse he passed had smoke coming out of its chimney. Folk were holed up inside, where it was warm. It was a long walk past the farms, but as he came closer to the inn, he noticed more people than usual about on the road. Flick slowed and listened for snippets of conversation.

  …A Palace building burned down….

  …magistrate make an example of him…

  His pulse quickened, and he ducked into the inn’s dining room. It was a small establishment compared with the ones in the city, but it should be busy enough to get him the news he needed.

  The energy level inside was certainly high. While the dining room was usually divided into separate tables, the majority of the patrons were seated near the center, participating in one big, disorganized discussion.

  “They say he single-handedly took out a dozen Red Shields,” one potbellied man was saying. “And his lackeys killed even more with that fire.”

  Flick took a seat near the side and settled down to listen.

  T W E N T Y

  Leyus was her father.

  Even after she said good-bye to Craigson and started making her way back to her cave, the knowledge sat awkwardly in her mind. Kyra circled it warily, afraid to delve too deeply, yet unable to forget it.

  You don’t choose your family. Kyra had known this. Yet in her imaginings, she’d still conjured the warm, loving parents that every orphan wanted. This hope had taken a blow when she learned she was half Makvani, but even then, she hadn’t completely given it up. She’d just re-created the picture into someone like Pashla—dangerous yet gentle.

  Kyra would not have chosen Leyus. He was distant and intimidating, and he frightened her. Yet it all made more sense than she cared to admit. Leyus had always been a little too lenient with her. He’d had reason to kill her many times when she’d lived among his people, especially after he found out she worked for the Palace. But instead, he’d always sent her off with a warning.

  And then there was the way the clan kept track of her movements in the forest. Pashla had made it sound as if they watched all comers, but with Kyra it was more than that. Kyra thought back to that time Leyus rescued her from Zora’s attack, and the two times Pashla had saved her, once when Zora threatened her in the clearing, and once when Adele attacked. No, Leyus wasn’t just having her watched. He was having her protected.

  It was that thought that spurred her into action. Even now, Kyra could sense someone watching her, and the questions became too insistent to ignore. Why would he do this, yet stay so cold and aloof? How long had he known?

  “I know someone’s watching me,” Kyra called out into the trees. “Pashla? I need to speak to Leyus.”

  The forest went quiet at her voice. She cast around, alert for any response, but nothing came, and slowly the sounds of the forest returned—the fluttering of a winter bird’s wings, the high bark of a fox. Kyra leaned against a tree, swallowing her disappointment and trying to make sense of everything Craigson had told her. Her mother was a woman who led a village an unfathomable distance away. And her father…

  Something shifted around her. “Anyone there?” Kyra asked. She definitely sensed someone coming toward her now, someone quiet enough to keep her from zeroing in on a specific direction. It might have been Pashla, but it didn’t feel like her. Kyra fell still, ready to run or fight if needed.

  Leyus stepped out from between the trees as naturally as if Kyra had been waiting in the antechamber to his throne room. She looked at him, really looked at him this time. He was tall, larger than life, bronze-skinned, and strong despite his age. She didn’t resemble him at all. His face was square and angular, his nose and eyebrows pronounced, in contrast to Kyra’s heart-shaped face and softer features. But something stirred within her when she studied his eyes. They were amber, just like hers, and the arch of his lids felt familiar.

  Craigson’s story just seemed so unlikely. How could this imposing Makvani man possibly be her father? He certainly wasn’t looking at her like she’d imagined any long-lost father would. Leyus regarded at her as he always had, with the same distant, proud gaze, and a touch of wariness or disdain.

  “I met a trader,” said Kyra, glad that her voice didn’t shake. “Or he used to be a trader. By the name of Louis Craigson.”

  There was a flash of something dangerous in Leyus’s eyes. “And what did he tell you?”

  Kyra couldn’t do it. Couldn’t come right out and ask him if he was her father, like some waif in a talesinger’s ballad. “Why did you protect me when Zora tried to kill me?”

  Leyus gave a grunt of disgust. “The caravanner should watch his tongue. I spared his life once, but I may not do so again.” He looked at Kyra. “You’re Maikana’s child—is that what he thinks?”

  It was surreal, hearing the same name coming out of Leyus’s mouth. “Aye.”

  He looked her over carefully, just as Craigson had, though Leyus’s scrutiny was more severe. “You have the look of her people, as well as some of their…peculiarities. Though your face resembles her sister more
than her.”

  That repeated detail about Kyra’s aunt drove it home for her, made it clear they had moved beyond her childish daydreams to a reality that was so much bigger than two imagined parents. There was an entire world Kyra didn’t know about, with implications and echoes that she was just starting to feel. Kyra realized she was trembling, and she pressed her arms to her sides in an attempt to stop. It was suddenly important to her that Leyus not see her shaken.

  Leyus gazed into the distance, as if looking into the past. “Maikana trusted Craigson. When I heard rumors about a halfblood in his caravan’s care, I immediately suspected.”

  How had this Makvani man, the same one who looked at her and other humans with such derision, ever been intimate with a human woman? “What did you do to her?” Kyra whispered.

  Leyus turned furious eyes to her. “Is that what you think it was? That I ravished her like some base human bandit? Watch your words carefully, Kyra. I will not be insulted again.”

  The strength of his outrage caught her off guard. Had he actually cared about her mother? “I don’t understand.”

  “It is not for you to know,” he said. Under the anger in his voice, there was a layer of pain. Kyra stared at Leyus, drawn to this crack in his mask. But he looked away, and when he turned back, there was no more trace of that pain on his face. “Take care you do not put too much stock in your bloodlines, Kyra. And do not expect to hide behind your parentage. Blood relations are earned. Respect is earned. Do not expect any special treatment from me.”

  She widened her stance, as if somehow it would lend her strength. “Why haven’t you let me die, then? You’ve had plenty of chances.”

  The smile he gave her had very little humor in it. “Misguided hope, I suppose. Maikana was a capable leader and stronger than any human I’d met or have met since. She knew who she was, and she knew what she wanted. She didn’t run from her troubles.” He said the last part as if it were a rebuke to Kyra. “It looks like that trait was not passed on to her daughter.”