“No sir.”
“Have you ever heard of it?”
He shook his head.
“What about these ‘wings’?”
The slave shrugged loosely. “Birds, I dunno. Maybe they thought it was food. They scratch me up a bit.” He touched the stitches on his forehead, on his cheek, and grinned crookedly as if that might take Sarovy’s attention from his crow tattoo.
“Did anyone else see it? Or the birds?”
“Dun think so. I was, uh… I was walkin’ on m’own. So—“ He blanched suddenly, his eyes going distant again. “Ehra Zolvin T’okiel,” he breathed in the manner of a prayer, and looked around as if for a door. “I gotta tell ‘em. Gotta warn ‘em. It has my face. It had Horrum’s and now it has my face and they dunno and it’s gonna be in camp, it’s gonna be in camp and they’ll think it’s me and it’ll be my fault, I gotta—“
The woman bouncer stepped in to push him down as he tried to struggle out of the leg-bonds. “You will stay here,” she said sternly, and flicked a look to the medic, who scurried away with all haste.
The slave struggled, panting hard, hands clutching at the edges of the cot, but the woman pressed him down with sheer weight. Sarovy stood back, trying to analyze this. In his mind’s eye he saw the grey material shaping a face, a familiar face—
A shock ran through him and the image shattered. The world reeled around him. He closed his eyes until it steadied.
“Lieutenant?” said the bouncer.
He looked up. Her face was strained, deep lines carved around her mouth. On the cot, the slave had subsided but was staring up at the ceiling, eyes flicking wildly side-to-side as if trying to see his way out from a maze.
“I am fine,” Sarovy told the bouncer, then to the slave, he said, “Which camp?”
The slave’s gaze snapped to him, and the only thing on his face now was guilt. “Green six,” he said. “Tell Maevor. Tell him it en’t my fault.”
Sarovy nodded briskly, turned and strode from the curtained area without a backward glance. On his way to the doors, they swung open to let in three women in medics’ coats, one the young lady who had rushed out and two looking rumpled, as if they had just been roused from bed. All turned alarmed looks on him before speeding past.
He caught a door on the backswing and stepped out into daylight. A figure detached from the wall and his hand fell to the hilt of his sword.
“Sir?” said Lancer Linciard, halting several paces away.
Sarovy stared at him, momentarily unable to understand why he was there. Then he remembered, and scowled. “I dismissed you, lancer.”
“Yes sir. But we’re off duty until evening, sir. I just felt like hanging around here.”
“And I suppose you just feel like strolling in whichever direction I do?”
“I do kinda feel like stretching my legs, sir.”
Sarovy snorted and looked away, toward the slave camps. From the dirt yard that fronted the infirmary, it was possible to see the tents beyond the line of barracks: a sea of canvas and cook-fires, of shabby men not quite bad enough for execution but not good enough to be free. It was patrolled infrequently, but it would be safe. Every slave was firmly conditioned against attacking freesoldiers.
“See if you can keep up,” said Sarovy.
But when they reached Green Six, denoted by poles with bright colored swatches, it was too late. The cook-fire was cold, the tents collapsed, the men and all their gear gone. The boot-prints baked into the mud were heavy and sharp, and with them the knuckle-like marks of hound paws.
*****
In daylight, the Forest of Night glimmered with a cold gloss, every twig and bramble captured in ice. Lark had slept through the whole morning and now, hiking through the woods in Radha’s footsteps, she felt much better about this place. Ridiculously cold, but at least it was pretty.
Radha had washed the ash-paint off and looked like a typical Red Corvish now: rusty hair plaited back from her sharp face, red fanglike tattoos under her angled black eyes, and the occasional hard smile when she glanced back. Her garb was still grey, her bow and quiver still slung; compared to her, Lark’s bear-hide coat stood out like a lump of mud on the snow, but none of the Corvish had clothes big enough to lend her.
They were out and about because of Lark’s questions. She had managed to rein herself in upon arrival at Kanrath-Neirai, and again when she had first been woken by Radha’s boot nudging her side. The Corvish were about as delicate as Trevere. But after inhaling hot stew and sending Rian to romp with the gleeful children, she could no longer keep her silence. The crystal towers had loomed in her dreams, unbroken, and she had to ask.
Radha had looked at her in amused irritation and advised that they take a walk.
They wove through the trees now, skipping the stream-path. Frozen snow crunched under their feet. Ahead, the land sloped down blindly in hummocks and jags, but the going was not difficult now that Lark had rested. Always a branch to grab to ease her way down.
Abruptly Radha, who had been silent for most of the trek, stopped at the edge of a new slope and looked back. “We get no closer,” she said, jerking her chin forward.
Lark trudged up to her and squinted in the frosty glare. They stood at the lip of a stepped decline, and from their height they could look over the treetops and see the stream-cut canyon running diagonal, marking a schism through the crystal ruins below.
The breath caught in Lark’s throat as she surveyed the wreckage of the shattered towers. From above, many things became clear that she had not seen before.
The snow touched neither the shards of pinkish crystal nor the mosaic walkways that ran between them, as if the stones themselves were warm. A narrow, golden ribbon of perimeter drew a vast circle around the visible ruins, with smaller circles unfurling from it to surround the bases of single towers. Where the stream and its canyon cut through, walkways lay uprucked and perimeter-metal twisted, but some flowers and green shoots still grew from the verges of the mosaic path.
Lark counted six towers on this side, some so shattered that she could only tell by the gold rings around their bases. Beyond the canyon, she guessed at three more. They must have been huge; some of the chunks of rubble strewn around were bigger than houses.
Oddly-shaped, too. Not circular but hexagonal, and broken in such a way that it was clear to her, even from a distance, that each tower had been formed from a solid piece. A single crystal.
“What is this place?” she murmured to Radha.
The Corvishwoman shrugged. “We dunno the name. Fell long before our people made camp here…few centuries maybe. We dun go closer than this, but the Wynds used to come up here with sledges to take stone away. ‘Til we started shootin’ ‘em. They don’t do it no more.”
“Why don’t you go closer?”
“It don’t agree with us.”
“What do you mean?”
Radha sighed and slanted her dark eyes at Lark. Pressing a finger to the fang tattoo under one eye, she said, “Magic place. Wraith magic, spelled against beasts. Yeh mixed-blood, I can tell. Wynds, city-folk, yeh all mixed, yeh got no tribe no more. Yeh ken’t change. Wynds come and steal ‘cause they not spelled against; they so mixed-up that the magic ken’t see ‘em. But it hurt us wi’ changin’ blood to go down there. After all these years, we still enemies to their magics.”
Lark looked at Radha askance. “Changing blood. You’re a skinchanger?”
Radha flashed a grin, showing far more teeth than her previous tight smiles. Sharp little teeth. “What, yeh think our foxes pets?”
Blinking, Lark struggled for a reply. She had thought that, and the realization sent a flush to her dark cheeks along with the new fear. Fear of offending her hosts; fear of being eaten by scary beastfolk.
“Um,” she said, and Radha snorted and looked over the ruins again.
“We dun talk it aroun’,” said the Corvishwoman. “Humans forget their ancestors an’ that’s fine; mixed blood dun need to know. Wynds think we s
piritists—true. We call the spirits, praise ‘em, offer to ‘em. Serve ‘em an’ they serve us. We send our mixed-bloods out to do our work in the human world, so no one guess we not human.
“But we chirinain. Foxes, children of the Slinker, Daxfora. Our cousins t’okielain, crows from up in the smoky mountains. Yeh seen ‘em perchin’, watchin’ over our compound. We work together but not too close. Few enough changers now to go breedin’ more mixed-bloods fer fun.
“But that why yeh here, yeh? Fer our way wi’ the spirits.”
Lark nodded slowly. She had only hinted at Trevere’s request before, and the thought of explaining it now made her nervous. She overtopped Radha by a head and certainly outweighed her, but she was no fighter. Even without knowing that the Corvishwoman was a skinchanger, she would have been wary of saying something that could start a fight.
Radha leaned against a tree and tilted her head, hooking her thumbs in her braided belt. “So. Yeh done yeh sightseein’. Now talk.”
Deep breath. Remember, it’s not your deal, it’s his.
“I’m just the messenger,” she said out loud. “There’s a man who should be in Thynbell by now. An Imperial. An abomination. He sent me to you to ask for help.”
Radha’s rusty brows rose, but her expression did not change. “What would an Imperial abomination want from the spirits?”
“To help kill the Guardian vessel.”
The Corvishwoman’s eyes widened and Lark tensed, expecting some fierce outburst. But Radha only said, “Why would spirits help kill Aesangat?”
“Not Aesangat. The man.” A guilty twinge went through Lark as she thought of Cob. Poor fool. She could not say that she had liked him, but he deserved better than this. “He’s fallen into Wyndish hands,” she continued. “The Gold Army. The abomination wants him dead for personal reasons, but killing him would set the Great Spirit free.”
“What personal reasons?”
“That’s…not really my place to speculate…”
Radha cocked her brows again. “Dun care about yeh place,” she said harshly. “Tell me why this abomination would set Aesangat free. We know they been huntin’ her fer ages. Why change their minds?”
“Her?”
“She the heart of the dark elements. Shade-giver, life-shaper, swaddler--the womb. Neither of ‘em really man or woman, but Aesangat, we call her ‘she’.”
“All right,” Lark said, thinking, She’s really got the wrong vessel then. “Well…I think…the abomination loves him.”
Radha gave her a flat look.
Exasperated, Lark said, “What? It’s what I think. Him and the vessel, they were friends—for real, maybe--and it’s scrambled Trev-- The abomination all up. It’s not Aesangat he wants to set free, it’s Cob. That’s the vessel’s name: Cob. I dunno what the Imperials are planning to do but I gathered that if they destroy Aesangat, they destroy Cob’s soul too. The abomination said he’d kill Cob himself before that could happen.”
“An’ yeh trust this abomination?”
“No. But he’s totally crazy over this. I believe that part.”
“An’ what he want from us?”
“Spirit aid. He knows the Gold Army wards against the Kheri, but he says they can’t keep spirits out.”
Radha showed her teeth in a sneer of amusement. “True. Men were taught magic by wraiths but never learnt it right.”
“I don’t think he cares what happens to him after, so long as the deed’s done. So you could cut down one more abomination.”
“Yeh got no care for ‘im?”
“Just pity.”
Radha made a thoughtful sound and tapped her chin with a finger, looking up at the trees. Lark looked as well.
Two crows watched them silently from the ice-crusted heights--huge crows, like the ones from the perches in Kanrath-Neirai. From this distance, they made Lark think of cloaked figures hunched on the branches.
“Um,” she said, just as one of them unfurled its wings and floated down to the snow beside them.
Lark squelched the urge to step back. The bird was big enough to peck her in the navel. She had never thought something with feathers could be intimidating, but when the crow cocked its head and fixed her with a beady yellow eye, a chill went through her.
“Yeh want t’okielain. They speak wi’ spirits the best,” Radha said as the crow hopped toward Lark and peered up at her. It was not entirely black; piebald spots marked its throat and breast and tipped its wings. Nervously she inclined her head to it, figuring that politeness always helped, and it clacked its beak once, giving her a glimpse of tiny reptilian teeth.
Then a shudder rippled through it, and it ducked its black head. Its wings shifted in their sockets, rolling forward like shoulders with a crackling sound of bone and sinew. Lark recoiled in alarm as feathers fluffed, then receded, and the bird spread its clawed feet for balance as it straightened into a more human stance.
Not entirely human. It still stood on claws, awkwardly, with narrow crooked legs coated in black scales and a thin, ribby body, hunched shoulders and long, long fingers. As it raised its head, Lark sighed in relief to see no beak, but a sharp, hatchet-nosed face under a bristle of black hair. Feathers still sprouted from its arms and shoulders and down its spine, its tail sweeping the snow, and though it was naked she could not guess at gender. There was nothing visibly genital about it.
“Yeh mighta stood by a rock so’s I could perch,” it said to Radha in a hoarse voice. The woman shrugged indifferently.
Lark twisted her hands together, telling herself not to show her sudden glee. A Black Corvish! Few Shadow Folk had ever seen one; they were reclusive, elusive, and left most of the business-dealings to their Red Corvish kin. Getting to know them—getting to a familiarity with them where she might broker her own deals without the Red middlemen—gave her another advantage over the shadowbloods who might try to force her out.
The Black Corvish scratched itself through its feathers with clawed forefingers and looked up at her with interest.
“Yeh abomination know we curious,” it said. “We always in fer trouble. But what ken we do in a human-place, eh? Fly down into a dungeon? Slink a fox into a garrison? Better a goblin fer that. Thynbell far an’ well-citified, an’ we can be city beasts when we need, but not easy. An’ we not the wolves. We dun storm castles.”
Lark grimaced and held out her hands apologetically. “I don’t really know what he’s planning. I’m not sure he does either. All I know is he thinks this is important enough to your folk that you’d help.”
The t’okielain tapped the side of its nose with a foreclaw, the other fingers tucked against its palm. Its yellow eyes searched her face, then abruptly it nodded. “Got anythin’ of his?”
“No…I don’t think so.”
“Tch… Makin’ us work fer it. I’ll go chat wi’ Zolvin T’okiel.” The t’okielain flashed a toothy grin at her, then stepped back and shook its shoulders. Like long hairs, feather-shafts slid from its bare skin then fluffed out their vanes; in a matter of moments, its arms were wings again. It stretched its jaw wide as the feathery fuzz spread, then snapped it shut as a beak.
A bird once more, it cocked its head at her, then hopped past and flashed out its wide wings as it took off over the ruined city.
Lark stared after it until it was just a speck in the pale sky. Then she glanced up to the other crow—blithely preening in its tree—and back to Radha, who looked smug.
“What?” Lark said.
“Nothin’, leina. Dun yeh worry. Zolvin T’okiel always go fer the fun stuff.”
Fun? Lark shook her head ruefully and wondered what she had gotten into.
*****
At the top of the last decline that led to Thynbell, Darilan Trevere reined in his horse. The pale wolf stood in the middle of the road, watching him.
He did not know why it had chosen to follow him instead of Lark. It seemed logical: the skinchanger should go to where the skinchangers laired, not pursue the Imperial. But her
e it was, and here it had been for the two days since he had parted from Lark—shadowing him through the trees, never quite emerging.
Now, with it out in the open, he was reminded of its size. The Ten-Sky horse was a light, small beast, Darilan’s height at its shoulder, and the wolf came up to its chest--high enough for Darilan to plant his boot on its back without straightening his leg. Even from yards away, it was an intimidating creature, its pale eyes inscrutable.
Darilan struggled to interpret the beast’s behavior. Its ears were up, and he thought that was good, but the arch of its back warned him off. Beneath him, the Sky horse shifted restively. It was used to the wolf’s shadowing, but not this.
“What is it?” he called out. He knew it understood.
The wolf did not move. Its tail stood out stiff, its legs splayed just slightly. Those eyes stayed fixed on him. In the wan light its coat looked silvery like the slush around it, and bristled with the suggestion of defensive quills.
It’s angry, he thought. What did I do?
If he had carried a crossbow, he would have just shot it. With Thynbell in sight, his nerves were on edge, his mind buzzing with dangerous plans. He needed to get down there and set things in motion, find Cob, finish the job. Not muck around with the wildlife.
But when he tapped the horse’s flanks, it did not move, only laid back its ears. The wolf stood its ground.
“Piss on this,” he muttered. His left arm itched badly, the skin crawling under the black bracer. He was not sure he could fight a skinchanger. Louder, he said, “If you had a problem with the plan, you should have spoken earlier. But feel free to speak now. Or don’t you know how?”
The wolf’s lips curled, showing its teeth. Darilan’s hand slid to Serindas’ hilt.
But then the beast bowed its head and shrugged its shoulders in a strangely human way. Across the distance, Darilan heard the sound of joints crackling, and the guttural groan of a creature caught between pleasure and pain. Silver hair spilled like a mane from its scalp, and its back stretched, bones shifting beneath the skin.
The Light of Kerrindryr (The War of Memory Cycle Book 1) Page 43
