Daybreak

by Shae Ford

  Her brows rose in surprise. She took a step back. “That isn’t —”

  “It’s exactly what would happen. You can’t fight Midlan on your own, and you won’t risk dragging them back here. It doesn’t matter if I’m standing in your shadow — there’ll be miles between us. I still won’t be able to reach you. We’ll never see each other again, if you leave me now. So if that’s what you want …”

  “No.”

  “Then trust me,” Kael said. He peeled her arm from his chest and took her hands in his. “Trust that I’ll be able to hold my own … and I’ll trust you not to drop me.”

  Her smile was reluctant and fleet. “This is it. Once we leave, there’ll be no turning back.”

  “Until we sack Midlan and knock Crevan off his throne, you mean.”

  “What if we can’t?” Her voice was hardly a whisper. When he rolled his eyes, she grabbed him under the chin. “I mean it, Kael. There’s a very good chance that we’ll be on the run for years. I need you to plan for the day when things go horribly wrong.”

  There was something in her stare that made him hesitate — the flicker of a warning in the dark, the starlight glancing off a dagger’s blade. It made him wonder if perhaps there was something she wasn’t telling him. He thought there might be something else to fear.

  But the moment passed in a glint, and the darkness covered his worries. “Nothing’s going to go wrong. We’ll cross that river when we come to it,” he said shortly, when he saw the argument in her glare. “Is there anything else?”

  “Yes, and it’s very important.” Her grip tightened as her voice dropped to a growl: “I need you to swear, on everything you hold dear, that you’ll stow your pig’s head and blasted well listen to me — especially while we’re in the air. Will you do as I say?”

  “As much as I ever have,” he said with a nod.

  She groaned, half-laughing. Then she kissed him gently. “Come on, then. Let’s find you something other than a pair of rumpled trousers to wear — the world’s much cooler above the clouds.”

  After weeks of enduring the stuffy weather of the seas, he was looking forward to it.

  Kyleigh led him down the hall to one of the empty chambers. There was a small dresser crammed beside one of the windows. They were looking through it for something that might fit when a slight cough drew their eyes back to the door.

  It was so faint and unremarkable a sound that it took them several moments to turn. A man stood near the doorway. He wore a full set of black, salt-stained clothes and kept his hands clamped firmly behind his back. Between the length of his face and the way his stare dragged across them, Kael began to feel as if they were boring him …

  Kyleigh groaned loudly. “Hello, Crumfeld.”

  And at the same moment, Kael said: “Geist!”

  CHAPTER 9

  Goodbyes

  “Geist?” Kyleigh passed a look between them. “Who’s Geist?”

  “I am.” He peeled the mold off his face, revealing the plain, bored set of eyes that’d once focused long enough to map every square inch of the Duke’s castle. “Crumfeld is little more than a character I devised to gain access to your Roost. I hope you aren’t too terribly upset by it.”

  The drone of his voice made it sound as if he didn’t care one way or the other. Kyleigh’s lips parted for a moment. She squinted at him as if he was a rude message scrawled at the bottom of a page, and she was trying to decide whether or not to be offended. “What?”

  It took a painful amount of seconds for Geist to turn to Kael — revealing the raw burn on the side of his neck.

  All at once, he understood. “You were the servant! I knew there was someone else.”

  “Yes, it was me,” he said, in what was possibly the least-exciting exclamation Kael had ever heard. “With the Duke toppled, I’d intended to make Roost my permanent home. I was rather taken with butlering, and the Dragongirl provided no end of entertainment. But,” his expression stayed fixed as he sighed, “I knew the moment you arrived that Crumfeld was in very serious danger — I knew you would recognize me the moment you saw me. A fascinating talent, to be sure.”

  The flatness with which he spoke made Kael wonder if he actually knew the meaning of the word fascinating, or if he’d accidentally confused it with ordinary.

  “I’d planned to tell you the truth, eventually. I suppose now is as good a time as any. I’d like you to heal me before you leave,” he added, dragging a finger to point at his neck. “I can’t have anything memorable about me, and a wound will always draw the eye.”

  Kyleigh frowned at him. “How did you know we were leaving?”

  “Don’t bother asking,” Kael mumbled as he went to work. “He’s full of secrets.”

  When he was finished, Geist straightened his coat hems. “Splendid. My ship leaves in an hour.”

  “You can’t go sailing now — you’ll be burned!” Kael said.

  Geist’s eyes slid dully over to Kyleigh. “Not as long as Midlan’s sights are fixed elsewhere. Now that Roost is gone, I shall have to find a new castle to call home … a rather taxing thought, to be sure. And the process itself is even more taxing. Good day.”

  He moved so slowly that it took Kael a moment to realize that he’d inched out the door. “Wait — where are you …?”

  The hallway was empty. Or at least it certainly seemed empty, but there was never any telling with Geist. Kael kicked the legs of a suspicious-looking armchair, just in case.

  “I’ll never understand him,” he grumbled as he stepped back into the room.

  Kyleigh pursed her lips. “I can’t believe he actually made me miss Crumfeld. Here, put this on.”

  She flung a tunic at him and, in the second he was blinded, shoved him onto the bed. While he struggled to find the sleeves, she slid a pair of boots onto his feet. They were a bit too big, but it was better than having to go barefoot.

  He’d gone to tuck his shirt in when he thought to check his pockets … and found them horribly empty.

  “Why are you pawing around like a —?”

  “Nothing. It’s stupid,” Kael said shortly, even as his stomach burned.

  He’d left the rings inside the pocket of his other trousers — the ones that’d been torn nearly in half by Kyleigh’s attack. They were probably melted together somewhere in the ruins of Roost … along with the bow she’d given him, and the dragonscale gauntlets she’d made …

  Though it stung him to think about all he’d lost, he knew it would do him no good to fret over it. They were only things, he reminded himself. You still have what’s most important.

  “Where are we off to?”

  “The kitchens. We won’t be landing for a while, and I can’t have your stomach growling in my ears all the way to Midlan. What if we get hit because I can’t hear the spells over the rumbling?” Kyleigh’s eyes slid up from the laces. “I’m sure you’d feel awful about it the whole fall down.”

  “I’m not sure I would,” he said at her grin.

  But in the end, it did him no good to argue.

  They slipped into the Bay’s grand dining room unnoticed. The afternoon sky had again become clouded by a storm: it dulled the shine of the great window that overlooked the water below, and sent the tiny fishing boats scrambling to their docks.

  Fortunately, there was a lunch waiting on the dining room table.

  Unfortunately, the table was already occupied.

  “Hello, hello! Come in and join our feast,” Uncle Martin called from the table’s head. There was a grin on his face and what looked suspiciously like a large number of cookie crumbs scattered throughout his mustache. In his arms he held a tiny, wailing bundle.

  Kyleigh moved so quickly that Kael hardly saw it: one moment she was standing beside him and the next, she’d plucked baby Dante from Uncle Martin’s arms.

  “Hello, you,” she whispered, grinning as she held him aloft. “I hope you haven’t been too fussy for your poor old Uncle.”

  “He starts wailing t
he moment he wakes and doesn’t pause for so much as a breath. But the moment a woman gets a hold of him,” he clamped his hand in a fist, “silence. He’s all giggles and grins. Yes, I know what you’re up to,” he said severely, when Dante’s wide blue eyes appeared from over Kyleigh’s shoulder. “Enjoy it while you can, you little villain — sobbing won’t get you anywhere with the ladies in few short years. Then you’ll be just as lost as the rest of us.”

  While Kyleigh snuggled Dante, Uncle Martin went back to shoveling in cookies at his usual alarming rate. Kael took the opportunity to fill his pockets with bits of cheese and dried meats. He stuffed two fistfuls of provisions down and grabbed some bread to eat on the way.

  He’d gone to tell Kyleigh that he was packed when she suddenly gasped. “What have you got there?” She unclenched Dante’s tiny fist and drew a small gold earring from between his fingers, tsking with mock severity. “I think you’ve got some explaining to do, little one. Whose is this?”

  Uncle Martin looked up from his cookie long enough to frown. “It must be Clairy’s. She came along with Jonathan a little while back. Then after he went off with Lysander, she stayed here. It’s turned out to be a good thing, too. I don’t know what little Dante and I would do without her.”

  “Where’s Aerilyn?” Kael wondered.

  It was the wrong thing to say.

  Uncle Martin’s cookie fell onto the table. As it rolled between the plates and onto the floor, Kael saw it wasn’t just any cookie: it was a ginger cookie with extra sugar on top — Uncle Martin’s favorite.

  And Kael knew that nothing short of a disaster could’ve possibly made him lose his grip.

  “Kingdom if I know!” Uncle Martin cried. “All my children have left me — scattering into the wind, fleeing in every direction. My son is arguing with merchants at the chancellor’s castle, my nephew took off to rescue one of his blasted ships. I can’t even tell you how they’re all getting on because that silly little bird-boy —”

  “Eveningwing.”

  “— hasn’t been by in ages. Elena might still be around here somewhere, but even if she is, I’ll never be able to find her!” Uncle Martin’s head sagged with a heavy moan. “Oh, but it’s gotten worse. It’s gotten so much worse.”

  “How?” Kael said carefully.

  Uncle Martin just moaned and shook his head for a moment. When he finally spoke, he sounded close to tears: “Even with the others gone, I thought I would always have Aerilyn. She’ll never leave me, I said to myself. Then not two mornings after everybody else scattered, I woke to discover that my favorite niece-in-law had slipped away in the dead of night — heading for the Grandforest, no less! It’s enough to make a poor old man’s heart seize up, I tell you, having to rise each day and wander an empty house!”

  Kyleigh glanced down at Dante — whose eyes were falling heavy with sleep. “That doesn’t sound at all like Aerilyn. Did she happen to say why?”

  “Oh, some rubbish about righting wrongs and saving the seas,” he muttered as he ground another ginger cookie absently into the tablecloth. “She wrote it all out, but I don’t remember the details. That girl always speaks in riddles — it’s her one and only flaw.”

  Worry bent Kyleigh’s lips into a frown, and Kael began to feel it. “Can we have a look at the letter?”

  “I burned it.”

  “Oh, for mercy’s sake.”

  “I’m a very passionate man,” Uncle Martin said defensively. “Once I’d read that letter, I knew I couldn’t stand to read it again. So I tossed it —”

  “Mr. Martin!”

  They all jumped at the indignant cry. A plump woman with rosy cheeks burst in from the kitchens. She’d replaced her usual apron with a light coat, and wore a broad hat over her tight knot of hair. There was a small basket hanging from her hand — and she brandished it at Uncle Martin like a sword.

  “Would you kindly stop grinding your lunch into my good cloths? They’re stained enough as it is …” Her words trailed away as her eyes narrowed upon the crumbs. “Is that a cookie?”

  Uncle Martin’s shoulders straightened. “So what if it is, Bimply?”

  “You know you aren’t supposed to have sweets, Mr. Martin. They’re not good for your — no, never mind it. Not today.” Mrs. Bimply straightened her hat and marched abruptly for the door.

  Uncle Martin nearly toppled his chair in his rush to stand. “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going out!”

  “Out?” he said, as if he’d never heard that word spoken before.

  Mrs. Bimply spun in the doorway. “Yes, I’m going out. Harold’s promised to take me sailing. We’re going to catch some fish and have a lovely picnic on his boat.”

  “Harold? Harold the blacksmith?” Uncle Martin sputtered. “But — but what about the cooking?”

  “There’s a giantess in my kitchens, Mr. Martin. A giantess. I think she’s got things well in hand. I’ll be back late. Good day to you all,” she added, curtsying as she swept out the door.

  Uncle Martin stared after her with the look of a man who’d just taken a boot to the breeches. “It’s all falling apart, I tell you. My whole life is crumbling before my very eyes,” he moaned as he slumped down into his chair.

  Kyleigh patted him on the shoulder. “Cheer up, Martin. It’ll all come back around. And in the meantime, you’ll have this little pickpocket to keep you company.”

  Amazingly, Dante had managed to fall asleep through the racket. Kyleigh place him gently into Uncle Martin’s arms — and set Clairy’s earring on the table beside him.

  “Yes, I suppose you’re right,” Uncle Martin whispered, grinning down. “All of these things just follow a pattern, don’t they?”

  Kyleigh slipped back, grabbing Kael around the wrist as she went. He followed her out the door, glancing behind him one last time … and the realization finally struck.

  They might not ever come back to Gravy Bay. As long as the King could find Kyleigh, they wouldn’t be able to come back. They couldn’t risk the lives of their friends. The same emptiness he’d felt when they’d set out for the Mountains pressed down upon him again.

  Only this time, it felt more … permanent.

  As they made their way down the hall, Kyleigh’s hand slipped from his wrist to wind her fingers in his. “After all the goodbyes I’ve said, you’d think I would’ve gotten used to it,” she whispered, her eyes hard. “But it always hurts just the same.”

  *******

  They wound their way through the mansion’s passageways and up several flights of stairs — each narrower and more impossibly twisted than the last. When they reached a room so bare and filled with dust that Kael’s eyes began to water at the sight of it, he thought for certain they’d reached the end.

  “What’s up here?”

  Kyleigh glanced at him from over her shoulder. “It looks like quite a bit of dust and nothing to me.”

  The ceiling was so low that it scraped the top of Kyleigh’s head. Kael had to hunch to follow her. “Well, then why are we here?”

  “Patience,” she growled.

  “What —?”

  Kael’s words were cut short as Kyleigh rammed the side of her fist into the planks above them. A hatch sprung open where she struck — and sent a shower of dust down the back of his neck.

  He tried to shake it off before it could trickle down his shirt, but wound up smacking his head against the low ceiling, instead. “Well, you could’ve at least warned me!” he cried, groaning as he felt a line of grit slide down his shirt. “It would have taken you no time — it isn’t funny!”

  “Yes it is! It’s always funny.”

  He felt a reluctant grin tugging at the corners of his lips at the sound of her laughter. So he shoved her out of the way and climbed from the hatch — prepared to march purposefully down whatever twisting hallway awaited them next.

  Instead, his toes curled inside his boots.

  He stood at the mansion’s top: a flat section of the roof where the bre
ath of the wind felt more powerful than ever. The Bay stretched out beneath him — a bowl of ocean turned dull by the thick clouds above it. The only things taller than he stood now were the white cliffs that ringed the village.

  “What do you think?” Kyleigh called from behind him. She’d pulled herself over the ledge and was dusting the grime from her armor when she saw the look on his face. She laughed again. “It’s not too late, whisperer — you can always turn back.”

  Kael quickly hid his shock with a scowl. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “All right, then.”

  Kyleigh stretched her arms over her head, bending herself in a curve that made him lose track of his feet …

  “Kael?”

  “What?”

  “I said you’re going to want to step back.”

  He knew there was no point in trying to hide it: a blind man could’ve seen the burn on his face. “Well, you shouldn’t do such distracting things if you don’t want people to gape.”

  “I don’t mind your gaping. I like the way you look at me,” she added, with a smile that set his skin ablaze.

  He watched in amazement as Kyleigh transformed. Her limbs grew long and her neck bent into a graceful arc. The black of her armor stretched into the lines between her scales to reveal the pure white beneath it. Wings unfurled from her shoulders. Even paced back, he had to duck to avoid getting swept off the roof as she flexed them.

  A dragon now crouched in the spot where Kyleigh had been standing only moments before. Her scales were snow-white, her eyes a fiery green. The dry, rasping sound of her dagger claws scraping against the shingles was the only sound for miles.

  Well, besides the worried thuds of Kael’s heart.

  “All right,” he said when she tilted her wing back. He followed the line of her eyes and saw she meant for him to climb onto her shoulders. The warmth beneath her scales made the pads of his fingers tingle as he braced himself against her side. He raised one leg hesitantly. “Should I …? Or is it like this? I don’t want to — oof!”