Daybreak

by Shae Ford

  “Hold on for a little while longer,” she whispered as she laid his head upon the floor. “I promise you … it’ll be over sooner than you think.”

  CHAPTER 49

  A Small Way

  Eveningwing had never seen such a flock gathered together. There were humans of every feather: pirates and giants, little mots and the wild ones. He remembered some of their faces, but most were new. He’d spent so long trying to learn them all that his eyes began to throb from the effort.

  But he was too excited to blink.

  While most of the humans slept or ate, the leaders gathered together. They filled the night with the different noises of their talking. The pirates’ voices hardly ever slowed. They were as quick and constant as bluebirds. The giants spoke in booms and bursts: their calls were far between, but powerful enough to silence the others — well, almost all of the others.

  No matter how the giants boomed, the wild ones would not be quiet. They carried on with a squabble so fierce that it would’ve shamed the crows into silence. Their voices forced the others to speak louder, and soon Eveningwing’s ears were ringing with the noise. It didn’t stop until their Gwen finally smacked the loudest one with the flat of her hand.

  He yelped and tumbled from his seat. She raised her fist at the others. “I’ve got one ready for each of you. I promise you’ll tire of having your ears rattled long before I tire of slapping them.”

  They went straight-backed and quiet.

  “Thank you,” Lysander said. He turned his glare from the wildmen and onto the giants. “So you’re telling me you have no idea at all where they’re keeping Jake?”

  “No, I … wait a moment.” Brend raised his brows and swatted Declan across the arm. “Didn’t one of those mages stop to tell you where they planned to stash him?”

  “Yeh, floor and cell. We had a nice long chat about it, and then I told him we were planning on coming up to Midlan for a visit —”

  “All right, that’s enough,” Lysander said testily.

  Eveningwing didn’t understand why he stopped them, or why the giants laughed. But even though it sounded as if they were about to find out where Jake was, the giants didn’t finish their tale. And Lysander never asked about it again.

  Maybe Eveningwing had missed the answer.

  “Enough with your teasing,” Nadine said, prodding Brend with the shaft of her spear. “This is no time for jokes. Our friend is in danger!”

  He flicked the weapon aside. “Calm yourself, wee mot. We’re getting to it.”

  “Yeh, and you’ll only make yourself sick if you worry over it,” Declan added. When she still fought, he picked her up by the shoulders and set her aside. “Why don’t you take your folk and go for a walk about camp, eh? See what’s out there.”

  “It is dark — there is nothing to see!” Nadine insisted.

  But the giants shooed her to the edge of the trees until she finally led her warriors away. The poor mots had voices that were smaller than the rest. Their words were no less important to Eveningwing, but they often got swallowed up.

  “It’s this Ulric we ought to worry about,” Brend said, dragging a hand through his spikey mass of hair. “From what I’ve heard, it sounds as if he’s the one controlling all the mages.”

  “He’s got them collared up like Titus had his beasts,” Declan said with a nod.

  Lysander tapped his chin. “So if we manage to kill Ulric, it’ll free the others?”

  “It should —”

  “Why are we still talking about this?” Gwen cut in, dragging a hand down her face. “Talking will get us nothing. My warriors could have the King’s walls beaten flat by dawn. My craftsmen will chop his army into pieces and scatter his mages to the wind. By the time the sun sets, we’ll be using his monsters’ hides for cloaks!”

  “We’re not going to give you the run of things,” Aerilyn said, stomping up to her. “You’ve got no order and no self-control. What if one of the mages you scatter is Jake? I won’t let you go crashing through those gates if there’s even the slightest chance that you’ll hurt my friend.”

  “Perhaps the King has already killed him,” Silas murmured. “We sit at the threshold of his great den — and yet, there hasn’t been a spell sent after us. His swordbearers have been strangely quiet.”

  He slid into Aerilyn, his glowing eyes upon the shade of Midlan in the distance.

  She stepped back uncomfortably. “He’s probably only waiting for dawn. No one wants to start a fight in the middle of the — would you stop that?”

  Silas had been stepping close to her every time she gave him an inch: touching his chest to her crossed arms, silently pushing her back until she stood several paces from Gwen. He smiled at Aerilyn’s scowl. “Mmm, no. I will not stop.”

  “Fine.” She bowed her chest out and shoved against him. “Then I suppose we’ll just stand here all night.”

  “Yes, I suppose we will.”

  “No.” Lysander grabbed his Aerilyn by the belt and pulled her away. “We don’t have time for all that.”

  “What we need is a rescue,” Shamus said. He sat close to the fire, hunched on the back of a log and tugging on the bushy hairs that grew from his face. “If we could manage to dig Jake out of there before things get thick, then we could set the whole lot of them loose on Midlan and never have to worry about who they scatter.”

  “We’ll scatter them all!” Gwen cried, stirring her wild ones into howls.

  Thelred had been watching silently while the others spoke. He leaned cross-armed against the front of a tree, a wild one named Lydia stuck to his shoulder. It seemed as if she was always stuck to him. Eveningwing couldn’t tell if Thelred liked having her close or not, but he thought the pirate’s face might’ve been a little less frightening than usual.

  “The only way into Midlan is through its gates. If there’d been any cracks in its walls, then it would’ve gotten sacked years ago,” Thelred growled.

  He silenced the leaders. Their faces fell and their stares turned to the fire. Hard lines creased their brows.

  But there was another way in. Eveningwing knew it! He wasn’t sure if his voice would be welcome among the others, but he couldn’t stop himself. “There’s one way — a small way.”

  All of their gazes rose from the fire. They stared into the branches where Eveningwing crouched, and their silence made him uncomfortable. He slid deeper into the shadows.

  Still, Lysander squinted until he found him. “Is that you, Eveningwing? What’s this about another way?”

  A knot bunched up in his throat. He swallowed it down. “It’s the passage the shapechangers use to leave the castle. The King never wanted us in his halls — he dug us a tunnel out.”

  “Is it too small for a giant?” Brend called.

  “No but it’s … tricky. And you would have to keep your steps quiet.”

  The giants grumbled loudly at this.

  “The wildmen will go,” Gwen said, pounding a fist against her chest.

  Aerilyn threw her hands up with an exasperated sigh. “Then we’ll be right back where we started — with you scattering everything that moves and giving no thought at all to Jake!”

  “Aye, but things would be much easier if the wildmen went through first. Could you just promise to keep your folk in line, lass?” Shamus said.

  Gwen frowned at the fire for a moment, her brows tight with thought. “No,” she grunted finally.

  Lysander drew his sword. “Then the pirates will go!”

  “Wait a moment.”

  Thelred stepped away from the tree. The wild ones had made him a new wooden leg. It was much quieter than the old one. His trousers covered it well and the end fit easily into his boot. But Eveningwing had seen it uncovered, once — and there were so many little metal pieces stuck into the wood that he wasn’t sure how it all fit together.

  “What’s on the other side of this tunnel?” Thelred said when he stood beneath Eveningwing’s perch.

  He thought that was a
n odd thing to ask. “It’s the nest where the shapechangers stay — the four-legged ones,” he said quickly when the camp beneath him let out a collective groan. “The birds stay in the atrium. But they will all be asleep right now. So if we move without a sound —”

  “And what if they make a sound?” Silas purred, his eyes sliding over to the pirates. “Humans are notoriously clumsy. They cannot be expected to move with grace and guile.”

  Eveningwing had a feeling they wouldn’t like his answer. “The shapechangers will send their thoughts to the King if they see you — or hear your footsteps or smell your scent. They don’t like having strangers in their nest. Then he will probably open their cages on you.”

  “So if we go in that way, we can’t be seen, heard, or smelled?” When Eveningwing nodded, Lysander’s sword fell to his side. “All right then, let’s get back to it.”

  All of their faces turned away and their voices started up again. He thought they might still be thinking about it until the forest cook lumbered in with a platter between his arms.

  There was a tower of bowls stacked on top of it, and it leaned dangerously with his every step. “Dinner!” he gasped, his face red from the effort. “Come have a bite while it’s hot.”

  The leaders gathered around him quickly, but Eveningwing didn’t feel like dinner. Perhaps he would join the mots on their walk. He climbed down from the branches and made his way through camp.

  The wild ones had built shelters from the things they found in the woods: there were tents made of deadened limbs, hollows molded into the rocks. They’d even stretched some of the lowest branches downwards — pulling them into arches that leaned against the trunks of the trees.

  It’d only taken them a few hours to change the forest. He thought the wildmen could’ve shaped a nest out of anything.

  Eveningwing had just made it beyond the light of the lanterns and fires when he felt a pair of eyes upon him. They stabbed against his back, watching from a knot of shrubs.

  He crept over to them carefully. His vision adjusted until he saw the shadow of a woman crouched beneath the leaves. “Elena?” he whispered. “Why are you hiding?”

  “I wasn’t hiding — I was following you.” She rose from the shrubs and took him under the chin. Her dark eyes never blinked. “You know of another way into the castle.”

  “I do. But the others didn’t seem to think it was a good —”

  “I don’t care what the others thought. Show me the way in.”

  Eveningwing liked Elena. The forest woman was patient and calm, and she had a hunter’s stare. Not only that, but she seemed to enjoy the thrill of cornering her prey as much as he did.

  They could’ve had such fun together, if only she’d had wings.

  “All right. I’ll lead you. But we should —”

  “No, wait!”

  Eveningwing had been so focused on Elena that he hadn’t heard the loping steps coming up behind them. The fiddler tumbled from the shrubs with his tunic unbuttoned and his belt half-done, whispering loudly:

  “Did I hear the murmurings of adventure coming from over —? Oof!”

  He was so tangled in his clothes that he must’ve forgotten to watch his steps: he tripped over a root and flopped onto the ground. When he peeled himself up, one whole side of his face was covered in dirt.

  “I’m coming with you,” he whispered.

  When he grinned, Eveningwing saw there was more dirt in his teeth.

  He liked the fiddler, too — but he was no hunter. And he was easily the noisiest human in the flock. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “No, you’re wrong. It’s a horrible idea,” Elena growled.

  Jonathan scrambled to his feet and sauntered until his toes touched Elena’s. “If you don’t take me along, I’m going to start singing. And you know how loudly I sing.” He drew the fiddle from his belt and placed the bow menacingly atop its front. “I’ll have the whole camp wide awake and swearing murder before I even hit the chorus — and the chorus, I warn you, is dreadful.”

  Elena stared at him for a moment before she shrugged. “All right, you can come along.”

  Eveningwing wasn’t sure he’d heard her. “He can?”

  “Of course.” Elena’s eyes brightened considerably as she watched the fiddler whoop and dance around. “If we’re going to be in there with all of Crevan’s beasts, we ought to bring someone we can outrun.”

  *******

  The tunnel Eveningwing led them to was cramped and dark. Its mouth was hardly anything more than a crack at the base of the southern wall — hidden so well behind a clump of foliage that Elena doubted if she would’ve ever seen it.

  “It’s slippery,” Eveningwing warned as he crawled inside.

  Elena didn’t care about it being slippery. Her heart was still pounding from their trip around the wall.

  Something strange was happening in Midlan. A mass of black clouds gathered above its western wall and grew steadily larger as they traveled, until the storm stood out like a blot against the stars.

  Moisture poured from its edges so thickly that it sounded more like a waterfall than rain. Elena knew the King’s mages must have summoned it — the clouds stayed fixed tightly above the western wall and the rain fell nowhere else. It was too strange not to be magic.

  But she couldn’t understand why the King would want rain falling in his courtyard. Wouldn’t it have been better to send the storm to drench their camp?

  At least the clouds had given them the shadows they needed to slip up to the walls unnoticed. The southern wall was much trickier to navigate. It was alive with soldiers: they packed the ramparts and filled the courtyard to its edges. She could hear hundreds of voices, hundreds of steps. There was the groan of ropes and the steady beat of blacksmiths at the forge. The soldiers marched tirelessly about their work — and she could only imagine what Crevan had planned.

  As they picked their way across to the tunnel, Elena kept her shoulders pressed against the wall. The rampart’s lip protruded just far enough to shadow them. She kept a tight hold on Jonathan while Eveningwing led the way. The fiddler couldn’t see very well and kept stumbling over every little rock — and the absolute last thing they needed was to have him go rolling out into the open for all of Midlan to see.

  There’d been a few close calls, and she’d all but carried him through the toughest stretch. But they’d finally made it to the tunnel.

  “Are you sure you’re supposed to go in with your head first, mate?” Jonathan whispered as Eveningwing’s legs disappeared. “I think I’d rather start with my feet — they’re less important and much easier to replace.”

  “I’m not sure it would make you any difference,” Elena hissed.

  She slid into the hole foot-first and braced her heels against the slippery floor. The tunnel was dank and so covered in moss that she had to dig her fingers through an inch of slime just to grip the stone.

  Things went well for a few moments. Eveningwing clawed his way down on his belly while Jonathan and Elena slid forward by the inch. They’d gone so long without anything foolish happening that she’d actually begun to forget about the fiddler.

  But he reminded her quickly.

  Elena was between holds when Jonathan suddenly lost his footing. His knees slammed into her back and jolted her forward — driving her heels directly into the flats of Eveningwing’s feet.

  He shot forward like an arrow, arms wrapped protectively over his face. Elena’s fingers clawed through filth and moss, but she could find nothing to slow her fall. In the end, all she could do was drag Jonathan down beside her and clamp a hand over his mouth.

  If they fell to their deaths, she didn’t want his yelling to be the last thing she heard.

  Fortunately, the tunnel came to an end before they could reach a skull-splitting speed, and the moss muffled their slide down. They wound up flopping out of the tunnel’s back — filthy and scraped, but otherwise unharmed.

  “Ugh.” Jonathan wiped at t
he muddy print Elena had left over his mouth, grimacing. “What sort of stink is this? Did we just come through a lat —?”

  Eveningwing slapped a hand over his mouth, leaving another filthy print behind. He motioned for silence and waved them between the arches of some narrow, slime-covered passage.

  They were deep beneath the fortress. Elena knew by how wetly the air clung to her skin that the earth was well above them. Hairs rose down the back of her neck and her lungs tightened against the pressure of the walls, but she forced herself to stay calm.

  She’d listened to the others talk long enough to know that they had no idea what they were doing. Jake was somewhere inside Midlan. He was depending on her. If she didn’t find him quickly, the wildmen would come bursting in on the wings of whatever half-finished plan Lysander came up with and tear him limb from bloody limb.

  Elena wasn’t going to let that happen. She would crawl through a crack to the center of the earth, if she had to. But she would see to it that Jake didn’t come to harm.

  There was far too much she had left to say.

  The narrow passage never seemed to end. It wound its way through the dank stone in inexplicable patterns. Torches hung sparsely down its length. Every once in a while, they would pass some hissing, sickly excuse for a light. But for the most part, the darkness reigned.

  They were coming around one particularly sharp bend when Eveningwing reached back. Elena looked up at his touch and followed the line of his eyes to a section of wall on their left.

  A door of iron rods had been fitted into the wall, blocking the entrance to a tiny stone chamber. There was a lumpy shadow curled upon the floor. Elena’s breath caught in her throat when her eyes adjusted and the shadow took shape.

  It was one of the King’s monsters — a man twisted around the body of a lion. The lion’s foreclaws were as wide as shovels with daggers sticking out from their ends. Its warped head rested atop them: a man’s face split nearly in half around a set of deadly, shining teeth.