Hooded

by A A Woods

  A rock shifted.

  Ina’s head jerked up.

  The Amonoux towered over her, its massive jaws dripping as it stalked forward. Ina threw herself backwards but found only the pit’s black wall.

  “Help,” Ina whispered, her voice failing her. “Please, someone.”

  “Stop the Amonoux,” Yokan repeated, her voice as callous and uncaring as the wind.

  The wolf seemed to glow, its many eyes glinting with hunger.

  The seventh eye fixed on Ina, sharp with starvation, greedy for a fresh soul.

  Mentally clawing through tangles of pain, Ina tried to reach out. Her mind stretched; her bound hands unfolded. Desperately, she tried to tap into the energy that binds all living things. She groped for the wolf, extending a tendril of thought the way one might hold a hand out for a dog to sniff.

  Instead of the neat, orderly minds of her hounds, Ina instead found a power as enormous and unruly as a hurricane. Thick vines of raw energy lashed around the beast, knocking her aside with a thoughtless, instinctual strike. Ina tried to fight her way through. She could sense something beneath, something familiar.

  But with another lancing attack, her reach was broken.

  Ina scrambled backwards, gripping at the wall, pulling herself upright. Her heart hammered. Her brain panicked. Ina opened her mouth to scream.

  The wolf’s jaws closed with iron force around her skull.

  High above the pit, Yokan’s cold eyes narrowed as she watched blood burst over the pit’s wall, hissing as it hit the stone.

  “Too bad,” said the short, black-haired rebel, leaning over the edge with an expression of gleeful distaste. “We could have used that hood.”

  Yokan turned away, fists clenched. She was running out of options. Her forces were strong, but Delasir was stronger. Without the Furix to bring the tribes together, the foreigners’ hold on her island, her home, was only going to grow.

  Yokan glowered at the black rock around her, wondering how long until the enemy crushed her Bloody Paws into dust.

  “Feed the stags,” Yokan snapped, ignoring the echoing sounds of ripping flesh. “And deal with the girls.”

  “What do you suggest we do with them?”

  “Set them loose. We have enough mouths to feed.”

  “They might not make it over the Peaks.”

  Yokan scowled. “They will if they are strong enough.”

  The young woman nodded. Without another word, Yokan turned back to watch as the wolf devoured the hooded girl, blood clouding on its white coat like a gathering storm.

  Chapter One: Ghost Eyes

  There was a rustle of uneasiness among the youngsters as the flying fox was brought out. Carlette watched them battle with the urge to step back, pride warring with instinct. A young boy—one of the few in the Prederaux red hood—wrapped the crimson fabric tighter around his shivering body, as if he could disappear into the shadow of his cape.

  Carlette strode forward until she was positioned between the novices and the snarling predator. Cold seeped into her boots as she broke the crusty top layer of snow, but she ignored it. Her focus was reserved for the youthful eyes widening in awe as their mentor stood inches from a muzzled beast restrained only by flimsy ropes and laboring guards.

  “This,” Carlette said, addressing the gathered students, none older than thirteen, “is what the Moian tribe calls a sionach.”

  Carlette stepped back with a sharp nod to the guards. With a unified grunt, the men pulled the restraints tight. The sionach snarled, its growl reverberating off the mountains behind them, but it was powerless to stop them from pulling its limbs taut.

  “See here,” Carlette said, running a hand along the membranous skin that stretched between the fox’s arm and leg. “This allows her to glide between trees and stay away from the beetles and forest spiders. To enhabit a sionach, you must learn what these feel like, or you won’t be prepared to deal with her instinct to flee.”

  “But ma’am,” piped up a small, steely-eyed girl with dark skin and braided black hair. “We aren’t yellow hoods. Why should we master flying? Isn’t that for the Tower of the Eye?”

  “There will always be some crossover between schools at Jemelle,” Carlette answered, patient and slow. Years of listening to Grand Mera had made Carlette the perfect mimic of the old woman’s voice. “Bugs, for example, can often fly, and many birds swim beneath the waves. Ground animals can be predators and sometimes even a steed can be something else as well, like the carnivorous mountain stags the Ebonal people ride. Besides, one must always respect the other towers, for no member of the Order stands above any other.”

  The guards shifted, exchanging mocking smirks that seemed to say but all of you freaks stand beneath us. Carlette ignored them. She was used to their scorn, the derision that her tattoo brought. Witch. Monster. Half-breed savage. To them she was property, barely human.

  But she wore the anchor tattoo with pride.

  “Come on now,” Carlette said, her voice militaristic but not cruel. “Touch her. Look in her eyes and form a connection. One at a time, line up.”

  Carlette expected the steely-eyed little girl to be first, but she had to swallow her shock when the frightened boy took a tottering step forwards, red hood still wrapped tightly around his shoulders. Carlette schooled her pale features into an expression much like Grand Mera’s, distant and nonjudgmental.

  “Very good,” she said, moving aside. “Now, just like we practiced with the hounds.”

  The boy stood before the flying fox, his white-rimmed eyes owlish. His body angled away from the beast, whose menacing growls had become a single, wicked note. But he didn’t falter.

  “Form a connection,” Carlette said, her voice dropping into something kinder, soothing. “Once you’ve enhabited her, the rest of her kind will feel familiar.”

  “Yeah, they’re basically family to you animals, aren’t they?” called one of the guards. The rest of them snorted in response. Again, Carlette ignored them. Keeping her gaze firmly on the young boy, now reaching one quivering hand out towards the beast’s muzzled snout, Carlette would not, could not let her attention waver.

  The boy’s fingertips touched flared nostrils, so gentle it might have been the brush of butterfly wings. His brow furrowed. The snarling, angry note the fox had been sustaining trailed off. The white rims around the boy’s pupils glowed. Matching white rings appeared in the fox’s black eyes. Their breathing synchronized.

  “Very good,” Carlette said, careful to keep her voice low. The boy’s feelings were tangled with the fox’s now. The creature’s wild impulses would be almost inseparable from his own. “Feel her will mold to yours. You could ride her through the Giant’s Wood or use her strength in a battle.”

  “She can smell me,” said the boy in a distant, awestruck voice. “Even more than the hounds could.”

  Carlette smiled.

  “They do have incredible senses, don’t they? And they use each and every one to survive in the—”

  Suddenly, one of the fox’s limbs loosened. The boy cried out and toppled backwards, breaking the connection. With predatory grace, the sionach lashed out, its razor-sharp claws hissing through the air. There was a rip and a shriek of surprise as the boy went flying into his classmates in a tumble of bodies.

  Carlette’s head snapped up.

  “Why did you do that?” she growled at the snickering guard who had released his rope.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” he sneered. “Must have slipped. Sometimes when I’m around magic, I just can’t control my hands.”

  The other guards chuckled, fighting to haul the fox backwards and away from the novices. Carlette’s fists clenched as she fought the wave of hot power that surged through her, crashing against her self-control.

  “Maybe I should make your hands do whatever I want,” she said softly, stepping forwards, her mind whipping out like a cat’s tail. “How would you like that?”

  “T-that’s illegal,” stammered the guard, fear cry
stalizing the amusement in his expression.

  “Try me again,” Carlette said, “and we’ll see.”

  “Half-breed bitch,” he spat, but scrambled away as Carlette stretched out her fingers. The other guards exchanged glances, free hands flying to their pistols.

  Wrestling back her roiling, rabid magic, Carlette dropped her hand.

  No.

  Not again.

  Grand Mera couldn’t keep covering for her. She had to learn control.

  “I think that’s enough for today,” she said, voice tight. “Bring her back tomorrow. Same time. Except you,” she said, pointing at the now-pale guard. “Never come to this plateau again.”

  “Hoods don’t give orders.” said an older, more grizzled guard.

  “Perhaps not, but my requests tend to make it to Grand Mera. If you’d like to explain to her why a member of the upcoming Prederaux class almost died today, be my guest.”

  Turning away with dismissive finality, Carlette crouched in front of her students. The boy lay sprawled in the thin snow, cradling one arm, face twisted with pain.

  Carlette reached out. “Let me see.”

  She could already smell the wound, her raw senses prickling against his fear and the lingering scent of the Delarese men. The boy held out one shaking arm, revealing a clean slice that dripped blood on the training ground, gaping from elbow to wrist.

  “It’s just a scratch,” Carlette said, ripping off a bit of the boy’s tattered, fluttering cape and binding his sleeve tight. “Nothing to worry about. I’ve had far worse.”

  “W-why do they hate us?” asked the boy, the question small and vulnerable.

  Carlette kept her eyes on the knots, unable to meet his gaze. His voice pulled at something deep inside her, the force of her power struggling to get loose.

  She wrestled her answer into some semblance of Grand Mera’s brusqueness.

  “Because they fear us,” Carlette said, helping the boy to his feet. “They have no power. They know that you could destroy them with nothing more than a thought.”

  “But we can’t,” said the steely-eyed girl. “We aren’t trained to enhabit humans. It’s illegal.”

  Carlette’s lips twisted into a bitter smile as she wrapped an arm around the wounded boy.

  “But the difference between a threat and an action is the difference between survival and the noose. You will all need to learn how to walk that line if you plan to graduate in one piece.”

  · · ─────── ·❅· ─────── · ·

  Satisfied that the boy would live and the other students were safely in Cerise tower, Carlette leaned against a pillar. The stone square between the six towers of Jemelle, jokingly referred to as ‘the green’, bustled with activity. As snow drifted down in lazy swirls, hunched-over hoods and guards hurried to get out of the cold, haul supplies to various sheds, and bring and send news to the appropriate people.

  To her, the cold was a balm against what had almost happened.

  Carlette watched silently as a cluster of guards wrestled with a gigantic mountain stag, a brood mare captured for the breeding stalls. A class of black hoods trotted past, on their way to the insect conservatory for practice. Beyond the towers, Carlette could just barely make out Jemelle’s fences, a crown of spiked wood around their mountain base.

  And beyond?

  She sighed.

  “Hello, dear,” came a voice from her shoulder. “I heard there was trouble with the fox today.”

  Carlette froze, fighting the urge to curl her lip in disgust as her nose filled with the acrid scent of decay. A figure shuffled closer, his breath wheezy and strangely cold against her neck.

  Erebus, Jemelle’s Skin Smith, one of the precious few hoods allowed to enhabit a human being.

  And they think I’m the monster.

  She gritted her teeth.

  “Nothing I couldn’t handle,” Carlette said, voice straining to stay polite as the Skin Smith’s ancient fingers snaked over her shoulder, his silver hood fluttering against her arm.

  “Why are you teaching them such advanced magic? It would be easier for them to master the hounds first.”

  “There aren’t wild hounds in Ferren. Besides, they can’t get better if I don’t challenge them.”

  “But they are just children,” said the nauseating, silky voice, too close to her ear. “As are you, beautiful child.”

  Carlette forced herself to remain still as Erebus’s finger slid down her cheek, over the anchor tattoo on her neck. Power thrummed down her spine, still coursing through her like a stampede. She made herself think about graduation this Gaulday, only a week away, when she might be presented to the Woodsman and join the King’s Axe. Travel across the sea, fulfill her life’s purpose. At sixteen years old she could be considered for the warfront if Grand Mera saw fit, and then she’d never have to deal with Erebus’s unwanted attentions again.

  But only if she could control her temper.

  “What do you want?” Carlette asked through clenched teeth.

  “So much anger, child. I am well-schooled in ways to… relieve such feelings.”

  “I’m sure you are.”

  “The Guerison taught me all the secrets of the human body.”

  Erebus’s fingers slid to Carlette’s skull, pressing into her ice-white hair the way one’s hand might close over a piece of fruit. Carlette yanked herself free and whirled on the old man.

  “Don’t you have Nuri spies to torture?” she snapped.

  Erebus’s lips parted in a moldy grin. Carlette had met doctors trained in the Guerison, healers and battle medics and sea-faring surgeons. But this man was the only Skin Smith she had ever known, trained in the gruesome arts of suffering and cruelty.

  “Oh, I have a few of them simmering,” he said with a chuckle. “But I’m taking a rest. It’s hard work, you know, serving our king in such a… messy way.”

  Carlette swallowed bile. Never had the Order’s law of celibacy felt like such a blessing. The strict edicts to protect the purity of their power kept even Erebus at bay.

  “I need to report to Grand Mera,” Carlette said, pulling up her red hood and turning away. Erebus grabbed her hand and pulled her back towards him, an eel reeling in his catch.

  “Someday, my young ghost, the laws will change. The Guerison scientists are already experimenting with what a quarter-Ferrenese child might be able to do. Perhaps you won’t have to be so… lonely.”

  Carlette yanked her hand free. Her temper boiled, frighteningly close to slipping its leash.

  Not again, she prayed desperately.

  But she was saved by the piercing trill of a scream, echoing against the mountain, slicing through Carlette’s anger.

  Close by.

  In a swirl of red, she ripped her arm free, spun towards the source of the sound, and set off running.

  Chapter Two: Love Lost

  Carlette had to elbow her way through a crowd at the main gates of Jemelle, following the stuttering screeches that rose and fell in staccato beats.

  “What’s going on?” Carlette demanded as she skidded to a stop next to her best friend.

  Aheya’s eyes were wide, shadowed beneath the red fabric of her hood. She only shook her head, skin as pale as the fresh autumn snow.

  An angry voice rose from somewhere in front of them. “Back off! Back away or I’ll gut each and every one of you rogues!”

  Carlette peered through the thicket of shoulders, dreading what she would see.

  Crouched in the middle of the observing crowd was a half-dressed woman, one hand holding a pile of fabric against her bare chest, the other wielding the wicked, curved blade of a scout. She was short, eyes rimless and clear brown, and even Carlette was impressed at the level of ferocity in her expression.

  A few guards laughed, but most had the grace to look serious.

  “Who…?” Carlette whispered.

  Aheya jerked her chin. Carlette followed her friend’s frightened gaze.

  “
No,” Carlette breathed.

  It was Sindur, his hands now bound behind his back, yellow hood ripped away to reveal the anchor tattoo on his neck, surrounded by talon scars. Unlike the scout, Sindur’s face was tight and controlled. He knew what was coming.

  They all did.

  “Thought you would whore around with monsters, eh Calixa?” jeered a guard.

  “Touch me and you’ll be fucking with an iron cock,” she snarled, brandishing her knife in a wide circle as the guards made cautious grabs at her.

  “Calixa, don’t,” Sindur said, but his plea was cut short by a brutal fist to the stomach. The boy bent double. Carlette winced, wishing for the spectacle to end.

  Sindur was her age, one of the best in Oeil Tower. With any luck, he would have been recommended this year, joined the King’s Axe and fought for Delasir in the Narrows. It seemed like only hours ago that Sindur was cracking jokes at dinner about how much trouble they were going to cause for Nurkaij in the war across the sea, how he would take on a stormrider brigade alone with a wave of enhabited eagles. Carlette had laughed at Sindur’s impression of some theoretical Nuri airman, flapping his arms and clawing at his eyes in mock fear.

  Now that laughter seemed very far away.

  “Come on, we don’t need to watch,” Carlette said, laying a hand on Aheya’s shoulder. Beneath her fingertips, the girl was shaking, vibrating like the warning of an avalanche. “Aheya,” Carlette tried again.

  But her friend’s gaze flickered back and forth, from the scene in front of them to a tall, kind-faced guard standing back from the action, expression stony.

  Dachen.

  Of course.

  Carlette had been so consumed in her own preparations for the upcoming Gaulday that she had chosen to ignore Aheya’s strange comments and midnight absences. It was enough for Carlette to worry about Grand Mera choosing her to present to the Woodsman, enough to fret about having to stay in Jemelle for a whole year and watch her classmates go off to fight. Or worse, be chosen for an on-island assignment, like the Skin Smiths or Collectors.