by A A Woods
But she focused on the young man, her mind tightening around his like barbed wire.
“I could kill you for escaping,” Carlette said, making the words resonate in his head. “No one would blame me for it. Tell me, why shouldn’t I let your brain starve?”
She loosened her hold to allow him to speak while keeping his body stock-still, shaking violently as he tried to buck her control.
“Kill me then. We’re both going to die anyways.”
Carlette didn’t respond.
Standing there, heartbeat slowly returning to normal, she felt the true gravity of their situation sink in. Leaving the assigned path and breaking eight years of faithful service had felt so monumental to Carlette that she hadn’t considered what came after. To her, the choice had ended with her leap from Durchemin. In that instant her life had shifted like continental plates. She had broken a cardinal rule, disobeyed the strictest of orders. Her attention had been only on recapturing the prisoner and begging for Grand Mera’s forgiveness.
But what if they never made it that far?
Now, knee-deep in snow, shadowed by the monstrous Goddeau trees, reality crept in, unwelcome and venomous. A whole valley separated her from Jemelle, a valley filled with the most dangerous creatures known to mankind. Forest spiders, giant beetles, snow snakes, sionach. Not to mention the hanging cities filled with Moians who hated the Order of the Hood more than they hated Nuri soldiers. Everything around them wanted them dead, and Carlette had nothing but her own power and the Nuri’s stolen gun for defense.
It would be a miracle if they survived the night.
Carlette reached out and yanked the pistol out of the boy’s grip.
“I’ll take that,” she said.
The mechanic didn’t know it was illegal for her to carry the weapon, and she had no intention of informing him. She feigned confidence, checking the bullets the way she had often seen the guards do.
Three left.
She swallowed.
“I will get you to Jemelle,” Carlette said at last, tucking the gun into her belt as if she did that all the time. She planted her hands on her hips, facing the prisoner. His face was blanching, eyes watering with pain. “I will not kill you. And I will defend you in this forest to the best of my ability. In return, I ask for your help.”
“Why would I help you?” he gasped.
She released him.
The Nuri crashed to his knees, vomit hissing as it hit the icy ground.
“Because I’m the only chance you have,” Carlette said, watching him retch with emotionless eyes. “You might survive torture. Perhaps you can even escape. But without me, you won’t make it one day down here.”
Carlette watched his shoulders heave. She waited, dreading another snarl, another rejection. To him, she was a monster, but she hoped at least to be a necessary one. If she had to watch her back every step of the way, their chances went from slim to none.
Finally, he tilted his head up. Carlette hated his wry resignation, but the Nuri boy sighed.
“Well then,” he said. “I guess I don’t have much of a choice.”
Chapter Eleven: In the Shadow of Trees
The forest was a thing of shifting light. As they wove their way through trees as thick as Durchemin itself, awe filled Carlette’s chest. She could feel life pulsing, thick and viscous and thrumming in the dappled afternoon. The consciousness of a thousand beating hearts swirled around her, a vortex of thoughts and movements. Insects scrambled up the trunks of Goddeau trees, weaving through cracks in the deep red bark. Enormous shapes rustled overhead, leaping, soaring, disappearing in a flutter of leaves. The very air seemed to breathe, as if the trees themselves were conscious.
She had expected the forest to be dark, dreary, dripping with spiders and insect traps and wild natives. But she was wrong.
It was beautiful.
As they passed through a clearing filled with infant saplings, fingerlings of wood stretching for a distant, filtered light, Carlette remembered the last time she was in the Giant’s Wood. Even though the trees around Tuleaux were smaller, dwarfed by the thin seaside soil and the settler’s history of chopping them down, Carlette had felt the same deep recognition that she did now. A pull to this place, a thrilling excitement that was marrow-deep. It was like walking through the halls of Mya’s orphanage, only more intense.
Here, under a roof of branches, pounded by life on all sides, Carlette was home.
“Do you know where we’re going?” the Nuri asked.
“I can track Jemelle based on the position of the sun.”
“I’m surprised they taught their precious prisoners how to navigate outside the school.”
Carlette ignored him as they climbed over a massive root system.
He stumbled and she grabbed his arm before he could crack his head open on the nearest obsidian boulder.
“Thanks,” he said.
Carlette didn’t respond.
“Stoic, aren’t you?”
“I don’t fraternize with prisoners.”
“Yeah, well I’m not supposed to speak to a witch.” He shrugged, glancing over his shoulder as Carlette prodded him onward. “But we’re both having a weird day.”
Carlette rolled her eyes and shoved the mechanic with her bandaged hands, now wrapped in fabric ripped from her undershirt. “Keep walking and stay quiet. We don’t want to attract attention.”
Carlette held her breath, listening to the noises of the forest, hoping he would stay silent. But after a few more crunching steps, the airman spoke again.
“Am I the first prisoner you’ve transported?”
“I said stay quiet.”
“Because you seem new at this.”
“Will you shut up?”
“Is it because you’ve never been outside the school? Or were you in another unit before, hunting down native virgins or something?”
Carlette growled to herself, wishing she could just gag him and be done with it.
He tilted his head back, staring at the canopy. The Goddeau Trees were so tall, it felt like the tips of their branches must brush the very sky.
“I’ve never seen them from below,” he said in a thoughtful voice. “They look a lot bigger down here.”
“They’re also much more dangerous,” Carlette said, trying and failing to hide her frustration.
He shrugged. “I’m a dead man anyways. Might as well enjoy the views.”
Carlette ground her teeth. “There are few deaths less pleasant than being eaten alive by forest spiders.”
“What about having your fingernails pulled out by a Skin Smith?”
Carlette had no answer. The boy crawled beneath a thick webbing of shrubbery, jumping as a gigantic Norjay leapt from the bushes with a scolding caw.
“Do you have a name?” the airman asked after another too-short silence.
“Not one that concerns you.”
He stopped in his tracks. Carlette was so focused on watching the forest around her that she almost knocked him over. Her hand flew to the pistol, waiting for the attack. But the Nuri’s head was cocked, and his eyes lacked the hostility she had come to expect. Instead his gaze was curious. Probing.
“Why do you hate me so much?”
Carlette’s growl fizzled out on her tongue. The innocent question slithered beneath her armor, struck her very core. It was too familiar, too recent. He could have been the hooded student she had saved, his arm bleeding, his wide eyes panicked.
Why do they hate us so much?
Carlette swallowed.
“Your people hunt mine down for sport,” she said, trying to reignite her anger. “You fight King Elan at every step, attack our Collectors, execute hoods for nothing more than existing.”
“And your kind kill mine by the thousands,” he said, eyes hard. “I’ve watched entire airships go down under enhabited birds. I’ve seen villages crushed by stampeding buffalo and elephants turn on their own riders. But I’ve never killed a hood and I don’t think you’v
e ever killed a Nuri soldier.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“No, I don’t. But I do know we’re both stuck out here together. And I, for one, would like to know what to call you.”
Carlette glared at him. But she couldn’t think of a reason to hold back something as simple as a name.
“Carlette,” she said at last. “My name is Carlette.”
“I’m Tuk.”
“I don’t care,” Carlette said, shoving him forward and trying to convince herself that this didn’t change anything.
· · ─────── ·❅· ─────── · ·
After hours of walking, Tuk stumbled, his boot catching on a protruding root. As Carlette reached down to haul him to his feet, she smelled the blood before she saw it, pooling in the Nuri’s sliced glove.
“Damn,” Tuk swore, clenching his injured hand.
“We need to clean that,” Carlette said. She tugged his fingers back, peered at the wound. “Goddeau bark is poisonous. You’ll lose the hand if we don’t get the pieces out.”
“Well aren’t you a considerate witch.”
She ignored the jab as she let her mind relax, her senses filtering out the chittering of birds and swishing of leaves.
There.
An opening, around which the animals gathered.
“This way.”
She pulled Tuk with her as she picked her way down a long slope, filled with crooked trees. Using the trunks for support, she guided them toward a crashing river, overflowing with snowmelt and ice. The water churned and bubbled as it flew over rocks, crashed into stones, beat against the riverbank. In the distance, Carlette could hear a waterfall, filling the air with a persistent hissing.
“Be quick about it,” Carlette said, giving the boy a push.
“You know, I thought I would get used to the cold here,” Tuk said as he pulled off his ripped glove and plunged his hand into the water with a grimace. “Can’t say I have quite yet.”
Carlette ignored him, scanning the clearing like a fox hound.
“If you ever came to a city in Nurkaij, you’d realize what you’ve been missing out on,” Tuk said as he swirled his injured hand in the water, rubbing the last of the wood out with jerky movements. Carlette listened to the jabbering of needle-nosed Norjays and the distant territorial shrieks of a sionach. “This place feels like someone took the color out of the world. But in Vaijan—”
“If I came to Vaijan, I’d be executed before I could step off the ship,” Carlette snapped as her ears strained for whatever threat might catch them unawares at the water’s edge.
That silenced Tuk for a moment as he clenched and unclenched his hand.
“I can’t imagine what your life here is like,” Tuk said.
“It’s fine.”
“Is it?” he asked.
Carlette hated his questions. What right did he have, to ask things like that? It’s not as if he could change things, go back and give her different parents. A different bloodline.
A different life.
After a long, tense silence, he shrugged. “Well, it certainly wouldn’t be good enough for me. I’d take a sunny day on the beach over this weather any—”
“Shhh!”
Carlette jerked out a silencing hand. The skin on her neck was prickling. The hairs on her arm stood up beneath her gauntlets, tiny warning sentinels. Carlette bent her knees before her brain even registered the hush growing near, the sudden absence of sound.
“We need to go,” Carlette said, voice tight.
“But—”
“We need to go now.”
She grabbed Tuk’s leather jacket, hauling him up. She spun them away from the water, her body coiling as she prepared to break into a sprint.
When her gaze returned to the shadowed forest, catching on a glimmer of white, Carlette felt her heart drop out of her chest.
They both froze.
Standing in the shaded darkness were three huge Amonoux. Larger than any animal Carlette had ever seen, they hovered between the Goddeau trees as if the forest had been made for them. Shoulders as wide as the Tuleaux gates, at least twenty-five feet tall, they were ominous and eerie and horrifyingly beautiful. Tuk might be awed their size, the iridescent, jewel-bright glimmer of each wolf’s seven eyes. But Carlette swallowed as she felt the minds of these creatures’ brush against her own. A vast and kinetic power haloed each of the Amonoux, and wrapping around it felt like trying to hold lightning. Surrounded, shielded by the kinked and woven souls of every animal they had ever eaten, the minds of the wolves were impenetrable. Unenhabitable.
Unstoppable.
Flanked by two smaller pups, the gigantic she-wolf padded forward, silent as a wraith. Carlette stepped in front of her prisoner, mind reeling. She could sense anger, an insistent prodding. They were questioning her without words, looking for something. Carlette reached out and winced as a power so much greater than her own slapped her mind aside.
But there was something familiar tangled in that mesh around the she-wolf.
Carlette had seen her before.
The Amonoux prowled towards them, nose twitching, hackles rising. How did she know this animal? Where had they met?
Then she remembered.
The eyes, the glittering white fur, the obsidian-black claws.
Carlette’s mind tumbled, falling back into a day eight years ago. The worst day of her life…
Tuk was reaching slowly into her belt and Carlette felt him step around her, as if from a great distance, her mind flickering in and out.
“Quaina?”
She was a child again, searching for her friend. Laughter filled the woods around Tuleaux as silence pressed in on the Goddeau trees around them.
“Quaina, where are you?”
Tuk was lifting something. Carlette couldn’t breathe. The she-wolf curled her lips, the deep growl almost cosmic in its reverberating power.
In her memories, Carlette heard the same growl, laced with hunger instead of rage. Filling the forest with a different kind of need
In the haze of a dream, Carlette saw the she-wolf stalk forward.
Saw the Nuri mechanic cock the stolen gun.
She blinked.
“No!”
But it was too late. The bullet ripped into the she-wolf’s flank. Blood sprayed over the riverbank, tinting ice the same color as Carlette’s cape. The Amonoux snarled, snapped her jaws. The two others threw their heads back and howled.
“No, wait!”
Tuk fired twice more into the she-wolf, but the bullets were wasted. Even Carlette, who had never held a gun in her life, knew that nothing but a point-blank shot could penetrate an Amonoux’s hide. Inches of thick, wiry fur covered layers and layers of muscle. He couldn’t kill her from here, not without a canon or a military-grade spear-gun.
But he could make her very angry.
“Move!”
Tuk leapt to the side as the wolf swiped out at him, her razor-sharp claws barely missing. Carlette surged after him but was stopped when one of the other Amonoux grabbed her hood in its fangs, yanking her back. Snapping her hands forward, Carlette cut out with her spines. She felt them make contact, heard a whine of pain.
She rolled away, trusting the neurotoxin to stop the creature… at least for a little while.
Tuk sprinted down the riverbank, away from Carlette, followed by the two remaining wolves. He tried to fire over his shoulder, but the gun clicked empty. So he threw the pistol at the she-wolf. She leapt over the projectile with all the grace of a snowfall.
Carlette was chasing after them, but she wasn’t going to make it. The boy was cornered between a swiftly narrowing bank and the tumultuous water. Ice had piled up on one side, blocking the prisoner’s escape.
Clenching her jaw, Carlette scrambled over the bank, reaching out with her mind. It was instinctual, uncontrolled, something Grand Mera had always berated her for. This automatic lashing out was a native trait, exactly what the Convent of Othe
rs bred out of their genetic lines. But with adrenaline singing through her veins and fear clouding her thoughts, she couldn’t suppress the tendrils that shot from her like skeins of wool.
As her body stumbled through the mud, Carlette’s mind dove into a whirlpool of energy. She felt it slice her, a mental storm of razor blades.
Don’t hurt him! she projected, hurling the thought at the wolves like throwing knives. Don’t hurt him!
She didn’t care that he was her enemy. To her panicked mind, Tuk was Quaina. He was someone else who was in the Giant’s Wood because of her.
Someone else who would die because of her.
As Carlette beat against their massive, gargantuan power, both animals froze. The smaller of the two bristled, his breath one continuous stream of deep-throat snarls.
But the she-wolf turned, lips settling around glistening fangs. All seven iridescent eyes focused on Carlette. She felt their power, sizing her up. Measuring her.
“Don’t hurt him,” Carlette said aloud.
Her head ached from the effort of holding the she-wolf’s attention. One of the woven strands of her power brushed against Carlette, not unlike an outstretched hand. Carlette’s mouth fell open. She felt tears prickle, spilling over. Her breathing caught, sobs building in her chest. The forest stood still as Carlette felt the glow of a soul she had felt so many times. A spirit she knew almost as well as her own. Perhaps better.
Quaina.
And then something slammed into her. Metal cracked against her face. Strong arms circled her chest, her breath rushed out.
She hit the water.
Ice chunks scraped her throat as she swallowed, tried to inhale. Her hood was a tangle of fabric, drowning, dragging. A foot kicked her shin. The arms around her ribcage tightened.
“Put your feet downstream!” Tuk yelled, adjusting his own body.
She tried to shift, but the water slammed her against a rock before she could change direction. Her ribs screamed in pain. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. Her fingers and feet were already numb with cold.
