by A A Woods
And, in the distraction, the Bloody Paws’ hold on their animals slipped.
Carlette’s mind was a steel trap, closing around every one of the beasts in the gully at once. She leapt on top of her rock, clenching her fists, snapping out her spines. But the rebels who had been inches away from her were now tumbling down the rock face, tossed from their panicked beasts like sacks of meat.
All but one black-haired Moian girl, whose cairog shifted nervously but made no move to throw her off.
From her vantage point, Carlette watched the mountain stags stampede into Bloody Paws. Bodies were everywhere. Blood ran, but Carlette had no idea whose it was. Yokan drew her bow, aimed it at the fleeing blue hood.
Carlette pulled the mental reins of Yokan’s steed.
The creature reared, sending Yokan tumbling into the melee of falling rock.
Cairogs were swarming down the mountain, six of them, their eyes white. Twice as many as Carlette had counted. She couldn’t hold them—their minds were too foreign, too strange—so she focused on the nearest stags, launching the antlered beasts into the insects. The cairogs rolled, their movements synchronized and controlled.
There was a powerful insect enhabiter here.
Prisoners were disappearing like voles into the caves. Carlette could sense Tuk sliding towards her with her hood tucked in his shirt.
Her mind was weakening, assaulted by the rebels, spread thin by the animals. Everything beat against Carlette like waves against a ship, threatening to pull her down. Other minds were trying to shove her out of their beasts, working individually, but if they coordinated their attacks…
She had to get out of here.
She scanned the scene but couldn’t find Aheya anywhere. Yokan screamed orders in Ebonal. Carlette couldn’t understand the words, but she saw the rebel leader pointing at her. Then at a stag.
An arrow punched into it, hitting true.
It died.
Carlette gasped.
Sick, slippery nausea gripped her belly. Her hold slipped. Two of the beasts fell away from her mind like sand through fingers.
“Come on!”
Tuk’s voice, in her ear.
Carlette sent a final pulse of power, scattering the Mountain stags.
And then Tuk yanked her backward, into a different tunnel.
Her line of vision broken, Carlette could only sense the animals distantly, as if through a haze. She blinked, her mind returning to one place, one set of eyes. It was always disorienting to go from multiple minds to one.
Tuk sprinted beside her, their footsteps echoing in the wide mining cavern. A pair of rails guided their mad escape, snaking deep into the mountain, a trail that Delasir men had once walked. Carlette’s breath plumed in the cold, dry air. Tuk’s exhales were ragged next to her, his fear a physical weight. They passed a pile of pickaxes and an ancient campsite. Old tin cups were knocked over, half-filled with dust.
Carlette wondered what had happened to the miners who had once toiled here. Had they fallen to rebels? Died in some creative and horrible way in Moian tree-cities or Ebonal mountain caves? Or had they simply evacuated, fallen back when iron became the second most valuable export of Ferren?
As the air began to thicken and the tunnel grew so dark that Carlette couldn’t even see her own hand in front of her face, they slowed to a jog. Then to a walk. Tuk released her. Carlette smoothed down the spines on her arms.
A crash echoed down the tunnel.
“What was that?”
“Sorry,” Tuk said, panting. “Fell over.”
Carlette listened for a long moment but heard nothing. Sensed nothing. There was a fuzziness to her thoughts, an exhaustion that went beyond just the fight. There were too many minds, the insects of the mountain swarming her, battering her senses.
She couldn’t think.
“We should stop,” Carlette said, her hands shaking as she felt for the wall.
“This feels like wood… Ouch!” Something jerked. “Splinter,” he explained.
“I’m not sure if it’s safe to make a fire,” Carlette said, her mind abuzz.
Could there possibly be this many insects living in the mines?
Were they… getting closer?
She tried to reach out, to expand her senses, but something was blocking her. A strange, cultivated emptiness.
She’d never felt anything like it before.
“Well, we either make a fire or fall into a crevasse somewhere,” Tuk said, his voice interrupted by scrapes and clicks. “As an airman, I have no intention of dying under the mountains.”
Carlette leaned against the cave wall, her head pulsing. She had stretched too far, that must be it. Enhabited too many strong predators at once. No other Prederaux in Jemelle could have done what she did, so of course it had been too much. She simply had to recover.
She listened to Tuk grapple with the wood for several moments, his curses and mutterings flowing over her. Comforting.
“Thank you,” she said at last.
Tuk paused.
“For what?”
“For helping save my friend,” Carlette explained.
He chuckled. “Least I could do for the girl trying to kill me.”
Carlette bit her lip, her thoughts as hazy as a disturbed riverbed. She sighed and tilted her head back.
“I wish things were different,” she said, almost to herself.
Tuk didn’t respond. His manacles clinked as he shifted.
“There must be something better,” Carlette said. Then smiled to herself. “That’s what my friend used to wish for. A better way.”
“I don’t think our world takes kindly to that. My dad used to say he’d rather live a soldier than die a martyr.”
Carlette winced. A father. Tuk had a father. A mother too. She folded her arms against the chill as Tuk snorted.
“Of course, the dumb fool didn’t take his own advice,” Tuk muttered, hitting rocks together.
“What happened to him?”
“Died saving a ship full of prisoners.”
“Sounds like a good man.”
“Would have been a better man if he’d stuck around,” Tuk said, but Carlette sensed a softness in Tuk’s words. A pride.
“I’m sorry. I know how it feels to lose someone.”
Tuk struck the flint again. “Would this have anything to do with those Amonoux we saw?”
Carlette didn’t answer.
“I mean, you looked like you’d seen a ghost. You were pale before, but when that she-wolf turned on you—”
“It’s not important,” Carlette snapped.
Tuk took a breath before speaking again.
“It’s strange, but I always figured that the first hood I met in person would be some evil beast. Everyone in Nurkaij is always going on about what unnatural monsters you are.” He paused. “And then I saw you cry. Commander Invitas never said anything about that.”
Carlette listened to him struggle with the damp wood, her thoughts a muddle. What he was saying should make her angry, revealing a weakness she didn’t want to show.
But she wasn’t angry.
She was tired.
Light bloomed in the cave, a spark illuminating the space between Tuk’s hands.
“Yes!” he whooped, manacles clanking as he pumped the air. “I am the king of this mountain!”
“I’m afraid,” said a voice from above him, “that we don’t recognize kings here.”
Carlette froze. Her throat constricted. Her exhausted mind flickered out and she sensed, even through the dense confusion of a million assaulting minds, a human being. Tilting her head back, she saw their infant fire reflected in the pitch-black exoskeleton of an enormous cairog, hanging upside-down over their heads. It’s pincers, each as thick as Carlette’s thigh, chittered and snapped. Its long hairs shimmered, fluttering beneath thick chittenous armor.
A tiny black-haired girl clung to the insect’s vast shoulders, peering down at them with an impish, malevolent smile.
“Hi ther
e,” she said.
Tuk’s voice caught in a strangled shout. Carlette’s hands snapped forward, her instincts honing in on the monster before them, on the girl. She couldn’t enhabit the insect, didn’t have the experience. But perhaps the Moian warrior…
She made to move away from the wall, grab Tuk, run. But one of the cairog’s long, twisted feelers shot out. The fire snapped off, a candle being blown out.
And then something thick and slimy was curling around her neck, pulling tight as a hangman’s noose.
Chapter Thirteen: Beetlespeaker
Carlette’s world was a blur of sound and panic. She couldn’t breathe. The cairog’s scaly leg jerked her through the darkness, smashing her body against every corner as the gigantic insect zipped along the celling. Pincers clicked. Loose stones tumbled down the tunnel’s edges. Her head hit a rock. Her ribcage smashed against a wall. Unconsciousness sloshed around her like water. The deep-seated magic in her mind scrambled, grappling for the human consciousness entangled with the insect’s, both of them dangerous and sharp.
She was powerless to enhabit either as her brain starved.
Her back hit another wall. Carlette’s raw throat tried to release a scream. It came out as a strangled gurgle. Tuk’s foot kicked her thigh; a spasmic movement. She could hear his breath whistling, struggling.
They were going to suffocate.
Suddenly, the darkness broke. Carlette tried to make sense of the moving shapes, but her eyes wouldn’t focus. There was a human howl, a responding snarl that she felt in her very bones. Firelight flickered in her vision, distant and dim. Pillars of stone passed like sentinels, and she could make out shorter, moving columns.
People.
Rebels.
The insect’s grip loosened, dropped her. Her kneecaps shrieked in agony as they hit the stone floor, but she didn’t cry out. Instead she gulped air, swallowing breaths as if they were her last. Maybe they would be. She coughed, her eyes watering as she teetered on all fours, ready to collapse.
But she was given no such privilege.
Hands yanked her hair back and someone tied a blindfold over her face, painfully tight. Her hands were swathed in fabric, bound behind her back.
“What have we here?” said a voice that seemed entirely made of sharp edges.
Yokan.
Carlette heard a scuffle next to her. Tuk’s manacles clanked and he spat something in Nuri, followed by a meaty thud. Tuk groaned. Carlette heard a body hit the ground.
“I think Byrna Beetlespeaker found the source of our disruption,” said the Bloody Paw leader, her voice lilting strangely, drawing emphasis in unexpected places. Carlette heard feet shift next to her. The metallic tang of dried blood filled her nostrils, along with animal skin, campfires, body odor, freshly dug earth.
Carlette cringed as she sensed someone kneel in front of Tuk.
Yokan smelled like death.
“Are you a troublemaker then?” Yokan hissed.
“Get off me,” Tuk snapped.
There was another thud, another punch.
“Iron-bound hands. Fingers stained with rust. Perhaps you thought it would be fun to scatter our prisoners. Kill our beasts. Work for our enemy.” Yokan’s voice was silky and dangerous. “But never fear, bronze boy, the fun will be repaid in full.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“And who are you, playing with Nuri scum?” Yokan said, pulling Carlette’s head back with vicious strength. Fingernails scraped along Carlette’s neck, where blood had dried over her anchor tattoo.
Yokan was silent for a moment. Carlette’s throat worked, her starved lungs trying to breathe despite the angle of her neck.
“A Delasir slave working with a captured Nuri spy?” Yokan’s voice was incredulous. Amused. She cackled once. “Our children will sing songs about this! How unnatural, like a dog befriending a viper.”
Malevolent laughter filled the cave. Carlette tried to sort through the voices, count their number. But the echoes made it impossible. It sounded like a thousand men and women were crammed under the Shadow Peaks, mocking her.
And beneath it all was that choked growling that made Carlette’s hair stand on end.
“So tell me, child,” Yokan said, rotten breath washing over Carlette’s face. “What tower birthed you?”
“She’s not a hood!” Tuk broke in, his voice raspy. “She’s a turncoat. Was helping me track down Jemelle.”
“The anchor speaks for itself,” Yokan said.
“Every half-breed child gets one. Not all of them make it to Jemelle.”
“And yet she enhabited our beasts.”
“I saw a red hood among your captives,” Tuk insisted. “You didn’t bother to blindfold her, so why were you surprised when she took over the predators in your midst?” He snorted. “Of course she’d take the opportunity to escape. She’d be a fool not to.”
Yokan released Carlette’s hair. She gasped, toppling forwards. With her hands tied behind her back, she couldn’t stop her fall and collapsed against the stone, her chest scraping against sharp rock as she inhaled.
Why was Tuk lying to Yokan? Carlette knew a Nuri spy was unlikely to find mercy among these rebels, but to lie to them, to pretend that Carlette wasn’t exactly what Yokan accused her of being…
They would search him, find her Red hood tucked in the front of his tunic, and then what? He would be a liar as well as an enemy.
Yokan moved, her footsteps almost silent as she shifted.
“It would take a hood of great power to cause such trouble,” Yokan said, almost to herself.
“Well, looks like you lost a powerful captive.”
Yokan chuckled. “Nothing in this forest is lost to my hunters. She simply gave our riders something to chase.”
Carlette felt a chill whisper down her spine. She shivered and someone kicked her.
“Stop it!”
Tuk’s voice echoed. There was an ominous silence.
“It is fitting, though,” Yokan continued as if there had been no interruption, “For you to fall so fortuitously into our midst.”
Tuk’s breath came out, sharp and pained. His body shifted, as if being pulled upright. Carlette struggled against her bonds.
That’s my prisoner, you bitch, she found herself thinking.
“You see, the men we captured were just soldiers. Useful only to feed our hungry stags. A foot soldier does not know how to fly a sky-ship or build a fortress… or find a secret base.”
Carlette’s heart sank.
They knew about Caika.
“But I’ve seen other men like you fall to the ground. They die first, stabbed in the back by their own men. Now why would that be?”
Tuk’s teeth clicked together. Carlette could feel terror rolling off him in waves, his familiar consciousness the only thing she could even vaguely sense with her vision cut off and her palms covered.
“My thinking,” Yokan went on, “is that the one who controls the ship must know where to fly it, eh? And could tell us all about the toys such a place would have.”
Yokan made a sharp movement. Tuk cried out. Carlette kicked, scrambled, trying to find purchase, but a boot collided with her ribcage.
She wheezed.
“Tell me, little boy. Will you help us find your secret base?”
Images bloomed into Carlette’s head. Bloody Paws on airships, armed with guns and crossbows. If Yokan found Caika before Tuleaux did, it would be catastrophic. She would rain down a reckless fire, destroy both the Nuri and Delarese settlements. Tribes would flock to her brutality, follow her lead.
The island would become a living hell.
Tuk laughed.
“You wouldn’t make it within twenty leagues of Caika.”
“Ah, but with your help...”
“Think again,” Tuk said. Carlette heard him spit.
Yokan laughed. “They’re always so spirited in the beginning. Until the screaming starts.”
Carlette swallowed, t
hinking hard. What could she do? Could she surprise them, kick out in a certain way, perhaps knock Yokan down?
But claws curled around the roots of her hair, interrupting her pathetic plans.
Jerking her upright.
“I’m thinking you like this girl, yes?” purred the rebel leader, running a fingernail along Carlette’s tattoo. “You seem to care about her. Perhaps for that we won’t kill her.” She paused significantly. “Yet.”
Carlette could almost hear Tuk’s heartbeat, harmonizing with that deep, mysterious snarling.
“Or, if you’d rather, we feed her to our little pet,” Yokan said. Carlette cried out as she was hauled over rock, Tuk beside her. The growling got closer. The rebels were dragging them somewhere, approaching whatever was making that horrible noise.
Carlette’s knees found a sharp edge. A deep-tunnel breeze whispered over her, lifting her clumped, dirty hair and rustling the edges of her still-damp furs. She shivered. Someone was shoved down next to her, someone who smelled like the Giant’s Wood and open skies.
Manacles clinked. Something snarled. There was a swish of fabric.
“No,” the mechanic whispered.
A knife was pressed to Carlette’s neck as her blindfold was ripped off. It was the unspoken understanding that if she tried to enhabit anything, her end would be swift and unforgiving.
Carlette’s eyes adjusted to the dark. She felt her stomach clench.
Below her, in a sunken pit of carved obsidian, was an Amonoux. But unlike the vast, graceful creatures she and Tuk had met out in the Giant’s Wood, this one was matted, shrunken, its once-thick fur hanging off bony ridges like a pelt on tent poles. It was so huge that it barely fit in the wide hollow, but still the beast cowered from them, its seven eyes roving the surrounding rebels with a frantic, terrified anger.
The creature’s head swung around, following a cairog that skittered over the cave’s celling with one black-haired rider hanging on like a bat. When it looked up, Carlette saw warm blood on the beast’s neck, crusted around ropes that had dug so deep it was a wonder the animal was still alive.
It can’t call for its pack, Carlette thought, pity rushing through her. With her eyes uncovered, she could feel the wolf’s pain, smell the stench of agony and fear. It was a juvenile, a pup. Even beneath the sustained, almost endless snarl she could sense its longing for home.
