by Jaymin Eve
Thud. That definitely hurt. Damn she’s strong. Curse my little body. I’m so light she can fling me anywhere. And she’s coming right back at me. I scramble to my feet but halfway up her knee attempts to slam my chest. I lurch backward just in time, pushing down on her knee defensively, but she spins, using her momentum to slam another fist at me. I block, dance backward. She leaps at me but I crouch, use my shoulder to lift her, and it’s her turn to take a tumble along the street. She lands right next to Erit, jumps to her feet, hits him square in the jaw, and steals my sword from him.
Suddenly the fight is no longer close to equal.
I don’t wait for her to unsheathe the weapon. With a roar, I barrel straight into her, grabbing her sword arm as we slam into the nearest building. My fingers close around her wrist and my fingernails dig in.
“Lady Storm! Catch!”
My hand shoots out. Somehow, I catch the dagger Erit throws to me. Turning my attention back to Indira and all I see is her fist. Pain explodes in my temple, the hardest hit she’s landed. I drop but I don’t let go of her sword arm, taking her with me. Once again we tumble, but not before I nick her cheek with my knife. We roll apart, both shooting back to our feet at the same time.
The sword is out of its case now and my dagger is no match for it. She charges, I defend, and metal scrapes on metal as her sword sings down the blade of my dagger, forcing me to my knees. I’m using both hands on the smaller weapon to resist the sword’s force, but I brace, pushing with all my might to set my left hand free to thump her stomach. The impact causes her to flex forward and I use the small shift in her weight to unbalance her. She tumbles to my left, angles her shoulder to take the fall, ready to roll through it, but I grab her nearest wing, yanking backward on it. She lands on her back with an oomph. I land on her stomach, straddling her.
My dagger descends to her heart.
Her sword ascends to my throat.
Both blades draw blood, making us freeze. If we continue, she will slice open my neck as fast as I can slide the blade into her chest.
Neither of us will survive.
10
This fight started with a blood challenge. The only way it’s going to end is with another one. I have no idea whether it will work but I have to try. Without moving any closer to the blade at my throat, I stretch my free hand forward, reaching out to drag my fingertips across the same spike she used when she made her challenge, screaming out the pain in my jaw and all the places she thumped me with those rock-like fists of hers.
“I am Supreme Incorruptible Marbella Mercy. Grievous Indira, you owe me the Grievous Clan’s allegiance!”
I take hold of her face with my bleeding hand, curling my fingers into her hair, forcing her to look at me and not the weapon at my neck. “I hold you to your clan’s debt, body and soul, for the rest of your life.”
Her eyes widen. “For the rest of my…”
I ease my bloody fingers from her hair, too sticky not to catch and pull, making her wince. I don’t apologize. “For the rest of your life. Which will have to be very long to pay out the debt that your clan owes.”
I pull upward, withdrawing my dagger.
Her arms flop to her sides. The sword clatters onto the street. “What did you do?”
I have no idea but she stopped fighting me so it can’t be a bad thing. The heartstones flicker back to life, telling me the blood challenge has ended. I check my fingers. The cuts have healed and when I brush my neck, it no longer hurts. Virtuous’s heart has done its job and healed me.
Now the Queen’s heart casts a soft glow across Indira’s stunned features. “I… can’t fight you now.” She scrambles to her feet, sporting a cut across her cheek and another across her am. “How did you know which blood words to use? You’re an elf.”
“I’m really not.”
Her chest heaves. She roars, long and loud, curling her fingers into fists. “Grievous Clan! Come down from the rooftops!” She picks up my sword and hands it to me, her voice lowering. “We have a new leader.”
She takes a wobbly breath. Drops to a knee. Bows her head, her braid falling across her shoulder. “Supreme Incorruptible… I honor you.”
The gargoyles swoop down from the rooftops and out of the alleyways, settling down onto the street in neat rows, hunched under their wings, faces hidden, all of them taking a knee. “Supreme Incorruptible, we honor you.”
I frown as they speak. Their voices are not quite what I expected… but relief overcomes any uncertainty I feel. “I am honored.”
Erit strides forward and retrieves my sword, slipping it neatly into the weapons brace at his back. “Lady Indira, there’s something that you and the Grievous Clan need to know. It’s important because of clan law.”
He waits for Indira to find her feet. I eye the others warily as they retain their hunched positions, remaining concealed under their wings, not revealing their faces.
Erit announces, “Lady Storm killed a shadow panther.”
Indira’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise.
Erit continues. “It smelled her blood and attacked her. She killed it with her own hands.”
Indira is incredulous. “But… shadow panthers only crave gargoyle blood.”
I press my lips together before I say, “Like I said, I’m not an elf.”
But inside, I’m surprised. If shadow panthers only crave gargoyle blood then that would explain why Erit looked so perplexed when I told him the story about how the shadow panther hunted me. It’s just one more piece of evidence to support Senturi’s declaration that I’m partly a gargoyle now.
Erit speaks firmly to Indira. “You know what this means.”
Indira contemplates me in the heartstone’s light. Her gaze flickers to her people, still concealed under their wings. I notice how they stay out of the light, preferring the shadows.
She says to me, “Very few gargoyles will fight a shadow panther. They leave that job to the Grievous Clan. You are not Grievous, but by killing a shadow panther you have earned certain clan rights. Since you are also female, there is something you have the right to know.”
She takes a step back before she shouts, “Rise, Grievous! Show yourselves.”
As one body, the warriors behind her glide to their feet and emerge from beneath their wings.
I gasp. Not wings… but shadow panther skins pretending to be male wings to conceal their bodies. From girls as young as ten years old to females as old as one hundred, they lift their faces and stand proud before me, each of them holding weapons and dressed in armor, an impressive and determined force.
They are all female: every single one of them.
“When our males were taken away, we learned to defend ourselves,” Indira says before she spins to her small army and orders them, “Sentries, back to your posts! Everyone else, back to your duties.”
The females disappear into the darkness as silently as they arrived. It’s hard to believe that it’s actually daylight on the other side of this shadowy mountain. This village is doused in perpetual night.
Indira heaves a sigh and heads off along the street without waiting for us. “Come with me. I need a strong drink.”
Indira’s home sits above all the others right on the edge of a cliff, the building itself taking on the attitude of a gargoyle clinging to the precipice by nothing more than the tips of its claws. It suits her.
She pulls off her wing and chest armor and thumps a jug of beer onto the wooden table. Scooping a cup into it, she doesn’t drink it, but carries it over to the sink instead. She sucks in a sharp breath as she pours the alcohol over her wounded arm. “Erit, would you pass me the gum please? Unlike Lady Storm, I don’t have the power to heal my own wounds.”
He lifts the pot from the shelf she points at but dips his forefinger into it instead of passing it to her.
She scowls as he approaches. “I can do it myself.”
“I’m certain you can, Lady Indira.” He ignores her exasperated sigh, reaches for her arm, and wrap
s his whole hand gently around her elbow to keep it steady so he can apply the sticky gum safely. It will keep the wound sealed while it heals. She bites her lip but doesn’t pull away.
“You have another cut on your cheekbone,” he says, taking a cloth from the sink and soaking it in alcohol from her cup. He lightly dabs the cloth across her cheek. She blinks rapidly, but endures the sharp pain, holding still as he leans in to inspect the wound. Lightly smearing the gum across it, his face ends up close to hers.
Her gaze flickers for the briefest moment to his lips.
I hide a smile. There’s definitely history between these two.
When Erit returns to the table to pour three drinks, Indira joins us, choosing the seat closest to him and furthest from me. That’s fine with me.
I consider all the questions I have for her. “You hated Howl enough to want to kill him. I wish you had, but something must have stopped you.”
She peers into her cup. Despite announcing that she needed a drink, she doesn’t touch the liquor yet. “The practicalities got in the way. I couldn’t fly myself to him because of my wings and none of the females are strong enough to carry me. I had to wait for him to come to me.”
“Which he never did?”
She shakes her head. “Howl took all of the males with him ten years ago. Even the young boys. None of them returned.”
“Gone for ten years?”
“There hasn’t been a child born here the entire time.” She grimaces. “You kind of need males for that sort of thing.”
She taps her cup, her fingernails clinking an irregular rhythm against the side. “The consequences weren’t all bad. He took all the old brutes away. We were glad to see the back of them. After that, it didn’t take long for us to figure out that if we stuck to the old ways, our future would be even more precarious.”
Erit says, “You mean sending teenagers out to hunt shadow panthers.”
“Barbaric practice,” she spits. “I outlawed it.”
“Good.” Erit leans back in his chair. “But I couldn’t help but notice that you are all wearing panther skins. You must be killing them somehow.”
She meets his eyes, an edge to her voice and a muscle twitching in her jaw. “I kill them, along with a group of older females. We don’t send kids to do an adult’s job. Only cowards use children to keep the shadow panther population down.”
She draws a deep breath and swallows a mouthful of alcohol, grimacing as it obviously burns all the way down. She wrinkles her nose and shoves the cup away. “Disgusting stuff.”
Watching her, I make a decision. “Erit… I brought you here because I was going to ask you to lead the Grievous Clan.”
He gives me a smile and a nod, scratching his bristly jaw. “Your intentions were easy to read, Lady Storm. But I see that you’ve changed your mind. I think you’ve made the right decision.”
“Wait…” Indira interjects into the conversation. “You aren’t leading us yourself?”
I level my gaze with hers. “Grievous Indira, do you acknowledge my power to choose the next clan leader?”
A worried crease appears on her forehead. “I do. But if it’s not you, then I want to be involved in the decision. These females have fought to survive with everything they’ve got and I don’t want some arrogant male coming in and—”
“I want you to lead them.”
She blinks at me. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Well, you’re already leading them, aren’t you?”
She rocks back on her chair, clearly shocked. “Yes, but… I’m… not good at it. Really not good. I’m tough on them and I curse and shout. A lot.”
“But you know what they need. You know how they think. I didn’t see a single fearful face out there today. They follow you out of loyalty, not fear.”
She splutters. “I don’t think you’ve thought this through, Marbella.”
I hide a smile as she takes up calling me by my name. I’m pretty sure it’s the shock of my announcement that makes her drop her guard.
She says, “I’m not going to bow and scrape like the other clan leaders. I won’t go easy on you.”
I laugh. “They don’t exactly bow and scrape either.”
“Hah. Grew backbones, did they? Let me guess… right after you killed Howl?”
I’m not sure what to say. The irony doesn’t escape me.
Indira blows a long breath through her lips. She reaches across the table for the cup she abandoned and inhales a long drink from it. As the mug thuds back to the table, she says, “Okay. But you need to know right away that I’m not letting those old bastards back on Mount Grievous. If any of them are still alive, you’ll have to find somewhere else for them to live.”
I ask, “Do you mean males like Gerst?”
“Exactly like Gerst.”
“He’s dead.”
“Good. I’m glad.” She stares at her hands. Her eyes water up, but this proud female will never cry in front of me. “Oh, fuck.” She hunches over her drink, shaking out her wings as if they’re dirty laundry. “How can I lead them when I can’t even fly?”
I’m not sure if I’m supposed to ask, but I’m going to anyway. “How did it happen?”
Instead of answering, she glances toward Erit, blinking hard to try to hide her emotions. “Erit can tell you.”
He shakes his head. He’s not going to go easy on her. “It’s not my story to tell.”
“Fine.” She gnaws at her lip. “It was the night Howl and I were sent out to kill shadow panthers. It was winter. Cold. But I had a plan and it worked. I killed my panther and started carrying it down the mountain before I froze to death. It turned out that my brother had a plan too. He jumped out at me… knocked me over, stabbed a knife through each of my wings to pin me to the ground, and took my panther. I couldn’t get the knives out.”
I peer at her. She said she’d made the cuts herself. “You ripped up your own wings to chase after him.”
“Coming back without a panther means death. So I tore through my wings to get free. He knocked me down again. Pinned me. Again.” She hunches even further. “Damn I hated my wings.”
“You ripped them again.”
“But this time he hit me with a rock. He knocked me out and left me there, bleeding. Right where the panthers would smell me.”
She clears her throat, squeezing her cup hard. “But I woke up to find Erit standing over me… and two dead panthers lying next to me. They would have killed me except for him…”
Erit interrupts her and she seems relieved not to have to keep telling the story. He folds his arms across his chest, muscles flexing. “I made you carry them both down the mountain.”
She growls, “While you vanished into the trees, you lazy brute.” Her eyelashes lower. So does her voice. “I always wondered how you knew I was in danger?”
Erit tips his chin at her. “Because you told me how you were going to kill the panther—trap it while you waited high in the trees, then drop onto its back and stab its eyes out. The panther Howl brought back was killed just like that, right down to the trap marks on its legs. I knew it was your kill, not his.”
She leans toward him, her expression softening. “You were gone three years later. What happened to you?”
“Howl was being groomed to take over as clan leader. I had to get out while I could.”
“They told me that you died and I thought that Howl had killed you. He always found a way to take away everything good in my life…”
The blood leaves his face. “No. Not Howl.”
Her voice is small. “But you didn’t take me with you.”
He blinks at her. Swallows visibly. “I didn’t think… that you…”
I lean back in my chair. It feels like they’ve forgotten I’m here, the same way everyone in the room fades away for me when I’m with Baelen.
Indira rustles her wings again, but it’s a subdued movement, the torn ribbons fluttering around her. “Was it because of these?”
Erit
closes the small gap between them, his arms unfolding and his knees knocking against hers. “No, not because of your wings.”
She presses her lips together so hard they turn white. “You were older than me but I turned eighteen the night you disappeared. I thought you knew my heart. I went to your bed but you were already gone.”
Erit is shell-shocked, frozen, wings half-forward, not quite reaching for her.
I take glances between the two of them and carefully slide off my chair. It’s time to go. I’m definitely intruding on a conversation I shouldn’t be part of now. I tiptoe away from the table, grateful that neither of them notices my departure.
Outside, I take stock of the mountain and its view of the wastelands. Talon crows wheel across the distant sky. The birds aren’t as big as giant eagles and nowhere near as large as the Phoenix but they are a dangerous predator. Far, far in the distance, our world ends in walls of rock. I never imagined that any clan could survive in the wastelands, let alone on a cold mountain like this one. I feel a deep respect for the Outlier Clan and especially the Grievous females for surviving in these conditions. I shiver, wishing I’d brought a coat. I draw on the heartstones’ power, trying to warm myself as I glance at the door behind me.
Nope, not going back in there to get warm. Not until one or both of them comes out.
Five minutes later, Erit emerges, quiet and troubled. He leans against the wall beside the door, his wings tucked tight to his sides, broad shoulders hunched. I can’t see much of Indira through the opening, but it looks like she picks up the jug of alcohol and stares right into it.
He says, “I can’t be what she wants.”
I blink hard. Is he really going to throw this chance away? “And what is that, Erit?”
He gestures at our surroundings. “Grievous. I can’t return to the clan I gave up.”
