A Flight of Marewings

by Kristen S. Walker

  Korinna gave Mkumba a reassuring smile. “Sometimes if you push too hard, people just push back. Not every battle is worth fighting.”

  Mkumba swallowed hard. “I just don’t want to fail. They don’t listen to me like they listen to you.”

  Korinna opened her mouth to protest, but then she looked around and saw how the other recruits looked at her, still in awe from her standing up to the much larger boy. She shrugged. “I think I might have more practice at it. Just don’t take it so personally when someone doesn’t jump to do your every bidding. We’re all tired and frustrated.”

  Mkumba shook his head. “You may have more practice, but you may have also gotten it from having a duke for a father. My father was a goat herder. They’ll never respect me.”

  Korinna looked up at him in surprise. She hadn’t realized that the others knew her identity; she had only told them that she came from a small farming village outside of the city. But when she stopped to think about what he meant, she knew he was wrong. “Do you really care that my father was the duke?”

  He shook his head again. “I thought a girl from such a soft life couldn’t possibly make it as a mercenary.”

  “But I’m proving you otherwise, right?” He grinned and she grinned back. “I’m here digging ditches with the rest of you, and I don’t have any title or power other than recruit. I earned the respect of the people on my farm the same way, by doing the work. In the end, you judge me by my actions, and that’s how these recruits will judge you, not by what your father did. You have to earn their respect.”

  Mkumba nodded slowly and looked around at the recruits who were all digging industriously—all except Herokha. The girl sat on the ground away from the rest of the group, nursing her cheek. “I don’t think she’ll respect either of us now.”

  Korinna looked at Herokha and shook her head in bafflement. The girl was a mystery to her, chatting and following her as if she wanted to befriend her, but underneath she sensed that Herokha didn’t really like her—as if she were secretly mocking Korinna, or measuring her up. “You can’t win everyone over,” she said with a shrug. “Some people don’t want to respect anyone.”

  Mkumba sighed and picked up his own shovel to join the work.

  11

  Varranor II

  Varranor had a few days left before businesses shut down for the week of the New Year’s festivals, so he finally followed his brother’s instructions and went to investigate the mage who had approached Korinna at the duke’s funeral. He found the right building on a side street in the Market District.

  There was no reply to his knock. He opened the door to the mage’s office a little too far and managed to upset a stack of books onto the floor. He stopped short and squinted in the dim light. He identified even more additional hazards in his immediate path: a series of colored globes hung from the ceiling low enough to hit his head, the skeleton of an unidentifiable creature stood against the wall where he could bump into it, and more stacks of books seemed to line every available inch of space, leaving only a narrow area to walk through the room. He decided to stay put and cleared his throat. “Ameyron Niketos?”

  A balding head popped up from behind a cluttered desk. “Yes?”

  Varranor strained on his tiptoes to see the man’s face. “Are you the mage that worked for Duke Votsis before his death?”

  Ameyron put on a pair of glasses and squinted back at Varranor. “You’re the body guard from the funeral, aren’t you? Have you come around to intimidate me again? I’ll call the city guard on you.”

  He frowned. “I’m not a body guard. Varranor Mrokin, serving as a sort of guardian to the late duke’s daughter. You approached her at the funeral, but I think it would be better if you discussed your research with me.”

  “I explicitly told her that my information was for her ears only,” Ameyron complained.

  Varranor shifted his weight onto his other foot and nearly toppled another pile of books in his impatience. “Is there somewhere better that we can go to talk?”

  The mage twisted his mouth into a scowl, and for a moment Varranor was afraid that he would refuse. But then he gave a sharp nod and stood up from the desk. “Go around back of the building. I have a little patio there.”

  Varranor left the messy office with relief. He looked around and soon spotted a gap in the building to his right, where he was able to walk through and around to the back. There he was pleased to find a small potted garden and a cobbled stone patio with a small table and several chairs.

  Ameyron was already outside, rearranging his wrinkled robes. He sat in one chair and pointed to another. “I don’t have nearly the proper facilities to do my work, so I meet with clients outside. Who are you?”

  Varranor sat down and composed himself. “I’m the second to my brother, who is the head of the Storm Petrels, and we both worked closely with the late duke. I knew most of the mages who were employed by him, but I’ve never met you. When you contacted his daughter, we naturally became curious about what information you had for her.”

  “I only just started working for Basileos before his death,” Ameyron said, as if that explained everything. “But I wanted to speak directly with Korinna Votsis. Why is she not here?”

  “She left the city shortly after the funeral.” He wasn’t going to give away any more information than the snappish mage was. “Believe me when I say that I have the interests of her and her father at heart, and I know more about his private business than the girl, who isn’t prepared to take on all of the duke’s responsibilities. If you have new information about the illness that ended his life, I would very much like to hear it.”

  Ameyron scowled again. “I was not anticipating to deal with a mercenary.”

  Varranor leaned forward and raised his eyebrows. “I’m also able to continue paying your contract with the duke if I’m satisfied with your information.”

  Ameyron shrugged. “I think any sane person with respect for his own hide would want me to continue my work.” He pulled a stack of papers out of his right sleeve and adjusted his glasses. “You were aware that the duke believed his family was cursed after the death of so many of his family members?”

  “Yes.” Varranor did not allow his expression to betray how he really felt about the duke’s paranoia. “It was a perplexing problem that he hired many mages and others to solve.”

  “It’s my experience that rich men will use any amount of money to solve their problems, or if not, to find someone to blame.” Ameyron shuffled through his papers. “He had a list of many potential people to blame for the curse, a list of victims of the curse, their symptoms before death, and other maladies and misfortunes. The difficulty lies in finding the pattern since the duke believed that it began over twenty years ago with his father’s death.”

  Varranor sat back in his chair and folded his arms. “I never thought that there was anything to the theory. I witnessed the illness of the duke’s second wife and their infant son, and they seemed to be unfortunate, but not unnatural.”

  “The earlier cases do not contain a pattern that match any known illness, and in fact, do not seem to be related except in the way that they fed the duke’s fears. But after Basileos’s unusual illness, I realized that we were dealing with something totally new.”

  Ameyron handed him a list, and Varranor scanned it. The duke’s name was at the top, but none of the other names were familiar. “What is this?”

  “These are the people in the duke’s household, mostly servants, who were also afflicted with the same symptoms as the duke. Of the eight, five are already dead and two are in critical condition.”

  Varranor looked up at him in surprise. “What was unusual about their symptoms? I thought that the duke was exhausted and confined to his bed.”

  The mage shook his head. “The true nature of his illness was not made public to preserve Basileos’s dignity. The illness was so unlike any I have ever seen before, that neither the physicians nor I had any way to help him. The othe
rs will not live if we cannot find a cure soon.”

  “I want to see proof of their illness.” He looked at the list again. “You said that most of them were servants. Who isn’t?”

  “Good question.” Ameyron smiled thinly. “The duke had an intern, a young woman named Kalysta Peren. She is here as part of a treaty with her uncle, the duke of Petropouli.”

  Varranor cursed under his breath. “If something happens to her, then it will start an incident with Petropouli.”

  “If I can identify the source of this affliction, I might be able to help her.”

  He shook his head. “We can’t afford to risk it. We’ll send her back to her uncle. Do what you can for the other two.” He stood up and began to pace. “Nine people sick in one household. We’ll have to quarantine everyone else who lived there. Do you think it will spread?”

  “In a city this closely populated, disease spreads quickly.” Ameyron looked over his notes. “I still have to figure out how it spreads and what was the source. But I cannot work quickly with my limited resources. You have seen my office. If I had more space to work, a staff to assist me, access to the magical ingredients I need to perform my experiments—”

  Varranor held up a hand. “Bring me evidence that there’s an epidemic threatening the city and you know how to stop it, and we’ll take it to the Council. They can give you the funds you need to fight this thing.” Better that the Council foot the bill instead of stretching the mercenaries’ budget.

  Ameyron got to his feet. “Please, these people need help now. Their lives are measured in days, or even hours. The nature of their illness—”

  Varranor glowered at him. “You keep hinting about how bad it is, but you won’t tell me what’s wrong with them. Why do you keep hiding the problem?”

  Ameyron shook his head. “You will not believe me even if I tell you. It will be easier just to show you.” He locked the door to his shop and gestured out to the street. “If you come with me, I will give you all the proof you need.”

  Varranor nodded. “That’s exactly what I want. Lead on.”

  Although the mage was short and the dirty robes he wore would be long enough to hamper a taller man, he moved quickly through the winding streets and Varranor had to stretch out his stride to keep up.

  They stopped at a run-down, old apartment building near the harbor. Varranor looked up with a frown; he’d expected an infirmary. “This is the place?”

  Ameyron nodded and held up a hand. “Ah, just a moment.” He searched the pockets of his robe. After several wrong guesses, he pulled out two metal spherical containers and handed one to Varranor. “I do not know if the disease is communicable, so better to be safe. Breathe this while we are inside.”

  The container was a pomander, perforated with several holes. When he held it up to his nose and inhaled, he caught a strong whiff of dried flowers from within. He examined it with suspicion, but he didn’t see any runes or other signs that the mage had added any magical enhancements to the common ward against pestilence.

  Thus defended from the sickness of the inhabitants, the two men went inside the apartment building and up the stairs to the third floor.

  Varranor had believed that Duke Basileos paid his staff well, but the home of these servants sagged with neglect. The paint on the walls had flaked off in most places, and the stairs creaked ominously beneath his weight. When he ducked his head under the doorframe and entered the apartment, he saw that the walls were lined with cheap cots. Most of them were empty, except for two at the far end of the room. A young man sat on a chair between them, repairing a broken sandal as he watched over the patients.

  Ameyron went to the far end of the room and knelt by the bed on the left. Torn pieces of cloth that matched the threadbare blankets tied down a young man at his wrists and ankles. Despite the bonds, the youth, who was barely older than a boy, jerked back and forth in the throes of a fever. His ribs stuck out above a bloated stomach and he was covered with bruises, some old and faded, others fresh.

  The mage picked up a clay cup that sat on the floor next to the cot and offered it to the youth. He turned his face away. Ameyron tried to pour the water into his mouth, but most of it dribbled out again, wetting his face and the bed.

  Varranor stood over the bed and looked down at the youth with a frown. “Does he always refuse food and drink like this?”

  Ameyron nodded without looking up. “Early on, when the illness is less severe, they can be coaxed to take some refreshment. But when it progresses to this stage, they move even when restrained and will neither drink nor eat. It is the lack of nourishment that usually kills them.”

  The youth looked malnourished, but not that close to death. However, Varranor heard a strange labored wheezing in his breath that he recognized from the battlefield. “He has a cracked rib?”

  Ameyron lifted up the youth’s shirt, revealing more large, dark bruises on his chest. “At least three cracked ribs on the left side. Yesterday he broke free of the restraints, and his brothers had to hold him down. They have punctured his lungs. It won’t be long.”

  Varranor turned to the youth in the chair. He looked up from his sandal and stared back.

  “I had to get Lesyr back in the bed,” he said with his chin held high. “The physick said he needs rest.”

  Varranor put a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “I would have done the same thing for my brother.”

  On the bed, Lesyr coughed loud and harshly, still swaying back and forth against the ties. “The bells,” he muttered in a voice almost too low to hear. “The bells won’t stop ringing. I hear the music and I have to dance. Dance for your life!”

  Varranor looked at Ameyron. “What does he mean by that?”

  Ameyron took a deep breath of his pomander and shrugged. “They often suffer from hallucinations as well. Their ramblings don’t mean anything.”

  Varranor frowned. He didn’t believe that the young man’s words could be meaningless. He stepped up to the end of the bed and leaned forward. “What bells are you talking about? Do you hear music?”

  Lesyr’s head snapped up and he strained against the bonds, staring directly at Varranor. “The bells are always ringing! The music is the dirge that will play at your funeral! Even you can’t fly away from their song, winged man!”

  He let out a wordless howl and slumped back onto the bed.

  Ameyron leaned forward and touched the patient’s neck. After a moment, he nodded. “He’s fallen unconscious. He may not wake again.”

  The older brother let out a sigh of relief and turned away.

  Varranor took a step back from the bed. “Feverish hallucinations aren’t unusual. Nor are the seizures. What about this illness has you so perplexed?”

  Ameyron shook his head. “They are not having seizures, and there is no fever. Watch.”

  The mage crossed to the other bed and released the bonds on the second patient, a middle-aged man. The man half-stood, half-rolled out of the bed and got to his feet.

  Varranor watched in horror as the sick man began to sway back and forth in a jerky motion. “Is he trying to dance?”

  “Yes. They will all dance unless restrained.” Ameyron shook his head. “This is why I thought you would not believe me.”

  Varranor couldn’t take his eyes off of the dancing man. There was no grace in his movements, no identifiable rhythm or pattern, yet he couldn’t deny that the erratic motion was a dance. He grabbed hold of the man’s arm and tried to stop him.

  The older man pulled away with remarkable strength and continued to dance.

  “Do you mean to tell me that Duke Basileos danced himself to death?”

  The mage nodded slowly. “They all do. They dance themselves past the point of exhaustion. Eventually they either injure themselves—” He nodded at Lesyr. “Or they simply wear themselves out.”

  As they watched, the dancing man went pale and fell to the floor.

  Ameyron crouched over him and pressed his hand to the man’s neck. Afte
r a few moments, he shook his head. “His heart has stopped. There is nothing more that I can do for him.”

  Varranor stared at the man on the floor and swallowed hard. He couldn’t comprehend what had just happened. He had seen people die gruesome deaths in battle, or succumb to their injuries afterward—the company’s mage physician was good, but she couldn’t heal every wound. Men and women had died under his command and at his hand. But this kind of death he couldn’t make sense of. He was a warrior, not a mage or philosopher who could explain the reason why a man would dance himself to his own funeral pyre.

  He turned and walked out of the apartment.

  Ameyron rushed after him and caught him on the stairs. “Now do you believe me?”

  Varranor looked down at the eager mage’s face. “Yes. Even if this illness only affects those who directly worked for the duke, they do not deserve this fate. I will extend your budget to cover two assistants.”

  Ameyron’s eyes lit up. “And a larger space to do my work in?”

  “I can provide rooms in the military complex.” Under Galenos’s orders, Varranor had been slowly moving his people out of the city and back to the fort, so he had empty rooms to spare. “I think that location will be more secure, to keep the information from spreading, and it’ll give you ready access to my company’s resources. You will also find it easier to contact my brother and me there. He’ll want to see this for himself.”

  Ameyron looked less excited by this news, but he nodded. “I will be by later this afternoon after I have collected my materials. I do not think the other patient will keep me here much longer.”

  Varranor glanced at the closed door to the apartment and turned away from the harrowing scene. “Do what you can to ease the boy’s passing, and let the families know that I’ll cover the expense of the funerals. We’ll speak later.”