Shan balanced the falcon on a gloved hand while I rechecked the security of the message. I nodded to him and said, “Okay, it's good. Do it.”
Shan stroked the falcon's head and whispered, “Katrin Sylleth-Goldtree. Cypress Quay. Fly fast and safe.”
He raised his arm and kept it aloft for several seconds after the falcon took off.
My heart fluttered and sweat trickled down my spine as I watched the falcon fly south and out of sight. I sat in the dewy grass and drew my knees to my chest as the panic continued to rise. My chest tightened and gray spots spiraled across my vision.
“Tessen?” Shan's hand was on my shoulder. He sat down next to me and put his arm around my back. “Breathe, Tessen. In and out, slowly.”
I focused on the steady rhythm of his breathing and used it to regulate my own. Slowly, so slowly, the tension released and my heart returned to steady. Once the pain in my chest subsided, I leaned against him and said, “Thanks. I guess I'm just feeling it now. All of it. Daelon was my friend, though I'd never thought of him that way before, and I watched him die. I killed people, Shan. It was to save our family, but still, I killed them with my own damned cutlery. I couldn't even look at my fork this morning without remembering what it looked and felt like to stab one into someone's eye. It's squishy, and then it pops and oozes before the fork clunks against bone. I'm not sure if I can forget that.”
“Yeah, I understand that,” Shan said. He plucked a stalk of grass and stripped it of its seeds. “My mind kept replaying Mara's death over and over, even before I knew who it was I'd killed, that it was my own great-grandmother who was trying to help us. That feeling does go away eventually. You still remember all the sensory stuff, but it isn't so vivid.”
“I never wanted to kill anyone. That's why I went into smithing instead of anything with the potential for violence.”
“And yet you willingly volunteered to assist in my rescue from the catacombs, even knowing death would likely be involved.”
I shredded several blades of grass between my fingernails. “That was different. That was to protect you.”
Shan sputtered his lips and sighed. “So was what you did in the kitchen. Exactly the same thing. It's perfectly justified to kill in defense of your family. Don't feel guilty about it. Yeah, it is unnerving, but you and Elsin saved us, all of us. I'm alive because of you. So are Mom and our sisters and my father.”
“But I couldn't save Daelon.” My eyes were dry, but I couldn't convince my jaw to unclench or my throat to loosen. All I could think about was blood—Daelon's blood, guard blood, blood on the kitchen floor and on my clothing, splattered from the guards and smeared where Daelis had touched me. I'd tossed that clothing in the garbage bin before I'd left. Even if I'd had the time, I couldn't have convinced myself to scrub it clean.
“Of course you couldn't. No one could have, aside from those bastard guards who killed him in the first place. Don't feel guilty about a crime you didn't commit.” Shan stood and offered me a hand. “Come on. Up. Don't shut down on me. We're in this together, wherever it leads us. I know you'll do your best to not let anything happen to me, and I'll do the same for you. I love you, little brother, always have and always will.”
“I'm not so little anymore. I've been taller than you since I was three years old, you damned petite half-elf. I've got a hand and a half on you now.” I grabbed his hand and jumped to my feet.
He embraced me and pulled my head down to kiss my cheek. “You'll always be my little brother. We need to go now. They'll be waiting for us.”
I didn't tell him how I really felt as we walked back to the cottage. I didn't tell him that at least some of this was his fault. If he hadn't stolen the stupid eggs, we would be with Mom and the rest of the family right now. Sure, the guards may have still tried to kill us, but the eggs wouldn't have been a factor and we wouldn't have needed to run north while everyone else went west.
My ribs ached and my head pulsed. It wasn't anything I hadn't experienced before. This type of panic attack started almost a year earlier, when Mom disappeared and no one knew if she was still alive. They became worse when Shan disappeared, and then stepped up again when a courier misinformed me that my mother had been killed. Uncle Tristan and Grandpa thought I was being dramatic, but Grandma said the attacks were justified. I had no father and I'd just lost my two closest family members, so I was overwhelmed.
The problem was that the panic attacks didn't stop once my family returned alive. I thought it was because I was afraid of losing them again, and maybe because they wore the scars of their ordeals plainly upon their skin. I knew they were in pain, inside and out. I couldn't help them and it set my nerves on fire. What if they always hurt? What if someone came back to finish the murders that were originally intended?
Well, that one came to fruition. Maybe not by the original offending party, but still . . . someone decided it was a good idea to murder my relatives. Again. And now we were separated. Again. Breathe, lungs. Beat, heart. One foot in front of the other and remember to stand tall, shoulders back. Things wouldn't always be this hard. I'd either grow used to it and become numb or we'd all be back together again and alive.
But I longed for the safety I'd lost, the naïve embrace of childhood. Prior to the caves, when Mom went away on one of her assignments, I was absolutely certain she'd come home. I knew Shan would be reading a book by the hearth when I woke in the morning. I knew we'd spend rainy days with Mom, telling stories and sipping hot drinks within the comfortable shelter of a blanket hideaway. I knew things were good, that life was kind.
It wasn't. I grew up. My half-brother Alon was born. He lived. He died. I didn't see him die. I was thirteen and he was four. Mom sent us to stay with Aunt Nora when the pneumonia came on, and I'm still grateful for it. Mom and Ragan stayed with him until the end, but I didn't have to watch my little brother suffer and die. I never wanted to watch anyone die.
But I did. I watched my friend and his four assailants die on my kitchen floor. I actively participated in the deaths of three of them. I killed two myself, with my own frightened strength and utensils forged through my own sweat.
My ribs tightened again. Almost to the house. I could make it. Maybe a cup of water and a quick sit in a comfortable chair would help. I doubted I had time for that. Ragan was already with the horses, and he was restless.
“Don't worry, my falcons fly true,” Ragan said as we approached. He adjusted the saddlebags and nodded toward the cherry trees. “The rest'll join us on the other side of town. No need to draw excess attention, is there?”
“Birds fly true, but do we?” Shan mumbled. He lifted Lumin's crate and strapped it to his saddle. “Adventures lie behind and ahead. I saw home again with the last one and I will with this one too, right?”
“I don't know,” I said. I wanted to lie and tell him everything would be fine, but I couldn't. If I lied, I'd be strangled by my own thoughts once again.
“Oh, aren't you reassuring?” Shan lowered his head and sighed, then nodded toward Serida's crate. “They're already getting bigger. We might need to find them new traveling accommodations before we get to where we're going. They're fine for now, but they won't be turnips and limes for long.”
“Turnips and limes?”
“Read the boxes. Seriously? Have you not read the boxes?”
“Sorry. I didn't notice what was on them, only what was in them,” I said. I glanced at Serida's produce crate. FRESH LIMES, approx. 50 ct. “Sorry. I was in a hurry and you took the turnip one for Lumin, so I just grabbed something.”
“You need to be a hell of a lot more observant than that if you're gonna survive the wilderness,” Ragan said. He sniffled, then scratched at his pointed ear. “Won't say what wilderness, and don't you go saying aloud where we're going. Don't know what tricks the sneaky weasels after you have, or what damnable forms of magic they're skilled with.”
“We've got magic ourselves, though. I mean, I don't, but Shan does and so do some of the others. W
e can fight back if they come after us.”
“Depends on how many there are.” Shan tapped his fingertips along his horse's shoulder. Evinlore was a dapple gray mare that until two days ago had belonged to Daelis. The horse I rode was Mom's buckskin mare, Saragon, a large beast with expressive eyes and a little bit of a foul attitude. They were both orc-bred horses, sturdy animals the Foxfire orcs had gifted to Mom and Daelis following their journey from Sungate to Jadeshire to rescue Shan and Yana. Orc horses were strong and hardy, capable of running for hours at a time without break, so Mom decided they would be the best horses in the Sylleth family stable for us to ride. Perhaps Mom already suspected we had a long distance ahead, and that was why she sent us on the orc horses instead of the faster and lighter—but less stalwart—Jade-bred horses. That breed was bred for racing and occasionally for pulling loads, not for stamina over great distances.
“Tessen. Get your gods-damned dragon on your horse and let's go,” Ragan said. He climbed onto his horse, which was a hairy-footed beast even larger than our orc horses. The brown and white draft horse could carry extra equipment without burden, but I wasn't sure if he could keep pace with the smaller horses if we needed to escape anything at a sustained gallop.
I secured Serida's crate to my saddle. “You sure that lumbering beast of yours can keep up?”
Ragan patted the horse's withers. “I get your concern, but Sprite here is a lot faster than he looks. He's a Fae horse. Not to be confused with a Horsefae, mind you. Horsefae get rather offended by that. Come on. We need to get out of gods-forsaken Juniper before the sun climbs any higher.”
Chapter 10
The coastal hills gave way to a dense and ancient forest. Fog clung to the treetops and left the air heavy. It smelled of detritus and old hope, of salted mist and abandoned dreams. The redwood forests of the Jade Realm were once my favorite landscape, but now I felt dread beneath the canopies rather than relaxation. We were as far from home as I'd ever been and once we left these trees behind, it would be months before I'd see them again. If I saw them again. The Diamond Road was a dangerous and unforgiving path across six realms, so even if our pursuers didn't kill us, the journey itself might. Lions on the plains and wyverns in the mountains—we'd need to sleep in shifts and remain vigilant as we crossed the often-vast spaces between cities and villages.
We rode in near-silence for the first four hours, but the reticence broke by the time we stopped to eat our lunch. Nador and Iefyr sat against a rotting log and exchanged vulgar stories while complaining about about drinking cool tea from canteens rather than hot tea from cups. Rose and Shan were a couple trees away, discussing what sounded like warlock spells.
That left me eating soggy smoked fish sandwiches with Ragan and Marita while Serida chomped on beetles at my knee. The three of us sat close to each other, nearly touching, but we kept our heads down and didn't speak as we chewed. I couldn't think of anything to say to them and they were clearly too involved with their lunch to pause long enough to speak to me.
Nador's chirping soprano voice carried across the thick patch of ferns that separated her and Iefyr from us. “So, I was thinking . . . I was thinking if those wyverns were so intent on eating virgins and only of-age virgins since the young ones didn't have enough meat on them, why didn't they just make sure there weren't any virgins? Easy enough problem to remedy, isn't it?”
Iefyr chomped into an apple before responding. “Well, I offered to fix the problem in just such a way, but the self-righteous bastards got offended and tossed me out of town. They really should've listened, because sure enough, another wyvern swooped down that very afternoon and gobbled up another succulent virgin. Pretty thing, aged nineteen or twenty. Could've saved her life, but no, they had to keep to their prudish traditions, didn't they?”
“Ignorant twits,” Nador said with a lopsided grin that made me wonder if the story was nothing but a shared joke between her and Iefyr. “Hey, have you ever been to Caprima?”
“Not unless I was too smashed to remember.”
“Damned cold tea,” Nador mumbled. She coughed and cleared her throat. “Okay, well, if you ever get stuck there, check out the Temple of the Lady of Light. Pretty place with a couple fountains out front, can't miss it. Anyway, you go inside and the first thing you see is this huge mural on the wall. It's a bunch of prayerful women gathered around a tree, and the tree is easily twice your height. So, I went in the temple to pay my respects, and while I was waiting for a Priestess to escort me to the shrine I decided to examine the painting a little closer. It was really a beautiful work of art. Then I noticed something that made me fall to my knees in a fit of tearful laughter. The blooms on the trees weren't the flowers I thought they were from afar. They were nothing but a collection of fancy cocks. Large, small, erect, shriveled, different colors, different orientations. Must have been fifty of them, all different, and all fancied up to look like flowers. The Priestess came in and asked why I was laughing, and all I could tell her that I was overjoyed to be in the presence of her phallic tree. She claimed not to know what I was talking about and feigned ignorance when I pointed them out one by one. 'I still don't see it,' she said, but the crimson in her cheeks gave her away. Another person came in to pay respects, and the Priestess stood in front of the painting in an attempt to block the view. Of course, that was ridiculous because this thing took up the entire wall. I saw the artist's mark near my feet, so I took a look. Damned thing was painted by the former High Priestess herself fifty years prior. All this time, thousands of people walked by that wall and were too polite to point out that it was covered in ornamental cocks.”
Nador and Iefyr stared at each other for a moment, then burst into laughter.
I nodded at Ragan to get his attention. “Is that true?”
Ragan scoffed and his lips slowly stretched into a grin. “Ask your mother.”
“Why?”
“She told me nearly the same story. I've never been down to Caprima myself, so can't confirm anything.”
“I'm not going to discuss a gods-damned painted cock tree with my mother, Ragan. Shan's new hobby is being a rude asshole. I'll let him ask her.” I swallowed the last of my sandwich and glanced at Marita. I expected her to be embarrassed, but instead I found her with a hand over her mouth and a laugh caught in her throat. Ragan shifted his weight and stared down at a nearby fern. He was the uncomfortable one. “Oh come on, Ragan. I'm not the little kid you remember. I was, but kids grow up. It's been a couple years and a whole lot of piled up shit since we knew each other last. I'm not going to go sit in a corner for cursing in front of my parents.”
“That's not why I looked away,” Ragan said. His voice was soft and plaintive.
“Sorry, did I say something wrong?”
He shook his head and forced a smile. “No. Sometimes the memories break through and sting me. Swarm of thoughts, angry bees. Not your fault. Sometimes recalling conversations I had with your mother cycles into memories of our son.”
“Oh.” I gazed into the ferns and tried to ignore Iefyr and Nador's discussion on dwarven orgy cults. “That happens to me sometimes, too. Some wonderful memory pops into my head, but then it reminds me that he's gone.” I looked toward Marita, who glanced away when my eyes met hers. “Now we're getting morose. How did we shift from that mural into sadness?”
“I can't remember now,” Ragan said. He stretched his arms above his head before raising his voice. “Hey, Rose? You two about ready to move on?”
“Couple minutes. He's almost got this spell down,” Rose replied.
“Take your time.”
I tugged at a stray thread that had escaped from a side seam on my sleeve. “Sorry about all of this.”
“About what?” Ragan asked.
“You getting stuck escorting us to you-know-where. Awful lot of time on the road just to play nanny to some wayward kids and their pets.”
“I won't say it's no trouble, but you're worth it. Both of you. I'd traverse this road three times in a
row to keep you safe from the trouble caused by your damned tiny beasts.” Ragan sighed and laid his hand on my shoulder. “As for the rest of this lot–”
“This is what we do,” Marita interrupted. “We all came into our calling knowing we'd spend weeks and months and years away from home, if we ever had a place to call home at all. We accept the dangers into a comfortable embrace, pat them on the head, and wish them a good night's rest. Don't think yourself a burden upon us. You two are important to the future of the Jade Realm, and perhaps the future of Bacra itself. Especially him.” Marita nodded in Shan's direction. “Strange time we live in. The heir to the Jade Duchy is a half-blood. It was certainly unexpected when that news reached North Juniper.”
“It's caused some discord in the aristocracy.” I offered a dried cherry to Serida. She snatched it from my hand, then dropped it on the ground and buried it beneath a heavy layer of pine needles. “Some of them threatened a delayed revolt when Shan's existence became known to the public, said they would never follow a half-elf. Daelon wouldn't hear of it. He calmly and firmly told them that Shan was his blood, and the rightful heir following Daelis. I don't know . . . maybe that's why he was murdered. Even though Daelis is young enough that he'll probably outlive Shan, maybe some prejudiced bastard was so concerned about what could happen decades from now that they decided to take out the whole line just to ensure a half-elf has no chance of becoming Duke of Jadeshire. Maybe it was less personal and more about upholding the purity of the aristocratic elven bloodlines.”
“Makes sense. We'll keep that in mind if we run into anyone from one of the Jade highborn families along the way.” Ragan stood and stretched into a lunge. He yawned and cracked his neck as his tawny tail flicked the ferns behind him. “All right. I'm going to walk around a minute before we get riding again. I'd advise you lot do the same.”
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