Winter War Awakening (Blood Rose Rebellion, Book 3)

by Rosalyn Eves

  Once Bahadır agreed to come, I launched myself out of the tree, shifting into crow form as I tumbled through the air, letting my clothes flutter to the ground around me. Bahadır followed more sedately, using a pulley system he’d rigged, a kind of cage attached to ropes and wheels that let him ferry himself up and down. I’d have rigged a pulley myself if the only alternative was being carried in Hadúr’s arms as he leapt up and down from the tree. (Of course, I’d also have crashed to the ground and died, so perhaps it was as well I could fly.)

  I was still collecting my scattered clothing when Bahadır reached the base of the tree. Luckily for both of us, he carried the coin purse, or I’d have been collecting coins too.

  “I could have brought those for you,” Bahadır said, fixing his gaze across the puszta and not on my semidressed person.

  “I know,” I said, finally locating my trousers caught on a bush some dozen yards distant. “But this was more fun.”

  “I think someone needs to explain to you what ‘fun’ means.”

  We walked to the nearest csárda, a mile or so distant. The small taproom was not much to look at: a packed-dirt floor, a soot-stained hearth, and broken windows stuffed with straw.

  After the first drink, I bespoke a room from the owner of the csárda, and Bahadır looked at me.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Moving on. It’s time. My sister is still missing, the Austrian army continues to encroach upon Hungary, and I do nothing—I whistle and twiddle my thumbs on the top of a tree.”

  “It’s not nothing,” Bahadır said. “You’re preparing.”

  “I’ve done enough preparing. At some point, a man has to act.”

  “Or act too soon and prove himself a fool,” Bahadır muttered into his tea. Lifting his eyes to mine, he asked, “Are you certain you are not running?”

  The question stung. If I wished to run, I’d stay hidden in the World Tree. “Are you certain you’re not? You have not faced your father’s killers.”

  The blood drained from his face, leaving his brown skin chalky, his scar lurid across his cheek. My words had been a low blow, and I knew it, but I could not recall them.

  “If I returned to Scutari, I would surely be killed, and there would be no one to help my mother and my sister.” He set his teacup on the rather sticky surface of the table and stood. “At least I know what I am afraid of. Do you?”

  He swept deftly through the crowd and out the door of the taproom into the soft darkness. I stared after him, wanting to call him back but finding the words sticking in my throat.

  I took another swig of sör, but the taste had soured in my mouth. Damn and blast. So much for sleeping in the dubious comforts of the csárda while I dream-walked in search of Noémi. Bahadır would doubtless report back to Hadúr that I’d gone off, and I had no desire to be hauled back to the tree like a recalcitrant schoolboy.

  Bahadır had, at least, left the coin purse for me. I paid our tab, then left. The air outside was crisp, carrying the hint of the coming winter. I’d overheard an old man in the bar claim that this winter would be long and fierce. I hoped he was wrong. The cold did not agree with my complexion.

  Outside the village, I shifted to a crow again, stooping to pick up the coin purse with my beak but leaving the clothes pooled on the ground behind me. I’d need to purchase a horse—and new clothes—as soon as I could put distance between me and Hadúr.

  The night was clear, and despite the weight of the purse dragging on my beak, I enjoyed flying, riding on the air currents and sweeping below the stars. I didn’t have a clear destination—only away—but as the night wore on, it was clear that “away” meant back to familiar habitations, west across the puszta toward Buda-Pest. Below me, the farms and pastures and wild prairie slumbered.

  A couple hours into my flight, my attention snagged on a mass of dark shapes below, lit by sporadic fires. Curiosity being one of my besetting sins, I dipped lower for a better look. The mass proved to be a camp full of soldiers bearing the yellow-and-black standard of the Austrian royal family, with the double-headed eagle snapping in a brisk wind.

  I scrambled to make sense of their location here, well past Buda-Pest. Either the city had already fallen to Austrian soldiers or the soldiers pursued a different quarry. I knew from Hadúr’s lectures that if Buda-Pest were in danger, the government would have to relocate—the most logical choice was Debrecen, across the plains from Buda-Pest, as the second-largest city in Hungary and easily accessible to Buda-Pest by the newly completed railway line from Vác.

  Still considering, I circled over the camp. It did not seem to matter whether this army chased Kossuth and the rest of the rebel Hungarian government from Buda-Pest to Debrecen or was bent on some other errand. An Austrian army this deep into my homeland was no friend to me.

  And I had an idea.

  I found a promising farmhouse not far from the army’s camp, landed lightly on the ground, and shifted. The farmhouse was abandoned—likely a temporary response to the army’s proximity—and I found what I was searching for in one of the bedchambers: the skirt and blouse of a peasant woman, and a kerchief to tie over my hair. I shifted again, with a mental apology to Noémi, whose face I borrowed, and donned the clothes. I slipped on a pair of boots, adjusting my feet so the boots fit and did not rub, then walked toward the camp.

  As I had anticipated, a pair of guards stopped me at the perimeter. “What do you want?”

  I adopted what I hoped was a dulcet expression—something Noémi would never adopt herself—and said, in broadly accented German, “I should like to see the general. I’ve urgent news for him.”

  My plan was brilliant, if simple: distract the general and other ranking officers with a diversion, then set fire to the cannons and supply wagons, hobbling the army’s forward momentum.

  The older of the two soldiers, with a greying mustache, said, “General Windisch-Graetz is not to be disturbed by the likes of you, but I will carry a message.”

  I batted my eyelashes at him. “I’m sorry, but I must deliver the message direct to him.”

  The second soldier, a young brown-haired man with patchy sideburns, leered at me. “I’ve a notion what ‘message’ you wish to deliver. I’m off watch in an hour, if you’d rather deliver it to me.”

  Good lord, what a pig. I fought to keep the revulsion from my expression. Did Noémi face such comments? Then: had I delivered such comments to a woman? Let a crow pluck out my eyes if I ever did so again.

  The older soldier cuffed him.

  “Please, sir, it truly is urgent,” I said, ignoring both the crude soldier and the turmoil his comment stirred up. “It concerns Kossuth Lajos.”

  “Kossuth, eh?” The older soldier looked interested. “I’ll see if the general’s adjutant is still awake. That’s the best I can promise.” He glared at the younger man. “Keep watch until I get back. If you mess this up, I’ll feed you to the cook’s mongrel dog.”

  As luck would have it, the adjutant was taking a dictated letter for General Windisch-Graetz, and I found myself ushered into a tent before the general himself: a tall, spare man with steel-grey hair. His eyes were piercing. “Yes?”

  “I beg pardon for disturbing you,” I said, dropping an awkward curtsy. The adjutant and a middle-aged woman, fiddling with something in her lap, both watched me attentively. “I thought you should know that Kossuth Lajos is at this moment not five miles from here, meeting with a Hungarian outlaw called the King of Crows. He means to offer the bandit pardon in exchange for his support of the war.”

  Those piercing eyes grew sharper at the mention of the King of Crows, as though he recognized the name. I fought down an irrational flicker of pride.

  “How do you know this?” the general asked.

  “My father helped arrange the meeting. He fancies himself a patriot, but I am loyal to the emperor.”
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  The general inclined his head. “Then I thank you for your service. We will deal with this at once.” He turned, not to the adjutant or the older soldier who had escorted me but to the middle-aged woman in the corner of the tent. “Frau Schreiber?”

  The woman stood, smoothing her navy skirt. “He lies.”

  He? Fear stabbed through me. There was a crawling sensation in my head, as though an insect scuttled across my brain. Damn it, the woman must be a Coremancer. No one else would have seen through my shifting.

  I braced myself to run, but the adjutant hissed something, shaking his fingers at me, and the ground beneath my feet was suddenly porous, sucking my boots in with a slurp.

  Perfect. A Coremancer and a Lucifera. I’d landed myself thoroughly in the suds this time. Here lies Eszterházy Mátyás: He had an idea.

  “Who is he?” the general asked, still watching the woman.

  “A shifter—the form he wears is real, not a glamour.”

  “And is Kossuth, in fact, nearby?”

  “No closer than we already knew him to be, fleeing on the railroad.” The woman took a couple of steps nearer, peering at my face. “Interesting. About one thing he did not lie: the King of Crows was nearby. He stands here, in fact.”

  “The outlaw magician?” Windisch-Graetz asked.

  I’d overstayed my welcome in this conversation: time to disappear and execute the second stage of my plan.

  The Coremancer shouted, “He’s shifting!” just as I began to change, and the adjutant shouted too, and a wave of earth came crashing over me, burying me in the soil beneath the camp.

  The crow I’d been shifting to choked on the dirt, and I flailed useless wings against the ground. Another shift, and I wiggled through the dry soil as a plump, pinkish worm—not my favorite creature, but at least I could breathe and move freely. The coin purse I’d borrowed from Bahadır was buried in the ground beside me, but that was the least of my worries at present.

  I had a few moments while they thought I was still trapped. If they meant to capture me and not simply kill me, they’d be retrieving me in a moment.

  Casting my mind out, I found a brace of hunting owls nearby. I urged them closer to the camp, close enough to shift, and then the light, feathered bodies began changing. Through our mental link, I could sense the shifting from the owls’ perspective: the pale brown wings hardened, taking on a scaly sheen. The broad heads narrowed, lengthening above their shoulders.

  The first owl hooted in alarm, and a spritz of fire emerged. It tried to flee, and promptly careened into the other dragon.

  I swore again. In my rush, I hadn’t taken the time to calm the owls, to project my plan into their brains. Now, instead of foiling the Luminate magicians as I’d hoped, I’d have to exert all my attention to soothing two crazed owl-turned-dragons.

  The second dragon crashed to the ground and emitted a gout of flame, which tore through the camp, setting fire to tents and scattering soldiers and horses alike. Not the supply wagons I’d intended, but a decent distraction.

  Only now, the camp was roused, alarm bells ringing and shouts filling the air. I tried to nudge the first dragon toward the supply wagons and the second toward the cannons, hoping to set them alight before the soldiers were organized, when my body went flying upward and I found myself suspended by a spell, limp and pink before the general.

  The Lucifera adjutant had rallied.

  “Let me crush him, sir,” the adjutant said, “like the worm he is.”

  Whoops. I shifted again, launching myself through the air before my wings had finished forming.

  But I’d misjudged the adjutant’s spell, which held not only my worm self but my crow self fixed in the air. I felt as though I’d flung myself against a brick wall.

  “Can you stop the shifting?” the general asked, a tightness to his voice the only sign of his annoyance. Despite myself, I was impressed: his camp was burning and his evening had doubtless not gone as intended, but he still did not raise his voice.

  The crawling feeling in my brain was back, scuttling through my memories of shapeshifting, making the crow shape in my head fuzz and blur. In response, my crow self fuzzed and blurred, and I lost my hold on the owls, which, returning abruptly to their own forms, winged away as fast as they could.

  “Who and what are you?” the general asked, ignoring my nudity much better than the rather prim Coremancer, who would not look at me.

  I didn’t answer. I could tell him I was an Eszterházy, which would doubtless earn me better treatment in whatever passed for a camp prison—and possibly some clothes—but what was the point? I didn’t intend to be prisoner long. The Coremancer couldn’t stop me shifting indefinitely, though at present I had nearly reached my limit. Hunger clawed at my empty gut.

  The general shook his head in disgust. “Take him away. Perhaps he’ll feel more talkative tomorrow.”

  The Lucifera adjutant used his levitating spell to move me out of the tent. The cool night air pricked every exposed hair on my body. I wanted to rub my arms for warmth and cross my legs to cover myself, but I could not move: the adjutant had added an Immobility spell to the Levitation.

  I was well and truly stuck—at least so long as his attention and his spell did not waver.

  The burrowing hunger in my gut seemed to deepen, bringing a tug of longing. Miles away, I could feel the World Tree, its vague sentience sharpening to alertness at my attention. It called to me, whispering a shape to my mind, a beast out of fable to guard the heart of the tree.

  No.

  And perhaps it would have ended there—my will set against the tree’s more inchoate nudging. But the adjutant, acting as though my presence was a personal affront to him, was not content to float me through the darkened camp. Instead, he had to draw attention to my humiliation, sparking Lumen lights along our path, calling to any soldiers he could see. He let the Levitation spell drop, so that my immobile body dragged and bumped across the cold ground.

  As the gathering soldiers laughed and hooted, something in me snapped.

  The shape I’d been fighting boiled up in me, swelled, and burst forth like a savage bloom.

  I came back to myself in fits and starts, like patterns seen beneath a guttering lamp.

  First there was a memory of blood, of shouting and screams cut short with the satisfying crunch of bone.

  Then flying, first as an enormous, sleek, multiheaded beast whose full stomach pointed to a satiation I could not bear to think of. Then as a crow, streaking across the puszta.

  I woke sometime in midmorning, my head pillowed on my bare arms, drool pooling in the corners of my mouth. There was blood underneath my fingernails, and the memory of blood still coated my tongue. I was sick in a nearby bush, and then sat, spent, in the thin sunlight of late fall. I should have been cold, unclothed as I was, but the only thing I felt was a vast, crawling exhaustion.

  What had I done?

  I’d sworn I would not take the dragon form again—and yet in a moment of weakness, a burning flicker of shame, I’d given in to it.

  If my initial, ill-conceived plan had not succeeded in impeding the army’s movement, I had bloody well succeeded now.

  So much blood.

  I tried to tell myself I’d struck a blow for Hungary’s independence. I tried to tell myself this was war and casualties were an inevitable side effect.

  Anna had told me that her branch of the Eszterházy family was mostly Coremancers: that gift had clearly skipped me, because I was a terrible liar, particularly to myself.

  I thought of Bahadır’s final words in that squalid csárda. He’d accused me of running, of not knowing what I was afraid of.

  He was wrong. I knew what I was afraid of.

  This is what I was afraid of. Of destruction without redemption—of becoming monstrous like my father. There was no glory in the s
hambles he’d made of his life, of all our lives.

  I’d always thought I was afraid of disappointing those around me, as my father had disappointed me. When the Lady first tasked me with using my táltos gifts to save Hungary, I had fled because I was afraid of disappointing her, of disappointing everyone who trusted me.

  But what if it was more than that?

  What if it was not failure that frightened me but success? Perhaps I hadn’t left Hadúr’s training because I thought I had learned enough; perhaps I had left because, deep down, I feared learning too much. After all, a small man can have only small failures. A powerful man will have powerful ones.

  A táltos can leave half an army decimated in his wake, with no one to stand against him—not even himself.

  Bahadır was not wrong about me running.

  In the searing light of this new realization, I saw the shape of my past differently. I’d spent so much time running. I’d run from my father’s death, hiding my grief in games and drink and pretty girls. I’d run from the Lady’s offer to train me, fearing that my power would make me a monster. I’d even run from Kossuth and the war, looking for Noémi instead. I wasn’t wrong to put Noémi first, but I had done so to avoid a different responsibility.

  I didn’t want to keep running.

  Not from the war.

  Not from myself.

  Running hadn’t saved me—and it sure as hell had not saved the army I’d left ravaged behind me. Running hadn’t even let me find Noémi.

  With this new filter, I saw that my father’s death was not a disappointment because he failed but a disappointment because he ran from his challenges—his bankruptcy—instead of facing them.

  Only once in my life had I stood my ground: when Anna entered the Binding and I had agreed to die to destroy a spell. I’d died in fire and pain—but I had also been glorious.

  Maybe it was time to stand again.

  On that victorious note, I pushed myself to my feet—and promptly stumbled over a half-buried root and collapsed to the ground again. I gave up on standing—literally, not metaphorically—and shifted back to crow form.