Bloodkin

by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

  No, I thought, shaking my head to clear my own cowardly thoughts. I don’t want to forget. I refuse to lose anything else.

  I HAD JUST opened my mouth to try to answer Vance’s worried inquiry—maybe not with the whole explanation, but with enough that he would understand—when Malachi suddenly appeared beside us, like a rock plunking into a pool.

  Vance jumped, but I was so used to Malachi’s ways that they couldn’t startle me anymore. He embodied the magic that allowed our guild to disappear into the woods, invisible to the serpiente guards who would like to kill us. Unless he made a point to be obvious, the half-white viper, half-falcon prophet could walk through a crowded room without drawing a single eye.

  “Morning,” Vance said tensely, when at first Malachi simply looked at us as if waiting for one of us to say something.

  Malachi blinked twice, then shook himself as if coming out of a cold lake.

  “Morning, Vance,” he replied. “Are you going to the market today?”

  Vance frowned, looking to me with obvious frustration, then told Malachi, “Yes.”

  Many of our day-to-day supplies came from the serpiente market, or directly from the forest in which we lived, but other needs couldn’t be met locally. Midnight’s market had the best blacksmith—the only one who would actually deal with the Obsidian guild—and was the only place to find most goods produced by avians, the Shantel, the Azteka, or other even farther-off groups. It was also the only place we could sell any of our own wares.

  We visited Midnight’s land only when we had to, two or three times a year. We had all been surprised when Vance offered to join the group traveling north this time, in what would be his first return to Midnight’s land since he had walked away from that empire four months ago. Some had speculated that he intended to leave us and take the so-called masters of Midnight up on their offer for him to join them. I had spent enough late nights talking with Vance that I had no fear that he would return to that place; he had something to prove to himself, I suspected, and this was how he needed to go about it.

  I personally had no desire to return to Midnight’s land so soon after our last misadventure.

  “Did you want me to look for something for you?” Vance asked, when Malachi’s gaze went distant again.

  Malachi nodded absently.

  “Something in particular?”

  I bit my cheek to suppress a smile. Sometimes Malachi was perfectly coherent, reasonable, and understandable. He could fight when he needed to, and could be unsettlingly persuasive when he chose to be. Other times, he walked with one foot in a different world. The rest of us were so used to Malachi that we mostly ignored his odd behavior when it surfaced. Vance was the only one who deliberately provoked him.

  Maybe that was a good thing. Malachi sucked in a shuddering breath and this time seemed to come fully back into our world. His eyes focused on Vance, then me. He said, “There is something you need there.”

  “Can you be more specific?” Vance asked.

  He’s going to look for a new knife for me, I thought, and Torquil wants salt and cayenne. I doubted that was what Malachi meant, though, and unlike Vance, I tried not to interrupt Malachi. Sometimes, speaking to him cut off the entire conversation.

  “Kadee, what about you?” Malachi asked.

  I shook my head. “I’m staying here,” I answered, with a little more certainty than I suddenly felt. Malachi had no authority to give me orders, but his visions had guided the Obsidian guild for longer than I had been alive. If he thought I needed to go to the market for some reason, I couldn’t just dismiss his words.

  Malachi shook his head, frowning, and said, “You need to look for a boy with a harp.”

  The statement gave me chills, as it brought forward the last image from my nightmare.

  That dream had been false—a mishmash of my knowledge and my fears—but the boy with the harp was real, and one of the few vivid memories I had from my childhood. The most terrifying days of my youth had been spent with a Shantel witch determined to make me well, after my seizures had become so severe and so frequent that my human parents had been convinced I was dying. I hadn’t understood what the witch was doing, or why, and my fear had only exacerbated the symptoms she was trying to control. The only comfort I had was a boy named Shane, who would sit next to my sickbed, play the harp, and sometimes sing in the lilting, exotic language of his people.

  “What about him?” I asked Malachi.

  “I don’t know,” he answered.

  “If you don’t, then we certainly don’t,” Vance said sharply.

  “Is he going to be there?” I asked, though it seemed unlikely. Shane was prince of the Shantel, one of the few civilizations with the power and arrogance to resist full subjugation by Midnight. Their magically guarded forest had given them the leverage to negotiate with the vampires from a position of strength the rest of us could only dream of. Among other things, instead of sending a prince or king to Midnight three times a year to balance accounts, as other empires were required to do, the Shantel stayed in their own territory and had Midnight send a representative to them.

  It wasn’t surprising, really, that one of their own had found the nerve to try to fight Midnight.

  Midnight would have demanded flesh in payment for that crime. The Shantel, who never traded slaves, had probably bargained for a fine of equivalent value in coins and trade goods. It was what they had always done. Midnight would have demanded a high price for their audacity, but the vampires didn’t want anyone to realize how close the attack had come to succeeding, and they wouldn’t risk losing face by insisting on a punishment they could not possibly enforce.

  All this passed through my mind before Malachi answered thoughtfully, “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Who’s the boy with the harp?” Vance asked.

  “I don’t know,” Malachi answered, before I could untangle my thoughts enough to speak. If Shane wouldn’t be at the market, why did Malachi want me to go there to look for him?

  “What about you?” Vance asked. “Are you coming with us?”

  Malachi shuddered, seafoam eyes widening. “Not if I can help it,” he replied. “Too many ghosts.”

  He stood and walked away without another word, and approached his sister, who was sorting and packing her gear with quick, angry motions. Her fight with Aika seemed to have blown over, for now.

  As the two siblings exchanged soft words, Vance shook his head and said, “I will never get used to him.”

  At least Malachi and Vance hadn’t argued this time. I preferred Vance’s confused annoyance to the tightly wound fury Malachi had triggered in the past. I wasn’t sure what had gone on between these two, but in Vance’s early days in the Obsidian guild, their arguments had been at least as bad as Aika’s and Misha’s.

  “He’s usually less obscure,” I pointed out. “Would you excuse me a moment?”

  I didn’t wait for permission before I stood almost as abruptly as Malachi had.

  Farrell was deep in conversation with Aika as I approached. I overheard her saying, “Sometimes I think she misses Midnight, with the way she goes on. Are you sure she’s not going so she can find an excuse to sell herself back?”

  “I can only pray she is not,” Farrell said, each word precise.

  “And watch your own back. She—” Aika broke off when she noticed me. “Kadee, it looks like Vance will be in charge of the blacksmith trip. I’m staying here after all. Did you still want me to help you with your staff-work?”

  I was a fair shot with the bow I carried, and I could throw a knife with reasonable accuracy—at least, before I stupidly lost my favorite in the flank of a deer that fled before I could try for a better shot—but Aika was determined to teach me more defensive fighting skills.

  “Actually,” I said, looking from Aika to Farrell, “I was thinking I might join the group going to the market.”

  I expected him to object, even though he believed absolutely that a child of Obsidian was subject
only to her own will. Farrell guided but did not rule, and the rest of us often listened but were expected to make our own decisions.

  Instead, he raised his brows with surprise. “First Vance, then Misha, and now you?”

  “Misha’s coming?” That explained why Aika wasn’t, and what they had been talking about when I approached. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  If Misha lashed out at someone in the market, she would be arrested by Midnight’s guards and end up back where she had been, back where her night terrors made it clear a part of her was still trapped. It would be passive suicide.

  Like Aika, I suspected it had crossed Misha’s mind at least once that it was easier to give up than it was to be a prophesied savior.

  “No, I’m not,” Farrell answered. But it isn’t our place to tell her no.

  I swallowed, wondering if I dared go and risk being near her—

  No, I told myself. She has nightmares, and she’s on edge, but she isn’t suicidal. She is supposed to be the one who will rescue us from Midnight. How can she do that if she is too afraid to even face the market?

  I had to believe that.

  “Do you still want to come with us?” Farrell asked.

  I nodded. “Malachi said something to me about Shane and the Shantel.”

  “You still have an open invitation to visit Shantel land, don’t you?” he asked. “You don’t need to look for them in the market.”

  I bit my lip. As absurd as it sounded, I felt safer in Midnight’s market than I did in the Shantel forest. My “open invitation,” as Farrell put it, was left over from when I had been a child. The Shantel were not normally so welcoming of outsiders, but they were the ones who had stolen me from my human kin and brought me to this world of shapeshifters, and it was their magic that had taught me to shapeshift before the seizures killed me. Because they had taken responsibility for me once, they claimed they had a responsibility to me in the future as well.

  Despite that noble notion, I wasn’t sure my invitation would still be valid. If the Shantel had heard the same rumors as the serpiente, and thought the Obsidian guild might be responsible for turning them in, they might conveniently forget I had once been a child in their care.

  “Malachi said I should go,” I said, feigning indifference that Farrell was sure to see through.

  “As you wish,” he answered. “We’ll leave in an hour.”

  The next hour was occupied with frantic packing and rapid conversations about value, and which supplies were most needed and which we should only get if we could afford them. Aika didn’t trust anyone but Farrell to negotiate the sale of the hides she had tanned and other tools she laboriously created throughout the year. Those could usually be exchanged for blood coins, mostly from the Shantel, which was why we had planned this trip to coincide with their normal spring trading window.

  Torquil had Vance memorize a list of spices and other ingredients we needed, in order of importance. He didn’t mince words as he admitted that the Azteka who sold most of those would either give Vance a better deal because he was supposedly related to one of their holy bloodwitches, or they would try to cheat him because he was considered a bloodtraitor. “If they give you a hard time, don’t hesitate to remind them that your coins are as good as anyone’s, and if they don’t believe you, they can ask one of the guards to check.”

  Vance paled a little but didn’t respond except to nod.

  We were about to get on our way when Aika pushed a few extra coins into my hands. “Get a better knife this time. The handle on that last one was loose. Take care of Vance,” she added, dropping her voice. “This can’t be easy for him. And …” She glanced at Misha, as if to check that the white viper wasn’t listening. “If there’s trouble, you and Vance get out of the way. Don’t go jumping into the middle to protect her. You hear me?”

  Others might have called it cowardly advice, but I nodded, because it was futile to go up against Midnight, and fighting a futile fight for some idea of honor wasn’t our way. Such was the life of the Obsidian guild, my chosen family, which lived and sometimes died by the ideals that no man had the right to rule any other, and that he who lives to run away, lives.

  “DID YOU KNOW Aika and Torquil are trying to breed?” Misha demanded of Farrell, almost as soon as we had stepped outside the bounds of Malachi’s magic, which hid our camp from passersby.

  If we looked over our shoulders, we wouldn’t see or hear the camp, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t still hear us. I could picture Torquil restraining his mate to keep her from coming after us.

  “I know they want a child,” Farrell replied blandly, replacing Misha’s coarse wording with something less … Less like Midnight, I thought. Midnight talks about breeding people as if they were horses or dogs. “I also know they were trying to keep it quiet until they were successful,” he added, with a touch of censure in his voice and a nod toward Vance and me.

  I hadn’t known, though I wasn’t exactly surprised. Serpiente didn’t find marriage or monogamy as important as humans did, but Aika and Torquil had declared themselves mates well before I had ever met them. It seemed natural enough that they would want children.

  Misha shook her head. “It’s ridiculous, not to mention selfish,” she huffed. “This is no life for children.”

  I saw Farrell flinch, and remembered that he had once been a father. His mate, Melissa, had shared Misha’s opinion. After Naga Elise’s death, when the first accusation of treason had fallen on Farrell, Melissa had left the Obsidian guild and begged sanctuary from the serpiente king, Julian. She had brought Farrell’s child with her, and when she had become Julian’s second queen, her son, Aaron, had become his son as well.

  Therefore, the only son of a man who had dedicated his life to the principles of the Obsidian guild was now called a prince. Before I had joined the Obsidian guild, I had known Aaron fairly well. He had treated me like a kid sister, but it was obvious that he was every inch a young man used to privilege, and blind to anyone else’s struggles. He had no idea that the infamous outlaw Farrell Obsidian was his father.

  “Weren’t you born in the Obsidian guild?” Vance challenged Misha. “Would you rather Farrell had left you and you brother where you were?”

  “Vance!” I gasped, shocked. If Farrell hadn’t bought Malachi and his mother from Midnight, Misha would have been born a slave of that empire.

  “At least Shkei would probably still be alive,” Misha mused. This time, I was the one who sucked in a sharp breath, feeling as if I had been struck. “Malachi says the vampires planned to cull him, but my older brother has a knack for survival. He would—”

  “That’s enough,” Farrell broke in. The sharp command, so different from his usual thoughtfully permissive approach, made it clear how deeply Misha’s speculation had hurt him.

  “Of course, sir,” Misha replied, turning long enough to give Farrell a baleful glare before speeding her pace so she could once more walk several steps ahead of us.

  Farrell sighed heavily, but said nothing. What was there to say?

  We reached the boundary of Midnight’s land, a bridge over the rapidly tumbling Barri Creek, two long days later. Though the four of us were supposedly traveling together, we were far from companionable. It was difficult to hunt effectively while carrying the amount we were and still make good time, but Vance and I used trying as an excuse to range ahead of the others, where Misha’s voice couldn’t reach us. Farrell stayed close to her, protective, and when I saw how tense and drawn he looked in the evenings I felt a twinge of guilt, but mostly relief that I had avoided her seemingly poisonous voice.

  We approached the bridge at sundown. Most serpiente traders would have camped for the night in the clearing on this side, which was maintained for just that reason, then moved on after sunrise to reach the market by midday, but we paused only long enough for the sun to duck behind the trees before stepping onto the trade road.

  This was one of the most dangerous moments of our trip. The
trade road was the most likely place for us to run into other serpiente, and on this side of Barri Creek, we were likely to be shot without warning if we were recognized by their guards. Unfortunately, the “creek” had high cliffs on either side and wide rapids at the bottom, so crossing at any other point was even riskier.

  Midnight was the only local empire that didn’t consider us outlaws or worse, which meant we were technically much safer in their land than any other, as long as we didn’t overstay our welcome. We could travel in Midnight’s forests as long as we were intending to trade, and their laws protected us from the other shapeshifter nations who would like to see us dead. However, the penalty would be swift and severe if they judged we were actually living here. The only shapeshifters allowed to do that were the ones who officially worked for the vampires’ empire, and they were even more despised than we were.

  More than we used to be, anyway, I thought, remembering what I had heard in the serpiente market. Midnight didn’t consider us employees—bloodtraitors, as they were referred to by other shapeshifters—but the rest of the world seemed to be leaning that way.

  We finally reached the market midmorning. As always, the sight of the guards at the gates made my hackles rise. The men and women in Midnight’s burgundy regalia were here to make sure the vampires’ laws were being followed, which meant they were the ones ensuring we could trade here safely.… Still, it was hard for me to trust any guards, much less ones I knew had chosen to leave their own people to work for Midnight.

  Normally, the guards made an attempt to avoid conversation unless there was a problem. They knew that most of the merchants and shoppers here considered them traitors. Today, one of them noticed Vance, straightened, and greeted him with a respectful “Sir.”

  The acknowledgment made Vance flinch and freeze at the threshold of the market. Misha was standing with her shoulders tight and her nostrils flared, like a horse on the verge of bolting. Farrell and I exchanged a concerned glance.