Bloodkin

by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

  “We don’t know what the Shantel think happened,” I warned. “If they think we betrayed them, I can’t promise we’ll be greeted warmly.”

  Vance and I were the only people alive who had seen four of Midnight’s infamous trainers lying, cold and still as corpses, on the stone floor. We had been present when the Shantel witch responsible for poisoning them had been killed by an Azteka woman seeking to keep Midnight’s wrath from falling on her own people. That woman never knew we had just infected Jeshickah, and that if she had stayed her hand Midnight’s leader would have been destroyed. Since we didn’t dare share the real story, it made sense that other shapeshifters apparently thought we had somehow betrayed the Shantel.

  Shantel magic was supposed to be powerful, especially when it came to prophecy and knowing about events they had not witnessed. I hoped, even if they thought we had worked with Midnight against them, they would let us speak and would have some way to confirm our account. But I couldn’t guarantee that.

  “If you’re worried, why are you going?” Vance asked at last.

  “Because …” I trailed off. I couldn’t articulate the horror I had felt at the end of my nightmare. I didn’t even want to think about it. Instead, I said, “Malachi said to look for the boy with the harp. His name is Shane, and he is one of the Shantel I once knew. Malachi wouldn’t have mentioned it if it weren’t important.”

  Vance didn’t respond, but now my own thoughts were swirling too fast for me to take note. It had been years since I had seen Shane. Back then, I had been a sick, terrified child, and he had been a sweet young boy who had tried to comfort me. Now I was an outlaw, accused of—guilty of—treason against the royal house of the serpiente, and Shane was a prince.

  Was I being a fool, putting myself in his land?

  The sound of the shattering harp and the stink of burning bodies pervaded my memory, as if to say, What choice do you have?

  We were almost in Shantel land when Vance broke his silence, and said, “Tell me about Alasdair.”

  God help me, I thought. I had been so focused on my immediate concerns, I had actually forgotten how Vance had reacted to Hara’s accusations.

  “I trust you to tell me the truth,” Vance added, when I was quiet too long. “That’s why I volunteered to go with you.”

  “I … We …” I tried to gather my thoughts. “A few months after Misha and Shkei were sold to Midnight, a mercenary came to us. She said a hawk had crossed one of Midnight’s trainers, and he wanted her. Midnight’s laws include a clause that says that shapeshifters can’t be made slaves unless we disobey those laws, or our own kind sells us in … so he couldn’t take her, legally. Not unless someone … other shapeshifters, like us … sold her to him.”

  Repeating the tale with Vance frowning at me left a foul taste in my mouth. The rest of the story seemed obvious enough, so I didn’t say it aloud. We agreed. We sold her, and we got Misha back in return.

  “I met her, you know,” Vance said, once I had stopped speaking. “Gabriel owns her, or did when I was there.”

  “He’s the one who asked us for her,” I answered softly. “He had Misha and Shkei, and was willing to make a trade.”

  Vance winced. “Do you have any idea …” He trailed off, speechless. Farrell, Malachi, and Misha all did the same thing when they tried to describe Midnight, as if words were not sufficient to express what they had seen within those walls. My own brief glimpse last winter had been enough to sate any curiosity I might have had.

  “We believed,” I said, “if Gabriel was trying so hard to get her, then he would, whether or not we helped. We couldn’t save the hawk, but we had a chance to save one of our own.”

  Only one.

  “There are two of them,” I remembered protesting, when the mercenary had offered her deal.

  “There is only one hawk. Choose.”

  Shkei was younger, sweeter, innocent. I would have chosen him in a heartbeat if I could have, but there had been the prophecy to consider. How could Misha bring about Midnight’s fall if we let the vampires break her as a slave?

  Farrell, as ever, had refused to order any of us. Instead, he had us vote blindly. Twelve had voted to bring Misha home. Only two had voted for Shkei. I was one of them; I didn’t know who the other had been. It didn’t matter, because as the mercenary had said, there was only one hawk.

  “Trainers are good at convincing you of things like that,” Vance said. “That’s their job, their existence—to get you to believe that there’s no reason not to sell your soul, your freedom, your faith, anything that makes you alive and free. They convince you that the blood is there for a reason, a necessary reason, and—” He broke off, coming to an abrupt stop.

  Ahead of us, the road disappeared. We had reached the edge of Midnight’s territory, and the beginning of Shantel land.

  “If he wanted her, he would have found a way to get her,” Vance said, gazing at the wild forest ahead of us. “You’re right about that much. But with the deal you made, he didn’t just get a hawk. He got all of you. All of us.”

  “That’s not—”

  He cut me off with a sharp look, and the words “Isn’t it?” Vance verbally reviewed what he had observed. “The serpiente already thought of the Obsidian guild as traitors and criminals, and now the avians and the Shantel and I’m sure others do as well. Malachi rescued his sister, but don’t you see how much he hates himself for that? Farrell says Malachi’s prophecy is why we’re doing all this, but have you noticed that he and Malachi don’t even look each other in the eye anymore? And you … if you weren’t ashamed of it, you would have mentioned it before now. How many nights have we stayed up talking? You never told me about Naga Elise, or—”

  “We didn’t kill her!” I snapped.

  I wasn’t even born when Naga Elise, the serpiente queen and the mother of Julian Cobriana’s only daughter, Hara, died in a fire. During my time in the palace, I had heard servants say the fire had probably been an accident, but Hara insisted that someone had started it. Some of the servants thought that the child might have caused the fire herself. An accident, surely, but children weren’t always able to admit to accidents.

  “True or not,” Vance said, “what reason have we given anyone to doubt our guilt?” He took a deep, shuddering breath, closing his eyes.

  I reached instinctively for his hand. His fingertips brushed mine, but then he pulled away.

  The accusing tone dropped from his voice as he confessed, “If it hadn’t been for the Shantel magic against Midnight, I would still be there, blithely believing everything the trainers told me. Believing order is needed, a few to rule, and many naturally meant to be ruled over. Believing the blood and pain and all the ways they use to ‘teach’ their subjects obedience are necessary. Sometimes I look at us, lost in the forest, and I want that order back. I want it so badly, I have to put all my energy into running the other direction.” He wrapped his arms around himself as if he was cold. “I had almost convinced myself that I had gone far enough. I could even stand to face the market, because Midnight didn’t have any power over me anymore.”

  He didn’t have to complete the thought aloud: I was wrong.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “We should have told you about Alasdair.” Vance hadn’t asked, and none of us had wanted to share the moment of our lives of which we were all most ashamed. We would all say that we had only done what we needed to do, maybe even that we had done the right thing, but that didn’t mean we were proud of it. We had stalked the hawk for weeks, learning her movements. We had learned who she was and who she cared about so we could use that against her in order to capture her.

  “I should have guessed,” Vance sighed. “I saw the way she responded to Malachi in Midnight.”

  “You don’t have to come with me,” I blurted out. “You don’t owe the Shantel anything. You shouldn’t risk yourself for them.”

  “I’m not doing it for them,” Vance asserted sharply. He drew a breath, and his voice was gentle again
when he said, “When I went back to Midnight this winter, you came with me. I was still practically a stranger to you then, but you didn’t make me go alone.”

  “I should be safe,” I said. “I have—”

  “An open invitation,” Vance interrupted. “I know. Have you ever gone?”

  I shook my head.

  “I don’t know the whole story,” Vance said, “but if you didn’t dread this place, you would have visited at some point.”

  “The forest might not even let you in,” I admitted. “Will you be able to find your way back to camp if we get separated?”

  Vance nodded. Not long ago, the quetzal hadn’t been able to find his way out of a tree without help, but he seemed to have an innate sense of direction that had quickly developed once he had been exposed to the wider world. Maybe it was a bird thing. Personally, I missed city streets and town markets, like the ones that haunted my dreams and my faintest memories. I loved the forest, but sometimes I wished I had a road, literally as well as metaphorically.

  We moved forward together, crossing the boundary from Midnight’s land into the enchanted forest that belonged to the Shantel.

  The woods here seemed simultaneously darker and brighter than they should have been. The light cascaded through the trees in a way that had no rhyme or season. Shadows fell without regard for the location of the sun, and plants that were just peeking up above the ground in other areas were already in full bloom here.

  I had lived with the Obsidian guild long enough that I could normally navigate a forest comfortably. I habitually took note of the direction of the light, and which trees marked a straight path. In Shantel territory, however, that didn’t work. North wasn’t north, and one could walk in a line forward and end up making a circle.

  “Where are we going?” Vance asked at one point.

  “Hopefully, the Family Courtyard,” I answered. “That’s what the Shantel call their village. We won’t reach it until tomorrow, though.”

  “Do you have any idea where we are?”

  I shrugged. “We’re in the forest,” I answered. “If we keep traveling, we should reach our destination, unless the Shantel don’t want us to. We’ll be under guard before we get there, if we aren’t already.” Just as the forest could decide to let us in, send us away, or drive us lost in circles, it could bring Shantel guards to us. “For tonight, the only thing we need to worry about is avoiding the serpiente. We probably got here hours before them, but time and distance in the Shantel woods change, so they could catch up with us.”

  We traveled until dusk, then set up camp and divided the night into two watches. We wouldn’t see the Shantel unless they wanted us to, but we would hopefully hear the serpiente royal party if they approached.

  Vance took first watch, and I succumbed to uneasy sleep.

  Monsters surrounded me.

  I didn’t know where I was, or what I had done to deserve this. I was the child of a Patriot in the Continental army and a nurse he had met during the war. They loved me, but what value could I possibly have to anyone else? I was seven years old, and constantly ill. Why would anyone want me?

  I cried out for my mother, for my father, though my throat was parched and hoarse. They didn’t come. Instead, a woman approached me whose skin was dark like clay, and decorated with black and indigo inks.

  She spoke to me in a language I didn’t understand, and offered me foods I didn’t recognize. Some settled well in my stomach, soothing my hunger, but others inspired vivid hallucinations and made my body heavy. They came in bowls carved with symbols that writhed and made my eyes ache when I looked at them.

  Sometimes the woman—the witch, I was sure—would leave if I tried to refuse her tonics and potions, but other times, she would call for help. More strangers would come, and would hold me in place so she could force the foul brews down my gullet.

  I thought I remembered others coming to me, who spoke English and tried to explain what was happening, but their visits were hazy.

  Sometimes Shane was there. He never spoke to me, just played his harp. Sometimes he sang, in that strange language. His music was the only thing that calmed me in this terrifying place.

  A WORDLESS CRY of alarm snapped me from dreams to full alert. I reached for my dagger, only to find my wrist caught by shadows in the forest.

  I lashed out instinctively, driving my shoulder into the chest of the person restraining me as I tried to stand. Instead, I found myself off balance, with my wrists pinned behind my back by warm hands.

  Warm. These weren’t serpiente. If they had been, Vance would have seen them sooner, and we would have run. The fact that they had been able to sneak up on us meant they were Shantel.

  Vance let out another protest, and I called, “Don’t resist! They won’t hurt us.”

  I wasn’t entirely sure about that, but I didn’t have time to say, “As long as we’re given permission to speak to the royal family, we will probably have a chance to explain ourselves. If we can convince their leaders we didn’t conspire against them, they won’t hurt us.”

  As soon as I stopped struggling, the figures around me became solid, no longer formless shadows. Shantel guards took my bow, quiver, and knife. They were all held by a man whose dark skin was marked with swirls and dots of ink that I recognized as Shantel marks of power.

  “We won’t hurt you,” the witch said, echoing my words. “We have been instructed to bring you to the temple. We cannot do that while you are armed.”

  The Shantel recognized what they called “three-times-three” types of magic, and of those, eight were common forms that any Shantel could study. Each of the eight paths filled a particular niche in Shantel society: craftsman, explorer, trader, healer, et cetera. I did not know the meaning behind the specific symbols this witch wore, but if I’d had to make a wild guess, I would have said “hunter.”

  When he referred to the temple, however, I knew he was talking about the ninth witch: the sakkri, a woman dedicated before birth and past death, and revered by even the king.

  “No,” Vance said, bluntly, as if we still had any power over the situation.

  I understood his feelings, but the guards had already taken us by surprise and seized our weapons. What choice did we have but to go along with them? At least the sakkri would probably be able to divine the truth about our role in the plague.

  The witch who had taken our weapons explained, “The sakkri herself has demanded your presence.”

  “Vance,” I said, trying to reason with the wide-eyed fear I could see on the quetzal’s face, “the sakkri is the person most likely to know we—”

  “The last time I was in the presence of a Shantel witch,” Vance interrupted, pushing ineffectively against the guard gripping his arms, “he turned me into a plague-bearer so I could murder everyone I cared about before probably being put to a messy and painful death. I came here to support Kadee, because she was worried about you people. I do not want to visit with your high witch.”

  “I’m afraid,” the hunter said, “that you do not have a choice. Your weapons will be returned to you if and when the sakkri declares that you are not a threat.”

  “Are the other serpiente in these woods?” I asked, worried. The last thing I wanted was to run into Hara Cobriana while armed with nothing more dangerous than a wooden spoon.

  “They have been sent home,” the guards assured me. I lost my balance as my arms were abruptly released. “We’ll take our leave now, and see you soon.”

  Before we could reply, the Shantel faded back into the woods.

  Vance spun about, looking for the guards. Even their footprints were gone now. The only evidence they had really been there was the absence of our weapons.

  “See us soon?” Vance asked.

  “They already disarmed us,” I said, shaking my head. “They don’t need to drag us along with them and deal with our arguments and struggles. They trust the forest will put us where the sakkri wants us, regardless of our wishes.”

  �
��Are they right?” His tone said he already knew.

  “Probably,” I answered reluctantly. “Likely enough that we might as well pack up and get it over with. They wouldn’t have stepped in to take our weapons if we weren’t almost there.”

  I turned to start packing up our camp, and Vance followed suit. The process didn’t take long, and as we finished, Vance asked, “When you said you had an open invitation to visit the Shantel, I guess I thought that meant they saw you as a friend. What do I need to know before we walk into this?”

  “Shantel don’t really see anyone outside their own kind as a friend,” I admitted. “I think they see me as a … a responsibility I was a child when I was here last. They promised me I would always be allowed to return if I had a need, but I’ve had no desire to do so.”

  I could see the curiosity on Vance’s face, but I didn’t want to go into detail when I was sure the Shantel guards were still standing nearby, probably close enough to see and overhear us.

  For the rest of our trip, our escort remained mostly invisible, only noticeable as occasional shadows in the corner of my vision. I caught sight of the witch again as we approached the low stone wall that marked the edge of the Shantel village. His gaze was on us, but he made no attempt to speak to or restrain us.

  The woods did not end here, but they thinned slightly. Cobbles took the place of dense underbrush, and younger trees had been trimmed away, while statuesque red cedar and fir trees still dotted the sprawling, winding space. The buildings looked like they, too, had been grown from the forest. Stone walls blended into clay brick and then natural branches and bark, supplemented with thatched or woven curtains or roofs.

  As we stepped past a break in the wall, the other guards appeared around us, forming a corridor I had no doubt led directly toward the sakkri. Outsiders were not permitted to wander Shantel land without an escort, but this was extreme.

  “This is the Shantel Family Courtyard,” I explained to Vance, trying to fill him in on crucial information while ignoring our armed companions. “If someone here says ‘the Family,’ they mean the royal family. Unless they’ve had a birth I don’t know about, that means King Laurence, and the two princes, Lucas and Shane.”