Ten arrows of iron, p.59
Ten Arrows of Iron, page 59
They leapt. They charged. They flew.
Graspmages. Siegemages. Skymages. Mages I’d never seen before.
In plumes of flame and the shudder of wood and the howl of wind and always, always in the echo of her song, they emerged from the portal. They ran toward the battle, a sea of purple-lit eyes with the Lady’s song as their crashing waves. They rallied behind Velline as she raised a blood-slick blade, pointed it at the Revolutionaries, and uttered, cold as her steel:
“Ontori tun vatala!”
FIFTY
LITTLEBARROW
Life as an apothecary had never been easy, despite what complaints Meret had about it.
Perhaps it wasn’t as demanding a profession as a Revolutionary field medic or an Imperial Mendmage, but the healing arts all shared a need for precision. A broken bone required an exact knowledge of how to set it, a wound needed a precise hand to suture it, a fever required a painstaking knowledge of exactly how much silkgrass would be needed to dull the pain without exacerbating it. A single mistake, a single misspoken word, could be the difference between life and death.
Meret kept that knowledge in mind, wore it around his neck like a heavy chain, as he squinted over his situation and applied the carefully honed, expertly polished methodology that he had been trained for.
“So.” He cleared his throat, looked to Sindra. “We’re fucked?”
She grunted. “We are fucked, yes.”
They returned their stares to the road stretching out before them. Or rather, what had once been a road before it was drowned beneath an Imperial ass-load of snow and ice.
Winter in the Valley was not unlike the relatives who know everyone hates them: it came too quickly for anyone to object, made itself comfortable before anyone could notice, and then proceeded to loaf around and make everyone else work around it for the next several months.
That was a good analogy, he thought. He’d have to remember it if he survived.
His eyes were drawn skyward. The clouds hung thicker, unloading soot-singed snow as the smoke columns from Sal’s pyres twisted into the sky. In another few hours, he wouldn’t be able to see twenty feet ahead.
But he could see the birds.
They came and went like bad thoughts: nimble shadows fleeting through the clouds, darting at the edges of his vision, there and gone again before he could even look. They would come and go at random—sometimes hours would stretch between each sighting, sometimes minutes. But every time they came, they came closer. He could see the details, the edges, and the points of their wings, their beaks…
Their riders.
They’d be here soon, he knew. More of them. With weapons. With magic.
With the road thusly buried, it would take a swift bird, a sturdy wagon, or a lot of luck to escape them. The wagon part, he knew, was already out—with some solid hammering and a lot of cursing, Sindra had gotten it to a point where it would only sound like it was going to fall apart. Luck, too, was a nonstarter, since this had all started from a fucking airship falling out of the damned sky.
Which left the bird…
Old Surly.
Once pride of Rodic’s flock. A champion showbird, once.
Why couldn’t I have gotten that one? he thought disdainfully as he observed the weary old creature yoked to the wagon. One eye a useless rheumy orb, one leg trembling with arthritis, a lot of feathers lost to age, and one beak stained with his own blood from where she had nearly taken off his ear. Why’d I have to get this old shit?
Old Surly looked up, glared at him through her one good eye. His eyes widened in astonishment. A bird that could read his thoughts could, ideally, be useful in some other situation. However, he suspected he would have precious little worth relaying to her once Littlebarrow started burning.
“Rodic said she could get me out of this town,” Meret observed, frowning.
“A few hours ago, she probably could,” Sindra sighed. “Of course, a few hours ago, Rodic probably thought you weren’t a fucking fool.” She cast a sidelong look at him. “I still say—”
“We’re not leaving them,” Meret said.
She sighed. “Right.” She clapped him on the back briefly before starting to stalk back off to her house. “I’ll pack enough that we can go it our own, if we need to. Then we’ll just hope for the best and—”
The wind whispered. They stared overhead. Black against the clouds, a shape flew. Not a bird, but a human: slender, laughing, and carrying a sword as they disappeared into the void.
A Skymage.
They’d be here soon.
“We’ll hope,” Sindra muttered. “We’ll hope.”
He watched her disappear into the swirling snows until only her tracks remained. He started counting in his head as he watched the snow fall until her footprints, too, vanished beneath the white.
Six minutes, forty-eight seconds, he told himself. That’s how long it took for her footprints to disappear. He looked out over the snow-choked road. So, roughly, if you died out there, it would take less than an hour for your body to disappear, too. He took off his spectacles, polished them. Assuming there was anything left of you, mind.
He’d come to the Valley a few springs ago and his first sight had been the tank. It had looked ancient, rusted-out and overgrown, buried by snows in the crater that had become its tomb. But it had only been about two years old when the Imperium had destroyed it, a local had told him.
It was a Valley tradition, seeing what relics of the war came out during the thaw. Freemakers, Ashmouths, and independent collectors alike would show up when spring arrived to start plucking off the best parts. A Valley child’s earliest money usually came from hawking spare machine parts or Imperial weaponry to buyers passing through.
He wondered what they’d find on his body when he thawed out.
He wondered what they’d sell his medicine bag for.
He hoped it would be a good price, at least.
“More than we’ll get for you, I suppose,” he sighed to Surly without looking at her. “Not much of a good price for a mind-reading bird.”
“I disagree.”
Liette’s voice, unexpected, caused him to emit a rather high-pitched shriek. She was too polite to mention it, though. Or maybe she hadn’t even noticed. When he turned around, she stood beside Surly, gingerly stroking the bird’s neck as Surly leaned into her.
How had she gotten here so quickly? But when he looked down at the snow, he no longer wanted to.
No tracks, he noticed. She didn’t leave a single footprint.
“An avian that could detect thoughts would be exceedingly valuable,” Liette observed as she studied the bird. “It would reduce difficulties in training and promote a more harmonious existence with a species that benefits us immensely, as well as furthering our knowledge of their processes.”
“Oh, uh…” Meret fumbled over his own cough. “I didn’t mean she could… I mean, I was just joking.”
“As was I,” Liette replied, “hence why I was using my joking face.”
Meret opened his mouth, squinted, studied the very hard frown and severe stare that comprised her joking face and then thought better of saying anything.
He had that old healer’s reflex to try to urge her back to bed—her bruises and cuts were still fresh and the cold couldn’t have been good for them, after all. But to look at her… he didn’t think he could muster the nerve.
She stood straight as an arrow, her face frozen in pristine severity, neither expression nor posture betraying pain. Yet even looking upon her wounds made him cringe. She didn’t so much not feel pain as… not consider it worth noticing.
Snow didn’t collect on her shoulders. Footprints didn’t follow her. Everything—the cold, the wind, nature itself—was unworthy of her attentions.
And that thought terrified him.
“I never used to like birds very much,” Liette interrupted his thoughts as she scratched beneath Surly’s chin. “I found their hygiene atrocious, their attitudes deplorable, and they were far too… too…”
“Smelly?” Meret offered.
“I believe I covered that, albeit without pointing it out specifically, when I criticized their hygiene.” Liette glanced at him. “No, I found them too… unpredictable. A machine does what you design it to. A sigil does what you wright it to do. Provided you have the knowledge to make it. But you can know everything about a bird and it’ll still be moody, still have needs.” She cringed. “And they do this thing where they scream right when you’re trying to do something delicate that would not be helped by them screaming.”
Hey, you do do that, he thought, glowering at Surly with an accusing stare. Then the bird scowled at him through that terrible eye and he quickly looked away and cleared his throat.
“But you like them now?” he asked Liette.
She grimaced. “Honestly, I’m not sure. While they are smelly, noisy, and angry, they’re also gentle.” She smiled, stroking Surly’s last few feathers. “If you’re gentle to them. They’re comforting. They’re strong. I suppose, after a while… you come to appreciate unpredictability.”
Meret waited a moment before mustering the nerve to speak. “Are we still talking about birds?”
“Obviously, I was attempting to allude discreetly and poetically to a different subject.” She winced. “But I don’t actually want to talk about that subject at this moment, so I’m not quite sure what my aim was beyond acknowledging something is irritating me.” She glanced at him with something that might have been bafflement. “Does… that make sense?”
He blinked. “Uh, yeah. It does. People do that all the time. Talk-about-but-not-talk-about things, that is.” He coughed. “Which, uh, I’m sure you knew they did, but…”
She stared at him for a long moment. So long that it took him a good minute to see the frown tugging at the edges of her lips.
“I’m not… good with people,” she said. “They’re like birds. I can figure out their patterns, where they go and what makes them want things and it’s almost like I understand them. But then I remember they’re big, huge things that can destroy me if the mood hits them and…” She turned away. “I’m glad, I suppose is what I’m trying to say. That you’re helping her.”
“Uh, sure,” he said. “But I’m helping both of you.” He glanced at her wounds and cringed. “No offense, but you kind of look like you need it more than her.”
“Oh.” She looked at a large cut across her hand, suddenly aware of, but no more concerned with, the bloodied bandage. “Technically true.”
“Technically? You’re kind of… bleeding a lot.”
“That’s a correct assessment, but I can fix blood,” she replied, “and wounds, and broken bones. But she… she can’t fix things.” She turned to him and offered him the barest of smiles. “But you can. That’s important. I recognize your aptitude.”
That was an extremely weird way to say thank you, but it was probably also as close as he was going to get.
“I’m glad I could, too,” he said, daring to edge a little closer. Surly punished such impudence with a quick snap of her beak, sending him sulking away. “I wish I had any talent in fixing broken, shitty birds, though.” He nervously cleared his throat. “Uh, again, no offense, if you were, like… developing a bond with this one.”
He looked to her, hoping to see the last remnants of that smile. But her eyes were somewhere else, him being relegated suddenly to the same category as the snow, the blood, and all the other things that didn’t matter.
She was staring at the bird. And she was not blinking.
“Fix,” she whispered to herself. “No… not fix. Understand.”
That last word… she hadn’t spoken it. He hadn’t heard it. He’d felt that word, reverberating inside him, as though every strand of sinew inside him had been plucked like a violin string.
“Arthritic leg,” she whispered, her unblinking eyes sliding slowly across Surly, appraising. “Bone and muscle loss. Cataract rendering eye unusable. Sixty-six nerves damaged, forty-two sets of muscles degraded…”
Her voice trailed off into murmuring, words and numbers he couldn’t keep up with. But her eyes remained fixed: unblinking, unwavering, staring at a horizon only she could see, one that kept getting farther away until suddenly:
“Ah. I see now.”
She leaned down beside Surly before he could stop her—the old bird was prone to kicking, after all. Surly didn’t so much as flinch as Liette held her palm out against the avian’s trembling leg. Before Meret could blink, she ran her hand across the bird’s limb and…
It stopped shaking.
More than that, it was bigger. Leaner. Strong again. Surly, as if disbelieving it herself, warily tested the leg but settled upon it confidently. The bird’s leg was whole again, thanks to Liette.
As though she’d simply reached inside it and… fixed it.
But that was…
“The other one needs to be equivalent.” Liette hurried to the other side of the bird, touched her leg. It, too, became strong. “The eye next.”
“Wait, Liette, what’s going—”
Surly clucked a little, pulling away as she reached up toward the bird’s face, but allowed Liette to trace a circle around the rheumy orb. The bird blinked and when its lid opened again, the eye was a perfect, pale yellow match for the other one.
“Holy shit.” There was probably a more appropriate exclamation for the sheer awe of what he was witnessing, but this was the best he could muster. “What did you…” He smiled broadly, clapping his hands together. “No Barter, no explosion… Liette, what kind of magic is this?”
“It isn’t.” Liette continued studying Surly as the bird preened over its newfound vigor. “It is understanding. I can see how it works, every muscle, every nerve, every…” She looked to Meret. “You said she’s angry?”
“I mean, her name is Old Surly, but—”
“I can fix that, too.”
Before he could protest, she waved a hand. The light in Surly’s eyes dimmed, then diminished entirely, leaving her staring ahead, unblinking, unthinking, barely even breathing.
“Wait, this isn’t…” Meret placed a hand on Surly’s neck—she didn’t even flinch. “What did you do to her?”
Liette wasn’t listening. She was still staring, still searching. Her fingers were trembling. And Surly was still changing.
“White plumage would be more effective in the snow for evading detection,” she whispered. “That’s easy enough.”
“Liette, wait.”
She didn’t. She waved a hand. Surly’s feathers sprouted anew, a brilliant ivory.
“This whole breed is ill-suited to our purposes in general,” she hummed. “I know something better.”
“Liette, stop!”
She didn’t. She waved a hand. Surly’s flesh rippled, bones popped, going from an old draft bird to a tall, regal Imperial charger.
“Why be limited to that?” Excitement, desperate and dry, lingered in her voice. “Why not longer legs for running? Broader wings for flying? Why not fire breathing? All it would take would be a new organ and…”
“LIETTE!”
She didn’t listen. She continued to wave her hands. Surly’s flesh trembled, her form breaking and being remade, over and over, as she assumed new and terrible forms.
“STOP!” Meret ran toward Liette, seized her by the shoulders, turned her toward him. “I don’t know what you’re doing, but please, don’t—”
She turned to face him. His hands fell away from her. He stepped back, mouth agape and breathless as she stared back at him.
Through eyes black as pitch.
He wanted to run, but his legs wouldn’t move. He wanted to scream, but his lungs shriveled inside his chest. He wanted to blink, but that stare of hers wouldn’t let him. He felt the hairs on his arms stand up, like they were trying to pull themselves out of his body. The skin of his limbs started to stretch, to ripple, to change.
He struggled to gasp out a word, a plea for her to stop, but his voice sounded not like his own: a warbling, quavering sound that came from outside his body. His head pounded, a heavy sledgehammer blow of a noise filling him instead of breath. He tasted copper as blood dripped from his nose onto his tongue. He held up a hand in a desperate bid to ward off whatever was happening to him, and saw his digits disappearing into his hand, sinking beneath the flesh to become a long and twitching tendril.
He shut his eyes. He opened his mouth. He heard a scream.
Not his own.
When he opened them again, his skin was whole, his hand was a hand again, his body felt like its own save for a horrifically unpleasant tingling. Even the blood weeping from his nose had vanished.
You’re okay, he told himself, breath returning to his lungs. He glanced to Surly, saw her unpleasantly discombobulated, but once again an aging, angry avian. You’re both okay. But… how did—
“I’m sorry.”
Liette was on her knees, her arms wrapped around herself, shivering. The snow collected upon her shoulders, a funeral shroud for a body that hadn’t realized she was dead yet. Tears fell from her face, sliding over her cuts to fall, red-tinged, upon the snow.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean… I don’t… I…”
Meret leapt away as she looked back up at him. He cursed himself for doing so. The eyes staring at him were big and brown behind her glasses. Human, again. And full of tears.
“I don’t know what’s happening to me.” The traces of that expertly clinical voice that she’d greeted him with had vanished from her mouth. She spoke through tears, through shuddering breath, through wracking sobs. “I can… feel something inside me. It keeps talking, it keeps telling me secrets I don’t want to know and answers I don’t want to hear and… and…”
She looked at him with a desperate stare. She extended a trembling hand. That shaping hand that had turned Surly into something else, that had almost done the same to him.
