Flight of the King (11 page)

With Bert in tow, he found it difficult to run and jump the way he used to. Halfway through practice, he tucked Bert inside a hollow log near the forested end of the field.

“Stay there,” he said to the lizard, who immediately fell asleep. Bailey took off, in pursuit of a Gold Squadron Sneak who'd just spotted the Blue Squad's flag. He aimed
his Flick and lobbed a glob of paint. It struck the Sneak's left knee, coating her leg in bright blue, but she kept running.

The power Bailey had felt through his brief connection with Taleth had stayed with him. As he ducked under branches and barreled over the wooded terrain in pursuit of the Gold Sneak, he realized
how much he'd missed playing. He tackled her just yards from where the flag hung, suspended from the limb of a huge oak tree.

“Good tackle, Bailey!” called Arabella, captain of the Blue Squadron, who was guarding the flag.

“End of play!” Coach called.

“Good practice,” Phi said to him, as they found each other near Bert's napping spot. “You can't show off tomorrow, not with Viviana watching.”

“You're probably right,” Bailey said. “But it sure is fun today.”

Bailey grabbed Bert, and together they went to run drills with the rest of the team, who were gathered near the stands. Taylor approached with a smirk.

“Ants' antennae, that thing stinks!” Taylor said, pointing at Bert. “
This
is your kin? What in Nature is it?”

“He's an iguana,” Bailey said.

Taylor lifted Bert up by his tail straight out of Bailey's grip. He held the iguana at arm's length.

“Creaking frogs, it looks like a giant insect. Is it dead?” He shook Bert slightly.

Bailey took a step forward and reached for Bert, but Taylor stepped backward and swept him out of Bailey's reach.

“Watch it, Walker,” he said. “Or I punt this dumb piece of leather so hard, you'll feel it in your own gut.”

As if to respond, Bert twisted himself up and nipped at Taylor's finger. Taylor let out a high-pitched shriek and dropped Bert onto the ground.

“Ants! Oh, anting
roach
-ants! Creaking
frogs
!” he cursed, sucking at his finger. A trickle of blood ran down his hand.

Bailey couldn't help but smile.

“This ‘piece of leather' goes by Bert.” For the first time, he was proud of being “Animas Iguana.” Even if it was a lie.

The next afternoon, Bailey and Phi returned to the Scavage pitch in nervous silence. Bert slept in the crook of Bailey's arm, completely unaware of the frantic worry that
Bailey felt. They were about to be put on display before Viviana, in the first Scavage scrimmage of the semester. Bailey was tempted to reach out and grab Phi's hand as they trudged through
the snowy campus, just to calm his buzzing nerves. As for Phi, she was steel-eyed, staring straight ahead. Only once did she glance up to watch the skies, and then she shook her head, as though
remembering something she'd forgotten.

Bailey followed her gaze, and realized: Carin, Phi's falcon, was nowhere to be seen.

“Where is she?” he asked as they trod down the hill to the field.

“Hunting,” Phi answered.

“Are you nervous about playing without her?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Nope.”

Bailey smiled. “I wish I felt that confident.”

Phi matched his stride and moved closer as they walked. She bumped his shoulder with her own, and Bailey felt his heart leap in his chest.

“It'll be okay,” she said.

Bailey wished he could be as certain, though it felt good to hear her say it.

As they approached the pitch, Bailey's heart began to beat faster. The entire school—students, teachers, and even Mrs. Copse and the kitchen staff—was lined up outside the
gates to get in and watch the scrimmage. Bailey heard shouts of “Let's go, Fairmount!” The teachers wore blue-and-gold neckties and scarves in support of what wasn't even a
real game.

“Oh, ants,” Bailey sighed as they made their way to the locker rooms. Viviana was already seated in the dean's box, high in the stands. Her slim maroon coat was buttoned all
the way up to a high collar that hid her chin, and the large, round hat she wore looked like beaver fur. Graves, Finch, Shonfield, and a few other teachers sat bundled against the cold, chatting
dutifully. As Bailey watched, Graves stopped talking to Finch and peered over the bundled folds of his massive scarf, directly at Bailey. Viviana, sitting next to him, followed his gaze.
Bailey's skin prickled all over as their eyes met, just for a second, before he ducked into the locker room.

“She's watching me,” he whispered to Phi. “Graves too.”

“It'll be okay,” said Phi again, though her voice sounded a bit higher this time.

The team changed in the warmth of the locker room before lining up at the edge of the chilly field in two squads, Gold and Blue. Both Bailey and Phi wore blue-striped uniforms. The
players' animal kin, too undisciplined to fall into line, explored the edges of the field and, in some cases, darted out into the terrain ahead of the starting whistle. Bailey wondered what
Viviana thought of the display—if she actually cared about the game at all, or whether she was carefully taking note of each and every student at Fairmount who could be the Child of War. As
Coach Banter lifted the starting whistle to his lips, Bailey snuck one last look toward the stands. Viviana gazed down at the team, her eyes skipping along the line of athletes. Bailey ducked his
head and looked away.

Coach Banter blew the whistle, and the players barreled out onto the field, scattering like leaves caught in a strong gust of winter wind. Cheers echoed across the pitch.

Bailey ran headlong into the trees with Bert in tow. He jogged until he came across an outcrop of rocks, several yards from the Blue Squad's flag and partially obscured from view from the
stands by long pine branches overhead. With his Flick in his right hand and Bert on his shoulder, he waited.

It didn't take long: not even five minutes passed before Bailey heard a rustling in the dry, leafless underbrush nearby, and saw a flash of a gold kneesock. He readied his Flick, prepared
to send a glob of bright blue paint at the player as soon as he had a clear view. But the Sneak must have heard him, and veered away. Bailey followed the sound of footsteps on the dead leaves,
keeping his pace steady. A small movement in the corner of his vision caused him to stop—a tiny stoat, kin to one of the Gold Squad's Squats, dashed away, presumably to warn its human
kin that Bailey was on the hunt.

“Ants,” Bailey muttered. He'd have to speed up.

Applause sounded from the stands—somewhere on the terrain, a Sneak had been taken out.

Just then, the low-burning embers of his Animas bond seemed to ignite like the flame of a gas lamp. Bailey's breath halted in his lungs. He knew that Taleth was edging the field, drawn by
him to the most dangerous place she could possibly be.

“No,” he said, though no one could hear him.

“Bailey!”

He looked around—it was Phi's voice calling him, but he couldn't see her.

“I'm up here!”

Bailey craned his neck upward. Phi waved at him from halfway up a tall, spindly birch tree.

“Are you okay?” she half whispered.

The stands loomed at the other end of the field. They were out of earshot.

“It's Taleth,” he said, keeping his voice as low as possible. “She's going to get herself seen.”

Phi's eyes widened in understanding. She stood on tiptoe and looked around.

“Hide,” she said.

“What?”

“Trust me. Hide!”

Bailey ran with Bert behind a flank of pine branches. He heard the sound of an approaching player, and understood—if he engaged, he'd be watched. Instead, he had to stay hidden and
out of the game, so he could get to the edge of the field. He tried sending his intentions to Taleth, as he had near Gwen's tree house.
Get away,
he thought.
It's too
dangerous here.
But he felt no clarity with the connection, just a jumble of emotions and sensations. He didn't know whether she could possibly understand him.

The Gold Sneak ran past him, so close that Bailey could easily have tagged him—but he didn't dare. The Sneak, a slim, brown-haired Year Two boy, paused and listened. Bailey held his
breath, thanking Nature that Bert seemed completely uninterested in moving a muscle.

The Sneak peered in his direction, blinking.

Then Bailey heard a cry and a gasp from the stands: Phi had leapt from the branch above, her arms spread and her legs kicking. She landed just behind the Sneak and tumbled forward, catching him
by his ankle.

Bailey froze. He wanted to cheer at Phi's gutsy move, but she looked in his direction, just for the briefest moment, and her gaze told him to run. She'd made sure no one would be
looking at him.

Still, Bailey's legs felt like they were glued in place. He shivered, feeling a familiar sensation of gooseflesh. Turning to the stands, he saw a gleaming reflection on the lenses of a
pair of opera glasses. Viviana Melore was holding them up to her eyes, and they were pointed right in Bailey's direction. His ducked into the trees and ran. He stayed as close to the pines as
he could, hoping that his blue uniform didn't show through the veil of branches between him and the observers.

As soon as he was within a few yards of the edge of the field, he stopped and took cover behind a boulder. Closing his eyes, he frantically tried to get a sense of where Taleth was. “Get
away; you can't be here,” he whispered over and over.

He heard the snap of a twig to his left. Behind the trees, a flash of white appeared, then vanished.

“Taleth!” He barreled forward—he had to lead her away from the pitch, away from Viviana. He couldn't see her, but the twinging in his chest, the perking of his own ears,
told him that she was anxious, and had been pacing the edge of the pitch all morning, desperate for a glimpse of him, to know he was all right.

Bailey heard a scattering of leaves next to him. Looking down, he saw Fennel the fox running in the same direction. She narrowed her black-and-yellow eyes at him and darted ahead. Then, just
beyond the next boulder, Bailey saw Taleth. She stood waiting for him between a pair of straight, tall pines. Her whiskers were flattened against her cheeks and her teeth were slightly bared. At
the sight of her, Bailey felt his blood grow even warmer in his veins. Fennel rushed at Taleth, who stepped back, apprehensive.

“Go,” said Bailey, though every part him wanted to cry out
Wait
instead.
Wait for me.

Fennel slowed and began to pace in front of Taleth. She barked, then jumped at Taleth again, never going so near as to attack her—only to force her back, blocking her from Bailey. Bailey
watched, heartbroken, as Taleth padded backward into the trees, away from him. Her dazzling blue cat eyes met his own, and he felt a tug, as strong as if he had a rope tied around his chest,
pulling him to the woods. Then she broke the gaze, and sauntered into the shadows. Fennel stayed sitting on a snow-dusted rock. She gazed at him with unblinking eyes.

“Walker, what are you
doing
?” Taylor ran up behind him. “Looking for ghosts again? You missed the end of the match!”

The scrimmage had ended in a tie, with the final Gold and Blue Sneaks getting eliminated at exactly the same moment—a record, Coach Banter said, amused. Bailey shook hands with his fellow
players, and Viviana finally left her seat as the players congratulated Phi on her daring tackle. He watched as Graves and Finch led their illustrious visitor down the steep steps of the Scavage
stands, and he could not be sure, from where he stood, whether she was watching him in return.

GWEN'S JOURNEY TO THE
Gray City took several days, by way of the icy back roads. The motorbike was clunky and slow to start, but it was better
than making the journey on foot in the snow. She'd made many stops to assess whether she was being followed. It had been a stressful ride—owls circled nervously overhead, since they
could feel the Dominae's presence growing stronger as they got closer to the city.

By the time Gwen reached the outskirts of the Gray City, several frightened owls had peeled off and flown back toward the woods. Gwen felt like a pauper again, her coat soaked, torn, and dirty.
She'd lived as a pickpocket in the Gudgeons, the nastiest area of the city, before she'd been apprenticed to the Elder. Now she felt just as bedraggled as she had then. She parked
Tremelo's motorbike in a hidden alcove near the dockside marketplace where she used to steal pocket watches. Knowing the thieves who populated those alleyways, the risk that the bike would be
stolen before she returned was high. But she couldn't ride it through the bumpy streets and cobblestone steps of the Gudgeons without attracting attention. She slipped her knife into her
right boot, and tied the longbow and arrows to the motorbike. She wheeled the bike behind a pile of garbage bags, hoping that no one would come along to collect them.