The Reawakened (9 page)

They led her down the rocky path toward the rest of the troupe, two of them carrying their wounded comrade, the one Marek had shot in the knee. Rhia struggled against her bindings enough to be convincing, but not enough to slow them down. The sooner they could leave, the sooner Marek could return to Tiros and get help.

Assuming he could walk. Assuming he ever woke up. Her eyes overflowed again, and genuine tears dripped in streams off her chin.

They led Rhia to a tall, thin Ilion who was supervising the transport of the dead. The sergeant gave the officer a brief salute.

“Sir.” He pushed Rhia forward. “We found this one. And a man with a hunting bow, but he fell and died. Extracting him would have been too treacherous, in my judgment.”

The officer raked a skeptical glare over the sergeant. “Indeed. We wouldn’t want anyone getting hurt now, would we?” He gestured to the mass of corpses behind them.

“As you say, sir,” the sergeant replied with a clenched jaw.

The officer glanced at Rhia, then stopped to examine her. He stepped up and yanked her feather fetish so hard the leather chain bit into her skin.

“Those crows we saw,” he whispered. “Circling, not landing to feast.” His gaze on her softened. “You were guiding home the souls of our men?”

She nodded.

He struck her hard across the face. A sharp pain stabbed her neck as it snapped back, and red sparks danced across her vision.

The officer loomed over her, eyes tight with fury. “It’s not enough you people have to slaughter us, piss on our flag? You have to desecrate our dead, too? Curse them to an eternity of emptiness with your Spirits?”

“It’s not empty.” She spit a line of blood and drool. Her tongue felt for loose teeth and found none. “The Spirits are for everyone.”

He smacked her again, but this time she anticipated it, and ducked so that his blow glanced off the side of her cheek, his nails raking her skin.

“This one’s more valuable than we thought.” He smiled at her. “I know who you are, Rhia of Asermos. There aren’t many Crows among your people.”

Her blood froze, but she kept her face indignant. “I’m from Tiros, a free village, and my name is—”

“Don’t bother. Your brother is what we call a ‘man of interest.’ Perhaps he’d be
interested
in your arrest.”

She kept the panic from her face. Did they know she’d been coordinating the smuggling of weapons from Tiros to Asermos for years? “Arrest for what?”

“We found you at the scene of massive human casualties.”

“A scene that clearly took place over a day ago. A scene requiring more manpower and weapons than my husband and I had.”

“Evidence of anything can be provided.”

“But not believed in court. Last I heard, Ilios still held to the rule of law, such as it is.”

“All we need is enough evidence to hold you until your brother comes to set you free.” He reached forward to grasp her crow feather, which he used to pull her closer to him. “Besides, you were doing magic.” With his other hand, he drew a knife. She jerked back, expecting to feel the blade at her throat.

He slashed the leather band that held her fetish. Though her hands were bound, instinct drove them to reach for the feather. The sergeant yanked her back by the wrists, sending shooting pains into her shoulders.

“Magic,” the officer said, “is illegal in Ilion territories.”

“I’m not standing on Ilion territory.”

“Again, a detail that can be established when you have your day in court. Until then, you can sit in detention.”

“As bait for someone you think is my brother. I don’t even have a brother.”

“Hmm.” He tossed her feather on the ground and crushed it under his boot. “You won’t for long.”

The Descendant authorities in Asermos had banned this coming-of-age ritual, as they had all other forms of magic. A few Asermons dared to sneak away for their Bestowing, but those caught were made examples of. Mali had wanted Sura to keep a low profile to avoid scrutiny of her own activities, like raiding armories and planning assassinations.

But Sura had always known that her destiny could only be delayed, not denied. She was meant to be here right now, waiting for her Guardian Spirit.

She wondered how long Dravek’s fire would burn. Surely he would put it out before going to sleep. The night wasn’t cold enough to need the warmth of a flame, so perhaps he was only using the light to perform some task.

She should probably pray or something, Sura realized. Her mother had taught her chants to honor and call upon dozens of Spirits—always quietly, in the privacy of their home, of course. But at the moment nothing seemed right except silence.

Silence, and fire. Her eyes unfocused further, her gaze adhered to the flame. The sensation of cold, hard stone beneath her legs began to fade, and she floated. It seemed as if she could hear the torch’s sparks, that she could rise with them all the way to the sky.

She’d lived the last half of her life afraid. Yet now, on the verge of confronting something more powerful than the entire Ilion army, she felt no fear, only peace.

So much so that when she felt a strange, dark presence at her back, she merely acknowledged its existence. It loomed closer, yet she did not look away from the flame. It rasped a cold breath on the back of her neck, then inhaled hard, as if to pull something out of her. Her strength? Her courage? Her soul?

“Get out,” she whispered, and away it slunk.

Sura watched the fire as it burned all night.

“I’ve got to keep up my strength.” Sura flexed her biceps, lifting a round rock the size of her fist. “Never know when I’ll need to defend myself.” She nodded to the eagle. “Go on, I’m listening.”

“And I’m speaking.” Its sharp male voice cut the crisp morning air. “I said to put that down. You’re safe here, so stop trying to be your mother.”

As if I could ever be that strong.
Sura dropped the rock and folded her arms. “Can I ask you a question first?” When the bird tilted his cloud-white head, she said, “The Eagles I know call their Spirit
She,
but you speak to me with a man’s voice. Why?”

“The Spirits are neither male nor female.”

“Even Raven?”

“Especially Raven.” The eagle preened his gleaming brown wing feathers. “We manifest as male or female according to whichever we think you’ll respond to best.”

Sura cocked her head, wondering why the Spirits assumed she would listen better to a man. She’d had so few of them in her life.

The eagle continued. “But we stay consistent with those who serve us, which is why all Eagles refer to me as
She.
Humans confuse so easily.”

“I can’t deny that.” Something about his words made her glance toward the boulder field. In the bright sunshine she could no longer see the torch, if it still burned, and she definitely couldn’t see Dravek. Her lack of distance vision alone told her that she wasn’t an Eagle.

“If you’re not my Guardian Spirit,” she said to the bird, “why are you here?”

“Because I have something to teach you.”

Sura waited. The eagle shifted his position to stare off into the distance toward the western horizon.

Finally she grew impatient. “When do we begin?”

He clicked his sharp yellow beak. “Oh, you want it in words?”

Sura closed her mouth and thought hard about what Eagle represented. Seeing far, not just in space but time, as well. Third-phase Eagles had the power of prophecy, but their vision only encompassed details. An Eagle might receive a premonition as mundane as a piece of cloth lying in a basket. Understanding its context often required the logic of a Hawk or the intuition of a Swan—preferably both.

Finally she said, “If I receive a vision, I should see it as an event that will really happen, and not just a symbol, no matter how strange it seems. Is that right?”

“Hmm.” The eagle turned to her. “You don’t confuse as easily as most.”

As he spread his wings, she couldn’t resist one last question. “Will Raven come soon and bestow Her Aspect?”

“If I had a fresh rat for each time someone asked me that question.” The eagle shook his head. “Only She knows.”

He took off and soared into the valley below, fading slowly, as if passing into an invisible mist.

Sura watched the space where the eagle had disappeared, to see if another Spirit would emerge. She heard footsteps behind her, and turned to see two deer with expansive sets of antlers clop up the trail to the ridge where she sat. She scrambled to her feet.

“Greetings,” she said, her voice rough with awe.

The bucks halted, then angled their magnificent heads to look behind them. Sura followed their gazes and gasped. Two does tripped lightly toward her, nodding their heads with each step. A fawn cavorted behind each of them, noses up and ears twitching.

The deer formed a semicircle around her, soft brown gazes roaming her face. Then, instead of speaking, they sang. Not in words, but notes with distinct characters, as if each deer were a separate instrument. The bucks sounded like bass fiddles, creating the undertones, while the does each played a different toned violin. The fawns leaped about, making cheery piping noises. They all tapped their feet to create a complex, infectious beat.

Sura laughed louder than she had in years, then began to dance. Though her body was unaccustomed to moving in rhythm, it shook and writhed and bounced along with the sounds of the deer herd. She made up words to accompany their tune, words that made sense in a way that would seem crazy tomorrow.

The deer joined her, dancing in pairs or alone or in small circles of flashing hooves and shining flanks. She laughed again. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t dance or sing. The deer didn’t care. All they wanted was to give her this gift.

The song ended with a flourish, and Sura collapsed on the ground, panting. “Thank you.” She wiped the sweat from her brow.

More suddenly then they had appeared, the deer were gone.

“No…” Sura scrambled to her feet and peered over the edge of the ridge, then inside the cave.

For a moment the loneliness threatened to tear open her heart, which felt as empty and shriveled now as it had been full to bursting a minute ago. She sank to her knees and covered her face with her arms.

Forcing herself to breathe, she grasped the memory of the dance and pulled it inside herself, storing it deep within where nothing, including time, could ever touch it. From her core it spread out to warm her, as if she had swallowed a tiny sun.

She sat back and hugged her knees, at peace once again.

“Mali?”

“In the flesh. What’s left of it, anyway.”

“Are we in prison?”

Her old nemesis sighed. “You’re not as smart as they say you are. We’re actually in a secret cave provided by my associates in the resistance, not far from where you were captured.”

Rhia ran her hand along the cold stone beneath her. “We are?”

“Idiot. Of course we’re in prison.”

Rhia let her forehead drop to the floor. Its coolness eased her nausea and the overwhelming desire to throttle her brother’s former mate.

She rubbed the back of her head, feeling for a lump or a sticky spot of blood that would indicate a hard blow, and found nothing. “They must have drugged me.”

“I don’t know why they thought they needed to. A runt like you should be easy to tuck under one’s arm and place anywhere one wants. Like a basket of fruit.”

“What happened to you?”

“Arrested, obviously. I didn’t exactly stop in for tea.”

“Where’s Sura?”

Mali’s voice lost its edge. “I sent her to Kalindos. You haven’t heard from her?”

“No, but the weather’s been bad for the homing pigeons.”

The Wasp woman sighed. “Still no third-phase Hawk in Kalindos, I suppose.”

Rhia pushed herself to a sitting position, her head reeling. Her vision slowly cleared so that she could see the bars now, and Mali’s long, thin figure. She blinked hard. Her own cell had a bed, such as it was, and enough room to walk about. The Wasp’s, on the other hand, wasn’t even large enough to lie down in.

“Have they hurt you?”

Mali snorted. “They tried. They can’t, not by beating me or peeling off my skin or hanging me by my heels, any of those tiresome methods. Once they figured that out, they tried other things, like this tiny cell. When they feed me, once a day, it’s rancid meat, moldy bread—”

Rhia’s stomach lurched. “Stop.”

“It’s not too bad. Maggots are nice and chewy when they’re not overcooked.”

Rhia gulped deep breaths to keep from vomiting. When the wooziness receded, she said, “If we’re going to get out of here, we’ll have to learn to get along.”

Mali gave a harsh sigh. “You ran away when things got bad in Asermos.”

“I had to protect my family. We’ve all been helping you from Tiros.”

“I had a family. I could’ve run. But I stayed to protect our homeland.” The Wasp sniffed. “You ran because you thought one of your children was the Raven baby. You thought that made you special.”

“You’ll be happy to know they’ve both been claimed by other Spirits.”

Mali was silent for a moment. “What are they?” she asked in a muted voice.

“Nilik’s a Wolverine.”

“Like his uncle. What a plague. And Jula?”

“A Mockingbird.”

Mali cackled. “I bet she makes you crazy.”

“The last three years have been one long argument. I can’t say anything without her contradicting or belittling me. It’s exhausting.”

“That’s the way they are at that age.”

“I was never that bad,” Rhia said.

“Me, neither.”

“You were horrible.”

“To you. Not to my parents.”

“Jula worships her father.” Rhia swallowed the lump in her throat at the thought of Marek. She hoped he would return to safety in Tiros rather than follow her to Asermos alone.

“Sounds familiar,” Mali said. “Sura thinks her father’s a god.”

“Lycas, a god? That’s because she’s never known him.”

Mali laughed. “I don’t know how you lived with him all those years.”

“Nilo was even worse, in a way, because his torment was stealthy. He’d plan elaborate tricks to scare me, then act completely innocent. There was no justice, because my brothers would punish me if I tattled.”

“Brutes.” Mali’s tone indicated the word was a compliment. “I miss the way Lycas was before Nilo died.”

Rhia uttered the next thought only because the bars protected her from the Wasp’s wrath. “I think you’d like him the way he is now.”

“Shut up,” Mali growled. “He made his choice eighteen years ago, to leave me and Sura.”

“He left to rescue my son and my husband.”

“Which I eventually understood. He had to protect his family. But afterward, he went right back to Ilios to rescue a bunch of Kalindons he didn’t even know.”

“Most of whom were children,” Rhia said.

“What about his own child? Didn’t she deserve a father instead of a distant hero?”

“Are you proud of the way she turned out?”

“That’s beside the point.”

“Are you proud of Sura?”

Mali’s voice crackled. “Yes. She’s strong and smart and everything else I could have wished for.”

“Lycas may not have been there to hear her first word, or see her first step. But everything he’s done out there has shaped her.”

“Shut up,” Mali said again, more feebly.

A door opened at the end of the hall, letting in more light that pierced Rhia’s throbbing temple. Two soldiers entered, each carrying a tray.

“Good, you’re awake,” the taller soldier said. “Breakfast time.”

“Breakfast?” Mali said with a sneer. “It’s past noon already.”

“And how would you know that?” he said. “Give the new one that meal,” he told the other soldier.

The other man slid a wooden tray through a small opening in the bottom of Rhia’s cell door. She waited until he had backed away, then slid forward and grabbed it quickly. She lifted the lid, wrinkling her nose in anticipation of the rotting smell.

To her surprise, the meal wasn’t spoiled. In fact, the baked chicken was steaming hot, its skin dotted with minced herbs. She squeezed the chunk of bread, which was soft instead of stale. The vegetables looked overboiled, but the water in her cup smelled fresh. Her stomach growled.

“Thank you,” she said.

The taller soldier nodded. “And for you,” he said, turning to Mali, “the usual.” He shoved his tray through the hole in the door, then latched it shut.

Mali looked at Rhia’s plate, then lifted her own lid. “Ugh!” She cursed and shoved the tray and its contents through the bars. Some of the meat fell just outside the cell, and Rhia swore she saw small things crawling over it. The shorter soldier bent to pick up the food.

“Leave it,” his superior said. “She’ll eat it later. She always does.”

When the door shut, Rhia tore her chicken and bread in half. “Here, take some of mine.”

“I don’t want your pity,” Mali snapped.

“They’re trying to turn us against each other. That way we won’t cooperate to escape.” She placed a plate on Mali’s side of the bars and put half her food on it. “Let’s show them it won’t work.”

“I won’t eat anything until they serve me something decent.”

“They won’t. They’ll be happy to let you starve.”

“Then I’ll starve.”

“Suit yourself.” Rhia carried her tray to the bundled up lump of straw that passed for a bed. She began eating, not bothering to mute her smacking lips. “It’s quite good.”

Mali said nothing, just sat in her cell and stared out through the bars.

Rhia sighed and kept eating. She was determined to get out of this place. Alive.