The Shattered Sylph (19 page)

Once he was oiled, the slave put balm over the cuts on Ril’s side and shoulder and helped him step into fresh clothes, these smelling of desert flowers and falling looser than the leathers in which he’d fought. They were made of silk instead, bearing the emperor’s sigil and showing his regard for his favorite. Bowing deeply, the slave retreated, the water sylph at her side. The straw-covered floor hadn’t even got damp.

Ril shook himself, feeling more normal but still exhausted, and went to the feeder cages. Sometimes he’d hold out and wait for Lizzy, just pretending to feed on the men’s energy, but now he was too tired to care how bland they tasted. Dropping down in front of the first, he reached a hand through the bars and laid it on the man’s arm. He drank deep, skimming the energy off and into himself. Usually one was enough, but he’d worn himself out and his shoulder still hurt, so he went to the next, missing Leon’s much richer energy even more after hearing the man’s voice. His master would try to rescue him—he already knew that—but he honestly didn’t know how Leon could succeed. He drank from the second feeder and then,
though he usually didn’t, this time he even advanced to the third.

Justin. Eyes red-rimmed and bitter, the boy glared at him hatefully. His energy was bitter as well, but Ril forced himself to drink it anyway, even as he forbade himself from growling. Justin was just as much a prisoner as he was, if not more so. Ril would even have explained about Leon if he could, but he couldn’t and so went over to his bed. Falling across it, he was asleep immediately.

Ordered to leave him alone when he was sleeping, the handlers let him rest. Ril was unconscious the rest of that day and through the night.

At the back of his stall, a wide window had been cut. For a penny a visit, people could come down into the pits and see battlers close up. Crowds came to observe the strange new sylph, peering at him through the dirty glass, but while they’d enjoyed seeing his bath—especially the women—they didn’t have much interest in a sleeping man. The other battlers were far more impressive.

And yet, one man stared at Ril for quite a while, a hood up over his dyed hair, his face calm. He studied the battler and the three feeders imprisoned nearby. Then, reaching out, he tapped the window. The sound echoed loudly through the cell.

The closest feeder looked up and his eyes widened. Quickly, Leon put a finger to his lips and motioned back toward his battler, intending to keep Justin hopeful. There wasn’t much else he could do at the moment. Except…the passageway he’d come down had cleared, the spectators gone to watch Two-hundred kill the latest batch of prisoners. Their screams sounded in the passageway, echoing down air vents cut in the stone, so Leon took the chance to call “Ril!” several times, loudly.

His sylph didn’t wake, but he moved, shifting closer in his sleep toward the calls. Ril still responded to him, despite whatever rules he had to be obeying now. Leon smiled grimly and left, eyes on the ground like any other lower-class person. He made his way out of the arena, right past battler guards who didn’t pay any attention to his calm, relaxed thoughts. They let him go even while they searched for him, and he shuffled slowly along in his old, borrowed sandals, not in any rush at all.

Making his way to the city outskirts, he was soon back where the forgotten lived and the battlers never journeyed.

The sylph known as Two-hundred outside of the harem and as Tooie to the people he actually cared about didn’t have guard duty. There were enough battlers who did only that, leaving his sole task to fight in the arena. Thus, his orders were a little different, and he’d never been told to watch for a blue-eyed, blond-haired man wandering the inner city. He could come and go as he pleased, save for the stipulation that he arrive at the arena and harem exactly at the times required, which left him a little leeway. Just a bit.

Deep in the middle of the night, Tooie lifted his head from the bed he was sharing with Kiala, one of the women in the circle and the lover of Four-seventeen. Four-seventeen was in a different alcove with Lizzy. Eapha was alone in the main sleeping chamber.

Tooie rose up silently and padded to the curtains. Careful not to wake Kiala, who just kept snoring, a trickle of drool running down her chin, he peered outside but saw no one. All the other battlers were occupied in alcoves, and the women were either with them or asleep. There was no real day or night in this place, but everyone seemed to slow down in the late hours anyway. That applied to the handlers as well, and Tooie couldn’t sense any of them looking through peepholes.

He seized the opportunity. Taking his natural shape, a cloud of energy and red eyes with a huge mouth of teeth formed by lightning, he spread out long dark wings but
didn’t fly like any bird of this world. Instead, he floated upward, squeezing delicately into the vent that would release him from the harem. But he went with extreme care—there were bells rigged to ring the handlers and announce his departure.

The alarms stayed silent as he passed, Tooie having gone completely incorporeal. Hurrying on, he spiraled upward through the looping passage, squeezing through gaps a rat would have had trouble traversing, let alone a woman, though he knew some women who had tried. None had gotten past the bells. Eapha had suggested the same once, but he’d dissuaded her. She’d never make it out that way. Worse, if she tried, he was under orders to stop her.

Tooie rose through a half mile of tunnel, past the offshoot that would take him to the feeder pens, and instead went to the outside. That was his loophole: he had to be at the arena and at the harem at certain, specific times, but he was allowed to go to the feeder pens whenever he wished, without any restrictions on how long he stayed. Nor had he ever been ordered to go
directly
there. So long as he fed tonight, he wouldn’t be disobeying orders.

He didn’t know how many other battlers had figured out the same thing—and he didn’t exactly care. Still, his one concern was that if even one of them gave the secret away, they would all have their orders tightened. It wouldn’t do at all to have someone see him, so he rose up into the darkness, careful to present both the ground and sky with only his dark mantle. The great island citadel floated overhead, blocking out the stars in the same way it did the sun, and he flew through the shadow it cast, passing other sylphs on errands of their own. A few acknowledged him, shimmering, but none tried to stop him or speak. None were allowed. He could feel their misery,
though. Even if he could have, he wouldn’t have wanted to talk to them. He couldn’t do anything to help.

After seventy years, he was used to not speaking. The sign language he’d learned was usually enough, but now he wished he could talk—or that Seven-oh-three could use the signs and tell him how he’d made Lizzy his master. Or who had done it for him. The humans here made masters out of the people they turned into feeders, after crippling them so they couldn’t give a single order, but none of the feeders who served battlers were female. Nobody would tie a girl to one of them. That was law. So how had Seven-oh-three done it? And where had that queen pattern come from? They’d all lost such bonds when they crossed the gate, and Tooie couldn’t imagine any queen crossing over herself.

He’d studied Seven-oh-three closely, trying to puzzle it out, had analyzed the other battler’s patterns until he knew them as well as his own—and the one in Lizzy. He couldn’t figure out how it was formed, which was driving him mad. If only he could make Seven-oh-three understand, force him to show how he’d done it, then Tooie could make Eapha his master. He couldn’t talk to Seven-oh-three, though. Orders forbade it, and his natural loathing…Anytime two battlers came together, their natural hatred for each other got in the way. He flew across the city, angry with Seven-oh-three and angry with himself for his own limitations. There was so much he wanted and so little he could have. Such was the life of all battlers. At least he had love, he told himself. But it wasn’t enough. He was so hungry, it could never be enough.

Descending through the night, he hovered at the edge of the city, just shy of the tumbling wall that marked the start of the desert. Farther out, lit by small fires and wandering through the darkness, he could see the energy
patterns of the usual camp of the vagrants, as clear to him as if they walked in daylight. He couldn’t go to them, but he didn’t intend to. There were flowers growing along the wall and out in the sand, flowers Eapha loved. He got them for her whenever he could, and though she had to be careful with them, destroying them before anyone could see, collecting the blooms was always worth her looks of joy.

Tooie found three growing out of the wall. He plucked them with a tendril and carefully brought them back within his mantle, where he carried his breechcloth, but he wanted to give her a better bouquet. Thus he stretched out with his senses, scanning the life on the sand. He found scorpions and snakes, most sleeping. A lizard, also asleep. Children, women, men…

He sensed a flower almost at the edge of the camp and stretched out the tendril again, reaching for it. He couldn’t leave the city, but he wasn’t going to. He was just reaching out with the tiniest part of himself, and not even changing shape to do so, since that was forbidden. Reaching the flower, he wrapped the tendril around it, pulling it out of the sand and back. There, he broke the root off the stem and flower, which he added to the others.

Another would do it, he decided, and looked again, reaching out with his senses. There wasn’t much. He’d plucked the area pretty clean already, and the children of the vagrant camps liked to pick the flowers themselves. They might have missed one, though, and he flooded his awareness over the camp itself.

That was when he felt
him.
Tooie started, thinking for a crazed moment that Seven-oh-three was in that camp, then that Lizzy was. But neither of those things made any sense. He focused his battler instincts closer, and only then did he feel the pattern clearly: a man, the same as he’d felt
inside Seven-oh-three. The bond was stronger than the one to Lizzy and barely weaker than the bond to the queen. Certainly it was stronger than any of the feeder patterns inside Tooie. Tooie had never felt such a thing, and he suddenly wondered if this was the man who had bonded Seven-oh-three to Lizzy. If so, could the stranger do the same for him and Eapha?

Tooie quickly stretched out, reaching across the sand he wasn’t allowed to cross for that pattern, lashing blindly through the darkness in attack.

Leon sat and sipped the cofi he’d bought, lost in thought. Across from him sat Zalia’s father Xehm, mouth curved in an expression of bliss. Leon suspected it had been a very long time since Xehm had tasted cofi, or even the food he’d bought.

It wasn’t much that he’d purchased. Leon had only the gems and coins Solie had given him, saved because they’d been hidden in his boots when he was taken. The guards had shortly expected to be peeling his clothes off his corpse, so they hadn’t searched him. He had to hoard as many of them as he could to buy passage home, and yet he couldn’t leave these people like this. Even with so many of them working, they were close to starvation. He didn’t like the idea of leaving them in penury, but he had to be a realist. There wasn’t much he could do. He had to focus on his own problems and hope that he found a solution.

To be fair, he thought he had, and thanks to Xehm’s people he had more information on this empire than he would ever have uncovered on his own, including the fact that Ril spent most of every day in a place where he could be reached! Going to the arena had been a risk, but it had been a risk he’d had to take—both to see Ril for himself and to determine the battler’s condition. He knew his
sylph had been compromised. It was just a question of how badly.

Now Leon thought he knew the solution to his problems, but if he was wrong, he was dead. That was why Xehm and the others scouted the city, making the maps Leon needed on paper he’d bought, and watching the arena, learning the necessary schedules. It was for this that he’d bought them their food and cofi, though he suspected it wasn’t necessary. They were good people, and they too had lost family to the slavers, feeder pens, and harems. They were desperate, though, and he wished he could do more.

“Good?” he asked Xehm.

“Oh, yes,” the man breathed. “I haven’t had cofi in twenty years.” He inhaled deeply of the smell from the cup. “So good!”

Leon chuckled. The others who had stayed up swapping stories with him grinned.

Including Zalia, most of the women were asleep. They had to rise early. In this country, they were the most likely to be employed, serving as domestics and waitstaff. Most of the labors men normally did were performed by sylphs. There was some male employment, but only short-term and usually brutal. Xehm worked in the fall, butchering animals for market—that was one job elemental sylphs didn’t do, though apparently there were some battlers who would—but it was Zalia who supported the family. Her mother was long since taken for the harem and her little sister dead of sickness. All of the people here had similar stories.

Leon shivered in the cold night air that Xehm didn’t seem to notice. “All of you will stay away from the arena tomorrow?” he asked. If he was wrong in this, he didn’t want any of them hurt.

The man’s features danced in the flickering firelight as he stared enraptured into his tin cup. He nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said. “The doors you need will be unlocked, though.” Thanks to Zalia and a few of the other women and men.

“Thank you. Just be sure no one goes there.”

“No, sir. We’ll stay home.” Xehm grinned toothlessly. “You can see us later.”

Leon returned the smile, though he might not be back. Not if everything went according to plan. Of course, his plan included Ril visiting in dreams for orders. Leon had been waiting for that for days, and it hadn’t happened. Now that Ril had seen him, he had high hopes that the sylph would come tonight. But Leon couldn’t wait much longer; soon he would be forced to take a more direct approach. He’d already proven he could direct Ril in the arena, so he would risk going back there and telling him what to do, but…Ril wouldn’t be happy about it.

“No one should bother you,” Leon said to Xehm. “I can’t swear to it, but there’s no reason for them to suspect—”

A narrow black tendril swished almost silently through the sand. Pausing for a moment, it bulged and lengthened, became even thinner as it moved forward and up behind the rock Leon sat on to wrap around his leg. The thing tightened, squeezing hard, and pulled. Leon howled as he was yanked off his seat, nearly landing on his face in the fire, and dragged feetfirst into the darkness. Behind him, Xehm leaped to his feet, yelling in terror, and the other men rose as well, shrieking. More screams erupted from the hovels.

Leon clutched at sand that tore his clothes and skin as he was reeled in like a fish on a line. He bounced high over a ridge, gasping, and nearly lost his breath as he slammed down again and slewed through the sand, pulled inexorably
toward a lightning-laced cloud hovering just over the city wall. It was glaring at him with red eyes and huge teeth.

“Goddammit!”
Leon swore, somehow managing to draw the dagger he’d bought when he got the paper. Sitting up and feeling his pants tearing away beneath him, he slashed at the black rope around his leg. The thing fell away, and he skidded to a stop.

The battler bellowed in pain. Scrambling to his feet, Leon started to run.

A half dozen tendrils came this time, wrapping around his arms, legs, waist, and neck, and Leon saw Xehm’s terrified face from the edge of the camp for only a moment before he was yanked off his feet and slammed onto his back. The horrible pull started again, dragging him even faster than before, and he had a frantic moment to imagine himself brained by the stone wall before he was lifted bodily into the air.

The ground simply dropped away. The battler was rising, Leon realized, flying who knew how high and taking him along. Leon saw a flash of the underside of the floating island of the emperor, and then the battler wrapped around him completely, bringing him inside his mantle. Warm and dark, it was just solid enough to keep Leon from falling.

Leon had ridden this way inside Ril previously, before Ril lost the ability to take the form. Though he’d seen no reason to tell his battler at the time, he had been able to tell from those trips how vulnerable it made battle sylphs to their passengers. He’d lost his dagger, but Leon now drew his sword, fully intending to drive it up and through the front portion of the battler’s body, where the creature maintained its consciousness. He wasn’t sure if he’d be able to kill the thing that way, just as he wasn’t sure if he’d be killed
himself when the battler vanished from around him, but the longer he waited, the higher they’d rise.

It was the smell that stopped him. Of all things, he could smell flowers inside the battler, and he reached down, feeling across the floor until he felt the stems and soft petals. Immediately the battler shifted, pulling them gently away as if afraid of having them damaged.

Leon put the hilt of his sword on his shoulder, its long point aimed at the battler’s brain stem, if it had such a thing. “You’re not kidnapping me, are you?” he asked.

There was no answer, but he could feel the creature’s hesitation.

Leon pressed his free palm against the side of the mantle that enclosed him. “Press here once for yes, twice for no.”