Tribe: The Red Hand (Tribe Series Book 1) (7 page)

Aiden appeared to share her opinion. “That’s not right,” he muttered, fiddling with the side lever again. The mosquito whine was louder this time, and cycling higher. With an almost offhanded gesture, he aimed at the statue and squeezed the trigger.

The second blast, this one tinged like green fire, hit the statue with a thudding roar that ripped through the park, and sent Kestrel diving under the bench, her hands cupped over her ears.

When she dared open her eyes, she saw a cloud of acrid dust drifting away from the statue—rather, what was left of it. Half of it was simply gone. The other half, a twisted, smoky wreckage from the waist down, leaned sharply on its stone pedestal.

Aiden loosed an excited whoop and danced in a circle, looking like a little boy. She had never seen him behave that way, and that unnerved her almost as much as the thought of roaming spirits. He composed himself quickly, but the image remained in her mind, one part endearing, and one part oddly terrifying.

“What do you mean to do with that thing?” Kestrel asked.
Kill Stone Dogs and Black Ears
, he would say.
What else?

But he did not say that at all.

Aiden squared his shoulders. “I will lead a raid against the Tall Ones.”

“
What?
” she demanded, sure the ringing in her ears had made her misunderstand.

“Every old city I’ve explored has hidden vaults filled with firelances—pistols
and
rifles.”

“How many of the old cities have you explored?”

He went on as if she had not spoken. “Some of the vaults hold machines of old, though they look new-made. Hundreds, Kes, maybe thousands of them! But I don’t need those machines. With a few of these,” he finished, brandishing the firelance, “we can destroy the Tall Ones.”

Kestrel’s eyes bulged. “Are you mad?” she blurted, getting to her feet. “Why would you attack the Tall Ones?”

“Because they shelter behind their walls, little sister, with no worry of attack. They prowl the darkest nights, and carry away the unwary. Their presence alone fills strong hearts with distress, but I say we should fear this mysterious enemy no more.” He spoke with the same veiled dread she always heard when someone mentioned the Tall Ones. But there was something more in his voice, something she had heard from him before, but could not quite recognize.

“Those are all good reasons why they should remain untroubled,” she cautioned.

He shook his head, denying her advice. “I want to learn if they are evil spirits, as One-Ear Tom says. I want to learn what devilry they are hiding, discover what powers they wield. These are the things I will find out. And whatever keeps them safe, we will take for ourselves, and use to keep our people safe.”

When he said
I will find out
, his voice cracking with conviction, she remembered that he had sounded the same way on the day he told their parents he would become the youngest Red Hand ever, and again when he proclaimed that he would become the youngest warchief. In the end, he had been right, but no one had ever doubted him. The way he sounded now, the way he looked, his eyes hard and cold as ice, told her he wanted more than his words suggested.
But what more is there?

Aiden stepped close, caught her shoulders, and glared into her eyes as if she were his enemy. “Say nothing about any of this. Do you understand?”

Kestrel hid the wince of pain as his fingers clamped tighter on her shoulders, and nodded.

He held her stare for a long, dreadful minute. “Good. Now, let’s get you home. Your fever seems to be getting worse.” He flashed a thin, loveless smirk. “I couldn’t live with myself if my little sister died in my care.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Kill, a soggy mess of skin and bone, blood and fur, filled Kestrel’s nose with a fearsome reek. It seemed to gain weight with every step she took, until it felt as if she were carrying a bundle of heavy stones. More troubling, her fever was savaging her like a starving predator. One minute she was shaking with cold, the next burning. As the forest began to thin and the steepness of the mountains gave way to rugged hills dotted with scrub brush, an intrusive exhaustion sank deeper into her mind, until she felt snared inside an unsettling dream where neither the world nor its colors were as they should be.

Doggedly, Kestrel put one foot in front of the other, refusing to complain. She snatched handfuls of berries where she found them, crammed them into her mouth, chewed and swallowed. She felt no hunger, and the berries tasted sour, but she had to eat to keep her strength up. As well, she drank deeply from her waterskin, hoping it would not run dry before they reached the river.

Aiden held silent along the march, but he occasionally favored her with his usual disdainful looks. She ignored him. It was easy to do. That way she felt, he might have been a ghost guiding her along.

Dusk had fallen by the time they came to the river, a concrete canal a mile wide and two hundred feet deep. The sloping sides had stairways that led down to deeper pathways, until reaching the water far below.

Her people told that the Ancestors directed the streams flowing off the mountains into this canal, which in turn fed smaller canals. It was said that the world was covered in such canals, moving water from one place to another as needed, eliminating worry over drought. No one knew if canals actually covered the world, but if you followed them long enough, they all eventually led to the impassible boundary of the Dead Lands.

Kestrel knew many such stories of the Ancestors’ genius. Stories of how they had tamed the world by eradicating war and famine; how they had survived ages of ice, when the sun stopped giving its light and heat, and the seas froze, and the mountains became trapped under snow. And when the sun burned too bright and too hot, scorching the land, they had persevered and even flourished by building the canals.

Yes, she knew the stories, but the one that always stayed with her was that of the Ancestors’ demise.

Although the they had found ways to stave off sickness and death, and so were able to live lives measured in hundreds of years, the pestilence named the Red Fever devoured them as fire devours straw, leaving their mighty works and machines to churn on and on, until they exhausted the unknowable fuel that drove them, or their metal insides of gears and cogs and springs simply ground themselves into dust.

“So much lost … so much forgotten,” Kestrel murmured, gazing with glassy eyes at the water below, running placid but swift. Every turning of the moon the river flooded, whether it was in the middle of summer or the heart of winter, and the roaring flow would climb almost to the top edge of the canal, scouring it clean.

“What?” Aiden asked, his tone sharp.

“But not
everything
is lost,” Kestrel said, feeling at once heavy and light, somehow separate from herself, and yet at the same time buried so deeply within herself that nothing else existed. She smiled wanly. “The ghosts of yesterday still work to keep the river clean. At least we still have that.”

Aiden squinted a thoughtful eye at her. “Your fever is getting worse.”

Kestrel stared down at the water, wondering if it was cool enough to steal the boiling heat from her blood. “A bath would be nice.”

“Kes?”

She took a shaky, swaying step toward a set of stairs.

“Kestrel!” Aiden snapped, lurching towards her.

She dodged out of reach. “You cannot help me! You
shouldn’t
have helped me. I’m a Red Hand!”

He lifted his hands. “Then go drown yourself, if that’s what you want.”

“Just a bath,” she muttered, struggling to keep her balance on the concrete steps, wondering at the hands—or had it been machines?—that had built them.

She made it down the first flight, paused to catch her breath on the walkway running off in either direction, then continued.

Halfway down the second set of steps, she passed out of slanting red sunlight and into twilight shadow. It was cooler down in the dark, but the memory of the day’s warmth radiated off the smooth gray surfaces. A breeze brought with it the mossy smell of the river.

Kestrel stopped again at the next walkway and looked back the way she had come. The sky, now purple, vaulted above her, but Aiden was nowhere in sight. Had he decided to leave without her? If so, that was fine. She did not need his help, nor did she want it.

Kestrel began down the third flight of stairs, and stiffened between one step and the next, arms held out as she tottered between keeping her balance and falling headlong down the stairs. Before her hung a distorted image of herself. She slowly thrust her head forward, stunned, and saw her mouth yawn impossibly wide in the curved surface. It took a few seconds for her to understand that she was looking into a hovering spherical mirror.

It’s not real
, she thought.
It can’t be.

But it was, and it was coming closer.

By now, a series of rippling rings were spreading across the smooth surface, making her reflection waver and wobble. From the spot where the ripples originated, a long needle eased out of the sphere.

Kestrel drew back, not daring to breathe. A faint clicking noise came from the sphere, followed by a hum, and then more clicks.

Faster than she could react, the needle shot forward and stabbed the center of her forehead. She reeled drunkenly, her skull ringing as if Fat Will had hit her with one of his hammers. Bursts of light flared and sizzled before her eyes, blotting out everything else.

Aiden called out, seemingly miles away.

“Help me!” Kestrel shrieked, dropping the bundled lion hide and raising her hands for balance. The lights burning across her vision became explosions of crimson, and the ringing agony in her skull deepened, flowed down into her spine like molten metal. Her limbs began to jitter.

“Kes?”

“HELP ME!”

“Stay there! I’m coming!”

Kestrel tried to hold still, but it was as if her body had been invaded by a nest of writhing serpents. Her skin burned and itched and crawled. She screamed again, eyes bulging sightlessly.

Aiden called out once more, but his voice was receding.

She was falling. Falling and tumbling down the side of the canal. Down and down and down.

Blackness followed, but did not last.

She found herself looking up at the outline of a bird wheeling through the darkening sky. Then Aiden’s face was hovering over hers, blocking out everything else. He was saying something, but she could not hear him. She tried to answer, but her throat had quit working.

And then Aiden began to disappear under seething waves of gray-black flowers, and she felt herself slipping away, suffocating.

She fell into a nightmare filled with fiery pain and swirling images, a place where time had no meaning. Every time she blinked, she saw something different.

Once she saw the night sky, dusted with a sweep of brilliant stars. The next time she opened her eyes, the soft golden light of dawn had come, but she was looking down at one of the smooth concrete walkways lining the sides of the canal. Aiden’s heels flashed, one after the other, in and out of her line of sight. There was a painful pressure in her middle, as she bounced with his every stride.
He’s carrying me
, she thought with dazed amazement … and drifted away.

She opened her eyes and it was full dark again. Aiden was standing in front of her, shoving some bulbous, smelly bundle into her hands.

My Kill
, she thought dully. It was so heavy now, and so large that she could barely wrap her arms around it. Kestrel almost let it fall, but a second thought made her hold it tight.
I must keep it safe.

He spun her around. “Go, Kes,” he whispered against her ear. “Go home. You know the way. And remember, say nothing of the old city. For your life, Kes, remember that, and go home.” He shoved her forward.

And away she went, staggering, tripping, falling, getting up time and again along a familiar trail.
The way home.

Her skin burned; her bones felt cracked and charred. The smell of pine sap and evergreen boughs filled her nose, and she wanted nothing more than to lie down and sleep. Instead, she walked into an enveloping black curtain, hearing her brother’s whisper:
Go home … home … home.

When last she opened her eyes, Kestrel was again looking straight up. Dark tree branches blocked out most of the stars. She blinked, and then there were a dozen faces staring down at her; hungry faces made freakish and sinister by dancing firelight.

“No more fire,” she gasped.

Their hands reached, but they did not
reach
so much as stretch, growing thin and long, like strands of cake batter. Their faces began to ooze and drip.

Kestrel howled. And when those sticky, clutching fingers touched her, she thrashed and clawed, but could not drive them back. They caught hold of her, and she knew there would be no waking after this. No blinking away the nightmare. No retreating into the darkness. She was going to die.