The Flute Keeper's Promise (The Flute Keeper Saga) (43 page)

She whistled a tune as she stomped
downstairs, leaving me alone.

I wished my skin was as thick as
Valory’s. I knew I was being childish, but at the root of it all I felt very
real pain. One glance from Hugo had been like the twist of a knife.

I found the inspiration I needed in
my pride. If everyone saw that I was miserable, they’d know why and I’d look
like a fool. Hugo would enjoy that. The only remedy was to hold my head up and
be as aloof as him. If I didn’t exist to him, then he did not exist to me.

Feeling much calmer, I descended
into the main lobby. Every soul present at the hall had already congregated on
the lower level, so I took up a spot by the rail at the top of the stairway.
Someone had drawn a cover over the pool where Lord Finbarr had given Valory and
me a Truth Test. Now there was a little stage in its place. The ragtag group of
Slaugh convened around it. I noticed that several were badly injured. One young
man was missing a hand. Another had a broken wing. I refused to look at Hugo so
I didn’t know if he’d suffered any injuries, but the tattooed girl beside him
was nursing a bandage on one arm. It was Katriel, the same girl who had been
helping Hugo on the dock the day he left. She had an air of importance, like
she was his second-in-command. She was more muscular than any of the other
female Slaugh, and she dressed in pants like the men. Nevertheless her face
held the same exotic beauty as all Slaugh women. Her lips were tattooed black
and a line of black dots went up each of her sharp cheeks. I could never pull
off such an extreme look, but on Katriel it seemed perfectly natural.

Katriel leaned over and whispered
something to Hugo. I noticed how formal her movements were. She did not lean in
too close or even brush a hand near him as any other girl might. The absence of
affection struck me as odd. In my agitated state at the dock I’d automatically
assumed that Katriel was a romantic rival. Now I realized that wasn’t the case.

A fellow onlooker nudged me. “I
think those folks down there are trying to get your attention,” he said.

I looked where he pointed and spied
Yert the brownie and her husband, Ralph, along with Joyboy, Wimbleysminch,
Bayard Barrie and Sandrine. It was the whole crew of the Melidee Gale—almost. I
didn’t see Doctor Splitfoot.

Sandrine and her crew were crammed
into a corner on the lower level behind the stage. Yert waved a hairy arm back
and forth. I waved back and she beamed like a big, furry ball of sunshine.
Sandrine was much more composed. Of course, she couldn’t see me. She wore a blindfold
and leaned on a cane. Next to her stood Bayard, Ivywild’s own renegade Sword
Bearer. He had traded his shiny pants and silk shirts for the canvas clothes of
a sailor. His blonde hair, once down to his waist, now barely came past his
ears. He was still tan as ever, but the sea winds had turned his cheeks ruddy. I
was proud of him. He’d come a long way from the arrogant coward I used to know.
Then I felt a little pang because Commander Larue wasn’t there to see him.

Somebody rapped on the stage floor.
I had to look hard to spy Lord Finbarr among all the tall Slaugh. He cleared
his throat loudly and then knocked on the stage again with his foot. The room
grew quiet.

“Good morning, my friends. You were
all witness to the events of last night. The ocean rose up and scoured the
forest. We were only spared thanks to the quick thinking of a few.” He shot me
a brief glance.

“However destructive the wave was,
it did bring new allies into our midst. These fighters are not like you or I,
but they fight nonetheless and our cause is the same: to protect and preserve
peace in Faylinn. While we have been trying to reclaim Ivywild from the Duke of
Briar, they have been chasing an enemy much more cunning. Your true queen,
Chloe de Lolanthe, spoke of this enemy in her last address. You’ve seen the
minions of this enemy, those vile beasts that attacked Mag Mell at our king’s
funeral. The Slaugh standing behind me have seen where those beasts thrive.
They have been into the darkest battleground where evil is breeding, and they
have returned to tell us what they found.”

Gasps went around the room. Lord
Finbarr observed the response with a grim tightening of his jaw.

“Please give your attention now to
the man behind me. Some of you have seen him before, but you have not known him
as a king. He is heir to Hagan Winterwing, ruler of all the Slaugh.”

“For right now anyways!” shouted
Valory from somewhere in the back of the room. The Slaugh around the stage
looked angry. Lord Finbarr pressed on without faltering.

“King Hugo,” he said, bowing
slightly. “Please tell us about your mission.”

Lord Finbarr stepped to the side as
Hugo took front and center. He drew every eye in the room like a magnet. Even though
many of the Slaugh behind him were bigger or more fearsome, he commanded a
presence that they could not. It was in the straight line of his shoulders and
the in the way he held his chin. It was in the way he moved: always with
purpose but still graceful. These traits were unique to him and even though I
tried not to look, I couldn’t help but notice how familiar all those little
things were—and how much I’d missed them.

Then he spoke.

“Thank you all for welcoming us. We
have had a hard journey.”

I had forgotten the power in his
voice. It was deep with just a hint of danger, like thunder rumbling high in
the clouds when you couldn’t yet see the lightning. I knew its subtle pitches
and inflections like the tune of my favorite song.

It was agony. I closed my eyes and
tried to separate the man from the voice.
Don’t listen to him,
I urged
myself.
Just listen to his words.

“We have been to Seraph’s Tear,” he
continued. “There we found what you know as mechamen. They are the undead
minions of the demon, Robyn. They have been using machines in the ruins of
Seraph’s Tear to bolster their numbers.

“When we arrived in Seraph’s Tear
we found them working like insects, building nonstop day and night. At first we
thought that they were simply adding more drones to their ranks. We made a preliminary
sweep of the area to learn their numbers and see if Robyn was also hiding in
the city. We found no trace of Robyn, but we did discover that her mechamen are
evolving.”

Gasps came from the crowd. I felt a
sickly prickle, like a spider crawling slowly down my back.

Hugo’s voice took on an even
deeper, more chilling tone as he continued the tale.

“They built a ship. I could use
many words to describe it. A behemoth. A monstrosity.  None of these are
adequate. It is a moving machine made from buildings taller than the trees in
this forest. That is not all. Thousands of mechamen can fit inside it. We saw
the thing and we thought we were seeing our death, but the ship had no interest
in us. It departed Seraph’s Tear and moved out over the ocean.”

By now everyone in the room was
agape save for the Slaugh who’d been there.

“We followed it,” Hugo went on. “It
stayed on a course to the middle of the ocean between here and Larlaith. Once
there, it lowered metal arms and chains with hooks into the water. We stayed
far back watching it, waiting. For many hours it lowered chains into the heart
of the ocean. The mechamen aboard the vessel worked constantly to lengthen the
chains. As best we could tell, they were trying to reach the bottom. At long
last it pulled up one of the chains and there was something wrapped in the end
of it.

“What was it?” shouted a Fay in the
crowd.

“A tree branch,” Hugo said. “As
soon as it pulled up the branch, the mechaman ship dove into the water. It made
a giant wave, but it was only a ripple compared to what came later. The crew of
our ship managed to keep us afloat so we stayed nearby to see what would
happen.

“Hours later, after nightfall, the
sea began to bubble. We saw the ship rising out of the water. It pulled
something up with it: a dead tree. It was black with branches and roots coated
in layers of sea-bottom silt. The ocean did not want to let go of it. The
machine struggled to pull the tree free. When at last the roots broke the
water’s surface, the whole ocean trembled. It made the sea buckle in every direction.
That is what caused the wave. We were carried along by it all the way here. We
have no way of knowing where the mechaman ship might go next or what its
purpose with the tree is.”

He finished. At first nobody spoke.
The silence was stifling as everyone except for me tried to make sense of the
strange tale.

I knew about the tree at the bottom
of the ocean. It was one of the few useful things I’d learned in my priestess
training. I knew now why the tidal wave and I were connected. My family’s
ancient past and my present had just collided and all of Faylinn was caught in
the backlash.

Maybe Hugo didn’t know I was there or
maybe he was still ignoring me, but he never glanced in my direction. If he
had, he’d have seen a stricken girl clutching the hilt of her shortsword.

I squeezed the hilt so hard that
the skin over my knuckles felt like it might tear. My fingers sought past the weapon
to the flute that lay hidden inside. At my fingertips was a piece of a tree
sealed away ages ago.

A tree resurrected by a demon’s
machine.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The air felt so heavy that it made
Chloe’s hair stick to the back of her neck. She’d never been anywhere so steamy.
Even though it was spring in New Orleans just like in her own world, it felt
more like summer. A haze hung over the hot pavement and insects buzzed in the
air, especially by the wide river that cut a swath through the city.  Giant barges
bigger than any boats she had ever seen chugged against the muddy currents.

She sat on a bench near the river
watching the ships. A few blocks behind her lay the French Quarter where the
scents of food and spirits poured out of windows under wrought-iron balconies.
There were street performers and musicians on every corner. An old man was
playing a trumpet just down the walkway from her.

Even with the giant ships and the
cars whizzing by on great, arched bridges, the city felt more like home than
anywhere else in the human world she’d been. It had the vivacity of Ivywild’s
own market square.

Violet sat quietly next to her,
examining a map of Tulane University. It was nearby, but they did not know yet
how to get to Tobin Leboux’s apartment. Their mother had wheeled herself down
to a crowd of people waiting to board a paddlewheel boat for a dinner cruise.
Chloe could see her chatting with a couple of men. Othella seemed perfectly at
ease. She’d braided her hair and wrapped it around her head so that the tips of
her ears were hidden. She passed for a human easily, but she was much more
beautiful than most human women. It was a great advantage whenever she needed
directions or advice.

“How de do, Misses?” said the old
man with the trumpet. He tipped his hat to Chloe and Violet. “Can I play you
gals a tune?”

He had a thick accent. Chloe smiled
politely but she wasn’t sure what to do.

Violet nudged her. “Give him some money,”
she whispered.

Chloe reached into her pocket and
pulled out one of the wadded green papers. The man offered his hat. She dropped
it inside.

“Now what you gals wanna hear?” the
old man asked, flashing a nearly toothless smile.

“Do you know
Gigue of the
Highland Tuatha
?” Chloe asked. It was her father’s favorite song. Normally
it was played on artisan bagpipes made only in Port Zephyr, but she supposed it
could be done on a trumpet as well.

The man shook his head. “Don’t know
that.”

Chloe shrugged. “Anything is fine.”

The man played a lively tune for
them and then went on his way. The paddlewheel boat had arrived for its
passengers. Othella waved goodbye to the men she’d been speaking with and then
rolled her wheelchair back to the bench where Chloe and Violet were waiting.

“What did you find out?” Chloe
asked.

“Most of the students live in
apartments near the campus,” Othella said. “This way.”

The trip to New Orleans had been
difficult. The bus was crowded and it smelled of feet. Chloe had sat next to a
loud, middle-aged woman most of the way who insisted on showing pictures of her
cats. The only way Chloe had kept her sanity was by fantasizing about all the
things she was going to do when she got home. Most of the fantasies involved
torturing the duke. She tied him to mountaintops and let carrion birds peck out
his eyes. She set him ablaze with fires that would burn him for all eternity but
never kill him. She fed him to the dragons that were rumored to still exist in
the Ruvanian Mountains. Then she started fantasizing about feeding the cat lady
to the dragons as well. She knew that it was not a good thing for her or her
fellow passenger, so she tried to think nicer thoughts.

She missed her friends. Now that
she’d been away for so long she realized how much she’d come to depend on
others. She missed her maids and all the Gnome servants who’d taken care of her
ever since she was a small child. She missed Commander Larue and his haughty
Master Casters. She missed Lord Finbarr and Garland. She even missed Bazzlejet.

Of all the people at Ivywild, she
missed Emma the most. Good old gutsy, passionate Emma. She was the only person
who made Chloe feel like she could do anything she set her mind to. Until Emma
came along, Chloe simply thought she was entitled to whatever she wanted. She’d
since learned that the only things worth having were the things you had to
fight for.