The Shattered Sylph (20 page)

The battler pressed twice against his hand.

“No. No, you’re not kidnapping me, or no, you
are
kidnapping me?”

Almost, Leon heard the battler sigh.

This was getting nowhere. Leon lowered his sword. “Are you kidnapping me?”

Two presses.

“Are you turning me in?”

Two presses.

What could a battle sylph want with him, if he wasn’t turning him in? “Are you a friend of Ril?” he asked.

There was a pause, followed by two slow presses. A sort of no?

“Are you Lizzy’s friend?” he asked dubiously.

One vehement press.

Leon’s eyes widened, his sword forgotten. “Is she okay? Did she send you looking for me?”

One press, followed after a moment by two.

Leon forced himself to calm down. Whatever this
battler’s reasoning, he wasn’t free to speak about it, or free to speak at all. This was not going to be easy. “Please put me down,” he requested.

The battler soared lower, shifting. Leon felt his legs drop out from under him and managed to land mostly upright on a stretch of road near the edge of the city, though away from where he had been. He couldn’t see the campfires of the exiles at all. A flower fluttered down to the ground beside him, and he bent to get it. Straightening, he held it out to the battler. “Here.”

A tendril looped down around the flower and pulled it back up inside the cloud.

Standing on the road, his body aching from where the sand had burned him, Leon eyed the battler. It was nearly the size of a small house, the shining red eyes staring back. Its mouth was closed, but he could see the lightning nonetheless. That sparking light moved quickly, a sign he’d learned to recognize as distress.

“You’re not allowed to talk, are you?” Leon asked.

The cloud backed off a bit, extruding two tendrils as thick as arms. Quickly, he made a series of gestures.

“Whoa!” Leon said. “I don’t understand.” Was that some sort of sign language? If it was, he had no time to learn. “You’re trying to speak to me, aren’t you?”

The battler stretched out a tendril and tapped him against the collarbone hard enough to push him back a step.

Yes? Good. “Is this a sylph language?” Leon asked.

Two taps. Leon suspected he would be bruised in the morning.

“Does Lizzy understand this language?”

Two slow taps. Not really.

Leon eyed the creature, his thoughts already whirling.
“If Lizzy doesn’t, is there someone who does? Someone who could tell Lizzy what you’re saying?”

One very vehement tap. Leon winced and rubbed his shoulder, rotating his arm. “Try not to kill me, please.” He looked around. “Follow me.”

The battler trailing him like a sort of giant, demonic puppy, Leon walked along the inside of the city wall back toward the camp. It took nearly twenty minutes. He was lucky the battler hadn’t headed straight across the city, he supposed—they could move terribly fast when they wanted, and he would likely have crossed the entire city. Any of a hundred battlers who were looking for him could have spotted him then. Leon suspected the battler had grabbed him on impulse, and it had been simply looking for somewhere quiet to talk. He just didn’t know about what.

He returned to the camp, which was still in turmoil, stepping over Meridal’s broken wall. “I’ll be right back,” he promised the battler, and headed across the sand, hoping the creature wouldn’t become impatient. He was getting too old to be hauled bodily wherever the thing wanted.

As he trudged into the circle of firelight, Xehm’s eyes widened in amazement and Zalia ran up with a shout. “You’re alive!”

“Yes.” Leon lifted his hands, tried to think of an explanation that wouldn’t take an hour, and finally let them drop. “Give me a couple of minutes, okay? I have to do something.” He went to his pack and dug out a sheet of the paper he’d purchased for making maps, along with a stick of charcoal. Taking both, he headed back toward the wall. Xehm and a few of the other men followed, but at the sight of the battle sylph retreated in panic. Leon really hoped they wouldn’t shun him when he returned.

The battler watched as Leon climbed the wall and sat
down, putting the paper in his lap. “Move closer, will you?” he asked. When the creature did, the lightning glow was just enough for Leon to see the letter he wrote to his daughter, being sure to ask precisely what this battler wanted. He didn’t tell her his plans, or sign the note, but she would know his handwriting.

Once he was done, he wrapped the parchment around the charcoal. “Take this to Lizzy,” he told the battler. “She’ll write whatever it is you want to ask me on the back. Return that to me. I’ll be here tomorrow night. Understood?”

The battler nearly punched him over the wall in answer. Excitedly taking the paper, the thing flew off.

Leon sat up, definitely convinced he was bruised as well as abraded and full of sand. But Lizzy would be able to send him the creature’s question. She’d be able to answer other things as well, things he still needed to know.

Ril would have to wait another day for his rescue, it seemed. Hopefully it wouldn’t be one day too many. Leon sighed, stood stiffly, and made his way back to camp.

Tooie raced back to the harem, ablaze with hope. He hadn’t been able to talk to the man—it had been a moment of madness to think they might communicate meaningfully—but the stranger had determined a way for them to do just that. Now he had to get Eapha to explain enough for Lizzy to write down his question. She never understood when he tried to explain, but maybe this man would. Maybe he was smart enough to interpret whatever was written. Tooie hoped so.

He reached the sylph building and flowed down the vent, careful even now not to set off the bells. The feeder pens came first, there being no choice if he was going to fulfil his orders, but he barely sipped from the sleeping
men before returning to the harem. He hovered there at the lip of the pipe, waiting, and it was an agonizing amount of time before the last woman tottered to bed out of an alcove and the handler who’d been watching her went away. Then Tooie flowed down to his destination.

Four-seventeen lifted his head at Tooie’s arrival in the alcove, and he growled, waking Lizzy, but Tooie ignored the other sylph’s angry hissing. Shifting to humanoid form, he made his delivery to the girl, gesturing awkwardly for her to read the letter while holding Eapha’s bouquet in his other hand. Four-seventeen gawked at both items, stunned. Paper wasn’t something ever seen in the harems, not when most of the women couldn’t even read or write. Plus, it could be used to write out plans for escape, but this letter was just asking about Lizzy’s bond to Ril. There was nothing in it to trigger any order to prevent the women from trying to leave, or so Tooie believed, trying not to think about it too much. Four-seventeen looked dubious, but Tooie ignored him. He didn’t like Four-seventeen on principle, but the other battler wasn’t stupid. Once he knew what was happening, he’d be just as willing to help, if only to make the same sort of link to Kiala.

Blinking sleepily, Lizzy took the parchment and sat up, her eyes widening. Both battlers felt her sudden joy as she recognized the handwriting, and they watched in wonder as she started to cry.

Trembling, Lizzy read the letter. It wasn’t signed, and it wasn’t exactly addressed to her, but she knew it was her father’s handwriting and meant for her eyes alone. She recognized the relaxed loops of each
l
and
s
, as well as his seeming inability to write in a straight line. His writing angled across the paper, slanting downward until he had to write very small at the bottom to fit everything.

The one who brings this to you has a question he wants answered, but he can’t ask it of me himself. Find out what it is, and write it on the back. Also, tell me where you are and what it’s like. How many people guard you. How many women are there. The rules the battlers are ordered to obey. Anything you can think of. Even the smallest detail could be important.

Most critically, tell Ril to look for me in his dreams. I need to talk to him.

Never forget that I love you, and I
will not
leave you there. Not ever.

Lizzy wept. Her father had come for her.

Leaping up, she threw her arms around Tooie’s neck and kissed him soundly on the stretch of skin where his mouth should have been. Immediately, Four-seventeen started waving his arms, indicating that he wanted a kiss as well, if kisses were being handed out, and so she kissed
him, too. She’d kiss every battler there, she felt so good. She just wished Ril had come back tonight so that she could tell him.

“It’s my father,” she informed the two battlers while wiping tears out of her eyes. “He and Ril came all this way to find me. I’m so happy.” They looked at each other, and Tooie poked the letter and made a series of gestures she didn’t understand. Four-seventeen made a few as well, at Two-hundred. His movements were belligerent, and the two started making angry motions at each other next.

“Stop!” Lizzy said, before things could get out of hand. “I don’t understand either of you. We need Eapha.”

Tooie nodded, heading out of the alcove after waiting at the curtain for a few minutes with his head cocked. While he was gone, Lizzy reread the letter from her father while Four-seventeen looked over her shoulder.

“Can you read?” she asked him.

He shook his head.

“Ril can. I taught him when he wasn’t allowed to talk. That’s how we spoke to each other.” She wiped her eyes again. “I’m so happy father’s here.” Four-seventeen patted her shoulder a little awkwardly, and she smiled at him.

Tooie slipped back into the alcove, leading Eapha. The woman was rubbing her eyes, and her hair was sleep tousled. “What is it?” she slurred.

“My father sent me a letter,” Lizzy exclaimed. “Tooie brought it.”

Eapha blinked and regarded the battler in surprise. He shrugged and made a long series of gestures, and at the end handed her a bouquet of flowers. Eapha’s eyes misted over and she pressed her nose into them, inhaling. Tooie beamed happily, and Lizzy had to hide a smile.

Lifting her face, Eapha sat down in Tooie’s lap, still holding her flowers, and he put his arms around her. Appearing
a little put out, Four-seventeen settled behind Lizzy so she’d have someone to lean on, too, then Lizzy read the letter, her voice soft and full of wonder. Her father was here, as strong and undaunted as ever. She’d always been so in awe of him, loving his strength as much as his gentleness. He was capable of anything. She’d always thought that as a little girl, and the feeling came back now. Her father could save them all.

She didn’t read the entire letter, though, remembering what Eapha had told her about battler orders when it came to women trying to escape. She left out everything her father said about wanting information on the harem and the guards. If she’d said that, both Two-hundred and Four-seventeen would have had to turn her in, no matter how much it would break their hearts. She only conveyed her father’s love, and answered his first request.

“What’s Tooie’s question?” she asked at the end.

“I don’t know.” Eapha leaned back so that she could see Two-hundred’s hands, and he signed for a long time, sometimes correcting himself and getting frustrated. Four-seventeen tried to interject at one point, but Tooie swiped at him.

Eapha put a hand on his arm and looked at Lizzy. “It’s hard to explain. There aren’t signs for it, but he tried to ask me this before, after Ril got here. I couldn’t answer him.”

“What is it?” Lizzy asked.

Eapha tapped her lip and looked down with a sigh, stroking the petals of her flowers. “He wants to know how you’re Ril’s master. I could figure that part out, but he wants to know how he has a…more-than-master? There isn’t a word for it.”

Lizzy blinked. “I’m not Ril’s master.” Except he’d said she was. But she’d thought he meant metaphorically.

Tooie made a series of angry gestures. “He says you
are,” Eapha translated. “He says Ril makes love to you straight through to your soul.”

Lizzy turned red. “You were listening?”

Tooie and Four-seventeen both gave her a look that didn’t need any translation: they were empathic and sensualists, so of course they had. Lizzy put palms over her burning cheeks.

“I…if I’m Ril’s master, I don’t know it.” But she could feel what he felt. And he could find her in her dreams and track her. “I don’t know!”

Four-seventeen made gestures. “What about the more-than-master?” Eapha asked.

Lizzy didn’t have the faintest idea what that was, but she tried to puzzle it out. Did they mean her father? Somehow, she didn’t think so. He was just Ril’s master, the same as the feeders were, even if they couldn’t give orders.

“Maybe they mean the queen?” she said instead.

Both battlers stared at her, their eyes wide and every muscle in their bodies tight. Eapha glanced at them, obviously surprised. Slowly, Tooie nodded.

“That’s just Solie,” Lizzy explained. “Back home—I mean, where I come from—she’s a girl about four years older than I am. She was supposed to be sacrificed to bind a battler, like you guys, but she managed to get free, and Heyou, that’s her battler, he ended up bound to her instead. The first time he made love to her, all the sylphs nearby became part of this big hive. Ril got pulled into it later. She must be the more-than-master you felt in Ril. She controls all the sylphs in our valley.”

“Are you serious?” Eapha gasped.

The two battlers were obviously upset. Tooie was even shaking, his hands clasped under his chin. Four-seventeen stared at the ceiling, not moving.

“Yes.” Lizzy stared between the two, remembering how
crazed the battlers back home were for Solie. There was always one or more of them with her, and the rest kept checking if she was okay. For herself, Lizzy thought that would drive her crazy after a while. “She’s really nice and all, but her commands are primary. The sylphs will obey her even over their own masters.”

At that, Tooie lunged forward, almost dumping Eapha out of his lap. He grabbed Lizzy’s arms for a moment and then let her go so he could make a bunch of gestures. One of them she recognized: How.

How do they do it? she realized. That’s what he wanted to know. What he’d wanted to know from the beginning without being able to ask. How did one make a queen?

Lizzy gaped at him and then Eapha. The two battlers were shivering, their chests heaving, and other battlers were pulling the curtain back to stare into the alcove, drawn by their distress. Women were waking as well, as the battlers they’d been lying with rose and hurried away.

How many handlers were aware of this? How many were coming even now? “I don’t know,” Lizzy gasped. “Maybe Father does. He knows almost everything. Maybe Ril does, but he never told me. He can’t talk, and I don’t have any blocks to ask him.” She buried her face in her hands. “I don’t have any blocks.”

Leon made his way slowly across the sand to the place in the exile camp he’d chosen for the times when they were happy to leave him alone, a place where he could let himself relax for a moment. He hurt everywhere. That battler had left bruises all up his leg and sides. His skin was abraded, and he’d bitten the inside of his cheek at some point. He’d been tasting blood in his mouth ever since.

He felt sand everywhere, so when he reached the little dip in the desert where he’d placed the rest of his purchased
supplies, he stripped down carefully, wincing at the pain, and shook out his torn clothing. He next took a flask of water Xehm had given him and ripped a strip off his blanket. Wetting it, he used it to clean himself as best he could in the dim light. It was barely dawn, the sun rising up over the endless mounds of sand and the air still cold.

Leon hissed as the cloth scraped over his wounds, most of which were scratches. A few went deep, though. A stone was imbedded in his hip, which he had to use the tip of his sword to force out. Another cut on his ribcage felt bad and refused to stop bleeding. Hoping all the dirt was flushed out, Leon removed another long piece of blanket and bound it. He soon wasn’t going to have much blanket left.

Finally as clean as he could make himself, he dressed again and lay down, slowly easing himself onto the sand. What was left of his blanket pillowed his head. The ridge of sand he lay next to would shield him from the sun for most of the morning, and once it didn’t, he’d have to be up and about anyway.

His stomach rumbled, but he closed his eyes. That battler had cut and bruised him, and he still felt sick from the aftereffects of the adrenaline rushing through his system. He had been absolutely terrified for that first moment, even if he hadn’t let it control him, and he was afraid even now. What did the creature want? Battlers preferred not to deal with men, unless it was a man they knew and trusted, or if they had no other choice. Only Heyou back home genuinely liked men, having deliberately taken the former trapper Galway to be his master along with Solie. And Ril, of course. Always Ril.

Leon took a deep breath and relaxed, sand blowing lightly off the ridge to dust over him. Thinking of his battler as he fell asleep, he dreamed of Ril and found
himself standing on the crest that overlooked Sylph Valley, the mountains that separated them from Para Dubh rising purple and blue in the background.

Under his feet the earth was dead and rocky, broken only by bitter gray plants, but the Valley itself, which was actually a canyon dug into the bedrock of the Shale Plains, was lush and green. Its rolling grasslands and wheat and corn fields, stretched away from him. There were few trees, and they were all small and young, none older than six years. A lake even glistened near one end.

Once, this place had been as dead as the rest of the surrounding environs, obliterated centuries before in a battler fight that no one could remember, since no one had survived it. Elemental sylphs had brought back life, working together in ways masters in Eferem or Para Dubh would never have dreamed. Those masters had been taught that sylphs were just smart animals, only interested in serving humans and not forming any actual community. How wrong that was. They’d misjudged their slaves, denying them the right to think for themselves, always afraid of losing control. Leon himself had been afraid of losing control. He’d wanted his battler to serve him willingly, lovingly, and yet he’d kept Ril in hateful servitude.

He would have left you if you hadn’t, his heart whispered. Ril would have left him, and Leon couldn’t have borne that. To spend any great time as a master to a sylph was to feel their essence seep indelibly into your soul. Only the most heartless bastard could ignore that connection and abuse their sylph…though of course battlers were traditionally only ever given to heartless bastards. Leon had been exactly that, once, cold and brutal enough to earn the King of Eferem’s respect and Ril’s servitude. He would be one still if it weren’t for Betha, whom he’d always loved, and his girls. And perhaps it was also due to
Ril himself, who’d sneaked into the parts of him that weren’t swallowed by pride and ambition until Leon forgot what pride and ambition were and found himself to be an ordinary man after all.

A shrill cry sounded. Leon looked up and saw a bird with a shape nearly like a hawk circling above, floating on the warm air that rose from the valley. He cried out again and Leon raised his arm, whistling. Immediately, the bird swooped down, flaring his wings and reaching out with viciously sharp talons. He landed on Leon’s bare forearm.

His weight was heavy, but Leon was used to that, and Ril folded his wings, eyeing him expectantly. There was no hate. Always before, Ril trapped as a bird had hit Leon with his hate, using it as did other battlers, not just to express contempt at his captivity but to hide his real emotions. Except sometimes Ril forgot—or so Leon assumed—and Leon would feel what Ril did for brief moments that he never let the bird realize, fearing they would end. He’d felt how Ril enjoyed clinging to his extended fist, the wind ruffling his feathers as Leon kicked his horse into a gallop. He’d felt how Ril loved his daughters as much as Leon did, and sometimes, how Ril enjoyed being touched until he remembered he shouldn’t.

Leon reached out and stroked his battler’s head, caressing the tiny feathers around the bird’s skull, rubbing the ridges above the eyes. Ril let him, arching into the touch, and Leon stroked his neck, working his fingers under the feathers until he was scratching the bony skin beneath, his hand wrapped around his battler’s throat. Ril let him, eyes closed and trusting.

Good boy, Leon wanted to say, but of course Ril wasn’t some sort of pet. He was an individual, and this was a dream. Was it one of the dreams where Ril was really present,
Leon wondered? How could he even know this was a dream, without waking?

Somehow he did, though, and he knew that somewhere Ril was sleeping just as he was, thinking of him, and this dream was for both of them. This was what he’d been awaiting.

“Talk to me,” he said quietly, sure to make it an order in case Ril’s rules extended even into this dream state.

Those cold predator’s eyes opened, regarding Leon over his caressing hand.
What’s there to say?
the sylph asked, his words echoing quietly in Leon’s mind. Though most elemental sylphs only spoke mentally, Ril did so rarely. Leon suspected he was bothered by the intimacy of it.