The Shattered Sylph (8 page)

Lizzy didn’t see it when the ship docked, but she felt the side shudder against the wharf and heard the men shouting in renewed excitement. Everything lurched in a way that was different from progress through waves, and stopped. Then there came only an idle up-and-down motion as the ship bobbed.

It was hours before they came for her. Lizzy huddled in the corner of her cage, one hand over her eyes as the light threatened to blind her. The door rattled as the chain was unlocked, and she cringed back farther into the corner, her heart pounding. She should be brave, she knew. She should fight them. That’s what her father would do. But all she could do was whimper as they grabbed her arm and dragged her out of her confinement, laughing harshly at her. She was pinched and grabbed in places no one had ever touched her, made to shriek and cry as they put her in irons, shackling her feet and wrists with a long chain hanging between. Their weight pulled at her wrists. Her father would swing that chain and brain his captors; Lizzy was dragged by it across the floor and up some wooden steps.

It was the first time she’d seen the sun since she was kidnapped. She kept her head down, her eyes squeezed shut as they led her across the deck. She heard the sailors calling to each other, but they didn’t speak to her at all—she was just cargo to them. Lizzy kept her eyes closed. The light was painful and she was afraid to see anything anyway. The heat of this place was near to overwhelming,
like a wall that pushed on her chest, stealing her breath, and she could smell strange things over the salt water, the reek of unwashed men and her own dirt.

“She’s filthy,” a voice said, sounding unimpressed. “And scrawny. Did you even bother to feed her?”

Lizzy forced herself to look up, her eyes shielded by her trembling hands. Before her on the dock stood the man with whom Loren had been so stupid as to flirt. He was ignoring Lizzy, instead looking uncertainly at someone else: a fat, heavily tanned man with what looked like a sheet wrapped around him and more jewelry than Lizzy had ever seen. He reeked of cloying perfume.

“She’s from that valley with the free battlers,” her kidnapper said. Lizzy still didn’t know what his name was, but he looked at the newcomer with grudging respect. Lizzy had a guess that if he didn’t convince the robed man of her value, he was out a lot of money. The thought of what he’d do then was terrifying. “She knows how they do it.”

“Oh.” The perfumed man sniffed. “I don’t buy fairy tales. Do you think me stupid? Free battlers. Hmph. You sailors believe anything.” He looked Lizzy up and down while her kidnapper sputtered apoplectically. “Skinny, next to breast-less. Too pale to put in the fields. She’d die from the heat. Too blonde for service. No one wants a girl with hair like straw.” He sniffed again. “Too
northern.
I’d have to sell her far inland to keep their diplomats from seeing her and screaming that we’re breaking the treaties. Barely worth the effort.”

“You can’t be serious!” the kidnapper whined. “Do you know what I gave up to bring her here?”

“That’s not my fault. I never told you to.” The perfumed man stepped forward, eyeing Lizzy critically. She felt like an insect. “Twelve gold,” he decided.

“Twelve!” the sailor wailed.

“All I can use her for is a battler sacrifice.” The buyer turned away. “No negotiations. I don’t need her.”

He headed down the gangway, back toward the pier. Lizzy’s abductor shot a hateful look at her, his fist trembling as though he were about to lash out, but he hurried after the robed man instead. “Fine! Twelve! But it’s an unfair price!”

“It’s twice what you’d get selling her to a brothel, and you know it.” The robed man turned to give Lizzy a final glance before setting again on his way. “Bring her,” he ordered, waving negligently at a small group of henchmen.

Two men and a woman came on board the boat, all of them dressed in short blue tunics made of extremely light fabric. Their legs were bare, even the woman’s, and their skin was a deeply tanned brown. One of them handed the sailor a dozen coins while the others removed the heavy shackles Lizzy wore, replacing these with lighter ones, including a length of chain that rose to a collar they placed around her neck. Her abductor ignored her completely as he studied his gold, testing each piece with his teeth while Lizzy was led away. She never did find out what his name was, or even the name of his ship.

Her new captors tugged her along behind them as they walked, likely following the man who’d bought her. Lizzy let them drag her, stumbling on the hot ground in her bare feet with the abbreviated steps her chains allowed. Tears poured down her cheeks. She knew what a battler sacrifice was. They were going to kill her.

Daddy!
she wailed silently.
Ril!
She also cried for her mother, or Loren, or anyone who could save her. No one answered. There was no way anyone would come for her here. She was going to die in this place, murdered to trap a battler.

Lizzy sobbed silently at the end of her chain, towed
along a pier that stretched more than a mile out into the ocean. Once, she would have marveled at that, and at the floating city that hovered directly overhead, but now she felt like she were already half dead and all that remained was taking the final blow.

Southern Dancer
moved steadily south. Built to carry passengers instead of cargo, she had no sails. Instead, three water sylphs swam under her, bearing the ship onward and leaving her deck clear of masts and lines. Most of her passengers were wealthy merchants or nobility heading down to warm cities in the south for business or leisure. These seemed accustomed to soft lives, where a walk around the railing on the ship was an unnecessary amount of exercise. Thus, the activities of those on the front deck were truly alien, if entertaining to watch.

Leon ignored this audience, used to being stared at when he worked as the head of security in the king’s castle in Eferem. Of course, back then the spectators were students eager to learn, not a group of effeminate weaklings without the common sense of a dog. To go on a pleasure cruise along the coast…? Didn’t they know there were pirates in these waters? Or that Meridal wasn’t the only kingdom to practice slavery, no matter how they all promised they wouldn’t take anyone from the continents to the north? King Alcor hadn’t liked to deal with them, no matter how wealthy the southerners were. That was one piece of paranoia with which Leon agreed. The south used sylphs in ways the northern kingdoms never dreamed.

Across from him, Justin was less relaxed at the idea of being watched. He glanced nervously around at the spectators, his hands shifting on the long stick he was using for a practice sword.

“Ignore them,” Leon said. “Attack me.”

The boy swallowed and lunged, nearly stumbling over his own feet as he tried to jab the end of his stick into Leon’s stomach. Leon stepped neatly out of the way and brought his own weapon down on Justin’s, knocking it out of his hands. The youth stumbled and landed face-first on the polished deck.

Leon was about to tell him all the things he’d done wrong, when the faint boredom tickling the back of his mind turned to sharp intent. Gasping, Leon spun and brought up his fake sword, catching Ril’s before it could break his shoulder or perhaps his head. The battler’s eyes widened with surprise, not realizing how he’d given himself away, and Leon looped his sword around, forcing Ril’s arm up and away, and swinging for the back of Ril’s knees. His legs taken out from under him, the battler crashed onto his back and found Leon’s weapon at his throat.

“Much better,” Leon gasped, his heart pounding. His entire arm threatened to go numb from where he’d caught Ril’s swing. Stick or not, the battler could have taken off his head. “Don’t strike so hard next time, though. This is supposed to be practice.”

Ril glared, and Leon could feel his humiliation. Six years he had been trying to convince the battler to learn swordplay. Ril couldn’t rely on his powers anymore, even if he didn’t want to believe it. The sylph had ignored the suggestions and near orders for too long, but now the threat to Lizzy had finally changed his mind. He wasn’t terribly good yet, though.

Six weeks it would take them in total to get to Meridal at this boat’s speed. Every day, Leon drilled both Ril and Justin in combat. Justin was clumsy and nervous, while Ril was just as bad for other reasons: besides being a reluctant student, he relied too much on power and speed and very
little on technique. Essentially, he still fought like a battle sylph. Still, Leon was glad he was trying. He didn’t want to order his battler to do anything ever again—had in fact sworn to him that he wouldn’t—but to save his daughter he was prepared to do anything. Ril had to learn to live and fight as a human. If they were ever forced to reveal he was a sylph, they would likely have only one chance.

“You did really well,” Leon told him, but the compliment fell on deaf ears. The battler shoved himself to his feet and stalked off, pushing his way through the murmuring crowd. Leon sighed.

“I didn’t think you’d be able to beat him,” Justin said, standing up.

“Keep thinking that,” Leon replied, turning around and dropping back into an attack position. “Now defend yourself.”

The boy yelped and dropped his fake sword at the first hit. Silently groaning, Leon gave him a few seconds to pick it up before going at him again. They only had a few more weeks before they reached Meridal. Before that, he had to turn Justin into someone who wouldn’t get them all killed.

He stepped out of the way of the same uncoordinated lunge as before and swung his sword, smacking the boy across the buttocks as punishment. Justin screeched and went rolling, and the audience roared with delighted laughter.

Ril stalked down to the room they’d been given in the belly of the ship. He didn’t know how much it cost, though he’d seen how the negotiations made Leon cringe. They hadn’t got much for their money. Theirs was a windowless room with a narrow bed against three of the walls. His own was on the wall across from the door.

Ril dropped into bed with a groan. He hadn’t even
wanted to fight the stupid man, but what other choice did he have but to learn? He’d ridden Leon’s shoulder in the enslaved form of a hawk when he first learned about Meridal, and he knew as well as his master about the battlers there: they patrolled the cities, attacking anyone who broke the law. If Ril used his powers, they’d sense him, and he couldn’t defend himself from even
one
of them. He would have to hide his aura like a hatchling from an attacking hive, and that meant learning the sword if he was to kill whoever had Lizzy. He hated swords. They felt weak.

Throwing his arm over his head, he closed his eyes, feeling again the rocking motion of the ship as the water sylphs pushed it through the ocean waves. He could feel them as well, and hear them as they chattered to each other. Silence hadn’t been demanded of these as it was of the sylphs summoned both farther north and to the south, and they never shut up. Ril hadn’t slept well since they set sail, and he suspected that if he could actually eat food, he’d be vomiting it up on a regular basis.

Still, he was tired now, and even if those idiot sylphs were babbling, at least he didn’t have to listen to the idiot boy snore on top of that—or feel the edge of Leon’s dreams. Ril had never before had any idea he was in danger of falling into them, not until he’d started needing to sleep every bloody night like some kind of human. So far, he hadn’t gone far enough to join in any of his master’s dreams, and he had no intention of ever doing so.

Relaxing, the arm over his eyes slid down above his head. His eyes stayed closed, his lashes fluttering as his breathing deepened. Ril slept and dreamed, and even as he drifted off, telling himself that he wouldn’t wander, he did.

Lizzy, after weeks spent in a cage that usually held goats, now found herself in a cell with walls of pale adobe. The
front of the cell was barred, which at least meant that the chains were gone from her wrists and ankles. The collar remained, though, heavy around her neck. The entire room was barely six feet across, though that was worlds more room than she’d had before.

She didn’t explore. Instead, she lay curled in a ball on her tiny bed, clenched fists held up to her face. So much had happened, she’d gone numb. She’d had to—only if that were true, how could she still be feeling such terror? She shuddered, exhausted, still filthy and frightened. No one would explain anything to her, and the wing she was in was otherwise empty.

When she was brought here, she’d seen dozens of floors where catwalks wound through hundreds of stacked cages with humans inside: tired, tongueless people who gaped at her silently while sylphs flitted everywhere, dropping down and drinking their energy. She’d recognized what was happening, having seen her father feed Ril enough times. The battler would just stand there with his eyes half-closed, seemingly doing nothing for a few minutes while Leon waited patiently. These sylphs did that, too, but
their
masters screamed soundlessly in protest. Although how could a slave be a master? And why would the sylph then go to the next cell, and the next, drinking from three or four inmates before flitting out again?

She didn’t care. Lizzy curled up even tighter, trying to become as small as possible. She tried to think only of her parents and her sisters and Ril, even of Justin, who’d abandoned her, and Loren, whose stupidity had caused all of this. She had to keep them in mind or she’d go mad, she just knew it.

“Ril,” she whispered, falling asleep to the memory of those half-closed eyes and the feeling that he was draining something from her father, taking something that she
herself could nearly feel, as though he were taking it from her as well.

Dreaming, she found herself walking across the grass that grew beyond the town in the Valley, the sky above a rich blue and boasting massive white clouds stacking up to the size of mountains. The breeze was cool on her skin, streaming her hair out behind her. Ril was walking toward her, stripping off his blue and gold coat and dumping it in the grass behind him.

Lizzy moved eagerly forward, her fingers fumbling with the buttons of her blouse, forcing them out of the holes and the garment off over her shoulders, leaving her breasts and stomach bare. Ril pulled off his shirt and unbuttoned his pants, still walking, his eyes locked on hers. Lizzy pulled down her skirt and stepped out of it, naked, and then suddenly his arms came around her. She pressed herself against his warm body, her hands reaching up to cup his face and comb through that blond hair he wore long in front, shorter in the back. He gasped at her touch, his mouth open, and ducked down, pressing against her lips.

Lizzy cried out at the feel of him. At that sound, Ril bucked back in pain, his horrified eyes staring down at her, and he began to break apart under her hands, his face fracturing into a thousand pieces. She screamed, but he fell away from her, dissolving into smoke and lightning—only there wasn’t enough of him left to hold his shape. He blew away in the wind, scattering as motes of dust across the meadow.

Ril started awake, gasping. For the first moment, he didn’t know where he was and tried to change shape. Sudden pain shocked him back into awareness, and he sat up slowly, wincing. Now he could feel the rocking of the boat and hear the endless gossip of the water sylphs. He put a
hand to his head, barely aware that his hand was shaking, and he closed his eyes, just focused on breathing. He had to breathe.

It wasn’t fair, he decided. On top of everything else, why was he now getting nightmares?

Shalatar Misharol walked down the passage in the holding cells, checking the feeders. It was important that their health remain high, and he’d earned the accolades of the emperor by instituting a weekly exercise regimen and change of diet that made them the healthiest feeders possible. This was reflected in the work of the sylphs who lived off their energy.

It was a good system. Every sylph summoned here had a primary master who gave the orders, but after that, each was bonded to five submasters, men and women who’d had their tongues cut out to prevent them from giving orders. To help ensure that, the sylphs were under strict orders to ignore any attempt to communicate by a feeder, no matter what it was, and to report such to the nearest handler. The feeders learned quickly that any of them who tried were put to death. They existed only to provide energy for their sylphs, and with access to that kind of power, even the youngest, weakest sylph could manage miracles a northern sylph would need twice the age to accomplish with only a single master.

Shalatar took his responsibility seriously. The sylphs here were the backbone of the empire, and their work was hard. The emperor’s city was entirely airborne, and it took nearly a hundred air sylphs alone to manage that. And of course, there were other elementals who served different functions. Ninety percent of Meridal was city and the remaining ten had to produce the food required to feed the population, no matter how poor the desert soil. Five
thousand sylphs in all meant twenty-five thousand feeders. This stable alone serviced two thousand sylphs, and Shalatar was in charge of the health and happiness of each.

He had been one of the first to recognize that the health of the feeders made a difference. Their happiness was another matter. Each was in his own cell, and the cells were kept scrupulously clean, but other than weekly walks in a guarded courtyard, they never left the prison. These men and women stared at him dully as he passed or, more often, didn’t pay him any attention at all. Their cells were nearly silent as well, save for the shuffling of feet or the sounds of the sylphs coming in at regular intervals to replenish their energy.

While he could only spot-check the stable for quality, for the most part he found nothing but good results. Clean feeders, clean water, clean cages. He saw one man scratching at lice and made a note for him to be shaved. Another was twitching spastically, drool coming out of his mouth. That wasn’t good. A crazed feeder might pass bad energy on to a sylph. An ensuing note listed the feeder to be destroyed. He was easier to replace than a well-trained sylph.

Beyond the feeder cells—all located deep underneath the city, where it was easy to keep them cool—were the cells for the sacrifices. Shalatar had nothing to do with that element of the business, not having any truck with battlers beyond feeding them, but his twin sister did. He had come here to find her.

His tablet tucked under his arm, Shalatar walked down rows of cages holding women. All were beautiful but flawed in some way—they were good enough to lure a battler but not quite right to be assigned to the harem. Either that, or they’d already spent time in the harem and were now being liquidated. This happened when either the battlers
ignored them or one took a particular interest. Once any battler started to mate exclusively with a woman, it was time to get her out of there, before he started focusing more on her than his duties. The harems were to keep the sylphs happy, not lazy.

As Shalatar passed, the women stared at him in fear or pleaded for him to either let them go or return them to the harem. He ignored them all. If the women didn’t end as sacrifices, they would be sold somewhere else in the city—if anyone would actually want to buy a woman who’d been used by battlers—or made into feeders with removed tongues. That was all they were good for and was their most likely fate. Once a woman had been bred to a battler, she couldn’t reliably be used as a sacrifice to draw a new one. Somehow, battlers knew and would rarely come for ex-concubines. And of course no battler was allowed to feed from a woman, only to fuck her. Once, these women had found their throats cut when they were deemed useless for the harems, but that had upset some battlers. Nor could the women be used for sport in the gladiator arena. That drove the battlers mad. No, they could only be used as feeders for the elementals…which meant a loss of revenue for the battler section. It was a logistical headache that he didn’t envy his sister.