Unbound (24 page)

The ambush, when it came, was sudden. A great flower-colored beast charged out of the tall grasses, matted stalks still clinging to its fur, and rushed the square. The general barely had time to shout a command before it leaped above the row of spears and landed inside the formation.

Later, Alinder would remember thinking there was a strange beauty to the battle. The square did not break right away, but the spears within rippled like water, flowing away from the creature and then suddenly rushing toward it again. It bellowed in agony as steel slid into its body, but all heads had turned toward it and none were ready for six other creatures that charged out of the grasses.

Two were the smaller, darker beasts. Their fur was deep blue like the most expensive dyes from the east, and she could see protective ridges along their backs and shoulders. Had she thought them small? In fact, they were only smaller beside their purple cousins; each was at least as long as a human being, with a deeper chest and more powerful leg muscles.

Creatures ducked under the spear points. They went over. They swatted soldiers to the ground like stalks of salt grass. Archers stood on the walls, arrows nocked and ready to offer support, but they had no clear shot to take.

There were screams, too. Many came from the meadow below, when soldiers were pinned to the ground and bitten, but some came from the guards around her.

In the end, it appeared that only six were killed. The others were grievously injured, and while the dead were devoured in broad daylight, the others were bitten—once—then herded toward Shawa and her listless gathering.

Linder held his fists against his chest. He had spent a fortune on steel weapons and constant drilling to create an army that could win him the whole of Kal-Maddum, and it was not enough.

When he spoke to her, his eyes were wide with rage and spittle flew from his lips.

“Did you urge her to this?”

Alinder had no idea what he meant. “Urge?”

“Shawa. Your daughter. Did you tell her to linger before my walls like bait, to draw out our spears? To undermine me? Surely you don’t expect me to believe those
animals
set a trap for us.”

The terrible empty space in Alinder’s belly turned over. Was her brother accusing her of treason, of murdering her own son to take his worthless stone chair? She stared at him, waiting for him to realize he was speaking madness.

Instead, the tyr her brother addressed the guards beside her. “Take her to the iron tower. She is to have no visitors without my leave.”

The iron tower was not made of iron. It was quarried black stone, but with black iron bars in place of a banded oak door. Alinder was locked in a cell on the top floor.

She wept until exhaustion took her, then wept again when she woke. Food was brought at sunrise and sunset, but no one spoke to her, and she did not care.

There was one exception: Three days after her imprisonment, a soldier appeared at her barred door. He explained that her daughter, Shawa, was no more.

Alinder had expected this news, but she was not prepared to hear what had happened. The soldier claimed that she had transformed
into one of
the creatures—he called them “grunts” after the sounds they made. In fact, all of the humans who had been bitten were transforming into the smaller, dark-blue creatures.

Alinder did not respond. He withdrew.

For the first time in days, Alinder stood and went to the balcony. The iron tower was built atop a hill near the southern wall, and it was tall enough to look over the walls to the sea. What’s more, the balcony itself had no bars; any prisoner who felt they had endured enough were free to pitch themselves onto the stony courtyard below.

Shawa was alive—transformed but alive. Alinder stared over the wall, beyond the cliffs, to the gently rolling sea beyond. Something was floating just beneath the waves—something gelid and repulsive, like a corpse as wide and long as Rivershelf itself. Then a section split like a tearing seam, formed a mouth, and lunged upward at a sea bird.

Alinder watched it float westward along the cliffs until the sun set. This world was full of terrible things, and her daughter had become one of them.

The days passed. Alinder sat on her cot or stared out to sea. Sometimes she heard screams of terror or wails of grief. As the days wore on, redeployments along the walls became more frantic, and so many funeral banners were raised that they obscured her view of the city.

She saw no more creatures break above the waves but she knew they were out there. When she felt especially lonely, she went to the northern side of the tower, which had no windows at all, and laid her cheek upon the chill stone. Her daughter was out there somewhere, ready to pluck Alinder and all her people out of the air like sea birds.

Just as the ocean held its terrors, the land had her Shawa.

* * * * *

Finally, after the moon had waxed, then waned, then began to wax again, Eslind appeared in the darkness on the other side of the barred door.

“It’s time to go.”

She slid the key into the lock, then swung the door open. Alinder did not get up.

“Allie,” Eslind said, as though trying to wake her. “Allie, we must go. The city will soon fall, and I’ve convinced Linder that we cannot leave you behind.”

“Linder?” she croaked. There was a bowl of broth on the floor. Alinder drank from it to sooth her throat.

“Allie,” Eslind said, kneeling before her. Her baby—the heir—lay in a sling at her breast. So beautiful. “Do you remember the day we buried Ilinder? You swore that we would always be sisters. Now, Linder is taking me and the baby out of the city, in secret, and I insisted that he bring you, too. Will you come?”

Alinder stood. Eslind smiled and hurried to the stairs. “Quickly! The archers are upon the walls, but they have nearly run out of arrows. The moat has been blocked and the walls nearly sundered. Quickly!”

Two hulking guards awaited them, shields on their backs and swords on their hips. They held clay oil lamps with stubby linen wicks. There was a hint of sunrise in the east, but only the lamplight let them scurry through the dark alleys.

They did not turn northward, as Alinder hoped. She wanted to top the walls to look for her child. Instead, they turned south toward the ocean.

Pounding echoed through the city. The streets were full of wailing. The destruction Alinder had imagined that terrible day was here, but it had come from a direction that no one expected.

Eslind and the guards led her through the little ocean gate, then out onto the cliffs themselves. Alinder stopped at the edge. “What are we doing? Going to the sea?”

The heir began to fuss, and Eslind became impatient. “There isn’t time! There isn’t—Monument sustain me. Allie, some of the fisherfolk have been dumping sewage into a cove, a space where the waters are calm. That caused a bloom of red. No one is sure what the red stuff is, but the great beasts of the sea avoid it like poison. Look below.”

She pointed to the foot of the cliff. A long wooden boat was moored there, in the shelter of a rock spur. “Linder has collected barrels of the red stuff, and of dried sewage, too. He’s going to sail along the cliffs with the barrels submerged beside the hull. That should protect us until we reach the beaches of Espileth. There’s no love between Holvos and the Simblins, but surely the steel weapons in our hull will buy us sanctuary.”

Alinder looked around. There were great booms built along the top of the cliff, and a sturdy wooden ladder running down the rock face. She remembered the long, curving wall of timber she’d seen on the morning she was fished from the bay and the terrible stench of human waste. How long had the tyr her brother been planning this retreat?

Then she glanced to the east and saw, perched upon a rock, one of the blue-furred creatures. She suddenly felt as though she couldn’t breathe. The thing stared at her, and she stared back.

Was that her? Was that Shawa? The plankways between that stone and the ocean gate had been destroyed, but Alinder felt herself drawn to it like an iron pin to a lodestone.

“Don’t worry,” Eslind said, “they can’t come closer. The beasts don’t swim.”

Alinder looked down the long ladder. “My brother is down there?”

“Yes, now we must hurry. The gates will break before full daylight.”

Alinder extended her hands toward the oil lamps the guards held. “Give those to me, and help the heir and his mother!” The creature—the grunt—was behind her. She could feel it watching.

The men gave her the lamps, then one climbed onto the ladder. The second helped Eslind down, then went after her.

Alinder leaned out over the cliff. The lamps were heavy with oil, but she did not need strength to throw them. Only drop them.

The burning wicks fluttered as they fell, but they were still alight when they struck. One fell into an open hold, spraying flame inside. The other broke through the top of a barrel, and the contents lit up like a flare. Within moments, the entire bow of the ship was aflame. Burning men leaped into the sea. A second barrel ignited with a sound like thunder, and the ship began to list.

The guard at the top of the ladder stared down into the flames, but Eslind, her helpless babe held close, stared up at Alinder, her eyes wide with shock.

The world conspires to take everything from us in the end
. But Alinder still had one thing left. One chance to stop being prey and start being predator.

She went back through the ocean gate, toward the wailing of terror and despair. Toward her daughter.

Delilah S. Dawson

The magician wasn't in his shop when his next sweet obsession slipped through the front door. She ducked into the darkness as they all did: shyly, clutching a wrapped package as tenderly as a sick babe, and perfuming the air with her terror and bewilderment.

It always took them that way—losing their magic. And Monsieur Charmant thrived on it.

From his underground laboratory, the magician twisted his mustache and shivered in anticipation as the girl pushed the door open with one hand and a shudder. The sound of her slippers on the boards nearly sent him over the edge as he removed his lab coat and shrugged into his natty red-and-white striped jacket. He could imagine her there, seeing the dark bowels of the alchemist's shop for the first time. She'd be beautiful, off-balance, fresh from the surgeon and still wearing the tracks of her silvery tears.

First she would see the heads of carousel horses crowding by the door, their lips pulled back in fury, showing fangs. She'd gasp and stumble back, knocking into the chair where unfortunate humans sat to trade their blood—or worse things—for coin. Oh, how fast she would gulp and lurch away when she saw the collection of antique surgical instruments hanging on the wall, rusty with long-dried fluids, reminding her of what she'd just lost. Perhaps next, she would seek the safety of his bookshelves only to find grimoires made of daimon skin and jars of dead floating things blinking back at her. Or perhaps she had woken the hound that waited behind the counter, grinning, tongue out, to growl at just the right time.

He was an artist of torture, this magician. He'd built his lair as lovingly as a conductor conjures an orchestra for just this purpose: to drink the fear and hopelessness of each new girl who entered his shop to bargain her past against her future.

A low growl went up, and a feminine shout signaled the perfect moment for the magician's entrance. After adjusting his bowler and straightening his bow tie in the mirror, he took the stone steps up, throwing open the door in the floor with a wave of his arm. As his head crested the boards, he found the girl just where she was supposed to be, backed into a corner and held captive by the monster hound. But instead of cowering and crying, as they so often did, she had stolen an umbrella from the stand and was fencing the ravenous dog-beast as if she thought she had a chance of besting it.

Foolish girl.

Beautiful foolish girl.

Oddly intriguing, damnably delicious, beautiful, foolish, foolish, foolish girl.

“
Arretez
,” he barked at the dog, and it froze. “
Dormez
.” It fell over, already snoring, the floorboards shaking beneath its massive shoulder.

But the girl didn't toss down her umbrella. She pointed it at him and twitched her hips like a great cat preparing to pounce, the wrapped package flopping over one arm.

“Charmant,” she spat like a curse.

His name was heaven on her trembling lips. She hated him. But she feared him more. And he drank it in like wine, his perfectly curled mustache twitching as he bowed deeply.

“Charmed, I'm sure. Welcome to my shop, mademoiselle.
Je suis a vous.
”

Turning his back on her, Monsieur Charmant strolled behind his counter and held out a hand invitingly. The scale waited, tared to deny the girl what little riches she might know from here on out. Usually, at this point, the girl minced forward and handed over her bundle gently, dashing away tears as the paper was unwrapped.

But this girl—she threw it at him. The package hit Charmant in the face with the weight of a halibut and slapped wetly to the glass counter, opening a tiny starburst crack where the bulk of it landed. That was the moment the daimon magician's heart cracked, too.