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  And then he and the young man disappeared into the wharf house and Wing Ivo motioned to us to hurry.

  None of the horses looked like they were very high in quality. They were nags meant to pull fish carts, not fine racers, but they were better than nothing. My horse had a paint coat that was rough and shaggy and smelled strongly of fish. She rolled her eyes at the sight of me and I narrowed mine in return.

  “Hurry,” Ivo reminded. “And try not to be seen.”

  We mounted quickly and set out, following his shaggy black horse down the docks and skirting the small fishing town beyond. I’d never been to this town – whichever it was – and it seemed I wouldn’t be going into it today, either.

  Ivo set a punishing pace to the road and once we were on it, he kicked up his horse. There was no talk. No discussion. Just silence.

  We could all feel the pressure of the chase and the burden of the hopes of people like that fisherman. Urgency lit the hooves of our horses aflame and we rode fast and hard. And fear pressed down on me, like a leaden weight that would not let up until it drove me into the ground.

  I kept feeling for the feather in my wristband, but though I was certain that Osprey was right behind us, it remained still and cool to the touch.

  Chapter Two

  The hours seemed to pass at a snail’s pace as we watched the road and sky with equal worry. The sides of the road showed no sign of the Forbidding, but that didn’t make me feel safe. I’d grown too used to seeing trouble there and the fact that there was no tangle of dark magic to hack at only made me feel more and more that there would be one coming soon.

  I asked Ivo for my short sword – still strapped to his waist – but he refused me.

  “I can wear one since I am a Wing, but anyone else wearing a sword will only draw suspicion. We need to avoid attention at all costs.”

  And avoid attention, we did, sticking to the road and keeping our eyes down as other travelers passed. Any one of them could report seeing us to Le Majest. Any one of them might already be looking for us. It wasn’t long before a trickle of travelers on the road grew to a steady stream and we found ourselves passing hay wains, farmers with goats they were herding to market, carts laden with salted fish, and high-sided wagons that jingled with the sounds of bottles.

  Exhaustion ground down on us. I hadn’t slept more than a few hours in the past two days, and despite my gnawing anxiety, I could barely keep my eyes open as the steady movement of the horse rocked me. Every bone and muscle in me ached – my injured eye and belly most of all. I kept pulling the hood of my cloak forward, hoping no one would notice my eye.

  At one point, a vision rocked me – my bee watching as a healer dressed wounds. Which bee was this? The one I’d left with Juste? But Juste had no wounds to dress and that skin was too dark. It took me a moment to realize it must be Osprey – that these were the stab wounds he’d inflicted on himself in his insanely noble effort to save me from harm. There were so many of them – some deeper than others – and I flinched as salve was applied and torn skin stitched.

  I should be grateful for surely this would slow him down – even if he was getting help in a town along the way it would still delay him for long enough to bind these wounds. But I was not grateful for that. With every stitch applied I felt a mirrored pain. He’d done all of that to try to keep me safe.

  When the vision vanished, I found my eyes stinging and wet. I dried them hastily, hoping the others wouldn’t see.

  We reached another town after an hour of traveling out of the fishing village, and another an hour after that. I swallowed at the sight of so many people – dozens on the road and hundreds in some of the towns we passed. Some of them peered curiously toward us and I quickly looked away, keeping my hood pulled low and my face in shadows.

  When I accidentally met Zayana’s eye, her look of scorn made my face burn hot. So what if I wasn’t used to all the people yet? So what if they made me nervous? What special use did so many people have that it was a good thing to be among them?

  An army, I decided. They would be good for an army.

  After that realization, I watched with different eyes. Instead of looking at the sheer numbers and strange Houses represented, I saw men eyeing the forest just as nervously as I did, feeling at an empty spot on their belts and then clenching their jaws. Instead of women with new hairstyles, I saw how their shoes were worn, the toes almost broken through and no money to replace them. Instead of watching the sheer number of livestock we passed, I noticed how they seemed thin, their eyes spooked as they rolled past.

  But I also watched for any hint of betrayal – of any hint that someone was hurrying off too quickly or tying a message to a pigeon’s leg. We were prey – and I must never forget that. Hunted, chased, harried. Our only hope now was that we could hide among the harmless people of these towns and escape notice.

  When the first Claw division came thundering down the road, mounted on carabaos, I almost missed seeing the looks on the faces of townspeople. I was so busy trying to look normal, trying to still my racing heart and calm my frantic puffs of breath that I almost missed their resentment. Some of it was close to rage as it flickered across every face. Their shoulders were hunched, and eyes turned down, but not out of submission. I saw their knuckles clench white on anything they were holding, their mouths tight with anger.

  I didn’t dare let my bees loose, but I could feel them within me, furious and buzzing with the anger of the people and the fear in me. They almost seemed to resonate with what was around us instead of just what was inside of me. We all felt the yoke of the Winged Empire settling heavily on our backs. Maybe Ivo was right. Maybe the people were ready to give their very blood to lift that yoke.

  We settled for the evening in someone’s back pasture just past a small town. Zayana looked longingly at the smoke drifting up from the fires of the inn we’d passed, but Ivo shook his head grimly.

  “The town is too small. They’d remember us. This is safer. There’s no Forbidding to worry about in this place and we can sleep quietly. Here, eat some bread.”

  There had been bread stowed in the saddlebags along with a blanket for each of us, skins of water, and not much else. Wing Ivo still had his leather pack, but Zayana and I were starting to feel our poverty. We had no way to clean or tend ourselves, no mirrors, no way to clean our teeth, nothing. Miserable and spent, we sank into our thin blankets. I didn’t know if the others felt as hunted as I did, but I looked often at the sky, worried about Osprey’s pursuit. I knew him too well to think those wounds would hold him back for very long.

  Wing Ivo snorted at us. “Bold revolutionaries one minute and then sniveling girls the next. Stop looking so fearful. We have a little space here and I can help you with your manifestations. When we reach Glorious Ingvar, the city is large enough that we can take rooms at an inn without fear and I will give you coins to shop for what you need, hmm?”

  I smiled, trying to pretend I wasn’t as worried as I was, and his answering grin made me feel warmer than the blanket.

  “Now, call your manifestations, and let’s see what we can do with them.”

  “I just want to sleep,” Zayana moaned.

  “You can sleep when you’ve tended your bird,” Ivo said firmly. “You need to practice tending, and so does Aella. We’re not safe yet and this is more important than sleep.”

  I opened my palm and a bee popped out almost before I could stop it, buzzing around my head angrily. Five more followed and in moments I was almost swallowed by them.

  Ivo made an irritated sound in his throat. “I think I will work with Zayana tonight. Go a little way off, Aella, and try to calm those bees. I can already feel a sting from one of them rising on my neck. You can’t tend magic so wild that it strikes at everyone nearby. Think of calm things to say ... if you know any.”

  The wryness of his tone made my cheeks heat. I knew how to be calm! I did. It had just been a while since I felt that way.

  I stalked off to the edge of th
e trees, bringing my thin blanket with me. I found a quiet place and slumped to the ground, wrapped in the blanket. I glanced worriedly back up at the sky. My bees swirled around me, stinging me on my hands and arms.

  “Really? You’re still doing that?” I complained. But words like that wouldn’t help. “I forbid you from stinging me.”

  That did nothing, either. Quietly – being sure that no one could hear me – I tried a song. It was a song that my father used to sing to me when I was a child. I had always found it calmed me.

  My bees grew more agitated, stinging me a half-dozen times in a few seconds. Maybe it was only my poor singing voice, but it felt personal.

  Frustrated, I shook them off and tried something else.

  “Fine, you want to be mad? Go ahead and be mad!,” I told them. “I’m angry. You’d better believe I am. Anger is better than fear. It cripples you less. Think I don’t have a good reason to be angry? I’m on the run again, hunted by someone who is supposed to be my friend and when he finds me, he’ll drag me off to be the wife of a villain from a Forbidding Tale. Me! I’m not even pretty. It should be someone with long flowing hair and a voice like an angel who can enchant him into sparing her life and all her people, but we all know I’ll be the opposite because I’m not a sweet, nice girl. I’m Aella. I’m angry and I’m direct and I just want my freedom and to protect the freedom of the people I love.”

  Strangely enough, my fury seemed to calm them down to a dull buzz. I swayed against exhaustion. I could just lie here. Just for a moment. I could talk to my bees lying down as easily as sitting up, right?

  I lay down on the stony pasture ground, not even caring that the rocks pressed into my ribs. My eyelids flickered and I mumbled to my bees.

  “I complain about you, but you are actually a real asset. You were there when I needed you. You caught me when I leapt from the balcony. You were there to free me from Juste. Those are things I’ll always be grateful for. And you sent my message to my family. That was very important. And you are my eyes, watching friends and enemies alike.”

  There was another flicker of a vision after I said that. A vision of someone looking over the city of Karkatua. I saw the buildings, small and rolling out before the person’s vision. The sight came and went so quickly that I couldn’t see whose perspective I was looking from. Perhaps the crown prince was still surveying the damage from where his allies attacked the people he was supposed to shelter and guard. And no, I wasn’t at all bitter about that.

  My eyelids were growing heavy. I fought them as I began to mumble.

  “If you could just channel all that fear and anger into a cause – like me. If you could use it like you did in the city to protect people and help them see. If you could find my family and guard them. If you could help me escape evil and cling to the good. If you could hold me together with ... your ... buzz.”

  I didn’t realize I’d fallen asleep until I felt something burning my fingers. I woke with a start.

  I’d tucked my fingers into the edge of my wristband without realizing it and the heat of Os’s feather had scalded them.

  I scrambled to my feet.

  My bees were gone. My blanket damp. I stumbled back toward where our camp had been. My feet were both painfully slow and far too loud at the same time. I didn’t dare cry out. The rocks were wet. A drizzle of rain was making everything slick. It dampened my hair and face.

  Almost there.

  Above me, thunder cracked, splitting the air like a hatchet. I jumped. Was it Osprey? Of course not. Just thunder. Powerful though he might be, he didn’t create the thunder.

  I scrambled into the camp where Ivo sat opposite the fire from Zayana. His voice was a patient drone as he taught her. I couldn’t have been asleep for very long, though it was fully dark now and it hadn’t been before. And the fire was new.

  “Osprey,” I gasped, stumbling into camp.

  “Where?” Ivo asked, leaping up and drawing his sword free. Would he really fight his friend? My heart lurched at the thought.

  “I don’t know,” I gasped. “He gave me an armband. It tells me when he’s near.”

  Zayana’s eyes narrowed suspiciously, but she kicked dirt over the fire with a delicate toe and shook out her blanket.

  The thunder cracked again, rippling through the sky and as if it had torn a waterskin, rain descended in sheets, wiping out whatever was left of the fire. A horse whickered nervously, but the rain was so loud that it blocked out all other sound. Ivo was trying to say something, but I couldn’t hear him.

  He leaned in, grabbed us both by the cloaks, dragging us in close and yelling into our faces.

  “The storm may be our salvation.” He thrust something into my shaking hand. It felt like my short sword. “Try to stay together. If we are separated, meet me at the Dawn’s Forbidding Inn in Glorious Ingvar.”

  He reached into a pocket and jammed something into Zayana’s hand and then something into mine as well. Coins, by the feel of them. I tucked them into my belt pouch and then tried to put my scabbard onto my belt but he shook me.

  “No time for that! Mount up!”

  He shoved us toward the horses as lightning stabbed down into the pasture, making everything seem to freeze for the split second that it rent the darkness with brilliant light. In the instant of brightness, I thought I saw a silhouette above us.

  I scrambled for the horse, narrowly avoiding her stamping feet. She tossed her drenched head, eyes rolling with fear. I untied her from the picket, fitting her bridle on awkwardly. My fingers were clumsy and I’d jammed my sword scabbard into my belt in a way that made it hard to bend. The seconds raced and dragged at the same time as I tried to finish her buckles, fingers slipping as my pulse raced.

  Ivo and Zayana were already mounted. They motioned to me to hurry.

  I scrambled up into the saddle, still not sure that the bridle was fitted correctly. I’d just have to hope my horse could follow the others. They were already running before I’d sorted out my stirrups. I could barely see their horses’ rumps in the pouring rain.

  Lightning streaked down again, followed by the crash of thunder almost instantly. The storm was right over us.

  My horse followed the others and I thought we were following the road again, but in the heavy rain, I couldn’t tell. We could have been on farmer’s fields. And if we were, my horse could break a leg any second in a gopher hole or rut.

  I reached into my cuff and singed my fingers. Was it possible that the feather was even hotter? Fear washed my careful approach away and I leaned over my saddle, hunched forward over my horse as she ran. Wind snatched my hood, pulling it off my head and I was instantly drenched, my bushy hair tamed for once by the fury of the storm. I caught a bare glimpse of Zayana’s horse ahead of me when lightning shot down, slicing the very air with its fury, and then nothing.

  A faint cry came from behind me. It sounded like my name but though I looked behind me, I was too blinded by the rain. The wind snatched at the blanket wrapped loosely around me and it flew away. I thought I saw a blur of light behind me that went out as the blanket swallowed it up.

  That was my imagination, that was all. That couldn’t have been Os right behind me, could it? I was seeing things.

  I turned back to the horses. Forbidding take it!

  I’d lost them completely. I sucked in a breath, scanning frantically through the sheets of rain around me.

  A tree branch thwapped me in the face, stinging my cheek. I bit down a curse. Somehow, we’d turned off the road into the forest.

  I tried to slow my horse with the reins, but she wouldn’t respond. The halter slipped off, falling loose. I pulled it up to me, hand over hand, trying not to lose it entirely. I knew what the problem was. I hadn’t snugged the bit tight enough. My horse didn’t understand what I was trying to communicate. There was no way to slow her terrified gallop and no way to stop.

  I gritted my teeth, held on to the saddle, and ducked my head down to try to avoid the worst of the branches. Th
e short sword dug into my belly, but I didn’t dare adjust it. I might need it very soon – to defend myself against Osprey or to put down this poor horse if she broke her legs in holes on the forest floor.

  It felt like we ran for hours. When my horse finally slowed, the rain was still pouring down in such heavy sheets that I could see nothing at all. Reluctantly, I dropped from the saddle into ankle-deep streams running across the forest floor.

  Her bridle hung in the reins wrapped around the saddle horn where I’d looped it. With a curse, I tried to feel her head and mouth to see if it had been damaged. She bit me – hard.

  “Fine,” I spat. “Be that way.”

  I shouldn’t be angry at her. She was as frightened as I was and who knew what damage I’d done by not fitting her bridle correctly. I corrected it now, fumbling in the darkness and rain. I was bitten a second time for my trouble.

  I shouldn’t have leapt on her back until I knew the bit was right. I shouldn’t have fallen asleep in the field. This was all my fault. I tried not to sink into self-pity, but tears were close and it was all I could do to hold them back.

  When I was done, exhausted and soaked, I led the horse to the bole of a large tree, leaned against it, and fell half-asleep standing up with her reins in my hand. I didn’t even care if I was soaked to the skin and holding the reins of a terrified horse. I was too tired to go on. Too tired to care.

  I tucked my hand into the leather cuff. Please don’t find me, Osprey. It was still warm, but not like it had been.

  The thunder and lightning ceased as I blinked in and out of short snatches of sleep. And then, slowly, the rain began to lessen. When dawn finally crept into the world, l shook myself to alertness.

  I was in the middle of a forest of large trees. Large enough, fortunately, that the brush beneath them was thin. But the rain had erased my tracks and all other signs of how I’d arrived here or where my friends might be.

  Anxiously, I reached into my cuff and sagged in relief. The feather was barely warm. The storm had saved us.