Penrys woke to the twittering of birds and the soothing sound of running water. Her face was grateful for the freshness of the cool air, but her body was warm. If she didn’t move, nothing hurt.
That must be Zandaril’s arm, draped around her, and she could hear a low, rumbling snore at her back.
We’re alive. How far did we get? Far enough he hasn’t found us yet.
She’d settle for that.
Her head throbbed, but not too badly.
Oh. The wings.
What did Zandaril think of that? Must not be too bad, or he wouldn’t still be here.
She realized she had no shirt on, under the blanket, and his arm was around her bare waist. She took a deeper breath and it… moved. He was still asleep, but his hand had a mind of its own. It brushed one breast, still in its breast-band wrapping and she felt her belly tighten.
She cleared her throat loudly and the snoring stopped, followed by the frantic withdrawal of the hand. She lamented the draft of cold air down her back as he rolled away and stood up, clothed only in his long shirt, facing away from her.
“Sorry, um… How are you?” he said, over his shoulder, embarrassment thick in his voice.
“Don’t worry about it. Something else m’body knows,” she commented, dryly.
“Your body? Just your body? What, you mean in three years…” His voice trailed off.
“Nobody asked. Too scary, remember?”
He muttered something she couldn’t hear.
“What?” she asked.
“‘Cowards,’ I said.”
She thought about that for a minute and let a slow smile spread across her face. Then she held the covers to her chest and tried sitting up. Her head was sore, very sore, but the wound in her side was only a bit tender.
At the sight of his bandaged leg, she said, “The landing? I seem to remember it was pretty rough.”
He looked down as if he’d forgotten it. “No, an arrow.”
He shook himself as if starting over and started putting on the rest of his clothes. “I found your stone,” he ventured.
She looked down. “It’s not quite right, I know, but I liked the feel of it.”
He stopped as if uncertain what to say, and then he tried again. “So, it was a tail you had, after all, wasn’t it?”
She grimaced. “I’m afraid so. Sorry it was a surprise, but it just seemed like one thing too many.”
One more thing to make a monster out of me.
“So, um, how does it work, the wings?”
“Don’t know.” At his skeptical look, she added, “Stumbled off a high balcony one day, and that’s what saved me. Luckily no one was there to see.”
Into the growing silence, she said, flatly, “Yes, I can call up wings. No, I don’t know how they work. Do you know how your arm works?”
Zandaril patted the air. “All right, all right—I was just curious.”
“Sorry,” she said, looking down. “And before you ask, there’s nothing else.” She shrugged. “That I know about.”
“Except for how fast you heal,” he said. He held out his arm and unwound the wrapping, comparing it to her own wrist.
“I never did find the injury in your wing. Do you want me to look again?”
Now it was her turn to look puzzled. “How did you…”
“I asked you to show me your wings, and you did. Then you put them away when I asked.”
She sat there, covers pulled up to her neck, stunned. “I don’t remember.”
“You trusted me,” he said. “Like I trusted you, when we ran off the cliff.”
She swallowed. “Yeah, well, thank you for that.”
There was a moment of uncomfortable silence between them.
“Do you know him?” he asked.
She had no trouble understanding whom he meant. “No.”
“But he recognized what you were.”
“Apparently.”
“He had a chain…”
“Just like I do. Yes, I saw.” She rubbed a hand over her face. “Guess there’s more than one of us.”
She could see the unasked questions in his face vying with his wish to be polite, and her temper broke.
“Does he have wings? I have no idea. Can I do what he was doing, keep wizards as slaves? Don’t know and don’t want to find out.”
She took a ragged breath. “Can’t you understand? I don’t know anything about him!”
“Except that he’s stronger than you are,” Zandaril said.
“Yeah, except that.” Is it innate? Learned? Special aids or devices?
“Well, he wasn’t happy to see you, I could tell that much. Maybe he knows something about you, worries him.”
Penrys snorted. “Wish I knew what it was, m’self.”
Penrys insisted they keep moving, east through the foothills. She didn’t know how far they’d come from the ridge of the Horn—thirty miles or more, maybe—but it didn’t feel like enough. Even traveling slowly, to favor Zandaril’s leg, she wanted to get another ten or twenty miles away, each day.
Speed mattered, now. Their mission was over, but they still had to get back to Chang, and avoid the Rasesni between them.
No one was within her range, but now that range felt pitifully small to her, as though she stood in a shallow circle of light in a darkened room, with a ravening monster taunting her just out of her sight.
The stream they’d found meandered east as it worked its way down to the northern plain, ultimately seeking the Neshikame, the north branch of the Mother of Rivers. They followed it for three days, until it reached the open lands where they couldn’t follow and still be well-sheltered.
They encountered Rasesni scouts only once, at a distance, and let them pass well to the south. She pitied them if they met the Voice and his scouts as they probed west.
The Craggies to their right grew steeper, and the open land to the north began to sprout small farms.
As they pushed past through one patch of woods, they emerged onto a clear trail, running up from the plains, and stopped to rest.
“Must be one of the northern trade roads Tak Tuzap was talking about,” Penrys said. “Any idea how close we are to the end?”
Zandaril leaned down, untied the cloth wrap that held the loose flap of his boot up, and massaged around the edges of his wound. “He said there were three of them, maybe thirty miles between the first and last, and the first was just west of Koryan, above the Gates. The mountains get steeper and broader there.”
“So, what, two days to reach the outside of the Gates, more or less?”
Zandaril shook his head. “Might not be good enough. Remember, the Rasesni were sending raiders out through the Gates. Who knows where Chang is now? By then, we’ll have been gone more than three weeks.”
He looked downslope to the north. “We’ll need horses. Maybe on those farms…”
Penrys looked down at the ground. “You’re not thinking… I can scout for Chang, once we get that far.”
Zandaril raised an eyebrow.
“From the air,” she said. “At night. There’ll be fires.”
Two evenings later, from the final bits of rough ground that were all that remained of the Craggies, Penrys and Zandaril surveyed the grasslands that led up to the outer entrance of Seguchi Norwan. The river itself was barely in sight as it flowed out of the far side of the Gates, already in shadow from the setting sun.
Penrys’s scan turned up a few Rasesni, but most of the ones within range were inside the gorge. Harlin, where Tlobsung’s army was reputed to be encamped, was too distant for her to reach.
They made their cold camp tucked behind a few rocks, and waited for full dark.
“Down the Seguchi first,” Penrys said, reviewing their plan. “Then inland a couple of miles and come back. If that fails, try a loop outward from here for a few miles, and then a loop to the north.”
Zandaril grumbled, “If they’ve moved elsewhere, we have a problem.”
“Maybe not. We know they’re not here. The closest we’re sure they’ve been is around Shaneng Ferry, so if this fails, let’s go there and see if anyone has word. Hing Ganau said they would garrison up there.”
She dropped her pack next to his, and made sure her few necessities were well-tucked in her pockets or attached to her belt—a knife, a canteen, the makings of fire.
It wasn’t quite dark enough yet, with twilight still lingering to the west, so she settled in to wait.
Zandaril cleared his throat. “Can I see them?”
“Hmm? You mean now?”
“If it doesn’t make any difference…”
She was so used to hiding them, it took a moment to adjust to the request. Then she stood up straight and swept her wings into existence, stretching them to their fullest. They weren’t attached to her body directly, and yet her back and shoulders always felt their presence. Her legs were a nuisance in flight, a poor adjunct to the feathered tail, but she supposed it was an acceptable compromise.
They had the air of a design, a made thing, rather than something organic, and so she thought about them that way and theorized how she might improve them.
“Can you wrap them around yourself, like a cloak?” Zandaril said, with a tone of wistfulness.
Penrys cocked her head at him.
He said, sheepishly, “I always wanted a cloak I could hide in, when I was a boy, and wings would have been even better.”
“Let’s see,” she said, with a grin.
She found she could cross them in front, but not truly wrap them around herself, as though they were arms. They didn’t bend that way, so close to the front of her body.
“Sorry,” she said, and watched him stifle his disappointment.
A thought occurred to her. “Stand still,” she said. She walked right up to him and stood chest to chest, and tried again. The wings did manage to close over the double thickness of torso, as she’d suspected. From above his head, almost to the ground, they were enwrapped in a tunnel of smooth, sliding feathers.
“Ah,” he growled, in a low, soft voice. “That’s good.” His arms slipped around her to hold them together and help keep their balance.
She froze for a moment at the unexpected contact, then made herself relax and return the embrace.
They stood without moving for several moments, her cheek against his shoulder, while she inhaled his scent and smell of her own feathers. His chest rose and fell against hers.
“I have to go,” she murmured.
“I know.”
He released her, and she opened her wings and stepped back.
The sky was quite dark, now, and the stars were out.
“Come back safe, Pen-sha,” he told her. “We have much to discuss, and nowhere to go until daylight.”
She half-smiled at him, then she turned and took several running steps, ending with a leap and a heavy downstroke that pulled her into the air.
Zandaril’s senses were full of her, after she passed from his view into the dark. Those wrapped wings had been intoxicating, and he could still feel his pulse racing. He’d wanted to delay her mission, to spend the night with her instead of waiting for her return.
Maybe if she came back early… He smiled at the thought. No one could expect them to travel at night.
