The stars were dimmed by a haze of smoke from villages that had been set afire, and the crops and storage barns blazing. Akil could smell it. All was quiet here by the river; even the insects had ceased their rhythmic call. Now and then Akil heard the gentle lapping of the Tet testing its banks with no intent to breach them.
He shifted in the mud, his feet squelching. Though he wasn’t bothered by the chilling air, or the damp prickling of reeds, his flesh crawled with disgust at the slime he crouched in. It reminded him of the oil he’d once had to slather upon the naked bellies and buttocks of his masters, and his masters’ guests. Might they rot in hell.
“Be still, for goodness’ sake, Akil!” Vara was in her Boy shape, small and almost invisible beside him, the little sun-browned body blending well with the riverbank’s muck. “Can you feel her?”
He could. Carolina Marsh was somewhere to the north-west, and she was in a state verging on panic. Not an emotion she normally felt, or would willingly acknowledge. Her heart was pounding and her breath was laboured. Now and then he felt her choke.
The three resura had flown at random, one at a time, over the walls just after moonset, when the night was darkest. Petru’s city marshals were well drilled in vigilance. No one wanted to risk getting shot, even though they couldn’t agree on what might happen to their magical bodies, which functioned almost like true flesh and blood. They had flown in different directions, at varied levels, to reunite here, where the water was shallow and slow moving.
Akil grunted as he felt his lungs strain against an urge to gasp for one long clean breath. It was what Miss Marsh was feeling; her fear was scattering her emotions wide. He breathed slowly through his nose, trying to ignore the multiple stinks around him. The very stuff from which he, and the other resura, were made… The skin of his back quivered with the knowledge that at any time, an arrow could pierce it.
But it wasn’t his own back that was in jeopardy, it was his alanbir’s.
Doing her best to imitate a dead body, she was floating face down on the black current that swept the city of its trash and waste, including the bodies that now, in troubled times, were no longer getting any kind of burial. With luck, the current would carry Carolina Marsh under the city wall to freedom.
Hawk was circling overhead, her sharp eyes alert for signs of movement, whether a body floating on the current, guards patrolling the banks with torches, or late-night prowlers about their secretive business. She was to screech three times quickly for danger, once long and twice fast to alert them to Miss Marsh’s approach. Were she to float past them, she’d be caught in the quickening current as the Tet flowed southeast, and might never reach shore.
The hawk cried once long, then twice again fast.
Akil stood, peering into the rippling shadow and starlight that was the river. Boy clung to his withered arm, and he almost shook the small hand away in his eagerness to retrieve his alanbir. He bent and began to slap rhythmically at the soft mud, three slaps, a pause, three more. He dared not call out.
Splashing sounded from upstream, accompanied by wheezing gasps. Akil waded out, at last spotting a dark wet head and flailing arms as his mistress made for shore. She rolled sideways to haul the inflated bladder from her bosom, letting it bob away into the darkness. He saw her teeth gleam as she spat out a long, hollow reed and reached for his hand. Grinning fiercely, she swam to shore to be hauled the last few lengths by Akil and Boy.
She sprawled gasping on dry land while Akil tried to wring water from her clothes and hair.
The hawk landed beside them and became Knife Woman. She began to strip off her friend’s sodden clothes. Akil wrung them out thoroughly, glad the night was warm.
Her small leather boots were tied around her neck, for she’d refused to leave them behind, and no corpse would be tossed in the river with perfectly good boots still on. “They were made by the finest cordwainer in Spain and fit me perfectly,” she’d explained. “Years of wear are in them still.” Miss Marsh had an unfortunate passion for footwear.
Despite the mild air, she began to shiver, her teeth chattering as she suppressed a crow of triumph. “You cannot imagine,” she whispered, “how filthy the tunnels in the cloaca are! I put my head up when I knew I was underground, and I was mightily sorry at once. Thank Mithra I could only smell, not see. And I had thought this little city so advanced and sanitary!”
She did smell rather bad, and not only from polluted river water. He must steal a lump of soap for her as soon as possible; the risk of disease was ever-present for humankind. In his former life of ignorance, he’d have prayed to a God to chase away illness. It had been Miss Marsh who informed him that in her opinion, washing was better than praying.
Akil wanted suddenly to shake sense into her. In the city, she’d have a chance for what small comfort it still offered. The Uzmite Sisters would have hidden her. Next she would order him to seek Jameel al-Kindi with the others, and he could not disobey. But if he left her, she’d be utterly alone, with nothing but what she could carry.
“Akil, my darling boy,” she said, sounding calmer. “I know that look. You angry are with me. But aren’t you also proud of me? Are not you pleased that I possess the swimming, as few people do?” She took Knife Woman’s hand and drew it to her cheek. “I learned from naked savages of Terra Torridia, in one of their immense brown rivers. They thought I very odd and funny, particularly when I refused my underclothes to take off.”
“You are odd and funny,” replied the crone impatiently. “Do you feel ready to press on? We must find you shelter as far from the city as possible, before dawn.”
“Of course. We all must go, and fast.” She struggled back into her damp clothes, assisted by Akil.
Knife Woman led the way, moving with a purposeful stride, faster than Akil had ever seen her cover ground. She had abandoned her cart and all its tools and supplies. Akil had no idea how this worked, and spent the next few hours trying to deduce whether she actually had a real—that is, not magical—knife sharpener’s barrow, or if it was a part of her resura form. An extension of her old-woman body. But if it were an extension, then it must remain part of her forever more, mustn’t it? How could she alter a form she had chosen?
He gave it up, and promised himself to ask her when there was time. There was so much to learn about being what he was, and he feared the others knew even less than he did. He wanted to seek out more of their kind to study. Or even befriend, if that were possible among bound resura.
At last Knife Woman stopped. Akil, who had been carrying the exhausted Miss Marsh on his back for the last couple of leagues, saw that they were at a laneway meandering off the side-road they had been following. It was lined with perfectly straight cypress trees, as rigid as soldiers.
“Here we are,” said Knife Woman, her crisp, aristocratic diction reminding Akil that within her was Ragna Svobodová, mistress of a huge and sprawling estate and attendant farms, orchards and mills. “I know this farm. The family is part of our Villa’s holdings, and tend many of our orchards. The eldest son took over when his father died, and was teaching his younger brothers and sisters the arts of pruning and grafting, even of creating new and sweeter varieties of fruit.”
They could smell no smoke, nor see any lamplight. At this time, the start of day, the farm should have been active.
“I hope they are well,” murmured Knife Woman. “I had hoped they might shelter you. But if they have fled, I don’t blame them.”
Akil glanced at Vara, who nodded and changed to Bird. She flitted off, to return in a few minutes with news. “The farm is deserted. Not even a chicken, and the main house is open and empty. It looks as if it’s been looted and partially burnt.”
Akil saw Knife Woman’s face harden. She knew what had happened. Soldiers, like a swarm of locusts, had come upon a peaceful farm, conscripted the men, raped the women, stolen all the food and taken pleasure in destroying what remained.
Dawn light was brightening quickly. They hurried up the lane to spy a small shed, half buried in lush grasses and a flourishing myrtle tree, its scented leaves and white blossoms nodding gently. Petru would have that myrtle cut down and burned for its sacred connections. Saraf didn’t like reminders of other gods.
Knife Woman bent and lifted a leather flap that covered a small opening, and peered inside.
“It looks untouched,” she said. “This is the house that my tenant Matheus de Grignon built for a family of dwarves who were in his employ. Man and wife, and a child of normal size. The dwarves found better pay in the city once their child had grown tall enough to be useful. For you, my little friend, it should be perfect. Everything is small.” She grinned, a flash of teeth. She found a flint and lantern among the abandoned clutter, and soon thin yellow light illuminated the hut.
Miss Marsh sank onto a mouse-eaten, miniature Roman-style lounge and groaned with relief. “I feel quite big in here. Ah, it’s so good to lie down… Akil, dear, could you removing my boots, please? They are still damp and must be stuffed with something to dry and hold their shape.”
Akil snorted as he bent to her bidding, though there was nothing but dry grass to stuff them with. How could she think of boots at a time like this? Women were hard to understand. At the sight of her dirty, blistered feet, he had to look away. In his hands would always be the feel of Vara Svobodová’s smooth, tawny skin, her slender ankles firm and warm. He was glad that Vara hadn’t chosen forms too similar to her own human one. He might have looked at her more than he should. “I’ll find you some food.”
He changed to Eagle and in a matter of minutes was back with a small brown rabbit flopping dead in his talons. Akil the eagle dropped it at his alanbir’s feet. She snatched it up admiringly.
“Oh, thank you, my dearest boy. I am so very hungry.” She stepped back outside, slapped the soft little carcass onto the ground, pulled out her knife—sharpened by Knife Woman—and commenced to skin and gut it. “I can get a fire going. Now you must fly away to find Jameel al-Kindi. I to stay right here.”
Akil spread his wings. Ragna Svobodová was already in the air, circling impatiently over the hut.
The three birds rose, and as Akil looked back towards the rapidly diminishing hut, he observed Miss Marsh standing at the door, skinned rabbit dangling from one hand, gazing upward avidly after them. His eagle eyesight made her scars and her every worried wrinkle visible, but also the hopeful look in her eyes. She would never give up. She had not given up on him, ever, though he had been ready to surrender to despair more than a few times.
He looked ahead to where Hawk’s sharp brown wings beat eastward into the rising sun, and quickly caught her up. Nightingale was riding on her mother’s back, as she had once sheltered on his.
*
As they flew, the nightingale conversed with the hawk. Vara knew that they must not rush blindly into a trap, for certainly Petru would have deduced that in their resura forms they would try to rescue Jameel al-Kindi. But he couldn’t know what forms those were, or that they were free. He probably assumed that, since he didn’t possess them, they’d been taken by a God, who presumably had no interest in Jameel. But could he take that chance?
No matter the legends, Petru could not really be everywhere at once, nor did he have enough falci adepts to sniff each suspicious being. And he must be quite certain they could not yet know where his captive was.
“With a little luck and planning,” stated Hawk, “we should be able to infiltrate the mine and find Jameel-my-husband.”
If he’s even there, thought Vara, regretting her earlier enthusiasm. What if she was wrong? “How can we do it?”
“It must be you, my dear,” said Hawk. “My forms would not pass. Knife sharpeners are not needed at mines. But you, as Boy, may get in, if you are clever and careful.”
“I… I will do it. I must do it,” said the Nightingale.
“Yes. You must… and you will. I have confidence in your courage.”
The girl Vara would have laughed at this, for the one thing she knew she lacked was courage. Her mother had it, Carolina Marsh certainly had it. She didn’t quite know about Akil. He might be courageous when it was necessary, or he might merely be logical. If it made sense to rush into danger, he would do it. If it would gain him something to help a girl escape ruffians, he would help. But to rescue a man he barely knew? One who was damned to a lingering death by a tyrant so powerful even the Emperor gave way before him?
That might be too foolish an undertaking.
Of course, his alanbir could simply order him to do whatever she wanted. He would have to obey. Wasn’t that how it worked? Could Miss Marsh be trusted to do the right thing?
Her little talons, like Hawk’s but so much smaller, clung to the hawk’s dense brown and white feathers. Her mother’s feathers. Vara nerved herself to look down. They were so very high…
But she found that it didn’t frighten her; in fact it was thrilling. Was that why she’d not taken the form of a snake? She hated and feared dirt-crawling snakes, but heights were exhilarating.
They were over marshland right now, glittering in the morning light. The scent of water and reeds billowed up on the warming air. Great drifts of birds congregated on the water and in the air below them, peeling apart and scattering at the sight of two birds of prey. But the hawk and the eagle passed them by, in search of other game.
She looked ahead, the warm, smoky wind buffeting her. She felt the odd sensation of what felt like another set of eyelids flicking down like a shield over her eyes. Were she human now, her eyes would be stinging. Below her lay forests, orchards and vineyards, rivers, towns and roads. The forests were quickly being chopped down, the orchards and vineyards stripped, the towns set ablaze and the roads filled with the men and machinery of war.
I’m glad I’m not a snake, she thought rebelliously. Nor a man, fighting uselessly for a cruel master. I’m glad I’m not still alive, to weep and lament over the destruction of my land.
She clung to her mother. Akil flew at their side. Ahead were the mountains, where prisoners cowered under the whip.
*
It was late afternoon. Below him as he flew, Akil could hear a relentless thumping: the continuing catapult attack on Arles, on the west bank of the Rhône. He wheeled lower to get a look. Several of the infernal machines surrounded the city, some on land, another two on huge barges in the river. One of Petru’s generals would soon capture that stubborn city and its ancient mills, which could grind ten tons of grain a day now that they’d been modernized and expanded. His armies and generals were spread wide, north and east; he’d soon take Soissons and his Emperor’s head. Petru had the God of War at his side.
Akil knew he should have listened more carefully to old Josef Svobodá’s ramblings and predictions, and the bitter grumbling he’d overheard from Vara’s father. Petru Dominus had a heart that burned for revenge, for retribution, for the joy of vanquishing the empire that had tortured and imprisoned him, then banished him to a sleepy corner of a world he wanted to rule. And the Gods loved it. They applauded his ambition; Petru’s rise could not have been so fast without their help. On his own, Petru would still be stubbornly designing irrigation systems and trying to gain favour by pious deeds and heavy taxation.
Old Josef had seen the man’s life as a carpet, ravelled and stained, its regular pattern twisting into confusion and madness as he was goaded into greater and greater acts of violence and terror.
The birds flew over the broad Rhône, downstream from the barges and the oared swiftboats laden with archers waiting for the catapults to breach the walls, and came to land in a high, whispering pine grove. They’d seen very few people. Those not conscripted for the fighting had mostly fled to the walled cities, or, fearing the very attack happening now, retreated into the hills.
Life, Akil had to admit as he changed to his human form on the pine-needle carpeted ground, was easier without a real human along. Humans got hungry and tired, and asked questions he couldn’t answer. The other resura fluttered down beside him, changed to forms in which it was easier to talk, and began to plan.
“How will we even get close to the mine?” asked Freewoman, a note of desperation in her melodic voice. “Even such lonely prisons are guarded, especially now.”
Knife Woman snorted. “Guarded by mere men, who often are bored or stupid or drunk. We will get by them, never fear.”
“What do you mean ‘we’? You mean me.”
Knife Woman regarded Freewoman levelly. “I do mean you, daughter. As Boy, you will easily slip by them. We will make up a story for you.”
“Why don’t I just fly in as Bird?”
“Because, my dear child, you must question the men there if you have a hope of finding your father. You can’t do that as Nightingale. But a small, harmless boy, properly admitted—not miraculously appeared from thin air—will have a chance.”
“I hope you’re right about the guards,” grumbled Freewoman, looking rather sick.
Akil looked away. He knew a lot about guards and how often they were bored, stupid or drunk, or all three at once. It really shouldn’t be too hard for a peasant boy to infiltrate the mine. With Petru not yet in the area, there should be no falci to reveal Vara as resura.
Yet Vara fretted, constantly asking her mother questions as they worked out a plan. It was only because she feared that her father’s chance of freedom rested solely upon her shoulders. Did she feel an allegiance to her father as he did toward his alanbir? Did she have no choice but to love him?
Had he, Akil, already forgotten what it was to be human?
He heard rumbling from the sky, and hoped it was just a storm brewing. The humming tension he felt all around might only be the heat building the clouds into thunderheads. But he didn’t think so. It was the Great Gods. They loved strife—the stuff of stories and legends that bolstered their pride—and wanted nothing more than to stir up trouble. A happy, healthy populace tending its farms and flocks was boring. Human lives were fodder to them, the pain and fear of death whetting their appetite for more.
Knife Woman said, “We shall need oil. A small amount of any kind—it doesn’t matter.”
Freewoman wrung her hands. “What do we need oil for? We have no lamp. We aren’t going to cook anything.” Her voice wobbled. She bit her lip and shut up.
Knife Woman ignored her complaints. “Akil and Vara, go and get some. Now.”
“I can do it alone,” said Akil grumpily. The last thing he wanted beside him was a whiny, panicky female.
Knife Woman closed her eyes. “Go! Both of you. I need to think.”
*
They could find no oil. Either it had been requisitioned, or was being hoarded by folk in secret places lest it be stolen.
Boy had found himself enjoying the hunt, realizing with pleasure that he had a store of street-urchin lore tucked in his brain, available when he needed it. Giving up on olive oil or butter, he stealthily pilfered a wad of sheep’s tallow from a bucket left in a stable, probably to soften the udders of cows which were most likely cooked by now. It was slightly rancid but free of dung or grit, so he smeared some onto a palm leaf and rolled it up tight. Eagle took the smelly parcel in his beak, lifted mightily into the air and beat his way back the way they’d come. Boy changed to Nightingale and followed.
“Ah! That will do very well,” stated Knife Woman, surprisingly, as she unrolled the leaf and took an appreciative sniff. “No one will want to relieve you of that, will they?”
She bestowed a feral grin upon Boy, who wondered if the old woman even remembered that her own daughter dwelt within the skinny little ruffian whose hair she tousled. Did she care? Or did she think only of Jameel, and of Petru?