Blood and Feathers, page 1
Blood & Feathers
BETH REVIS
Copyright © 2022 by Beth Revis
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover design by Jessica Khoury.
Cover images composited from photography by D-Keine and Daniel Olah.
“I mean, they say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time.”
BANKSY
Contents
1. North of the Wall
2. South of the Wall
3. Across the Wall
4. A Map to Safety
5. The Burnt Note
6. Old Wounds
7. Iron Cages
8. The Nature of Sacrifice
9. Queensguard
10. Heading Home
11. Attack in the Sky
12. Scars
13. Statues
14. The First Delegation
15. Castlekey
16. Amaryllis & Char
17. At the Edge of the Cliff
18. Fly Away, Fly Away
19. The Censored Library
20. The Banquet
21. Nine Years Ago
22. Seven Years Ago
23. The Night Before the Attack at the Wall
24. Archery Lessons
25. Gathering
26. Hiding
27. The History Book
28. A New Queensguard
29. Gold Painted Maps
30. Blackheart Potion
31. Dressing for Battle
32. Dangerous Dances
33. Statues & Kisses
34. Luncheon
35. Starlings
36. The Hunt
37. The Prey
38. Attack
39. Witness
40. Aftermath
41. The Spare
42. So It Is Written
43. Worth It
44. So It Is Obeyed
45. The White Bird
46. Monsters of Men
47. The Color Purple
48. The Question of the Law
49. Ignorance & Choices
50. Not How It Works
51. Sunshine and Hope
52. Blink
53. Stone
54. The Truth
55. A Finger
56. Blue Powder & a Golden Map
57. Fire
58. Hiding
59. Into the Tower
60. Choices
61. Another White Bird
62. Made
63. Long Live the Queen
Epilogue
Author’s Note
The Cost of It All
The Magic of War
The Legend of Edwind
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Beth Revis
Chapter 1
North of the Wall
RIGBY
TEN YEARS AGO
Rigby didn’t reach for his twin sister’s hand, but he clutched it desperately when her fingers brushed against his wrist. She glanced up at him, her eyes wide and fearful.
It’s just a wall, Rigby thought to himself.
But on the other side were monsters.
“They’re too young for this.” Their mother’s voice cut through the eerie silence in the field, almost disappearing on the warm breeze making the long grass at their feet shudder.
Their father shook his head sadly. “They have to understand,” he said.
Mack’s grip in Rigby’s hand tightened. He swallowed down the lump in his throat. Maybe seven was too young to be here, so close to the border. But Rigby could tell from his father’s stiff posture that arguments were worthless. Besides, even though he couldn’t see them, he knew that the enormous black birds in the shadows of the forest a short distance away would protect them.
Above them, a vulture circled, making wide swoops in the air, lazily drifting down. Rigby watched it, calculating, his eyes darting from the short stone wall up to the vulture and back again. The bird’s path was half over the field where Rigby stood with his family and half on the other side of the wall.
“The wall doesn’t hurt him,” Rigby said, nodding to the vulture with a hint of childlike accusation.
Rigby’s father squinted against the bright sky. “The wall doesn’t hurt anything,” he said finally, his face still tilted up, “except us.”
Mack squeaked. Rigby shifted slightly so that he was a few inches in front of her. Their father reached forward, grabbing their hands and yanking the twins apart. Their mother gave one more weak protest as their father dragged them closer to the wall.
Mack’s whimpering grew both louder and higher pitched as they drew nearer the stones separating their land from the south. She reminded Rigby of a whining dog, desperate to flee. And he understood her fear. The closer they came to the rough, uneven stones piled along the border, the more uncomfortable Rigby felt. A horrid sensation clawed under his skin. It reminded him of the sound of teeth scraping against metal, but as if the sound was turned into a feeling rather than a noise. A buzzing, stinging vibration filled his skull, and water sprang to Rigby’s eyes. He tried to force back the unbidden tears, but they leaked down his cheeks, a result not of fear, but pain.
On the other side of the wall, the world seemed no different from his own. It looked and tasted and sounded the same. Clear blue skies over grassy hills that gave way to mountains. If there were no wall, it would look like one unified land. But there was a wall, and on the other side of it were people willing to dabble in sacrifice and death, and all to make sure that no one from the Wildlands could ever cross the border.
Mack dropped to her knees less than half a meter from the wall, and although their father dragged her along for another step or two, her body was limp. He dropped her arm, and she wrapped it around herself, curling into the fetal position. Rigby struggled to remain standing, staring at the lumpy stone wall through his burning eyes.
“Enough!” their mother cried as she rushed forward and crouched over Mack’s body. She picked Mack up, cradling her in her arms, and ran back toward the center of the field, closer to the forest.
Rigby’s father stood still, staring at the wall. His jaw clenched, and it wasn’t until then that Rigby realized that his father was as affected by the magic at the wall just as much as he was.
He had never seen his father in pain before.
“What made this?” Rigby asked. He wiggled his feet down, forcing his boots into the earth, trying to focus on the sensation of being so grounded when all he wanted to do was fly away.
“The monsters on the other side,” his father growled. “They look like people, Rigby, but don’t forget. Don’t ever forget. They made this wall. They trapped us here. And what’s worse—” His words died suddenly on his lips, and his eyes darted down to Rigby. In the brief moment when their gazes connected, Rigby realized that he had not intended to say any of this to his seven-year-old son.
But the words had already escaped, the questions had already risen between them. It was too late.
“And what’s worse,” his father continued, “is that the way they make this wall that keeps us here, this magic…it’s blood magic, Rigby.”
Rigby tried to understand what this meant. In his land, magic came as easily as thought for everyone. At least, little magic did. Fixing a broken pot or starting a fire was simple magic. Bigger magic was more difficult, and not everyone could do it. His mother could. She was a great sorcerer of the land, charged with protecting the Rookery along with the other members of the Council. People said that Rigby and Mack were born with more power even than their mother. But their mother wouldn’t let them test the limits of their magic…not yet, anyway.
But blood magic…that was big magic. Bigger than what his mother did, even. Such magic required a sacrifice of blood, and to make a wall like this, one that completely cut off an entire land…that would take the lifeblood of a creature. Many creatures.
Rigby started to count the stones piled up to create the wall. Large stones, as big as him, each dark, deep red.
As red as spilled blood. Every single stone.
“What…” Rigby stumbled back, despite himself, unable to stay so stalwart in the face of such strong magic. “What creatures did the people of the south sacrifice to make this wall that keeps us out?” he asked.
His father kneeled in front of him, holding Rigby’s shoulders and demanding his full attention.
“Who do you think the Southerners sacrifice?” he asked in a low voice.
The answer filled Rigby’s stomach with acid.
“Why do they hate us so much?” he whispered.
His father shook his head. “They hate our power. They fear it. So they made a wall that we can’t cross. But they can. They send hunters, son, and they kidnap our people, and then they sacrifice them. The wall is our prison.”
Rigby looked past his father to the wide open field and the distant trees. To the mountains. To the sky.
A prison, all of it.
“We don’t understand how the wall works, but we’ve been trying,” his father continued. “And here’s one thing I know for sure: Even if we don’t understand how the wall works, it is definite that the wall is weakening.”
Rigby dried his cheeks with
“All the sorcerers agree, even your mother. Every year, the magic in the wall grows weaker. Thinner. Before, our people couldn’t even enter this field, and look—” His father glanced behind them, to the red stones. “We’re just a few paces away. One day, we’ll be able to cross the wall. We’ll cross it, and we’ll make sure that it’s gone forever.” His father’s eyes narrowed, filled with hate. “And then, son, and then we have our revenge.”
“When?” Rigby asked, his voice cracking. His knees trembled, his muscles felt like jelly. Standing here, so close to the wall, hurt. He couldn’t imagine ever being able to actually touch the red stones, to step over them.
“Give it a decade.” His father stood up and started to lead Rigby away. “Give it ten more years. Ten more years, and that wall will break.”
Chapter 2
South of the Wall
SINE: TEN YEARS LATER
“Are you excited, Sine?” my brother Jude asked as he moved closer to me, the wind whipping the ends of his hair.
I looked past the bow of the narrowboat, staring over the side of the aqueduct and down into the valley below. The aqueduct was so high up that, even though the narrowboat wasn’t going very fast, it felt as if we were flying over the valley, gliding from mountain to mountain, skimming above the pointed tops of the trees.
Jude laughed at my enraptured face. “Excitement is an understatement, huh?”
I punched him in the arm, then leaned closer and said in a low voice, “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” Jude said, and for a moment his face darkened with worry. “Father invited you to come on his own.”
My hands gripped the rail of the ship involuntarily. Father had gone to the northern border of the kingdom every year for as long as I could remember, and although everyone knew the purpose of his visit, few were allowed to accompany him. The border ceremony was one of Father’s most important duties as king. It was the time for Father to speak with the Guardian of the Order of Silence and learn about what charitable and civil works our people most wanted, and it was the time reserved for the king of the Bloodlands to reflect and meditate at the monastery.
But more importantly, it was when Father inspected the wall that kept the monsters out.
“Why did he want me to come?” I asked Jude. I was not the important one.
Jude shook his head, his lips pressed together in worry. I couldn’t help but notice the way his broad shoulders tensed. He was only three years older than me, but he sometimes looked ancient, as if he’d already started to feel the weight of the crown Father now wore.
I opened my mouth to ask him…so many things, but no sound rose to my lips. We used to be so close. We used to be all the other one had. But while I was cloistered away in the castle, Father kept Jude busy learning the actual job of being the heir to the kingdom. I studied maps; Jude explored the edges of our kingdom. I read the record books on the trade systems of our great canal; Jude sailed it from east to west and back again. I learned the names and lineages of the key families of the other kingdoms; Jude met most of them as visiting dignitaries to our castle. I lived my life on paper, and Jude had left me behind.
My brother bumped into my shoulder, bringing me back to the now. At least this time, I guessed, Father had bothered to include me.
The rowers slowed down as the Chief of the Kingsguard shouted instructions. I leaned forward, watching as the water crested around the narrow point of the boat, creating small waves that splashed along the sides of the aqueduct.
“Almost there now,” Madiera said as she walked up to my brother and me. My lady-maid was from Flannary, a country known for its beauty, but it was a bit ridiculous how much Madiera lived up to her homeland’s legacy. Her olive skin seemed to sparkle when she smiled; her black hair was a smooth sheet of silk sweeping over her shoulders. My skin was darker than hers, but it didn’t glow, and my braided hair was already frizzy from the windy and humidity. I loved Madiera like a sister, but sometimes I hated her like a sister, too. I knew, no matter how much I tried, I would never be half as beautiful as her.
And I’ll never have anyone look at me the way Jude was looking at her now.
I scooted away, giving them a somewhat more private moment. When Madiera married Jude—not that he’d asked her yet, but it was inevitable—I wondered what would happen to me. Madiera was my only lady-maid. Of course I was happy that the two people I loved most in the world loved each other, but…I didn’t want to be alone, either.
I leaned further over the edge of the narrowboat. The aqueduct was so high up here that a hawk soared below us, playing on the wind that blew between the stone arches.
Jude jerked me back when the narrowboat bumped over the end of the aqueduct and into a small lake bordered on one side by the remains of the mountain that was excavated for the stone that built the castle. The other side of the lake gave way to a plain, grassy field. A group of people clothed in dark brown robes stood on the edge of the lake with a mule-cart. As the narrowboat approached, the rowers threw the mooring lines out to them. Jude wrapped his arm around me to steady me as the narrowboat’s mooring lines pulled tight and the servants positioned a ramp from the deck to the land.
Father left the narrowboat first. He was in such a hurry that he barely stopped to accept the welcome of the members of the Order of Silence waiting for us, pausing only to shout at the servants to hurry up with the cargo. He strode across the small field toward the sprawling compound in front of the stone border. Jude rushed after him, and the kingsguard were a swirl of black cloaks on their heels.
I attempted a smile at the members of the Order of Silence still standing by the boat. If they smiled back, I couldn’t tell. Each member, male and female, wore the same dark cowl-necked tunic that hid their mouths.
Madiera linked her arm in mine as we followed Father across the grassy field. “What’s his hurry?” she asked, staring at the king’s back. Even though the words were a complaint, they didn’t sound that way. Madiera was much too polite to ever really complain. Even when her father dropped her off at the castle with little more than a farewell—his way of ingratiating himself to my father, the king—Madiera hadn’t complained.
The same could not be said of the servants behind us, knee-deep in the water, pulling at the ropes that lashed five barrels of wine to the stern of the narrowboat. They rolled the barrels onto the bank and started loading them onto the waiting mule-cart.
“Come on, then,” Madiera said, tugging my arm to make my pace quicken.
The Northern Gate loomed over the other side of the hill. The monastery was home to both male and female monks in the Order of Silence. And while the monastery has been built at the exact center of the northern bloodstone wall, it wasn’t a gate. How could it be? Nothing ever crossed that wall.
Madiera and I were practically running in order to catch up with Father and the others, but we slowed down when we reached the long shadow cast by the Northern Gate. A stone archway cut through the outer wall, leading into the courtyard of the monastery. The men’s boots echoed loudly, but my slippered feet barely made a sound over the cobblestones.
I cast my eyes up to the arching ceiling. Dead bodies of rotting blackbirds dangled from thin wire along the stone archway. I gagged, ducking low so that the broken, bloody wings didn’t brush against my hair. Ahead of me, Jude, who was much taller, cursed and swatted away the corpse of a low-hanging raven whose wing had smacked him in the face. It jerked uneasily on its wire, like a possessed, rotting puppet.
