Unlikely (Kingdoms Gone), page 7
His hand found her thigh again. The other slipped into her hair and pulled her face against his. The pocket shrank to a tight skin around them, a warble of sensations both physical and magical. Satina clung to him, wound her arms around his neck and held on while the maelstrom spun inside her chest. He pulled her onto his lap, leaned away enough to drag the kiss down along her neck.
The world spun. It didn’t stop when he lifted his eyes to hers, nor when he leaned back and squinted at her. His arms loosened, and she fell into the spin. Her head broke the pocket barrier. The world outside still looked drab and washed out. It waited in real space, completely unaware of the glorious things in the pocket. Satina frowned at a sky with no spark. She should have hit the ground by now. Instead, strong arms pulled her back.
The ruins blazed with magic again. She blinked and found Marten staring down at her. Something sad touched his eyes. She reached up without thinking, to bring him closer, maybe just to touch him. His lips curled up at the corners.
“You are completely toasted.”
“M’not.”
“Really?”
She nodded until his face whirled overhead.
“Then sit up on your own.” He started to let go. She fell with his arms, limp. Not one muscle answered her command to sit up. “Drunkard.” He pulled her up. His eyes made the word an endearment. “Get some sleep, my dear.” One of his hands brushed her hair back, and he bent forward and touched a soft kiss to her forehead.
She fell asleep curled in the Skinner’s lap, staring up at stars that remembered when the castle still stood. When she awoke, cool grass pressed against her cheek. She lay on the ground and the wrong imp stared down at her. This one had pointy ears and sharp teeth. She scrambled to sit up, and felt her stomach flip over. Her head throbbed and her lips tasted like sand.
“Unngh.” She grabbed her head and lay back down quickly. The imp cackled and scampered away. Satina rolled onto her hands and knees. She held still while the nausea washed over and then, carefully, sat back on her heels.
The pocket bathed in golden sunlight. She felt it then, the longing that was the price of time spent in Old Space. Why couldn’t the whole world look like this? Hadn’t it, once upon a time?
“A bit fuzzy this morning?” The voice was feminine, and only partly friendly.
Satina looked to either side. The menhir stood directly across the courtyard from her, in one direction, the pocket wall shimmered. In the other, a huddle of Gentry sipped from the skin flasks and eyed her sideways between whispers. She twisted, but saw no one close enough to belong to the voice.
The fiend messenger dropped to the stones, directly in front of her and with too much grace for her own situation. “Your man’s off haggling with Hamis,” she said. Her full lips smiled and she bent into a dainty squat and eyed Satina closely.
“He’s not m—” Something about the cat eyes, the long silky hair and ample chest stalled her tongue. “He’s where?”
“With Hamis.” The fiend stood. Either Satina imagined it, or her edge had gone. At least the smile seemed more genuine the second time. “Over by the carts.”
“Thank you.”
The woman shrugged and leapt way, only half flying and managing to utilize her figure to her advantage as she worked her way toward another group of Tinkers. She had everything in the right place, and she knew it. Satina bit her lip and scanned the line of wagons. She smoothed her skirts and tucked the loose bits of hair back into the knotted bun before changing her mind and loosing the whole thing. If she couldn’t wear her hair down in the pocket, where could she?
She didn’t intend to barge into the negotiations, but just sitting there would emphasize the damage she’d done to her body the night before and only open her to more mockery. She leaned one arm against the stone block and stood, waiting for the ruins to stop tilting before trying to walk. The standing stone still beckoned, and she worked her way in that direction.
The symbols barely glowed in daylight—even in the pocket. She hesitated at the base of the huge monolith, craned her neck back and tried to read just one of the marks. Satina squinted, and the faint lines flared. The sigils squirmed and slipped away, hovering on the very edge of understanding. She recognized a piece of one, a fragment of another, the curve at the bottom there. She relaxed into the shifted vision and willed to symbols to make sense.
One alone flared brighter. It focused and surged while all around it, the others dimmed and seemed to shift aside. She followed the mark’s lines with her eyes, drawing it in her mind over and over. The thought appeared without effort, Vision, and before she could register the success, the scene all around her shifted. She was thrust upward through her crown, pushed hard by an unseen hand and left to float above the castle ruins.
Below lay, not the pocket, but the whole basin in real space. The colors dimmed and grayed. The caravans vanished, and all over the stones, the Starlights swarmed.
The gang leader, Vane, strode through the ruins as if he owned the place. His band flanked him, and a small child led the way. The boy skipped and chattered and pointed out the stairs, the courtyard, and the standing stone. This, Vane nodded at. His lips pursed and his eyes narrowed. Satina could only guess at his plans, could only wonder what he’d given the boy to buy the town’s betrayal. She cringed away from the child’s familiar face. She knew him. She’d set him free on the dark road leading into Westwood.
Shouting forced her gaze back down. A Tinker had burst from the pocket, darted a half dozen steps toward the stair before realizing she was not alone. Satina knew her as well—the fair fiend who’d delivered her message from Flaut. The girl sprang into the air at the sight of the gang. Her wings fluttered madly. Her cat-eyes stretched wide with fear. She flew up, toward the suspended pocket, while Vane’s men drew swords and rushed in.
Satina saw the archer first. She screamed, but no sound came out. The man dropped to one knee and took aim. The fiend flew directly for the rift, and the man’s bow fired. She dived toward the pocket, but the arrow struck first. The girl staggered in mid air, one bat-wing torn and useless. She was falling now, all the time reaching for the pocket’s escape while her wings tried to compensate for the injury.
The archer aimed again. The second time Satina screamed, the force slammed her down. She hit her own body as if it were stone, staggered and heard her voice howling for help as if it were far away in someone else’s head.
The courtyard erupted. Tinkers ran shouting in her direction. Somewhere in the mob, Marten called her name. Her eyes fixed to the spot over the wagon. She pointed to the rippling air, shot one arm out and tried to make words that didn’t sound like a shriek. One heartbeat pounded in her chest, two, three. The fiend fell through the pocket. She hit the straw and didn’t move.
The Gentry wheeled around. They converged on the form in the wagon, climbing over the sides and one another to get to the fiend’s aid. Satina’s chest heaved. She watched them, struck dumb at last and only able to stare and pray the woman lived. The voices continued, but she heard them through a fog, muted and distorted by the sigil, by Vision’s, afterglow.
“What happened? What—Satina!” It was Marten who got through to her, his hands that took her by the shoulders and shook her back to the moment.
“Wing.” She shook her head and blinked at him. He’d be so angry at her over the boy. His town would never lose the Starlights now. “The gang is in the ruins.”
His face hardened. She saw it in his eyes, what the news meant to him. “They followed us.”
“No.” She swallowed hard. Tears blurred her vision. How could she tell him? “Someone was leading them.”
“Who?” The weight of his hands on her cloak, warm, even gentle brought back the night before, the kiss that he would likely never repeat. “Satina, who led them?”
“The boy. Your thief with the booby trap.” The words choked in her throat.
Marten’s face twisted between emotions. A snarl came out, but it had less force than the shadow in his eyes. His hands dropped to his sides. “Are you sure? How?”
“The menhir. One of the sigils lets you see outside the pocket.”
“And they’re there now, in the ruins?”
“Yes.” She half feared he would break through to confront them, but he only frowned deeper and looked back to the wagon where a group of the larger Genrty were lifting the fiend out from the straw. Her injured wing hung like a curtain between the men. The other one fluttered in pathetic, spastic fits. “They shot her wing.”
“More than that.”
She could see it too. Once the Tinkers set the fiend on the ground and cleared a space around her. A single arrow shaft still stuck from the woman’s torso, toward the shoulder but not quite clear of her chest. Its flights blazed Starlight blue. The Tinkers closed in again. Their healer knelt beside the girl.
Before she could see more, Hamis left the crowd. He headed in their direction, and his huge form blocked any view of the wounded fiend. She screamed once, and Satina cringed. Had they tried to remove the arrow?
“You!” Hamis rounded on them. “Who did this? Your people?”
“Starlights,” Marten spat the word. “Came into town yesterday.”
“Something you failed to mention,” Hamis narrowed his eyes and rubbed a big hand through his beard.
“They didn’t know about the ruins.” Satina felt compelled to defend their silence, though in hindsight, she agreed with the faun. They’d seen the Gentry playing tag with the real world, and hadn’t so much as warned them. She could see it on Marten’s face as well. They both suffered guilt pangs. The fiend’s screaming didn’t help.
“Granted,” Hamis said. “Still, I suspect you should be going.” He glanced back over his shoulder. “Just in case.”
“Can’t we help?”
The screams quieted into a steady moan. “We take care of our own.” Hamis scowled, and though his look said enough, Marten still had to take her by the cloak and tug her away. She went after him for no better reason than because she had nowhere else to go. Their own most definitely excluded two half-bloods who lived among humans.
Marten led her to the spot where they’d slept. He didn’t look at her once, only reached out and stroked the barrier just as he had the night before. “You remember the pocket where we met?”
“Beside the stairway.”
“Yes.”
She put her hand against the magic, felt it pulse and ripple beneath her palm. She remembered it. She closed her eyes and stretched her mind to find it. A blur of imagined places slipped past. One by one the pockets shuffled. Satina focused on the one she’d stepped from on the night they’d met, the night she’d freed the boy who in turn had brought the Starlights to the castle.
“Got it?”
“Yes.” The image fixed in place. Solid, a real place where they could sneak away. Marten took a deep breath, but he didn’t make eye contact. He didn’t look up, and even though they stepped through together, even though she’d wandered by herself for fifteen years, Satina had never felt quite so alone.
Chapter Nine
They slipped out of the next pocket as rapidly as they entered it. This time, they rejoined normal space, emerged from the bushes beside the shadow of the same crumbling staircase where they’d met two nights before. Satina noticed the difference as soon as she stepped through the membrane. The stair had been tagged far more obviously. It gleamed with huge, magically painted Starlight symbols.
Marten growled beside her. The noise was the first he’d made since Hamis banished them from the Tinker camp. She risked a look at him, pressing her nails into her palms for courage. His rage seemed aimed elsewhere. His eyes focused on the stair, and she saw fire in them.
“Marten.” The bravery didn’t extend to touching him. “I’m so sorry.”
“Not your fault.” Despite the words, his tone was clipped.
“The boy, I—”
“The trap wasn’t meant to last. He’d have been free in time to do this either way.”
So she hadn’t aided the boy’s crime much. Somehow, it didn’t make her feel any better, not with Marten looking everywhere but directly at her. Not with the ice in his voice, the self-loathing. His shoulders curled into a slump.
That posture, the defeat he embraced so quickly, wriggled under her skin. The Starlights, the Shades even, they did this to people. To anyone. And the Gentry fiend? They’d shot her down like a game bird. “We have to stop them.” It seemed the obvious thing to say, the only just answer, but Marten looked at her like she’d just sprouted a tail.
“Oh really?”
“What else can we do?”
“Well, I was leaning toward nothing.”
“Nothing?” She’d heard that wrong, or he’d meant it as a joke. The Starlights had his town in a chokehold. What they’d done to the Gentry couldn’t be ignored.
“That’s right.” He swept past her, stopped at the roadside long enough to squint at the sky, and then started off through the ruts toward Westwood.
Satina scurried after him. They walked toward town without speaking. When they’d reached the outlying fields the sky darkened with thick clouds that spoke of both rain and an early dusk. The fences had been tagged already, and she knew Marten saw the marks. He said nothing, not until they neared the stable and the chapel steeple stretching toward the incoming storm.
“If you were planning to move on, I suspect now would be a good time.”
“What?” She stopped walking, stood in one of the wider ruts and stared at him.
“You know,” he waved an arm half-heartedly. “Move along. Get while the going is good. Abandon ship.”
It stung, even with his lilting tease behind the words. He meant it. She couldn’t miss his sincerity. Shove off, he meant. Get lost. Her mouth opened to retort, but a voice from the road ahead preempted her reply. It shouted at them from the edge of town.
“Halt!”
They hadn’t really been moving. Still, Marten froze in place. They both waited without twitching while two blue-booted men approached. They’d drawn short swords, and wore scraps of armor that she hadn’t seen among the gang’s attire previously. Crude metal cups topped their shoulders, and one man had an armored plate bound to his sword arm.
“It’s the half-bloods,” he snarled to his fellow. “Vane’s been looking for you, shopkeeper. They’ll be needing more tools. Shovels, I reckon. Picks, whatever you’re hiding.”
To raze the castle ruins and find—what? The menhir flashed in her mind’s eye, and she was certain there was more power hiding there, things Hadja and Marten had not found that would prove deadly in the Starlight’s hands. And Marten wanted to do nothing.
“Not hiding, certainly.” Marten shuffled now to the side, effectively putting himself between her and the gang members. “I’m sure we can work something out.”
“What about her?” The second guard stuck a finger in her direction. “Vane said—”
“She’s just on her way home,” Marten interrupted him. He cast a look her way, low down and pleading for her to take his hint and run. “Down past the blacksmith,” his voice sharpened. “On the road that leads east to the mountains.”
“Shut up.” The man kicked out. His boot landed on Marten’s thigh and sent him stumbling. “No one asked you where she lived, Skinner.”
“Stop it!” Satina moved to help him, but he shrugged her off, pulled away and turned a blazing expression on her.
“Go home,” he said. “I’ll take one of these gentlemen to the store and help him, and I’m sure the other will continue to do his job here as he’s been instructed.”
He’d worked out a nice escape plan for her, and without consulting her for an opinion. Now the guards exchanged looks and processed what he’d said. Maybe he’d guessed correctly and they had orders to watch the road. More likely they’d been ordered to watch for two half-bloods wandering in from an errant pocket.
“I’ll see you later tonight, then.” She didn’t wait for him to answer, or for the Starlights to decide on a course of action. Leaving Marten alone with them would have been her last choice, but he’d dug a trench for her that pointed directly toward Hadja’s, or if she read him correctly, toward the mountains far outside of town. She balled her skirts into her fists, lifted them enough to give her boots more freedom, and trotted away, half expecting the guard to snatch her mid-flight and drag her back.
Instead, they let her be, allowed her to run for it while Marten was still firmly in their clutches. She chewed her lip and rounded the corner in front of the smithy. They’d kicked him on the leg he already favored. Had they done the original damage yesterday as well? She ground each step into the road and snarled at nothing in particular. She had nothing to lash out with or against, no fighting skill at all. She was a Granter. She didn’t work with weapons.
Regardless, she had no intention of taking Marten’s orders, of running and leaving him or his town to the Starlights’ fate. She’d seen the fiend fall, would see it again whenever she closed her eyes. She planned on fighting, by herself if necessary. Otherwise, if the gangs could rout her at every turn, if they could dog her steps, destroy everyone she tried to assist, how could she call herself a Granter?
If she couldn’t help this town, how could she help anyone?
She didn’t know if it was the Starlights, or Marten or that arrow standing from the fiend’s chest, but something had hardened into a stubborn knot inside her. She didn’t want to run anymore. She wanted to chase the gang out of Westwood. Even as she jogged past the blacksmith’s shop, as she ducked her head to avoid the gazes of the Starlights inside the shed, waiting for their turn at armoring, she knew she had to try. She had to help the whole town, to face down a gang and survive.
