Caprion's Wings (8 page)

He nodded. “Yes.”

She glanced over him again. “But…where
are your wings?” Her voice came out in a rasp. It sounded
painful.

“My wings?” he asked distractedly. The
sunstone gleamed at her throat. He looked closer and noticed the
skin around her collar: red and ruptured, blistered and burned.
Blood trickled from the iron collar to her neckline. He stared at
the wound on her neck, his unease turning to horror. How could his
people do this to a child?

She looked at him shyly. “You’re the
first Harpy I’ve ever seen without wings. Can you fly?”

Caprion had the sudden,
terrible urge to laugh.
Even here,
he thought,
deep down in
the bowels of the earth, I am still being asked that
question!
He shook his head in irony. Was
it wise to share his wingless state with this girl? Perhaps she
would realize his weakness and attack....
Damn it all,
he thought.
She’s in a far worse state than I am!

"I have yet to earn my wings," he said
bluntly.

"So you can't fly?"

He frowned. “No, I can't.” His hand
hovered closer to his sword, just in case.

A grin suddenly split the girl's face,
and the sheer simplicity of it struck him: her curving, slanted
eyes framed by dark lashes, and a teasing dimple on her left cheek.
She didn't look like a demon. Just a young, delicate girl sitting
in the darkness, small for her age, bruised and burned and still
speaking to him as though they stood on a street corner. He decided
she must be older than he first assumed, perhaps the same age as
his sister, around thirteen. Six years younger than himself. Soon,
she would be thrown to the wolves. He felt empty at the
thought.

"It’s good that you can’t fly," she
said. "Their wings hurt my eyes. You're very easy to look at." And
she stared at him for a long moment as though to make her point. As
her eyes searched his face, another small smile touched her lips,
completely secretive. He couldn't guess her thoughts.

"Well," Caprion stuttered, “uh…thank
you.” He had nothing better to say.

“Have you come to let me out?” she
asked hopefully.

He swallowed, wishing he could give
her a happier answer. “No,” he said.

Her face fell, and his heart plummeted
with it.

“Why are you here, then?” she asked
cautiously. Her eyes narrowed. There it was—the face of an
assassin, surprisingly cold and calculating.

The look gave him
pause.
She’s still a
demon
, he thought.
You can’t trust her.
But she
appeared firmly chained to the wall and he couldn't imagine her
breaking loose. She couldn’t attack him, and she was still young,
far from a full-fledged assassin. And perhaps…perhaps she knew
something that could help him.
Don’t be a
coward,
he thought.

“I'm looking for answers, I suppose,”
he began softly.

She gazed up at him, completely
focused. “Answers to what?” she asked curiously.

Caprion decided to tell her the truth.
"I am trying to earn my wings, you see,” he said, watching for her
reaction. “But I keep having the same dream. That's why I'm here.”
He described it as he had to Florentine that morning. The girl
didn't ask what a Singing was, nor why the dark voice bothered him,
and he wondered if she truly understood.

When he finished, she sat quietly and
lingered on his story, or perhaps thought of something else
entirely, he couldn't know for sure. The lizard chose that moment
to escape from her hand. It darted agilely up her wrist into the
sleeve of her shirt, and she snatched it with her left hand through
the fabric. With a slight grimace, she pulled it out of her sleeve,
then set the lizard back on the ground, allowing it to scurry
away.

Caprion stared. Her hand moved so
fast, he hardly even saw it.

Then she answered him. “Since I came
here, I’ve heard a voice, too.”

Caprion paused at her words. On
impulse, he knelt down to her level, bringing them eye to eye. “A
voice?” he asked. “Like what I described?”

She nodded. “Yes,” she said. “It comes
from deep in the earth.”

“What does it say?”

She looked troubled. She
shifted, her chains clinking. He had to wonder, briefly, if she was
lying. Her face remained a perfect mask, impossible to read. “It
calls to us through the shadows,” she finally said. “It says
find me
. I’ve only heard
it twice; I haven’t been here very long. But perhaps it’s the same
voice you hear.” She hesitated and gave him a searching look, as
though deciding if she could trust him. Finally, she said, “The
voice isn’t natural. I don’t trust it. I think…I think it’s a
demon."

Caprion sat back with a sigh. “Well of
course,” he said. “These halls are full of the Sixth
Race.”

“No,” she said abruptly.
“I don’t mean an assassin. I mean a
demon
. Don’t you know
anything?”

Caprion looked at her
questioningly. Her words reminded him of the conversation between
the Harpy soldiers.
A demon in the
crypts.
He didn’t know where the crypts
were, but by the soldiers’ words, they had to be deep
underground.

The girl struggled to keep her stoic,
close-lipped facade of the Sixth Race. But she couldn’t maintain
it; perhaps she was too young for that. “We are children of the
Dark God,” she finally said. “Inside each of us lives a demon, a
shard of the Dark God’s power. We train long and arduously to keep
the demon under control, but sometimes, we let go, we lose
ourselves… and the demon comes out….” She hesitated. “Some
assassins choose to become the demon. They embrace its dark and
violent power—and the human part is lost. Do you understand now?”
she pressed. “This is a demonic voice.”

Caprion understood—as much as he was
able to. He had learned this before, but he hadn’t studied the
Sixth Race in several years, not since graduating from the Academy.
He hadn’t realized the assassins and the demons were two separate
entities, somehow contained in the same body. In his mind, they
were one and the same.

He thought of the demon’s sibilant
voice and its threats against his race. His mind worked quickly,
considering his possibilities. If he went to Sumas with his
suspicion, his brother would call it a poor excuse for failing his
Singing. The demon was only a ghost story, after all. And if he
admitted to sneaking into the dungeons and speaking with a slave,
he might be imprisoned for treason. His trespass would not be taken
lightly.

Florentine might listen, but he knew
she would turn to the Madrigal first, and they would want to
consult the Matriarch before taking action. He wished that were
possible, but the Matriarch wouldn’t wake up for another few days.
Somehow he felt the pressure of losing time, like a silent
hourglass sucking away the minutes. He couldn’t wait on this; he
needed to take action now. Once he left the underground prisons, he
knew he wouldn’t be able to return.

“I need to seek out this voice,” he
finally concluded.

The girl’s eyes widened, her
assassin’s mask completely forgotten. “That would be very foolish.
Whatever is speaking to you isn’t human in the slightest. I would
stay far away from it.”

“I only mean to confront it,” he said.
“Not to fight it. And certainly not to help it.”

“Demons are deceptive,” she said
quietly. “And it’s unusual that you can hear it. You’d do better to
leave it alone.”

No,
he thought immediately. The word leapt from his heart,
vanquishing his doubt. He had played the coward before, bowing down
the Sumas, acquiescing, obeying the rules of others. But he
couldn’t do that now.
No, I can’t let
myself fall. I have to stand my ground….

And in that second, an immense
stillness washed through him, like the silence before a great
symphony. In his mind, he suddenly stood on the edge of Fury Rock,
the ground solid beneath him. The crevasse lay before him. Iron
courage rose unbidden from his heart; his throat swelled with a
Song summoned deep from his chest. It pressed against his ribs, an
immutable chorus not yet realized. He didn’t know this Song, and
yet it seemed born within him, staunching his fear.

No, he wouldn’t be pushed from that
ledge—he would leap for his wings, and he would take
them.

He looked at the girl. He realized he
was smiling.

“What?” she asked, watching him
curiously.

He didn’t know how to answer, didn’t
truly understand it himself, but somehow this young, fettered slave
had set him free.

“Do you have a name?” he asked
softly.

She shook her head. Of course,
children of the Sixth Race were born without names. They had to
earn them through combat, a custom that seemed needlessly cold.
“Then what shall I call you?” he asked.

“Whatever you’d like, I
suppose,” she said. “In the Hive, they called me
savant.
But they call
everyone that.” She hesitated, then looked away.

“I don’t think it suits you,” he
replied, observing her wide, slanting eyes and dark
hair.

She glanced up at him
strangely.

“I think I’ll call you Moss,” he
said.

“Moss….” she echoed, trying the name
on her tongue. “It’s not very fierce.”

Emboldened, he reached out and touched
her lightly on the nose. “For your eyes,” he said. “And your
darkness. Moss can only grow in shade.”

She smiled at him then, quick and
sudden, like a bird taking wing. “I like that,” she
said.

“Will you help me find this voice?” he
asked. “I’ll need the light of your sunstone, and your knowledge
about the demon.”

Moss thought for a moment. “But…” she
said slowly, almost sadly, “I like you without wings.”

Something about her tone softened him.
He touched her again on the arm, drawing her gaze back to his.
“Thank you,” he said earnestly. No one had ever told him that
before. “I wish I could stay longer, but I am running out of time.
It doesn’t seem right to leave you here. Let’s make a deal.” He
knew it was a foolish thing to do—more than foolish—but the
softness in his heart drove him to it. He couldn’t leave a small
child in this place.

As he spoke, he said the same words
deep within himself, lacing his promise with the power of Song.
“Help me find my wings, and I will make sure you’re freed,” he
said.

Her eyes widened. She heard the
resonating tone of his voice, the binding contract that lay between
them. “You will take me back to the mainland?”

Caprion hesitated only slightly. He
had never been there before, but he would do that for his wings. He
would do that for her. “Yes,” he said.

The word hung between them. She gazed
at him intently, as though trying to see beneath his skin. Slowly,
she frowned. “This is a spell, isn’t it? You will be bound by your
word.”

He nodded.
Foolish,
his thoughts
murmured, but he hushed them.

“Why would you do such a thing?” she
finally asked.

“Because you shouldn’t be in a place
like this,” he said, hoping she saw his sincerity. “And I want you
to trust me.”

Finally, she nodded. “Then I’ll help
you.”

Caprion grinned and stood, drawing his
sword. “Hold your hands out over the stone,” he said.

She looked up at him, surprised, then
did as he asked, planting her hands wide apart on the firm ground.
Her rusty chains did not look very strong. He picked out the
weakest link. Taking careful aim, he swung his heavy blade down and
snapped the chain in two with a shower of sparks. Moss gasped and
flinched back, then raised her freed hands before her eyes, flexing
her wrists.

“Now your neck,” he said, indicating
the chain that bound her to the wall. Moss scuttled to one side and
he repeated the action, hacking three times before the chain
finally shattered apart.

“Can you remove the collar?” she
asked.

He knelt next to her in the dark room,
not thinking twice about her freed hands or the possibility of an
attack. A natural rhythm seemed to fall between them—a trust born
of silent need. In this cold and gloomy place, they only had one
another. He moved her thick hair out of the way and inspected the
metal collar around her neck, looking for a clasp. He couldn’t find
one. It took him a moment to realize the sunstone worked as a lock;
in order to free her, he would have to deactivate it, and he
couldn’t do that unless he had wings. Without his star, he had no
power over the Light.

“I’m sorry,” he finally said, sitting
back on his heels. “I need my wings first. But once I get them, I
will take this off.”

She looked at him, searching his face
doubtfully; in that moment, she looked painfully small and
vulnerable. But his promise, made of words and Song, could not be
broken. In many ways he had chained himself to her fate, and she
seemed to realize that. She would have sensed it when he spoke the
words.