Voice of Crow (16 page)

“Think they’d risk cutting across open land?” she asked Marek.

“It’d be quicker.” He shifted his bow. “Let’s go.”

She grabbed his arm, unaccustomed to being the cautious one. “Let’s try both ways. You take the field, I’ll take the woods. If one of us keeps the scent, we’ll signal.”

Marek nodded, his face like a pale stone, then took off.

Alanka drew another whiff of the child’s shirt, then stuffed it into the back pocket of her trousers and entered the thicket of trees to her right. There were no trails here, and dead blackberry vines clawed at her trousers.

She had taken fewer than twenty steps when she heard Marek’s whistle. She shoved her way through the brambles to the edge of the field. He stood at the bottom of the hill, flailing both arms at her. She waved back and headed toward him. When he saw she was on her way, he took off again.

“Slower,” she muttered, “or we’ll lose the trail.”

Another thought occurred to her, borne from years of blundering into dangerous situations—from which Marek had often saved her. If the kidnappers thought they were being followed, they might wait in ambush. She wished Marek would turn invisible, but he was probably using his magic for speed and stamina instead of stealth.

She slowed her pace and stooped into a crouching run, refocusing her powers to soften her steps. The frozen grass made it difficult, shouting out her presence with loud crunches.

When she reached the spot where Marek had signaled her, she found a white blanket that reeked of the baby. Poor thing, his diaper needed changing. But it made Nilik’s scent easier to trace. She followed the scent downhill.

The terrain turned to woods again. The presence of mottled, twisted sycamore trunks told Alanka they were nearing the river. Her ears strained to hear the flowing current, but a rising wind clattered the branches above her.

A trail cut through the woods, and she saw Marek ahead, plunging downhill with unusual recklessness. She could smell the river now. Were they too late?

A few steps later, she knew the answer. No. There were others here, and—

“Stop!” cried a booming male voice far in front of her.

Alanka dropped to her knees, then crept forward to take cover behind a thick arrowwood bush half her height. She peered over the top. Marek was trapped between two sword-wielding men, one of whom had taken his bow and arrows. They weren’t wearing uniforms, but the curve of their swords and the arrogance of their postures marked them as Descendant soldiers.

“Give me my son,” Marek said.

“We can’t do that. Leave now or we’ll cut your throat.”

“I won’t leave without my son.”

Alanka crept to the edge of the shrub to get a better look. Through the trees she saw a small boat, part of which was enclosed. A scruffily dressed man in his late twenties stepped out of this section, followed by a young woman cradling Nilik.

“We’re not here to shed blood,” the man in the boat told Marek. “But we’re taking the baby. Now, as the fellow with the blade at your neck asked so kindly, please leave.”

“I said, not without my son.”

Nilik wailed. The man scanned the riverbank with nervous eyes. “This is not a negotiation. Leave or die.”

“Take me with you,” Marek said.

Alanka put a hand over her mouth to muffle her gasp.

“Very funny,” the man said. “You’ll try to steal the child and escape.”

“I just want to take care of him.” Marek pointed to Nilik. “I can make him stop crying. Please.”

The woman on the boat nudged her companion, who turned to confer with her in tones too low for Alanka to hear. She scooted down the trail on her elbows and knees, hoping for a clear shot at the man or either of the soldiers. She had to wait until they lowered their swords. If she could shoot one, maybe Marek could disarm the other and retrieve Nilik. Maybe he was waiting for her to do just that, and offering to come with them as a distraction to buy time.

Her left shoe scuffed a twig, and Marek tilted his head. He knew she was there. The others didn’t react. She moved closer.

The man on the boat turned back to Marek. “If you come with us, you’ll be taken to the city of Leukos as a prisoner like your son. Is that what you want?”

“If it’s a choice between that and never seeing him again, then yes, it’s what I want.”

Keep talking, Marek.
Alanka inched forward to a place where the trail dropped off steeply, giving her a clear view of the sword wielders’ backs. She slipped an arrow from her quiver.

The man motioned to the soldier holding Marek’s bow and arrows. “Leave his weapon behind and bring him. The price he fetches better be worth our trouble.”

The guards each took one of his arms and lowered their swords to lead him to the boat. Now was her chance.

Alanka rose to her knees and nocked the arrow. She aimed with a surety born in the chaos of battle. The bowstring stretched taut.

The world grew bright with fire. Through the smoke of the battlefield the Descendants came, swords raised. She shot one in the shoulder, her arrow penetrating his armor like a needle through fabric. He laughed and kept running toward the archers’ line. Someone else shot him again, in the stomach. His laughter mixed with a scream as he lifted his sword and lunged for Alanka.

When he was a few steps away, she shot him in the throat. He stopped laughing, stopped screaming, stopped everything, and stared at her. The light in his eyes, rather than fading, flared with a fear she’d never seen in the eyes of an animal—the fear of death. She knew she should turn away and defend the line, but something held her gaze. She waited and watched.

The soldier stood rigid, blood-soaked fingers fumbling at his neck. His mouth opened and closed twice, then twice again. His gaze pleaded with her to take back the arrow’s flight, make it so that all this never happened.

A day seemed to pass before he fell.

When his body hit the grass, the ground shattered.

Alanka looked around. The battlefield was gone and the riverbank, empty.

“No…”

She lowered her bow and ran to the water’s edge. The Descendant boat, with Marek on it, was swept away by the swift current at the center of the river. He was gone.

Alanka sank to her knees, releasing a howl of anguish. Marek had known she was there, known she’d abandoned him when he needed her. She clutched her hair, rocked forward, and pressed her forehead against the cold, hard mud. Arrows spilled from the open quiver on her back, raining over her head and onto the ground, useless. She howled again, wishing she could shoot each one into her own heart.

One of Medus’s officers ran up. “Two other infants were stolen, at the southern end of town.”

Rhia gasped. “When?”

“About an hour ago,” the officer said. “The same time as yours. The parents were injured in the abductions.”

“Wake everyone,” Medus said. “Red alert. We’re under attack.”

The hospital door opened. Rhia turned to see Damen, his face grim and his apron stained with blood from Coranna’s burial preparations.

“Alanka’s back,” he said.

Rhia’s stomach lurched at the absence of Marek’s name. She entered the hospital, followed by Medus and his officer. Alanka stood in the front room, panting, her black hair bedraggled. She held two bows, one of them Marek’s.

“No…” Rhia’s throat constricted on the scream she wanted to hurl.

“Rhia, they’re alive. They’re safe.” Alanka gulped a breath. “But they’re gone.”

“Gone?” After
alive
and
safe,
Rhia almost didn’t recognize the word. She repeated it, as if to confirm its meaning. “Gone? Gone where?”

“To Leukos. I saw them. Descendants. They offered to let Marek go, but he wouldn’t leave without Nilik. So they took him, too.” She stepped forward and pressed Nilik’s tiny shirt into Rhia’s hand. “I couldn’t stop them. They were all too close together and I couldn’t risk shooting Marek or Nilik and even if I’d taken out one, the others might have hurt them.” She clutched Rhia’s wrists, and her voice cracked. “I’m so sorry.”

Medus stepped forward and took Alanka’s arm. “Sit,” he said. “Tell us everything, from the beginning.”

She rattled off the story with a series of shaky breaths. Galen the Hawk entered and stood with the others, listening silently. Halfway through Alanka’s tale, Rhia’s mind began to spin.

Marek and Nilik couldn’t be gone. They couldn’t leave her life empty. She couldn’t go to bed tomorrow night alone, wake up the next day alone, and the next day and the next, stretching out until the day she died. They couldn’t be
gone.

Alanka fell silent, or maybe her voice had been drowned out by the shrieks in Rhia’s own mind. The sounds shifted and sloshed, then her world tilted like a capsized boat. She grabbed the wall and felt it slide past.

“Rhia!” Damen caught her under the arms. She opened her eyes to see the floor much closer than she’d remembered it.

Alanka dashed for the hallway, shouting for Zelia. Damen helped Rhia sit on a nearby chair.

The Otter healer rushed into the room. “Let’s get her into one of the beds.”

“No!” She couldn’t lie helpless while her husband and son were carried off. She shoved Damen’s arms away, then staggered to her feet. “I have to find them.”

“I’ll get some valerian,” Zelia said. “It’ll calm her down.”

“Don’t you dare calm me down.” Rhia wanted to claw the sympathy off the faces around her. “I’m going after my family.”

“There might be another way,” Galen said. “We’ll send a bird message at daybreak to Velekos. If it arrives in time, the Velekons can stop the Descendants.”

Rhia’s mind raced. It took a full day to sail to the bayside village. The kidnappers would arrive tomorrow night. If the pigeons didn’t make it in time for the Velekons to save Marek, she would go herself, even if she had to swim the Southern Sea.

Less than an hour later, Rhia paced the floor of Arcas and Galen’s kitchen, resisting the urge to look over Arcas’s shoulder as he worked at the table. She twisted Nilik’s shirt around her fingers, binding them so she wouldn’t smash every object in Galen’s house.

“Why would they take our babies?” she asked the Hawk. “To torture us?”

“I think they have a plan. If they just wanted to hurt us, they would have taken older children who are easier to care for and less likely to draw attention by crying.”

“So what’s the plan?” she said.

“To study our people’s abilities, I think.” At the stove, Galen poured three mugs of steaming chicory. “If Filip can gain magic, then maybe the Spirits reside in a place, not a person, which means our people might lose power in their land. If so, the Descendants no doubt wonder what would happen if one of us spent his whole life in Ilios.”

“They’re using our babies to experiment on us?” Her skin felt covered in centipedes.

Galen rested a hand on Rhia’s shoulder. “It means he’s not in immediate danger, which gives us time.”

She took a mug of chicory from him, grateful that he understood she needed something to keep her alert, not to soothe her. “Alanka said the boat she saw was small, probably not seaworthy. So the kidnappers will stop and change ships in Velekos.”

“And if they dock at night,” Galen added, “Marek can turn himself and Nilik invisible to help them get away.”

Rhia thought of the other two Asermon infants on board. Would he leave them behind to save himself and his son? Spirits forgive her, but she hoped he would.

“If the Velekons don’t stop them,” she said, “I’m going to Leukos.”

He held up a hand. “We’ll send others. You’re our only Crow.”

“I’m also Nilik’s only mother, Marek’s only wife. I’m going.”

“You have no experience in this sort of operation.”

“Neither do you, but you’d go if they took your son.”

They looked at Arcas, who didn’t blink at their mention of him. His dark blue eyes stared through the wall in a Spider trance as his thick hand moved the sharpened charcoal across the parchment. Tall, broad and dark, he still held the demeanor of the Bear Spirit he’d coveted all his life, the Spirit who never appeared at his Bestowing.

Galen turned back to her. “I can’t keep you from trying to save your family. But be sure to take support. You’ll undoubtedly receive many offers of assistance from other Asermons.”

She knew it had nothing to do with neighborly generosity. “Because they think Nilik’s the Raven baby.”

“It could be.”

She shook her head. “I’ll take those I know are helping because they love us, not because of some prophecy. That way I’ll be sure of their commitment.”

“Nevertheless, I’ll make sure the Velekons know the importance of the child they’ll be rescuing tomorrow night.”

“How’s this?”

They turned to see Arcas, out of his Spider trance, holding out the parchment. Rhia took it and wanted to weep. On the page was a perfect likeness of Marek’s face.

“How did you do it?” she asked.

Arcas shrugged. “I know that face well. I spent many a night contemplating it in my memory, wondering how you could choose it over this.” His fingertips displayed his own face, then he gave a grim smile. “Sorry. Not a time for jokes.”

Galen examined the picture over Rhia’s shoulder. “Can you make three more before dawn?” he asked his son. “I’d like to send all four pigeons to ensure the message arrives.”

“I’ll do my best.” Arcas reached for a knife to sharpen his stick of charcoal. “I wish I’d met Nilik more than once and could do his picture, too. Babies all look alike to me.”

“Babies will be easier than Marek for the Descendants to hide,” Galen said. “The Velekons will be looking for a ship with him on it.”

When Arcas had settled into another trance, Rhia whispered to Galen, “How did the Descendants know where to find the newborns? There must have been a spy.”

“Indeed. And I intend to find that spy.” Galen picked up the tiny tube that would attach to the pigeon’s leg, then reached out for Marek’s picture. Rhia held on to it, searing her memory with the face she might never see again.

No. She would find him if it took the rest of her life.

Her fingers, no longer trembling, released the picture.

Nilik cried.

Marek shifted the boy from one aching arm to another to try to settle him, keeping his little face shielded from the night’s bitter wind. The boat was rocking more, having hit a rapid stretch of river, and Marek had to concentrate to keep from sliding off the bench built into the stern.

He hoped the baby’s noise would alert someone on the riverbank to their dilemma, assuming the sound of the water didn’t smother it. But the soldiers—if that’s what they were—shot Nilik a hostile glance every time he so much as gurgled. Marek wouldn’t put it past the Descendants to throw a child overboard if it jeopardized their mission.

He crooned a nonsensical string of words to the baby, lilting his voice the way Nilik seemed to like. But he knew that this particular cry, at this time of night, meant that nothing would soothe his son but food.

“Can’t you shut him up?” asked the ugliest of the six soldiers who flanked Marek—four on one side, two on the other, to balance the boat against the wind’s pull.

“He’s hungry,” Marek said.

“So am I, but you don’t hear me whining.”

The other soldiers laughed, but silenced when the woman came out of the cabin below. She was dressed simply, in a long gray dress that covered her from neck to toes. When the wind tossed her dark hair across her face, she pulled a cowl over her head, making her look like a turtle with its nose poking out of its shell.

“I’ll take him.” As she reached for Nilik, her sleeves fell back to reveal slender wrists and hands. Marek reluctantly passed his son to her.

She sat beside him and unfastened the front of her dress so that Nilik could feed. Marek was half relieved and half dismayed at how willingly the child acquiesced. His tiny fist opened and closed as he drank. Two of the soldiers watched them, while the others scanned the riverbanks.

“I’m glad you’re along,” the woman said to Marek. “It will be less work for me. Four babies, one of them my own.”

“What’s your baby’s name?” he asked in a whisper.

“Neyla. She’s five months old.”

“Pretty name. And yours?”

“Mila.”

“Mila, I’m Marek. And this is—”

“Don’t tell me his name.”

“His name is Nilik.”

She blinked hard. “Not for long.”

“Is it easier for you not to know their names? That way you can’t imagine the pain felt by the people who named them?”

“Stop it.”

“His mother’s name is Rhia. My wife. Think how she must feel.” His throat closed for a moment. “Imagine if someone ripped your child out of your arms.”

Mila trembled, hard enough that Nilik broke off and cried. Marek stroked his son’s light brown tuft of hair. Soon the boy fed again, hunger overtaking fear for the moment.

Marek looked eastward to the lightening horizon. At this part of the river, a quarter of the way between Asermos and Velekos, the banks steepened. Memories from his trips south told him that cliffs would soon surround the channel, cutting them off from the stray hunters, fishers and trappers living between the villages. By the time the sun rose, if someone saw the abductors’ vessel, there would be no way to reach them. The Descendants had timed their escape well.

Inside the boat, another child whimpered. Mila sighed. “Come with me,” she said.

Marek helped her down the stairs into the cabin. One of the soldiers followed them, clasping Marek’s shoulder tightly.

The close space felt suffocating, though it was warmly lit by lanterns fixed to the wall, one in each corner. An open doorway on the other side showed a small cockpit, where the captain, with one hand on the wheel, was leaning over a table to examine a chart. He didn’t acknowledge Marek’s and Mila’s entrance.

One of the babies on the left berth was crying. Mila nodded to it. “See if she needs changing.”

“She doesn’t, I can smell.” Marek pointed to the baby on their right, who slept alone. “That one needs changing.”

“Then do it.” She sank into a chair in the corner. “But first hand me Neyla. That’s the crying one.”

He did as she asked, exchanging Neyla for Nilik, whom he placed in the left bed. Then he found the babies’ supplies in a wall compartment. Keeping one eye on Mila and the captain, he cleaned the squealing young Asermon.

“Did they kill this one’s guardians?” he asked.

Mila looked at him, mouth open.

“They slaughtered an old woman to get Nilik,” he told her. “Stabbed her in the stomach. Did you know that?”

She spoke to the captain. “Sareb, is that true?”

“Of course not,” he said laconically, without looking up.

“Liar,” Marek snarled. “What do you want from us?”

Sareb set down the chart with a sigh and turned to Marek. “We’re just doing what we were hired to do, Mila and me. The others, they’re following orders, like good little soldiers.” He crossed his arms and leaned his shoulder against the door frame. “We don’t want to hurt you, but we won’t mind it, either.”

Marek looked at the soldier by the door, who mirrored the captain’s smirk. Swallowing the lump of rage in his throat, he reached for a clean diaper. He had to stay alive for his son. Based on how the Descendants had treated him in their army camp, Marek expected to be beaten or worse when they arrived in Leukos.