“I do have one theory,” he said flatly, as if my entire tirade hadn’t taken place, “about this fever.”
“What?” I asked guardedly.
“There’s no magical connection between the humans and the vampires,” he said, “but I cannot read your power well enough to know whether there might be a connection between you and the vampires. There is a chance that killing you might save them. Would you like me to try?”
The words were said so calmly and coldly that it took me a moment to realize he really had said what I thought I had heard.
Killing you might save them.
A few weeks ago I might have accepted that sacrifice as no more than my duty as a grateful child. My life for all of theirs? Easy trade. In the abstract. In reality—
“I don’t want to die,” I whispered.
Malachi had suggested it as a possibility, not a certainty. What if I knew for sure? Knew that, with my death, I could save everyone—the vampires, the humans who were still sick, everyone. What then? Was my single life worth so much?
I wanted to scream, Yes! It’s my life!
I didn’t choose this. I didn’t deserve to die.
THE DOOR OPENED, and I had thrown myself at Mistress Jeshickah’s feet before I realized that if Malachi told her that killing me might save the trainers, she would do so in the blink of an eye. I knew my value to her—it was exactly correlated with my usefulness.
“What have you learned?” she asked.
Malachi explained about the slaves’ blood, and why they died at the end. He shared his theory about why the Azteka could not have known this would happen and concluded by saying that there was little else he could do from down here.
I made my decision in silence: I would not volunteer to end my life. I couldn’t stop Malachi from speaking and knew I had no hope of defending myself if Mistress Jeshickah decided I needed to die, but I wouldn’t sacrifice myself, not for anyone. I wasn’t a slave, I didn’t need to selflessly put my owners before my own well-being. The Mistress of Midnight wasn’t my mistress. Not anymore.
“Someone needs to look directly at the trainers,” Malachi said. “Preferably someone more competent than I am.”
“Did you learn anything about our little bird?” Jeshickah asked.
I braced myself. The only decision left to make was whether I would try to run or try to fight, even though I knew either was useless.
Malachi looked at me for a moment before turning back to Jeshickah to say, “I cannot read his power well enough to tell if there is any lingering connection between him and your vampires. However, I have seen what happens to humans when the magical infection is suddenly gone. If Vance dies, it could kill the trainers.”
I wasn’t sure I hid my shock very well, so I was grateful that they were looking at each other, not me. That was the exact opposite of what he had said to me. Had he been lying to frighten me earlier? Was he trying to protect me now?
I was smart enough not to ask.
Instead, I asked, “What is wrong with the … the trainers?” Malachi always called them that, and Jeshickah seemed to accept that as a term for all of them, but my first impulse was still to call them all by name. “I mean, exactly?”
Part of me recognized that the precise symptoms might tell us more about the illness and therefore help us heal it, but more of me just wanted to know what was happening. It was hard to imagine Taro or Jaguar falling ill.
“Good question,” Malachi said. “And I think you knew you would need to answer it eventually.”
“All of them are unconscious now,” Jeshickah said. “It started with vivid dreams and increased hunger.”
“Did anyone remark on how odd the dreams were when they first occurred?” Malachi asked. To me he added, “Vampires don’t dream.”
“Jaguar assumed—rightly—that they were a side effect of taking Vance’s blood. Taro did as well. Sometimes that happens when we feed on someone powerful. It has never led to this.”
“What kind of dreams?” I asked. Jeshickah gave me a look that asked, “Does it matter?” so I added, “I want to know whether they are the same as the ones I had.”
“Jaguar and Taro both described them as pleasant,” Jeshickah answered. “They have very different preferences, so I would be surprised to learn the dreams were identical. Normally I would be able to see for myself, but something about the illness keeps me out.”
“Can I see Taro?” I asked. “Please. He has always been good to me. I hate thinking about him ill.”
Manipulative or not, Taro was all I had known for so long. I needed to know if I could look at his face once more and still consciously decide to put my life before his.
Malachi made a sickened sound and turned away, leaving me to face Jeshickah on my own.
“I didn’t mean to do this,” I added, pleading.
“You just want to get out of this box,” she replied. “Very well. You may come upstairs. As it turns out, I am inclined to believe that you are as innocent as a Trojan horse.”
I wished I could argue with her metaphor, but it was too accurate. None of this had been my intention, but the attack had still come from inside me.
“In exchange for your release, you can carry a message to the marketplace for me,” Jeshickah said. “You ride well enough to follow the path, correct?”
I nodded. I had been to the market more than once.
“You’re opening him up to assassination, you know,” Malachi said.
“Perhaps,” she replied without concern. “Come with me, Vance.”
She left Malachi locked away and took me to her study. As she sat at her desk and began to draft a letter, my gaze was drawn to the black wooden door, now open to reveal Taro, Jaguar, Gabriel, and another trainer lying on the veined marble floor. Blankets had been placed under them as if to protect them from the cold stone, but they didn’t seem to notice. Even Taro’s dark skin seemed pale and sallow.
I’m sorry, I thought.
“Jaguar thought you had potential,” Jeshickah said. I jumped at her voice, just over my shoulder. “Even once the pochtecatl convinced us that your magic was useless, my Jaguar insisted that, in a few years’ time, he could make you into a man who would thrive in our world. He thought you could be one of us.”
She held out two cylindrical letter cases. “If he survives,” she said, “I suppose the offer will still be open. Return, and you can live as a prince. If he dies, then for his sake I will warn you never to cross my path again.”
I swallowed thickly and took the letters from her with trembling hands. Malachi had said that trainers took free souls and made them into slaves, stripping them of free will and passion. What had they been trying to twist me into?
A man who would thrive in our world. A man who didn’t flinch at the sight of blood and pain but accepted a slave’s servitude as necessary and right. A man who could dismiss vicious punishment as appropriate, and who could cut into a girl’s arm and draw blood for his own gain.
“Deliver these to the marketplace,” Jeshickah said, as if unaware of my reeling horror. “One is to be hung on the message post. The guards can show you where it is. The other should be given to the pochteca directly or left on their stall. It will be dark before you return, so you should stable the horse you ride at the market. You may sleep in the guards’ cabin if you wish.”
“Should I return in the morning?” I asked when I realized she was done with her instructions.
“As long as you deliver those letters and leave my horse in the market stables, I do not care where you go afterward. As I said, Jaguar had a plan for you. I have none.”
After everything, how did those words still have the power to cut? Old habits. Sometimes the heart is not quick to believe the mind.
“Go now,” Jeshickah snapped. “I have no desire to look at you unless you can be useful.”
I turned and fled. I did not know what the letters said, and I didn’t dare ask. It didn’t matter. Whether the letters contained th
reats, slander, or pleas for assistance, I was powerless to respond.
As I reached the stables and saddled my horse, I tried to squash a twinge of guilt about leaving Malachi behind. I couldn’t quite manage it.
I had meant every word I said. I didn’t trust him, didn’t like him, didn’t think he was innocent … but neither was I. If Malachi was responsible for the plague, I wanted him far away from me, but he didn’t deserve to die the way Jeshickah might kill him.
So I rode, with my thoughts lost somewhere between the clouds and the dust. It was not a short ride to the market, and I did not arrive until about an hour before sunset. The square was tightly packed with people of all kinds. They watched me as I stabled Mistress Jeshickah’s horse safely before wading into the press of merchants and customers.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my friend the Shantel guard watching me protectively. Though he wasn’t obviously following me, every time I looked up I could see him just within my field of vision.
I found the message post without needing any help, but the pochteca had not returned to the market yet. Their absence spared me a messy confrontation but also denied me the opportunity to ask any questions as I tacked the second letter to the outside of their stall.
Having accomplished my mission I flagged down the guard so I could ask him the way to the guards’ cabin, so I could sleep before …
Before what? Where was I going to go? Jeshickah had made it clear that she didn’t want me around. There was nothing I could do for Malachi, or for any of the slaves dying in Midnight. Malachi had warned that my coming here could be dangerous, but he didn’t seem to realize that I still had nowhere else to go. I didn’t even know how to find the Azteka if I wanted to.
Someone pushed past me to look at the notice I had just posted.
He read it and swore before looking up at me and then backing away, never breaking eye contact until he could turn and disappear into the crowd.
I took a step back, keeping my eyes on the quickly growing crowd. I couldn’t make out any individual words over the general din of conversation, but I could recognize the growing hostility. What had I just posted?
“You son of a—”
A woman grabbed my arm, shouting at me, but someone else pulled her back. “Leave him alone. You don’t want to get involved.”
Some continued shouting. Others turned away, as if they either didn’t care or were pretending not to care. None of those who were still looking at me appeared friendly.
Why should they be? I had never done anything good for any of them. I had been taught to think only of myself and my “betters.”
I changed shape and rose above the crowd. A brisk spring breeze above the tree line threatened to push me off course, but I didn’t need to fight it for long. I just needed to land by the stables, where the guard quickly found me.
As I saw it, I had only two options: go back to Midnight, where I could beg Mistress Jeshickah to let me work in exchange for a place to stay, or wait for the pochteca and see if the offer to go with them was still open. Either way I knew I would be stepping into life as a servant—or worse: working for either the woman who had made it clear my life meant nothing to her or the people who might have poisoned me.
The decision would be made in the morning. For now, the sun was setting.
“Travel back down that path,” the guard directed me once I explained my situation, “and turn left at the fork. The way is a little narrower than the one you took down here, but you shouldn’t have trouble finding it. The cabin isn’t far. It has its own stables, so you don’t have to leave Mistress Jeshickah’s horse here with the riffraff.”
“Thank you.”
“Vance?” he called as I mounted my horse and prepared to head out. “I don’t know what you just posted, but it obviously wasn’t something that crowd liked. They will blame you for it. Most of them are too selfish or too cowardly to go after the actual trainers, but you would make a good scapegoat for someone who wants to feel big and powerful by killing a kid who is only doing what he was raised to do.”
I considered his words as I started down the path he had indicated.
Most of them are too selfish or too cowardly to go after the actual trainers. Didn’t I fall into that same category? Didn’t he? I was selfish. I was a coward. Even if we could cure the trainers and Jaguar was willing to take me back as his protégé, I couldn’t go back to the life I had lived. I would miss his teasing and his irreverent humor, but I didn’t want to become the man he wanted to make me.
Suddenly I heard a wavering yelp from up in the trees, and the next thing I knew I was falling from the horse with the breath knocked out of my lungs.
The horse! I thought frantically. I couldn’t damage another one. One of the people who had just attacked me had grabbed the horse’s reins before it could bolt.
Someone else caught me as I fell, but not as if they were trying to protect me.
I tried to shapeshift, but my captor shoved me down. Then there were cold chains going around my wrists; the next time I tried to change into my quetzal form, I felt the metal at my spine and let out a shriek, falling back into human form.
They dragged me off the path. I looked up to see a half dozen figures around me, all armed with a combination of staves and blades.
“You shouldn’t—”
“I’m not afraid,” a woman’s voice said before one of her fellows seemed to try to caution her back, away from me.
She walked forward until she was standing above me, staring down with her expression utterly impassive.
Her clothes were simple, leather and cloth in the colors of the winter forest, including sturdy boots and gauntlets tipped with copper bands. She wore several daggers of various sizes across the backs of her knuckles. Her skin was fair despite its tan, but what struck me were her pale, moss-green eyes, and hair the color of snow sparkling in the sunlight.
I had only ever seen that kind of hair once before.
“Malachi’s sister,” I guessed aloud.
“This is extreme, Misha,” someone objected from outside of my slim field of vision. “We have no reason to believe Malachi is even in danger, much less—”
“I know,” the white-haired serpent, Misha, snapped back. “Believe me or don’t. I care not.”
She knelt down and looked like she was going to say something—maybe something comforting, like “We won’t hurt you”—but instead she produced a cloth, which she placed over my mouth and nose. After my first protest and inhalation, the forest around me began to warp and spin. After the second the trees and sky and everything around me turned black.
THE FIRST WORDS I heard, before I even dared to open my eyes, were “The birdie is awake.”
Not until you woke me up, I thought groggily.
I tensed and opened my eyes cautiously, as if my enemies might not be able to see me if I didn’t look at them. Instead of the white-haired woman, I saw a girl with cinnamon-brown hair pulled back in a large braid, and wide green eyes. Her face had a kind of soft, rounded quality that made her seem friendlier than her weapons indicated. She couldn’t have been much older than I was.
“Hi,” she said. “Sorry we had to knock you out, but you are like a little puppy dog to the trainers, and we couldn’t be convinced you wouldn’t show them the way.”
I sat up, inching away. My wrists were no longer bound, but I remembered how easily Malachi had caught me when I tried to fly. I needed to figure out what these people were before I could form an escape plan.
“We hope you will stay long enough to talk,” the green-eyed girl said, “but we haven’t kidnapped you. You’re free to go when you want to go.”
I was so tired of people telling me I was free to go only when they knew perfectly well that I wouldn’t. “What about my being able to show people the way here?” I asked. If they had to knock me out to bring me here, why would they let me leave on my own?
“You won’t learn the way by leaving,” she said. “That’s
how the magic works. You would only know how to get back if one of us showed you how to get here in the first place. Magic is funny like that.”
“Yeah. Funny,” I repeated flatly, thinking of the magic I had experienced so far.
“We don’t intend to hurt you,” she said, “unless you try to hurt us first. Which you won’t, right?”
“Right,” I said. I had no fighting experience. I was not about to assault this heavily armed group.
“Good. Now that we’ve established all that, you’re Vance, and I’m Kadee,” she said. “You met Misha earlier. Over there is Torquil. Most of the others are avoiding you.” She waved to a man kneeling in front of the fire pit at the center of the camp we seemed to be in. He waved back briefly before returning his attention to the tinder. “You mentioned Malachi earlier.”
“You’re his family,” I said. Though looking at Kadee and Torquil made it obvious the relationship wasn’t one of blood, that didn’t mean they couldn’t be kin.
“Absolutely,” Kadee replied. “And who are you?”
“I’m Vance,” I said, confused. She knew that; she had said it. She had also referred to me as Jeshickah’s “puppy dog,” and though I didn’t like the description, it made it clear that Kadee knew my relationship with Midnight.
“Yes, obviously,” Kadee said. “You were abandoned by the Azteka and raised by the trainers. You lived in Brina’s greenhouse for a while before moving to Midnight proper. Malachi told us all that. But who are you?”
I stared at her. She had just summarized my life. What else did she want?
“That’s what has been done to you, or around you,” Kadee said. “I want to know who you are, inside, when you think and feel and speak for yourself.”
“I …” I trailed off, looking around for some kind of inspiration in the sparse camp. None was forthcoming. “I have no idea what you want from me right now.”