“Do you hear that?” she asked, craning her head in the direction of the explosion.
Rollan’s brows went up. “I think everyone heard that, Abeke.”
“No,” she said. “Not the blast. I mean the cheering.” She didn’t wait for him to answer, but started walking, eyes half-lidded, letting her ears sharpen and pick apart the sounds the way she did when tracking prey. Rollan followed, a stride behind, and as they wound through the city, Abeke could hear the sounds of celebration getting nearer. Shouts and cheers, interrupted by the whistles and pops of smaller fireworks.
All of a sudden they rounded a corner and found themselves at the edge of a growing crowd.
It looked like some kind of festival.
“Oh!” said Rollan, his spirits brightening as he took in the line of stalls. After a moment, his attention narrowed like a hawk, everything else forgotten. “I smell meat.”
Another firework exploded overhead, shaking the world like thunder—no, there was thunder there as well, rumbling through the clouds—and the people of Stetriol whistled and whooped. Rollan jogged away, but Abeke couldn’t tear her attention from the road, where people were pressing, shoulder to shoulder, jostling to see something around the bend. A procession. When she stretched onto her toes, she could see it rolling down the street toward them.
Men and women in the official blues and blacks of Stetriol waved sticks with bird-shaped kites fluttering on top. It looked like an entire flock. The sticks were a dozen different lengths, the paper birds atop them a dozen shapes and sizes—hawks and eagles, doves and geese—but they’d all been painted white.
Abeke frowned. It didn’t make sense. The symbol of Stetriol was a serpent, not a bird.
The air, still thick with impending rain, was now buzzing with excitement, but Abeke’s bad feeling was getting worse. “What do you think they’re celebrating?” she asked as Rollan reappeared at her elbow with two skewers of what looked like beef.
“Who knows,” he said, passing her one of the skewers. “Loosen up. Have a meat stick.”
But Abeke waved the food away. Between the brewing storm and the swarming crowd, she was beginning to feel dizzy. The warning plucked at her ribs, and she could almost feel Uraza’s coiled energy, her twitching tail, as Abeke’s vision sharpened. She scanned the crowd for danger.
Amid the blues and blacks and the fluttering streaks of white, the flash of a red cloak on the other side of the street caught her eye.
“Rollan, look!” she said, tugging on his sleeve. But by the time he turned his attention from his skewer to the crowd, the red had been swallowed up again by the other colors.
“What?” he asked, his mouth full of food.
Abeke shook her head. “I … I thought I saw—”
She was cut off by a round of fireworks. The sky lit up with bursts of white. The parade had almost reached them, swelling with every block. Men and women and children cheered as the birds swung and danced on the air.
“Excuse me,” said Abeke, touching the sleeve of a woman in front of her. “What is all this for? Is it a holiday?”
“Haven’t you heard?” said the woman, twisting toward them. Her face was painted with a swan. “Ninani has come to Stetriol!”
It was like a punch to the stomach.
Rollan cursed beneath his breath. “This isn’t good,” he said.
“No,” muttered Abeke. “It’s not.”
The arrival of the Great Beast in Stetriol should have stayed a secret. But Ernol was right. Word had obviously spread like fire. Abeke was just wondering how when she saw Ernol himself at the center of the crowd, waving a stick with a large white swan fluttering on top.
“That fool,” growled Rollan. “He has no idea what he’s doing!”
Another firework exploded. Abeke turned and tried to jostle her way through the crowd, swinging the green cloak back over her shoulders. She felt Rollan behind her but didn’t look back. They had to get to the castle. They had to find Tasha and Ninani and get away from Stetriol before word spread beyond its borders. Before it reached Zerif.
And then, just as she broke free of the crowd, it hit her.
A wave of sickness.
Suddenly Abeke swayed, feeling ill.
It wasn’t the same dizziness that had plagued her through the city with the brewing storm, but a bright, sharp sickness. Her nerves cramped and her muscles twisted around her bones. Pain burned through her, but just as she recognized what was happening and the terror of it hit her, the wave was gone. She could breathe again. She could move. She could think. It had lasted only a second. Long enough to knock the air from her lungs, long enough to make her shake, but even as she trembled, she stared down at her hands, confused. The first time the bonds had strained, the sickness had been much worse. It had seemed to last forever.
Rollan stood beside her, looking pale, his hand bleeding where he’d gripped the skewer too hard and it had broken, cutting into his palm. “Did you feel that?” he mumbled hoarsely. “That was … ”
Abeke swallowed. “Yeah, but it felt more like an aftershock than an event.”
“Yeah,” agreed Rollan nervously, “but doesn’t an aftershock usually come after?”
“Then maybe it wasn’t an aftershock,” she said, trembling. “Maybe it was a warning.”
Rollan opened his mouth, but before he could speak, something caught his attention.
“Hey,” he snapped over her head.
Abeke straightened, following his gaze, and saw red. The figure in the red cloak stood several yards away, noticing them as soon as they did him. Again and again he’d looked like a shadow, a ghost, but now he was very real, the ends of his cloak flicking and snapping in the stormy wind. His mask was smooth and empty, but behind it, his eyes were pale and sharp.
He inched back a step, and Abeke held up her hands. “Stop,” she said. “We just want to talk.”
For an instant, no one moved.
For an instant, she thought he’d stay.
And then a firework went off, shattering any chance of calm.
In the blast of sound and light, the masked boy spun and ran. Rollan growled and Abeke sighed, and the two of them took off at a sprint through the streets of Stetriol.
THE SKY SHUDDERED WITH THUNDER AND LIGHT.
The people cheered and sang and crowded in the streets, making it harder and harder to keep sight of the figure in red, let alone catch up to him.
Rollan was starting to wish he hadn’t eaten that skewer of meat.
Even with the crimson cloak standing out against the sea of cooler colors, the boy was fast—too fast. He wove through stalls and vanished for long seconds, only to reappear on the other side of a street or on a balcony, climbing a wall or running along the wooden spines of stalls.
The streets of Stetriol were less a grid than a tangled mess, but the stranger moved the way Rollan once had through the streets of Concorba during his years as an urchin, like he knew every crack in the ground, every twist and turn, every way to disappear.
How is he so fast? thought Rollan as they reached the edge of the crowd and swung a hairpin turn. The figure’s red cloak had been trailing like a tongue around the corner, but by the time they rounded it, he was gone. Rollan cursed and kicked a bin.
“Split up!” called Abeke, and before he could say that he thought that was a bad idea (because of the crowd and the storm and the fact that he still felt woozy from the weakened bond), she was gone, ducking down another side street in a blur of speed and grace.
“Enough of this,” grumbled Rollan, swinging the green cloak back around his shoulders.
He had spent enough time being chased to know the way a person fled when they wanted to lose a tail. He took a running jump, pushing off a stack of empty crates, and then the wall, nearly losing his balance before he caught the tiled edge of the roof and hauled himself up. Lightning forked across the darkening sky, and Essix’s screech cut through the air as he clambered up the slate tiles and got to his feet, s
canning the streets below. The city unfolded around him, a maze of roads, houses, courtyards, open in a way it hadn’t been from the ground. Sometimes, thought Rollan, you just need a change of perspective. Now, on the roof, he tried to see the city the way he would have back when he was a street thief in Concorba, back before he’d joined the Greencloaks. Before he’d become one of them.
Then again, now that he was one of them, Rollan had something he’d never had as a street urchin.
Rollan dropped to a crouch and closed his eyes.
He clutched the tiled roof as the world tipped away, his vision going dark, and then swinging back into focus, no longer on the roof, but overhead.
The change in perspective was dizzying, tunneling in and out with the weakening bond. Again Rollan wished he hadn’t eaten that food, but he wasn’t about to forfeit the contents on someone’s roof, so he tried to focus on Stetriol through Essix’s falcon eyes as she scanned the city, searching for a swatch of red.
The celebrations painted the city in bright colors below, sound tangling with light and movement, all so sharp and—
A firework detonated too close to Essix’s head, and for an instant Rollan’s vision went blinding white. He gasped, gripping the rooftop, but the falcon wasn’t wounded, only stunned, and he could feel her annoyance as she dipped and wove through the firework’s falling debris. Her vision—now his—returned, and as it did, Rollan saw the shape of the red cloak sprinting away down an alley two blocks south.
“Got you,” whispered Rollan, opening his eyes. His sight bottomed out, then settled back into his head. He took a single steadying breath before launching off along the roof’s edge, tracing the gutters and climbing the peaks until he caught sight of the red cloak rounding a corner up ahead.
From his vantage point on the roof, Rollan smiled.
The stranger in red must not know the city as well as he thought he did, because he was heading straight into a dead end. The sides of the narrow street were high, and instead of giving way onto another road, the alley turned a corner and ended abruptly in a brick wall, the back of some tavern or inn.
Rollan ran along the rooftops, and then, before the masked figure could realize his mistake, Rollan dropped from the courtyard wall and landed in a crouch before him, blocking the only way out.
“Aha!” he said with a grin. “Caught you.”
The figure turned, the silvery wood of his mask eerily smooth and faceless. Up close, there was nothing specter-like about the stranger. He was tall—taller than Rollan, anyway—and Rollan tried not to think about the way his opponent had taken on Suka the Polar Bear.
“Take off that mask,” said Rollan, taking a step forward and drawing his dagger. “There’s nowhere to go.”
He heard steps, and Abeke rounded the corner, skidding to a stop beside him when she saw the masked figure.
“Who are you?” she called out, breathless.
The boy in red didn’t speak. He held up his hands, eyes narrowed to slits behind his faceless mask. Rollan didn’t know if he was surrendering or telling them both to stay back. Then, in one fluid motion, the figure spun away and leaped, pushing with startling strength off the corner of the wall and vaulting one, two, three steps straight up the wall before landing on top of the roof. He didn’t flee. From his new perch the stranger turned to face them again, almost taunting.
“No, you don’t!” Rollan tried to follow, took a running start at the wall and jumped. He got one boot up, and almost got two, but before he could manage the second he lost his footing and fell back to the street, landing roughly on his backside. He could have really used Arax’s old talisman right about now.
“Okay,” he grumbled, getting to his feet. “You can stay up there … ” Over the stranger’s shoulder, he saw Essix diving, talons forward, and smirked. “… For all I care … ”
Essix screeched and sank her nails into the stranger’s back. Or at least, she meant to. At the last second the stranger spun, cloak billowing as he dodged Essix’s talons and somehow kept his balance on the roof’s edge. The falcon tried to bank, but the stranger’s hand shot out and caught Essix by the throat.
Rollan let out a panicked sound. Essix tried to claw her way free, but her talons raked uselessly against the stranger’s forearm, as if he were wearing armor. The stranger’s grip tightened.
“Stop!” cried Rollan, but the figure in red didn’t hurt the bird.
“Call her back,” he ordered, his voice low and gruff, slightly muffled by the mask.
Rollan didn’t hesitate, and neither did the falcon. He called Essix back to him, and Essix came; in a flash of light she vanished from the stranger’s hand and reappeared on Rollan’s skin. The masked figure turned his head sharply, as if hearing something in the distance. Something besides fireworks and thunder and song.
“Who are you?” demanded Abeke again. The figure’s masked face tipped down as he considered her. Another fork of lightning split the sky behind him, and his cloak fluttered ominously in the wind. “Why are you following us?” she added.
When at last the stranger answered, all he said was, “You should go.”
“Oh, yeah?” Rollan snapped. “Why don’t you come down here and make—”
“Why were you in the forest that day?” cut in Abeke. “And why are you here in Stetriol? Are you trying to collect the Great Beasts for yourself?”
The faceless mask tipped to the side. “No,” he said sternly. “We seek to protect the future from the past.”
Oh, great, thought Rollan. Now the stranger was talking in the royal we.
Again, something caught the masked boy’s attention. Something Rollan couldn’t see. “It’s not safe here,” he said. “You need to … ”
But his words trailed off, swallowed not by a rumble of thunder but by the rushing of blood in Rollan’s ears. An instant later, the crushing pain hit him, this time not in a warning, but in a wall. He could feel the bones in his body shudder in time with the Evertree as it trembled halfway across the world. Pain—crushing, tearing, lasting pain—tore through his body, and the next thing he knew he was on his hands and knees, trying not to black out.
He heard Abeke scream beside him, heard her small body collapse to the cobbled street. But Rollan couldn’t help her, couldn’t even call her name. He tried, but his jaw was clenched, teeth locked together in agony as he curled in on himself, something deep inside him twisting so hard he was sure it would break. Rollan’s vision swam, and he pressed his palms against his eyelids, trying desperately to make the stuttering vision stop.
And then, at last, he felt it.
A drop of cold rain broke the fevered spell of the tearing bond, dragging him back to his senses. Cold rain kissed his temple, his cheek. Cold rain slicked the ground beneath him and tapped a beat against his arms. Rollan wanted to stay there, curled on the alley floor, and let the rain wash over him until the last of the burning pain was gone. He wanted to, but he couldn’t. It felt like hours lost, when it was only minutes, and he had to get up.
Something was wrong. Hadn’t something been wrong?
A boy in red. A girl in white. A swan.
Ninani.
Stetriol.
The parade.
This is how his mind came back to him, in drops of rain.
Thunder rolled through, but it sounded too low, too close.
He heard Abeke’s shuddering breath beside him, saw her roll onto her stomach, then rise to her knees.
Everything ached, and his heart was pounding in his head, but he could move again, and he forced himself up to his hands and knees.
“You need to get up,” said a voice gruffly.
Rollan looked up. He’d expected the masked boy to be long gone, or at least atop the wall, but he was standing in the alley, masked face bowed over Rollan, boot prodding his shin. “Get. Up.”
“Who do you think you are?” snapped Rollan, staggering to his feet, his body still ringing with pain.
“You need to go now,” said the
figure in the red cloak. “They’re coming. They were waiting for you to stumble. Now they’re here.”
“What are you talking ab—” started Abeke, but she was cut off by an explosion.
Another firework, only this one wasn’t overhead.
The boom seemed to come from the top of a building nearby, and Rollan’s stomach turned as it was followed an instant later by a scream of terror, the rain of slate tiles crashing to the ground.
Why had someone shot off a firework so low?
In his dazed state, it took Rollan a moment to understand.
Stetriol wasn’t celebrating anymore.
The city was under attack.
CONOR WASN’T AFRAID OF SPIDERS, AND EVEN IF HE WAS, they were the least of his problems right now.
The group was halfway across the Arachane Fields when his hands started to shake again, and his vision tunneled, and the whispers began to weave through the music in his head. He was getting too tired too fast. He might actually have told Meilin that he needed to stop, needed a break to collect his energy, his thoughts, if they weren’t standing rather precariously in the middle of a sprawling spiderweb.
A strand away, Meilin made her way cautiously forward, along with Xanthe and Takoda.
Conor took a step and nearly missed the silver thread entirely when his vision doubled at the last instant. His breath caught as he fought for balance. The web trembled beneath him, and the nearest spider, its body amber and its limbs black, pivoted to look at him with its many, many, many eyes. Conor felt in that moment as if it could see the darkness roiling inside him.
The Arachane Fields … guard the way against evil.
And the spiders?
… catch anything the music doesn’t.
Conor swallowed. The spider chittered, and he could feel the parasite moving beneath his skin. But the more he thought about it, the more the spiders in the web seemed to think about him, so he wrestled with his panic and fear, tried to find calm the way he had so long ago, when he was only a shepherd tending a flock in Trunswick. How many hours had he spent there, gazing up at the sky, finding peace in the slow procession of clouds, the steady blue, or even the soothing sound of rain?