Queen of the Sylphs Read online

  Chapter Nine

  The largest warehouse in the Valley was one of the crowning glories of the town. It rose four stories into the air, the roof made of translucent colored glass that let in sunshine and reduced by far the number of lamps or fire sylphs that were needed. Heavy metal shelving was stacked in dozens of rows, all packed with goods either brought to the Valley or meant to be exported.

  With the majority of townspeople still rising at dawn and going to bed with the sun, most of the work here was done during daylight hours. Sylphs were active at night, of course, but they were mostly left to their own devices. This sometimes resulted in people waking up to find that groups of sylphs had become inventive during the night and created something. Occasionally, it was something huge. The warehouse was just such an event. So were enough stables to house a thousand horses, and one building with a pointed roof that reached nearly a hundred feet in the air. No one had figured out what to use it for yet.

  When a caravan arrived, though, no one went home early. Well after dusk the warehouse was still full of people and sylphs working to unload, unpack, set up. Dozens of locals labored to move goods from the wagons and pass them to air sylphs who carried them up for storage on the higher shelves. While this happened, the wagon masters argued with the warehouse mistress.

  Today they’d been in disagreement over where the wagon drivers were going to sleep and who was supposed to pay for their rooms. It was at the peak of this fight that one of the huge shelves lurched forward. It shuddered at first, no one even noticing, but then slowly tilted and began to tumble down, the beams screaming as they twisted and tore, showering bystanders with lumber, wool, metal, and more. All came crashing down, for the first shelf slammed into others, creating a cascade of destruction like collapsing dominoes.

  It lasted only seconds. For a moment there was nothing but the sound of debris rolling across the uneven floor, as well as the wails of injured men and frightened animals. Then a roaring started, distant but growing louder.

  Before the survivors could even fully grasp what had happened, battle sylphs were there, thunderous and raging around the warehouse as thick, flickering clouds. They didn’t use hate auras, but their presence caused some to flee in fear. Others tried desperately to dig free those trapped beneath debris.

  Frantic, the woman who ran the warehouse and the caravan master struggled to move a huge pile of sawn lumber from a man whose outstretched hand was all they could see. It clutched the floor by their feet. Moments later, Mace pushed both mortals aside and grabbed the edge of a log. Hauling it up, he tossed the entire piece to Heyou, who caught and threw it to Dillon, who carried it away.

  More battlers crowded around, some acting as guards, others helping remove rubble. Other sylphs joined in, hundreds of them, many hysterical about their now-trapped masters.

  Panting through gritted teeth, Leon sprinted down the street toward the accident. He had his pants and shirt on, but his jacket was at home and his suspenders flopped around his waist as he tried to get them back over his shoulders while he ran. He’d been getting undressed for bed when he’d heard the crash, and he’d barely got out of his room in time to see Ril shoot down the stairs. The battler was well ahead of him now, still in human shape but immensely faster.

  All around him, Leon saw people standing on their porches, staring in fear and confusion toward the black dust rising in the distance but doing nothing. He even saw Wat flicker past in the wrong direction, his lightning sparkling more slowly than usual.

  Footsteps sounded behind him, and Lizzy pulled abreast. Her face was red, for she ran nearly flat out, her skirts raised in both hands. She looked like she was floating in the layer of froth around her knees. Her hair was down and streamed behind her like silk.

  “What are you doing?” he panted, hating how he sounded. He was in better shape than this.

  “Helping,” she grunted, and she put on speed, leaving her father behind as she raced after Ril.

  Leon swore under his breath, but he also grinned, and chasing his daughter became a race between them to the accident site.

  Mace directed the sylphs silently and the humans aloud, bellowing orders to get debris moved and the wounded found—and to watch that ceiling. He wasn’t so sure it wouldn’t come down as well. Stria, one of the earth sylphs who’d erected the building, stood beside him, wringing her hands and moaning.

  The big battler wasn’t sorry to see Leon arrive a minute or so after Ril, who was put to work moving rubble; he didn’t much care to be in charge of humans. Most were men, and he didn’t have any interest in those. Women he wouldn’t send anywhere there was danger. Mace nodded to the chancellor and leaped into the air, shifting to cloud form and rising up to the glass ceiling. Fire sylphs floated there, giving illumination to those below.

  Keep that light up, Mace told one as he heard Leon start barking different orders below. Get close enough so they can see but be careful not to set anything on fire. He didn’t know for sure what was stored in this place, and he berated himself for his lack of knowledge.

  Yes, Mace. The fire sylph shot downward, moving closer to some of the human and sylph rescuers. The sylphs were doing most of the heavy lifting, but humans did their own part, mainly moving the dead and wounded.

  Below, Leon found Ril. He grabbed the battler’s shoulder. “Has Luck been called?” he asked, already coughing from the dust that had been kicked up.

  The battler peered over his shoulder at his master, then pushed him out of the dust cloud. Glancing up and contacting Mace provided a quick if silent answer. “Yes,” he relayed. “She’s on the way.”

  “Good.” Leon sighed, staring at the carnage. There was no telling yet how many wounded or dead were in the wreckage, and without Luck most of them wouldn’t have a chance.

  Even with her, it looked like it was going to be a long night.

  It was. Solie arrived soon after Leon, and she labored all night long with the others, setting up rubble removal stations and places for the injured to be brought. Galway directed the latter area, along with his wife Iyala and older children. Lizzy, too; and while her father might have preferred to spare her the sight of injured and dying people, he never refused her the right to make up her own mind.

  At the Widow Blackwell’s suggestion, Gabralina spent the night scurrying through the chaos carrying a bucket of water and a dipper to the workers. The men and women were thirsty from their efforts, and they thanked her for the relief she brought. She smiled but kept moving, feeling scared and restless at the same time.

  Wat. He was confused. That was hardly unusual for him, but the battler felt off-kilter where he resonated in the back of her mind, and she’d started to worry that he had been hurt somehow in this accident. She didn’t see him anywhere, and she’d know if he was in pain—wouldn’t she? Leon said he knew whenever Ril was hurt.

  She eyed the bearded man, who was busy directing the last of the wounded out of the warehouse. She wished she had his confidence. She knew she’d been a trial for him when he and his battler brought her and Wat to the Valley, but she hadn’t meant to be. She hadn’t even thanked him for saving her. She should have, certainly. She’d been in a terrible situation when he came, and if he hadn’t come to her rescue, she’d have been killed and her poor defenseless Wat someone’s slave. She knew that, and yet she still hadn’t thanked him. She hadn’t even told him she was in love with him a little.

  She just didn’t ever want to think about her past. One moment she’d been the somewhat bored and periodically beaten mistress of Yed’s head magistrate, the next he was dead and despite all her protests she was being charged with murder. She’d been so terribly alone.

  Gabralina swallowed and walked over to him, filling her dipper with water and holding it up. “Thirsty?” she asked.

  Leon glanced down at her and smiled, his face tired and dirt-streaked. “Thanks,” he said and took it. After draining it, he handed the empty dipper back and clapped his hand on her shoulder. “Good wor
k.”

  Gabralina sighed as he turned back to his task. According to the sylphs, the wounded were all out now, and most of the remaining debris could wait for daylight. Already Solie was sending people and sylphs home. A few moments later, Gabralina was one of them.

  She left with another sigh, her bucket abandoned and forgotten. She still hadn’t thanked Leon, she realized as she trudged off to her empty bed. And, Wat. Where had her battle sylph gone to?

  Claw let himself back into Rachel’s house as quietly as he could. Shivering slightly, he latched the door and pulled off his boots, setting them neatly by the coatrack where he hung his jacket. It was filthy. He hated it when it got filthy, because Rachel had to clean it. He’d tried to do laundry himself, but he always shrank everything. Rachel suggested he got the water too hot, but that didn’t make much sense.

  Twenty-three people were dead in the warehouse accident, along with seven sylphs and a dozen oxen. Claw didn’t know for sure how many were injured—that was Luck’s job—but he’d seen how exhausted she was when Mace finally sent him away.

  He crossed the tiny sitting room and entered the back bedroom. He was tired himself after so long lifting rubble; he just wanted to curl up and maybe even go to sleep for a little bit himself.

  Able to see through the darkness, he moved toward the bed. Rachel lay there, curled on her side with her face turned toward the door. She seemed almost to be looking at him. She lay very still, and he realized for the first time that he couldn’t feel her presence, not even the little tiny bit she normally exuded when asleep. Claw paused, puzzled, then moved closer.

  She didn’t look like she was asleep.

  Claw whimpered, suddenly shaking so badly that he nearly fell. Luck. He needed to get Luck. Only, Luck was exhausted and working on a dozen people who would die without her, and she was on the other side of the town, and he knew already that . . .

  The blue-haired battle sylph climbed gently into bed, careful not to disturb Rachel as he crawled over to her side and lay down, arms around her. She might be cold, he decided. She liked it when he lay with her, especially when he was there when she woke in the morning.

  He whimpered one last time, a sound like no creature born of this world, and then was silent again, lying with his master in the dark.

  Mace made his rounds with a dozen other battle sylphs. The warehouse was now secure. Well, the building was too dangerous for humans to enter, but everyone was out.

  He didn’t like this. Such disasters were never supposed to happen in a hive, and the fact that the queen wasn’t blaming any of them only made it worse. So he searched for threats he could stop before they threatened the hive, tracking negative emotions throughout the entirety of the town. There were many. People were scared by what had happened, upset. Almost everyone seemed to know someone who had died or been hurt, and the town resonated with their collective pain. The big battler was looking for more, though. Some emotions alerted him to danger. Those always gave humans away.

  Mace found an angry little boy planning to leave home because his parents wouldn’t give him a puppy; a single glare through the window dissuaded him. He tracked down a woman furious at her husband for being late, her house on the far side of the town where she hadn’t heard about the accident. Mace told her the situation and she was gone, running to look for her husband at the warehouse. Mace had seen him up and mobile, but that didn’t matter; Mace let the woman run off, knowing she’d be safe.

  Next he found Justin Porter glaring hatefully at the Petrule house from the shadows. Mace knew the story of what happened between him and Ril, but even if he hadn’t, he would be drawn to that hate. Other battlers were as well. Justin had almost daily encounters with battle sylphs now, all due to his temper, which was only making matters worse. Mace didn’t care. If it weren’t for the queen’s rules, Justin would already be dead.

  Ril wasn’t home. Leon, either. The house was full of females, which set off Mace’s protective instincts. The big battler started to move forward as one of the females passed the lit front window: Lizzy, back from her efforts at the warehouse.

  Justin’s anger immediately changed to a helpless, hopeless love. He watched Lizzy moving through the house, pacing back and forth, and Mace stopped unnoticed behind him. Justin loved the girl. Mace didn’t really care about that; Lizzy was Ril’s master and he’d gone through worse than hell to get her. Justin had no place in any of that. But love was an unthreatening emotion, and so long as Justin didn’t try to force himself on the girl, he could continue to feel it. Mace would warn Ril that the boy had been there, but otherwise he’d do nothing.

  He slipped away without Justin ever realizing he’d been seen. But the battler had been distracted by other things, and in return he hadn’t felt how that love overlaid a subtle additive of obsession.

  Mace continued his sweep, checking on the queen and marveling for a moment at her sleeping, pregnant energy. Heyou lay in bed beside her and looked smug. That little donor trick the young battler pulled would make things very different for battle sylphs in the future. They wanted to fight, they wanted to mate, but in the secret silences of their minds, many of them wanted to be fathers. Heyou had first given them a queen. Now he’d given them a way to be parents as well.

  He nodded at the young sylph, sure Heyou would be insufferable about this, and slipped away from the window, not wanting to wake the queen. Slipping down into the underground hive where classes had been canceled for the night, he saw almost no one at all. The corridors were empty, and at last he floated down to the holding cell used for the assassins. The door was unguarded. Only one battler had been assigned, but there was no sign of him.

  Mace wrenched the door open and snarled his way down the stairs, his hate flaring out as he reached the lower level. This door was unguarded as well and wide-open. Mace stopped in the archway, seeing the abandoned cots, the empty privy, and some tossed-aside blankets. Furious, he roared, broadcasting his rage to every battle sylph in the Valley. They in turn began roaring, rising, ready to hunt and do battle. The assassins were free, the queen was threatened, the hive in danger. A battle sylph had failed in his duty.

  Mace backed out of the cell, his lightning swirling in a maelstrom of rage. Heyou was head battler as the lover of the queen, but Mace made the rules and assigned the duties. He thought back to the schedule he’d made for all the battle sylphs, all of it kept in his head instead of on paper. He knew exactly who was supposed to be watching this cell tonight.

  Wat.

  The battle sylphs all gathered high above the clouds, where the air was cold and clear, the dawning sun still hours away from topping the mountains. Heyou had been granted permission to stay back, but that was strictly so he could guard the sleeping queen; when Mace left, he’d been growling with suppressed anger. Even Ril had come, a red-feathered hawk circling among them, his eyes still a little red from the pain of his change.

  Where’s Claw? someone asked.

  YOU! Mace thundered, flaring out at a much smaller, slower battler. WHY DID YOU LEAVE?

  Wat squealed in terror, trying to run, but the battlers were everywhere, suddenly closing around him, blocking him in. They pushed him back toward Mace, who hit him with his hate. Wat squealed again and tried to flee, tried to hide from all of their anger. There was no way out.

  WHY DID YOU LEAVE THE ASSASSINS UNGUARDED?

  I don’t know! the young battler wailed. Even terrified, his energy flickered slower than everyone else’s. I forgot!

  You forgot? How could you possibly forget?

  Circling above, Ril screamed. Dillon hissed, lashing out with a tentacle at the ignorant Wat, who squealed again and tried to present himself as a smaller target.

  I forgot! There was the accident! I came to the accident!

  I didn’t see you at the accident, Mace thundered.

  I-I realized then that I wasn’t supposed to be there! Then I didn’t know what to do.

  So, he’d been too stupid to go back to the cell.
Ignorant, foolish, idiotic . . . Mace roared and delivered Wat a blow that would have torn him in two if he hadn’t pulled back at the last moment. Wat still tumbled away with the force of it, squealing in terror.

  Useless, stupid reject. He would have been killed in the home hive. Inferior, foolish . . . The queen had her rules, though. Much as he wanted to, Mace couldn’t kill Wat. From the rage of the others, they agreed, but none of them moved against the idiotic creature. Wat whimpered brokenly, too stupid even to realize that he wasn’t going to be destroyed.

  No more, Mace growled at him. You’ll guard no more.

  Wat looked at him without comprehension.

  You won’t wear the uniform, you won’t stand guard, you won’t come to any calls. You’re not a battle sylph to us anymore.

  Wat shivered, not really getting it, not understanding that he’d been ostracized by his brothers and what it really meant. He did grasp that he wasn’t going to be murdered, and after a frightened hesitation he flickered downward, racing away from them as fast as he could, returning to his master.

  Mace watched him go for only a moment. He turned to the others and said, Spread out. Find those men.

  He didn’t need to say anything more. The battle sylphs vanished in every direction, sweeping low to the ground in a crisscrossing pattern as they searched for the five escaped assassins. Only one stayed behind, circling Mace, wings beating against the still cold air.

  Where’s Claw? Ril asked again.

  The sun was coming up, lighting the room through the lace curtains Rachel knitted so patiently during the evenings of one long winter, working by the light of an oil lamp while Claw watched; he’d been nearly hypnotized by the motion of her hands as she produced yards of airy material from what looked to him to be string and two sticks.

  The early morning light glistened off the edges of her hair, though most of her still lay in shadow, blocked by his body lying next to her, pressed against her back. She was cold. Despite his attempts to keep her warm, she was cold and still. Lifeless.