Empires of Moth (The Moth Saga, Book 2) (28 page)

"He tastes of
fear." She spat. "This one is weak. His flesh would serve
to test swords and arrows."

Koyee shook her
head. "That one is mine, not yours to claim. He is my prisoner
of war. You will not take him."

The empress
laughed, turning back toward her. "Fire indeed! I will offer you
this, Koyee of Qaelin. You've proven that you can speak our words.
Yet can you fight with our strength? I will test your might. You'll
fight a champion I choose. If you win the battle, you'll have proven
yourself a warrior, and I will fight by your side. Yet if you fail .
. ." The empress smiled. "I will cut out your heart and
feed it to my dragon, and your prisoner will feed the fires of our
forges."

Koyee stared back,
chin raised, and though her innards trembled and her arm blazed with
renewed pain, she managed to speak in a steady voice. "Send me
your champion. Flame or death."

 
 
CHAPTER NINETEEN:
THE BEAR MASQUERADE

Cam and Linee
wandered the streets of Eeshan, dressed in furs, war hammers hanging
across their backs.

"Camlin
. . . I . . ." Linee wobbled at his side. "This hammer is
too heavy and this fur
stinks
."

He turned to glare
at her. "Hush! Don't speak Ardish here." He glanced around
nervously at the countless Verilish soldiers, broad and bearded, who
wandered the streets, tankards of ale in hand, belches fluttering
their lips. "Just try to blend in."

She blinked,
looking ready for tears. "How can I blend into this place?"
Her voice rose louder. "Am I to grow a beard and belch like a
barbarian? I'm a queen and—"

Cam grabbed her arm
and leaned in closer. "Linee! Be quiet! Like it or not, the
forces of Verilon occupy this city. They might be fellow people of
sunlight, but I doubt they love the Queen of Arden very much. Our
kingdom did after all burn down half their forests a generation ago."

Tears filled her
eyes. In her oversized Verilish disguise—crude iron plates strapped
over patches of fur and leather—she seemed like a child drowning in
her father's clothes. The cut Suntai had given her had faded into a
pale, pink line on her cheek; tears now streamed down the groove.

"I
didn't burn anything," she said. "I wasn't even
born
then. Please, Camlin, can we go back to Suntai and the wolves? I
promise I'll be good. I won't cry anymore or be afraid. But please
can we go back? It wasn't as bad outside on the plains."

Suntai, along with
their two remaining nightwolves, was hiding outside the city; these
streets were too dangerous for them. At first, Cam had wanted to
leave Linee in the dark too, but—after her altercation with
Suntai—the dethroned queen had insisted on donning a disguise and
joining Cam.

He shook his head.
"Too late; you're already here. We'll go back to Suntai once we
hire a ship. You know we have to sail north to Leen and find aid."

She nodded and
lowered her head, lip wobbling. "I don't even want to go to Leen
anymore."

"It was never
about what you wanted, don't you get it?" Cam wanted to throttle
her. "Leen has an army. They can help Qaelin fight."

She rubbed her
eyes. "Who's this Qaelin person anyway?"

Cam
groaned. "Linee! By Idar's beard! It's not a person. How could
you not know this by now?" He stamped his foot. "
This
is Qaelin—the Elorian empire we're in. The one you've been traveling
across for a month."

She pouted. "I
don't know all these names. This whole place is just Nightside to me.
As far as I'm concerned, all the dark places are the same."

"As far as I'm
concerned, your brain is the same as a rock. Now please be quiet and
don't draw attention."

Grumbling under his
breath, Cam looked around the street again, hoping nobody heard the
argument. Fortunately, the Verilish soldiers who walked here all
seemed too drunken to pay Linee and him any heed. Cam was thankful.
Linee and he wore Verilish furs and armor—relics of their battle
along the road—but they stood a good foot shorter than everyone
else. The Verilish, dwellers of the snowy pine forests north of
Arden, were a towering folk, their shoulders broad and their bellies
ample. They wore breastplates over fur, and their wooden shields bore
paintings of bears. Most were men, their beards brown and bushy, but
women moved among them too, nearly as broad and powerful, their
cheeks round and red, their laughter raucous. Like the men, these
bear-maidens drank from tankards of ale, and war hammers hung across
their backs; they too towered over Cam.

"Sheep's
droppings, it's a wonder Torin's father ever survived a war against
these people," he mumbled under his breath. He had heard the old
soldier speak of Arden's invasion of Verilon; Cam had always thought
the stories of giants riding bears mere tall tales for the fireside.

A bear lolloped
down the street ahead, grunting with every step. The rider atop the
beast—a woman with hair as brown and shaggy as her mount's—shouted
down at him.

"Move,
dwarves! Out of my way."

Cam and Linee
leaped aside, landing in a puddle. The bear rambled on.

"Come on,
Linee," Cam said softly. "Let's keep walking. The port must
be around here somewhere."

They made their way
through the crowd of soldiers, stepping between wandering bears,
drunken warriors boasting of their kills, and the odd pile of bear
droppings. The city of Eeshan, located on the northern coast of
Qaelin, bore little resemblance to the fallen city of Pahmey. Cam saw
no crystal towers here, only rows of squat brick homes, their green
roofs curling up at the corners like sneering lips. Lanterns lined
the cobbled streets, the tin shaped as fish. A few pagodas rose here
and there, and public fireplaces belched out heat and light, but he
saw no grand castles or temples. This seemed to have once been a city
of traders and merchants; he saw many workshops with pottery,
candles, silks, and other goods in the windows.

It was a smaller
city than Pahmey—Cam guessed that perhaps twenty thousand people
lived here—though he saw few of its denizens. The Elorians hid
inside their homes; Cam caught only brief glimpses of their large,
bright eyes peering from windows before disappearing into shadows.
Only once did he see an Elorian outside on the street; the poor man
was a prisoner of war, naked and chained, a Verilish soldier tugging
him along.

From the drunken
boasting of soldiers, Cam could piece together the story. Verilon had
invaded the place a few months ago, it seemed, and the city had
fallen after only an hourglass turn of battle. Since then, most of
the Verilish troops had left the city, streaming toward some eastern
campaign.

"It's the
capital we sack next!" one Verilish soldier shouted, standing at
a street corner and waving his hammer. "The sun will rise on
Yintao."

Cam grumbled.
Yintao. Capital of Qaelin.

It's
there that we must bring aid,
he thought and swallowed.
It's
there that I'll meet my friends again. It's there that the fate of
the night will be sealed.

He
shuddered, remembering the great Battle of Pahmey last year.
Thousands had died fighting for that city, the forces of Arden
clashing with the city defenders. Nightmares of the blood and fire
still filled Cam's sleep. But that battle would seem like a mere
wrestle with Bailey compared to war at Yintao. If Cam and his friends
could bring aid to that city, empires would clash. Hundreds of
thousands, maybe even millions of troops would kill and die for the
night. Cam felt faint and his knees wobbled. More blood would spill.
More cannons would fire. More soldiers would die around him, armor
cleaved open, innards leaking, and—

"Look!"
Linee pointed down the street. Cold wind ruffled her stolen furs and
clanked her crude, iron armor. "I see masts. The port!"

Cam shook his head
wildly, clearing it of thoughts. He squinted and peered along the
street. The cobbled road sloped downward, lined with brick homes,
pagodas, and swinging lanterns. Beyond a crowd of Verilish revelers
astride bears, he could just make out the tips of masts. He counted a
dozen. Beyond them loomed shadows.

"Let's go."
Cam tugged on Linee's hand. "Do you still have your jewels?"

She sniffed, bit
her lip, and nodded. "You promise to buy me more jewels once the
war's over, right?" She reached into her pocket and produced
chains glittering with diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and sapphires. "My
Cery gave me these, and—"

"Not here!"
Cam hurriedly pulled her hand down, glancing around and hoping no one
saw. "We're supposed to just be Verilish soldiers. Verilish
soldiers don't have the jewels of a queen."

"But
I
am
a queen—" she began. "Oh." A sly look spread across
her face. "Now I finally understand! I was wondering why we were
dressed in furs and armor and carrying hammers." She giggled.
"It's a
disguise
!
Like at the masquerades back home."

Cam's jaw hung open
and his eyebrows rose. "You just now . . ." He shook his
head again and sighed. "Come on. And keep your jewels in your
pocket."

They made their way
down the road. A stone archway rose ahead, topped with bronze statues
of leaping fish and whales, candles inside their eyes. Linee pointed
upward, gaping at the statues, as they walked under the archway and
emerged into the port of Eeshan.

A boardwalk
stretched along the coast. Piers drove into the sea, topped with
lighthouses. Fifty-odd boats docked here, while further out in the
ocean, Cam could make out the lamps of anchored carracks, vessels too
large to moor at the piers. Two breakwaters engulfed the port like
wings of stone. Most of the ships had wooden hulls, canvas sails, and
bear figureheads—Timandrian ships. Others were Elorian junks, their
hulls smaller, their sails battened, but they too now bore the bear
banner—ships captured in battle, Cam surmised.

"We're looking
for a civilian ship," he said to Linee, walking along the
boardwalk. "A merchant would do nicely, even a mercenary or
smuggler."

"I
don't like any of these boats," Linee said. "I
hate
water, unless it's a warm bubble bath. Can we just look at the boats,
then walk the rest of the way?"

Cam
held out his hands, exasperated. "How can we walk to Leen, an
island
?"

"The same way
we walked here!" She tapped his helmet. "Think, Camlin."

He groaned. "Linee,
do you even know what an island is?" When she shook her head,
Cam covered his face with his palm. "Oh thorny sheep hooves . .
. just . . . just be quiet then and let me choose a ship myself."

He returned his
eyes to the ships. Right away, he ruled out most of them; they bore
the banners of Verilon's navy, and soldiers in armor guarded their
decks. Cam and Linee walked along the boardwalk, scanning the piers.
Hundreds of people moved around them. Most were soldiers of Verilon,
their wide breastplates snug atop their fur tunics; they sang between
gulps of ale, their tankards as large as their hammerheads. But Cam
saw other Verilish folk too: bearded peddlers hawking food from the
homeland; ladies in fur-trimmed gowns, golden bear-paw amulets
hanging from their necks; and every sort of tradesman from engineer
to doctor to haberdasher. Even a few Elorians stood on the boardwalk,
seemingly unperturbed by the forces occupying their city: yezyani
batting their eyelashes and giggling at soldiers' jokes, buskers
playing flutes and juggling torches for coins, and—Cam cringed to
see it—three Elorian prisoners in stocks.

"What about
that one?" Linee tugged his sleeve and pointed. "I like
that ship. There's a nice puppy painted on it."

Cam
looked and groaned. "That's a military vessel. See the soldiers
on deck? And that's a
bear
on the hull, not a puppy. We can't travel with Verilon's navy."

She pouted. "Why
not? I like that ship. It's painted nicely and it's the biggest one."

"Linee! For
pity's sake, a Verilish warship isn't going to give us a lift to
recruit Leen to fight them. Think! Ah . . . here we go. This one is
more like it."

He began leading
them toward a creaky old cog with a single mast. The unpainted hull
bristled with barnacles. A ragged Verilish man stood on the deck, his
head bald but his beard thick, sorting through piles of furs.

Linee froze,
planting her feet firmly on the ground. "That ship stinks! I can
smell it from here. And the sailor looks like a disgusting gutter
rat."

"He looks like
a disgusting fur trapper." Cam smiled. "Just the sort of
chap we need. If he's not a soldier, he might take us north to Leen
for your jewels."

Linee
looked ready to burst into tears. "I'm not giving my jewels to
him
!
I'll only give them to a nice, beautiful lady like me."

A growl fled Cam's
throat. "If you don't come with me to this ship right now, I'm
going to tell you another ghost story."

Her bottom lip
wobbled. "But I'm scared of ghost stories."

"I know. And
I've got a cracker of a story for you. It's about a ghost who was
haunting a young queen, and—"

"All right!"
She stamped her feet. "You don't have to be so mean. You're
worse than Suntai when you try to scare me."

Three bears rumbled
by, soldiers waving tankards upon their backs. When the beasts had
passed them, Cam and Linee walked along the docks toward the old fur
trapper's cog. Linee gave a little squeak, and even Cam wrinkled his
nose; she was right, this boat did stink, a sickening aroma of sweat,
rotten food, and dried blood.

"Ahoy!"
Cam shouted up to the man on deck, deciding it was a good nautical
greeting. "Ahoy, friend!"

The bald, bearded
man leaned across the railing and squinted down at Cam. He hawked and
spat noisily, narrowing missing Linee; the exiled queen whimpered and
hid behind Cam.