Flight of the King (32 page)

“It can't be!” Gwen heard someone exclaim. “The Velyn!”

As the motorbuggy sputtered to a start, the Velyn and the Dominae guards came together like colliding storm clouds, emitting lightning flashes of steel against repurposed claws. Two Dominae
guards broke through the Velyn's defenses and lunged at the motorbuggy.

Tremelo grabbed a rusty scimitar from underneath his overcoat, and swung at the first guard. The man jumped back, but not before Tremelo sliced through his uniform, exposing the guard's
skin.

“Tori, drive!” he ordered.

Gwen searched the motorbuggy for something she could use to fight. She would not watch the lost Prince Trent die at the hands of some Dominae underlings. She clasped a wooden staff from the pile
of weaponry in the sidecar, and swung it hard toward the second guard. She felt a satisfying thud as the staff connected, hard, with the man's chest, knocking him backward.

Tori slammed on the clutch, and the motorbuggy jolted into action once more.

“Wait! Gwen, Phi, Tori!”

Gwen searched the crowd for the source of the familiar voice. At first, all she could see in the direction of the sound was a cloud of leathery black wings. A boy ran a few paces behind the
motorbuggy, flailing his arms to fight away the colony of bats.

“It's Hal!” Gwen yelled to Tori.

Tori slammed on the brakes, causing them all to lurch forward. Then she spun around in her seat and tore off her driving goggles. “Hal!”

Gwen and Tori leapt out of the motorbuggy. Gwen took off her cloak and threw it over him to protect him from the bats.

“Come on!” shouted Tremelo, as he kicked a Dominae attacker off the sidecar. “Hurry!”

“How did you escape?” Tori asked. She put an arm around Hal so he could lean on her as they ran to the motorbuggy. “Are you okay?”

“I'm okay,” said Hal, though his face and hands showed numerous bright red scratches.

They piled back into the motorbuggy, where Tremelo made room for Hal next to the Halcyon.

“Let's go!” said Tremelo. “Thank Nature
one
of you boys is safe.”

Gwen and Phi squeezed into the sidecar as Tori jumped into the driver's seat, and they took off once more. The bats peeled away, flying higher above the field.

“I was held by two of the Jackal's men,” Hal said. “But one of them had this.” He opened his jacket, and took out Bailey's claw. “They'd taken it
from us when we were captured. The bats came on fast, and attacked all of us. When neither of them was looking, I grabbed it and cut myself free. I ran as fast as I could.”

He put his weight on Tori, clearly exhausted. He kept looking up, as if expecting the bats to appear again at any moment. Gwen followed his gaze, and her jaw dropped.

A small parliament of owls, Melem among them, circled closer and closer to the motorbuggy. Gwen screamed and covered her head. Hal swirled Gwen's cloak over her, doing his best to keep the
owls at bay. But Gwen's vision was lost in a tangle of feathers as she felt talons tear at the skin of her arm—one owl had swooped out of the sky.

“No, no!” Gwen cried. Rattling at her feet, on the floor of the motorbuggy, was her walnut bow. No, please, she thought. I can't hurt my own kin. Melem's talons gripped
the coat over Gwen's head, uncovering her. The others were shouting and trying to fight the owls off with stick and swords. Gwen reached down and grabbed the bow, along with one slim arrow.
She turned and took aim.

Before she let the arrow slip from between her fingers, the owls surrounding her disappeared. She heard gasps of surprise from Tori and Phi, and the sound of flapping wings quickly quieted. She
lowered her arms, bracing herself against the side of the moving car, and saw the owls struggling, on the ground, inside a tangled net. The motorbuggy lurched to a halt as several people ran in
front of it and put up their hands.

“Come on now, girl,” said a familiar voice, which was deep and comforting. Gwen looked up and met the eyes of Digby Barnes. He wore a makeshift piece of armor made from a metal keg,
with the image of a mole hand-painted on it in white. Behind Digby stood a ragtag group of hundreds of men and women. They wore whatever protection they'd been able to make for themselves,
and were armed with whatever weapons they could get their sly hands on. Many of them held nets that contained their squirming, possessed kin, while others had blood smeared across their armor. Gwen
let the arrow fall from the bow; it clattered onto the floor of the motorbuggy. She began to cry at the thought of what she'd almost done.

“No time for tears,” said Digby. “The RATS are here now. Come on—we've got a queen to stop.”

Gwen gripped the bow tightly and nodded.

“RATS, move out!” Digby called. The RATS surrounded the motorbuggy and marched ahead of it, cutting a clear path to the stage through the swarming citizens.

Ahead, Bailey stood captive by Viviana's guards, and Taleth fought the automaton. The motorbuggy sputtered to a halt only a few yards from the platform. Gwen leapt out as Tremelo struggled
to adjust the position of the orb in the Halcyon.

As she ran closer to the stage, Gwen could make out a pulse issuing from it—the drumbeat from her vision. Just as it had then, it pounded in her ears like the very blood in her veins. She
repeated Ama's words to her, for guidance.

True sight is a light that grows—your sight is strengthened and made clear by true bonds. You see what lives unseen in the heart.

Onstage, Taleth and the mechanical tiger circled each other. With a hollow roar, the automaton rose on its haunches and prepared to swipe at Bailey's kin. The metal plates of the
automaton's exposed chest seemed to glow.

“‘What lives unseen in the heart,'” she repeated. Ama had added those words to the Elder's mantra—had she known?

“Bailey!” she yelled, as loudly as she could over the chaos around her. “It's
in
the tiger! Viviana's machine—it's the tiger's
heart!”

BAILEY, AS WELL AS
the two Dominae guards holding him, whirled toward the crowd at the sound of clinking weaponry rushing toward the stage.
Bailey's eyes grew wide—he saw Eneas Fourclaw running in his direction, and the wide, friendly frame of Digby Barnes, leading a horde of fighters. Viviana's guards loosened their
grip on him in surprise. Bailey lunged away. In the corner of his eye, he saw Gwen, shouting something at him with one hand cupped around her mouth, but the words were swallowed up by the fighting
around him, and the rhythmic thudding. He thought he heard her say “cart” or “part,” but he had no time to decipher her words—the automaton was upon him. He dashed
across the stage, dropping into a crouch. Around him, heavy footsteps pounded the wooden boards. He looked up to see a dozen Dominae guards rushing past him to meet an advancing flank of fighters
just offstage. Viviana stood at the back of the platform. Her hands were rigid, fingers outstretched. The sound of wings and claws grew louder as almost every animal on the fairgrounds surged
toward the oncoming fighters.

The incessant, mechanical pounding that Bailey had heard since returning to the platform grew louder as well—it vibrated directly behind him now. He scrambled around and came face-to-face
with the mechanical tiger. It lunged; Bailey ducked and rolled away. As the automaton pivoted to leap again, Taleth appeared at Bailey's side. Bailey scrambled to get away from her, but he
couldn't move quickly enough. With one step, she stood over him, her colossal paws on either side of him. Bailey put his arms over his head and squeezed his eyes shut.

He heard her roar, and then he felt her whiskers tickling the back of his neck. He opened his eyes—she stood between him and the automaton, protecting him from her false double. From
somewhere close by, just offstage, Bailey heard faint echoes of music—long, sustained notes like choral chanting or the slow draw of a bow across a violin. The Halcyon. He looked out onto the
field below the stage. In the midst of fighting among the Dominae and the Velyn and RATS, Tremelo was in his motorbuggy. He leaned over the passenger seat with Fennel the fox, directing the
gramophone horn at the stage. Tori was with him, cranking a lever on the machine's side. At the sound of the haunting music the Halcyon created, Bailey felt a quivering in his chest, and he
knew that Taleth felt it too.

The sound echoed over the fairgrounds, and Bailey could see that the kin of the Velyn and RATS were helping to fight the Dominae, not attacking like the other animals. The Halcyon was helping
them resist Viviana's Dominance. Several animals on the outskirts stopped attacking their human kin as well—they paused, ears twitching, as though wondering where they were. The more
wounded of the kin simply dropped to the ground, their bodies still at last. Viviana's hold on them had broken.

“Yes!” Bailey cried, but there was no time to celebrate. The rest of the fairgrounds was still in turmoil—the Halcyon wasn't strong enough to stop the Reckoning, not
against Viviana's machine.

Suddenly, a roar and the shriek of claws on metal—the automaton leapt on Taleth, biting at her neck and shoulder. Bailey cried out as he felt the pain on his own body, just as two guards
rushed at him, tackling him to the ground. He landed a hard kick to one's chest, but the other held him down, pinning him to the stage. Viviana appeared over him, her hands now clenched into
fists.

“You feel her pain, her injuries—and look how pathetic you are because of it,” she sneered. “You represent the old ways. Empathy is weakness! Dominance is progress. I can
form an army at will. I can make animals serve humans for the betterment of the kingdom! And”—she beamed at him, as though she was sharing a wonderful secret—“I can control
whatever I wish: animals, energy, perhaps one day even life itself.”

“But you
can't
control it,” said Bailey. “Just look at what's happening!”

Viviana did not answer him—instead, she raised her hand and gestured toward the automaton. It stopped, midlunge, in its fight with Taleth, and swung around to face Bailey. Its tail of
metal lashed as it crouched. It was about to pounce.

The automaton opened its mouth, and Bailey stared up into the gleaming cavern of metal joints and wires within. It was a machine, an uncaring killer. Bailey regarded the subtle carvings in the
metal plates that formed its face, and the painted copper made to appear like luminous fur. He could feel the waves of energy pouring out of its metal mouth and joints—Viviana's energy
projected through it. Bailey concentrated on Taleth, and on the music emanating from the Halcyon. He could feel his own bond growing stronger. Bailey pushed back against Viviana's energy,
focusing on his own. As though Viviana's Dominance was a tangible force, Bailey confronted it, his hands outstretched in front of him and his entire skin alive with sparks that only he could
feel. He could feel Viviana's Dominance begin to fall back, its resistance wavering. The mechanical tiger stalled, its movements jerky and weak.

“What are you doing?” Bailey heard Viviana shout. “What have you done?”

The tiger stopped, as though it was jammed. It twisted its head to one side and lifted a paw, which remained frozen in midair like a statue. Its tail lashed in one direction, then the next, and
grew still. The intense pounding that had echoed throughout the fairgrounds ceased, as though the tiger's heart had stopped. In its place, Bailey heard the battle behind him, and the shouts
of familiar voices. His friends were coming, fighting their way to him through the Dominae.

Bailey looked back to the mechanical tiger standing over him. Viviana's own words echoed in Bailey's mind:
I can control whatever I wish: animals, energy…life itself.
But
why control the
tiger
with the bond, and not the Catalyst? he wondered. Unless—

The realization came quickly, like an electro-current shock: the Catalyst was inside the tiger.

“It's the
heart
,” he said aloud, understanding what Gwen had shouted earlier.

Viviana rushed toward him. Quickly, Bailey searched the tiger's body for weak points, wishing that he still had his claw, or even the Jackal's cane—anything that he could use
to penetrate a seam in the machine's immaculate hide. He focused on Taleth. She paced around the automaton, growling. Bailey thought of the moment he'd first Awakened, imagining the
crisp air of the mountains in her nostrils, the soft snow that had fallen around them as they looked at each other for the very first time. Then he pictured her heart, in its cage of bone and
blood. He could feel it beating in rhythm with his own. Through Taleth's eyes, he pictured the automaton standing before her, and its rib cage of copper and steel. That's how we end
this, he thought. The heart—that's what we need to destroy.

Taleth lifted her head in a victorious roar, and brought her claws down on the seam of the automaton's ribs. They wrenched open with a metallic screech. With her teeth, Taleth tore the
wires holding the heart in place, lifted the Catalyst out of the automaton's chest, and spat it out. It bounced onstage, landing only a few feet away from Bailey. The orb throbbed, almost
like a real heart, and the pounding that Bailey had heard before—which he now knew had been coming from the orb—had weakened to a low pulse.