The Orphan Queen (23 page)

Disappointment rippled through me. I hadn't realized I'd hoped he would come along. So we could argue more? Fight? “You have important things to do in Skyvale. Thieves to catch. Wraith beasts to kill. I know.” And what else? Who was he when he wasn't Black Knife? “The caravan is scheduled to stay at West Pass Watch for two weeks. That gives me a week to get to the lake, and a week to get back. I'll return to Skyvale the same way I left: as a guard.”

“It's probably the first honest work you've done.”

“It's not completely honest. Where do you think I got this sword?”

“Will.”
He dropped back his head in exasperation, and a tiny sliver of his throat peeked between his shirt collar and mask. “Well, you'd better come back alive, and in your right mind, because when you do, I'll be waiting for you.”

I lifted an eyebrow. “To arrest me?”

“No. To—” He hesitated. As soft as a breath, he closed his hand over my arm. “To welcome you home.”

Trees shivered in the wind, sending spirals of leaves hissing downward. I looked at his gloved hand, unmoving over my sleeve. Why was he touching me like that? What was he thinking? He'd followed me out here from Skyvale and now . . .

I held very still so that he would, too. “Skyvale isn't my home.”

“It doesn't matter. I'll wait for you anyway.” He squeezed my arm, just lightly, and withdrew. “Please be careful—”

A shriek and howl interrupted him. Screams sounded from the caravan. Without another word to Black Knife, I leapt to the ground and ran.

I RACED THROUGH
the narrow stretch of forest separating my post from the road.

Already, torches illuminated the clearing. Sleeping guards rolled off the rooftops, and inside the barricade created by the wagons, people shouted and cried out in terror. The reek of smoke and wraith flooded the area, chased by the metallic tang of blood.

Nausea tumbled through me as I drew my sword. It was a strange, heavy weight, and not as comfortable in my grip as my daggers, but it had a better reach.

“Where is it?” Black Knife stopped next to me, breathing hard. His sword was already out, a natural extension of his arm.

“I don't—”

A terrible
click-clack
and shriek came from the far side of the caravan. We both ran toward the sound, following the other guards.

An enormous scorpion—as big as a wagon—scuttled down the road, pincers clacking as men surged toward it.

Black Knife swore and charged the beast, and only then did I notice the most terrifying part of all: chains around the scorpion's head, pincers, and tail. Chains that had snapped and were now dangling like jewelry.

From the chaos, glowmen emerged. They carried the broken ends of chains, torches, and long staffs that they must have used to prod the beast into the Indigo Kingdom.

I drew my dagger in my left hand and hurled myself into battle.

Most of the men concentrated on the scorpion; it was heading straight for the wagons.

I focused my efforts on the glowmen, the grotesque wraith-mutated men. There were five of them. No, ten or twelve. They emerged from the forest with shouts of rage.

I swung my sword down on the nearest glowman. He blocked my sword stroke with his staff, and fire raced up my arm and shoulder from the impact.

With a grunt, I staggered back and into another glowman. He kicked me back toward the first. I adjusted my grip at the last moment, ducked, and sliced a wide arc with my sword. Blood sprayed from the glowman's stomach, but I didn't have the luxury of watching him flail. I turned and attacked the second one, but he lifted his forearm, wrapped in chains, and steel struck steel with a spray of sparks.

I stabbed with my dagger, hitting the large artery in his thigh with a long, clean cut. Blood poured out of him in wraith-stinking torrents.

Smoke choked the air. I coughed into my sleeve and turned for my next opponent, a third glowman. Then a fourth and a fifth and a sixth. The fight became automatic—cut and block and duck and slice and
do not die
—and the glowmen kept coming, wearing horrifying faces that reminded me of hounds and birds of prey.

My right arm burned as I raised my sword again and again. Cacophony filled my head, all clank of steel, rush of fire, screams of horses, shouts of men, and the
click-clack
of the scorpion. I saw it only between glowmen trying to behead me. The wraith beast was black and glossy, its carapace barely scratched in spite of the guards throwing themselves at it.

Glowmen littered the ground around me. I used a dead one as a stool so I could slice open the inner-thigh artery of another, who'd been fighting Josh or Jack or whatever that guard's name was. The man gave a curt nod before turning to his next opponent.

The scorpion's tail slammed into the ground as people hurried out of its way. Men stood on top of the wagons, brandishing torches to keep the beast away from the merchants and merchandise, but a giant glowman with a sparking metal rod jabbed at the scorpion, keeping it from retreating.

I pushed toward it, elbowing my way through guards and glowmen, using my blades where necessary. Blood and sweat coated my hands, drying into a dull armor under the heat. Someone had thrown a torch at the scorpion, but overshot. Now flames licked the edge of the forest, working into a full blaze. The scorpion screeched, shying away from both fires. Its stinger struck the ground, remnants of its binding chain flailing along with it.

People screamed as the chain hit the edge of a wagon roof. Wood splintered and the wagon tipped, but men raced to right it.

I forced past a clutch of guards taking out a glowman with rough skin that looked more like alligator hide.

“Will!” Black Knife appeared beside me, both of us just out of reach of the wraith scorpion. “You're hurt?”

I shook my head. “Not my blood.”

“Thank saints.” He bumped my arm with his and jerked his chin toward the wraith beast. “Remember the giant cat?”

“With horror.” But I knew what he was going to suggest. “This one has no neck.”

“Not long ago you claimed you knew which end of your sword to stick where.”

Ugh. Using my own words against me wasn't fair. “Taking me out to robberies, bar fights, and wraith houses isn't enough for you anymore? I thought we were happy.”

“Only the best for you, my lady.” He tugged my arm. “Let's go.”

We split up. I headed for the scorpion's back end, looking for a way to climb onto the dancing beast. There were men all around, hacking at its legs and underside, but the stinger came down again and again, the chain striking men aside.

I sheathed my weapons and waited as close as I dared. When the stinger hit the ground, I darted in and grabbed the chain with both hands.

The tail whipped up, nearly catapulting me into the forest, but I clung to the chain so hard my knuckles ached. I screamed as I whirled over the tail, swinging within a gasp of the stinger.
All my breath whooshed out of me when I dropped onto the scorpion's back.

I groaned and forced myself to sit up. The scorpion probably wouldn't sting itself—if it even knew I was up here—but its exoskeleton was slick and difficult to grip. I braced myself with one boot tread against the shell, getting my bearings. The glowman at the scorpion's rear prodded it toward the wagons again, but the torches made it duck backward—not too close to the fire growing in the forest. The scorpion struck with its tail, driving back the guardsmen.

I couldn't see Black Knife in all the chaos, but he was somewhere in front, trying to get beneath the wraith beast to spear it. But the scorpion was too big—much bigger than the cat—and it had enormous pincers just waiting to snap that reckless vigilante in half.

There was no other way.

I stood, clutching the upright tail for balance, and stretched my hand to touch the chain. “
Wake up. Be heavy
.”

The tail went crashing down and I scrambled out of its way, farther up the body of the beast. When I reached the chain wrapped between its head and abdomen sections, I said, “
Wake up. Squeeze
.”

Dizziness spun through me, and I slipped as the beast shuddered against the living chains. Pincers snapped out at nothing, and its legs scrambled across the blood-slicked ground. Men screamed and backed out of the scorpion's way as it began turning in a circle.

Fire in the trees roared, stirring the beast into a frenzy. It banged against wagons and trees, shrieking, and I kept myself
low and steady on its head. Where was Black Knife?

There. He'd either killed or disabled the giant glowman with the prod and seized it for himself. “Will!”

“Ready!” The shout tore from my throat as I drew my sword and drove it deep into one of the top eyes. A moment later, Black Knife thrust the prod into the creature's scissor-like mouth parts.

The beast spasmed. Its back half pulled against the immense weight of the chains. It twitched, and everyone cheered as the giant body hit the earth with a
thud
. Black Knife disappeared into the crowd, somehow avoiding everyone's notice.

Quickly, I drew my sword from the eye and tapped the chains on my way off the beast. “
Go to sleep
.”

Men clapped my back and congratulated me, but my whole body shook with adrenaline, and the exhaustion of animating those enormous chains. I managed to pull myself away—I didn't want to get caught in the wraithy mist like I had in Skyvale—and for the first time I got a look at the rest of the caravan.

Guards and glowmen lay motionless on the road, their bodies illuminated by the blaze growing in the forest. There were so many people on the ground.

The scorpion's body hissed, and a miasma of wraith poured into the air above it. Then, the white mist split and snaked around a few men, hitting three or four men in the chest. They all dropped to their knees and coughed, but a moment later, they were fine. Back on their feet, as though nothing had happened.

The mist was wraith, that much I knew, but why touch some people and not others?

My head spun with confusion and weariness, but there was still a fire to put out, so I wiped my sword clean and sheathed
it, and accepted a section of the heavy, rigid hose that syphoned water from the nearby river.

Water sprayed onto the forest fire, and heat and steam rolled off in waves. Within minutes, the flames were out.

The fight and fire had left me nauseous. I staggered down the road a ways and heaved, doubting I'd ever be able to sleep again after that nightmare.

When I straightened, a black silhouette stood down the road, motionless as our eyes met. He sheathed his sword and lifted a hand in good-bye.

I stayed planted as he stepped backward. I should have said something. Done something. But while I stood there with all these strange emotions boiling inside me, Black Knife vanished into the smoke and steam and darkness.

“See you when I come back,” I whispered. But he was already gone.

THE CARAVAN WAS
determined to arrive in West Pass Watch on schedule, in spite of the attack, and so it resumed the long journey over and around the mountains.

As we trudged up the winding roads, some of the guards worked on the lyrics to their new song, “Will Makes the Kill,” and I ducked my head in embarrassment. Maybe that was another reason Black Knife wore a mask: so he could escape the people's adulations by simply removing that slip of silk.

Anyway, it seemed wrong to take credit for killing the scorpion when Black Knife had done half the work. And I'd cheated by using magic. The very thing that had made that creature.

“You ever been to West Pass Watch, Will?” asked Josh Blue. The guard had been one of the men I'd saved during the scorpion attack, and he'd made it his priority to look out for me—since he still believed I was a young, inexperienced boy trying to pay for my education.

“Never been out of Skyvale,” I said, squinting against the early afternoon glare.

“You're in for a sight, then.” He pointed up at the weathered, gray bricks peeking out from the autumn foliage. “The castle was built long before Skyvale Palace. That one is only two hundred years old, a baby palace. But this one is from centuries before Skyvale ever was. It was built with magic, by some of the original settlers from the old land across the sea. West Pass Watch and its twin castle, East Pass Watch, were the first kings' homes, back when the Indigo Kingdom was much smaller.”

“How small?”

“The whole thing was inside this valley, everything the House of the Dragon claims. The rest came during a series of wars with ancient kingdoms you've probably never heard of. They were incorporated as territories for a while, given overlords who were all related to the king of the time, then made official parts of the Indigo Kingdom.”

“Like what's happening with Aecor now?” The words caught in my throat. “The king's younger brother is Overlord of Aecor.”

Josh shrugged. “Hard to say with times like this, with the wraith just beyond the mountains. Before, I'd have said yes. But now, it'll be a miracle if we're around long enough to see any changes in our world.”

I checked the woods, but this area was heavily patrolled; it seemed unlikely we'd run into any difficulty just outside West Pass Watch. The only trouble was the ever-present stink of wraith, which grew stronger every day, though it seemed my nose was becoming accustomed to it.

“So this castle.” I motioned upward. “This one and the other guarded the western and eastern borders of the Indigo Kingdom?”

Josh nodded. “King of the time lived at whichever end he was fighting a war on. It was usually the east, as their attentions began focusing on what is now the eastern areas of the kingdom—from those mountains to Aecor. West Pass Watch was pretty neglected until the year eight thirty-five, when the Pierces seized power from the Gearys. Terrell the First gave the keep to one of his top supporters, but it went back into Pierce hands when the wraith problem was discovered.”