Kindred and Wings (21 page)

Surely the Swoop would not come back now. That would be suicide for certain. Another possibility hit her. The Named. Many of them could fly. Gathering her robes around herself, Kelanim slipped from the windowsill and to her door.

Easing it open a fraction, she was glad that she always kept the hinges so well oiled. Out in the corridor, all was quiet. The faint smell of rosewater lingered, so that meant the servants had been past recently. Every night the harem was sprinkled with the cloying water, thought to bring peace and beauty. To Kelanim it only smelled of desperation.

Her perfume was of lilacs and cinnamon, a concoction that the Caisah had expressed an affinity for. Thinking of him still made the mistress’ heart beat a little faster. If one of the Named had come to Perilous, then she would be the one that they wanted to speak to. She paused only long enough to take her dark cloak off the hook behind the door and slip it on. It was not much protection from the dangers of the Court, but it at least hid her instantly recognizable hair and provided some chance of remaining in the shadows.

The old chapel was part of the inner court, so she did not have to worry about going beyond the walls. Several times, though, she had to slip into alcoves and side corridors as eunuchs and female servants moved silently around the palace. Kelanim had never thought much on the army of lesser folk that kept Perilous running, but now it felt as though all of them were determined to keep her from reaching her goal.

Patience had, at least until recently, been her greatest personal virtue. She felt none of it now. The possibility that the centaur had dangled in front of her like a gleaming jewel had made her ache for completion.

Stealing through the corridors of Perilous like a thief, she began to fantasize about a time in the future where she might be able to stalk them as queen. Once the Caisah was a mortal, he would have no need of the other women. He would be able to think on things that normal men could, like love and raising a family.

That glowing idea made her insides ache. A child for the Caisah, one born from her womb, would be the most spectacular thing.

It made the whole mad scheme worth it.

As Kelanim got closer to the chapel she felt the cold steal past her robe and thin slippers and into her bones. Her breath was now visible in front of her and she dared not touch the stone wall of the building. The seneschal had locked the great ironbound door of the chapel tight, and she didn’t have access to the key.

As the mistress stepped closer, she saw with a little thrill that the door was ajar, with a thin slice of light breaking through into the corridor.

She crept forward, certain at any moment one of the Rutilian Guard would appear and haul her off to the dungeons. She felt as though she was in danger, but curiously she was excited by it. As when she stood next to the Caisah, she felt truly alive.

A sound was coming from inside the temple. The sound of wings.

Emboldened by the thought that no one should be inside, Kelanim crept through the doorway. The chapel had an entranceway where penitents could take off their shoes, and wash their hands and feet in the small pool that stood just to the right of the next door. The water was long dried up, and the mistress did not feel the need for any ablutions.

The Lady of Wings was not her scion, and she was not even sure she believed in the scions. With as much fear as she felt, standing there in the half-dark listening to the faint sound of wings, she felt no real reverence. The scions had led the various tribes and races through the White Void to this place, but they had never been present in her life. None of them had stood up for her when her own father had sold her into virtual slavery to the Caisah. Where had any of them been when she had wailed and cried out to them? She’d wept alone in her room, wracked with fear and horror at what her own parents had done. No scion had magically appeared to whisk her away to freedom.

They were not gods, and they were not saviors, so there was no value in them.

However, there was no denying that in this moment she did feel some primitive reaction to something in the other room.

Kelanim, mistress to the Caisah, had never shied away from danger. She would not do so now.

Slowly, carefully, she went forward into the chapel. It was shaped like the dome of a dovecote, an odd realization that brought a smile to her lips. The perches lined the ceiling and walls, which soared upward in a cone-shape. Strangely, it did not smell.

One thing that the acolytes of the Lady of Wings had apparently been most studious about was hygiene. Even after all these months, it should have reeked of bird business, but instead it smelled of cedar and the memory of incense—almost like the Caisah’s bookshelves.

The sound of wings broke her contemplation. Turning her head upward, Kelanim saw that one of the boards that the Caisah had ordered hammered over the lofty entrances of the chapel had come loose.

The bird that had discovered the opening was sitting on a perch not far away, looking down at her with golden eyes. It was a snowy white owl, a creature of awe and beauty. Despite her disinterest in the Lady of Wings, Kelanim was not unmoved by the creature. It had to be one of the Swoop.

It tilted its head and watched her as if she were a mouse in the barn. Perhaps to one of the Swoop, she was.

It opened its wings and dropped toward her, transforming in mid-air.

A young woman, around whom light seemed to hover, was dressed in silver armor, with a winged helmet on her head and a long sword strapped to her hip. Kelanim did not move as the girl landed on her feet. She tilted her head, much as she had in bird form, and regarded the mistress.

“I know you,” she said in stern voice. “You are one of the Caisah’s whores. What are you doing in my Lady’s sanctuary?”

The insult was a slap in the face to Kelanim. She was fairly sure she had never been called any such thing—even by the Hunter. “This is no longer your lady’s anything!” she shot back. “You and all of your Swoop are traitors to the rightful ruler of this land, and I shall tell him as much.”

She was about to turn and leave when the press of ice cold steel against her neck gave her pause. The mistress looked along its length and swallowed hard. The look in the other woman’s eyes was particularly deadly.

“I am here for the tyrant’s blood,” she said, her voice as cold as her blade. “You will show me to his rooms, and maybe I will let you live.”

For a moment panic washed over Kelanim. She wanted to live just as any mortal did, but she did not want to show one lone assassin where her lover slept, either. The mistress pushed away fear and contemplated her options.

“What has he ever done but make you a whore?” The woman’s eyes, still gold, gleamed in the little moonlight that managed to reach into the chapel. “I can change all that in a moment.”

Her tone was so imperious that for a long moment Kelanim was not sure how to react. She was outraged that one of the Swoop would return, but also wanted to keep her neck intact.

Then something moved in the shadows of the chapel, and it was a sound that sent a thrill of fear down Kelanim’s back. The whisper of dead leaves blowing over stones. Many leaves. Only one thing that could make that sound in here.

The girl of the Swoop must have understood, too. Her eyes darted past Kelanim and into the shadows. Maybe her owl eyes gave her greater abilities to see into the dark, but it did her little good.

Kelanim had barely blinked before it was all over. The intruder turned and disappeared into her snowy owl shape, and then the creature in the shadow struck.

The thick serpent’s head caught the owl even as her wings spread. The teeth and jaws closed on the bundle of white feathers, and the bird had only a moment to let out a shriek of pain before it was lost among the coils of the creature.

Kelanim stood very, very still while the snake emerged out of the darkness. One of its heads was busy swallowing the owl, while the other five examined her with flat, dark eyes. The nagi.

She’d understood instantly and instinctually. Her grandmother had told her about the nagi, with all its venom and its cunning. It was impossible that such a thing could really exist, but here it was, plucked from legend much as the centaur had been.

A Named Kindred. That some Vaerli in the past had given a Kindred such a dire name was something she could not comprehend. The Nagi was a Manesto legend, present in the tales of all tribes. It was the beast of vengeance from the shadows, and used to terrify small children into behaving.

Even now Kelanim’s skin crawled as the fan of heads rose above her. The smell invaded her nostrils, stealing away her breath. The nagi reeked of old leaves left to rot away, and the hot tang of blood.

In the moonlight the snake shifted from side to side, and Kelanim’s eyes flickered to follow it. She did not move, standing as motionless as the statue of the Lady of Wings in the center of the chapel.

“He said you would not flee . . . I did not believe him.” The snake’s voice rattled and wheezed its way out of six fanged mouths.

The mistress swallowed hard on the bile burning at the back of her throat. “So he sent you.”

The snake reared back, the chorus of hisses pounding against Kelanim’s ears until she almost screamed with the horror of it.

“Pholos is a fool.” The nagi’s coils began to emerge from the darkness, and the mistress could only think about how each of those lengths could wrap about her twenty times and be done with her life. The snake’s head lowered closer to her, and the smell of the beast grew thicker. “And so are you.”

Kelanim coughed and choked against the waves of it. This near, she could see the curved fangs in each mouth were as thick as her arm and as long. Twelve sets of fangs all gleamed with poison, the likes of which could not be matched for deadliness in all of Conhaero.

“Then why . . .” she cleared her throat, “then why did you just save me, if I am such a fool?”

The slitted eyes of the nagi gleamed in the moonlight. “You have a purpose in this dance, as we all do.”

She recalled now the meaning of the many heads of the beast: they could see in all directions, including into the past and the future. Suddenly all fear dropped away from Kelanim. Instead of terror, she now looked into the nagi’s eyes with something verging on hunger. The snake could see the future, so perhaps it could see if her goal was achievable. Was the nagi, even now, able to see her at the side of the Caisah, perhaps with a child on her hip?

“I saved you,” the snake went on, its head weaving and dancing to a music that only it could hear, “because you are helping us and we are helping you, but if you do not go right now and wake the Caisah, it will all be for nothing.”

The strained hisses of the heads were making it hard for her to think.

“Is . . . is the Caisah in danger?” she gasped, her hand going to her throat.

“You have made him vulnerable by opening his spirit to the guardians of this world.”

A slight groan escaped Kelanim, but she was not so much of an idiot that she would spring away without knowing the kind of danger her love faced. “Who . . . who is coming for him?”

In answer, one of the heads of the nagi nudged a few white owl feathers that lay on the floor where they had fallen. The Swoop!

Without further thought, Kelanim turned to run to his rooms, but the long neck of the nagi flashed out, and the iridescent loops of its body blocked the way. The mistress looked wildly about, contemplating clambering over them for a mad instant.

“First, I have a gift to give. Make haste.” The fan of heads hissed in terrifying unison. The tip of the nagi’s tail flicked out, and a forgotten goblet with the carved image of the Lady of Wings on it, rattled out of the shadows. “Pick it up.”

It seemed it was the only way to escape the nagi, so the mistress did as she was bid.

She stood holding the goblet, mind filled with fear for the Caisah, when the fan of snakeheads enveloped her. It was a moment from her childhood nightmares. The smell of the snake was now all there was, and the slick skin of the beast was pressed all around her. She even felt the lick of multiple forked tongues on her face. An unvoiced scream echoed through her body as she stood ramrod straight, the goblet clasped against her stomach.

One of the heads dipped down and pressed its long fang against the curve of the vessel. Kelanim heard the liquid squirt into the bowl, and suddenly all her fear was washed away. The smell of the venom was sharp, and vaguely saline—not at all how she imagined it would be.

The nagi retreated, and she was left breathing heavily, looking up at it. When she finally glanced down at the goblet, she saw it was now full to the brim with white, slick venom.

“Will this save him?” she whispered.

“Not tonight.” The nagi seemed to be retreating from her, descending once more into darkness and imagination. “You must save him tonight. Leave the cup here, and if he lives you must slip this into his food. Every time he eats, there must be a part of me in him. Three times is the number. Have him drink three times and he will be yours.”

By the time the last words were out of the snake’s mouth, it had disappeared completely, taking the smell, the sound and its terrifying presence with it. All it had left behind was the full measure of its venom.

Kelanim carefully placed the goblet on the floor—no one would find it here. If it mattered at all she would come back and find it. If it did not, perhaps she would drink the whole thing herself. Then spinning about, she ran from the chapel, her slippers flying off her feet as she tore through the palace to the back chambers of the harem.

It was not her night to be with the Caisah; he had called another to his bed tonight. No guards were in the passageway, since it was assumed none of the mistresses would be foolish enough to enter this way. Her feet made slapping noises that echoed in the stairwell; that and her ragged breathing were the only sounds . . . at least until she reached the upper levels.

The door to the bedchamber was already open, and Kelanim ran in. Perhaps it had been part of her own delusion that she had never imagined the Caisah taking another woman to his bed—not since she had given him vulnerabilities. Even though all the others of his harem had surrounded her, Kelanim had been skillful at putting that fact from her mind.