The Queen of Blood (18 page)

Out in the capital, Daleina felt like a first-time visitor. She'd meant it when she said she hadn't left. It wasn't expressly forbidden, but students had so little free time that it was impractical. She knew some of the others liked to see friends in the city. Visit the tea houses. Shop in the boutiques. Drink in the taverns. Dance in the halls. Stroll through the markets. She wondered if she'd missed out by not doing those things. But she'd been happy at the academy, and there had never seemed to be enough time.

Ven kept striding through the crowds without meeting anyone's eyes, and Daleina stuck close, half a step away, so close that if he stopped she'd walk into him, but she didn't want to lose him in the crowd. She wasn't certain he'd come back for her. He might decide it would be a good lesson for her to navigate on her own.

The light felt different out here. Inside the academy, the sun filtered through the wide circular opening at the top. Midday, it flooded everything, but mornings and evenings were shadowed. Here, it was dappled with patches of light. Streams of sun penetrated the canopy above and then pooled here and there on the houses, the bridges, and the platforms.

She wondered what the people did all day every day, and realized she hadn't ever thought much about it. She knew what her family did, and others in the outer villages, where the challenge was to feed your family, keep everyone healthy, and keep a solid roof over your head. But in the capital, only a few feet from where she'd spent four entire years? She passed a woman who had braided gemstones into her hair and wrapped her body in shimmery lace and then a man with what looked like bits of
glass embedded in the fabric of his shirt. They stared as openly at Daleina as she did at them.

Farther out, the men and women looked more familiar, mostly dressed in tan tunics, often carrying tools—this was obviously the laborers' section of the city. They passed through it, and the living quarters became smaller and seedier. Instead of houses, the homes were platforms lashed together with tarps, boards—sometimes even a door hammered on as a roof. Laundry was strung between them, and there were a few kids draped over a branch, passing a jar back and forth between them. “Don't make eye contact,” Champion Ven told her.

She swung her head to stare just at Ven's shoulder blades. He strode quickly through the area and then he climbed another ladder. She followed him up to an empty platform with a tarp. “Where are we?” she asked.

“My place, for the week. I rented it.”

“We're staying here?” She tried, and failed, to keep the judgment out of her voice. She'd pictured them heading much farther out, into the forest.

“I paid for it, but since I won't be using it as a home . . .” He drew out a knife and sliced the tarp from the roof. He rolled it up, tied it with a rope, and slung it on his back. “Our portable camp. Consider it your first and last luxury, at least until we reach a village.” He then began to climb up, beyond the end of the ladder. “Let me show you the other reason I chose this place: location.”

She opened her mouth to ask where they were going next and then shut it. She'd find out soon enough. It didn't matter, as long as he trained her. Higher, they reached the canopy, and she found him looking at her. She wondered if she'd done something wrong.

“You aren't afraid of heights, are you?”

“I don't think so.” She'd climbed the spiral stairs daily, and she'd never blinked at it. He pulled a rope with a clip out of his pack.

“You wrap this around your wrists, attach the clip to the wire, and then you kick off. Whatever you do, don't let go.” He handed the clip to her, and then he got out his own, wrapped it
fast around his wrist, reached up, clipped it to a wire, and then without another word, he kicked off. Dangling from the clip, he sailed through the branches, breaking through the leaves, with the whoosh of wind in his wake.

“Wait! I . . .” She stared down at the clip in her hands and then swallowed. No wonder traveling the wire paths was considered insane. “Don't let go. All right.” She'd wanted this, she reminded herself. She'd taken plenty of survival classes, though they'd always been either on the ground or very close to it. None of them had involved hurtling through the tops of trees. She took a deep breath and then another, and she wished she were traveling the forest floor with Bayn.

She hooked the clip onto the wire, and she wrapped the rope three times around her wrist. Testing its strength, she lifted her feet. It held. She couldn't see where the wire led. It disappeared into the leaves only a few feet from her. She didn't see any motion and had no idea how far the champion had gone. She couldn't let him get too far ahead of her.

Kicking off the tree, she held on tight. She gritted her teeth so she wouldn't scream as she soared down the wire. Wind whistled in her ears, and branches slapped at her arms. One sliced her cheek. She turned her face away and closed her eyes, then forced them open again.

Ahead was a tree and a platform. The champion was waiting for her. It was almost over! But how to stop? She clung to the rope and felt as if she were increasing speed. She lifted her knees up to her chest, trying to protect her body, and she tensed for impact. She squeezed her eyes shut again—she couldn't help it—and then she slammed into something soft.

The champion grunted as he caught her, and she felt him take a step, only one, backward, then he steadied himself and her. Slowly, she lowered her legs down. She didn't stop clutching the rope.

“Unclip yourself.”

Shakily, she unclenched her hand and unclipped from the wire. “Are we going down?”

“Hardly. Next lesson.” He pulled a second clip with a rope out
of his pack. “To travel from wire to wire, you need to clip on to the next wire at the same time—or more accurately, an instant before—you unclip from the prior wire. Try not to lose momentum.”

“What?”

She saw where a second wire came into the tree. He reached over and clipped on to it. “You hang on with one hand, and you ready the second clip with the other. Think of a monkey swinging from vine to vine. It's like that.”

But I'm not a monkey,
she wanted to say, but didn't. More important, she'd never even
seen
a monkey. All she knew of them was that they were native to the islands of Belene and liked to throw rotten fruit and feces at intruders. Charming creatures.

She was starting to have the same feeling about Champion Ven.

Regardless, he was her teacher, her only one now, and she knew better than to argue. “Will you . . .” She licked her lips. Her mouth felt dry. “. . . go first?”

He grinned. “Stay close. And remember: this is the fun part.” Clipping on, he kicked off and hung from the rope by one arm. He held the other ready.

“Right. Fun part.” She clipped on and followed. In her other hand, she held the other clip. Up ahead, she saw him make the switch, clipping on to the next wire and sailing smoothly onto it. “You can do this, Daleina,” she told herself. “Ready . . . one, two . . .”

On two, she hit the end of the wire. Her feet swung up and bashed into a limb, and the force jerked her arm. She felt as if it were going to pull out of her shoulder. Wincing, she dangled, and then she clipped on to the next wire. Slowly, she slid down it, gathering speed.

She shook her arm out as she flew down the wire, and she readied the clip. She kept her eyes focused ahead of her. Ready, ready, ready . . . There!
Now!
She clipped on to the next wire and soared on.

Again and again, she switched wires, following behind Ven,
catching glimpses of him through the branches. Wind whooshed past her, and she felt as if the world had narrowed to just this area of forest. All her focus was on the next branch, the next switch, the next tree trunk. By the third switch, she was smiling. By the fifth, she was laughing.

At last, she saw the champion ahead, waiting for her on a platform. She raised her legs up, feetfirst, as she'd seen him do. She tensed her arms, ready. He hadn't mentioned how to stop. The trunk came at her fast, and she saw the champion was leaning against it idly, no intention of catching her. And an instant later, she was there, feetfirst, hitting the trunk. She bent her knees, absorbing the impact as best she could, though it shuddered through her.

She lowered her feet to the platform. For a minute, she could not make her hands open to release the rope, but then her muscles obeyed. She unclipped. Her arms ached in a way they never had before. Wincing, she swung them around in a circle.

“How good are you with a knife?” he asked.

“I did well in survival class. But not with shaking arms.”

“You'll learn. Get out your knife. Next lesson.” He pointed to the next tree, at a crook between two branches. “Hit that.”

She pulled her knife out of her pack, wrapped a charm around the hilt so the spirits wouldn't object, and then held it up, aiming at the tree. Her arms were shaking. She tried to calm the muscles. “Can I wait until—”

“Throw.”

Deep breath. Steady. She threw.

The hilt hit the trunk, and the knife plummeted. It bounced off a branch, then another, then lower, before it landed on a wider branch.

“Get it, climb back, and try again.”

She obeyed, even though her arms ached. Climbing down from branch to branch, she lowered herself down to where the knife had landed, and then she crawled to it. Reclaiming it, she climbed back up to the champion. Her arms were shaking worse now, and her cheek stung from where a branch had nicked it.
She wondered if there was blood. Later, she'd deal with it. In the meantime, though . . . She took another breath, focused on the crook in the branch, and threw.

This time, it embedded itself in the tree, three feet down from the crook. She looked at him. “Get it, climb back, and try again,” he repeated.

She climbed again.

And again.

And again.

“Enough,” Ven declared. “We'll camp here.”

“Here? As in, right here?” She felt him watching her, judging her. “Here is fine.” He handed her the canvas, and together they set up camp, creating a nest of ropes.

Suspended between trees, Daleina tried to sleep. After so long closeted inside the academy, she'd forgotten what the open forest sounded like at night. The owls called to one another in long, low notes, while the wolves howled far below, echoing the howls of other packs. Insects clicked, buzzed, and hummed, and the wind whispered through the leaves. It was extremely irritating. Plus she couldn't get comfortable. The makeshift rope hammock wasn't woven evenly, and every time she shifted, she accidentally stuck an arm or a leg through a too-wide hole.

“You need to rest,” Champion Ven said, his voice much too awake for this late at night. She supposed he was keeping watch, another thing she hadn't had to worry about inside the academy. She missed her walls, and she wondered if Bayn had found a comfortable place to sleep on the forest floor. She wished they could have camped down with the wolf.

“I know.”

“Relax,” he said. “Think soothing thoughts. I know the academy teachers taught you control and focus. Use that to coax your body to sleep.”

Daleina didn't answer. She didn't want to sound disrespectful, but she couldn't force herself to sleep. The more she ordered her body to relax, the more it tensed.

“Or you could summon a few spirits to sing you a lullaby.”

“Is that a joke or an order?” She wasn't sure champions were allowed to have a sense of humor. She'd never pictured them ever laughing. Lifting her head, she tried to see him in the darkness. They were tucked in the shadows, and he was only a shape, sitting on a nearby branch. She thought she saw a sword balanced on his knees.

“There are several nearby. Can you sense them?” He was looking out, and his profile made her think of a hawk, alert, ready to hunt, or maybe he was more like an owl, watching the trees for any hint of movement.

She stretched out her awareness. It felt like straining one's ears to hear a muffled whisper, except it was more closely linked to the sense of touch. She concentrated first on the feel of the rope hammock, biting into her skin, and the feel of the air that moved beneath the tarp they'd stretched as a roof. She then “felt” beyond her, to the sturdy trunks of the trees, the empty air between them, the thin life of the branches . . . Her mind brushed over an owl and then a few crickets before she encountered the first spirit.

It felt like a small one, huddled in a nearby tree. She reached farther and touched two more. “What are they doing?” she whispered.

“Watching us,” he answered.

“Do you think they'll attack?”

“Only if we do something stupid.”

“Like what?”

“Like this,” he said, and swung his sword and lopped off a branch. “Did your teachers ever tell you about the most important ability that champions possess?” he continued conversationally.

Struggling to sit up, Daleina scrambled out of the ropes. “What are you doing?” He hadn't taken any precautions—no charms on him or the blade.

He hacked at another branch, and then another. “The ability to”—hack—“thoroughly”—hack—“piss off”—hack—“spirits.”

“Champion Ven!”

He stopped and said in a calm voice, “Your turn. Keep them
from killing us.” Sitting on an unchopped branch, the champion propped his legs up and leaned back, his hands behind his head.

Daleina heard the spirits shrieking. Leaves rustled as they ran along the branches and flew through the trees. Three wood spirits. One looked like a raccoon skeleton, draped with leaves, with a face made of bark. Its eyes were like black rocks embedded in mud. Another looked like a beautiful green girl with hair of leaves. The third looked like an insect, with a hard, glistening shell for a body and many legs. She could feel their rage shivering in the air.
Stop,
she tried. But the spirits weren't listening, and Champion Ven pursed his lips together and began to whistle, breaking her concentration.