The Sylph Hunter (20 page)

Tooie groaned aloud, wondering how much food was actually stockpiled in the city. He’d have to ask the elementals; surely they knew. Then he’d have to send his battlers out to collect it. It was just more work on top of gathering the females together and searching for the Hunter, and he doubted there would be enough stored in the city itself to last long, not with all the women they had to feed. Not if they couldn’t find and kill that Hunter.

He looked up toward the palace floating above the hive, brought lower again now that the storm was over. Eapha wouldn’t want to hear about this. What would she say anyway? Collect the food and save the humans. He could figure that one out for himself without bothering her. He’d have to find out how much food there was and if there wasn’t enough, they’d have to ration it, or reduce the number of humans they needed to feed. He couldn’t in good conscience leave a single woman to starve or be eaten by the Hunter outside the hive.

Tooie sighed again and changed to a cloud, lifting up into the air as he planned the searches and the rescues and just how many men they could throw out of the hive and still make it possible for the women to have daughters.

After the storm ended, Eapha went down the hall to the great sitting room, kicking at the sand that had managed to get in despite the air sylphs’ efforts. There, she found Haru bundling Fareeda into a large, ornate shawl. He was tremendously gentle with the old woman, smiling at her as he brushed her hair back over her shoulders, and lifted her into his arms, straightening up. She leaned her head against his collarbone, her eyes closed.

Eapha stared at them in surprise. She’d seen Haru move Fareeda around in the palace, since he neither bathed her nor expected her to relieve herself in the main sitting room, but this had the feeling of a more permanent leave-taking. Haru wasn’t planning on bringing her back, Eapha could feel it.

Haru turned, seeing her, and stopped, his eyes wide. He stared at his queen, his brow suddenly wrinkling with both concern and protective instincts as he looked at her and then down at Fareeda, torn.

Eapha still wasn’t used to these strange emotions she felt from the sylphs. It was bizarre enough to get them from Tooie, let alone everyone else. She even felt her friends’ emotions whenever a sylph was near, as Haru so often was, and she was intimidated by their indifference for her position. Now she felt Haru’s desperate need to get his master to the hive below them, coupled with his urgent instinct to protect his queen.

She could hear her friends coming down the hall, Kiala’s voice rising above the others as she complained about the sand in the hall. Suddenly, Eapha didn’t want them here while she tried to deal with Haru. There was nothing for her to waste her time with, they’d think, even if most of them wouldn’t say it. Kiala would just argue that the world owed them for what they had been forced to go through in the harems. Certainly no one had any right to tell them what to do.

Eapha walked toward the battler and his master, her hands clasping underneath her full breasts. “Where are you going?” she asked softly.

Haru ducked his head, looking down at Fareeda again. “To the hive. I want her to be safe.”

Eapha looked around at the huge windows, which showed a magnificent view of the city. They were so high up she could barely see the edge of the hive itself, looming below them as though it were some sort of monster’s egg. She could even see shredded clouds passing by, and swirls of dust that looked like anything from a stretched-out puppy to the top of an immense jellyfish. She turned her attention back to Haru. “It’s safe here,” she promised him.

Haru drew into himself, holding Fareeda closer and refusing to look Eapha in the eye. “It doesn’t feel like it,” he whispered. “The walls aren’t thick enough.” He lifted his head to look at her. “Come with us, my queen?”

He couldn’t possibly think they were in danger here, could he? Eapha saw Haru did, but she knew Tooie didn’t agree. Hunters in the hive world took sylphs working in their crop fields, he’d told her. That was low to the ground, not hundreds of feet in the air. She was probably safer here than she would have been in the hive. Haru didn’t look as though he was willing to believe it, but how could she blame him, after he’d been separated from Fareeda for so long?

Behind her, the rest of the women came into the sitting room, laughing and talking among themselves. Eapha put a hand on Haru’s arm before they could notice and start teasing her about putting on airs again.

“Go,” she told him. “I don’t think it’s necessary, but do what makes you happy. I’ll be safe here.”

“Are you sure?” he whispered back, his voice just as low as hers. “My queen, your place is in the hive.”

She smiled at him sadly. “My place is out of everyone else’s way. Go now.”

Haru shook his head, his eyes sad, but he turned and carried the old woman toward one of the open windows, changing his shape to that of a lightning-filled cloud while he did. Fareeda held carefully within, he flew out the window and down over the edge of the palace. Eapha walked over to the window herself, watching him descend until she saw him make his way inside the hive, the wall rippling to let him through.

“Where’s he going?” Kiala asked, walking up beside her.

“He wanted to take Fareeda to the hive,” Eapha answered. “He didn’t feel she was safe here.” The other battlers did. Even Tooie did. Why didn’t Haru?

Kiala snorted derisively, breaking Eapha’s thoughts. “There’s nowhere safer than here. I wouldn’t want to be in that dark, cramped place. Too much like the harem again.”

Perhaps, Eapha thought, but wondered as well what it really looked like in there. Tooie hadn’t said much about it, or how it was maintained. In their limited time together, talking wasn’t something they bothered with. He was down there somewhere right now, feeling stressed to her wondering mind, but determined as well. He seemed to have everything in hand, but maybe she could go and look at the hive herself, see what was going on there to find and destroy that Hunter. Maybe she could help as well.

Kiala glanced at her. “You’ve got that look on your face again,” she noted.

Eapha blinked. “Look? What look?” She stared at her friend.

“The look where you’re thinking of meddling again. Come on, come and have breakfast with the rest of us.” Grabbing her hand, Kiala towed her toward the tables on the other side of the sitting room. Sylphs were bringing them plates of fruit and cheeses, just like they’d eaten in the harem. None of them were used to anything heavier.

They were her dearest friends, but Eapha looked back toward the window where Haru had vanished. Where was that young man Leon had sent? she wondered. He’d wanted her to do more than just sit around. She tried to remember how young and unimpressive the man had looked, how obviously terrified. He’d been just as confused as she was.

Still, he had been sent by Leon Petrule, who was the least confused and unimpressive man she’d ever met. If only Leon had stayed. She sighed as she watched platters of cheese and fruit fly invisibly into the room, the sylphs who carried them content. If Leon were here, it wouldn’t matter what she thought or what her friends said. She’d be a queen for real; he wouldn’t let her be anything less.

So why are you letting yourself be less?
she asked herself.

Right at that moment, Eapha didn’t have an answer.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Z
alia came down the stairs that led from her apartment soon after dawn, wondering how it could be that she didn’t feel completely different. She’d lost her virginity, sullied herself in a way that she couldn’t ever be cleansed from, but other than a bit of soreness, she didn’t physically
feel
any different. She’d always thought the world would be changed once she took that step. Certainly she’d been led to believe it would.

Emotionally, however, she felt completely different, as if the words
I SLEPT WITH A BATTLE SYLPH
were inscribed in glowing letters across her forehead. How could people not look at her and just know? How could her father not know? How could Devon?

Devon had to know, she’d realized in the earliest hours of the morning. Airi would have told him, and that just made her nervousness and uncertainty worse, because she still felt so much for him that she couldn’t describe. Even after One-Eleven had taken her, she could see the possibility of a lifetime with Devon Chole, which was just foolishness. Men of her culture wanted their women pure and untouched. A single passionate tryst with One-Eleven had made her completely undesirable to any human man.

Even as the thought of that was terrifying to her, she tried to find hope in it. Battle sylphs were loyal to their women. One-Eleven would never abandon her, even as a part of her feared he already had. He wouldn’t let anyone taunt her and call her
whore
or abuse her or threaten to fire her from her job. She closed her eyes for a moment, not sure if she’d have a job anymore, even with One-Eleven’s threats to her employer. It wasn’t as if she could go there to work now, not with the Hunter in the city. For all she knew, it had already gone through and devoured her employer and Ilaja. There might not even be anyone left at the restaurant, just as there might not be anyone still alive in the hovels she and her father had lived in.

They didn’t know about the Hunter, she realized with a horror that made her forget any thought about the purity or lack thereof in her body. There were people she’d grown up with in those hovels, all of them too poor to find a home within the city, though some held jobs as she did, each of them trying to help the others survive another year. They weren’t even considered citizens and were only a step above slaves. No one would be going to their rescue.

She ran down the stairs, ignoring her fear and uncertainty, just as she did her hunger and thirst. Her father wasn’t down yet, probably still asleep in the first bed he’d had access to in decades, but Devon was in the foyer of the building, his hair lashing around despite the lack of wind as he looked up at her, his eyes calm and searching.

She ran right up to him. “My home, out on the city edge. No one there knows about the Hunter. We have to warn them!”

“Whatever you want,” he said.

There was a large gathering of people at one place by the inner wall of the hive, where the stone had an arching half circle a darker shade than the rest rising fifty feet or more in the air. According to Airi, that was the entrance in and out of the hive.

Devon, Airi, and Zalia ran toward it, passing confused people on the street. Most of them were just standing there, staring up at the dome. Thanks to their sylphs, they knew what was happening, but Devon doubted the reality of it had sunk in for these people, given how there wasn’t a panic going on. Granted, if there was, there were more than enough battlers to stop it and these people had once been feeders. There was a broken fatalism in all of them, as if they couldn’t quite muster up the courage to care. The dancers and musicians they’d seen the first day weren’t in sight, so perhaps it was only the damaged that were out here now.

Devon felt a little damaged himself. What was he thinking? Defying a battle sylph’s territory? Leaving the hive when he knew there was something out there that would kill him without his ever seeing it? Was he crazy? He looked at Zalia running beside him and decided that it wasn’t insanity. It felt too right for that. Noticing his attention, Zalia looked at him sideways and blushed, smiling tentatively before ducking her head. Devon’s heart surged.

When they arrived, they found the entrance was placed where the wall of the hive cut through the center of a large square, leaving plenty of room in front of it. Only there were a lot of people standing in that open space, making it as crowded as the party the night before.

These people weren’t celebrating. They were all women and girls, most of them weeping or wailing outright, jostling in a near panic or clinging to each other as they crowded around sacks of grain and crates of dried meats and fish, all dumped wherever there was space.

Devon slowed to a walk, staring at them. “What’s going on?” Zalia whispered in his ear, pressing close to him in a way that felt wonderful even as his own heart pounded with nervousness.

They’ve been evacuated here,
Airi told him,
because of the Hunter.

That made sense, Devon thought, since it was what he and Zalia had just been planning to do. Maybe they didn’t have to go out there at all. There was something wrong though, something it took him a moment to see, though it was obvious once he did.

There were no men in the crowds, no little boys or even infants. He could hear women wailing for their sons while they clutched their daughters tight, other women crying for husbands and fathers who’d been left behind.

The archway in the hive wall swirled, the stone rippling and pulling away as if it were no more substantial than a set of curtains. The scent of sand came and a dozen battle sylphs swooped in through the opening, which closed behind them before the anxious women could escape.

The battlers settled into a hovering line, waiting patiently as each of them landed in the center of the square long enough to set down their cargo. Most of them carried women, all as stunned and horrified as the rest of the women in the square. The remainder carried crates of foodstuffs that earth and air sylphs Devon hadn’t noticed before put into stacks or transported out of the square altogether.

“Why are they only bringing in women?” Zalia asked in a whisper, realizing the same as Devon.

“Because battle sylphs are cruel,” he assured her and tried to ignore her flinch. Solie never would have allowed this in the Valley. Eapha never
should
have allowed it. Cursing himself again for his absolute failure with the queen, he grabbed Zalia’s hand, feeling Airi tangled through his hair, and towed them both through the crowds toward the archway. He hoped they could get the sylphs to open it. Battle sylphs in their natural forms turned massive eyes on them as they passed, making Devon’s balls curl up against his body with terror, but they had too many hysterical women pressing against them and pleading to bother with a single man and his alien air sylph. They let them by.

An earth sylph fifteen feet tall and shaped like a heavyset clay woman stood unmoving by the archway. Devon hesitated. Earth and fire sylphs tended to be the smallest in size of the elemental sylphs, but their size did still indicate age and he guessed this doorkeeper had to be very old indeed. She had no eyes or features on her face, but still she turned her rounded head toward them, looking down past massive dangling breasts at the three of them.

Devon swallowed. He wasn’t afraid of elemental sylphs the way he was battlers, but she looked like she could step on him. Not that she would. Elementals were incapable of deliberately harming a living creature.

Still, she might
accidentally
step on him.

“We want to go outside,” he told her. The earth sylph just continued to look at him, or rather, point her head in his direction. The stone of the arch didn’t move. “Please?” he added, to no effect.

Let us through,
he heard Airi plead.
We have something we need to do. We’ll be right back, we promise.
The earth sylph was unmoved, finally lifting her bulbous head to continue staring without eyes across the square.

Devon swore softly, though he wasn’t terribly surprised. Most sylphs weren’t exactly independent thinkers. Beside him, Zalia bit her lip and stepped forward.

“Please open the gate,” she said. “I’m with…I’m with the battle sylph One-Eleven. He wants us to go through the gate.”

Devon stared at her, wondering with an absurd sort of pride how much courage it took a woman of this culture to say that in front of him. The earth sylph rotated her head down to look at the young woman for a moment and then the stone of the gate swirled, making an odd, sucking sound as a hole only a bit larger than a standard doorway opened.

They hurried through it before she could change her mind or the battle sylphs notice that a woman was leaving their forced sanctuary. On the other side, the opening led on to a tunnel several dozen feet long, the far end just as dark as the stone that closed behind them.

Zalia looked back at the archway as it sealed itself behind them, leaving the air heavy and oppressive. Once it did, the far end of the tunnel rippled open to show daylight.

Hurry,
Airi cautioned.
She won’t leave it open for long.

Devon grabbed Zalia’s hand and ran, her long legs letting her keep up as they sprinted for the exit. As they ran, he hoped that the Hunter wouldn’t be waiting for them outside, but of course, if it was, the battlers wouldn’t have been able to get in.

The earth sylph must have been able to tell that they were outside, for the moment they passed through the arch, it closed behind them again, becoming smooth and dark against the rest of the hive wall. It towered over them, sitting like an alien growth in the rest of the city.

Devon and Zalia stopped, Airi whimpering as she clung to her master’s hair. The earth sylph hadn’t left them much time, but it might not have just been because she was afraid of the Hunter getting in. There was sand everywhere, piled waist high in corners and spread across streets that were clear the day before. The air was cloudy from grit and in the outer half of the square, men were gathered, hundreds of angry men who were shouting at the hive to give them their women back.

How could they be brave enough to dare and anger the battlers, Devon wondered distantly, though of course that was just what he was daring with the woman whose hand he held. At the sight of them, the men grumbled and glowered, looking angrily at them.

“How did you get out?” one demanded in a fury. “They stole my wife!”

Devon swallowed, not wanting to antagonize the man more, but these were human men. He was scared, but not terrified. “I know. The battlers are evacuating the women. They want out as much as you want in. We can’t do anything about it,” he added.

“How did you get out?” another man demanded.

“I was in there when the hive went up,” Devon told them. More men were watching them now, some devastated, most angry. “I don’t think they cared if a man left.”

“What about her!” the first man shouted, pointing at Zalia. She edged behind Devon, pressing against him in a way that made it a bit hard for him to think.

“I snuck her out,” Devon said. The murmurs grew. “I could only get one out! You think they’d let me bring them all?” A few men looked disappointed, though most were still shocked at what happened and their own inability to do anything about it.

“Why did they take them?” one man wailed, forgetting his dignity in his pain. “Why did they take my Loresha?”

More murmurs and angry shouts rose at that, but most of the men watched Devon, wanting answers.

“They took them to protect them,” he shouted, knowing only a fraction of the crowd could hear him but not knowing what else to say. The battle sylphs certainly wouldn’t bother to explain. “There’s a creature loose here somewhere, something from the place the sylphs came from that they can’t find. It eats people. They’re evacuating all the women and female children to keep them safe.” He pointed at the hive.

For a long moment, the men close enough to have heard what he said gaped disbelievingly at him, but none of them could deny that the battle sylphs were grabbing their women and daughters and hauling them into a giant stone dome that hadn’t existed two days before.

“Why didn’t they take us?” one man finally gasped out.

Devon gave the man an almost apologetic look. “We’re men. Why would they want to?”

There was silence at that, but Devon could feel the rage growing again and Airi was whimpering in his mind, whispering for him to go, just go. He started to back away, still holding Zalia’s hand and pulling her with him. He couldn’t just leave them without a warning though.