The Sylph Hunter (4 page)

“Pathetic little thing,” he said at last to Airi, who just pressed herself farther down, as submissive as Devon had ever seen her. It might even have been the only thing saving her life. “The queen said someone was coming.” Straightening up, the battler leaped into the air and changed, becoming again a black cloud streaked with lightning, and lifted away.

Devon lay where he’d been left, gasping for air. Beside him, Airi lifted her head and looked at him before shifting back to her usual, invisible form. He felt her press against his neck and back.
I guess he decided to leave us alone.

“I guess.” He moved slowly into a seated position. He was covered in sweat, most of it, he was sure, not due to the heat.

Too bad he didn’t tell us where the queen was.

Devon shook his head. The less contact one of those monsters had with them, the better. Still, he thought as he climbed to his feet, it would have been nice. He looked down the length of the street they were on. With the heat haze in the distance and the turns, it was impossible to tell how long it was, or even if they were going in the right direction. With a sigh, he continued on.

Zalia found her thoughts turning back to the battle sylph.

Business was slow. Even back when the emperor ruled and the city was full, most people preferred to avoid the greatest heat of the day, and that had only become worse since the queen arrived. No one seemed to have money anymore, including those who’d been wealthy before the revolution. There weren’t many of them left either. The battle sylphs had killed hundreds, if not thousands, of people in purges after they were freed. They’d destroyed a great many homes and lands as well, leaving most of the kingdom’s wealth in ruins. Slavery was illegal, punished by the battlers’ rage, but at least a slave in the old Meridal was fed.

Zalia cleaned one of the tables on the covered patio, wondering if anyone would come and what she would do if the restaurant closed and she lost her job. Likely, she and her father would have to join the exodus of those who were following the coastline to the next kingdom. There was no guarantee of salvation there and probably no fate better than becoming a serf or a slave, but it was better than no hope at all. Meridal was falling apart.

Maybe she should have taken that battler up on his offer, she thought furiously, and then blushed a vivid red. What kind of life was it to be a sylph’s woman anyway? Her father’s heart would have shattered. One-Eleven had been so warm though, his touch so exciting. She shivered for a moment and felt her toes curl in her sandals just the tiniest bit from remembered sensations.

“What’s wrong?” Ilaja asked, and Zalia jumped, almost dropping her rag as she turned her still furiously blushing face to her fellow waitress. “Are you sick?”

“I’m fine,” Zalia managed to squeak. “Just a little light-headed is all.”

Ilaja looked somewhat dubious, but finally she shrugged. “Maybe you should drink some water.”

Zalia shook her head. She was thirsty, but good drinking water was expensive and she’d spilled what she’d taken from the stable when she ran that morning. She’d wait until later and fill her skin again from one of the troughs back at the stable, provided she could manage it without being seen. She thought of the battle sylph again, ducking her head.

“Look at him,” Ilaja said suddenly.

Zalia’s head snapped up, her cheeks burning even more hotly as she expected to see the battle sylph coming back to try his luck again. Instead, she watched a man walking down the empty street, making his way in full sunshine during the worst heat of the day. He wore a heavy linen shirt and pants, as well as boots his feet had to be baking in. Zalia’s eyes widened, wondering if it was Leon Petrule come back from whatever frozen land he’d gone to. It wasn’t, of course. Leon couldn’t come back because his battler wasn’t part of Eapha’s hive. The other battlers would have killed him. Besides, Leon had learned before he left how to dress properly for the heat and this was a much younger man, his hair sticking out everywhere in sweaty spikes and his face red from sunburn.

“He’s so pale,” Ilaja gasped.

Zalia nodded absently. Of course, Ilaja hadn’t seen Leon close up when he’d come to the restaurant and he’d been trying to hide his identity at the time. He hadn’t really done a good job of it, since the heavy cloak he’d worn only made him stand out when Zalia first saw him. It was the boots that had really made her wonder though, even before she’d seen his blue eyes. No one else in Meridal had blue eyes.

This man’s eyes were as brown as a local’s, even if his skin was shades lighter than anyone born to Meridal. He walked up the steps and into the shaded interior of the patio, heading wearily toward them. He must have no water on him, Zalia thought. Pale people like Leon didn’t seem to handle the heat well. Ilaja backed away, afraid of him, and ran to the kitchens while Zalia stepped forward, wondering, with no small degree of fright, whether this would mean that more changes were coming to Meridal.

“Can I get you some water, sir?” she asked as she held a chair out for him.

He didn’t so much sit in it as fall. “Yeah,” he croaked, and, as she turned away, asked, “Is it always so hot here?”

Zalia smiled at him over her shoulder. “It’s much hotter in the summer, sir.”

His groan followed her toward the kitchen.

She got him a cool clay jug of water and a mug. While Ilaja watched her suspiciously and the cooks sat as far from the stoves as they could, fanning themselves, she put the water on a tray and carried it back out. The stranger was sitting slumped back in his chair, his head hanging over the back while he fanned himself with one hand. Zalia giggled but managed to hide her smile before she reached him.

“Your water, sir.”

She set it all before him, carefully filling the mug with some of the water before she placed the jug in the center of the table. The man lurched forward, wiped sweat off his forehead, and grabbed the mug, draining it as fast as he could. His hand shaking a bit, he filled it again and drank a little more slowly.

“Thank you,” he gasped at last, pressing the mug against his forehead.

“You’re welcome, sir. Will there be anything else?”

He shook his head slowly. “I don’t know how anyone can eat in this heat.” He looked at her, his brown eyes shadowed and his face patchy from the burn. His hair was waving softly, though Zalia didn’t feel a breeze. “Can you tell me where I can get some better clothes for here?”

“Of course, sir.” She hesitated, wondering if she dared ask him anything. The staff weren’t supposed to socialize with the customers, but if he did come here like Leon had…she hadn’t seen the man much after the queen ascended, and once he had left, she hadn’t seen anyone from that day at all.

“Do you know Leon Petrule, sir?” she asked.

He looked up at her again, his expression incredulous. His hair suddenly swept upward in a mohawk and she blinked.

“You know Leon?” he blurted.

Zalia nodded, holding her tray flat against her belly. “Yes, sir. He stayed with my father and myself while he was here. He’s a very noble man.”

The man stared at her for a moment and then squeezed his eyes shut, snapping his fingers repeatedly while he thought. “You’re…you’re…give me a minute…you’re…Zalia! And your father’s Xed? Xel?”

“Xehm,” she corrected, smiling.

“Right. Sorry.” He opened his eyes, looking at her again, and Zalia blushed a bit. He was rather cute under the sunburn and the soaked, wild hair. It swayed suddenly and she squinted at it, puzzled.

He looked upward, his eyes crossing. “Oh! Zalia, meet Airi. Airi, meet Zalia.”

Out of nothingness, a girl formed from the sand swirling up off the ground. The fine granules made her outline as she looked up at Zalia and smiled. Before Zalia could do more than gape at her, the girl let go of the sand and it scattered across the floor again.

“Airi’s my air sylph,” the man told Zalia and carefully filled his mug again. “She’s very pleased to meet you. She’s shy about talking to anyone she doesn’t know though.” He sipped the water and exhaled heavily. “I didn’t know water could taste so good.” He paused for a moment, blinking, and then turned back to her, his face even redder than it had been before as he blushed. “I didn’t tell you my name!”

“That’s not necessary, sir.”

He stood up. “It is. Leon told me how helpful you and your father were to him. He wanted me to find you.” Before she could stop him, he took her hand and shook it. “My name is Devon Chole. Leon sent me to be the ambassador in Meridal for our queen.”

Zalia yanked her hand back before anyone saw them. Ilaja alone would declare it a scandal, if only so she could take Zalia’s place in the restaurant. “That’s very good, sir. Our kingdom is very honored to have you here.” She bowed.

Devon looked sheepish. “Yes, well, um, thanks. The problem is, no one showed up to meet me when I got here. I was kind of wondering, do you know where I can find the queen?”

CHAPTER THREE

G
lutted by its feed, it let itself float with the winds out over the ocean.

It hadn’t ever seen an ocean before and had no idea at first what it was, but some of the food spoke about it. It could hear them here as easily as on the hunting grounds it came from, and it mused on the word as it floated across the waters, past the wall that encircled the other new word it had learned of—
city
. It only snatched up a few morsels of food that wandered into its tendrils as it went, dissolving them in its belly as it drifted over the ocean, tendrils playing with the waves.

A few hours later, it realized its mistake. The winds kept pushing it away from the city and the water wasn’t as rich with food as it would have liked. There was food, certainly, if it dipped deeply enough, but it was quick and small, tasteless and poor. Food was so much better when it thought, as so many things did in the place where it came from.

It floated for hours, the land dwindling in the distance until it couldn’t even hear the food on the land anymore. It lifted its heaviest tendrils so that it could look more clearly, debating. Continue to float and come to another city with more food, or make itself hungry and return now? The food had believed that the ocean was very big though. It might not make it before the hunger made it sink.

At the edge of its tendrils, it felt motion in the water that wasn’t just from currents. Something bigger than the tiny things it had been eating swam in its direction, filled with alien speech. Patient, as it was ever patient, it waited, watching as dozens of the great blue things came toward it as blindly as food ever did, great fins moving through the water while they blew streams of spray every time they surfaced. Unaware of it, they came closer, and it spread its tendrils outward, knowing that at least some of them would stumble through them.

They did. The first of the creatures, as large as an ancient breeding battler, swam through the rain of its tendrils, both thick and thin. Immediately, it plunged them deep, hooking them through its skin and blubber, intending to draw it in to feed.

It was a mistake. The creature was too large for it to dissolve and it bellowed, its wails sounding of danger, of pain, of escape.

The blue whales dived, fleeing in terror, and the one that it held went with them. The Hunter shuddered as it was suddenly yanked downward, its eyes blinded as its tendrils were pulled into the water. The salt stung them and it had an image of being pulled under entirely, to be left floating in all that water, unable to get airborne again before it sank and died. Terrified, it ripped its tendrils free, letting go with its barbs as fast as it could while the food kept diving, trailing blood behind while it went for the depths, holding its breath in a way that its attacker never could.

The Hunter got the last of its tendrils free as its underbelly and mouth slammed into the ocean’s surface. The water was shockingly cold and it stopped, afraid to move and risk going under. Instead, while it was still, the waves lapped against its underside; and after a time, it slowly started to rise again. It didn’t try to fight or speed the process. It just let itself ascend, lifting until only the tips of its tendrils touched the ocean, and even those it pulled up, not wanting to feel the water again.

This was an evil place, a horrible, hideous world. It looked toward the distant land and the dusty city with the food and made its decision. It would go back. Most of the time it drifted, finding food as fate found it, but it didn’t have to be that way, not when matters grew desperate enough for it to risk the hunger that could keep it from floating.

It pulled its tendrils in, rolling over until its underbelly and mouth faced opposite from the way it wanted to go, and then it released that which let it float, expelling it behind in a wave as strong as any ocean current while it blew back toward the land, sinking ever lower as it did, and hoping its feed earlier had been enough to get it back in time.

Then it would feed again.

Zalia finished her shift long after dark and made her way home, her shawl pulled around her now that it was cold out again. Mr. Chole had gone on his way hours before, still looking for the queen. Zalia was sorry she hadn’t been able to help him; he was a nice man and she liked him. She just didn’t know where the queen was. She wasn’t sure anyone did, not really.

Ahead of her, the streets were empty. Even with everything that had changed, a part of Zalia was still amazed at how many people had left. If they kept leaving, soon there wouldn’t be anyone left in Meridal at all. The battle sylphs didn’t care who left. As long as no one broke their rules, they left people alone. No one Zalia knew felt safe though, since no one knew what the rules were anymore.

“Hello.”

Zalia jumped, looking around in surprise. The street had been empty, and who would talk to a lower-class woman after dark? An attacker wouldn’t bother, and no other man would want to demean themselves, unless they thought her a whore for hire.

Sitting on a stone wall around one of the many empty houses, the battle sylph she’d seen just that morning smiled at her. He was wearing the same clothes as before, his hands clasped around one drawn-up knee. He really had a beautiful smile, she thought, and blushed wildly, remembering. He’d seen her naked! He’d touched her!

Zalia turned and ran, not knowing what to say to him, afraid of what he might do, afraid that someone would see her with a battler and think…what?

He was after her in an instant with a whoop of glee and she wondered suddenly if he thought they were playing. Weren’t sylphs supposed to know what people were feeling? How could he mistake this for a game? What
was
she feeling? Confusion. Shyness. Fear.

Desire.

Zalia gulped and ran down a side alley, aware of the battler so close behind her that he could have reached out and touched the trailing end of her shawl if he’d wanted. Ahead of her, the alley opened out into a square and she almost flew out into it, panting but exhilarated at the same time and not really understanding why. All Zalia really knew was that she was running through a beautiful, moonlit night, a battle sylph laughing in unabashed delight behind her, and the only thing she could think of clearly was how warm he was. And how, for all his strength, if he caught her now, it was because she let him.

It was wonderful. It was sinful. It was freedom. It was too much. Zalia’s unexplainable exhilaration turned into real fright and she heard him sigh.

Something rushed over her. Skidding to a gasping halt, Zalia looked up to see a black cloud streaked with lightning lifting into the sky above her. There was something almost happy about the way the lightning flashed through him, and One-Eleven formed a tentacle of black smoke, waving down at her as he flew away.

He was letting her go? He really was. Maybe they actually could tell what a person was feeling. Shifting her shawl back around her shoulders and gasping in the cold air, Zalia looked around at the empty square, seeing he’d chased her into a place where no one would ever have seen them, and smiled a bit as she continued on home.

Devon, to his utmost relief, didn’t get chased by any battle sylphs after his departure from the restaurant. After the first one, they must have decided that he was harmless. Certainly they’d communicated about him. Devon knew that, for he’d seen the battle sylphs back home do it all the time. A threat one had encountered was shared among them all. It only took them seconds to talk to each other, Airi told him once. Likely, they were ignoring the two of them now.

I like being ignored by battlers,
Airi said.

“You and me both,” he muttered.

It had been a long, useless day. He’d thought he had a real break when he found Zalia, but she hadn’t been able to help him. She didn’t know where the queen was. No one did, or at least no one they could ask did. Devon certainly wasn’t going to be demanding answers from a battler, and the other kinds of sylphs didn’t seem to congregate on the streets at all. He tried seeing if Airi could ask, but she’d been against the idea. The battlers were treating them as harmless right now. That could change if a foreign sylph started asking about the location of the hive’s queen. Devon figured she had a point and didn’t press.

It was frustrating though. He’d been sent to represent Solie and to help Eapha sort through the problems a new leader would inevitably have. Devon had no idea what those problems would turn out to be, but Leon had felt that Devon had enough experience with seeing Solie go through it to be able to give some kind of assistance. Devon had been doubtful, but with Heyou vehemently wanting him gone, he hadn’t argued as much as he could have.

Now he wished he had. Places such as the restaurant where Zalia worked were still functioning, but they were unusual and in the long run, this kingdom was falling apart. People were leaving at a rate that was alarming, given they had no real place to go, and no one seemed to be in charge of anything. If something didn’t change soon, everyone would have to leave, just to try and survive.

Someone had to take charge. Devon gazed up at the beautiful colors that tossed across the sky while the sun set. Taking charge was supposed to be the queen’s job; at least it was back home. It would have to be the same here; the battlers had killed everyone else who could have kept the infrastructure going. Granted, it was an infrastructure based on slavery, but still…He looked at a child huddled in a doorway, his face gaunt from starvation, but when he tried to approach, the boy ran off, vanishing around a corner. Meridal was going to die at this rate, along with everyone in it. Die or be conquered by someone else.

Devon sighed and kept walking, headed back toward the harbor, his feet aching and his mood depressed. He’d spend the night on the
Racing Dawn
with Kadmiel and Ocean Breeze and try again in the morning to find the queen.

Suddenly, he stopped in the center of the road, feeling Airi ruffle the hair on the back of his neck while he slapped a hand over his face.
What is it?
she asked.

“I’m an idiot,” he moaned.

Really? Why?

Devon dropped the hand and started trudging again. “Ocean Breeze. I bet she can take us straight to the queen.”

Airi thought about that for a moment and started giggling again.

Kadmiel sat on the deck of the
Racing Dawn
, watching the sun set behind the ocean. He sat cross-legged as he always had in his cage, his hands resting lightly on his knees. No one had come by to tell him what to do, but that was fine. He didn’t know if he was supposed to turn the
Racing Dawn
over to someone or if he should leave her or even if she belonged to him now. That didn’t matter either. There was food below deck, water by the barrel, and he had nothing to bother him.