Page 67 of Court of Talons
Chapter 27
As I hurtle toward the open plain, I sense the air around me snap in the dark, the impact lifting me on an invisible current that has me soaringup, not down,upfor a precious moment more. Then an enormous hand snatches me out of the sky and Gent’s body curls around me, the two of us now a heavy stone tossed off a cliff.
Instantly, I realize my mistake. Gent is no longer the giant he was with Merritt—he’s three times larger now. The moment he lands, the entire valley will quake with a crash loud enough to stretch to the Sounding Sea.
But Gent continues to soar up, not down, somehow gaining speed instead of losing it, and when he does finally hit the ground running, there is no rumble and roar but merely the sound of his full-throated laughter. I peel my eyes open and realize we’re no longer in the darkness of the mountain and marsh, but on the side of a rolling hill, racing through a midnight-and-white patch of flowers.
Run!Gent cries in my mind. He’s racing and I’m racing with him, his hand cradled around me. I feel twin flames of sorrow and joy coursing through him. Hecaughtme, I think his thoughts, bracing myself in his grip. He did—he finally did.
He couldn’t catch Merritt, but he caughtme.
He saved me.
Gent races into the night until even he tires, wide looping turns over endless hills bathed in summer sunlight. I don’t want to leave, but know I have to get back to the First House, to tell Nazar what I’ve learned, to warn…
My mind is a jumble, all the events of the day crashing together, especially my encounter with the female marauders on the outskirts of Trilion. Who were they? Was it truly only gold they’d stolen from the encampment? Could they be attached to that…thatthingthat Rihad was talking to, in the center of the fire? Were there more of them, fighting in the shadows, all of them women?
Before I can form the words to ask Gent to return me to the First House, my glorious Divh is swooping his arm down, down, dropping me once more to the cool meadow grass. I stand, so dizzy I can barely breathe, and his finger nudges me with what I suspect he believes is a gentle push?—
I sprawl face-first into the mist-dampened dirt.
Dirt. Not grass. Not flowers. Dirt.
The world around me suddenly prickles with humidity, warmer and so much louder than Gent’s meadow with the sounds of insects and chirping birds.
I’m not in the First House courtyard, I know immediately. I’m not anywhere near the First House. I struggle against the urge to rise quickly to my knees and instead lie still, breathing shallowly, smelling the mist in the air, feeling the cool, broken earth beneath my fingers.
As my senses gradually acknowledge the world around me, I hear the crash and rumble of falling water, and experience a wave of sick certainty about where I am: the falls that Caleb had pointed out to me, when we’d approached the First House gates. I’m nearlytwo milesfrom those gates, I think in sudden horror.Gent has dropped me in the middle ofnowhere. How am I going to get back to the castle before dawn, before the next fight, before…
Then, over the mutter of insects and the crash of water and the pounding of my own pulse in my ears, I hear something else. Laughter. Voices.
Women’s voices.
Slowly now, with infinite care, I lift my body from the damp earth. I stand, getting my bearings. The voices are coming from a thick knot of trees ahead of me, but there’s no flickering fire to light my way. Instead they float, disembodied on the lifting mist, at times so quietly I think I must have imagined them. But no—no. There they are again. I take a slow step forward then another.
Cautiously, painstakingly, I inch forward, pausing every time the voices fall away. I can’t see much of anything, and my clothes are already sodden from the mist in the air, but I decide not to shuck the heavy servant’s robe, contenting myself only with pushing my hood back to clear the infernal chains from my eyes. If these are the women from the marauders’ camp, and they almost certainly are, then being dressed as a woman will serve me far better than?—
The sharp chill of a blade presses against my temple, and I stop short as a voice hisses in my ear. A female voice. “Not a word, girl, you understand?”
I nod quickly, remaining entirely still as I’m searched with quick, efficient hands. I have no weapons on me, for which I give silent thanks, but then the dissatisfied grunt of my captor chases even that small relief away. Did women typically approach this campsite armed? And why would they approach it at all?
With a second grunt, the woman reaches for my arm and tugs me forward. She appears to have no need for light and walks quickly and confidently through the thick trees. The sound of crashing water grows stronger at first, then dies away, and Irealize it was only by chance that I landed in the place where I could hear anyone talking. Chance, or more likely, Gent—who read the uppermost questions in my mind and put me in the exact place I could resolve those questions, instead of the safety of the First House courtyard.
Clearly, I need to think more careful thoughts with my Divh going forward. Assuming I get the opportunity.
We step into a clearing, but by the time we do, all is silent. I squint, trying to see in the gloom, but there is no campfire, no shadows of women huddled together. My captor also stands quietly beside me, so still that if my arm wasn’t being held by her, I’d doubt she was there at all.
Then something shifts in the darkness behind us, and a soft whistle breaks the stillness. An eerie voice floats out of the gloom, thick with an accent I can’t place, but an accent I’m certain I’ve heard in recent days. “She wasn’t followed?”
“She was not,” confirms the woman beside me. Her voice is flat, with notes of Trilion’s broad accent, very different from the other’s.
“You’re dressed as a servant of the First House. Why are you here?”
The question is bold, abrupt, and I scramble for a moment, thinking how best to answer. But I am too disoriented, too exhausted, really, to do anything other than speak my truth. It’s been so long since I was able to do it. And here in this disembodied forest, with darkness all around, I find the words come more easily.
“I am Talia of the Tenth House,” I say simply.
The next command is spoken in a language I don’t know, but what’s left of my hair is pulled back, a hand clapped over my mouth. “Careful now,” the woman beside me hisses in my ear, her anger as cold as the blade of her knife. “You’ll march, you’ll not say a word, and maybe you’ll live.”