A Blight of Blackwings Read online

  “I’ll get it,” the hearthfire said, levering himself up on one hand. “Burn the city down, like I said.”

  “The people too?”

  “I don’t really care. I just want them too busy to worry about stopping us. We’re going to find Olet and burn anyone who gets in my way.”

  They exited, leaving us in an inferno with a very hot door to burst through. Fintan rammed his shoulder against it and we tumbled into some open space. We had to get out before the ceiling collapsed, but where could we go if they were going to burn the whole city down?

  “The kitchen,” Fintan said, coughing.

  “What?”

  “It’s stone and has a back exit.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Perfect recall. I’ve seen plans for the palace and grounds. Follow me.”

  We scurried past the cooking corpses of the king and his guard and peeked out of the exit. The Hathrim were nowhere in sight. Fintan took us around a corner and down a few halls, where people were quite rightly panicking as smoke and flames roiled along the ceilings.

  The kitchen was already in the process of being evacuated when we got there. The roof was on fire. When we stepped outside, coughing and eyes streaming from smoke, we saw that other buildings were likewise burning from the roof down. Pinter Stuken had set them all alight.

  There had to be something I could do to stop them, but there wasn’t a handy boil of kherns nearby. Not that they would do any good against a fury anyway.

  But I remembered how a hive of moss hornets had been surprisingly effective against a firelord, and I wondered if something similar might work here. I searched with my kenning for creatures with poison bites, but there were very few within city limits. There was one, however, lurking in the dungeon, feeding on rats there. A face jumper.

  Spiders with bodies the size of a fully extended hand, they were deadly to humans but thankfully didn’t find us terribly delicious. Still, a goodly number of people died from their bites every year.

  I encouraged the spider to exit the dungeon via one of the many ventilation shafts that ended topside and went to meet it, dragging Fintan along.

  “Where do you think we can find Winthir Kanek?” I asked.

  “Down by the docks, probably, going to board his ship. Why?”

  “The Hathrim need to know that Nentians are not defenseless anymore. These hearthfires look at us as easy pickings now that the other nations are worried about that invasion on the east coast. That needs to stop.”

  “What, are you fireproof all of a— Gyaaah, is that a face jumper? Stay back!”

  “It’s okay.” I invited the spider to perch on my right hand. It neatly leapt up and rested in my palm, about the weight of an orange, its six eyes looking at me. Fintan backed a couple of lengths away.

  “I don’t know if you’ve heard, Abhi, but those things have a habit of jumping. On your face.”

  “She won’t bite us,” I said, sensing that she was female. “Will you? Little cutie.”

  “Cutie?”

  “Don’t hurt her feelings, now. Let’s go.”

  We set off into the chaos. Some folks were trying to fight the fire and others were running for their lives, heading to the river. Pinter Stuken wasn’t purposely targeting people, just the buildings, but plenty of folks got trapped. It was impossible to tell where the fury was; he could be any ball of flame on the rooftops.

  Winthir Kanek was easy enough to spot once we rounded the corner leading down to the docks. He towered over everyone, clutching his left arm as he walked, and people streamed around him, paying him no mind. Hathrim weren’t that uncommon in this port city. No one but us knew what he had done, and few people, if any, had figured out that the fires were due to the work of a fury. When there’s a fire, figuring out who started it always runs far behind escaping it and putting it out.

  I wasn’t sure it was my place to avenge the king, but I couldn’t let this hearthfire treat us like kindling and go upriver to do the same to others.

  “Jump away as soon as you’re done,” I told Cutie as we caught up to the hearthfire. “I’ll take you back to the dungeon.”

  I extended my hand toward the hearthfire’s backside—which was about my head height—and Cutie leapt from my fingers onto the giant’s lava dragon armor. She scrambled silently up his back, none of the sensation ever getting through to his skin, and he didn’t seem to notice the extra bit of weight. When she got to his shoulder, she perched for a moment, positioning herself for the strike, then pounced.

  Face jumpers inject a massive amount of venom in a fraction of a second and leap away. The head or face is their primary target because the venom works quicker that way, and the pain is such that their prey will be too busy pawing at it to look around for a spider to squash.

  Cutie landed neatly on the ground to Winthir Kanek’s right and scurried back to me, leaping up to my outstretched hand. The hearthfire clutched the bite with his right hand and screamed, fire shooting out of his face, since his instinct was to solve all his problems by burning them. But the venom was in the blood, and he couldn’t let go of his flesh the way a fury could. He lasted a good deal longer than many creatures would, being a giant, but inside of a minute he succumbed in much the same way the king had: taken by surprise, unable to defend himself, and in agony.

  “One down,” I said.

  “One down?” Fintan’s eyebrows performed some impressive acrobatics as he goggled at me. “You think you can take on a fury the same way?”

  “Nope. But I don’t want to be here when he discovers his hearthfire is dead. Back to the dungeon vent for us! I promised Cutie.”

  “Is that the best place for her now?”

  “The dungeon probably won’t burn, and it’ll still be full of rats. So, yeah, perfect place. Whatever prisoners are down there are going to be safer than everyone else.”

  “How are you going to fight a fury?” he asked as we wove through the panicked masses. We were definitely moving against the tide at this point, but the appearance of Cutie had some power to make people swerve out of our way.

  “I don’t know. I’m making this up as I go along.”

  Pinter Stuken must have found Winthir Kanek’s body just as I returned Cutie to safety at her vent, with my thanks. A fireball bloomed in the sky in a show of emotion that I thought was a little outsize to commemorate the death of such a man. What affection could the fury have truly had for someone who used him to terrorize people? Who had asked him to spend years of his life on burning down a city? For to burn so steadily as he had, Pinter had to be feeling poorly right now. And in a moment he might think he should take over and rule in Winthir’s stead. He might already be thinking along those lines. I had no confidence that he would be a model of restraint and diplomacy after he had so readily agreed to raze the city.

  “We need to return to the docks,” I said, a plan forming in my mind. “I need to see the Hathrim ship but not be seen.”

  That was easier said than done. Everyone wanted to go to the river right then; running out onto the plains wasn’t an attractive alternative. Which reminded me to communicate with Murr and Eep and tell them not to worry about me and to stay away from the city.

  When we finally did make it down to the docks—via a route that did not take us past the body of Winthir Kanek—we saw that someone had wisely decided to start ferrying people across to the camp area on the northern shore. Plenty of others were simply heading upriver or out to sea, cramming the hired boats to the rims, having made the calculation that all was lost and there was no use lingering.

  We were perhaps ten berths away from the Hathrim ship and Pinter Stuken was there, dressed again in his lava dragon armor, shouting and gesticulating at the giants on the boat and, once, pointing back into the city, where Winthir Kanek lay dead. Delivering th
e news, no doubt. He looked angry and visibly older, crags on his face that were not there before.

  That gave me pause. Was it worth it, going after him? It would cost me some time, no doubt, to defeat him as I planned. How much, I had no way of knowing in advance.

  But I looked behind me at the clouds of black smoke rising from a city on fire, at the parents clutching crying children, all with soot-stained faces like mine, everything lost at Pinter Stuken’s willingness to destroy on another man’s whim.

  Yes. It would be worth it to prevent him from doing this to others. It was not only criminal; it was an act of war.

  “Face me,” I told Fintan. “Pretend we’re in conversation. We can’t be seen staring at them.”

  “Why would they notice?”

  “They might start looking around soon.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Just move your lips meaninglessly, gesture once in a while, and watch from the corner of your eye.”

  I reached out with my kenning to locate pests in the city—there were still plenty—and directed them to pester Pinter Stuken in waves.

  First, a cloud of flies descended upon him, which he tried to swat at but eventually burned. Then mosquitoes. Then hornets, which managed to sting him a few times before he went all flames again, expending energy at the task. I waited until he’d dressed again and then hit him with the wasps. Grasshoppers flew in from the plains. A swarm of roaches followed, which he could easily avoid and burn but which unmistakably let him know that he was not welcome here. That’s when he figured out that someone must be behind all this and started looking around. Fintan said as much. I never made eye contact.

  He was also scanning the ground for more approaching vermin, so that’s when I had a blackwing dive at his head from behind and give him a good peck in the ear. He cursed and cooked the bird, but then he looked up and saw a cheek raptor circling high above and pretty clearly targeting him. It was too high for him to blast, but now he couldn’t let his guard down. Give a cheek raptor the same chance as he gave that blackwing, and it would tear his face off.

  Pinter thought it best to go home at that point and leave Winthir Kanek’s body behind. He shouted orders and his crew cast off and rowed to midstream before heading out to sea. The cyclone that the hearthfire mentioned filled their sails with wind and sped them on their way. I made sure the cheek raptor kept following, and then I dropped off the side of the dock into the river, much to Fintan’s surprise. This was going to be the hard part, because I couldn’t count on anything being especially close by. Just searching for something to help me was going to take plenty of energy.

  I found what I needed, but they were leagues away. A stabbing pain grew behind my eyes as I relayed my requests, and then I fell backward into the water, exhausted.

  I rose, spluttering, trying to walk a bit closer in to shore, and Fintan was there to help me. He was trying to pull me fully out, but I resisted.

  “No, I need to stay in the water to see if it works.”

  “If what works?”

  “Right now Pinter Stuken is worried about that cheek raptor following him. He’s probably climbing up to the crow’s nest to get closer to it, thinking he’ll be able to blast it. So he won’t see what’s coming. Not that he could do anything about it, heh heh.”

  I made Fintan wait for the report as it happened and then told him: “A Larik whale just rammed their ship from below and toppled Pinter Stuken, along with some others, into the sea. He was too tired from his exertions here to take his flame form before he dropped in, and once in, he couldn’t. A bladefin followed up, grabbing him by the leg and dragging him down to make sure he’d never surface again. That’s how you kill a fury: Drown him. A pod of dolphins is now rescuing all of the other sailors, bringing them back to the ship. That was a measured response to what they did here today. I’m hoping that will teach the folk of the First Kenning that the Sixth Kenning is real and they won’t last long with the world’s wildlife after them.”

  “Well,” Fintan said, and then, after a pause: “Well.”

  That made me laugh. “I’ve struck a bard speechless?”

  “Savor the moment, because it won’t happen again. What now?”

  “Now you tell me how old I look.”

  “I wouldn’t say you look older. Maybe…more mature.”

  “That’s older. I’m supposed to be a youth.”

  “Looking a bit older isn’t so bad. It gives you gravitas. That can go a long way sometimes.”

  “Will gravitas get me upriver?”

  “No, but is that what you want?”

  “I don’t want to stay here.” I gestured to the burning city, the oily clouds of smoke spreading in the sky. “There’s going to be a fight over who gets to be king of these ashes, and I don’t want to be caught in the middle. But exploring the Gravewood sounds like a great time.”

  “It does?”

  “If you don’t have to worry about the animals eating you, yeah. I could help Olet Kanek start this new city. You think she’ll be mad that I killed her dad with a dungeon spider named Cutie?”

  “I don’t know. On the one hand, she is clearly not anxious to do what her father wants and has made plans to get as far away from him as possible. On the other, he’s her dad.”

  “Maybe you could ask her for me first.”

  “Maybe. So you want to go?”

  “I do. You have a boat?”

  “The Raelech embassy has one twenty or so berths down. We can catch a ride with them.”

  “Will they let me bring Murr and Eep with me?”

  “I’m sure they will.”

  I didn’t have a lot of good choices in front of me. I was a wanted man in Khul Bashab, so going home was out. Viceroy Melishev Lohmet had put my death on his to-do list. The king might have been truly willing to work something out with me, but we’d never know now. Going upriver was the only way forward I could think of.

  I wished I could talk things through with Tamhan. I hoped he was doing okay in Khul Bashab.

  Fintan and I were informed after his tale that Pelenaut Röllend would like to meet us for breakfast in the morning, and when the sun crawled out of the ocean, a mariner arrived at my door and escorted me to the home of Tallynd du Böll, Pelemyn’s tidal mariner. Rölly and his lung, Föstyr, soon joined us.

  We had a mess of peppered eggs and some sliced sausage from Tallynd’s seemingly never-ending supply of gift baskets.

  “Enjoy this last bit of luxury,” she said. “I’m donating the remainder today to the refugee kitchen in Survivor Field. It’s starting to get dire out there. Found out from a hygienist that some kids haven’t had protein in a week. That’s unacceptable. After this I’m going to escort some fishing boats out to the Mistmaiden reefs and bring in a haul just for the people in the field.”

  Fintan and I thanked her for that, and I was seized by the overwhelming desire to give her a gift basket for giving away all her gift baskets. Our cultural mandates can tie us up in knots sometimes.

  Rölly frowned as he spoke to Föstyr. “I know food supplies were already on our list of things to revisit soon, but perhaps you could move that to the top of the list? I hadn’t heard about the protein shortages among the refugees, and I’d like to know why not but also make sure it doesn’t continue or happen again.”

  We ate somewhat guiltily after that, and I wondered if I was pulling my weight; next to the crisis of basic needs some people were facing, I didn’t feel that my duties were more important than, say, joining a fishing-boat crew.

  “Forgive me for not spending longer on pleasantries,” Rölly said after a few moments, “but I have plenty to do and I just wanted to speak to you, Fintan, about your story last night. I believe it made clear what’s to come, as you promised; the Nentian throne was not overthrown
so much as suddenly left vacant and Melishev was able to seat himself?”

  “That is correct, Pelenaut. More details to come, of course, but you have the essential drift.”

  “So that was months ago, and we hadn’t heard because the Granite Tunnel collapsed and their capital was burned down. With all that going on, it’s little wonder they didn’t try to reach out to us on the other side of the continent. Melishev was ill when he took the throne, and I’m given to understand he must be even worse now?”

  “He’s well-nigh buried.”

  “Sending a hygienist will take weeks. He might be dead by the time they get there—or he might be dead already.”

  “That is true.”

  “Still, those Nentian merchants pulled at my heart. I wouldn’t want the families of Subodh, Ghurang, and Poudresh punished because I failed to act. Or Jahm’s family, for that matter. But I don’t like rewarding hostage taking, so I’m going to release one hygienist to each country—one to Rael, Forn, and so on—to deal with any dire needs as the leaders of each country see fit. I believe we have stabilized our situation here and are making excellent progress in the river cities, so I feel I can let a few return abroad.”

  “I am sure everyone will be grateful.”

  “What I’m wondering is if there is some other information in the stories ahead that I should know now. Any other new leaders in the west I should know about? Who took over for Winthir Kanek, for example, in Narvik and Tharsif?”

  Fintan chewed thoughtfully and swallowed before answering. “I have no idea who the new hearthfires are. Numa hasn’t reported it to me, and so I assume for the moment that the Hathrim are occupied with internal affairs rather than making noise abroad. There are some surprises ahead—developments in both the north and the south—that I think will bear the stamp of revelation for many people, but nothing that affects your day-to-day business right now. We have spoken privately about some events in the north that we agreed can wait their turn, and what little else has happened you already know, as you’ve been getting reports from your quartermaster up there. What I’m going to share about the north came from people I was with, and the rest came from Numa, who reported extensive goings-on in Ghurana Nent before she presented me here to you.”