But it feels so different, not just in weight nor texture. When I flex the fingers, it’s not muscle and tendon and bone moving, but springs and wires and metal parts.
It’s living iron, but it’s still iron.
A scent of ozone, and Flutter’s standing right beside me.
She says nothing.
“Well?” I ask, trying for a neutral tone. I can’t quite manage gentleness, but I can mask the impatience.
I wanted Flutter to live, but not like this. Not like this vacant-eyed creature who has trouble putting words together into a simple sentence. Who looks like she’s barely holding herself together, grey-faced and fading in the harsh light.
Her lips move, but it’s several moments before the words come out. “Come and see. They’re coming.”
“Who’s they?” I ask, before I can help it.
She just looks at me, opens her mouth to repeat her earlier words.
“Never mind,” I say hastily. “Let’s go.”
They are the baradari, a group on horseback, raising a dust storm on the road.
“You were right,” says Daral, standing on the wall next to me.
Their standard trembles above their distinctive winged helms. Even in the dust, I see the red hawk is upside down on its cream background. They lost at the Crater.
“Open the gates.”
I plant myself in the middle of the courtyard, Daral at my right shoulder and Leap at my left. For a moment, I remember standing in this same courtyard with Sera at my side, with Toro flanking me a pace away, with Dvid and Tito and the rest at my back, and my heart aches.
It aches for that younger man, now a stranger, and for the betrayal he will know.
His trusted warriors will fall in battle or lose hope in him. His friend will become a stranger and his wife—
My throat closes.
No, I trust neither Daral nor Leap, but for now our interests are aligned. I don’t fear a knife in my back this afternoon.
This evening is another matter.
The riders pour into Kaal Baran in a sea of tossed manes and foamy necks. Hooves thunder over the courtyard, horse sweat spatters onto the stones.
I hold my ground. A faint pride rises in me to see that my ragtag Highwind army doesn’t flinch. The eerie men eye the horses as if they were food, the cobble crunchers sneer and the cloaks, spread out across the walls, look inscrutable as always.
Horses plunge and pant, their riders call. Sunlight glints off a helmet rim, an unsheathed knife, a buckle on a leather strap.
Their chief pulls his horse to a stop sharply right in front of me. His horse drops trails of slobber all over my shoulder. I tilt my head up, squinting at the bright sky haloing his helmeted head.
I recognize the harsh dark features, the proud flared nostrils. A familiar weariness settles over me, the weariness of years spent trying to forge warriors from the many-banded lands into one army. Of putting hoe-wielding farmers next to career infantry. Of integrating the mounted archers of the plains with the lance-wielding riders of the desert.
Of the futility of the whole endeavor. Oh, how that face above me drives home my failure in the regard.
“Mehmet of the Hawks. The hot winds bring sorrow in your wake, and the proud bird flies low.”
Protocol dictates more tact, but diplomacy was never my strong suit. That had been Sera’s job.
Mehmet’s glance flickers over the Highwinders. “Does Kato the Hope-Destroyer now ally himself with Highwind monstrosities?”
Yes. He’s always been direct.
“I see no monstrosities here, unless you bring them with you. It’s thanks to these that the golems and Garguants that have long plagued our people were wiped out in battle less than a week ago. Surely you owe them some thanks.”
“I owe Highwind no thanks as they desecrate our sacred places.” His voice is even and cool. I raise my eyebrows. Mehmet of seven years ago would have answered with heat and challenge.
“These over here”—I indicate them—“were not involved in the desecration. Do you hold foot soldiers accountable for the decisions of their commanders? We have no quarrel with you.”
He opens his mouth, and I realize we can stand here all day arguing over right and wrong, honor and dishonor, while his wounded companions fall out of their saddles.
“Come, let us discuss the matter over…” I bite my words down on wine and meat, not knowing how much of either is actually available. “…food, while your horses are seen to and your wounded taken care of.”
“We will take care of our own,” he says abruptly. And then, softening, “But we thank you for your hospitality.”
He turns to bark orders to his people, and I do the same to my own.
Leap looks longingly at Mehmet’s horse. “Wonder how that tastes roasted. With garlic.”
I cuff him on the ear with my flesh-and-blood hand.
“Ow,” he says, looking hurt. “What’d you do that for, champ?”
“Next time it’ll be the other hand,” I warn him. “Horses of the baradari are not food and this is the easiest way for you to find that out.”
Leap makes a great show of rubbing his head and muttering but he bounds off fast enough. I hear him call for meat to be roasted and for bedding for the “softskins” and wish that Flutter was still herself.
The question is, which self?
I shouldn’t have been worried about the eerie men and their taste for horse meat.
No, it was the cobble crunchers I should’ve been watching.
Horses don’t like the smell of cobble crunchers, and their riders are only too happy to stamp out what they view as vermin.
That’s not something cobble crunchers will take lying down.
One moment, there was controlled chaos as Mehmet’s men squeezed into Kaal Baran and I delegated their provisioning and lodging to Leap and the others. The next, horses are squealing and their riders cursing, while cobble crunchers, yelling battle cries in their small, high voices, swarm all over the beasts.
By the time it’s all over we have three crunchers
