In a glade, she found a doe and her fawn, part of the herd of Riddling Deer Balthus had loosed on the orchard. They lay in a drift of fresh green grass. Red poppies bloomed around them, rare vegetation in this scorched land.
The doe’s eyes were dark as forest pools. Her nostrils flared and her head jerked, testing the air, as Aife approached. But the wind reassured her; she settled back.
The fawn spoke—how had Balthus managed that? The Deer were his unique creation. He had wanted oracles, had not realized how enigmatic and troublesome they would prove.
“Inside you is your worst enemy,” it said.
She did not move, but looked at the fawn, hoping for additional details.
They were not forthcoming. But perhaps—
A branch snapped under Wolf’s foot in the underbrush. The wind changed. Jackknife sudden, doe and fawn were on their feet.
They flickered away into the night, taking with them the answers she sought.
She came back to her quarters, smelling of grass and thyme, knowing the boundaries were unchallenged except by the deer’s troublesome words. She unslung her heavy cape, velvet folds as soft as a baby’s earlobe. Her boots were black leather with gilt buckles. She undid them one by one and slipped the footwear off by the fire before padding over to the table to contemplate the Falcon’s patterns anew.
A black-barred feather lay on her map.
She picked it up with some difficulty. Cold made her fingers stiff.
Who would have dared to leave it here? The Falcon had some ally—perhaps even allies, for she reckoned him her equal in cunning, in planning out each move in a long game, and she would have never betrayed just one ally, unwilling to lose the advantage it gave her, unless she had others in place.
Twirling the feather, she watched its dance. She would use it as her test of the amulet. Surely if Balthus plucked it from her thoughts, it would spur him to some action.
But he did nothing when he saw her the next morning. Instead she laid the feather beside the map and continued her study of the Falcon’s appearances. She tracked the phases of the moon, the weather, anything that might prompt his decisions.
It seemed to Aife that in the last few months, such a pattern had emerged. But why, puzzlingly, had one recently appeared?
Still, she was there, in the village he had half-burned before, lying in wait, when he doubled back. She had sent the surviving townspeople away, filled the houses with archers and swordhands. In the remnants of the town hall, the Catoblepas crouched, waiting for her orders.
She chose the Mayor’s house for her headquarters, finding it the best appointed for her needs. She told herself the decision was not motivated by the way the man had flinched when she first rode in.
As expected, in the night the bandit band appeared, slinking in through the shadows, slipping into houses. Their deaths would be as quick and as silent as she could manage. She had ordered them killed; she had no need for anyone alive but the Falcon.
But she waited in vain, and the breath in the Catoblepas’s lungs withered only the small grasses among the stones where it crouched. When her archers and soldiers came, they said the Falcon’s men had been only illusory wraiths, melting through their steel.
At that, she expected the courier’s arrival to bring word that the castle was under siege. It did. She had been outmaneuvered. It was not a customary sensation for her.
By the time she arrived, several dozen of Balthus’s choicest Beasts were dead, and a full troop’s worth of seasoned mercenaries who would be difficult to replace. Balthus uttered no reproach, but she felt the weight of his unspoken disapproval and disappointment. For the first time, she wondered if there were worse things than the life he had given her.
In the months that followed, she found herself experiencing another uncustomary sensation: irritation. She played a game where her opponent had her outwitted at every turn, as though he could read her mind. As Balthus once had.
Her opponent taunted her. Every few days another feather appeared. Laid atop her pillow, on the tray beside her breakfast, drifting on the windowsill. A marker in her book, turned a few pages beyond where she had been reading.
She burned them in the fireplace but said nothing to Balthus.
Inside you is your worst enemy. What did that mean? The thought ate at her like a parasite. Was she at odds with herself? Was she overlooking the obvious, making mistakes she should have realized? She found herself outside her actions, watching them with a critical eye.
She faltered sometimes. The fine lines around Balthus’s eyes meshed and deepened when he frowned at her, but he said nothing aloud.
But he wanted the Falcon captured, and soon. He was angry about the losses, the time that would be necessary to create more Beasts. For the first time he did not communicate his plans but expected her to guess them in a way that left her scrambling to catch up at times, trying to figure how to incorporate each creature he created. He did not consult her. She could have used more winged Beasts, to replace lost scouts, but she did not dare request them.
It shocked her when Balthus, finally making a move, caught the quarry she had sought so long. Little consolation that his victory came by cheating, not the sort of thing she would have ever embarked upon.
She could see why Balthus had moved with such efficiency, though. Was not all fair in war, as in love?
It was through an exchange of hostages, one of the sacred customs. By doing it, she thought to pay the Falcon tribute, let him see she respected him as an opponent, perhaps lure him into complacency. It was not until they had been dispatched that Balthus revealed that one had been a Siren, a woman created to entice, who would cast her magic over them.
“She even looked a little like you,” he said with a smile. Then added, “As you were, I mean.”
She made no reply aloud, but had he been able to read her thoughts, his smile might have faltered.
Aife went to the cell where they kept the Falcon. She took two guards with her, trailing her as she made her way down spirals of stone. On the third landing, a torch burned beside his door.
Her hand spread like an elderly starfish on the door’s surface as she leaned forward. She found herself trembling like a hound ready to be loosed on the scent.
He had been sitting on the bunk. He sprang up as her shadow crossed the rectangle of light on the stone floor, approached the door till he was inches away from the bars and the hood’s edge shrouding her face, but not far enough. He recoiled as he saw her fully, recovered, stood still, but this time not as close.
She looked at him all the while. Rumors had not lied about his handsomeness. Slim and brown-skinned, his hair as black as ink, a few white strands at the temples somehow making it seem even darker.
Aife could have loved this man, long ago, in her soldier days, before the weight of death had settled on her shoulders. He was young and beautiful, so beautiful. So alive. She wanted him as she had not wanted anything for so long. She put a hand to the bars, looked at him, hoping to see the same recognition there.
Only horror and revulsion.
She had thought her heart dead, but that was not true, else how could she feel it aching now?
Still, she had to question him. She took two guards in with her but motioned them back when they would have seized him. Leave him his dignity for now.
“How did you know what I was doing for so long?” she said.
He sneered. “Are you not a dead thing, to be commanded by magic, like all dead things that walk must be? I had my necromancer working for months, trying to find a way inside your mind. On the night of the year’s third moon, he succeeded.
“After that, all was clear to me. His magic let me take control of you from time to time. We could not risk it for long, though, so I used it to trouble you, making you lay down clues for yourself: a feather to stir your thoughts, send them in the wrong direction. And it worked, until your master chose to trust you no longer.”