(no subject)

[volpish]

fly like you're free — original Chapter 15


 

Daine got her flight—several, actually.

 

The Lioness decided that giving both of them another hour of sleep would improve their work output more than just using that hour to work, and Daine found that she suddenly had an hour in which to take bird shape and drift on the air currents, which was more restful than plain sleep would have been, in some ways.

She had missed this.

If there was one thing she could thank Draper for without wanting to bite off her own tongue, it would be the snippets of freedom she found in stolen moments, with nothing but the wind in her feathers and the weightlessness that followed as the world shrank away.

She didn't let herself think during these times, didn't let herself dwell. She used her senses and ignored all the rest.

(She had a horrible suspicion that if she spent too much time thinking, she would weep, and that was a dreadfully silly waste of time, especially when there was so much to do. If she let it bowl her over, she might never get back up again.)

There were camps dotting the shoreline and forest surrounding, now, the vast physical barrier of foliage left by the Dominion Jewel preventing further migration inland. Mages guarded the camps, but most of them were kept in line more by the slave rebels than whatever magics their exhausted wardens could manage. The ships had been stripped of anything useful or valuable, and now floated empty, anchored in rows around the port, blocking off trade until there were enough people to move them out of the way.

The forest was doing better than the two-leggers, resettling after the dreadful fright the Dominion Jewel had given them. Her wing-brothers and sisters told her that the ground-dwelling People were unhappy to lose access to the sea, but the sky hunters were much better off for how it had forced the prey into denser numbers.

On the human side of things, sorting out the mess continued to be rocky. The new emperor had made headway into making sure the gods got their dues again, and between wrangling with the myriad of problems his predecessor had left in his wake, he was opening peace negotiations between their countries.

A trade of prisoners was packaged into the offer, with trade concessions to replace some of the slaves in value, though Draper remained a constant. Nobody was about to forget that he had killed the Emperor Mage and lost them the war, and they wanted his head on a pike.

From what Daine had gathered, standing next to the Lioness with her papers and materials on hand during the negotiations and conferences, some of the Carthaki nobles, especially those who had been in the Emperor Mage's inner circle, were pushing more and more for making Draper the only prisoner they truly needed.

Not all of the slaves wanted to stay in Tortall, though—the kraken they knew being better than the Trickster they didn't, as far as Daine could tell, and some were hoping to gain favor for their loyalty—but sorting out those who were begging for asylum and those who were desperate to go back was proving to be a nightmare when their mages could barely hold onto them all, and getting censuses took time, especially with the sheer numbers Draper had left on their shore. If it weren't for the physical barrier of the forest wall—nearly a quarter of a mile thick that stretched along the shoreline for many miles on both sides of the port, without room enough between the trees for anyone but a child to walk sideways through it—there might have been a riot big enough to break into the country.

Emperor Kaddar was hesitant to arrange a prisoner swap before anyone knew exactly how many prisoners would be swapped, and while King Jonathan would have been delighted to see Draper put to death for killing his second eldest child so soon after he had lost his first, the Lioness had been kept busy reminding him that pushing for the terms set forth by Emperor Ozorne's old friends would be a very bad idea.

It was after one such conference, held through a fire-based communications spell, that Daine cautiously laid out a small tray of oatmeal cookies by the knight's elbow, while the woman gripped her short-cropped red hair in both fists and contemplated the parchment in front of her.

Letting out a long sigh that trailed off into a groan, the Lioness mumbled, "So, when do I tell him we have a rogue agent wandering around?"

Daine paused in the middle of drawing back. "A rogue agent, sir?"

The Lioness scrubbed her face. "We finally convinced the black robe mage from the City of the Gods, Arean Jule, to come look over the wards we were dealing with before. They were sabotaged. Thrice."

Daine's heart lurched, but thankfully it didn't show in her voice when she said, "Thrice?"

"Firstly, in the way they were set up. Jule said that while it's obviously Draper's work, it was also just as obviously meant to be based in twenty nine plates—the tenth prime number, she says, as if that should have told the whole tale. Something so simple as removing a single plate turned it from very useful to the exact source of the sickness we were battling, and none of us could find why."

"I see," said Daine. The Lioness sounded about as bitter about it as Daine had felt herself.

"The second time, somebody figured that out and sabotaged it in the other direction. With granite."

"What's the fuss about granite?" Daine wondered. Should she have just stuck to the iron after all? Using gloves and piles of small chips of stone to disrupt the flow seemed both safer and easier than trying to wedge any more arrowheads into anything.

The Lioness groaned again. "Granite shouldn't have worked. Granite wouldn't have worked if those circles had been built any other way, apparently. The only people who would have known to use granite would be Draper himself—if even him—or another mage who had specialized in wards for as long as Jule. None of them have been crawling around our forts recently, we're certain. It is possible that Draper had a spy, but what motive does he have to protect Tortall from its own demise? A demise he shouldn't have even known was happening? We don't even know why he turned in the first place."

...Why did he, I wonder, thought Daine.

"Anyone else wouldn't have needed a spy. Goddess knows we were all desperate for a solution, so why the secrecy?" The older woman pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. "And then, after that, someone altered the marks on the dead to keep the living safe. Another thing that only Draper or someone equally skilled could have known how to do. Whoever it was went grave-digging to do it, or so it'd seem, but nobody saw anyone digging anything."

Well, it was nice to know she hadn't been caught, Daine supposed, and beat back the faces of those corpses in her mind.

"So, rogue agent," the Lioness finished, taking her hands away from her eyes, and Daine made herself breathe normally once again. "Gratitude may be in order, but I'm holding off my own thoughts, especially if they were working with the enemy. We don't have the people to track them down now, so all we can do is hope and pray they don't change their minds now."

"Of course, sir," Daine managed on the correct beat.

The older woman cast her an odd look, but didn't seem to dwell on it, and instead looked at the platter, then picked up a cookie. "If I even suggest to Jon that this fellow might have worked with Draper, he'll want 'em jailed and on trial quicker than sense can kick," she continued, then took a bite. After chewing and swallowing: "It's hard enough already to keep him from trying to execute Draper himself—none of us are doing well with both Kalasin and Roald gone, but this is the one place where his heart is winning out over his head."

"It's a fair troublesome situation," said Daine—the topic of Draper facing the consequences for his actions was a much more palatable one than the previous—and the Lioness only sighed.

She hadn't known the princess well herself, only in passing. She had been set with the Royal Guard from time to time when the Lioness and king were conferring, and had found herself doing the royal equivalent of babysitting.

Princess Kalasin as Daine had known her had been a bright girl with a powerful healing Gift, determined to keep anyone from facing the same fate as her brother, who had been killed by a Carthaki strike force at the beginning of the war. Her father had forbidden her from becoming a knight, as she had dreamed, but the timing of the war meant that she had had too many opportunities to try to prove herself.

It had crossed Daine's mind that she might try to seize the opportunity, and had even stopped the girl once or twice, but to think that she would ignore all warnings and slip through anyway, only to meet such a fate as that...

Draper had a lot to answer for, and she could only pray the Carthaki gave him his dues.

The Lioness had worked her way through two cookies before she reached into a bowl on her desk—one that held all the ruined opals they had found around the place where Draper had collapsed—and pulled out a cracked, blood-red stone that had been streaked with chalky green.

"Lioness?" Daine prompted, as she had learned to.

"Something's not right," said the Lioness, squinting at the stone and then spinning it on her desk.

Daine waited.

"There's those who want only Draper and the free men traded back, yeah?" she said slowly, stopping the stone with a palm.

Daine blinked. "Yes, mum."

"They want the free men because they think those are the only ones with value—" The stone was slid five inches to the right. "—and they want Draper to face consequences for his betrayal." The stone was slid five inches to the left.

"Yes, mum."

"The folk who want this—" Three fingers spun the stone like a top. "—they were a part of Ozorne's inner circle." The stone was clapped to a stop.

"...Yes, mum."

The stone was slowly flipped once, twice, thrice. "And that's why they want Draper. Because they want 'justice for their old friend' and retribution for the loss of their war."

Daine tilted her head, trying to get a better gauge on the Lioness's expression; the woman was scowling. "But...?" she prompted.

"But who bought all these slaves, do you think?" The woman picked up the stone and started rolling it between her palms. "Ozorne's inner circle was incredibly wealthy. The numbers here are crazy-making. Do a few thousand free men and the death of a powerful sorcerer amount to the value of tens of thousands of slaves?" Her hands paused. "Why don't they care about the slaves? What makes Draper so important?"

"I... don't know, mum," Daine said.

The Lioness clicked her tongue and set down the stone, then rearranged the parchment on her desk. "Lord Moehe and Lord Husani. They're the same ones who are the loudest that Draper killed the emperor with a focus, too. How do they mean to prove that?" The last question was a frustrated mumble more than anything. "Not that they need to on their own soil, I s'pose. Bring me another inkwell—this one is low."

"Mm," said Daine, and went to fetch another inkwell.

---

Once the Lioness released her for the day, Daine decided not to go flying, and instead went back to the castle library.

One of the Rider girls there was all too happy to bequeath a fellow novel fan with Imiary Adona's latest book—apparently, the one that had gone to Draper had been the second latest—and once she had it in her possession, she walked down to the prisons.

She ducked into a corner and waited until the evening patrol had passed her to go in search of Draper. She didn't particularly want people to know she had met with him, if possible. The threat of what the king might do to anyone caught associating with him lingered in her mind.

Draper, she found, was right where she had left him a week ago, lounging against the wall to which he had been chained, only he was awake this time, and reading the book she had left instead of dozing, and his whiskers were starting to turn into a coat instead of a pepper.

For the sake of her own health, Daine decided he must have sensed her coming and opened it, not that he had actually been reading it.

That, or he had been desperate enough for distraction that he had been forced to consume it anyway, which was considerably more satisfying.

She waited in front of his cell for several seconds before finally clearing her throat.

He made a very good impression of a man startled. His expression gave nothing away as he looked up, piercing eyes unfocused until they were very focused—right on her.

(Could anything hunt this hawk, really?)

She tossed the book through the bars. "That one's her latest. Imary-whoever's."

Instead of giving her anything so pleasing as a scowl, Draper brightened as he picked it up from where it had landed next to his thigh. "Imiary Adona—is it truly?"

Daine bit down on a surge of irritation. "That's what I was told."

"Mithros bless," he said—smiling, of all things, at her attempt to call his bluff. "I've read the other three times through now. I was sure it was going to be Deastor and Lia together in the end, but the for-shadowing for Sperion and Lia... it was going to drive me mad."

Daine blinked. She was very sure that all those words made sense separately—it was merely the order that baffled her. "...What?"

His eyes glittered at her, and her stomach jolted. "Well—you wouldn't understand, I suppose."

Daine stared at him mutely for several seconds while her heart pounded harder and harder, locking her jaw against the noise her throat wanted to make and the crook of his full mouth kept laughing at her—and then forced herself to take a deep breath. It took a considerable amount of effort to keep from blurting out that she could understand, it was just him who wasn't making no sense!

Instead, she managed a tight-but-even, "I've got questions for you."

He didn't even have the grace to make a jab at her transparent bribe, just stretched in that powerful, liquid way of his and straightened, folding his long legs tailor-style and giving her the weight of his full attention.

(A harvest mouse trying to kill a griffin—only lucky that she was too small to be a threat and too insignificant to eat, and she hated it.)

She took a deep breath and refused to fidget. "You said you was—were—friends with Emperor Ozorne."

"I was."

"Lord Moehe and Lord Husani—what d'you know of 'em?" It was easier, almost comforting, to talk business with him, regardless of how concerning the business was. He was a despicable man, but one with honor. She could trust what came out of his mouth now. "What have they in common?"

"Moehe and Husani?" Draper echoed, leaning back and frowning at the ceiling. "Master mages—some of Ozorne's most trusted, after me. Those were the two that put together Hadensra's focus; they didn't do it very well, which was what allowed me to end Ozorne's life remotely."

"...Hadensra's focus?" He tilted his head at her, and she explained, "They're going about tellin' everyone you had a focus on Ozorne proper. Nobody said a thing about him."

The smile on his harsh face was sardonic. "They wouldn't. It was their attempts to to make Ozorne's control of him tighter than resulted in the faults in its structure; through them, they essentially turned Hadensra into a living focus on Ozorne."

She thought about that for a moment—that the two mages in charge of making a focus that could control a mage who had been offered a black robe were now the two mages who most loudly wanted an actual black robe mage back—and shivered.

Then froze, the world filtering in in knife-edge clarity.

"What does a body need to make a focus?" she asked slowly.

He gave her an odd look, but answered anyway: "At its most basic, you need an image of the person—a painting, a sculpture, or similar; the more accurate it is, the more powerful the tie will be—something that has been theirs for a very long time—no less than seven years, and the longer, the better—and a part of their body. Nails, hair, and blood are the most common, but that's mostly because the mutilation required to obtain flesh or bone is rarely worth the benefit."

Daine swallowed. Her heart was pounding for reasons other than rage now, ice trickling down her spine. "That all?"

"Those are harder to obtain than you might imagine," he replied far too lightly. She was reminded all over again that this was a sorcerer who could defeat an army with hardly more than a snap of his fingers. "For an image, all you need is a skilled painter or sculptor, but for an object that's been theirs for a long time, it's difficult. Clothing and linens are replaced all the time. Workman's tools are a better bet, but what if they're replaced every five years, rather than every seven or ten? Books must be read frequently to incur the essence of their owner—and on. If you've got hair that's been left to grow for several years or you've obtained flesh or bone somehow, those can be doubled as both a body part and something that's been theirs for a long time, but that's assuming—"

"How many times did you replace your mage tools, when you was in Carthak?" Daine asked, cutting him off. Her blood had started to spark, her fingertips tingling, and a couple of the castle dogs were trotting over in concern.

"It depended on the tool, but I knew Ozorne was using focuses, so I made sure to proof my belongings and ensure they couldn't be used before boarding the ship." His smile was dry and a little smug as he stretched and leaned back again. "It's a trick, but it's possible."

"So the only thing that's been yours for very long—in the magic sense—is yourself."

He gave her another strange look. "Well, yes, I suppose."

Daine nodded sharply, then said, "We're leaving."

His mouth opened, then stayed open for a moment while she dropped to her knees and greeted the dogs. "...'We'?"

"You'n I." She would enjoy having flustered him this small bit later. To the dogs: "Hunter, go find Gerald." Gerald was the guard set to make the next round. "Distract him. Steal his pocket knife—you know how he loves the thing."

Hunter sniffed her face, then set off on his task, proud to have one.

"Snip, the keys. Third ring from the left, I think. Ask the cats."

Snip jumped to obey.

Draper rose smoothly and started walking towards the bars of the cell, looking deeply confused.

Daine didn't wait for him to speak. "I know you've an invisibility spell of some sort—can you use it?"

"I used a bespelled cat's eye," he said slowly, coming to a stop at the limit of the chains. "I don't know if I'll still be capable of using it." He raised one hand to show the slate cuff. "These here are tight."

"Was it with your belongings?" He had been stripped of his clothing and dressed in prison garb, and all the items he kept on his person had been placed out of the way in a collection no one was quite willing to touch.

"Yes."

A tabby mouser had come to twine around her legs, echoing the dogs' concern. "What did it look like?"

"A stone of about this size," he said, holding his thumb and forefinger about three quarters of an inch apart. "Striped amber and brown."

Why are you helping a two-legger who steals cats' eyes? the mouser wanted to know when Daine went down on one knee to speak to her.

"It's not a real eye," Daine assured her softly, scritching the top of her head while a strong purr rumbled underneath. "It's only a stone—but one so pretty they couldn't imagine naming it anything else. Can you find it for me, please? In the main workshop, on the big table under the shelf. It will stink of magic."

The mouser's tail lashed, an ear flickering in irritation. Everything stinks of magic in the workshop.

"I know. I'm sorry."

Only because it's you, the mouser sniffed, and turned.

"Careful not to get caught," Daine whispered after her.

Who do you think I am? the mouser demanded, but didn't stick around to wait for the answer.

"Daine—" Draper started; she held up a finger to cut him off.

"I'm thinking."

Out of all the belongings she had, what had she had for more than seven years? Her bow had been given to her by her grandda when she was ten, so that was six years old, and she needed it anyway. Her boots and clothes had been grown out of regularly in the past seven years. Everything else in her possession had been gathered since the fire three years ago—except the puppets Grandda had made her.

She should take as much as she could manage of the money she had earned as well. It was a tidy sum; she had been set to high level work.

Horses and saddles could be stolen and sent back when they were far enough away. Clothing and bedrolls. Oilcloth tarps. A spit, a large pot, and a pan. Flint and steel. A shovel for the latrine. Soap, towels, and a comb.

Food, she would rather not take from their stores. She could ask her friends where to forage and hunt for the two of them; the rest could be left to the people who had no means to forage or hunt themselves.

Anything else she was missing, she should be able to buy in the outlying towns, if they got there before word traveled and they became wanted for real.

Snip returned with two rings of keys then, and to Daine's relief, she found the one to Draper's cell on the fourth try and shoved the door open with minimal squeaking.

"Daine, what on earth is this about?" he asked, but allowed her to work through the keys on the second ring, trying each one on the wrist shackles. They were very large wrists, and Daine's hands were dwarfed as she tried key after key, the hair standing up on her arms in the adrenaline.

"They want you back, those two, and only you." One cuff came free. "They're saying it's so they can try and execute you, and the king wants you dead for the death of his daughter enough he might agree." The other cuff came free. "They don't care about all those slaves they spent all their coin on, only you." She looked up at him—and up and up and up. Goddess, but he was tall, even when he wasn't busy looming. "And now I know why."

Then she blinked at his neck, and the very visible reinforced slate collar.

A scarf then, as well.

"Oh," was all he said in reply to that, but his dark, piercing eyes studied her face, inscrutable but for the half-light of that old manic heat.

Daine looked away first, and stepped back; she wasn't particularly comfortable with the way it crackled like static over her skin—or the way it made her half-wish he would kiss her again, just to remind her of what it felt like.

Instead, she backed up and set her heel against the door, so it couldn't be slammed shut behind her without warning.

Draper went back to the wall of his cell and gathered the two books she had brought him. A flicker of irritation shot through her at the sight of them and what they represented, but her personal grudges could wait until they were out and away. They had no time for fussing.

Snip, on request, retrieved a cloak from the guard room to drape over Draper—more for warmth than any silly notions of disguising his build and height—and then a glance at his large bare feet raised the question of how she might shod him, and Snip was kind enough to sniff out his boots as well.

The tabby mouser came back while Snip was fetching the second boot, and Daine handed Draper the stone before turning her attention to the mouser and giving her all the pets and scritches she demanded.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Draper hold it, then wince as he made a sign over it.

And then he vanished.

"Hm," came his disembodied voice from where he had left. "It seems it can hold a charge independent of the power channeled through it. Fascinating."

She shot a glare at where she assumed his head was.

"I think it will last the night, though I wouldn't count on it any longer than that."

Daine nodded. "Turn it off once we've gotten out; the forest will do enough to hide us."

Snip returned then with the other boot, and, with the help of her other friends, Daine led the invisible Draper out of the prisons.

---

She slunk into the Rider barracks with Draper in tow, and packed everything she could while the other girls slept—making certain that the dancing puppets of Ma and the horse made it in as she went, just knowing Draper would call her silly and childish for it if he could speak, biting down a litany of excuses for why she couldn't just burn them and not take the risk—and then grabbed the coin she kept on hand, her bow and quiver, and a traveling cloak for herself, and set out.

While most of the supplies had been run through trying to give the camps the bare minimum, Daine managed to scrounge enough for two travelers.

A word to the pasture brought her two pack horses, a riding horse, and a pony, all of whom made saddling up and stowing the packs even easier than normal, and then, carefully choosing the moments in which to ride and with a bit more help from her friends, Daine managed to get all six of them out of the fort by way of a small side door.