Skyfire (3 page)

Illusionism is just a freak genetic accident, like a rare eye colour or athletic talent. I'm the only illusionist in our crew, which makes it my job to hide us. But this time, I can't set up a magnetic circle to sustain my illusion. All I've got is my own damn magic – and right now, it feels as wobbly as custard.

I clench my eyes shut, straining to focus. The image of the cliff rises behind my eyelids. Rocks and shadows. Scraggly weeds. My crewmates, terrified and scrawny.

I paint my illusion. I cover the scene with beige and dust. Barren rock. Rumpled undergrowth. The chill of a morning breeze, and a glint of dew in the shadows. Nothing to see but empty stone …

The magic yanks behind my gut.

I force my eyes open, straining to maintain the illusion. My powers have grown stronger lately – I've had plenty of practice – but the image still flickers around us, as coarse and wild as the cliff itself. Surely it'll be enough. Surely, from such a distance, the man with the gun can't –

The first foxhawk veers sideways, an avian screech escaping its throat. Its rider is a woman in white, black hair flying like a shadow behind her. She arches around in a panic, desperate to escape her pursuer.

My illusion flickers. I grit my teeth and grasp tighter to the cliff, taxing every skerrick of strength in my body to hold the magic.
Come on, come on
…

The larger beast shrieks and its wings tilt sideways, angling its body into a charge against the wind. The breeze buffets it backwards but it twists yet again, before it surges forwards in a rush of claws and feathers.

Psshhreeeeik!

A gunshot cracks. The woman screams. Her foxhawk plummets from the sky, tumbling and screeching with a hole through its neck. Blood splatters on fur and feathers, and the woman screams again. Her foxhawk flaps wildly, squalling, desperate to slow its descent.

My breath catches. And in my moment of shock, the illusion fails.

I suck down a violent breath and wrench the magic back into place. Bare cliff, dead rock, dry shadows. The effort burns. It's enough to make my throat ache, my limbs throb.
Nothing to see but empty stone
…

Barely ten metres above the ground, the wounded foxhawk seems to catch itself. It flaps and flails like a drowning swimmer. The rider shouts, frenzied, yanking her reins upwards to –

The foxhawk hits the rocks. A wet crunch below: the snap of bones and crushed flesh.

I don't dare move. I don't dare breathe.

The larger foxhawk glides overhead. I stare up at its enormous furred belly, the cruel arch of its claws. Somewhere atop its back sits a man with a gun – and he isn't afraid to use it. If my illusion fails …

And then he's gone.

His foxhawk glides back towards the mountains, veering higher to ride the wind home. I cling to the
cliff face, my hands stinging, my throat raw. Finally, my illusion shatters. And somewhere in the back of my mind, the smugglers' song runs like broken breath.

Not a song of hope, but a threat.

A warning.

Those deserts of green and beyond.

By the time we reach the fallen foxhawk, the sun has drifted behind a murk of grey cloud. The rock beneath our boots is black, carved by nature into rectangular tiles. Maisy mutters something about volcanic sedimentation, but I'm past caring what sort of stone my boots are stomping on. If it isn't a cliff face, it's good enough for me.

I peer back up towards the cliff, half-afraid that the hunter might appear atop it. But there's no sign of movement. No sign of human life. Just bare rock and faded sky.

We approach the dead foxhawk: a broken heap of flesh and feathers. Its wings are smashed into unnatural angles, ruffling quietly in the breeze. Blood stains its neck and throat, smearing white with rust.

Up close, the creature is enormous; its wingspan could blanket my parents' old apartment. As I step closer, I notice that its eyelids are still open. Lukas is as pale as I've ever seen him, and he bends down gently to close the creature's eyes.

‘It's so … big,' I say lamely.

Lukas nods, bows his head for a moment, then steps away. Teddy looks just as strained, his hands clenched into fists. I wonder suddenly if they felt the creature die. When our foxaries went over a waterfall, back in Taladia, I remember Teddy screaming in a moment of shared pain.

‘She's underneath,' Maisy whispers.

It takes me a moment to realise she's referring to the rider. We all bend to shove the foxhawk's body. The beast is heavy, and it takes all our groans and gritted teeth to roll it aside.

The rider lies facedown, black hair sprawling in tendrils across the rocks. Her white cloak is smeared with streaks of red. I spot proclivity marks on the back of her neck: a round little stain that looks like a sun, with lines of light across her skin.

Daylight.
Her proclivity was Daylight.

‘Why didn't she just melt into the light?' I say. ‘Why'd she let herself fall?'

No one answers.

As gently as possible, we roll the rider onto her back. As soon as I see her face, my question is answered.
Although she doesn't wear a neck-scarf, she's younger than I expected. Too young. She looks about our age – still more girl than woman – and I wouldn't be surprised if her proclivity had only developed recently. It might even have blossomed in the last few days.

And now she's dead.

Her body is crushed and broken beneath the weight of the foxhawk, and I try to keep my gaze on her face rather than her mangled legs. I reach out slowly to close her eyes. I don't know her name, or why she was running, or who killed her, but to die like this – alone and broken, in the wilderness at the edge of her nation …

She breathes.

We all jump, and Clementine lets out a cry. It was only a weak little breath – an echo of what the girl's lungs could once achieve – but we all heard it. She breathes again: the tiniest hint of life against my palm. I jerk back my hand as though it's been bitten.

‘She's still alive!' Teddy says.

‘Yes,' Clementine snaps, ‘we can see that.'

But the girl isn't just alive, and she isn't just breathing. She's trying to tell us something. It's in the twist of her lips, the urgency in her eyes. I press my face closer to her mouth.

‘Hour,' she whispers. ‘Hourglass …'

I frown. The girl's accent is strange – I've never heard such a roll on the letter ‘R' before, or such
a hiss on the ‘S' – but the word is unmistakeable.
Hourglass
. Does she mean to tell us she's running out of time? Or is she simply losing her mind, reduced to babbling by the agony of her wounds? Her left hand is still crushed beneath the foxhawk, but her right hand lies clear beside her face. It's empty. No sign of an hourglass in those broken fingers.

‘What's your name?' I say, as gently as I can.

She takes several shallow breaths before she manages to get the word out. ‘Tindra.' She licks her lips. ‘My … my mother …'

‘Yes?'

‘Give her … tell her …'

Tindra raises her hand weakly to the pendant around her neck. It's a plain wooden carving: not an alchemy charm, not enchanted silver. Its only value can be sentimental. I think of my mother's bracelet, cold around my wrist, and the comparison makes my insides sting.

‘Of course,' I say. ‘Of course I'll give it to her. Where do I find her?'

‘Fire,' Tindra whispers. ‘Firestones.'

I shake my head, confused. ‘I don't know what –'

‘Hourglass.' This time, the word is so faint that it feels more like a memory. ‘Midnight …'

Tindra gurgles. A faint dribble of spit rolls over her lips, wet against my earlobe. Then she falls silent, and I know she's gone.

I pull away slowly, and realise the liquid on my ear is blood. I wipe it away and blink furiously, the sting of my own raw palms long forgotten. Such a minor injury seems insignificant now that this girl, Tindra, lies before us. Young, broken, and dead.

‘She's gone,' I say quietly.

The others nod. They already knew, of course, but Clementine doesn't make a snarky comment this time. We all just stare at Tindra's body, our tongues like sawdust in our mouths.

This could have been any of us. If we'd barged ahead to introduce ourselves to the locals – trusting blindly that they would take us in, would offer us shelter and safety – this could have been us. If they're prepared to shoot their own children, what might they do to the children of strangers?

I unclasp Tindra's pendant from around her neck. It's a small wooden carving, the shape of a flower. I survey the barren landscape and swallow back a bitter laugh. There are no flowers here. Just dead rock and empty skies.

‘What did she tell you?' Lukas says.

‘She wanted us to give this to her mother.' I slip the pendant into my deepest pocket, then button it securely to keep the carving safe. ‘Her name was Tindra.'

No one speaks.

I glance around one last time, searching for a patch of softer ground. It seems so wrong to leave
her body here on the rocks. But there's no soft earth to bury her in, and none of us has a Stone proclivity. There's nothing we can do.

I think of my family, left to burn in the ruins of our apartment block. Of Lukas's grandmother, Silver, rotting in the forest of the borderlands. Of Radnor, our old crew leader, down in the dark of the flooded catacombs. This isn't the first body we've left in our wake.

Please
, I think.
Please let it be the last
.

‘Come on,' Clementine says. There's a tightness in her voice now: an unusual surge of command, free from whining or complaint. ‘We're too exposed out here. We have to keep moving.'

I take a slow breath and force myself to my feet. She's right. Out here on the rocks, we're as visible as seeds on a loaf of bread. This is no place to linger. If King Morrigan's hunter appears atop the cliff – or if another foxhawk crosses the sky …

There's no choice, really. We can't return to Taladia. For all we know, the king might be amassing his army in the borderlands again, readying another strike. If we venture back into our homeland, we'll be dead within days.

Our only hope is the city on the mountain.

‘What will we do?' Clementine says. ‘I mean, if – if the city is no good for living in? They just killed that girl, as if she –'

‘Nowhere else to go, I reckon,' says Teddy.

‘We could turn north! Or south. We don't know what lies beyond this country – there could be
another
land, somewhere better, somewhere –'

‘What, start all over again? Nick off to another land and cross our fingers it's better than this one?' Teddy shakes his head. ‘We've got at least one hunter on our trail, maybe more. We're not gonna stay alive without help. It's gotta end somewhere, Clemmy.'

Clementine gazes at the distant mountains, too distressed even to object to the nickname. She looks pale and thin, like a drink that's been diluted. ‘But they killed her,' she whispers. ‘They shot her from the sky.'

‘Look, we won't just barge into their city,' I say. ‘We'll sneak around the outskirts, suss out our options. Decide what kind of people we're dealing with. If they've got a shred of decency, then we'll warn them about King Morrigan, and they'll
have
to protect us from the hunters.'

‘Yeah,' says Teddy, nodding. ‘I mean, we dunno what was really going on. Maybe that girl was a criminal. A killer, even. Maybe it was justice.'

‘Or maybe it was murder,' says Clementine.

No one has a response to that.

It's mid-afternoon when we hit the end of the rocks. It isn't dramatic: not a stark slice from one
landscape into another. It's just a slow fade of rock into dirt, dotted with the occasional scraggly tree.

As the foliage begins to thicken, I steal one last glimpse at the plain behind us. The landscape is so flat and barren that we can see for kilometres, all the way back to the cliff. A black-scorched blanket of stone.

My breath catches.

A man. Just one, back upon the rocks. The figure is tiny and remote – a couple of hours behind us, at least. His figure wavers a little, distorted by the wind and distance, but there's no mistaking his purpose.

When they notice that I've stopped, my crewmates turn to follow my gaze. There's a long pause as we watch the distant figure. The man is trekking from the cliff towards the trees.

Towards
us.

‘My father must be desperate,' Lukas says, shocked. ‘To send a hunter into enemy territory …'

‘Least there's only one of him,' Teddy says. ‘Five against one, right? I reckon I'd take a punt on those odds.'

I force a smile, but it's a hopeless argument. There might be five of us, but we're unarmed. We have no pistols or useful proclivities. What use is Beast or Bird or Night, when we stand upon a barren landscape in the middle of the day?

And if King Morrigan sent only a single hunter … well, the man must have a deadly proclivity. Maisy can defend us against Flame, of course, but King Morrigan probably knows that by now. I doubt he'd send a hunter whose magic we could thwart.

If the man's proclivity is Stone, he could drag us down to be slowly crushed beneath the earth. If it's Air, he could toss us to the wind and let us fall, screaming, to smash upon the rocks below. Even with something like Reptile, he could send a deadly snake into our camp site and –

‘Come on,' Teddy says. ‘Better keep moving, I reckon. He's gotta get close before he can hurt us, right?'

‘Yeah.' I wet my lips and try to sound confident. ‘You're right. No point worrying until he's in proclivity range.'

But even so, my body feels as stiff as stone.

The trees ahead are thin and stunted, brown leaves crackling in the breeze. But tiny nuts cluster on their branches, and the undergrowth curls in knots around our feet. A sign of life, at least. There are hiding places, too: old logs, splintered trunks and knobbly ditches. If the hunter draws too close – or if a foxhawk swoops overhead – we
might
stand a chance.

We tread upon rocks and upraised roots, trying not to leave a trail. King Morrigan's hunters are expert trackers, and can spy even the slightest sign of
human passage. A broken stem. A crumpled leaf. A misplaced stone, or a patch of scuffed dirt.

I scan my companions. The twins are visibly exhausted now, and even Teddy's face is strained. But it's Lukas who steals my attention. With his green eyes and hollow cheeks, pinched grey and weary in the cold light, he reminds me sharply of another Morrigan.
Silver
. His grandmother. A woman who fled her royal life and joined the smugglers, leaving her beloved grandson to think her dead. She was the only decent member of Lukas's family. The only one who ever loved him.

Yet Lukas still doesn't know I ever met her. He doesn't know his grandmother's official death was pure facade. He doesn't know she lived for another decade, or that her real death was less than a week ago.

Or that
I
let her die. I let her bleed to death, right in front of me, and I left her corpse to rot on the forest floor.

I can't tell him the truth. I can't cope with the betrayal in his eyes – the way he would look at me. The resentment, the questioning, behind those orbs of green.
Why didn't you save her
?

‘Danika?' Lukas startles me out of my thoughts. ‘Is everything all right?'

‘Yeah.' I force a smile. ‘Of course.'

Until the screech of a foxhawk slices the sky.