The Orphan Queen (2 page)

While they untangled themselves, I crouched and slashed my blade across one's heel, slicing through the leather of his boot to the heavy tendon.

The glowman dropped immediately, dragging one of the others with him.

I jumped toward my friends, but the third glowman shoved me hard against a building, knocking both my daggers from my hands. As he lumbered closer, I groped along the brick wall, and a windowsill came loose. I swung with all my strength. The rotting wood clapped wetly against his head, but did no damage. He jeered and lunged for my throat.

I reached for my daggers, and his hands mashed against the brick.

The glowman reared back. I brought my heel down on the arch of his foot, making bone crack. When I drove my dagger into his thigh, blood poured, hot over my hand. I stepped away.

Melanie, Quinn, and Theresa were dispatching the two glowmen who'd been bearing down on an unconscious Ezra. The glowman with the cut tendon was limping toward them, but they could take care of him.

The fifth glowman . . .

Down the street, he held a dagger to Connor's throat. Blood caught moonlight as it trickled down Connor's brown skin.

“No!” I lunged for him, but the glowman I'd just stabbed caught my ankle and I fell, both daggers skittering out of my
reach. Magic stirred on my tongue. I could make the ground bring the daggers to me.

No. Not yet. Magic was a last resort.

I struggled, twisting and yanking my foot, but the glowman's grip tightened.

I slammed my heel against his face. His nose cracked and blood spewed, and he released me.

Daggers in hand again, I scrambled to my feet and ran to help Connor.

But Connor was free. A sword-bearing figure sliced and stabbed at the fifth glowman. Long and slender, he moved like a dancer when he twisted and ducked and disarmed his opponent.

Connor peeled away from the fight and hurtled toward me. “Wil! I'm sorry! I was coming to help you, but he—”

“It's all right.” I dropped to one knee and touched his neck. “How bad is it?” It was all I could do to keep from hugging him, checking the rest of his body for wounds. He was old enough that it would only infuriate him. Still, I didn't stop myself from pulling him closer.

He tilted up his head and cringed, but the cut on his neck wasn't deep. “It hurts.”

“Put pressure on it. The bleeding will stop.” Instead of coddling him more, I turned and rushed the glowman who'd hurt him.

The newcomer had the glowman worn down. The beast was panting, bleeding from cuts all over his arms and chest. His shirt hung in shreds. With a mind to add a few more gashes to his collection, I ripped him away from the stranger and slammed him against a building.

A fantasy tickled the back of my thoughts: the brickwork coming alive, swallowing the glowman whole. A fantasy it remained; I couldn't call attention to my power.

“Why did you attack my people?” My voice was little more than a growl, a knot of rage and fear. If they knew who we were . . .

His gaze flitted beyond me, toward Connor and the others. “The boys looked easy.”

Not because they knew us. Good.

Again, I slammed his head into the bricks. His eyes grew unfocused. “Touch us again,” I said, “and you die.” Maybe he could die right now, for what he did to Connor. I had daggers. I could do it quickly. It wasn't like he was human. Not anymore.

A presence warmed my back, and the glowman tried to wrest himself away. “No!”

“Excuse me.” The voice was deep and unfamiliar. “I'll take him, if you're finished.”

I spun away from the glowman as he crumpled to the ground, and readied my daggers, but the hooded man didn't look up. Quickly, expertly, he bound the glowman's hands and feet together with a silk cord.

The sounds of fighting died away as the other Ospreys dropped their opponents. Five bodies littered the ground, still breathing for now. My eyes followed the stranger as he turned toward me.

His face was covered by a thin sheet of black silk; only his eyes remained unhidden, though shadowed now.

Black Knife.

“Thank you for your assistance.” He stepped closer and
offered his hand, but then paused and let it fall back to his side.
“You?”

Wonderful. He recognized me from the last few times our paths had crossed. Though he'd never saved one of my friends before.

I threw a glance over my shoulder. Melanie had gathered the other Ospreys and they were already slipping quietly away. I took four long strides backward.

“What's your name?” Black Knife stalked toward me, removing another silk cord from a pouch on his belt. “I've been looking for you. Where have you been hiding?”

I touched my chest and feigned flattery. “You've been looking for me?”

“Who were those children? More recruits for your gang?”

Same group. Younger orphans. Not that I'd tell
him
what we were, or from where we'd been taken.

“Surely we're a waste of your time. There are worse things in Skyvale than a few teenagers trying to feed themselves.”

His gaze cut to the glowmen bleeding in the alley. A few of them were beginning to stir. “What are you stealing this time?”

“Do I look like a thief to you?” I reached for a look of innocence.

“You look dangerous.”

I smiled. “Thank you.” Before I could consider the wisdom, I pulled a dagger and threw it.

Black Knife swore and darted aside. The dagger struck behind him, pinning a glowman's hand to the ground. The broken pipe he'd been reaching for rolled away.

When Black Knife kicked the pipe aside and knelt to tie the
glowman, I ducked around a corner and ran as fast as I could, crossing into the White Flag district and taking to the rooftops. The other Ospreys would be waiting at the inn.

Away from the quiet of the warehouse district, midnight life rumbled on the streets below: drunks staggering home, dogs barking, and babies crying. The moon cast wan light over the district, not yet reflected in the mirrors that hung on the taller buildings. If Black Knife had followed me, I couldn't see him.

I paused on the roof of an apothecary and whispered to the sky, “Thank you.” My Ospreys were safe. That was all that mattered.

They were my only family, my only hope for home. When the Indigo Army invaded Aecor almost ten years ago, every adult living in the palace was slaughtered, and the highborn children were brought to Skyvale, the capital of the Indigo Kingdom. We escaped the orphanage a year later and named ourselves after the national animal of our conquered homeland.

The Ospreys, these children, were my life. Without them, I had nothing.

But with them . . .

With them, I would take back my kingdom.

AFTER DROPPING INTO
the apothecary and lifting a few bandages and powdered herbs, I made my way to the Peacock Inn and slipped inside through the open window on the top floor.

We couldn't afford the room, even though it was the worst one in the building; but Patrick, Melanie, and I had once broken up a huge fight that would have ended with five dead men on the floor, police swarming through White Flag, and the Peacock's owner in jail. Now the innkeeper always let Ospreys stay when we were in town.

The others were there, starting a small fire and rinsing their wounds. I shut the window behind me and tossed my bag of medical supplies to Quinn Bradburn.

“Ezra.” I nodded at him. “Glad you're awake. That was quite the hit you took.”

He ducked his face and shrugged. “I'm better now.”

I raised an eyebrow at Connor, who gave a small, frantic shake of his head; he hadn't done anything. A knot of tension in my chest untangled. I smiled and moved on to gathering the stray weapons the boys had tossed everywhere. “Good. Next time, try not to get knocked out or cut, you two. It's embarrassing. People are going to think kittens trained you.”

“What was wrong with those men?” Connor winced as he dabbed a damp cloth on his throat where the glowman had cut. “They looked human, but they were
wrong
.”

“They were huge,” Ezra added. “And strong.”

“They were glowmen.” The tiny room was packed, three sitting on the bed and two in the only chairs. I perched on the windowsill, ignoring the way the old wood creaked. Muffled shouts and thumps came from the lower stories; the inn stank of waste and smoke and sweat.

Connor finished inspecting his neck in a tarnished silver mirror he kept in his pocket; he'd fallen hard for the whole mirror-and-wraith superstition. With a frown, he set the mirror aside. “What are glowmen? And are there glowladies?”

“There are women like that, but the term is just glowmen.” I raised an eyebrow at Quinn—Ezra was her younger brother, after all—and she nodded. We couldn't keep the younger boys sheltered forever, especially now that they'd faced a pack of glowmen. “Sometimes people use wraith to make themselves feel happier, stronger, whatever. Like people once used magic.”

“Wraith isn't magic, though.”

“Wraith
was
magic. Once.” Quinn shook her head at the boys. “Haven't you been paying attention to your lessons?”

Both boys slumped. “Yes,” said Ezra. “If magic is like fire,
then wraith is like smoke. Magic isn't created or destroyed. It just gets changed.”

“That's right.” I leaned against the window, the glass cool on my spine. “Wraith is another form of magic—a toxic form.”

“Wait.” Ezra held up a hand. “We're not finished. We
did
study.”

“People once used magic for everything, from building to farming to war.” Connor parroted the history papers we'd written for the younger Ospreys. “Radiants had even built a railroad system for transporting goods and people. Magic was
useful,
and families with a lot of radiants became powerful and rich. There was always wraith, but never enough of it to be a danger.”

Ezra took up where his friend left off, his voice pitched to mimic Quinn's: his impression of her giving lessons. “But just over a hundred years ago, the western kingdoms noticed the wraith accumulating, obscuring sunlight, and making storms worse. It's been creeping across the continent ever since, destroying everything in its path. Liadia was the most recent victim.”

“When the wraith was first discovered as a problem, King Terrell Pierce the Second, sovereign of the Indigo Kingdom, forced most of the surrounding kingdoms to sign the Wraith Alliance, making magic illegal, and now radiants are persecuted and hunted. People call them flashers now, to be rude. The once-powerful families and businesses who'd used magic to gain their wealth were replaced by those who could produce similar results without magic. Lots of people went into ruin, even in Aecor, which didn't sign the treaty. But Aecorians did change their methods of industry, and the kingdom became a safe place for radiants to hide. Until the One-Night War.” With a chuckle, Connor snapped and
thumped his chest at Ezra—the Osprey salute.

“I'm glad your studies amuse you so much,” said Melanie.

Connor turned back to me. “But what does
history
have to do with glowmen?”

I shook my head. “Wraith isn't magic like people are used to, it manifests physically. But wraith is still magical. Sometimes people add certain chemicals to wraith mist and sell it to others to drink or inhale. That's called shine. A little will make people feel however they want to feel. Stronger. Braver. Bigger.”

The boys exchanged glances and raised eyebrows. “That doesn't sound bad.”

“It's dangerous. If you take too much, the changes become real and permanent. You don't just
feel
amazingly tall or muscled. You
are
. Those people will never be normal again.”

“When they're caught, glowmen are exiled to the wraithland.” Melanie placed her bag on the small desk and fished out a notebook and pen. “I've seen the prison wagons. The glowmen are sedated, loaded like sacks of grain, and taken as far west as horses are willing to go.” Almost nonchalantly, she shook a bottle of ink and twisted off the cap.

Both of the boys were silent.

Theresa nodded. “It's true. They're dumped while they're still unconscious. Sometimes soldiers in West Pass Watch can see the glowmen waking up, if it's still light out. If the wraith beasts don't find them first, the glowmen usually attack one another and—”

“That's enough.” Quinn twitched her little finger at Theresa, who just smirked at the rude gesture and unfolded enough bandages for everyone's wounds.

Sufficiently frightened, the boys shuddered and turned
toward creating a paste from the powdered herbs I'd brought. While they were engaged with treating cuts and bruises, Melanie and I wrote a quick report to Patrick, the leader of the Ospreys.

When we got to the glowmen, Melanie paused. “What was Black Knife doing there?” Her voice was low.

“Hunting the glowmen, I assume.” I turned a pen in my hands. “He doesn't know what we were doing, and he didn't follow us. That's all I care about.” I glanced back at Connor, who was helping Theresa put away the last of the medical supplies. Hard to believe I was
grateful
to Black Knife for something. “Did the boys realize who he was?”

“Oh yes.” Melanie hunched, hiding a smile. “Ezra made fun of Connor for getting rescued by
Black Knife
, of all people. Connor made fun of Ezra for getting knocked unconscious almost before the fight began. Then they punched each other.”

“Clearly, they've made up,” I muttered. The boys now wore matching bandages around their heads and on their necks.

“Clearly.” Melanie smiled and shook her head. “Maybe you were right about him being a problem. At least he was more interested in the glowmen than us.”

This time. “We see him too often,” I muttered. “Maybe he'll trip and fall on his knife.”