by G. A. Aiken
“If there’s truth to that, my friend, her life will not be easy.”
“I know that as well.”
Wincing that she had to ask the question because she had not been here to witness it or help, “Was it a hard birth for you?”
“Do you mean did I die, only to be brought back from the other side by a god so that I could slaughter a herd of Minotaurs trying to kill my child?”
Laughter wiped the awkward moment away, and Keita nodded. “That’s exactly what I’m asking.”
“Sorry. Nothing so exciting as what happened to Annwyl. Just your typical, miserable labor with lots of screaming and swearing blood oaths at your brother for doing this to me. Very similar to my Izzy’s birth.” Talaith studied the babe in Keita’s arms. “But this time no one took my daughter from me. This time I can hold her whenever I want to. She’s mine to raise as I like.”
Knowing the human female spoke of how the god Arzhela had secured Talaith’s obedience for some sixteen years by holding her now-eldest daughter hostage, Keita said, “Gods, Izzy must be so excited by this. Her own little sister.”
When Talaith didn’t answer, Keita looked away from her niece’s intense little face. “Talaith? You have told her, haven’t you?”
“Well, like you, Izzy hasn’t been home in two years.”
“So you haven’t told her?”
“Don’t yell at me!”
“How could you not have told her?”
Talaith rubbed her forehead with her fingers. “It just never seemed the right time.”
“Well, two years later is certainly not the right time. It’s bad enough she didn’t even know you were pregnant, but when she finds out there’s been a child and no one told her—”
Talaith slapped her hand against her leg. “You know, for someone who hasn’t deigned to reward us with her presence in two bloody years, you certainly seem aware of what’s going on. And have opinions!”
Iseabail, Daughter of Talaith and Briec, Future Champion of Rhydderch Hael—probably—Future General of Queen Annwyl’s Armies—She hoped! She hoped!—and sometimes Squire to Ghleanna the Decimator, kept her head down and tried hard not to show any reaction at all. She’d learned this approach after the first time her unit had come into one of these small towns, only to find it decimated by one of the barbaric Western tribes. When she’d first arrived as a new recruit for Queen Annwyl, the troops often went into towns just like this one, either to protect the residents or to deal with the aftermath, if they were too late. But even when they were too late, they usually found only the men dead. The women and children were taken off to be slaves, and more than once, some of the units were able to rescue them before they’d been sold at the slave market.
But in the last eight months or so, things had changed. Instead of finding a lot of dead men, they’d been finding dead everything. Men, women, children, pets, cattle, crops. Nothing had been spared. And seeing a dead child for the first time had taken Izzy by surprise, leading to silent but noted tears. By the end of the evening, after cleaning up the bodies, she’d been called in front of her commander to be told not to be “so damn weak.” Izzy knew her commander was being intentionally cold. There was no other way to get through a day when you had to put one, let alone many, corpses of children on funeral pyres.
So Izzy had taught herself to stare at something innocuous. A tree. A cart. Today it was the bushes surrounding a burnt-out husk of a house. It was strange how the house had burned, leaving the lower-left frame standing but nothing else.
Grumbling about “bastard barbarians,” her commander began to snap out orders to the young recruits. “Grab this, get that, burn them…” It was all the same.
Not exactly the glamorous battle life Izzy still dreamed of, but she knew everyone had to start somewhere and it was her dreams of earning more that made getting through the set-up of more funeral pyres for the innocent tolerable.
“Iseabail,” her commander ordered, “check the rest of the houses.”
“Uh-huh,” Izzy said without thinking, her gaze catching something buried in the dirt by the burned house she’d been focusing on. She walked over to the husk and crouched down by what was left of the bushes. Curiosity getting the better of her, Izzy dug her hand into the dirt and caught hold of the strip of red leather. She pulled it out and brushed at it, trying to see the emblem.
“Iseabail! Daughter of Talaith! Do you hear me?”
In the back of her mind, Izzy knew she should be jumping at her commander’s bellowing, but she didn’t know how. To say she’d been through more than most of the recruits was kind of an understatement, and after facing down gods, dragons, and, most terrifying of all at times, her mother, some bellowing unit leader who could have the skin stripped off her back for insubordination really didn’t worry her much.
“Commander?” she said, running over to him. “What do you make of this?”
The commander, always annoyed Izzy didn’t jump in terror at a mere word from him, snatched the leather from her hand. He wiped at the emblem with his thumb, his scowl suddenly fading away. “Where’d you find this?”
She pointed. “Over at that house there. In the dirt.”
The commander slapped the leather back in Izzy’s hand. “Take this to the general.”
Izzy grinned. “Can I get a horse?”
“No!” he bellowed back. “You cannot get a horse. You haven’t earned one!”
“I was just asking,” she muttered.
Bringing two fingers to his lips, the commander whistled.
Izzy shook her head. “No. Please, sir. No.”
Her commander leered at her. It was the one way he knew to get to her. The one thing that set her teeth on edge. Because it was the one thing Izzy had absolutely no control over.
“Enjoy the ride, Iseabail.”
Before Izzy could beg more, the dragon’s tail wrapped around her waist and lifted her out of the small town. As always, she screamed when that happened. Begged to be put down, because she knew exactly what would happen when they arrived at their destination. Because it happened to her at least once a day now. Sometimes more, rarely less.
Yet the cruel beast holding her was no different from all the others who did the same to her—heartless and relentless, thoroughly enjoying the pain she suffered. And usually—family!
“No!” she begged, as she always begged. Especially when she saw the expansive camp that belonged to Annwyl’s troops, right outside the Western Mountains. “Don’t!” Izzy tried again as they flew through the camp. “Please!”
“Hold on!” was the only warning she got before the tail pulled back and then flicked forward, tossing her through tent flaps and inside the tent.
“Bull’s-eye! Ten points!” the dragon cheered.
Izzy flailed wildly, trying to find a way to land that wouldn’t shatter a shoulder or knee. But before Izzy could fly out the other end of the tent, where she was often grabbed by another tail and tossed somewhere else, big hands plucked her out of midair.
Panting, relieved, she looked up into a face she knew well because it looked so much like her grandfather’s.
“Honestly, Izzy,” her Great Uncle Addolgar chastised. “What are you playing at?”
“Me?” Why did they think it was always her? True, she’d been known to throw herself from one dragon back to another while hundreds of miles above the earth, but that was her choice, wasn’t it? This particular game was not her choice, but it had turned out that those dragons she thought of as cousins and kin, didn’t care. They insisted on treating her like a human shot, and no one seemed to care! Least of all her great aunt and great uncle.
“Don’t start all that caterwauling,” her uncle warned.
“I do not cater—”
“Why are you here?”
“My commander sent me back. He wanted you to see this.” She held out the strip of leather, and her uncle took it, then dropped her. Izzy’s ass hit the ground hard, but she kept in her grunt of pain. It wa
sn’t easy.
“Where’d you get this?”
“From that little town you sent us to check out. The barbarians had already been and gone. I found that in the dirt by a house.”
“Oy. Ghleanna. Look at this.”
Izzy’s Great Aunt Ghleanna got up from the chair she’d been sitting in, drinking her afternoon ale. With her hand still around the battered mug, she took the leather from Addolgar and studied it. “Shit and piss,” she finally said.
“What is it?” Izzy asked, trying to get another look.
“Mind your own,” Addolgar told her, pushing her back by planting his excessively large hand against her forehead and doing just that—pushing her back.
She hated when he did that.
The siblings walked over to a corner and talked in hushed whispers while Izzy tried to listen without appearing to. Eventually, as they sometimes did, the pair began to argue, but for some reason Izzy got the feeling they were arguing about her. That was strange. It seemed as if they barely noticed her these days.
“It’s a mistake,” Addolgar said to his sister’s back as she walked up to Izzy. But, like most days, Ghleanna ignored him.
“You were coming back with us to Garbhán Isle, yeah? When we leave in four days?”
Izzy nodded and held her breath. She’d feared this would happen. That something would come up and she’d be unable to return home. She wanted to go home so badly. Not to stay, of course—she had too much to do—but she hadn’t seen her family in two years. She missed them all, but especially her mum. She wanted to see her mum.
“Looks like you’ll be going back earlier.”
Izzy bit the inside of her cheek so she wouldn’t smile. “Oh?”
“Yeah. But before you go, I think there’s something you should know first.”
“And I think you should stay out of it,” Addolgar snapped.
“Shut up, brother.”
Izzy began to panic. “Is everyone all right? Is Mum—”
“She’s fine, Izzy. She’s fine.” Ghleanna handed the leather to her. “When you get back, give this to Annwyl. Tell her it’s the fourth bit like this that we’ve found. She’ll understand.”
“All right.”
Ghleanna placed her hand on Izzy’s shoulder. “But about your mum…”
“Is she coming back for the celebration?” Keita asked, slowly pacing around the room with her niece still in her arms. The entire time the babe’s gaze never left Keita’s face.
“They all are. Ghleanna, Addolgar, all their offspring. Some of your father’s cousins who work the desert borders will hold the line in the west until after the celebration.” Talaith watched her for a moment, then asked, “I’m glad you came back, luv. If nothing else, I know Izzy will be overjoyed to see you. She writes about you often.”
Keita couldn’t help but smile. “Does she?”
Talaith snorted, rolled her eyes. “You are joking? She’s adored you since the first time you two met and you said in that cultured lilting voice of yours, which none of your other siblings have, ‘Well, by the gods, isn’t Briec’s daughter absolutely beautiful.’” Talaith sneered and added, “Suck up.”
“I wasn’t lying, your daughter is beautiful. Besides, it worked, didn’t it?”
They both laughed until Talaith’s youngest daughter suddenly focused her intense gaze on the door.
“Should I be flying her to safety?” Keita asked when all on the other side of the door remained quiet.
“No. It’s merely this incredible sense she’s had since birth to know when her cousins are nearby.”
As if on cue, the nursery door opened, and Fearghus walked in.
“You came to see Briec’s offspring before mine?”
“Her mother led the way. You, however, were too busy laughing at Gwenvael.”
He snorted. “Well, that was funny.”
“Where are they?” Keita asked, trying to see over and under his excessively wide shoulders by moving about. “With the nanny?”
Her brother snorted again. “They lost her hours ago. They tracked me down themselves.”
Fearghus looked over his shoulder and said, “Well, get up here. Meet your Aunt Keita.”
Keita watched as two sets of eyes—one a vibrant green, the other an endless black—peeked over their father’s shoulders.
So sweet, she thought. They’re shy.
At the sight of her, those green eyes rose, and a filthy little boy raised himself up, his hands firmly placed on Fearghus’s left shoulder. He sized Keita up with one long glance—and grinned.
Keita blinked, her gaze going to Fearghus, who quickly stated, “I won’t discuss it. I just won’t.”
“Yes, but—”
“Not discussing!” he barked.
And that’s when the child on the right launched herself at Keita, a small wooden training sword tight in her meaty little fist.
Thankfully, however, Fearghus was fast and caught hold of his equally filthy daughter by the back of her shirt.
“What have I told you about random attacks?” he asked the black-haired toddler. He sounded so bored by the question that Keita felt certain he’d had this discussion with her nearly every day since her birth. Disturbing enough, but the fact that the girl continued to swing her sword at Keita while snapping tiny baby teeth—definitely, much more disturbing.
“Is that normal, brother?”
“It’s about to get stranger still,” Talaith warned.
“And how is that possible?”
To answer the question, Talaith’s daughter reached out her tiny hand toward her cousin, then placed it against Keita’s chin. A moment later, Fearghus’s daughter instantly relaxed, her sword lowering to her side.
“She didn’t like you holding her cousin,” Talaith explained, “until she got her cousin’s approval, that is.”
Taking a step back, Keita asked, “What in all the hells has been going on here?”
“We don’t know,” Talaith said on a yawn. “Though we’ve all asked ourselves that question often enough.”
“But we had to stop,” Fearghus continued. “Because to be quite honest—”
“—we were getting a little bit terrified by it all.”
“But on the plus side,” Fearghus quickly added, “none of them has a tail.”
“Or scales.”
“So superficially they seem quite normal.”
Keita frowned. “And that’s fine with you?”
Fearghus and Talaith exchanged glances before answering together, “It could be worse.”
Branwen the Black was busy braiding her older brother Fal’s hair when she saw Izzy. She looked well enough, even though one of their cousins had tossed Iz into Branwen’s mum’s tent. Branwen knew it for the compliment it was—that the Cadwaladrs thought Izzy tough enough to stand the abuse they’d dole out to any young dragon—but that didn’t mean Iz liked being tossed about. Then again, Branwen didn’t like it much either, and she could fly.
“Izzy doesn’t seem to be in a very good mood,” Fal observed.
Izzy was scowling so hard, she almost looked like Uncle Bercelak, which was strange since none of them were actually related to Izzy by blood. It didn’t matter, though. They were all kin now. And after two years and countless battles, Branwen had grown impossibly close to Izzy. She was nicer than any of Branwen’s sisters and more understanding than any of her brothers. True, they were more than six decades apart in age, and Iz was tragically human, but it wasn’t something that mattered. Not to them.
Branwen released her brother’s hair and stepped over the log he sat on. “Izzy?”
Izzy stopped, faced her cousin. “Did you know?”
“Did I know what?”
“You mean about your mother?” Fal asked, looking all sorts of bored. He shrugged. “I knew.”
“You knew what?” Branwen demanded of her brother, but he never got a chance to answer. Izzy picked up one of the logs they used for sitting and with one good swing, knocked
Fal up and back into their brother Celyn, who’d come up behind him to find out what was going on. Both dragons hit the ground hard, and Izzy tossed the log down, the ground shaking a bit from the weight of it.
“Can you take me back to Dark Plains?” Izzy asked her.
“Aye, but—”
“General Ghleanna wants me to give something to my queen as soon as possible, so it’ll be faster this way.”
“Anything, Iz, but—”
“Five minutes then?” And not bothering to wait for Branwen’s answer, Izzy walked off.
Celyn stood next to Branwen now, both ignoring their groaning brother with the broken jaw. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know, but I’ll find out.”
“I’ll take her back to Dark Plains,” Celyn offered.
“Like hell you will.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Don’t be stupid,” she whispered and motioned to poor Fal. “Take care of our brother. I think his jaw’s broken.”
“Then maybe he should have kept his mouth shut for once.”
“There she is!” Briec walked into the room, and for a moment, Keita actually believed he spoke of her. She was wrong. “There’s my perfect, perfect daughter.” He removed the child from Keita’s arms without asking permission. As always, her brother was rude!
“Isn’t she perfect, Keita?” He motioned to Fearghus and his offspring. “Unlike those two.”
In response, Fearghus’s little girl pulled back her arm to toss her wooden blade at her uncle’s head, but Fearghus yanked it away from her before she could carry through.
The baby clung to Briec, small arms wrapped around his neck. But, for the first time, Keita noticed that she didn’t smile.
“Does she not smile?” Keita asked, and she knew it was the wrong question when both Talaith and Fearghus winced and Briec snapped, “She’ll smile when she’s gods-damn ready!”
“Don’t bark at me!” Keita snapped back. “It was a simple question.”
“Well, if you’d been here, you wouldn’t have to ask those bloody questions!”