I sucked in a long breath. Maybe I’d wait before testing my bonds again.
It felt like we’d been traveling for a long time when the air around us grew cooler. It felt damp against my skin. I tried to think about what that could mean. Were we near a hidden pool?
Something sounded louder ahead – something that sounded like the murmur of voices in a language I didn’t understand. My captor said something in a harsh language with short, sharp syllables.
And then I felt something on my ear. A bug? No – too large. I tried to reach for it, but my hands were tied. Tried to rub it away with my shoulder, but a hand hit my shoulder hard enough to bruise and then the thing – whatever it was – was sliding into my ear. I screamed and heard other screams echoing my own. The same sensation bloomed in my other ear and then it was gone, and I was left trembling.
“Screaming over the gift of our snakes? How did you think that would win our pleasure?” my captor asked, his harsh voice seemed to suit his words now. “I refuse to continue to speak your filthy language and translation will only make this more difficult. Better to give you new ears immediately.”
He ripped off my blindfold and I saw him swaying slightly as if exhausted. A long rope of snake slid back into his hand.
“Why did you blindfold me?” I asked boldly. He kept pulling me after him despite his loss of energy.
“I hate it when captives squirm,” he said. “It makes the whole thing take forever. And there are places that you should not see.”
“Did your snake ... did it go inside my ear?”
His answering laugh held a nasty note that set my teeth on edge. The constant buzz in my chest rose, growing more and more irritated. So, he liked letting his gross snakes slither through people, did he? Well, maybe I’d show him what bees could do.
My captor took a sudden turn and threw me to the ground as if he’d sensed the violence welling up in me.
I hit hard on my wounded shoulder and moaned, struggling to get up again with my hands still tied behind my back. I pushed up to a sitting position and found Zayana sitting beside me, her eyes wide with terror.
“Are you hurt, Aella?” she asked.
“Only a little,” I said through gritted teeth. My shoulder screamed with pain. I’d probably pulled the stitches. But there were no new injuries. I blinked back tears at the sharp pains radiating from my shoulder and tried to look around us. “Do you see any of the others?”
Our captors had disappeared back into the tangled landscape. Were they planning to leave us here? But then why do the snake thing to my head?
“Just Le Majest. They had him on a litter made of spirit snakes.”
“Ugh. Did they put a snake through your ears?” I whispered.
Zayana shivered but she nodded, her Imperial face carefully cold and distant. “Who are these people? I wasn’t told about invaders here.”
“I wonder if they are invaders,” I said, working at the bindings behind my back. They felt like a rough jute twine. If only I could get at my belt knife. “They seem to know their way around.”
There was a crash in the distance and a long scream. Something slashed through the trees above us. Another scream. Then stillness.
Zayana shuffled toward me and I leaned into her, trying to look in every direction at once. “Is Flame hurt?”
“No. I have him hidden. And your bees?”
“I can’t tell,” I admitted. “I’m not very good with them yet. I could call them ...”
“...but that would leave Le Majest in danger,” Zayana finished. She nodded as if agreeing with me that he should not be disturbed. “I knew there would be trouble. I should have said something. There were four turtles on a rock in the river. Four! An even number. Nothing could be more inauspicious.”
Something rustled through the tangled Forbidding ahead of us. I focused on the sound, trying to keep my breathing even. Trying to keep from panicking. We shouldn’t be able to sit so safely in the middle of a tangle of Forbidding. I should have realized it would come for me soon.
I swallowed down fear. I was House Shrike. I was relentless. I would not let fear take hold of me.
There was a crashing in the dark Forbidding ahead of us and then a swarm of men and women in masks dragged an unconscious Ivo to where we were, tossing him on the ground like a sack of bones. I gasped as one of them kneeled on his back, lashing hands and feet together with brutal efficiency. There was no sign of his eagle.
“What are you going to do with him?” I asked, my voice trembling more than I would like.
The snake-masked attacker closest to me backhanded me, splitting my lip. I spat blood, blinking as pain shot through my head.
“Silence.”
If they thought beating me would make me docile, they were wrong. The pain was awful. But I was House Shrike and we didn’t cower or bend.
They left again, and this time, when they returned, they had Osprey, still tangled in the net, but unconscious, head lolling to the side, his familiar toothpick nowhere to be seen. The net had been strung to a pole and four heavily muscled men lifted the pole to their shoulders.
I swallowed, thinking of a bird I’d seen once, caught in a net. The poor thing hadn’t stood a chance.
They marched into the Forbidding, Osprey’s limp form swinging between them, as a second group grabbed Ivo and threw him into a similar net. I flinched as his limp body fell heavily onto the ground as they moved him. That was going to leave bruises. In moments, his net was attached to another pole and four more bearers carried him into the Forbidding, their masked expressions blank and unyielding.
A pair of them grabbed my upper arms, wrenching me to my feet at the same time that they pulled Zayana up.
“Where is Le Majest?” she asked, her voice shaking. I expected them to hit her, but surprisingly they did not.
“You ask after the Adder? Your concern is admirable. His snake has given him a fever and so has that poorly patched wound. We take him to the temple of the Cobra for healing and harmony.”
I stared at the one speaking to her, wishing I could see behind the mask. Temple of the Cobra? Adder?
A grim realization was starting to flood over me. We were the Winged Empire – as much as I both feared and hated that – and we were people of the skies and of the birds. My belt had shrike feathers sewn to it. My knife had a shrike etched on the handle. Birds or feathers, wings or claws decorated every bit of clothing we wore or owned.
These people – in contrast – were masked as snakes, wore the skin of snakes, and manifested snakes that snatched us from our boat. Was it possible that the underground cathedral we’d been in – the one that Juste Montpetit Hatched in – was one of their temples? Was it possible that they had been here in the Far Stones all this time, living deep in the earth or far into the Forbidding where we did not know to look? Perhaps, they were the ones who built the bridges covered in snakes, the ones who decorated old monuments with them. Maybe they were even the ones who made the Forbidding in the first place.
I shuddered at the thought, but my suspicions only solidified as we were marched through the gnarled forest. Those who led us thought nothing of walking between waving tangles of Forbidding. They walked up the sides of waves of land that curled over and around. They ducked and hunched as they walked under spirals of grass growing overhead instead of under their feet. But the twisted land didn’t harm them. It even seemed to move away from them, curling away rather than toward them as they moved.