My lips twisted. As if I wanted advice from him.
But there was no use in fighting. We were outnumbered and outmaneuvered. They even had magic on their side.
“We’ll be taking these,” Juste Montpetit said with a false warmth to his voice – as if he was doing us a favor. “We are so pleased that you can join us in making the Empire a truly safer place.”
I shook from head to foot. Not with pain – though that was there. Not with shock – though that was probably there, too. With red, roiling rage.
I wanted to spit.
I wanted to bite him with my teeth just to show him that I wasn’t defenseless.
He could take every weapon from us and still we weren’t weak. Not us. We were the relentless and he would pay for this.
He started to stride away, but he turned in the doorway to face us as if he’d just remembered something. It was too rehearsed to be real.
“Oh,” he said with half a smile. “I should remind you that you are expected at the village green for Hatching tomorrow. Any citizen who does not come to the green will be hung by the neck until dead. And any citizen caught with a blade any longer than their hand will also be executed. We will be an Empire of peace, by decree of Le Majest, our Imperial god and father.”
His Swan Claws left with him in a storm of thudding boots and squeaking leather.
A hot tear spilled down my cheek the second the last one walked through the door. And I wasn’t alone. The wails of the children began again in the dining room.
I swiped my angry tear away with the back of my hand and hurried to the door, not caring that my hand was still bleeding and in pain.
I peered out after them, wanting to be sure that they would actually leave. That they wouldn’t be lurking in the shadows waiting to surprise us a second time.
The light of the door left a long golden beam across the darkened yard, illuminating a dark pile outside our door – the corpses of our dogs. That’s why they hadn’t barked.
The Claws had stacked them one on top of the other.
I gagged as my tears fell faster and hotter.
Chapter Four
Raquella wrapped my hand in a soft cloth bandage and a shrike feather for luck. I tried not to wince as she smiled tremulously at me.
“He missed the bone and the major blood vessels. You’re lucky. It will heal fast,” she said sweetly, talking under the loud voices of our older siblings.
“Still want to marry a prince someday?” I teased.
“Definitely not.” Her dark eyes widened in horror.
Alect set the broken washbasin on the long table. There would be no repairing it despite the way he was trying to put the pieces in place. He looked lost.
The acrid smell of burning meat drifted in from the kitchen and Raquella cursed, dropping the bandage to hurry away. I gathered up the end of the bandage and continued winding it. She’d done a good job with the stitches. She’d always been good at needlework.
“We can’t let them keep our weapons.” Oska ran his tanned hand through his tangled curls. His expression was tight. “Only last week the Forbidding nearly stole my best mare. I had to fight a pair of Forbidding bears tied together by tentacles of magic to set her free. A belt knife or a Hatchet wouldn’t have been enough to stop them. I needed the speed and efficiency of my sword. What am I supposed to do without weapons? This is not a land for the peaceful or the unarmed.”
“We should have fought.” Awet hit the table and the dishes bounced loudly along the top of it. “Forbidding take us all, but we should have fought.”
Anfrea clucked her tongue at him as she dabbed Royn’s head with a wet cloth. He winced.
“Royn tried to fight,” she reminded us, with a tight look on her face.
The children had been hustled up into the loft. I could hear the murmurs of my other sisters and sisters-in-law tucking them into bed with comforting sounds. Small sobs still escaped through the tender noises of mothers consoling their children.
“And then what?” my father asked with a sigh. He looked ten years older. The lines in his sunburned face were twice as deep as they’d been this morning. “Even if you hadn’t been knocked down like Royn, would you have watched your children slaughtered? Or worse ... stolen? Have you forgotten Canaht?”
We all shivered.
Word had come of Canaht the same year my mother died. They’d defied the Empire and the Emperor had sent in his Claws. They took the children and executed anyone who got in the way, leaving the rest with the knowledge their little ones were being raised by other hands and taught to hate them from far away.
Canaht didn’t dare rebel again. Not with their children held hostage. And every so often, the Empire sent them a small wooden box to bury. A reminder that even when they were good and submissive, the Empire was a fickle mistress and she killed as she pleased.
I’d met a man from Canaht when we took a trip to Far Port once. He’d kept his gaze down, shrinking back from anyone who tried to speak to him.
“They’re beaten and broken, hardly men at all,” my father had said when I’d asked him about the man. His eyes had been hard.
“I feel sorry for them,” I’d said.
“Once your fight is gone, you’re a dead man,” my father had said sharply, and I wasn’t sure if he was angry or afraid.
“We haven’t forgotten Canaht,” Royn said. He chewed on his lower lip, placing a hand gently on Anfrea’s as tears filled her eyes. “And fighting would have done us no good, even if I’d managed it. They had four times our number with their swords already at our throats. We could have been killed on the spot, and our wives and children, too.”
“So, what now?” Alect asked, pale-faced. He was clearing up the children’s plates now, picking up scattered forks and broken pottery with trembling hands. “Can we get weapons from somewhere else? We should have hidden some in caches in the woods.”
A look passed between my father and Abghar so quickly that I almost didn’t catch it. Did they have something hidden?
I shouldn’t ask.
Better not to know.
“The old plow can be beaten down and reshaped,” Retger said quietly. “I can take it to Master Cuthern tomorrow.”
Retger was the blacksmith journeyman for our town. His arms were already wider than my thighs from his work at the forge, little white scars dotted his forearms and neck from the work.
“A good sword isn’t like a pot,” Abghar muttered. “It takes craftsmanship.”
“And you think I don’t have what it takes to craft it?” Retger protested.
“No one is saying that,” Oska said mildly. He was picking at the dining room table with his belt knife, carving what looked like a shrike into the surface of the fine table. If it had been any other time we would have been horrified at the disfigurement. It seemed fitting now.
I shifted in my seat, tightening the bandage. I felt like I might shake apart, the tension was so tight inside me. It was echoed in every strained word and worried look around the room.
“Not tomorrow,” my father said. He held the large shrike totem that used to hang above our front door in his hands. It had been smashed into three pieces. He kept trying to fit them back together. “Tomorrow, we go to the Hatching. We keep our heads down. We don’t draw attention. The Claws will leave after the feast. They’ve never been here before and they have no reason to stay. And then we’ll go on our way, too, and make plans.”