“If we’re going to talk about traitors,” I said, “then you’d better stop threatening my family, Wing Essena.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Think twice before accusing me, girl.”
“I have thought twice. I’ve thought three times,” I said boldly, projecting my voice through the room. “I’ve thought about how you threatened to kill people in this room if I didn’t remain silent. I’ve thought about how you threatened my family.” At that, the porcupine made a careful step toward me as my siblings moved to get nearer to Wing Essena and me. “I’ve thought about how you think these people will believe you and not me. But why would they do that? You’ve worked for the Winged Empire since before you received that owl, and you’ll keep on working for them. You stole me from my people and helped Le Majest keep me confined. When we were beset by the Forbidding, you left your apprentice to die and tried to save yourself. And when I arrived here – finally reuniting with my family and bringing to them information and knowledge they can use against the Empire and against the Forbidding, you try to threaten my life. I think they’ll believe me. I think they’ll hear my heart – that I long to see our continent free and our people bold and prosperous. I think that when they consider it, they’ll realize you’ve never really been on their side.”
“Are you about done?” she asked calmly.
“Not even close.”
“Do you mean to tell us all that you aren’t married to Le Majest?” she said with a glimmer of triumph in her eye.
“I am married to Le Majest,” I said and a gasp went up from the whole room. But my family made my heart roar. They completed their circuit to me, surrounding me and edging Wing Essena aside.
“Don’t do this,” she told them calmly. “There’s no need to kill all of you. Only your sister has betrayed us.”
“She’s betrayed nothing,” Abghar said, standing between us with his sword drawn. “As the head of House Shrike, I say that we stand with our sister.”
“We do,” Oska and Adigale said together from behind him.
“Who took her blades, Wing? If that was you, you’ll return them or pay dearly,” Helissa could be very insightful when she wanted to be.
“She had no blades,” Essena said.
“Her man Francen tried to take them from me – mine and Wing Osprey’s. I gave them to Alect instead, but it was Francen who gave me this swollen jaw,” I said. Because I was done with secrets and protecting the guilty.
There was a shift from the room around us – they were nervous now – not certain who to believe.
“If you’re really with us,” Chandres said, “then why have you married Le Majest?”
“It was a marriage in absentia.” I tried to match his calm, but my bees were raging. “I had no more say in it than you do. And I want it no more than you do.”
“Lies,” Wing Essena stated just as calmly. “All lies. We all know that the Skybinders don’t work like this. She’s a clever trap meant to distract us and turn one of our strongest families from us.”
But she was showing her true colors. Her bird slipped from her grasp, sailing into the sky. He blinked his white owlish blink, but he was diminished, smaller than normal.
“You’re the one who taught me the power of words, Essena,” I said, careful to leave off her title. “Your lies have diminished your bird and shrunk your power. And no wonder when you are feeding it hate and paranoia rather than the truth. If anyone needs proof, I’d be willing to bet it’s in the messages you send with your pigeons. Have you been informing on your new friends, Wing?”
Chandres’ jaw clenched tightly, and he looked from Wing Essena to me and back.
“Regardless of what anyone else believes,” Abghar said loudly for the room to hear, “this is our sister. As head of House Shrike, I say she is welcome with us. We’ll be in our camp deciding what outcome this will have on our alliances and choices for the future. You’d all do well to consider the same.” He turned but then paused. “Oh, and Wing Essena? I believe my little sister. If you’re still in the camp by dawn it will be blood feud between yours and mine.”
“What does that mean?” Wing Essena asked, shaken. Maybe there weren’t blood feuds across the sea.
“It means any one of us who sees you will kill you on sight.”
“I’m not so easy to kill,” she said coolly.
“Aren’t you?” Abghar asked. And the quiet threat of his words shot a spike of fear through me. Thank the skies and stars that he was on my side.
We marched together from the room and as soon as we were through the door I could hardly stand. A huge hug from Oska swept me off my feet and then Abghar was there roughing up my hair and Royn was nodding in a friendly manner and Raquella was trying to kiss both my cheeks at once while Helissa scolded us all.
“Hurry, hurry!” she chided. “We need to get to the house and see to the children before that wretched Wing decides to make good on her threats.”
I could hardly breathe as they swept me through the encampment or village or whatever it was. I kept catching glimpses of men and women training with weapons or fletching arrows or sharpening blades and all of that was in between glances of my family’s happy faces.
“We missed you, Shrikeling,” Adigale said, kissing my head like mother used to, and then Oska leaned in with a worried frown.
“Retger told us about Father. It shouldn’t have been you who had to be there for that.”
“We all wish we could have held your hands,” Raquella said, tears brimming in her eyes. “Oh, Aella, you wouldn’t believe the things we’ve seen. We had to flee into the Forbidding, and we found these crazy places.”
She pointed to the nearest building as if that could explain the strangeness of a village plopped right in the middle of the Forbidding with a twisting path leading to it.
“It’s a place to gather and strategize,” Oska added. “And now that you’re here, we’re all safe and ready to finish readying the plan. We strike in a week. We’ll take Karkatua. It’s weakened already by the attack of those strange barbarians.”
“The Hissan,” I said. “And I could have sworn I saw you there.”
“You did!” He said cheerfully. “Or at least, you could have. I was there, talking to the Single Wing in the city.”
“But how did you get here?” I asked, stunned.
“That’s how it works, silly,” Raquella laughed, dragging me toward a noisy well-lit house. “Time doesn’t mean the same thing inside the Folding.”
“Wait!” I protested. “I can’t go in there. Alect took Marcel and Osprey to the healer and they’ll be in danger from Essena.”
Abghar paused, looking at me before nodding briskly. “Everyone inside except Oska and Raquella. We four will go retrieve Awet and Aella’s friend from the healers. The rest of you set up a perimeter and for skies sakes make some kind of supper. Conflict with supposed ‘allies’ makes me hungry as a Forbidding-bear.”
My eyes grew wide as he spoke but my siblings hurried to obey in a way I would never have guessed – none of us had ever been particularly submissive. Raquella, Oska, and I hurried to follow him as he trotted toward the house of healing.