“This feather. It fell off a turban. A fortune-teller’s turban in a caravan. She was a Stranger, too, and I thought I loved her. I thought she was going to save me.”
“And she betrayed you.”
“She chose a Bludman over me, took the fortune she saw when she held his hand. I know there was something more than what she told me. I saw her face, and I know she held something back.” He stroked the feather back and forth over my hand as if painting a secret message there. “ ‘Your loss will be your salvation,’ she told me. Well, I lost her, and it didn’t save me. I lost my riches and fame, and it didn’t save me. So what’s the next loss? Keen? My humanity? My mind?” He stared straight into my eyes, and I swallowed at his bald desperation. “Is it you?”
I looked down, taking the feather from him and twirling it back and forth between my fingers. “My mother once told me that fortune-tellers see what they want to see and tell what they want to tell.” I watched the feather, considering how very carefully I had to choose my next words. “I was always told that the fortune I chose for myself was the truest one.”
“And what fortune did you choose after that?”
“That I wouldn’t be forced into doing anything ever again.”
“Yet here you are. Are we all just victims, then, Ahna? Just puppets?”
I stood and shook my head defiantly, letting pine bits flutter to the earth. “Only if we allow ourselves to become so. I choose to meet life as a powerful conquerer. Nothing will ever take command of me again.”
“But what if—”
A scream cut through the woods, silencing us both.
22
Casper was up and running beside me faster than I would have expected him to move. He must have been right about becoming more like a Bludman and less like a Pinky. After a few short steps, the strings of my chute trapped me like a spider in a web, and I howled in animal frustration, ripping through the heavy lines with my teeth and pounding through the trees in Casper’s wake.
The forest was thick and heavy, old and cold. I dashed through the branches, flinging them out of my way in pieces when necessary. I threw out my senses but didn’t hear Keen. The scream—it hadn’t actually sounded like her. The scent of bludbears clung to the earth and trees, but that was expected. This part of the country was known for the shaggy monsters, which grew large and lazy on bludlemmings and the foolish pioneers perpetually tromping into the woods, expecting to make new Pinky cities outside the harsh blud rule of Minks and Muscovy. But bludbears weren’t the problem. Something else was wrong. The forest was too quiet.
Another scream echoed through the air, and I put on a burst of speed as I recognized its source. I had to hurry, before they lured her closer.
Scrabbling under branches and past fans of sharp green needles, I let the beast go free, abandoning all pretense of royalty. In a fierce gallop, I caught up with Casper and pulled ahead, my nose aimed straight for Keen.
We burst into a small clearing, the sort of green-lit hollow my mother had called a fairy dun. Keen stood there, a look of wonder and joy on her face. Her hand stretched out toward a magnificent peacock, a male in full splendor. His tail was set wide, shivering back and forth and throwing sunlight off the vibrant feathers. His head cocked to the side as he danced closer to her, and she laughed.
Looking beyond her into the forest, I saw what I feared: the red spark of an eye.
“Drag her into the underbrush,” I whispered to Casper. “Have your knife ready.”
“What?”
But I had already launched myself across the clearing, darting past Keen and diving into the shadows of the forest. The creature had already seen me and wheeled to escape, but I dug my talons into its flanks and ripped a gash in the dingy white fur of its rump.
Fear for Keen melted into fierce joy. I had always loved unicorn blood.
The beast bucked, trying to throw me off and keep me from tearing the wound bigger. Without weapons or hunting partners, I couldn’t take it down, but I held on as long as I could. I would teach this creature to tangle with virgins.
As I lapped up as much blood as I could, feeling it shift into my throat like sunshine, the unicorn snorted and squealed, its hooves knocking against the ground and trees as it tried to fight me off. Somewhere far away, the peacock screamed again and again, warning the unicorn that danger was near. Its pure call finally ended in a gurgle and silence, the scavenger dying before its master.
Spinning on two hooves, the unicorn tried to skewer me, but I dodged its gnarled horn easily and leaped away, sliding behind a thick tree. I licked my lips, sated, as the unicorn blew air through its lips and galloped off into the forest. Its blood spread through me, leaving me warm and satisfied like nothing else.
“Ahna!” Casper called, his voice high and frantic.
“I’m here!” I struggled to compose myself and tried not to skip on my way back to the clearing.
I saw Keen first; she was trembling, eyes huge, with rips down her sleeves. Her arms were wrapped around her skinny middle as she breathed through her nose like a spooked bludmare. The peacock lay battered and bloody on the ground, and Casper soon appeared from between the trees with a dead pirate’s machete in his hand. He dropped it when he saw me.
“Ahna. Thank God. Are you hurt?” He rushed to take my shoulders in firm hands as he checked me up and down. With unicorn blood in my belly, it was hard not to giggle at his unnecessary concern.
“I saw it,” Keen said, barely an awed whisper. “The unicorn.”Casper gazed down at me in confusion. “A unicorn?”
I shrugged. “He won’t be back. Let’s go.”
“So they’re real?” Keen breathed.
I snorted. “They’re just animals. Big, bloodthirsty monsters. But animals. Welcome to my world.” Seeing their dropped jaws and the mist of magic still swirling in Keen’s eyes, I sighed. “Unicorns aren’t magical and beautiful. They’re just predatory horses that have horns and love to eat virgins.” Casper pointed at the peacock carcass and raised his eyebrows, and I nodded. “Unicorns and peacocks work together. The peacocks are bludded scavengers that scout for prey. While the peacock dances, the unicorn is sneaking up behind you to run you through with his horn. And then they gorge and drag your carcass home to their harems.”
“This place,” Keen said slowly, shaking her head, “is wack.”
Casper knelt to run a finger along the peacock’s sharp beak.
“Jesus. It’s like one big tooth.”
I grinned. “They’re the only bludded birds in all of Sang, and they originate in Freesia. The Mad Tsar bludded them centuries ago, and they escaped the Ice Palace and managed to breed in the wild. No one knows the source of their partnership with the unicorns. An elegant friendship, don’t you think?”
I reached down to pluck a plume from the dead peacock’s tail and stuck it through the band of Casper’s hat. It didn’t escape me that we’d dropped his old feather in the forest when we heard the peacock’s scream. A jay called, and another bird answered, and then the forest finally came back to life, with the unicorn out of range.
“I can’t believe I was almost eaten by a unicorn,” Keen muttered. She shook her head as if the magic had finally fled, and her hands went to her pockets. “Donatello! He’s gone.”
She fell to her knees and rustled through the leaf litter, and Casper gave me a pained look.
“That gold ball she’s always playing with. It’s . . . the only thing she really cares about, but she won’t tell me why.”
“I’m right here, asshole, and I’m not deaf. I’m not leaving until we find him.”
I spun slowly in a circle, breathing deep until I caught a scent that stood out from the ancient greenery and earth. I followed the metallic tang and dug around in the forest floor near the peacock until I found it—the brass sphere I’d seen Keen playing with again and again. I turned, holding it out to her, and her face lit up with that brilliant smile.
“Donatello!” She snatched it from me and nuzzled it.
“What is that thing?” I asked, trying to rub the oily scent of clockwork off on my skirt.
Keen held the sphere up to the light with a radiant grin. “I guess we’re far enough away now that I can show y’all. Not like anyone in London is ever going to find me, right?”
Casper shrugged, and I watched her little fingers reach in to turn a nearly invisible brass switch. The sphere opened up smoothly, the parts unfolding and twisting until a brass tortoise sat on her hand with the subtle whisper of ticking gears.
“I get it,” Casper said, stepping closer with a smile. “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.”
“It’s actually a tortoise,” I started, and she cut me off.
“Shut up. There’s no cool names for tortoises.”
“So when did you pickpocket that little gem?” Casper asked.
“Nicked him from Sweeting,” she said with a shrug. “He owed me.”
Casper groaned and rubbed his eyes. “You’re suicidal, girl.”
“Whatever. You’re the one who just yanked me out of a window with a broken parachute.”
With things somewhat back to normal, I scanned our surroundings, but the forest all looked the same to me. Although I had been taught to hunt, no one had ever bothered to teach me how to survive outside of the Ice Palace and its grounds. I knew geography but not how to navigate. My entire life had been meant to unfold in the halls of grand castles.
“We need to get to Minks,” I said. “Then we can take the train directly into Muscovy.”
“And then?” Keen’s attitude and accent were back, and I tried to hide my smile.
“And then we find an old acquaintance of mine and decide the best way to approach the palace.”
“But if you’re in disguise and we have no money, how do you think we’re going to get on the train? They don’t need famous pianists to drive a steam engine,” Casper said with a bitter shake of his leaf-strewn hair.