Tif paused in pushing through the leaves of yet another tree she had no name for. The fronds were wide with veins that shone blue in the sunlight. What had made her stop though was the smell: it was sweet, like…berries, but Tif didn’t see any fruit.
A buzz whisked by her ear, followed by a chirping voice.
“What’s wrong? You see another bug you want to keep?”
When Tif had traveled with Udaru and the other knights, flying through the sky in ris powered leaps, she’d barely gotten to experience the ground below. This time, however, it was like she found a new surprise every hundred feet--surprises that her travel companion always seemed to have a comment about.
Tif turned to the small fairy who hovered nearby. “Do you know what type of tree this is?”
“Why you asking me?” Plumya snapped. The bounty hunter was the same size as a das piece, barely four inches high, and seemed to have perfected a look just as sharp as the invisible blade she could summon.
Tif shrugged it off, continuing on her way. “I always heard that the Life Tribe city had huge trees, some as tall as mountains, so I thought you’d know.”
“And you know the different types of rocks you’re walking on?”
“Hmm,” Tif said, looking down at the scattered stones that lived underneath the low foliage. If a trail had once existed between her city of Lercel and their destination of Sah’Sah it was now overgrown, and Tif hoped she was on it. “Maybe some shale?” She thought she had heard that name once.
“But you grew up on a pile of em? What’s wrong?” Plumya’s self-satisfied voice got higher with each word, and Tif swore that the bounty hunter rose up in the air just so could stare down at Tif.
Tif gave the fairy a look of her own. “I get your point.”
“And what’s that?”
“That you’ll pick a fight even when you don’t need to.”
Plumya bared her teeth in reply and then bit the air with a tiny click. “Maybe if you had fought more you wouldn’t be on this stupid trip.”
“And maybe if you didn’t love flats so much you wouldn’t be here with me.” Plumya claimed that Tif’s old boyfriend Awt had paid her to keep an eye on Tif, and considering how much the fairy seemed to dislike her, Tif thought it must be true.
Plumya jutted her chin out but didn’t respond, taking the lead with an extra push of her gossamer wings, the air behind her shimmering like unseen ris.
They traveled without speaking after that, much to Tif’s preference. She had Pep to keep her company and plenty to see: birds swirling overhead with feathers tipped in red, drooping trees and bushes of every shade of green she could imagine, and occasional furry critters that all seemed half again as big as the ones she was used to back home.
The last group was arguably the best because they served as good practice for her, so Tif kept a special eye out for them. Not long after they crossed a low stream bed that had more rounded pebbles in it than water, Tif’s vigilance was rewarded when she caught sight of a white and black speckled bunny dashing across their path. Tif marked it nearly as quickly as it appeared, whipping her thumb across her forehead and then in the direction of the animal before it escaped into the underbrush. Goal accomplished, she smiled at the face made of charcoal on the inside of her left hand.
“You see that, Pep? Pretty soon I’ll be able to do it without even thinking about it.”
Not only was she getting faster at making the connection with her Death ris, but Tif was better at keeping it going. At first she had tried focusing on the grey, smoky thread that snapped into being between her and what she had latched onto, but for whatever reason that didn’t do the slightest good. Instead, the trick Tif had found was focusing on the sensation she felt in her head about whatever she had marked. The rabbit was a skittering heartbeat in the front of her mind, almost tickling the inside of her skull, zig-zagging its way ahead of her. Of course, even with its back and forth path, it was out of her range in a few moments--she could only track things within a few dozen feet. Still, a few days ago she would have lost it as soon as she didn’t have eyes on it, so this was a definite improvement.
While Tif was proud of her self teaching, she also knew it was a necessity if she planned to make it to Sah’Sah in one piece. Without her three seals of Blood ris she was a sitting target in many ways, so she needed to know as much as possible about the seal of Death she possessed. When she had broken into Vak-Lav’s underground to rescue her parents, Tif had used it on some guards, and with the mark she could not only feel where the people were but also what their body was doing, which gave her hints as to where they’d end up. What else was there to it? Could she know what they were feeling? Maybe even thinking?
Tif figured there had to be some limits--if not, she wouldn’t have been able to go toe-to-toe with the spidra warrior she had faced who she had gotten the Death ris from. But at the same time people in Lercel used the first seal of Gold in all sorts of ways, to make all types of strikes, so why couldn’t the same be true of Death?
That was the reason Tif had been interested in the bug Plumya was teasing her about. The long, green insect with its triangle head and folded arms had sat so stilly on the leaf, Tif thought it could do the same on her shoulder. It looked big enough to mark, and by having it nearby for longer than a few moments, she could delve deeper into what the Death connection was telling her. Unfortunately, when Tif had tried to use her Pep hand to pick the bug up, it had flown away.
Pep still felt bad about that but reminded Tif that there was something bug-like nearby she could use instead…
Tif’s eyes drifted up to the fairy who buzzed through the air a few feet in front of her, whizzing back and forth at times as if she was forging a path through tiny wind currents. Tif was tempted to be sure; she could have it set before Plumya even noticed. But, from experience, Tif knew that the Death mark created a sensation of numbness on its target, making it instantly obvious. In that way it was similar to the Death ris on her body, though it had taken nearly a week of having the tattoos before Tif had lost sensation in most of her right hand and arm where the majority of the grey ris was concentrated. She also had some splashes of it on other parts of her body, like her forehead, but the small amount made the lack of feeling in those spots less obvious. Tif had gotten used to the change, finding it funny even to wiggle fingers that felt as if they belonged to someone else, but Plumya? Tif didn’t need to be a das master to predict that marking the bounty hunter would not improve their relationship.
So what would? It was true that out of the many people she had met, the fairy had a way of rubbing her wrong, but they were going to be traveling together for a while and there was no reason to make it miserable. Tif didn’t know how long the trip would take on foot, but it had already been longer than the two days she and the knights had spent porting through the clouds, so she might as well at least try to make conversation.
The trouble was Tif didn’t have a clue where to start. One of the few things she knew about Life Tribe was that they almost never left their forest home. Besides that, there was the Life Trade, but talking about Lercel’s poor being forced to sell their newborns to Life so they could be sacrificed for ris would surely put her and Plumya on worse terms, not better.
And that’s when Tif realized what the problem was between them. Of course she didn’t get along with the fairy. It had been staring Tif in the face the entire time, and she just hadn’t seen it. What’s more, it was completely unfair of her to hold any sort of prejudice against Plumya just because the bounty hunter was from Life. The Trade had been despicable, but for all Tif knew Plumya didn’t have anything to do with it and had earned her Life ris from plants or eggs or maybe animals that had lived long, good lives. One of Pep’s favorite sayings was that the perfect time to change was now, and that’s exactly what Tif was going to do.
“So,” she called up to Plumya, “why did you leave your Canopy?” Tif was nearly certain that’s what Life Tribe called their city, and she hoped the added effort would go over well.
The fairy turned her head ever so slightly, but not enough to look at Tif. “You mean The Canopy?”
“Yes, sorry,” Tif said. She shouldn’t have chanced a phrase she wasn’t sure of, especially when trying to rebuild a bridge between them. “The Canopy. Why did you leave?”
Plumya slowed, gradually drifting backward until they were parallel. The face the fairy gave her was pinched and suspicious. “Why you asking?”
“Well…” Tif said, trying to put on her friendliest of smiles, like the one Pep had. “I figure if we’re going to be on an adventure together, we might as well know more about each other.”
“That so?” Plumya said, her lip quirking in what Tif hoped was a true smile to come. “If that’s how it is, you won’t mind me asking you a few things.”
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Despite trying to be upbeat, Tif caught herself frowning. “You’re not going to answer mine first?”
“Because I wanted,” the bounty hunter replied crisply. “And I’m never going back.”
That only left Tif with more questions. What would make Plumya act so differently than the rest of her people?
“My turn,” the fairy declared. “Why did you do something as stupid as break into the underground jail?”
Tif didn’t love the way Plumya was asking, but she also didn’t mind sharing the story. “It was an accident. I was visiting Awt, he left, and I thought I heard someone being hurt, but it was just Torgath massaging his feet.”
The fairy chortled. “Dumb luck, of course.” Tif supposed it was a bit silly, but that was no reason for Plumya to take that tone. Worse, before Tif could ask her next question, the fairy went for another, “And which would you say was stupider: trying to be a knight a day after getting your ris or trying to be a Gold knight using Blood?
“It wasn’t--” Tif stopped herself and shared a look with Pep. She could do this and do it nicely. “I’d change some things if I could, true enough, but they only accept new knight candidates twice a year in Lercel. It’s my dream, and I wasn’t about to let the opportunity go. And Lercel knights are allowed to have ris from different places,” she added, unable to let the conversation go without defending herself some.
As she talked, Plumya floated closer to the side of her head, making it tough for Tif to watch the fairy and where she was putting her feet.
“And the Archon’s son I hear you spent the night with,” Plumya hissed, almost conspiratorially, “he your new lover boy? That why you’re keeping Awt at a distance?”
Tif had plenty of reasons for not wanting to be with Awt anymore, but thinking of Jer added a whole new level of discomfort to the fairy’s questions. That Tif hadn’t gotten to convince him of the truth before escaping the prison beneath the Archon’s palace was something she still regretted.
“Jer thinks I was part of the plot to kill his ma,” Tif answered quietly. “He…hates me.”
“Sounds about right,” Plumya said, sailing ahead with a decided swagger to her buzzing and clearly ending their conversation.
Tif continued walking but it was a struggle to keep her steps measured after weathering such an assault. In fact, her cheeks felt so flushed it was almost like she had her Blood ris back. However, there was one small kernel in her that was glad: now she knew without a doubt that it wasn’t Plumya being from Life Tribe that Tif didn’t like; it was Plumya being Plumya. And that meant…
The fairy’s back went stiff, and she dropped almost a foot in the air before recovering, whipping around to face Tif.
“You trying to get stabbed?”
“What now?” Tif asked, her arms innocently at her sides.
The little fairy snarled. “The Death mark. I can feel it oozing over me. Get it off. Now.”
“Oh no,” Tif said, looking side-to-side. “Some Death Tribe must be near.” She knew she wasn’t doing a good job of selling it, but she was enjoying Plumya’s discomfort too much to care.
With a growl, Plumya shot at her. The fairy was fast on her wings, but Tif could feel the little creature darting at her and stepped to the side, Plumya’s tiny body whisking past. The pixie zipped back around for a second strike, but like before, the Death mark in Tif’s mind gave her a clear indication of the angle Plumya was coming from, and she easily dodged. It was so easy in fact, Tif was glad that she had grappled with the spidra she had fought. With this sort of awareness, she didn’t know how she could ever have beaten it otherwise.
After a few more passes--Plumya seemed to only like wild charges, Tif noted--the fairy stopped in midair, breathing hard and quivering in rage. “I’ll carve my name into your cheek, I swear it. You don’t have Blood ris to heal anymore.”
Tif cocked her head nonchalantly. “Couldn’t you just keep it on for a while? It would really help my training.”
“Absolutely. Not,” Plumya said, jabbing her arm forward with each word, probably to accentuate that she was in fact holding her ris sword.
“Fine,” Tif said, putting her hands on her hips, “but I want an apology first.”
“A what?” Plumya shrieked in her squeakiest register.
“Also, if you’re coming with me, you’re going to promise to be happy sometimes. And not because of something cruel or mean you did.”
“That’s cute,” the fairy said, grabbing the invisible sword in both hands. “I promise if this filth isn’t off of me in five seconds, I’ll add my whole family tree to your backsi--”
CRUNCH
Both Tif and Plumya jumped at the sound that echoed through the forest around them, and some birds Tif hadn’t even realized were there took flight from a nearby tree in a rush of flapping wings.
As for the source of the disturbance, it took less than a heartbeat for Tif to find.
She looked up and then up again. A grey figure lurched above the treetops--well above the treetops, actually--the green points only coming up around its hips. Its head was like that of a woman, but where a slight intent of skin for a temple would have been there was another eye. Tif had seen the like before but on a much smaller scale. It was a Death Aspect in the form of their people: a spidra. It was impossibly large though--bigger even than the golden Gargant in Lercel--probably a hundred feet high. Awt had told her that Aspects of Death Tribe towered over the trees, but after she didn’t see any in her own travels and his other lies, Tif had thought he had been exaggerating.
“Apparently not,” she breathed to Pep.
In some ways Tif was surprised she wasn’t already running. However--even as far off as the Aspect was from her, a mile at least--the thought of any sort of movement terrified her because she didn’t want to do anything that might draw its attention. All Tif could do was watch it rumble by, the sound of trees rustling, groaning, and then breaking as the giant Aspect knocked them down happening on such a large scale it reached them across the distance.
“It’s unnatural, that’s what it is.” Tif heard Plumya say, though Tif couldn’t make herself take her eyes off the behemoth to see exactly where the fairy was.
Not that it really mattered since for once Tif was inclined to agree. The number of living things that must have been killed and then sacrificed to the Aspect was horrifying to contemplate. In Lercel, keshe and humans alike gave nearly every scrap of gold they could mine to the Aspects in tribute, and the Aspects there weren’t even ten feet high.
“Do you think that means Death Tribe is nearby?” Tif asked the bounty hunter. Priests in Lercel followed the Gold Aspects around, taking great meaning in the paths they took, where they stopped and for how long, but she very much wanted Plumya to say no.
“I know as much about Death Tribe as you know about rocks, but I’d bet on it.”
“How can you say that?” Tif said, managing to rip her eyes from the colossus to look at the fairy who it turned out hovered nearby. “What about when you traveled from your home to Lercel? You must have crossed paths with some of them.”
“I fly,” Plumya said contemptuously, continuing to stare at the distant Aspect. “I don’t have to deal with things on the ground.”
Tif supposed that the little creature was right. The only time that she and the knights had needed to fight Death Tribe troops was when they had paused in their jumping across the sky.
“Whelp, guess we’re not going to Sah’Sah,” Plumya said, spinning away from the Aspect and starting to head in the opposite direction.
“What?” Tif said, the comment finally forcing her to move. She turned, putting her back to the giant, which she did not like, especially since she could still hear it breaking its way through the forest behind her.
Plumya’s tiny face peeked over her equally tiny shoulder. “If you want to get crushed by an overgrown Aspect or the horde of Death troops swarming after it, feel free.”
Tif had been ready to be rid of the little creature only a short time ago but now she didn’t find the prospect nearly as appealing. “I thought Awt paid you.”
“Not that much,” the fairy scoffed. “Nobody could. I mean, look at that thing.”
Tif turned back around. The Aspect was far enough away it didn’t seem to have moved too much, just a few feet to the left. However, at the distance, it also meant it was covering an absurd amount of space, probably what equaled a dozen streets with each step.
“Aspects don’t fight,” Tif said, more to calm herself than in response to the fairy. “Everyone knows that.” If everyone was wrong, Lercel’s outer wall was in trouble…but that was silly. Being bigger than normal didn’t mean that the Aspects would act any differently than they always had. “And I need to go to Sah’Sah.”
“Good luck with that.”
Instead of getting riled, Tif forced her breath into a steady rhythm, like she had seen so many ris users do to replenish their energy. As she did, she remembered Jer saying how the exercise could also bring clarity and after a time, that’s how she started to feel.
“It’s simple,” Tif said, sharing a slow smile with Pep. “It’s going west and we want to go south. We’ll just wait,”--she suited her words by sitting down on a patch of tough grass--“and let them pass. Then we’ll be on our way.”
“Oh, brilliant,” Plumya said from beside her, apparently not having left yet. “Waiting to be found. Nothing I love more than sitting my way to an early death.”
This time Tif didn’t hold back her anger. “You really just are the most negative, naysaying, little--”
And that’s when the Aspect turned, heading straight for them.
“Nope!” Plumya shouted, zipping away.
Tif scrambled up after the fairy. She had lost the Death mark connection between them with the surprise of the enormous Aspect, so all she had to go on were the flashes of the little creature she caught between tree branches, fronds, and other uncomfortable things she shoved her way through. More than once she had to curve sharply to stay on Plumya’s trail, and at times it almost seemed like the bounty hunter was trying to lose her, but that just made Tif put on a grim burst of speed. If she was going to get flattened, they both would.
Tif exploded out of a bush in a spray of leaves and found herself face-to-face with a group of at least dozen normal-sized spidra who were making their way through the woods. Those who weren’t already looking right at her turned at her sudden arrival, their eyes in front and on the sides of their heads staring her down. Behind them were maybe three times as many humans wearing boiled leather, and some of those had crossbows--crossbows that quickly lowered to point right at her.
Tif stopped breathing and opened her hands to show that they were empty.
Plumya, of course, was nowhere to be seen.
“I really hate that fairy,” Tif whispered.