Two and Twenty Dark Tales Read online

  With a single sweep, Blackbird rose a dozen feet. The second beat lifted him that height again, but twice as fast. The wind howled and screamed as he swept his sable pinions back, reveling in the way his muscles flexed across his back, the sharp joy shining from the feather tips as the smoke and the phantoms swirled and danced in his passing.

  ***

  Blackbird hunched in a petrified tree, his hand around the hilt of his narrow blade. The copper-colored leaves shivered and sang in the soft, cold wind. He watched with a thief’s eyes, wary of traps, guards, and the beast that prowled the garden of the Counting House. Even from high up in the tree, the crunch of bones was sharp and clear and the creature’s deep chest growled with satisfaction as it sucked out the marrow.

  Blackbird’s slim fingers drew out a sharp needle. His gaze did not shift as he dipped the long point in poison from one of the small bottles that dangled from his belt. He shifted his weight forward. The bough creaked, rustling the leaves. The beast snorted and looked up.

  Big mistake.

  Blackbird flicked the needle and the shard of silver pierced the dog-demon’s right eye. It blinked and twitched its head as a small bead of red and black blood seeped from the wound. Then it lowered its head, and died.

  Nothing but the breeze stirred amongst the wild forest of thorns and black roses. Barbed wire wrapped the mutilated bodies of crumbled fountains, their bowls filled with rustling leaves. Nothing beautiful could dwell here. The long grass swayed while the trees—twisted, decrepit, and sickly grey—groaned in the poisonous earth, as if their roots were in pain.

  The bells chimed twelve.

  A door opened and a figure pushed through the wall of brambles.

  The maid glanced around, her face pale and clear in the ghost-light. She held a cloth-bound object against her chest.

  The dish. She had done it.

  Blackbird leapt. He held the wings close to his body, managing his direction with a subtle shift of weight and re-angling of his feather-tips. The wind roared as he sped downward, his gaze unblinking upon the maid who looked around in fear. Then figures dressed in silver and gold poured from hidden doorways, brandishing bright swords and shining axes. Two ran with devil-dogs, the litter brothers of the creature Blackbird had just killed. They strained against their leashes and howled with blood-freezing lust. The maid screamed as the huntsmen released their beasts and the dogs raced toward her, their red tongues slobbering and huge, oily limbs beating hard upon the earth. Within a few strides the first was upon her, leaping high, its massive, fang-filled jaws widening to consume her head whole.

  Blackbird rammed into the dog’s chest, hurling it into a spiny tree trunk. It howled and thrashed as the long, slim thorns passed through its body.

  Blackbird slashed wildly with his dagger as he sought out the maid’s hand. The steel carved wounds into the demon-flesh and the air stank of putrescence and the garden filled with a mist of black blood as arteries opened and monsters died.

  He darted and swooped amongst the melee. The guards were clumsy, earth-bound things with their heavy armor and wingless bodies. But they had numbers and sooner or later one would sheer off a wing, and then he would die. But for a moment, Blackbird exalted in his element as feathers and blood covered him.

  He felt a hand grab his wrist and swung around, dagger raised and heart singing with bloodlust.

  “No!” screamed the maid. He halted his blow, the wicked edge of his blade just touching the nose he’d almost sliced off. Then Blackbird pulled her against him. His wings pounded the air, and they were sky-born. Within moments, the frustrated cries of the Counting House guards vanished in the song of the wind.

  ***

  Blackbird flew as fast as he dared and then faster still, the maid pressed close against him. They weaved through the tall spires and under the ancient arches and through the web of walkways and gantries that filled the spaces between the towers. They kept low to avoid the others, but every now and then he’d see a mighty-winged shadow pass over them as the kings of the eyrie sent their own hunters after them. Raptor cries echoed in the shadowy canyons.

  She trembled in his close grasp and her heart pounded against his chest. She held herself rigid and straight, understanding his need to cut out resistance, and closed her eyes. Blackbird wanted to laugh. Why miss all of this? He swooped beneath a spike-encrusted buttress, his feathers stroking the razor-edged iron before he rose with a single flap.

  Then he saw it: a thousand feet high, its skin covered with wire and spikes and guard towers. The wall.

  Men armed with torches and crossbows ran along the top, preparing to prevent their escape. But he was too fast, too beautiful to be stopped, and the bolts flew and hissed around him. He was a streak of black lightning, a dark meteor, and the hurled spears were slow and he swept them aside.

  Oh, the joy of such freedom! The maid stiffened as they spun between the flying darts and bolts.

  Then he drew his wings to him like a cloak, and they descended. The ash-covered earth rushed past them as Blackbird searched for a place to settle. There, a cluster of old buildings. Talons extended, he settled them onto the desert beyond the wall.

  “You are free,” he said.

  The maid, pale and gleaming with sweat, stumbled back and gave a nod. She handed him the object. “You have done all I asked.”

  Then she fell.

  Blackbird, more out of instinct than compassion, caught her and felt the dampness between her shoulder blades and the feathered end of the bolt lodged between them.

  “Can you see anyone?” she asked.

  Blackbird looked about them. His heart, a dark thing for millennia, stirred as he saw where he’d brought them. A graveyard. Small bones lay, cold and white, scattered and picked at by the ghouls.

  “Is he there? Do you see him?”

  “I see him,” said Blackbird. How was it that he knew? By the corroded gate stood a small boy, perhaps six, his hair flaxen and his skin grey, watching them with hollow eyes. He stared, his skinny limbs wrapped within the tattered remains of his burial shroud. “He is very beautiful.”

  “I told you,” said the maid.

  “Yes. You will be with him shortly.”

  She smiled then—an expression that was not common here—and closed her eyes.

  Blackbird stood up, looking down at the mortal. What had she hoped for? The lands beyond the wall belonged to the dead. She had known and still gone. His attention shifted to the boy, slowly, cautiously approaching. Then the dead thing knelt down and took his mother’s hand. He looked up at Blackbird. “She promised she would come for me.” His voice was brittle, dry, and little more than a rasp but even within the still heart of the dead some faint emotion stirred. The boy pressed his cold, white lips to his mother’s forehead. “Mother.”

  The maid’s eyes opened. She did not gasp for the dead no longer draw breath, but exhaled, and Blackbird watched the silver cloud of her soul rise. He could have grabbed it, could have held it, squeezed it for what nourishment remained. He held out his hands but did not close them, and so the soul slipped like smoke through his talons. He had payment enough.

  The maid stood, hands tightly around her son. “Thank you.”

  “You thank me for this? For losing you your life?”

  She looked back toward the city with its dark walls. “I lost that many years ago.” Then she handed him the box.

  Blackbird opened it.

  A dainty dish, made of thin metal that reflected gloomy colors from another place.

  He put the dish on the ground and it shook of its own accord. Cries rose from the metal. Light burst from within, throwing winged shapes across the looming clouds. Then, one after another, figures leapt from their prison and into the sky.

  He knew them all. His brothers and sisters. Though not radiant as they had once been, they were his own. Four and twenty blackbirds, crying with the joy of freedom, beat their wings and turned back toward the city. His heart burned for the first time in centu
ries as Blackbird threw back his head and screamed, dagger aloft.

  They were coming. Coming for the Queen in her Parlor and the King in his Counting House.

  And the other blackbirds, they began to sing.

  – The End –

  Clockwork

  Leah Cypess

  Hickory, dickory, dock,

  The mouse ran up the clock.

  The clock struck one,

  The mouse ran down!

  Hickory, dickory, dock.

  – Mother Goose

  WHEN the clock struck one, the mouse turned away from a mold-encrusted scrap of cheese and sat on its haunches, whiskers trembling.

  The enchantment was not quite broken. It had been a mouse for a very long time, and human thoughts couldn’t fit into its mouse brain. But through the pungent smell of the cheese and the hunger in its belly and the fear of cats came a tendril of something else: a desire to go toward those chimes. Toward the clock.

  Because it was a mouse, it didn’t question the desire. It scuttled along the walls until it was as close to the clock as possible. A hint of memory wisped through its mind, a memory of being tall and clothed and afraid, next to that very clock. For a moment it recalled being a girl, a girl with a knife hilt clenched in her trembling hand, grief and terror ripping through her. But the memory was vast and incomprehensible, and it swiftly vanished.

  The mouse hesitated for a moment, torn between the compulsion and a wariness of open spaces. The clock’s pendulum swung back and forth. The mouse blinked, then gathered itself and dashed forward across the hardwood floor.

  That was when the cat pounced.

  It streaked from its hiding spot beneath the couch, and a heavy paw knocked the mouse sideways. The mouse skidded across the floor, rolled to its feet, and ran. A shadow passed over it, and two paws came down on either side of it. The cat batted it across the floor, slamming it into something hard and slick. The base of the clock.

  The mouse scrabbled to its feet, too slow and too late, as the cat leapt.

  The echo of the clock faded away, the mouse’s body blurred and shimmered, and the cat’s snarl of victory turned into a shrill meow.

  A girl crouched where the mouse had been. Her fingers twitched against the floor, and she let out an inhuman squeal.

  The cat spat, whirled, and raced out the library doors.

  ***

  Amarind got slowly to her feet, gasping and shivering, the clock silent behind her. When she looked up, the hands on the clock had moved five minutes ahead. She stepped toward it, drawn as the mouse had been, but this time knowing what she was drawn to: power. There was magic in that clock, in the swing of its pendulum and the ticking of its hands, the power of Time itself. She had known how to use that power, once…

  The door to the library swung open, and she caught her breath as she whirled, expecting the cat. It took her a moment to remember she didn’t have to fear cats anymore. Another moment, once she saw the man standing in the doorway, to remember she still did have to fear humans.

  She looked down swiftly, and was relieved to see she was dressed in a green, floor-length dress. A vague memory filtered through her confusion, of a woman’s cold, amused voice: The spell transforms everything that’s on you. Do you think your dead hair and fingernails are more a part of you than the silk on your skin?

  “Where did you come from?” the man at the door demanded. He was tall and lean, wearing black silk clothes and a purple velvet cape.

  “I don’t know,” Amarind said. “I was… until a moment ago…” She shuddered without meaning to. She could still feel the cat’s breath, the brush of air against her whiskers, the terror of knowing she was about to die. “I think I was a mouse.”

  She stepped toward him, and had to balance herself to compensate for the lack of her front paws. The effort made her aware, for the first time, that there was something heavy and elongated strapped to her right leg, invisible beneath the layers of her skirts. She knew at once that it was a knife. Memory ripped through her again, of that knife in her hand, of an unconscious man on the floor… there, by the couch… and someone else dead behind her, someone who shouldn’t, couldn’t be dead…

  Tears stung at her eyes, and she pushed them down ruthlessly. She had no time, right now, to pursue memory. The man was staring at her with narrowed blue eyes. “You were enchanted? How?”

  It requires the deathblood of a virgin princess, a knife forged by moonlight, and a clock made of cedar wood. She clasped her hands together and made her eyes wide. “I don’t know, my… lord?”

  “Majesty,” he corrected her. “I am King Cedric of Hickere.”

  She dropped into a curtsy, not just because he obviously expected it, but to hide the expression on her face.

  He started toward her, and she wondered why he didn’t seem more surprised. Her entire body tensed, but she didn’t know what to do. Run? Hide? Draw the knife?

  Then someone said, “Your Majesty?” and a noblewoman came into the library, giggling behind her handkerchief. She stopped giggling, stood in the doorway, and stared.

  King Cedric stopped short. After a long moment, he said, “Summon the guards, please. It seems we have a problem.”

  ***

  The guards recognized her at once. She saw it in their faces, in the way they hesitated before taking her by the arms, in the gentle way they escorted her through the halls. By the uncertain glances they exchanged when she said, “Take me to the throne room.”

  Kind Cedric looked at her over his shoulder, nothing uncertain in his glance. She glared back. Much as her instincts screamed for someplace small and secluded and alone, her human self saw where the true danger lay. If he thought he was going to question her alone, or get rid of her before too many people saw her, his memory was even worse than hers.

  The king’s lips thinned, but he nodded once before turning and striding on ahead. Amarind followed passively. By the time they reached the throne room, the memories of being a mouse were starting to fade, and she remembered who she was.

  But she still didn’t know what to do about it.

  By the time they entered the throne room, Cedric was sitting on the throne where her father had once sat, wearing a purple cape her father had once worn. She remembered him as a plump and unimpressive boy, but sitting straight on the throne, with his chin up and the entrapments of regality around him, he looked like a king.

  “Lady Amarind,” the king said, and the girl who had been a mouse clenched her fists at her sides. She had meant to be silent until she got her bearings, but a sudden surge of rage and betrayal made her forget her plans.

  “Your Highness,” she corrected him, and his lips tightened until they were white.

  “I am sorry, my lady. But you were believed dead. The throne was passed on.”

  “I was not dead,” she said. “I was enchanted.”

  A murmur ran through the court. Amarind looked away from the king—who had once been merely her second cousin, and not one she particularly liked—to glance swiftly at the courtiers. Their faces were stiff, or suspicious, or calculating.

  So that, at least, had not changed.

  “Did you suspect what had happened to me?” Amarind demanded. She could not quite keep the raw edge from her voice, and the courtiers murmured again, even more uneasily this time.

  “Of course not,” King Cedric said.

  Amarind bit down on her next question: Where are my parents? If Cousin Cedric was on the throne, there was only one place they could be.

  And it occurred to her, then, that there was no woman at the king’s side. Even though if he really wanted the throne, there was someone he should have married…

  Panic rose in her throat. A sudden, vague memory growled at the back of her brain: brown hair covering a still face. Blood. A knife. Her own hand, taking that knife…

  The deathblood of a virgin princess.

  “Where,” she asked, and the shrillness of her voice made the courtiers go silent, “is my sister?�
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  The silence stretched on. Then Cedric got off the throne and walked down the aisle toward her. He took both her hands in his, and she let him. Suddenly, it didn’t seem to matter.

  “I’m sorry, Cousin,” he said.

  Bile rose in Amarind’s throat. She felt only a vague regret for the death of her parents, who had been rare and distant figures in her life. But her sister… Lily had been so sweet, so innocent, so unaware of danger.

  Amarind hoped Lily had remained unaware. That death had come swiftly, and her sister had never known fear or betrayal.

  Cedric lifted a hand to touch her cheek. Amarind almost shrank away—sideways, a mouse’s movement—and controlled herself just in time, holding herself still, staring at her own hands to remind herself that she was in a human body now.

  “Your family was betrayed,” Cedric said. She stood rigid, staring at him, and he took his hand back. She could still feel the indentation of his fingers, right below her eye. “The assassins were hired by Lord Ofil, who has of course been executed. The kingdom was in chaos. Someone had to restore order.”

  How noble of you. “How do you know it was Ofil?” Amarind demanded.

  Cedric’s mouth went grim. “What are you implying, Lady Amarind?”

  Princess Amarind. But she had pressed him far enough for one morning. If she presented herself as too much of a threat, he would probably kill her and get away with it.

  A tremor of fear ran through her, subdued and familiar. She knew what it was to be prey. She knew she could survive like that, day after endless day, that the fear could sink in and become just another part of her. But she didn’t want to be constantly afraid anymore, not now that she was human.

  Yet no one at court would care more about a stray princess’s rights than about maintaining the kingdom’s stability. She didn’t even blame them. Cedric’s position was a lot stronger than hers.

  Nothing less than magic would enable her to gain the upper hand.

  Luckily, she knew where to find that.

  ***

  It took her three days to get away. She took advantage of that time, getting used to being human again, to walking on two legs, to her lack of a tail. She got used to the heavy tightness of silk covering her body, to the heaviness of her hair when it was twisted above her head, to the endless variety of food she could eat. To the fact that she could eat it as slowly as she liked, and that no one was going to snatch it away or come up on her from behind.