The Flower of Aquitan glares at us from behind a shield of glass, her hair streaming silver in the moonlight. On the wide wings of her contraption, propellers spin, and gunfire flashes from a barrel mounted to the nose of her machine.
Bullets zip by. Akra aims back, firing madly. But his shots go wide as our hawk pulls away, dodging and weaving through the air, as quick on the wing as she was in life. The world seems to tilt and my stomach twists like a snake, but Theodora falls back. As our hawk slows, I scan the horizon—there, the temple, across the garden. Murmuring to the hawk’s soul, I point her toward Hell’s Court.
Akra swears and reloads his gun, but his face is pale and his hands are shaking; he keeps glancing at the earth below as bullets slip through his fingers. “Turn us around, Jetta! We need to get over the ridge out of the city!”
“Not yet,” I say through my teeth, but Theodora is circling too, coming back to meet us head-on. Akra curses as another round of gunfire tears the air. The soul of the hawk dips and turns, sweeping back and away again. “Shoot her, Akra!” I shout; he’s already taking aim, but he cannot steady his hand.
“Our bird is faster,” he calls. “Just keep going!”
“No!” Maman grips my arm and points south, toward the Hundred Days Sea. “We should leave now while we can!”
“Leave?”
“To Aquitan!”
“We’ll never make it that far,” Akra says over the rushing wind. “We have no food, no water—”
“What are saying, the both of you?” Disgust curls my lip. “We can’t leave Papa behind!”
Under his breath, Akra swears, but Maman doesn’t look away. “He made his choice,” she says. “To save you. Don’t throw it away.”
“Don’t make this about me.” I spit the words through clenched teeth. “We’re going back to the temple!”
At my command, the bird banks again, beating the air as we turn. But Theodora is still waiting over the plaza, and the next round of bullets clips our wing.
Our hawk lurches as the bamboo splinters; she shudders in the air, struggling for balance, for height. I wrench at the controls like reins, but Akra reaches out to take my shoulder. “Jetta!” Something in his tone turns my head. “We were never going back.”
He gives me that look . . . Maman’s look. Leo’s look. The look that fears my reaction to their reality, and at first anger flares in me. But it burns fast into bitter ash. I’d already known about Papa, hadn’t I? I’d known when I’d left him with the gun.
I’d known and I’d left anyway.
I want to shout at Akra, to make it his fault, or Maman’s—anyone else’s. But it’s mine, isn’t it? Not because Papa chose to save me, but because of my choices along the way. From Legarde in Luda to Leo aboard Le Rêve—it was always about me. And at last I urge our hawk toward the ridge as cold wind wipes the tears from my eyes.
We pass high over the garden as Theodora circles to stay on our tail, but when we reach the face of the mountain, the bird works harder for height. Souls are strong, but the crack in the bamboo leaves her off-balance. Still, she pulls at the air, clambering up the side of the caldera. Finally, when we reach the apex, the country unrolls before me like a stage lit by the faint glow of dawn.
For one bright moment, we hover. The horizon levels out, the open sky before us, the night air fresh and cool. Then the roar of the propellers grows as La Fleur pulls up to keep us in her sights, and the rattle of her guns splits the sky. “Down!” I say to the hawk, and she folds her wings and stoops. We tip, dropping below the lip of the ridge, picking up speed as we skim over the jungle. The wind of our passing pulls the leaves from the trees. The earth rushes closer . . . closer . . . too close—then the hawk snaps her wings open to stop the fall. But instead of the whuff of wind, I hear a sickening crack.
A jolt, a snap. The bamboo breaks. The hawk twists in the air as the bent wing clips a branch and sends us spinning, tumbling, falling from the uncaring sky.
Thrown from the bird—
A blur of leaves. Branches lash my cheeks.
I land briefly in a tangle of vines, scrambling for purchase before I lose my grip, flip head over heels, and flop heavily to the earth. A firework flashes behind my eyes; for one eternal moment, I cannot breathe. Is this the end? Has my neck snapped in the fall?
No . . . it was only the wind knocked out of me. My lungs heave and air fills me again. Blood rushes in my ears and vana appear in my vision, buzzing lazy circles around my face. I lie on my back, blinking at the hole in the greenery above. Leaves drift from the canopy as the last stars wink down.
Where are Maman and Akra?
And where is Theodora? Can she make it over the ridge?
I should move . . . I know I should . . . though my body doesn’t seem to agree. For a long while, I lie listening to the wind in the trees and the sound of the birds calling. Then I hear something else—a rustle of leaves—and fear pushes me to my feet. The world spins. I fall back to my hands and knees. Panting, I crawl toward the cover of a nearby patch of ferns. Slipping into the greenery, I peer through the fronds, trying to catch my breath. Another rustle—then my brother’s whisper. “Jetta?”
He staggers through the undergrowth, holding his ribs, blood flowing from a gash on his left arm. I scramble from hiding and stumble toward him as he leans against a tree to rest. “Are you all right?”
“Broken rib,” he says, taking shallow breaths. “Maybe two. You?”
I flex my arms, my legs. “Only bruises.”
“And cuts,” he says, nodding at my face. I touch my cheek; my hand comes away bloody. “Where’s Maman?”
“I don’t know.” He scans the canopy and the distant sky. “But we have to find her and get out of here.”
He turns, pushing off the tree, and I follow. Together we search, one eye on the ground and one on the sky. It is too risky to call out, so we creep across the turned soil and broken branches. There is no sign of Maman, neither body nor soul, though soon enough I hear another shiver of leaves. I freeze; Akra draws his weapon. But as we move closer, the twisted bamboo body of our hawk comes into view.
She is caught in the branches of a mimosa tree, her skeletal wings still trying to beat. Blossoms fall like rain around us, shaken loose by her feeble movements. Akra turns to me, a strange look on his face. “It almost looks alive.”
There is an unspoken question in his voice, but I don’t have the words—or the time—to explain. “We have to get her down from there.”
“After we find Maman.” He hesitates. “Do you think . . . you can make it fly again?”
I take a deep breath. I don’t have the supplies to make a good repair—the glue, the rope, the rivets, everything was left behind in the roulotte. But perhaps I could cobble something together. It wouldn’t have to be graceful as long as we could go slow. “Probably.”
“How, Jetta?”
I know what he is asking, but I do not have the energy to collect my thoughts, my words. Not yet. “Let’s find Maman first.”
We search in widening circles, past tumbles of trumpet vines and patches of wild yam. The vana follow me, their glow fading as the daylight filters down through the jungle. An arvana creeps close, peering out of the leaves—an ocelot, perhaps; some sort of jungle cat. Then the souls of birds, gliding from branch to branch in eerie, expectant silence.
Finally we find her behind a thicket lying on her back, her hair across her pale face. I brush it back, but she does not move.
No . . . no. I cannot lose her too. But if she were dead, wouldn’t I see the bright light of her soul? Kneeling beside her, I search for a pulse on her throat; I sag with relief when I find it, still strong. But her breathing is so shallow I didn’t notice it at first. Akra hovers behind me. “Is she alive?”
“Yes,” I say, forcefully, angry at the question. Then my voice softens. “But I don’t know what’s wrong.” I remember my own fear. “Could she . . . could her neck be broken?”
“Move aside.” Akra shoulders me out of the way. First he touches her hands. “Her fingers are warm,” he says. “Good circulation. Can you check her feet?”
I struggle with her boots—they are not tightly tied, but my hands are tender. Akra gently probes her skull, running soft hands behind her ears and through her hair. He hisses.
“What’s wrong?”
“A knot like a lychee. She hit her head. How are her toes?”
“Warm. That’s good, right?”
“Better than the alternative.” Akra sits back on his heels. “We’ll know more by tonight.”
“What happens tonight?”
“Hopefully she’ll wake up.”
A pit yawns in my stomach. “What if she doesn’t?” Akra looks away, and the only answer is the sound of insects in the jungle. Panic rises in me. “We can’t just wait and hope, Akra.”
“That’s actually all we can do,” he replies. “And we have to do it somewhere else. Can you take her feet?”
“What?”
“We have to bring her back to the flying machine,” Akra says, slipping his hands under Maman’s shoulders. Her head lolls against his arm. “We’ll pull it down and load her in, if you can get it back into the air.”
“And then what?” I chew my lip. “Maman wanted to go to Aquitan, but there’s no way we could make it across the sea like this.”
“Aquitan? No,” Akra says, shaking his head. “We need to go north. Back home.”
I open my mouth—but what to say? How to put the last few years into a few words? Home feels even farther away than Aquitan. “Akra . . .”
But before I can say more, the leaves stir again, and a Chakran woman steps out from the shadows.
“Bonjour, capitaine.” She’s dressed in a traditional sarong, the tail pulled up between her knees and tucked into her belt. She’s also holding a rifle, and she aims it square at Akra. “You aren’t going anywhere.”
Rebels. My heart starts pounding. All the stories come back to me—the sabotage, the torture, the executions. “The uniforms are stolen,” I say quickly. “We’re only shadow players. Performers. Trying to escape the capital. We just want to get home to Lak Na.”
She narrows her eyes, glancing from my too-large boots to my baggy armée jacket. “You, maybe. Not him.”
“I swear,” I say, widening my eyes, lying through my teeth. “Ask him for a story, let him craft you a fantouche—”
“I recognize him, girl!” The woman swings the barrel of the gun around, jabbing the butt of the rifle into my stomach. My lungs seize as I double over, wheezing. But Akra lunges for the gun, grappling with the rebel, trying to wrench the weapon from her hands. He almost has it when another rebel dashes through the brush, his own gun raised.
“Hands up!” he shouts, and Akra falls back, breathing hard. The woman kicks him in the stomach and he stumbles back against a tree, sliding to the ground.
“I’m not a capitaine,” he gasps, clutching his broken ribs. “Not anymore.”
The rebel woman sneers, her teeth bright. “Demoted?”
“Deserted.”
“You betrayed your own people when you put on that uniform,” she says. “I’m not surprised you would betray theirs.”
At her words, rage burns on the back of my tongue—suddenly I want to tell her exactly why he joined. But the second rebel steps between her and me: an older man, tattooed but shirtless, unashamed of all of his sins. He kneels at Akra’s side, speaking softly. “If you’re a deserter, how did you get hold of the flying machine?
Akra’s expression doesn’t change. “I’ll trade information for medical care and the safety of my mother and sister,” he says, but the rebel girl laughs.
“You’re in no position to bargain,” she says. “Get up. Both of you.”
Using her foot, she nudges Maman. “She’s unconscious!” I shout, but the woman raises the butt of her gun again and I cringe back, wrapping my arms around my stomach. Slowly, she lowers her weapon, a warning in her eyes.
“Be grateful I’ll let you carry her,” she says softly, speaking to me, but watching my brother. “It’s more than I got when his men burned my village to the ground.”
Is the pain in my chest from a lack of air, or shame? I look to Akra, but he will not meet my eyes. The rebel woman laughs like glass breaking.
“You’re surprised? How do you think cha made capitaine?”
I don’t answer her. What can I say? I only kneel beside Maman, pulling her arm up over my shoulder as I struggle to my feet. Her body is limp and heavy by my side. Akra takes her other arm, sharing the burden. I want to push him away, but I can’t carry her alone. So she hangs between us, feet dragging, head lolling, as we follow the rebel woman through the jungle.
The path is winding, long and tangled. Vines grip our ankles and rocks find our toes; slick patches of red mud have us scrambling. Soon I am panting with the effort; worse for Akra, who can’t seem to catch his breath. His arm is bleeding freely again. We travel slower and slower. Every so often, the man behind us prods us with his rifle. Finally, when we pass a thicket of bamboo, he calls a halt to build a sling.
He says it’s because we’re traveling so slowly, but I wonder if it’s pity. Either way, I’m grateful. And when the bamboo poles are cut and lashed together with vines, I quietly draw a little vana into the cot to lighten the load. Maman would hate it, but Maman can’t complain.
Though carrying her on the sling is easier, it’s still grueling work to keep her balanced. I focus on my feet, trying to make sure I don’t slip and spill her onto the jungle floor. One foot after the last, one foot after the last. My shoulders burn, and blisters rise and burst on my hands. My world narrows, and soon enough I forget everything but the path in front of me, the space between Maman’s feet and my own.
I am bone weary and famished, and I crave water with a deep ache; it’s all I can do to hold on and keep walking. What if I just stopped? What if I simply laid down on the path?
The thought of it is so tempting, I nearly do. But then a sound stops me—a whisper. Maman’s voice. “Jetta?”
The glint of her eyes is barely visible under her lashes. I smile to see it, though my lips are so parched it hurts. I haven’t lost her yet, and for all the times she carried me to safety, now I have the chance to carry her. One foot after the last, one foot after the last.
The day is fading by the time Akra staggers to a stop. I look up, tossing lank hair out of my eyes, and see it before me all at once: the rebel camp.
It’s carved into a clearing in the jungle, set in the curve of a wide stream—but instead of the stronghold I imagined, it looks more like a place for refugees. Tents are interspersed with slapdash lean-tos and one-room shacks, all scattered over the muddy earth. Skinny chickens and barefoot children roam throughout, and various cookfires send smoke toward the sky. Then the smell of food drifts toward me on a breeze, and my stomach cramps so hard I double over, dropping the poles of the sling.
Akra staggers, but he manages to lower his side carefully to the ground. Then he kneels heavily beside it. In the dim light, his face is wan.
“Get up,” the woman says, but Akra only shakes his head, his breath fast and shallow.
I can’t imagine standing either, now that I’ve stopped moving, not even when she nudges me with the gun. “You didn’t make us walk this far,” I say, breathing hard. “Just to shoot us at the end of the road.” Her eyes narrow, and suddenly I am not so sure. But then, in me, the deep, dark dare. “Do it, then,” I growl, the words slipping out, and the woman’s expression falters.
But that spark of bravado has taken all my strength. My head drops; my shoulders sag. Other rebels are drifting toward us now . . . children too. Would she kill us before their eyes? The scene plays out in my head—the gunshots, the blood—as another voice floats in: wicked, wry, familiar. “Did you bring me a gift, pussycat?”
Sauntering toward us, as lovely in a long sarong as she was in a scrap of silk—Cheeky. She grins at our captor, and I stare. The world seems to spin, like we are back up in the air. Am I only dreaming her here? But I never would have imagined her a rebel—nor wearing a machete at her waist, and Eve’s snake around her neck.
I want to say her name, but my throat is too dry. The rebel woman winks at her. “I found a bird too, but it was too big to drag home.”
“Too bad! I could use a new boa,” Cheeky says, petting the scales of the snake. “This one doesn’t have any feathers. So what are these, then?”
She peers down at Maman with a frown on her face—is that start of recognition? And when she meets my eyes, her own widen in shock. She whirls, barreling right into our guard, shoving the woman back. “Go! Get the docteur, quick!”