Page 20 of The Poisoned King (Impossible Creatures #2)

The Flight of a Sphinx

“Please!” cried Anya. “Help me!”

“It is the law of the sphinx,” said the great lion face, “that we must ask a riddle before any aid may be given.”

Anya gasped for breath. “Everyone’s trying to kill me and you want me to do a puzzle ?”

The boy on the sphinx’s back made a sharp noise of protest. “As she’s seconds from capture or death, can we do it later?”

The sphinx was untroubled. There was wit, and peace, and limit-less time in her voice. “It is impossible. I am obliged. I will offer an easy one.”

Roegan had frozen into astonished stone. Now he unhooked the crossbow, fumbling to load it.

The sphinx said, “What is owned by the poor, and needed by the rich, and death to those who eat it?”

Anya stared at her. “I—don’t know! There’s nothing!” And then in a jolt she understood, and she cried again, “Nothing! The answer is nothing!”

The sphinx inclined her great head and gave something like a smile. “Very good.”

Samvel barked an order and Roegan aimed the crossbow not at the sphinx, but at Anya.

They made three points of a triangle: soldiers, sphinx, princess.

“Anyone moves,” said Roegan, “and I shoot.” He was making up, she understood, for his mistake in letting her into the king’s chamber.

“If I stay,” she told him, “I die anyway.”

“So,” said the sphinx, “that threat is peculiarly useless, sir. Now, child!”

Anya hesitated only a heartbeat, then she darted toward the sphinx. As she did so, Roegan’s hand moved on the trigger, and the sphinx leaped at him. She tore away the crossbow and what looked like it might be a thumb, and flung both into the bushes.

The boy leaned over the sphinx’s vast back. “Here!” Anya took his hand, and he hauled her up. The sphinx’s wings rose around her, and for a moment all she could see was the blur of yellow-gold feathers as they launched into the air.

“Grip tight,” said the sphinx, and beat her wings. “Bury your hands in my fur.”

There was a shrill whistling, and Anya cried out as a crossbow bolt missed her by inches. It stuck in the sphinx’s upper leg.

Naravirala let out a roar. “Pull it out, Christopher.”

“It’s barbed. It’ll hurt you.”

“Do it.”

There was a wrenching sound, and Christopher’s hands were covered in sphinx blood. “Sorry,” he said. “Ugh.”

He dropped the bolt and watched it spin downward. Below, the lake grew smaller and the cries grew softer. Soon they were among the clouds.

The sphinx did not slow her wingbeat.

“Are you hurt?” Anya asked her. “Are you in pain?”

“I am hurt. But I will be able to heal myself when we land. So the pain is irrelevant—it will be gone before the day is over—and therefore I am not afraid. You must make a great effort and choose, likewise, not to be afraid.”

Anya gripped Naravirala’s sides with her knees and looked harder at the boy.

“Who are you?” she said.

He was perhaps a year or two older than her. His rolled-up sleeves showed arms marked with animal scratches.

“My name’s Christopher,” he said.

“I’m Anya,” she said, and he nodded, as if he already knew.

They flew higher, and his face was lit by the rising sun. She saw that he had a sword at his belt, and a tiny dragon on his shoulder.

The dragon spoke. “Traditionally, the dragon should eat the princess,” he said. “But I deplore cliché, and therefore I shall allow you to live.”

She laughed. Relief—glorious, giddying relief—took hold of her. She pressed her face against the sphinx’s back. The thick fur was rough and hot against her cheek and smelled of mountains.

“Look out,” said the boy, and his voice was light and joyful. “You have a follower.”

There, ten feet below them, was Gallia. She was flying at a speed that exhausted her—Anya could see how much each wingbeat cost her—but she had not let the sphinx out of her sight.

“Gallia!” Anya held out her arms, and Gallia gave a great burst of effort and came to rest in them.

“I told you I’d follow,” said Gallia. “I will always follow.”

Anya pressed the old bird to her chest. Each murmured the words of love that true friends speak together.

She checked the tin: Koo was crouched in a corner, bruised and cold but otherwise uninjured.

She fished him out and put him inside her clothes, touching the warmth of her skin, next to her heart.

“We’re alive,” she whispered to him.

“Tell me,” said Christopher. “What happened?”

The sun was bursting orange and crimson over the horizon. As swiftly as she could, Anya told him everything; about the poison, and her uncle’s gloves, and her father.

“And I have to go back to him,” she finished. “I have to free my father.” When she closed her eyes, she saw Claude’s face. “I have to make it right.”

“I know,” said Christopher. “But you were about to be murdered.” He didn’t speak to her as if she was a princess—only like a person. “So you can’t just go charging back. You need a plan.”

“I know that,” she said. She was teeming with plans, but most of them were impossible. She wanted to draw a sword and run at Claude; she wanted to fight him to the death. But she was small, and he had an army at his back.

The wind picked up, and the roar of sky and sphinx wings together became almost too loud to speak over. Anya and Gallia spoke in gestures.

“ Was anyone hurt? ” said Anya. Three inches left, and diagonally up.

“Nothing serious.”

“I want to kill him. Claude.”

“Peace, child.”

The sphinx soared higher. They passed up into a bank of cloud, and the world was suddenly bright opaque white and wet as rainfall. It was quieter in the clouds. Christopher asked, “Is that a language?”

“Yes!” said Anya. “Gaganan. A lot of it’s in the angle of tilt and the eyes, and a flick of the wings—I use my hands, obviously.

Some things are simple—up is ‘yes,’ down is ‘no.’ But some things mean multiples—two up, two down means both ‘I admire you very much’ and ‘You are at risk of being attacked by a herd of marauding sheep’—you work it out from context.

Twice down to the right is the worst swearing they have. ”

They swept through the clouds and came out into sunlight. “Look!” said Christopher, and pointed. “Winged unicorns!”

Thousands of years ago, a herd of unicorns on the island of Dousha had mated with a herd of pegasuses, and the young had been born with golden horns and gold-feathered wings. Shining, they roamed the countryside, foraging for herbs and mint and bladder-wrack seaweed.

“My father used to grow mint for them specially,” Anya said.

More than a hundred winged unicorns flew up alongside Naravirala. The clattering of their wings was cacophonous. Unicorns, Anya thought, had glorious precision; even in this great crowd, they never collided, never brushed a wing against each other.

“Foals!” said Christopher.

She could see small, winged, golden young keeping pace with the herd. It felt like an augury; like an injection of luck.