Page 23 of The Poisoned King (Impossible Creatures #2)

Freshwater Spring

Jacques watched Anya watching Christopher. He yawned so widely his jaw unhinged, and he reset it with a click.

“If you’ve quite done with your human emoting? I resent being ignored. Are you ready? Do we fly on to meet Sarkany?”

“Perhaps,” said Christopher. “But didn’t we agree, Jacques, that we would help?”

“We did. And that’s exactly what we’ve done. The princess is on her own from here.”

“But she can’t go back to Dousha. They’ll kill her. I’ve been thinking…Nighthand and Irian. Do you know where they are?”

The dragon sighed. “As it happens, I do. The Berserker and the nereid woman are on the islet of Glimt. I heard it from the ratatoskas.”

“They’d be able to help you, Anya,” said Christopher. “You and your father.”

“You could do worse,” said Jacques. “The Berserker has the personality of a volcanic explosion, but they are a pair who will offer friendship if you are friendless.”

Anya was startled at the word. She had never been friendless—always, always, there had been her father and his sense of safety and quick smile. And even now, of course, she was not friendless. She turned to Gallia.

“What do you think?”

The old bird considered. “I have heard about those two. If they will give you refuge while we decide how to rescue your father, we should go.”

Anya looked out over the hillside, and saw Naravirala come bounding up the slope toward them. Her wound was still matted, but it had ceased to bleed. “To Glimt, then,” she said.

—

But first, water. Naravirala had refused to share the milk. “A sphinx needs water.” She looked at Anya. “You too are thirsty.”

It was true. Despite the milk, the burning in her throat was relentless. Ever since the moment her father had been taken, it had been there, scorching every breath.

“Follow.” Naravirala led her across the rocks to a spring. A young wildcat carbuncle was drinking there, its fur glowing, but it caught sight of them and vanished into the undergrowth.

“Here.” There was a pool, bubbling with fresh water rising from moss.

The sphinx bent her head and lapped from the pool.

“Now you.”

Anya knelt on the stones, scooped up the water in her hand, and drank; for minutes she knelt there. Soon her stomach was tight as a drum from the water, but still there was the burning in her throat.

“I’m still so thirsty,” said Anya. “The water doesn’t help.”

Naravirala nodded her great head. “Then it is not thirst for water. It is thirst for something else.”

“For what?”

“For truth, I imagine. For justice.” She looked harder at Anya: at the dark rings under her eyes and the shine within them.

“For something more than that, too. Something darker. Take care, child, that you do not burn through your own heart and leave yourself with nothing but a scorched scar to rely on.”

Anya wiped her mouth and looked the sphinx straight in her huge tawny eyes. “I won’t,” she said.

But the sphinx’s words had helped her understand. She knew what it was, that burning in her body.

It was a thirst for revenge.

I have to kill my uncle.

It was the only way to avenge her grandfather, to save her father, to protect her own life. She could not, would not, live in a world in which Claude Argen lived too.

She had no weapons, she was dressed in torn and bloodied silk, she had a baby bird in her dress, and she was a child. None of it mattered. She raised her wrist, and Gallia flew to land on it. The bird, looking at the beloved girl’s face, shivered. There was love, and longing, and death in it.

—

They flew up, first over mountains, then meadows and woodland. It grew dark before they began to pass lights below them. Hamlets, towns, cities of Lithia. From time to time Naravirala swooped low to evade the clouds, and Anya could see streets, restaurants, a fairground full of eager children.

At last they swept over a city on the west coast. Its thousands of lights shone on spires and tall towers, built along a lattice of canals.

“That’s the City of Scholars,” said Naravirala. “We are close.”

The sea winds were strong, and Naravirala’s wings caught a current to glide on. Anya stared eagerly downward as they flew out over the coastline toward a tiny patch of solid dark in the lagoon beyond.

“That is the islet of Glimt. If the ratatoskas are right, that is where you will find Fidens Nighthand and Irian Guinne.”

The only light was that of the stars. It looked, from above, as though there were only one building on the island, vast and turreted, and to the west a small forest.

Naravirala touched down in a clearing in the forest. “Wait here,” she said. “I will go and find them.”

For several minutes, Anya and Christopher stood together in the dark. Anya squatted down against a tree, clutched tight at her silver necklace, and tried not to let her heart race so fast that it burst from her chest.

They heard a roar, and a squawk of birds, and Naravirala returned swiftly, a pigeon in her mouth.

“The humans are not here.”

“They’re not?” Anya’s heart sank. She was so exhausted. She ducked her head twice down to the right.

Gallia nipped her. “Watch your language.”

“I spoke to a ratatoska. It said Irian Guinne will return in the morning. So you will sleep,” said the sphinx, “and tomorrow we will make our plan.” She stalked to a huge spreading oak tree.

“You may lie near me for warmth.” Anya’s knees were ready to buckle; she sank to the cold ground.

Christopher lay down on the other side, and the sphinx covered them both with her wings.

The warmth under the wings was immediate and glorious. Anya moved closer so that her skin touched the side of the sphinx, her cheek against Naravirala’s thick fur.

Naravirala did not sleep, only kept watch. Sphinxes live long and complex lives, and she had hundreds of years ahead of her to rest, if she wished it.

A cold wind rose, and she blew soft breath first on Anya’s sleeping face and then Christopher’s.

She looked at the two unconscious young people and then up at the stars, which she knew so well and could read in ways that humans cannot yet fathom.

Her face, had anyone been there to see it, was full of resolve, and pity, and pride.

Then she turned back to face the earth and ate the pigeon whole.