Page 24 of The Poisoned King (Impossible Creatures #2)

The Islet of Glimt

Anya woke the next morning with Koo running up and down her nose, plucking at her forehead, her nostrils, and one of her eyebrows.

“Ouch!” She jerked sideways, and the bird fell onto her chest and sat there peeping in protest. “You’re not a very restful alarm clock, Koo.”

She sat up. She was on the ground in a forest, high grass flattened around her. Koo was swallowing the eyebrow hair. Then he gave a chirp of disgust.

“Well, quite. Eyebrows are not food. I could’ve told you that,” said Anya. She took the bird softly into her hands. “I reckon we need to find you something better to eat.”

“Eea.” For the first time, Koo opened his sticky-lidded eyes, and the first thing he saw was Anya Argen: her blond hair a dirty gray, bruised, bloodied, and ravenously hungry in the eyes.

The day any living thing first opens its eyes to see the world is a stupendous day—whether that thing is a human baby or the smallest pup—but for gaganas even more so.

The personality that radiated from Koo was immediate.

He was all mischief and adoration, beak to tail.

Koo half fell, half fluttered to Anya’s knee and took joyful, immediate, and total possession of her. He croaked his first word.

“Mine.”

Anya laughed. “Yes,” she said. “Exactly.”

She set him on her shoulder, and he settled into the upper crook of her collarbone with a pleased wriggle.

“Mine,” he said again. “Mine, mine.”

There was a movement from within the woods. Anya jumped to her feet, ready to fight—but it was Christopher, with Jacques flying overhead. Christopher wasted no time in asking how she had slept; his look went straight to Koo.

“He’s opened his eyes!” he said.

“Yes,” said Anya. She felt as proud as a new mother. “And he talks, too.”

“Koo,” said Koo. His diminutive wings tickled her neck as they fluttered. “Koo!”

“He knows his name already?” said Christopher.

“He knows a lot,” said Anya. “There’s a lot of glimourie in a royal gagana.” Gallia gave a low caw of approval.

Jacques huffed, and white smoke emerged from his nostrils. “Christopher insisted that we come to get you,” he said, “before we go in search of breakfast. We are both hungry. I suggested we eat a small portion of you while you slept, but he refused.”

“I said it wasn’t a good look for his biography,” said Christopher.

Anya grinned. “Where’s Naravirala?”

“In the forest,” said Christopher. “Hunting. She said she has to eat before she can fly any further. I think she’s in more pain than she was willing to admit.”

“Then we will leave her, and fast,” said Gallia. “Don’t be near a sphinx when they’re hunting, unless you wish to be hunted yourself.”

In the crushed grass were Naravirala’s paw prints from the previous night, and they followed them through the wood.

Anya held Koo close. She did not want to scare him, and so she didn’t say aloud what thundered in her heart.

She was being hunted. She thought of her uncle’s soldiers and assassins, fanning out across the Archipelago in search of her.

Her father would be waiting for her, more desperate every day.

What had he been told about her—that she was missing? That she was dead?

She stopped among the trees and pressed her face against the bark of a vast hollow oak, breathing in the scent of forest. Courage, Anya.

“Are you all right?” said Christopher.

“She is sniffing a tree,” said Jacques. “She is clearly not all right.”

She smiled. “I am now,” she said. Courage, then. Courage and faith. Courage and love. “Come on. I think I can see water.”

The trees thinned out. Birds sang, and a young rasselbock lolloped past them, its antlers gleaming on its little rabbit body. They emerged from the forest to a sweep of grass leading to the water’s edge.

“There!” said Christopher. He pointed out across the water, toward mainland Lithia. “The City of Scholars.” It was just barely visible in the distance, a blur of high spires and shimmering colors.

But Anya did not answer, because her gaze was fixed elsewhere.

Ahead of them was an avenue of trees, oak and cedar and beech.

Beyond it there rose a huge building of stark loveliness.

It soared up in amber-colored stone, with two towers and many turrets, its windows high and arching.

It was a palace: a dwelling built not for fortification but for delight.

“The Palace of Glimt,” Gallia breathed. “I have heard tell of it.”

They walked down the long avenue toward the palace. High up on the wall ahead of them, gleaming in the sun over the double oak and iron doors, was a blue-and-gold sundial.

Christopher called out as they walked. “Hello? Irian…Nighthand?”

There were sounds from all around: from the forest, even from the water—a cawing, a rustling, a bleat, jubilant nonhuman noises—but no people.

Then a woman stepped into the avenue ahead of them. She was tall and dark-skinned, and her face—which was beautiful, Anya thought, a face cut in the shape of a thousand ideas—was looking for something. She wore her hair in long braids, plaited down her back.

“Irian!” called Christopher. “Irian Guinne!”

She turned. She blinked. And then she called out with joy, and a dozen birds took off from the woods and circled, cawing with surprise, around the towers of the palace. She flew down the avenue toward them, and pulled him into her arms. “Christopher! I can’t believe it’s you!”

She seemed unwilling to let him go. At last she pushed Christopher back, to take a look at him. “You’re taller than me now. You look well.” Her voice was a glorious thing: low, and musical as a bell.

He laughed. “Do I?” Christopher’s whole face had transformed at the sight of her, and he looked younger and older, both at once.

“Well, no—you look fairly disgusting, actually—you smell of travel, and goat. But you look…right.” She put a finger on the apple-shaped scar on his cheek, and there were sudden tears in her eyes.

A ratatoska, squirrel-faced, green-horned, and nimble, appeared at her side.

“Less greetsings,” she said. “More eatsings.”

Christopher laughed. “Ratwin! It’s excellent to see you.”

“Why are you here? It’s a delightful gleefuling, of course, but it is also breakfasts.”

“Irian, Ratwin. I have someone I need you to meet. Her name is Anya Argen, Princess of the Island of Dousha.”

Now Irian turned to Anya. Faced with a world so new, Anya found her training had taken over: she stood with her back straight, her hands out of sight.

Hands reveal a great deal; they would have shown, by the quick twisting of her fingers, that Anya was suddenly shy.

She felt the old blush rising in her cheeks.

She had not been afraid of the sphinx, but this was something harder: an adult, a stranger whom Christopher treated with deference.

“Anya,” said Christopher. “This is Irian Guinne. She is a scholar of the ocean. If you know the songs that the mermaids sing about me, you will have heard what they sing of her.”

“They say you’re part nereid,” said Anya. The woman’s dark hair, she saw now, shone with streaks of the silver of the water people.

Irian nodded. “And you’re the granddaughter of King Halam? I’m sorry to hear of your trouble. The ratatoskas brought us news of his murder.”

“My father’s in jail for that murder—but he’s innocent. My uncle—”

“Wait. Stop. I must hear all of this. But you must come in and wash and eat first. You’re both filthy.”

“I can’t!” said Anya. “Please, there isn’t time! My uncle wants me killed—and I have to—”

“You need to eat, or you will achieve nothing.” She saw the urgency on Anya’s face and her fingers vibrating at her side. “And we must talk and make a plan.”

“Where’s Nighthand?” asked Christopher.

“He is,” said Ratwin, “on a hush-hush-don’t-tell clandestinious search mission.”

“What is he searching for?”

“Only Irian and I may knows that. But he sent words he is on his ways; he is lates already.”