CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE #2
“Bring daggers. And that,” Cleobah said, and gestured to my belt pouch, the one stuffed with pre-loaded spells. She was curiously quiet, and her face was taut with something that looked like pain. I grimaced in sympathy, since I’d been the cause of it, asking that question.
Soon, I was rigged out in all-black, tight-fitting leggings, a clingy, high-necked, long-sleeve top that hid the talismans tucked beneath it, and a vest solely for my throwing daggers.
“This doesn’t seem much like a party,” I said, wrapping my belt pouch around my waist. “More like burglary or robbery.”
“Close enough.” Cleobah pressed her lips together and muttered, “Let’s go.”
She wouldn’t answer questions, just led us out across the field under the stars, up to a large boulder, and stopped.
“Get on.” She jerked her chin at the boulder, her jaw clenched.
“Wait. What’s going on?” This was all too weird. She’d taken us wide of Taenya’s tent and Cassyrra, whose snores buzzed in the distance.
Several old tales of sphinxes leading people to their death flashed through my memory. In his Bestiary, Complete, Cliniys wrote several times of their dangerously unpredictable nature, using those tales as proof. They liked to play with their prey and often designed intricate traps.
I did not want to end up as one of those stories.
“You know I can’t tell you outright.” She winced.
I crossed my arms, shook my head. “Maybe we should talk with Taenya.”
Cleobah scowled, anger erasing the pain in her face.
“Don’t be like that. This has nothing to do with her, and he’s running out of time.
Dammit.” She grimaced, lips twisted and compressed.
Her front legs buckled as her eyes tightened.
She was definitely in pain. “Knew that one would get me. Listen, I can’t say, but I can show you. Get. On.”
“He?” There could only be one ‘he’, right? The rest of my question stayed unspoken, and Cleobah didn’t say, didn’t even nod. Her lips remained sealed.
Once more, I was astride the sphinx.
She broke into a lope, heading straight for the cliffs, then stretched into a run and launched by leaping from the edge.
I clamped my lips on a yell of surprise and bent low over her shoulders, holding on tight as she plunged toward the rocks below.
Her wings pressed deep into my legs, quivering as she folded them tight to her flanks like a falcon in a stoop and held me astride.
This is it. I refused to die screaming. The wind tore at my eyes and shrieked in my ears. My muscles spasmed to hold me, only relaxing a fraction when Cleobah snapped her wings out, swooping into level flight, and the swift change pressed me deeper into my seat.
“You’re pulling my feathers out and making it hard to breathe! Relax!” she shouted over her shoulder. “I told you, I won’t let you fall.”
I relaxed my grip on her shoulders. “Sorry!” I yelled back, not sorry. “If we’re going to make this a habit, let’s come up with some straps, so I don’t have to clutch at you when you fall into a dive like that.”
Her muttering vibrated through my legs, clamped around her ribs, but whatever she said got lost to the wind of her flight.
From the air, Hastrior’s lights twinkled, reflected in the bay's water, but we left them behind as we soared inland. Cleobah landed us in a field beyond the city’s perimeter walls.
Houses, some occupied, some not, judging by the lights glowing in windows, lay scattered along a packed dirt road.
It tracked from the hills behind us toward the main road that led to the Solar Gate.
“Your answers are in there.” Cleobah sat and nodded at one house in particular after I slid to the ground.
No light shone from the darkened windows. Peeling paint and a yard overgrown with weeds indicated it was abandoned, but the glass in all the frames and a sturdy-looking door said otherwise. The other dark buildings on the road had doors busted open like their windows.
Safe to presume that meant it was still occupied, who knew what the other side of the house would reveal.
I looked from the sphinx to the house and back to Cleobah. “Am...am I supposed to go in there?” I pointed at the dilapidated building and raised my eyebrows. Was she serious?
“Only if you want to know.”
“Know what?” I was confused. Why had she flown us out there in the middle of the night?
“I wasn’t serious about the burglary part.
” Irritated, I asked, “Weren’t we were talking about Fraser back at the keep?
He’d never come here, it’s too far from the sea.
Why bring me to some rundown house outside Hastrior’s walls? ”
“I’ve told you as much as I can.” Her tail lashed the long, dry grasses, and her lips clamped tight, scarcely letting her words out.
“Go in, don’t go in. Is it dangerous? Could you die?
” she muttered, and rose to her feet to pace, plate-sized paws swishing through the brittle stems. Her expression transformed, becoming more ancient and implacable, and her gaze lost focus.
I wasn’t sure she saw me anymore. “These are things people always ask. The answer is the same.” She halted abruptly.
Awareness snapped back into her golden eyes, along with sad concern. “Yes.”
This was a different side of Cleobah, a melancholy one.
“I didn’t ask... You came to me,” I protested, unsure where she was going with her brief speech. “You’re the one who dragged us out here.”
“I really have to spell this out for you?” Exasperated, she rolled her eyes, but it was a relief because she was back to her normal, youthful self.
Crazy-talking ancient Cleobah was an uncomfortable creature to be around.
“Okay, not making it easy for me,” she groaned, but this time, it was less pain and more frustration
On impulse, I wanted to bark back at her, but something stopped me. I took a breath. Heard the quiet pleading behind her tight, sarcastic tones.
After spending so much time with Cleobah that week, I’d learned a few things. Despite being born just a couple hundred years after Cassyrra, she was very much a youngster. Sphinxes, being immortal, take a very long time to mature.
The brat was in fact a desperate young woman, using sarcasm and snark to hide fear and uncertainty. She could see, but not tell us what was to come, except in her circuitous phrases.
After I considered all she’d told me, I came to a disturbing conclusion.
She wasn’t being a snotty teen; she was terrified, unable to warn me outright, and it seemed death was a possibility.
Frustrated, too, because she could only drop vague hints and hope I’d put them together because of the constraints on her about revealing the future.
Worse, it seemed to hurt her when she came too close to exposing too much about upcoming events.
“Are you telling me Fraser is in there?” I asked, horrified. This was a place no nereid would come to willingly. Their element was water, and no elder-blooded could stray far from their home element. To be forced far from the sea, for an extended period of time, could be fatal.
Which meant something bad had happened.
Her expression and wings sagged with relief. She could speak now with ease once I recognized what she’d been hinting at and blew out her breath like she’d been holding it.
“Be sneaky,” she whispered. “Never know who you might run into out here. Old friends maybe?” Our eyes locked, she could only mean one person.