21 Light as a feather, hot as the sun
The trail was fresh.
Fi thought they’d have more time to prepare.
She thought she’d have time to process the bone-chilling sight of Avroz waiting for them in the Thomaskweld capitol building, that wretched beast standing in their home, looking upon their city.
The trail was very fresh, he informed them impatiently. They had to move. Now.
Fi barely had time to don her silviamesh, to arm herself. Then, back to the Summer Plane.
They met on a forested ridgeline, a human village a couple miles away, a farmhouse in the clearing below.
Fi listened to the vital updates—a more concentrated scent than usual, hours old, the possibility of catching the aedari while it slept nearby—but when the daeyari turned to arguing over strategy, her patience thinned.
Jazst, the territory lord, had come. Mostly to be an ass, Fi surmised, insisting he share in the glory of catching an aedari on his lands.
Antal, dressed in a dark shirt with a pattern of vesper fabric starbursts, kept slipping unbearable looks her way.
Avroz took one look at the teeth marks on her neck, flicked his tail, then ignored her. Still playing nice—which only made Fi grind her jaw.
Ixli perched in a tree. Honestly, having well exceeded her angry daeyari interaction quota, Fi appreciated this approach the most. Ixli looked like a wraith of vengeance in her silviamesh underclothes and silver armor.
At her back, she carried her spear shaft, a bow, and that single strange arrow attached to a ribbon.
Even her claws were armored in metal sheathes.
And there stood Fi, a lone human in a pack of immortals. This fight with the aedari, the defining conflict of their species. Not hers.
She stepped away from the arguing, to the ridgeline to survey the house below.
Syvr joined her.
Fi bristled as the daeyari slipped around her side, feet silent on the loam. They’d not stood this close since she’d put a dagger in Syvr’s heart. She caught Antal’s eye.
He noted the proximity with a tail flick, but didn’t intervene. Syvr was less of an immediate threat than the others. Antal thought so, at least. And true, they’d never drawn a weapon on her, had never dug claws into her scalp.
They still ate humans. Fi kept a hand near her sword hilt.
“I apologize for interrupting earlier,” Syvr said, low. “It wasn’t my intention.”
Nope. She was not going to talk about that.
Fi appraised the daeyari with narrowed eyes. They wore their hair shaved on the sides, a braid on their crown—all braids on these daeyari, unlike Antal’s shorter strands. Syvr’s antlers bore five points, five centuries, carved with stars and masks and little foxes.
“You’re Avroz’s spy?”
“Spy?” Syvr huffed. “I don’t like that word. I gather information is all.”
“That’s… a fucking spy.”
“Oh.” Their tail swished. “I see why Antal likes you.”
That sounded strangely like a compliment.
“And you?” Fi said. “You’re the only one here who doesn’t look at me like a lost hare.”
They hummed, thoughtful. “Those are old ways of thinking, most rigid on the Twilit Plane. But I travel often. Humans are far more common company across the Planes. Your people have an earnestness to them that I imagine Antal appreciates.” They lowered.
“And you do some excellent things with your mouths. I’m sure he appreciates that, too. ”
Fi weighed the jab. Decided it was not, oddly, an insult. “Damn right he does.”
Syvr snickered, tail swishing a contented arc.
She must be getting soft, the way their grin eased her bristles a little. The way it made them feel like fellow conspirators. Maybe they were just a good spy.
In the clearing below, a human man worked in the yard of the farmhouse, splitting wood. Everything looked calm. Normal.
“You found the trail?” Fi asked.
Syvr tested the air with a sniff. “The scent is all around this forest. And him.” They nodded to the man. “Whispers in town say he missed an appointment recently. Acting strange before that, avoiding conservation.”
Fi frowned. “You think he’s helping the aedari?”
“They can be persuasive. In their part of the Planeverse, the aedari call themselves gods. They offer favors to loyal mortals in exchange for supplication. This aedari may have sought a place to rest, convinced the human to act as lookout.”
If that was true, Fi pitied the man, caught up in this the same as her.
“Shouldn’t we wait for night,” she asked, “if we want to catch it sleeping?”
“Aedari don’t rest like humans. Or daeyari. They stay awake for days, sometimes weeks at a time. Then, asleep for several days straight.”
Asleep for days? Easy prey, then. Fi wondered if there was as much honor in that, slaying an aedari in its bed. Assuming it was actually asleep. If not…
“What do I need to know to fight it?” Fi asked.
Syvr glanced at her sword hilt. “Antal hasn’t told you?”
“He doesn’t want me to fight.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t? I’m not fighting. Ixli does the fighting.”
From her perch in the trees, Ixli huffed. Syvr waved a dismissive hand at her.
“I can decide for myself,” Fi said. “I want to fight. How?”
Syvr looked at her. At Antal, still arguing with Jazst and his father. Back to her, hushed. “They don’t Shape energy like daeyari. Aedari bind their magic to jykae, more versatile at—”
“Jykae?”
“Ah. Like…” Syvr mimed drawing with a claw. “Little pictures. You would say…” They swapped to seasonspeak. “Glyphs? I think?”
“Little pictures…” Fi mused.
Syvr returned to daeyari. “Glyphs can alter physical aspects of the world around them. The trained magicians are the deadliest, but even their brute warriors use basic glyphs to bolster strength and defense. Watch for the golden light. Golden eyes.”
How tacky. “More antlers?”
Syvr chuckled. “No antlers. Shapeshifters.”
Fi’s brows shot up.
“Not that dramatic,” Syvr said. “Their overall form, they can’t alter. But they can change their face, their eyes, to mask their appearance. Easier to entice prey.”
Just another kind of predator, then.
“They eat energy,” Fi said. “How?”
“Pulling it to the surface. Very painful, I’m told.”
Fi scoffed. She’d spent a lifetime imagining the feeling of flesh stripped from bones. What could be worse than that?
Behind them, the conversation hardened.
“This is my territory,” Jazst said, earning a rare double glare from Avroz and Antal. “I should be the one to deal with my subjects. I’ll go first. Determine what this human knows.”
A sleazy show of bravado, trying to slip in and steal the credit while the aedari slept. Fi wondered if Jazst would be equally generous against a more capable opponent.
“We should all go,” Antal argued. “Less of a risk.”
“All of us will draw attention,” Avroz said, low and chiding.
“Sending any daeyari will draw attention,” Antal countered. Then, to Jazst, “And that human isn’t going to want to speak to you.”
“Then I’ll make him speak.” Jazst flashed a fang.
The sooner they killed this aedari, the sooner they could go home, the sooner Fi could make a poster of Avroz for her wall, just to hurl energy daggers at it.
“I’ll go,” she said.
Fi didn’t appreciate the weight of five red stares boring into her. Antal’s least of all. His tail flicked, an argument brewing in his eyes.
He’d left her high and dry earlier. He could get fucked.
“Let me talk to the human,” she said.
“There’s no reason to send you alone,” Antal argued.
“Of course there is.” She closed the distance between them. “I’m more approachable. More likely to get information out of him. That’s what I’m here for, right?”
“We don’t know where the aedari is. You don’t have to—”
“I want to.” She grabbed him by an antler, baring her own teeth. “Or do you expect me to just wait here and do nothing?”
Antal fell very still.
Every daeyari around them went rigid, a ring of bright-eyed predators—all staring at Fi’s hand on his antler.
Fuck. Was she not supposed to do that in public? Curse these giant cats and their rituals. Fi released him, fighting an indignant blush.
Antal’s tail swung low. The look he gave her was soft, forgiving, a clear no hard feelings, you didn’t know. But why didn’t she know? In the year they’d spent together, why had he never told her she wasn’t supposed to touch his antlers in front of other daeyari?
Because he’d never expected to show her to other daeyari.
“In any case.” Avroz slid his scowl off his son, onto Fi. “The vavraesa is right. She stands the best chance of gathering information from another of her kind. Let her go.”
His words settled over Fi like a Winter chill. Avroz agreed with her?
Oh. He actually was hoping to get her killed. Good to know.
And because it was his father, Antal clamped his teeth, but didn’t argue.
For the record, it wasn’t Fi’s idea for Jazst to come with her. He insisted. One grumpy cat was better than five, but she planned to do most of the talking.
They walked the road to the farmhouse. A bird trilled from the wheat field, flashing red wings as it disappeared into the stalks. Jazst acted like Fi didn’t exist. Preferable to speaking.
When they reached the yard, all was quiet.
The man had finished chopping wood, but Fi hadn’t seen where he’d gone.
Wouldn’t this be an unpleasant surprise, a visit from a stranger and a daeyari?
As Fi stepped onto the porch, she made a shooing motion to Jazst, urging him out of sight of the door. He growled but complied.
His tail flicked as he sniffed the air. Fi couldn’t smell whatever he did, but a prickle went down her neck. The house was too quiet.
Fi knocked on the door. No one answered.
“Hello?” she called out in seasonspeak.
She tried the handle. Fi was dismayed to find it open, but she couldn’t back out now, with a daeyari watching. She steeled her nerves and stepped inside.
The house was… normal. Small. Homey. The living room had a bright rug and several amateur watercolor paintings on the wall, opening onto a dim hall with more closed doors. No signs of distress. No immortal monsters lurking in the shadows.
Jazst stalked inside after her. He breathed deep, tail lashing fiercer.