The Heartwood Crown Read online

  “Your brother is at the house,” Nightfall said, “locked in battle with Break Bones.”

  Baileya’s eyes widened. “You should have said this at once. There is no time to lose.”

  “I wanted to tell you when you hugged me,” Jason said, “but honestly, the thought went clean out of my head.”

  She grinned at him. “You did not want to cut my embrace short. But my brother will be after us soon. I will go back to help Break Bones or, if he has already fallen, to slow Bezaed. Nightfall, you must ride with Wu Song. Eclipse and Shadow, you will come with me as sentinels.”

  The two younger Scim flanked her as soon as the words came out of her mouth, and Nightfall had already swung himself onto Moriarty’s back. “The Elenil are to the north,” Nightfall said, “your brother to the south. So we will ride southwest, toward the great trees. I think we can hide from them without leaving Scim territory.”

  “We may not be able to stay in the Wasted Lands,” Baileya said, “not if the Elenil and my brother have found us. Go toward Aluvorea, and we will return as quickly as we can. If we have not returned to you by the time you reach the Aluvorean border, then I fear my brother has triumphed and will reach you before we do. So hide in the Wasted Lands or seek help in Aluvorea, whatever you think is wisest if such a thing comes to pass.”

  A wave of fear hit Jason like a wall. “Be careful, Baileya.”

  She boosted him onto Moriarty and patted his hand. “My brother will not harm me,” she said. “It is you he must kill, not me.”

  “About that,” Jason said. “He said he’s trying to catch me so he can murder me in front of your relatives.”

  Baileya frowned. “This is to our advantage. He will not fill you with arrows, then. He will have to get close.”

  “I bit him,” Shadow said. “Hard.”

  “Fierce warrior,” Baileya said, no smile on her face. “Well done. You can tell me the tale as we travel.”

  “We must go,” Eclipse said.

  Baileya squeezed Jason’s hand. “Fly swift and straight. I will see you again.” With that, she turned and trotted toward the mansion, the two Scim children trailing behind her, one on each side.

  Nightfall did not say good-bye. He put his heels to the brucok, and they sped away to the southwest.

  “I should probably drive,” Jason said.

  Nightfall didn’t even look over his shoulder. “Baileya never lets you.”

  “That’s because she’s good at it, and Moriarty always tries to bite me when I’m in charge. But I’m older than you. You probably can’t even drive a car.”

  Nightfall shrugged. “I don’t know what a car is.”

  “Exactly.”

  Nightfall pulled the reins so Moriarty would jog around a stone, and Jason nearly lost his grip. He snatched at the giant bird’s feathers, and the bird squawked and ran faster. Jason fell one way, then counterbalanced and nearly fell off the other side, popping back and forth like a metronome more than once before getting his balance again. “You did that on purpose,” Jason said. “Both of you.”

  Nightfall gave him a sly grin. “True.”

  Jason wondered what would happen when Baileya confronted her brother. She said he wouldn’t want to hurt her. The law of the Kakri gave him permission—encouraged him, really—to kill Jason because he was Baileya’s fiancé. The law gave no such protection to someone who killed his own siblings, a grave injustice in the Kakri system. Jason had asked Baileya if it happened sometimes—it seemed likely that when you were trying to murder your sister’s fiancé you might accidentally harm your sister, instead. She laughed at him. “The Kakri do not miss,” she said. In fact, she told him a story about a woman who had protected her fiancé without ever fighting her siblings by making it impossible for any of them to get a shot at her fiancé without harming her until their engagement year was up. It was a sort of Kakri comedy . . . the woman who protected her hapless fiancé from violence by putting herself in danger. Baileya had been generous to share the story with Jason, as the Kakri people considered a story like this to be of great value. “It is a family story,” she’d said. “Soon we will be family.” She had taken his hand at that point and squeezed it, and he had blushed. He still couldn’t figure out a way to tell her that he had only accidentally asked her to marry him. He wasn’t going to lie to her, but he couldn’t bring himself to say it. He was convinced she would be angry or embarrassed enough to end their relationship, and he didn’t want to risk that. He had stayed here in the Sunlit Lands because of her. Instead he had asked her why she didn’t use the same strategy as the one in the story. Why not just keep herself positioned near him at all times so her brothers and sisters couldn’t get a shot at him? She smiled and said, “I have many more siblings than the woman in the story.”

  “Wu Song,” Nightfall said. “I have wanted to ask you a question. But not in front of the others. It is . . . personal.”

  “Um. Okay,” Jason said. He couldn’t imagine what possible question the kid could have.

  “Why do you reveal your true name to us?”

  Jason saw some bobbing lights off in the gloom to the far north. Probably a small Scim settlement. Or, knowing Jason’s luck, it was the Elenil. But Nightfall didn’t seem concerned, so Jason didn’t mention it. “Humans aren’t like Scim. We don’t have war skins or war skin names.” Names like Break Bones were war skin names. Like the war skins themselves, the names were designed to intimidate, and to protect the Scim. He had seen some Scim—like the kids—out of their war skins, but he had never seen Break Bones in anything but. It seemed to be a deeply personal thing, deciding who could see you without your war skin. But the names . . . well, he only knew war skin names. He hadn’t learned any personal names of the Scim, except for Madeline’s little friend Yenil.

  “I thought Jason was your war skin name,” Nightfall said.

  “No,” Jason said, but then he considered some more. “Sort of, I guess. You only share your true name with your family, right?”

  “Or our closest friends. People who we trust with our lives.”

  “Where I come from, a lot of people have a hard time saying my name. So I have another name, a more common name, to help them be able to say it.”

  Nightfall nodded. “I see. Like the tame Scim. They take on a name the Elenil choose, so that they will not intimidate with their war skin name.”

  “Wait,” Jason said. “That’s sort of right, I guess. But it’s not like that—Jason is my real name too. I’ve been called that since I was a kid.”

  “At home?”

  “No, at school, and when I wasn’t with other Chinese people. I—” He paused. Was it the same thing? He had his given name, his Chinese name, and he had another name that wasn’t on his birth certificate, a nickname that let him move through American society, where many people didn’t know Chinese and weren’t willing to do the little bit of work required to learn to say his name.

  “So why do you share your true name with us?”

  Jason reflected for a minute, watching those distant lights. “I’m trying to be completely honest, Nightfall. I decided after my sister died that I would never lie again. Wu Song is my name, and I don’t want to hide that. Jason is my name too, or at least it’s something I’ve been called since I was a kid. I don’t want to hide things about myself, not if I can help it.”

  Nightfall turned and looked at him. “Many of the Scim have taken an oath to kill you.”

  “Yeah, yeah, them and half the Sunlit Lands.”

  “I have not taken the oath.”

  Jason knocked the kid in the shoulder. “Aw, thanks, Nightfall.”

  Nightfall’s war skin flowed off of him, dropping all the excess muscle, the intimidating face, the jutting tusks, and leaving only a wiry Scim kid who didn’t look all that much different from the kids Jason had run around with when he was in middle school. “You have treated me like family. You have shared your true name. You have shown kindness and even weakness to me and to my br
other and sister.”

  “I, uh, well, when you say it that way—”

  “I am saying, Wu Song, that to me you are a brother. My name, my true name, is Nola.”

  “Nola,” Jason said. “Thank you.”

  “You must say, ‘I will keep it safe.’”

  “I will keep it safe,” Jason said.

  “As I will keep yours safe,” Nightfall said.

  A lump formed in Jason’s throat. This kid was related to Night’s Breath. He had hoped to make a connection to Night’s Breath’s family, to his mother and wife and children, but they had rejected him. Now this boy, Night’s Breath’s nephew, had reached out to Jason. It didn’t change what had happened in the past, but Jason felt strands of loyalty knit between him and Nightfall. Nola. They were brothers now, and what did that mean except that Eclipse was his sister and Shadow his brother? He thought of Jenny, and saw her for a brief moment the way he had seen her on that last and terrible day, upside down in a smashed car at the bottom of a cliff face. He closed his eyes tight, trying for the thousandth time to wash the picture from his mind.

  When Jason opened his eyes again, he noticed the distant lights were closer. “Nightfall,” he said, “did you notice those lights to the north?”

  Nightfall twisted to get a better view. “Elenil,” he said, as if the word was a curse. “They bring light for the hunt.” His war skin flowed back onto him, and he snapped Moriarty’s reins.

  “I should have probably mentioned that sooner,” Jason said.

  6

  THE PRINCIPAL’S

  OFFICE

  You are more forest spirit than woman.

  FROM “JELDA’S REVENGE,” A SCIM LEGEND

  Shula’s first thought was that Madeline’s body had finally given up. Madeline’s face was flushed and sweaty, and she stood half leaning against the wall, her phone in hand, a wide-eyed, open-mouthed look of panic on her face. Shula crossed to Madeline, ready to catch her if she should fall.

  “Something’s wrong,” Madeline repeated.

  Shula grabbed Madeline’s forearms. “Hospital?”

  “School,” Madeline said. “The principal . . . called. Yenil.”

  “No,” Shula said, pulled back to the day she had been called by her sister’s school. They were sending all the children home because of a nearby bombing, they said, but they could not find Shula’s parents. A bombing. That meant the Russians, who were dropping bombs on the city with little regard for who was in the buildings. As she had heard her father say more than once, “Russians above, ISIS below.” The terrorists and rebels and their own government were all ravaging the city while people like Shula and her family just tried to get by, to find a safe place to buy groceries. She remembered the day her little sister had learned that the Russians were Orthodox Christian. Or at least, many of them were. “We should be safe from the Russians, then,” Amira told their father, “since we are Christian too.”

  Baba said, “A bullet does not stop to ask if you are Muslim or Christian, habibti.” Shula knew that was true. Bullets may not ask if you are Muslim or Christian, but people do, and it was people who directed the bullets, and dropped the bombs, and set the fires.

  Shula’s heart pounded in her chest, her breathing fast and shallow. Her first thought was guns, that someone had broken into Yenil’s school, had shot the children. Her hands tightened on Madeline’s forearms. Madeline sagged, and Shula scooped under her, directing her to the easy chair by the fireplace. Mrs. Oliver still lay on the couch. Although her breath came quiet and regular, her brow was furrowed and her mouth twisted in a frown.

  “We have . . . to go,” Madeline gasped, “get . . . Yenil.”

  Shula nodded. She knew the best thing in an emergency is to keep your head, to stay calm, and to be committed to your actions. She did not know the exact situation. She could try to call the school, but her English was uncertain. Mrs. Oliver was still in shock, and Madeline was in no shape to drive. Shula could drive. In the chaos of Syria, her father had needed her to have this skill, even though she hadn’t been old enough at that time to get a license. She certainly didn’t have an American driver’s license. Sofía could drive too, but then who would stay with Mrs. Oliver? If Madeline went anywhere, Shula would be her shadow. Madeline wouldn’t let Sofía go alone to get Yenil, and Shula wouldn’t let Madeline leave without her, which would leave Mrs. Oliver alone.

  Shula held her hand out to Sofía, who locked eyes with her, car keys in hand. It was Mrs. Oliver’s car. She never let Sofía drive it by herself, not once since Shula had been here. But this was an emergency. Whatever had happened, Madeline was panicking, her breath coming more irregularly, and still she was trying to stand.

  “You go,” Sofía said. “I will take care of Madeline and Mrs. Oliver.” She looked back at the two Oliver women.

  “I’m . . . coming,” Madeline said.

  Shula put her hand on Madeline’s forearm. “Sofía is right.”

  Madeline scowled. “I’m . . . coming,” she repeated, her lip turning up in a half snarl.

  Shula knew better than to argue with Madeline at a moment like this, and to be honest, a small feeling of relief flowed over her. If she was pulled over by the police, it would be helpful for Madeline to be there. Or if the school refused to release Yenil to her. They hadn’t been sure if it was wise to put Shula’s name on the “trusted adults” list, because what if, somehow, the immigration authorities found out about it? If Shula was deported to Syria, there was no guarantee she could get back to the US again. No guarantee, for that matter, that she could find her way back to the Sunlit Lands. She might be trapped there. Again.

  Shula shivered. She blocked the memories of her last day in Syria. She did not think of that. Her parents, her sister, her brother. They were gone, and she had a new family now. Madeline. Yenil. Perhaps these others, who Madeline thought of as family . . . Mr. and Mrs. Oliver, Sofía.

  Madeline was struggling to her feet.

  “Do you want your wheelchair?”

  Madeline nodded gratefully. She didn’t like to ask for it, but she needed it. In a moment, Shula returned with it, and she backed out the front door, past the fallen groceries, and to the car. She opened the door, and Madeline carefully got in. Shula folded the chair again and wrangled it into the trunk, bashing her elbow hard. She rubbed it absently as she slid into the driver’s seat.

  The school was not far. Shula drove with the care of a new driver, making sure to follow every rule, to stop completely at the signs, to turn on her blinker. At the same time, though, she was distracted by Madeline’s pained breathing and the uncertainty of what had happened to Yenil. “What has happened?” Shula asked.

  Madeline tried to answer but was so upset that the words wouldn’t come. She finally managed to say, “Fight. At school.”

  This made Shula feel slightly more settled, but only slightly. She saw Amira’s panicked face that day in Syria. The crowd of people, parents and grandparents and siblings, descending on the school, then tumbling away like leaves in the wind, skittering off to their apartments, and Shula weaving among them to take her terrified little sister by the hand and make their way home. Checking her mobile to make sure her parents knew she had Amira. Boulos was with them that day. He had been wandering off into the city many days, which upset their father. But today he had been nearby somewhere and had arrived just as they walked out the school gates. Shula had almost melted with relief, and he had walked in front of them, turning his head to the left and right, and stayed with them all the way home. Some people were saying that the Russians wouldn’t bomb again, not so close to the first site, but in this city of half-fallen apartment complexes and volunteers donning white helmets to pull innocent people from the wreckage of their homes, who wanted to risk their family based on what you thought the Russians might or might not do? It’s not like they called before dropping their bombs, unless you counted the high whine of their distant engines.

  Then Shula and Madeline were at Yenil�
��s school.

  The parking lot was too big, to make room for all the Americans and their cars. The path to the front office was too long, and the buildings had too much glass . . . far too much glass to be safe if someone came with intent to harm, or if an earthquake happened, or any number of other calamities. Shula kept telling herself that a fight meant something small. She needn’t worry. It was much more likely that someone had upset Yenil, that she had put on her war skin and smashed something.

  “Slower,” Madeline said.

  Shula had been pushing the wheelchair so fast it almost careened off the sidewalk. “Sorry.”

  Shula pressed the doorbell by the front door and leaned over so they could see her in the black eye of the camera. The door buzzed, and she pulled it open, trying to get Madeline turned around and through the door while holding it open. Madeline waved her off and wheeled herself through, coughing so hard she bent almost in half. Shula pulled a handkerchief from the zippered pouch on the back of the chair and gave it to Madeline. She wiped her mouth and nodded for Shula to get the next door.

  The women behind the front desk were busy. A child was sitting next to one desk, his head tipped back, tissues and a bag of ice on his nose. Shula clenched her fist. Oh please, don’t let that be Yenil’s doing.

  “We are here for Yenil,” Shula said.

  The women did not answer—one was on the phone and the other tending to the boy. Madeline took the flat of her hand and slammed it down on the counter, hard, twice. Both women looked up, their eyes wide. “Yenil,” Madeline said, then held on to her armrests when the coughing took her.

  The woman on the phone asked her caller to hold, and came over. “You’re Yenil’s . . . mother?” she asked, looking first at Shula and then at Madeline.

  “No,” Shula said. “Madeline is her—” She paused. Madeline had told her the word to say. It was a war word. A soldier’s word, not a family word. Ah yes, she remembered it now. “She is her guardian.”