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Prologue
The castle was going down, thanks wholly to her birds. Queen Dante sat upon her horse and watched as stone after stone crumbled to the ground. In a matter of moments, not only were the walls to the fort destroyed, but the king inside his castle was dead as well. Turning her mount, she headed back to the encampment to ready herself for the long ride home. The birds joined her not half an hour later, their large bodies covered in dust and blood.
“You have done well, my darlings.” They could understand her and she them, but no one else could. She had made them what they were, and she would be the only one to control them. “Have you fed well on his dying cattle? How does it serve a man to have his food dying? His people, they were fed no better, I saw.”
The birds—she had never named them—told her that the people were headed west. In a few months, maybe less, they would all be dead too. It bothered them when the people suffered because of the king or queen of the castle. But it was to be. Dante could not care for any more in her own keep.
No one would attack her keep. If they tried, she knew them to be too stupid or too drunk on their own mead. She had her birds, all of them bigger than life, made large by magic that she gave them. Looking at them as they landed around her, forever keeping her safe, she wondered why she had not thought of it sooner, when her king was still alive.
“I would have set you upon him. You could have eaten him for your dinner. Though I suspect that it would have given you a great deal of belly pains.” The hawk told her that she was lucky that he had died the way he had. No one would come for her if she had killed him. “Yes, that is very true. But I suffered greatly when he was living. No children with me to give me comfort in my olden age. Though they might have been just like him, and that would have been too much to bear.”
She would never marry again. Love wasn’t something that she searched for. Not that she didn’t have someone to warm her bed on occasion, but it was nice to be able to send them on their way when she was finished with them. Her heart belonged to no one, and she would not take another man to her bed by force. All would be well, and no one would threaten to come and take over her home, she hoped. The birds’ as well.
The hawk used her beak to put delicate things upon the backs of the others. There was aplenty this time. Barrels and smoked meats. Pottery that they would use like it wasn’t worth a king’s gold. They raided the castle each time they conquered. Hawk was the best at getting in and out before they took the places to the ground.
The eagle took off toward home. She would let the people know that the queen was returning simply by her showing up. They would have a feast this night. The food upon her back would feed them for many days, and the barrels of spices that had been hoarded in the lower levels of the king’s castle would go a long way toward trading what they did not grow.
The phoenix, by far the most deadly of her birds, shed her feathers in anticipation of getting new ones. After a battle she would become anew, each time getting stronger, and her feathers, brilliant now, would be brighter still. She could flame a fire so hot that stone would crumble under a man’s feet. The ground would no longer hold a seed within its belly to produce food, and she could kill a man with a single breath so that there would be nothing left of his body.
Dante loaded the last of her things onto the back of the owl. She might be small, she had always thought, but she could carry more than her own weight. And she would pick up her horse, used to flying through the sky like a bird himself, and take him back to the castle. He would be fed and groomed before Dante ever landed on the ground.
The vulture squawked at her, and she turned to look at the two men there. They looked as if they might have been about to kill her, but the sight of such large birds threw them off their duty. In no time at all the vulture snapped both of them up and ate them. A gruesome sight, but one that filled her heart with joy too. She was safe again. The vulture took off once she was loaded up.
“Well, my falcon, it is just you and I left.” She told her that she was still armed. “Yes, well, probably not too bad of an idea seeing that they nearly shot us.”
The falcon laid her body to the ground. She was the only one that was fitted with a seat, one that Dante rode on. Scouring the area, Dante always made sure that she left the places that she camped as neat and clean as she’d found them. Sometimes in better shape. As she climbed onto the back of her bird, she held her breath.
“I do hate the height. I should have thought this through when I turned you into my warriors.” Her laughter, should there have been someone around to hear it, might have sounded insane. “Homeward, my love, and we shall eat well tonight.”
She took no one with her on her fights, except the birds. That was why, she believed, her people were so loyal to her—she protected them. Fed them better than herself and made sure that there was plenty for them to trade and share for things that she did not provide for them.
The soil was rich and would give forth a bounty like no other gardens. Flowers that were woven into pretty things and traded. There was a smithy, as well as a doctor who doubled as a dentist. They had even acquired a grave digger, who doubled as a man who made markers.
A single merchant that came by, his wagon filled when he arrived, would leave with the wagon near empty. He would bring the latest news with him, and any posts that he had been asked to bring to them. He would also, for a small coin, take out posts for the next time he was in the keep of a relative or friend.
And today there was such a missive, but it was for her, from someone that she had hoped never to hear from again. The king of the land—the only man that she answered to, though it wasn’t with any kind of happiness on her part.
After the others were settled down and the food that had been brought put into storage, she sat down and wasn’t surprised that the falcon came to see her. The room that she was in—the throne room, for lack of a better term—had no roof, and six perches for the birds when they wished to see her. Otherwise they sat upon the top of the castle turrets, watching for anything that might befall them.
“I am to wed. The king of the land, he has decided that my castle, Duncan Castle, is the best there is, and he will marry me himself.” They asked ab
out his castle. “He says that it will be his son’s, which he has none as yet. His last five wives only gave him daughters, from what I have heard, and they did not last long afterwards.”
The falcon asked her what she would do. Dante knew what would happen to her should he come here. He would kill her. Being in her fortieth summer, she was much too old to bear children now, and he would be better with a younger bride. One that could birth him the sons that he wanted.
“He will kill me, we all know that. And you six will kill him or be killed. I worry so much for the people here too.” She thought of several plans and threw them out. It was in her head that if she should die, then she would do so on her own terms. “I will need a day to think on this. In the meantime, he says that he will be here in the new year. That will give us a month to provide for the people and make sure that they are not harmed.”
To be continued in book two, Hawk.
Chapter 1
Mercy was pissed, which if she thought about it, was a normality for her. But today she thought she had a good reason to be. The people that worked for her were not doing what she wanted. Before she could go down to the floor and tear into a few of them, Blaze joined her in her office.
“They say that it might rain today.” Mercy sat down, waiting for Blaze to get to her point. If she had one. “I was thinking that later today, while it’s storming, we could go on a long flight. It’ll do us both, mostly you, some good to get out and be yourself for a while.”
“We’re behind in production, and you want to take to the skies like it’s nothing at all.” Blaze smiled and nodded. “This is not the time, nor am I in the mood, for you to be your sweet self. I’m mad.”
“You are forever mad, Mercy. I think you should have picked a better name than Mercy, because you certainly don’t seem to have much. Maybe you should have picked Bullheaded. Or Asshole. That’s the favorite among the ones that work for you.” Mercy asked her if that was true. “It is. I’d not lie to you about this, even if I could. But you’re not only too hard on yourself, but on everyone around you. Including us. And you have been since the day our queen passed.”
“She was the only person that I ever loved besides the other birds like me.” Blaze said that she knew that. “I miss her every day. And it’s been eons since we were changed, yet I hate it just the same as the day it happened.”
“Because you have never been free, Mercy. All you have done since then was to try and figure out a way for you to make us coin...money. And you know that we have more than enough to live out the rest of our days without a need for any more. The bounty that was left for us was more than ample, yet you still strive to make more.” That was true, but when one told you that you would never die, it made a person—her—terrified of being without a place to hide, food, and something to do every boring day. “What would you do today if you weren’t at work? And I want you to realize that today is Saturday, when most of these people working for you would rather be home and spending time with their families.”
“I don’t know. Working is all I know how to do.” Blaze leaned back in her chair, as if she had just come up with the formula for some ancient remedy. “What do you propose I do, Blaze? I haven’t any idea what taking a day off means. And you might be right about the people that work for me. My turnover rate is higher this month.”
“Because it’s summer and kids are home from school. People are taking vacations and working at making time for their children. Not for their asshole of a boss who makes them work overtime. Even though there is a great deal of product ready to go out at a moment’s notice.”
