I didn’t have time to analyze the question. Instead I pressed my advantage-swung the flail until it twirled in a slow jerky arc. “You tell me. Where would Zery go? Is anything missing?”
Her brows lowered, Pisto stared at me. Her gaze tracked the round-and-round movement of the studded metal ball. My shoulder began to ache, and I realized I’d screwed up royally. I had no idea how to make the thing stop, not without bashing my own brains out.
Mother cursed, an unprecedented act on her part, then jerked the flail from my hand. The head hit the wall, knocking a foot-wide chunk of plaster onto the floor. I grabbed my arm, began massaging my shoulder.
“Her sword. Does she keep it here?” Mother asked.
I glanced at the box. There was no sword.
Lips pursed, Pisto nodded. “But she prefers a staff.”
Zery’s staff stood angled against the wall.
“Well, she has a sword. That’s something.” I tried to take comfort in the words. I tried to tell myself Zery was too strong to be taken by the killer-the girls he had taken were just that, girls-inexperienced and too full of their own emerging talents to realize danger. But it didn’t help.
Above our heads, the floors rattled-feet pounding as Amazons awoke and raced from the building.
“Pisto, it’s Zery. Come now.” The guard’s voice.
I didn’t wait for Mother or Pisto. I grabbed Zery’s staff and flew up the stairs.
The Amazons were back in my front yard. This time there was no fire, but there was an Amazon queen staked out spread-eagle.
Zery lay unconscious on the ground. She was stomach up, and dressed in a T-shirt and shorts. Her arms and legs were spread, her body forming a five-pointed star. Shoved into the ground next to her was a sword-the one missing from her room, I guessed.
Bubbe had control of the scene, holding the Amazons back with one hand and a good dose of magic. She’d gathered air into a flat spinning disc that she held out like a shield. If an Amazon tried to approach, she knocked her aside like a gnat.
She had also, I hoped, done something to put a hush over the noise the group was creating. Yells, feet stamping, and unsheathed swords clattering drowned out anything I could hear, but I ignored it all and rushed as close to where Zery lay as Bubbe’s air shield would let me. I tried to get past her, but the old miscreant pointed a finger at me, letting me know she wouldn’t hesitate to send me soaring into the grass-covered hill behind me.
Then Mother and Pisto arrived. With a few smacks of their staffs against one another’s, the raging Amazons quieted-not completely still, but still enough we could hear my grandmother speak.
“She’s caught in a web. Not one easily broken. I’ve tried.”
I frowned at my grandmother. I had never heard her say she couldn’t do something.
“But she’s just lying there,” one of the warriors called out.
Pisto strode forward. Bubbe, her focus on the warrior who had spoken, missed her movement. The Amazon lieutenant got within three feet of Zery, before my grandmother noticed-telling me my grandmother was truly shaken. That fact scared me almost as much as what happened next.
Zery’s body jerked. Her eyes, which had been closed, flew open. Her face flashed shock, then pain, then determination.
“Pisto, stop!” I yelled.
The Amazon froze, her gaze on her queen’s face. She’d seen it too-the pain. But like me, she couldn’t see what was causing it. Then, with no movement of her head, just her eyes, Zery glanced down toward her left breast, and I saw the source…a growing circle of blood, right where Zery’s givnomai tattoo was-or should be.
My stomach lurched. Was it missing; had the killer already stolen it from her? Was she dying before our eyes?
“Zery.” Her staff fell from my hands.
Ignoring my grandmother’s glare, I stumbled to her side. “What can you do? What have you tried?” Accusations camouflaged as questions. I knew Bubbe wouldn’t leave Zery there, pinned to the ground like a dead bug on a collector’s Styrofoam pad.
She jerked a hand toward Mother, who grasped me from behind.
“Melanippe. What do you think? You think I leave Zery there for no good cause? The web. It’s set. I take a step; she bleeds. I reach my hand to unravel the spell; she bleeds.”
I took a breath. Tried to focus. “What’s holding her there?”
The creases in Bubbe’s forehead deepened. “The magic.”
“No bonds?” I leaned forward, looking around my grandmother at Zery’s wrists. There was a shadow on them-a design.
Bubbe pushed her lips against my ear. Her lips were dry as they brushed against my skin. “A drawing. An artisan’s work, one skilled as priestess as well.”
I turned my head. Our noses almost brushing, I stared her in the eyes. Questions, concern, fear-all three showed in her gaze.
Not me. I wouldn’t…The objections must have shown on my face. She reached with a gnarled hand and stroked my face. “I know, devochka moya, but the others…? I have no control of their minds.”
“Any priestess could do this,” I whispered, my mind rolling, thinking of Alcippe and her anger at Zery for sending me to the camp.
“Some, not all. And none would use an artisan skill when a priestess spell is quicker.”
She was right, why take the time to draw something, murmuring over each line, pouring some of yourself into every bit of shading, when you could wave your hand, call up the wind or fire or one of the other elements to do your bidding? Only an artisan, someone who loved that connection, needed it, would go to that trouble, but still my mind couldn’t shake an image of Alcippe…the anger in her eyes when she’d stepped out of the safe house’s front door.
“Can art do that?” I nodded to Zery. “Hold someone down?”
“I would have said no…” My grandmother clucked her tongue. “And I would have been wrong.”
“I have to get closer.” I had to see what the design was, see if I recognized it.
Bubbe looked away, her lips disappearing into her mouth.
“I’m the only artisan here,” I said, enunciating each word with precision.
Finally she stepped away, her hand going up as she did, ready to pummel back the warriors if needed. Mother’s fingers squeezed my arm one last time before she stepped back. She motioned to another warrior, and a flashlight was pushed into my hand. I shined it first on Pisto. Her body was rigid, afraid to move forward and hurt Zery further, but forced by allegiance to not leave her queen.
I respected that, but I didn’t want her getting in my way. As I waited, Mother circled around the group, placed a hand on Pisto from behind. The younger warrior ignored her at first, but Mother bit out something I couldn’t hear, probably wouldn’t have understood if I had. Something about loyalty and death, maybe with a dash of tradition thrown in to round it all out. In other words: Amazon propaganda.
I wasn’t going to save Zery because she was an Amazon or my queen. I was going to save her because she was a living being and my friend-my best friend, no matter past differences.
With Pisto under Mother’s control, I moved the beam of light onto Zery. She was still awake, her gaze glued to me. I couldn’t tell what she was feeling. Her eyes just looked confused, like she didn’t know where she was or what was happening to her. I wondered if she recognized any of us.
The thought was disturbing, but at least she wasn’t jerking in pain. I shifted the beam again, this time only a little lower to a shadow I hadn’t noticed before-across her mouth. Lines, like stitches. I almost dropped the flashlight.
Her mouth was sewn closed.
No wonder she hadn’t called out-she couldn’t. Something caught in my throat, the pie I’d gorged on earlier being heaved upward.
My body jerked, a hacking noise leaving my chest. Bubbe spun, her glare like a physical touch knocking me back upright. Show no weakness. Act strong even when you aren’t-the key to dealing with animals and Amazons.