The hawk lifted her head and screeched. The sound echoed through the trailer as she swiveled her head to fix her gaze on Kyle.
“I don’t have it, stupid bird!” Kyle scrambled to his feet on the couch behind me even as Karin grabbed Elin in the jacket once more.
Pursue the animal speaker. Destroy him, and bring the leaf he bears back to me. Do not return until you have it. The Lady had changed Elin and sent her out again. She must have. “I have the leaf,” I told her. If she wanted to fight someone for it, she could fight me.
The hawk shivered in Karin’s arms. “Liza, can you hand me the stones?”
I didn’t move. “Elin made Ethan burn his own people. She thought it was some sort of test.”
“My mother’s tests are harsh indeed.” Karin looked troubled, and I remembered that she’d talked of passing the Lady’s tests in my visions, too.
Being troubled wouldn’t protect Kyle or me if Elin decided to attack. “She can’t stay with us.”
Holding the bird awkwardly with one arm, Karin knelt to pick up the nearer orange stone herself. She looked up at me, asking me to understand—understand what?
“You can’t ask this of me.” I remembered how Kyle smiled as his hand grew slick with the blood that Elin had demanded to see. “Of us.”
“I ask only that you not interfere.” Karin tucked the stone into the jacket. Elin made a soft meeping sound as her shivering eased. Had she been out in the storm looking for Kyle all night? Surely no one, hawk or human, could survive so long in the ice and the cold.
Elin wasn’t human. Fey folk were harder to hurt—and harder to heal—than humans were. “She can’t be trusted.” Behind me I felt Kyle clutching my coat.
“No,” Karin agreed. She gave me a searching look. “I ask much of you by even bringing her here. I know that, and I take full responsibility for it. Yet I cannot leave her.” Her voice dropped. “I have left her too often before.”
The trailer door remained open. Beyond it, the black sky was giving way to gray. Soon the sun would rise. We needed to leave this place. “If she turns her glamour and her magic on us, or forces us to turn our magic on ourselves? What then?”
“She hardly has the strength to—” Karin stopped mid-sentence. When she spoke again, her voice was cold. “If she harms either of you in any way, I will see to stopping her myself, though it mean her life. You have my word.”
Elin gave a strangled squawk. She struggled in Karin’s arms, pushing free of the jacket, and tried to launch into the air. Her injured wing failed her, and instead she landed on the trailer floor. She lifted her head to glare at Kyle and me.
“She says she doesn’t understand why you put humans ahead of your own people,” Kyle whispered. “She says you should kill us all. She says—no!” Kyle pushed past me and ran at Elin. “Go away!” he screamed. “Away ’way ’way!”
I grabbed Kyle. He fought me, but I didn’t let go. I wouldn’t let Elin hurt him.
Elin wasn’t trying to hurt him, though. She was backing away, talons scraping metal, left wing dragging.
Kyle wriggled out of my arms. “Go away, stupid bird!” He clenched his small fists and advanced on Elin. She backed into the corner and hunkered down there, trembling.
I yelled the bird away. I drew a soft breath. Karin’s eyes widened, and I knew she’d figured it out as well.
A slow smile crossed my face. Kyle wasn’t helpless after all.
Elin looked up at him, her yellow eyes fierce. Kyle’s hands went slack. His steps grew slow and dreamlike. “Pretty bird?” He sounded uncertain.
I grabbed him. Karin grabbed Elin. “They’re both under my protection,” she hissed at the bird.
Elin squawked her protest. Kyle went rigid in my arms, the glamour’s brief hold on him lost. “Go away!”
Elin fought her mother again, though there was nowhere left to go. A talon tore Karin’s sweater, drawing blood, but she scarcely seemed to notice.
“That’s enough, Kyle,” I said. I didn’t want Elin hurting Karin, and it was clear enough Karin wasn’t going to let her daughter go.
Kyle stuck out his tongue at the hawk. “Told you I could yell her away.”
I thought of how he’d asked—no, told—the ants to leave the Store. I squeezed him tightly before I set him down. “Good job, Kyle.”
Elin stopped fighting and trembled in Karin’s arms. Karin stroked the hawk’s feathers. “It is not unknown for animal speaking to move beyond ordinary speech into commands—it is much like plant speaking that way—though usually command comes when the speaker is older.”
Kyle glared at Elin as he leaned against me. “He didn’t even need her name,” I said.
“It is only people who require names. Animals and plants do not use them. Still, to be able to speak to the animal even in one who has been changed or shifted—one who has a name when in another form—takes considerable power. Kyle is in a fair amount of danger.”
I drew him close. “He’s in less danger, if he has that much power.”
“He’s also of more interest to those who would use that power for their own purposes.”
Like the Lady. Had she wanted Kyle killed because he was useless—or because she feared anyone who might be able to control those she transformed? It was hard to believe that the Lady feared anything.
Karin set Elin down again, found her water skin, and stashed it in her pack. “I should have Kyle’s oath before we go,” she said.
Kyle helped me fold the blanket, but his gaze kept straying to Elin. I was glad. The warier he was, the better. “I already took his oath.”
Karin blinked. “You intend to teach him, then?”
“The oath isn’t about teaching.” Is it?
“The oath is about many things.” Karin took the blanket, put it in the pack, and tied the pack closed. Kyle hung behind me, clutching the edge of my coat with one hand and his frog with the other. I was responsible for him. That was what the oath meant.
I got Kyle’s hands into the sleeves of his coat and buttoned it up. I traced the bloodied slashes along the coat’s back and glanced at Elin. At least with his sweater on backward, no part of him was fully exposed to the cold.
I hesitated, then took my leather gloves and set them beside Karin’s pack. She’d need protection if she intended to carry the hawk. I turned away before she could thank me, still wishing she’d leave Elin behind.
I tied my knife belt around my waist, though the sheath was empty. “Ready?” I asked Kyle. I couldn’t do anything about his gloveless hands, but I wrapped my scarf around his neck. The woven-together ends would help keep it in place, and I wouldn’t let Elin anywhere near the wool.
Kyle held his head up high. “Now we find Johnny, right?”
“Right.” I climbed outside. The ground was slick with ice, and I grabbed the trailer for balance. Cold metal stung my palms. I cursed and jerked away. The clouds were gone, and through the trees I saw an orange glow at the horizon. I reached for Kyle and helped him out. He slipped, and I caught his hand, steadying him. Karin climbed out after him, green ivy hidden beneath gloves that met her jacket sleeves and hawk balanced on one leather-clad fist. She didn’t stumble as she landed silently on the ice.
The sun poked above the horizon, breaking through the trees. Light hit the branches around us, turning them bright as broken glass. The light hurt my eyes. I blinked hard against it, and as I did I saw—