Flight of the King Read online

  Also by C. R. Grey

  Animas, Book One: Legacy of the Claw

  Text copyright © 2015 by Paper Lantern Lit, LLC

  Illustrations copyright © 2015 by James Madsen

  Map illustration copyright © 2014 by Kayley LeFaiver

  Cover illustration © 2015 by James Madsen

  Cover design by Marci Senders

  All rights reserved. Published by Disney • Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney • Hyperion, 125 West End Avenue, New York, New York 10023.

  ISBN 978-1-4847-1956-5

  Visit www.DisneyBooks.com

  Contents

  Title Page

  Also by C. R. Grey

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Map

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  Thirty-four

  Thirty-five

  Thirty-six

  Thirty-seven

  Thirty-eight

  Thirty-nine

  Forty

  Forty-one

  Forty-two

  Forty-three

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  for Aaron, again

  A true ruler sees a false one in the mirror; a false ruler sees only themselves.

  The Child of War is the mirror they gaze into: the Child is both the reflection and the opposite of evil.

  A WRETCHED WIND HOWLED across the northern Dust Plains, stirring up brittle blades of dead grass. Barks and yips echoed through a gray stone compound: the sound of ten young jackals, enclosed in a wire cage just outside.

  The barking did not bother the man sitting inside the compound. He enjoyed the sounds of chaos.

  The Jackal, known only to his intimates and his long-dead mother as Lawrence, sat with his broad back to the window. In front of him stretched a wooden table the length of two lions standing nose-to-nose, littered with gears and scraps of metal. In the middle of the table, like a fresh kill, lay an enormous metal crow. Where its heart would have been was an intricate device with an exposed button. The Jackal pressed it and listened.

  The Child of War is here, at the school.…A woman’s voice echoed from the bird’s flayed mechanical innards. The tiger must be close by. Don’t worry. Tonight the child dies, and your throne is safe.…

  The Jackal’s snicker filled the room. So, lovely little Viviana Melore was investigating the prophecies—and like him, she would kill to keep her throne. Birds of a metal feather, he thought, tracing his finger along a discarded copper wing on the table. He’d heard about the demise of Ms. Sucrette, however—and not a whisper about a white beast or a dead student. She clearly hadn’t succeeded in her task.

  “I managed to kill hundreds of white tigers,” the Jackal said, laughing, “and Viviana can’t even kill one!”

  Most everyone in Aldermere believed that the Jackal had been executed—all the better for him, as this allowed his lackeys to gain information that would otherwise be denied him. Parliament had spared his life, exiling him to the Dust Plains. But Parliament had now fallen, and he saw his chance to make some mischief in broad daylight. His Dust Plains agents—thieves and thugs and self-proclaimed “lords” of the outer territories—would be more than happy to plunder the Gray City in his name, for the promise of food and a trunk of snailbacks.

  He slipped into the uniform jacket that was draped over the back of his chair and surveyed himself in a small mirror hanging on the stone wall. He was not as strong as he had once been, but his broad figure was still imposing. And the scars—yes, the scars, those certainly helped him maintain a fearsome appearance. He fingered the soft trail of puckered skin that ran from the bridge of his nose down to the underside of his jaw.

  Viviana would be a trembling little girl in his presence, no matter how she’d trussed herself up. She’d been a small child when he’d killed her father and ordered his soldiers to set the palace alight. Undoubtedly, she’d grown up with a grudge. But as the Jackal grinned at his own reflection he felt sure that he could easily overwhelm the seemingly impervious new queen. After all, she feared for her throne, and killing the tiger would not help her keep hold of it.

  Because I will find it first.

  The thought delighted him. The legendary beast of prophecy could actually prove useful, if one was in need of a comeback.

  Which the Jackal most certainly was.

  AS THE RIGIMOTIVE CREAKED into the Fairmount station, Bailey felt a surge of joy. The Midwinter break had only been six weeks, but it felt like months since he’d awakened to his Animas. Being away from his kin had made the days at home seem long and flat—nothing compared to the excitement of his first few months at school. And now being so near to his kin, the great white tiger Taleth, again had him feeling light-headed with anticipation. He couldn’t wait to see her, and to continue training with Tremelo, who would teach him how to strengthen and utilize his newly formed bond.

  Hal crouched at the rigimotive window, scanning the waiting crowd through his thick glasses. Outside, a fresh layer of snow dusted the station roof and the hedges beyond, and the gaggle of students on the platform were dressed in cozy coats and scarves. Bailey saw his friends Tori and Phi waving, their breath floating up like mist into the air. Phi’s falcon, Carin, stood on her usual perch: the protective leather patch strapped to Phi’s shoulder.

  “It’s the girls,” Hal said, nudging Bailey excitedly. A pain shot through Bailey’s right arm and he flinched. He was still healing from the deep knife wound that ran up his forearm, given to him in the fall by the Dominae spy Ms. Sucrette. Hal sucked in his breath.

  “Ooh, sorry, Bailey,” he said. “I forgot.”

  “It’s okay,” said Bailey. He adjusted his sling and pulled his coat over his shoulders.

  As soon as he disembarked from the rigimotive, Bailey could sense the presence of Taleth somewhere in the nearby woods. He felt relief to have the tiger so close, though he knew he’d have to keep his Awakening a secret still. The Dominae would be looking for a white tiger and its human kin, and revealing his true Animas would put both him and Taleth directly in their sights. Just as he’d struggled the previous semester to hide the fact that he hadn’t Awakened, now he’d have to hide that he actually had.

  “Bailey! Hal!” called Phi, hurrying over to them. She and Tori pushed through the throng of students and their kin. A pack of dogs, along with a couple of raccoons and badgers, played happily in the snow as students hustled across the platform to find their trunks. Phi hugged both Bailey and Hal, taking care to avoid Bailey’s injured arm. Tori stood back from them, smiling.

  “We’ve been waiting for you,” Tori said, with an air of importance. Bailey noticed a small, triangular black face pe
eking out from her coat sleeve—a snake. It flashed its beadlike yellow eyes at him and retreated. “You’re supposed to see Tremelo as soon as you get here, and not talk to anybody about your…well, you know.”

  “My nonexistent kin?” Bailey guessed.

  “Right,” said Phi, with a finger to her lips. Her dark brown eyes sparkled as she smiled. “He has something for you.”

  Bailey smiled, hoping that Phi was referring to the Loon’s book of prophecies. In addition to training with Tremelo, Bailey was eager to learn more about the strange book that had predicted his Awakening. The book contained a prophecy about the “Child of War,” who would herald a new king for Aldermere. It had been written by the Loon, the man who had raised Tremelo. Ever since the discovery that Bailey was, in fact, the Child of War and that Tremelo himself was the True King, Bailey longed to pore over the book’s mysterious code. But it could only be read with the Seers’ Glass, a prism-like object that deciphered the broken, scratchy letters. Tremelo had promised to study the book over the break, and to tell Bailey what he’d discovered.

  With their bags in tow, Hal and Bailey followed the girls away from the crowded rigi platform and onto the main campus. The hedge animals along the path, lovingly sculpted by the groundskeeper, Mrs. Copse, wore white hats of fresh snow. A family of deer darted through the falling flakes on the path ahead of them. A flurry of bats, happy to see Hal again, fluttered out of the Fairmount clock tower in a leathery swarm and surrounded the group, causing Tori and Phi to shriek with laughter.

  “They’re just saying hello!” said Hal, grinning as the colony circled the clock tower as one, then disappeared under the eaves of its peaked roof.

  The Fairmount campus was still decked out for Midwinter—candles shone in every window, and cheery garlands of ivy and cranberry twigs had been draped over all the marble entranceways.

  “How was the Gray City?” Hal asked Tori as they passed the library.

  “There were lootings,” she said. “A printing press near our apartment was ransacked. Papers everywhere, all along the streets, for days. It was a mess! At least the papers looked sort of festive.…”

  “Who did it? The Dominae?” Bailey asked.

  Tori shrugged.

  “Who knows? The entire city’s gone nuts—whether people support the Dominae or want Parliament back, it doesn’t seem to matter. Everyone’s just doing whatever they please. I’ve even seen people trying Dominance for themselves—controlling their kin just for fun. Like a game!”

  “That’s awful!” said Hal. “There’s nothing like that in the Lowlands. Not that we saw, anyway.”

  Bailey knew that Tori’s experience of going home for a few weeks was remarkably different from his own. In the Lowlands, he’d felt very far away from Taleth and his friends, but also far away from the growing power of Viviana and the Dominae. He couldn’t imagine what it was like to live in the center of the turmoil.

  “No one’s able to do what Sucrette did, though,” Tori continued, lowering her voice. “I haven’t seen anyone able to control someone else’s kin, the way she did in the woods that night. I think most people don’t even know Dominance is capable of that. If they were, I wonder if they’d be so eager to try it.”

  The four of them walked on in silence for a moment. Bailey tried to dismiss the grisly images that played across his mind: an advancing troop of bears and wolves and badgers, their eyes cold and murderous. Sucrette, ordering them to kill.

  “Did you tell your mom and dad anything about Taleth?” Phi asked, drawing Bailey back to the chilly commons. He smelled burning logs on the breeze, drifting from the chimneys of the library. Carin the falcon nestled her head in Phi’s curly hair, which had somehow grown even wilder over the few weeks they’d been gone.

  “I couldn’t,” said Bailey. He’d wanted to blurt out the whole story as soon as he’d gotten home, especially when he imagined how proud and relieved his parents would be that he had Awakened at last. Instead, he’d pretended that nothing had changed, and had tried to ignore their looks of concern. As far as they knew, he would have an Absence forever.

  “It’s not that I don’t trust them,” he explained. “I know they could keep my Awakening a secret, but if I had to explain why it’s a secret, they’d never let me come back to school! How was I supposed to tell them that the Dominae tried to kill me once already? I can’t see my mom taking that in stride.”

  “No, I guess not,” laughed Phi.

  “How were things here?” Bailey asked, hoping he hadn’t brought up any sore feelings. Phi’s family hadn’t been able to afford a rigi ticket back to the Dust Plains, and she’d spent the break at Fairmount, in the lonely wing of the Treetop dormitory that the school had kept open for cases like hers.

  “It was nice, actually,” she said. “I spent a lot of time with Gwen.”

  “That’s great,” Bailey said. “I wouldn’t mind talking some more to her too.” Gwen was only a year older than Bailey and his friends, but she came from an entirely different world. She and her guardian, the Elder, had escaped chaos in Parliament and the Gray City, and had come to Fairmount in search of Tremelo. It was the Elder who had broken the strange and life-changing news that Tremelo was the lost Prince Trent. Now, with the Elder dead, Gwen was also in danger from the Dominae. The safest place for her was at the school.

  “She’s been a huge help,” Phi said, lowering her voice to a whisper. “She’s hiding the Seers’ Glass for Tremelo.”

  Bailey felt a twinge of envy. He wished he’d been asked to keep the Glass safe, or the Loon’s book. But Tremelo hadn’t asked for his help.

  Bailey and his friends arrived at Tremelo’s classroom, which was just as messy, dark, and unorganized as he’d left it the semester before. Worse, even, since Tremelo—a devoted tinkerer—seemed to be at the start of several new projects. In his office, oil-covered gears and ink-blotted papers were piled on the wide, wooden expanse of his desk. This wasn’t how kings lived.

  “Good, you’re here.” Tremelo, a tall, lean man with a dark mustache, stood against his desk with his arms crossed. “We need to discuss your plan now that you’ve Awakened.”

  “Nice to see you too,” Bailey said, shuffling off his winter coat. “Good break?”

  “Not enough rootwort rum in the stores,” Tremelo replied. Apparently he didn’t care how Bailey’s break had been as he changed the subject abruptly. “You’ll have to be on your guard, Bailey. The school will be watched now that Sucrette’s gone.”

  Bailey nodded, excited to hear what Tremelo had in mind. Six weeks had passed, and Bailey was sure that as king, Tremelo would have reached out to the Melore loyalists by now.

  “Of course,” Bailey said. “But what else? Have you talked with the RATS? Did you tell them you’re the True King? What about the Velyn? Will they fight with us?”

  “Focus,” Tremelo said.

  “But—” Bailey tried again.

  Tremelo held his hand up for silence. He looked at Tori, Hal, and Phi, who stood gathered inside the doorway between the classroom and the office, and beckoned them in. He waited for Hal to close the door before going on.

  “You’re getting ahead of yourself,” Tremelo said. “We would need more than the word of an old man and the appearance of an abnormally large cat to spring into the Gray City like vigilantes. I am not running into the heart of the Dominae’s operations to get myself assassinated, thank you. Maybe there is a True King, maybe there isn’t. Right now, we’re interpreting a prophecy, not going into battle over it. Understood?”

  A silence settled over the room like a thick, suffocating blanket.

  “My status as a supposed ‘king’ is the least of our worries right now,” Tremelo continued. “I have urgent news: we’re about to be paid a very unwelcome visit by Viviana Melore. She’s conducting a goodwill tour of the kingdom’s assets: factories, farms…and schools. Her first stop is none other than Fairmount.”

  Bailey stiffened. He heard a sharp intake of breath from Ph
i.

  “She’s coming here?” Bailey said.

  “Next Friday.” Tremelo nodded. “In less than two weeks.”

  “Goodwill tour, my eye!” exclaimed Tori. “She’ll be asking around about Sucrette!”

  “If she even needs to ask,” Hal pointed out. “What if she already knows we were involved?”

  “Don’t panic,” Tremelo urged. “If she knew that, we’d all be dead already.”

  “That’s reassuring,” Tori said.

  “The tour is a ruse, an excuse for her to find out more about the Child of War. I suspect she’ll also try to find the book and the Glass, as it’s certain that Sucrette would have mentioned them—but she won’t find them,” said Tremelo. “Not as long as you all lie low. And that begins now. No jaunts off the grounds. No secret meetings, after this one. You will all do your utmost to appear as normal, unaware students.”

  “But shouldn’t we try to stop her?” Bailey asked, though he wasn’t sure how. “You’re the true ruler of Aldermere, you could challenge her—”

  “We’ll do absolutely nothing to draw attention,” said Tremelo firmly, cutting Bailey off. “If we do, we risk exposing ourselves—and that goes for using the book and Glass while she’s here. Working out the Loon’s riddles isn’t worth the risk.”

  Bailey looked around at his friends. Hal stood with his arms crossed tightly over his chest, staring at the floor. Tori was shaking her head.

  “I don’t understand,” said Bailey. “We’re not going to do anything?”

  “I have a plan,” said Tremelo, “if only to gain some information during Viviana’s visit. But you must listen to reason, Bailey. Involving you is far too dangerous. Even if I was this ‘True King,’ we’re nowhere near ready to challenge Viviana’s rule openly. Unless the four of you and Gwen are ready to stand in for an entire army.”

  Bailey didn’t respond. Tremelo was right, though he didn’t want to admit it out loud.

  “I thought not,” said Tremelo. He straightened up. “The Dominae suspect foul play in Sucrette’s death. And if Viviana is as intent on stopping the prophecy as I believe she is, then that means she’ll be after us. We can’t give her any reason to suspect our involvement.” He walked to a wire cage hidden behind a pile of newspapers in the corner.