Enjoy the chapter, folks!

See you Friday with more :)

-Plum

45 – Feathered Intelligence

When the steam finished billowing away and the tower was fully revealed, Andy had to agree with the many exclamations he heard, primarily the one guy who shouted, “Bad ass!”

The tower was taller than he’d expected—judging by the evenly spaced windows along its length, five stories. He figured the base was about twenty strides in diameter, but it narrowed significantly as it stretched upward. Andy craned his neck, looking over the dark-gray, smooth stones, until his eyes found the top, where a wooden canopy hung over a wide, crenellated battlement.

“Let’s look inside!” Lucy said, tugging his hand.

Andy nodded, following her up the set of stone steps to the landing outside the heavy hardwood door. A simple bronze handle was mounted beneath a twisting latch. Andy turned the latch; it clicked smoothly, and the door swung open on well-oiled hinges. He could feel people crowding behind him and Lucy as they stepped into the dimly lit interior.

The bottom floor of the tower was…cozy. A bronze spiral stair in the center of the room climbed through a hole in the wood-paneled ceiling. The space around the staircase was furnished—a table and chairs on the left, an iron stove just past the table, and a counter with a sink on the back wall, near a shuttered window. On the right-hand side were a bed, a bookcase, and a leather chair with a big, cushioned ottoman.

“It’s an apartment!” Lucy cried, stepping forward to run her fingers over the tall leather chair. “Nice!”

“For the watchman?” Janice asked, peering through the doorway.

Andy shrugged. “I guess so…”

Lucy bounded up the steps, her boots ringing on the bronze treads. When her head poked through the ceiling, she called out, “Two more beds! And trunks!”

Andy followed her up, and they found similar conditions on each of the other three floors, though the top floor only held one narrow bed. “I guess it’s a kind of barracks,” Andy said as he pushed the trapdoor open that led to the battlement. The top of the tower was wider than the floors beneath it, but there wasn’t much up there—just an open area with a steeply gabled roof that afforded a beautiful view of the mesa and the surrounding desert.

Lucy moved over to stand between two stone crenelations. “Perfect for archers.”

Andy couldn’t argue, especially considering the commanding view of the gate. “Yeah. Hate to be a bad guy trying to fight through that gate.” He glanced at Lucy. “I mean, if you were up here.”

Lucy nodded, smiling. “Can I move in?”

Andy glanced toward the trapdoor, where Bernice was helping someone Andy didn’t recognize off the ladder—someone from Tanque Verde, probably. Looking back at Lucy, he tilted his head to the side and asked, “Really?”

“I figure if I ask first, I can call dibs on the bigger space on the bottom.”

“But if we use it the way it’s intended, you’re going to have other people living in here with you. They’ll be sharing your, uh, kitchen, and…”

“I mean, if you let me pick my roommates, it won’t be so bad. I just think, well, if someone’s going to be here most of the time, it ought to be me, right? Like you said, if I was up here, I could do a lot of good if someone was trying to break in—more than any of the other archers in the community!”

“Well, I mean, I guess I don’t have a problem with—”

Andy’s words were cut short when a flutter of wings came to him, and he summoned his spear, swinging the tip toward the sound. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected—an attack from Seraphine, maybe—but what he saw brought an instant smile to his face; it was Lyta, the harpy matron. Her white wings flapped, and several feathers fell toward the ground as she squawked, fighting to gain footing between two crenelations. After a brief struggle, she pushed herself through, and regarded Andy with sharp, yellowish eyes.

Reflexively, Andy reached to his throat, reassuring himself that the translation necklace was there; Bella had returned it to him before the council meeting.

“Well, man-thing? Have you made this nest for me and mine? Are we to mate at last?”

“Ahem.” Lucy grabbed Andy’s arm. “Why’s she looking at you like that?”

Lyta cocked her head and made a clicking sound deep in her throat. “Did I anger the huntress?”

“Uh,” Andy chuckled, shaking his head. “Come on, Lyta. You know the deal we made; you can’t be trying to claim the men in our community—that includes me.”

Lyta strutted toward the trapdoor, her talons clicking as they gripped the stout timbers. Bernice shrank back as Lyta leaned toward her, sniffing and poking a taloned finger at her blouse. “Why is it you cover yourselves so?” Before Andy could respond, she looked at him and said, “Our bargain was struck before you made me this offering. I thought you were seeing things more clearly.”

“Andy?” Lucy asked, and Bernice stumbled back, blanching.

“Relax, everyone!” he said. “She’s just admiring the new tower. She, uh, thinks it would make a nice nest.”

Lucy frowned, shaking her head. “Andy, you can’t have an entire flock of harpies living right here by the gate, crowding for space in this tower. It’s going to be a mess!”

“What does the huntress say?” Lyta asked, and when she glanced at Lucy, Andy saw a flicker of doubt enter the harpy’s eyes. In fact, he thought her voice, when she said huntress, carried a distinct note of respect.

He decided to be blunt, capitalizing on the harpy’s apparent deference toward Lucy. “Well, Lyta, the huntress has claimed this tower. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind you visiting, even spending some time up here, but she doesn’t want your flock moving into it.”

Lucy squeezed his arm. “Andy, I didn’t…”

Lyta closed her eyes, ducked her head, spread her wings, and made a cooing sound. “Of course! This is her nest!”

“Um, what did she say?” Lucy asked.

At nearly the same time, Lyta asked, “She is not angry?”

“She’s not angry,” Andy said, chuckling as he realized it answered both of their questions. Hoping to change the topic and avoid having to translate back and forth, he asked, “Lyta, did you and your flock receive the message from the System? Are you worried about tomorrow?”

She straightened, reaching up to scrape a sharp tooth with one of her claw-like talons as she looked at Andy. “Why worry?”

“Well, there might be an invasion nearby.” Andy fought to keep from grinning when he saw Bernice and the others make a hasty exit down through the trapdoor behind Lyta.

“We will remain vigilant, but our eyes are yours, and your strength is ours.” She fluttered her wings in a way that Andy took to mean she was shrugging. “We saw the winged demon-woman fly away.”

He knew immediately what she meant. “You did? Did you see where she went?”

Lyta nodded. “Rexa was high in the air, hunting. She watched from a distance. The demon-woman has a home among the ugly man-things.”

“Ugly?” Andy could feel Lucy’s eyes on him and knew she wanted him to translate. He took her wrist, squeezing gently. “Just a minute, Luce.”

Lyta hissed, walked to the battlement, and spat over the side. “Ugly, cruel, and stupid. They wish to mate, but we won’t have them.” She shuddered, leaning against the stone, then turned, looking over her wing at him. “They’re too large!”

“Can you describe them?”

Lyta hissed again, looking at him like he was an idiot. “Man-things, but ugly. Twice your size—some have two heads, some have three arms. They stink, and they eat their prey alive. They worship the demon-woman in their cave.”

“How long have you known about her?”

Lyta narrowed her eyes as though she wondered if he’d suffered some sort of mental lapse. “Did I not say we saw her fly from here?”

“And you learned all this since? About the, uh, ugly man-things?”

“I said Rexa watched! When she arrived here, we thought she might be a friend to us—like the demons who live here.”

Andy realized she was talking about Jace and his sisters. “They aren’t demons, Lyta, and the lady is different.”

“We know. When the huntress chased her, we knew better.”

“You saw that?”

Lyta stepped closer and placed her hand on Andy’s shoulder, gently scratching her talons against his drake-hide coat. “Are you well, land-loper? Is your mind damaged?”

Andy smiled despite himself. “I get it: Rexa saw.”

“Yes!”

“Can you show us where the winged demon-lady is?”

Lyta smiled, exposing a dozen sharp teeth. “Yes!”

Andy felt his fist tighten on his spear, and he sent it into his ring, trying to shake the hot rush of excitement off. He wanted to go after Seraphine that very second, but there were things he needed to handle with the settlement first. Besides, he’d be a fool to go alone—wouldn’t he? “Lyta, please wait for me at the grove down by the water. I’ll probably want to go after her soon.”

Lyta smiled, nodding. “And for me?” She looked pointedly at his waist.

“Not that,” Andy said with a chuckle. “I’ll think of something—a treasure of one kind or another.”

Lyta looked like she was going to argue, but then she glanced at Lucy and nodded, ducking her head and cooing as she moved to a gap in the crenelations. “I will await you.” With that, she dove off the tower’s edge, flapped her wings, and glided away from the settlement.

Lucy folded her arms over her chest and cocked an eyebrow at Andy. “I think I know what that was all about, but you better go over it with me, anyway.”

Later, after Andy had filled in the gaps on Lyta’s side of the conversation, Lucy walked to the trapdoor and stepped onto the ladder. As she started down, she said, “I’m guessing you want to go after Seraphine, even though we might have an invasion on our doorstep tomorrow?”

Andy followed her onto the ladder and down to the stairwell landing. It was strange, he thought, that the stairwell didn’t just go all the way to the top of the tower. Was it a defensive thing? Was it easier to defend a trapdoor than a doorway? He supposed the tower’s defenders could go to the top and pull the ladder up after them if enemies got inside. “I think it’s kind of because of the possible invasion that I want to finish our business with her.”

“I get it,” Lucy replied as they descended the spiral stair. “You don’t want her threat hanging over you if you have other threats cropping up.”

Andy nodded. “I was thinking about it a lot, to be honest. When I knew she was out there scheming, I got to thinking how things might go if she found an ally among the invaders. What if there’s a hostile monster species that comes through one of those portals? What if she can get them to work with her like she has the trolls, the goblins, and whatever the ugly man-things are?”

When they reached the bottom level, Lucy took his hand and tugged him toward the door. Her grip was tight, almost like she didn’t want to risk him slipping off without her. She confirmed the notion with her words, “Let’s go take care of the Boon Point, then, because if you think you’re running off alone again, you’re sorely mistaken.”

Andy let her pull him along, past the crowd outside the tower and toward the entrance to the underground. He wasn’t going to argue with her; he’d learned a valuable lesson when he’d been trapped in Seraphine’s glass box. If he hadn’t lucked into the Axiomancy Codex, there was a very real chance he’d still be in there. “Yeah, don’t worry, Luce. I figure you won’t be the only one who wants to join me on the hunt.”