Kindred and Wings by Philippa Ballantine Read Free Book Online Page B

Equo felt a little twinge of jealousy. The Vaerli shook herself as if she were a suddenly soaked cat, and leaned back. “That is as may be, but she has not been revealed in a thousand years, so we have to go on with what we have.”
    “And what we have is bugger all,” Varlesh muttered. “You seers are always rabbiting on with never a bloody point.”
    The moment turned abruptly quiet again, and Equo wondered if the other man had pushed a little too far. Finally, the seer laughed, breaking the tension. “Then let me make this plain, old friend: there is one thing that Si and I agree on. One thing we have seen. If Conhaero is to survive the coming destruction, your people, the Ahouri, must rise and be as they were.”
    “Crone’s nails!” Varlesh’s pipe snapped suddenly in his grip, while Equo leapt up as if scalded. Si alone remained calm; the only sign he had even heard her was a slight tilt of his head.
    Equo pushed aside the tent flap and glanced frantically left and right, but luckily no one was nearby. Turning back, he grabbed Nyree’s arm, fingers digging into her flesh. “To even say that name, to even think it . . .” He stopped, shook his head, and then glared at her. “You must be insane!”
    Nyree looked up at him as if he was a complete stranger, and under his palm a sudden heat bloomed. Equo felt it as if it were his own flesh burning—which in a way it was. He did not let go, though, stubborn in his absolute fear of the Ahouri being discovered. His jaw clenched tight, but after a minute Nyree smiled and laid her hand over his. She had made her point.
    “It is time, Equo.” Her voice was low and soft, but there was no mistaking the steel at its very core. “Your people have lain hidden for far too long, and now they must come out of the shadows. All of the races of Conhaero must stand together when the Conflagration comes. The White Void will not be ignored.”
    “The shadows are all we have, woman,” Varlesh barked, flicking the remains of his pipe into the corner of the tent. “If we come out, if we show ourselves, then what your own people suffered will look like a picnic by comparison. Do you think we did this terrible thing to ourselves without consideration? Do you think that we went to ground lightly?”
    Equo couldn’t stand to see his other third and his love argue like this—even if voices had not yet become raised. He stepped between them and took Nyree’s hand. “The Ahouri were peaceful people, so we would bring nothing to this war of Baraca’s. It is not in our nature.”
    She squeezed his hand, and locked her star-filled eyes with his. “It is not for the war that they are needed, dear heart. It is for something far grander and more important. Unity. The people of Conhaero must be united. Surely you know how wrong it is to be separate?”
    They stared at each other for a long time before Varlesh, pulling out a fresh new pipe from his pocket, grunted. “You two can bloody hold hands all you like, but by the maid’s fair touch, you will not get the Ahouri involved merely by batting your eyelashes at him.”
    “You can find them, though,” Nyree’s pitch black eyes gleamed with little pinpricks of light that appeared to be moving. “You know where they are.” It was not a question, it was a statement of fact.
    “They still sing to us—in our dreams we can hear them.” Si’s voice low, musical, and infrequent, broke through to his brethren.
    Equo felt his breath freeze in his chest. Such a sensation of peace stole over him that for a moment he couldn’t even feel if Nyree’s hand remained in his own. The rest of the world dimmed in the face of this hint of a remembered feeling: utter calm. It was the sensation that he could only recall in dreams; knowledge that he was whole.
    Just one glance across the other parts of him—Si and Varlesh—and he knew that they had felt it too. This whisper of the past surely could not be ignored.
    Varlesh cleared his throat and