Tiffany Trent: The Unnaturalists

The armored creatures moved through the train car, shaking people out of their quilts. They either shoved the Tinkers toward their compatriots at one end of the car or skewered them. It was only when the blood started to flow that the screaming began. Syrus watched in horror as his cousin Amalthea was pierced and tossed aside while her mother wailed.

Wicked dancing shadows lit the broken panes and dark stains that spread among the quilts on the floor. Granny Reed stood and thrust a rolled blanket into the stove. She lunged toward the nearest Guard, trying to set his feathered head afire, but he turned his long pike on her before she reached him, slitting a dark line from chest to navel. He shoved her body aside, then stamped out the flaming quilt with an armored foot.

“Nainai,” Syrus breathed. He was too shocked to yell. He patted his chest all over again for the summoning stone, but the toad mocked him.

“More will die, unless those eligible for Refinery work come quietly with us,” one of the Guards said in his spiritless voice.

Someone spat. Otherwise, all Syrus heard was labored breathing and hushed weeping.

“Syrus,” his Uncle Gen whispered. “Get out of here before they take you or kill you—do you understand?”

Syrus was about to protest, but then saw the glint of a curved dagger under his uncle’s sleeve. Most Tinkers slept with their weapons outside their doors; it was too dangerous to have weapons among a nest of children and babies and grandmothers. But when Syrus thought of how easily the Guard had entered and slain so many before they’d even had a chance to wake, he wished with all his might he’d kept his dagger and dart pipe.

His uncle shook his wrist gently. “Do you understand?” he repeated.

Syrus nodded.

“Out that window there,” Uncle Gen said, tilting his head toward it. “And go warn the others if they’ve not already been captured. There hasn’t been a Cull like this since your parents were taken. We’ve gotten soft.”

“But—” Syrus started to say.

The Raven Guard waded toward them.

“Now!” his uncle hissed.

Syrus slithered toward the wall. Hoping none of the Guard would notice, he tugged at the end of a leather flap that had been loosely nailed over a broken window.

His hopes were quickly dashed when a blast of energy sizzled right next to his hand. The only fortunate thing about it was that it blew the leather clean off the window.

“Go now!” Uncle Gen shouted. Syrus saw his uncle throw his dagger, even as a blast of energy took him down. Syrus dove through the window, rolling on the hard, cold ground. As he crouched by a rusting wheel, he realized the Guard had used their pikes merely for effect. Their real weapons were the thunderbusses.

He ran to the next train car and the next, thankful each time that they were empty. The others must have heard and slunk off to the Forest. He was glad they’d escaped, but he was angry, too. Angry that no one had come to help his family, that Granny Reed and Uncle Gen, aunts and tiny cousins had been murdered in their beds. He gritted his teeth against sobs.

Truffler shuffled along behind him, making frightened noises. He turned to the hob as he headed toward the Forest. “Hide,” he hissed. “You don’t want them to find you and collect you, do you?”

It was then he heard the clanking footsteps behind him. He deeply regretted again that he had hung up his dart pipe in the entryway to the passenger car like everyone else. He wondered what must have happened to the summoning stone the Architect had given him—most likely one of his cousins had managed to steal it. All he was left with was the toad, the toad that Granny Reed had said would bring down trouble. He had to wonder if something he’d done—stealing the toad, helping the Architects—had brought this Cull down on his clan. Best not think on that now.

The Raven Guard was just behind him—Syrus sensed the scrape of metal through the tossing trees, the vague scent of guano and rust over the forest loam as the wind changed direction. The Guard didn’t call or taunt; his threat was in his steadiness of purpose, a purpose given by the Empress in her Tower. Syrus knew the Guard would find him and destroy him or bundle him off to the Refinery with the rest of his clan.

Syrus found the low mound by memory rather than sight. It rose like a giant, bracken-covered turtle shell through the trees. He knew he’d arrived by the smell—the odor of carrion and cat piss was strong. He thought he heard the Guard slow, as if he too had caught the scent and had suddenly become unsure. Faint ticking issued from the mouth of the mound.

Syrus swung up into a tree, climbing as fast as he could before the Guard fully entered the clearing. Two swift, sharp sounds— tink, tank —and the Guard was on his knees. Spines in his feathered neck and the shoulder joint of his armor glinted with their own deadly light.

Then, the great maned head emerged and before the Guard could shriek, he disappeared into the Manticore’s maw.

Syrus clutched the tree, gasping. A sharp breeze rattled the dry leaves. He looked down, and a face peered up at him through the trees—a wide, razor-toothed face that was all the more horrible for its very human grin.

And all along there was that ticking, as of a muffled clock. Or a faintly beating heart.

Thank you, the Manticore said. I was quite hungry . Her voice was liquid silver, exquisite as the Harpy’s.

“You’re . . . you’re welcome,” Syrus stuttered.

You may come down now, boy, the Manticore said. Fierce red energy pulsed around her. Her power scorched his feet and he wondered that the tree didn’t shrivel into ashes.

He clutched the trunk tight and said, “You . . . uh . . . sure you’re full? ’Cause there’s plenty more where that one came from in the trainyard, and I wouldn’t mind you having your fill of them.”

The Manticore chuckled. I will not eat you, if that is what you fear.

“Well, let’s just say I want to make certain you don’t change your mind. I’m sure I’m a mite more tasty than one of them old Guards.”

That is most likely true, the Manticore conceded. The creature sat on her haunches, the shadow of her barbed tail curving around her paws. Still, you are far less edible because you are much more interesting .

“Eh?”

I take it there has been a Cull, the Manticore said.

Syrus nodded, then realized the Manticore mightn’t be able to see him. “Yes,” he said. He began his descent, picking and choosing until he came to the last branch just a few feet from the Manticore’s smiling jaws.

“All my family were taken or killed,” Syrus said.

The Manticore’s eyes were like two small moons as she looked up at him. All my family have been taken or killed, too.

Syrus remembered another old tale Granny used to tell—about Lord Virulen killing the Manticore’s child long ago on a Hunt. Anger flared like white-hot lightning. “Then why don’t you do something about it?” he shouted. The rational part of him realized he had just sassed the Manticore and that she could kill him with a well-placed barb from her tail if she chose. He shrank against the trunk again.

Instead, she laughed, as if she read his mind. You may as well come down.

He considered, figured there was nothing left to lose, and slithered down to land square on his bum in front of her giant paws.

He had never been this close to her before; he had only seen her at a rare distance whenever the clans made their offerings at the edge of her clearing. He looked up at her in awe. Red light pulsed around her heart. But it was no ordinary heart. Cross-hatched with wires and hoses and gears, it sang out its rhythm like a clock. Something was scrawled on it in the old language that Granny had taught him; the characters read: ENDURANCE .