Ash Rising Read online

  Ash Rising

  By Katya Lebeque

  Copyright © 2018 by Katya Lebeque

  Worldsmith Press

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by mechanical or electronic means without express written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations for purposes of book reviews and critiques only whereby the author has been notified.

  Cover art: R.J. Palmer Design & Illustration

  A note from the Author

  The next instalment in the Ash series will be available soon: Ashes Slowly Fall

  Readers of Ash Rising can get a special discount on the sequel, which has a special Halloween launch planned. Simply visit www.katyalebeque.com and fill in your email address when the lightbox appears to offer you your free chapter sample. This will entitle you to your copy of Ashes Slowly Fall before it’s even available to the public at the massively discounted price of $0,99.

  Hope to see you there!

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One – An Overgrown Miracle

  Chapter Two – Land Sakes

  Chapter Three – Mystery Girl

  Chapter Four – Unheard-of Madness

  Chapter Five – Blood Sister

  Chapter Six – The Problem

  Chapter Seven – The Memory of Water

  Chapter Eight – Strained Relations

  Chapter Nine – Bad Things Happen in Three’s

  Chapter Ten – Magick Something Up

  Chapter Eleven – Fairy Tales

  Chapter Twelve – Punishable by Death & All That

  Chapter Thirteen – Be Water

  Chapter Fourteen – In the Bedchamber

  Chapter Fifteen – Long Live the King

  Chapter Sixteen – Worse Things

  Chapter Seventeen – Stranger in a Dress

  Chapter Eighteen – Put this Pain Away

  Chapter Nineteen – Do Something

  Chapter Twenty – Door to Door

  Chapter Twenty-One – Under Attack

  Chapter Twenty-Two – The Shoe Must Fit

  Chapter Twenty-Three – A Proposal

  Acknowledgements

  Free Sample: Ashes Slowly Fall

  One Last Thing…

  About The Author

  The bird moves like a scythe through the air.

  The black wing tips cut through the dead blue sky with little resistance, moving silently as a whispered threat. Anything it preys on now will not hear, will not see danger until wrapped in the tangle of sword-like claws. All they may feel is a chill as the black feathered mass blocks out the sun.

  Only its shadow, big as a tree, gives it away.

  The bird is looking. Hungrier and emptier are the days now, between kills. There is less of everything now. In the beginning of its new largeness, there were wingless two-leggers everywhere, almost the only things enough to satisfy the craving for meat. The bird felt a sparkling explosion of animalistic joy the first time it dove into one with its beak, the fingers still twitching.

  It still does not fully understand how the tall gods of all its life and the birds before it suddenly became squirming pale things far below on the ground, scurrying to and fro enchantingly as if in some game. It does not care how now. The flesh is sweet and easy to cut through once one is caught and that heady redness to drink in drives out all thought except for more.

  Chapter One

  An overgrown miracle

  Where were they?

  Ash pressed her back against the crumbling limestone archway and glared hard into the blue.

  She didn’t particularly feel like dying today more than any other day, so she looked again. But the sky was empty of oversized wings. Empty of rain too.

  A noise came from some other field or gardens in the estate. In spite of herself, a girlish gasp of fright escaped her lips.

  Ash silently cursed herself, told herself to toughen up, but her gasp had a point. It was not good, this, venturing out when you couldn’t see them. But what choice did she have? There was nothing left. Ash pictured it in her mind, to give her courage: the last measly handful of lentils, barely enough to keep one of them from starvation. Vanita’s face flashed before her eyes. That did it. She hoisted her crossbow over a shoulder and darted out before sense could stop her.

  As soon as she was out in the open, it was easy to remember that her childhood home was gone. Rhodopalais looked eerie in the grey morning light, with red scrawls of mob profanities graffitied on the walls, the withered remains of mazes lying under the sightless gaze of vandalised statues, staring not at their own missing limbs but out at the pinkening sky. At one point, Vanita had been able to recite every stony ancestor in amongst the statues, for all that they weren’t hers, much to the amusement of Ash’s father as Stepmother trotted her out for garden parties. It made Ash feel uncomfortable and small to think of it – fine-born ladies in silken flounces and masks tittering through these same mazes, then perfumed with gardenias and imported sage, as some of the most powerful men of the country chased after them. All were gone now, everyone dead and only she remained. Why?

  She looked away and saw that the wall nearest the entry hall of the main drive had a new message today. ‘Nobil pigs R 4 eeting’ someone had written in someone or something else’s blood. Ash sighed, trying to let go of the flare of anger at someone defacing the home she’d lived in her whole life. Hey, at least the poor were expressing themselves. Not that there was any rich or poor anymore.

  This was not helping. Ash turned and walked out from the ghost of flowerbeds and onto the main drive and tried to focus herself on the morning ahead. She imagined herself a planet, layers of hardness that had built up over time around an iron core. Standing in this haunted place brought cracks to the surface she could not allow. She deliberately picked up her pace, her mind clearing of its own accord as potential death got closer the further she stepped away from the safety of the house.

  Then, footsteps the gravel that were not her own.

  She smiled to herself but did not slow her pace. “Honestly Derrick, people have been shot for less,” she whispered over her shoulder, a small lilt in her voice.

  “One day, just one, I’ll manage to sneak up on you.”

  “Well, not today. Come here.”

  The two stood alone and small on the gravel, what was left of a once grand estate behind them. They took each other’s hands as ones who had spent a lifetime in friendship and looked each other in the eye to say the thing they said every time before hunting now:

  “What is our promise?”

  “Only one of us is allowed to die.”

  “I will take care of Vanita and Stepmother and all the house, if you’re gone.”

  “And I will take care of it all as if I were you if you’re gone.”

  “I promise.”

  “I promise.”

  “Great. Let’s go.”

  They moved fast, homemade crossbows high as they darted across the dead ground, past the rusted trampled things that had once been imposing gates of gilded fleur-de-lis.

  Ash’s heart was hammering in her ribs, the way it always did. Carriors. She tried to think of something else. But her mind kept coming back to the size of them and the way they tore through flesh like hot butter before their victims had even died. And their sheer heat as they stood over you, cocking their heads from side to side.

  She had learned a trick in the two long years since the winged nightmares had replaced their normal birds. She slowed her pace, much as it seemed like suicide and as she moved Ash leaned into the fear, not away from it. Instead of a random person being torn apart she pictured it being Derrick. Instead of herself dying in those foul claws she pictured Vanita there. And the red-hot horror of those imaginin
gs solidified to the icy rage she needed on a hunt.

  Everyone died by carrior. Everyone. Today or tomorrow or the next day, they would get you somehow. But not her, not today. Not while Derrick and her family were still breathing and needed their bellies filled.

  “So, what do you think we’ll find today?” asked Derrick on cue.

  Ash grunted. “Near death experiences, I suppose. Not hopeful for an amazing haul. You saw when last there were rain clouds it would be –”

  Ash broke off. Or rather, just forgot to carry on speaking. Because they had come up a mound of dead grass and she was looking directly at a pumpkin.

  A giant pumpkin.

  They had scarcely gone half a mile but there it was, standing on its own in the veld-like expanse that had once been green. A pumpkin the size of a doorway.

  “One of the overgrown Expansion Project vegetables,” she whispered, not entirely sure why she was doing so.

  “It’s an overgrown miracle, is what it is. Everyone knows there’s no Expansion vegetables left, we wouldn’t be starving if there were. And for none of the mob or birds to have got here first… An absolute miracle. Not a good haul today, eh?” Derrick grinned at her.

  But Ash’s mind was already whirring. “Derrick, we could get killed for a treasure like this. Keep your voice down. We’ll need to cut its stalk and get out of here quick.” It had been so long since she had seen one of the freakishly engorged vegetables of the Expansion Project. She couldn’t stop looking at it, half convinced that if she looked away it would vanish.

  Still, it was real beneath her hand when they went up to touch it. Derrick whistled. “Indeed - a pumpkin fit for Cinderella.”

  Ash snorted, too loudly in the dry air. It was ludicrous to connect the very thing that had poisoned the ground with some social-climbing dead celebrity from a time when problems consisted of who to marry.

  Still, it was a miracle. How was it even still there? After the Expansion Project failed, all the neighbouring estates had sent staff out for weeks to gather up the last of the gigantically deformed produce. Then their elderly and then the children. Until there was no one left to send. Were they the only household left? It was impossible to know. No one ventured outside anymore, because of the birds.

  As if she had summoned them with her mind, Derrick‘s voice rang out.

  “Carrior!”

  Ash turned away from the pumpkin, just in time to see giant talons coming in for her face.

  Before she had time to think, instinct threw her to the ground. Claws the colour and size of poisonous coral snakes landed next to her head.

  Pidgeon, her mind told her, her body still numb with terror as the bird passed so close that a gust of cold wind blew over her face. Coral legs mean pigeon, her mind insisted again and she willed herself to get up. Shakily, she propped herself up on elbows and looked.

  It was a pigeon - that was lucky. The pigeon carriors had become large from feeding off the Expansion grain while it had lasted and technically weren’t supposed to eat meat, unlike the scavenger carriors like crows that had taken a liking to humans. The pigeons were among the dumbest kinds of carriors, but that didn’t mean they weren’t dangerous. Ash had seen plenty of surprised-looking corpses out in the fields that had been crushed to death by being landed on by one of these horse-sized oafs, who would try peck at the body, fail and swoop off again, leaving its kill for the scavengers. Still, at least they were dumb.

  The massive bird was in profile to her now, facing Derrick. It bobbed its head and looked at him with yellow-green eyes. For a moment, Ash felt a small wave of awe go through her. The big pest, so commonplace when it was ankle-height that she had never really looked at it, was magnificent. Within its feathers were flashes of iridescent pinks, lilacs and greens and the smoky grey plumage on its head gave way to downy lighter grey feathers the colour of clouds, dappled on its wings like a horse’s flanks.

  Then it pecked at Derrick’s shoulder, cooing monstrously and the spell was broken. With a winded sound, he fell over backwards. Quickly, Ash readied her crossbow and planted her elbows more firmly into the cracked earth. She breathed out slowly once, twice, then readied her aim. The carrior was about to come at Derrick again and that was good. It was distracted, it’s heart area exposed. Ash twitched her finger, let her iron bolt fly and felt the meaty ring of satisfaction in her own chest as it pierced straight through the side of the bird.

  She must have hit a lung, for it gurgled monstrously without any piercing shriek, then crashed gracelessly to the ground. It was silly after all this time, but she always felt the twistings of guilt in her gut after she’d made a kill. This one had its long neck contorted backward and its eyes closed. Ash did not really want to, but she found herself looking at the soft, downy feathers on the bird’s chest and how they were interrupted by the ugly dark bolt of iron she’d put there. It almost looked helpless.

  Derrick was hovering in that way he had, massaging the shoulder the pigeon had pecked. “We should get the body back for eating.”

  Ash shook her head, still looking down at the poor creature. “I know we can’t be picky about meat nowadays, but we have to choose. The carrior made a noise when it fell, people will be here soon. There will only be time to make off with one before any mobs come. A measly six of us won’t eat this whole bird today - what if the carrior attracts Expansion-sized maggots? Plus, the bird would require plucking and cooking. Who is going to help, Vanita?” She snorted at the idea. “No, I think the priority is the pumpkin.” They both looked over at the huge orange globe again and Derrick nodded.

  It took the better part of two hours to hack the rope-like stem, find thick enough wood to act as a lever and then finally roll their find onto its side. In silence, the strange procession began: the girl with a crossbow and expectations of only bad things, circling the boy rolling the giant orange sphere like something out of a fairy tale.

  Today, it seemed, they would be fed.

  Chapter Two

  Land Sakes

  The sun was high in the sky when they made it back.

  Old Merta was at the kitchen’s work table already, her threadbare smock’s sleeves rolled up to her elbows. If life had continued, Ash would have been there next to her, making the nobles’ pies for the day with no one depending on her for anything other than a pastry glaze. She felt a momentary flare of resentment to the birds that life had gone this way. She felt its heat, then let it pass. There was no time to wish she didn’t have to be strong for everyone else.

  Old Merta was already in fine form anyway, huffing and puffing over the miniscule food portion she was working, her white hair escaping its cap. Her hair was the only thing in the world Old Merta couldn’t control. Everything else saw sense and listened to her.

  “Last of the lentils,” she said by way of conversation as Ash and Derrick trudged in. Like most houses, they had given up the frivolous luxury of eating every day when no one knew when food would come next. Ash remembered her and Old Merta scraping with their fingernails in the kitchen’s hearth just two nights ago, after Tansy had spilled twenty-three precious lentils into the ash by accident. They had scratched and scraped until their fingers were bloody and the moon was high in the sky, until they had salvaged every last precious lentil for one more day’s eating.

  “And no barley at all,” Old Merta was saying. “What I’ll make after this I –” she stopped mid-sentence at the look on Ash’s face. “What is it?”

  “Breakfast, lunch and supper too,” said Derrick, grinning. “Come and see.”

  “Land sakes!” Merta’s usually impressive poker face melted at the sight of the thing. “Well, that’ll need some cutting up.”

  There was lentil and pumpkin soup that morning, which tasted wonderfully exotic to Ash. She slurped down the sweetness almost without breathing. Then she set about her ironwork.

  Only a few months ago, she and Derrick had found the bizarre, coal-like clumps of iron that the crazed ground was producing, the only thing
to have come out of it since the Expansion Project. Only a few months and yet it had meant the difference between death and survival for them because Derrick had made them both crossbows out of odds and ends. Then he and Ash had learnt how to carve crude crossbow bolts and other weaponry to use on the carriors, talking about it and talking as the food supply dwindled. Finally, one day, the food had been gone for a few days, but the alcohol hadn’t. So, they had had a drink, taken their homemade weapons and gone out to hunt. Then they had gone again.

  It was a way to last a while longer.

  Beneath her kitchen cap, Old Merta threw Ash a disdainful glance. “That’s not very ladylike,” she sniffed, mostly because the pumpkin had put her in a good mood.

  “It’s a good thing I’m not a lady anymore then, isn’t it?” Ash retorted without looking up.

  “Still… what will you two do with the time now? There’s no need to go out foraging for at least a week, no foraging means no new iron needed or weapons making and all that. The pair of you, honestly! A groom in a house what’s got no horses and a cook’s assistant when there’s no food - who leaves the cook on her own most of the day, mind. So, what’ll you do?”

  It wasn’t something Ash had even considered once in the hours of rolling the pumpkin to Rhodopalais. After months of scrounging for the barest minimum of food, the pile of voluptuous cut-up pumpkin flesh seemed too vividly orange to be real, even though they had only cut off the barest chunk. Tansy – the one scullery maid still alive – had actually cried at the sight of it.

  “Perhaps I could teach you a couple of pumpkin recipes.” Old Merta’s eyes crinkled at the corners. “With the world not needing saving for the next couple of days, you can finally get back to what you always wanted to do – train to be a cook.”