The Battle Sylph by L. J. McDonald Page A

end of the lane,” she told him instead. “There’s a house with a blue rooster weathervane on the roof. We have to hide there.”
    Heyou nodded and increased his speed, blurring down the lane. They blew through an intersection, making a cart horse rear, and then they arrived. Heyou vaulted the waisthigh fence.
    Solie clung to him, shaking. “I didn’t know you were so fast,” she gasped, her fright sufficient to keep his ardor down, at least long enough to put her back on her feet.
    “Sorry,” he apologized.
    Solie stumbled a few feet off, shaking, and the door at the back of the house opened, an old man shuffling out with a pipe. Heyou growled at him. The old man started, nearly dropping his pipe as he was hit with the full force of Heyou’s hate. But he was male and near Heyou’s queen. He was a threat. He needed to be destroyed.
    Solie slapped the battler across the back of the head. “Stop that!” She hurried forward. “Please, Mr. Chole, you have to hide us!”
    “F-from what?” the old man stammered, staring at Heyou in terror.
    “Please, there’s no time,” she begged. Heyou had moved like the wind, but he had probably attracted attention, and someone could easily have seen them come into this yard. Also, the bakery wasn’t far away. Her father might pass here and see her while she was standing and arguing.
    Heyou looked at her and back the way they’d come. He could feel the man they’d fled approaching—easy to destroy,but his queen had given an order. He swallowed his hate and turned to the old man. “Please let us in,” he said.
    It helped, the softness of his voice. The old man looked between Heyou and Solie, at first confused, but then he relented. “Come in,” he sighed at last, shuffling back.
    Solie hurried past, brushing his arm as she did, and Heyou stepped up into the doorway to stop and stare at the man. He held on to his hate for his queen’s sake, but the old man saw the challenge in his eyes and shuddered, looking away. Heyou nodded and went inside, mollified for the moment.
    The interior of the cottage was tiny, the furnishings worn but well maintained. Mr. Chole closed the door and came in, careful to keep well clear of Heyou and, Heyou noted with satisfaction, Solie as well. “What’s going on?” he asked uncertainly, eyes downcast. Heyou glared at him and glanced to his queen.
    She rubbed her hands together uncertainly. “My aunt sent us here. Masha? She runs the bakery.” The old man nodded in recognition, and Solie took a deep breath. “She said you’d hide us. My father is looking for me. He wants me to accept an arranged marriage.”
    Chole looked like he wanted to laugh, but a glance at Heyou dissuaded him. “You can hide here,” he grumbled.
    “Thank you!” Solie gasped. “Thank you so much!” She went to hug the man, but Heyou growled. The old man jumped back. Solie glared. “Calm down, Heyou!”
    Heyou decided he had liked it better at the bakery, with all the women.
    Chole offered Solie his attic, there being a tiny straw tick there for her to use, and Heyou the floor in the main room. He then went out to see what was happening with her father, leaving Solie in the kitchen with a washbasin of lukewarm water and an old comb.
    Sighing, she looked at the tepid water and slipped off her dress. She’d bathed at the hot springs but hadn’t washed her hair and had fallen asleep before doing a really thorough job. That hot water was missed as she knelt and wet a cloth, using it and a bar of soap on her body. Starting on her hair, she found it horribly tangled, and she couldn’t help a short sob as she pulled the comb through, yanking tufts of hair loose to drop on the floor. Everything else started coming down on her then: yesterday’s marriage announcement, which she hadn’t even been warned about first, the kidnapping by the king’s soldiers, the ritual where she’d nearly died and Heyou killed everyone else, their flight, coming here, finding out