A Respite From Storms Read online

Kuura went on, “Do you honestly believe he would take a child into battle with him?”

  “I’m not—”

  “If anything were to happen to you, his honor—it would be in tatters.”

  “But he said …”

  Except—maybe he hadn’t said at all. Maybe Jasen was putting words in other people’s mouths. Maybe Longwell’s battle was his alone, and Jasen was never to be a part of it. Maybe, like Jasen, Longwell’s revenge must be exacted by himself, no one else—and to let Jasen along, hurt and angry and ready to commit his own murder, would prevent him from achieving vengeance the way Longwell envisioned it.

  So he had left.

  He had gone, departed the Lady Vizola, after his promises—promises that maybe he had never made, but Jasen believed in them nevertheless, had been fueled for days by them—

  And Jasen was alone again, with no direction and with these two people who cared for him, yes, but who believed he was a child, engaged in a child’s folly … that he was doomed to fail.

  No.

  He couldn’t.

  He had to find Baraghosa. Had to.

  He must be here. He must.

  So, wheeling Scourgey around, he leaned forward—pointing toward the center of the city, where it rose another level—

  “Go,” he told Scourgey.

  “Jasen, what are you—” Alixa began.

  The rest of her words were lost, though. Scourgey bounded forward, carrying Jasen deep into the crowds.

  “Baraghosa!” he shouted, a piercing roar that cut through the chaos like a thunderclap. “Baraghosa!”

  On and on, he shouted. Scourgey wove through them, deft on her feet. Impossibly twisted though her body was, the spine too curved, the opposite of streamlined, she moved with surprising finesse. The crowd made way for her with cries of shock or fear or disgust, or just plain irritation at this boy and his beast sprinting through the city. Where people did not shift in time, Scourgey bounded through gaps between, springing left and right to carve a path before Jasen even registered them.

  Again and again, he shouted Baraghosa’s name. His gaze roved, desperately, at the faces moving past. Woman. Man. Man. Man. Child. Woman. Woman. Man. Woman. Indeterminate, but not Baraghosa. Just a fraction of a second to take them in now—yet still he searched.

  He was here. He must be.

  “BARAGHOSA!”

  Up the steps, to the next level.

  Were Alixa and Kuura following?

  He did not look back for them. He could only go forward, pressing closer to the city’s heart, here in the shadows of the Aiger Cliffs.

  Smells flowed over him, glimpsed and gone before he could fully process them. A flowerseller had a stall overloaded with bouquets. A tangy burst of sweetness clouded the air, and he and Scourgey surged through it, the scent mixing with the scourge’s rotten aroma—the same deathly stench that had assailed him from over the boundary’s edge, carried on a strangely hot wind when the air blew in from the mountains just right.

  He was used to it now. Barely did he think of it.

  Something meaty—gone before he could identify it. Nothing like Terreas’s cookfires.

  “BARAGHOSA!!”

  Buildings passed, the smallest bigger than Terreas’s largest. White stone; grey stone; neat thatch, pale yellow, like new … nothing like the aged roofs back home, long in need of replacement.

  Back home.

  He had no home now.

  And—

  “BARAGHOSA!”

  —had taken it from him.

  He screamed his throat raw, drawing eyes to him, eye after eye that he looked into, then moved on from, as though discarding that person.

  Not Baraghosa. Not Baraghosa. Not Baraghosa.

  He had to be here. Had to be, in this strange place that Jasen had longed to visit without having ever heard of, had dreamed of his whole life without knowing the first thing about it.

  Baraghosa had brought him here—and Jasen hated him for it, just like he hated this place, hated it for no reason other than that it was not home, his house was nowhere on these streets or even upon this land, and Adem Rabinn, his father, was not waiting for him to come home, with a mother whose amulet bounced against his chest with every breath he took, every lungful he sucked into a scratched, pained throat, not to keep breathing but simply to shout that name, to find the man who had done this awful thing …

  “BARAGHOSA!” he roared. “BARAGHOSA!” Through a throng collected outside a hall, the entrance wide open, upper level overhanging and supported by pillars. “BARAGHOSAAAA!”

  “Wait!”

  Scourgey thundered to a stop, as if she had understood it.

  She wheeled around.

  A man was pushing his way out of the small gathering in front of the hall. Light-skinned, his hair had been blonde once. Now it was turning a faint greyish-white color. Lines spilled out from the corners of his eyes and down an apprehensive face.

  “Did you say ‘Baraghosa’?” he asked.

  Jasen dropped off of Scourgey. “Yes,” he said. “I seek him. Do you know where he is?”

  “Not right now.”

  Jasen’s stomach dropped.

  Yet this man, almost timid-looking, not just in his expression but the very way he held himself, slight and slightly slumped, barely any taller than Jasen … he had reached out for Jasen as he passed.

  “You know something, though,” Jasen said. “Don’t you?”

  The man cast a backward look. The people outside the hall remained in their clusters. Some looked at him, most not.

  Speaking lower, the man said, “I am a councillor here.” He said it almost conspiratorially, as if being a public servant was some great secret that he was entrusting to Jasen.

  “What do you know?” His heart was thudding hard in his chest. It banged against the base of his throat too, sending nauseating spikes through his stomach.

  The man hesitated. Another backward look.

  When he glanced back to Jasen, he opened his mouth and closed it without saying a word.

  He looked away.

  “Please,” Jasen whispered. “Tell me. I need to find him.”

  The man gripped the back of his neck. He squeezed, looking pained.

  He edged a half-step back. “I should …”

  “No,” Jasen breathed, closing the gap again. “Please. I must find him. What is it you know?”

  The seconds were long. With each, this tantalising hope drifted farther away.

  “Please,” he whispered—begged.

  The man bit his bottom lip.

  He leaned forward. “None of us are very happy about it, you see.”

  Jasen nodded, kept silent, fighting desperately not to press—not to disrupt him now he was opening up, spilling this secret.

  “He came through here two days ago, spoke to the council. He … made a request. Most of us voted against it,” he said, and the sentence warbled with a nervous laugh. Those fingers working the back of his neck pressed harder, fighting a knot. “But we were overridden. He offered good compensation to the Aiger Cliffs—a donation—so …”

  “What did he want?” Jasen asked.

  “Use of the conduction fields.”

  So Stanislaus had been right.

  But that was two days ago.

  Jasen’s stomach dropped a half-inch. “Has he used them already?”

  The man shook his head. “No.” He glanced away, around, looking for listeners.

  Meeting Jasen’s eyes again, he said, “But he will.”

  “When?”

  The man answered, one word that sent Jasen’s heart into overdrive:

  “Tonight.”

  16

  Alixa and Kuura had followed. They caught up as Jasen was chatting with Councillor Drue, who had to nervously reiterate what he’d told Jasen. By this time he was increasingly itchy to get away and kept shifting from foot to foot and looking about, more of his attention on the surrounding street than the people he was talking to. Kuura gr
anted him leave after just a handful of questions, to which Drue’s answers were vague—how much compensation Baraghosa had offered, what he might be doing in the conduction fields, and why tonight was the night of choice considering he had been in the Aiger Cliffs for days now.

  Grateful for his escape, Drue scuttled away and disappeared.

  Now Jasen sat with Kuura and Alixa at the front of a tavern. A round wooden table was erected outside, on the street. Though several around it had been occupied, they emptied when the three sat down—probably something to do with Scourgey’s smell. Definitely, considering the fact that the barmaid had said quite firmly, “Do not sit in here with that wretched thing. You’ll drive all my business away.”

  Sitting outside was going to do the same, Jasen thought: with Scourgey sat at the table’s edge, anyone who eyed the tavern was put off of entering. If they sat long enough, it would empty out completely without refilling.

  “Congratulations,” said Alixa with all the sarcasm she could muster—which was a lot. “Now we know where Baraghosa is headed. I can’t wait to go rushing up to the clifftops all over again, without a plan.”

  “I’ll think of a plan,” said Jasen.

  “Think?” She laughed. “That’s the last thing you’re doing at the moment. Do I need to remind you that—”

  “He’s a sorcerer, and I’m just a kid with a dagger?” Jasen shot back laconically. “No, you don’t need to remind me. I’ve heard it dozens of times today. It has sunk in, thank you very much.”

  “Hardly seems that way to me. If it had, you’d shrug off this ridiculous quest and see that the Emerald Fields are where we should be going. Not after a powerful wizard.”

  Jasen cast his eyes down. Lectures, lectures, from left and right today. How tired of it did he need to get before Alixa laid off?

  He sipped from his glass. Three quarters full, it was topped by a head of pale green foam. The beverage, which Kuura had bought for him, was alcoholic, brewed from a plant called hops, and dyed the shade of young grass. The alcohol was weak, so it didn’t burn. Didn’t matter; Jasen couldn’t enjoy it. The whole thing tasted just too green, somewhere between sweet and savory with every mouthful, never settling on one—never inviting Jasen back in for another sip, either.

  Kuura had his own glass of it. Already half was gone. The foam clung to his lips. He smeared it off with a thumb, licking it clean.

  Alixa, as was proper, had a glass of water. The barmaid wouldn’t give her a bowl for Scourgey, so when they were outside she had ordered Scourgey to open her mouth, and then poured half of it in as Scourgey madly lapped at the air.

  Jasen sniffed his drink. That last sip was almost earthy, and not in a good way.

  Either it smelled of pondwater, or its true scent was mixing with Scourgey’s aroma.

  He set it back down and idly wondered how he could get away with not drinking anymore, even though Kuura had paid for it and would expect to see the glass emptied.

  Maybe Alixa might be tempted to share …?

  Doubtful. Though, her thoughts on the other hand …

  “I’m serious, Jasen,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “And I will keep saying it until you listen to me and change course. You cannot beat Baraghosa. And before you say it,” she said quickly, cutting over him before he could interject, “that does not mean I don’t want to see Baraghosa beaten. I am just saying, of all the people in the world, you are not the person to stop him. I mean, honestly—what are you going to do when you run into him? Yell at him for burying Terreas in magma and rubble? Write him a strongly worded letter? Maybe just ask him politely to draw and quarter himself for you?”

  All through this, Kuura was nodding furiously.

  Jasen ignored him.

  “I don’t know,” he answered.

  “Tell me.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “No, come on. I want to hear it. You’re so determined to find him that you’ve gone racing all over the Aiger Cliffs today, hoping to crash into him somewhere—outside a butcher’s shop, you probably think, as if he’s just going to be walking the streets like you and I. Tell me what you’ll do when you find him.”

  “I don’t know.” This, a long, exasperated sigh. Because, after all Alixa’s pushing … she was right. Baraghosa was a sorcerer. Jasen’s only hope, really, was the element of surprise … and he had no way of banking on that. Even if he had it, who was to say the sorcerer would not outwit him?

  Jasen was just a boy with a dagger.

  Less, really: he was a boy with a dagger, and no experience to speak of.

  He looked down at it, affixed to his hip, and wished Shilara were here. She would train him. Could have trained him for a good many years, if he had gone to visit her more often, instead of treating her, most of the time anyway, like the outcast Terreas had turned her into.

  He closed his eyes on his regrets, willing them away.

  “I thought as much,” said Alixa.

  “Whatever I’m doing,” Jasen said, “it can’t just be nothing. Baraghosa can’t just be allowed to walk around, free to do his business, while we stand here idle and aimless. He was able to do that for too long—and now he’s pushed it too far.” He ran his finger around the rim of his glass, picking up a small blob of greenish foam. “He took Pityr from us, and dozens of other children over the years. Who’s to say they’re not out there? Our next of kin—”

  “They’re dead, Jasen.”

  She said this so abruptly, yet so gently, that Jasen was silenced. His breath stop-started, once, and he looked up, locking eyes with his cousin.

  “He killed them,” she said softly. “You know this.”

  He did. He knew it, knew it even though he had hoped for years that it was not true—hoped for the past year that Pityr still lived, his friend, so happy and jolly and then gone.

  It stung him.

  But then he steeled himself against it, hardening.

  “That is exactly why he needs to be stopped,” he said. “He is a monster.”

  Alixa seemed to strain under the weight of her incredulity. “And I ask again: what do you expect to be able to do?”

  Another voice answered, from the street: “I expect you to win.”

  They turned, and

  Kuura gasped.

  An ebony-skinned woman stood before them. Tall and imposing, she could measure and match Shipmaster Burund inch for inch. Straight-backed and standing proudly, she wore a thin, pale blue armor made of overlapping plates. It must have been custom-made for her, as it curved to her shape perfectly. A sword hung at her side, held in a ring by the hilt but not sheathed. It was curved, a brilliantly polished silver with a wicked edge.

  Her hair was braided tight to her skull. A red tattoo adorned one cheek, a crescent moon, arcing around the edge of her left eye. Her lips were full, pressed into a short line beneath a rounded nose and almond-shaped eyes—brown, the same shade as her skin.

  “Huanatha,” breathed Kuura, and he dropped from his seat onto one knee. Then, without looking up, he whispered to Alixa and Jasen, “Bow!”

  Alixa gave him a perplexed look. “Why should we—”

  “Because she is a queen!”

  17

  “I am no queen,” said Huanatha dismissively. “Rise.”

  Kuura obeyed, scrambling up to his feet as though, despite her refutation, she was still royalty, and worthy of being obeyed.

  Jasen took her in. He had never seen a queen before, or a king. Syloreas had had one, once … but Shilara’s stories of him were not flattering. Jasen’s impression of the man was not a good one, thanks to her, and few others in Terreas spoke of him at all. In any event, by now he was a distant memory, and Jasen’s concept of royalty was based mostly on stories and books.

  Huanatha was not a queen as Jasen had ever imagined one. For starters—that armor. This was a warrior, surely, not a woman who sat on a throne.

  Alixa evidently thought the same.

  Wors
e: she turned her nose up at Huanatha.

  And Jasen remembered those early days with Shilara … Early days. As if their time together had been more than a few weeks in all … when Alixa had been very clear: women were not made to be warriors.

  Some of Alixa’s propriety had relaxed, from being around Shilara and from the various disasters they had faced. But gradually she seemed to be reverting to her old self, going by the way she looked Huanatha up and down.

  “What is a ‘queen’ doing walking the streets of Aiger Cliffs?” she asked.

  Kuura’s face fell. He did his best to recover. “I am so sorry, Queen Huanatha,” he said quickly, bowing forward. “The girl, she does not know of what she—”

  Huanatha cut over him, in their native language. A short sentence—maybe an order.

  Kuura hesitated. Then he answered, slowly.

  She said something else.

  He replied, looking miserable.

  Jasen followed, eyes moving back and forth as if following a ball batted from one person to another, yet with no sense of who was winning—or indeed what this conversation was.

  One last word from Huanatha.

  Kuura sat on his chair again. He folded his arms, letting them lay on his lap.

  He looked like a child who’d been scolded.

  Jasen glanced from him to Huanatha. “Uhm.”

  “I told your friend not to call me ‘queen’ any longer,” she said. “It no longer befits my station.”

  “So … you’re not a queen,” said Alixa. It was half a question, though her tone suggested it was obvious.

  “Huanatha was a queen,” Kuura explained miserably. “The Queen of the Muratam—a widespread tribe in the Coricuanthi. They have been warring amongst themselves, though …” He trailed off.

  “You were deposed?” Alixa asked Huanatha.

  “Worse: exiled,” said Kuura. He shook his head, frowning bitterly, his eyebrows a hard line. “I had heard that you had come to Chaarland,” he told her, “but to see you myself, with my own two eyes …” He drifted off again, eyes misting, like he had lain them upon a goddess. “Already you have become legendary here, the tales say.”

  Huanatha said only, “I am not legend.”