Call of the Bone Ships

by Rj Barker

  Slowly, with great effort, Vadim shook his head.

  “Wonderful,” said the man. “Now run along and do as I say.”

  He tried to move. He really did. But his legs wouldn’t work. They were frozen, fixed in place as if already pierced by the glittering swords.

  The man muttered to himself as he leaned over and reached into one of his saddlebags. “This is why I’m counting the days until my transfer back to Aureum. If I have to see one more—”

  An arrow pierced one side of the man’s throat and exited the other side. Blood sprayed from the severed artery, spattering Vadim’s face and hair. He gaped as the man clutched his gushing throat. The man’s eyes were wide with surprise and he made faint gargling noises as he slowly slid from his saddle.

  “We’re under attack!” shouted one of the other soldiers.

  “Which direction?” shouted another.

  A third one lifted his hand and pointed out into one of the snowy fields. “There! It’s—”

  Then an arrow embedded itself in his eye and he toppled over.

  Vadim turned his head in the direction the soldier had been pointing and saw a lone rider galloping across the field, the horse kicking up a cloud of white. The rider wore a thick leather coat with a hood lined in white fur. Vadim had never seen a Ranger of Marzanna before because they were supposed to all be dead now. But he had been raised on stories of the Strannik, told by his mother in hushed tones late at night, so Vadim knew that was what he saw.

  “Get into formation!” shouted a soldier. “Archers, return fire!”

  But the Ranger was closing fast. Vadim had never seen a horse run so swiftly. It seemed little more than a blur of gray and black across the white landscape. Vadim’s mother had said that a Ranger of Marzanna did not need to guide their horse. That the two were so perfectly connected, they knew each other’s thoughts and desires.

  The Ranger loosed arrow after arrow, each one finding a vulnerable spot in a soldier’s armor. The soldiers cursed as they fumbled for their own bows and let fly with arrows that overshot their rapidly approaching target. Their faces were no longer proud or grim, but tense with fear.

  As the Ranger drew near, Vadim saw that it was a woman. Her blue eyes were bright and eager, and there was a strange, almost feral grin on her lips. She shouldered her bow and stood on her saddle even as her horse continued to sprint toward the now panicking soldiers. Then she drew a long knife from her belt and leapt toward the soldiers. Her horse veered to the side as she crashed headlong into the mass of armed men. The Ranger’s blade flickered here and there, drawing arcs of red as she hopped from one mounted soldier to the next. She stabbed some and slit the throats of others. Some were only wounded and fell from their horses to be trampled under the hooves of the frightened animals. The air was thick with blood and the screams of men in pain. Vadim squeezed his doll as hard as he could and kept his eyes shut tight, but he could not block out the piteous sounds of terrified agony.

  And then everything went silent.

  “Hey, mal’chik,” came a cheerful female voice. “You okay?”

  Vadim cautiously opened his eyes to see the Ranger grinning down at him.

  “You hurt?” asked the Ranger.

  Vadim shook his head with an uneven twitch.

  “Great.” The Ranger crouched down beside him and reached out her hand.

  Vadim flinched back. His mother had said that Strannik were fearsome beings who had been granted astonishing abilities by the dread Lady Marzanna, Goddess of Winter.

  “I’m not going to hurt you.” She gently wiped the blood off his face with her gloved hand. “Looks like I got you a little messy. Sorry about that.”

  Vadim stared at her. In all the stories he had ever heard, none of them had described a Ranger as nice. Was this a trick of some kind? An attempt to set Vadim at ease before doing something cruel? But the Ranger only stood back up and looked at the wagon, which was still attached to a pair of frightened, wild-eyed horses. The other horses had all scattered.

  The Ranger gestured to the wagon filled with the tithes of other villages. “Anyway, I better get this stuff back where it came from.”

  She looked down at the pile of bloody, uniformed bodies in the snow for a moment. “Tell your elder I’m sorry about the mess. But at least you get to keep all your food this year, right?”

  She patted Vadim on the head, then sauntered over to her beautiful gray-and-black stallion, who waited patiently nearby. She tied her horse to the wagon, then climbed onto the seat and started back the way the soldiers had come.

  Vadim watched until he could no longer see the Ranger’s wagon. Then he looked at all the dead men who lay at his feet. Now he knew there were worse things than imperial soldiers. Though he didn’t understand the reason, his whole body trembled, and he began to cry.

  When he finally returned home, his eyes raw from tears, he told his mother what had happened. She said he had been blessed, but he did not feel blessed. Instead he felt as though he had been given a brief glimpse into the true nature of the world, and it was more frightening than he had ever imagined.

  For the rest of his short life, Vadim would have nightmares of that Ranger of Marzanna.

  2

  Sebastian Turgenev Portinari sat on the floor of his bedroom and stared at the bowl of water in front of him. He took one of the rusty bolts from the small pile beside him and gripped it tightly in one hand. He stared at the water in the bowl, focusing his intent on the metal in his hand. After a moment, he felt a surge— the bolt crumbled to rusty flecks, and the water spiraled up into a delicate point of ice.

  “Oh, that’s lovely, Sebastian. You’re getting quite good at controlling it.”

  Sebastian turned to see his mother, Irina Turgenev Portinari, standing in the doorway. Her pale face was framed by her long white silky hair as she smiled down at him.

  “Thank you, Mother,” he said. “But I would prefer to practice at the lake, where I could really let loose.”

  “Your father said you must not be so ostentatious right now.”

  “But why, Mother?”

  She sighed. “Why don’t you come down and ask him yourself. Dinner is ready.”

  “Fine. . .”

  Sebastian followed his mother downstairs to the small dining room in their farmhouse. His father, Giovanni Portinari, was already seated at the head of the table. He was a solidly built, clean-shaven man with the olive-tinged complexion of an Aureumian, close-cropped gray hair, and thick bushy eyebrows.

  “Sebastian,” he said by way of greeting.

  Sebastian nodded. “Father.” He noticed that a fourth place had been set at the table. “Is Sonya coming home?”

  “She usually makes an appearance after the first snowfall,” said his father. “If not today, then perhaps tomorrow.”

  Sebastian wasn’t entirely sure what his older sister did for months at a time out in the wilderness. Hunting, camping, becoming one with nature, he supposed. Or as best as she could without the gift of elemental magic. Whatever it was, she’d been doing it for a couple years now, only stopping in now and then, and more often than not getting into an argument with their father when she did. She always upset the normal routine of the house whenever she appeared, and these days Sebastian found that he somewhat dreaded her visits because of that.

  He sat down at the table as his mother brought in a platter of sour bread and boiled potatoes.

  “Really, Mother?” he asked. “Potatoes again?”

  “Now that it’s winter, we need to be conservative with our stores,” she said.

  “No, we don’t,” he said. “I could go out there right now, thaw that field, and have a whole new crop growing in weeks.”

  “No, you can’t,” said his father. “It draws too much attention.”

  “From whom?” asked Sebastian. “I’m tired of keeping my magic a secret.”

  “Tough.” His father sliced a potato as he spoke with the calm authority of a retired general. “You
are only sixteen and as long as you live under my roof, you will do as I command.”

  Sebastian glared at his father as he gnawed on a chunk of bread, but his father seemed not to notice. It really wasn’t fair. Ever since Sebastian had discovered he could perform elemental magic, his parents had constantly pushed him to hone his abilities. But what was the point if he was never allowed to show anyone what he could do? His sister was only two years older than him, yet she could go off and do whatever she wanted, while he was stuck here, practically a prisoner in his own home.

  Then Sebastian heard an odd noise outside the house. Something he couldn’t place. The clank of steel, perhaps? His parents paused in their eating.

  “Is that Sonya?” asked Sebastian.

  His father’s thick eyebrows curled down into a scowl. “No.”

  Suddenly the sound of breaking glass and splintering wood filled the house. Imperial soldiers charged into the dining room, their sabers drawn.

  Sebastian froze, partly in terror and partly in awe of the absolute precision that these men displayed. But his father was a hardened veteran of the war. Without hesitation, he flipped the table, sending bread and steaming potatoes into the air, then grabbed Sebastian and his mother and hauled them in the only direction available: the staircase that led to the bedrooms.

  Sebastian stumbled up the steps as his father yanked him roughly by the arm. Once they were inside his parents’ bedroom, Sebastian’s father slammed the door shut and shoved the wardrobe in front of it.

  “Why are soldiers here?” Sebastian asked in a shaking voice. “What do they want?”

  “Sebastian, you must listen to me!” Giovanni pulled his own imperial-issued saber down from the wall, his face set. “I will hold them at bay for as long as I can. You jump out the window and run to Olga Slanikova’s farm down the road. Hide in her cellar until. . .” He paused. “Until the soldiers are gone.”

  Sebastian gaped at his father. Even in the fog of his panic he could see that those instructions made little sense. How would Sebastian know when the soldiers were gone if he was hiding in a cellar? And even more importantly, what would he do after?

  “Father, do you want me to try. . .” He looked meaningfully down at the sword in his father’s hand. Steel would work even better as a conduit for his magic than iron bolts. It would destroy the sword, of course, but he was certain he could finish off the whole group of soldiers with one fiery explosion.

  “Absolutely not!” his father said. “I forbid you to use magic. That would be playing right into their hands.”

  Before his father could explain further, the soldiers knocked the door off its hinges and the wardrobe fell forward with a loud crash.

  His father squeezed his shoulder. “I have told you what to do, Sebastian! Go now!” Then he placed himself between Sebastian and the soldiers, his sword held at the ready.

  “Mother. . .” Sebastian turned to where she was huddled on the bed.

  “Listen to your father,” she said in a pinched voice, her eyes glistening with tears behind a curtain of long, snow-white hair. “Go!”

  He gritted his teeth, feeling the hot shame of helplessness fill his throat as he yanked open the window and climbed out onto the ledge. The clang of steel on steel rang behind him as he half slid, half fell down the side of the house and into a snowdrift. Since he was only dressed in a shirt and trousers, the harsh, biting chill of winter suffused him immediately. He stumbled to his feet, shook the snow from his clothes, then turned in the direction of Olga Slanikova’s farm.

  Except his father had underestimated the imperial soldiers. Sebastian only took two steps before the tip of a sword appeared inches from his throat.

  “The commander said to take you alive, unless you resisted,” growled the soldier with the sword. He was flanked on either side by several more soldiers, all with swords drawn. “Are you going to resist?”

  Above, the sounds of combat from the bedroom window ceased. Then he heard his mother scream out his father’s name, followed by her heartbroken sob.

  Sebastian closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “If you give your word not to harm my mother, I will come without a fight.”

  The soldier nodded approvingly. “That’s a good boy.”

  Sebastian almost lashed out at him for that. People were forever calling him a “good boy,” or worse, a mama’s boy, and it was never a compliment. But it was precisely to protect his mother that he kept himself in check.

  The soldier whistled shrilly. “Bring the old lady out unharmed!”

  if you enjoyed

  CALL OF THE BONE SHIPS

  look out for

  WE RIDE THE STORM

  The Reborn Empire: Book One

  by

  Devin Madson

  Seventeen years after rebels stormed the streets, factions divide Kisia. Only the firm hand of the god-emperor holds the empire together. But when a shocking betrayal destroys a tense alliance with neighboring Chiltae, all that has been won comes crashing down.

  In Kisia, Princess Miko Ts’ai is a prisoner in her own castle. She dreams of claiming her throne, but the path to power could rip the empire—and her family—asunder.

  In Chiltae, assassin Cassandra Marius is plagued by the voices of the dead. Desperate, she accepts a contract that promises her a cure if she helps an empire fall.

  And on the border between nations, Captain Rah e’Torin and his warriors are exiles forced to fight in a foreign war or die.

  1. Miko

  They tried to kill me four times before I could walk. Seven before I held any memory of the world. Every time thereafter I knew fear, but it was anger that chipped sharp edges into my soul.

  I had done nothing but exist. Nothing but own the wrong face and the wrong eyes, the wrong ancestors and the wrong name. Nothing but be Princess Miko Ts’ai. Yet it was enough, and not a day passed in which I did not wonder whether today would be the day they finally succeeded.

  Every night I slept with a blade beneath my pillow, and every morning I tucked it into the intricate folds of my sash, its presence a constant upon which I dared build dreams. And finally those dreams felt close enough to touch. We were travelling north with the imperial court. Emperor Kin was about to name his heir.

  As was my custom on the road, I rose while the inn was still silent, only the imperial guards awake about their duties. In the palace they tended to colonise doorways, but here, without great gates and walls to protect the emperor, they filled every corner. They were in the main house and in the courtyard, outside the stables and the kitchens and servants’ hall— two nodded in silent acknowledgement as I made my way toward the bathhouse, my dagger heavy in the folds of my dressing robe.

  Back home in the palace, baths had to be taken in wooden tubs, but many northern inns had begun building Chiltaen-style bathhouses— deep stone pools into which one could sink one’s whole body. I looked forward to them every year, and as I stepped into the empty building, a little of my tension left me. A trio of lacquered dressing screens provided the only places someone could hide, so I walked a slow lap through the steam to check them all.

  Once sure I was alone, I abandoned my dressing robe and slid into the bath. Despite the steam dampening all it touched, the water was merely tepid, though the clatter of someone shovelling coals beneath the floor promised more warmth to come. I shivered and glanced back at my robe, the bulk of my knife beneath its folds, reassuring.

  I closed my eyes only for quick steps to disturb my peace. No assassin would make so much noise, but my hand was still partway to the knife before Lady Sichi Manshin walked in. “Oh, Your Highness, I’m sorry. I didn’t realise you were here. Shall I—?”

  “No, don’t go on my account, Sichi,” I said, relaxing back into the water. “The bath is big enough for both of us, though I warn you, it’s not as warm as it looks.”

  She screwed up her nose. “Big enough for the whole court, really.”

  “Yes, but I hope the whole court won’t be joinin
g us.”

  “Gods no. I do not wish to know what Lord Rasten looks like without his robe.”

  Sichi untied hers as she spoke, owning none of the embarrassment I would have felt had our positions been reversed. She took her time about it, seemingly in no hurry to get in the water and hide her fine curves, but eventually she slid in beside me with a dramatic shiver. “Oh, you weren’t kidding about the temperature.”

  Letting out a sigh, she settled back against the stones with only her shoulders above the waterline. Damp threads of hair trailed down her long neck like dribbles of ink, the rest caught in a loose bun pinned atop her head with a golden comb. Lady Sichi was four years older than my twin and I, but her lifelong engagement to Tanaka had seen her trapped at court since our birth. If I was the caged dragon he laughingly called me, then she was a caged songbird, her beauty less in her features than in her habits, in the way she moved and laughed and spoke, in the turn of her head and the set of her hands, in the graceful way she danced through the world.

  I envied her almost as much as I pitied her.

  Her thoughts seemed to have followed mine, for heaving another sigh, Lady Sichi slid through the water toward me. “Koko.” Her breath was warm against my skin as she drew close. “Prince Tanaka never talks to me about anything, but you—”

  “My brother—”

  Sichi’s fingers closed on my shoulder. “I know, hush, listen to me, please. I just . . . I just need to know what you know before I leave today. Will His Majesty name him as his heir at the ceremony? Is he finally going to give his blessing to our marriage?”

  I turned to find her gaze raking my face. Her grip on my shoulder tightened, a desperate intensity in her digging fingers that jolted fear through my heart.

  “Well?” she said, drawing closer still. “Please, Koko, tell me if you know. It’s . . . it’s important.”

  “Have you heard something?” My question was hardly above a breath, though I was sure we were alone, the only sound of life the continued scraping of the coal shoveller beneath our feet.