Plague Arcanist (Frith Chronicles Book 4)

by Shami Stovall

  “It’s Adelgis,” Fain muttered. “He’s been acting strange since yesterday.”

  “How so?” I asked as I reached the bottom steps.

  “Ever since you two returned from Theasin’s lab, Adelgis has sequestered himself to the corner of our storeroom. He’s reading over a pile of paperwork, and he avoids speaking with me at every turn.”

  I reached the storeroom door and opened it without bothering to announce myself.

  Just as Fain had described, Adelgis sat on the floor of the room, hunched over a myriad of paperwork. His long hair hung down, blocking his face from my view. His reading materials consumed a quarter of the small space, the papers stacked on the crates and barrels, organized in such a chaotic way that I couldn’t make sense of it all. It reminded me of Vethica’s room.

  A glowing sea snail hung in the air—Adelgis’s ethereal whelk, Felicity—and she faced me as I entered. Her tentacles wiggled, similar to a wave, just more bizarre. The crystal of her shell glittered as she floated to the side, allowing me a straight line to Adelgis.

  “Adelgis?” I asked.

  He placed his hands over the papers he had been reading. “I’m busy. I apologize, but I have a lot of material to analyze. Can we speak another time?”

  “Uh, sure. But are you okay?”

  He didn’t move. “I’m perfectly fine.”

  “What’s so important about this?”

  “I’m using it to find the location of my father.” Adelgis drew some of the papers close and stacked them with restless energy. “Several people have written him letters, but they don’t specifically list their locations. They do, however, discuss landmarks and other points of interest nearby. I believe I can deduce my father’s location once I have all the facts.”

  “Okay.” I walked over. “Do you need help?”

  Adelgis tensed. “I’d prefer if I did this on my own. If you attempted to help, I fear it would only add to the overall time. Some of the locations mentioned require a firm grasp of geography and history, and I would have to stop to explain things. We’re short on time. You want me to find my father as fast as possible, don’t you?”

  “How long do you think this’ll take?” I asked, skeptical of his reasoning, but unwilling to demand a different explanation.

  “I don’t know. Perhaps a few days. I haven’t gotten through half the paperwork yet.”

  I nodded and then moved away. It seemed to ease Adelgis’s anxiety—he loosened and fanned the paperwork out again.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you.”

  “I just need time. Please. No disturbances.”

  Felicity slowly spun in midair. “My arcanist just needs to concentrate,” she said.

  I didn’t want to leave him—Adelgis always conducted himself in an odd manner, but this seemed worse than usual. On the other hand, I didn’t want to agitate him any further. Perhaps the paperwork involved a lot more than locations, and the disturbing information had gotten under Adelgis’s skin.

  I decided to trust him and assume everything he had told me was accurate.

  One day.

  Two days.

  On the third day, I started to regret my decision to leave Adelgis to his own devices. He sat in the storeroom morning, noon, and night, barely interacting with anyone except for the crewmates who brought him food. I only had a limited amount of time, and I had to remind myself that I couldn’t force anyone to work faster than they were capable.

  I just had to wait.

  To keep my mind busy, I trained with Fain. My thoughts occasionally dwelled on Adelgis’s wellbeing, though. The last few nights, he hadn’t given me any more dreams. Was he doing anything other than reading? Was he even sleeping?

  Fain rushed across the deck of the ship, went invisible, and then—while I was distracted—grabbed my forearm and manipulated my flesh, ripping away layers of skin with just a gentle touch. Pain flared throughout my body.

  I growled through gritted teeth, unleashing terrors and manipulating shadows without any real control.

  Fain’s invisibility dropped as he staggered backward, grabbing at his head, tormented by unseen horrors. He hit the deck on his knees, his eyes scrunched shut.

  Claws of darkness ranked across the deck, gouging wood, mauling barrels, and snapping rope.

  A deckhand fussing with the rigging crumpled to the ground, her scream startling.

  I throttled my magic, my breathing heavy, frustration building in my veins.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to the woman. “It was an accident.” I jogged over, intent to help her up, but she shook her head, tears at the corners of her eyes, and hustled off the deck.

  Shame twisted inside my chest. The crew of the Sun Chaser had just started to tolerate my presence, and now they probably wouldn’t get within twenty yards of me. Why had I lost control like that?

  Fain got to his feet and shook the last of my terrors from his mind. “Is everything okay?”

  “Yes,” I said, curt.

  I gripped my injured arm and glanced back at the crimson droplets on the deck of the ship. After a short exhale, I cleaned everything, determined not to leave even a single speckle. Fain helped, his ice making things easier since he could prevent the liquid from spreading.

  “I don’t normally catch you with my attacks,” he said. “You must’ve been pretty distracted.”

  “Hm,” I replied, the agony subsiding slowly.

  Once I finished, I went to the railing of the ship to grab a bucket reserved for waste. I spotted Biyu hurrying down the gangplank, her head ducked low, her little legs carrying her away from the airship at a stealthy rate. No one accompanied her, and she glanced over her shoulder like only a guilt-ridden child could.

  “Fain,” I said. “I think Biyu is trying to sneak away.”

  He stepped up to the railing and watched the little girl quietly descend the steps to the walls of New Norra.

  “Looks like it,” he muttered. Then he motioned to the deck. “So, how about we train evocation again? The ice will feel refreshing.” He shielded his eyes from the blazing afternoon sun. “Maybe the deckhands will also enjoy it.”

  “I think we should go after her.”

  “Who? The deckhand you scared?”

  “I’m talking about Biyu,” I stated, trying to hide my sardonic irritation, but failing. “C’mon. I don’t think she should go anywhere alone.”

  Fain shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I’m not, well, a kid person. I’m not even a person person, either, if I’m being honest.”

  “Think of this as social training, then.” I pointed to the city walls. “Meet me down there.”

  Before he could answer, I stepped into the shadows and traveled through the darkness. I emerged at the base of the sandstone steps of the wall, and Biyu almost collided with me. She managed to stop on the last step, her one eye huge the instant she realized she had been caught.

  “V-Volke,” she stammered.

  The injury on my forearm had healed a decent amount—no longer bleeding—but it was still raw. I removed some wootz cotton from my bicep and wrapped it around the injury as I said, “I saw you heading into the city. Does the captain know where you’re going?”

  Biyu held the leather strap of her book, her lips pursing. “He can’t know. It’s a secret.”

  “I don’t think he’d approve of you leaving. And I think you know I’m right or else you wouldn’t be sneaking off.”

  She pressed her sun hat down until it covered her face, muttering angry things under her breath. She must have been talking to herself, because the words shifted from confrontational to calm between sentences. When Biyu finally lifted her hat, her eye was glassy.

  “I want to get the captain a present,” she said. “So he can’t follow me to town or else it won’t be a surprise.”

  “You have coins?”

  Biyu reached into one pocket of her coat and then another. Each had something useful inside, like a
piece of charcoal or a blank piece of paper. The last pocket contained one silver coin and four copper coins. She held them up, beaming a smile that could be seen from Thronehold.

  “Here they are!” she declared. “I earned this, you know. By being the best cabin girl ever!” Biyu leaned closer to me and lowered her voice. “Captain Devlin said I’d get paid a silver coin every moon, but he gave me these coppers as a bonus because I did such a good job.”

  I hadn’t realized the captain was paying her, considering how young she was. If I had been given money at her age, I was certain I would’ve used it immediately and frivolously.

  Fain leapt down the stairs until he was behind Biyu. She gave him an odd glance over her shoulder.

  “Fain and I can accompany you to the bazaar,” I said. “And we promise we won’t tell the captain about your surprise.”

  “I dunno… Vethica said you can’t be trusted.”

  “What do you think?”

  Biyu stroked her chin as though imitating someone who scratched at their beard while they thought. “Will the wendigo come, too?”

  “Wraith is with us,” Fain said. He motioned to his side. “Show yourself.”

  Wraith appeared a moment later, his invisibility melting off his gray fur and revealing his skeletal frame and skull face. Nothing about Wraith looked pleasant to me, but Biyu stared at him as though she were looking at a majestic flower that only bloomed once every decade.

  Biyu let out a girlish and excited gasp. Then she reached out her hand. “Can I pet you?”

  “I suppose,” Wraith muttered. He lowered his head and Biyu stroked the grooves of the skull all the way up to Wraith’s ears.

  She yanked her hand away, turned on her heel, and then leapt off the last step of the staircase. “Okay. You two can be my bodyguards, but you have to promise not to tell anyone!” She pointed toward the glittering delta in the distance. “Let’s go to the port bazaar. Karna says that’s where all the best stuff is.”

  The gold and blue lines painted onto the bricks of the street led us straight to the port bazaar. It was larger than I had imagined, with stalls and stands for every desire. Food, guns, knives, clothes, live animals, maps—anything I could think of, there was someone selling it. The concern of thieves and pirates drifted into my thoughts, but the weight of my new weapon attached to my belt dispelled the fear.

  “—and that’s the first time I ever ate octopus,” Biyu said.

  She hadn’t stopped talking since we had left the city wall. At first, she had focused on her life, her hobbies, how she had learned to read and write… And once that had all been over, she’d gone straight to innocuous topics, such as her favorite colors—surprise, all of them—what kind of dreams she had, and now all about her least favorite foods.

  I would’ve answered her, but it was clear she didn’t want to engage me in conversation. Or Fain, for that matter.

  Biyu patted Wraith on the scruff of his neck. “What’s your least favorite food?”

  “I’m not sure,” Wraith said. “I haven’t eaten something I didn’t like.”

  “Wow. So amazing. If you don’t dislike anything, what’s your favorite?”

  “Human fles—”

  Fain cleared his throat with a loud cough and then grabbed his eldrin by the side of the skull. “Hey, aren’t you looking for a gift, kid? You should focus.” He pointed to the merchant stands all around us. “Pick something.”

  Man-eating mystical creatures could eat all types of meat, but they occasionally needed human flesh to maintain themselves. I had never asked Fain what he did about Wraith, but now that Fain knew what he could manipulate, I wondered if this problem would be easier to solve. Or perhaps… it was his own flesh he fed to his eldrin, since arcanists could heal themselves?

  I shook my head, dispelling the disturbing thoughts.

  The port bazaar had hundreds of people, but the area was spacious enough to provide plenty of room.

  The three of them walked to the next stall over, Wraith wagging his tail, Fain frosting his clothes every thirty seconds, and Biyu pointing to everything on display. Just as I went to follow them, a group of five children—around four years old—charged into my legs. They hadn’t been watching where they were going, but fortunately they weren’t large enough to knock me over.

  They wore simple robes, nothing fancy, and dirt caked their faces, typical of children no matter the culture, apparently.

  “Run,” one cried, her voice filled with excitement and mirth.

  “He’s going to catch us,” another said.

  “Oh, no,” a little boy said with a giggle.

  No one said a word to me. They probably didn’t see me through their merriment. They just ran around my legs—one going between—and then continued through the bazaar.

  A sixth child hurried after them, a red chicken held tightly in his arms. Someone had drawn a silly arcanist mark on the boy’s forehead. Each point of the star was a different size, and the creature drawn over it was none other than a chicken.

  He also collided with me, despite the fact that I was tall and visible.

  The little boy rasped and hugged his chicken close to his chest. “Stand aside,” he said between breaths. “I’m an arcanist, coming through!”

  I chuckled. “You’re an arcanist?”

  The boy glanced up, really seeing me for the first time. His eyes went straight to my arcanist mark. He squeezed his chicken, which answered with a strangled bagok!

  “I’m… I’m a chicken arcanist,” he whispered.

  “I don’t think so.”

  The boy frowned, and his posture wilted.

  I grabbed a green sash from the nearest vender and knelt, surprising the lad.

  “You’re a cockatrice arcanist,” I said as I wrapped the green sash around the fluffed tail of the chicken. “Much more dangerous than a chicken arcanist.”

  Cockatrices were deadly mystical creatures that lived in the harsh sands of the desert. They had the bodies of chickens, the tails of serpents, and the wings of bats. I fashioned the sash into a snake-like tail as best I could before offering the boy a smile.

  “Now you can turn people to stone,” I said.

  The boy patted his chicken along her red feathers, a shy smile growing at the corners of his lips. “Y-yeah. I am a cockatrice arcanist.”

  I pointed down the road. “Your friends went that way.”

  “Thank you. Thank you very much!” He ran off, holding his chicken high.

  The woman selling colored sashes gave me a long glower.

  I reached into my trouser pocket and gathered a few coins Karna had given me. I handed them over, and the woman placed three fingers on her heart. I mimicked the gesture, even though I didn’t know if that was appropriate for the situation.

  Fain ran toward me, shoving a man out of the way in his haste. He had been more than fifty feet away.

  When had he gotten so far from me? Last I had seen, he and Biyu had been shopping just one stand over.

  “Volke,” Fain shouted as he reached my side. “We need to get the captain.”

  The panic in his voice sent me right to the edge of restraint, and I placed a hand on the hilt of my blade. “What is it?” I asked. “Where’s Biyu?”

  Sweat dappled his face. His frostbitten ears and fingers stood out against his paled skin. With shaky hands, he pointed away from the bazaar. “We need to go. He’s here. They took her. Captain Devlin has to—”

  “Who’s here?” I snapped. “Calm down and tell me what’s happened.”

  “Calisto.” Fain grabbed my upper arm, his grip tight. “His crew took Biyu. I saw the tattoos…” He ran his hand idly over the ascot around his neck—the only thing hiding the tattoo that marked him as a former member of the pirate crew. “Calisto is here. At a cantina near the edge of the ports.”

  It would take us over an hour to get to Captain Devlin, even if we ran.

  The Dread Pirate Calisto was an agent of the Second Ascension and a madman wh
o had destroyed dozens of ships. He had cut the eye out of Illia’s face, and he had almost killed Zaxis, Illia, Master Zelfree, and me.

  And now he had Biyu.

  I shoved Fain off my arm and stormed down the road, my pulse high and heat in my system worse than I had ever felt it. I didn’t care what it took—I wouldn’t let Calisto harm a little girl, not when I could do something about it.

  “Volke?” Fain asked, his panicked tone laced with confusion.

  “You get Captain Devlin and alert the Watch Battalion,” I commanded. “I’ll retrieve Biyu.”

  22

  The Return Of Dread Pirate Calisto

  “You can’t,” Fain said as he stepped in front of me. “If there’s a fight—”

  I pushed Fain aside a second time, harder than before. When our eyes locked, Fain hesitantly backed off, his protests dying.

  “I’ll get the Watch Battalion,” he said.

  With no more arguments, Fain draped himself in invisibility and dashed off. Fueled by anger, I headed in the opposite direction. I didn’t know where they had taken Biyu or even where Calisto was staying, but I knew his ship, the Third Abyss. It was larger than most—a man-of-war style battleship with over 100 canons—and constructed using ghostwood. The special lumber created a perpetual fog, and once I reached the piers, there was no doubt in my mind I would either see the effects on land or out in the delta.

  “My arcanist,” Luthair said, his voice echoing from the darkness around my feet. “Do you intend to fight him?”

  I stormed through the dock bazaar, my expression enough that people moved out of my way when they noticed me approaching. “I just need to rescue Biyu,” I said, terse.

  “You’ve improved your sorcery significantly since last you faced Calisto, but he’s still a master arcanist. If we wait for the Watch Battalion, they’ll help us retrieve Biyu with little risk to ourselves.”

  New Norra was a free port, which meant Calisto’s previous crimes of piracy wouldn’t be punished by the governing authorities, but any crimes he committed while in the city were fair game. Kidnapping a little girl meant the authorities could arrest him, but would they? Surely, there were strong enough arcanists to handle him, but perhaps he would escape them, or injure several innocents in the resulting melee.