A Respite From Storms

by Robert J. Crane

  Jasen stepped forward. “Just now, you—cut in. Do you know who we’re talking about?”

  “The sorcerer Baraghosa,” she said. “You speak of defeating him.”

  “You know him then?”

  She sneered. “He came to our lands many years ago,” she said, “spoke to our people. Struck deals. Whispered in ears, raised hackles … sowed discord.”

  Her accent was not quite the same as Kuura’s, though it was tonally close enough that Jasen figured their birth places could not have been greatly separated back on Coricuanthi. Kuura’s had been diluted though, in much the same way as he lamented the dilution of Nunahk if it grew out of its humble footprint. Travel, speaking other languages with the locals of many places, had softened his accent, as it had Shipmaster Burund’s. Huanatha’s remained harder, her vowel sounds clipped short. However long she had been exiled, it was not yet long enough to have blurred her way of speaking.

  She went on, “I welcomed him when first he came. But soon enough … he cost me my throne.”

  Kuura murmured, “So the stories were true. I had heard …”

  Jasen rounded on him. “You knew Baraghosa had done this too? Why didn’t you say something?”

  “I believed they were just tales,” Kuura said.

  “What else do you know?”

  “Doubtless he knows many stories of that wizard’s upheavals,” said Huanatha. Her bottom lip curled. “Baraghosa is known among many people in many places. I can only imagine that others see him the same way I once did: wily, but an asset all the same, the benefits he brings outweighing the stormclouds he inflicts upon the lands he visits.”

  “He caught us in a storm too,” said Jasen, “out to sea a few days ago.” He made to add, And our friend, Longwell, but did not. Abandoned by him the moment Lady Vizola pulled into port, Jasen did not see him as much of a friend anymore.

  In hindsight, he should never have assumed they were friends.

  “The storms that rent my land were not physical,” said Huanatha. “They were the human sort, dissent sowed among my people. I should have seen it coming. Yet I ignored the whispers of the dead—and now I must make my life in this frigid and rainy land, cut off from my people.”

  Frigid? Rainy? Jasen squinted into the sky. Blue, with little cloud. The ocean breeze blew in along the docks, and he supposed when the sea was cold, the wind carried that iciness upon its back … but the day was warm, the sun shining and bright. Temperatures dropped in the shadows, yes. At the height of summer, though, they offered cool respite.

  Kuura saw his confusion. “Coricuanthi is far south of here. Even its coldest days are equal to some of the warmest here.”

  Oh. Well, that made more sense. Though Jasen struggled to picture it—a place hotter than Luukessia. Sitting aboard the Lady Vizola two days ago, awaiting Longwell’s awakening, they had endured a stifling heat. The same every day—that was madness.

  “So there’s another thing,” Alixa said, and she rounded on Jasen. “He was able to overthrow a queen. It’s mild, relative to the storm and Terreas—but does it give you a clue as to what we’re up against now? One that you might take heed of?”

  Jasen’s teeth ground together. “I know what we’re up against.”

  “So what do you expect us to be able to do about it?”

  Before Jasen could answer, Huanatha drew her sword from its resting place at her hip. She swung it around and forward, a precise arcing motion, bringing it to bear in an instant. The blade caught no sunlight, but still it gleamed as it sliced through the air.

  A kerfuffle from the passing crowd. Gasps—shouts—the closest to the tavern on their way around backpedaled furiously, compressing the small pathways etched between these walkers. Someone had just been making their way from the tavern’s confines. Stepping out to the sight of this armored woman lifting her sword to two unarmed children and their companion, he yelped and made a swift about-face, returning inside.

  Huanatha ignored the commotion. She said, “You can fight.”

  Alixa opened her mouth to protest—

  Jasen pushed past her, bringing himself out and ahead of her and Kuura. “I want to fight,” he said, resolute. “And I know where he is now.”

  Huanatha appraised him, eyes tracking up and down his body. Beneath her gaze, he felt instantly very inadequate. His frame was too slight, his muscles not developed. Compared to her sword, the dagger hanging at his side looked like little more than a well-crafted children’s toy. Somehow, he was certain she would even see through the sheath, knowing that it was not anywhere close to a perfect fit.

  But he did not back down. Another person had presented herself who had a bone to pick with Baraghosa. And there would be more. Councillor Drue had been upset by him, as had a number of his peers. Stanislaus said Baraghosa had left an impression on the dock workers who saw him, and not a very good one. How many more were out there, longing to settle a score with a sorcerer who had scorned them?

  Jasen might just be a child with a pilfered dagger … but he was set on vengeance for his people—for his father—and for himself, most of all, to atone for his guilt that had brought this grief upon him and Alixa, and his ancestors. And in a battle against the sorcerer capable of ripping open the earth, the more hands were willing to fight, the better.

  So he stood as tall as he could, his shoulders pushed back, the way Huanatha’s were. He steeled his face, set his expression, steadied his breathing.

  “You want to fight,” Huanatha said, her words slow. “Yes. I see it in you. I see it in your eyes—the fierceness of them, filled with determination—hatred.” She stepped closer, looking deep, a penetrating gaze, like she could peer into his very essence and decipher it. “You wish to kill him.”

  Jasen nodded, not breaking eye contact. “I do.”

  She assessed for a moment longer, looking into his eyes, at—what?

  Then she jerked her head to Alixa, and the spell was broken. Jasen felt himself relax.

  “And you?” Huanatha asked. “You wish for your own revenge too?”

  Kuura cut in. “Queen—Huanatha, no, you cannot. These are just children.”

  Her head whipped around, her burning gaze on him now. He almost recoiled from it—or perhaps it was the blade that made him take a step backward, poised and ready to strike any who opposed her. A quiver in his knee threatened another low bow. He overpowered it.

  “Who are you?” Huanatha asked. “I do not recognize you from my own lands. Yet you bow to me, like I wield power over you.”

  “I am not from your lands,” said Kuura. “Yet you are royalty; I must bow.”

  Huanatha bared her teeth in a cat-like sneer. “I am royalty no more.”

  “I am sorry, Queen—”

  “Enough. Who are you?”

  “I am Kuura of the Wantanwe,” he answered, “from the city of Nunahk.”

  Huanatha nodded, knowing, possibly, where Nunahk lay in relation to her own tribe’s lands. “And do you know how to wield a blade, Kuura of Nunahk?”

  He hesitated, then nodded. “Yes.”

  “You do not carry one, when the boy does.”

  “That is—not true, Que—Huanatha,” he corrected, speaking low. Glancing about, he licked his lips. “I have small weapons secreted upon me, should the need arise. It does not arise often, so they remain out of sight.”

  “Where you cannot reach for them at a moment’s notice.”

  Now he bit his lip. “I do not wish to show you. Not here.”

  “Fine.” But her look at Kuura was disbelieving. “And you two? You can fight?”

  “I can use a sword,” Jasen lied quickly.

  “No, you can’t,” said Alixa hotly. “He cannot.”

  Huanatha raised no eyebrow. But she did look at him, hard, another penetrating gaze that did not sift through his basest feelings, but rather demanded he share the truth with her.

  “I have practiced several times in my life,” he said.

  “With a dagger,” A
lixa added. “And only rarely. You can no more wield a sword than I can.”

  Shame threatened him.

  Just a child with a pilfered dagger.

  Still, he fought it back. Setting his shoulders again—they had slumped, his back too, taking an inch off his meager height—he said resolutely, “But I will draw on all the experience I have so I may defeat Baraghosa.”

  Apparently that was good enough for Huanatha. She turned her attention to Alixa. “And you?”

  “Unlike my cousin, I would not claim to be capable of fighting a warlock,” she answered sniffily. The daggered glare she fired at Jasen was well practiced though, even if her hands were not.

  “You have weapons of your own?” Huanatha asked.

  “No. And I don’t want—”

  But Huanatha just spoke over her. “Then we must get you some. Follow.” And she stowed her sword at her hip once more, tucking it through the loop that held it at the handle with fluid grace. Pivoting on her heel, she made her way back through the crowd, which parted around her.

  “No way,” said Alixa. “I am not being roped into this.”

  “Come on,” said Jasen. “We have to do this.”

  “I have to get to the Emerald Fields. And so do—Jasen!”

  He had strode away as she was mid-sentence.

  Scourgey followed. Jasen heard Alixa’s shrill voice calling her name.

  Scourgey hurried alongside him.

  He looked down at her. She returned the gaze, lifting her head to meet his eyes with those black voids. Her mouth open, tongue lolling, she made an almost strangled sort of noise that Jasen could only take as support.

  “Good Scourgey,” he said. “Thank you.”

  She padded alongside, and so he too had a path cut for him through the crowd, following the back of Huanatha’s receding head, with its tamed braids strung through colored wooden beads that hung against the backplate of her layered armor.

  A glance behind showed that Alixa was following, a harried look on her face.

  So too came Kuura, muttering to himself. Just before the crowd closed between them and again blocked his sight, Jasen was sure he heard him say:

  “What have I done to offend the gods that I find myself at the mercy of two children?”

  18

  Huanatha occupied an apartment two thirds of the way up the leveled hill where the city was built. Here, foot traffic was lighter and there were fewer market stalls. Storefronts sold expensive fineries. Restaurants were open here and there, nowhere near as common as the stalls on the docks, or even those arrayed in the first couple of levels of the city. The folk dining in them wore silk dresses and tailored suits.

  Though such a separation had not occurred in Terreas, given its small size, he recognized this immediately as a district for the richer travelers to the Aiger Cliffs.

  So who lived in those grandest of buildings on the uppermost level, Jasen could not imagine. Neither could he imagine that he would be welcome there if he were to wander up and take a look. Certainly he, Alixa, Kuura, and Scourgey had drawn looks of a mildly offended sort as they made their way to Huanatha’s apartment. Were Huanatha not with them, her position as a woman of wealth obvious in her attire if not simply the way she carried herself, they might’ve been ordered to turn heel and return to the lower portions of the city.

  The scaffold erected about the cliffside was much more obvious here. Actually, it was something of an eyesore, compared to the white stone buildings erected so perfectly on these streets. Miners climbed up and down it, harvesting the metals shining in the cliff wall. A patch on the right, spanning some two hundred yards or so, had been picked mostly clear. Such a minuscule span of the cliffs, it was only noticeable here this close to it—Huanatha’s apartment lay on the edge of this level, not long a walk from the scaffold at all. From so near, the barer stretch of cliffside was unmissable.

  “We are here,” said Huanatha, beckoning them to a door.

  “Great,” Alixa muttered. Arms folded, face dark, this was the first she had said since catching up and being forced into an introduction.

  Huanatha led them up. Her apartment was in a building housing many more—something Jasen could not fathom, as he looked up a set of steps that had been turned into a smooth spiral, up to higher levels.

  The doors were locked, with a key and mechanism like that of Burund’s book chest. Huanatha’s door, though, had two keyholes. She produced both keys from separate locations somewhere on her body—though her doing so was so smooth, likewise in vanishing them after the door was unlocked, that Jasen might have sworn she were a sorcerer herself.

  The place was sparsely decorated. It was bare, in fact, as far as Jasen could see. Her small rooms had essentials only.

  “You don’t entertain guests often, do you?” he asked as they passed a living area with only one chair. Opposite, where Jasen would expect a fireplace in a traditional home, stood a rack for a suit of armor. It was empty; she had only the one set, apparently.

  Kuura marveled at it, sadness in his expression. “Did your people not allow you to bring any keepsakes from your lands?”

  “I did not wish for them,” said Huanatha, and no more.

  At the back of the apartment was another closed, locked door, this time with three keyholes, spaced above each other at a separation of maybe six inches. Again, she produced keys from somewhere as though conjuring them. The locks, she did not open from top to bottom; instead, she opened the middle first, then the bottom, then lastly the top.

  Only when the key twisted in this one did Jasen hear a click.

  Huanatha’s keys vanished.

  The door opened …

  Jasen’s eyes bulged. He breathed a curse word that made Alixa gasp in response. He clapped a hand to his mouth, as though doing so would stop it from having fallen out.

  Kuura cracked a grin, but Huanatha did not smile. “Come in, and you may choose.”

  Inside the room were racks, set up at every wall. And on them hung dozens of weapons, the likes of which Jasen could have never imagined. Oh, there were swords, but only some were like the thin blades he would have recognized. A whole rack of them were curved; some just fractionally, others curving greatly. Some had hooked ends, and these came in their own varieties too: one had a straight hook, jutting off at a forty-five-degree angle from the main body of the blade. Its neighbor’s hook was curved, like a crescent moon had been affixed to the sword’s end.

  There were fat yet stubby swords, and terribly long ones that were so thin that Jasen could have sworn their maker had affixed no more than a thread to a hilt, hardened it, and sharpened its edge. A person run through with a blade like that would never even feel it.

  Kuura’s gaze had lingered on a rack of axe-like weapons. Yet only one of these was even close to an axe as Jasen would imagine it. Many others were pronged, so a strike would impale at two points, or three. One particularly vicious axe had an additional prong pointing in the opposite direction, so it could be sunk into an attacker at the front, then impale another from behind as it was withdrawn.

  “I see now why yeh did not fill your boat with keepsakes when yeh fled the Muratam,” Kuura said.

  Huanatha said nothing to this. Instead: “Take your pick.”

  Jasen’s eyes had hardly gone back to their normal size. Now they bulged again, wide and full of whites. “Sorry?”

  “Choose a weapon.”

  His gaze swept through the room. So many. And he could just take …

  “Any?”

  Huanatha nodded. Then she stepped forward, to a rack of spears, and retrieved one with a three-quarter-length handle and a bronze barb upon its head. “For a beginner, perhaps this one.” She lifted it from its resting place, and swung it. Kuura, who’d edged toward the rack of axes, had to flinch back as the spear’s tip lanced through the air just inches from his face—although, the swing was so controlled, Huanatha’s poise so precise, that Jasen believed it could have come a half-inch from slicing him from te
mple to collarbone and still he would have been safe.

  “It is lightweight,” she explained, “but the barbed tip will gore a man.” Another swing, stabbing out at an invisible foe’s guts. She twisted, then drew it back.

  Jasen imagined a man’s innards strung along the barbs, pulled out of him in meaty lumps.

  “Would you like to try?” Huanatha asked. She held it out to Jasen.

  “Uhm …”

  The hesitation, however brief, convinced her that this was not the weapon for him. She reset it in its rack, then hurried to another, her stern demeanor giving way to excitement. “Or this,” she said, and she withdrew a weapon resembling a pick, all fashioned from the same piece of dark metal. “It is small, but the points will smash through a skull with one strike.” She swung it, two-handed. “Or you can grip it in one hand, and brace with a shield in the other.” She mimicked this—though why she gave this piece of advice, Jasen did not know; shields were apparently of no interest to her, going by this room.

  “Or—no. This one.” She snatched up a billhook, with extra teeth along either side of its exaggerated blade. One in each hand, she whirled, a flurry of razor sharp edges.

  Jasen stared. On the one hand, he understood why this woman had been a well-respected warrior in her own right.

  On the other, his only experience of people with weapons were the boundary guards in Terreas as they drilled … and Shilara. She had had her own small arsenal and practiced each day, improvising targets and raining her patch of grass with the broken remains of weapons she had pushed beyond their limits. Yet even she was tempered, albeit in a different way to the boundary guards. Fighting was second nature to her, an intrinsic part of her being, but it came from a place of survival.

  Watching Huanatha, Jasen did not believe she fought for the same reasons. She wielded blades because she had an insatiable passion for fighting, one that drove her from her very core. An addiction, perhaps, to be fed and fed and fed.

  “You should really put those down, you know,” said Alixa, as Huanatha again came within killing distance of Kuura, twisting her body so that the blades sailed past him on either side. He cowered, eyes wide, no smile on his face now. “You could hurt someone.”