Mourningbird

by Brock Deskins

  The breeze turned into a cyclone and a bolt of lightning leapt from her hand, striking the cake. The cake exploded, and the wind propelled the frosted bits of confectionery like shrapnel around the room.

  Conner swiped a bit of frosting off his face and popped it into his mouth. “Well, the candles are out, but now the table is on fire.”

  Kiera stood in shock, her heart racing and her breathing coming in deep gasps. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what I did!”

  Surri smiled and took Kiera’s trembling hand. “You claimed your birthright.”

  “So…I’m a wind caller?”

  Surri shook her head slowly. “You are something more. You are a stormbearer.”

  Kiera furrowed her brow and crinkled her nose. “What is a stormbearer?”

  Surri took a deep breath as she gathered her thoughts to put them into words. “Wind callers are shields for our people. While we are capable fighters, we are the defense against those who would do us harm. We can lift our people into the air and ferry them away from danger. Stormbearers are our swords. They are the weapons we can wield against foes we might not otherwise be able to fight, like the sorcerers in the past.”

  “Or this Necrophage thing in the city…”

  Surri nodded. “Precisely. My grandfather was a stormbearer, and a powerful one at that.”

  “Does that mean I have power too?” Kiera asked.

  “It is hard to say. You are your mother’s daughter, and she was only half Thuum. She and I lived in two separate families, and we were not close. However, Conner’s line descends from sorcerers, so who can say what a joining of the two bloodlines could create? It may be a minor power, or it could be something altogether new and powerful.”

  “How do I learn how to use it?”

  “I will teach you as best I can. Our two abilities are similar but also different. Wind calling is about focus and discipline. Stormbearing relies a great deal on emotion, particularly anger, like the tempests themselves.”

  Kiera grinned. “Well, that’s in my wheelhouse.”

  “It certainly is.”

  Conner broke in. “What matters is that you’re my daughter, and that always comes first.”

  Kiera shrank under Conner’s praise and the gentle hug he gave her. Coming to grips with the unexpected change in her life, and the people and their roles in it, was going to take time. Despite her emotional reluctance, part of her cried out with joy, craving the attentions and praise of a loving father, and that was the voice she feared the most.

  “I found something last night,” she said, deflecting the uncomfortable sentiments with work.

  She stepped away from Conner, raced up the stairs, and returned with the papers she had stolen from the finance minister’s ledger. “I got this from a book in the palace. It looks like payouts from the Crown.”

  Conner looked for a place at the table not spattered with cake and sat down to read the pages Kiera had given him. His eyes flicked over the numbers and text.

  “Is there something you saw that I’m not seeing that made you think this was of interest?” he finally asked, giving up on deciphering their meaning.

  Kiera leaned over the table and stabbed a finger at several entries. “Look at these dates and sums. The dates are Nimat’s tribute days, and the payouts are all the same dating all the way back to when Rastus took over after his brother died. Same days, same amounts for the last fifteen years.”

  Conner stroked his chin as he nodded. “I see it now. So Rastus has been paying Nimat tribute. For what? One would think it would be the other way around, a payment for license to operate her criminal organizations. That’s how it usually works. The gods know I saw plenty of that during my tenure as inquisitor.”

  Kiera shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe Nimat has some dirt on him and he pays her to keep quiet.”

  “Possible.” Conner tapped his chin as he thought. “As bad as the streets are now, it used to be worse. It only got better when Rastus succeeded his brother.”

  “You think that’s what the money is for?” Kiera asked. “You think Rastus is paying Nimat to keep a tighter rein on the gangs?”

  “It’s possible. If that’s the case, I can’t make a strong argument against it. Asher refused to deal with Nimat as most of his predecessors had and was prepared to go to war in an effort to drive her out of Undercity and destroy the gangs once and for all. It would have been an expensive undertaking in terms of life and property damage.”

  “If both Rastus and Asher were men of conviction in their ideals, it sounds like a good motive for fratricide to me.”

  “Me too, but I never found a connection, and every healer who examined Asher’s body declared his death to be of natural causes.” Conner sat up straight and shook his head. “Regardless, it is no longer your concern.”

  Kiera screwed up her face and gave Conner a questioning look. “What do you mean?”

  “I just got you back. I cannot risk your life on these shadow investigations. The last time I crawled into a skitter lizard hole like this they killed your mother and took you away, and I will not put you in danger again.”

  “But it was OK when you thought I was someone else’s kid? Or better yet, nobody’s kid? My life had less value then?”

  Kiera felt the hairs on her arms rise with her mounting anger and fought to control her emotions. It was a battle she was losing.

  “Kiera,” Conner said in a soft, tight voice, “part of me died when I lost you and your mother. When I got you back, it was the first time I felt alive in fifteen years. I cannot bear the thought of losing you again. You can’t understand what that feels like.”

  Kiera stabbed a finger at her father. “This is exactly why Cleary never told you I was alive. He knew you would stop looking for my mother’s killer, and he was right! I came to you because I needed your protection. But now I’ve found a real purpose in my life, and I’m not going to quit because you think something has changed. Nothing has changed! Nothing will give us back the years I was stuck in Wayward House, and nothing will bring my mother back. But I will make those responsible pay, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

  Conner stood, his face clouded with anger. “I am your father, and I will not allow you to risk your life!”

  Kiera snorted and walked away. “Screw you, Father. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some training to do.”

  Surri cocked a thin eyebrow at Conner as Kiera stormed out of the room. “Did you really think that was going to work?”

  Conner sighed and dropped back into the chair. “No, but I had nothing else. Please talk some sense into her. She cannot throw her life away, not now when I just got her back.”

  Surri turned away. “You heard the girl. Screw you, we have some training to do.”

  CHAPTER 28

  Ashlea’s voice intruded on Russel’s already fitful sleep. He opened his eyes and found himself floating in a familiar sea of blackness. Ashlea’s glowing, incorporeal form hung in the air an arm’s length away.

  “Russel, I’m scared. What do we do?”

  Seeing clearly without his lenses was an odd experience. Despite being nearly blind in one eye for most of his life, he had perfect vision in his dreams. “You have to stay hidden. I will get us out of this. The people who took us are stupid.”

  “Everyone is stupid compared to you.”

  “These people especially. Stay hidden. Don’t come to me again unless you have to. Nimat and the other creature might be able to track you anytime you expend energy. Your projections aren’t masked here like I was able to do in the airship.”

  Ashlea looked around at the darkness as if someone might jump out at her at any moment. “OK. Just free us as quickly as you can.”

  “Everything at its proper time. Fear of impending death is a powerful motivator. I’m missing something in my calculations. This might be what I need to find the missing piece, find what we need before returning the highlords.”

  “Did you let this man take us on
purpose?” Ashlea asked in a sharp voice.

  Russel shook his head. “Not consciously, but perhaps my subconscious saw something I did not. I cannot explain my lapse in judgement any other way. It may be this needs to happen.”

  “You mean like fate?”

  “Fate is just the subconscious guiding a person to do what they already know they should do but are blinded to it by outside interferences and distractions. I have been very distracted lately. You just have to trust me.”

  “I do trust you, but I am still afraid.”

  “Me too. Go. Someone is coming.”

  The door opened with a rattle and clank. Russel opened his eyes and sat up from where he had fallen asleep on the filthy floor. He saw Langdon still chained to the wall, but the young man barely registered the intrusion.

  Top Hat stood in the doorway and beckoned to Russel. “Come along. Time to meet some new friends and see what you can do with a proper workshop.”

  Russel stood and stared up at the gangly man without a trace of fear in his eyes. “I need my stone. Can’t go without the stone.”

  “The stone is going with us. It invites trouble, as Nimat learned the hard way, and Fred does not want it anywhere near him. You will use it to make a weapon of extraordinary power. You are going to give Fred the keys to the city and be well rewarded for it.”

  Russel remained silent, his hands still and not betraying his objection with his body language. Russel did what Russel wanted to do, and helping Fred in any way was not one of those things.

  Top Hat interpreted the boy’s lack of reaction as defiance. He stepped aside and jerked his head toward one of the other men standing outside the cell. The man strode into the room, an eager grin plastered across his face. His foot caught the thin tripwire Russel had woven from strands of thread plucked from his shirt.

  This dislodged the nail propping up the floor stone precariously perched on the ceiling rafter overhead. The twenty-pound block fell and struck the man atop the head with a sickening crunch. He fell to the floor, never to rise again, as blood pooled around his head from a large gash.

  Top Hat leaned through the doorway, gazed up at the ceiling, and turned his eyes on the boy standing passively on the other side of the small room. He saw the dark shape of a hole beneath the bench behind him where Russel had spent half the night working the stone loose. Top Hat’s eyes drifted back to the dead man on the floor and doubled over in laughter.

  “That is the funniest damn thing I have ever witnessed in my life!” Top Hat crowed. “Gods how I wish I could have seen the look on his face.” He shook his head and waved Russel over. “Come, enough games. It’s time to go.”

  Russel shuffled over, stepping around the man on the floor and his expanding pool of blood. Top Hat ushered him from the room, leaving Langdon where he was and not sparing him so much as a glance. The remaining man fell in behind Top Hat and his charge and followed them up the stairs.

  Top Hat stopped next to a large trunk in the middle of the floor near a side door. “I’m afraid you will have to travel the first leg of your little journey in less than comfortable style. Fred is taking no chances on anyone connecting you with him, so you will hide in the trunk. Do not fret. The airship captain will let you out after they have left the mooring yard.”

  A shudder wracked Russel’s body as he stared at the box. Other than beatings, his father’s favorite form of punishment was locking him in a cupboard for hours on end while he drank himself into a stupor.

  “Go on, kid,” Top Hat said. “You won’t be in there long, and I’m pretty sure you won’t run out of air.”

  Russel’s throat bobbed as he swallowed his fear and climbed into the chest. Top Hat closed the lid, and Russel heard the latch click into place. Not a single particle of light found its way into the box. Russel closed his eyes and went to a place of even greater darkness—the recesses of his own mind. Equations and diagrams flared into being all around him, shattering the darkness. This was the one place he never felt alone, where there was no fear or pain, only answers born of supreme logic. It was where he went to figure out how to make bad people go away…forever.

  CHAPTER 29

  Dorian stumbled down the street, favoring a bent and twisted leg and cradling one arm against his chest. The damnable horse had dragged him more than half a mile before he was able to cut himself loose. Blood crusted over one eye, making it difficult to see through the already obscuring sandstorm.

  Rage was a perpetual source of energy, urging his bruised muscles to respond to his demand as he fought to block out the crippling pain suffusing every inch of his body. He caught movement out of the corner of his good eye but ignored it. His only thought was of the girl who, for a second time, had interfered and aided in his failure. There was no doubt that it was the same girl from the warehouse, and when he found her, he would make her suffer.

  For now, he had more pressing concerns, like not dying. Dorian had freed himself near Midtown and shambled through the district like a crippled drunkard. His soul stones were all but depleted. He had drained them as much as he could in an attempt to repair some of the damage to his body while reserving just enough to defend himself should the need arise. It did not take long for that need to appear.

  Two men stepped out of the sheltering confines of a doorway, their faces covered in face wraps, and goggles protecting their eyes from the blowing sand.

  “Hey there, friend,” one shouted above the wind as he took Dorian by the arm. “You look out of sorts. Why don’t you come over here out of the storm?”

  The second man moved to the Necrophage’s other side and tried to lead him back toward the doorway, both men’s free hands questing inside Dorian’s robes in search of valuables.

  What they found was death. Dorian’s void lance extended in a flash and sank into one of the men’s guts, transfixing him as it pulled his life force from his body. The Necrophage expended a portion of the stolen energy, sending a tendril of blood from the man’s wound to wrap around the other thief’s throat.

  With both men immobilized, Dorian released his hold on his lance, retrieved a command spike from his pocket, and lodged it into the base of the choking man’s neck. The impaled thief could do nothing but stand and stare helplessly as he gripped the lance stuck in his stomach with both hands.

  Dorian freed his newest puppet from the constricting band of offal and returned his attention to the man impaled upon his lance. He pulled at the man’s soul, forcing it into the soul stone he wore, siphoning off its memories before using it to heal some of his more crippling wounds.

  The Necrophage let the corpse fall onto the street and turned to his newest slave. “Your name is Martin, is it not?” he asked, skimming the name from the memories of his recent victim.

  “Yes,” Martin replied, his eyes staring vacantly through his goggles at a distant point lost in the blowing sand.

  “You are part of a gang?”

  “Yes.”

  “Take me to your leader. We have an important matter to discuss.”

  “Yes.” Martin turned and began leading Dorian through Midtown at a languid pace.

  Servant and master weathered the storm, one oblivious to the stinging sand, the other focusing on survival and the awful retribution he would enact once he was well and had solidified a secure base from which to operate. Martin led him to one of the finer manors in Midtown, a compound surrounded by a brick-and-iron fence with people standing watch at every connecting intersection.

  Martin spoke to those who stepped out of their protective alcoves to question them. He was convincing enough to secure their passage to the manor, the guards seeing a lone stranger with one of their men as little threat to the house or their leader.

  Dorian had been so focused on his injuries that he had not noticed how terrible the storm was until he reached the sanctuary provided by the manor. The moment the doors shut behind him, sealing off the storm outside, it felt as though he had shed an enormous weight from his back. He stood up s
traight and surveyed his new surroundings, his new home.

  It was not unlike Arnaud Newell’s mansion in size and layout. While the furnishings differed and the construction was less refined, the most notable difference was the number of people lurking within. A handful of men and women appeared while others kept to the shadows or peered around doorways to adjoining rooms, wary of intruders and ready to react to any threat.

  Two burly men stood outside what Dorian assumed was the manor’s master bedroom. They interdicted Dorian and his guide by placing their bulk between the newcomers and the door.

  “The boss is sleeping,” the brute on the left said.

  “She needs to speak with my friend,” Martin replied with an unblinking gaze. “He has just come from the palace and has important news regarding the future of not just our gang, but the city itself.”

  “It can wait till morning. The city ain’t going nowhere in the next few hours.”

  Martin began to tremble as Dorian mentally urged him to press on. “He needs to see her now!”

  The guard’s hand drifted toward the knife at his waist, and his face twisted into an angry sneer. “I don’t know what’s got into you, Martin, but you and your friend better—”

  “Send them in,” Marina ordered through the closed door.

  The man looked as if he might strike Martin anyway, but he spun and flung the door open with an angry shove. “You better hope she likes whatever he’s got to say. Marina don’t like to have her beauty sleep interrupted.”

  “Stand behind them. If one moves, kill them both, smartass,” Marina said.

  Marina was a short, stocky woman with cropped, dark hair that would be much more appropriate on a man. Dorian thought this must be only one of many nights of interrupted beauty sleep.

  Marina narrowed her eyes at Martin. “Martin, isn’t it? What do you want at this hour, you little pismire?”

  Dorian laid a hand on Martin’s shoulder. “It is I who insisted on meeting you. I do apologize for the hour, but something has happened in the palace that will affect everyone in the city, particularly you and others like you.”