Clearly, he thought they were refugees, too.
“Variena?” Etienne asked and his tone was cool. Tamerlan had noticed his tone tended to grow cool when he was considering deeper things than what was on the surface. “The Red Door Woman from Jingen?”
“You’ve heard of her, then.” The man sounded satisfied. “Follow me.”
Etienne stood up quickly and Bronzebow followed. What made him interested in this woman? Tamerlan had never heard of her and they’d been working to help the people in these camps for weeks.
But never like this. This gift has brought the attention of the true power in this refugee camp. We should meet them. We can help them.
In truth, he hadn’t really hurt anything, had he? After all, while stealing grain was wrong, distributing it to the needy made up for that, right?
I agree. Let’s meet this Variena and see how we can help her.
They slid through the descending darkness of the camp, skidding in the thick mud churned up by many feet and relentless rain. Shelters here hardly counted as shelters at all. Some were nothing more than blankets or rugs strung up between poles. Smoke wisped up from some of the better shelters – muted and faint as the fires struggled to stay lit.
Etienne had called them his people, but in truth there were are many here from H’yi as there were from Jingen.
It was to one of the shelters with a fire that the man led them. Ringed with people even in the rain, the shelter was a simple place. Carpets – their colorful designs mud-streaked now – and an actual tarpaulin formed a crude pavilion packed with bodies. From the edges, it was hard to see the struggling fire but there was a heat in the eyes of the people crowded here. They were mostly men – young men – and they all seemed moments away from violence. Growls of agreement rippled through their ranks as words were muttered between them.
At the center, a woman was talking, her face lit with emotion.
Tamerlan’s heart seized, his breath coming too quickly.
Was that?
It couldn’t be.
Marielle!
But it wasn’t. The woman turned and her eyes met his. Brown eyes – not Marielle’s purple ones. And the lines on her face showed a woman almost twenty years older than Marielle. But still, his breath caught in his throat.
“Her mother,” Etienne whispered in his ear right before he grabbed Tamerlan’s arm and dragged him into the shadows. “Shhh. Say nothing. We can’t be here right now. I have somewhere I need to be, and you need to get back to Jhinn. Now.”
And stop mooning over women twice your age.
That was Lila’s voice. Somewhere in that moment when he’d seen Variena, Byron Bronzebow had left him.
Tamerlan blinked. She’d looked so much like Marielle. It felt like a punch to the gut to see her. He wanted to talk to her. He wanted to see if she was like Marielle.
“Tamerlan.” He looked up to see Etienne’s eyes boring into his in the half-light. “I know what you’re thinking. Don’t talk to her. She’s more dangerous than you realize. Go and find Jhinn. We need a plan to find the Grandfather again. Maybe this time, you’ll be quicker in using that Eye.”
Tamerlan flinched as he nodded. He’d been too slow. Had it been because he hesitated to lose his vision? By the time they tried again, he’d need to be over that fear just in case.
After a moment, Etienne patted him on the shoulder with a satisfied nod before slipping away into the shadows. The darkness and rain swallowed him up before he’d gone more than a few steps.
Tamerlan breathed in a long breath. He should listen to Etienne and go back to Jhinn. The other man would be waiting. It made sense. And yet ...
He couldn’t stop thinking about Variena. She’d looked so much like her daughter. And everyone was hanging on her words. Perhaps he could listen just for a few moments. He crept through the shadows toward the edge of the crowd, listening, watching.
There she was! Her eyes glowed in the light of the fire and the favor of the crowd.
“You saw how the Landholds treated us! They bought my daughter’s life to save our city. My daughter! And the city was still destroyed by the dragon. What was the point of her sacrifice? What was the point of any of the sacrifices? We’ve been tricked! We’ve all been made fools of by those with money and power. They tread on our heads as their walkways. They make our broken bodies their roads. It’s all been a lie!”
She didn’t know. Her daughter was alive, and she didn’t know!
Tamerlan took a step forward.
Pain split through his head, stopping him mid-stride and the world went dark.
8: Searching Through Time
Marielle
IT WAS AS HARD TO STEER herself through the tides of history as it was to steer a maple seed through the course of a river – and yet, she was making progress.
And now she’d stumbled on two Legends together.
It was Maid Chaos – or she thought it was. Her hair was long and gleaming, and her curving figure seemed better suited to dancing than sitting in a dark room drinking with a one-eyed man.
“I didn’t fight this hard to gain power just to see it slip away,” she said and the bitterness in her words seemed far too deep for one so young. “They’re my people – my followers. Mine. Do you hear me?”
She smelled – wrong. Like a dog with rabies. An astringent scent close to Elderflower. And her colors were too bright – like they’d been infected with something. Marielle had seen that before and she knew exactly what it was. In the City Watch, you found people like this sometimes. Occasionally, they were harmless. More often, their crimes turned your stomach worse than rotted meat ever could. Insanity was not a pleasant scent even if the scent itself was not so bad.
“If the dragons stay free, you’ll lose any power you have. They’re picking us off village by village. They are too large – too powerful.” That was King Abelmeyer – she was sure of it. From his single eye to the ruby hanging in the frame of his open-laced shirt, he was all king. Scent trails of Royal blue wrapped around him like a cloak – a testament to his power.
“The price is too high. The people will revolt,” she said, her insanity flaring so that a burst of rainbow colors spun around her. “You’ve planned this to quell us all, haven’t you? Planned it to make yourself King of all the Dragonblood Plains!”
He sighed. “I don’t care about crowns. They’re too heavy for an honest head. And I don’t care about power. It’s nothing but an anvil pulling me deeper and deeper into hell. I just want to save who I can. While I can.”
“Then do it by yourself.”
He opened his palms, showing them to her – empty. “I can’t. I’m just not enough.”
“You stopped that dragon when you gave your eye.”
“But only temporarily. To keep him bound will require more. And I don’t have more to give.”
What did that mean for Tamerlan and his sacrifice outside the clock? She’d seen him give an eye – hadn’t she? Or was that King Abelmeyer? Had she seen that with her own eyes or had she watched Abelmeyer in the flows of history? Sometimes it was hard to keep the two straight. She’d seen too much of what had been and what would be and what might have been. Marielle’s mind felt fuzzy and thick.
“You have another eye,” Maid Chaos said glibly, but it was lightning blue fear that tinged her words, not levity.
Abelmeyer’s growl made Marielle feel her own thrill of fear even though he couldn’t see her. His voice was hard as flint.
“You’ll do this, you trumped-up maid. And you’ll do it when I tell you, or I’ll shake you to pieces. Like a dog with a rat in its mouth.”
The scene started to fade. Marielle tried to claw her way back. What happened next? Did Maid Chaos agree to work with Abelmeyer or did he manage to force her? Why did the histories never talk of this? Marielle was dying to know.
What had he needed from her to seal the dragon up and why was Maid Chaos so nervous about the cost?
But the scene faded, and M
arielle was rolling again in the river of time, bobbing just along the surface. She had found no laws to this place – no code. There was nothing to govern what she – or anyone – should or shouldn’t do and that terrified her to the core. She was a servant of justice, not a filmy seed in the wind.
But justice worked best when the judge knew all the facts. And there was more to find in this morass of history – if she could just steer herself to the right things.
Grimacing mentally, she pushed on.
9: Kidnapped
Tamerlan
“HE’S WAKING NOW.”
The voice sounded familiar, but Tamerlan’s head was pounding so painfully that he might not have been able to pick out his own sister’s voice in the heavy drumming going on inside his skull.
Pull yourself together. You have been captured. This is a time to keep your wits about you.
Deathless Pirate rarely gave advice. Strange that he was speaking to Tamerlan now.
The story is getting more interesting. I want to know who these people are who have our vessel in their hands.
Tamerlan blinked, opening crusty eyes. He was tied tightly to a chair. His hands and wrists hurt from the ropes and his back ached from where he’d been slumped in the hard chair. He was still soaking wet, though the room was dry, and a fire burned in the hearth. That meant he couldn’t have been there for long.
He frowned. It looked like the room of an inn. Who would bring a kidnapped victim here? Anyone could hear his screams.
A face loomed into his vision. Ah. He recognized this one. The friend of Marielle. What was his name again? Anglarok.
“Remember me?” Anglarok asked with a smile that wasn’t friendly at all.
“Sure,” Tamerlan allowed. His lips felt thick and his mouth was dry.
“Remember this?” The man bounced the yellow conch shell on his palm – the same one Tamerlan had picked up when he found it in front of the clock. It was Marielle’s.
“Yes.”
“It’s not yours,” the other man said.
“Not yours either,” Tamerlan replied. A drink would be nice right now.
Stop being so surly. Try to charm them!
Maybe that was easy for a pirate. It was hard for an Alchemist’s apprentice. Especially when the people they were referring to had kidnapped him.
Stop fussing about how hurt you are by their actions – that’s what children do. Adults deal with things as they are. Try to learn why they want you. That will give us valuable information.
“We want the girl that you put in the clock. We saw her there,” Anglarok said. “Found her after many days of searching. Alone. Alive in an undamaged clock, while the city around her was nothing but a burned husk. It took us weeks to find witnesses but did you really think we would stop. Did you really think we wouldn’t look everywhere?”
“Why do you want Marielle?” Tamerlan asked. It seemed ridiculous to answer the rest. He hadn’t thought about these people at all. Why would he?
There was the woman behind him – she had short cropped hair except for a long swath at the very front and she wore a furious expression that made him think of a Watch Officer, though she was clearly a foreigner. That must be the woman who Marielle had saved. Liandari. Was that right? He wasn’t sure.
“She is ours. She took the vow. She is part of the Harbingers now and we owe her a debt. And the witnesses told us that a man with short blond hair put here there. A tall man. Broad-shouldered and confident, but with a beardless young face. He had a ruby medallion.” Anglarok pulled the medallion around Tamerlan’s neck out from under his shirt, twisting it until Tamerlan gagged. “This looks like a medallion to me. What do you think, Liandari?”
“If that’s not a ruby medallion, then I’m an octopus,” Liandari said. She slid a knife from its sheath and began to sharpen it slowly.
“We want her back,” Anglarok said slowly.
He eased up on the chain and Tamerlan sucked in a gasping breath.
“I want her out of the clock as badly as you do.” His words were rasping through his ragged throat.
It seemed the safest thing to say. This man looked violent and the gleam in his eye spelled trouble in capital letters.
Make him believe it!
“I’d do anything to get her out. But to do that, I have to find the Grandfather – the man who put her in the clock. And I need to trap him.”
The blow came out of nowhere. Tamerlan’s face blossomed with pain and the sight in his single eye went dark for a moment before he was spitting blood and gasping for breath.
These were Marielle’s friends? These thugs?
“Don’t lie to us,” Liandari said from behind Anglarok. She stood at the fire, still sharpening her knife and swirling her fingers through his things. A few loose coins. A belt knife. A tangle of string. Abelmeyer’s Eye. The rolls of Spices. Tamerlan flinched at the sight of those in her possession. What would she do with those? Did she know what they were?
“I’m not lying,” Tamerlan said through a fat lip.
The blow came so fast that he couldn’t flinch before it struck him, spinning his head with the force of it.
“Anglarok could hit you all day. But what would be the point of that? Better to be honest,” Liandari said. He was starting to worry about that knife. What was she sharpening it for? “You put the girl in the clock. We can’t get her out. You took her conch shell. And yet, you have not used it. But Anglarok smells the same scent on you that we smelled when the Lord Mythos vanished after promising to help us. The same smell that led us to the clock and Marielle. What is that smell, boy?”
Tamerlan kept his mouth shut now. He was learning his lesson.
Liandari picked up the contents of his pockets, examining them in her hands and he held his breath as she looked at the spices held in her hands.
In his mind, the Legends held their breath, too, because what he feared was the same thing that they wanted. They wanted her to burn the spices – whether for herself or for him. They wanted her to release them. He could almost feel them jockeying for position on the edge of the Bridge.
“I will give you a few minutes to think about how easy it will be for us to kill you and how wise it would be for you to tell us everything. In the meantime, Anglarok and I will have a quiet talk with the keeper of this fine inn. Rest assured that when we are done, any sound you make in the questioning will not concern him.”
She threw his sword and the yellow conch shell on the table but the other things she kept in her hand as Anglarok opened the door to the room. Tamerlan heard the hinges squeaking behind him.
“Remember, boy,” Liandari said. “Cities aren’t the only thing that can be burned to the ground.”
She threw his other things into the fire, as if for emphasis, or maybe to remind him that she could burn him just as easily – and then the two of them stalked out of the room and shut the door.
Tamerlan waited for them to leave before sucking in as deep of a breath as he could.
Please let there be smoke! Please!
There! Just a whiff. Would it be enough?
He coughed. Breathed in more. Coughed again.
He was going to hyperventilate like this!
And then he wasn’t coughing at all.
Ram the Hunter was coughing.
Yes! If anyone could get free, it was Ram!
Dragon. I sense it beneath us.
And then Ram the Hunter was bursting out of the bonds. How had he done that when he only had Tamerlan’s muscles to use? And Ram the Hunter was scooping up Tamerlan’s sword and strapping it on.
We hunt!
Ram reached to where Abelemeyer’s Eye had landed – just the ruby part in the fire – and snatched it out, gripping it by the cooler chain.
Ram grabbed the chair he’d been tied to only moments before and ran to the window, shattering the panes with the chair legs and sweeping them clear before leaping up to the ledge.
The door to the room swung open and Anglarok ch
arged in.
“What -?” shock was on his face, but it only took him a moment to snatch up his harpoon from beside the door.
“Next time,” Ram growled. “Ask better questions.”
And then he leapt out the window, grabbing a sign on the way down and swinging dramatically on it before landing squarely on the cobbles. Liandari rushed out the inn door, sword in hand. Anglarok was already up on the window ledge. How were they moving so fast? How had Liandari even known to run out the door? They were smarter than Tamerlan was. Quicker than he was.
Not quicker than Ram.
The sign over the door read, The Priest’s Revenge. They were on the edge of the Temple District where trade and mercantile leaked into the edges of religion. That was a relief. He wouldn’t have to go far for aid.
Fortunately, Ram was not hesitant. He was moving before Tamerlan had even assessed the situation, dashing down the cobbled street and between clumps of strangers working in the dusk of the first night of Autumngale – the night known as “Drawing Bounds.” Tonight, groups of friends, family and neighbors would draw thick boundaries in chalk – or even oil pastels to defy the rain – all through the cities of the Dragonblood Plains. The boundaries marked the small places claimed by these groups of allies.
In the past, we didn’t do it with chalk. We did it with blood.
Yuck. Of course, it would be something violent and unnecessary.
Who are you to say it wasn’t necessary?
They ran through the rain, picking up speed as they dashed down to the canal. Ram tossed the Eye’s chain over his head as he ran. Tamerlan could just imagine Ram out with a bucket of blood and paintbrush making marks on the streets.
That’s too literal. What I mean is, we killed for what is ours. And I sense a dragon sleeping beneath our feet. We should slay this beast.
Did you ever slay dragons in your past life, Ram? Ram? Ram?
The Legend was gone.
Dragon’s blood in a cup!
Feet pounded behind him and Tamerlan clenched his teeth. Just when he needed him the Legend was gone! It was up to Tamerlan to get free on his own, now. But what Ram could do with Tamerlan’s body, Tamerlan could do ... right?
Autumngale Page 5