Queens of Wings & Storms

by Angela Sanders et al.

  “You can’t give us one more year, Brin?” a lady in green velvet asked.

  “Shel, I am ninety-two years old. Truth is, I should have hung up my cloak over a decade ago. Maybe two decades ago,” Brin said. “It’s a wonder no one has taken advantage of this frail old man yet. My days of fighting and defending are long gone.”

  Then he gestured to someone else, the youngest one in the group by far. Tillie didn’t think he had made it past his twenties.

  “We are lucky,” Brin said, “that this man moved to Riddenholm! Mister Sheltier, I must make comment on how perfect a fit you are for this job!”

  The young man’s cheeks reddened just a hint. “It is luckier for me that you’d choose a stranger.” He ran a hand through his fluffy brown waves. “Are you sure there was no one more qualified?”

  Some of the others in the group exchanged glances and uncomfortably shifted their weight.

  “Oh, so humble a man!” Lord Tutson clapped his hands. “Even better!”

  The young man let a laugh slip into the celebration, flaunting a wide and charming smile that featured a little gap in his front teeth.

  “Well, don’t let me go without thanking you for the opportunity! I’ll keep a watchful eye over this place, I promise. And please, call me Dane! Mister Sheltier is too stuffy. Maybe in twenty years.”

  A round of laughter came and went, some genuine and some nervous. Tillie left and returned to Rowan and the grave, her mind busy at work.

  “Ma, the fish turned out so good!” Rowan waved to her as she neared. “He’s gonna love it!”

  They watched the sunset and Tillie took her turn talking to Galen. She talked to him about Brin Colt—the same man who had helped bury him—leaving the cemetery after being its warden all her life and most of her mother’s life.

  “I know he’s old,” she sighed, “but I thought he’d have an apprentice or something. Instead it seems like he just plucked a random man off the streets and dropped him here.”

  Rowan fell asleep in her lap as she rambled.

  “His name is Dane Sheltier.” Tillie wove her fingers through Rowan’s hair. “Will you keep an eye on him? I don’t trust him. I can think of at least five other people in this town who could have gotten the job, but no. This new man, somehow perfect for the job, shows up at just the right time. Seems fishy to me.”

  The sun was gone and stars emerged one by one. Tillie knew it was time to go. She said sweet nothings to her late husband and kissed the stone rabbit on the head, then packed, heaved a sleepy Rowan into her arms, and left.

  Her heart was heavy and a little cold. Last year there had been more to say. Galen’s memory was feeling more distant by the day.

  Chapter 2

  Tillie woke the following morning at her mother’s home in Riddenholm. Her mind picked up right where it had left off as though the last seven hours hadn’t passed at all. Sun beamed in through old lacy curtains and the scent of fatty, salty bacon pulled her out of bed, into clean clothes, and toward the kitchen.

  There was a note on the stone counter by the hearth. Her mother had gone to work at the fletcher’s and had taken Rowan with her. Tillie ate her breakfast in peaceful silence, imagining Rowan talking a mile a minute about the day before. Fortunately, her mother was a very patient woman.

  As soon as she had finished her meal and tidied up, Tillie grabbed her bag and set off for her final errand in Riddenholm. Her destination was the Physician’s College.

  Riddenholm’s Physician’s College was the only place in all of Central Siopenne where a person could officially become a doctor. Lack of education never stopped anyone from practicing in the smaller towns, but all the best doctors on the mainland studied in Riddenholm. Tillie tried not to think about how different life would have been if she’d studied to become a doctor.

  Those thoughts won’t do you any good, she reminded herself. Galen is gone. You couldn’t have changed that.

  The college was massive. Old stone reached stories and stories into the sky, with covered balconies weaving their way around like a snake. Courtyards trailed through the grounds and were home to miles of wisteria clinging to every brick.

  Like most days, the front doors were open until sundown. Tillie stepped inside and up to the reception desk, building herself up with a smile. A gentleman with a long goatee regarded her with a nod and adjusted his glasses.

  “Well, if it isn’t Missus Tillie Boyce! It’s been awhile, little lady!” His smile looked down on her.

  “Been a whole year already.” The corners of her mouth fell a little. She patted the loose bun at the nape of her neck and cleared her throat. “I am here to make my donation.”

  The man took a thin book out from underneath the desk and readied his fountain pen. “To the Anatomy Wing, as usual?”

  “Yes, Sir Caster. One gold piece to the Anatomy Wing.” Saying it out loud made her face hot with shame. She pulled her eyes away from the book, but not before seeing the other names on the page and their donations of triple digit amounts.

  “Oh Missus Boyce, please don’t fret. We are very grateful for your continued support. Especially the Anatomy Wing. Their studies until recently went mostly unnoticed.”

  He logged her name and donation, then took out a small blue purse emblazoned with the college’s crest. Tillie stared at the sun symbol sewn in gold thread and its five rays ending in different leaves. Then she watched her money disappear.

  “I think you’ll be happy to know that this has been making a difference lately, Missus Boyce.” He tugged on the drawstrings and pulled the purse shut on her single gold coin. “Have you heard the news?”

  She tilted her head. “I have not.”

  “Lord Deloren, head of the Anatomy Wing as you know, has been hard at work with his students. They have a new study. A discovery. And it could be relevant to, well—” his next words stuck in his throat for a moment, “—ah, Galen’s death.”

  Tillie’s eyebrows rose. “Really? Galen’s father died of something so similar, I’m worried the same thing could happen to Rowan. But if they’ve made a discovery…”

  “It’s promising,” the receptionist said, putting the purse away back beneath the desk. “Or at least it sounds that way. He’s going into strange territory with this study. There’s things that involve genealogy and subjects of other Wings. Lord Deloren has been running tests and exper—” he stopped again, searching the air for the right words, “—paying people to help test his theories, is what I meant.”

  “Of course.” Tillie tried to grin but wasn’t sure she had made it that far. “I understand the lengths the medical field must go to for the rest of us.”

  He closed the donation logbook and put it away next. “Don’t be a stranger. You can come see us any time. Not just once a year. Not just for a donation. This town will always be a part of your family, Tillie.”

  She bid him farewell and left to see her mother and son at the fletcher’s. It was time to return to Beralin. The next river boat going back would be at the port in only a couple of hours, and then she could try to go back to normal. Try to forget.

  But the receptionist’s news wouldn’t leave her mind. Her husband’s condition seemed to run in his family. It was a festering in the stomach that eventually ended him, and his mother didn’t speak up about it until after the death ceremony. Every time Tillie looked at Rowan, she wondered if he was harboring the same thing that very second.

  If Lord Deloren figured out what it was, what caused it, maybe Rowan could be spared. She imagined the students hard at work as the receptionist had said.

  But then she wondered a little more. What did that work actually look like?

  How many stomachs, alive or dead, did the Anatomy Wing have to study to get where they were? And where did they come from? Who donated body parts? Were there really people lining up to let Lord Deloren run his tests and experiments?

  Cut that out, Tillie. She breathed in deep. Stop thinking about it. You’re working yourself up fo
r nothing.

  When she arrived at the fletcher’s, Rowan had an endless story about making arrows with grandma. The arrows in actuality were steel-tipped, but to him they were dragon scales and ogre teeth and lion claws. Tillie’s mother gave them a hug, and then they left.

  Tillie and Rowan took the next riverboat to Beralin and were back when stars covered the dark sky above. She made one last stop in the city before going home. She couldn’t let today go by unnoticed.

  “Ma, isn’t this the City Watch building?”

  It was. Tillie held onto his hand as they approached the sturdy masonry that held the City Watch and its officials. A proud blue banner flapped in the night breeze. Blue for Hanarn, the god of Justice and Law.

  “We’ll be just a minute here, okay baby? Then we can go home.”

  Inside, the building was only lit with a handful of oil lamps. The dim yellow light flickered in and out as the flames threatened to die. A woman trimmed new wicks from a long braid of rope nearby, ready to replace them as they burned out. When Tillie crossed her vision, she smiled.

  “Hello there. Are you two okay?” she asked.

  “Doing well,” Tillie said. “I just came by to—well, I suppose I want to leave an anonymous tip. I don’t know if it’s anything, but I can’t ignore it.”

  “Of course.” The woman went to a desk and procured a slip of paper and a leather wrapped pencil. “Here. Write down the details for us and we’ll have it looked into as soon as we’re able.”

  She felt silly having so little to go on, but she wrote anyway. When she left the City Watch, she did it with a bit of weight off her heart. She skipped home beneath the stars with Rowan.

  Chapter 3

  The next morning, just after Tillie sent Rowan away to the schoolhouse, there was a knock at her door. Heavy handed and four perfectly timed raps. She surveyed the front room of her little cottage, and though it was cramped, it was clean enough for visitors. She wiped her hands on a rag and opened the door.

  “Hello. How can I help you?”

  She said it to a woman she had never seen before. A woman who she could not guess one single thing about based on her appearance. She could have been in her fifties just as well as she could have been a dour-faced twenty-year-old. Her hair color and skin color were both a shade of ambiguous tan—she could have hailed from anywhere on Rosamar. The hard stare of her dark eyes couldn’t even be deciphered. Was she angry? Confused? Far-sighted?

  “Missus Tillie Boyce?” she asked. Her voice was harsh but even.

  “Y-yes ma’am. And you?”

  Even the woman’s clothes left Tillie perplexed. She wore a tall black witch-hunting hat with a thin silver ribbon, a long black coat with silver epaulets, and a polished flintlock pistol at each hip.

  “Lady Cadence de la Croix, Bone Priestess from the Botathora Sanctum. Missus Boyce—” she produced a note from her pocket, “—I am told you wrote this.”

  It was from her trip to the City Watch the night before. “I told them that was anonymous!”

  “And I told them to tell me.” The woman tipped her hat and came inside. “My investigation starts with you.”

  “Investigation?”

  “Please close your front door, Missus Boyce. I must discuss this with you, and I do not intend for the whole world to hear.”

  Tillie grunted, shut the door, and hurried to lead Cadence into the kitchen. “You said you’re from the Botathora Sanctum? What does that mean, exactly? Why are you investigating?”

  The kitchen was as cramped as the front room. There was just enough room for a cutting board by the lit hearth and a small pantry. Tillie poured water from a ceramic jug into her kettle and set it by the fire for tea.

  “Botathora is the Goddess of Death and Time, as everyone knows, and as I am a high-ranking dedicant, the Sanctum employs me to investigate any incidents where the dead have been desecrated. I am to enact justice for the dead and then consecrate them again so that their souls may continue the journey to Botathora.”

  Tillie covered her mouth. “Oh gods, you’re investigating desecration? They really thought what I put in my note was that serious?”

  “Perhaps.” Cadence’s gaze didn’t wander for even a second, yet Tillie was sure she had already observed every detail in the room. “And perhaps the City Watch has no idea how to handle something of this nature. The dead are just as sensitive as the living, but they are completely out of the Watch’s expertise or jurisdiction.”

  Tillie took a deep breath and fetched two tea cups. She kept the chipped one for herself—one that Rowan had dropped once—and saved the nice one for her guest.

  “Alright then Lady Cadence, what would you like to know?”

  When Cadence thought, she didn’t move. There was no pacing or idle fidgeting or bouncing. The woman was like stone.

  “Tillie Boyce, twenty-five years old, born and raised in Riddenholm. Originally Tillie Thatcher.”

  “I thought you came here to ask me questions.”

  “Are you confirming my information?”

  Tillie huffed as she retrieved a jar of loose tea. “Yes.”

  Cadence nodded. “Married Galen Boyce in the early spring of 1130. Gave birth to a son several months later. Fall of 1133 Galen falls ill and perishes.”

  “Perishes.” Tillie grumbled and put a pinch of tea in each cup. “Such a sweet, delicate way to phrase an agonizing death, Lady Cadence. I did not take you for a delicate speaker.”

  “I judged you for someone delicate, yourself. I would not have used the word otherwise.”

  Tillie stood across from her at the countertop. A silence fell over them as they waited for the water to boil.

  “Will you confirm the information?” Cadence asked.

  “Yes! Gods, is that all you want? Do you just want my life story, or did you actually come here to solve a potential crime? I must warn you that my life is not all that interesting.”

  Cadence’s eyes shifted to the ground for only a fraction of a second. “Actually, Missus Boyce, I am here to judge character because my next question is why you thought it necessary to report what you saw. And just what was it that you saw?”

  The water started to simmer. Tillie breathed in deep.

  “Can I ask a question first?”

  “You may.”

  “When a place like the College needs to study, where do the bodies come from? We’ve learned so much about all the races on this world through dedicated study… but how do we come by that material?”

  Cadence folded her arms. “Study is important for medical advancement and survival. The Sanctum knows this. Our goddess knows this. Having your body—your soul’s vessel in life—donated upon your death is something that can be celebrated and honored in a death ceremony or Rite of Crossing. A person of significance must make that choice, however. Perhaps you decide to donate your body on your deathbed. Or you let a loved one decide. Or the Sanctum.”

  “But it must be decided upon and noted in the ceremony?” Tillie asked.

  “Yes. Because even though the soul’s ties to all things mortal are severed with the ceremony, sometimes threads are stubborn and still linger.”

  Tillie went to the kettle, now rattling with boiling water. “And what does that mean?”

  “It means the soul cannot reach Botathora to complete the journey. Sometimes the threads pull the soul back and it winds up in the Ethereal Realm as a ghost, or the Silent Realm as something more malicious. Or worse. It could end up as a daemon.”

  “And these are all things that could happen if bodies are improperly—” she poured the steaming water into the cups, “—oh, what would you call it? Used?”

  “A soul being pulled back is angry. A soul being pulled back to see its old body disrespected is furious. And rightly so.” She pushed the cup away as Tillie slid it to her and took the chipped one instead. “You are a nice person, Missus Boyce. Your sacrifice is noticed and appreciated, but please, take the finer things. You have earned more than a chippe
d cup.”

  The words brought a ferocious blush to Tillie’s cheeks. “Thank you.”

  “The Sanctum’s drive to pursue perpetrators of desecration and improper use of the dead is not just about preventing a soul from turning into the undead, Missus Boyce, though there is nothing more tragic than when that happens. We also do this because desecrating a body is just rude.”

  Tillie hid her smile in her teacup as she tested the water. Too hot. “That it is, my lady.”

  “Now.” Cadence straightened her already perfect posture. “What possessed you to report to the City Watch?”

  Where could she even start? Tillie’s eyes wandered, looking to bowls and spices and knives for answers. Finally, she shrugged.

  “I guess it was just overthinking. I’m told I do it—”

  Her face went blank and yesterday’s events raced through her head. Cadence waited patiently and blew on the tea.

  “It was that damn grave warden!” Tillie shouted. “What was his name?”

  “You wrote ‘Dane Sheltier.’”

  “Dane Sheltier!” Tillie threw her hands up. “He got this whole thing started. He’s replacing old Brin Colt as the grave warden in Riddenholm.”

  “Now there’s a stubborn soul.” Cadence sipped. “A skeleton wearing skin.”

  “I’ve never heard of a Dane Sheltier in my life.” Tillie wandered the cramped space with her cup. “He’s new to Riddenholm. A stranger! And that old man just hands the job over to him like it’s nothing!”

  “Missus Boyce, hiring a grave warden is no small matter. The qualifications are serious. Not just anyone can be picked. Is perfect timing Mister Sheltier’s only crime?”

  “I suppose so.” Tillie stared into the tea and felt her fire snuff out. “I just can’t believe Brin Colt would overlook so many others native to the town who really could have used that opportunity.”

  “My next question, Missus Boyce, is how this links to the Physician’s College.”