Caged Lightning

by Marina Finlayson

  “You’ll see. He’s nearly finished.”

  I couldn’t help wondering what Jake was saying, but it seemed rude to ask, so I watched his bowed head instead. He looked foreign in the magnificent red cloak and ruby diadem, not like the Jake I knew at all. Was that man gone, buried under the weight of his new responsibilities?

  No, I wouldn’t believe that. Cloaks and jewels didn’t change a person, any more than shiny silver dresses did. We’d both taken on new roles but, fundamentally, we were the same people we’d always been. Just better dressed.

  Jake finished his prayer and nodded to the two priests flanking him. They stepped forward and removed the heavy cloak with a ceremonial flourish. One draped it over his arm and stepped back. The other waited while Jake removed the ruby circlet and then, surprisingly, the long, shapeless tunic.

  Not that I would complain about any opportunity to admire Jake’s broad, muscled chest, but this seemed a little odd. What now? I caught Syl’s eye, and she cocked a puzzled eyebrow at me. I lifted one shoulder in a shrug.

  We weren’t left wondering long. Now clad only in a loose pair of white pants, Jake took a deep breath and walked straight into the sacred fire. I sat bolt upright in surprise, fingers clenching on my bow. The fire burned in a vast bowl, sunken into the temple floor, several paces across. But Jake wasn’t pacing anywhere, just standing there as the flames danced and flickered across his skin.

  I glanced around, unnerved. Sure, he was a fireshaper, but this seemed a little excessive. “If he fries, do they decide he’s not worthy or something?” I whispered to Apollo.

  “It’s a test of his power,” Apollo murmured. “Throwing a few fireballs is much easier than withstanding the temple fire playing over your body. The sacred fire is no ordinary flame. The previous Ruby Adept only lasted a little over a minute, I’m told.”

  Therefore, Jake had to do better, to prove himself to the remaining fireshapers, who would be looking for a strong leader to help them rebuild. Relax, I told myself. He’s not going to get crisped. But my fist stayed clenched around the bow.

  His face was expressionless, eyes fixed on some point on the far wall. Strands of his dark hair lifted gently, wafted by the fire’s heat, but otherwise he was still. Dazzled by the flames, I could only stare and count off the seconds.

  In the darkness beyond the fire, something moved, and that was my only warning.

  An enormous gust of wind sprang up from nowhere and ripped through the vast chamber, scattering the sacred fire and knocking the gathered people from their feet. It forced me against my chair, my quiver digging into my back. My heart pounded in shock as all the torches blew out in the same instant, plunging us into shadow. The only light came from the tiny windows circling the base of the dome far above.

  Barely knowing what I was doing, I reacted on pure instinct, my hand reaching over my shoulder for an arrow in a well-rehearsed movement. I nocked it to my bow and stood in one smooth motion. The great room was dim, but not too dim for my eyes. The bow string twanged; the arrow flew, and in the shadows, a man went down.

  Apollo leapt up, his reactions slightly slower than mine, and flung his arm out. Flames roared back to life in the sacred bowl.

  “Watch out!” I snapped, leaping down from the dais as his flames leapt hungrily at the lower reaches of the dome. He’d burn us all to cinders if he didn’t get his inner sun god under control. The scattered fireshapers struggled to their feet, but kept well clear of the massive flame.

  Jake sprawled on the tiles in front of it, knocked aside by the tornado. I dropped to one knee at his side, but before I could feel for a pulse, his eyes flickered open. Time stopped as we stared at one another.

  “Lexi,” he said, his eyes shining with love.

  I smiled down at him. Zeus’s balls, but he was handsome. I could drown in those blue, blue eyes of his.

  His hand reached out to me, and then a shadow crossed his face and he sat up, drawing away. “I mean, Lady Artemis.”

  He held himself stiffly, as if the separation cost him an effort of will. Stupid, stubborn man. How many times did we have to save each other before he admitted that we were meant to be together?

  Apollo appeared at my side. He reached down and took Jake’s hand, helping the new Ruby Adept to his feet. “Are you all right?”

  Jake ran a shaking hand through his hair, very careful not to look at me. As if it would hurt less that way. “I think so. What the hell was that?”

  “Good question,” Apollo said, moving around the roaring flames, which quieted as he passed. He stopped by a black-clad body that lay on its back in the shadows by the door.

  “Who is it?” I asked, crossing to his side. The flames of the now-subdued sacred fire warmed my back as I stared down at the body.

  Oh, damn. It was Adani.

  Apollo waved his hand at the torches on the walls and they re-ignited, burning far brighter than they had before, raising the light levels in the great room considerably. Apollo’s mouth set into a hard line as he contemplated the former Master of the West. The man had a surprised expression on his face and a golden arrow lodged in his throat.

  “Oops,” I said. “Maybe I should have left him alive for questioning.”

  “I already did question him,” Apollo growled. “At length. And then let the bastard question half the other fireshapers. I thought he was clean. Now I’ll have to start all over again.”

  Definitely not clean. And what was that length of pipe lying by his outflung hand? I knelt to examine it.

  “Don’t touch it,” Jake said as I reached for it, his voice urgent. His instinct to protect me, at least, couldn’t be suppressed. But I knew it couldn’t harm me. Belatedly, the knowledge of what it was swam into my mind from somewhere deep in the murky layers of memory.

  “A blowpipe.” I picked it up, intrigued. I hadn’t seen one of these in years. Decades, even. I’d used one myself, once, but that was long ago, racing barefoot through the jungle with—

  What the hell? Where had that come from? The humid air, heavy on my skin, the calls of exotic birds and monkeys high overhead in the canopy, clouds of buzzing insects—it seemed as clear as if I stood on that spongy ground right now, and the temple around me faded. But when I pushed for more, the memory slipped away.

  I drew a sharp breath and shook the blowpipe until two tiny darts dropped onto the tiles. The mysteries of my uncooperative memory would have to wait. That was a good sign, though, right? I’d remembered something, and I hadn’t even been trying. Maybe that was the secret: to stop chasing it and let it come as it would.

  The ends of the darts were smeared with some kind of dark paste that gleamed even in the low light of the temple, and I was very careful not to touch it as I picked one up and sniffed it. The scent told me nothing, but there was no prize for guessing it would be some kind of poison. But who was it meant for?

  Carefully, I replaced the darts in the pipe. Unlike the one I remembered from that long-ago jungle, this pipe was made of metal, not wood. I held it out to Jake.

  “Seal it. We don’t want any accidents before we can get this analysed.”

  He nodded and pinched the ends together between his finger and thumb. I’d seen him work metal magic before, but it still astonished me. He made it look as easy as if the pipe had been made of clay.

  Apollo took the now-sealed pipe from me and tapped it impatiently against his open palm, gazing down at the body with frustration in his face. “Who was his target? And why now? It makes no sense.”

  “Was his secondary air?” I asked, though I was pretty sure I already knew the answer. Still, it had to be asked. Shapers all had two powers, sometimes three. Whichever was stronger decided what kind of shaper they were—in this case, fireshaper. Their secondary power was usually much weaker than their primary.

  “No,” said Jake. “He was metal, like me.”

  “Which means that that wind he raised—”

  “Must have been stolen from one of the gods,” Apollo sa
id, a touch of impatience in his voice. “Probably Zephyrus. Yes, obviously, he was a shadow shaper.”

  I’d been there when the shadow shapers had killed Zephyrus and stolen his power over the winds. I didn’t remember Adani’s face among the crowd, but some of the gathering had worn hoods—and besides, I’d been far more focused on surviving the experience myself and saving Jake than on identifying all the guilty parties.

  “But what did he gain by revealing himself now?” Apollo asked, still worrying at the problem.

  “If he didn’t flee with the Ruby Adept—” I checked myself. The fireshapers had a new Ruby Adept now. “—with the previous Ruby Adept, he must have had a good reason for staying.” Presumably, that reason had to do with capturing Apollo, or even myself, but this was an odd way to go about it. “There were two darts—were they meant for me and you?”

  “In front of all these witnesses?” Apollo shook his head. “Maybe poison darts are how they are stealing the gods away, but a temple full of fireshapers would have had something to say about that. They can’t all be damned shadow shapers.”

  I glanced around at the gathered shapers. The high priest was hovering uncertainly a few steps behind Apollo, with Syl and Winston right on his heels. The rest of them were keeping a respectful distance, though all eyes were glued to our little tableau. All except Syl’s, that was. She was watching everyone else, alert for danger. A warm glow of pride bloomed in my heart.

  “He’s right,” Jake said in a low voice, as a hundred ears strained to overhear our conversation. “That would have been a suicide mission.”

  “It turned out to be a suicide mission anyway,” I pointed out. It didn’t make sense. Why run the risk of exposure all this time, then throw it all away for nothing? How had he expected to get away with it?

  “He probably wasn’t counting on getting an arrow through the neck the instant the lights went out,” Apollo said, giving me a look that was half approval, half frustration at being denied answers by my haste to loose that arrow. “I didn’t tell anyone but Winston who the other throne was for. No doubt he intended to blame someone else, maybe even ‘accidentally’ kill the supposed villain in the confusion so we couldn’t question them.”

  “So, if not us, who were the poison darts for?” Again, I looked around at the gathered shapers. The high priest? Killing him would mean some other priest would take his place. The shadow shapers could be trying to get one of their own into the top job, but for what purpose? He was powerful, but only in the temple structure. The members of the council had more power than the priests already, and more influence.

  There was no one here who had more power than Adani himself, except one.

  Jake met my eyes. “They must have been for me. If I died, he would have been the logical choice for Ruby Adept.”

  If he had died, I would have torn Adani’s heart out with my bare hands. I resisted the urge to kick the dead body, feeling a powerful satisfaction at the sight of my golden arrow embedded in the traitor’s throat. I closed my hand on its smooth shaft and put my foot on Adani’s shoulder. The arrow head scraped on a vertebra as I pulled the arrow out and wiped the gore off on the dead man’s shirt. A murmur swept through the crowd. Did my actions seem callous to the onlookers? Too bloody bad. I wouldn’t be shedding any tears for him.

  Two darts didn’t necessarily mean there were two intended victims. Even guided by the powers of the wind, a dart wasn’t the most reliable of weapons. The second dart was insurance in case the first one missed.

  I nodded. “You’re right. With you out of the way, the shadow shapers would have had control of the fireshapers again. That was something worth staying here in the danger zone for.”

  Apollo was still frowning. “Now you’ll have to start all over again,” he said to Jake. “Question everyone he interrogated, see how many of these snakes are still hiding in the grass. Burn them out if necessary. I want them gone.”

  5

  Syl came in the next morning and perched on the edge of my bed. “Are you going to lie there all day, or do you want some breakfast? Lucas is going to fry up some bacon and eggs.”

  “Lie here all day,” I said, stretching lazily. I hadn’t been asleep, just lying there watching the clouds move across the blue expanse of sky that was all I could see outside my window from this angle.

  “I thought Apollo was taking you out today?”

  “He is; I’m just kidding.” I glanced at the time: just before ten. No wonder my stomach was complaining.

  “Did you get a chance to talk to Jake yesterday?”

  I threw the blankets back with a scowl and sat up. “Jake made very sure that he was never available for any private discussion. He seemed determined to demonstrate how very busy he’s going to be as Ruby Adept.” I shrugged. “Whatever. A public ceremony and reception isn’t really the ideal place for a tête-à-tête.”

  Not that I’d been left in any doubt of how he really felt underneath his very proper behaviour. That look on his face just after Adani had attacked, when he’d forgotten for a moment that I was a goddess, had given away his true feelings. He needed to work on his poker face if he truly wanted to convince me that he didn’t care for me.

  I peeled off the old T-shirt I’d slept in and lobbed it at Syl. She batted it away without comment, watching me rummage through my drawers for something clean to wear. “To be fair, he is going to be busy. The fireshapers are a mess; they’ve got traitors hiding under every rock and all those empty jobs to fill. Maybe your brother shouldn’t have been quite so enthusiastic with the smiting.”

  Trying to ignore the oddness of her saying “your brother” so casually, I shrugged on a dark shirt that only had a small stain on one sleeve. All this adventuring certainly made keeping up with the laundry difficult. “To be fair,” I said, gently mocking her, “most of the ones he killed were attacking him at the time, so keeping them alive probably wouldn’t have been the best idea.”

  “Most,” she said, and left it at that.

  Okay, so maybe Apollo had lost his head. But we had been under attack and trying to save Jake from certain death. They weren’t exactly ideal circumstances for clear thinking.

  She wandered to the window and stood, contemplating the view. I peeked out, too, as I zipped my jeans: it was another glorious spring day outside. My window had the same mesmerising view of the ocean as the lounge room, and there was nothing but blue all the way to the horizon today. The sea was flat, with no white caps to disturb it. The surfers would be unhappy, but the scene looked like something off a postcard, with the green headland off to the right and the long sweep of white sand along the foreshore.

  “I’m going to miss this,” Syl said softly.

  I paused with one shoe only half-tied, struck by the wistful note in her voice. “Since when are you going anywhere?” Surely it was too soon for her and Lucas to decide they wanted to move in together?

  “Since you became a target for every psycho god-killer out there,” she said, with some asperity. “We can’t stay here, numb-nuts. The shadow shapers know where you live.”

  “Numb-nuts.” I finished tying my laces. “If only they all regarded me with as much reverence as you do, eh? Then we’d have no problem.”

  Lucas was clattering around in the kitchen, humming something so off-key I couldn’t tell what it was supposed to be. The delicious smell of bacon cooking drifted down the short hallway and my stomach rumbled in anticipation.

  Syl wasn’t so easily distracted, however. “You can laugh all you want, but the one thing you can’t do is stick your head in the sand and hope this all goes away. You don’t see Hades hanging around to be slaughtered, do you? We were in the pub last night and there was no sign of him. Harry said he’d gone off on a long holiday. Holiday, my arse. That man has a better sense of self-preservation than you do. You’re sitting here with a target on your back, practically begging the shadow shapers to come and get you.”

  I paused in the doorway. Syl was standing with her b
ack to the window, her face in shadow, but I could still see the worry in her eyes. “As soon as we get a lead on Poseidon’s whereabouts, we’ll be out of here.”

  I didn’t want to think any further than that. I loved this town; it truly felt like a home. I’d go if I had to, but I wasn’t letting the shadow shapers drive me away if there was any hope of staying. Maybe Poseidon would know who had the other lightning bolt. Hell, maybe he had them both, and this could all be over in a couple of days.

  “And how long will that take? Apollo’s been searching for days already. It’s not safe for you here, Lexi.”

  “Considering they know where I live, these shadow shapers are taking an awfully long time to get here,” I said. For the first time, it struck me how odd that was. I mean, Becky had barely shaken the dust of this place off her feet and Hades had disappeared. Now they knew not only Hades, but I, and sometimes Apollo, could be found here for the taking—and, instead of attacking, they were sitting on their hands.

  It gave me a nasty feeling. They must be brewing some truly evil surprise.

  “I don’t care,” she said. “We need to get out now. I’m sick of looking over my shoulder all the time.”

  “What about Lucas?” My stomach gurgled again. I could hear the bacon sizzling in the pan. Couldn’t we continue this argument after breakfast?

  “What about him?”

  “Well, you said ‘we’ need to get out, as if you’re planning on coming, too.” Not long ago, she’d said Lucas was just a fling, but I wasn’t so sure. They’d been inseparable since they’d met—but Lucas had another life back in Crosston, a life he could only delay returning to for so long. “Do you really want to go on the run and leave him behind?”

  She shrugged, but her gaze slid away from mine. “Do you really think I’m going to let you go on your own? Lucas is a big boy; he can make his own decisions.”