Needle Rain

by Cari Silverwood

  Glossary and Map

  Cartography done rather badly by a drunken, one-eyed sailor sitting on the deck of a rolling ship.

  Glossary for Needle Rain

  Amora – the goddess of hate and love.

  The sighting of gods and goddesses by humans is rare but not inconceivable.

  Animus – the essence or spirit of an animal or plant,

  often used by a trinketologist in the creation of trinkettons.

  Bio-energeer – healer who uses magience to gather data from people and animals.

  Some can tell how a person or animal died.

  Gheist trapper – a person who traps ghosts. This ectoplasm is valued most as ammunition in gheist weapons.

  Gheist Weapon – a trinketton weapon that uses ghost energy, ectoplasm, to kill – the ammunition is the compressed ectoplasm of trapped ghosts.

  Normal guns cannot handle ectoplasm.

  Grint and fennig – units of money in the Burgla’le Empire.

  Herbologist – a magience practitioner who studies herbs

  and masters their use in magience.

  Imperator – the ruler of the Burgla’le empire.

  Imperial Investigator – a person appointed by the Imperator to investigate matters that might threaten the empire.

  Magience – magic fused with science.

  Needles – every needle placed by a needle master costs the recipient some of their lifespan.

  Needle Master - an acupuncturist who can use magience.

  Quagga – a type of riding or pack animal similar to a zebra in markings.

  Trinketton - a magical device made by a trinketologist. These are powered by the animus (essence) of an animal or, rarely, a plant. The death of the creator means the death of the trinketton.

  Trinketologist – a magience practitioner who makes magical objects

  from wood, metal, or plant.

  *****

  Magience is a book set in this same fantasy world.

  Needle Rain is not connected to Magience in any way, except for the setting.

  Because Magience is YA in genre and not erotic, it was published under the pen name of Cari Silver.

  If you’d like to read Magience, it can be found at the below link on Amazon or you can read the following sample of Chapter One.

  MAGIENCE

  Chapter One from Magience

  The Watcher

  It was a dirty war when ghosts were used as ammunition. For reassurance, Ellinca touched the black satin pouch at her waist sash – her secret. Inside was a perfume bottle – emerald-cut glass and filigree lid, full of memories and the twirling, dancing ghost of her mother.

  “So, you were on the Grakk bank of the river,” she muttered to the boy. “Dangerous.”

  His cormorant lay asleep on her lap. A working bird, it still had the leather snare about its neck to stop it from swallowing any of the larger fish it caught. Ellinca shifted to better catch the light from the nearby pole-slung lantern.

  “Nothing here.” She raised her voice so as to be heard over the catcalls and clapping from the audience gathered at the nearby stage. “No fish hook.”

  “’Twas there earlier,” said the boy, fidgeting from one foot to the other. “We let her dive for a fish but she came up with a hook in her.”

  Ellinca frowned. “I don’t doubt you. The hook’s gone.” On her thumb was a gritty paste of dark red rust. Hooks didn’t just fall out. The skin of one leg was split as if fishing line had once been wrapped around it. “This’ll need three stitches.”

  “My brother only gave me eight numen. That do?” He didn’t wait for her reply and placed the copper coins on the blanket next to her. “I heard the Grakks have got somethin’ that eats metal.”

  Some scary things were being used in the war, by both sides – and if gheist weapons, why not metal-eaters?

  No one would be selling her mother’s ghost, ever.

  “Metal-eating, hey? Your buttons haven’t fallen off or anything?”

  He grinned. “Nah, besides, they’re bone, not metal. My earring’s okay, though.” He tapped the little hoop with his finger.

  Eight numen. She needed eighty for a bottle of the soporific potion. With a sigh, she took up her pliers and the needle, threaded with the silk Pascolli had pilfered from a forgotten item of stage finery.

  She and Pascolli, as well as a few traveling traders, had tagged along on the same route as the theater troupe for a month now, tag traders, as they were called. Pascolli was a mute, and near to her own age of eighteen years. They had met one moon-washed evening in the middle of an orchard, both of them clutching stolen apples. Their partnership had begun that night.

  “My brother, Jon,” piped up the young cormorant owner, “he’s going to enlist.”

  “Oh?” She refrained from telling him what she thought of anyone who volunteered for war. People paid you less when you insulted them.

  Ellinca started sewing with tip of tongue stuck out the side of her mouth. Three sutures closed the wound. She smoothed down askew feathers on the bird’s stomach. Within two weeks this wound would be gone, as if time had turned backward.

  Her vision blurred and she blinked to clear it. Something stirred, shivered, beneath her fingers. She flinched and pulled them away.

  Dreading what might be underneath, she dabbed away seeping fluid with a cloth. Feathers shifted loose. There, on its stomach, a raw-edged sore glistening with a slurry of pus and blood. Her pulse pounded in her temples.

  “There’s a sore here ’neath the feathers.” Her voice squeaked. “Too infected to stitch. Bathing it daily should fix it.”

  “Oh?” The boy held out a box lined with cloth. He cooed soft words. “Let’s see this, Blackie. This? We thought this healed a week ago.”

  “Well, it’s not. Keep him warm until he wakes. The potion’ll wear off soon.” Very soon. It had been the last drop. She kept up the patter, talking more than she meant to, unable to stop. “No letting him fly or dive for a week and a half. Say, your family...just your brother and you?”

  He shrugged. “What’s it to you?”

  What was it to her? She glared. “Tell your brother wars are a waste of time. My father volunteered. He died.” Curse him. “Left me and my mother alone. Don’t let your brother make the same mistake!”

  Wide-eyed, he nodded and backed away.

  Ellinca cleaned her trembling hands on a cloth soaked in uclypt oil, scrubbed them rougher than she needed to. As if she could scrub away the memories. She shook her hands then pressed them dry against the sides of her black leggings.

  What had happened? Could it have been magience that seemed to reopen that wound? Wild magience? Please, no. She rattled off a small prayer.

  There’d been no warning signs. The world seemed as it always was. She wasn’t going mad. Maybe it was something to do with the potion and not her doing at all? Just an unpleasant, rare, side effect? If a certified herbologist caused it then it was legal. That must be it.

  A shout rang out. She looked up.

  A third of the audience was out of their chairs and cheering or calling insults, rowdy, but better than average. A ghost had shown up earlier and stirred them up. To her sorrow, the townsfolk had made plans to trap him another night.

  Her instruments put away, she sat cross-legged to watch the play though she’d seen it fifty times. She undid her hair tie and began to maneuver a comb though her curls. It calmed her. She had inch-worm hair – all little wriggles, comb-snagging hair.

  Long, coppery-red strands of it gathered on her leather jerkin and she stopped to brush them off. The blouse beneath the jerkin was stained a mottled green from blood and uclypt oil and numerous unidentified substances. Her mother would have been horrified.

  Grinning widely, dusting off the back of his tattered doublet and pants, Pascolli emerged from a group playing cards around a low table. He sauntered over.

  “Lucky night,” he signed and tossed a few numen onto the blanket. A lock of his wavy black h
air swayed across one eye. The last few months had made her proficient in reading his fingertalk.

  “Great!” She smiled and wondered how to tell him of what had happened – later, though, when all the drunks had gone home to bed.

  The lanterns dotting the far perimeter of the clearing backlit the audience. A woman with arms that were round as cow legs and almost as hairy stood and hurled her bonnet onto the stage. She stumbled, tripped over one of the troupe’s dodos, and landed in a man’s lap. Laughter and hooting erupted. The bird serenely waddled away to look for more tidbits.

  Yes. She would tell him when it was quieter.

  * * * *

  A week later they were outside the town of Strickly, another night-time performance since the farmers needed daylight to work their fields. Still Ellinca had not told Pascolli. She had tended a dozen or more animals and nothing had happened, nothing strange, anyway.

  Mid-evening.

  Pascolli arrived carrying a plate of sausages and fried potatoes. “Here.” He placed it on the blanket and signed to Ellinca. “From Beth. There’s a fellow asking after you. Wants you to take a look at his tuskdog.”

  “A tuskdog?” Rare creatures, tuskdogs were said to be nasty-tempered if you got on their wrong side. “They’re supposed to be tough as nails.”

  “It should be a big fee. But if you take this on, be careful.”

  She slid her knife from its belt sheath and speared a sausage. “I will. We going halves?” Saliva filled her mouth. One thing about going hungry, the food smelled better.

  “No. I ate already.”

  “That the truth?” No. Ellinca pushed the plate to him. She’d make him eat half.

  With the speared sausage stopped halfway to her mouth, she realized why she hadn’t told him about the cormorant. She didn’t want to lose the friendship of someone who would offer his food when he was hungry. She didn’t want to see fear and revulsion in his eyes.

  “Also...I lost my temper. Again. I hit someone. Sorry. He was spreading dirty lies. Said he’d seen you use magience.”

  The world shrank. She closed her eyes a moment. “There’s something...something I must tell you. I...” Past the audience, in the shadows of the forest, a man leaned against the trunk of a ghost gum. Too alert to be a drunk, too far away to see the play, he watched something else.

  From among the clotted darkness came the crunching and crackling of branches and twigs snapping, the thud of hooves and the jingle of metal harness.

  Fifteen or twenty horsemen emerged into the light from the periphery of the clearing. Their black-enameled breastplates were embossed with the royal Burgla’le liger – half golden tiger, half lion. Soldiers of the Imperator – their hands rested on or near the pommels of their sabers and daggers or carried crossbows casually pointed earthward.

  A horse was led to the watcher and he swung into the saddle. “Please do not be alarmed, citizens, or should that be ladies and gentlemen?” He rode slowly forward.

  Ellinca climbed to her feet. Both guilt and relief pulled at her, and a tinge of fear – there was something unnerving about this man. Why was he here? Why now?

  Words rolled languidly off the watcher’s tongue as if he tasted them. “I am the Finder, Hilas Frope, appointed by the Imperator. You have nothing to fear from me.” He smiled thinly. “Unless of course, you are guilty of something.”

  Cold washed through her.

  His jittery black stallion tossed its head and jigged sideways a step or two. He stroked the horse’s neck until it settled; then, with a tap of his heels, he spurred forward, going around to the left-hand steps of the stage and dismounting. He flung the reins aside for a soldier to hold. In two strides the Finder was on the stage beside Jerome, an actor in a red demon outfit.

  “Join your friends on the ground.” Frope flicked a gloved hand at Jerome.” I require the stage.”

  Hilas Frope was built like a praying mantis: long spindly limbs and round spectacles. A porcelain scale mail shirt and armored legs completed the insectile picture. Blue light flickered across the glass lenses. From his scalp, spikes of short blond hair spread out like the nimbus of a sun.

  He looked formidable, except that every now and then Ellinca thought she saw a tiny spasm shake his body.

  It was easy to see why he’d shooed them off the stage. Up there you were god-like; down here, on the ground, you were only the audience. Hilas Frope fumbled at the catch of a leather canister hanging from his belt. On the other side, slung in a holster, was a long-barreled gheist pistol.

  Ellinca couldn’t help herself – she tugged her jerkin lower, hoping no one had noticed the satin pouch. It was dark, but still...

  These pistols were why people sold ghosts, why they were worth smallish fortunes, because a gheist pistol made by a good trinketologist was one of the most powerful hand weapons available. Compressed ectoplasm stored a deadly force. If the weapons were easier to make and the ammunition less rare she had no doubt the army would have already won their war against the Grakkurds.

  Hilas Frope took a small bronze-and-green lizard from the canister. It half-hopped, half-flew onto his shoulder and sat preening itself, licking its tiny feet and whippy tail before it started tugging at the membrane of one wing with its teeth. Once finished with the task it blinked its ruby eyes and stared intently at Ellinca.

  She stared back.

  The Finder’s voice tuned back in, “...tracked this exceedingly dangerous creature to this area...but have not yet found him. You may suspect him by his odd walk and other behaviors. Do not approach closely if you believe you have seen him. He cannot be killed easily. Send a message to your nearest military post at Hull. Or to me.”

  The sounds of fidgeting, the shuffling of feet and quiet muttering subsided.

  A man sang out, “Where’s he come from this, this undead thing? This bludvoik? Carstelan? We’ve heard rumors there’s a plague of them, sir.”

  Hilas Frope showed his teeth. “Perhaps. An illegal mage created him. Our sovereign, Imperator Uster the Fourth, has decreed that, when found, this mage will be hung, drawn and quartered until...” He smiled. “...he is very dead.”

  Finder Frope held up the lizard in one hand. “Now, I can see that none of you are undead.” Some of the troopers chuckled. “So, on to the other half of my employment, finding wild mages. Are there any youths here who have been found capable of legal magience but are not yet apprenticed? None? Good.”

  Legal magience, the safe and very profitable side of magience. If only. She had been tested. The nurse had held a little snake trinketton to her arm: a slither of metalized wood, a quick ker-chunk of its fangs as it tasted her blood and then, to her disgust – nothing, a negative. The snake had stayed a boring beige color.

  This flying lizard couldn’t be a trinketton. She eyed it warily. It looked truly alive.

  “Do not move and you are safe! Sergeant, shoot anyone who runs. Seek!”

  Hilas Frope threw the lizard into the air and it began to circle above the crowd.

  He couldn’t be testing blood for wild magience, could he? There were too many variations, thousands. Yet, if she could have hidden under something, she would have. She wasn’t one of them, but fear still caught at her.

  Behind his back, where only she could possibly see, Pascolli began to fingertalk. “That man. He’s gone. I sent him packing.” He looked over his shoulder at her. “Was there any truth in what he said?”

  She looked straight back at him, at the curve of his lip, the shine in his eyes. His eyes went amber in sunlight and he had a scar on his throat that he claimed was the wound that had made him mute. He lied to her sometimes. It was his way, but never on the big things. She could feel the word, no, on her tongue, hear its echo in her mind. It was the truth, wasn’t it?

  She raised her hand. It wavered for a second. “Perhaps.”

  He turned away and her breath caught.

  Perhaps. Sometimes saying the right thing was wrong, and now her heart unraveled, peeled away, sli
ver by sliver. She shuddered and looked away from him.

  The spiral of the lizard’s circle grew smaller and smaller. When it appeared ready to land back on the Finder, he held up his gloved fist.

  Abruptly it veered, diving. With wings cupped and feet outstretched, it landed with a thump on Ellinca’s head. Her eyes widened. She felt it shift its weight while untangling first one claw then the other from her hair. It made its way down her head and plopped onto her shoulder.

  The people around her muttered and drew away. Only Pascolli turned with such slow deliberation she would swear she saw him weighing his thoughts. He came to her.

  With small finger movements, he signed. “Be calm.” For an instant she was happy – he’d come back to her.

  “How?” she signed back and swallowed slowly, her throat instantly dry. From the corner of her eye she examined the lizard. She jerked her shoulder. The wretched creature refused to take flight. A pretty metallic tinkling and the smell of sweaty horses told her some soldiers moved in closer.

  She wasn’t a mage, couldn’t use wild magience, not really. Fear tightened on her heart. This man would understand. Surely.

  Frope looked back at her with narrowed eyes, and that smile of his – totally without joy.

  “Sir.” Her voice squeaked. “I’m-I’m not an illegal mage.” She wasn’t. The other day had been a freak happening, strange, but not her fault.

  Pascolli moved closer. Behind the swaying black fringe, beneath the looming eyebrows, his eyes smoldered. Oh scum, he was getting cross.

  The blood inherited from his wild Andonny ancestors had given Pascolli a passion for life. His anger was hard to kindle but fiercely hot. Reluctantly, she stepped away from him. It wouldn’t do for both of them to be in trouble.

  “Please, stay back!” she signed, but he reached out and squeezed her hand.