A Tempest of Shadows

by Washington, Jane

  Bern recaptured the attention of the recruits with surprising swiftness, striding onto the platform and ordering me from it with barely a second glance. He announced that I would join the first tier as a Sentinel recruit, and then he was calling on the next person. When I struggled to stand, I felt hands on my arms, jerking me roughly to my feet. It was Bjern.

  “Hurry up, recruit!” he shouted, before lowering his voice, his mouth set grimly. “You can’t show them weakness.”

  “I passed their test,” I shot back, my legs shaking violently.

  “I mean the recruits.” He rolled his eyes, supporting more of my weight as we reached the stairs. Frey was waiting by the edge of the platform but didn’t reach for me. Bjern was making it look like he was dragging me from the stage to help clear the way for his father, but if Frey helped as well, it would become clear to the others that I couldn’t walk. I cast my eyes over the gathered recruits, who were switching their glances between Bern, me, and Calder. They were waiting for him to interfere as the Warmaster had.

  “This isn’t as simple as it seems,” Bjern explained quietly as he threw me down onto the lower level of seats, further away from where the others had gathered. Far enough away that they might not be able to see the tremble in my limbs. “You can’t just pool together this many Vold without it turning into a competition. The Sentinels’ initiation is already competitive enough—you’re not just overcoming tests, you’re doing it better and faster than the recruit who did it before you.”

  “The Vold are so uncivilised,” Frey grumbled, sitting on my other side, her arms notched back casually against the row behind her as she turned her head to Bjern, regarding him with a bland look. “And they’d be especially happy if the three of us failed, isn’t that right, Bjern Endredsen?”

  “Why us?” I asked, before Bjern could answer.

  “Because last year, you were a steward, I was a Sjel, and Frey Ojesen,” he mimicked her tone, “was a Sinn.” Bjern’s eyes were on the girl who had taken a seat on the platform, the fryktille projecting a scene that I couldn’t properly see from where we were sitting, though it was making her grind her teeth so hard that I fancied I could hear them cracking.

  “And what are we now?” I prompted, a little confused.

  “Implants,” Frey answered, unbothered by Bjern mimicking her. “It’s an honour … but an uncomfortable one. We’ll always be outsiders.”

  My vision wobbled as I tried to focus on the platform, my eyelids drooping. I forced my head up, my eyes fixed to the girl. There was a single thought in my head as, one by one, each of the recruits took to the platform.

  Show no weakness.

  It was difficult, my energy drained, my mind wanting to drift off to sleep, my limbs singing with the aftershocks of pain. When the sorting was over, the recruits were split up, those who didn’t make the first or second tier sent off to report to the steward coordinator. The scout recruits were sent off next, leaving twenty-something Sentinel recruits, including Sig Raekov, who had watched us for the entirety of the sorting, his eyes slitted so that only a thin slip of green iris was visible. He had the eyes of a snake in the sunshine. Sleep-heavy, lazy, ever-watchful … and dangerous. I couldn’t see the Darkness behind his eyes, but I vowed to keep an eye on him. It could have been hiding.

  We were shown to one of the short towers along the wall, where we entered through a plain, bolted wooden door. The steps were littered with leaves, each level opening to the countryside through narrow windows, the wooden shutters thrown back. Halfway up the tower, northern and southern corridors opened up, leading into rooms built into the walls. Bern didn’t so much assign rooms as he did kick open a door and grab the nearest four recruits to shove through it. Since we had hung back behind the group, only I, Bjern, and Frey were pushed into the last room.

  “The celebration feast will begin first thing in the morning in the main dining hall. If you don’t arrive early, you’re late. If you’re late, you’re out.” Bern delivered the same line that we’d already heard repeated a handful of times before he settled his eyes on his son.

  For a moment, he struggled with what he wanted to say before he settled on a swift nod, and then he was closing the door, his footsteps receding. Another set of footsteps approached, and I watched the shadow of them beneath the door as a single tap sounded against the wood.

  Frey moved to open it, but I intercepted her. It was Calder, letting me know he was there.

  “Do you think the testing will start tomorrow?” I asked her, scrambling for a question that might distract her.

  “I’m surprised it didn’t start immediately,” she admitted, glancing from me to the door. She was too intelligent to be distracted, but polite enough not to ask questions—which was surprising for a Sinn. Moving to a pile of blankets beneath a barred window, she grabbed one and shook it onto one of the four single beds. “It’s not customary to throw a celebration feast—I mean none of us are sworn-in yet, so there’s not much to celebrate.”

  “Sounds like a trick to me.” Bjern sniffed, dropping onto one of the beds, his arms folded behind his head.

  “You don’t think we should go?” I moved to the bed closest to the door, sitting right on the edge, as though I couldn’t bring myself to be comfortable.

  “I didn’t say that.” Bjern slanted his eyes at me. “That would be stupid.”

  “So we just walk into a trap?”

  “We’re warriors now. They’re not interested in watching us manipulate the situation. They want us trapped. They want us bleeding. When a mouse is trapped, it still tries to flee; when a bear is trapped, it will kill you even if you try to free it again. They’re trying to sort out the killers from the meek.” He shot a look at Frey before closing his eyes. “Now leave me alone. I need to rest before they unleash whatever horror they have planned for tomorrow.”

  I sat a little further back on the bed, marvelling at the fact that they had given us beds at all, and almost hesitantly allowed my eyes to flutter closed. I waited until Frey’s fidgeting quietened and the dying sun ceased heating the side of my face, and then I slipped off the bed and crept quietly to the door. Calder was leaning against the wall outside, tapping an unsealed message against his arm.

  “Your service isn’t finished yet,” he stated plainly.

  I held my hand out and he passed over the message with a frown.

  The Jewelled Grotto.

  “I don’t understand,” I admitted, handing it back to him.

  “It’s the King’s private bathhouse.”

  “This is from the King?” I lowered my voice to a whisper, barely audible.

  “No, it’s the Warmaster’s handwriting.”

  I glanced at the vicious scrawl, frowning. “Have you been there before?” I linked my arm through his.

  In answer, he pushed my ring around my finger, spoke the name, and sent us through the collapsing tower and into the earth below. When we smacked into solid ground again, it was damp sandstone, causing me to lose my footing and slip away. I landed on my side, pain shooting up through my hip as a voice rumbled through the dark room.

  “Good, you’re both here.”

  I quickly found my feet, only to slip again, but Calder was there this time, catching my arm and hauling me up to his side.

  “What do you want?” he asked, sounding impatient.

  As my eyes adjusted, I realised it wasn’t just the darkness of night making it difficult to see. The room was also hung with steam, the sandstone walls dripping with condensation. Moonlight tilted through the glass brick ceiling, which curved down to the floor, lending a view out to the sea of storms. Sandstone paths bordered by small glass lanterns in the same fashion as the glass bricks wound through pools of clear water, made bright blue by the sand that must have been lining the bases of the pools.

  In the pool nearest to the sea, with steamy water lapping at the glass wall, sat the Warmaster. His hair stuck to his shoulders and chest, the strands appearing ebony-black. His eyes als
o seemed darker, losing the golden light of life that usually seemed to shine out from the brown of his pupils.

  He didn’t look like a man anymore, but a harbinger of death, some horrible dark manifestation of fate floating the water, as the Weaver had prophesied. With a shudder, I quickly turned my eyes away, focussing on the pile of clothing to the side of the pool, draped over a smooth marble bench. Taking his time to answer, the Warmaster seemed to watch us quietly for a few moments before his voice rumbled out again.

  “I require to be bathed.”

  “You can’t,” Calder shot out quickly. “The soul mark.”

  “If you refuse to serve any of your masters, you will lose privileges, Tempest.” The Warmaster’s threat cut through the steam.

  “It’s fine,” I muttered, more to myself than to Calder.

  I stepped carefully between the glass lanterns, following the slippery path that would lead me to the edge of the pool close to the Warmaster. I crouched there, my fingers trailing in the water, my eyes drifting over to him.

  “What’s the trick?” I asked. “There’s always a trick.”

  His expression remained blank, his eyes still dark. “You’re right. We’re curious.”

  I didn’t need to ask who we were. “About what?”

  “Your link with the Blodsjel.”

  “You’re trying to force me into a situation that might make him lose control again?”

  “Something like that.” He grinned the way a wolf grins, and I imagined that the steam from the water might have been his breath, puffed out in the cold snap of a hunting field.

  “I might be branded. I might be marked. I might be your servant, but I’m not your toy. You’re asking to experiment on me, and my answer is no.”

  “I wasn’t asking, actually.” He rose from the bath, water running in rivulets across muscles that bulged and cut sharply across the lines of his body. He might have been huge, but there wasn’t an ounce of fat on him. For just a moment, I was frozen in fear, remembering that I would be forced to beat him in battle … and soon.

  “You have a choice, Lavenia.” My name spat from the Warmaster’s mouth like some kind of rotten morsel he was rejecting. “It’s me or him.”

  I followed the line of his pointed finger, swallowing around my panic with difficulty. I had almost convinced myself that someone else had entered the grotto before I saw that he was pointing directly at Calder—who, for his part, looked even more unwilling than I was. He was shaking his head before I had even answered, his teeth dragging over his lip as he let go of an annoyed hiss.

  “You don’t understand the link,” he said. “You’re asking to defile it.”

  “Oh, I understand it better than you think.” The Warmaster was moving toward me, the water revealing his nakedness inch by inch, until I could no longer pretend that I wasn’t intimidated, and my eyes darted away.

  “Let’s make a deal.” He was almost directly in front of me, and I closed my eyes completely. Embarrassed. Frightened. Out of my element. His wet fingers wrapped around the lower half of my face, a dark laugh vibrating around the grotto. “Those are the magic words, aren’t they? You’re like a little mouse, running after us, picking up our crumbs. It doesn’t even matter that we’re leading you. It doesn’t even matter that you’re starving by our design. It doesn’t matter, because you can’t help yourself. Even a crumb from the likes of us is a feast for the likes of you.”

  A violent rush of rage swelled and popped inside me, all in an instant, too fast for me to catch. My arms flew up, my hands planted on his chest, strength flowing into my body as easily as air, exploding out of me as I shoved him backwards into the water. I watched him fall, almost in slow motion, wondering why he didn’t grab on to me or catch himself at the last second, wondering why he let himself fall, enveloped by mist and darkness, welcomed into the water with a folding splash that rolled over and hugged him, catching him gently.

  Behind me, Calder sighed. “That was stupid,” he needlessly informed me.

  I couldn’t answer, because my mistake was now rising from the water in a steam-filled vision of inky hair and rage-darkening eyes, looking for all the world like some kind of mythical beast called upon to destroy the land we stood on until there was nothing left but the raging ocean and him … holding fast in the middle of it all.

  “Let’s make a deal,” I offered shakily, a second before his hands wrapped around my throat.

  He eased back, the smile of a man who had gotten exactly what he wanted spreading across his face.

  “Choose one of us,” he said. “And I’ll tell you everything I know about the Blodsjel connection.”

  “You,” I snapped out, my eyes avoiding Calder.

  I realised in that moment that I cared about Calder. I considered him a friend of some kind, and I didn’t want to put him in an uncomfortable position. I witnessed the slight flash that raced over the Warmaster’s eyes, and I knew that I had upset his plan somehow. He had thought I would choose Calder simply because I didn’t want to have to touch him again, but apparently I was willing to suffer exactly that to preserve the fragile, growing connection between me and my quiet, abrasive shadow.

  “No,” Calder said, his energy skittering across my spine as he stepped up behind me. “It’s fine, Ven. I know what he’s doing. It won’t work. Let’s just do this and get out of here.”

  I should have been surprised, but I wasn’t. Calder had almost exploded the last time I had kissed the Warmaster – though I couldn’t be sure this was the safer choice. I caught the hint of satisfaction before the Warmaster looked away, pulling himself onto the edge of the pool. He sat facing us, completely naked, his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes watchful. Calder began to pull off his clothing, adding it to the marble bench piece by piece. His cloak, his armour, his boots, his pants. He didn’t seem to feel awkward or self-conscious. Like the Warmaster, he was comfortable revealing his body, his mind busy with strategies and counterstrategies, tied up in a dance of motive.

  I watched as he walked into the water, my eyes on the wide stretch of his back, sun-darkened skin over hard-won muscle. He stalked through the steam the same way he stalked everywhere—with a quiet purpose, the calm before a storm. I took off my boots, my belts, the skirt wrapping my hips, and each of my armoured pieces, but left on the bodysuit. I caught the Warmaster’s frown as I stepped into the water after Calder, but he didn’t say anything. Ordering me to perform a task was one thing—ordering me to do it naked was slipping into questionable territory. Not that they seemed to care about the repercussions of their actions, but perhaps there was a thread of discomfort in what he was asking.

  “Start talking,” I demanded, reaching for a basket beside one of the glass lanterns, finding soaps, oils, creams, and scrubbing cloths inside.

  I knew the steps of a bath ritual—it was something both the stewards and the sectorian children learnt in school, a simple act of living steeped in deep tradition. There were bathhouses worked by stewards, but the process was even more important for the sectorians to learn, as it was a part of the sectorian marriage ceremony. On the night of their wedding, the couple were required to perform the full bathing ritual. The stewards didn’t have the resources for such a thing and were forced to develop other rituals.

  I thought back to my school years, trying to remember the exact process as I rummaged through the basket, buying time.

  “Circular container,” Calder muttered.

  I grabbed the container and opened it to reveal a paste littered with crystals crushed into a sand. It smelled like rosemary and eucalyptus and was surprisingly cool to the touch. I scooped some of it onto my fingers, and as I began to scrub it into the skin of Calder’s shoulder, the Warmaster’s voice vibrated over the water, raising the hairs on my arms.

  “The link between Blodsjel and Fjorn is sacred for a reason. The power of each sector comes from somewhere beyond this world, and it travels through the moment of their birth, marking the child as belonging to th
e source of power and not to this world. When the Fjorn is born, she is gifted the power of each sector, five separate lines of energy, each of them threaded through the fabric of the world to claim her … but the energy source is intelligent. In creating a champion, a protector of worlds, it acknowledged that the Fjorn too, needed protecting.”

  I frowned, my hand pausing in its task. It seemed like the Warmaster was talking without actually saying anything. As soon as I paused, he stopped talking, and I frowned deeper, my eyes flicking up to Calder’s face. His jaw was clenched, his eyes fixed over the top of my head. It wasn’t uncomfortable to be so close to him, but there was a shivering of uncertainty between us. A question passing from my breath to his. He had told the Warmaster that this would be defiling our link, but so far, it all felt natural.

  I moved from his shoulder to his arm, spreading the exfoliant over his bicep as I remembered the five stages of the bathing ritual: scrub with exfoliant, wash with soap, massage with oil, wipe with cloth, and then massage again with skin cream. I was following the lines of his muscles without properly realising it, my fingers digging into the dips and swells, caressing down the line of his forearm. My lip was burning, and I rubbed the back of my hand across it absently. Calder’s head snapped to the movement, his eyes narrowing, his golden eye heating my face as his blue eye focussed on my lip.

  On the soul mark.

  Blinking several times in confusion, I drew away from him, only to hear the Warmaster’s voice drop off again.

  I hadn’t even heard what he had been saying.

  In a flash of panic, I thought about fleeing the water, my thoughts jumbling together, but then Calder’s hand found mine, just beneath the cover of water, drawing me back. His jaw was still clenched tight, but the line of his firm lips tilted just slightly in grim understanding.

  “Focus your thoughts,” he whispered, placing my hands on his other shoulder.

  I nodded, redirecting all my attention to the Warmaster’s voice as he began to speak again.

  “The world used magic to create the bond between the Blodsjel and the Fjorn, just as magic was used to create the power of the Fjorn herself. The link is one of fate. The Blodsjel is fated to protect the Fjorn, who is fated to find the brother of her soul, the protector of her soul. That is why each pair can see the history of the Fjorn when they meet for the first few times—they are seeing the memories of fated things, the echoes of premonitions playing out over history.”