I didn’t know what to say, so I waited, a dull pain ringing in the back of my ears. I had mistaken it for adrenaline, but now that I was no longer running or hiding, I realised that it was a headache of some kind, pulsating into being, stronger with each passing moment.
“You were born in the shadow of our power, and now it lives within you,” she told me. “It is your greatest strength and your only true weapon in the battle to come. You must use it. You have no other choice.”
“Which battle?” I rushed out lowly, still whispering. It seemed that I was fighting too many.
“The battle for your freedom. For a storm to form, it must first be free.”
“You want me to … kill the Warmaster?”
“It is impossible,” she hissed, and I felt something tickle my upper lip. Wiping my hand beneath my nose, I glanced at the smear of bright red blood.
“I don’t think I have much time.” My voice wobbled.
“He must be at his weakest,” she warned. “Not a moment sooner.”
I nodded, though she couldn’t see me.
“Don’t come back here,” she warned gently. “All things must happen at the right time. Not a moment sooner.”
After attempting to use my ring to travel back to Foraether, and then attempting to use the “lotte” incantation, I gave up and re-traced my steps. It took me an excruciating amount of time to sneak my way back through the castle, my head pounding harder and faster with each step. Blood dripped freely from my nose, and my limbs were shaking too much for me to stand steady anymore, but I made it back to the tilrive tree that looked as if a wild animal had torn into it, and I stepped back into that horrible darkness, searching the rough innards of the free with my fingers. The bark fell away easily, spitting me back into the grey, frozen midworld. Some of the pain in my body eased, but it wasn’t enough. I needed to return to where I belonged before it was too late.
“Lotte,” I said, clawing at the air, rending an opening for me to step through.
I fell to the cobblestone road winding around the tilrive tree in Hearthenge, my arms collapsing beneath me. My eyelids fluttered, a groan slipping from my throat. I heard someone running toward me, hands on my shoulders, turning me over.
“She’s here!” Frey whisper-shouted, and another person approached, hauling me up and over a broad shoulder.
My vision swam, my arm reaching out weakly for a string of leaves hanging before my face. I grasped at them weakly, one of them breaking off as I was carried quickly away. Whoever was holding me was jogging, Frey following close behind, her eyes darting around the road behind us.
“They said you disappeared by the tree,” she whispered. “We’ve been trying to find you.”
We reached the forest and almost tumbled into a small grove, one of the pathways through the forest winding above us. I was set down, my back against the short rise, a tree branch angling out over my head. Bjern’s face appeared before me.
“Where are you hurt?” he asked as Frey knelt beside him, her eyes on mine.
“Inside,” she answered for me. “She’s injured internally.”
I nodded, slumping down a little further, my fingers constricting around the leaf. “I’ll be fine. Why are you helping me?”
She arched a brow at me, as though the answer should be obvious. “Because yesterday, you wore the sigil of the King on your armour—armour clearly made for you. Because you are covered in the marks of the Fated. Because the King has marked you as a mor-svjake, and yet, impossibly, allowed you to challenge the Warmaster to become a Legionnaire. Because the Captain follows you everywhere and watches you always—not like you’re a mor-svjake, but like you’re important.”
“That’s what we think,” Bjern added. “We think you’re important. We just don’t know why. The recruits are saying that you’re an Eloi, but that you also used Vold magic, and that you disappeared into thin air, which isn’t a magic belonging to any of the sectors.”
“I suppose not,” I muttered, trying to calm the painful thudding of my heartbeat.
“So, what are you?” Frey insisted.
My hand fluttered, reflexively moving to cover my mouth, to stop the words from spilling out, but Frey’s energy wrapped me in a comforting hold, tricking my mind into relaxing, soothing my hand back to the ground.
“All of them.” I groaned, trying to stretch out the pain in my neck. “Eloi, Skjebre, Sinn, Sjel, Vold. I’m all of them.”
“Like the legend,” she whispered. “One of the three.”
“The Fjorn?” Bjern barked, surprise making his voice suddenly loud. He lowered it again, his hand pushing through his dark hair. He shook his head, his eyes passing from Frey to me. “You’re crazy,” he said, and I wasn’t sure which one of us he was speaking to.
“The fourth.” I laughed weakly, though there was nothing funny about the whole situation. I just couldn’t seem to help myself. Frey’s power was making me dizzy, the unburdening of my secret filling my head with air. “The final Fjorn.”
“But there’s only three,” Frey countered, a deep frown creasing her lips. She sounded certain but looked perplexed. I supposed it wasn’t a comfortable moment for a Sinn to realise that they might have collected the wrong information.
“Should have been,” I agreed, with a weak nod, thinking of what Ein had just said to me. “They weren’t strong enough individually, so they sacrificed their power to create a fourth.” I frowned, realisation sinking into me, some small piece of the puzzle clicking satisfactorily into place. “She sacrificed them,” I corrected. “The first Fjorn. She sacrificed them before they were even born. They fought and failed with no idea of what she had done—with no idea that she had already chosen their fates for them.”
Bjern fell back, his hands planted behind him, his mouth hanging open. “You’re serious.”
“Of course she’s serious,” Frey snapped. “Are you blind? Have you not noticed what’s been happening? All the Sentinels returning from their posts at our borders? Talk of the ships returning home? The plague wiping out Breakwater Canyon? The Company calling in all litens to be recruited at once? Even the days have become shorter.”
“The end of the world.” Bjern blinked at her, and then at me. “The end of the world?” he hissed out a second time.
“Well … not if I can help it,” I groused, my eyes travelling up to the sky. “How long has it been since the hunt started?”
“A few hours,” Frey answered reflexively.
I swore, struggling to sit up again. “More than three?” I pressed, my heartbeat skipping, my pains forgotten.
“Almost,” she answered uncertainly—not uncertain about her response, but about my reaction to it.
I swore darkly, glancing between them. “Thank you for saving me. I mean it.” And then I was pushing the ring around my finger, muttering, “Vale.”
18
Torrential
I landed in a heap at the Weaver’s feet, which were planted on the worn floorboards of a surprisingly plain little cottage. He sat in a single chair at a table big enough only for him. He had stripped off most of the layers that I was accustomed to seeing him in, wearing only loose pants, his feet bare. His eyes drifted slowly to me, not at all rattled by my sudden drop into his house.
“Your time is almost up,” he told me, taking in the blood that smeared my face and the fact that I hadn’t tried to stand yet.
I reached up, tossing the leaf onto his lap without a word. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and for some reason, that rattled me. The Skjebre were generally more modest than the other sectors, wearing loose layers and plain colours. Even the Sinn took more pride in their appearance. He had the physique of a Sinn scout—not as bulky as a Sentinel, but lither. Quieter. Faster. I stared at his stomach, my mind flashing back to the bath that I had been forced to give Calder. The Weaver’s muscles weren’t as large, but there wasn’t any softness to him, either.
He picked up the leaf, turning it over in his fingers, his expression
curious. Outside his hut, the sky rumbled, lighting flashing against the windows. Still, he turned the leaf.
“You’re growing stronger.” He said it like a warning. “The Darkness can sense it.”
The thunder rumbled again, seemingly in agreement, and I glanced up as I heard the pitter-patter of rain skipping across the roof.
“It leaks in here sometimes,” the Weaver said dully.
“You’re one of the great masters,” I couldn’t help saying. “Why do you live like this?”
He set the leaf down, his eyes returning to mine. It was mid-afternoon, but the rapidly swelling storm was already turning the sky dark, casting shadows over his face.
“How else would you have me live, Tempest?”
“I don’t know.” I was unsettled by our conversation. It seemed too … normal. “I guess somewhere grander.”
“Andel doesn’t sleep,” he murmured thoughtfully. “He only … disappears into his mind for a while. Helki sleeps beneath the stars, usually drunk. Vidrol sleeps beneath a woman. One of his royal harem—he doesn’t much care where, only whom.”
“And F-Fjor?” I asked, with a grimace over my stutter, thinking of the Inquisitor’s grand mansion with the steward manservant.
“Fjor knows everything there is to know about Fyrio, and that’s because at night … he listens.”
“To what?” I hated that I was sitting at his feet, trying to gain enough strength to stand. I hated that his eyes were steady on mine and that the rain had intensified to a downpour, seeming to shut us in there together. But … what he was saying interested me, and I couldn’t help the questions tumbling out, one after the other.
“To the spirit all around us. To the currents of power that whisper from one person to the next. He can hear it all.”
“That’s impossible.” I finally managed to pull to my feet, my hands clasping tightly to the edge of the table.
“I’ve seen you do it yourself, girl.”
“I … I don’t … it doesn’t have a sound.”
He stared at me, almost level with my eyes even though I was standing and he was sitting. He stared without answering, and I realised that I was lying. While I could sense most power in the form of a feeling or sensation, I could hear the magic of war inside both myself and Calder.
A crack of thunder whipped too close to the hut, making me jump. Dirt rained down from the ceiling, and the Weaver stood, his eyes lightening to a strange, milky colour. I felt his energy leak into the room, creeping along my skin like the slow crawl of cold mist. His eyes snapped back to normal and he muttered a curse.
“This is no normal storm.”
“What do you mean?”
He strode forward, snatching me to his chest with his left arm as the storm exploded above us, the wind tearing half of the roof away and sending debris flying into the forest. The rain poured into the room in a single swoop, like an arm reaching in to grab us, but the Weaver crushed me closer, and everything disappeared in a tight snap of air, colour blurring around us, re-forming again to reveal us standing in a grand room with soaring ceilings and glass-bricked walls.
“The Sky Keep?” I questioned, more to myself, recognising the colours of the banners that hung from the walls, showing the King’s crest.
The Weaver ignored me, snatching a nearby steward servant, who was attempting to run from the room.
“Tell the King we’re here,” he said. “And send clothing up. And food.” He glanced over his shoulder at me, his eyes sweeping over me. “And a bath,” he added.
The woman stuttered out a response, scampering away as fast as she could. The Weaver simply turned and continued through the castle, navigating the halls and staircases easily. He entered a wing of the castle that was cold and dark but made up in readiness. By the time he had lit the lanterns, a team of stewards had already rushed into the room, somehow knowing exactly where he would go. They stirred a fire to life in the hearth, laying out clothing. The Weaver sat by the fire as the door smacked open again, the Inquisitor striding in, his eyes flicking straight to the Weaver and then to me.
He listens. He can hear it all.
I shivered, hugging my arms around myself. The storm battered against the windows angrily, the sky impossibly dark.
“We must talk,” the Inquisitor said to the Weaver as the stewards rushed around them.
“She needs to bathe anyway,” the Weaver replied. “I’m sick of looking at her in such a state.”
On cue, two steward women appeared at my side, their eyes lowered, one of them holding out her arm to usher me toward the washroom. I followed simply because I wasn’t sure when I would next get such an opportunity and found the room already steam-filled, the water a clear, bright blue. I knew the colour was achieved by adding solid crystalline minerals that broke down into magnesium when they were dissolved by the water. They were supposed to ease muscles and calm stress. I was no longer being ushered toward the bath, but stepping towards it eagerly, shoving out of my clothing even though the steward women stepped up to help me. It felt wrong to be waited on by these eager but stoic people. Not long ago, they would have walked right over me—they were servants of the Edelsten court, after all. They had a very high status amongst the stewards.
One of them opened a case filled with oils and dried flowers, and I realised that they were going to perform a sectorian bath. It shouldn’t have bothered me as much as it did. I quashed my reservations, climbing into the warm water as they sprinkled it with soft white petals. I picked one of them out of the water, pressing it between my fingers to release the scent as I breathed deeply.
Roses.
I was bathing in roses.
A shocked laugh fell out of me, jolting the woman closest to me. When they began to scrub my shoulders with a subtle, minty exfoliant, I felt the tremble in their hands, and I turned to peek at the face of the woman to my right. She tried to meet my eyes, but instead her attention flicked to the mor-svjake before quickly averting her gaze again, the shaking increasing.
I didn’t know what to do to put her at ease, so I shrugged out from beneath her touch, turning to put my back at the other end of the tub, facing them both.
“It’s okay,” I told them, almost a whisper, even though I couldn’t hear the Weaver or the Inquisitor in the sitting room. “You really don’t have to.”
They looked at each other before one of them—the one whose hands had remained steady—skirted forward on her knees beside the tub.
“How did you survive the Warmaster’s mark?” Her whisper was a rush, excited and fearful.
“And the Legionnaires’ brand?” the other added, emboldened. “I’ve heard it’s very painful.”
“You wear so many marks,” the first added, even more eagerly.
“Was it all a mistake?” the second asked. “The crime that they took you to the Citadel for? That’s what people are saying—that you didn’t actually kill them.”
I swallowed, my throat dry, my eyes wet. I knew that look in their eyes. It was the same quietly hopeful expression I had worn whenever I heard tales of the Warmaster. When they looked at me, they saw a steward girl, as small and ignored as they had felt at times in their life. A steward girl who had climbed out of death row … and then climbed further, all the way into a perfumed bath in the King’s castle.
“It was an accident,” I finally said, my voice cracking. It felt like a lie, but I couldn’t bear to wipe out that look on their faces.
Not when I was so accustomed to revulsion and disgust, or worse…
Accusation.
They scrubbed and washed me, cleaning my hair and scenting my skin with flowers before helping me out of the bath and rubbing oil into my aching muscles. Their hands skirted my marks, afraid of touching them, but they both couldn’t keep their eyes from the wings extending around my neck. As they brushed away the oil and began to massage a cool, soothing cream into my skin, I felt a heavy weight settle into my stomach.
It wasn’t just me that I needed t
o win this battle for. There were little girls and tired, hardworking stewards all over Fyrio who were now whispering about one of their own who was standing up and forcing the greater, more powerful people of the world take notice.
The tide of gossip was turning in my favour, the mere whisper of the Legionnaires’ brand enough to sway their opinions. They combed my hair with brushes heated by the fire until it was dry, the strands tamed into soft waves, the colour a shifting red, rippling like a faceted ruby turning beneath a light. They powdered my skin, hiding the multitude of bruises and scratches that littered my body, and then one of them carried in a dress that had my eyes flicking away in hesitation.
It was pure gold cut into sections, like a golden mirror that had cracked into a hundred pieces only to be glued back together in just the right way. It was fashioned like the usual sectorian bodysuit, though there was a lining beneath that looped over my shoulders when I stepped into it, and fell all the way to the floor as the women pulled it up. It was a silk so thin that it was completely translucent, a few sections of gold attached to the skirt. When I glanced down at myself, it looked almost like those pieces were falling from my bodysuit to the floor, where they collected thickly along the train.
“I don’t think I can wear this,” I admitted as they encouraged me to step into strange slippers of the same cut-gold pattern. “I wouldn’t know how to walk in it.”
“Try forward,” a voice said from the doorway as the Inquisitor appeared, his shoulder notched against the opening. “You’re finally ready.” His eyes skipped over me as the steward women scattered like a pile of leaves blown into the wind. His first look had been swift, but he frowned, his eyes travelling again in the same direction, but slower. He dipped his head a little, those bronze dots pierced into the skin above his brow shifting and glinting at me. When his eyes met mine again, he was silent, the darkness of his irises wrapping around me.
I brushed past him, because it wasn’t his night and I wasn’t following them around and obeying their every order for the fun of it. I was already uncomfortable that my bath, clothing, and even the good company of the steward women had been something that they provided me, but I wasn’t going to let it soften my attitude towards them.
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