Phoenix Rising

by Rebecca Harwell

  “Most of these smiths are making tools and construction materials for the rebuilding. A few, however”—and there was no mistaking the note of pride in Shay’s voice—“have been tasked to replace all the weaponry and armor lost on the solstice.”

  She led Nadya around to the last workstation in the smithy, to a fire and bellows manned by a large woman, the grease smeared across her brow unable to hide the lines of age. Her salt-and-pepper hair was tied back with a band of leather, and her eyes were sharp. Nadya kept behind Shay.

  “Morning, Jeta,” Shay said. She surveyed the workshop. A line of newly made rapiers hung on a rack. Hilts, ready for their blades, sat in a pile on the solid stone table. Jeta held a hammer rather menacingly as she looked over Nadya. Her expression did not change.

  “Morning.”

  “I came to ask a favor,” Shay continued, unperturbed by Jeta’s curtness.

  “Mmm.” Her eyes flitted between Shay and Nadya, and something passed behind them, so quick that Nadya could not put a name to it. “I assume that means you’ll stop shirking your duties here.” Her voice carried an accent that Nadya could not place. It was not Nomori, nor Cressian, nor Erevo.

  Shay pointed to the pile of hilts. “Do you think those forged themselves? What I do at night doesn’t interfere with my smithy work.”

  Nadya’s eyebrows went up. This woman knew about Shay?

  “This is Nadya. She’s a friend.” Shay said it calmly, and Nadya wondered if that was all she felt.

  It’s better that way, she reminded herself. Because that is all I feel.

  “She needs some armor.”

  “What?” Nadya said, staring at Shay.

  She shrugged. “You do.”

  “I…I am pretty resiliant.” She was hesitant to hint at her powers with Jeta standing right there. The forgemaster, however, turned back to her work.

  “Maybe so, but there is only a cloth between you and the blood-hungry mobs of the city.” Shay’s voice lowered. “I think it may help with…everything.”

  “What do you know about it?” Nadya snapped instinctively. She swallowed, regretting the words. “Shay, I—”

  “Why do you think I fight the way I do?” Shay asked.

  Nadya had wondered. With Shay’s fiery abilities, it seemed that casting a mass inferno would be a more efficient way of subduing enemies. But now, with Shay’s serious eyes boring into her own, Nadya realized the truth. An inferno from Shay was the equivalent of Nadya under Gedeon’s control: pure force, no control. Power, yes, but indiscriminate power.

  Shay nodded. “Control. Some things are the same across our kind. I may not have your past, but you do not have mine. What I know is that running from this will not save you. And if you have to become the vigilante again, you will want this. Trust me.” She looked at Jeta, who pumped the smoldering coals. “Plate armor, thin. Able to be worn under a cloak, of course. We still have that starline metal we found.”

  Jeta turned around. “That’s a powerful set of armor. Is she strong enough?” She asked Shay the question, but her iron gaze swept over Nadya and pinned her.

  “Yes,” Nadya said softly. This woman knew more of her than she let on, she was sure.

  Jeta nodded once. “Come back a week from now, and it will be waiting.” She turned back to her work.

  “I—I can’t pay you,” Nadya began, but Shay grabbed her arm and pushed her out of the smithy.

  “She doesn’t need coin. Not for something like this.”

  Nadya stopped once they left. “Who was that? Does she know about you?”

  “She’s my master while I apprentice in smithing. I’d make your new disguise myself, but I have nowhere near her skill. She is the best forgemaster in the land. Your Duke is lucky to get her.”

  “But she knows?”

  Shay nodded. Her eyes grew hard. “She should. She is the one who took me in when my family sent me to my death.”

  If her nivasi blood had shown itself when she’d been young and innocent enough not to hide it, would Nadya’s face hold the same hard lines, the same darkness? Would her face turn to stone, now that the same fate, or part of it at least, had come to her? She bit her lip. Nothing she said could make any of it right. “Why do this? Any of it?”

  Shay turned and smiled. The sincere expression softened her dark eyes just a touch, enough to invite Nadya to see into them for a moment. “Because in this, we are the same.”

  Chapter Ten

  The Ceremony of Passing Breath—the name long and full of fluid vowels in ancient Nomori—was a private affair. While festivals like Arane Sveltura involved all their people, this was between the Gabori family, the Elders of the Nomori, and the Protectress herself. Gathered around the fountain were the seven Nomori Elders and the family. Cousins and aunts and uncles that Nadya usually saw only in passing, exchanging a smile or greeting. A hundred or more, depending on whether the babies were here. She tried not to think of the missing faces, struck by scouring sickness, dead or dying.

  The fountain had been dry still the solstice, coated with a layer of floodwater grime that covered the brilliance of the white granite. Tonight, it shone again, clean, but empty. The etching of a woman, sea waves crashing at her feet, reached up to the stars, frozen and beautiful.

  Nadya watched from the outskirts of the crowd, half hidden by shadows.

  I should not be here.

  Pain twisted in her gut, a knife.

  I really should leave.

  No one could pick her out of the dozens of the Gabori clan. Thinking of Shay, she had smeared her face with dust and wore a hood. Not the Phoenix cloak, though. Despite her semi-disguise, she kept a wary eye out for any familiar glances. All attention, however, was on the three figures right in front of the fountain.

  Nadya sighed. She knew she wasn’t going anywhere.

  Aishe, the eldest of the Elders, a wizened woman whose dark skin clung to her in sags, stood straight and strong at the fountain’s head. She spoke loudly, her voice carrying no waver of age.

  “This night, with the stars above, we gather to pass on the authority of the family. From woman to woman, mother to child. A passing usually takes place in the throes of grief”—and here Aishe glanced at Drina, disapproval written in her eyes—“but times have changed, and whether it is our path or not, we are changing with them.”

  Nadya stood silent as mutters rippled through the crowd. For so long, she had thought of Nomori tradition and her grandmother as one and the same. What had pushed her to give her position up? The Drina she knew would rather rot in a grave, an Erevan custom at that, than willingly change from the traditional Nomori ways.

  “Drina Gabori, head of the Gabori family.”

  Drina stepped forward. She wore a beautifully embroidered tunic of deep blue, multicolored fish of thread dancing along its hems.

  “Do you consent to the Passing of the Breath, given by the land and sea, guarded by the Protectress, unto another?”

  “Under her eyes, I do,” Drina said, voice stiff with ceremony.

  Aishe nodded. “Brioni Gabori, daughter of Rosta.”

  Brioni stepped forward. A sturdy woman, thick braids drifting in the breeze, she too wore what must have been her best tunic, one of deep red. Sweat shone at her brow, and her face was pale in the torchlight. Until a few days ago, she probably thought she would never inherit the title. But she stood straight and strong, her expression ready to answer the duty before her.

  “Do you take the burden the Protectress has bestowed upon you with a free and willing heart? To guard and lead your family in the ways of the Nomori, to keep them safe and on the path of our people?”

  “In her arms, I so promise.”

  Nadya swallowed hard. Beside Drina, Mirela stood, eyes glittering. Rightfully, that title should be hers. But illness forced her to give it up, just as Nadya’s blood did for her.

  Mama would have been good at leading the family, she thought, and tears pulled at the edge of her eyes.

  “Then
it is done. The breath of our people has been passed, the family name carried forth.” Aishe added a few more words, a prayer in ancient Nomori. Nadya only understood the final sentence: May the Protectress watch over us all.

  Silence followed Aishe’s prayer. The ceremony had finished. No one moved. Mirela took a deep breath, visible across the square. She turned and walked away, Shadar two steps behind her. At that unspoken signal, noise washed over the gathering. Cousins and siblings shook hands and chattered away, about the family, about the city, about inane things that grounded them in today, no matter what the next days would bring.

  Nadya made to melt back into the shadows. The logical part of her mind had been right, as usual: coming here had been a mistake. The dull ache in her chest roared to life as she watched what was once her life move on without her. It reminded her of that terrible afternoon of being under Gedeon’s control, and bile rose in her throat.

  “A quiet night.”

  Nadya jumped. She turned to see her grandmother there, hands clasped behind her back. How had she found Nadya, in the middle of dozens of Nomori, hidden as she was in the shadows? Her heart began to pound. Had Mirela told her anything?

  “Yes,” Nadya said. She fell into an awkward silence, standing there with her grandmother. She commanded her emotions to be still, but they raged and bounced against their cage. She knows nothing. She won’t say anything to Mama about my presence here, either. This will be fine. She repeated those thoughts until she almost believed them.

  “You wish to ask me why I gave up my title,” Drina said, breaking their silence.

  Nadya swallowed. “It is not my place.”

  Drina snorted. “Knowing your place never stopped you before. Has all the Nomori spirit gone out of you these past months? Ask.”

  Her grandmother’s words hung in the air, a challenge. Nadya swallowed hard. She looked at Drina, at the fine wrinkles that laced her face and hands, the bluish veins visible underneath her soft skin. In the months since the solstice, her grandmother seemed to have aged a decade. “Why did you do it?”

  “Because of you.”

  “Me?” Panic surged in Nadya’s stomach.

  “Because you are nivasi.”

  Every nerve in her body froze at Drina’s casual utterance of the term. Only a few months ago, Nadya had heard the word for the first time when Drina whispered it, her voice dripping in poisoned hatred. Sweat broke out along Nadya’s neck. She struggled to hold her grandmother’s stare. Drina’s psychic gift for reading the truth of the emotions of those around her was regarded as the strongest among the Nomori. Everyone would take Drina’s word. Would the Elders seek to do what they did not when she was a child?

  Her grandmother looked over at her with unreadable eyes. “Yes, I know. And no, your parents did not tell me. You should know by now not to underestimate the power of a Nomori psychic.”

  Nadya tried to speak, but her throat closed in, threatening to suffocate her. This scene had terrorized her nights for years: her secret revealed to her people. Mirela had promised to keep the truth hidden, but Drina harbored even more hatred for nivasi.

  Nadya’s hands were shaking. She glanced around, looking for any Nomori fighters crouched in the shadows. She could make an escape. Up onto the rooftops, and run. Run until she could not feel her feet any longer, until…

  “I was wrong.”

  Nadya stared, her mind uncomprehending of her grandmother’s words.

  “It ages me just to say that, but under the sight of the Protectress, I declare it. I was wrong. We all were, though I am the only one to admit it, I suspect. Nivasi are dangerous. They are to be feared.” Drina sighed. “But how much of that danger is created by us? We say they are unstable, that time will illuminate their descent into madness. For centuries, that was our teaching, and we clung to it as we clung to the stars and the water.”

  She looked at Nadya, and tears shone at the edge of her eyes. Crying. Nadya had never seen her grandmother cry, not in all her life.

  “I saw what Gedeon did, what he made you do, though I did not realize the Phoenix’s identity at the time. And I wondered if we were not the ones who created him. Chaos-makers, every one of us.”

  She took a rattling breath. “Still, I held to our teachings. It took seeing the same vehemence in my daughter’s eyes, having my granddaughter cast out, to change my mind. And I am sorry that it took all of that. I gave up my title because I can no longer be a part of this madness. I was not strong enough to do what’s right.”

  Not in all of her wildest imaginings did Nadya ever play out this scenario. Her grandmother, the epitome of Nomori tradition, of iron wills and scalding tongues, apologizing to her. Keeping her nivasi heritage a secret. Doing what her mother could not. Warmth bloomed under her fingertips, but immediately she squashed it. Was this a trap? “I—I don’t know what to say.”

  Drina nodded. “That is fine. I suspect this comes as a bit of a shock. I only hope you will forgive me in time, and see why we have done as we have.” She paused. “There is something you must understand. They are dangerous, Nadya.”

  “But you just—”

  Drina took her hand. “I know. But you must listen to me. She is dangerous. Perhaps we made her so, but it does not change the truth, that anger left simmering for years is liable to explode in the most unpredictable ways. I do not want you to be in the way when that happens. This may be hard to believe, but I have always wanted what’s best for you.”

  Nadya looked at her, trying to see the agenda in her grandmother’s eyes. How could she trust this woman, who until recently would have condemned her for her blood? She was not lying, not in a way Nadya’s abilities could pick up on, but the prejudice she had against nivasi, prejudice so vile it poisoned Mirela as well, could not vanish in an evening. She did not know Shay, and Nadya did.

  “If you ever did care, you did a poor job of showing it,” Nadya said, too harshly. Drina drew back, but she did not lose the strength in her voice.

  “Do not trust me then. But do not trust her either.”

  Nadya stalked away from the square, down the street, trying to rid herself of the feeling that her grandmother might be right.

  *

  Not for the first time, Shay wished she had better sense.

  She had avoided the Nomori tier since that first night, dodging any chance to go down to the bottom of the city, where the air tasted of the Kyanite Sea. More than a handful of copper coins had been lost to bribing the other apprentices, Erevan boys mostly, loathe to take an order from a Nomori girl, to take Jeta’s deliveries down to the bottom tier. When Jeta caught her batting her eyelashes at a young Cressian man who was practically falling over himself to help her, Nomori or no, the forgemaster only gave Shay one of her enigmatic looks before returning to her craft.

  Tonight, she hammered at the last of the hinges—stars-cursed hinges, didn’t the city have enough already?—impatiently, checking the position of the sun every few moments.

  “Plans for the evening?” Jeta said from behind, startling her.

  Shay adjusted her grip on the hammer and banged the thin sheet of metal flat once more. “Just ready to leave the forge. My lungs will thank me to breathe a bit of fresh air.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “Are you my nanny?”

  Jeta reached out and took her arm, adjusting her motion just a bit. Always a teacher. “No, I am not.”

  Shay sighed. “Down a few tiers, okay? No nivasi business tonight. Just a walk.”

  “Down to the Nomori tier.” Jeta had an uncanny way of phrasing every sentence as a question that one had no choice but to answer. Shay resisted as she cooled the hinge in a pail of water, eliciting a cloud of steam.

  She could never resist for long. “Yes, the Nomori tier. That I have been avoiding. Just the square, though. Not…not the other districts.” Not to see my family.

  She half expected Jeta to remark on her absolute resistance to going anywhere near that place up until now. The forgem
aster did not. Instead, she put one hand on Shay’s arm and said, “Be careful of how far you are willing to follow her.”

  “There is no her!” Shay said, backing away. Curse that woman, always knowing everything, reading an epic into the slightest twitch of an eyebrow, the pause between words. “The hinges are done, enough to anchor every door from here to the South Marches. Anything else?”

  “No.” Jeta gave her another look before returning to the workbench. “There will be another order tomorrow.”

  “Praise be,” Shay mumbled. She ripped off her smithing apron, dropped her gloves, and headed out into the night.

  There was no good reason to visit the Nomori tier, not really. Only whispers she had picked up while passing through the streets of the market. Ceremony of Passing Breath. Gabori. Poor family.

  Chances are, she will not even be there, Shay told herself as she took a crowded railbox down to the bottom of the city. The scent of brine could not cleanse the disease- and waste-tinged air, and for a moment she missed the smoke-filled smithy.

  As the final rays of the sun disappeared into the west and stars dotted the near-black sky, Shay arrived at the Nomori square. A small crowd had already gathered, the ceremony under way. Aishe, eldest of the Elders, a wrinkly old bat of whom Shay had few memories besides a quiet scolding now and again, presided, her warbled voice rising above the quiet lapping of the Kyanite Sea. The Gabori clan stood near the forefront, and Shay caught the very end as the breath was passed, or whatever the Elders had dreamed up to denote a change of inheritance.

  Nadya was nowhere in sight.

  Shay had guessed something had gone down between her and her family. It was, after all, only a matter of time before her nivasi blood and their fears would break them apart. Better now than later, she reasoned. Still, Nadya might need a bit of comfort.

  And are you the one to provide it?

  Shay shoved such thoughts away and began scanning the back of the gathered Nomori crowd. As the moments passed and she could not find Nadya, she began convincing herself that this was a bad idea, that she did not even care if Nadya was hurting because there was nothing between them and never would be, and—