Nadya backed up, then sprinted forward, launching herself off the edge.
In that moment, she had wings.
The nearest she’d ever felt was the warm buzzing in her collarbone when she drank a bit too much of the second tier’s sweet potato ale, but it could not compete with this.
No one could leap across rooftops and not feel…
Invincible.
Another, and another. Nadya found her rhythm. Each time she took off, she didn’t know if she’d land with a solid thump strong enough to rattle her bones or cling to the edge by her fingers or even to come up short and fall without ever touching stone. But she gave herself over completely to her abilities. It was moments like these when Nadya could forget the grave consequences of being found out, the struggles of hiding her unnaturalness from her family, her friends. Here, she owned the skies and she reveled in what her body could do.
She landed on the roof of the tallest manor on the block. She teetered on the parapet for a moment, her stomach performing a few circus flips. It was such a long way down. The loose hair around her face whipped about in the wind. Her eyes watered.
Below, the courtyard of the neighboring manor was illuminated by ghost light, turning every stone bench, every gable into a specter. Shadows of two figures standing at the back gate stretched all the way through the garden to the brass manor door. She could not see much besides that one was taller than the other. It was the shorter one, however, who seemed to be advancing on the other—a Nomori man, she thought as she peered down.
Nadya was about to turn around and leave, as no good would come of being seen, when the scene below shifted. The Nomori man suddenly faced toward her. Before he ran back inside, rapier in hand, Nadya saw his eyes. Pure black, not a speck of any color. She shivered, and looked to the other figure. He stood in shadow, nothing about him giving any hint as to who he was. His head tilted up, and she saw eyes as dark as midnight.
A scream split the stillness of the night. A man’s voice. Nadya covered her ears, wincing against the shrill terror. The man below darted away. The Nomori guardsman stumbled out the back doors of the manor. His rapier gleamed red, and Nadya wished her eyesight were no better than everyone else’s.
She didn’t know what had happened, but no sooner had the scream died away that the faint sound of many running boots—the Duke’s Guard—echoed through the neighborhood. She could not be found here. Not by the Guard, or worse, her father, a captain of its ranks. Tripping over her rush to get away, she sped to the opposite side of the roof and made an ungraceful leap to the next one. It would be nearly dawn by the time she returned home. She had a feeling that what she just witnessed was no small matter. Murder, her mind whispered as she sped down through the city. Hopefully, Protectress willing, she would avoid any consequences from it.
After all, Nadya Gabori had a secret. And if anyone found out, she would lose everything she held dear.
Chapter Two
Nadya slipped into the back window of her home just as the first rays of sun hit the great marble wall. She landed softly in the loft where her pallet lay. Quickly, she stripped off yesterday’s clothes and pulled on a fresh pair of blue trousers and a cream shirt. Her seal of the Protectress remained fastened around her upper arm, a metal band with a five-petal flower—a river lily—imprinted into it. She brushed it with a finger. Warmth blossomed in her arm. It could have just been her imagination, but she liked to believe it was a response to her unspoken prayer.
After taming her wind-snarled hair into a braid, Nadya climbed down the ladder to the main house, careful not to let the rungs squeak. She couldn’t do the same for the growling noises her stomach was now making. Her nose had already picked up the scent of cinnamon flatbread.
“You weren’t in your bed last night.”
Nadya froze, her hand halfway to the ledge where the flatbread lay cooling. Before she could say anything, a grating cough echoed throughout the small dwelling. Her mother covered her mouth, but her body shook with the effort to stop it. She leaned against the stone wall. “Where were you?” she asked hoarsely.
Mirela Gabori was a small woman. Once she might have been called lithe, but now she looked frail. Her trousers and vest hung off her frame. Silver streaks peppered her black mane, which she kept plaited back in a knot on her head as was custom for a married Nomori woman. Still, she had an air about her that would allow no one to question her as the heir to the Gabori family, nor as one of the more powerfully psychic of the Nomori women.
Nadya met her eyes for a moment. “Nowhere.”
“Am I expected to believe that?” Mirela asked. Her voice regained its strength, as it always did when she found fault with Nadya.
“I just needed some air.” She turned around and grabbed a piece of flatbread, scoffing half of it down in one bite.
“Do not lie to me, Nadezhda.”
It’s not as if I can tell you the truth, Nadya shouted in her mind. You would disown me and throw me out of here before I could give you two words of explanation. So what exactly do I owe you?
They were toxic thoughts, and she knew it. But Nadya ignored the prick of her conscience and the tired lines in her mother’s face. She grabbed her second-best vest off its peg on the wall. It was light blue and embroidered with a desert scene of quick-footed deer being hunted by a feline predator. Her grandmother might be many things, overbearing being the nicest of them, but she was unrivaled when it came to creating such pieces of art. She slipped it on and fastened the buttons. “I’m going out.”
“So soon? It’s as if you hardly live here anymore.” Mirela stepped away from the wall to block her path. “You are not leaving this house until you’ve finished your chores. There is mold growing in the corners, and it’ll only get worse as the season of storms approaches.”
“It isn’t that bad,” Nadya said. She tried to keep her tone even, but that was hard. “I’m going to walk Kesali to work, all right? Nothing forbidden or scandalous. I won’t even leave the tier. I’ll clean tomorrow.”
“I have heard that before.” Mirela crossed her arms. “You think I don’t understand, but I do.”
No, Mama, you do not. You could never.
“You are young, and it’s hard to think beyond today. But you are nearing your eighteenth birthday, and you must start taking on more responsibility, Nadya.” Mirela sighed. “You are a Gabori, and you need to start understanding what that means.”
“I know what it means,” Nadya said sharply. She pushed past her mother, carefully. “It means I’ll have to get married to a man I hardly know in the coming year. It means I won’t be able to go anywhere in the city because I’ll be the next head of the family. It means I’m going to lose all my freedom.” She clenched her hands into fists and made herself breathe deeply. Losing control now would do no good.
“Nadya…”
She whipped around, and her mouth almost betrayed her: It means that if my secrets were ever found out, I would no longer be part of this family. But she caught herself in time. Her anger was dangerous, and her mother meant well, at least. Even if she would never understand, and Nadya would never be able to confide in her.
About anything. Not her abilities, not Kesali.
“Sorry,” she mumbled. “I’m just…tired.”
It was the perfect opportunity for Mirela to comment once again on her nighttime absence, but she must have decided it wasn’t worth another argument. Instead, she nodded and said, “At least bring you father his lunch. He’s at the Guardhouse this morning.”
“Okay.” Nadya grabbed the cloth sack from inside their icebox and left through the curtain that parted their living quarters from her mother’s shop. The shop was messy, with tools and bits of wires and cuttings of gemstones strewn across the worktable. This wasn’t like her mother, to keep things in such disarray. Maybe coming home early to help tidy up would be a good idea. Her mother wasn’t feeling well after all, and hadn’t been for a while.
“Be safe,” Mirela called.
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Nadya muttered, “Good-bye,” and left the house.
Her family was luckier than most. With her father a captain in the Duke’s Guard and her mother one of the best jewelers in all of Storm’s Quarry, they could afford to live in one of the nicer districts of the Nomori tier. It was still plain and waterlogged compared to the finery she had seen last night in the fourth tier, but Nadya had spent plenty of time running through the more impoverished parts of the Nomori tier, and she knew how much the Protectress had blessed her family to not have to endure that.
The air was thick and damp, a sure sign of the coming storms that would leave the city surrounded by floodwaters. Nadya was barely out a few minutes before sweat was running down her face and pooling in the depressions in her neck. Damn, it was hot! She almost wished for winter again, and the cooling breezes it brought through the streets of the city. She passed dozens of other Nomori, but no Erevans. The Nomori men were in uniform, ranging from the crimson of the Duke’s Guard to the white of a personal guard to a courtier or a trainer to that same courtier’s obnoxious children. The women wore everything from the thick smocks of engineers for the city’s pumps to the bangles and headbands of a palm reader or fortuneteller. The Erevans of Storm’s Quarry didn’t like or trust the Nomori for the most part. That did not stop them, however, from employing the natural gifts of the Nomori: the psychic talents of the women and the preternatural fighting abilities of the men.
“Such a long face for such a beautiful day. Did you lose your smile while you were running all over the city last night?”
Nadya grinned in spite of herself as Kesali hopped off her doorstep. “And were you spying out your window to see me drop it?” Suddenly, the morning’s argument seemed far away, as if chased off by Kesali’s presence. She frequently had this effect on Nadya, calming whatever storms currently raged in her life with nothing more than a glance, a word or two.
“No. I, unlike some layabouts”—she poked Nadya in the arm—“have duties to perform, so I can’t be up half the night. It’s the bags under your eyes. They always give you away. Buy some cream from the third tier, the stuff those ladies use to cover their faces. It’ll stop your parents from being able to tell.”
Nadya shook her head. “They would know even if I paid a doppelgänger to sleep on my pallet. Do I really look so tired?”
“Try sleeping. You will be amazed at what it can do.” Kesali laughed and dodged Nadya’s friendly jab. Nadya was careful to let her. Kesali knew about the nighttime excursions because she had caught Nadya once. She didn’t know about Nadya’s secret, and Nadya planned to keep it that way.
“Let’s go, hmm? I can’t be late. The Head Cleric is a man devoted to his studies, and woe to anyone who doesn’t share the same commitment.” Kesali tugged on her arm. “Coming?”
Nadya smiled and started forward. “Can’t have you being late, can we?”
Kesali’s only response was to tug harder, and they proceeded down the narrow street toward Miner’s Tunnel. There, a carriage waited to take Kesali up to the palace for her training as the Head Cleric’s apprentice. Before her, that role had been an honor reserved only for Erevans.
She was the Nomori Stormspeaker after all, inheriting the title from her mother, the woman who had saved both peoples from the Great Storm of the Veiled Moon nearly twenty years ago. Her psychic gift in predicting the weather was passed to her daughter, and Kesali now bore that responsibility.
But Nadya tried hard not to see all that. She was just Kesali, and she was her dearest friend.
“Something is wrong, though, isn’t it?”
Nadya shook her head. “It’s nothing.”
“You can’t lie to me, Nadya. I read you as easily as I do the skies. Is it your grandmother?” Kesali asked, the humor gone from her voice. Her large, deep brown eyes looked down at Nadya, who caught her breath. Kesali was beautiful in a timeless way that would make any sunrise hide in shame. She wanted to touch that smooth skin, to brush a wisp of hair that had escaped her braid behind Kesali’s ear.
She blinked and turned away. Such things couldn’t be done in public, especially in the Nomori tier.
“My mother is beginning to talk like her. Responsibility and the Gabori name and all that.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Nadya realized how pathetic they must sound to Kesali, who had the fate of the city riding on her shoulders come every season of storms. Storm’s Quarry only survived because the storms and consequent floodwaters would be predicted and prepared for. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to complain.”
“Nonsense. I understand, believe me,” Kesali said.
Nadya wanted to believe her. But there was still a part of her life that no one would ever be able to enter, not even Kesali, whom she had known since they were babies wrapped in swaddling cloth and set beside one another while their mothers worked.
“I’m lucky she didn’t bring up marriage, but it surely will come up again.” Nadya ducked around a young man pushing a cart of rapiers, the preferred weapon of Nomori guardsmen. He was probably a trainee, tall and strong-looking, with dark hair cut to his earlobes and a nice enough chin. Someone her grandmother Drina would be thrilled to pair her up with, no doubt. She rolled her eyes.
“Be nice. You could be betrothed to someone wonderful. He’ll be smart and strong, at least, for your grandmother to think him worthy.”
Nadya stopped. “That’s not what I want.” Her heart pounded. How could her body feel the same way now as it did last night, when she leapt from building to building, defying the stars?
Kesali gave a small, resigned smile. “People like us, dear, rarely get to do what we want.” She started walking again.
Nadya watched her for a moment before catching up. She wiped at her eyes, blaming it on the sun glinting off the windows of the storefronts they passed. It didn’t matter, she told herself, if Kesali knew or not, if she felt the same way. It wasn’t just her duty to the city and Nadya’s duty to her family that made it impossible. It was the secret between them, the secret that made her hold Kesali at an arm’s length when she wanted nothing more than to embrace her and smell the sweet spice of her hair.
She remained quiet through the rest of their morning walk. If Kesali thought something was amiss, she didn’t press her.
The crowds grew thicker as they reached Miner’s Tunnel. All roads in the tier converged into one chaotic street that led up to the hole in the earth. The dark road pierced straight through the heart of the mines Storm’s Quarry sat on, built to allow its miners a quicker commute to and from their work.
A red carriage waited at the corner, with an Erevan footman holding the reins of two horses, a rare, expensive, and unwieldly resource in Storm’s Quarry. He wore a frown and kept looking up at the sky, following the sun’s path.
“I must go,” Kesali said. “Thank you for walking me here. You know that you don’t have to do this every day.”
“And you know that I want to,” Nadya replied without a pause.
Kesali bent down slightly and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek before bounding off to the impatient footman. Nadya stood there, rooted to the spot by the weight of that small good-bye, until the carriage vanished into the darkness of the tunnel.
The sack in her hand finally reminded Nadya that she did have things to do this morning. She carefully made her way through the crowd to the opposite edge of the tunnel’s mouth, where the pedestrians trod through. She took a deep breath and entered.
Nadya hated the tunnel. With only lamplight to illuminate the gloom, not even her eyes could see very far. She would have much preferred to run around the outer wall of the city, but only guardsmen were allowed up there. Of course, that hadn’t stopped her from running its length several times over the past months at night.
The tunnel let out on the south side of the Nomori tier, where a faint hammering could always be heard coming from behind metal doors that led deep under the city. These mines were the reason Storm’s Quarry existed as more than a
barren rock in the middle of the Kyanite Sea; the precious gemstones brought up kept the hundred thousand people in the city fed. A fence ran around the entire area and guardsmen patrolled the outer perimeter, keeping a wary eye on the crates of material sent up to the palace and its refiners. Just outside the wall, the squat two-story prison of gray stone stood like a watchdog over the mines.
From there, Nadya left the suffocating darkness of the tunnel behind and climbed the stairs that led up to the palace. It was a daunting climb that would take a normal person over an hour to reach the top tier of the city, where the palace, its storehouses, and the headquarters of the Duke’s Guard lay. Most people opted to pay a coin and take the rail that ran on either side of the marble stairs. Nadya elected to walk, going faster than perhaps was wise in public, but no one she passed had any cares but their own. When she reached the top, her breath came heavily.
Ignoring the crowds going to the Duke’s open forum, Nadya headed straight to the Guardhouse. She did not miss the dirty looks cast her way. Not many Nomori came up here, and those who did usually wore the uniform of the Guard.
An imposing building of white marble, as old as the city itself, it was not as tall or as ornate as the palace, but it had an impressive presence nonetheless. A ten-pace wall surrounded the grounds, with two guardsmen at each entrance. Nadya walked up to the gate that was guarded by two Nomori men in the crimson uniform of the Duke’s Guard.
“Business here?” one asked curtly in accented Erevo, but the other held up a hand.
“The captain is one lucky man, having a beautiful woman visit him,” the other guardsman said with a wink. “Good to see you again, Miss Gabori. Go on in.” He stepped aside and motioned for his companion to do the same.
Nadya couldn’t remember his name, but she had been coming here her whole life and knew most of the guardsmen by sight at least. “Thank you,” she said with a smile and went inside.
The Iron Phoenix Page 2