The Iron Phoenix

by Rebecca Harwell

  Hundreds of Nomori passed them, all headed to some form of work. Most of the men wore uniforms of either the Duke’s Guard or private security or the whites of a weapons tutor. A few desperate ones with reddened eyes wore the overcoat of a miner. The women carried baskets and tools, employed as everything from lady’s maids to engineers on the steam pumps that could still be heard through the stillness. No one spoke, either not wanting to draw attention to themselves or not wanting to bring voice to the tension in the air.

  “The sea hasn’t gone down,” Marko said suddenly. “A couple of brave souls actually rappelled off the walls to measure against the Mark of Recession. Not even a fraction.” He sighed. “It’s been six weeks. It should have lowered by now.”

  Her stomach sank. It was less than a week until the solstice and all that day would bring. Nadya swallowed her panic down and tried to make light. “All the more reason that you shouldn’t be here alone,” she said sternly. The Nomori they passed did not give them more than a passing glance, but if Marko’s identity were exposed, the sheer number of people could give them trouble.

  “I won’t tell Kesali if you won’t.” Marko glanced over at her.

  Nadya tried to keep her face a mask.

  “I am worried about her,” he said, dodging a couple of women pulling a wagon.

  “We’re all worried. But nothing will happen. The rioters won’t win, and the zealot will be found and the Kyanite Sea will return to its bed,” Nadya said quietly.

  Marko laughed, but this time it was hollow, echoing across the desolate stone buildings they passed with wide-eyed Nomori children watching them with hands outstretched. “Is that for me, or you?”

  “Both of us.”

  “I just hate feeling useless.” He stopped, and Nadya had to pull him out of the flow of workers to keep from being trampled. Marko didn’t even seem to notice. “I can’t do anything, anything to protect the city, anything to save her. Your father is busy searching for factions of rioters and keeping the peace. He actually ordered me out of the temporary headquarters yesterday, saying I was just getting in the way.” He sighed. “I was.”

  “Sometimes we have to leave things to those who know them best,” Nadya said without believing it.

  He looked down at her. “That’s pretty wise for someone so young.”

  She snorted. “I’m only two years younger than you.”

  “My point.” He sighed. “I know your father was right to kick me out. He knows far more than I ever could.”

  He started walking again, and Nadya followed. “That isn’t all that’s bothering you.”

  Marko sighed. “My father is holding an open session today, against the wishes of his son and his deputy Guardmaster. Were you planning to go?”

  She shook her head and lied, “No, I need to look after my mother.” She had made her plans last night. Such an event was a tantalizing target for the zealot and any others who wished the city ill. Something might happen, and Kesali would be there. Nadya decided the Iron Phoenix would be as well.

  “He says that now, more than ever, the family needs to show openness to the city. He thinks he can quell the unrest with diplomacy, with peace.” Marko shook his head. “My father has always been the peacemaker. It’s worked so well for him that it’s narrowed his mind. Sometimes…sometimes all someone understands is the bullet or the blade.”

  There was a finality in his words that Nadya didn’t like. “You think that of this zealot and his followers.” She couldn’t help but think of the magistrate. She had a sinking feeling that Marko was right, and there was nothing short of violence that would stop him.

  “Don’t you? Or,” he paused, “maybe you don’t.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Now it was she who stopped, backing into a culvert to avoid the thinning crowds. The sun had risen behind the clouds. It lit everything in a gray glow. Water splashed up around her boots.

  Marko leaned against the stone wall. “You don’t really have gods.”

  “And you have gods that no one actually believes in, until a madman riles them up enough to spill blood.” Nadya took a breath and said in a softer tone, “Just because we don’t have shrines or make sacrifices, do not think we don’t pray. Who do you think the Protectress is?”

  Marko leaned forward. “I guess I’ve never really known. The Nomori I know rarely talk about her other than invoking her name.”

  She hesitated. This was a question better suited for an Elder, not a Nomori girl whose very life was blasphemy. But something in her chest pushed her to answer, so she considered her words and began, “The Nomori were nomads for a thousand years. We traveled the waterways from one end of the world to the other. During those centuries, we faced plagues and barbarians and swords and pistols and animals and elements.” The history in the Elders’ songs came to her now. “We didn’t need a pantheon of gods to appease, not like those who originally built Storm’s Quarry needed someone to blame the storms on.”

  She took a deep breath and reached up to touch the seal, hidden under her shirt sleeve. “The Nomori did not need gods. We needed a protector, and we received a Protectress.”

  “Like a goddess?”

  She shook her head. “A Protectress. That is what she’s called, and that’s what she is. She looks after my people, listens to our prayers, and protects us. In years gone by, it was from the dangers of a nomadic life.”

  “And now it’s from the dangers of living in a city with Erevans,” Marko finished. His expression was unreadable.

  “Ay.” She paused. “She is not better or worse than your storm gods. She’s merely different.”

  “But you believe in her.”

  She did not know how to answer. Once, her belief in the Protectress was stronger than the great marble walls of the city. Now, she never prayed. “Yes,” she said finally. “Every Nomori wears her seal.” It was not a lie. She still believed in the Protectress, in her curse. But Nadya did not have her faith anymore.

  “Kesali never told me this.”

  “Perhaps she was waiting for you to ask.”

  Marko grunted and started walking again, cutting through the culvert to loop down a side street, heading back toward the marble stairs and the upper tiers of the city.

  Nadya tried to cheer him up. Despite his relationship with Kesali, she did not wish to see him upset, not with the unrest in the city and him bearing the burden of its future. “It’s really a private thing, not something we talk about.”

  “You talked about it.”

  “Because you asked me. Have you ever asked her about it? About any Nomori custom?”

  The red that crept over his ears, barely hidden by the hood, was answer enough. “Sometimes I think we’ve been betrothed forever, and sometimes it feels like I don’t know her at all.” He looked down at Nadya. “You’ve been friends with her for years. Tell me about her.”

  It wasn’t an official command from Lord Marko, the Duke’s son, but the request of a man in love, Nadya realized with a sour taste in her mouth. This was why he sought her out this morning. The worry about the riots and the open session, while genuine, was a simple cover to be able to talk to her about Kesali.

  The kiss was too fresh in her mind. Nadya wanted to remain silent, but one glance at Marko’s hopeful face, and she knew she had to say something. “Kesali…Kesali is the best person you’ll ever meet.”

  “I know that.”

  Do you feel how strong her heart beats when you kiss? “Do you know that she likes to dance?”

  He frowned. “I thought the Nomori didn’t approve of such activities.”

  Nadya shrugged. “Kesali likes it. She always shocks all the Elders by prancing around to their songs.”

  “That sounds like her.” Marko smiled. When he spoke again, he stared mistily over the heads of the Nomori they passed, all the way to the edges of the tier that could be seen. “I’m lucky. I always knew I would marry for political gain. I thought it would be a princess of one of the neighboring n
ations who wanted a larger share of our mine’s output. Wintercress, most likely, but one of the Marchlands if I got lucky. But I never imagined someone like Kesali. I love her.”

  Bile rose in her throat, but Nadya forced herself to smile. “I’m happy for you two.”

  “I know we’re engaged already, but I want to propose to her in the Nomori fashion.”

  Nadya almost tripped over her own feet. Marko continued speaking, drilling her with questions on Kesali’s likes and dislikes and different methods of performing a Nomori proposal. He insisted she tell him in detail how the man brings a loaf of bread to the woman’s house. If the woman accepts his offer, and most Nomori women of good families had multiple offers, she cuts a slice and they share it. Marko looked like an eager child, absorbing all of Nadya’s bitter words.

  She was relieved when the front of her house came into sight. Marko bowed when they stopped at her door. “Thank you, Nadya. I should return to my father, but thank you. You’ve eased my heart.” He bowed again and left.

  He shouldn’t have been so cheerful, not with the city teetering on the edge of chaos and starvation. But then again, he was a man in love and nothing stood between him and his betrothed. Marriage meant forever, one of the few things the Erevans and Nomori agreed upon. She wondered what it felt like, knowing he would wake up to those soft eyes, that eager smile every day for the rest of his life. She swallowed back her jealousy and went inside. Any thoughts she’d had of a romantic future always involved Kesali. She tried to see someone else and found nothing past Kesali.

  Shoving back the raw thoughts of what wouldn’t be, she checked to make sure her mother still slept soundly, then climbed up to where the gray cloak that belonged to the Phoenix was stowed. Surveying the roofs of the Nomori tier from her own, Nadya saw nothing standing between her and protecting Kesali at the palace.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The damp seemed to close in, choking her as Nadya sped through the narrow streets to the rail. She ignored the angry looks and grunts that were thrown at her as she barreled past people. After she knocked one guardsman to the ground by accident, she tempered her speed slightly.

  A whistle blast screeched through the air just as she reached the base of the stairs. Nadya leapt over the edge of the slow-chugging railbox just as it departed. She got one or two stares from its other passengers, but settling into a seat at the far end, she did her best to look average.

  The gray cloak, rolled up and secured to her back with twine, felt like an anchor and a brand.

  The Iron Phoenix might not take precedence with the Guard over rioters, zealots, and murderers, but she would be a fool to think any of the Guard would just let her masked persona waltz by. With the increasing tension between Erevans and Nomori, guardsmen were everywhere. Wearing the cloak and scarf painted a target on her back, but the thought of not wearing them was even worse.

  If she was needed to step in to save Kesali, the Iron Phoenix would be there. If she wasn’t, no one would recognize the cloak as belonging to the man who was either a hero or a villain, depending on who you spoke to.

  A bell rang throughout the tier, marking the beginning of the Duke’s weekly open session. Chatter and boot steps filled in the silence after it, punctuating stern shouts from guardsmen and the creaking of the palace doors.

  Nadya stepped off the rail platform. She carefully pushed her way through the throngs of people. The cobblestoned square of the top tier was full of people from all walks of life. Courtiers in their fine clothes and huge amounts of gaudy jewelry that looked heavy enough to snap their necks walked alongside muddy beggars from the second tier. Nadya peered through the crowd. She saw one or two Nomori, but no one she recognized. The two races gave each other a wide berth and dirty looks. Red uniforms stood out from the milling people, more than Nadya had ever seen at an open session. They walked through the crowd, checking faces.

  Looking for the zealot or his rioters, she thought, then realized with a pang of sickness, and the Iron Phoenix, if he’s foolish enough to show.

  At the huge metal doors melded into the imposing white marble walls of the palace, a troop of the Duke’s Guard stopped everyone before they entered. They dug through bags and parcels, raking along peoples’ limbs despite the outraged cries of the citizens. Then the guardsmen waved the group through the small gap in the doors and called the next few dozen people forward.

  Nadya had no weapons, but that didn’t stop her pulse from pounding in her ears as she weaved her way through the disorganized line to the front and the guardsmen. She kept her head down. Only one was Nomori, and she kept well away from him. The Erevan who searched her did it with rough hands that lingered too long over her backside and her chest. He touched the cloak, and Nadya bit back a surge of fear. She forced herself to breathe as his hands rifled through it looking for the butt of a gun or the hilt of a rapier.

  “Go on, now,” he said gruffly, and Nadya hurried through the door.

  The crowd was restricted to the throne room with queue of the Duke’s Guard on either side, directing them forward along the velvet carpet. The astonished cries of children, their wonder at the splendor of the palace, were the only noises to be heard over the constant hum of suspicious murmurs. No one was here because their life was good.

  Nadya could hardly believe, as she walked through the sun-painted doors, that she had encountered Levka in here just the day before. It felt like a lifetime ago, with a lifetime’s regret and hardship settling on her shoulders ever since. She wished more than ever that she could go to someone with her new knowledge of Levka’s involvement in—well, she still didn’t know what. Supplying explosives to the rioters, perhaps. All she knew for certain was there was a lot more to the magistrate’s quiet looks and confident demeanor. It masked a man who wasn’t afraid to watch a city fall to chaos and see its streets run red with blood.

  She had considered the consequences of an appearance by the Iron Phoenix. If Levka planned something for the open session and she got in the way, he very well might reveal her identity to everyone.

  As much as that thought made her sick, the thought of Kesali’s lifeless eyes staring up at her was worse.

  The marble pillars now stood like sentries, guiding the crowd down the center aisle. Nadya had to restrain herself from clapping her hands over her ears. Every little sound, from the woman who lectured the Duke on the food shortages to Marko’s sigh to the dozens of heavy footsteps, echoed in here, coming back like a tidal wave to her sensitive ears.

  She slipped out of the crowd as soon as one of the uniforms who patrolled its edge had to wade into the mass of people and separate a Nomori woman from an Erevan one.

  Nadya quietly walked backward until she melted into the shadows and cobwebs in this back corner. The frames of the gilded paintings that hung back here were dusty, and the sole torch in the corner had gone out. None of the meager light that came in the hall’s stained glass windows reached this corner, and for the first time since leaving the Nomori tier, Nadya let herself breathe easy.

  Sitting in an unadorned wooden chair atop three steps of gleaming marble, Duke Aleksandr Isyanov presided over the hall. He was handsome enough…for an Erevan. His flaming locks were dimmed by gray strands. He wore a rich purple tunic and an ornate jeweled collar—the signet of the ruler of Storm’s Quarry, a sun with brilliant rubies and more subtle opals. Nadya, a hundred paces away, saw the rings around his eyes. Yet he still listened to the woman who raged about the food shortages and her children’s hunger with attentive eyes.

  On the Duke’s left side, Marko stood in formal purple and jewels that he did not look very comfortable in. Beside him, Kesali stood in her traditional, almost stubborn, Nomori vest and trousers. Like the ones she had worn to the theater, they were made of expensive cloth and richly embroidered. There was no mistake of the message she was sending to the entire city. She wore the necklace of rubies. Nadya’s heart ached when she saw the pair of them holding hands.

  She was there to protect
Kesali from anything that might happen. That was all there was. That was all there would ever be, watching her and Marko hold hands, and the sooner she accepted that, the happier she would be.

  Nadya stayed in her corner, unmoving so as not to be noticed by the guardsmen. If any saw her, they ignored the young girl standing there quietly and turned back to the citizens who were causing trouble. The mass of people slowly moved as each citizen got their few moments before the Duke. On his right side, several scribes worked away at the writing desks, copying down his every word. More often than not, he ordered extra rations to be given to families. Nadya wondered if the city could spare them, or if the Duke was dipping into the rations saved for his own family. Sometimes he resolved a dispute between two parties, but mostly, he just listened. As she watched, Nadya realized what Marko hadn’t. The Duke was right to continue with the open session despite the growing turmoil in the city. These people needed to see their leader, and most came away happy, or at least no longer glowering. If they found a compassionate leader who listened in the Duke, they would have no need to go to the zealot.

  After almost an hour, Nadya started to believe that her worry was unjustified. Her mother would be wondering where she was. There was always something that needed to be done around the house. She did not yet need to scavenge for food, though. The Erevan shopkeepers would still sell to them, even if they tripled the price of the already overpriced food.

  She felt it as she turned to leave, a tingling between her shoulder blades. It was nothing more than a fancy, but Nadya had learned to trust her instincts. They had been right about Levka. She swept her eyes over the proceedings but saw nothing suspicious. The Duke’s Guard was doing a fine job keeping order. She saw her father once or twice but always looked away before he could meet her eyes.