The Hand of the Storm

by Iain Lindsay

  “My hand!” The Overseer’s blow had smashed through the staff to score an angry red line across the man’s wrist. The Overseer kept on laughing as the woman punched low with her staff, hitting him in the belly and forcing him backward. It was a blow that should have broken ribs, or at least winded him, but the Overseer bounced off the trunk of the tree.

  And dropped the Oculant.

  With a crack, the glass fractured on the cobbled, and there was a sudden smell of ozone and the decay of seaweed as the green-blue liquid seeped out.

  “you idiots!” the Overseer lashed out with the accursed blade, narrowly missing the woman as she bent backwards. She looked about to strike again, but was interrupted by a bellow from the crowd.

  “Overseer!” It was Garn, pulling his axe from his back as he barged a trader out of the way, and roared his displeasure.

  “We will find you, demon!” the Nhkari woman hissed, grabbing her friend by the shoulder and dragging him back into the crowds. A shout as a cart tipped over, and they were gone.

  “Overseer – who were they? Are you hurt?” Garn’s eyes were steady as he stood protectively over his master.

  “I’m fine, you imbecile.” Jekkers snapped, ignoring the man as he bent over the precious device. The liquid had all drained into the cracks around the cobbles, seeming to effervesce slightly as it did so, leaving the triangular serrated fin to lie inside the cracked receptacle.

  “No, no, no!” The man pawed at the disappearing serum, but it was gone, leaving nothing but a ghostly cold sensation on the tips of his fingers as he picked up what was left of the ruined Oculant, and the compass-fin rattled inside. Would it work with water? The Overseer panicked, but knew that it wouldn’t. The arcane forces that the Breaker’s wielded was stranger than mere water.

  “Useless.” He spat, sheathing the Breaker’s knife back into the scabbard at the small of his back. “And why am I employing you if I have to do my own knife work!? Where were you? Why didn’t you catch them?”

  “Sorry boss,” Garn grunted, looking behind him to see that the Plaza was still in uproar, and there was no sign of either of the attackers. “I’ll try to pick up their trail…”

  “Not now, you idiot!” The Overseer kicked the larger in the shins, causing Garn to flinch. “We need to find the youth. The Nhka. I have no time to follow you around this rathole as you mess things up for us again.” Jekkers was panting with anger, cradling the glass to is chest. There had to be something he could do, he thought. The thought of displeasing the Breakers was unthinkable. “No. We will concentrate our efforts on what we came here to do.”

  “I did hear something, boss.” The thrall offered. “When I got the rooms down at the Drowned Man; the barman said that a ship called the Storm came in this morning, and that it was a Merchant Burandin who she is doing business with.”

  “Merchant Burandin, is it?” The Overseer pursed his lips. At least there was some good to come out of this hellish situation. He patted his clothing straight. Never mind the tavern. Give me blood. “Then we had better find this Merchant Burandin. This time however Garn, I want you ready to fight.”

  “But boss – the rooms, the food…” Garn looked forlorn for a moment back in the direction of the Drowned Man and whatever vitals it had to offer.

  “Eat and drink when the blood of your enemies is cold, axe man Garn.” The Overseer nodded eastward in the direction that the Oculant had previously pointed, confidant that it must also be where the Merchant Burandin resided.

  19. Root & Rot

  Talin ran through the streets of the rebellious city, always heading west and down, always heading for the docks. Which street was it? His heart hammered in time with his frantic steps. He got lost at least two times, cursing under his breath as he had to retrace his steps to the last knot of brick walls he recognized, to try a different avenue. As long as I’m heading to the river. The sun had faded from the sky, but the rushing youth was still surrounded by the merchants, beggars, and traders of the city.

  “Hey!” A small man, barely bigger than a child but still fully-grown batted at the running youth as he careened around the man’s cart of oranges. “Bloody Nhka.” The man spat in Talin’s wake. A trio of the thin desert dogs jumped out from behind a market table to snap at him, stopped short just by the reach of the chain that held them.

  “Mnema!” A guttural shout; a word that he did not recognize, but in an accent that he did. It sounded like his mother, impossibly. Talin spun around to scan the crowds behind him. The tide of annoyed or greedy faces, merchants and their workers, Izantine, southerners, pale northerners, Nhkari?

  The youth wondered if, he found people like his mother, like sharp Meda and old Bdui – would they help him?

  But the word did not repeat, and Talin had lost wherever the voice in the tumult. No time. Must get the Captain. He turned and ran down the cobbled slope, skipping past a line of servants with handcarts as he heard the screams of gulls above him, and saw the rise of ship’s masts and decks between the warehouses.

  The Storm, the Storm, he slowed, catching his breath as he searched for the tell-tale crow’s nest like a closed flower head. There! He saw her, and ran.

  “What do you mean, they’ve got Gulbrand?” Lura landed on the deck, hissing. The tyl had set up lanterns hanging across the gently bobbing deck, at least giving the impression of life aboard as she waited, before being disturbed by the frantic scrambling of Talin. “You do know who we’re talking about here, don’t you? The biggest troll this side of the equator?”

  “The one who killed an ogre singlehandedly. The most fearsome War-lag in the last war.” Talin gasped the words that Burandin had crowed over the Quartermaster’s body.

  “How do you know all that?” Lura’s tail lashed against the deck.

  “Burandin. The merchant said it. Right before he poisoned him, and said the Captain needed two hundred and fifty ducats by tomorrow night, or he would sell Gulbrand back to the Protectorate.”

  “Root and Rot” Lura swore, “we need to get the others. Stay here.”

  “I’m going with you.” Talin said fiercely. The Quartermaster had been the one to save him from the Reach’s crossbows on the platforms of the Reach. He couldn’t not try to save him.

  “Well, someone’s got to keep an eye on the Storm,” Lura growled, before grabbing the railing and swinging over the side. Talin open and closed his mouth in stunned shock. She just left me here? He watched as the Rigger ran up the pier but stopped at the low stone house where some very unenthusiastic guards where standing outside. There was gesticulating back at the Storm and a lot of tail swishing on Lura’s part. He saw her take one of the matching curving sabers at her hip, and press it into the hands of the guard captain, pointing back at the Storm, before earning a nod. The Rigger then waved to Tal to meet her on the pier, and, from the speed of the hand gestures; quickly, too.

  “What did you do?” Talin asked when he got to her, seeing one of her hands hovering over her now bare left hip.

  “A small price to pay for the Storm’s safety for one night,” the tyl hissed. “Now come along. Needle Street is nearer, and then we’ll get Sevesti.”

  The Master Rigger set a punishing pace through the rising night, her natural truculence only made worse by the loss of one of her beloved sabers.

  “What are we going to do? How are we going to get him back?” Talin said as he had to run beside the tyl.

  Lura’s plan was simple. “Get Odestin and Sevesti. Find the Captain, get some weapons and visit a holy hell of vengeance on that pig.”

  “Right. Get weapons. Visit vengeance.” Talin said. So far, his time as able airman has involved a whole lot of near-violence.

  The inns of Needle Street weren’t far from the docks thankfully, but even so the daylight had failed them by the time they reached it. It was a wide street made entirely of inns, taverns, and other sorts of establishments. A long stone pavement sat outside the row of buildings, on which lounged, sang, or commiserated
other sailors and merchants. The gutters were deep here, and already not deep enough.

  “Talin – stay here. If anyone tries anything, shout,” Lura said, before entering the first tavern, to the catcalls of those patrons that lingered outside. There was a short pause in the loud voices, before an endangered squeak could be heard, a crash of glass, and Lura stormed out once again, to head into the next, and the next. After the third entrance there was a loud hoot of laughter, followed by the smash of glass and an Izantine sailor flew through the swing doors, followed by a stalking Lura. She found Odestin in the fourth tavern, to the screech and shout of women’s voices, before she emerged, dragging an inebriated blackbeard with his shirt already half-off his rangy and tattooed frame.

  “Whaaa!” the First Mate was incensed, but also senseless at the same time, until Lura managed to plunge him into the nearest fountain and proceed to explain to him in no uncertain terms what had happened to their Quartermaster.

  “Burandiiiiin!” Odestin roared, seizing up his sword.

  Their party of three found Sevesti in the much more salubrious environs of the Three Grapes, a large, sprawling townhouse of a restaurant sitting on the three sides of its very own plaza, with each wing dedicated to a different course. Lura left Odestin to plunge his head again into a picturesque fountain outside and Talin to make sure that the blackbeard didn’t drown, as she headed for the wing that specialized in Izantine deserts. More smashing glass, loud shouts, the tramp of feet, and Sevesti and Lura emerged from the far end.

  “Your chocolate fondants are a disgrace to the motherland!” Sevesti bellowed behind him as he ran.

  And now all we need is the Captain, Tal thought.

  20. The Travails of House Tremaine

  “When are you going to stop this gallivanting around half of the World Islands, playing at being a pirate, Joselyn?” The Lady Rathine stated in a bored tone.

  The Captain and the Lady sat in a secluded drawing room in one of the higher-most houses of Marduk. This part of the city sloped up in uneven terraces, evading the riff-raff and fish-stinks of the miserable docks below, and attracting an altogether richer sort of building. The Lady Rathine’s house had, like the others beside it, tall stone walls enclosing a large courtyard garden, with the house sitting two stories high, with one of the few peaked roofs in the city. The house adjoined the walls, and all together was made of the same cream-white stone, pillars, and exactly matching arched windows along its length. It could have been the sort of house that a provincial governor, or a captain of the Protectorate owned.

  But it wasn’t. Inside, the house was a warren of rooms half-cluttered with ancient mahogany furniture from the Gravos empire, petrified pelican hat stands, Mamut tusk curtain rails, and tapestries long-since lost their glory. Side tables held curiosities from far and wide; a rare silver-box filled with fragrant Oud spice, a tylaethian wooden puzzle-box, stands of quills and inks.

  Rathine hasn’t changed, Tremaine groaned as he leaned forward in the antique chair that wasn’t decadent, merely uncomfortable. He had tried to wear his very best to impress her this time, but it didn’t seem to work. Opposite him the lady sat, discarded her purple jacket now, with a cream and white buttoned blouse-top instead, and a pair of braces that held a holster for a small flint-and-powder pistol under her arm.

  “I’ve always hated that name, you know.” The Captain muttered. “I just go by Tremaine now.”

  “What, Joselyn?” the lady swished at the air with her fine rod as if directing an invisible orchestra. “But it’s your name.”

  “It’s a girl’s name,” the captain mumbled angrily, wishing that he didn’t feel like a ten-year-old every time that he was in her presence.

  A harsh bray of horsey laughter from the chair opposite him. “Well it didn’t used to be, as well you know. It is a fine name for a fine family.” The Lady gestured to the fireplace opposite them, and above it, where the flag of the purple Heimarian eagle hung in profile, claws outstretched. “Father was a proud man.” She intoned.

  “Father was a fool, sister,” Joselyn Tremaine scowled deeply. Sister Rathine Tremaine, he considered in his misery was the second-biggest thorn in his side after the Protectorate. She had spent her life tormenting him in some fashion or another, and had also the gall to be older than he was, and thus knew more about everything than he did, ever.

  “How dare you say that!” Slap. The bendy rod hit the side of the table like a whip. “He did everything for us, you know. Everything for you, Joselyn.”

  Tremaine’s scowl only deepened. He didn’t want to admit that she was right. She couldn’t be right. But their father, the Duke Havast Tremaine had indeed given them both everything that his money and prestige could after their mother had died giving birth to him. Fencing, riding, and sailing lessons for the both. A sadistic language tutor that nevertheless drummed Ancient Gravos into them alongside Izantine and Protectorate and even a little tylaethi. Joselyn knew which spoon to use at which part of a seven-course banquet, and he knew how to correctly address a Lord, a Marquis, and certainly a Duke.

  But he had never been a kindly man, Tremaine considered. No warming embraces, no words of encouragement, no sympathetic ear.

  Instead, he had dragged House Tremaine into war.

  “It was father’s idea to stand against the Empress-Protector in the last war,” Tremaine managed a growl. “Is that the work of a wise man to you?”

  Now it was his sister’s turn to scowl, and abuse the air with the swipe of her rod. She was not made for this fringe existence, Tremaine thought. Being the older, she had spent time at the Empress Bathys’s court. She had danced with Earls and Dukes, and yet here she was, eking out an existence on the very scrub of society with whatever fading glamour that she could draw to herself, pretending that the Tremaine family name wasn’t a disgraced one.

  “Our father was a man of principle, Joselyn. A bit harsh at times, yes…” Rathine started one of her famous lectures to her younger brother.

  “A bit harsh?” the pirate captain blurted out. “He was the one who threw me in the pit of Dugoul Fighting Dogs when I was fourteen!”

  “You got very good with the sword very quickly after that, though…” she opined.

  “He had me swim after his boat every day for an entire summer!”

  “You were a terrible swimmer.”

  “He tried to marry me off to that Lady from Ausbridge!”

  “Well, he had to do something with you didn’t he? Can’t have a Duke’s son running around playing at being a pirate, cluttering up the place, could he?” Rathine stated. “And anyway, as I recall, it was later that same year that he declared his secession from the Protectorate, and so there was no way that any Protectorate family would have considered you marriageable material after that.”

  “Thank the Waters for small mercies,” Tremaine picked at the hilt of his sword sullenly.

  “Oh, Jos’” his sister sighed, her tone of rebuke gone as she slumped forward head in her hands. She looked tired, the pale foundation make-up not able to hide the worry lines on her brow and around her eyes. “I thought this time would be different.”

  Why? Tremaine considered, a little uncharitably, he knew.

  “I thought that this time, when I heard that the Storm was coming in, that you would be ready to talk seriously about your future. Our future.”

  Tremaine still wasn’t in a charitable mood. “From where I’m sitting sister, our future consists of trying to hide for as long as we can, and as far as we can from the Empress-Protector. She killed father. She declared us disgraced. She seized everything our father held dear, the fort, his lands, his ships…”

  “Do you think I don’t know all of that, Jos!?” Rathine’s voice broke as she looked at him, her dark eyeliner smudged. “I fled the Protectorate’s navies too, remember. I lost people too.”

  Of course, he remembered. I sent word back as fast as it would fly to flee when father’s ship went down, Tremaine recalled. His sister and her h
andmaiden Bella had only just got out of there before the Empresses airships had fired their homelands. He had been sick with worry for them, and would have turned the Storm right around then and there if it hadn’t been engaged in pitch battle itself.

  “I know, I’m sorry, sister. We’ve all lost good people.” Tremaine reached out a hand to set it on his sister’s shoulder. She deserved better than this, to see people die, he thought. Reece, the Captain remembered the envelope in his waistcoat pocket. I’ve been losing a lot of good people over the years. “Talking of which,” the man said heavily. “Can you see this gets sent to Ausbridge? It’s a dead-man’s chit.” He placed the envelope on the side table, where Rathine looked at it as if it were another insult.

  “Of course. I’ll tell Bella to send a bird in the morning.” She said distractedly, waving his hand off. “You were never meant to be a pirate, Joselyn. Father wanted you to be a Duke. An Admiral. If it hadn’t been for that damn war…”

  “What’s done is done, and there’s no use worrying over what can’t be undone,” Tremaine said.

  Rathine looked at him, “when did my little brother find such wisdom?”

  “My Quartermaster’s words, actually.” He said with a ghost of a smile. “Your brother is still running around from one storm to another, I’m afraid.”

  His sister nodded silently. “Well, that is one of the reasons why I was glad to see you,” she said quietly. “There is a chance – just a chance, mind – that you don’t have to.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I still have some of my old contacts at the Empresses court,” she said, and Tremaine nodded. His sister had always been far better at diplomacy than he could ever hope to be. “And I have heard some interesting news. A bit of news that could turn the fortunes of House Tremaine around, if we act quickly.”

  “Ach, Rathine…” he pulled back. Same old Rathine, always trying to win her way back to glory.