Call of Arcadia

by Annathesa Nikola Darksbane

  Contents

  Description

  Dedication

  1 Revenant

  2 Warlike

  3 Obligation

  4 Hospitality

  5 Bounty

  6 Unfair

  7 Lawless

  From the Author

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  The Knight won’t die. The Lady won’t give up. And the Pirate won’t behave.

  Jonelise gave all she had when her people needed her most...and lost. Years later, she finds herself lost in a strange world, burdened with an impossible task...though she can’t remember what it is.

  A gnawing hunger drives her. Amnesia haunts her. And the friends she makes cannot truly be trusted.

  A simple tavern girl, a lady of noble birth, and an incorrigible pirate cross her path, but even with a cast of unlikely, powerful allies—and lovers—at her side, victory seems as nebulous as the ever-present steam that shrouds these floating realms in endless clouds of white.

  In a world of steam and steel, spirits and superstition, where magic and leadership are one and the same, a woman who should be dead must snatch freedom from the grasp of the most powerful tyrant to ever exist, and the man who will destroy everything at her whim.

  But is making the same sacrifice again enough to save a people in need, and fill the void that threatens to consume her?

  After all, Jonelise is just one girl.

  One girl who may be her people’s last and only hope.

  Call of Arcadia is the first book in Eternal Queen’s Skies, a genre-bending series of novellas by Annathesa Nikola Darksbane, author of the Dying Ashes series. Gaslamp and Steampunk fans will enjoy the floating islands, airships, and cultural anachronisms, while fans of action and adventure will love the daring battles and exciting chases. Those hungry for an edge of romance in a plot that stands on its own, with an interest in polyamory or harem—and definitely lesbians with steamy sex scenes—will find all they desire in this series of delicious tales about Jone and her sexy lovers.

  Join our mailing list at www.DarksbaneBooks.com for a free book plus updates and future release announcements and more!

  Reading Order:

  Call of Arcadia

  Knight of Arcadia

  Champion of Arcadia

  Survivors of Arcadia

  Hero of Arcadia

  Savior of Arcadia

  To Rote.

  You may be gone, but you gave me many things, including this, that I just can’t forget.

  Farewell, my friend.

  1

  Revenant

  Jone wasn't alive.

  Well, Jone wasn't alive anymore.

  She felt she must have been once. Maybe yesterday, or maybe a very long time ago. There was no way to be sure, though, as no confirmation lurked in the recesses of her thoughts. No memories came to her summons; everything was dim and far away, like a dream—if only she remembered what dreams were like. But no, Jone knew nothing for certain, not anymore.

  Nothing except her name. Jone.

  She clung tightly to that one note of truth as she tore at the earth, climbing and clawing her way out of her own grave. She dug her way to fresh air and freedom, to lie panting on the packed, muddy earth above, at the edge of a cliff overlooking the Abyss.

  Was it her own grave? The towering stone monument looming above her seemed to agree:

  Here lies Jonelise Doramee.

  May her death serve as a lesson to the rest of you.

  Though she stared at the roughly chiseled, merciless script until the icy, drizzling rain made her eyes swim, it offered Jone no other answers. No memories of how she had ended up here returned, no matter how patient she was.

  In the end, she rose, tugged the shredded, soggy garments around her mud-caked form into a semblance of decency, and walked away. Because there was one more thing she knew as true and certain as she knew her own name.

  She had a job to do.

  She just didn’t know what it was.

  - - -

  The glow of distant city lights drew Jone like a moth to the flame. She didn’t know how long she’d been in the ground, but she was so very, very hungry. Lights meant civilization, civilization meant people, and people meant food and answers alike.

  Right now, Jone was starving for both.

  She felt like a nice bath might not go amiss, either.

  First things first, though: one foot in front of the other, bare feet treading packed earth along an empty road. She knew that if she were seen, she would have been taken for an ill omen, assuming there was anyone awake to lay eyes on her. But it was the Dark Hours, when any good-hearted soul would already be abed, like the dual suns that were absent from the endless sky above.

  Those with villainous intent were another matter. This was their time.

  Which then, did that make her? Simply unfortunate? For all she knew, she was an ill omen.

  One more time, she examined herself for clues. “Jonelise Doramee” wasn’t much to go on; the name was meaningless to her, devoid of all context except that it was undeniably hers. She ran her hands, calloused and scarred, over her frame; despite being compact and—did she remember?—rather small, her skin was tanned from long days out-of-doors under the suns, and her body was toned, sturdy, and strong.

  I worked, then? With my hands? Did I tend the docks, or perhaps crew a flying ship? Perhaps I simply worked the fields, or harvested steam.

  Those simple thoughts brought a sense of contentment to mind, but nothing else. Jone knew these things existed, yet she had no memory of them. As if they were facts read in a book, recited in rote but never actually witnessed. The absence of familiarity left her feeling empty inside, and she shuddered.

  The ground rumbled as a vast curtain of steam blasted up, roaring, just past the jagged edge of the land. She braced herself, deafened, as the ground continued to shudder at its passage. The road to the city became hot and foggy as the steam surge went on and on, but she wasn’t scared. This, then, was normal as well.

  Jone got the shower she wanted as she walked. The steam surge left her sodden and sweating, even while it soaked the path and turned it to mud. The heat and damp baked aches she hadn’t known she had from her body, forcing relaxation, while rising rivulets of grave dirt from her hair and skin. Her shroud, a thick, shapeless, worm-eaten burlap, stuck to her figure but refused to accentuate it, instead scraping roughly and uncomfortably at her flesh.

  Her hair, heavy, matted, and tangled, caught at her bare lower legs like a soggy whip. She untangled it as painlessly as possible, a length of golden blond as bright as wheat in the sun, falling just past her knees. Its extreme length felt strange in her hands and she paused, disoriented, to wring some of the moisture from the sodden mass of gold.

  She couldn’t stop for long though; her task and her hunger drove her unrelentingly onward. As she continued, her hands tied her hair into a long, thick braid of their own accord, as if her muscles had long ago memorized the act.

  The thought that she had somehow returned from a rightful burial haunted her. Wholesome, living things did not crawl from their proper entombment. Especially not under the lightless sky. There had to be some mistake; perhaps she had been buried after an injury that she had somehow survived. But then, whence had gone her memories? And why did she feel no pain, as would linger after sickness or near-fatal injury?

  Perhaps, then, she had committed some crime, and had been justly punished, interred and left to die. Or worse, perhaps she had made some foul deal with Gatekeeper Jones, the Jailer of the Dead and Last of the Gods. That, at least, would explain her lack of memory, perhaps bargained away for a hideous second chance at unnatural
life. She shuddered again. If so, far better to throw myself from the cliffs now, and fall into the waiting Abyss between lands that leads back to his realm.

  But she couldn’t. She had something to do, something that had to be done.

  A spot of persistent cold dug at the center of her chest, and her hands dug an object free of the tangled, saturated folds of her rotten burlap shroud. It gleamed in the dark, stubbornly reflecting what little light there was: a golden symbol set into a faceted disk, sturdy but feather-light, dangling from a golden chain wrapped around her neck like a hangman’s noose and caught up in the coarse, thick fabric engulfing her. The symbol itself was that of a stylized eye: gold on copper, bronze, and black, with a bright golden iris at the center and flowing black markings accentuating the edges and corners of the eye itself.

  It was foreign to her and unsettling, remaining cool to the touch no matter how long she held it in her warm hands. The longer she observed it, the heavier it seemed to become, so she put it away.

  Dawn broke as she reached the town, the steady blue-white light of Aru the First-to-Rise shearing through the lofty clouds and lingering steam fog, casting the shadow of Elizabethia far, far above. Venus the Mother would join her sister soon enough, the large yellow sun marking the start of the first hour and the beginning of the working day.

  Jone hid, lest the townsfolk suspect she’d been traveling at night. She put her back to an outlying barn and let the mist conceal her like it did half the town. She had a feeling it was going to be hard enough to blend in without her arrival outright stating that she was some sort of rogue or other untrustworthy sort.

  The ground quaked once more as the steam surge died away as suddenly as it had appeared, but its passage left the small town wrapped in a soggy shroud of its own. It was hard to wait, as hungry as she was, but Jone forced herself to sit patiently, anyway. Soon enough, Venus rose, the larger sun bringing her heat with her and burning away some of the mist beneath her unblinking gaze.

  Rejoining the road, Jone passed under a battered wooden arch, its weathered white lettering proclaiming a welcome to the town of Estori. No walls stood in her way, no guards stopped her, no city watch called for her to identify herself as she entered, even though the townsfolk were already up and about, focused on business that didn’t include her.

  “Goodfolks, now is the time to return to our roots!” The opening line of a street-preacher’s speech shattered the quiet of the early morning air and made Jone drop into a fighting stance before she’d even registered what had happened. “The Eternal Queen rules from on high, yes, but for how long? Forever, if no one stops her! Think of who her power rightfully belongs to!”

  Relaxing, Jone cautiously ventured closer—a contrast to most other people, who hurried away from the speaker, refusing to make eye contact. And with good reason, too; unless something had changed, proselytizing about the Gods was forbidden in most major nations in the world, even on the mainland. She wanted to think that some places were exceptions, but unsurprisingly, she couldn’t bring the names of any to mind.

  “The Gods!” The man bellowed the words with the fervor only true belief could provide. “Their power was taken by man so long ago, but they exist still! Do not believe the lies of Columbus and his ilk! Their temples are not plundered, their ways are not gone forever!” Jone couldn’t help but feel sorry for the man. She hadn’t expected anyone in town to challenge her status as a dirty vagabond, but he did. His once-white robe was tattered and stained, draping voluminously around his too-thin frame. His beard was uneven and tangled worse than her own hair, left looking more like a bird’s nest than a facial feature. His bald head was covered in coarse stubble, and a multitude of scrapes and scars wrote a story on his exposed skin, clearly describing how he had been treated elsewhere in his wanderings.

  And yet, here he was, still holding true to his course. She couldn’t help but respect that.

  “The worship of man instead of God must be tempered with compassion, not avarice! Man is temporal, fallible. The Gods were not! They cared for us once, before they were betrayed, and they can once again! Their mantles await to be taken up anew!” His voice rang out, and Jone found her feet making their way closer to the man. She wished she had anything, a coin, an apple, something to give him, illegal or not. Right was right, and there was no need to mistreat the man for his beliefs.

  Especially when they made so much sense. Was this what she had believed once? How much of what she was had she lost?

  “You!” Startled, Jone realized too late that the preacher had singled her out of the thin flow of passerby, pointing his finger directly at her. She took a step back as nearby townsfolk and travelers began to take note of her, fearful of attention that could do her no good turn. “You know, do you not? Know what it is to suffer at the hands of others, of fallible man who reaches for power! I can see it in your eyes!” Stepping down from his crate, he started toward Jone, and she backed away further.

  Then his eyes glazed over, turning gray and blank like a steam-cast sky. “What you have done once, you will do again!” he intoned, his voice suddenly strange and ringing. Nearby citizenry began to look at each other nervously, and at Jone with apprehension as the man approached her. The street preacher stood straight and tall, towering over her, finger outstretched, his eyes locked onto hers. Out of the corner of her eye, a disturbance in the gathering crowd heralded the arrival of whatever amounted to the city watch. “Remember, when you are hopeless, when all is lost, that you can make a difference, even if you stand alone. That sometimes, that is the only way to make a difference, when no one else will.”

  A pair of dark-uniformed men pushed through the onlookers, halberds in hand—and Jone turned on her heel and ran. Behind her, she could hear the unfortunate preacher’s cries of surprise and protest as the guards seized him, his voice once again returned to normal. But the echoes of commotion faded away as she lost herself in the growing traffic and narrow, twisting streets of Estori.

  - - -

  Unnerved, Jone let the commotion die down before showing herself near the town center again, using the time to catch her breath. It was a simple matter to write off the preacher’s words and shift in attitude as craziness, but that didn’t mean it was smart to do so. But, the morning’s incident aside, Jone had other priorities that needed seeing to, like the hollow pit in her stomach. So back into town proper it was.

  Estori was either a large town or a small city depending on your background and definitions. It sat with its back to a rocky rise, facing the open, empty air off of the coast, with a grand view of steam, clouds, and distant ships. Personal dwellings of solid, blocky granite crammed in tightly against one another, built into the natural stone of the ridge, each one supporting their neighbors’ architecture and forming a labyrinthine set of streets that the natives no doubt knew by heart. Red slate roofs dipped and rose, shining dully in Venus’ light, interconnected on many levels and forming another layer to the town whose pathways were already in use by light-footed children and teens.

  The dense part of town spread out as it shifted into public places: several open shops, various businesses, and a tall inn bearing the name “The Heartfire Hearth.” Beyond that was the large area devoted to an open-air market with a tall, plain fountain at the center; past that, outlying homesteads and farmhouses lay beyond the bounds of the town proper. Despite being situated along the shoreline, Estori only sported one short dock, not even extending far enough to become lost in the clouds, only suitable for a few, short-range craft or maybe one large visiting vessel.

  That’s right. I’m on the mainland for certain. No telling where though.

  The open market square was already bustling with activity, between other travelers arriving with wagons and goods, to farmers bringing in their own goods from outlying homesteads, ready to fill the stalls with the fruits of their labors. Some children ran this way and that, playing, while others ran stalls so their parents could return to work. Merchants raised their voic
es, hawking their wares, but few targeted Jone; it was far too apparent that she lacked the funds to act on their offers.

  Her stomach rumbled painfully as the smells of food began to fill the air, an unnecessary reminder of her primary needs.

  It was hard to ignore how very strangely everyone was dressed. Though Jone couldn’t conjure an image of what current fashion was supposed to look like, she still knew this wasn’t it. Tri-corner hats adorned many a head, with the merchant class sporting unfamiliar loose garments of smooth cloth and foreign trim. Some women wore high boots and corsets inlaid with brass or bronze, and even the cut of the average workers’ tunic was strange to her eyes.

  The technology was even more disorienting. Jone knew what a steam processor looked like, with its wheel, harvester, and large cast-iron chamber, but she was surprised to see such a large one in such a rural town. Weren’t they only for large cities, busy ports, and the very wealthy? One of the pair of small hunting craft anchored at the dock sported hammered brass sails and wings, the fluttering mechanism connected to a plasma-steam generator and engine in the back, the smallest one she’d ever seen. A man in sturdy leathers and forager’s camouflage made his way past her with a blunderbuss slung casually over one shoulder, a thick steam cartridge jammed into its side port.

  But what caught her eye the most was the spirits.

  They were everywhere. Abundant. Tiny imps with metal collars crawled in and out of a portable generator, tools in hand. A vaporous sprite sat, forlorn, chains trailing from its arms and legs tethering it to the town’s steam processor. And if she wasn’t mistaken, the burning eyes of a mephit peered from between the bars of a larger home’s furnace, much like the bigger, blazing ember orbs of the ifrit bound to the open forge, currently working the steam pump and the bellows with its bulky, steaming muscles. A tiny nymph with a perfect if miniscule figure graced the arm of a traveling merchant, tethered to a bracelet by a golden thread, helping the woman choose amongst herbs and uncut, semi-precious stones.