Inkmistress

by Audrey Coulthurst

  A band of Mukira’s hunters guided us to the edge of their lands, no doubt to ensure we didn’t trespass again. At least any city guards who might have searched for the two of us in the days since our escape had probably given up by now.

  Eventually the trees began to thin, and the hunters left us when the cover could no longer hide them. Then they were gone, as invisible as ever, leaving the two of us at the edge of a plain that stretched as far as the eye could see. I breathed a deep sigh. While I feared what lay ahead of us, I had become too accustomed to my life on the mountain alone to enjoy much time in communities where solitude was so hard to come by.

  Our boots crunched over rocks hidden in the grass—we’d left the farmlands far behind. This ground was too rocky to till, and too remote to make getting to markets in larger towns easy. Clouds scudded overhead, a mixture of white and gray that blocked the sun like a heavy blanket, breezes endlessly teasing them into new shapes that threatened rain in every leaden shadow. The farther we got from the forest as the afternoon wore on, the more the wind picked up, slowing our progress as we leaned into it. Birds flew overhead in small brown clusters, like seeds scattered against the gray sky.

  Hal didn’t talk much—at least not to me. A few times I caught him with a far-off smile on his face and an ear to the wind. I always looked away. It felt like eavesdropping, even though I couldn’t hear a thing, and every time I witnessed his gift, it reminded me I wasn’t who I’d thought. The ache of it grew bigger each time. I forced myself to turn my thoughts to the Fatestone, to fuel my determination. If I found it, I could have my people back. My life. Everything.

  Still, my mood grew darker and more anxious the farther we walked. Conversations replayed over and over in my mind. Could I have said something different to talk Ina out of killing the king? Why hadn’t she told me about her pregnancy, and how could she be willing to die trying to murder the king knowing she carried another life inside her? When those unanswerable questions weren’t consuming me, intrusive thoughts of burned bodies and blood-spattered slush rose up unbidden, forcing me to relive the carnage I wanted desperately to erase from my past.

  Now, more than ever, I felt lost and alone out in the world. I thought about saying a prayer for comfort, but which god was I even supposed to ask now that I didn’t know who I belonged to?

  “What’s wrong?” Hal finally asked.

  “Nothing,” I said. Talking about it wasn’t going to change anything.

  “Tamer breakfast not sitting well with you? Cloudy weather bringing you down?” he guessed, even though he had to know it was more than that.

  I didn’t know how to communicate the mess of memories and emotions tearing me apart. He couldn’t understand what it was like to be responsible for the deaths of countless souls. He had useful gifts, things that helped him get by in the world, not magic that left a trail of death and destruction in its wake.

  “Talk to me, Asra. It’s no good holding all of it in. The things that brought you here can’t have been easy.” His voice was gentle.

  “I wish I could do something to get us to Orzai faster. I’m useless. Worse than mortal. I’m not even who I thought I was. All I have is the ability to mix herbs. What good is that?” The anger in my own voice surprised me. I’d never had such ugly thoughts about myself before, but in my other life, I’d known my place. I’d known who I was and how to help people. All that had been taken away.

  “But you can mix herbs with magic,” he said, as though that made any difference at all. “And you healed someone who would have died without your intervention.”

  “I was only able to heal Kaja because I’d drawn so much magic out of that dying demigod in the Sanctum. And anyone can learn to mix herbs and magic. Even mortals, if they study as clerics of earth like my mentor did. Your heritage gave you gifts—the Farhearing, the wind manipulation, the compulsion—some of which barely have a cost to you. I wish I were mortal. At least then I could take a manifest. Be like everyone else. At least have another form to use to flee or to defend myself.”

  “No mortal could have done all you did,” Hal said. “You helped us get out of Valenko unscathed. You talked sense into your friend. You bargained with the Tamers and defeated a corrupt demigod, then used that power to heal. That’s amazing.”

  I sighed. “Yet here I am, back on the road in search of yet another person who has a vendetta against the king.”

  “From what little I know of Ina, I’m pretty sure Nismae is nothing like her. Nis has an agenda, certainly. And always several irons in the fire, knives up both her sleeves, and half a dozen spies in every city. But she’s never let that stop her from being a good sister,” Hal said.

  “Ina wasn’t my sister,” I said. She was both so much more and, in the end, so much less. Whatever I was to her, it wasn’t enough.

  “My point is that Nismae has her preoccupations, but she wouldn’t desert me. Like your friend, she has her secrets that she chooses to reveal only at her own discretion, but she would never let those come between us. She’s forthright when it matters most.”

  “You’re lucky to have her,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say. In his attempts to frame his sister as a source of hope, he’d only reminded me of what I lacked.

  “Yes, I am. She’ll help you, too, though. I’m sure of it. She has to know something that will help you uncover your parentage,” he said.

  “She’ll probably tell me I’m descended from some forgotten god of dung.” I kicked a rock and sent it flying across the road.

  Hal chortled. “That would explain how well you fertilized those plants in the Tamers’ forest!”

  I couldn’t help a smile. “Maybe for my next act I should see if I can conjure fewmets to use as a starter for our fire tonight.”

  “That’s the spirit! We might as well enjoy the journey while we’re on it,” he said. “Here we are, free, out on the open road!” He stretched out his arms as though the dull, rocky landscape was something we should be thrilled to be a part of, as though he could see the sun shining from some far-off place beyond the clouds. “Look at us! We can shout obscenities about the king and no one can throw us in jail! For example, it would probably take an entire team of plow horses to dislodge the enormous stick from his rear!”

  I covered my mouth with my hand, pretending to be shocked even as a smile crept onto my face.

  “We can do dances that have been banned in Corovja!” Hal gyrated in a way that was both peculiar and suggestive in equal measure.

  That time, I couldn’t help giggling. He looked ridiculous.

  “We can pretend to be feral Mynarian war steeds galloping for freedom from the oppression of idiots who wear tin cans on their heads!” He whinnied and cantered zigzags across the road in front of me.

  “Stop it,” I said, laughing. All the awful things that had happened should have outweighed my ability to feel any lightness or humor.

  “Why? There’s no one here to see us! No one to tell us what to do! We could keep going clear past Orzai and Corovja to the Zir Canyon and see who can spit farthest off the edge!”

  I laughed so hard my cheeks started to ache.

  “We can sing bawdy tavern songs inappropriate for a fine young lady such as yourself!” He broke into a song called “The Tavern Lamb,” which involved a wide variety of intoxicating drinks, a woman who enjoyed them all, and several mentions of sheep’s wool that were clearly metaphors for something else entirely.

  “You’re hurting me!” I gasped to catch my breath.

  He walked backward in front of me, grinning. Despite my conviction that I didn’t deserve it, the laughter eased the burdens I carried with me, unknotting the tangle of leaden feelings in my chest. Even my satchel felt lighter on my shoulder, and the part of me that Ina carried with her ached a little bit less.

  “You needed that,” Hal observed.

  “Maybe I did,” I replied. In that moment, my gratitude for him was overwhelming, but fear followed close on its heels. I liked hi
m. His appearance in my life had been a blessing, but how long could I expect to have his company? Certainly not past the time it took to get to Orzai and introduce me to his sister. The moment I had a clue about the location of the Fatestone, I’d have to press on to Atheon, wherever that was.

  Nothing was permanent, and the things we thought were solid could be ripped out from beneath us at any moment.

  Perhaps that was why I felt compelled to take his hand.

  It was warm, and his long fingers wove comfortably through mine.

  His eyes widened in surprise, and then he smiled, a little more shyly than the playful grin he’d worn before. He didn’t seem sure what to make of me. I wasn’t sure what to make of myself, either, but I liked the steadiness of being connected to him. After spending most of my life alone, I was learning to be grateful for the opportunities I got for good company and easy companionship. I’d have to work on accepting that no relationship, and certainly no love, could last forever.

  I could learn to enjoy my simple and temporary connection with Hal because it didn’t have to last. I’d been a fool to hope for a lifetime with Ina. Perhaps love was only an ephemeral thing that existed for a breath or a heartbeat, there and gone like a sunbeam breaking through the clouds of a storm.

  After a hard day’s walk east, we found the northern road. There were not many signs of other travelers. A few pairs of wagon ruts cut lines through the road, none of them fresh. I tried to keep my mind on how light I’d felt in the few moments when Hal had made me laugh. I had to focus on the future, not the past, which meant I needed to know more about Nismae.

  “That Fatestone your sister is looking for—why does she still want it?” I asked. “It makes sense to me that she left the king’s service after he sent her on a suicide mission, but why keep chasing the artifact that nearly got her killed?” If I didn’t have problems I needed the Fatestone to solve, I would have run as far as possible in the other direction.

  Hal snorted. “My sister laughs in the face of the shadow god. She’s as competitive as a gladiator, and she doesn’t suffer betrayal. She’ll probably sell it for as much money as she can to whichever buyer lives farthest away from the king. Or see if she can figure out some way to use it against him.”

  I thought about telling him that Veric was my brother, the Fatestone was meant for me, and the letter was the proof, but it would pose a thousand other questions I didn’t want to answer. I didn’t know if I could trust him with knowledge of my powers, or the admission that I barely knew the scope of them beyond the simple enchantments logged in my journal. There were too many secrets in my past unknown even to me that I needed to unravel first. The thought of them made me ache. I hated how rootless I felt.

  “Do you think your sister will expect anything in exchange for her research?” I asked Hal as we crossed a wooden bridge over a stream rushing with spring snowmelt.

  “It’s hard to say,” he said.

  “What does she care about?” If I needed to offer her something, I wanted to know what I might be able to trade her for the information I needed.

  Hal looked up at the sky for a moment, then ticked off a few things on his fingers. “Achievement. Knowledge. Success at any cost. Me.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “In that order?”

  He sighed. “You have to understand why Nismae is the way she is. Things weren’t easy for us growing up. Our mother was a cleric sworn to the wind god. She joined the temple after Nismae’s father died, several years before I was born.”

  I pushed aside the prickles of envy that he knew where he had come from and who he belonged to. Now that I knew the wind god wasn’t my father, my connection to Veric was the only evidence that I might be related to anyone, but it didn’t do much good for my only known sibling to be several hundred years dead.

  “Nismae never cared for the temple much, in spite of growing up there. So she spent a lot of time getting the farm children in trouble for shirking their chores, or hiding from my mother in the temple library, reading. So it was no surprise that she manifested as an eagle and turned out to be a scholar—one as respected for her knowledge as she was for her sharp eyes and quick right fist.”

  “So you grew up in the temple as well?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Our mother died before my third winter, when Nismae was fourteen. Nismae had no desire to stay, so we left for Corovja, where she could further her studies. But the crown city was a more challenging place to navigate than she expected. It’s a hard place to stay alive, much less keep a little brother safe. So she started training to become a Nightswift. All that time she’d spent hiding and sneaking and fighting with the farm children at the temple came in handy.”

  “But what did you do?” I asked. “How did you survive?”

  “I grew up on the streets, learning to make a living stealing this and that and talking my way out of trouble. It’s much easier when you’re small, let me tell you. Once they stop seeing you as a child . . . well, you know how we met. You know where we would have ended up if we hadn’t managed to escape and if you hadn’t given those drunk guards a little extra help to forget us.” He stated it calmly, like a fact, but his tense fists betrayed him.

  “It must have been hard to grow up like that,” I said. I wondered how, in spite of that beginning in life, he’d turned out to be so kind.

  “It was,” he admitted. “I’ve never liked to fight. Even if I were mortal and given the choice, I never would have wanted to be a Nightswift.”

  I understood that sentiment all too well. Neither one of us had ever wanted to deal in death. It seemed to be all I did lately.

  “But Nismae . . . she had high hopes when she started working for the king. She wanted to be his chief adviser, and as it turned out, the fastest way into his inner circle was to serve as one of his elite assassins.” He frowned a little, like there was some part of the story left untold.

  “What about you, though? Did you work for him, too?” I didn’t know why the idea hadn’t occurred to me before.

  He shook his head. “No. Sometimes I helped Nis, but I never worked for the king directly. It’s convenient to have spies who don’t need to get very close to eavesdrop on secret conversations.”

  “How did you feel about that?” I asked. Having been told never to use my gift, it seemed a foreign idea that Hal would be expected to use his at the insistence of anyone, especially a mortal—even if she was his sister.

  “Truthfully? I hated it. I stopped doing it a few years ago. It made me feel awful to listen in on people’s secrets. By then, Nismae had plenty of others to do her dirty work anyway. And more lining up in the wings. She had quite a devoted following in Corovja.”

  I pondered his comments for a moment. Would I have been as good as him if I’d been raised the same way? How did he know the difference between right and wrong when those kinds of expectations were placed on him as a child? And what about his own wants and hopes and dreams?

  “What would you do if you could earn a living any way you chose?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure.” He shrugged. “I haven’t ever had much choice in the matter.”

  Sympathy welled up. I knew what that felt like.

  “Maybe I would have been a messenger, or gone into service with the crown someday if Nismae hadn’t broken away from it. I like to travel. I like to move fast—and I’m good at it.”

  I could see it even in the way he’d behaved since we had left the Tamers’ forest. He liked to be moving, and it put a spring in his step to be headed somewhere new.

  “You would be good at that,” I said.

  “What about you?” he asked.

  “Honestly, I never thought I would leave home. I was a good herbalist. I liked helping and healing people. I just wanted a family someday, even if I had to cobble it together.” I thought also of Miriel’s dark warnings, of her promise to the wind god. It was too late to hold to any of those now. I hoped that someday I’d be able to help people again, maybe even to have
a community where I belonged.

  “You aren’t doing so badly at the adventuring,” Hal pointed out.

  I smiled weakly. He didn’t know how terribly I’d failed, to end up here in the first place.

  A few fat drops of rain slapped down on us, warning us of a spring shower about to come. We pulled up our hoods, ending the conversation, keeping our heads down as we hurried onward.

  We stopped for the night long after the fierce ache of my feet had faded into numbness. As twilight fell we came upon an abandoned farmhouse and decided to make camp. The fields around it lay as fallow as the others we’d passed earlier in the day. Water glistened in the few furrows remaining in the dirt and reflected the gray and purple of the dimming sky. Weeds sprouted haphazardly throughout the field, having grown quickly after the recent rain.

  The two of us trekked down the overgrown path to the house, only to find that most of the roof had burned away and caved in several moons ago. A family of skunks peered out curiously at us from a den they’d built in the fireplace. The copse of trees behind the house suddenly seemed like a far better option.

  “I’ll hunt if you can put camp together,” Hal said.

  I nodded, surprised he’d made the offer before me, but grateful that my sore feet wouldn’t have to trek any farther. “Will a lean-to be enough?”

  “Should be. The winds are most likely to come from the north or the west, but I can wake you up if that changes.” He disappeared into the field as soon as I’d nodded my acknowledgment of his words.

  I gathered branches and fashioned us a rustic shelter, thinking about the way he’d tipped his ear to the wind before he had answered me. I closed my eyes and tried to listen. Perhaps, like my ability to unravel Leozoar’s magic, the Farhearing was simply a gift I hadn’t yet discovered. I needed guidance to know what else I could do. My ability to repurpose Leozoar’s magic for other things surely represented some connection to the wind, didn’t it? Maybe a chance still existed that I could be the wind god’s daughter. But all I heard were the last soft chirps of nearby birds returning to their nests. The hollow inside me grew deeper and darker, as vast as my uncertainty about who I really was and who I might belong to.