The Storm Witch

by Violette Malan

  “How else could we be sure their talents are kept available for all and are being used wisely?” Remm gave her a wide-eyed innocent look and Dhulyn found herself smiling before she remembered she had nothing to smile about.

  “And the Slain God?” she said.

  Remm Shalyn became instantly serious and moved closer to her, lowering his voice. “As a Hand of the Slain God, you’re obviously not a heretic yourself, Dhulyn Wolfshead. Heresy is technically legal, but unbelievers generally find themselves losing status. Most guards and the military and the Tarxin, Light of the Sun, follow the Slain One. We go to him when we die, ready to rise with him when the need comes. Some say the Nomad crisis will cause him to rise, but I say they should stop smoking fresa.”

  But Dhulyn had already relaxed. “We call him the Sleeping God,” she said. “Soldiers and Mercenary Brothers follow him in Boravia as well. You mentioned the military—what of them?”

  “The Battle Wings are stationed at outposts along the frontiers, with two training camps in the east. The Tarxin is the official Commander, but it’s been Tar Xerwin’s responsibility since he came to manhood. He’s very popular with the men, so it’s said, but they can’t come closer than ten days’ march of Ketxan City, so much good that would do him if he fell out with his father.”

  “No military in the capital itself, then?”

  “The Light of the Sun’s personal guard is the only official armed force in the City. The Houses have guards and escorts, naturally, but there are strict limits as to how many, and how they can be armed.”

  Shortly past midday, with the Arxden Forest in sight, Dhulyn called a halt for food. An outcropping of rock was tall enough to give them shade, and there were several boulders of a convenient size for sitting. Once she’d chosen the spot, however, she found she had to allow the servants to set up her own seat first, with Remm allowed—somewhat grudgingly, it seemed—to sit near her. No other seats were prepared, and at first it seemed the servants intended to stand for the whole time. When she couldn’t persuade either the women or the two men to sit down with her, Dhulyn finally ordered them to sit apart in another section of shade to get at least some rest while they enjoyed their own meal. Even then there was some shuffling of feet and uncertain glances from the young page.

  “If you don’t rest, you won’t be able to help me later on,” Dhulyn pointed out finally. That did the trick, and she was able to sit down comfortably and drink her juice mixed with wine and eat smoked duck legs.

  “What about a leasr House, like Loraxin Feld?” she said, after washing down the first of the duck. “Would he have a seat on the Council?”

  Remm snorted, speaking around a mouthful of duck. “Not likely. Even though it’s called the Council of Houses, it’s really limited to the Great Houses, and they are very watchful over who belongs. Under them would be the lesser Houses, then least, the plain landowners, merchants, and so on—and it’s not always easy to tell which is which. Loraxin Feld, for example, his family started out as merchants. They’ve only been a House for five or six generations, and believe me, no one forgets it. Finally, there are the tradesmen, usually family connections of a least House or landowner, or soldiers such as myself.”

  “And then, below everyone else, the slaves.” He nodded.

  “Speaking of which, what is the process for freeing them?” she asked.

  Remm paused, a dried date stuffed with cheese halfway to his mouth. “Freeing them?”

  “Yes, what documents do I need, what clerk do I bribe. You know, the process by which I can free these people, for example?” She gestured with her free hand to the other patch of shade.

  “You want to free them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Dhulyn studied Remm Shalyn’s face. He watched her with a measured expression. “I disapprove of the practice of slavery,” she said finally.

  To her surprise, Remm burst out laughing, slapping his knee with the hand that didn’t have a wine cup in it. “You remind me of my great-aunt Tella. Married above herself and made up for it by having just that prim way of speaking. ‘I disapprove.’ ” He laughed again.

  Dhulyn lifted one eyebrow. No one had ever called her prim before. “You haven’t answered my question.”

  Remm leaned forward, elbows on knees, turning the empty cup around in his fingers. Dhulyn waited. She knew a man thinking when she saw one. And she’d wager her second-best sword she knew what he was thinking about. Trust her, or not? Nothing she could say would help him decide. He’d have to come to his own conclusion, based on whatever he already knew about her.

  “It’s highly illegal to help a slave to his freedom. Or her freedom, for that matter.” Remm stopped turning the cup, but he did not look up. “The penalty for doing so is—”

  “Let me guess, slavery.” At least he looked at her then, if only fleet ingly. “There are no freedmen, then, in Mortaxa?”

  “Freedmen? Who would feed them? How could they live?”

  “Having prepared me with this warning, what is your true answer?”

  “There are those who feel as you do. They . . .” Remm looked directly at her, grinning. “They disapprove of the practice. There is a group. Runaways are helped. Some go by sea—though none of those by my hands, mine all go by land. There are lands to the south, beyond the mountains, where men can live free.” He shrugged. “It’s said Tar Xerwin’s latest campaigns have been to the foothills, trying to find the source of the help that’s been coming to the slaves.”

  Dhulyn eyed him carefully. “That’s what you’re doing, hiring out to these Houses, here in the outlands, helping slaves escape.”

  He shrugged again, grinning at her.

  “My arrival, my taking you away, must be upsetting your plans.”

  Remm straightened, looking around at the plate of food, and offering Dhulyn the last stuffed date. “We can’t free slaves everywhere we go, or it would be noticed. I don’t mind going somewhere I haven’t been before. I can renew old acquaintances, perhaps make some new ones.”

  “And you have a way to recognize one another.” She waved the food away.

  “We do.” Remm popped the date into his mouth and chewed. Slowly.

  And he obviously was not going to tell her anything more. Dhulyn began to laugh—only to stop short, her breath stopping in her throat. How could she be laughing? Only hours ago, it had seemed impossible that she would ever laugh again.

  She nodded once more in the direction of the other patch of shade, where the servants—no, the slaves—waited for her to finish her lunch. “And these? How badly are they really needed to maintain my status?”

  “We could manage,” Remm said. “A Paledyn, with one sword servant—but not everyone wishes to be freed. And they all must agree.”

  Dhulyn shook her head. “Don’t tell me you didn’t give that careful thought when you were picking out which ones would come with us. When would it have to be done?”

  “Tomorrow. There are ways out of the fressian forest. We can arrange it tonight.”

  Xerwin found it harder than he’d expected to find Kendraxa. He’d been able to establish pretty quickly through his own servants that the woman was still in the House, but her exact whereabouts had not been so easy to pinpoint. It was not until the next afternoon that the Royal House Steward himself brought Xerwin the information that Kendraxa was now to be found in the Tarxina’s apartments, empty since the death of the Tarxin’s last wife. Xerwin had not been in his stepmother’s rooms since the woman’s death the year before. He found Kendraxa at a northern window, embroidering a red headdress with golden thread.

  “Please, do not trouble yourself,” he said as the woman hastened to rise to her feet as he entered the room. When had she become so old? He’d always thought of Kendraxa as no older than his stepmother had been, perhaps ten years older than himself. Today she looked thinner, more tired, and with more lines around her eyes than she should have. He took the seat across from her, noting that eve
n when she was alone in the apartments, Kendraxa had taken the lesser chair.

  “Are you comfortable here? You’ve been so long with my sister.”

  “I am. I thank you, Tar Xerwin. You won’t remember, no reason you should, but I lived in these rooms with the Tarxina before the Tara Xendra was born, so they’re familiar to me, you might say.” Still, there was something subdued in her tone.

  Now that it came to the moment, Xerwin hesitated. How could he ask what he’d come to ask?

  “I don’t think my father has ever punished Xendra this way before,” he said finally, trying to keep his smile sympathetic. “Though it’s hard to say which of you would feel the more deprived.”

  “Indeed.” Kendraxa’s eyes had returned to the work in her hands. The needle gleamed in the sunlight streaming in the window.

  Xerwin leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “I saw my sister yesterday,” he said. “Or rather, I saw the Tara Xendra.”

  Kendraxa’s hands stilled, the needle halfway though a stitch. She knows, he thought.

  “How long?” he asked. “Come, you can tell me.” He saw her consider it, and thought it a mark of the woman’s desperate isolation that she chose to answer.

  “Since the accident,” she said, her fingers pulling the thread through the stitch. “Or rather, since the Marked saw to her, the Healer and Finder. When she finally came to herself . . .” Kendraxa’s lips trembled.

  “She was not herself.”

  The woman inclined her head, just once. “At first, I couldn’t be sure; after such a fall, some confusion was only to be expected. So the Healer said. And I so hoped—” Kendraxa pressed her trembling lips tight for a moment before she continued. “But she only became more watchful, more cautious in what she said. Xendra was always ready to talk about herself, the Slain One knows.” Kendraxa’s smile was hard to see. “And her smile, so ready, so joyous. But this one,” she shook her head, “this one asked too many questions, and studied the answers to things Xendra knew very well. And once or twice, in the night, she called out in a language I have never heard.”

  Xerwin stared at his clasped hands, saw the knuckles standing out white.

  “What do you think happened?”

  “Can I know? I’m a lady page, Tar Xerwin, you can guess what my education has been.” She shrugged, half holding out the embroidery in her hands as evidence of what she said.

  “I know you for nobody’s fool, whatever your education might be,” he said. “An emptyhead is not chosen as companion for a Tarxina, nor as nurse for a young Tara. Tell me what you think.”

  Something in his tone—or in his face—must have convinced her. She licked her lips. “How much do you remember, did you know, of your sister’s illness?”

  Xerwin thought. “She fell from the wall around the palace precinct, injuring her head. She was unconscious for many days. I remember you crying.” He glanced up. There were tears in Kendraxa’s eyes now. “The Healer came from the Sanctuary, and then she was getting better.”

  “You didn’t know about the Finder?”

  Xerwin shrugged. “I knew the Healer had come with both a Mender and a Finder. I assumed that was part of their normal practice.”

  “They told your father the Tarxin, Light of the Sun, that your sister’s spirit was missing from her body. Your father told them to find it.”

  “And the Finder Found . . .” Xerwin didn’t really need Kendraxa’s nod to answer him.

  “Someone’s spirit, that’s certain. But Xendra’s? Not so far as I can see.”

  Xerwin’s hands formed into fists. “How can I tell my father?”

  He felt Kendraxa’s fingertips on his arm. “Tar Xerwin, your father already knows.”

  “Put up your swords!”

  As the man to his right stepped back, Parno flicked out with the point of his right-hand sword and opened a cut the length of his first knuckle in the man’s right pectoral muscle, where it would bleed but do no harm.

  “Lionsmane, stop. You will kill someone at this rate.”

  No voice but Darlara’s would have reached him through the concentration of the Mirror Shora. Parno blinked, licked away a trickle of sweat that neared his mouth. There was another voice that could have reached him, but he would never hear that one again. He stuck his left-hand sword into the wood of the deck and smoothed his oiled hair away from his face.

  He glanced around at the three fighters Darlara had chosen for him. A man of his own age, Deniss showed a white swatch of hair from an old scalp cut and wore the scaled jerkin. The other two were women, Tindar and Elian, clearly twins, as alike as two grains of sand. And now even more alike as he had given each of them identical cuts, on their right collarbones. All three were pale and sweating, breathing hard.

  A chink of metal to his left and Parno spun, both swords up, and took a step toward the sound before he realized it was unarmed crew who backed away from him, wide-eyed people with the money they’d been wagering in their hands.

  “Can’t have you killing people, Lionsmane,” Darlara said.

  “None of them are dead.” Parno looked around, but she was alone. Her brother must be off watch. He lowered his swords again and straightened.

  Dar shook her head. “Nevertheless. Teach them to move as you do, or find some way to even the match. Five people? You unarmed?”

  Parno took in a great lungful of air and let it out slowly. He was tempted to say he wouldn’t bother with the sparring at all, that they should leave him alone. He couldn’t face another day of staring at the maps and drawings Malfin Cor had found for him and seeing nothing more than colored lines and meaningless shapes. He rubbed the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. What was so difficult about this decision? What was so important? What matter of life or death hinged on it?

  His gaze dropped to the hilt of the Teliscan blade he had in his left hand. In his mind he saw Dhulyn’s face when she’d given it to him. Just after Arcosa, it had been, when they’d decided to Partner. But the expression he saw her wearing now wasn’t the one she’d had then. Now she was showing him her wolf’s smile. His hand closed tightly enough that he could feel the steel tang under the corded grip of the sword. He had a score to settle. A reason to stay alive. He’d almost forgotten.

  The Storm Witch.

  Darlara and Malfin were right. To get to the Witch, to defeat her, he needed a clear head. If nothing else, a workout would help him sleep, and sleep would clear the clouds and cobwebs from his brain.

  After a moment, he said, “Get me a blindfold, then.”

  At the edge of his senses, Parno could feel the communication going on between the crew members as those watching used their Pod sense to summon those still below.

  “Captain.” It was the older man. “Done for this morning. Be excused.”

  Darlara nodded. “Done, Deniss. You two?”

  The twins grinned, showing identical gaps in their front teeth. “Like to try him blindfolded,” said one, as the other nodded. Parno felt an answering grin on his own lips.

  “Deniss,” he called the older man to him. “Hold this for me, will you?” He handed Deniss his sword and pulled the long dagger from the back of his belt. Two swords or a blindfold he could manage. Just now he had his doubts about two swords and a blindfold.

  The Hunter’s Shora, one of the basic twenty-seven taught to all Mercenary Brothers, was a little too basic for this fight, Parno thought. It taught you to feel the direction of the wind on your skin, to move without making noise enough to frighten a mouse. But to be blindfolded he needed something more than that. He needed the Stalking Cat Shora. In addition to stealth, the Stalking Cat would give him heightened senses beyond what the basic Hunter’s could do. If he was blindfolded, he would need to locate each opponent by their smell, feel every shift of air, hear the movement of clothing, of weapons. Dhulyn said that, properly done, the Stalking Cat would allow you to feel the beat of your opponent’s heart.

  And in addition to the Stalking Cat, the
Crab Shora for the shifting of the deck, and for, Parno bared his teeth, the large claw he had in his right hand and the smaller one in his left.

  A third fighter had stepped forward to replace Deniss, a tall, clean-shaven youth with the marks of frostbite on his cheeks. He carried a shorter sword than the twins did, Parno noted automatically, one with a slight curve which would be sharp along that edge.

  “Conford, isn’t it?” Parno said, recognizing him. “Hope you’re not as angry as you were. Anger’s no reliable ally in a fight.”

  Conford inclined his head. “Keep that in mind, Mercenary Brother.”

  Darlara pulled a silken sash from around her waist and approached him with it held up in her hands. Parno went down on one knee.

  “Give me a moment,” he said, loud enough that all could hear him. “Keep the watchers well back. I’ll stand when I am ready to begin. Attack from any direction, but be so good as to come at me one at a time.” He waited until his three opponents had nodded before closing his eyes and tilting his head up for the blindfold.

  Darlara’s fingers were cold on his skin as she wrapped the sash around his eyes twice, tying it at the back of his skull. As she moved away, Parno began to repeat to himself the trigger words of the Stalking Cat Shora. The first thing he felt, even before he began to breathe slowly, was the presence of the Crayx, like the hum of a crowd in the distance. Parno shut them out of his conscious thought as his heartbeat slowed, and he pricked up his ears, flared his nostrils. His skin shivered as the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stood up.

  The deck rose and fell beneath his feet. The wind came from . . . there; with it on his left cheek, he was facing aft. The twins Tindar and Elian stood to his left, their drying sweat making them easy to locate and identify. They were slightly closer together than they were to Conford, who was behind him and to his right. From the gurgle of his stomach, the man had not eaten yet this morning.

  Parno rose to his feet, and in the same movement, feeling the rush of air, raised his right arm, sword in the guard position and heard/ felt the jar as his blade met Conford’s and the blow’s weight shivered through his arm bones. He heard the man’s grunt, and the drawing in of a dozen breaths. Parno pushed off with his left foot, spinning, and bringing his left hand around to where the other blade must be, to catch it with the guard of his dagger, twisting and pulling it out of his opponent’s hands.