Harbinger

by Shae Ford

  “It’s about Lysander. I know he cares for me — after he went off the other day about my part in the plan, I knew he cared. I can tell by the way he looks at me, how he compliments my horrible artwork. And Papa obviously trusted Matteo … he must have. Why else would he have given the pirates his ship?” She smiled for a moment, then slipped back into a frown. “But Lysander’s still a pirate! A horrible, grog-gulping pirate! Oh, I don’t know what I should do. What should I do?”

  She leaned forward, as if he had all the answers and all she had to do was listen. He realized there was only one path of escape. No promise to Lysander was worth sitting through one of Aerilyn’s crying spells.

  “I’m going to tell you something, but you can’t tell a soul, all right?”

  When she nodded, he told her about Lysander’s secret. He told her what he did for the people of the High Seas under the cover of darkness. He told her everything, and while he spoke, her eyes grew wider.

  “He’s a rogue only in costume,” she said when he was finished. “He pretends to be a bad man in order to hide the fact that he’s not.” She grabbed the front of Kael’s shirt, so roughly that it put him on his toes. “He’s not really a pirate at all — he’s a good man, isn’t he? I knew it! Oh!” She flung her arms around his neck and very nearly choked him. “Thank you, Kael! Thank you for telling me.”

  “You’re welcome,” he gasped.

  As soon as he broke free from Aerilyn, he headed straight for the library. If she’d been looking over books with Jake, then she must have gone to the library to find them. All he had to do was set up camp and wait for her to return.

  But when he opened the doors, it wasn’t Kyleigh he found: it was Lysander.

  “Fancy meeting you here,” he said with a grin. “What luck!”

  Kael doubted very seriously that luck had anything to do with it, especially since the book Lysander was pretending to read was upside down. He’d been waiting.

  “I think I forgot my —”

  “Actually, I was hoping you’d be here. Do you have a moment?” He set the book on the table behind him and began to pace, hands clasped smartly behind his back. “I confess I have something to ask you. It’s about Aerilyn.”

  “What about her?” Kael said, discreetly positioning himself next to the door.

  “I can’t stop thinking about her,” Lysander replied after a moment. He quickened his pace and his words came pouring out. “No, that isn’t entirely true — I ache for her. I can’t sleep, I can hardly eat anything, and anything I do eat just tastes like sand. It’s maddening!” He crossed his arms and glared stoically through the waves of his hair. “I need to know, once and for all, if I have a chance. Do I have a chance?”

  “Uh —”

  “And even if I do, I don’t,” he exclaimed, thrusting his hands in the air. “I can’t love her — she’s a merchant, by Gravy. We are the sea and the sky! The sea may love the sky, but can he ever reach her? Can he ever hold her in his arms? Must they be forever doomed to live apart?” Lysander slumped into one of the chairs and buried his face in his hand.

  Only when he stopped talking did Kael realize how he truly felt. It was the fall of his shoulders, the ragged defeat in his breath that finally convinced him: Captain Lysander was heartbroken.

  He told himself he wouldn’t get distracted, but as much as he wanted to sprint from the room, he couldn’t leave Lysander in torment. “What if the sky became the sea? If Aerilyn became a pirate, could you love her?”

  “Of course,” he said, rather spitefully. “But however will I convince her? She’s so good and I’m so … well, I try my hardest not to be good.”

  “And yet you are,” Kael said, playing on the words Aerilyn had spoken only moments before. “Someone always has to be good. If the Duke is bad, and if merchants like Chaucer serve the Duke …”

  “They’re bad too?” Lysander guessed. He thought intensely for a moment, the lights behind his stormy eyes pulsed as they worked to generate a conclusion. “If those who write the laws are bad, and someone has to be good, then it’s got to be us — it must be the outlaws, the pirates! Ha!” He slapped his knee and sprang to his feet. “Aerilyn is so good that it’s only a matter of time: she’ll come around to being a pirate, and then we can be together!”

  Kael was glad he hadn’t been the one to say it. He didn’t want to get Lysander’s hopes up.

  “Hold on a moment,” Lysander called when he tried to make a hasty exit. “If you’re heading out, would you be so kind as to take this down to the basement for me?” He pulled a vial of dark liquid out of his breeches pocket. When he held it to the light, it turned red.

  “I didn’t know there was a basement,” Kael said as he took the vial. It was strangely warm.

  Lysander cleared his throat. “Yes, well, it’s sort of out-of-the-way. There’s a trapdoor under the main staircase that’ll lead you to it. I’d take it myself, but I’m already running behind. I was supposed to meet Jake an hour ago — we’re practicing the attack formation,” he added with a grin.

  He strode from the room before Kael could object, leaving him with yet another unwanted task. At the rate things were going, he thought it might be a full year before they were ready to face the Duke.

  Chapter 34

  Foolishness

  Beneath the spiral staircase was a battered trapdoor — right where Lysander said it would be. At least the basement didn’t look as dark and damp as Kael imagined it: a dim light glowed out from the depths, illuminating the narrow ladder leading into the room below.

  He tucked the vial of dark liquid into his pocket and tried not to step too heavily as he made his way down. The ladder creaked under his feeble weight. He thought it might collapse at any moment and fling him into the bowels of the mansion. But miraculously enough, it held.

  As his boots touched the packed earth floor, he realized he was sweating. He thought it was his nerves at first, but then he breathed in and his lungs nearly shriveled under the heat. His collar began to cling to the back of his neck as he made his way towards the light.

  Clang! Clang! Clang!

  The noise ricocheted off the walls, tore through the hot air and made his heart leap directly into his throat. It was sharp, and stabbed mercilessly at the insides of his ears. He had to clamp his hands over them just to keep moving.

  He hurried around the corner and nearly tripped when he saw what awaited him on the other side: a trough of fire, filled to the brim with low-burning tongues of yellow flame.

  He thought he couldn’t have found anything odder in a basement. The trough had been set into the wall; it produced enough light to fill the whole wide-open room around it, and enough heat to melt the snow from a dozen winters. To the right of the trough were an anvil and a small shelf.

  And leaning over the anvil, thrashing at a red-hot piece of metal, was Kyleigh.

  Her eyes glowed in the fire of her work. Sparks flew up as her hammer came down. A wisp of flame rose, hissed, and she beat it back into the iron. Then she turned and thrust it into the trough, where the flames lapped hungrily at it. She dragged an arm across her forehead and her eyes widened when she noticed Kael haunting her doorway.

  “Hold on a moment,” she said. Then she reached up and with a sharp tug, pulled a metal lid down on the flames, leaving only a thin sliver of light.

  By the time his eyes adjusted, she was standing next to him. She wore a loose-fitting tunic and breeches with a thick leather apron tied over the top. Her gloves were cracked and covered with singe marks. Her feet were bare — which Kael didn’t think was a particularly good idea, considering the condition of the gloves.

  “I was wondering how long it would take you to find me,” she said, her lips bent in a smirk. “I’ll admit I was expecting you much sooner.”

  “You’re a blacksmith?”

  She shrugged. “Not really. It’s a hobby more than anything. But I do find it intriguing.”

  “Smithing?”

  “Fire.�
�� She smiled, and light glanced her eyes. “Perhaps it’s the dragon in me, but I’ve always enjoyed watching the flames do their work.” She held out her hand. “You have something for me, don’t you? From Lysander? I thought so. I can smell it on you.”

  “What do you mean?” he said as he handed the vial over.

  She pulled the cork out with her teeth and spat it away. “Nothing reeks quite as grandly as fresh blood,” she said, waving the vial at him.

  His stomach twisted to think that he’d been carrying blood around in his pocket. “Whose is it?”

  “Lysander’s, of course. I’m going to use it to mend the Lass,” she said, in answer to the question on his lips. “Come along and I’ll show you.”

  He stood to the side as she pulled the Lass out of the flames. “What’s left to be done?”

  “I’ve fixed the blade, but now I’ve got to wake her up,” Kyleigh said. “Normal swords are one thing, but the Lass has magic in her. In order to bring her back to her former glory I need two things: blood of a pirate, and dragon flames. Lucky for me, I already use dragon fire to light my forge.”

  So that’s what she’d been doing in the spell room with Jake. “How does it work?”

  “I’m about to show you.”

  She held the Lass over the forge and with a quick swipe, drizzled a line of blood on either side of the blade. It met the steel with a hiss, it bubbled and popped as she turned it, letting the blood run down to the very tip. Then she thrust it deep into the coals.

  A blast of hot air erupted from the trough, knocking Kael a step backwards. The flames rose and fell onto the Lass, batting it in angry waves. They made a strange, high-pitched shrilling as they danced. His toes curled at the sound of it.

  When Kyleigh pulled the Lass free, she turned and immediately drove it into a barrel of water. The blade sighed and steam billowed up in a giant puff.

  “What was that?”

  “I told you — I had to wake her up.” She pulled off her gloves and waved him over to the shelf. “While we wait for her to cool, I’ve got something for you.”

  Not again. How many debts must he owe her? Amos would be ashamed if he knew. “Well I can’t accept it, whatever it is. I just needed to talk to you about —”

  “The grand sacking of His Dukeness? Lysander told me all about it this morning. You know I’ll do my part.”

  He was slightly peeved. Had she appeared to everyone in the Kingdom but him? “Where were you?”

  “In the library, of course.”

  “Oh, so I suppose you were nicking books again. That’s really clever of you, by the way.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said lightly. “I hate reading.”

  His astonishment knocked whatever he’d been about to say right out of him. “How can you hate reading? How can anybody hate reading?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose I’d rather be killing things than reading about it,” she said, with an impatient wave of her hand. Then she snatched something off the shelf and handed it to him. “Here. These are for you.”

  It was a pair of gauntlets — so odd and remarkably made that he couldn’t stop himself from staring. They were black as night and forged of what appeared to be iron. He stood quietly while she pulled them over his hands, admiring how strangely light they were. They stretched halfway up his forearm, their tops ridged and slightly sharp. He imagined he could do a fair bit of damage just punching someone.

  The gloves were the oddest part: they were cut off at his second knuckle on all fingers and a circle had been cut out the bottom, leaving his entire palm exposed.

  “That’s how Setheran always wore his,” Kyleigh explained as she snapped the buckles into place. “He said he couldn’t whisper properly if he couldn’t feel what he touched.”

  “I suppose you made him some gauntlets too, huh?”

  His tone was not lost on Kyleigh. She stopped what she was doing and pulled back from him, the corners of her open mouth bent in a smile. “Ah, so that’s the problem.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “You think I was in love with Setheran, don’t you?”

  “What? No —”

  “You do!” she said with a laugh. “You thought we were lovers! That’s why you’ve been so particularly cranky, isn’t it? You think I’m so sad and brokenhearted, and now you don’t know what to do with me.”

  “I do not,” he said, even though it wasn’t true. He shoved her hand away and fumbled with the buckles on the gauntlets. He refused to stand down in that insufferably hot basement and be made a fool of. “Here, keep your dodgy gloves.”

  She grabbed his arm, covering the buckles so he couldn’t pull them loose. “They’re gauntlets, not gloves. I’m not a seamstress,” her brows dropped into a dangerous glare, “and nothing I make is the least bit dodgy. He was married, Kael,” she said as she released him. “He was madly in love with his wife and they were expecting their first child. So if you’ll kindly get your knickers out of a twist —”

  “They aren’t in a twist,” he said impatiently. “Setheran had a child? Why have I never read about that?”

  A strange look crossed her face. She went back to cinching up his gauntlets, undoing all the work he’d just done to pull them loose. “The historians didn’t mention it because it didn’t matter. Setheran only got to hold him once before Fate took the child and mother away.”

  He knew his mouth was hanging open, but he didn’t care. Now he knew why Setheran the Wright sacrificed himself in the final battle against the rebel whisperers. He must have looked just as the songs described him:

  Like heroes of old before, he knew what must be done:

  With sword in hand and eyes alight,

  The cry he loosed shook the mountains down,

  And buried foes with Seth the Wright.

  He’d called the mountains down upon himself because he had nothing left to live for. What the Kingdom thought was a sacrifice was actually Setheran’s great relief …

  “Do they fit well?”

  Kyleigh’s voice brought him back from the battlefield, where he’d been watching Setheran meet his end in a whole new light. “They fit perfectly,” he said, and it was no exaggeration. The gauntlets molded to his skin. He felt as if they belonged there. He reached up and ran his fingers across the material: it was smooth, impossibly hard. Certainly not iron and yet … familiar. He grasped at a memory. “It’s made of dragon scales, isn’t it? That’s why your armor doesn’t tear when you change form —”

  She clamped a hand over his mouth. It was an involuntary movement; the shock in her eyes gave her away. “Blast you whisperers and your memory for things,” she muttered. “Yes, they’re made of dragon scales — my scales, actually. And no, before you ask, I won’t tell you how it’s done.”

  “Why’re they black?” he said from around her hand.

  She pursed her lips. “I blacken them to attempt to hide the obvious. But now that you know, you have to swear not to tell a solitary person. Do you understand? This has to stay between you and I.”

  He had no idea why she should be so defensive about it. But he thought if he didn’t agree she might very well kill him and bury his body under the floor, so he nodded.

  She studied him for a long moment, her eyes hard, before she released him. “You can take the Lass up to Lysander and leave me be. I’ve got a lot of work to do.”

  The Lass was whole once again, but he could see very clearly where she’d patched the pieces back together. The crisscrossing lines looked like the mends in a traveler’s cloak.

  “It suits her,” Kyleigh said as she handed the sword over. “It reminds her of the urchins and thieves she loves to protect.”

  “You … talk to it?”

  He meant to hide his skepticism, but didn’t do a very good job of it. She spun him around by his shoulders and shoved him towards the door. “Off with you,” she snapped.

  As he left, he couldn’t help but think that the strokes of
her hammer were coming down a little more maliciously than before.

  *******

  It was a full week before Geist returned, and he didn’t even bother to announce himself. Kael simply came out of his room one morning and nearly tripped over what he thought was a poorly placed chair. Then he looked down and realized it wasn’t furniture at all: just Geist holding a traveler’s chest.

  “I thought we might practice your disguise, if you have a moment,” he droned.

  “All right,” Kael said, still a little taken aback. “Oh — hold on a moment.” He ducked into his room and returned with the potion Jake had finished mixing the day before.

  “Ah, thank you,” Geist said, slipping it into his coat pocket. “Shall we?”

  Kael didn’t even bother to ask whether Geist thought he would be able to sneak into the mages’ tower unnoticed. He just nodded and followed him to the meeting room.

  Geist plopped his chest down in the middle of the table, stirring up a cloud of ancient dust. “The first thing we’ve got to do is get you properly dressed,” he said, with all the same energy of the dust settling around their shoulders.

  He popped the chest open: first at its lid and then sideways, revealing a number of tiny shelves. There were several jars of paint, labeled by color and arranged by hue. Canisters of powder sat next to the paint, and a number of wigs hung on hooks beneath them. But the most exciting thing by far was the vast collection of fake mustaches.

  Kael picked up the bushiest one he could find and stuck it under his nose. He laughed when he saw himself in the chest’s tiny mirror.

  Geist plucked it off and set it back in its place. Then he picked up another — one that was slightly gray and shaped like an upside-down comb. He popped the cork out of a small, green glass bottle and selected the tiniest of his many brushes, which he dipped into the bottle. He swiped a bit of clear, sticky liquid onto the back of the mustache without explanation.

  “Why do you have all of these things?” Kael said, partly to break the deafening silence. He wasn’t even certain Geist was breathing.