Contents
Title
Copyright
Epigraph
Ekaterina
Adept
Rider
Lady Katerine
More in this series
Dear Reader
About the author
Fantasy Romance Fanatics
Sisters of
Wind and Flame
A short prequel to Threats of Sky and Sea
by
Jennifer Ellision
Copyright 2014 by Jennifer Ellision.
All characters and events in the story contained therein are fictional and not to be construed as real.
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
-Sir John Dalberg-Acton
Ekaterina
After passing sixteen summers, I know not to expect that life will promise me any more.
The city’s watchmen thunder past me, clouds of dirt billowing behind them. Tiny grains fly into my eye and I blink at their intrusion, but I’m accustomed to it by now.
The watchmen have slapped red onto the back of a man who struggles to keep his feet beneath him, wrists bound by ropes strung to the steeds’ saddles. The horses won’t slow for him if he fails to keep up.
Others in the market avert their eyes, knowing the man’s trespasses. Knowing his fate. The red he wears tells us all we need to know. He’s spilled the blood of another. Taken a life.
But I don’t look away. My sore eyes stay locked on the man’s stumbling path until long after his steps lose the battle. In the distance, his figure sails over the ground like a limp rag doll until he disappears into the dust, the clouds swallowing him whole. I can’t summon pity for the man—or his victim.
The only promise life fulfills is its end.
My palms are stained black with the work that I found that day. Mucking my way through the soot and ashes of Missus Fremont’s fireplaces had earned me a solitary copper. I might be able to afford the bakery’s day-old crusts. Maybe. The ones that are browned, but not quite blackened.
I curl my fingers around the coin, the rivets and grooves flush against my skin. My mother and sister wait for me in the shack that we spend our nights crouched inside. It’s where they lie in bed beneath blankets eaten by moths and a roof that drips in rainstorms; behind walls that seem to rattle when we cough. I know what waits for me there. A quarter-full bowl of soup and the screeches of the neighbors that surround us.
The cavern of my stomach echoes with want. My bones protrude from my skin, and tonight’s stew will not feed us all properly. But neither will the bread. My bread.
Hunger is a cruel companion. When it slings its arm about my shoulders and whispers that we should keep the bread for ourselves, I listen.
✺✺✺
Later, I learn that it’s difficult to vomit quietly.
Behind the bakery, I’d gobbled down the bread like an animal, ripping into it with my teeth and swallowing it before I’d finished chewing.
I don’t know if my sister’s dinner stew has turned or if the Makers are punishing me for hoarding the bread crusts, but the effect is the same. I’m hunched over our largest pot as the bile slows its purge of my insides and it dribbles from my lips.
“Ekaterina?”
I stiffen at the whisper of my name. My sister. I don’t turn around. “Go back to sleep, Elena.”
Fingers as thin as twigs pry mine away from the pot’s handle. Her cuticles are split and bloody; dry and dirty. There’s a clunk as she places the pot on the floor beside us. I look up, meet watery blue eyes that examine me between reeds of scraggly blonde hair. She could be my reflection, my twin sister. I wonder if I look as bad as she does.
She gasps with the effort of dragging herself out of bed. We haven’t had even the snub of a candle to light in weeks, but if I could make out the pallor of her cheeks, I’m sure they’d be painted pink with the flush of a fever.
I cringe away. Across the room, Mama’s breathing is wheezy. Whatever infection drifts through the air has spared me for now, but I fear that at any moment, it will strike me down too.
My seat on our bed sinks as Elena sits beside me. “You’re sick?”
“You’ll wake Mama.” I swipe my arm over my lips to rid myself of the vomit’s residue.
“Don’t try to put me off, Ekaterina.” Her voice is hoarse and her ferocity costs her. Coughs wrack her body.
I sigh, rising, and prod her gently in the shoulder. “Come. Back to bed.” When she lies down again, I tuck the too-thin blanket up to her chin as though she’s a toddler.
They have no one else to take care of them. My mother. My twin.
My burdens.
✺✺✺
The bread is one of only a few lapses I have in falling victim to my own needs. After that, I remember my role as caretaker. Mama struggles to put one foot before another and can hardly leave her bed.
Then come the days when she cannot leave it at all. I chew the inside of my cheek to keep the frustration at bay. Mama’s eyes are vacant. Her mouth lolls open uselessly as I spoon a watery stew into her mouth in the vain hope that it will have some effect—any effect.
Mama was the healer in our household. With her laid up, I don’t know where to find the herbs that can help her. Or help Elena.
Weeks ago, Elena was able to help me walk Mama about, shouldering half of her weight, but now I’ve ordered Elena to bed as well. She can still walk unassisted, but I’m terrified every day that she will lose the small bit of strength that she has left.
There’s a part of me that acknowledges that Mama’s lost to us both, but I am not ready to let go of Elena.
Nor am I bred to be a caregiver. My best is not enough and Mama fades within the month. I watch the light decay in her eyes over time and when it leaves, my mother is gone. An empty husk lays in her bed.
I have no tears left to shed for her when the body collectors arrive to carry her away.
I had tears once. I cried when Papa left five years ago. He was the one who insisted we emigrate from Clavins to Egria when Elena and I were nine, but tensions between the two nations had grown, and Egrians grew more and more disdainful toward the Clavish. He hadn’t been able to face his own failure at building a new life for us. And rather than face that, he’d abandoned his wife and children in Egria to fend for themselves.
My father was a coward. One too weak to confront the consequences of his actions.
Whatever else I may be, I will never be called a coward.
I’d had tears too, when the infection first stole into Mama. I cried when my once strong mother had to lean on me for support to get to and from the privy. The morning that I rose, soul-weary, to find Mama’s eyes open and unblinking, it was almost a relief.
Mama’s corpse is piled on top of the others and the death cart rattles away between the other shacks.
Elena weeps beside me, clutching the doorframe. I don’t know what she sees in Mama’s lax limbs. It could be sadness. It could be grief.
With the sickness still in her though, it could very well be Elena’s own future.
I leave to find work with Elena still crying in bed.
I hate to leave my sister. But I have to if we want to eat tonight.
✺✺✺
“It’s our birthday.”
Elena’s reclined on her back while I get ready to head to the town square in search of a day’s earnings. Her hands are pillowed beneath her head as she stares at the ceiling. She’s still not well. But she’s better than she was before. Food that was stretched three ways makes more of an impact when it only goes to two mouths.
Sometimes, I wonder if Mama stopped fighting so that we could make it.
Her laughter is soft and she turns on her side to face me. “Of course not. I’m not as foolish as you think I am.”
My hands still in their combing of my hair and one flits to the cloth purse at my hip. I’ve coppers inside. And bronze chips. Not many. Not a lot by any definition. But a few. Enough that I could spare one or two.
It’s not so much to ask that my sister have a moment of pleasure on her birthday.
I don’t say anything, and surprise lights her face when I return home from the work I managed to find that day, a pastry for us to share clutched in my hand.
“To seventeen years,” I say, half of a smile twisting at my lips as I toast her with the pastry.
She mirrors the gesture, eyes glimmering with happiness. “And seventeen more,” she says.
Adept
I’d forgotten what turning seventeen could mean; the possibilities that it could open to us. Seventeen is when Elementals have a Reveal.
I’m glad that I’d been too preoccupied with finding work to make that connection, for in the first days that follow our birthday, Elena and I are as unremarkable as ever. I don’t know how I’d have swallowed life passing us over for yet another blessing.
Though any despair would have been unfounded. The Elemental gifts come for both of us three days after our birthday, and I discover that I’m not as empty of tears as I thought. I kiss Elena on both cheeks in my joy and a gust of wind speeds my walk as I hustle Elena to the nearest watchmen station.
The stone building is cold and the room swallows the sound of our steps. The watchmen stand, uniformed and unimpressed; stone-faced as they wait for us to demonstrate our new gifts. Elena wavers on her feet, but the tiny spurt of a flame perches on her index finger. I pull a breeze in, meaning only to ruffle their hair, but it knocks them to their knees.
I’m not worried about that though. Control will come later.
We’re Elementals now. Adepts, they’re called in royal service. Whatever word I use to name what we are, the meaning is the same: our lives belong to Egria. To the service of our young king. We’ll be sent to a training camp to become soldiers.
But more importantly, becoming Adepts means that we’ll be fed. Sheltered. Cared for when we’re sick. It’s care Elena sorely needs. She squirms next to me, trying not to cough; to make a good impression while we wait for the watchmen’s approval.
“Your accent,” one of them says, shifting papers on his desk without meeting our eyes. “You’re Clavish?” He exchanges a meaningful glance with the others.
“We’re about as Clavish as a beet that’s grown in Clavins and eaten in Egria,” I say, heart pounding. Unlike our control, I had worried over this on the walk to the station. That anti-Clavish sentiment may undermine what we can offer.
Please let them agree with my reasoning.
“What does it matter where the beet grew if it fills Egrian bellies?” I continue. “Why does it matter where we came from if we’re defending Egria?”
“Girl’s got a point, Jack,” a watchwoman says. She smiles at us. I offer a hesitant one in return. “War’s on. The king needs all the help he can get.”
Jack shrugs doubtfully. “I’m still not sure…”
He’s interrupted when Elena can’t hold her cough in any longer. She hacks, doubling over and gasping for breath, and fire leaps from her hands to Jack’s navy coat.
He jumps, patting down the bright yellow stripes with frantic hands. His uniform is singed and his comrades laugh, slapping him on the back good-naturedly. I brace Elena’s shoulders as she recovers, wheezing, but the spectacle of Jack hopping about to put out the flames seems to have broken the tension among the rest of the watchmen.
“They’ll do just fine,” one of them says, still chuckling as he shakes his head.
The watchwoman tilts a wink at us as she leaves the room. “I’ll find the conscription papers.”
Jack hasn’t taken well to being the subject of amusement. His brows slam together and his eyes are thunderous as they settle on my sister.
I step in front of Elena so that he looks at me instead.
“When do we leave?” I ask brightly.
✺✺✺
Before we’re transferred to a training camp, we undergo what they call a ‘cleaning.’
I call it a rebirth.
First, our hair is shorn to rid us of the lice and fleas that make us itch like dogs. With each clump of hair that falls to the floor, I say farewell to a piece of the life that I spent in squalor.
Snip.
The dim memory of waking to find Mama rocking her stillborn son and Papa sleeping through it is extinguished.
Snip.
There goes the beating I endured from an employer after Papa left; my first scrubbed fireplace wasn’t clean enough for them.
Snip.
Good-bye, shack-house.
Snip, snip, snip.
Next, they scrub away years of being overworked, overlooked, and underestimated. And when they finally they take our disease-ridden clothes away to be burnt, I bid good riddance to the life I never wanted.
After we’re deemed presentable, a healer sucks the sickness from Elena’s lungs. There’s such little pageantry for this small miracle that I’m amazed. I’d thought that Mama was a good healer, but this is different. This is magic. They’re giving my sister her life back.
The healer—another Air Rider, like me— insists that I watch. It’s expected that I’ll eventually become a healer as well. Riders are rare, but often go into the trade.
“It’s easy,” the man says while his hands spin over my sister. “Nothing at all.”
Nothing. I feel a twinge of unease. Nothing is not what I came here to be.
But ‘nothing’ is what I learn from his treatment since he doesn’t take the time to explain it. One moment, Elena’s breathing is labored and difficult, and the next, she is looking up at me, wide-eyed.
“The weight is gone.”
The healer administers a syrup and prescribes a diet heavy in red meats and fruits and Elena practically skips from the tent, laughing as she twines her arm through mine to pull me to camp.
The brown, canvas tents that we sleep inside aren’t much better than the shack we left behind, but at least it’s warm— though it’s blazing hot some days. The king has royal Adepts to regulate the weather inside the capital’s gates, but here, we’re told, we must make do with whatever the Mother and Father give us each day.
In the heat of the desert beyond the city borders, we train with both those who share our abilities and those with different gifts. We’re each assigned to a squad. Excepting the healer, I’m the sole Rider in camp and am set into a group that includes a Fire Torcher, a Water Thrower, and an Earth Shaker. Elena joins one in need of a second Torcher.
Our squad is supposed to be a family, but their ties are tight and they acknowledge me only when they have to.
In the beginning, I blame their distrust on my Clavish accent— our father’s one legacy. I’ve been unable to rid myself of the dragging vowels and twisted consonants and with every word I speak to a new acquaintance, something shifts in their face: suspicion. We’re at war with Clavins, after all.
But it’s more than that. Something about me fails to reach them. Elena is able to move past our birthplace with her squad-mates as her training progresses. When I contribute to my squad’s banter, my words fall flat and their smiles fade.
After the first few painful attempts to “bond” with them, I give up. I don’t need them and their instincts are right: I’m different. They don’t see it yet, but I’m more.
I eat with Elena instead of my squad, but it’s as though even the blood that ties us together, the womb that we shared, are to be forgotten. Her eyes flick away from me, over to a group of other Torchers as they roast a piece of meat over their hands.
“Go,” I tell her with a rueful grin. I spoon the mealy gruel into my mouth and jerk my hea
d toward the laughing Fire Elementals.
“No,” she says, yanking her gaze back to mine. “I’ve not seen you all week. Tell me: how is your training?” Her hair has regained its blonde sheen and her eyes sparkle in the firelight of the torches surrounding the mess tent. I wonder what it costs her to ignore her Elemental brethren as they make merry only feet away from us.
We are not ignored, though. Jack, the watchman from our Reveal, was moved here a few days ago and I’m uneasy about the switch. Though his coat is free from scorch marks now, it’s obvious he has not forgotten Elena. He watches us from his station. His black eyes blaze into Elena’s back and follow her when I finally coax her over to the Torchers.
I send a cool breeze to tickle his ear. I know he won’t miss it in the dead heat.
Me, I think. Don’t look at her. Look at me. His gaze transfers to me and I meet it coolly.
✺✺✺
The Torchers are the lucky ones in camp—the accepted ones. Their power is firmly Egrian.
But, like the healer said, I am nothing here. If my inability to relate to the other Adepts wasn’t enough to ensure that, my gift would be. Air Riding is much more common in the mountains of Clavins. The job of the piddling few Riders in the king’s army is simply to heal, and I am the brunt of all jokes.
“Fly away, little Rider,” is a phrase that burns my ears when I want to practice for battle. They mock the old legends: the ones that tell them how people like me can fly and vanish before their eyes.
And maybe we can, but I’ve no one to teach me. All the other Rider has to teach me is healing, but I’m bored by the thought of a future spent soothing people’s hurts. I face the other Adepts in drills, determined to find another option.
Sisters of Wind and Flame Page 1