This close to the bay, air smelled of the sea, a mixture of salt and fish with an undercurrent of rot that Rsiran somehow found reassuring. A pale streetlamp burned nearby, casting a soft glow of light and intended to aid those not Sighted. A few other streetlamps glowed farther up the street, but they were spaced far enough apart that shadows pooled between them. Rsiran saw a man in a faded cloak drifting up the street, likely one of the Servants of the Great Watcher, judging by the cloak, but otherwise, they were the only ones out. He heard a cat nearby and waited, but didn’t hear another. Two meant luck, but only one…
Jessa pulled on his arm. “I heard two,” she said.
Rsiran listened for a moment before following her.
Inside, the tavern was awash in light. Candles burned on a few tables, their flames flickering with sudden life as the door opened. A crackling hearth near the back of the tavern glowed brightly. After working the forge for the last hour, Rsiran didn’t need its heat, but it still gave the tavern a different kind of warmth. A bandolist played near the back of the room, a man Rsiran recognized from other performances. Likely a friend of Lianna’s, the owner of the tavern.
Jessa led him to a table along the long wall. Brusus sat atop one of the stools, a cracked, brown leather satchel tucked between his legs. He wore a navy shirt heavily embroidered and simple black pants. There was a bright shine to his boots. Everything about the way he dressed screamed that he belonged in the palace rather than down here in Lower Town, but as far as Rsiran knew, he had lived his entire life here.
Haern sat next to him. A dronr drifted across the tops of his fingers, flicking quickly from one to the next. The other hand held the cup of dice. The long scar on his face tensed as he dropped the dice onto the table.
Firell sat next to Haern, dressed simply in a plain, olive-green shirt with matching pants. The pointed beard on his chin had lengthened since the last time Rsiran had seen him. He smelled heavily of fish, though it was more a ruse than anything. Firell was a smuggler.
Brusus looked up when Jessa dropped onto one of the stools. “Do you have to do that?” he asked. His voice was gruff, but a smile drifted across his face, reaching his eyes.
“Do what?” she asked.
Rsiran sat next to her, still holding her hand under the table.
“Flaunt yourselves. The Great Watcher knows we don’t want to see it.”
She glared at Brusus. “Just because you can’t be happy doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t.”
Brusus looked past her toward the bar as one of the servers brought over two mugs of ale and set them on the table. She was heavyset and wore a wide apron. Her eyes glanced around the room before settling on Brusus.
“Don’t worry, Jessa. Brusus had never been happy,” Firell said. “Not so long as I’ve known him, at least.”
Brusus ignored the barb. The server chuckled before walking away, not mindful of the way Brusus glared at her. “Thought we’d see you before now,” he said, looking to Rsiran. “Anything new? Firell will only be in port a little while.”
Brusus wanted more forgings, and not of iron or steel, though he managed to move those just as easily as the lorcith. After all the time Rsiran spent working lorcith, listening to it as it guided his forgings, he had improved his skills to the point where much of his work was indistinguishable from that of the master smiths. He felt a quiet pride in his burgeoning skill. As far as he knew, few of the other master smiths could match his skill with lorcith. And soon, he suspected, the same could be said about other metals.
Why had his father never told him that lorcith could teach as well as any master smith?
“A few items. A hook. A lantern,” he said. He had been particularly pleased with how that had turned out, but knew it was nothing like the lantern he had seen in the palace that glowed with a blue light. If he only had one to study, he might be able to copy it. He didn’t tell Brusus about the charm he’d just made. There seemed no use in selling simple jewelry. “A couple of knives.”
“What am I going to do with a hook?” Brusus muttered. He grabbed the dicing cup from Haern and shook it more vigorously than he needed before dumping them out on the table.
“Fish. At least, that’ll be what I claim if I’m caught with it,” Firell said.
Haern laughed and grabbed the coins stacked in front of Brusus, sliding them in front of him. His eyes drifted for a moment, and Rsiran wondered what he Saw. As a Seer, Haern had visions, glimpses of the future, though Rsiran had never worked out how far into the future those visions went. Some Seers, like the great Seers of the Elvraeth, could see far into the future and used that to help guide the rest of Elaeavn. Or so the Elvraeth claimed. Most had a more limited field, able to only See moments into the future.
Rsiran shrugged. “Can’t always help what I make,” he said, though that wasn’t quite true. With iron and steel, he could be intentional. Grindl could be forged well and fetched some value, but they struggled getting enough of the pure ore to be useful to Rsiran. And he didn’t dare steal any from the other smiths. Anything that brought more attention to him, he avoided.
“Hasn’t he done enough?” Haern asked. He set another coin in front of him and shook the dice cup.
Brusus sighed. “He’s doing enough. But I know we can do more. Just need the supply. With what we’re fetching for those knives alone…”
“I don’t want to sell the sword, Brusus.” Selling the knives bothered him more than it should. He didn’t want to think about the sword.
Brusus looked over. His pale green eyes flashed briefly, for the barest moment. Rsiran was one of the few people who knew Brusus’s secret, that he carried Elvraeth blood in his veins and with it, he had their abilities. Abilities that were more than Rsiran could manage. Rsiran felt the crawling sensation as Brusus tried to Read him, and he fortified the barriers in his mind using the image of lorcith. Another lesson he had learned while nearly dying in the Floating Palace.
Brusus nodded slowly. “If you ever do—”
“If I ever do,” Rsiran agreed.
So far, he hadn’t forged another sword blade. Either because the metal had not wanted to become a blade or he somehow exerted his own influence over it, though he didn’t think that he did. He’d never truly tried to push the metal to become something it didn’t want to be. That struck him as too much like what his father did, a power he felt uncomfortable wielding, especially considering the connection he had with lorcith.
More likely, he had not chosen the right nuggets of lorcith to become a longer blade. Rsiran had no doubt about how much a lorcith-forged blade would fetch, but part of him was glad that he possessed the only one he had ever fully forged. After learning of his other ability, the one that Haern of all people had drawn out of him, he felt somewhat unnerved to forge anything too large to control.
Brusus looked at him, and some of the edge faded from his face. “None of this can come back to you, Rsiran. That’s the whole point of moving everything outside the city, getting it to places like Thyr and Asador so you aren’t at risk.”
“But his mark,” Jessa said.
Firell looked to Brusus before answering. “That mark is what makes it even less likely Rsiran will be tagged. None of the master smiths have marked their work in over a century. And none has worked lorcith like Rsiran in much longer than that.”
Rsiran nodded, knowing that they were right. The mark identified forgings made by him—placing the mark on them just felt right—but he hadn’t seen anything made by the master smiths working in Elaeavn with a mark. Some of the oldest and most revered works carried the marks of the smiths that had forged them, but the guild felt doing so took away from the work. Still, if someone ever did learn that it was his mark, there would be no way he could deny how much he’d made. Since leaving his father and his apprenticeship, he’d marked everything he forged.
“Even moving his work out of the city, are you certain the Elvraeth can’t learn of everything Rsiran has made?” Jessa looked from B
rusus to Rsiran as she spoke.
Rsiran hadn’t told her of seeing the other man in Josun’s room before they Slid. He hadn’t wanted to worry her, not yet at least.
Brusus shook his head, running a hand through dark hair streaked with silver. “Not the way we’re moving it. Firell ships it out, moves most of it through Asador—”
“And Thyr. But Asador prefers the knives. Everything else moves more easily through Thyr,” Firell said. He took a long drink of his ale.
“And you don’t think word gets back to Elaeavn?” Jessa pressed.
Rsiran had not realized she worried so much about the Elvraeth. Back at the smithy, she had not seemed as concerned as she seemed now. Did she ask because she feared he wasn’t concerned enough or because she worried more than she let on? Did she know what he feared—that the Elvraeth would learn what he did, making it necessary for him to choose between staying and hiding, or running, leaving the only friends he’d ever had?
“Easy, Jessa,” Haern said. His eyes flared green for a moment. “I’ve not Seen anything to indicate that Rsiran risks himself.”
“But you can’t really See him that well, can you?”
Firell looked from Jessa to Haern. He was the only one who didn’t fully know of Rsiran’s ability to Slide.
Haern stared at Jessa for a long moment, his jaw tensing, before nodding. “Not as I can others,” he agreed. “But what I can See tells me that we are safe. I have warned Brusus of the dangers.”
Brusus shot him a look, and he cut off.
“What dangers?” Jessa asked.
Brusus waved his hands and tipped the dice cup toward Jessa. “Set out your coins and play.”
She didn’t reach for the cup. “What dangers, Brusus?” she pressed.
Rsiran squeezed her hand, trying to soothe her, but when she got like this, there was not much that he could do but sit back and let her work it out. Besides, she knew them better than he did, had much more history with them.
“No, Rsiran,” she said, looking over at him. “If there are dangers that Haern has Seen, I think we all should know about them. We are in this together, you most importantly, especially after what happened—” She caught herself and lowered her voice. “—what happened the last time. If the Elvraeth come looking for any of us, it will be you, Rsiran. I won’t have them risking you again,” she said, giving Brusus and Haern a look of warning.
“Do not confuse me with that Elvraeth. I did not risk Rsiran.” Brusus stared at her, heat in his gaze.
Letting go of her hand, Rsiran pulled Jessa over to him and put his arm around her shoulders. “Let it go. If Haern says that we aren’t in any danger, then we aren’t.”
“Like last time?” she asked. “When you almost died?” Looking at the others, she seemed to punctuate her point. “When Rsiran tried to do the job by himself to protect the rest of us?”
Rsiran noticed she didn’t comment on how she almost died. And thankfully, she didn’t mention what he had done to keep them safe.
“That was different. Josun was different,” Brusus argued.
Jessa sniffed but set a stack of dronr on the table anyway. Finally, she took the dice cup from Brusus and shook it, upending it over the table. As the dice spilled across the rough wood surface, the door to the tavern opened. Brusus looked over and something about him changed. Tension seemed to leave him as Lianna entered.
Long black hair pulled back and twisted into a bun. A pair of slender rods seemed to hold it in place. She strained under the weight of a heavy basket. Green eyes, not as deep as Brusus when he didn’t hide his ability, but darker than even Haern’s, flickered around her tavern. The other servers stepped a little more quickly when their mistress arrived.
Lianna smiled when she saw them and stopped at their table. “You’ve been busy, Brusus.”
“Busy?”
Lianna nodded. “I know you wanted to move some of those crates along with Rsiran’s work, but I don’t know why you would leave one stacked out on the docks like that. Never seen other crates like that before, so it must be one of yours.”
Brusus frowned, not saying anything. Rsiran noticed that Haern’s eyes flared deep green for a moment, and then the scar on his cheek started to twitch. He looked at Firell. “Those crates should not have been left on the dock.”
Firell frowned. “They weren’t, at least not when I left. Just my transport. Besides, you’ve not been removing full crates from the warehouse. Don’t know how you could, really. Too heavy.”
“Someone has,” Lianna said. She frowned as she sensed the mood. “And if not you, then perhaps you should go check on that crate. Told you not to get involved in something like that.” The last comment was directed at Brusus.
“And I told you I had it handled.”
Lianna laughed lightly, shifting the basket she carried. “Not sure you do. And you put these others—”
Brusus stood, grabbing his coins off the table with a sweep of his hands. “What I’m doing is for the others,” he said softly. “Come on. We need to move that crate before someone finds it.”
“Sounds like someone has found it,” Firell said, smiling.
“Someone else.” Brusus started toward the door.
Haern looked from Lianna to Brusus as his friend left the tavern. The dronr he held flipped across his knuckles, sliding quickly. The long scar on his cheek tensed. His eyes took on the faraway expression Rsiran had come to recognize as him trying to See some future vision.
The worried expression on his face made Rsiran nervous, but it was the sudden fear that they might have been discovered the sent fear tingling along his spine.
Chapter 3
Rsiran followed the others to the docks. He could Slide there, but did not have the strength to take them with him all at once. He’d never taken more than one with him—Jessa, and even doing that for short distances strained him. And besides, since Firell didn’t yet know about his ability, he preferred to keep it that way for as long as possible. That part of him had been influenced by his father over the years.
Brusus walked quickly through darkened streets. Once, Rsiran would have wondered how he managed so easily, but that was before he had learned of Brusus’s heritage. The dark bothered Brusus no more than it bothered Jessa; both were strongly Sighted. Rsiran wondered how many of the Elvraeth could Slide, but had never gotten a satisfactory answer. As far as Della knew, the ability was incredibly rare even among the Elvraeth.
Haern trailed alongside Brusus, silent. One hand went to his pocket, and he left it there. He had a distant expression, one Rsiran recognized as him using his ability to See. Since leaving the Barth, he continued to frown, the corners of his mouth working as if struggling through a puzzle.
Firell hurried ahead, his thin black cloak flailing behind him as he jogged through the street. Rsiran had yet to learn what ability the Great Watcher had given Firell. Whatever it was likely helped him captain his ship, either Sight or Listening. Even Reading could be useful, Rsiran decided, if the Reader were powerful enough to step past the barriers others built within their minds. Maybe Pushing, like he’d learned Brusus could do, influencing another’s thoughts, but that seemed tied to Reading.
Jessa pulled him off to the side of the road, drifting into shadows. The others continued ahead. Only Haern noticed that they had stopped and nodded once to Rsiran before continuing forward.
“I worry about Brusus,” she whispered to him.
“Why?”
She looked down the street. The others had turned a corner and disappeared. Neither Rsiran nor Jessa worried about losing sight of the others. Rsiran could simply Slide them the rest of the way. “I haven’t seen Brusus like this in a while. He’s… he’s obsessed with this.”
“With what?” Rsiran had not known Brusus long, but the man always seemed somewhat obsessed. First, it had been the knives Rsiran made; then it had been the strange cylinders they found in the warehouse. Recently, Brusus’s newest obsession seemed about raising money, u
sing whatever Rsiran could create.
“The crates in the warehouse. The lorcith knives. You.” She shook her head. “Something is going on that I can’t explain. And it’s making me uncomfortable.”
Rsiran had learned to trust Jessa’s instincts but didn’t share the same anxiety. For the first time in his life, he was doing what he wanted to do. Running a forge. Spending time with friends, feeling cared about—loved even. If he had to risk himself to help Brusus, then he would.
“When I first met him—all of you, really—I thought you were part of the rebellion.”
“There is no rebellion, Rsiran,” Jessa said. “Josun wanted power. Without him… well, there’s nothing without him.”
He glanced down the street and thought about the anxiety he’d seen from Brusus and the way Haern looked. “What if there is?” He sighed, realizing that he had to tell Jessa. “When I Slid, before we left the palace, there… there was another. A man I knew from the mines. I don’t know if he saw me, or if he recognized me, but…”
Jessa bit the inside of her lip and leaned to sniff her flower. “Brusus would have heard if there was something more. I don’t think he would keep that from us.”
“Like he did with Josun?”
Jessa sighed. “I know what you intend to do. Just—”
“I’ll be careful,” Rsiran promised.
She took his hand and squeezed. “I’ve… lost a lot of people I’ve been close to. I can’t lose you too. Not now that I’ve found you.” She whispered the last and looked down at the ground as she said it.
His heart fluttered, realizing just how close her fears were to his. Rsiran didn’t want to have to leave them, but if doing so kept the others—kept Jessa—safe, then he would do so. After everything they had been through, after the way Jessa had made certain to pull him into her world, prevent him from getting isolated, he owed that much to her.
“I’ll be careful,” he said again.
She looked up and let out a long breath. For a moment, he thought she might say something more. Rsiran would wait, would delay anything if Jessa needed him to, but she said nothing more, only nodded.
The Heartstone Blade (The Dark Ability Book 2) Page 2