“Where’s Luca?”
Isabelle laughed.
***
Marta stared incredulously at the bawdy house then to the woman beside her. Isabelle remained impassive, and so Marta headed inside to receive her answer. Upon entrance, Marta felt all eyes upon her, particularly the male clientele. The madam hurried over, her gaze flicking from the worn slouch hat to the rawhide coat she wore.
“Perhaps you’ve stumbled into the wrong establishment.” But upon receiving Marta’s icy stare, the woman seemed to warm. “Or perhaps not. We have many ladies with numerous proclivities. Perhaps you might find one to your liking.”
The men in the room paid Marta even more mind now, and she wanted nothing more to shrink from their lecherous stares. “I’m here for my husband—pretty with dark hair. See that you find him. Quickly.”
Perhaps it was her tone that made the madam hurry away, but Marta did not care. She was more concerned about the two men who scurried out the door without finishing their drinks.
Led by the madam, the sheepish Luca appeared a moment later, a dark-haired and obviously besotted girl doing her best to remain inconspicuous at his heel. He flashed a familiar grin as he took Marta’s hand. “So glad you found me. I got quite turned around, but these kind folks kept me company until your return.”
Marta thrust his arm away. “Your explanation best be extraordinary.”
“Oh, but it is a tale to be told. One hopefully worth a few dollars of yours since I have run up quite a bill on your behalf.”
Marta was ready to crack his skull for wasting both their time and money, but suddenly he went still. Marta braced for attack, but Luca stepped to the table that the two departed men recently occupied. Their glasses surrounded by a smattering of spilled beer, he nodded to the drying design etched on the table with the spillage: two half-circles roughly coming together to form a whole.
“I believe that we might need to stay in Sinton another night if we hope to escape it.”
Chapter 8
Maia 11, 559 (Eight Years Ago)
Luca’s life changed forever that night in that forgotten clearing outside of Suttonville. Upon returning to the wolari, he was no longer bietala, but a full bieta. True, his tasks remained the same, but Simza now openly addressed him in front of others, though Jaelle remained as aloof as ever. Bo could barely contain his fury when he arrived a few days later to discover Luca’s promotion.
Although Luca could not fancy his life shifting so significantly ever again, not a week later he rode behind Bo to Suttonville. Having only seen towns at a distance from their caravans, Luca was ill-prepared for the bustle of the burg. It seemed so grand and breathtaking, a metropolis beyond his wildest imagination. Bo bought Luca his ticket, watching his fellow bieta without a word until the train arrived. Then, still without speaking, Bo pressed the bundle of banknotes to Luca along with the address of his final destination.
Luca boarded his first train that day, amazed at being inside one of the Tinker contraptions, and as it whisked him away, he realized how little of the world he had actually seen on his journeys crisscrossing the nation of Newfield. Previously, he had only encountered gaji arriving at the wolari, but now he was a single Dobra invading their world, and he hoped his vest and gads did not give him away.
Despite the ley headache that thundered in his skull, Luca was enraptured by Hammond, his first true city, a day later. It dwarfed what he had thought a city before, the scale of it putting the town of Suttonville into perspective. But Hammond too faded in prestige after Oreana, the Nahuat state capital Broad Baird, the national capital of Vrendenburg, and then finally Polis, a city so huge it engulfed an entire peninsula. The sights, sounds, and smells instantly assailed his brain as he stepped off the train, the grand rush of it immediately drowning out his lingering ley headache. It was a madhouse of modernity, with electric lights dimming with the dawn, carriages barreling down the boulevards, and a flowing glut of human flesh everywhere. The crush of it was beyond daunting, but Luca refused to be cowed as he gathered his bags and went in search of the Hottenkof School of Tshi.
He found the building hours later in the district belonging to the Rax Cousins, their bushy beards and black suits alerting him as to their identities. The school’s porter led him upstairs to reveal the room that would be his for the next six months. Although smaller than his vurd, Luca could not hide his awe at being so high up on the third story of a building. From the window, he peered down into an alley and felt like a king surveying his domain. The polite porter let Luca stare his fill in silence before informing him of a nearby bakery he should avail himself of before bed.
Tomorrow he would begin his training with the lockblade.
***
Luca could not sleep, the constant drone of the city imploring him to rush to his window and see each new wonder that awaited, so he was red-eyed when he arrived downstairs in his best tweed trousers the next morning. But it was not Luca’s first night without sleep as he readied himself to learn from Imre Erro. When the illustrious head instructor finally arrived, he told Luca to draw his lockblade, and Luca quickly snapped the blade into place. Taking one look at Luca’s grip, Erro announced he would not waste his time and pawned his charge off on his assistant Laszlo Clijster. The master then disappeared to deal with his advanced students, and Laszlo led Luca away to a smaller room where he would not touch a lockblade again for the next month.
Instead, Laszlo put Luca to work wringing water from towels for hours on end. When his hands gave out, Laszlo would then instruct Luca in the proper poses for lockblade combat, the man making Luca memorize the nearly hundred positions. The process reminded Luca more of the steps to a dance than fighting, but he threw himself at it, striking each pose Laszlo called for. These individual poses, Luca eventually learned, were the basic words to the art of combat, Laszlo soon combining them into sentences. If Luca made a mistake, they would start back over, Luca groaning each time.
Luca made sure to work twice as hard as the other students, all Cousins from the local Rax and Hammat tribes. It was not entirely unheard of for Wanderers to learn the way of the tshi, the Dobra word for a knife, but Luca was the first from the Ikus tribe in living memory. The other students clearly despised him, and as the only Listener there, Luca was well aware of their unsaid opinions. Cousin Listeners exclusively plied their trade along the lines of ley, their non-Blessed brethren the ones taught to defend the tribe.
The other students were also already far more advanced than Luca when they arrived, and the word grubber continually bounced about their heads when they saw him. He therefore worked all the harder out of spite, and by the end of the month, Laszlo presented Luca with a black band he was meant to wear around his arm to signify he had attained the rank of initiate. If he passed the further tests, and Laszlo doubted Luca would have the time in his short six months, Luca might earn lighter and lighter bands until he received the white armband of master. The test for the second was a match against a fellow student for the blue band, but the red was shrouded in secrecy. Still, Luca caught a few stray thoughts from unwary instructors that it somehow involved flies.
Luca was free from lockblade training in the afternoons, but Simza made sure not a moment would be wasted by securing a tutor—a gaji woman named Grace Kamm. Kamm was as strict and matronly as Luca imagined all gaji women to be, her dark dresses covering even her neck as she peered at him from over her spectacles. It was her job to instruct Luca in his letters and mathematics, though after a few lessons, she shook her head and told him he had a sharp mind, but was simply not applying himself. Luca wanted to please her by trying harder, but he was too worn out from Laszlo to keep his mind on task.
“Just like the other Ikus,” she chided, piquing his interest for the first time in a week.
“Other Ikus?”
“The girl who was here the year past—Jaelle Ikus.”
“Jaelle Morjana,” Luca corrected, feeling no small degree of satisfaction from the revers
al of their roles. “She will not attain the title of Ikus until she takes over as matriarch from her mother.” The woman was clearly taken aback by his revision, and so Luca tried to smooth it over. “Congratulations, you have taught Dobra royalty. But say, what kind of student was Jaelle? What was her favorite book?”
She squinted, probing him with her gaze. Although more spinster than Listener, Kamm still could recognize a besotted boy when she saw one. “Perhaps I will tell you after today’s lessons. If you perform satisfactorily, that is.”
To her surprise, he surpassed “satisfactorily,” Kamm checking his arithmetic at the end of their session and finding few errors as Luca waited expectantly.
“The Pea and the Pod was Jaelle’s favorite book. I have a copy that I could lend you if you would like.”
Luca very much did, and Kamm loaned him the book the next day. Still unable to read it, Luca availed himself of Kamm’s instructions with the same ardor he applied with the knife. And for each milestone he reached, Kamm granted him another tidbit of her time with Jaelle to gobble down.
He devoured every scrap, visiting each location she said Jaelle ever mentioned. Even though they were separated by miles and months, Luca now knew her far better by imagining each experience through her eyes. Learning that Jaelle’s favorite bakery, Armetta’s Pastry Shop, resided a half mile away, Luca made the trek each morning. The proprietors did not recollect the girl, but they soon knew him by name and were delighted by his desire to taste each of their confections on the off chance he might stumble upon Jaelle’s favorite through the process of elimination.
At the end of the third week, Luca finished The Pea and the Pod and knew he had been took. It was a children’s book and something that would have been far below the educated Jaelle’s comprehension. It was, instead, perfect for his ability, and Luca did not begrudge Kamm her deception, but demanded a second insight into Jaelle’s life in Polis that night. Jaelle might still be unaware of it, but Luca grew closer to her by the day through treading over the same ground her shoes had kissed. He assured himself if he saw and remembered it all, they would finally have something just the two of them could share.
***
The nights were Luca’s own, and he did not squander them with sleep. His travels throughout the city in his quest to retrace all of Jaelle’s steps took him outside the Rax quarter to learn that Polis was large enough to support not one, but two enclaves of Cousins. The Hammat tribe also shared the peninsula, setting up their quarter far from where Luca stayed. To his chagrin, Luca quickly demonstrated his inability to tell the difference between the two clans by their clothing alone. Both groups, dressed in their black suits and hats, appeared identical to him; however, the long scarves worn by the Hammat were gray tinged with black, whereas the Rax dressed in black scarves interwoven with gray.
It was far past when Luca should have been abed as he returned to the Rax quarter. Nearing the outskirts, he heard the harsh taunts doled out with sweet sing-song voices.
“Iniquity, iniquity, Waer’s own iniquity.”
Luca stopped to spy on the two gaji with the Cousin between them. His Listener’s pin reflecting the lamplights’ electric gleam, and Luca wondered why the lad had risked returning home alone. Because the Biba Sacara tied their abilities to pluck the ley to a deal with Waer, the Dobra could never escape the association with the evil entity; the Cousins were accosted most often for residing in gaji cities. It was instances just like this that inspired the lockblade schools and exactly why Luca tied his black band around his arm before making his presence known.
“Iniquity, iniquity,” he joined in. The hecklers fell silent upon his approach, so Luca politely finished for them. “Waer’s own iniquity.”
He smiled brightly, but made sure there was no friendliness there. His non-Cousin clothes clearly confounded them, but they certainly recognized his armband. With each step of his, they drew back, Luca not breaking stride until he took the young Cousin by the arm. He could feel his hecklers’ fear wafting off of them through his Listening Mind, but Luca did not even bother to grace them with a glance over his shoulder. His unflappable confidence alone had terrified them, and he knew without a doubt they now believed no Dobra ever truly traveled alone.
The boy stared unabashed as Luca led him back to the Dobra quarter, his mind unable to process Luca’s strange garb.
“Wanderer?”
“Ikus,” Luca answered. At the mention of his grubber tribe, the boy seemed as frightened by Luca as by his assailants. But Luca’s face did not have the chance to fall before the boy straightened and extended his hand.
“Thank you, sir. Thank you. My parents live only a few blocks more, and I know they would like to thank you personally for what you did tonight.”
Although he was tired from his full day, Luca went with the boy, and by evening the next day, there was not a Rax Cousin in all of Polis that did not know the name Luca Dolphus.
***
Perhaps the tale of his intervention prompted Laszlo to allow him the opportunity to test for his next armband ahead of schedule. Luca was more than ready for the chance, hungry to demonstrate his mastery over Laszlo’s lessons. But more than that, he desired to actually spar against another human opponent. Given carved wooden lockblades that put the Wanderer sticks to shame, the two men saluted each other then Laszlo. Their instructor’s clap then signaled the start of the match.
Luca lashed out immediately with the maneuver Bo introduced him to lockblade combat with. His blunted blade crashed down on his opponent’s fingers hard enough he instantly dropped his mock knife. Luca’s following strike, a quick stab to the center of the man’s chest, was purely perfunctory, Luca then pivoting to salute Laszlo and receive his blue armband. Instead, Laszlo sadly shook his head.
“You embarrass us all.”
“How?” Luca sputtered. “I won the match.”
“No, you refused to use the proper forms. A proper opening gambit is a sailor’s shuffle or a grabber’s bend, followed, of course, by a crone’s walk or the eager lizard, which he would have countered with a sparrow’s thrust or hidden tortoise. This would have been a proper match, but instead you bring base brawling through our doors.”
“But I won,” Luca repeated in shock.
“No, Luca. You most decidedly did not.”
Chapter 9
Blotmonad 9, 567
The cost of the two rooms was dear at five dollars, but Marta willingly paid it. She was significantly less willing to part with the money Luca said they required to escape Sinton, but she paid it as well, just as she had for his bill at the bawdy house. And so she begrudgingly peeled off eight more five-dollar banknotes from her roll and placed them in his hand.
He explained his predicament and choice of the bawdy house as soon as they departed, telling her how he and Isabelle ran afoul a squad of soldiers who recognized the two of them together. So he led them away as Isabelle hid Caddie, finally taking refuge in the house of ill repute in the hopes that it was too expensive for soldiers to stumble across. Remembering that a few days ago she considered how she would have preferred to face Newfield soldiers rather than their unnatural pursuers, Marta cursed herself for having dared fate with the thought. Now they were trapped within the city by the Home Guards at the gates, which meant they would have to rely upon the Covenant Sons to smuggle them out.
Remnants of the Covenant rebellion that sparked the Grand War, the Covenant Sons conducted a new war against their Newfield oppressors from the shadows. She had heard that in some cities they had taken to burning the shops of the Carrion Kind and Ticks, the Westerner profiteers flooding their land after the war and the Easterners who dared to work with them. Officially, the Covenant Sons were considered nothing more than a nuisance, but Marta knew that with the addition of Orthoel Hendrix, they were significantly dangerous; hence, why Carmichael sent her to assassinate him.
But until that moment, they needed the Covenant Sons’ help.
Luca recognized their
symbol from the spilled beer on the table: two half-circles united to make a whole. The image was drawn from the Covenant flag’s silver circle on a crimson background. To overcome the Listeners in the Home Guard’s ranks, Covenant Sons operatives never used their real names unless they trusted each other. So, Luca had informed her, to make contact with fellow unfamiliar operatives, they took to the symbol, the first tracing half of it and the second finishing it to prove that contact had been made. In his occupation as a freebooter, Luca used this method numerous times, but said it was becoming more dangerous by the day. The Newfield spies within the Home Guard had quickly figured out this ploy, making the attempt at contact fraught with difficulties. If the drawing of the half-circle came too soon, it would mark its creator as an infiltrator and earn him an early end. But, as always, Luca seemed sure of himself, so Marta did not mind placing her fate in his hands.
What irked her most was the waiting, Luca the one required to go out because of her brand. Every passing second ensured Graff, the black Breath, and Bernice were closing in, and Marta wanted to make herself of use. So in spite of her first comfortable bed in weeks, Marta found she stared at the ceiling as she picked through the problem. The obvious answer was to lay a trap, but the how of it escaped her. Sleep almost overtook her when the realization hit, Marta marching to Luca’s door with another fiver in hand. He had barely rubbed the sleep from his eyes before she demanded he procure a blank piece of paper, pencil, lantern that did not require a spark box, and two luz jars.
***
He waited until dark before making his way back to the bordello, Luca happy to find that the downstairs room already swelled with men at their drinks. Claire spied him right away, making her way over and wondering if she could earn another night of rest. He instead said he needed a man and received an odd look from the girl.
The Imbued Lockblade (Sol's Harvest Book 2) Page 9