The Imbued Lockblade (Sol's Harvest Book 2)

by M. D. Presley

  Luca grinned at the death that would finally descend, but it vanished as Marta’s odd Armor disappeared. She seemed just as surprised as she looked over her body, but barely hesitated a moment more before her Shaper blade extended.

  Caddie was faster, scuttling forward to catch the woman’s elbow. Marta could easily push through the impediment, but she looked back at the girl.

  “We don’t kill kin,” Caddie repeated.

  Marta’s eyes burned. “He’s no kin of mine.”

  Caddie did not look away from the fire with her uncaring blue orbs.

  “My family. And families belong together.”

  Chapter 26

  Marz 3, 566 (One Year Ago)

  Gatlin called them back, even if only Simza could hear its song. The devastation the airships wrought surely deserved a dirge as Simza led her wolari not to the outskirts of the once-thriving city, but to its cratered center. Stating the capital of Mimas deserved more aid than their Cousin kin could provide, she ferried messages up and down the lines of ley for a pittance. Wet ash and human waste seemed all that remained of the city, Luca returning to his previous position as a Dobra Listener along the ley to get all the desperate messages out. Isabelle took over his duty as Simza’s enforcer, the diminutive girl Simza’s shadow as she staggered out of her vurd to address the wolari. In the few moments Luca could catch Isabelle before she retired to Jaelle’s vurd, the girl would make her distaste of the crumbled city known. It was far too full, the living and dead stacked atop each other in a glut of civilization. Any moment she could, she hurled herself into the Saulshish Ocean to rid herself of society’s stench, but the girl feared there was never enough water to wash it away.

  She still remained though, bound by her promise to Simza.

  The Carrion Kind arrived soon after, Westerners promising to rebuild. Everyone recognized them for what they were: opportunists intent on profiting on the Eastern misery. The few who could afford to avoided them, but many accepted their wages to construct straight streets and uniform homes the outsiders now owned. Soon these turncoats were christened “Ticks”—deficient insects being considered the lowest of insults, and bloodsuckers the lowest of the low. If the furor continued, Luca would not be surprised if bodies of both Tick and Carrion Kind soon seeded Eastern soil.

  Their homes destroyed by the airship still lounging above them, the Levin at first lived off of the Ikus largess, but soon called their Wanderer kin Carrion Kind at discovering themselves displaced by the lower Ikus rates. On more occasions than he cared to recount, Marko or Petro assisted him in quelling disputes between the two tribes, Luca wishing the girl half their weight was at his side. Instead, Isabelle remained beside Simza and Jaelle, and Luca felt some assurance his love remained safe even if he were not.

  Aware of his tribe’s precious state, Luca knew he should consider more important things as he watched as a wasp tirelessly built its nest on his vurd’s overhang. He should knock the nest down, but could not muster the interest to, assuring himself it would be dislodged soon enough when they broke camp. For the time being, he soaked up every second of rest to consider his impending nuptials. The suitors from other tribes dwindled to a trickle, only Gideon Chunvin insisting on visiting after Luca’s relationship with Jaelle became an open secret. They treated him with the upmost deference, but the Hammat boy knew his place by the time he departed.

  “Lavish her with every treasure she deserves,” Gideon said as Luca escorted him to the train station.

  “Until there is no need,” Luca answered with a grin.

  ***

  Occupying Jaelle’s vurd, Isabelle soon smelled just like his love, and Luca was not disappointed when Simza suddenly sent the girl away again, even if it meant reassuming his role as Simza’s enforcer. Still irate at the Ikus presence in their city, the Levin called for a haichisano, a court of all the wolari heads in Newfield, to decide the matter.

  Luca spied Ostelinda among the Newfield Dobra, the woman having traveled all the way from the Auld Lands to witness the decision. The gathering of tribe heads was initially hostile, but Simza headed their arguments off before they could take root, the woman only pausing to catch her labored breath as she swayed them to her side. In the span of an evening, those who had been outright enemies turned to allies, Simza concluding the haichisano by announcing her Ikus wolari would become Cousins in Gatlin.

  The collective gasp echoed Luca’s own surprise, but provided no impediment to Simza’s plan. By a narrow margin, it was agreed that Gatlin could support two Cousin enclaves. Head still whirling at the speed at which his matriarch’s will took shape, Luca supported her back to her carriage, his future mother-in-law gasping for breath at issuing her next order.

  “You must make your sister come around.”

  ***

  “Impossible,” Lela announced.

  Requiring her support according to Simza’s instructions, Luca did all he could with his weary words early the next morning. He blamed Jaelle, his beloved most likely still sleeping peacefully in his vurd. Somehow she stole away from the camp’s most central wagon to appear at his door in the dead of night. Everything he had ever desired stood inside his doorway, yet Luca found himself pushing her away lest he queer his deal with Simza. Jaelle took his pretense at choice away as she let her dress drop. Beholding her, even in the shadows of his vurd, Luca found the points of her freckles forming constellations he could not help but trace with his tongue until dawn.

  Luca procured chilled sweet tea to sweeten the deal he offered his sister the next morning, but it ended up ineffectual as Lela intruded on the dawning silence with her familiar refrain. “Would you tell the bee not to sting, the bird not to sing? Why—”

  “The bee makes a poor singer and the bird no soldier,” Luca interjected. “But we are neither bee nor bird. We are Dobra, Ikus in fact, the lowest of the low. But we are still human, Sol’s chosen, which puts us ahead of both bees and birds. Unlike the animals, we have a Soul and therefore choice. We can become more than what we are born, can become something worthwhile.”

  “A grubber can no more escape his place than the bee breed with the bird. The Wanderer can no more put down roots than the tree can discard them.”

  “But can a sister stand to agree with her brother for the good of the tribe? If nothing else, at least urge others to remain calm until after he is happily married?”

  His sister eyed him a long while. “We shall see.”

  ***

  Lela announced her decision to divide the wolari within the week. Their wagons did not meet the requisite hundred that would demand such a detachment, but Lela made special case because of Simza’s sedentary decision.

  Simza again made a rare exit from her vurd to quell the insurrection. Although their matriarch, each family retained the right to join any other wolari so long as they shared the same blood. Lela provided that opportunity, even if it would only be as an offshoot branch of the Ikus tree. Although Simza swore she did the will of their progenitor Ikus herself, Simza found herself powerless as the wolari tore itself in half at Lela’s behest. Those who were a part of the wolari since before Luca’s birth generally joined his sister, whereas the more recent members, like Petro, mostly remained. Most of the chisana followed Lela, depriving Simza of many of her female supporters as well as Saban and all of Luca’s family.

  Despite his blood-bond with the emigrants, Luca knew his heart belonged with his love and her mother. His loyalty never was in question, but his father arrived to pick at it anyways.

  Having not beheld his father from more than afar in many years, Luca found they had been unkind to Camlo Dolphus. As the man hailed him to speak, Luca realized he no longer identified the stranger as father, rather as his assigned surname, one Luca had done his upmost to escape. Camlo still possessed the audacity to speak to the wolari’s bieta as an underling, a position only Simza, or perhaps Jaelle, could claim.

  “Boshla,” he called, as if Luca was not worthy of the solo spot over his
father. “Your sister commands the will of the wolari, and it would be poor form to side against her. Don’t set your boat against the tide. Rather ride it to reach a position of power.”

  Running his father’s words again through his head, Luca realized he indeed heard true. “I am already bieta. Haibieta, in fact, to become the matriarch’s husband once Jaelle takes the mantel.”

  Camlo brushed his argument away as if annoying gnats. “A bieta to a fish that believes she can crawl on land. Such lunacy spells only a messy end and perhaps a meal for scavengers. Be more than that and stand at your sister’s side. She will elevate you to where you belong.”

  “Opposed to the woman I’ve served for eight years?”

  Camlo’s scowl turned as hard as his son’s. “We’ve never seen eye to eye, but let me speak marrow true to you. That slattern will lead you nowhere but to your end. She has failed the wolari since the moment she took you on, and I will not see the ruin she makes of you. Go with her if you want. I haven’t been able to steer you since you were a boy. But know she does not love you and never will. To her you are a thing, a path to a place she hopes you will never see. I thought, given enough time at your folly, you might see yourself clear, but you choose blindness. I’d order you, but I know that would just turn you the wrong direction out of spite. So I will tell you as clearly as I can it will be better for you to be done with that woman and begin a path that might really suit you. Begin anew and finally make something of yourself.”

  It was all Luca had to keep himself still. It was obvious to everyone Luca had escaped the position of grubber, and for Camlo Dolphus to suggest otherwise almost drove him to violence. But peering at his father after so many years, Luca realized he did not fear the man he envisioned as Sol when in his youth. Camlo Dolphus’ famously black bushy beard had faded and with it both Luca’s fear and resentment at the stranger bearing his father’s name.

  “Go seek your fortunes far away, old man.”

  His father’s face registered first surprise then resignation before settling on disappointment. His hand rose as if to shake, but then fell along with his face. Without another word, Camlo Dolphus departed, but Luca refused to watch him go. Instead, he fetched a broom to deal with the wasp nest hanging from his wagon. Upon Lela’s announcement, Simza ordered all their vurds to be sold to buy new buildings in Gatlin.

  Her smallest wagon alone would remain in the center of their new enclave, she said, to remind them of what they came from, but were no more.

  Chapter 27

  Blotmonad 26, 567

  Hendrix was so near she could practically smell him. However, the problem with clandestine rebellions was, as the Home Guard were surely aware, actually encountering them by choice. Two days now in Ceilminster without any leads, Marta could still feel the hateful Tinker near. Unfortunately, “near” without an exact “where” was just as good as trying to catch a Breath without a luz jar. Were she in good standing with her Cildra kin, she could simply ask for an introduction to the nearest Covenant Sons conspirator, but that avenue was now decidedly closed, leaving her with her nose to the ground like a hound hoping on blind luck.

  The great rub of it was, without his status as an actual freebooter, Luca ended up just as equal a liability as her Traitors Brigade brand. Despite her desire to lather her hands with his innards, Caddie remained adamant she not, and Marta found herself demurring to the girl’s demands. This reaction surely too was a weed, something that did not coincide with her sense of self, but like Hendrix’s scent, it was maddeningly close, but impossible to flush.

  So, for now, she was still stuck with the dispossessed Dobra.

  She refused to trust him though, never letting the man out of her sight. Pitching a fireless camp on the outskirts of the city to sleep during the day, Marta and Luca trudged into Ceilminster each evening to continue their hunt. Isabelle kept guard over the girl, and Marta trusted her despite her feelings about Luca. Although Isabelle came to his aid on the boat, Marta sensed something had changed between them. Why and how much that shift had altered she could not ascertain, only sure that questioning the mute woman would prove an effort in futility.

  Words would fail her if forced to describe the sad state of the city. Though no Gatlin, the Ceilminster of Marta’s youth was not without its idiosyncratic charms. Built like a wheel with the vaunted Ceilminster College at its center, Ceilminster-that-was consisted of wonderfully winding roads containing delights at every turn. The architecture suffused with the Eastern Weaver style and aversion to uniformity, the denizens boasted no two buildings shared the same design. This created a living, undulating feel to lure the idle ambler into a sense of security with a quaint shop, only to then overwhelm with a four-story monstrosity beside it. The luz jars atop their poles added to the effect each night, making the whole city dance. As a child, Marta loved roaming and inhaling Ceilminster’s wonders, but now wanted to be rid of the Grand War’s wreckage.

  The Carrion Kind and Ticks had made significant progress in the unvarying buildings set so similar Marta could scarcely tell which street she walked on. Everything was scrubbed and straight, clean and sparkling so white under the electric lamps that it hurt her eyes. The Osterdock Bridge spanning over the Theade River at least remained the same, the overpass still too thin to support all the traffic unloading the barges below and devolving into snarls of irate travelers shortly after morning each day.

  The Western victors made it a point not to rebuild Ceilminster College, abandoning its burned husk to slow decay. This alone would have been offense enough, but the Newfield government made sure to twist the knife twice more. The first consisted of the army barracks constructed on the carcass of the campus, the second the massive anchor cratered in the dried brown that once served as the university’s greens, its chain rising high to moor the airship menacing over them. The citizens of Ceilminster dwelt in its shadow, none daring to chance a glance up at their destroyer during the day.

  Wandering among the denizens each night, Marta caught a few glances skyward. Each was fleeting, almost stolen, resulting in a flinch Marta knew too well: it was the same she gave at the reflection of her face when she first beheld her brand.

  Her traitorous brand was good and covered now, Marta disguising herself in the dress and bonnet purchased at the onset of her brother’s mission. The women’s clothes made her feel soft and exposed as she and Luca searched for Covenant Son sympathizers in the taverns and gambling dens. At each they remained for a single nursed drink before moving, Luca pilfering thoughts all the while.

  “Herschel Serson,” he announced proudly as they hiked back to their camp the first night. “He runs the Sons here, and if anyone can lead us to Hendrix, it’s him.”

  “You found that in a night, and you think the Home Guard don’t already know his name? Go on, go ask after him tomorrow and see what that earns you.”

  Luca shook his head as if she somehow was the simpleton. “Names mean something to the Sons. Names carry weight, while faces are forgettable. Anyone could be Serson, which is why every Son who’s going to talk to us will use his name. That’s why we give our own when we ask after him, so they can see if we’re known in turn. If they like what they hear, ‘Serson’ will come talk to us.”

  “And how do you know it’s not a Guardsman if every bug this side of the Mueller Line knows that name?”

  “That does make it a bit more difficult.” A shadow of Luca’s grin appeared, but with the several-day stubble, it cast him as more haggard than handsome. “There are other clues. Accents help, signs that someone truly grew up in the East. That’s why they’ll draw out the conversation—to see if it slips.”

  “Which means yours is of no use.”

  He rubbed the back of his neck. “Worse yet, the Dobra know my name well, and I have a bit of a curse called down, as of late. Any whiff of it will bring them round. Which means yours will have to do.”

  Marta could have killed him then and there, the man of little use except to explain h
ow little he was. Her own name turned out to be just as thorny, however. Aware she now knew of his coup, there was a chance Carmichael’s Home Guard would be hunting her legitimately, along with any Cildra.

  Or perhaps not.

  She could not know for sure until she encountered them. Carmichael always played his games like a general, whereas Marta saw the world as a pawn forced to survive rather than strategize. Perhaps she might live long enough to become a queen, but she doubted it now.

  The name Marta Childress would mean nothing to the Covenant Sons, but she had killed Mitchell’s idol right before his eyes, and he knew her name well. If word of her execution of a beloved Weaver revivalist had spread, and she suspected it had, she might as well hang herself. She could still pass as an Easterner well enough, but was too long gone from the region to know any useful names except one:

  “May Oles will have to do, then.”

  ***

  The second night of searching afforded them no more success than their first. Marta felt blinded and fumbling as they flitted from tavern to inn then back again, though Hendrix’s scent seemed even more maddening by the hour. The third night felt more fruitful, Marta noticing more gaunt and haunted faces among the crowded Dusty Day Tavern. The occupants outwardly appeared subdued, but Marta sensed something simmering underneath as she noted several men missing limbs. This marked them veterans, though surely wearing different colored coats than the one she had left behind.

  She watched them with her trained Cildra eye, one man in particular sticking out in that he did all he could to blend in. Like her, he only sipped at his drink as his eyes scanned the crowd. He always avoided another man far in the corner, which made that second man the one Marta wanted. Setting a refrain explaining her find, Marta opened that portion of her Mind to Luca, the Dobra finally taking a glance then nodding his approval.