Shadow of the Phoenix

by Rebecca Harwell

  “The Stormspeaker told me what you plan to do,” Drina said without looking at Shay. “I wished to say good-bye.”

  “Why?” It slipped out before Nadya could stop herself. Her grandmother had always disapproved of her. Before her nivasi blood had been discovered, Drina had thought her to be a poor truthseer who avoided marriage. Now, she was nivasi and in a relationship with another woman, another nivasi at that. She couldn’t imagine her grandmother cared for her anymore.

  “Because you are all of my blood that remains. I wish to see you safely home. Nadezhda,” Drina added, after a long pause, “your mother was proud of you, in the end. And while I cannot approve of your alter ego or your companions”—Shay snorted, but Drina ignored her—“I am proud of you as well.”

  Nadya thought she had expended every tear left to her, but her eyes welled up at her grandmother’s words. She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around her grandmother. Drina stiffened but did not recoil.

  “Thank you,” she said into Drina’s shoulder, breathing in the familiar scent of spices and sea air. After a long moment, her grandmother pressed a hand into her back, returning the embrace.

  “Pani nevi lungo drum cher,” she whispered in the ancient Nomori tongue. Go fast with the current and follow the stars.

  Chapter Ten

  It was amazing, Shay thought, what a difference one year could make. She had always believed herself to be a loner, her relationship with the forgemaster notwithstanding. She had her apprenticeship duties, her training in the martial ways, and her nightly forays into the darkest and most desolate places of the world. It had always been enough.

  Then Nadya crashed back into her life, quite literally, and Shay had grown accustomed to her steady presence. To the light that Nadya had brought into her life, brighter than any fires Shay could summon. Now, with Nadya and Levka gone off to Wintercress, Shay was left alone in Storm’s Quarry, fending off the shadows of her past. Her time spent in the city earlier that year, meeting Nadya and eventually confronting her sister, had healed some of her old wounds, but Shay would never enjoy Storm’s Quarry. She certainly had never thought to be part of a resistance fighting to regain it.

  Nadya’s absence became a nauseous hunger that wormed its way into the pit of Shay’s stomach, growing sharper by the day. Nighttime, marked only by the extinguishing of two-thirds of the cavern’s lanterns, was the worst. Despite the heat of the mines, Shay could never get warm enough. Her body missed the solid presence of Nadya on the narrow cot beside her. Each artificial morning that she opened her eyes, she couldn’t help the wave of disappointment that crashed over her.

  Shay wasn’t sure she believed in the Protectress, but still she found herself looking up, to where the stars hid beyond the cavern’s peak. If you’re there in any form, keep her safe. Bring her back to me.

  At least there was plenty to distract her. The resistance swam with activity day and night, and each turn of the clock that hung above the headquarters brought more citizens of Storm’s Quarry through the tunnels, guided by whispers and rumors, to join the cause.

  More people for Shay to avoid, but the new royals seemed to be set on making that as difficult as possible.

  “You’ll be in charge of the forge,” Marko told her when she half-heartedly reported for duty the morning after Nadya and Levka had left Storm’s Quarry.

  “What?” She wasn’t sure she had heard correctly. “You want me on the smithy?” The smithy was located in the center of the cavern, paces from the lake, in case of accidents, she had been told. It was exactly where she did not wish to be to avoid attention, but she couldn’t understand why the Duke would suggest such a thing.

  He nodded. “We don’t have anyone with your experience, and we will need weapons and armor. Good ones. If half the things that I’ve heard about Jeta Forgemaster are true, then as her apprentice, you’ll be a welcome addition indeed.”

  Shay stared at him. “I’m nivasi.”

  Marko flinched and glanced around, but none of the guardsmen who whacked at crude dummies with bayonets and rapiers had taken notice of the two. “And?”

  “And don’t you want me out in the city, taking on Cressian forces?”

  “Any kind of assault without more intelligence on the enemy would be foolhardy at best.” Marko shrugged. “You’re more than nivasi. You’re a skilled smith, and we need that. Why do you think Kesali and I wanted you to stay here so badly?”

  “Oh.” Shay had not considered that the resistance might have wanted her for more than her ability to set the enemy on fire. Her cheeks grew warm. “I will do my best. Your facilities leave much to be desired, you know,” she added, giving the Duke a nod and walking away.

  “And I expect to never hear the end of it,” Marko said with tired resignation behind her.

  * * *

  Just as Shay had anticipated, working the smithy brought her to the center of attention in the resistance. Gaggles of children stopped in front of the forge, and she had to shoo them off, lest they burn their fingers from touching its coals. She complained to one of the Erevan women who brought her new supplies. Alla, her name was.

  “Why are there children here in the first place? Aren’t we supposed to be in the middle of a war?”

  Alla set down the basket of leather scraps with a thump. “The city isn’t safe anymore, not even for children. Wintercress doesn’t care your age, only if you share the blood with a traitor, guardsman, rioter, or anyone else they decide needs to be put down. This is one of the few places the children are safe.” Her hand lingered at her midsection, and Shay swallowed back the question it drew.

  “Well,” she finally replied, “at least they’re being put to work.” It was true—six-year-olds washed the cooking pots while ten- and twelve-year-olds ran messages throughout the cavern. Older children worked alongside the adults at whatever task they had been assigned.

  Of course, that couldn’t be said for all of the refugees who found their way into the cavern. Filipp, an Erevan drunk from the second tier who had once apprenticed to a city blacksmith long ago, had forced himself into Shay’s daily schedule. He liked to sit on a nearby rock and comment as she worked, incorrectly remarking upon everything from the coals she used to the angle of her hammer as she brought it ringing down upon the bayonet blade she forged. “Not like that, stir the coals with your left hand. Like you’re twirling a daisy girl on the last day of summer,” he’d say, and Shay never figured out what he was talking about. Or, “Breathe with the metal, see. That’s what I been taught. With the metal, see.”

  The first day, Shay made the mistake of correcting him—that no, the flames of the forge shouldn’t be so hot as to scorch the hair off the back of someone standing forty paces away—and he stood up, puffed his chest out, and lectured her for a solid quarter hour before wandering off to find something to drink. She had to restrain herself from setting his trousers on fire the entire time.

  Her fourth morning found a muddy child waiting in front of the forge. He picked up her iron poker, and Shay barked out, “Oi, leave that be.”

  The child dropped it but kept his annoyingly large smile. He was missing two front teeth. “You’re the forgemaster, ain’t ya?”

  “I’m the smith.” She hadn’t earned Jeta’s title, not by a long shot.

  “Lady Stormspeaker wants to see ya. She’s in the Bulwark.”

  Shay rubbed her eyes. The thought of speaking to Kesali made her head ache, but she sucked in a deep breath and made her way to headquarters.

  The Stormspeaker stood in front of a rough-hewn table, scrawling notes onto parchment with a flawless script. Shay peered over her shoulder; it was a sewer map, sketched in charcoal, of the two lowest tiers of the city.

  “Good, I have a special order for you to fill. Top priority.” She shoved a rough sketch across the table toward Shay. “Can you do it?”

  Shay looked at the sketch, frowning. A crude drawing of a rat was depicted, with some type of metal contraption on its back. This w
as drawn again next to it in greater detail. It appeared to be a harness, tied snug with several delicate leather straps. “You want me to make a collar. For rats.” Shay stared at Kesali, wondering if the Stormspeaker had gotten into Filipp’s secret stash of ale.

  Kesali waved a hand. “Speak to Peanna. She will tell you what you need to know.”

  Shay waited another minute, but Kesali did not look up from her parchment. “All right, then,” Shay said when the dismissal became clear and left the Stormspeaker to her musings.

  The stables, as people liked to call the collection of shacks and pens near the eastern edge of the cavern, was home to an entire flock of chickens, three goats, and a very disgruntled-looking falcon. Shay wondered at the logistics of transporting livestock unseen through the narrow mining tunnels, but she did not mind the fresh milk and eggs served at the mess each morning.

  The stables were kept by a single woman, who currently sat on her heels, coaxing a rumpled hen off a nest.

  “Come now, Sorrel, don’t be like that,” she said as Shay approached, clucking between every couple of words.

  Peanna was a short Nomori woman with gray hair pulled back into a widow’s knot. She wore a simple orange tunic, and she had a pouch belted at her waist. Her face broke into a practiced smile at Shay’s approach, and she lumbered to her feet.

  “Our forgemaster!”

  “Blacksmith,” Shay corrected automatically. “Just a blacksmith.”

  “No just about it. Storm’s Quarry doesn’t have many smiths, fewer among the Nomori. We had to bring in outsiders after the Blood Sun Solstice just to repair our city. You are valuable.”

  Shay felt the tips of her ears grow hot. “The Stormspeaker said you needed collars,” Shay said quickly, before Peanna could ramble further.

  “Ah, yes. We’ve tried fashioning them of string or leather, but we cannot find a way for them to stay in place and out of sight.”

  “Out of sight? On the rats?” Shay half hoped she had misheard Kesali on the exact nature of the assignment.

  “Yes, yes!” Peanna gave a sharp whistle. After a moment, Shay jumped when two large gray rats skittered over to her and waited at the older woman’s feet. Their eyes glittered black, marking them as city rats, generations of breeding apart from the blind rats of the mines. Peanna whistled again, low and throaty, and the rats stood on their hind legs.

  Shay blinked. Now she really had seen everything.

  “They’re clever creatures,” Peanna said with a fondness that Shay did not understand. “And they are helping us against Wintercress.”

  “They are?” Shay gave the rats a second look, wondering if their claws carried a deadly plague or if they had been trained to leap into the faces of enemy soldiers. “Are you sure?”

  Peanna laughed. “They are our messengers. Wintercress knows of the carrier pigeons we use to take messages from tier to tier. It’s too risky to use them, and we have secret outposts of resistance fighters all over the city. Rats are the safest way.”

  “But how? They’re rats. How can they carry messages?”

  “I train them.” A note of pride cut through the older woman’s voice. “My gift. I can understand animals to a limited extent, their behaviors, their needs, their strong emotions. And I can train them. I worked with the messenger pigeons in the Duke’s aviary for over a decade before…” Her voice caught.

  “I’m sorry,” Shay said. She didn’t know what else to offer. “You need collars to secure the messages.”

  Peanna’s face went from sorrow to a bright smile in a single moment. “Oh, yes! Something simple, so as not to draw attention to them. But something that will keep the written missives secure. Can you do that?” she asked earnestly.

  “I’ve never done armor for rats before,” Shay said. “But I can definitely try.” She froze as Peanna hugged her, thanked her again, and summoned more rats with a sharp whistle.

  Shay watched as a veritable horde of gray fur poured out of a nearby crack in the cavern wall, suppressing a shudder and wishing that Jeta had been a master of curtain weaving. Then Shay would never have had to forge collars for trained messenger rats.

  * * *

  The next few days found her hammering away at the forge in order to get the first wave of Peanna’s trained rats—my stars, she had called them—fitted with their new collars. The ingenuity of the message system did nothing to improve Shay’s opinion of the assignment. Though, in truth, she would not have been so much on edge if not for Drina Gabori.

  The Nomori Elder had remained in the cavern of the resistance. She supposed it made sense; with her daughter passed on and her son-in-law mired in the resistance, the former Gabori matriarch must have decided she had nothing left but to join. Unfortunately, she had taken to loitering around the edge of the forge, watching Shay with sharp, unreadable eyes.

  Finally one morning, Shay could not stand it any longer. After sending Peanna off with the newest iteration of rat collars, Shay marched to where Drina lingered at the edge of the raised platform that housed the smithy. The woman’s hawk-like gaze followed her to where she stopped only paces from the older woman.

  “Do you have an order for the forge?” she asked, crossing her arms. “A nice new leather whip, perhaps?”

  Drina narrowed her eyes, appraising Shay like she was a heifer at the market. Shay tried her best not to squirm under the Elder’s gaze. “No,” Drina said finally. “I seek nothing yet.” She turned and slowly walked away, leaving a bad taste in Shay’s mouth.

  Two weeks Shay spent in the belly of Storm’s Quarry, hammering away at the forge, dodging questions from friendly Nomori and Erevan alike. Two weeks she had managed to pull herself off her pallet each morning to slurp down the bland oatmeal the mess provided before lighting up the forge with a careless wave of her hand. For two weeks, she had held herself together.

  Then she caught sight of her empty cot one too many times, and her heart came undone.

  She made it to the cavern wall before collapsing against the cool stone, shaking. Knees to chest, head down, eyes closed—you are stronger than this, a voice at the back of her mind chided, but she didn’t want to be strong, not now. She wanted to be home.

  If any of the patrolling guardsmen saw her, they kept their distance. It had not taken long for rumors of the blacksmith’s fiery temper to circulate among the shanties. No one put themselves in her way if they could avoid it.

  “You are troubled.”

  Shay started. She looked up to see Drina Gabori leaning against the rough stone not five paces away, her gaze fixed upon the myriad of stalactites that grew from the ceiling.

  “What—what are you doing here?” Shay let go of her knees and stood. “Come to make sure I’m not up to something murderous?”

  Drina did not look at her as she said, “I find sleep has deserted me as of late.”

  Shay wasn’t sure what to say to that. “So you’ve come to pester me, then?”

  “How can we sleep, so separated from the water and the stars? Encased in this prison of rock,” Drina went on, as if Shay hadn’t spoken. “It’s a wonder we haven’t all gone mad.”

  “Yeah, a wonder.” Shay was pretty sure the Elder had gone mad. She hated Shay, hated everything she was. Why was she here now, sharing as if they were old friends?

  “I bring news of your family.”

  Shay’s mouth went dry. “Nadya isn’t here,” she said, though she knew that wasn’t what Drina spoke of.

  Drina ignored her attempt at dissuasion. “Wintercress did not take your sister’s role in the ousting of Aster well. She was taken to the palace a week ago, she and her family. They have not been heard from since.”

  “Okay.” Shay felt a curious emptiness in her chest at the news. She had hated her sister—the reason for her parents discovering her nivasi blood—for years. Ten months ago, she had faced her sister for the first time in years in order to save the city. Now she did not know what to feel. “Is that,” Shay asked, finding her voice, “all y
ou wished to speak to me about?”

  “Lying does not become someone of my age.” Drina sighed. Her sharp gaze met Shay’s. “I am unsure of you, Shay. Unsure of what you and my granddaughter mean for the future of our people. Nivasi carry a great power, and if is it allowed to run unchecked—”

  “What about your power?” Shay shot back. She faced the older woman. “You can pry into people’s minds, read their emotions. Don’t try to tell me that’s not dangerous in its own way.” She flung out a hand. “Or Peanna and her rat army? What if it wasn’t rats, but sabercats or even worse? Who is to say she’s not dangerous? My sister could tell the essence of a person or a thing with a single touch. How is that not power?”

  Her breath came heavily now, as every bit of anger she had toward the Nomori poured out of her. “Look around you, Madame Gabori. This cavern, this city is filled with dangerous Nomori, and only two of them bear nivasi blood. You like to separate yourself from us, but what really separates us? When it comes down to it, the Nomori are a dangerous race, every single one.”

  Drina stared at her, expression hard and unreadable, until Shay began to twitch under her gaze. “You sound like one of them.”

  “One of who? The bad nivasi? The ones you tell children stories about to make them fear the dark?”

  “The Erevans.”

  Shay shook her head. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Saying the Nomori are dangerous, down to every last child…I heard the speeches of many Erevans, from politicians to crazed drunkards. There was a time, not long after Duke Isyanov took us in, that one couldn’t walk more than ten paces in the upper tiers without hearing it.” Drina shook her head. “They feared us. Some still do.”

  Shay swallowed hard against the lump in her throat. “Well, you should know what it’s like, then.”

  “Whether nivasi should be welcomed, banished, or killed is a matter for more peaceful times. Our people’s history with your kind is fraught with bloodshed, though I am not convinced it wasn’t partially of our own making.” Drina smiled grimly, her teeth yellowed and thin. “The other Elders would accuse me of heresy for saying that, no doubt.” She lifted a hand. “I know my gift makes some uncomfortable. My own granddaughter avoided me whenever she could for years.”