Prodigal Steelwielder (Seals of the Duelists Book 3)

by Jasmine Giacomo

  “What’s that?”

  “The only things in this world that are truly ours are our choices. The more that’s at stake, the more valuable those choices become. And Bayan, he chose for everyone. Everyone but himself. He knew what would happen when he did what he did. And he did it anyway because he chose who to save. And he didn’t choose himself.” Imee cleared her throat and looked down at her horse’s mane. “Did Bayan ever tell you how we met?”

  Eward shook his head.

  “It was a feast day. Everyone had gathered in the open market space in Pangusay, and the food and drink were flowing. Music played, there was dancing, and the seer was doing Tellings. Then, from down one street, came Bayan, absolutely slathered in mud and pulling this bawling kalabao by its nose halter. When he got closer, I saw he was wearing his feastday clothing, like he had meant to come to the celebration and somehow fallen into the marsh. As it turned out, the kalabao had fallen in the marsh, and Bayan had gone in after it. He recognized it as belonging to one of the poor farmers just outside Pangusay. He brought the creature with him to the party because he had heard from his father that the farmer was unable to purchase a new creature, couldn’t find the lost one, and had spent the last day in talks to sell his farm to Bayan’s father.”

  Eward took a moment to digest that. “So you’re telling me that Bayan saved a poor farmer’s kalabao to spite his father?”

  Imee shook her head and smiled. “Bayan was only six years old. He hadn’t started training to take over the farm yet. He adored his father, but he knew Datu would be mad. Still, he chose to ruin his clothes and save that kalabao because he knew the farmer, and he didn’t want him to lose his farm. That’s always been Bayan. Doing what he thinks is right, no matter the consequences. Silly idiot.”

  “Seems to be working for him so far.”

  “You mean it seems to be working for all of us. We’re the ones who get to live in the empire he saved. Someday, I think Bayan is going to face a decision where one of the options is death, and if that’s the choice that benefits the most people, he’s going to choose it. And that makes me both sad and proud. Hearing about his life is like listening to a tragic feastday legend.”

  “What sort of story is that? Waarden usually tell happy stories at our feasts.”

  Imee grinned at him. “No, you don’t. I’ve heard your tales of adventure and war. They’re just as tragic as ours, but you cloak them in the trappings of glory and slaughter. Which, I will confess, does make them far more entertaining. Our stories are more about individuals than generals and their duelist armies. Where a single man sets himself against impossible odds in order to save the princess, his children, his father’s fortune, or the like. And he always does so, but more often than not, he dies in the process.” She sighed. “I just think Bayan has absorbed too many stories like that. He’s going to get himself killed, and he’s going to think it’s a good idea, and then there won’t be any more Bayan stories.”

  I think I see the problem. “And that means you won’t be able to tell people any longer that you knew him once, right? Less fame for you if Bayan dies young.”

  Imee’s eyes flashed at him, then her lips curved in a smug smile. “I think you see me better than most. I like that.”

  With the bridge behind them, Eward and Imee led the caravan down the broad boulevard toward the Kheerzaal with all due pomp and circumstance. Judging the sun to be still low in the morning sky, Eward expected to arrive no later than the middle of the afternoon. And then he could finally be rid of his charge and return to his duel den, where he’d get to enjoy being insulted by his Head Duelist some more.

  Won’t that be nice? What I wouldn’t give for another few days riding and talking to Imee. At least she doesn’t have the power to potioneer me.

  Final Mercy

  A sudden cluster of life flowed against Bayan’s Lifeseeker spell then vanished just as quickly. Riding his disc of wind, he shouted to Sabella and pointed in the direction the impression had fled: toward the burning smeltery. “Did you see that? I think those were Ordomiro’s crickets. He never was any good at anima.”

  Bayan zoomed down under the caustic, billowing smoke and landed on the bare earth that surrounded the smeltery for dozens of strides. Sabella landed beside him. A quick scan of the area showed a scattering of bodies blown back by the blast and a gaping hole in the wall. Even from that distance, Bayan felt the radiant heat as molten fire devoured the structure. Further from the city walls than the circus camp, the smeltery seemed abandoned, and neither help nor riders were in sight.

  “Do you see him?” Sabella asked. “Anima was never my strong skill, either.” She hurried toward the outer edge of the wreckage, where twisted lengths of wood lay smoking, and began to dance her magic, sifting through the fragments.

  Bayan took a moment to focus, then set Lifeseeker loose across the burning landscape. Several dim orange glows appeared in his mind’s eye, but he couldn’t distinguish which one was Ordomiro. “They’re all scattered closer to the smeltery. Come help me.” Bayan stepped onto his disc and hovered around the wreckage as he made his way to the closest life source. Sabella joined him.

  The man was beyond their help. Bayan wasn’t even sure if a skilled chanter like Doc Theo could have saved him. In the orange light of the cataclysm, the man’s burnt skin seemed made of lava, and he could only twitch and moan helplessly in agony. All that remained of his clothing were charred scraps that merged into his burns. The scorched smell made Sabella turn and heave her stomach contents on the far side of a nearby cluster of smoking bricks. Bayan breathed through his mouth in an effort not to follow her example. Ay, Bhattara, this poor fellow won’t last long. It would be better if he didn’t last at all.

  Iulan of the Treinfhir had insisted on teaching Bayan a spell he called the final mercy, despite Bayan’s discomfort with the idea. He had never used it before. But now it seemed right. Gently, quietly, he eased into the man’s mind, stopped the pain, and felt the man’s spirit slip away like the last drops of water from a handful lifted from the stream, returning to the original source. The tortured body went still, and Bayan drew his focus into his own head, a little shaken.

  Sabella stared at him with wary eyes. “Did you just…”

  “Let’s move on. We have to hurry.” Bayan sought out the next life form, then the next, but they were both so far gone that he had to repeat the mercy spell. Sabella wouldn’t look him in the eye by the time they reached the fourth victim.

  The shape of a forearm caught Bayan’s eye. He dismounted his wind disc and crouched by the figure’s side. The person lay crushed beneath the wall of a small shed, which also blocked most of the firelight. “Sabella, light.”

  Her pale glow illuminated a young man near his age. The stranger’s tightly curled dark hair and high cheekbones revealed his lineage to be Raqtaaq. Bayan bent the wood away from the body to free it, but his woodcasting fled as he spotted a dark circle on the back of the man’s hand. He snatched at the limp wrist, then stared in horror at the duelist-seal tattoo that matched the one on his own left hand. Scrabbling, he pulled at the dead man’s other arm and found a second tattoo.

  Avatar Duelist.

  “Bayan? What does it mean?”

  “I don’t know. But it’s very, very bad.” Bayan backed away, out of the wreckage of the shed, his mind whirling with frightening possibilities.

  The faint whoosh of an approaching wind disc caught his ear, and Ordomiro approached, crouching on one knee and leaning on his other leg for support. As he reached them, his disc disintegrated under him, and he tumbled to the ground, colliding with a few broken bricks.

  Sabella rushed to his side and helped him sit. “Ordomiro, where have you been? Were you here when the smeltery exploded?”

  Ordomiro choked out a painful cough, then spat out a blackened gob. “I was inside. That smoke can’t be healthy for my lungs. I couldn’t find anyone alive in there. There were swine in the piggery, but they didn’t survive.”

>   Bayan scanned the area lit by the burning smeltery. “Ordomiro, you have to tell us the truth. Did you have something to do with this? Why did you paint Sabella earlier than you said you would? ” Right now, I can’t decide which is worse: knowing this place was sabotaged by a good friend or by a Waarden duelist.

  Ordomiro coughed again. “Did Sabella tell you I grew up in this valio? This is my home, Bayan. These oppressed people are mine, my family, my friends. Just because I have magic in me doesn’t mean I don’t see how they are made to suffer without it. I was with the rebels tonight. We need to show Yl Senyecho that he cannot dictate the hearts of his people. We all deserve to be treated equally.”

  Rage and betrayal spiked into Bayan’s mind. “And so you helped them attack your friends? To destroy our belongings? How is that letting us be treated equally? Where is the fairness in your decision there? You turned on us, Ordomiro. You left your friends to the mercy of your fellow rioters. If it hadn’t been for Sabella and me, people would have died. How can you not see that?”

  Ordomiro held his palms up in supplication. “I did see that. I made sure that the attack happened while you and Sabella were safe together. I knew that you would protect everyone to the best of your ability. And I directed the rioters as best I could to the places where there would be no people. I simply wanted us to make a statement. I didn’t want to sacrifice any of you for my beliefs. I hope you can understand that someday.”

  Bayan’s face felt as hard as stone. He crossed his arms. “That day is going to be a long time in coming. The smeltery? How is that beneficial to your plan? You’ve just destroyed the only legitimacy your emperor sees in this valio. Are you sure you’re thinking this through?”

  Ordomiro slowly rose to his feet and raised fingers to explore his right temple, encountering crinkly, scorched hair. “The rioters didn’t attack the smeltery. When I saw the explosion, I rushed over to see what was happening. But I didn’t find anyone or anything to tell me who had done it. I swear to you, this is exactly what I didn’t want. We know that our steel production is important and necessary, and we’re willing to contribute. We just want to be treated fairly, like everyone else in the Corona. We would not dare to destroy our only bargaining chip. It’s utter lunacy. I don’t know who did this, Bayan, I swear it. I’m probably angrier about it than you are, considering.”

  Sabella spoke up, her voice stunned into a quiet monotone. “I believe you, Ordomiro. I don’t think you did this. Bayan found someone with his tattoo in the rubble.” Her wide green eyes appeared pale brown in the orange firelight. “I think the Waarden did it.”

  Ordomiro’s surprised glance flickered between his friends, finally settling on Bayan’s face. “But duelists? Here?”

  Bayan pointed behind him. “Right there, in fact.”

  Ordomiro stepped closer and craned his neck to observe the body. “Do you know him?”

  Bayan shook his head. “The Waarden Empire doesn’t work like that. The only duelists I knew were at the Academy with me.” His mind bolted off with that thought. “Wait.” This Avatar Duelist could be a savant who graduated after my exile, if my former hexmates managed to execute their savantism plans on campus. Bayan tongued his teeth and switched trains of thought. I can’t imagine they sent him, which means he was working for Philo. But why would the Waarden spymaster send anyone to destroy a steel smeltery in another empire? Philo is one of the few villagers who understand steel’s true connection to duelism. Unless something has drastically changed at the Academy or at the Kheerzaal, I can’t see him risking a duelist’s life when he already knows the result is moot.

  Sabella gave his shoulder a push. “Bayan? You’ve been quiet too long. Spit it out, before…”

  Ordomiro whirled. Bayan glanced past his shoulder and spotted approaching torches, several dozen strong. “Is that the rioters or the city folk?”

  Ordomiro stared for a moment longer before replying, “That’s the city. If they find us here, they will kill us all, magic or no. Look. That mob is half the population.”

  Bayan’s heart rate sped to a stumbling run. “But it’s all a ruse. A setup! This isn’t a real duelist. I’d bet my life on it.”

  Sabella gave him a warning look. “You’re about to.”

  Ordomiro looked back at the tattooed corpse. “What? Not a real duelist?”

  “I told you,” Sabella said. “This is the Waarden plot. They’ve come to destroy our steel.”

  Bayan was already shaking his head. “No. Steel isn’t what you think it is. This can’t be us.”

  Ordomiro suddenly clutched at his hair in distress, heedless of the burn on the side of his head. “Mys peppos vacanos! I see it all, I see it, and it’s too late. It’s all too late. How could we have been so stupid? We fell right into his hands!”

  Sabella grasped his arm. “What are you talking about? We need to get out of here!”

  Bayan’s mind twitched. “Tell me. Whose hands did we fall into?”

  “Yl Senyecho. The rioters, the circus, the duelist… Don’t you see? Someone has to warn them.”

  A distant yell triggered an angry cry from the spreading mob in the distance. “Sabella, your light!” Bayan hissed. But it was too late. Her pale light had been spotted by the approaching mob, and they roared as one monster of destruction, wheeling and speeding in their direction.

  Sabella grabbed Bayan’s arm. “Come, we must fly!” She formed her wind disc and fled into the hazy sky.

  Bayan made to follow her, but Ordomiro ripped his wind disc apart and grasped his arm in an iron grip. “No, don’t you see? It’s war, Bayan. Yl Senyecho wants war, and this is his excuse. You need to go home and warn them. The steelwielders are coming.”

  Steelwielders. The term sent shivers down Bayan’s spine. Battle borne on the edges of blades wielded by common men—even if the metal could no longer affect his magic if he didn’t let it—was still a strange and terrifying prospect. “I have no way to reach the Singers or create a portal home, Ordomiro. I’d have to fly there. If this attack is the first stroke in a new war, by the time I reach the Waarden Empire, I might be too late.”

  “You will be too late. If he’s planned this, he’s planned everything.”

  The mob grew closer, yet Bayan stood locked to the ground. “They won’t listen to me. They exiled me, remember? Every duelist has orders to kill me on sight.”

  Ordomiro shot a glance at the screaming crowd. “Then don’t talk to the duelists. I can get you there safely. It’s something I’ve been working on for a new act. I’ve gotten it to work over short distances. I think… I think I know how to send you all the way home. Save your people, as I couldn’t save mine. Don’t let Yl Senyecho win. Goodbye.”

  The mob was nearly upon them. Steel blades winked in the fiery light of the smeltery. Their myriad voices thundered against Bayan like a wall of force. Ordomiro stood before him, back to the mob, holding his arms stiffly out to his sides as if they were about to be ripped from their sockets. Eyes closed, he flicked his fingers once, and to Bayan’s horror, the veins in his wrists opened. Ordomiro’s blood hovered in the air between them, and he swirled it with his fingers, painting the spell shapes he usually formed with zinc. More and more blood poured into the air, and Ordomiro staggered.

  “Ordomiro, stop, don’t!” Bayan thrust a large Wind tremor past his friend, and it threw the first several ranks of the advancing citizens into the air.

  Ordomiro’s blood paintings swirled into a hollow tube between the two of them, big enough for Bayan to walk through. The shapes merged, blended, and reformed, and still Ordomiro’s life poured from his veins, adding and adding to the spell. Bayan strained to reach him, to stop him, but Ordomiro’s spell held him fast. Ordomiro stumbled to his knees, still holding his arms out as if begging. But Bayan knew he was demanding. Demanding every last drop of his life, his magic, to do his will.

  A sudden roaring filled Bayan’s ears. The tunnel seemed to elongate impossibly in an instant, sucking him further and fur
ther away from Ordomiro and the burning smeltery. He tumbled down a tunnel of red, spinning amidst the last drops of his friend’s life.

  Suddenly, a body collided with him in a tangle of limbs, and he clasped it instinctively. Too small to be Ordomiro, though, and softer in certain areas. The whirling, throbbing, thrumming tunnel abruptly ended, and Bayan and Sabella tumbled together across dusty ground and sparse weed clusters, eventually coming to a sprawled and dusty stop.

  Bayan lay very still for a long moment, checking himself over. He felt like a one large bruise. Even breathing hurt. His eyes opened on a low, cloudy sky. The cold breeze bit at his cheeks, and his circus costume failed entirely to protect the rest of him from it. He turned his head and felt dust grinding its way against his scalp as he looked for Sabella.

  She lay a few strides away, curled into a ball, coughing and shuddering. He groaned his way onto hands and knees and crawled over to her. “Are you going to live?”

  Her reply was punctuated by occasional hiccups and twitches. “I came back for you, to pull you both from the mob, but somehow… Ordomiro had some kind of spell. I couldn’t… I think I brushed against it, and then I couldn’t get free. What happened? Where is the smeltery? Is Ordomiro here? I can’t… It’s so dark.”

  Bayan glanced up once more. The clouds obscured the moon and the stars, but the moon’s diffuse glow filtered through the clouds well enough for him to make out the occasional nearby feature, and he could see Sabella well enough. He helped Sabella sit up, then tilted her chin. “Let me see your eyes.”

  He called forth some light to hover around them. Sabella’s eyes were pure red, as if Ordomiro’s blood had poured into them.

  “Sabella, I just made a little light. Can you see it?”

  Her head turned this way and that, seeking the light, but nothing in her red eyes moved as far as Bayan could tell. “No. Am I blind?” She reached out with her hands, felt Bayan before her, and clung to him. “Ordomiro.”