Soulwoven: Exile (Soulwoven #2)

by Jeff Seymour

  Maia wrapped a blanket around his shoulders and sat cross-legged beside him, facing the view down the valley.

  “You have asked me many questions,” she said, “since I came to you. Do you remember the first?”

  “Your name,” he said, pulling the blanket tighter around his shoulders.

  She smiled. The breeze caught her hair and tugged it over her face. “That was so foolish as to hardly count as a question at all.”

  He sighed. Everything he did was “foolish.” She said it so often he expected it every time he opened his mouth.

  “‘Who sent you?’ then.”

  “No one sends Maia anywhere, Litnig Eshati. Better to ask why I came.”

  He ground his teeth. Always, in their conversations, she made sure that she was in control. He looked up. She was watching him with a half smile wedged between her lips.

  “Why did you come, Maia?”

  She leaned back and closed her eyes.

  “Ah…” she said. She faced the sky. The breeze from the ice stopped, and for a second Litnig was warm. “Your mother, Aera Eshati, asked me to.”

  Litnig’s mouth went dry. In his mind, he saw a woman with a red, weeping line across her neck. A woman who’d died for what he was, through no fault of her own.

  “My mother’s dead,” he whispered.

  “You are blessed to have begun your life with—”

  “Dead!”

  He glared at Maia. Every day, the woman pushed him. Every day, she pressed and pressed and pressed, and he tolerated it because she was making him stronger and he needed to be stronger to protect the people he loved. But too far was too far. His mother had died for him. And damn if he would sit there in silence while Maia disrespected her memory.

  Maia stared back at him like he was a child. Her fingers tightened on the rock and the muscles in her back tensed, and in that moment she seemed much, much older than him. She let him sit just long enough to doubt himself before she spoke.

  “Where you and I come from,” she said quietly, “few young men outlive their mothers. Count yourself lucky to have known one and still possess another.”

  The wind off the glacier picked up again and sliced through Litnig’s blanket and clothes, trickling down his neck and along his back like water. Maia’s eyes gleamed in the last of the daylight, and he saw a reflection of struggle and pain in them. She looked like Tsu’min did—tortured and very old.

  Litnig held on to his anger anyway.

  But that wasn’t what his mother would have wanted, and after a moment he let it go.

  He turned back to the valley feeling empty and sick, drained, exhausted from weeks of training and a day of hard work and the struggle to understand himself and his power and his place in the world. Tired tears welled up in his eyes, and he wiped them away absentmindedly. As the clouds darkened, silence fell over the valley, broken only by the roaring of the river, the occasional chirp of a bird among the boulders, or a loud crack as the steep shelves of ice above him settled.

  Eventually, the tears passed. He felt like himself again, stronger if not yet as strong as he wanted to be. Maia stood and placed a hand on his shoulder.

  Her fingers left warm imprints on his skin as she scrambled past him, down off the rock.

  She picked her way toward the roaring waters at the glacier’s mouth without a word, pulling the clothing from a body that was too young, too lithe, too smooth for the age he’d seen in her eyes. He didn’t turn away. The last time he’d tried that, she’d come at him with her bare hands and wrestled him to the ground and made him look at her. Told him that to fear the female body was a weakness he couldn’t afford.

  “You have not bathed in weeks, Litnig Eshati!” she called from the water’s edge.

  He watched her plunge in and winced. She swam into the current, grabbed a boulder, and hung from it with one arm while washing her hair with the other.

  “Soon,” she yelled over the rush of the river, “you will have to do that as well!”

  She was right. He stank.

  But he didn’t feel ready for that challenge yet either.

  EIGHTEEN

  Seventy days before the destruction of Eldan City

  A black wind broke over the back of Quay’s head. No stars shone in the night sky, no moon. Water lapped against a hull beneath him in the dark. He smelled the thick, salty scent of the ocean and the cloying smell of torches, distinguished land from sea only by two lines of fires hewn into the cliffs of the Bight of Densel.

  The Bight was a place of flame and shadow. Squat watchforts known as the Dark Sisters stood athwart its mouth, and the searing fires of its lighthouse paths illuminated a narrow channel that meandered through a forest of jagged rocks jutting from its bottom. At the far end of the Bight lay the flickering lights of docks—the tentacles of the port of Densel, reaching out like a mother’s arms.

  Quay had never been to the Bight before, but he could tell by the quick, quiet sureness of their movements that the sailors around him had.

  And he knew by his calmness that the man behind him had seen all the sailors had and more.

  Tytan Rhelp, the man’s name was. Captain of the Folly of Man, built like a wrestler and equipped with a thick beard and a golden smile. He wore rich green clothes and gold rings on every hand. Quay had found him haggling with a merchant on the waterfront in Mansend. The Folly of Man had been the only ship sailing for Eldan, toward the war the sailors knew was brewing there.

  “Not long now,” Rhelp said. He smiled when he spoke, and he had a deep and reassuring voice, the kind used to leading. “Best go and get your things ready.” He stroked his beard. “And wake your mistress.”

  Three golden Elds. That was what it had cost Quay to get himself and Ryse from Mansend to Densel. Enough to buy six months’ worth of food, in better circumstances. The prince had spent most of the journey seasick and feverish. He’d only grown able to stand once they left the towering, windswept seas of the Black Gulf and entered the quieter waters of the Bight.

  He still felt weak. As the sailors tacked to take the ship around a rock, it canted to one side and Quay lost his balance. He staggered into a capstan and dug his fingers into the wood until his guts stopped churning.

  He would be very glad to leave the ship.

  A stairway into the darkness of the hold yawned on the other side of the capstan, and he stepped into its shadows, steadied himself against the wall, and lit a taper from a rack. The corridor below the stairs led him past a mess room and the open sleeping quarters of the sailors. He glimpsed two men sitting on their hammocks there, faces sweaty, eyes black and small in the twilight.

  Quay and Ryse were the only passengers sailing on the Folly of Man. Few people were crossing the Black Gulf; rumors were running wild that the Eldanians would sail for Menatar any day.

  But they haven’t sailed, he told himself. Not yet. We might still save them from it.

  By presenting himself to whoever was in charge of the fleet in Densel, he might be able to stop the war preparations for weeks.

  He opened the door at the end of the corridor and stepped into the musty darkness of his and Ryse’s bunkroom. The ship creaked as it slipped around another rock, but he heard nothing else. Ryse was a quiet sleeper.

  “Ryse,” he called into the darkness. She stirred in the bottom bunk. “We’re almost there. Wake up.”

  He set the taper in a sconce on the wall—it didn’t illuminate much—and squatted before his bunk, fumbling underneath it for his sea chest. He didn’t feel like himself. On the water, his voice never bore the air of command he could lend it on land. It was weak, quavering, as unsteady as his stomach. On the waves, he was no real Prince of Eldan.

  The ship moved again, and Quay fell against the side of his bunk and focused on keeping his stomach from emptying itself all over the floor. He would have to be strong again once he entered Densel.

  Ryse’s footsteps padded softly on the deck behind him, moving toward the door. The ship took an
other sharp turn, and Quay lurched against his bed again, scrambling with his free hand to grab the chest and open it. He needed to get topside before his nausea got so bad he couldn’t see straight. At least with the wind on his face, he could breathe.

  His hand reached the chest, and he fumbled with the lock until it snapped open. He wanted to wear his swords and his gloves and his doublet when they reached Densel, to appear as regal as he could.

  He looked down and saw the velvet cloth of his doublet where he’d expected to find his weapons.

  His heart went cold. They weren’t there. He heard another step behind him and turned to ask Ryse whether she was missing anything.

  Something slammed into his head hard enough to jar his teeth. His jaw lurched to one side in a way that it wasn’t meant to, and he was suddenly on his back, head swimming. He kicked savagely at a shape near his feet. His boot connected with a hard surface that gave with a satisfying pop.

  “Shit!” shrieked a voice from the darkness.

  A male voice. One he’d never heard before.

  Footsteps pounded toward the cabin, and Quay found the side of the bunk and pulled himself unsteadily upright. His jaw hurt like all the hells. The ship listed, and the door to the cabin swung open and admitted a little extra light from the torch down the corridor. The man who’d hit him was limping forward with a cudgel in his hand. He was middle-aged, and his tanned, furrowed face was patched with splotches of grizzled white hair. Quay had seen him before—the ship’s carpenter, a man who kept to himself and had a penchant for fishing from the side of the vessel when he wasn’t needed.

  The carpenter lunged, swinging the club, and Quay kept his balance well enough to slip the blow, close the distance between them, and ram a knee into the man’s crotch.

  Ryse, he realized. That man came from Ryse’s bunk.

  The man crumpled. The ship lurched again, and the door slammed shut. Quay’s head was starting to swim a little less, but his jaw was getting worse. The footsteps in the corridor grew louder, and he whirled to feel for Ryse in the darkness.

  Nothing. Her berth was empty.

  The footsteps reached the cabin. The door banged open again, and Quay swung unreservedly at the first silhouette that entered from the hall. He connected solidly, and something cracked him across the face in return. His knees wobbled, and someone slipped behind him while he staggered. Arms wrapped around his torso and hooked him underneath the armpits. A pair of hands closed around the back of his neck, and a boot kicked him behind the knees. He attempted to wrench free, but the man behind him brought him down slow and controlled.

  The scent of old limes and rotten teeth wafted over his shoulder. Prat, he thought. The ship’s cook, barrel-chested and dark-skinned. The sailor Quay had struck a moment before glared at him in the dim light, clutching his eye. He was skinnier, younger. A deckhand, maybe.

  A large shadow crossed between Quay and the light. The carpenter writhed on the deck and spat curses. The deckhand sat sulkily on a bunk, holding his jaw.

  Prat squeezed, and Quay grunted as his ribs shifted against one another.

  A moment later, the shadow of Tytan Rhelp filled the cabin door.

  The captain smiled, stroking his beard as he held a torch in one hand and sidled through the narrow portal. Quay tried to rise, but Prat shoved him roughly back to his knees. He took a deep breath. The swelling in his jaw made speaking awkward.

  “Captain Rhelp, you have no idea—”

  “I think I do, my prince.”

  Quay swallowed, hard. His mind ran through scenarios and solutions as fast as he could make it, calculated probabilities, guessed and gambled and wondered, and in the end, he didn’t have enough information to bargain with the man.

  Prat tightened his grip, and Quay’s head was forced down at an angle, so that he couldn’t even look Rhelp in the eye.

  “Tell me, Prince of Eldan. Who’s your companion?” Even now, Rhelp’s voice sounded soft and reassuring. Velvet. Like everything would be fine as long as Quay played along.

  It made him sick.

  “Where is she?” Quay asked. His voice sounded thick and swollen.

  Prat loosened his grip enough for Quay to look up. The gold in Rhelp’s smile shone in the torchlight.

  “Waiting with the others for me.”

  It took a moment for Quay to realize exactly what he meant.

  When he did, his heart squeezed painfully.

  Rhelp had one hand on his hip, the other wrapped around his torch. He still looked thoughtful, reasonable, friendly.

  A costume, worn by a monster.

  I could try to stop him, Quay thought. Tell him she’s a noble and there’ll be money in it for him if he keeps her safe. But he didn’t know where Rhelp’s allegiance lay. If he named the wrong house, there was a chance she would wind up dead.

  The truth, then. That she’s a Temple soulweaver who ran. That the Temple will pay for her return. But the trader might not risk holding a soulweaver for long. He might kill her outright rather than chance her recovering from whatever they’d already done to her and sinking the whole ship.

  Quay’s stomach roiled.

  A fat gob of phlegm struck him in the forehead, and Rhelp reached down and wrenched his chin hard enough to send white spikes of pain racing through his skull. The voice hardened. The warm, reassuring face disappeared, and the monster beneath crept out and showed itself. Rhelp’s eyes narrowed. His jaw tightened. “Talk, Prince Quay,” he whispered. “Or I’ll crank your jaw until you scream.”

  Quay’s heart pounded.

  He guessed.

  He gambled.

  “Nobody,” he said. The words tasted like ash. “An actress I hired in Mansend to play a part. She doesn’t even know who I am.” His jaw cracked and popped. His neck was beginning to ache.

  The answer seemed to please Rhelp. He stood. “A pity you were too sick to enjoy her company. She looks—lively.”

  The captain adjusted his trousers and grinned. “So, for that matter, do you.”

  Quay’s guts leaped into his throat.

  He’d been afraid before. Of more than he was proud of. But this—this feeling, looking into the eyes of a man who stared back at him and saw not a prince, not even a human, but a toy, or a pet, or something even less than that…

  This was new. He’d never had to face it. It had been his privilege not to, all his life.

  His mind threatened to run screaming into the back of his head and stay there. He very nearly let it. He wouldn’t have blamed himself if he had.

  Be cold, he told himself. What happens to your body does not, in the grand scheme of things, matter.

  Rhelp was watching him, smiling, and beginning to undo his belt. “A tax collector,” he said idly, “once took everything from my father over a petty disagreement.” The belt came free, and Rhelp snapped its buckle into Quay’s face. It opened a small cut. “We lost our home, our business. He took ship and died at sea. My mother sold everything she had to keep us alive until her body gave out, and then it was my turn.” The belt snapped out again, then again. “We had no justice, my prince. And I am very, very much going to enjoy taking it out of you now.”

  Blood trickled down Quay’s cheek, and he stared at the eyes of the men around him: the angry sunken wastes of the carpenter, the stung young orbs of the deckhand. Anyone who had put a price on him was unlikely to want him alive. If Ryse didn’t do something soon, if she couldn’t get them both out unharmed, it was likely no one would.

  But he had a message to bring to his people, and if he could take it no farther himself, he would deliver it to those who could.

  “I have a message for Eldan, Tytan Rhelp,” Quay said. His jaw felt like someone had clamped a vise over it. “The dragon is coming. Run for the hills, and take as many with you as will follow.”

  Rhelp’s face showed a flicker of surprise. Surprise and a morsel of fear just large enough to give Quay hope. The man froze, belt in hand, and narrowed his eyes.

 
The traders of Densel were known for their superstition.

  As his jaw ached and Rhelp’s spittle slid down his forehead, Quay considered trying to bargain for his and Ryse’s safety. There was a chance, just a chance—

  But then he looked at Rhelp—saw the anger, the misdirected rage—and remembered the sunken eyes of the men in the bunkroom, who’d watched and said nothing as he walked into an ambush.

  It was hopeless. Cole had told him about seeing eyes like that before, among soulless men who knew what they were doing was wrong but thought they’d gone too far to turn back. Quay hadn’t understood what he meant until now.

  His and Ryse’s fates had been sealed somewhere on the waves between Mansend and Densel, when those men’s hearts had failed, and there was no longer anything he could do to stave it off but talk and hope.

  “Tell me who bought my life,” he said, his jaw thickening the words, “and I’ll tell you my story, Tytan Rhelp. I’ll tell you where and when and by whom the dragon was released. I’ll tell you what the rest of the world is going to do about it.”

  The captain’s eyes glittered. The rough, splintered wood of the deck pressed into Quay’s knees. His stomach reeled.

  Rhelp pressed a finger to his nose and drew in a long, deep breath.

  “This will not change what happens to you, in the end,” he said. His eyebrows rose. “Understand?”

  Quay nodded. Play for time, he thought. As much as you can. Pray that Ryse can save you.

  “It’s known,” Rhelp said after a moment, “that House Pendilon will pay well for information that leads to you.” He grinned. “I’m sure they’ll pay more for your royal person.” The grin faded, and Rhelp moved toward Quay in the shadows, holding his trousers up with one hand. He grabbed Quay’s jaw again with the other, and a hundred tiny knives ripped through the prince’s mind.

  “Now, Prince of Eldan. Tell me what I need to know.”

  NINETEEN

  Seventy days before the destruction of Eldan City

  A hand rested on Ryse’s shoulder.