Tempest

by Cari Z

  “You have a strange way of counting failure,” Colm said once they were aligned. “Who could have guessed three months ago that we would ever have this again? I thought we were separated forever.”

  “So did I.” They had already talked over the transformation, how Nichol couldn’t have known what would happen, how it was inevitable that Colm would be submerged at some point, living and working in Caithmor. The guilt Nichol still carried inside him was something that probably only time would diminish, and so Colm held him and kissed him and loved him with everything he had and was patient.

  Nichol’s lips pressed slightly chilly kisses against Colm’s collarbone. “What will we do now?”

  Ah, the future. That was the one thing they hadn’t talked about yet, and honestly, Colm hadn’t been eager to. The past was done, and he was content in the present. He didn’t want to think about tomorrow or next week or next year. But he couldn’t hide from it, not when Nichol was asking. “What do you want to do?”

  Nichol chuckled. “That isn’t an answer.”

  “It’s the only one that matters,” Colm replied. “Truly. I can’t go back to Anneslea, and I’m not sure how we would return to Caithmor, since I’m presumed dead by everyone who knew me. Apart from that, all I want is to be with you. Perhaps you could write,” he suggested after a moment, “and see if my sister made it to the Cove. She’s all I really worry about now.” The village they were sheltering in had only sporadic, and very careful, contact with the larger world, but they’d already been assured that letters could be sent if they needed. Special traders and caravaneers that catered to the secret places across the empire stopped by every now and then, and Meea expected one to arrive within the next few weeks.

  “I can write,” Nichol agreed. “I want to know how Gran is doing, of course, and learn whether she’s had any news of the fleet. But where shall I write from? Here? This is a friendly place, but it’s a bit hot for my blood, and we would stand out in any nearby town. Not that I think the Spectacular has wasted any more time looking for us. They’ve likely got plenty of their own problems now, but it’s risky.”

  “Meea says she knows someone who can help us travel elsewhere,” Colm said. “Someone with experience dealing with my kind, it seems. She says he should be by any time.”

  “You look human,” Nichol insisted, not for the first time. “You look perfect. There’s nothing amiss in your appearance except the addition of the walking stick. A broad-brimmed hat will shade your face, if it’s the eye you worry about.”

  “I think sometimes that you love me too well,” Colm said. He meant it to be light, but Nichol didn’t take it that way.

  “I think sometimes it is astonishing that you love me at all when I’ve been such a prat,” he said, his lips a terse line. “I know, I know—I’m not doubting you. How could I, after you saved me over and over again?” Colm didn’t say anything, just tilted Nichol’s face up and kissed his mouth, softening his tension, soliciting a response until Nichol was sweet and relaxed against him, leaning into every embrace.

  “Well then, there is one option,” Nichol said once he’d caught his breath. “Travel to a new town, a new city. We could run an inn, if we put our backs into it. You could cook—”

  “I would make a terrible cook,” Colm protested, but Nichol swallowed his objection with a kiss and a grin.

  “I would be the bartender, we could hire a few comely lasses to wait the tables, and our guests could sleep in august company above their own mounts in the stables, on a bed of straw as soft as cotton.”

  “This sounds like an inn destined for failure,” Colm said dryly.

  “Nonsense, we could sell it as a challenge. And anyway, if we were close enough to the main highways, we would have traffic regardless.”

  “I suppose. Or,” Colm said, warming to the discussion, “we could find a lake where I could fish without worrying, and you could lead the local militia against marauders.”

  “Or,” Nichol countered, “we could hire kidnappers to spirit away Gran and Baylee, bring them with us to our new home, get them to run the inn while you fished and I led the militia, and live happily ever after.”

  “Megg would kill us,” Colm said.

  “True. She would never leave the Cove, not while Granddad is still around.” Nichol sounded a little put out that their fantasy had been so thoroughly derailed.

  “Whatever happens,” Colm told him, “we’ll weather it together.”

  “We’ll have to,” Nichol chuckled. “For I won’t get very far without you.”

  It could have been fate, or the will of the gods, or the last vestige of the luck in Colm’s blood coming to aid them, but the man that Meea had spoken of, the trader who arrived the following week that knew how to handle people like them, was a very familiar face.

  “Weathercliff!” Fergus shouted at them from across the village’s small market square. One of the men had gone to escort his wagons in earlier: apparently, the path to the village changed with every new flooding season, old paths drowning and new ones growing strong. It was one of the things that served to keep them happily isolated. “By the gods, lad, I should have known! What other long, pale, fish-loving bastard would be crazy enough to bloody swim from Caithmor to the Siskanns!

  “Oh, I’ve heard all about it,” he snapped, pushing his bulk past their laughing hosts and marching over to Colm. “These folks couldn’t wait to tell me about their odd guests, and it didn’t take much for me to put it all together. Well, stand up, lad! Let me look at you!”

  Colm stood up, still using his walking stick, and winced when Fergus put his hands on his hips. “You’re limping now? And growin’ in your hair again—what happened to that? And you!” He saw Nichol and turned to rage at him, flapping his hand at the bandage still wrapping Nichol’s arm. “What in the gods’ name possessed you to carve yourself up like a festival ham, Pickle? You’re lucky to be alive! Marley was right, I should never have bothered with you two in the first place, the things you’ve done to my nerves.” He huffed, stepped forward and pulled Colm into a rough embrace. “You are a plague on my conscience, lad, someone that I’ll worry about for the rest of my life lest I take care of things, eh?”

  “Can you take care of things?” Colm asked sheepishly.

  “Would I even bring it up if I couldn’t?” Fergus demanded. “But that’s talk for later times. Right now I’ve got wagons to unload and camels to delouse and a hundred other things waiting to get done, all because you two had to go and distract me from my duties. Marley!”

  “What?” the other man yelled back from where he was unloading the first wagon. It was a smaller train this time, only two wagons and the pair of them to work them. The two were packed to overflowing, though, vast mushroom-shaped loads held together with burlap and twine almost, but not quite, falling over the sides.

  “Have you found the bitterroot yet?”

  “Does it look,” Marley grunted as he loosened a lashing, “like I’ve found the bloody bitterroot yet?”

  “When you do bring some to me, I need it for these ridiculous lads.”

  “The faster you get your fat arse over here to help me, the sooner it’ll be found!”

  “We can help you unload,” Nichol offered quickly. “And you can tell us more of Caithmor!”

  Fergus snorted. “You look barely capable of keeping your feet. What makes you think that—bloody Two, Marley!” He hustled back to the wagon just in time to catch a bale of pale blue cotton fabric that was tumbling toward the ground. “You’re useless, old man,” he muttered, but neither of them turned Colm’s and Nichol’s help away after that, or Meea’s and her sister’s.

  It took time to unload the cargo and disperse the special orders that some of the nimh-folk were waiting for, but by the end of the afternoon, things were back in order, one of the wagons empty and the other repacked more efficiently. Fergus accepted
an invitation to the sage’s house for the evening meal, but Marley went with Colm and Nichol, bringing along a package of bitterroot for them to chew. It would diminish their pain, they were told, and sure enough, one sliver dulled the sharp throb in Colm’s foot to a barely there ache.

  “I needed a break from that oaf anyhow,” he said gruffly as he sat down in one of the chairs they’d been provided with. “He’s been a bit of a wreck this trip, let me tell you.”

  “Why is that?” Colm asked around the pulpy root.

  “Uncertain times, lad. King Iarra was supposed to be back to the city this spring, but he can’t afford to leave the Garnet Isles without a firm hand. That leaves the regent in charge, and apparently, he’s decided it’s time for a magic purge. Anywhere a priest passes on tales, there’ll be a representative of the Ardeaglais there to investigate, with soldiers too.”

  “That was why the Roving Spectacular couldn’t keep to the main roads,” Nichol said, almost spilling the plate of bread in his haste to speak. “Their ringmaster was afraid of arrest or worse.”

  “Aye, and worse is happening.” Marley shook his head. “I don’t worry for us so much. Fergus is well-known along these routes, and he can keep his curse hidden away. But they’re rounding up people on sheer suspicion, anyone who looks different, anyone who acts a bit strange. Caithmor’s enacted strict regulations about regular worship attendance that’s got the working class in a bit of an uproar, but the regent won’t back down.” Marley looked at them seriously. “You won’t be able to go back there.”

  Colm and Nichol exchanged a glance. “We thought as much,” Nichol said. “But what will we do?”

  “What, the Siskanns aren’t to your liking?” Markey asked sarcastically. “You’re a fisherman, aren’t you?”

  Colm sighed. “We had a…hard time getting here. It’s a friendly place, but I don’t think we want to stay here unless there’s no other option.”

  “That’s the thing about Fergus.” Marley took a piece of fluffy bread and bit into it with a bit of a smile. “He’s always thinking of other options.”

  Marley and Fergus took over the floor of the hut that Colm and Nichol had been provided that night. Nichol slept like the dead, and Marley, after doing the bulk of the unloading that day, was also too weary to keep his eyes open after the sunset.

  Colm started in the bed next to Nichol, but he felt restless. This was a good place, a relatively safe place, but he couldn’t find it in his heart to love it yet. The method of his arrival, no matter that it had ended positively, still weighed on him too much to disregard.

  He saw Fergus stand and head outside, and a moment later, carefully untangled himself from Nichol’s close embrace and went out to join him. Fergus didn’t look back, just walked on toward the wagon that held his supplies. Most of the nimh-folk were in their homes, but there were still hot ashes in the brazier in the center of town. By the time Colm caught up with his friend, Fergus was lighting a thick, wide candle off one of the tiny orange coals still surviving among its dead.

  “The scent helps drive the insects off,” Fergus explained quietly as he set the candle down on the edge of the cart and heaved himself up onto it. It rocked gently under his weight, and when he gestured for Colm to sit beside him, it felt almost nostalgic.

  “So, lad.” Fergus rubbed his hands together briskly, although they couldn’t be cold. “You’ve had a right time of it since we last met, it seems.”

  That was one way of putting it. “That’s true,” Colm agreed. And then, because he had to know: “Have you heard anything of the Roving Spectacular?”

  “The bastards who caged you?” Fergus had already been told of Colm’s transformation, and how it had not been into the selkie he’d always assumed it would be. “Why’re you interested in them?”

  Colm sighed. “One of them was kind to me, and another wasn’t…he wasn’t unkind.” Colm had no idea what Kith’s tale was, but he’d seemed to be just as much a pawn of fate as Colm, in his own way.

  “Disbanded, far as I know. There were some rumors on the road, something about bandits and a village riot. The regent’s riders went looking for them, but as far as I know, they never found anything.” Fergus shrugged. “It doesn’t really matter. An outfit like the rovers always finds a way to carry on, even if it’s only for the next incarnation. People like us, we survive. Through conquest and fire and plague, we find ways to live. Much as the Ardeaglais would like to be shed of us, someone will always find his way through.”

  Colm thought of Kiaran then, how even blind he’d seemed to see more clearly than most of the people around him. Surely he could disguise himself so that he could travel and find whatever it was—or whoever—he was looking for. “So you just go on, then?”

  “That’s my way, always has been. Doesn’t mean it has to suit everyone.” He gestured around them at the village. “These people have been here for longer than I have, that’s for sure. No king’s managed to rout them yet, and I doubt one ever will. You’d be safe here, if you wanted to be.”

  “I know.” Just those two words were enough explanation for Fergus.

  “Bloody weather, isn’t it?” he confided. “Can’t stand so much damn water in the air. Give me a sandstorm over this Two-blasted dampness any day, that’s what I say. Of course, leave me in the desert for too long and I start to wish for snow. Lay me down in the snow and I’ll be begging for rain before day’s end.” Fergus chuckled. “I’ve a changeable nature.”

  “I don’t,” Colm said. “I just want a place I can call home.”

  “Well then.” They looked at each other for a long moment. “I think I might know a place. You and your lad would have to travel with me for a time, but by the end of the journey you’d have a place to make a new home in. There’s a village on the eastern side of the White Spires that’s friendly. Plenty of that snow I yearn for, and extra rooms for you two when Marley and I aren’t there. It’s the one town I rest my head in through the year where I’ve no wife, so there’s no need to worry about disrupting anyone’s household.

  “It’s rather hard to find,” Fergus added, “like all these places. But it could be good to you, to both of you, if you can wait the half a year it’ll take to get there. You can get your strength back, see a bit more of the world.” He tilted his head at Colm. “What d’ye say, Weathercliff?”

  Colm thought about Nichol, always steadfast, willing to stay with him no matter what. He thought of how good it had felt to have a place to lay his head that he could really lay claim to, and how glorious it would be to have one with Nichol. A place that might accept his strangeness, and their bond. He thought about seasons on the road with Fergus and Marley, days of work and stories and nights rolled up beside Nichol beneath a wagon, alone together for all that they might be surrounded by a caravan full of others.

  “I say yes.”

  Epilogue

  “It shall not leak,” Nichol declared, staring pensively up at the roof while Colm checked on the fish pie that was cooking in the small iron oven. Snow had just started falling in Faoilea, a storm that had been predicted by Marley and spurred Nichol to finally nail down the last of the new tiles. Fergus and Marley had left yesterday, the nip in the air just beginning to bite, and Colm and Nichol had spent all their time since clearing away the refuse that came when a house was left empty for a long time.

  Faoilea was a tiny hamlet, smaller even than Anneslea, on the opposite side of the White Spires as Colm’s former home. As promised, it had been nearly impossible to find. Fergus had hemmed and hawed for almost an hour thinking they’d missed the turn before Marley had finally steered them right, and even then it had been a tight fit for the wagons. The trail skirted boulders and a rocky scree field and gave the camels a hard time, but in the end, they made it to Faoilea, where Fergus was welcomed by the village elder, a man with slate-blue skin and a white beard.

  “What is he?” Nichol
had breathed next to Colm as he watched the pair greet each other.

  “Old’s what he is,” Marley had said quietly. “He’s the founder of this village, and he’s never looked any different to me in twenty years of coming here. Part giant, perhaps.”

  “Perhaps.” Nichol looked like he wanted to ask, but Colm had persuaded him not to, at least not until they’d had a chance to make a good first impression.

  Apparently Fergus’s word carried some weight, however, for they were welcomed into Faoilea kindly. Liyall, the elder, seemed particularly pleased. “It’s about time someone settled in that old place,” he told them over dinner that night, rock goat cooked in a mushroom stew. “When I gave it to you, I didn’t mean for you to let it founder,” he chided Fergus, who shrugged helplessly. “But at least you’ve brought us someone to fill it while we wait for you to give up your wandering ways. Tell me of yourself, Colm Weathercliff.”

  “I…” What did he mean? What he was, what kind of magic he had? Nichol’s hand found his under the table, linking their fingers together, and he drew strength from the connection. “I was a fisherman. I was changed by the sea,” Colm said at last. “And Nichol changed me back, but not without cost. I can’t go back to where I’ve been.”

  “This is a good place to be,” Liyall said. “Despite our Fergus not being able to stay longer than a week or so. And Nichol Searunner, would you stay as well?”

  “I’m staying with Colm,” Nichol said quickly. “Wherever he leads me.”

  Liyall had smiled. “Then I think you’ll both do well here.”

  And they had. Having a house that they could call their own, even one as decrepit as Fergus’s, gave them both a sense of purpose. Occupation beyond repairs would come with time, Liyall assured them. For now, they needed to batten down their hatches against the coming winter.

  “No leaks. I’m sure of it,” Nichol said again, even though he didn’t sound completely sure.