Dominion Rising: 23 Brand New Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels

by White, Gwynn

  “He, uhh…”

  Her beady eyes darted between me and Arwin. “You’re not just running from Mitbas for being thieves, are you?”

  “I’m just a thief,” Arwin argued. She pointed at me. “This one, however—”

  “Arwin!”

  “—is a nervous little firebug. He lights things when things get stressful.” Arwin looked to the ground and scuffed her worn, threadbare shoe against the stone paving. “It must’ve gotten out of control when Bruha ran away, and the stress just got to him.”

  Mabaya raised an eyebrow at her and then turned to look at me again. “Is this true?”

  I stared at Arwin in shock, but she wouldn’t meet my gaze. I couldn’t believe she’d just told a bald-faced lie to save my skin, and to Mabaya of all people.

  “Y-yes, it’s true,” I said, playing along with Arwin’s ruse. “There were some men who wanted to take the oil. Bruha got us away from them, but…it was too much for my nerves, I guess. I lit a fire to calm myself, and Bruha nudged my arm and got himself burned in the process.”

  Mabaya soaked in my words for a long moment and then nodded curtly. “So be it. Just bear in mind that my cart is made of wood, and Bruha is made of flesh. If you light another fire just because you’re feeling pressured, I’m leaving you on the side of the road. Understood? We don’t need that kind of trouble here.”

  I nodded quickly and slapped my hands to my sides. “Understood.”

  “Good. Come, now, Nico is waiting, and we’d best not disappoint.”

  We all loaded back into the cart, and Mabaya guided Bruha back up the cobbled streets until we reached the more populated areas in the center of town. Vendors dressed in leathers and hides shouted their prices and wares to us as we passed, and I saw a few more robed devotees to the Lord of Clouds walk by on foot.

  “Why are there so many of the Lord’s followers here?” Arwin asked.

  Mabaya flicked her reins and then turned to look back at her. There was a deep scowl etched onto her face. “Don’t you know anything?” She pointed a knobby-jointed finger back the way we’d come. “That temple back there is the greatest in all of the Qati Empire, drawing the faithful to its doors from every village within a hundred leagues.” She spat a globule of phlegm to the ground. “Do yourselves a favor and steer well clear of the Lord’s madhouses. Those men are nothing but fear mongers.”

  I gaped at her in shock. “The Lord delivers victories in battle to the empire. Our enemies should fear him and his might.” I couldn’t understand why Mabaya thought worshipping him was a bad thing; even though I wasn’t a strict adherent to the laws of the Lord in giving sacrifices and devoting at least a quarter of my day to quiet contemplation, I helped the poor when possible—despite being among those ranks myself—and gave reverence to the robed men who represented the Lord of Clouds’ interests here on the ground.

  “And the Dark Queen rules the Depths, drowning the souls of those who stray from the Lord’s tenets,” Mabaya said. “I know the faith.”

  “If you knew it so well, you’d know not to question it,” Arwin said.

  I glanced her way with eyebrows raised. I hadn’t taken her for the faithful type; I’d thought a long life of thievery and living as an outcast would’ve made her heart hard to the Lord’s promises. But I guess it shouldn’t be so surprising, I realized. After all, I’m much the same as her. Alone for years, scorned by the people of Pointe for something I couldn’t help. Arwin was my female counterpart.

  “Bah, you’re clueless, the both of you,” Mabaya said, swatting a hand and returning her focus to driving the cart.

  We reached Nico’s alley again and Arwin knocked sharply on his door. The man appeared a moment later with a quick smile on his face at the sight of her, and he motioned for her and Mabaya to carry in the last jug of oil.

  “Hold on,” I said. “I’ll help with this one. You aren’t leaving me out here again for some thugs to kill me.”

  Mabaya glanced at my wounded shoulder. “Have it your way, kid,” she said.

  I wrapped my one good arm around the side of the jug and waited for Arwin to grab it from the other side. We hoisted it up together, and I struggled to keep my side raised as we edged our way through Nico’s doorway and into the small room that lay beyond. A healthy fire burned in the stone hearth on one side of the room, its flames giving the room a warm orange light.

  “Just place it over there,” Nico said, pointing to a corner far from the hearth. The other jugs were already settled there.

  We dropped the jug into the indicated corner and I arched my back, stretching my spine. Arwin winced as several pops resonated loudly in the small room.

  “As always, I appreciate your service immensely,” Nico said, trailing a hand over the oil jugs. “But there is still the matter of the missing jug. You know I can’t afford to eat that kind of loss.”

  “I ran into trouble with soldiers near Mitbas,” Mabaya said, lying through her teeth. “They tossed the jug to the ground and smashed it to pieces before realizing I was just a harmless old woman.”

  “Ha! I’ll believe that when I see it. Regardless, I’m going to need you to do another courier run for me to make up the loss.”

  Mabaya crossed her arms. “I’ll take payment for this shipment, thank you very much, and then be on my way.”

  Nico shook his head. “I can’t pay you for goods I didn’t receive.”

  “Three-quarters payment, then.”

  “Mabaya, you know the deal. You bring me goods, I give you silver. Now, we can renegotiate after everything goes down, but until then…my hands are tied.”

  She stared him down for a long, hard minute before sighing and dropping her hands to her hips. “What’s the job?”

  “I’m glad you could see things my way.”

  Arwin stepped forward. “What about getting us to Cleighton?”

  “I need a crate of tamed steel blades transported to Ansible,” Nico explained.

  “That’s far too close to Harcour,” Mabaya said, “and you know it. It isn’t worth the risk.”

  “Hey!” Arwin shoved her face up close to Nico’s and glared him down. “We aren’t going to Ansible. That’s fifty leagues in the wrong direction. Tell him, Mabaya. Tell him we can’t go.”

  “If you don’t go, I can’t pay you anything,” Nico said to Mabaya.

  The old woman looked at me, then to Arwin, an apologetic frown on her face. “I have to do this,” she said, her voice quieter than I was used to hearing. “You’ll have to continue on to Cleighton without me.”

  “Ugh! I can’t believe this. After everything we did for you…you’re just an ungrateful old hag.” Arwin brushed past Nico and grabbed me by the arm. “Come on, Mal, we’re leaving.”

  “To go where?” I asked.

  “East! We aren’t going to Harcour, or Ansible, or anywhere else except Cleighton. That’s our destination.”

  I thought of the mountain of fire to the northeast; the metals smelted and tamed by its fires were the best in the land. I wanted Mabaya’s cart to help us get there, but there wasn’t any way to sway the old woman without any promise of coin at the end of the road. My feet stuttered, stumbled, then stepped of their own volition in Arwin’s wake as we made our way out the door.

  “I’m sorry, children,” Mabaya’s voice trailed behind us, but Arwin slammed the door on her and Nico.

  The distant sounds of the market reached my ears, and eddies of dust swirled in the air as we stood side by side in the alley. Bruha snorted and stared at us with intelligent eyes.

  “I can’t believe we just did all of that for nothing,” Arwin fumed. She stamped her feet and almost punched the wall a few times, stopping short just before her knuckles could break against the brick.

  “It wasn’t for nothing,” I reasoned. “We helped an old woman with her cart, and we’re a lot closer to Cleighton now than we would have been if we’d continued on foot.”

  Arwin stopped to give me a quick look. “I don’t l
ike you when you’re being reasonable. Can’t you let me stew in my anger for a minute?”

  “No,” I laughed. “Come on, I’m getting hungry, and the market here is much more hectic than the one back in Mitbas. Let’s see if we can scrounge up a quick meal.”

  “Well look who’s finally embracing the thief’s lifestyle,” she said proudly. Wrinkles appeared at the corners of her eyes as she grudgingly smiled. “You think we’ll be able to get away with it this time?”

  “As long as you don’t mess it up again.”

  “Hey! I would’ve been just fine.”

  “That guard had you pinned and you know it. It was only because I was there that you got away at all.”

  She raised her nose high in the air. “Even so, I didn’t mess up. It was a fluke that anyone even saw me nick that loaf.”

  I allowed her that. Arwin couldn’t have survived as long as she had on the outskirts of Pointe, home to arguably the harshest environment and strange woodland creatures, without some measure of skill. Her reservoirs of luck were more like shallow pools, the history of her misfortune stretching back since before she’d been scarred. Her whole life had been one long experience in the art of survival, and stealthy thievery was at the core of her continued existence.

  I waved the hand of my good arm. “Market’s this way.”

  We walked out of the alley, leaving Bruha to snort on his own outside Nico’s door, and followed the sound of chatter and music toward the city center. Here, the banners draped from the soaring stone walls grew varied and colorful, as did the conversations that I managed to overhear.

  “…just stormed out of the temple like a…”

  “Cabbages! Carrots! A silver each, or a gold for an armful!”

  “Did you hear? Another attack along the southern rim…”

  “You, young man! Yes, you!”

  I realized that last voice was shouting at me, and despite Arwin tugging at my arm, trying to pull me along, I couldn’t resist walking in the direction of the strange merchant.

  He was wearing a hat unlike I’d ever seen before. It looked like a mix of fabric and metal, with gears along the wide rim that seemed to have no function at all. The rest of his attire was equally strange. Leather straps held extra bits of metal across his waist and torso, and sturdy leather boots reached halfway up his shins, their soles unnecessarily thick. He wore black leather pants, and a slender gold chain hung in a loop from one pocket. His gloves, unlike the rest of his dark attire, were as white as snow.

  “Are you talking to me?” I asked when I was finally within earshot.

  “Mal, what are you doing?” Arwin asked, clearly frustrated.

  “Of course I’m talking to you,” the strange man said. “Please, there isn’t much time, and there’s so much I need to tell you.” He stopped and glanced over his shoulder, looking around for a moment before continuing. “I know about the curse that plagues you. The one that prevents you from laying eyes upon your own form? Ah, see, I can tell by your expression that you know what I speak of!”

  I stared at him with mouth agape. “How do you know?”

  “How do I know what?” Arwin asked, staring at me curiously.

  The man continued in a flurry of words. “I need you to deliver a message to a man in Cleighton. Name’s Pilor. Give him half of what’s in this bag and tell him the debt is paid.” He pulled a brown leather sack from one of his coat’s pockets and held it aloft. It jingled with the sound of metal.

  “Wait, why? You don’t even know me. Why don’t you do this yourself?”

  “There’s no time!” he urged. “It’s always about time, always. I don’t have long, certainly not long enough to make it to Cleighton.”

  I thought that was strange. Looking at him, the man didn’t appear to be sick or wounded. “I…I don’t know.”

  “Mal, what don’t you know?”

  I finally turned to Arwin to see that her eyes held a solid note of concern in them. “Don’t you think this is all strange?”

  “What’s strange?”

  I turned back to the man briefly and said, “Sorry, she’s a bit slow,” before rounding on my friend again. “A strange man comes out of nowhere, tells us to go to Cleighton—Depths take coincidences that we happen to already be headed there—and offers a sack of coins to perfect strangers to deliver a message on his behalf?”

  “Mal, you’ve really gone off into the Depths, haven’t you?” The worry made her voice sound pitying, so sincerely so that I wondered what had gotten into her brain.

  “Come on, even you have to—” I started to say as I turned back to the oddly dressed man, but stopped when I saw that he had vanished. I glanced sharply in both directions, but he was nowhere to be found amid the hustle and bustle of the busy market.

  “You just started spouting nonsense for two minutes straight,” Arwin continued. She placed the back of her hand against my forehead. “You don’t feel warm.”

  I smacked her hand away. “Of course I’m not warm.” In fact, a chill was working its way down my spine. I knew I hadn’t imagined the man; I could still clearly remember his foreign attire, the frantic rhythm of his words. He had been here, but now there was no sign of him. Was I actually going crazy?

  “Hey, you dropped something.” Arwin stooped down to grab something, and then yelped in surprise when she heard the clink of metal.

  “See? He was here!” I snatched the leather bag from her hands and pulled the string at its mouth to reveal the gold and silver coins inside. “He told me to give half of this to some man named Pilor in Cleighton and say ‘the debt is paid.’ I have no idea what he meant by that.”

  “He who?” Arwin insisted.

  “The…man! I don’t know how to describe him. He was this tall”—I held up a hand a few inches above my head—“and had the strangest getup you’ve ever seen. Lots of extra metal bits and dark leather. And white gloves,” I added.

  “White gloves?”

  “No accounting for fashion choices.”

  Arwin looked at the leather bag cradled gently in my hands. “We’re going to Cleighton anyway…did he say what to do with the other half?”

  I shook my head.

  “I guess it’s meant for us, then.”

  I couldn’t find any argument with that logic. We needed the coin, and he hadn’t specified what needed to happen with the rest of it. Maybe it was his reward to us for delivering Pilor’s payment.

  “Come to think of it, there’s nothing stopping us from keeping all of it for ourselves…”

  “Arwin!”

  “What? You can’t just drop a bunch of money in strangers’ hands and expect them to do your dirty work for you!” she argued. “What if this Pilor person is dangerous? We’d be walking into a trap, and for what? On some debtor’s behalf? No, thanks.” Her chin tilted up as her eyes looked toward the sky. “This is the Lord of Clouds looking out for us, that’s what this is.”

  I snorted. “You don’t hold the faith for him.”

  A smirk curled her mouth. “Even so, this is to our benefit. We’ll have no problem getting to Cleighton now, properly clothed and fed the whole way, with enough left over even to get us set up when we arrive.”

  Again, I couldn’t find fault with her logic. It felt dirty to go against the strange man’s wishes, but we were in dire straits. Between a stranger’s debt and our next meal, I had to think about the short-term game. Maybe we’d still be able to fulfill our end of the bargain if there was enough coin left over upon reaching Cleighton.

  “All right, deal. We use this to get to Cleighton,” I said.

  “Yes! Oh, Mal, I knew you’d see things the right way.” Arwin darted in for a hug, and before I could react, her arms had wrapped around tight, squeezing the air from my lungs.

  “You’re…my shoulder…” I gasped, and she immediately let go.

  “Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to. How is it, by the way?”

  Truthfully, it hadn’t hurt when she’d hugged me. I just had
n’t felt comfortable with the sudden outburst of affection. Now I felt guilty for making her think she had made my injury worse.

  “It doesn’t hurt anymore, actually. I think that worm thing is doing its job.”

  “Good. At least Mitbas wasn’t a total failure, then.”

  “Total failure? We got fed, found a way to treat what Beyland did to my shoulder, and we secured a ride almost halfway to Cleighton. Mitbas was a miracle compared to what we’ve endured here.”

  “Up until now,” Arwin said, her eyes darting hungrily to the leather pouch still secured in my hands.

  “Yes,” I agreed, and then slowly, deliberately, cinched the mouth closed and clenched my fingers around the small bag. “I think I’d better hold on to this for now.”

  “There could be thieves in this city—”

  “There are. The two of us.”

  Arwin continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “—and you want the one-armed cripple to hold our extremely precious sack of Lord-given, life-preserving wealth?”

  “Well, no, when you put it that way it sounds stupid. But I also don’t like the one-armed cripple’s chances of chasing down a streetwise thief who can hold her own in a fight against an imperial soldier, so I think the pouch will stay right where it is.”

  I stared her down, daring her with my eyes to argue, but she reluctantly backed down, her shoulders slumping forward as her head dipped in a shallow nod. “You’re a jerk.”

  “Then you’re in good company.”

  Arwin stuck her tongue out at me, but I sensed her amusement beneath it. Then, after a moment, she seemed to sober up. She glanced up and down the street and then gently pulled me in one direction, vaguely heading east. “You think we can afford a horse to get us to Cleighton?”

  I subtly hefted the bag of coins in my hand. It was heavy, and I’d seen more than a few gold coins among the silver. “We would need to buy two horses,” I reminded her, “one for each of us, and I’m not sure how much we’d have left over after that.” I thought furiously as we walked, and after we passed another half dozen vendors’ stalls, a thought occurred to me. “Why don’t we get Mabaya to help us? She seems motivated by coin. We could hire her on as our driver.”