Inkspice (The Mapweaver Chronicles Book 2)

by Kaitlin Bellamy

  At this, Fox grinned to himself. He could just imagine the look of mock scandal and outrage on Farran’s face if he had been there to hear it.

  “I’ll have a word with Radda,” said Darby, standing and stretching.

  But as Fox followed suit, he couldn’t help but think, Radda might not be so easy to convince. He was not one to pull his company away from danger. If anything, he was the type to stay and help. He felt it was his duty. Fox remembered the time the Shavid had helped save Thicca Valley. He’d even asked Radda about it once, and the player’s words had stuck with him.

  “When you wander without roots, every city is your home,” he had said.

  Bartrum agreed to walk them out of the Nightshade District. As they left the Goblin’s Crown, Fox suddenly remembered what had led him to seek out his old friend in the first place.

  “They said you could teach me more about the maps up at the library,” said Fox, falling into step beside Bartrum as they made their way through the district. “Is that true? Or just part of ...” He stopped himself from saying “your cover” out in the open, but Bartrum understood.

  “Not sure what I could teach you, to be honest,” admitted Bartrum. “You may know more about the subject than me, as a cartomancer.”

  “That’s just it, though,” said Fox, a touch of unbidden gloom creeping into his voice. “Everything I’ve learned has been self-taught, or an accident. I just thought ... maybe with the right teacher ... You helped so much before, but now we know what we’re looking for. And I’m tired of poking around in the dark, hoping to stumble upon something that helps.”

  “Ah,” said Bartrum airily, “the scholastic pursuit of ancient magics. How could I possibly say no?”

  Behind them, Darby grunted quietly, but other than that he offered no objection. So Fox ploughed on.

  “I don’t know how much longer we’ll be here, but I could meet you whenever you have the chance, as long as we stay? Anything would help, really.”

  “Tomorrow then. We can meet in my offices, around mid-morning.” He told Fox how to get there, then bid them farwell at the last stairway that led back Upcity. As Fox began his ascent, Darby hung back to speak to Bartrum. Fox could hear their low, muttered conversation, borne to him on a playful late-night breeze.

  “Shared quite a few secrets tonight,” said Darby. “No offense, but isn’t it your job to keep these sorts of things to yourself?”

  “All is done at my own discretion. I discuss what I will, with whomsoever I choose. Even an espionage commander, fighting his wars in the dark, needs an army.”

  “Putting an awful lot of faith in us, aren’t you?” asked Darby.

  “No sir,” said Bartrum. Fox glanced back over his shoulder just in time to catch the half-smile and nod in his direction. “I’m putting an awful lot of faith in him.”

  Chapter Seven

  Cutlass

  Dawn was still hours away when Lai slipped quietly out of the Five Sides, and into the sleeping valley. She was dressed in her training gear: hide leggings that allowed for movement, tucked into laced and well-worn boots; a matching vest, laced over a thin cotton shirt in dark green. Daggers were tucked into both her belt and leather wrist guards, and she wore a crude shortbow and quiver across her back. Her hair was braided and coiled, pinned carefully out of her eyes and face.

  She knew the way down to the proving grounds by heart, and her feet found their way with the barest of input from her eyes. Still, she wore a lymstone around her neck as a precaution, granting herself the clear night vision that the strange gems provided their wearer. Most Thiccans only used their lymstones ritualistically, holding them in hand at every valley funeral, letting their green, heatless light illuminate the town. Occasionally, however, certain groups found uses for the lymstones’ more mysterious properties: wearing it around one’s neck like a pendant granted light only to the wearer. Miners used them to see into the depths of mountain trenches, and women could use them to sew in the darkest of Deep Winter without the light waking their children. But such magical light came at a cost. When used too much, they caused intense headaches and dizzy spells, and in more extreme cases, some even began to lose the power of speech.

  But Lai only wore hers on these pre-dawn treks, until the sky lightened. Besides, she’d never had so much as a hint of a headache after wearing hers. She knew it was different for everyone, but it seemed she had an incredibly high tolerance for the gems.

  The grounds were empty, but she hadn’t expected company. Not yet. Instead, she slipped through the wagon-wide opening in the rough stone-and-wood barrier that signified the border of the proving grounds, and strode purposefully to the silent army of training dummies. She stood for a moment at the heart of the dummy ring, steadying her breath and clearing her mind. Then, by the private glow of her lymstone, Lai attacked.

  The yearly Courter’s Contests had long since ended. Traditionally, that meant the proving grounds would have been cleared and empty again. The flags that marked finish lines and the wrestling pens would all be broken down. The targets and dummies for the archery and knife-throwing contests would have been burned as part of the ceremonies, and the large field would have been sitting empty until the spring weddings, and then again until the Midsummer bonfire. The proving grounds had always been a place of celebration and deep-seated, seasonal traditions. But now, in the cracks between ceremonies, a new purpose had grown like a strange flower. And it was all because of the nightmares.

  It had been Picck who first admitted, during one particularly quiet evening at the Five Sides, to being kept awake at night. A smattering of jokes circulated the room, suggesting his lack of sleep was due to his infant child, or the passionate attempts to make her a sibling. But Picck shook his head miserably, and confessed the dreams that plagued him — dreams of the valley being attacked like it had been last winter. Of the Desloata returning.

  The thought of the cruel, mutilated raiders made Lai shudder and push herself harder with a feral yell. She spun around the training circle in a well-practiced dance. It was a pattern she had developed, a warm-up drill that utilized every skill she’d been learning since the late spring. She flung daggers at the straw-and-cloth dummies, feeling a flush of triumph whenever they buried themselves into the padded heads and stomachs. She tackled them with her shoulders and aimed kicks and punches at their canvas bodies. She loosed arrow after arrow into them, growling at each shot that missed, and scrutinizing each one that made contact.

  Before the Desolata, Thicca Valley had always been a peaceful haven. No armies marched through town, no lords wanted to claim the little hamlet for their own. Miners and farmers learned to wrestle and fight for enjoyment, and to show off their strength when it came time to win a bride. But their skills had never been put to practical use. And when the valley suddenly found itself the target of vicious intent, nobody was prepared. Death settled upon Thicca Valley like a fog, and Picck was right on the front lines when the Desolata broke through. Ever since, he had blamed himself for the twelve deaths at the Five Sides that night.

  The valley as a whole had tried to put the tragedy behind them, but it was not only Picck that had the nightmares. Evenings at the tavern grew more and more subdued, as talk turned to the growing fear of dreams and sleep. Fear of waking up to find loved ones gone, or the Desolata clawing at their windows through a deadly storm.

  Perhaps it was the guilt that had been plaguing Picck even more than the nightmares, but it was his idea to take control of that fear, and shape it into something useful. Like turning dough to pie and sticky buns, the baker turned frightened and frustrated townsfolk into fighters. What began as a simple training regimen to blow off steam quickly grew. Miners began to teach wrestling to anyone who wanted to learn. Fox’s father trained archery, whenever he wasn’t off hunting, and everyone learned to wield a simple knife.

  Now, months later, Thicca Valley had the beginnings of a small militia. Lai had joined up immediately as Picck’s second in command, expecti
ng to be the only woman who wanted to learn. But, to her surprise, most of the widows who had lost their husbands in the attack were there the moment they heard about the training group. A few of the teenaged boys scoffed at them, until a tiny, frail-looking widow named Aedish knocked the loudest one silly with her staff. Not an ill word was spoken among the group after that, and slowly, even more Thiccan women began to train when they could, determined to help protect their homes and families.

  Lai loved her time on the grounds. She’d helped Picck build their training routine, and kept the troupes in order when they worked. Early on, someone jokingly called Lai “Captain” when she was drilling trainees, and the nickname stuck. With so much changing around her, the feeling of control and usefulness was almost intoxicating. She embraced the title, and took it upon herself to push harder. To learn more. To practice every free moment she had.

  The sky had gone from blackest coal to violet and slate by the time Lai collapsed, the last flourishes of her private training regimen complete. She lay sprawled out on the grass, every muscle on fire, her heart close to bursting. Her bow lay discarded beside her, its arrows spent. The dummies themselves were very much the worse for wear, each sporting new battle scars and most with daggers and arrows still sprouting from them like deadly weeds. For a moment, Lai simply lay there, catching her breath, trying to sink into the grass like water and flee her own exhaustion. But, despite her body’s protests, she forced herself to a sitting position and placed her hands on her knees. Eyes closed, she re-gathered herself piece by piece, focus and meditation easing the pain. Or, at least, pushing it away to be dealt with later.

  The sun was finally beginning to melt the dew that clung to the grass and Lai’s boots when the others began to approach. Lai was already on her feet, her weapons gathered and stowed out of the way, all hints of the pre-dawn exercises gone. Her lymstone was tucked away in an inner pocked of her vest. She waved cheerily at the small group, four women and two men. The rest wouldn’t be far behind.

  Terric and Vita came first, arm-in-arm as usual. Terric saluted Lai cheerfully, and Vita blew a kiss by way of greeting, before the two settled into their own warm-up routine. As always, Lai was amusedly surprised when the couple could let go of each other for long enough to train at all. The two were usually sickeningly inseparable, as they had been since they’d first begun courting. Good-natured joking and bets about Terric’s prowess in the bedroom followed the pair wherever they went, but the two accepted it all with endearing charm. Still, when Terric first appeared at training with bubbly, curvy Vita in tow, even Lai couldn’t help herself. She teased them along with the rest of the company, committing her own bawdy jokes to the mix without hesitation.

  But Vita worked just as hard as any of them, and very quickly they learned to respect her. Terric had taught her many of his own wrestling and hand-to-hand combat tricks, and she was quickly becoming a force to be reckoned with. Lai was proud of her, but that didn’t make it any less amusing to watch the couple go through their own training warm ups, punctuated with giggles and kisses on each others’ noses whenever one of them got pinned.

  Aedish and her sisters came next, all three nodding wordlessly to Lai and then setting to work, slipping easily into their practiced staff patterns. Since Aedish had proven her expertise, she had become something of an unspoken leader in staves and batons. Her sisters, each as spindly and frail-looking as Aedish herself, had joined up shortly after. Now, after tireless months of practice, the three were a deadly unit. They rarely spoke, not even to each other, and some Thiccans claimed they were not human women at all, but instead faye creatures that spoke with their minds.

  The last member of the group peeled off from the others as they approached, making his way straight for Lai. He was tall and well-muscled, with a mane of close-cropped ginger curls. Lai smiled up at eighteen-year-old Cullen as he approached. Of all the trainees, he was the one Lai most looked forward to seeing each morning.

  Cullen was not a Thiccan by birth, but the valley folk had quickly adopted him as one of their own when his family moved to town. It had been over a year since the Desolata had attacked, but Thicca Valley had not been the only target. The raiders had first descended upon the city of Hammon, three days away. Its survivors had scattered across Sovesta and through the Highborn Mountains, looking for any community that would take them. Some refugees were only temporary, but Cullen and his family were among those that stayed. He was one of the first to join the militia-in-training, and he had been an excellent asset. It wasn’t long before he and Lai found favorite sparring partners in each other, and became something of a team on the proving grounds.

  “Captain,” he said lightly, coming to a stop beside her. And then, glancing over at the rolling, giggling mass that was Terric and Vita, he added, “Turns the stomach, doesn’t it?” He said it in mock disgust, but Lai knew better.

  “Oh, that?” she said with a smirk. “That’s downright tame. You should have seen her the first winter after they got married. Terric was away on caravan, and she was a bloody nightmare! Inconsolable! When she came into the Five Sides, people would buy her dozens of drinks just to shut her up.” She considered for a moment. “Come to think of it, she might have been good for business.”

  Cullen laughed, and the two began to warm up themselves, going through a familiar routine of disarming techniques and hand-to-hand combat while the rest of the company arrived a few at a time. Soon, the training grounds were full of grappling pairs as everyone shook off the morning sleep and woke up their minds and bodies. As Lai let her focus drift momentarily, sweeping the crowd to check who was there, Cullen took advantage of her lapse. In an instant, Lai was flat on her back in the grass, the breath knocked from her lungs. Instantly, the pains of her private pre-dawn training doubled, and she felt every muscle protest. Swallowing a whimper, she groaned a curse under her breath, and Cullen reached out a hand to help her up, a devilish grin on his face. Lai laughed and reached out to take it but, instead of standing, she shifted her grip at the last moment and pulled, aiming a swift kick at Cullen’s knee as she did so. He came crashing down to the ground, barely missing falling on top of Lai, who rolled away and sprang to her feet.

  There was a smattering of applause from the handful of trainees who had stopped to watch, and a few good-natured jeers at Cullen as he hauled himself upright once more. With an impish smirk, Lai elbowed Cullen in the ribs before turning on her heel and strolling off to check on the rest of the company. She spent several minutes making her rounds, checking techniques and correcting postures where necessary. There were about three dozen trainees all paired off and practicing, and a silhouette of one more figure on the horizon, making her way down to the grounds with a large satchel slung over her back.

  Lai signaled to Cullen to take over the drills, and jogged up the hill to help Widow Mossgrove with her load. The farm woman was muscular and broad, but even she was panting at the extra effort. When Lai approached, she gratefully shared the burden, each woman gripping a handle and hauling the package down to the rest of the group.

  It clanked as they moved, and Lai’s heart leapt with excitement. Real weapons had been hard to come by in a valley that had never needed to defend itself. They’d made do with wooden practice swords, staves, and wrestling up until now. A few of them, like Lai, did have their own tools, but the whole company could not share the daggers and bows at once. So, on her own, Widow Mossgrove had begun collecting.

  The two women dropped the satchel unceremoniously as they reached the proving grounds, and the rest of the trainees stopped to watch as Lai unlaced the leather and canvas.

  “Not much to work with,” said Widow Mossgrove, wiping sweat from her brow, “and they’ve no doubt seen better days. But then again, so have we. So they’ll do just fine.”

  The satchel was filled with a jumbled assortment of metal, all in various states of wear. Dull and rusted daggers, bent short swords, and spears with chipped shafts. Cullen appeared at Lai’s side, scru
tinizing the weaponry. He pulled a longsword from the pack and hefted it carefully, eyeing it from all angles. Of the whole militia, he was the one who had the most experience to offer on metalworked weapons, coming from a long line of fighters and knights on his mother’s side. Finally, he smiled. “Good balance,” he said. “And it should be easy enough to get an edge back to it. These are well made, if ancient eyesores.”

  “Penn down at the smithy is working on that,” said Widow Mossgrove as Lai and Cullen began distributing weapons. “It’s not what he’s used to, but he’s been practicing.”

  Lai knelt to continue digging through the blades as the conversation continued above her head, with the widow and Cullen discussing putting more town funding into expanding the forge. But then, one of the swords caught Lai’s eye, and their words faded from her concern and awareness as she wrestled it from the satchel.

  It had a thick, slightly curved blade, with a cupped hilt that looked like it might be used as a weapon in its own right. As she curled her hand into place, she felt all at once safe, and powerful. And excited. She gave it a few practice swings, marveling at the way it cleaved the air around her. Something about this sword felt right.

  “What is that?” asked Terric.

  And without knowing how, but unquestionably confident in her right-ness, Lai said, “It’s called a cutlass.” She swung it once more, feeling her muscles attuning to the weight of it. As she did, Cullen chose a sword of his own, and fell into step across from her. The trainees formed a makeshift ring around the pair, watching as they paced and tested their weapons. And, with each swing, new information came flooding into Lai’s mind like a tsunami. “It’s a favored pirate blade,” she told the group as she examined the curved blade hungrily.

  Cullen was holding his own blade almost lazily. “Don’t worry,” he told the group,” I’ll take it easy on our beloved captain. After all, she’s never even held a true sword before.”