Storm

by Lauren L. Garcia

  All the mages moved closer to Eris, though no one stood between her and the newcomers. Leal named each one as she pointed them out. “There’s Rilla, with the fair hair. Brice has the bow and arrows. That’s Ben.”

  “Who in the void are they?” Cai asked.

  Brice leaned on her bow and spoke calmly. “We don’t want no trouble, Mage. We just want to help our friend.”

  “They’re from the Assembly,” Leal explained. “Friends of Drake’s.”

  “They must be, if they’re willing to storm the bastion with us,” Adrie murmured.

  Marcen was frowning at the newcomers. “What in the stars is the Assembly?”

  Rilla raised her fair brows. “You’ve not heard of us?” Marcen only looked at her, and she sighed, casting her eyes skyward. “After all the Assembly has done across Aredia.”

  “We’re only beginning,” Ben said stiffly. He was older than Eris, perhaps in his early thirties, his blue eyes shot with red. He stood a little apart from everyone, watching the mages as if they were wild wolves.

  “Gideon often spoke of the Assembly,” Eris said. “You’re a group of Aredians hoping to abolish the tier system, correct?”

  Rilla’s smile was thin and dangerous. “That’s the idea.”

  “How’s it going?” Cai asked.

  Rilla shot him a glower, but Brice nudged her side, muttering, “Love, you promised to behave.” When Rilla said nothing else, Brice shifted her bow to her other hand, studying the mages’ camp. “This is everyone?”

  “For now,” Eris said.

  “Right.” Brice seemed to gather her courage, then stepped closer to Eris and gave a graceful bow. “Seems we have the same goal in mind, Ser Echina.”

  “And a shared enemy,” Rilla added. At the other’s looks, she said, “The Circle.”

  “I don’t care about the Circle,” Eris replied. “I only want to rescue my friends.”

  Rilla gave her a withering look. “You should care. The Circle is the reason your people are held captive. They preach the dangers of magic and mages to any who listen.”

  “The Circle is not wrong,” Ben said. “Just…misguided in some ways.”

  Eris glared at him. “Misguided? Is that how you define imprisoning innocent people, chaining and collaring them like animals?”

  “I am not your enemy,” Ben shot back. “I have pledged my life to gain equality for all Aredians.”

  “Except those that have magic?” Eris spat upon the ground. “Equality for those you find pleasing?”

  “It’s better than sowing chaos wherever I go, Mage.”

  He spoke the word like a curse. Before Eris could respond, Brice placed a hand on Ben’s shoulder. “Remember what you told me,” she murmured. “No more regrets, right?”

  Ben’s blue eyes narrowed, but his shoulders sank and he looked away from Eris, in the vague direction of Whitewater City. An answering chagrin swept through Eris; Ben was not the only person with regrets. Keep your goal in mind, she told herself. Nothing else matters.

  When Eris was sure she could speak normally, she looked at Leal. “This was your mission?”

  “You need allies, don’t you?”

  Eris glanced between the newcomers. “Won’t the city guards be looking for you?”

  Rilla flashed a pretty smile. “Maybe, but we’re awfully good at distracting those sods.”

  “Aye, and they’re strong fighters,” Leal added. “Well, Brice and Rilla are. I can’t speak for the man, but he–”

  “Has some unfinished business with Drake,” Brice interrupted. Ben grunted but said nothing.

  Eris narrowed her eyes. “You seek revenge? Or something else?”

  The Assembly man crossed his arms. “My business with Drake is personal.”

  “I wouldn’t have brought them to you if I thought they meant harm,” Leal said.

  It was all too vague for comfort, but Eris didn’t have the time or inclination to further question the fellow’s motives. She and her friends needed all the allies they could get. A glance at Adrie and Marcen showed they were thinking as she was, and although Cai still glowered at the newcomers, he didn’t openly object any longer.

  Good enough for now.

  Eris looked at Leal. “You didn’t have to do this. Thank you.”

  Leal shrugged, crossing her arms before her chest. “Aye, well… At least our chances of getting killed on this foolish errand are a little less now.”

  Eris started. “‘Our chances?’ Are you not returning to your people?”

  All eyes fell upon the Sufani, who shifted beneath their collective scrutiny. Leal’s gaze turned to Eris, briefly, before she shook her head. “I’m with you.”

  “For now,” Adrie pressed. “Right?”

  Leal’s pale-green eyes fixed on Eris with a look Eris did not know how to read. “Until I’m not,” the Sufani said.

  “That’s heartening,” Cai muttered, a few of the other mages nodding in dark agreement.

  But Eris had no room in her heart for anger with Leal, who had done so much for them, and who—apparently—had reasons of her own for sticking around. So she only dipped her head in an informal bow. “I welcome your aid.”

  Leal grunted acknowledgement, then came to stand over Eris’ scrawled map in the dirt. “So. What’s your plan, Mage Echina?”

  Everyone looked at Eris; their attention sat upon her like a too-heavy cloak. Cai’s words came back to her. Did she really want to go back to Whitewater City? Better, smarter, to flee to the south, where mages were treated slightly better, where she and her friends could disappear and get on with their lives. Where she could raise her child in peace.

  But if she did that, the weight of Kali and Drake’s imprisonment would drag her down every day for the rest of her life.

  Eris took a deep breath and knelt beside her makeshift map. “Before we can strike, we must have a better sense of what we’ll be up against.”

  “Well, you’d best hurry,” Brice said. At Eris’ inquiring look, she jerked her thumb in the vague direction of Whitewater City. “We spotted a sentinel squad in Orieon. Looked like they were bringing another shipment of hematite.”

  “Took ‘em long enough, after the last one went missing,” Rilla added with a smug grin.

  The mages cast one another curious looks, but Eris was already nodding. “Your doing, I take it?”

  Brice offered a short bow. “Ours and Drake’s.”

  “But don’t hope for a repeat performance,” Rilla warned. “We’re in no hurry to face the hemies head-on again.”

  Ben stroked his beard in thought. “Actually… I may have an idea on that score.”

  His Assembly friends shot him startled but approving looks, so Eris decided to keep her own reply just as civil as his. “Preventing the sentinels from getting more hematite is vital,” she said. “But we still need more information about the bastion and garrison before we proceed.”

  “You lot used to live there, right?” Rilla asked with a frown.

  “We know the compound’s layout, yes,” Eris replied. “But there’s no telling how the sentinels have handled our…disappearance.”

  “How do you plan on gathering information?” Ben asked.

  Slowly, Eris rose from her crouch, assessing her strength. Finding herself able, she concentrated on her particles, and slowly, to ensure the sod could get a good look, she shifted to her crow shape. There was no pain, only a tingle that crept outward from her heart to her limbs, strengthening with each heartbeat. Her vision blurred—usually the process was quick enough to prevent that—and when it normalized, her allies towered above her, gaping down. Eris cawed once and hopped up onto the nearest log, tilting her head to better see the others.

  Her fellow mages grinned and nudged each other, while Rilla and Brice simply stared, slack-jawed. Ben’s expression was one of revulsion; when her crow-gaze fell upon him, he took a step backward, one hand raised as if to bat her away. Eris cawed again, adding a broad flap of her glossy black w
ings for good measure, and he flinched.

  Leal, though, regarded her with an expression Eris could read this time, despite how the Sufani’s hood and veil covered most of her face. It was Leal’s eyes that gave her away: pale-green, wide and naked with longing.

  Strange.

  Eris flapped her wings a few more times, assessing her crow body before she began her transformation back to her human form. The urge to fly was strong, but it was wiser to save her energy. She shifted quicker this time and within moments stood as a woman again before her old friends and new allies.

  Of course, she was nude, but she was beyond embarrassment at this point. Before slipping back into her clothes, Eris made a show of brushing away a few stray feathers that had not shifted back. “I have my ways.”

  “Ea’s tits and teeth,” Brice gasped. She’d dropped her bow to cover her mouth with her hands. “You… You were…”

  “A sodding crow,” Rilla said when her wife trailed off. “Right? Did you see that?” she added to Ben.

  He scrubbed his face. “That display was impossible to miss. I suppose you think such an abomination is clever,” he said to Eris.

  She smiled sweetly as she fastened her cloak. “Don’t you?”

  “Careful, Ben,” Brice said with a snort. “I’d not upset her. You might wake up as a frog one day.”

  Ben’s face went white, and his mouth opened and closed like a fish.

  “I would never dream of doing anything so…abominable,” Eris said. No matter how much you deserve it, she added silently. But as irritating as Ben’s supposed piety was, the fact remained that she needed all the allies she could get; besides, he could always make good fodder for the sentinels. So she gave him a courteous nod, the kind she’d learned as a girl when her grandmother’s second tier friends came to her family home. “You have my word on that, Ser Ben. No transformations of any kind – unless you ask nicely, of course.”

  It was an empty promise, because her talents had only ever worked on herself. Performing magic on another—aside from something minor, like healing a small wound—was beyond her ability. It was, she supposed, the price she had to pay to fly. Not a bad bargain.

  She glanced around again in preparation to continue their discussion, only to find Leal watching her, gaze transfixed and calculating.

  *

  Later, after the talk had turned from planning to speculation and the afternoon had faded into twilight, Eris sat by the fire, trying to untangle her hair while the others chattered.

  “I hadn’t heard all that about Parsa,” Adrie was saying to Ben. “The whole village…lost? Truly?”

  Eris looked up in alarm. Kali had gone to Parsa. Her heart began to race. Was her friend even alive?

  “That’s the talk,” Ben replied grimly. “Although I’ve not been to Parsa in some time. I can’t confirm it.”

  “What happened?” Eris heard herself ask.

  “Thralls,” Ben said. Eris stared at him, but he offered no more explanation.

  But Brice either had no qualms about sharing information, or simply wanted to gossip, for she related the story as she knew it. The rumors were wild, but the gist seemed to be that a group of mages and sentinels had somehow turned the Parsan villagers into thralls.

  “There was a fight or something,” Brice went on. “Now all the villagers are dead. Folks are blaming the mages.”

  “Of course they are,” Cai muttered.

  Eris shared his ire, but tried to keep judgment from her voice. “I know the mages who were there. They wouldn’t have harmed a moth, let alone another person.”

  “Tell that to the dead,” Ben replied.

  “Tell that to your mother,” Cai shot back.

  Ben glared at him, but made no reply.

  “What happened to the mages?” Eris asked.

  Brice shrugged. “No one’s sure. Some say the sentinels killed them on the spot.” Eris’ heart froze in her throat. “Others think they ran off right after. I heard one fellow claim he saw them—and the sentinels—on the road to Whitewater City.” She shook her head, crimson hair loose and swaying. “Rubbish, I think. Why would sentinels let mages walk away from that sort of…” She trailed off and hugged Rilla’s shoulders. “Well, no one really knows.”

  Rilla leaned into Brice. “Those poor souls. No wonder folks are scared and angry.”

  “Perhaps good will someday emerge from this tragedy,” Ben said. “The One has a plan for us all.”

  Eris snorted. The others looked at her, Ben frowning, but Brice cleared her throat. “I suppose there’s really no knowing the truth, right now.”

  “The Circle would say otherwise,” Eris said. “And if the Pillars had their way, we’d all be in chains – or worse.” She withdrew a black feather from her hair. No doubt she’d be finding remnants of her shifting for days. She let the feather fall to her feet and rubbed her throat; although her collar was long gone, she could still feel its pressure and remember the absence of magic it had wrought.

  Ben shook his head. “If nothing else, Parsa has shown how dangerous magic can be.”

  “Thralls are the bigger threat,” Adrie put in. “Not the mages trying to save innocent lives.”

  Ben continued as if she had not spoken. “And magic is still so new to our world. The Circle is right to show caution.”

  “Caution?” Cai rose from his seat, hands knotted into fists.

  Eris said his name, drawing his attention. At his look, she shook her head. “Don’t.”

  “But–”

  “They are our allies now,” she said through gritted teeth.

  Cai frowned at her beneath his mop of brown hair. “Gideon wouldn’t stand for this dreg’s kind of talk.”

  “Gideon isn’t here.” Tears burned Eris’ eyes. “Leave it alone,” she said, and focused on the unruly black tangle of her hair. There was so much of it. Gid had loved to run his fingers through the strands, delighting in the way they flowed like silk over his skin.

  “Here.”

  Eris jerked upright. She must have been woolgathering longer than she realized, for the others had stepped away, arranging what would soon become their makeshift headquarters – until they had to be on the move. Only Eris and Leal sat by the fire. The Sufani stood before her, hand outstretched and palm open to offer a small dagger that gleamed in the firelight.

  Eris frowned up at the other woman in confusion. “I don’t–”

  “It’s beyond repair,” Leal interrupted.

  Eris stared at her.

  Leal sighed. “Your hair. There’s so much. You’ll never untangle it.”

  She offered the dagger again. Eris accepted, turning it over to get a better look. The hilt and blade together were barely the length of her palm, with no ornamentation, but the hilt was made of rare, expensive ironwood, judging by how the woodgrain whorls shimmered in the firelight. Eris skimmed her finger along the blade carefully. She’d had little use for weapons in her life before. Perhaps that, too, was about to change.

  “I’m not giving it to you,” Leal said. “Only letting you use it. All those snarls must be painful.” She considered, then sat beside Eris and drew back the side of her hood, revealing dark crimson hair cropped close to her skull. So bared, Leal’s face looked more angular than Eris had realized; her jaw was square, her cheekbones high and sharp. “I’ve never looked back. It’s so much easier.”

  “It suits you.” Eris could not think of anything else to say.

  “I doubt anyone can tell most of the time,” Leal said, pulling her hood back into place.

  Eris frowned and toyed with the knife. “Why are you so set on helping us?”

  Leal shifted like she was about to get up, but remained seated. “I made a promise to my father, and to Drake. And I… I had never seen a bastion before. It’s wrong, how your kind are locked away. I couldn’t bear it. I don’t know how you did.”

  “Those are nice reasons,” Eris said. “But what’s the real one?” When Leal glowered, she inclined her hea
d toward Leal’s caravan, which would soon host sleeping Assembly folk. “You haven’t abandoned your family and agreed to risk your life out of the goodness of your heart. No one’s that noble.”

  The Sufani rubbed her hands together, considering her answer. “You have something I want.”

  “I have nothing.”

  Leal reached down, where Eris had dropped the feather. As the Sufani held it up, twirling it in the firelight, Eris’ breath caught. “You want to be a crow, too?”

  “What? No.” Leal frowned but did not drop the feather. “I want to be…different. No, that’s not right.” She pressed a palm to her forehead. “Never mind. It’s foolish. No one can help me.”

  She made to rise, but Eris’ curiosity got the better of her, and she said Leal’s name. When Leal paused, Eris pointed to the feather. “Tell me the price for your aid, and I will do what I can.”

  Leal gripped the feather, her gaze darting everywhere before landing on Eris. “The One gave me the body of a woman, but it’s…the wrong body. I’m not a woman.” She took a deep breath. “I am a man.”

  Eris stared at her. “You…”

  “No one understands,” Leal went on. “My parents try, but they think I’m a little mad – I know they do. And the rest of my family agrees. Da says it’s a phase that I’ll grow out of, but I’m twenty-two summers and the feeling grows stronger every day. The One is perfect, but was mistaken, with me. I’m no woman. I’m a man. I know it. I feel it, here.” One gloved hand pressed over her heart.

  “And you want me to…change your body,” Eris said slowly.

  “Yes. Does that befoul your moral compass?”

  “No. It’s just…unexpected.”

  Leal gave a harsh bark of laughter. “What were you expecting? Or do I want to know?”

  Despite the severity of the moment, Eris felt a small smile come to her lips. “There’s no telling what people want, when magic is involved.”