Storm

by Lauren L. Garcia

  Kali said nothing. If she spoke, if she moved, she would shatter. Tears rolled down her cheeks, making her skin stick to the pages of the open book.

  The bed shifted as Eris crept to the window. The curtain whispered, the latch clinked, and then cold air swept into the small room, rifling the paper scrolls scattered about. A rustle of cloth, a flap of wings, and the urge for magic dissipated. When Kali managed to look up, Eris was gone.

  But Kali was not alone.

  Sixteen

  Despite Drake’s best efforts, consciousness ambushed him late one evening, nearly two weeks after Heartfire. At least, he thought it was about two weeks, for it was difficult to mark the passage of time when locked in the garrison’s bowels. Only by keeping track of his sentinel guards’ routines did he manage even a little.

  “Sergeant!” Hornfel exclaimed. He was the burnie who’d been standing guard at the cell door; he jumped to attention as a new sentinel stepped into view. Behind bars and still chained to the sodding wall, Drake couldn’t make out the newcomer’s face, but it didn’t matter. Every sentinel that had stood guard over him viewed him as the enemy. The understanding shouldn’t have bothered him as much as it did.

  “At ease,” the newcomer said.

  Elan.

  Drake’s stomach flipped, whether from joy or fear, he could not say.

  “I’m here to relieve you,” Elan—Stonewall—added to the burnie, coming to stand before the bars. In the flickering torchlight, Drake could see his little brother was fully armored, helmet and all, and so could not make out his expression. Maybe that was for the best. No one could glare quite like Stonewall.

  “Relieve me, ser?” Hornfel’s confusion was palpable. “But I’ve another three hours on my shift…”

  “The duty roster says it’s my turn.” Elan held out his hand. “Give me the key.”

  The burnie fidgeted, clearly not wanting to argue with an officer, but also devoted to his duty. “I’m sure I’ve another three hours to go, ser.”

  “Are you?” Elan asked. When Hornfel nodded, Stonewall jerked his thumb toward the garrison. “Good. Then you won’t mind running to check.”

  “With respect, ser, shouldn’t you–”

  “Now, Hornfel,” Elan snapped. “Unless you want to make insubordination a habit.”

  The kid jumped in his boots, made a hasty salute and all but tossed Stonewall the key before he rushed out, tripping over his feet in his haste. Drake almost felt sorry for him.

  “Good work, Sergeant,” he said as Elan faced the cell door. “You’ve taken to the role fairly well. But I imagine he’ll be back pretty quick.”

  Elan withdrew a crumpled piece of parchment, covered with writing. Drake couldn’t make out the words from here, but he recognized the format of a duty roster. “Not likely,” Elan replied.

  “Clever.”

  Elan studied the key in his grip. “If I come in there, what will you do?”

  Drake shifted so that the chains holding him to the wall clinked. “I’m trussed like a ptarmigan,” he said, shrugging. “Not much I can do other than talk. Unless,” he couldn’t help but add, “you came down here to free me?”

  His brother was silent. Drake sighed. “Can’t blame a man for trying.”

  “This is foolish.” Elan turned to leave.

  Drake’s heart sank and he scrambled to his feet, tugging the chains for support. However long he’d been down here hadn’t give him a chance to do much other than think and let his muscles atrophy. “Don’t leave,” he called as Stonewall reached the door. “Please, relah. Even if it wasn’t to free me, you’re here for a reason.”

  Elan froze, one hand on the heavy wooden door outfitted with iron supports, and his shoulders sank. “Don’t call me that,” he said as he went back to the cell door and began to unlock it. “Don’t call me anything other than ‘Stonewall.’ That’s my name, now.”

  “Never understood why you liked that name so much.” Drake tried to make a joke, but the words fell flat as his brother gave him that look. Shit. He ducked his head in a nod. “Aye. Stonewall.”

  Stonewall stepped inside the cell and shut the door behind him, and for the first time in well over three years, Drake was with his little brother again. Despite everything, he couldn’t help but smile. “An officer, eh? You’ve done well for yourself.”

  “You broke my trust.”

  So no small talk, then. Very well. Drake was silent, his mind racing almost as fast as his heart; as usual when he was in a bind, thoughts of escape pummeled him, but of course, he could not run now. At last he managed, “How can I rebuild it?”

  “I’m not sure.” Stonewall tucked his helmet under his arm and stepped closer, until he was an arm’s length away. Backlit by the torches, his eyes looked like shadows. His face was gaunt and his movements lacked their usual fluidity. Drake had heard snatches of the other sentinels’ conversations. He knew what Stonewall was feeling.

  “How long’s it been since your last burn?” he asked.

  He thought his brother wouldn’t answer, but Stonewall sighed. “Too long.”

  Drake squeezed his eyes shut. My fault. Even if he hadn’t been the one to steal the garrison’s most recent shipment—and they really should have been resupplied by now—he had been the one who’d set both of them on this path. It had been his decision to allow both orphaned boys to join the sentinels, so long ago. “How long have you got?”

  Stonewall shrugged. “A week. Maybe a little more. I’m not too bad, yet. Some are worse off than me. Some are better. Most of the cinders are...fading.”

  “Why haven’t you gotten more?”

  His brother ignored the question and instead withdrew something from his belt-pouch, offering it to Drake, who accepted the biri with trembling fingers. “You were in a bad way, before,” Stonewall said by way of explanation. “I’ve heard these…help ease the pain.”

  “I can’t light it,” Drake managed, too stunned to say more.

  Stonewall frowned at him before plucking up the biri and slipping out of the cell to light it on one of the torches. He returned and offered Drake the non-burning end. Drake wasn’t too proud to take a deep drag, holding in the sweet smoke as long as he could before exhaling it up and away from his brother’s face. Oh, it’d been too long. A languid ease crept into his body and suddenly his problems didn’t seem quite so daunting. Chains and hematite still bound him, of course, but now he could bear them a while longer.

  “Thank you,” he said to Stonewall, who watched him closely. But when he offered the biri, the younger man scowled and shook his head.

  “I’m no cinder.”

  “Nor am I,” Drake said, taking another drag. It wasn’t quite as nice as the biri Aderey had given him, but he wasn’t about to be choosy. He released another stream of smoke and leaned his head against the wall.

  “How did you survive without hematite?” Stonewall asked.

  Disappointment swelled in Drake’s chest, but he fought back the foolish emotion. After what he’d done to Elan, he’d lost the right to be disappointed by his little brother. Besides, given his brother’s current state, Drake couldn’t blame him for wanting this information.

  “That’s what you want to know?” Drake replied, feigning mild curiosity. “Out of all the things we could say to one another?”

  “This is the most pressing.”

  “Why? Isn’t the garrison getting more hematite?” Despite the warm haze brought by the biri, something cold swept through Drake’s body at the determined look on his brother’s face. “What are you up to, Ela – Stonewall?”

  His brother glanced around the detention area, and then crossed his arms before his chest. “Just sodding tell me.”

  Had they both been free, had Stonewall not been furious with him—with good reason—Drake would have grabbed his younger sibling in a headlock and gotten him to answer the question by force. Ah, brothers. But they were here and the collar pressed tight around Drake’s throat, and even the burning end of
the biri seemed dull.

  “I started tapering off about two months before I…ah, left the order.”

  “Tapering off? So you planned to leave?”

  Drake tried to keep his voice steady. “Tobin and I wanted to start over somewhere else. I knew that meant I’d have to live without hematite, so I started trying to get used to taking less. It was hard,” he added, recalling those first weeks. “Harder than I thought it’d be. I wasn’t sure it would even work, but I started stockpiling my allotted doses. I cut back and cut back, until…”

  “Until you could use magic again.” Stonewall’s voice was matter-of-fact and he didn’t look at Drake.

  “Aye.” Drake ran a hand through his hair, long enough now that he usually tied it back with a leather cord. But his hosts here hadn’t allowed him that amenity. “Once I stopped completely, my magic returned. And it hasn’t left me, since. Well,” he amended, tugging at the hematite collar, “not without some help.” He took another draw from the biri; by now, he’d smoked it almost to nothing. “I’m sorry, Stonewall.”

  His brother tensed, jaw working as if he were fighting back a string of swears. Drake bit his tongue, trying to allow him time to form his thoughts. If he pushed too hard, Stonewall would walk away, and only the gods knew when they might have another chance like this.

  At last, his patience was rewarded. Stonewall looked at him again, and something had softened in his gaze. “When did you first realize you…had magic?”

  The biri was gone, but Drake rolled the remaining charred bit of paper between his fingertips. “When did you first realize you could breathe? I can’t answer that, Stonewall. I don’t remember…discovering I had magic. It wasn’t like finding a new street in a city you thought you knew by heart. It was always there; always a part of me. A small part,” he added wryly, “but present and insistent.”

  “Did Mama know?”

  Doubtful. Their mother had been too busy trying to feed her family to do much for Drake other than give him a name he hated. But he couldn’t say that to his brother, so he only shook his head. “It wasn’t ever strong enough to get me into trouble.” Irony, if ever there was any. “And after she died, I was scared the sentinels would find out and take me away from you.”

  Stonewall leaned his shoulder against the cell wall, facing Drake, but still out of reach. “You didn’t want to end up in a bastion.”

  “I didn’t want to leave you alone,” Drake replied, although he winced at the irony of that, too. “And no, Stonewall, I didn’t want this,” he touched the collar, “to be my new reality.”

  “I should have realized it,” Stonewall said quietly, shaking his head. “Gods above, you were always terrified of sentinels. You went out of your way to avoid them, even the nice ones.”

  “Especially the nice ones. Why do you think they patrolled the worst parts of Pillau, handing out sweetrolls to orphans? They were recruiting.”

  “They’d come around in pairs, a man and a woman. Usually a little older…” Stonewall’s eyes widened. “Like parents.”

  “A luxury few of us could claim.” Drake gave a weary chuckle. “It’s brilliant, actually. If I was someone else, I’d be impressed.”

  Stonewall was quiet, his gaze distant. “If you had magic, why didn’t you heal Mama when she got sick? Or Bita, or Omri?”

  Drake’s stomach twisted at the mention of their dead brother and sister, whose names he had not heard aloud in years. My fault, too. His reply was a hoarse whisper. “Wasn’t strong enough.” Something hot stung his eyes: an old pain that even hematite could never quite burn away. He clenched his hands into fists, disintegrating the biri into ashes.

  “But you had magic,” Stonewall said. “Surely you could have done something.”

  “I wasn’t strong–”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Drake leveled the younger man with his own dark look. “You think I wanted Mama and the others to die?”

  “You just admitted you were scared of winding up in a bastion.” Stonewall drew himself upright. He had never been as tall or strong as Drake, but now he seemed as imposing as any statue of Tor. “You’re a coward.”

  Ea’s balls, but the truth was a kick in the right place, wasn’t it? Drake nodded. “Yes.” Stonewall did not immediately respond. To the void with it all, Drake thought, and added, “Yes, I’m a coward. I’ve always been. And I’ve made a lot of mistakes that I’ll never be able to amend. Stonewall, I hated lying to you—hated leaving you—but I couldn’t live as a sentinel any longer. I couldn’t live a half-life with my magic shuttered away, being told every day that people like me were corruptions in the One’s world. I tried. I really did. But the armor was too heavy. It may not seem like it to you, but I was a prisoner back then, more than I am now.”

  “You were a fine sentinel.”

  Drake shook his head. “I hated it. Every moment of every day, I hated what I’d become. I stayed for you.”

  Stonewall bristled. “So this is my fault?”

  “This?” Drake shook the chains. “No, relah. Sorry: Stonewall. No, this was bound to happen, one way or another. But at least I’m here on my terms. At least I’m here because I made the right choice. For once, I didn’t run.”

  He didn’t realize the truth of the words until he said them, and a warm feeling—better than any biri—spread through him at the understanding.

  However, his brother was not as pleased to hear this revelation. “Idiot,” Stonewall said. “You should have kept running.”

  “If I had, Eris and her friends would have shared Gideon’s fate.” Drake’s throat tightened at the memory of Gid’s body, lying just by the threshold of Whitewater City’s outer gates. If only I’d been a little faster, a little stronger, a lot smarter.

  Was it his imagination, or did Stonewall tense at the mention of Eris? Did his brother know the shape-changing mage? He must have, if he was serving here while she lived in the bastion. This reminded Drake of something Talon had said to Stonewall, back when the commander had so kindly reunited the brothers.

  “Are you really in love with a mage?” Drake asked.

  Stonewall hesitated before nodding once.

  And you say I’m an idiot, Drake thought. “Talon knows?” Again, Stonewall nodded, and Drake cursed beneath his breath. “Is she – it’s a she, right?”

  Stonewall scowled at him. “Her name is Kali.”

  “Pretty name. Is Kali still alive?”

  Stonewall nodded.

  “For now,” Drake said. He risked a step toward his brother, who took an answering step back. Drake tried not to let it bother him. “I don’t know much about Talon, but I’ve seen enough. There’s something in her eyes; something desperate. Your girl is alive now, but I doubt Talon will let her remain so for too long. If you love Kali, you’ll get her the hell away from this shithole and never look back.”

  “What about you?”

  Drake blinked at him, stunned again into silence. “You hate me.”

  “Blood is blood.”

  Fury swam through Drake’s veins at the words, spoken in monotone, as if by route. He jerked on the chains, the clink and rattle echoing in the cell. “I’m fucked, you fool,” he all but spat. “I think Talon means to send me to High Commander Argent. Only the gods know what he’ll do with me, and you if he gets his hooks into you. So shove your self-righteous attitude up your ass and save your girl – and yourself. Forget about me. I’m dead, remember?”

  Well, that last bit was below the belt, but for Tor’s sake, sometimes the dolt needed a lesson hammered into his brain before he’d take it to heart. It was this understanding that made Drake add, “I couldn’t save the mage I loved, Stonewall. Don’t wait for the right moment. Don’t make the same mistake I did. Just go.”

  Stonewall only studied him. From this angle, the torchlight in the corridor now cast his light-brown eyes in gold fire. “Did Mama have magic?” Stonewall asked.

  Caught off-guard, Drake answered immediately. “As far
as I could tell, I was the only one in our family with magic. Except…” He trailed off, squinting in the shadows as a memory trickled back. “I always thought your father was an odd one.”

  Stonewall straightened and came closer, enough for Drake to see how he trembled. “He was a mage?”

  “No.”

  “How could you tell?” Stonewall asked.

  “I dunno,” Drake replied, shrugging. “I just could. Some mages can sense others like them; I can’t explain how. It’s just…” He trailed off, unable to clarify. How to explain to Stonewall that feeling of kinship, of something deeper than blood? Only another mage would understand. Ea’s balls, Drake hadn’t truly understood until a few years ago, after he’d met Gideon and other renegade mages.

  “If my father wasn’t a mage,” Stonewall said slowly. “How was he ‘odd?’”

  This, too, was hard to explain. “I was only three summers old when he came around,” Drake replied. “I don’t remember much, only thoughts and feelings. I was a little afraid of him, but not because I thought he’d hurt me or Mama. He just… He was odd. Different. I remember thinking even when he spoke to me, he was somewhere else. Anyway, he wasn’t around long enough for me to think more of him than that. And then later, Mama had you.”

  Stonewall was silent, absorbing this. “You’re sure he wasn’t a mage?”

  “As sure as I can be about anything.” Drake frowned. “Why? You’ve never asked about him before.”

  “Well, I’m curious now,” Stonewall replied briskly.

  Drake saw through the lie, but chose to let it pass. Hornfel would probably be back any moment and he had no wish to start another argument. “You have his eyes,” he offered. “Well, mostly. His were brighter than yours – almost gold. And one time, I swear I saw them…” He wriggled his fingers to convey his meaning. “Sparkle. It was right after you were born, right before he went away. I remember how he held you and looked at you. I think he thought he was alone, but the door was open and I saw him. I saw his eyes.”

  The moment the words left his mouth, Drake snorted. “Gods above and beyond, that sounds stupid. Funny how you remember stuff when you’re a kid, huh?”