“But can’t you do good with magic, too?”
He nodded. “But magic is used much more often for evil than for good. And even the good we cause can accidentally do evil, too. Power is always dangerous. The more of it that there is, the more dangerous it becomes. Long, long ago, Queen Mer rode the waves, dispensing justice and mercy at her will.” He tapped on an eddy in the waters on his ribcage. “And in this place, she waits, ready to return, ready to judge. We feel her waking from her slumber. We must be ready.”
“And that’s why you are here,” Marielle nodded.
“The dragons are rising. The Dragonblooded have broken their vows. If the world is in chaos when the Queen returns, she will bring judgment on us all,” his words were quiet but grim. “We must restore order. We must close the Bridge of Legends. We must find the key. We must lock up the dragons again.”
“I want that, too,” Marielle said. “I want to restore order. I want good laws and justice.”
He smiled, cider-scented contentment rolling off him like heat waves. “Then don’t be too eager to leap into magic, Marielle.”
“Enough,” Liandari said from her seat on the ottoman. “If you plan to fold her into our ranks, Anglarok, then have her accept the Wind Rose. If she does not agree, then she knows too much already.”
“The Wind Rose?” Marielle asked.
He tapped his chest where the starburst and circle sat. “This. The sign that you are pledged to Queen Mer and the sea.”
“What does that mean?” Marielle asked nervously. For Jhinn, it meant never leaving the sea. For these people, it seemed to mean vengeance, but also order. She wasn’t sure she wanted that.
She had expected Anglarok to answer, but it was Liandari who spoke, “You will take the vow of our ancestors, ‘Seas send as you may, wind blow as you may, I am but a ship on the waters. I am but a vessel of justice and righteousness. Though many waters roll below me, though waves crash all around, still I am whole on the peak of chaos, still I climb to the top of the spray.’”
Marielle shivered.
“It’s a pledge of justice and righteousness and a promise not to let chaos sink you. There is more to it, more to learn from us Windsniffers – but that is all you pledge to begin. It’s a solemn vow. You can’t turn away from it once you begin. It will set your compass and guide your path.”
“But who wouldn’t want to promise to be just and righteous?” Marielle asked. “Who wouldn’t be willing to promise to keep trying?”
Liandari snorted derisively. “Lazy oafs. The twisted. Anyone who is not woven of moral fiber. Weak ropes and rotten docks, all of them.”
Anglarok cleared his throat and she blushed, looking back out the balcony window, her eyes glued to the white sail in the distance.
“I grow weary of waiting,” she declared. “I will rest until this Etienne Velendark returns or until morning, whichever comes first. Then we will act.”
She strode to one of the bedrooms and shut the door behind her.
“And you, Marielle?” Anglarok asked. “Will you take the Wind Rose?”
Jhinn had warned her not to accept gifts from the Harbingers, but he was only a boy. What could he know about this? If the Jingen City Watch still existed, that would be different. She could keep protecting the people and keeping the law, but it didn’t exist anymore, and it wouldn’t exist again unless they brought down the dragon.
“I’ve promised to help Etienne stop the dragon. I’ve promised to guard him,” she said, hesitating.
“And you think a pledge to do what is right would interfere with that?” his words were silky smooth, but he smelled only of determination – peppermint and crisp blue. He was serious about this. And he wasn’t trying to trick her.
She wet her lips with her tongue. Order sang to her like a distant siren. Her laws were gone, washed away with the emerging dragon, but she could uphold new laws – laws baked into a culture so dedicated to them that they made each member swear to live a life of justice. It was hard not to feel giddy at the thought of that, but she had to be certain before she made any kind of pledge.
“And that’s all that will be required of me – only what is said in that vow?”
“Of course.” There had to be a catch, didn’t there? And yet Anglarok’s expression was open and honest and he smelled of silver and mint truth with only the barest hint of lavender. What could possibly be wrong about that? “Join us in upholding the law, Marielle. Join us in pursuing evil and destroying it. Let us give you tools beyond what you could imagine to conquer this evil in your land. And pledge to pursue justice and righteousness with us.”
She was nodding before he had even finished already wanting it so badly that she felt she could taste justice on the tip of her tongue and purpose in the scent she breathed in.
“I want what you have,” she said, feeling almost giddy as she made her decision. She never even noticed the vanilla and lilac tinting the air so slightly that it was hardly discernable at all.
15: Black and White
Marielle
Marielle’s teeth were on edge when she finally returned to Spellspinner’s Cures. The Wind Rose on the upper part of her chest burned and since getting it, she felt both lightheaded and as if she really was riding a wave of passion and certainty. It felt so good to have a driving force behind her again. She was like a sail in need of a wind, like a gondola in need of the water. And it felt so right to have the wind at her back again and the tide under her feet.
Allegra was closing her shop when Marielle returned. She lifted her eyebrows as Marielle stepped into the main shop as Allegra was pinching out the candles in the window.
“You seem to enjoy the company of our guests,” she said mildly.
“Etienne asked me to watch them.” Allegra was hard to talk to without sounding stilted. You could feel hostility radiating from her like a stove. And yet that was not what she smelled of. She smelled of passion and secrecy, a strange mix of birch smoke and fragrant lilies, swirling around her in reds and pinkish purples. She glowed so brightly from her powerful emotions that she outshone the candles.
There were other smells in Spellspinner’s Cures laid out over the powerful scents of the spices in the back, and Marielle could smell the comings and goings of the day. Customers with worries lacing their steps, ambitions swirling in their movements, anxiety frizzling off them and leaving residues across everything they touched. And something else. Deceit swirled in the air in greenish-yellow, smelling of caramel. Something was going on a Spellspinner’s Cures – some plan that Marielle knew nothing about.
“He’s not back yet.” Worry puffed around her in ochre clouds, but before Marielle could respond, a rap sounded at the door.
Allegra, already nearby, lifted the bar and the door burst open.
Etienne stumbled into Spellspinner’s Cures, carrying a dazed Tamerlan in his arms.
“He lost consciousness when we hit the Spice District,” he said with a gasp as Marielle rushed forward to help. “The city has gone mad. Lady Saga doomed us all with this hunt. Here, help me.”
“That’s not the only way,” Allegra said with an angry twist to her mouth but there wasn’t time for Marielle to wonder at the puff of mushroom scent surrounding her.
Etienne stumbled as he tried to hold onto the bigger man. It was amazing that he’d carried Tamerlan as far as he had. Etienne was short and compact, and while his slender frame was strong, he was more than a head shorter than Tamerlan and not nearly as thick in the shoulders.
Marielle slipped an arm under Tamerlan’s, letting his head loll onto her shoulder. A dark patch spread across his shirt and he was missing his blue cloak.
Allegra clucked her tongue, taking the other side of him.
“How are we going to get him up the stairs?” Marielle asked.
“Just let me catch my breath a moment,” Etienne said, leaning against the barred door as he sucked in huge breaths. Marielle watched him, mesmerized by his youth. He carried so much weight
on him – so many plots and hopes and tragedies – for such a young man. And he never smelled of anxiety, only certainty and truth, swirling mint and sliver and intermingling with the royal blue and gardenia power and his own scent – tangerines and cloves. He was a puzzle. And she wanted to figure him out.
But not right now. Right now, they needed to help Tamerlan.
“What were you doing together?” she asked him.
“Hunting the Eye. We’ll need it to tame the dragon. To bind him once more.”
She shivered. That was all she wanted, too. It was why she shied away from Tamerlan’s slumped body every time it brushed against the burning skin of her upper chest where the Wind Rose had been tattooed only an hour ago.
“Everyone will want the Eye,” Allegra said coolly, “for good or ill.”
She smelled of ambition – roasting meat and russet swirls. She wanted the amulet, too. And the way her cold eyes were turned on Etienne, Marielle thought that perhaps if he found it, that would be the payment she would exact for all her generosity. Just watching that hawk-eyed glance made Marielle’s hackles rise.
“Yes, they do,” Etienne said, taking Allegra’s place under Tamerlan’s arm. “You take his feet.” As she scrambled to pick them up, he continued. “I watched a Scenter ripped apart in the street – Xin City Watch – two groups wanted her. Neither would back down, not even when her screams shattered the air and then stilled as they clawed through the rags of her clothing.”
Marielle felt light-headed as they climbed the stairs. What would have happened to her if Liandari hadn’t stepped in?
After a moment, Etienne added, “You need to stay out of sight, Marielle. You need to stay here while this hunt continues. You understand?”
Marielle nodded as they crested the last stair and hurried to Tamerlan’s bedroom. “I will.”
“I need to see to Queen Mer’s people,” Etienne said after they laid Tamerlan on the bed. He looked bone weary.
“And I want to speak to you about them,” Allegra said, her eyes narrowing and her scent smelling of jasmine concentration. She turned to Marielle, pointing to a small fireplace in the room. “Strip him to his small clothes and boil water. I’ll be back to clean and dress the wound. Fool man. He should have returned hours ago.”
“We were mired in the crowds,” Etienne explained as they left together.
Marielle clenched her jaw. She wanted to hear what else they had to say. If she was going to be stuck in these buildings for the next few days, she itched to know why. More than that, she wanted to hear what Etienne would say to the Harbingers. Especially now that she was linked to them.
With a sigh, she lit a fire, scooping water from a barrel next to it into a kettle and setting it on the hook above the flames. The fire lit easily, and she moved to Tamerlan.
He moaned as she tugged off his boots. They were wet and muddy. She threw them to the side by the wall and worked to unbuckle his belt and remove his sword. As she slid the belt off, his eyes flickered open.
“Marielle,” he sounded feverish.
“Shhh,” she said, gently pulling the belt free and hanging it on the hooks by the door. The sword was heavy, dragging at the belt. “You’re safe here, Tamerlan.”
He looked around, his eyes glassy, still muttering feverishly. “Trying to help the Lord Mythos find the Eye.”
“Yes, I know,” she said, tugging at his light armor. How did it come off? Ah! She found the leather straps, the tip of her tongue sticking out as she concentrated to loosen them.
“Trying to make it all right. Dragon.” His face was slick with sweat. It highlighted the stubble along his jaw and the sharp lines of his face.
She paused, looking at him, compassion and frustration warring inside her. He wanted to make it all right again? He wanted what she wanted.
And she was torn because part of her wanted to appreciate that desire and part of her thought it was unfair that he might find redemption when she still hadn’t found it. After all, she wouldn’t be in this mess without him.
“Are you sorry that you rescued me?” she asked gently as she pulled the armor off, piece by piece, and set it to the side of the bed.
“All those people. Innocent people.” His breathing was labored as he rambled. “Dragon. I killed them.”
The fever must be bad for him to be mumbling ‘dragon’ every few minutes. Marielle flinched from the thought of the dragon. He haunted them both. And he would destroy everything if he wasn’t stopped. But running all over the city looking for a lost amulet didn’t sound like the right way to stop him. The Harbingers had magic of their own. That would be a better way to stop a dragon.
“Marielle?” his voice, faint but still resonant as it had been the first time she met him, twisted with the golden scent of her attraction to him. It rose up with his own scent, making her mouth water with the cinnamon and honey scent of him. She was as drawn to it as ever, despite every reason she had not to be.
“Yes?” she asked as she gently tugged his tabard up and over his head, flinching when pain flashed across his face.
“Can you ever forgive me?” the words dropped from his mouth heavy and full of pain and with them, the golden attraction she felt for him flooded the room so strongly that it was more powerful to her than the turquoise and lilac of magic. More powerful than the guilt she felt over what her life had cost the world. It made her want to say ‘yes’ just to soothe him, just to make him smile.
“I don’t know,” she said, softly, honestly.
“I hope that you can someday.” His words were faint, and his eyes drooped.
She chewed her lip, closing her own eyes for a moment as pain swept over her. She was as much at fault as he was. Everything he’d done, she’d been complicit in. But how could you forgive something so horrific? How could anyone ever atone for that?
He was wicked and beautiful, tainted and attractive. He was utterly out of reach.
She cleared her throat, gently tugging the tabard over his head as he hissed in pain. It would need to be cleaned. It was soaked in blood. She hung it on one of the hooks and began to pull his shirt out of his breeches, tugging it free gently. She could feel her cheeks heating up. Practically, he needed to be undressed for his wounds to be tended. But she’d never undressed a man before and it felt – invasive. Like she shouldn’t be doing it. Like it was a small kind of crime.
He flinched from the pain with every tug of his clothing.
“Marielle?” he asked, his voice soft and thick.
“Yes?” she asked as she gently worked his shirt over his right arm and then peeled it bit by bit from the drying blood on his chest. His body was hard and strong under the bloody shirt. He could recover from this – she was sure of it.
“What do the laws say about forgiveness. Is it even possible? For someone like me?”
They said it wasn’t. They said he should sink. They said there was no redemption for a person like Tamerlan.
But why not?
He lay there, his face smooth in his half-conscious state, his big, calloused hands lying still and vulnerable on the narrow bed. It was his eyelashes that made him look the most innocent. They lay on his cheek like a child’s and she traced their soft edges with her gaze, letting it wander over his slightly parted lips and his blood-crusted chest as it rose and fell. He looked so innocent. He looked so young.
And he wasn’t innocent at all anymore. Did it matter that he’d done it all to save someone else? It mattered to him. It wouldn’t matter to the desperate survivors, mourning lost friends. It wouldn’t matter to the dead.
And yet ... couldn’t there be some hope for a man like this? What would Captain Ironarm have thought? She’d said it was moments like this where a Watch Officer really knew what she was made of. What had she meant by that? Had she meant that Marielle should be iron hard, not letting emotions or sympathy get in the way? Or had she meant that Marielle would see that not everything was so easy to judge? Some things were murkier than she could imagi
ne.
She felt the Wind Rose over her heart – a renewed commitment to justice. She just wasn’t sure. Everything was so tangled that she lost sight of one end of the thread by the time she got to the other end.
“I don’t think there is forgiveness for someone like you, Tamerlan,” she said thickly as she slid his shirt over his head. She was sad to be the one to say this. But wasn’t honesty better than lies? Didn’t she at least owe him that? “Not for the butcher of the Temple District. Not for the man who destroyed thousands of lives.”
He shuddered as the shirt came free, his eyes opening groggily. “Be careful, Marielle. With words like that, you might make me fall in love with you.”
Was that a joke? She licked her lips. It had sounded a little bit too real.
His eyes closed again but he grunted when she spread the sheet over his battered body – she left his dirty breeches on him. She wouldn’t invade his privacy enough to remove them. If Allegra didn’t like that – well, Allegra didn’t seem to like much of anything.
His chest wound was open and bleeding, the blood crusting at the edges now that he was lying still in the bed. Just looking at it made her flinch.
The water in the kettle was boiling. In a moment, Allegra would return, and she would patch him up again, but right now he was suffering for his sins, one breath at a time, and Marielle wasn’t even sure if she thought that was a good thing or a terrible one – just or unjust.
She sighed, wishing that the world was as black and white as her vision was. If only things were simpler. If only he didn’t smell like life and hope when he was nothing but death and despair.
Dawning
Day Two of Dawnspell
16: Tenacity’s Plaything
Tamerlan
Tamerlan woke to a snore. Surprisingly, it was Marielle. It looked like she’d been sitting in a chair beside the foot of his bed and had fallen asleep and slumped over the foot of the bed.
Had he really asked her for forgiveness last night?
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