Being the Suun

by J. A. Culican

  Estrid dropped back beside me. “Something feels wrong.”

  “I know.” I felt it too. There was a stillness in the air, an unnatural silence. Nothing rustled, nothing moved. There was no sound from the men we’d left at the airship.

  We came across the first body a few yards into the woods. A miner whose name I didn’t know, his throat slit from ear to ear. Dozens of boot prints were pressed into the dirt and leaves around him. We followed the path of broken branches and muddy ground to the next body. He lay on his belly, white hair soaked red with blood. I rolled him over.

  “Bertol,” I breathed.

  His eyes were still open, blue-grey and glassy.

  “Was this the ur’gel?” Grissall asked.

  I bent down, examining the wounds in Bertol’s stomach and chest. “No,” I answered, my fingers brushing another bootprint. “Definitely not.”

  I felt sick, seeing Bertol like this, knowing that he dreamed of being outside the mines, that he longed to feel rain on his face.

  Beside me, Estrid looked down at the body, her face stricken. “Erik.”

  “Estrid, wait,” I started, but she was already gone.

  She wasn’t following any trail or trying to be quiet.

  The rest of us ran after her, pushing aside branches and weaving around trees and fallen logs.

  Stiarna was the fastest of us, easily pulling into the lead. But then we all skidded to a stop as we came into the clearing where the airship sat, with repaired railings and patched sails. On the deck, Xalph and Arun stood surrounded by six guards, while on the ground, another six held Erik, his hands bound in front of him. There was no one else from the mines in sight.

  Except for Luthair.

  His face was closed again. Gone was the vulnerability and the pain I’d seen in Barepost. He was smug again, knowing that he’d won. He stood very close to Erik, close enough that Erik could easily have gotten his hands around the governor’s neck. If he wanted to. But Erik wouldn’t do that. Estrid was right. He wouldn’t do anything to compromise his honor, including board an airship to leave Barepost without being released from his life-debt.

  Luthair grinned, keeping one hand on the hilt of the longsword sheathed at his hip, a sword I’d never, not once, seen him draw. “Surprised?”

  I wouldn’t give him the pleasure of saying yes, of asking how he’d gotten up here so quickly and with so many men.

  “I know Bruhier and this plateau better than anyone.” He pointed at Stiarna, who stood beside me, her head low to the ground, her eyes on Luthair. “Even better than your new pet.”

  Stiarna snapped her beak and made the clicking growl sound in her throat.

  “Let them go.”

  He looked over at Erik, then behind him at Arun and Xalph. Did he realize who Xalph was? Would Haklang be punished? Or had it been so long that he’d forgotten about his illegitimate nephew? “I know you thought you could get away without making a choice.” He turned back to me. “You probably thought I was foolish, giving you the chance to get away. Really, I just needed you to think you had an hour, to think you could take your time returning, so that I could get here first.”

  “Why are you here?” I asked, growing tired of his gloating.

  “I’m here to force your hand, of course.”

  “What are you talking about?” Estrid spat at him.

  “Your brother can go, and Estrid, you can go with him, if Arun Phina goes back to the mines and if your sister agrees to marry me.” He held out his hands in front of him, palms up, innocent, as if offering a gift. “Or, you”—he pointed at me—“and you”—his finger shifted to Estrid—“can go with the elf, but Erik will spend the rest of his life in the mines. Though we’ll have to gather a new group for him, of course.”

  “Bastard!” Estrid lunged.

  Beru grabbed her.

  Stiarna growled and began to pace.

  I put a hand on her shoulder, and she became frightfully still.

  “Is that really what you want?” I asked. “For your bride to be a prisoner?”

  He shrugged, unconcerned. “I want you to do what’s right for your family. I’ll do what’s right for Barepost.”

  As if either of those options were valid. But there was something else, something I’d never tried before. Something that occurred to me as I watched him shift his grip on the hilt of his sword while I considered the matter of Erik’s blasted honor. While Luthair wasn’t particularly honorable, he was certainly prideful, hopefully to a fault.

  I took two steps forward, away from Estrid and the others and toward Luthair. I pulled my sword from its sheath.

  The men around Erik shifted, suddenly uncertain about where to focus their attention, but Luthair waved them away.

  I lay the blade of the sword over my left wrist. “Stephan Luthair, Governor of Barepost. I challenge you to a duel.”

  Luthair tried to keep the grin on his face, but I saw his lips pucker in distaste, saw the twitch of an eyebrow in surprise. “What are the terms?”

  “Winner takes all.”

  “Frida, no!” Erik and Estrid shouted at the same time.

  “All?” Luthair asked, ignoring my siblings.

  “If you win and I surrender, Erik, Estrid, and I all stay, all continue to do your bidding until you release Erik from his life-debt. If I win, all of us,” I said, gesturing to everyone around him, “go free. With your permission.”

  Everyone gathered in the clearing went still, even his own men, holding their breath while Luthair considered the offer. “Those are your only terms?”

  “Yes,” I said with a nod, feeling even as I agreed that I’d fallen into some type of trap.

  Finally, Luthair pulled his own sword from its place at his hip. It was shiny and smooth, obviously unused. He lay it across his own left wrist and looked at me. “Frida Svand, D’ahvol warrior and future bride of Barepost, I accept your challenge.”

  I sneered at him and spun my sword around my arm. I liked a good fight, but never had I been quite so happy to face someone on the battlefield than I was at that moment. It was time to put a few dents on that pristine blade of his.

  Chapter 24

  Luthair removed his cloak and handed it off to one of his men before squaring off against me. His stance was strange and shaky, while I made sure mine was steady. I watched his eyes instead of his sword, and when he came at me, twisting from the outside to the inside and striking my sword, I knocked him away easily, parrying just a bit to get the feel of him before driving forward with a series of quick blows back and forth.

  I could see his frustration building as he failed to get past my guard. It showed in his moves. He grabbed the sword with two hands and made a slice to the left, which I avoided, and another slice to the right, which I also dodged. When he came across as if to cut me in half, I dropped to my knees, his blade passing overhead, and knocked his sword aside with my own.

  I stood with a growl, driving him back until he was out of reach and I could regain my stance. He tried another overhead swing—a bad idea since it put him off balance—and I met it with my own sword. That was how it went for some time, our blades crashing together over and over as I took the defensive, not giving an inch. Finally, I spun low, going to the ground and kicking his knee. He yelped and stabbed at me, but I was already gone, dancing away on light feet.

  “You remember your terms, right?” Luthair said a little breathlessly, his sword drooping slightly as he favored his left knee.

  I nodded, smiling as my heart raced. The battle fever raged through my blood. I was done talking. I wanted to keep going.

  “You said nothing about who could fight.”

  “Who?” I straightened, dropping my sword to my side as Luthair flicked his fingers at his men.

  Luckily, Arun was not as slow on the uptake as I was. I watched as he shoved Xalph to the side and grabbed a sword from a nearby guard’s scabbard.

  Xalph scrambled across the deck, doing his best to avoid feet and swords.


  Arun plunged the sword into one of the guard’s chests just as Erik, hands still bound, got the twine around one of Luthair’s men’s necks, pulling tight and backing away. The man’s eyes bulged. Erik evaded other advances, never loosening his grip, not until the man went slack in his arms and he let him fall to the ground.

  Estrid, Beru, and Aria ran into the fray then, swords swinging. Even Stiarna pounced on a black-clad guard, holding him down with one of her front claws and ripping out his throat with her powerful beak. I wondered then if jumping onto her back had been an act of bravery or of insanity. Perhaps a bit of both.

  Grissall’s small form ran past Stiarna’s kill toward the ship, where she scooped up Xalph, who had been huddling against the railing, and dove into the crew’s quarters near the front of the ship, slamming the door.

  Taking advantage of my distraction, Luthair leveled his blade at my throat.

  I turned to him, eyes narrowed, ready to call him a liar and a cheater, but before I could get a word out, he brought a boot up and kicked me in the gut. I flew back, landing on my back. All the wind rushed out of me. I’d lost track of my sword in the fall, and I rolled, fingers groping through the leaves and dirt even as blackness encroached on my vision.

  Not far away, I saw Beru and Aria fighting back to back. Instead of a sword, Aria had a staff with a metal-tipped blade on one end, the other end rounded. She wielded it with confidence and expertise. She said something to Beru, and he ducked as she swung the staff in a circle overhead, knocking down two of Luthair’s men with the one move. Beru finished the other one with his sword.

  Not far away, Erik and Estrid fought side by side. I’d grown up seeing them fight like this. They were like one brain in two bodies, each covering for the other’s weakness. No one would be able to defeat them, not when they were together.

  I rolled the other way, still searching for my sword.

  On the deck of the Duchess, Arun had found a bow from somewhere and was using it in both close combat and to pick off Luthair’s men from far away. When he had to, he used it like a staff of his own, knocking aside swords and burying arrows in men’s necks with his bare hands.

  Just when my fingers brushed metal, hands grabbed my ankles and pulled me backward, rolling me onto my back. Luthair loomed over me, putting a boot to my chest and pressing down so my lungs wouldn’t fill. He held his sword, which, while still clean, now at least had a fair number of dings in the blade.

  “Any last words?” he asked, looking down his long nose at me.

  “If you fight dirty,” I gasped, “you should always watch your back.”

  Stiarna’s tail wrapped around his middle and lifted him off the ground. He flailed, his sword falling beside me. I rolled as Stiarna slammed him down and then shook him back and forth, dragging him through the dirt. When she released him, he finally looked as dirty and ragged as every other person in Barepost.

  I was on my feet again. I ran up to him, driving my boot into his gut as he tried to stand. He flopped back down.

  With both our swords gone, I drew my ax. Its wooden handle was warm in my hand, the etched runes of my name familiar to the touch. I hadn’t drawn it before because I’d wanted to play by the rules. I’d wanted to win fairly. But nothing about this duel had been fair. He’d brought other people into it. He’d hurt my friends and my family, people whom I loved. He’d tried to control me, to take away my dreams and write a different ending to my story.

  I gathered Luthair’s tunic into my hands and drew him up to my face.

  “Frida.” He wasn’t smiling any more. His eyes darted to something over my shoulder and I turned in time to see Estrid drive a sword through the back of a guard who had been coming to save the governor. There was no one to save him now.

  “Do you remember my terms?” I asked him, pressing the blade of the ax close enough to his neck that I could shave the tiny whiskers growing there.

  “Yes.” He gulped, his throat pulsing against the blade. “Yes, I remember.”

  “Winner takes all.”

  “Frida—”

  “Convince me not to kill you,” I hissed, my blood boiling.

  His eyes searched my face. Finally, he spoke. “I surrender.” He held both of his hands up.

  He was betting on my honor. I didn’t have to stop. I didn’t have to be honorable—he certainly wasn’t. He’d said we were alike once. I could prove him right. It would be so easy to rid the world of Stephan Luthair, but then what? Would Aysche come into power? I remembered what he told me about Barepost, how it had been before he’d taken over. As much as I hated him, at least Luthair knew what it took to run Barepost, to keep it from falling into chaos. It needed a firm hand. He was the one who could get it back on its feet after the ur’gel attack.

  I dropped him, stepping away.

  “Frida, what are you doing?” Estrid asked.

  There were no guards left. We stood in a sea of bodies—black-clad guards and escaped miners ringed by scaled dragons. Stiarna was beside Estrid, looking eager to finish what she started with Luthair. The rest—Erik, Arun, Beru, Aria, Xalph, and Grissall—were on the deck of the Duchess, watching.

  “You don’t get to make the rules if you don’t follow them,” I said to Luthair. “The people of Barepost need you, and maybe they even need to fear you, but you need to be fair. And just. And kind every now and then.”

  Luthair was nodding emphatically, his shoulders slumping with relief.

  I took a step closer to him and tipped his chin up with the blade of my ax, just to remind him of where he stood. “If you don’t . . . I will end you. I will end you and destroy Barepost.” Barepost was his home, for better or worse, and I thought that maybe that would get his attention.

  “I concede. I agree to your terms.” He pushed to his feet, brushing the dirt from his clothes and limping away toward the gate.

  I expected there was a hidden lift there somewhere that he’d taken up. I wondered how he would get down, but it really didn’t concern me.

  Estrid wrapped me into a hug.

  Luthair turned back around. “The offer still stands. If you ever find yourself back in Barepost. I’m used to getting what I want, and I want you, Svand. I never lose.”

  I almost laughed. Instead, I shook my head at him. “Well, you did today.”

  He hobbled away, disappearing into the trees, leaving us, as usual, to clean up his mess.

  Chapter 25

  Erik hissed through his teeth as Aria applied a balm to the burns on his arm.

  “I can’t believe you did this to yourself,” Aria spoke without looking at him, her attention on the angry red skin. “You’re likely to have permanent damage.”

  She had already tended the wounds in my shoulder and hand, so I had also been adequately scolded. She’d said the shoulder would likely be sore on and off for the rest of my life but that the hand would recover with a minimal scar. I didn’t care about the scar as long as I could still hold an ax.

  “It was that or die,” Estrid said in Erik’s defense.

  The four of us were sitting on the deck of the Iron Duchess. On the ground below, Arun and Beru were gathering the bodies of the dead miners and guards. Aria finished tending Erik’s arm and then left the three of us alone, disappearing into the crews’ quarters to check on Grissall and Xalph.

  When she was gone, I turned to Erik. He wasn’t speaking to me and had barely looked me in the eye since Luthair had left. “Are you upset with me?”

  He stood, pulling his shirt over his head. “It wasn’t your debt to settle.”

  “It was.” I looked to Estrid for support. She pressed her lips together and nodded, not meeting Erik’s eyes. “Look, I know we don’t talk about it, but Estrid and I got you into that mess. We took Luthair up on his offer because we couldn’t stand to lose you. But we lost you anyway.”

  “You didn’t—”

  “We did,” Estrid confirmed, finally speaking up. “And the only way to keep a small part of you was by ser
ving Luthair with you.”

  “I won your freedom,” I said. “I won our freedom.”

  He stalked to the gangplank to leave the ship but paused and looked back at us. “If only it were that easy.”

  Arun did not think the miners would appreciate being buried, so that afternoon, we burned the bodies in an elven-style funeral pyre, which was really very similar to an Ahvoli burning ceremony, just without the funeral boat. It was more and more obvious that even though the D’avhol and the elves didn’t intermingle much, we still maintained a lot of their traditions. We were maybe not so different after all.

  At Aria’s insistence, we buried the guards’ bodies, even though it put us staying on the plateau another night to finish the work. I slept, and when I woke to take the last shift, Arun was already there. We sat together on the deck of the ship, watching the dark tree line. Thankfully, Stiarna stalking through the woods was the only creature we saw.

  When it was past midnight, I leaned back on the palms of my hands and looked up at the sky. The veil had lowered, which it did rarely. This plateau wasn’t protected by the clouds like the rest were. But that night, I could see stars. The sky looked a lot like it did at home in Bor’sur.

  “It’s been so long since I’ve seen a cloudless sky,” I said almost without meaning to. I didn’t want him to think I felt sorry for myself, not after everything that we’d been through. Everything we’d survived.

  “It’s been so long since I’ve seen a sky at all.”

  I cut my eyes to him, ready to apologize.

  He was smiling. He bumped my shoulder with his and pointed to one of the brighter stars nearest to Aupra, the white moon. “Inara is bright tonight. We should have good weather for flying tomorrow.”

  I patted the deck beneath me. “Is she safe to fly? Truly?”

  “Truly?” He laughed. “Shame, because I was so planning on lying.”

  “Really?” I sat upright, watching his face.

  He laughed again. “You flew on a griffin, and you’re afraid of my Duchess?”