Arrival of the Rifted (The Rifted Series Book 1)

by C. C. York

  "Brother, it's the first night of Hasateen. Efendians will be out later than normal, and we'll begin to see more outsiders by the month's end. If the numbers continue to increase, it will raise the alarm beyond our borders that the Iktidar line cannot offer protection. Have you brought Taavi in?"

  "Bring me into what?" Their older brother strolled in and unstrapped his curved blades from his back to set aside. Taavi was the only Iktidar child to share their father's fair features. One would never know it, though, given how grime piled on his short, cropped honey-blond hair. Even his curls still looked rank with sweat.

  "You look horrible," Damari said while Alik said, "I'm so glad you're home!"

  Taavi ruffled Damari's dark hair and swept Alik into a hug. She put a hand to her nose. He smells worse than he looks.

  "Taav, how much do you know of the missing Efendian girls?" Alik asked while he poured himself water from her crystal pitcher.

  "Only what Damari relayed in his note early this morning. My men and I just returned from patrol, and one of his Eyes was waiting for me." Taavi winked at Alik.

  "Ugh, don't." Damari's Eyes were known by sight to only the three siblings. Alik wasn't even sure how many in total Damari paid, but each woman she'd seen was breathtakingly beautiful. "The perfect distraction for information to slip," he'd once told her.

  Damari just laughed.

  Alik's brothers both had enough charm to make even the oldest matriarch blush. Taavi, in particular, was a legend among the Horde for his skills in the hunt and border skirmishes. Still, most Efendian women simply knew him as "the Beautiful One." His men once taunted him as "Beauty," but he took it with gusto and now uses it annoyingly often in the third person.

  Alik, in her opinion, was infinitely more forgettable by contrast.

  She ripped a leaf from one of the potted plants, pacing. Where would anyone take so many Efendian girls? More importantly, how? They're young into their Dua, but they're not without some protection.

  "What reasons do the Dvarians have to hate us?" She asked.

  Damari began to list on his fingers, "Well, for one, we took over their country."

  Taavi chimed in, "Uh, we prefer 'liberated their country,' brother."

  "By killing off their king." Damari shook his head at Taavi but continued, "We also have a very robust trade requirement of them that, as you know, is a little one-sided."

  "We are an arrogant lot," Taavi supplied happily.

  "And our women have Dua whereas theirs do not?" Damari finished.

  "Right, right, right. I know all this, but Dvari has prospered twofold since Mother's war. And they hated their king." Alik recalled the emissaries' odd reaction, how they looked nothing like the predecessor's typical entourage, and how they arrived early without anyone learning of their arrival. "Are there any new reasons we've given them that they could be targeting us through these kidnappings?"

  "Not that I'm aware," Taavi said.

  Taavi and Alik knew every significant decision their mother made now that Alik finally sat in the advising sessions. News of new boundary pushes or restrictions placed on the kingdom of islands would have reached at least one of the siblings.

  Alik continued her slow pace across the opal floor. Apart from a handful of skirmishes after Mother's war, the kingdom fell under the Efendian bosom with little pushback and was rewarded with peace. Why would they disrupt that years later?

  Alik asked, "Damari, do you have any spies in Dvari?"

  He shook his head. "None."

  Taavi answered her unasked question. "I doubt Mother has any spies either. The vassal there now insists that any additional Duawielders on the islands cause unnecessary tension. She requires every female Efendian, regardless of power, to report in as soon as they arrive and are tracked until they leave. She explained to the ministers that keeping a low profile helps soothe the Dvarian egos in court."

  That could explain why the emissary seemed so surprised at seeing Dua up close, Alik thought.

  "See if you can find out if there is growing tension from whomever this new emissary is," Damari said.

  Alik felt a little stupid as she confided, "I can try. He's radiating hatred toward me, but he hides it well."

  Taavi took his little sister's hand, "We are Efendian, Alik. Everybody hates us."

  Alik swatted at him, "I'm serious. This feels, I don't know, different. More personal? Like I've done something to him, and yet you'd never know by listening to our conversations. He's amiable and engaging and---" She trailed off at her brother's smiles and crossed her arms. "What?"

  Damari glanced at the windows, nodding his head east as if they could see the Dvarian archipelago. "Alik, think about it like this: Your mother beheaded their king, and your kingdom is the most powerful in all of Sakalid. You are the Efendian heir and the Queen's right hand,"

  In theory, Alik thought.

  "—so it's likely that every Dvarian you meet will see you as an extension of her before they'll see who you are as a person."

  "Deep, brother," Taavi teased. "If you could make that rhyme you could turn it into a song and make every Efendian women's under—"

  "Stop," Alik interrupted as Damari laughed.

  The tease in Taavi's eye dimmed as he said, "Alik, don’t worry about him. You will marry anyone you wish. Who cares what a Dvarian thinks?"

  She replied before thinking, "Taav, I'm 19. We had one meal together. Marriage is the furthest thing from my future right now."

  She winced. Taavi was already old enough to marry off. Much of their mother's politics revolved around which Elite family would claim his hand. I will make sure you have a say in this, Alik thought. She didn't know how, but whatever influence she had over her mother, she'd use to help her brothers out of an arranged marriage that all royal Efendian males faced.

  "Anyway," she continued, "I need to focus on finding the missing girls. If I'm around the emissary more, I may figure out why they feel off. I need both of you at tonight's dinner. I think Agnian would hit it off well with you."

  "First names then, eh sister? Is he as charming as the last emissary?" Taavi teased.

  Alik grimaced, "He's an improvement at least, and fortunately, he doesn't seem as handsy as his predecessor."

  "Fortunately" might not be the right word, though I'd rather eat a Garfu egg again than say that aloud. No need to give these two any more reason to tease me about my love life. She glanced down at her half uncuffed pants now pooling around her flats. Or lack thereof.

  Damari said, "I'll go to dinner, but it is First Night. I'm not missing the show."

  A hidden corridor in the Trades hosted the city's best musical talents most nights and commanded all of Damari's free time. The first week of Hasateen, though, took the dancing and revelry to unparalleled heights. I could use a night out, she thought, ignoring the nagging guilt for wanting to dance when girls were still missing. I am not getting anywhere cooped up in the Palace, she justified. Maybe I can see something Damari's Eyes have missed?

  "I'll go with you." Alik said, "We can see if anything seems amiss in the Trades." Alik's Dua readings were at their best when she was physically close to one person, but she could also get vague impressions from a broader perspective.

  Taavi immediately flipped to his unofficial Captain Rules status. "No, Alik. If there really are this many girls missing in a single night, we can't risk you being vulnerable."

  Alik winked at a grinning Damari who, as usual, was steps ahead of Taavi alongside her. "Even better! It's been ages since the three of us celebrated First Night together. We'll go in disguise after the Dvarian dinner tonight. Bring Ty and some of your men if it makes you feel better."

  Ty was Taavi's best friend and equal rival for the nickname "Beauty." He was also the deadliest member of the Horde. Alik spent an entire season pining for him as a kid until he told her he wasn't interested in girls. It worked out for the best, though, because he, Shauna, and the Iktidar trio were
inseparable throughout their childhood.

  "Shauna will come as well," Alik declared despite Taavi's weak protests. She clapped her hands. "I'll see you both at dinner. And don't grill the emissaries. It's a long shot, but I don't want them to know we're suspicious."

  She understood that the new emissaries could be responsible for the kidnappings or at least know something about the disappearances. She just hoped Agnian was uninvolved.

  Only one way to find out, she thought.

  Elaine

  Elaine Reynolds skidded to a halt. Muffled laughter, as if a conversation occurred behind a closed door, flitted through her mind. The voices she'd heard her entire life before arriving in Efendi months ago came waltzing in again as if they hadn't disappeared six months prior. Wary but relieved, she closed her eyes to better hear.

  Nothing.

  She kicked at a fat, fire orange flower the size of a tomcat that trailed from a turquoise pot. I couldn't get the voices to stop chatting in my ear back home. Don't know why I thought I could bring them back any easier, she thought. An unexpected but familiar chord of loneliness strummed through her.

  "Elai!"

  Kara's voice, decidedly not in her head, echoed through the corridor. Elaine dashed underneath the maze of floating candles at the main staircase entrance that would cut through each Tier up to the Palace high at the top of the mountain. Before she even rounded the corner, the sound of the gurgling fountain where fathers mended clothes together greeted her. Her new home, a circular cluster of fabric lean-to's, came into view where her two favorite people were waiting for her.

  Reiki, one-half of the reed-thin twins that had taken Elaine in as their unofficial little sister, grinned at his scowling twin. "Ready for a nice, easy stroll?"

  Kara rolled her eyes with Elaine as they finished loading baskets into the leather ladder. Kara and Reiki hefted it horizontally between them up the hundreds of uneven, steep steps to the Trades. The only perk of being 13 and short meant that Elaine didn't have to help carry the grain.

  Kara trudged up the curving alleyway, complaining incessantly about the small pebbles stuck in her sandals and the broken bits of pottery. Elaine hadn't known this world or the twins long, but she still knew them as well as she did the root-ridden path behind her old trailer in South Carolina. Elaine shared a look with Kara's twin brother Reiki. Just a few hundred more steps and Kara will stop complaining.

  The curved burnt orange and khaki walls opened to sapphire, jade, fuchsia, and plum stone buildings. Kara smiled wider at the rainbow bend, and the happiness the twins shared whenever they arrived spread as easily as the desire to dance to the riotous drumbeats that greeted them.

  Everything overwhelmed Elaine when she first arrived in this world from South Carolina, but the riot of colors and sounds in the Trades Tier took sensory overload to new heights. It was the heart of the Efendian kingdom—a breathing monster of purple-hued walls, vats of orange and amber grains, and jade-toned glass. It marched to the discordance of horns, flutes, and drums the Towners played for coins. The air pulsed with smoke, baked bread, and tinny coffee grains the Efendian chewed like tobacco while boiling them in hot nut milk. Colorful fabric stalls clung to either side of the Tier. To walk through untouched was an art because everyone, from Towners to the most powerful Elite, thronged past performers dancing or playing around them.

  Kara and Reiki shuffled their grain ladder into their stall, narrowly avoiding a matriarch parading past with her retinue. In any other Tier of the kingdom, the Elite of the Upper Tiers would never rub elbows with someone from Low Town like them. But the status of Dua, the magical abilities of Efendian women that Elaine still gawked at, did not matter here as much as coin did. And coin was the most sought-after power in the Trades.

  Elaine liked to crack nuts on the high basket behind them and watch Reiki charm any woman, regardless of rank or age, that came within three feet of him. The neighboring stall owner, Kabushi, paid Elaine in soft lead for her journal if she cracked the golf-ball-sized nuts akin to pecans while he roasted them each day. She grew adept at filling the cloth bags of grain Reiki and Kara sold without spilling too much and was learning the different coins the twins deftly exchanged.

  After a while, Kara winked at Elaine, her silent signal to run amok before they packed up for the day. Elaine dashed off the basket and blew a kiss to Kabushi. She had yet to run the entire length of the Trades, so each day, she pushed herself faster to see something she hadn't the day prior. Yesterday she glimpsed a tiny alley filled with floating glass lanterns in a myriad of colors that she wanted to explore. Most shopkeepers smiled when she dashed by; others shouted at her to watch her step or slow down. She jumped over displays of colorful furs skinned from kingalias and under the arms of the Elite examining jewelry floating in the air, snatching bits of conversation as she zigzagged past.

  "Another disappearance. Her parents saw nothing."

  "Taken—one moment she was behind him, and then she vanished—"

  She skidded to a halt at the last tidbit of eavesdropping and slunk behind a stall selling multicolored bees the size of her fist. I got zero magic and even less coin, but gossip is the next best thing around here. Especially when it's about the missing girls.

  The gossiping women lingered ahead of her, their ruby and gold saris swaying with each brush of another Efendian walking past. Elaine swatted at the smoke from the neighboring stall to better see. The taller matriarch glanced behind her, but like so many Elite, didn't notice the slip of a girl sandwiched between fat bees and a spiraling hunk of glazed meat.

  "It's getting worse. It was one thing when it was just a handful of Towner trash disappearing, but this time it took one of ours."

  "Hey, get out of here," the beekeeper hissed. She pushed Elaine with a puff of her meager Airwerk. "No one will stop if it looks like I'm only selling to other Towners."

  Elaine glared at the woman but stepped back because she knew it was true. By the time she turned, the bustle of the Trades had folded in the wealthy women, and she couldn't see them any longer. A man holding a wooden cage of magenta and orange birds bumped into Elaine, nearly pushing her into a fountain of the water goddess, Sulu.

  Her reflection in the water still showed a mess of dishwater blonde hair run feral, straight at its skinny roots and ending in scraggly ringlets perpetually unbound despite Kara's braiding skills. Her cheeks finally seemed full enough, though, to support her large eyes the color of burnt walnuts. She had the Hadishi family to thank for months of steady eating since she arrived in Efendi. Elaine missed few things about her life in the world she left behind; being hungry wasn't one of them.

  The air cooled down considerably as she entered the narrow alley of lanterns, and the cacophony of the Trades died down to a low enough hum that she could hear herself think. The lanterns floating in the air filtered the brutal afternoon sun to dabbled pink and blues across the cobblestones, and tendrils of fat, lime leaves spilled down the sides of amber-tinged walls. Elaine ran her fingers over the powdered walls as she explored further down and tried to picture how she'd sketch it later.

  Then, as suddenly and unexpectedly as they had before, the voices in her head came back. Finally! Grinning ear to ear, she danced a little jig in the narrow alley before she composed herself to listen. Wait, what'd she say?

  Frustrated at the lack of clarity, she walked deeper into the darkening alley, heart pounding. She strained to hear the conversation just out of earshot, not noticing the lack of people around her. She squealed, There!

  "---Rutzgar, please hear me. I need—"

  The woman's prayer was cut short as Elaine's brain registered a closer, distressed whimper around the bend in the alley.

  Kara's warning to stay within eyesight of other people at all times came to mind at the sound. Girls her age disappeared every night. She tapped her fingers at her sides, debating if she should go back to the safety of the crowds or continue down to better hear the voices in her head that
she desperately missed.

  Elaine was never particularly good at dashing her curiosity, even when she knew in her bones that whatever she would find would not be good. She stopped questioning why she heard voices no one else did around the time she was 10. The voices were a distracting balm to the loneliness she felt even when she still went to school, so Elaine learned to tune in and enjoy the glimpse of a stranger's life. The first time she felt like one of the voices spoke directly to her, she followed it to this magical new world called Sakalid.

  What if all the years of being called crazy and a liar were for something else? Surely I'm hearing them for a reason. What if I'm hearing the missing girls? What if they're trying to lead me here? To them?

  The voices in her head brought her to a life better than she ever imagined. The least I could do is help find them.

  A sharp slap echoed off the dimly lit walls, deciding for her. She knew that sound well.

  She walked as light as a cicada and peeked around the corner at the next turn. A scrawny girl, no older than she, stood with her head bowed and shoulders curved in. She cowered before a ginger man the size of a boulder. Elaine flattened further into the wall when she realized the man had the letter C tattooed around his eye, and another of Kara's warnings echoed in her mind. Never, ever get in the way of the Canavar Company gang. Elaine couldn't hear what he was saying beneath the red beard that engulfed his face. He shoved the girl back in the curtained doorway, and she glimpsed several other men lounging on couches in the room beyond.

  A sick dread settled in her belly. They have to be the ones behind it. Everyone knows they're the worst gang in the kingdom. Maybe I found their lair.

  She inched closer.

  Rumors of girls snatched from thin air whispered throughout the lower Tiers, but the Elite did nothing. Queen Firtina doesn’t even do anything, she thought, creeping closer to hear the damning evidence.