by J M D Reid
“I try.” Ary sighed. “She’s mad. It’s hard to get anything coherent out of Her. And it’s not like I can control when She appears.”
“Well, maybe you can? Maybe it’s one of Her Blessings.”
Ary’s forehead furrowed. “Blessing?”
“Theisseg’s Blessings. You must have hers. How else did you heal your wounds?” Only a half-hour ago, Ary had suffered deep slashes down his back, buttocks, and thighs. Wriavia’s sharp talons had severed the tendons at his knees, laming Ary.
Only, he’d healed. He’d stood and fought. Chaylene couldn’t get the image of her husband’s shredded flesh knitting itself back together again from her thoughts. It was miraculous. And miracles possessed only one source in the skies: a Goddess’s Blessing. Riasruo had her four, given to all who worshiped her when they come of age. Chaylene and Ary both possessed them. Not the same Blessings, but they wielded powers to affect the world around them.
“Your healing ability has to be from Theisseg,” Chaylene said, her thoughts grasping onto something familiar. Something to anchor her against that swirling dizziness afflicting her. “Estan mentioned Theisseg has her own set of Blessings. The Agerzaks use them.”
Chaylene remembered the conversation from a few weeks ago. It was right after Ary recovered from his sickness. Or was he poisoned? Did Wriavia sell me tainted candied fruit? Was that the first time he tried to murder my husband?
Chaylene shoved that aside, instead focusing on her memories. Estan explained about the connection between the barbarous Agerzaks and the Stormriders. He claimed the Agerzaks were Stormriders who settled on the Eastern Skylands instead of dragging them down into Storm like the Great Cyclone had to the heart of the Dawn Empire a thousand years ago.
“Agerzak pirates can ride across the skies like Stormriders,” Chaylene said. “That’s one Blessing. Your healing must be another.”
“You think they work like Riasruo’s Blessings?” Ary asked.
Static charge prickled through Chaylene’s body, standing up the hairs on her arms beneath her light-blue jacket. Her husband manipulated his Lightning, one of the two Blessings he’d received from Riasruo. Blessings came in four types—Wind, Mist, Pressure, and Lightning—and three strengths—Minor, Moderate, or Major. Ary had Moderate Lightning and Minor Wind. The Goddess had granted Chaylene Moderate Pressure and Minor Mist.
“So there’s healing and . . . sky walking,” Chaylene continued, not sure on the proper names. “What are the other two?”
Ary shrugged.
“Well, if you have a healing Blessing, do you have another one? I think yours must be at least Moderate. You healed the wounds the Luastria inflicted and . . .” Chaylene words trailed off. She blinked. “That’s how you recovered from your sickness so quickly!”
“And how I survived the choking plague as a kid,” Ary said, rolling onto his back. He stared up at the ceiling, his left hand pulling from her arm. He balled it into his fist, chiseled jaw trembling.
“You didn’t kill her, Ary.” Chaylene snuggled closer to her husband. After the Cyclone ravished their village of Isfe seven years ago, the choking plague came in the winter. Many died, including Ary’s younger sister, Srias. “Your ma was wrong to ever blame you.”
Angry winds swirled inside Chaylene. She detested Ionie Jayne, Ary’s ma. The mad woman always found new ways to hurt him. Even her recent death plunged one final barb into her son’s heart.
“I always survive,” Ary muttered, his voice cold. “My ma was right. Theisseg tainted me.”
“You’re not tainted! Theisseg gifted you. Blessed you! You survived when you should have died. You would have . . .” Her voice broke, emotion choking her throat. “You would have died and left me alone.” A sob shuddered through her. She didn’t want to think about Ary dying. Didn’t want to end up weak and broken like her own dead ma.
Ary pulled her close, forehead furrowed. She studied his face, trying to parse his emotions. “You really believe that, Lena?” Something touched his voice. Awe? “That Theisseg Blessed me?”
“You’re alive. Of course I do. So should you. Stop listening to your ma. She never cared for you.”
“She broke, Lena.” He stared up at the ceiling, words sounding remote. “Anyone can break. She tried to find her way back . . . If I’d let her . . .”
Chaylene hugged him tight. He didn’t need to think about his ma’s recent death. She searched for a distraction and . . . a question popped into her mind. She voiced it: “How . . . how does Wriavia know about this?”
“Who?”
“The Luastria that attacked us. He . . .” She shivered. How often was he flying above us and watching us? Spying on us? Her chest ached where the bird-like Luastria had kicked her, and her right wrist throbbed from his pecking beak, a hasty bandage wrapped over the shallow wound. “How did he know, Ary?”
Ary didn’t answer right away. “It must have been at the Blessing ceremony.” Every year, Human youths who turned seventeen before the Summer Solstice received Riasruo’s Blessing at her nearest temple. The Bishopress of Vesche performed hers and Ary’s three months ago. “The acolyte grew excited and the bishopress unnerved. She smoothed it out, and I believed her excuse, but now . . .” He frowned. “When you had yours, there was the central plinth with the charcoal. What happened when you touched it?”
“Nothing.” An expectant tension seized her heart as she waited for her husband’s answer.
“When I touched it, the charcoal burst into flames.” Excitement animated his face. “That’s what startled them. It’s a test to screen for Theisseg’s touch.”
Chaylene’s stomach almost fell out of her. “Are you saying the Church of Riasruo is trying to kill you?” She felt so foolish even saying that. The Church taught the Goddess’s love, encouraging everyone to be kind towards each other, not to hurt each other. “No, Ary, not the Church.”
“You think it’s just a coincidence that a Luastria merchant tried to kill the pair of us?” Ary asked, incredulity staining his voice.
Chaylene bit her lip. How else could the merchant have known? She remembered, the day before Ary’s mysterious sickness, Wriavia giving her a special jar of candied pears pulled from beneath his stall instead of off his shelf. She bought the treat for Ary since he couldn’t leave camp that Dawnsday. If the charcoal test was to find Stormtouched, then it made a perverse kind of sense. The Church’s clergy all hailed the Sun Goddess’s favorite race: the Luastria.
Her stomach churned as she groaned, “Goddess Above. What do we do? We need to tell someone. We were attacked in camp. Do we report it to Captain Dhar or—”
“No!”
*
Chaylene jumped at his sudden roar.
Shame flushed through Ary immediately as his wife flinched back from him. Stray strands of her pale-blonde hair danced over her ebony forehead while her cloud-gray eyes widened. He didn’t mean for the outburst to explode out of him, but fear’s sickly vines squeezed his heart. Blood screamed cold through his veins.
“Sorry, Lena,” he said.
She waved her hands. “Just startled me.”
Dread swallowed his hot shame. “No one can know. They’ll quarantine me, Lena!” The terror he suffered for the last month or longer, that sickening unease, wracked his guts. “We’ll never see each other again if the Navy suspects what I am.”
He rubbed at the puckered scar on his left side right below his ribs, the mark Theisseg’s lightning bolt had left on his ten-year-old body; it was proof that the Dark Goddess had touched him. The Church of Riasruo wanted him dead while the Autonomy’s Navy would lock him in a cell for the rest of his life.
Why do they fear me so much? What is so dangerous about being Stormtouched that the Church would send an assassin to kill me?
“We have to be careful, Lena,” he continued as the surprise of his outburst faded from her expression. He drank in the sight of her face, her nose, a small rise above her plump lips, which always gave her face a delicate and
girlish delight. With her blonde hair tied back, it left exposed her round ears that his fingers enjoyed stroking while she burned beneath him. And those eyes . . . He could lose himself staring into them, soft gray like clouds after spring rain. He knew her features well. He’d loved her for years, since maybe the day of the Cyclone when she’d kissed his cheek while they’d played with Vel on the edge of their skyland.
“Of course we’ll be careful,” Chaylene said. “But what about Wriavia? Will he follow us when we sail from Les?”
Though not officially over, training had halted at Camp Chubris. After fighting the Cyclone last week, the survivors had more practical experience than most who served for years in the Navy. During peace, most sailors battled only boredom. In two days, the Dauntless would sail for the port of Onhur out on the edge of the Fringe, the eastern extent of the Autonomy, to start a four-year tour defending against Agerzak pirates.
“I don’t know.” Ary’s eyes fell on the bandage on his wife’s right wrist. She couldn’t heal herself. That night, that feathered demon had almost ended her life. The helpless terror Ary had felt lying maimed on his belly filled him. He never wanted to see his wife in such danger again. She’d fought with the dancing Luastria, held the feathered sow at bay, but the bird danced with too much skill, moved with too much grace. If Ary hadn’t healed . . .
Black rage swelled through Ary, devouring that sickly writhe in his innards. His hands clenched as he ground his teeth. He growled, “We have to kill Wriavia. We can’t let him follow us. We’ll have to search for him. End him!”
“Now? You want us to march into Shon and root him out in the dark?”
“Yes!” He rose from the bed, the anger beating on his heart like a warning drum. He ripped off his torn and bloodied shirt. The storm snarled inside of him, driving him to march to the nearby village. “He won’t be expecting it. I’ll carve him up.”
“And how will you explain that? How will we tell Captain Dhar or Admiral Dhamen that we murdered a Luastria merchant?”
“He tried to kill us!” he boomed.
She stood and faced him without flinching. Ary witnessed something hard, something vicious flick across his wife’s face. “I know that! I want him dead. He tried to murder you, Ary. He poisoned you! I was never so scared in my life—not even during the Cyclone—than I was sitting by your sickbed. I don’t want him to try again! I want him dead!”
“Good!” Ary grabbed his sword belt. “Let’s go kill him!”
“We. Can’t.” She said each word with clipped syllables. “What, do you think we can just kick down his door and murder him?”
“Why not?” He belted his sword around his torso, the burning in his back almost gone; his wounds had healed.
“Because we’ll be hanged for murder, Ary!”
The turbulent tempest inside of him quivered. It howled, beating at his insides, demanding to be unleashed. He’d felt this storm many times. It had propelled him through fights as a youth, and exploded out of him upon that sow Grabin when he’d grabbed Chaylene’s rear three months back.
“I’m not losing you!” She threw her arms around his neck, her eyes blazing. “Not after this. I almost ruined everything with my stupidity, so I won’t let you ruin it with yours.”
“Stupidity? Killing him is stupid? After tonight?”
“We can’t tell anyone why we killed him. We. Will. Hang.”
The pain in her eyes was so real, so visceral. He stared into it and . . . the tempest howled louder. It demanded action, but . . . but . . . She was right. He had to think. He couldn’t just let his anger control him. He took a deep breath. He’d almost killed Grabin because he’d let his fury loose. He’d come within a heartbeat of throwing him over the side of the Xorlar into the Storm Below. Ary’s anger always lurked in the dark corners of his soul, building over the years of swallowing his ma’s insults, hearing her mad pronouncements that he was corrupted, that he’d killed Srias and his pa.
He. Would. Control. It.
With a grunting snarl, he relaxed his fist. “You’re right. Tomorrow, after the funeral, we can . . . look around. Maybe find something—do something—about him. We can’t have him skulking around. I won’t let him hurt you.”
Chaylene arched an eyebrow. “And I won’t let him hurt you. I made a promise to your sister, Briaris Jayne.”
Ary smiled at the fierce expression on her face. “Your ma named you well. You could be the Shieldmaiden.”
Chaylene squirmed, her soldierly expression melting into girlish embarrassment. Then she sighed, her eyes becoming ancient and worn to Ary. They looked as old as he felt after witnessing the butchery of actual battle. She still was a youth like him in appearance, only seventeen, barely an adult.
Sickening images swirled through Ary’s memory: blood spurting, men and women screaming, bodies torn into fragments of ground meat. Crimson splattered across Chaylene’s smooth cheek, eyes staring skyward, filmed over in death.
The shadowy Luastria, hidden by that strange engine that wreathed his form in mist, stood over Chaylene, her blood staining his talons.
The dark winds stirred in him. His hand clenched. He itched to choke the life out of the assassin’s scrawny neck. He needed to find Wriavia. He wanted to march out into the night right now, kick in the Theisseg-cursed bastard’s door, and protect his wife. Blood screamed through his veins, beating action against his temple. Hunting down the feathered sow was something he could do. Could control.
Denied this path, he turned to the other problem. “How are we going to do this, Lena?”
“Find Wriavia?”
“No. Freeing Theisseg? How do I possibly free a Goddess?”
She worked her plump lips. “What if we talked to Estan about it? He knows things.”
Ary breathed deeply. He couldn’t be angry right now. Not with this. It was too important to let the tempest dictate where he sailed. He had to be calm, to channel his darker impulses. He drew in another lung-filling inhalation.
“I think Estan does know something,” he said as his pulse slowed. “He quoted a poem once. It sounded like someone who . . . witnessed Theisseg chains. A Stormtouched.”
“Good.” A smile spread on Chaylene’s lips. “Let’s talk to him.”
The dark winds turned icy in him. Fear and anger . . . Both emotions could lead him astray. Calm . . . Think . . . “What if he turns me in?”
“Estan wouldn’t do that. He would be more excited by the chance to learn what you know.”
“And share it.” Ary’s eyebrows arched. “Isn’t that what scholars do? Pen books and share their thoughts with the world?”
“If we asked him . . .”
Ary shook his head, the winter’s gale ravaging his soul. He stared at his wife. He wouldn’t let anything take her away. Not Estan. Not the Autonomy and their quarantine. Not Wriavia!
“I can’t take that chance. It was so hard just gathering the courage to tell you, Lena.” He shook his head. “It has to be just you and me.”
Chaylene bit her lip. “Thank you for trusting me. I . . . I won’t tell anyone. Not even Estan.”
Her arms hugged about his neck, pulling him tight. Her kiss was fierce, the heat washing through his body. Winter retreated before the shining summer of her love, a blazing sun spilling feathery rays of passion upon him. He couldn’t remember the last time she felt so lithe in his arms, tasted so sweet on his lips.
So much ash had choked their marriage the last few weeks. Distrust and secrets almost snuffed out their united fire. He pulled her close to him, feeling her through her uniform. His blood raced faster and faster, matching her ardor.
She didn’t resist as he pressed her down onto the bed. He didn’t have to worry about anything right now. The other problems—hiding Theisseg’s touch, figuring out the meaning of his dreams, dealing with the assassin, discovering the key to freeing the Dark Goddess—could wait for morning. He had his wife back. Trust soothed the hurt they’d inflicted on each other. Together, they s
tripped off stained clothing. He missed this intimacy, this wonderful passion. Chaylene became the sun. Her heat exploded out of her like he’d opened a galley stove. He bathed in her love.
After spending their desire, he savored holding her in his arms, stroking her golden hair spilling across the swarthy brown of his chest. Everything could wait for tomorrow.
*
Estan couldn’t sleep.
He lay on his lumpy, bay-stuffed mattress in the barracks for the crew of the Dauntless. His ribs, broken by a Stormrider falling on him during the Cyclone, ached. “It just needs time to heal,” Lieutenant Jhoch, the Dauntless’s medical officer, had said earlier today, his green eyes bloodshot behind his horn-rimmed spectacles. The Cyclone’s aftermath had aged his fatherly face. The Stormriders had killed or maimed over a third of the crew. Each day, the death count climbed as another seriously injured sailor succumbed. “There’s nothing to do beyond wrapping a tight bandage around your chest. Just take it easy, Private, and it will heal.”
Estan could not wait. Breathing hurt. Standing hurt. Writing hurt. Everything hurt.
He focused his thoughts through his discomfort to grapple with the conversation he’d had with Ary that afternoon. Estan’s ebony forehead furrowed as he reflected on Ary’s reactions, his words. Estan was positive Ary was Stormtouched and that was causing problems in the young man’s marriage.
Estan possessed only the greatest respect and brotherly affection for Chaylene. She possessed a sharp intelligence and quick wit. He enjoyed conversing with her on all manner of topics, especially her great passion: history. Many times they’d delved into deep discussions on the minutiae of the past. It pained Estan to see the rupture in Ary and Chaylene’s relationship. It was so obvious that the pair loved each other that even the most squall-addled fish could recognize it. The rumors of Chaylene’s infidelity—as if she would cuckold him, scoffed Estan—and Ary’s secret drove a deep wedge between them.
He has to be Stormtouched, Estan thought for the hundredth time. He reacted to Nzuuth sze Hyesk’s poem. He was entranced by the Dawnspire. He mentioned the foci!
