A Tempest of Shadows

by Washington, Jane

  “She was delivering medicine on the orders of the Inquisitor. One of the vials was infected,” Calder answered matter-of-factly, but his mouth was twisted in displeasure. “I witnessed the entirety of it. She won’t be questioned.”

  He began to leave the room, but Ingrid captured his arm, her face tipped back to stare into his. My skin crawled, but the sensation didn’t make sense.

  “We need you, Captain,” Ingrid insisted lowly. “Without you in Hearthenge, Malthe will take control of the garrisons. He’s obsessed with the Reken skirmishes; he won’t care about any of this.”

  “I’ll be there tonight.” Calder extracted his arm, glancing back at me as he left the house.

  We went to the other houses in silence, delivering the rest of the vials. The last house only received half a vial, since I had used the other half on Hildi, but none of them said a thing anyway. They all knew me on sight, and the presence of a Sentinel at my back didn’t seem to help ease their fear. They each snatched the offered vial, accepted Calder’s explanation, and were closing their doors before we even had a chance to step back, their locks snapping into place.

  On our way out of the canyon, we stopped by Hildi’s house. Calder walked close behind me as we squeezed through the crowd outside her door. Avrid was guarding the opening, but he stepped aside for us to enter. One glance at what remained of Hildi had bile rushing to the back of my throat, and I had to hold in my breath to keep from throwing up. The two boys were wrapping what was left of her body in the rug that they had pulled from beneath her armchair. They would likely burn it. The medicine man had his back to us, but I didn’t need to see the bundle in his arms to know that they had succeeded. The babe’s squalling filled the small space, shrill and boisterous.

  “A boy,” he said, as he spotted us. “Healthy but for his magic mutation. I’ve never seen one so large so early.”

  He held out the child, marked by a mottled purple colour spreading over half of his body, from his hairline to his toes. I gaped, reaching out to touch him. The medicine man hesitated for a moment before stepping closer, allowing my hand to wrap around one of the baby’s tiny feet. He had already been cleaned, his skin warm and wrinkled. I closed my eyes, feeling around for his energy again. It pushed back against mine with the faint pitter-patter of little fingers scattering across a war drum, pure and joyful and brave.

  I pulled back, filled with wonder.

  “Is the sickness inside him?” the medicine man asked.

  I shook my head. He stared at me, not exactly waiting, but assessing. Calder stepped up behind me, one of his hands landing heavily on my shoulder. The medicine man glanced up briefly, unafraid of the massive Sentinel, before returning his attention to me. He passed the babe off to a steward girl dressed in the silks of a kynhouse servant before running a hand through his short, white beard, his attention never diverting from me.

  “My wife said you would be here,” he muttered lowly. “You and a boy … though I don’t think this counts as a boy.” He flicked a finger at Calder, who scoffed, the sound vibrating against my back.

  I extracted my pen before tugging on Calder’s hand. He dropped it from my shoulder, allowing it to dangle down over my front. I could only reach the inside of his wrist, so I wrote out my question there.

  “How did your wife know this would happen?” Calder asked, after glancing at the single word I had scrawled.

  How.

  “I suggest you ask her yourself,” the medicine man replied, still speaking to me.

  He moved past me, calling to the boys, who had passed off Hildi’s body to some steward workmen. I glanced at Calder as they left the house, the boys looking forlorn and exhausted.

  He searched my expression, and I watched him weigh up the dangers of following the man back to his home. I wasn’t exactly waiting for his permission—I had five masters already and wasn’t about to willingly accept another—but I was beginning to accept that he was necessary to me.

  I feared him, but I trusted him.

  I didn’t understand him, but I needed him.

  I moved to his side, my pen against his forearm, the ink digging into his skin as I scrawled four powerful words.

  We are both Vold.

  He watched me write the words, his brow knitting together, a strange expression passing over his face like a heavy shadow. When he met my eyes again, there was confusion swimming in his blue eye and heat swirling in his golden eye.

  “You don’t understand.” The words were whispered, his body twisting to block out the activity beyond the doorway. “You’re only a girl.” He shook his head, backing away from me, swallowing the rest of his words. “You want to follow him? Go. Before you lose him.”

  10

  Spider

  I knew that Calder was following me, but I couldn’t feel his heat at my back, and when the medicine man disappeared into one of the houses, the two boys following after him, I stopped. Calder was several paces behind me, his eyes scanning the people I passed, his hand idly rubbing against the words I had written into his forearm. He stopped when our eyes caught, shoving his hands against his sides as he folded his arms, coming to a stop in front of me, his frown heavy and disapproving.

  “This could be a trap.”

  It could be. I stared at him, waiting, until eventually he sighed, reaching around me to knock on the door. We stared at each other until the door opened, and I spun around. One of the boys from earlier stood there, rubbing a damp cloth along the back of his neck. He had thin, sandy hair and cold grey eyes.

  “It’s her,” he said over his shoulder. “She came.”

  “Move aside,” a woman muttered gently, making her way to the door and pushing it fully open. She barely glanced at us before waving us in. “Go on, you two.”

  We stepped inside, just far enough for her to close the door behind us, after which she shuffled off back to a table tucked into a small, boxy kitchen, shelves cut into the wall of canyon rock.

  “Sit,” she commanded. “Don’t mind them.”

  The medicine man and his sons were sorting through their supplies in a cluttered sitting room, with an orange cat curled up in front of the small, dusty hearth, watching their progress. I walked to the kitchen, the second son glancing at me nonchalantly as I passed by. The woman had silver-blond hair, combed impeccably back from her face. Her eyes were a pale yellow-brown. I blinked, cocking my head to the side before remembering my manners and quickly taking a seat.

  Was that a magic mutation?

  Stewards weren’t allowed to pair with sectorians in marriage … and yet here they were. It explained the sons, I supposed. There was no way a steward man would be able to afford two children, and boys at that. The woman must have been fertile, and only fertile sectorian women turned their noses up at the life of a kynmaiden.

  The questions were practically bursting out of me, but I had no way of voicing them. Calder didn’t take a seat at first, but ducked into the kitchen and looked around, examining everything he could touch before sinking into the seat beside me, his hand landing on my lap, the palm facing up. I didn’t need further invitation, but started scribbling my first question.

  “Who are you?” he asked the woman, glancing at the words and piecing together proper questions from my broken Fyrian. “Are you a sectorian? How did you know that she was going to be here today? Did you know what would happen?”

  The woman tilted her head at me, her eyes flicking to Calder. “You’re not her age,” she said to him, ignoring my questions. “It’s not possible for you and her to be bound.”

  My scribbling paused, and we both stared at her, stricken.

  “I’m aware,” he finally replied, his tone carefully neutral.

  “You were bound before,” she said, reaching for his other arm.

  He shifted it away from her. “I was.”

  She smiled, and I was stricken once again, my eyes crawling over her face in wonder. Her energy was there, softly threading through the air, spinning a web arou
nd us, glittery and silver. The more I focussed on it, the clearer it became. It was in the mottled colour of her eyes, like dimples in sandstone. It was in the graceful lines of her face and the long bow of her smile.

  The mysterious, graceful power of fate.

  The woman was a Skjebre.

  I jerked my head back to the medicine man and his sons, and then looked to her again. She laughed, reading something in my face.

  “Ten years ago, the medicine man came to make a deal with me,” she said. “He wanted to know the fate of his wife, impossibly pregnant with not one child, but two. I told him his fate, and this was my price.” She rested her elbow on the table, her hand motioning the threadbare kitchen.

  I set the pen against Calder’s arm, but at the first letter, he already knew what I wanted to ask.

  “Why would you trade for this?”

  “To be close to you, child.” She smiled, watching me, and I felt the net around us constricting.

  “Why,” Calder grit out, my pen quivering against his skin. “What in Ledenaether is going on here?”

  “My name is Ylode,” she said. “But you may know me as—”

  “The Spider,” Calder finished, his arm somehow growing hard beneath my hand.

  The Spider had disappeared seven years ago. I remembered, because it was the day my Vold power had exploded in the schoolyard. It had stormed that night, Breakwater Canyon falling into an eerie, trepidatious silence. My mother had been in a good mood, allowing me to sit up late with her. It was my birthday, and she was relieved to be one year closer to being rid of me. In the morning, they said that the Spider was gone, her webs whipped to the wind, her power taken by the storm.

  I stared into her yellow-brown eyes, that webbed sensation thickening in my throat, choking up the words that I couldn’t utter. I pointed the pen at myself, and her lips parted on a smile that wasn’t really a smile but more a baring of teeth. I almost expected to see saliva dripping from them, the glow in her eyes soaked in anticipation.

  “That’s right,” she said. “It has everything to do with you, child. I spun your fate that day. I pulled a premonition from the depths of Lake Enke. The fish had nibbled the vevebre almost away, though it had been cast only the night before. The wire was slick with slime and corroded by the salt from a sea it had never known. The future decayed in my hands, whispering to me of a girl with eyes shallow and dark, burning with the fire of the afterworld. A girl with a storm at her heels, her fate cast to the ocean, and a primordial power huddled inside her heart. A girl swimming in death, born from the turning of an era, from the edge of darkness into darkness itself. A girl who is the first and final of her kind. It whispered to me of you.” She leaned forward, her eyes flashing brighter. “I knew what you were … I just didn’t know how it was possible. There are only three Fjorn. It is known. Three Fjorn to guard against the end of the world.” Her hands twitched, as though to reach for me, but then stilled, knowing that Calder would prevent her from touching me. “Tell me, child. Has it begun? The end of the world?”

  I scribbled something on Calder, who held my eyes as he answered. “We think it has.” He turned to the Spider. “So the vevebre told you about her, and you came here, seeking a home where you could be close to her? Where you could watch her?”

  Instead of immediately answering, the Spider stood, shuffling around her home, placing a tin teapot on the grate above the hearth before returning, tray in hand. She set out cups and a cracked clay plate with exactly three ginger biscuits. She sat down again, her eerie eyes drifting over to the medicine man and his sons, who were now talking in low voices, their packs tucked away and organised. They didn’t seem to care about our conversation at all.

  “In my life, I have never pulled such a prediction from the waters. I have spun the fates of many men and women.” She glanced to the medicine man, and I saw him look up from his muttered conversation for the very first time.

  “I have seen birth,” the Spider said, holding his gaze. “I have seen death. I have seen what every Skjebre hopes to see—those horrible and wonderful glimpses of the future.”

  For a brief moment, the medicine man seemed mournful, and one of his sons set a hand against his thin knee.

  “But then I felt a change in the world.” The Spider turned away. “All of those horrible and wonderful moments sank away from me, and only one fate remained. The fate I pulled from the waters that day seven years ago. I tried to reel in another, but it also spoke of you. I tried all morning, but every string sang of a darkness and a girl, bound together, crawling out into the world. The vevebre told me that you would be here the day the marks are painted onto the doors, the day the stewards are struck with plague. It told me of your death in a hundred different ways. It spoke of you over and over, and it refused to speak of anything else.”

  She stood to retrieve the kettle from the hearth, bending to pick up something wedged beneath a book on the table beside the medicine man. She tucked it into her shawl, shuffling back to us with the kettle. Calder was quiet, a slow wariness settling into his features. He was shifting in his seat, his eyes darting along the Spider, crawling around her, trying to find some sign of danger.

  “Why have you not approached her before now?” he asked.

  “The vevebre was clear.” The Spider’s eyes flashed to Calder. She stopped between his chair and mine, attempting to lean over us to pour the tea. The pot wobbled in her grip. “Will you help, Captain?”

  He took the kettle from her, and her stooped posture suddenly shifted, her shawl slipping from her shoulders, a flash of silver darting into view as she sprang at me. Everything seemed to happen at once: the kettle cracked against the table, boiling water sloshing out over the edge; Calder’s arm flew toward my face, and the warmth of blood splattered my cheek. The Spider was thrown backwards, Calder propelling from his chair. He pulled a dagger from his arm, tossing it to the table, his golden eye burning into the Spider, who scrambled backwards on the ground.

  “You think she stole your power,” he muttered, following her, violence vibrating out of him in pulses of energy. I felt a thrumming inside my heart that slowly descended into a crescendo of savage, thunderous drumming. It wasn’t exactly like the drumming I had grown used to feeling, and it took me a moment to realise that it was his magic, not mine. It battered at each of us, the medicine man gathering his sons close and herding them toward the door. He didn’t look shocked, but fear was slowly creeping into his grey eyes.

  “You weren’t supposed to be here,” the Spider hissed at Calder. “You’re not hers. You shouldn’t be bound.”

  “You think she stole your power, don’t you?” he repeated, taking another step forward. Blood was flowing freely from his arm, and the demanding thrum of magic thickening in the air had my teeth chattering. I stood, my reactions slow, a hand at my neck.

  She had waited all this time just to slit my throat at the right moment?

  “I have seen what that girl will do,” the Spider spat, glancing fearfully about, as if trying to figure out where the sounds of battle were coming from. There were distant sounds joining with the drumming. Screaming, crying, yelling—strange, ghostly echoes of death, of a battlefield beyond a crest, hidden from our view, but close enough to spill over into our space at any moment.

  “She is the sickness invading this world.” The Spider pointed at me accusingly, though her eyes remained on Calder. “Captain,” she pleaded. “We must kill her now, before she comes of age and her power grows too strong. Look at what she can do already. Look at the lives she has taken, the disease she has spread.”

  “You’re not as powerful as you think, Spider.” Calder crouched down, and the oppressive magic in the air gathered around him, burrowing into the frown creasing his mouth, crawling out along the wide stretch of his shoulders. “There’s something I learned from Alina. Something we both learned as we tried to navigate her strange magic. Can you guess what it might be?”

  He reached out as he spoke, the movemen
t so rapid that I didn’t truly see it happening. He didn’t have a grip on her, and then he did, her wrists held in one of his hands. She seemed to be struggling against him, but it looked as much use as if his fingers had an unbendable, steel core. He flipped a set of manacles from his pocket in another lightening-swift moment, and in the blink of an eye, the Spider was restrained, purpling marks already blossoming onto her skin from where she had struggled against him. He released her with a flash of disgust, standing over her.

  “You don’t want to guess?” He was almost whispering, his tone quiet with eerie danger. “What I learned was that magic will not show itself to you unless you understand its essence, its core. To kill, you must want to kill. To see death, you must understand death. Alina would discover abilities that she didn’t understand and they would keep happening, over and over, without her control … because magic needs to be understood. This girl”—his pointed finger flashed in my direction—“did not break your power. Your power showed you the same thing over and over again because you were failing to understand it.”

  “You’re wrong, you stupid fool.” The Spider’s tone was faint, her gaze far-off. “I saw her, drawing on the darkness. Pulling the sickness into her heart. I saw her. Covered in blood and screaming—”

  I stepped forward, and she stopped suddenly, meeting my eyes. The Weaver’s voice echoed in my head as those yellow eyes swam before me.

  Bathed in blood and screaming.

  I frowned, the rest of his premonition swimming back into my memory as easily as if it had been stored there all along, in pristine condition, waiting to be called upon.

  Tempest-born and tempest-dashed, be wary of the forces of chaos that brought you into this world, as they would see you leave it the same way. Bathed in blood and screaming. Look to the deep waters for your fate, for your soul is not your own.