A Tempest of Shadows

by Washington, Jane

  The recruits shuffled into a line, each of them accepting a slip of paper from Bern before heading out into the storm. I hung towards the end of the line with Bjern and Frey, shifting uneasily on my feet. I would be late again, and the King didn’t seem like the kind of man to let me slip through the cracks and avoid my service to him. My unease growing, I almost snatched the slip of paper from Bern’s hand before he could pass it to me—but he caught my wrist in a tight grip, the dark slashes either side of his eyes crinkling in anger.

  “The Warmaster was very disappointed to hear that you managed to escape everyone yesterday,” he whispered, low enough that the others couldn’t overhear.

  “He must learn to grow used to the feeling,” I said, taking the slip of paper.

  I knew it wasn’t wise to stir the man in charge of the recruits, but I was full of angry, restless energy. Panic was riding my back, and though it had only been a matter of days since I had received the Legionnaires’ brand, I already felt like I was running out of time.

  “On second thought….” Bern handed me a second slip of paper, his smile cruel. “Best hurry now.”

  With a cringe, I stepped out of the hall and into the downfall. I hunched over to examine the two pieces of paper as I waited for Frey and Bjern. Each of them indicated a spot on a map—two mansions at the very base of Sectorian Hill. I had run past them often in the mornings.

  “We’ll finish early and help with yours,” Bjern shouted over the rain as him and Frey ran out and we made our way to the stables.

  “It’s fine,” I insisted as we huddled beneath the overhang, waiting for the other recruits to claim their mounts. “I have a way of travelling … it’ll help me get it done faster.”

  Frey opened her mouth, but I cut her off whatever question she had been mustering with a knowing grin.

  “And now I have to go. Good luck.”

  I edged past them, to the back of the stable, and twisted my ring.

  “Vidrol.”

  The ground cracked open and spat me at the King’s feet in a mess of mud and rainwater.

  “How,” his familiar voice growled, free of its usual seductive polish, now grating with irritation, “are you covered in dirt and blood again already?”

  I peered up, pushing a wet flop of hair from my face. “It’s a skill,” I said, finding my feet and brushing splatters of wet dirt from my pants.

  They scattered to the expensive rug beneath me, and the King grabbed my wrist, dragging me through a sitting room scattered with attendants and into a washroom, where a naked woman was in the process of shrugging off her silk robe. She had a cascade of golden hair, her eyes golden-green and wide with shock as she glanced over a pale shoulder. Her irises were shaped like diamonds.

  “Out,” the King snapped, and she quickly swept her robe from the floor, wrapping it hastily around her body as she fled the washroom.

  She had been standing before a steaming bath, a gaggle of steward attendants on standby, who all fled the room with her. The King set me down, his hands already tugging on the fastenings of my corset. I shoved his fingers away, ignoring the flash of annoyance on his face.

  “What in Ledenaether,” I hissed, “is your problem?”

  He barked out a laugh, bending to put his face near mine, his hands on his knees.

  “You’re not a Legionnaire yet, girl. You have neither the freedom nor the status to walk into the keep looking like you just rolled out of a pig’s pen. Do you know what I would have done if you had been a sectorian woman invited to court?”

  I crossed my arms over my chest, meeting his stare. “What?”

  He straightened, stepping forward, forcing me to stumble back, the edge of the large marble bathtub pressing against the backs of my thighs. I tried to stop from breaking eye contact but couldn’t help glancing down. He had dressed in black again, but I was still marking him with mud.

  He didn’t answer, and I already knew why. The King wasn’t known for being unnecessarily cruel to his subjects. For the most part, he couldn’t be bothered with his court. He was much more preoccupied with our enemies across the sea, and until he strode into my trial in the Citadel, I had assumed that he was rarely ever at the Sky Keep.

  “Are you going to throw me out?” I asked, feeling the absurd urge to smirk at him, though I managed to contain it.

  He hooked his hands beneath my thighs, lifted me up wordlessly, and tossed me backwards into the bath. I narrowly managed to twist at the last second to avoid hitting my head on the other edge, but that meant twisting into the bath, and soon I was completely submerged. A hand flashed into the water, two large fingers wedging into the front of my corset and dragging me up. My face broke the surface, and I quickly wiped water from my eyes, deciding that it was pertinent to keep my mouth shut for now. I had pushed him far enough. He held me there, half suspended out of the bath, my front against his, now wetting his shirt and dirtying his clothes even more.

  “What I do with you today entirely depends on how you look the next time I see you,” he whispered before dropping me back into the water.

  He strode from the room, shouting for the steward attendants to return, and I sank back into the water with my heart pounding right out of my chest.

  “Sheesh.” My breath rushed out of my mouth as I sat back, fully clothed, my head falling against the lip of the bathtub.

  I turned to the window as the women rushed back into the room and pulled me to my feet in the bath, their hands working to remove my sodden clothing. The rain raged on, the sun completely hidden, and I thought back to the Weaver’s words before the roof had been torn from his hut.

  This is no normal storm.

  He was right, but the only other person I could ask about it was avoiding me—except to beat me up in the morning.

  My second bath in as many hours wasn’t as enjoyable as my first. It felt like an awful waste of time. They rubbed strange and wonderful scents into my skin, and when they were finished there was a knock at the door, another attendant saying that a dress had been sent up for me.

  It was a dark blue-black with bronze glinting from the material. When one of the women fit it over my head, it moulded to me like a glove, the neckline high, the sleeves long. The entire right side of the dress was made of tiny bronze rings linked together, settling like chainmail over my bare skin. The skirt was long but had a slit that left my right leg bare. I stared at the spot where I should have borne a horrible scar from the Dealer’s carving of my leg, but there was only the faintest white mark.

  I was given another pair of slippers, and I sat on a bench in the washroom to help the attendant clean the mud from my boots as my hair was braided in a long rope over my shoulder, small bronze rings threaded through to match my dress.

  Once ready, I thanked the women and shut myself in the sitting room, twisting my ring and muttering the King’s true name. The keep was too large for me to be able to find him without magic. When I stumbled into the driftwood room, I was unsurprised to see the other four gathered there, but I was surprised to find Calder by the door. There was a bloody bandage wrapped over his eyes, and I began to rush toward him, his name strangled from my mouth.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” The Warmaster’s voice stopped me in my tracks, and I turned slowly to face him, my breath short and sharp.

  “What have you done to him?”

  “We have a deal. He misbehaved.”

  Because Calder trained me this morning. I turned back to him, my heartbeat thundering, my gaze hot. He had lost his eyes because he had … gone to see me.

  “Fix it,” I demanded, though I wasn’t even sure such a thing was possible. The others all watched me advance, eyes assessing as I came toe-to-toe with the Warmaster. “Please,” I added, though it came out in a strangled murmur. “I’m begging you.”

  “As a matter of fact…” The Warmaster touched one of the rings at my waist, his large fingers drawing across the bumpy metal. “There is something we need.”

 
“You want to make another deal? That’s why you took his sight?”

  His finger paused in its progress, his brown eyes flashing to mine, lit by intelligence and cruelty. “You know why we took his sight.”

  A wave of guilt almost crippled me, but I forced it down, working to get my temper under control. “What can I give you?”

  “Your mark,” the Inquisitor answered, causing my eyes to flash in his direction.

  My breath stuttered, thinking of the little crescent symbol that I had gifted the medicine man’s son. “How did you know about that?”

  “The boy is here—the son of the man who died in Breakwater Canyon.”

  “Asper?” I glanced to the door, confused.

  “The majority of the canyon houses have been destroyed,” the Inquisitor told me. “Completely flooded or else torn apart by the winds. A large percentage of the steward population is currently without a home. He travelled all the way here to bargain for them to be relocated.”

  I stared into his dark eyes, feeling like I was missing some piece of the puzzle.

  “Word of you has travelled remarkably fast.” The King’s deep voice unsettled my stare, and I blinked away from the Inquisitor. “He thought you were someone important. Important enough that your mark might be enough of a bargaining tool.”

  My anxiety increased, two things becoming startlingly obvious: the first being that they could have used the predicament of the stewards to barter with me even if they hadn’t taken Calder’s sight, and the second being that the Inquisitor had seen my mark. Had likely touched my mark.

  I wondered what he had heard in the whisper of my power when he touched that little crescent moon on Asper’s arm, and why they now wanted my mark for themselves. I made to burrow my hands in my hair in frustration but paused when there were no loose locks for my fingers to tunnel into, instead just letting my head fall into my hands.

  “Fine,” I groused, knowing that I didn’t have a choice. “I’ll give two marks for two favours: you relocate the stewards and you fix Calder’s sight.”

  The King was shaking his head, a wry, humourless smile on his lips. “You know what you need to offer, Tempest.”

  I dropped my hands from my head, resisting the urge to shove him back into the chair. I glanced back at Calder, who stood large and silent, like a statue again. His lips were pressed so firmly together that his square jaw ticked. I swallowed, knowing how much he was hating the fact that I was making another deal … but this was something Calder didn’t understand. I had decided some time ago that I wouldn’t be a victim to these men anymore, but to get ahead of them, I needed to deal in their currency. I was trading parts of myself that I wasn’t sure I even fully owned anymore, taking out loans on leased property. This was going to end only one of two ways–either I would win my Legionnaires battle and slip out from beneath their hold, or I was going to die. The more debt I piled up before either of those outcomes, the better.

  “Okay,” I relented, sounding defeated. “I’ll mark you all. But fix him first.”

  “If he meets with you again, I won’t just damage his sight, I’ll take out his eyes completely,” the Warmaster threatened, rising from his seat and striding across the room.

  I watched him with my teeth grinding together, wondering what Calder could have possibly traded to allow the Warmaster to do what he was doing. It must have been something significant. Something that wasn’t yet complete, because he had allowed the Warmaster to disfigure him and was still standing here, waiting.

  The Warmaster set his hands against the sides of Calder’s face, and I watched as Calder’s fists clenched by his sides, a snarl lifting his lips. The temperature in the room rose by a degree, and a sharp bolt of lightning struck the balcony beyond the glass-domed wall, making me jump.

  The Warmaster didn’t speak an incantation, or even mouth one. Whatever magic he cast was inside his head, but it worked, because when he stepped away, Calder ripped off his blindfold, revealing one burning golden eye, and one bright blue one. There were two scars cutting through the lids of each eye.

  Two very precise cuts.

  My stomach clenched sickeningly and his eyes flicked to mine, showing neither gratitude nor regret before he set his gaze fixedly to the other wall.

  “Best get on with it now,” the Warmaster said, sitting back in his chair.

  I fisted my hands, feeling my palms dotting with sweat, and pulled in a short, fortifying breath before I strode to him, the bronze rings of my dress clinking together. I stopped outside his spread legs, pulling my lip between my teeth, unsure how to proceed.

  “Where—” I cleared my throat. “Where do you want it?”

  He arched a brow, laying his hand on the wooden arm of the chair, pointing to the base of his third finger. On his left hand. In the position of promise.

  Wracked with confusion, I shook my head. “This is a trick.”

  He smirked. “Isn’t it always? But you made a deal, Tempest. Get on with it.”

  They were scheming for another bargaining chip to use against me, knowing that I wasn’t moving any closer to choosing one of them to marry … but what was the harm, really? Even if the mark did offer them a favour of some kind, they couldn’t all cash in on it to force me into marriage. Not unless they could decide on only one of them for me to belong to.

  “Fine.” I stepped forward, between his legs, my finger on the spot he had indicated.

  I remembered the word I had spoken to mark Asper, and I thought of it now. The letters were slow to assemble in my mind. It was the meaning behind the word that seemed to hit me first. The fresh crackle of snow, the deep breath of night. Shy petals unfurling toward the moon, stretching out in a moment of unseen joy, only to curl away again with the sun, with the break of lively daytime.

  “Skayld,” I whispered, the sound like a chime too shy to be heard.

  The little crescent took shape, perfect and sharp and silver, and I stepped back, unable to look at it a second longer. The Warmaster left after I marked him, not a word spoken to me or the others as he swept out of the door. Calder’s eyes met mine briefly, a flash of something that may have been a warning in his expression before he was also exiting. I wished he would come back, and for a moment I just stood there staring at the door, willing it to happen … until I realised that four of the great masters were all just silently watching me, waiting for me to fulfil the rest of my end of the bargain.

  I cleared my throat, moving to the Weaver, who had been sitting in the chair closest to the Warmaster, but was now standing with a frown on his face. He didn’t like the idea of someone marking him. I could see it in the way his eyes narrowed on mine, some kind of decision wavering behind his. He was torn between not allowing the others have extra leverage over me and allowing himself to be marked. Even if it could be advantageous to him, he knew better than anyone else what it meant to wear a person’s symbol on your body. He had marked many people, sending lives into ruin and sucking people dry for as long as I could remember hearing stories of him.

  I grabbed his hand, his fingers flexing in my grip, and I closed my eyes, calling on that strange, elating feeling again. I whispered the word, willed my symbol onto his skin, and as soon as my eyes were open, he yanked his hand away, rubbing my mark with his thumb, his eyes stormy.

  “Look outside,” he said, spinning me by the shoulder, his words sounding angry. “You’re running out of time.”

  He left me like that, and I heard the door slam again, sending a shiver through me.

  He was right.

  It was easy to focus on surviving day to day, easy to focus on strengthening myself, but I was in a race against the Darkness, and it could feel me preparing. It had torn open the sky and shaken up the ground, sending the people of Fyrio into a panic … reminding me that the battle for Ledenaether had begun.

  I was killing myself, and it wasn’t enough.

  I still wasn’t strong enough.

  I still didn’t know enough.

  I
spun to the Scholar, who had moved behind me, tired of waiting. As quiet as he was, he was also the least patient of the great masters, and he grabbed my hand, forcing my finger into position. When I closed my eyes this time, a tear slid from the line of my lashes, and it took me several moments of struggling to quiet my mind enough to whisper the world and create the mark. As soon as it was done, the Scholar turned and disappeared, right there in the middle of the room, not even bothering to hide the strange ability from me.

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” I said as I reached the Inquisitor. He didn’t stand from his chair but took my hand and dragged me between his legs, those fathomless eyes regarding me with careful, dark consideration.

  “What doesn’t?”

  “You say you’re making me stronger, that you’re building me up, trying to make me powerful enough to defeat the … the Darkness, but it doesn’t feel like you are. It feels like you’re doing your best to stop me.”

  “Maybe we are.” He shrugged, his expression revealing nothing.

  “Then why this,” I gritted out, tossing my arms out to the side. “Why are you all still trying to force me into marriage with one of you? If you want me to fail, then why?”

  “I didn’t say we wanted you to fail. You did.”

  I snapped my teeth together. “What do you want, Fjor?”

  He sat forward, his breath warm against my face, his eyes burrowing into mine. “Everything, Lavenia. Everything.”

  I fell into silence, marking him and then the King, who was uncharacteristically quiet as the crescent moon bloomed onto his finger.

  “Come,” he said as I finished, standing from his chair and nodding to the Inquisitor—no, to Fjor. I screamed his true name inwardly, frustrated at how my mind so easily bent to the power of his Fated name. His, and the others. How was I ever going to defeat the all-powerful evil threading through this world from some undefinable source far beyond the concept of time and firmament if I couldn’t even wrap my head around the true names of the most powerful men in Fyrio?