Stormcaster

by Cinda Williams Chima

  Robert drained the rest of his cider and stood, pulling his cloak from the back of his chair. “It’s just a few blocks down, close to Citadel Hill.”

  When they walked out into the spring night, Hal still felt no need for a cloak, though the air was moist, promising rain. You’ve grown tougher during your time in the north, he thought.

  They hadn’t gone more than a block down the darkened street when Hal heard the thud of boots on cobblestones and the familiar hiss of swords sliding from their scabbards. Hal and Robert put their backs to a building and drew their own swords, only to find themselves facing a ring of steel.

  “Stand down, in the name of the king,” one of the swordsmen said, “or we’ll gut the pair of you.”

  Robert broadened his stance, lifting the tip of his blade, and Hal knew he had visions of fighting his way out. His little brother was a devil with a sword, and he’d draw plenty of blood before he went down, but there was no doubt about the outcome. Hal put a hand on his arm. “Lower your blade,” he said. “Remember what I said about being drawn into a battle we can’t win?”

  “That sounds like wise advice, Mister . . . Cordray, is it? I do hope you’ll take it.” Someone stepped forward, raising a lantern so that it shone down into Hal’s face, all but blinding him. The man was tall, slender, dressed in the black of the King’s Guard. “Blood of the martyrs,” he muttered. “What have we here?” The officer’s voice was faintly familiar, but Hal couldn’t place it immediately.

  He turned to his men. “Disarm them and bind their hands.”

  The blackbirds complied, collecting the brothers’ swords and chaining their wrists.

  The officer handed the lantern off to one of the blackbirds, so, once Hal’s eyes adjusted, he could finally see his face.

  It was Lieutenant Destin Karn, the king’s spymaster. Son of Hal’s nemesis, General Marin Karn.

  The situation had rapidly gone from bad to worse.

  Hal opened his mouth to speak, but Karn raised a hand to stop him. “Please,” he said. “It’s beginning to rain. We’ll talk later.” He turned to the commander of the blackbirds. “Take them to Newgate. Put them in the Aerie.”

  “Newgate? But—”

  Now Karn’s voice turned deadly cold. “Was there something you didn’t understand about that order, Sergeant . . . Levesque, is it?” The way he said it, he was taking down names.

  “No, sir, it’s just that it’s unusual to—”

  “Did I ask for your opinion?”

  Levesque reddened. “No, sir, but—”

  “Then why are we still standing here in the rain? Now, go. Set a close guard on them and make sure that they are well provisioned and comfortable. I’ll hold you personally responsible if they are not in good condition for interrogation.”

  “Yes, sir.” Levesque turned to his men. “Bring them, and follow me.”

  Karn turned with a swirl of his cloak and stalked off down the street in the other direction until he was lost in the darkness between the streetlamps.

  “Do you know who that was?” Robert said into Hal’s ear as they marched down the narrow street.

  “That was Destin Karn, the king’s spymaster. At least, I assume he still is, under the new king.”

  “Karn? But that’s—”

  “This is his son. He was in Delphi for a while. I don’t think you ever met him.”

  “Oh.” A few more steps, and then, “Have you heard of Newgate?” Robert whispered, trying to sound nonchalant.

  Hal nodded. “I’ve heard of it, but I don’t know much about it.”

  What he knew about it was mostly rumors, and mostly discouraging. Newgate was the prison used by the king’s intelligence service for prisoners thought to have valuable information that needed extracting. Or political prisoners too valuable to mingle with the general prison population.

  He tried to lighten the situation by saying, “Well, you’ve been trying to get more information about the king’s prison. Now we’ll see it for ourselves.”

  “I’m sorry, Hal,” Robert said.

  “Don’t worry,” Hal said, though he actually had plenty of worries. How was it that he’d ended up leaving one prison only to end up in another? And he had a feeling that this one would be worse.

  29

  CAPTIVES

  When Lyss awakened, she was immediately sorry. Everything hurt—her head, her back, her arms and legs. She was one big mass of bruises, and one of her arms seemed to be immobilized, strapped to her side. Worse, she was aware of an unpleasant sensation, as if the world was rocking under her.

  I must’ve taken a really hard blow to the head, she thought, fighting back nausea. The last she remembered, she’d been on the beach near Chalk Cliffs, trying to keep the busker out of the hands of the empress Celestine.

  “You’re awake,” Breon said. His anxious face came into view. “How do you feel, Your Highness?”

  She propped up on her elbow. “I feel horrible. Somebody needs to put me out of my misery.”

  “There’s a lot of rum around, if that’s appealing,” Breon said.

  “No!” Lyss said sharply. She lay back down, waiting for the world to stop spinning. “Where are we?”

  “We’re aboard the empress’s flagship,” Breon said. “The Siren.”

  Now that he’d mentioned it, she could hear the wooden hull creaking and complaining all around them.

  “Damn,” Lyss muttered. “Another bloody, gutter-strumming boat.”

  “Looks that way.”

  “I assume we’re under way?”

  He nodded. “We’re a day out.”

  “So I guess there’s no swimming back.” Lyss tried to laugh, but it was so painful that tears came to her eyes. More than one rib cracked, probably.

  “How about some water?” Breon said.

  “Hang on.” Lyss took one breath, then another, getting ready. “All right,” she said. “I’m going to sit up, and I apologize in advance if I spew all over you.”

  “Turnabout is fair play, I guess,” Breon said.

  Happily, she managed to sit up, and there was no spewing.

  To her surprise, she was actually lying in a bed, in a fairly plush cabin with a tiny round window that displayed an angry gray ocean.

  Breon had shed the filthy clothing he’d worn in their small boat and was dressed plainly but finely in a white linen shirt and loose, drawstring breeches. He’d washed his hair, so that the gold streak stood out. Despite his plain clothing, he resembled a demigod out of stories, one of those beings with one foot in the human world, the other in the divine.

  When Lyss looked down at herself, she saw that her blood-mucked uniform was gone, replaced by a white silk gown. She wondered who’d done that, and decided she didn’t really want to go further with that investigation.

  Breon brought her a cup of water and then perched at the foot of the bed, drawing his knees up and wrapping his arms around them.

  “What’s going on?” she whispered. “Are we prisoners or what?”

  “We are guests,” Breon said drily. “The empress is really sorry about losing her temper on the beach.” He stopped, cleared his throat, and swallowed hard. “She’s eager to make amends.” From the expression on Breon’s face, he wasn’t buying what she was selling.

  “Why am I here?” Lyss asked. “Why am I still alive?”

  Breon hesitated. “I think she likes you,” he said finally. “She likes that you’re not afraid to fight back.”

  “Did you tell her who I am?”

  Breon smiled slantwise. “You’re Captain Gray,” he said, “an officer in the Highlander army.”

  “Ah,” she said. She wished he’d used a less well-known name, but at least he didn’t name her the heir to the throne. “I’m sorry about your friend. I wish I could have been of more help.”

  “At least you had better weapons than me. I had a flute. Music is no kind of match for—for that.”

  “I wasn’t all that successful with a bow,” Lyss s
aid. “Don’t feel bad. Anyway, as long as we’re saying sorry, I’m sorry I didn’t jump out of the boat when you told us to.”

  “Me too.”

  “So, what’s this all about? Do you have any idea?”

  “It has to do with my magemark,” Breon said. “That’s all I know.”

  “So she didn’t tell you what it’s for or what it means?”

  He shook his head. “Maybe there’ll be a big reveal when we get where we’re going,” he said. “I guess the empress put the word out that she was looking for people like me. Aubrey heard there was a reward on offer, and split on me.”

  “Was Aubrey your sweetheart?” Lyss knew the question was out of line, but found herself asking it anyway.

  Breon drooped a little, like a flower in need of water. “I guess ‘sweetheart’ is too strong for what we had going,” he said. “But I thought at least she was my friend.”

  “From what I heard, she didn’t know what the empress’s intentions were,” Lyss said.

  “Obviously she didn’t know the empress meant to burn her alive.”

  “You know what I mean. She didn’t know what Celestine wanted with you.”

  “Maybe,” Breon said, “but it’s no excuse. It’s like when that cove hired me to wait for you on a street corner in Southbridge. I guess I could claim that I didn’t know what he intended. He never came out and said it. But, looking back, I had to know he was up to no good. But I did it anyway.”

  “We’ve all done things we regret,” Lyss said, thinking she had too many to count. “All we can do is try to do better going forward.”

  “Maybe. I just don’t know.” He paused, sliding a look at her. “Do you think Talbot and the others will come after you?”

  “Sasha will come,” Lyss said, without a shred of doubt, remembering the look on the Gray Wolf’s face the night of the failed escape. “She will come, if she’s still alive.”

  “I think you’re right,” Breon said. “She’s . . . formidable.” He sighed. “Will they even know where to look?”

  “I tried to leave a message on the beach,” Lyss said. “I hope they can figure it out.”

  “I hope they hurry,” Breon said. “I’ve got a very bad feeling about this.”

  “For what it’s worth,” Lyss said, “I misjudged you, and I’m sorry.”

  “No,” Breon said. “You didn’t misjudge me. All those bad things you thought—they were true. I could justify anything, as long as it led to another hit. I lied to everyone—myself most of all.”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Lyss said. It was odd to be in the position of consoling someone who’d led her into an ambush. “If I were picking villains in this, you wouldn’t be high on the list.”

  “I’d be on it, though. You were the one who forced me to get off the leaf. I never could’ve done it on my own. I don’t know how much time I have left, but I’m glad to be clean, and I hope I can make you glad that you saved me.”

  Lyss felt her cheeks heating. “I’m already glad, Breon. Since we’re in this together, I hope we can be friends.” She extended her hand, and Breon took it.

  30

  IN THE WAKE OF THE EMPRESS

  Cas slowly circled over the city of Chalk Cliffs, losing altitude with each circle he made. The air was still thick with smoke—thick, acrid fumes that burned Jenna’s eyes and made her cough.

  Bad air, Cas said. Stinks.

  “I know. At least it might make us harder to see.”

  Cas and Jenna would be hard to see if we fly to the mountains.

  Cas disapproved of Jenna’s interest in this broken, fuming city. He was happy that the big guns on shore had quieted, at least.

  “That’s low enough, I think. Just keep circling a minute.”

  The ships that had been lying out of sight of land had come in now, and were unloading soldiers and horses onto the shore. The city was a charred ruin, but the harbor was a hive of activity. The warning they’d delivered had been too little, too late.

  Why horse people want to live in burned city?

  “I don’t think they plan to stay long,” Jenna said. Leaning down over Cas’s shoulder, she studied the ships anchored in the harbor, looking for the three-masted ship with the siren figurehead.

  Jenna’s eyesight was sharper by far than that of anyone else of her species, but not nearly as sharp as a dragon’s.

  “Do you see the ship that chased the ship we burned?”

  Cas swept back and forth, twice, then made a larger circle, soaring past the white cliffs with the now-silent guns and out over the ocean beyond the bay.

  There.

  “Are you sure?”

  Cas snorted flame and smoke, vexed that she would ask that question. As they drew closer, Jenna could see that the dragon had called it right.

  While the other ships were dropping anchor in the harbor, this one was sailing east under full sail.

  “That’s interesting,” Jenna said. “The armies are staying, but this ship seems to be going back home. Go high, but keep them in sight, all right?”

  With a few lazy wingbeats, Cas gained altitude so that the ship below, on the dark water, resembled a tiny toy boat trailing a threadlike white wake.

  Jenna debated what to do. It was unlikely that a girl and a dragon could drive an army from Chalk Cliffs, though they could do plenty of damage.

  They could fly back west, over the backbone of mountains, and try to find the capital in the north and warn the northerners. But if Jenna lost sight of the ship, she might never find it again. If she meant to make good on her promise to seek vengeance on the empress who had taken so much from her, now would be the time to do it. A ship at sea is highly vulnerable to an aerial assault, particularly a sneak attack.

  If only they knew for sure that the empress was aboard, they could reduce it to a smear of ash on the waves.

  Yet she and Cas had been training for months so they would be ready to cross the Indio and confront the empress in her lair. As Cas put it: Burn the nest, kill the hatchlings, claim the hoard.

  Jenna had studied the map she’d stolen from the temple library at Fortress Rocks, tracing a path from shore to shore, past the script that said Here there be dragons. There weren’t any resting points for a dragon between the Seven Realms and the shoreline of Carthis. It would be a challenge, even though Cas used very little energy when they were soaring.

  “What do you think, Cas?” she said. “Are we ready for this? Do you want to follow them home?”

  Fish in the ocean?

  “Yes,” she said, resting her cheek against his hot shoulder. “We can fish in the ocean.”

  Without replying, the dragon turned northeast and put on speed, following the wake of the empress’s flagship across the dark northern sea.

  31

  GOING FOR BROKE

  To Hal’s surprise, their quarters in Newgate Prison were reasonably comfortable, at the top of one of the towers of the palace’s perimeter wall. Even more surprising, he and Robert were housed together, when common practice was to isolate the subjects of interrogation to make them more pliable and to prevent them from comparing notes and working up a story.

  Their guards were a cut above the usual as well, which had its pros and cons. They lacked the random cruelty and greed so often displayed by those in the trade. But they were strict, businesslike, impossible to chat up or bribe. Robert was a born charmer, but he got nowhere with them when he asked if the Matelon ladies were housed in the same building, or if they wanted to put a little money on a game of nicks and bones.

  A day passed, and nobody put them to the question, or took them to the gallows or the block. Hal wondered if King Jarat had sent word to his father that he now held two more Matelons, arrested for spying, and invited him to the execution. Perhaps the king hoped that might prompt a bloodless surrender. Maybe he was waiting for an answer before he took further action against them.

  Hal knew how his father would answer, and when. He would answer in the ti
me it took his armies to march from Temple Church to Ardenscourt. Hal and Robert wouldn’t survive, but neither would the king.

  Meanwhile, no doubt the empress was marching.

  Look on the bright side, Halston.

  Hal couldn’t find the bright side of this situation by torchlight.

  That same night, just as Hal was deciding whether to lie awake in his bunk or worry upright in a chair, he heard a terse exchange of greetings outside the door, and then the bolts sliding back.

  Robert pushed to his feet and stood, hands fisted. Hal closed his book and waited.

  The door opened to reveal Destin Karn. He spoke a few quiet words to the guards outside, then entered, closing the door behind him.

  He swiveled around to face them, looking them up and down. He no longer wore the black of the King’s Guard; he had changed into rich but subdued court dress, like a snake that had slipped from one skin into another. Whatever colors he wore, he was dangerous.

  It was easy to forget that he was a mage, on top of everything else. But then, his hand inside his coat, he walked the perimeter of the room and began murmuring charms.

  Hal and Robert looked at each other. Was the spymaster locking them in or soundproofing the room or what? Did he mean to put them to the question right then and there?

  Finally, Karn settled onto the broad stone windowsill and extended his long legs in front of him. He crossed his legs at the ankles, the heels of his fine boots resting on the floor.

  “Hello, Captain Matelon and Corporal Matelon,” he said, sounding amused.

  That answered one question—the spymaster knew who they were.

  “You’re a long way from Delphi. Wait—isn’t one of you supposed to be dead?” He rubbed his chin, then pointed at Hal. “You, I think.”

  Robert said, “My brother has nothing to do with this. He just came to fetch me home. Let him go, and I’ll tell you everything I know.”

  “Corporal, that is a brave thing to say, and exceedingly generous, but it’s no way to begin a negotiation, much less a conversation. For one thing, between the two of you, your brother is the more valuable prisoner, being more dangerous to the crown. For another, I have no doubt that if I asked you properly, you would tell me everything you know anyway, and wish that you had more to say.”