by Jae Waller
He gave a faint smile. “What prompted this sojourn into carving?”
“I don’t know. It was stupid to try.” I brushed woodchips off my legs. “I can’t trap furs in summer. If I want to go back to Caladheå, I need something to sell.”
“I see.” Tiernan was halfway to the door by the time I realized he’d gotten up.
I twisted around. “Wait, aren’t you hungry—” The latch clicked shut. I sighed. At least the stew would keep in the snow.
•
I woke to see the loft glowing green.
I grabbed my cloak and stumbled outside with one boot on. A shock of cold froze my nostrils. Tiernan stood in the clearing, a silhouette in the dancing light. I followed his footprints in the snow, hopping from one to another until I drew level with him.
The night sky shimmered as if the turquoise water of Kotula Huin was tacked to the stars. Curtains of light vibrated on the horizon, smudged upward like strokes from a paintbrush. White bursts winked in and out of sight.
“Can you hear it?” Tiernan asked.
I held my breath. The sky snapped like blazing fire. “The aeldu are loud tonight.”
He turned, questions written on his face.
“Rin legend says on nights like this, we’re in the house of the dead.” I pointed at green and teal beams arcing across the sky like ceiling rafters. “They welcome us under their roof to shelter us from the cold.”
“Do you believe the dead are out there?”
“I don’t know.” I hugged my chest. “I’m afraid if I start to believe, I’ll get lost in that world and won’t know how to come back.”
“Kateiko . . .” Tiernan’s voice was stilted. Heat radiated off his body. He smelled of woodsmoke. “Why did you bring me to Yanben?”
“Because you were already lost. And I wanted you to come back.”
He took a step away. “Kateiko—”
“What changed while I was in Caladheå?”
The sky crackled. Tiernan’s breath was shallow. “I missed you.”
My brows crinkled. “I don’t understand.”
“I grew used to your presence.” He rubbed the bridge of his scarred nose. He wasn’t wearing gloves. “You said you hear voices in the wind. So do I, but your voice drowns them out.”
“I didn’t think you wanted me here.” I shuffled my feet in the snow. “You were avoiding me. I was trying to give you space.”
“So was I.” He looked into my eyes. “I cannot keep you here. When Maika told me you met a viirelei family, I was relieved. You deserve the life you left home for.”
“But you don’t want me to be friends with a soldier?”
Tiernan gave another faint smile. “This old, scary ex-mercenary cannot protect you from everything.”
“I’ll come back. Yes, I want to spend time in Caladheå. It’s the closest I can get to Toel Ginu for now, to seeing my family. But I’ll always come back. I promise.”
“You are too young to make such promises.”
“Not anymore. I’m eighteen now.” I pressed my cold fingers to my mouth. My eyes felt frozen open, but I didn’t want this to end.
He turned toward the cabin. “We should go—”
“Tiernan.” I caught his arm.
He stilled. The silver flecks in his dark beard shimmered in the turquoise light. Hesitantly, I rested my hands on his chest, feeling his heartbeat through his worn leather jerkin. Warmth flowed into my body as smoothly as poured water.
Tiernan folded his rough hands over mine. He let me linger a moment before gently pulling my hands away. “Come inside,” he said, and his voice was the only one I heard.
•
The cold snap broke the next day. I basked in warm sunshine that flooded the porch. The log cabin didn’t have a proper doorframe, so I carved symbols in the railing with Tiernan’s folding knife. A sun for the burning man, a wolf for the Rin girl, and a roof for a night spent in the house of the dead.
16.
ASHTOWN
Three weeks passed faster than I could’ve imagined.
Caladheå was in shambles when I arrived. Shop windows were boarded up, broken glass lay on the cobblestones, Elkhounds patrolled the streets. I kept seeing the same Sverbian letters painted on brick walls. I could guess the meaning. Not enough.
I went to the square with my newest batch of pelts and found Airedain minding Segowa’s stall. “You must’ve come back for the inquiry,” I said.
“Nei, just got bored at Toel.” He flashed a grin that lit up the dusk. “Wotelem’s testimony got delayed anyway. Inquiry turned into a bloody fucking mess.”
I talked to Parr by the fountain the next day. He looked ragged, his Council robe wrinkled and his black hair escaping its ribbon. When I tracked Iannah down, she said people had shown up demanding to attend the inquiry and had been thrown out — but we could watch if I kept quiet under pain of a spear-shaped hole in my gut.
I arrived at noon and waited in the south gallery. Every time a guard looked my way I reminded myself there was nothing to fear. Iannah came straight after her shift, carrying her spear as threatened. My stomach was knotted like a fishing net as we climbed the stairs to the ledges in Council Hall.
Wotelem was the younger brother of the Okorebai-Iyo. He stood where Mayor Vorhagind had, fielding the Council’s questions like a tree weathering a storm. His dark braided hair was coming in grey. He wore an unfastened vest to show the black tattoos on his arms and chest.
“Not one person has offered proof of these spirits’ existence,” Montès was saying. “You have no written records documenting them, nor have you seen Suriel with your own eyes, correct?”
“I have not,” Wotelem said. “Nor have I seen the wind, yet I know to fear a storm.”
“Caladheå is not a city of cowards who tremble at shadows in the night.”
“Would you curse your god’s name simply because you had not seen his face?”
Montès’s face twisted. “How dare you. I will not be spoken to like that by a—”
“What are these spirits said to look like?” a pale-haired man interrupted loudly.
“Saidu cannot be seen unless they wish it,” Wotelem said. “In ancient times, some took fixed shapes when dealing with humans. Nowadays, they could pass by as a breeze or a grass fire, noticed only by those who know how to look.”
“Such as who?”
“My people’s spiritual guides. The only living Iyo with the gift is too frail to leave Toel Ginu.”
“Are there any active spirits besides Suriel?” The pale-haired councillor seemed intent on not letting Montès speak again.
“Suriel is the only saidu who did not go dormant. We believe it is because he had a close history with humans, while other saidu grew distant. He is no longer alone though. The others woke not seven years ago.”
A murmur rippled down the tables. I leaned over the railing, not sure if I’d heard right. Iannah pulled me back.
Parr raised his hands for silence. “Why have no others made themselves known?”
“Most were killed within months of awakening, Councillor. You might call it civil war. We call it the Storm Year.”
My stomach felt like it dropped to the floor of Council Hall. I rested my forehead on my hands. “Yan taku.”
Iannah tilted her spear at my stomach.
The Rin said storms meant the saidu were at war, but it was a figure of speech. Saidu didn’t kill each other. Whenever they scuffled over borders, one eventually surrendered. Behadul had declared the Storm Year a long, catastrophic fluke. It was more believable than the alternative.
My first thought was Behadul lied — but maybe he didn’t know. Maybe the Iyo kept it secret and the only Rin who could sense saidu had died. Or something I hadn’t thought of, like I didn’t know about parallel worlds until Tiernan told me. I knew so much m
ore than when I left home and yet I still understood nothing. I had more and more iron links that didn’t fit together.
“Seven years,” said a man with silver hair. “Is that not around the same time we stopped hearing of the Sverbian Rúonbattai?”
The pale-haired councillor waved a hand. “The Rúonbattai vanished eight years ago. I hardly think those are related.”
“Okoreni-Iyo, what would compel the saidu to fight one another?” Parr asked. I smiled to hear he’d remembered Wotelem’s title.
Wotelem spread his hands. “Look to the last one standing. Suriel has proven himself rogue. We suspect he turned them on each other.”
“Yet their core purpose is managing the weather. Does killing each other not seem . . . contrary to their existence?”
“You are familiar with locusts? They begin as grasshoppers, then something we cannot explain triggers a change. They cluster together, destroying each other and everything in their path. The saidu were likely disoriented from waking. Suriel may have used that.”
Parr looked disturbed. “And you believe he now has a human army fighting in his name? How does he manage that?”
“Through a human captain, I assume,” Wotelem said. “Suriel has been known to trust a select few people before. I would sooner go to war with a thousand soldiers than fight Suriel though. People are breakable. The wind dies a thousand deaths and still returns.”
•
“Yeah, we got hit during the Storm Year,” Airedain said that evening. “Lots of land torn up by the mountains. Nothing so bad as your side of the border river though.”
We sat on the floor of Segowa’s stall wrapped in furs. Airedain was sewing a shirt for her to embroider. Cold wind blew in from the ocean, bringing damp air that heat from the food stalls couldn’t stave off.
“Why didn’t you tell me the saidu had woken?” I asked.
Airedain looked baffled. “I thought you knew. What’d they teach you up north?”
“Enough for me to explain to the Crieknaast mayor what a tel-saidu is. Your jouyen left that part out.”
“Itherans get squirrelly when you talk about spirits other than theirs. The ones who believed it was a ghost stayed away.”
“What about telling them kinaru eat children?”
Airedain threw back his head and laughed. “Aeldu save me, they’re still telling that story? My friend Nokohin made that up ’cause itheran kids kept wandering off into the forest.”
I couldn’t help laughing. “Can I . . . ask something else? Why didn’t any Iyo come north after the Storm Year?”
“We intended to,” Segowa said. “The Tamu advised waiting. They said the Okorebai-Rin was . . . unsettled from your war with the Dona-jouyen. That he blamed Iyo-born Dona for convincing Rin-born Dona to fight you.”
She paused to unstick her bone needle from a pelt. “Our okorebai instructed us to let your jouyen make the first move. Year after year, the Rin made no effort to approach us. I didn’t expect to see one of you again in my life.”
“I’m not supposed to be here,” I admitted. “The Okoreni-Rin said you hate us.”
“Ehhh.” Airedain tipped his hand back and forth. “Nei, we just think you’re kinda weird.”
I flicked water at him. He laughed again.
“What’s done is done,” Segowa said. “We can’t afford to dwell on the past.”
“Right. No hard feelings.” Airedain thumped the cobblestone. “I’ll prove it. Wanna see my other job, Rin-girl? It’s my first time drumming since I got on the wrong end of a spear.”
“Ehhh.” I imitated his gesture. “Sure, if you can handle being with someone so weird.”
•
Airedain took me to a district called Ashtown near the southern docklands, explaining the name came from the constant layer of coal ash produced by huge brick-making kilns. I suddenly understood why he always wore black breeches and tunics. The hem of my skirt was stained dark by the time we arrived.
His workplace was a packed, smoky pub called the Knox Arms. A balcony on the second level looked down on a stage in the centre of the pub, a design I instantly knew to be influenced by Aikoto shrines. The furniture was like a mixed bag of old buttons. Crude pine stools, tables with finely carved legs, and soft padded chairs stood next to crates nailed together. The flickering oil lamps were made of glass or ceramic or brass.
I found a spot on the balcony and clapped along as drumbeats and soaring strings filled the room. Sverbians and Iyo jostled past. When a woman put down her fiddle and sang a lively piece, a few patrons climbed on a table and did some kind of dance involving a lot of high kicks and spilled drinks. Airedain bent over and held his ribs between songs, but when he was drumming it felt like the music coalesced into an aura around him, and he radiated pure joy. For a few hours, I shared his world and almost forgot about the one beyond those four walls.
I lost track of him while they packed up their instruments. When I saw him again, he was curving around an itheran girl’s neck to whisper in her ear, fingers knotted in her golden hair. I pushed through the crowd to an outdoor terrace, rinsed ashy slush from the steps, and sat down. I breathed cool night air, a relief after inhaling pipe smoke for so long. Blue-white stars glittered overhead. I wondered if I could get used to living in Caladheå, then wondered what Tiernan was doing back in North Iyun Bel.
“Ai, Rin-girl.” Airedain flopped down and leaned against the stone wall. He held a ramhorn mug of amber liquid.
I glanced around, but the steps were empty. “You shouldn’t call me that in public. I’m Iyo, remember?”
“You Rin have been gone longer than anyone in this pub’s been alive. No itheran’s gonna know what it means.” He elbowed me. “So, what’d ya think?”
“I’m impressed. Almost as good as our drummers back at Aeti.”
“Not as glamorous as Skaarnaht, but it pays.” He took a swig and held the mug out.
I sipped it and almost coughed it back up. “That’s disgusting. It tastes like swamp water and misery.”
“Sverbian ale. It gets better by the third or fourth mug.”
I handed it back. “I was surprised you played something as major as Skaarnaht. You can’t be more than, what, twenty-two?”
“Twenty.” He looked pleased with himself. “But I’ve been drumming for fifteen years. Learned from my uncle back when I lived at Toel.”
“Looked like you were learning a lot about that itheran, too. Am I keeping you?”
“Britte? Nei, she brought her friends tonight. Flock of fucking pigeons. I’ve been seeing her for two months and can barely get a moment alone with her.”
“Why bother then?”
He grinned. “The moments are worth it.”
We were interrupted by yelling in Coast Trader. “Hey! Flea-bait!” We looked up to see a group of Sverbians on the terrace, leaning over the wall along the steps.
Airedain set the ale down. “The fuck do you want?”
“We want y’outta our city!” the man said. “You an’ your filthy wood witch there! Your people brought this on us!”
“I got no idea what you’re talking about, mate.”
“Någvakt rettai! You planned this all along!” a woman shouted.
“Aeldu dan någva,” Airedain replied lazily.
They understood well enough. A burly man vaulted down from the terrace and smashed a bottle on the wall. The jagged edge glinted as he staggered toward Airedain.
Without thinking, I leapt up and swung my flail into the man’s arm. Blood spattered the steps. He lurched and swung a fist into my stomach. His next blow sliced across my forehead.
I stumbled, warm blood streaming into my eye. Airedain caught me and struck the man’s nose with a crack. A second, third, fourth punch, and the man went sprawling.
Another itheran edged down the steps, knife in hand. I seized a bottl
e from the ground and whipped it at him. It shattered on the stone behind him.
Something flashed in Airedain’s hand. With a few flicks of his wrist a steel blade snapped out. “Don’t come any closer.”
“Scared?” the burly man jeered, arm limp, blood pouring from his nose.
I heard footsteps, spun, swung my flail. A figure went down like a felled tree. Airedain’s blade sank into someone’s gut and came out dripping.
“We can’t—” I gasped. The others were coming like a cloud of bats.
Airedain yanked me toward the street. “Run.”
We ran. Through dark lanes and empty lots, scrambling over snowbanks, leaping an iron fence, and sliding on ice under a timber bridge. Cold air burned my throat. All I heard was our feet hitting the cobblestone, the shallow rasp of my breath, the rattle of my flail chain.
Airedain stopped in an alley filled with piles of frosty vegetable peels. I slumped against a wall and slid to the ground, cloak snagging on the brick. The lashes of my left eye were stuck together. Pain lanced along my hairline.
“You okay?” he panted, clutching his chest.
“Oh, yeah. I just wanted a closer look at the cobblestone I’m bleeding on.”
“Lemme see.” He peered at me in the dim moonlight. He unbuckled his jerkin, pulled off his tunic, and pressed it to my forehead.
“You’ll freeze.” I looked away from his tattooed chest. The spear wound had healed into an ugly scar across his ribs.
“It ain’t far. Come on.” Airedain helped me up. He wiped his blade on a vegetable pile before shoving it into his breeches pocket.
We hurried through a maze of alleys to a street lined with ash-stained brick buildings, all sharp corners and steep roofs and small windows. He unlocked a door and we climbed a cramped staircase into a shadowy room. Airedain took a tinderbox from a shelf and lit a lamp. The rank smell of fish oil jolted my memory back to Aeti Ginu.
Two unmade beds were crammed into the room, a washstand in the corner, floorboards covered with woven bark mats. A row of stone makiri lined a shelf above an iron stove, with a hole cut in the shelf for the stovepipe. Fur pelts hung on the walls.
