Valkwitch (The Valkwitch Saga Book 1)

by Michael Watson

  The chill followed for a few paces inside, grasping at their clothes but foiled by the warmth of the massed attendees and the dozens of torches, braziers, and candles spread around the ball room that made up the entirety of the third floor of this mansion. Round tables lined opposite walls of the hall and near the stairs stood a short stage occupied by a band that was currently on a break. A single violinist filled the break with a rambling, unrecognizable tune. Arched windows encased the entire room, each lit by its own small flame. The steadier elchemical lights were put away for the sake of tradition tonight, and all lighting was done with actual fire, shading the ballroom in the warm, shifting orange glow of the collective flames. With all the fire, wind and drinking going on across Khalanheim, Tyrissa marveled at how the entire city didn’t burn down each year.

  Olivianna guided them to their table where Jesca sat alone in the guise of Joyce d’Haute. She’d been cold and quiet all night, drinking perhaps too much wine given that she was on duty. This was their first joint assignment since the Night of Thieves, as the papers called it, and the first since Olivianna’s return from the falconry trip with the Van Brauns. Security was airtight tonight, and the hosts hired the Cadre for the event. She had seen not one member of the Talons tonight, either here or outside the dozens of other events. The Thieves hit them the hardest that night, with the majority of the fires set on Talon chapterhouses or the personal homes of their leaders. More than any actual thievery, that night had one true purpose: revenge. They were thoroughly successful. Since that night, there hasn’t been a single kidnapping or high profile robbery. The Thieves were in hiding, recovering from their orgy of law-breaking and murder. The damage was still being tallied and Central had caught only a few possible culprits, the rest melting away into the underground and shaded corners of the city like ghosts.

  “Devoss, you should get us more wine,” Olivianna said as she sat down across from Jesca. Tyrissa took up her watch next to one of the arched windows where a line of tall candles scented the air with cinnamon.

  “Of course, Via.”

  When Devoss was out of earshot Jesca asked, “Via? What happened to ‘every syllable, every time’?”

  “I like him enough to let it slide.”

  “He looks like a fox, ready to steal from you.” It was an apt comparison, with his pointed nose and reddish-brown hair. But he was also well placed in a Major-tier guild that specialized in hauling cargo along the Rilder River between Khalanheim and Rilderdam. A natural, strategic choice for Alvedo, all in all.

  “That’s hardly different from anyone else in this city. What’s with you tonight Joyce?”

  “Just doing my job,” Jesca said, heaped bitterness into her words but Tyrissa suspected that Alvedo was one glass of wine past noticing or caring.

  Olivianna turned to Tyrissa. “Jorensen, I…” cast her eyes around, struggling for a second. “I never thanked you for your support. At the theater. It helped so much.”

  Tyrissa gave Olivianna a hard, appraising stare. Her face was flushed from the wine, redder than the make-up would account for. It must be the drink talking. Tyrissa said nothing and waited.

  “Thank you.”

  There we go.

  “You’re welcome, Miss Alvedo.”

  “We don’t have to be so formal. I’m going home soon, after all. May I call you Tyrissa?”

  “No.”

  “Very well,” she said, a flicker of disappointment flashing across her face like a burst of light from the fireworks outside. She still had trouble with being denied.

  “But, really,” she pressed on, “Why did you help me at all?”

  “Because I’m a better person than you,” Tyrissa said without hesitation.

  “Well, that’s debatable, but I’ll let you have it for now.”

  Devoss returned and regained Olivianna’s entire attention. Tyrissa tuned out their chatter and watched as a band of six harlequins took to the center of the room, their checkered motley in appropriately festive red and orange. Five set about tumbling and cart wheeling about to the delight of the attendees. The sixth juggled flaming pins at the center of the swirling, acrobatic performance, his feet a blur of little capers and dances. Tyrissa gave him a close look, seeking out that mental tug of pact magicks. There was no rhythmic beat at each contact with a juggled pin to be found. He was normal. As much as she watched for unlikely mundane threats, Tyrissa also felt out for any hint of Pactbound magicks nearby. But there was nothing and the area was clear

  The harlequins finished their act and cleared out from the center of the room, pursued by applause and cheers. The band resumed playing and struck into a tune that Tyrissa recognized as a version of The Song of Spirals, though this version was decidedly more upbeat. Olivianna pulled Devoss to his feet and the two headed for the dance floor. The dance was heavy on spinning, the hems of dresses forming the spirals in the song.

  Jesca continued to be a dark cloud over the festivities. She intermittently floated around the mansion, acting as an on-site manager for the band of Cadre members guarding the party.

  “Joyce, are you quite well tonight,” Tyrissa said in an attempt to soften Jesca’s attitude when she returned from another circuit. Olivianna and Devoss conversed with a group of other couples a few tables away.

  “Let’s say I had other plans for tonight than watching ‘Via’ enjoy herself. There’s no reason for me to be here. You’re more than enough for the Alvedo job tonight. This is punishment in the guise of duty. Thanks in part to your recklessness. I ‘displayed poor management’ and now must manage this contract as well.”

  Tyrissa had received word that any Cadre members not on a contract were to lay low that night. She didn’t even think about obeying those orders. Jesca had given Tyrissa a thorough dressing down when she ran into the Cadre hall many hours late. That had apparently moved on up the chain of command and Jesca in turn received a similar talk.

  “I’m sorry.” She was sick of apologizing, but what was one more?

  Jesca sighed. “It wasn’t just you. Katarine and Pharlain got up to some trouble as well.” She swirled her glass, now filled with water, thinking for a moment. “There’s a lot of talk about Pactbound fighting across the city that night. Including sightings of the one you were so interested in.”

  Tyrissa said nothing. That night felt like it occurred in a void, as if all the action had been out of sight from the collective eyes of the city. Of course she could have been seen in the baker’s plaza.

  “I was worried, especially when you didn’t show up until the afternoon.”

  “Worried over nothing.”

  “Bullshit. He’s Pactbound. The fact you’re alive is a blessing.”

  Tyrissa couldn’t argue there. She still thanked the Ten for whatever reason that caused Vralin to stay his hand that night.

  “Was it worth it? Whatever you were after that night?”

  “Yes.” Tyrissa said, knowing that should would do it all again.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Comparing the Miner’s Pick to the tavern attached to the Grand Inn was a study in the class differences the Khalans like to pretend they eliminated. The common trait was the smoke, though here it coiled among hanging glass lamps of a dozen jeweled colors instead of a bare ceiling of stained beams. The tavern was a lushly decorated place enclosed by warm, paneled wood walls, the oval floor filled with cushioned chairs around finely crafted tables. The furniture had the look of a seasoned craftsman’s hand, like her father’s work but without the humility. Deep, private booths lined opposing, curved walls and a stage occupied the space to the immediate left of the entry. A long bar built of molasses-dark wood occupied the far side, backed by a mirror that filled the wall and doubled the rainbow array of liquor bottles stacked upon the shelves. The clientele were as finely arranged as the establishment, dominated by rich merchants in their silks and satins and guild coats, continuing the dance of negotiations and power games away from the guildhalls and merchant houses.

>   Tyrissa came here seeking Giroon and while a bard was on the stage, he was far from the dusky bald man many called ‘The Great’. Instead it was a Khalan man with a short lawn of precisely manicured brown hair and a pointed beard. He was delivering an acceptable rendition of A King Brought Low. Ferdhan’s advice to read that story on the caravan held true. The tale was a crowd pleaser in Khalanheim, a romanticized retelling of the merchant guilds turning the last king of Khalanheim into a pauper, though with far more heroics and far less blackmail contained within the historical record. The crowd was polite, if far from entranced, most granting only scant attention to the performance and away from their business of the evening. Tyrissa winced as the bard launched into an off-key sung portion of the story. His eyes kept glancing over to a booth along the wall to his left where a dark skinned man paid him no mind, preferring to flip though a large book with gold-edged pages. Tyrissa skirted the edge of the central floor to Giroon’s booth.

  Giroon clearly favored the color red. It was the color of his satin shirt, the covers of the book, and the glass of wine standing at the ready near his right hand. At her approach, the bard looked up from the tome, the pages coated by a foreign text that evoked forks of lightning and flares of flame in a hundred permutations.

  “Giroon,” she said.

  “Miss Jorensen. What brings you to this hardly humble place?”

  Tyrissa slid into the empty opposite bench. The cushioned seat, meant for the long meetings of the tavern’s refined clientele, were as soft and luxuriant as they looked. Giroon motioned to his drink then to her but Tyrissa declined, shaking her head.

  “As you will. One of my many astonishing abilities is that drinks are rarely full price, if priced at all.”

  The Khalan bard on stage reached an intermission in the story, bowed to the succinct applause, and stepped down to the floor. He promised to return shortly and made a bee-line to the bar across the room in pursuit of a dose of liquid courage.

  “Keeping tabs on the competition?” Tyrissa asked.

  Giroon chuckled. “That fellow, while respectable, poses no competition to me. Have you an update for me, my good witch?”

  “Witch?” The typical image of an ugly bog-dwelling crone came to mind, dispensing her poisoned wisdom and twisted demands to wayward adventurers. Their powers were a curse, the result of drops of daemonic blood from unfortunate or desperate ancestors. So the stories went, at least. It wasn’t too far from being Pactbound. Black icy fingers of corruption worming through argent clouds. Discomfort crept up Tyrissa’s spine in spite of the cushions at her back.

  “I’m fairly certain of my parentage, Giroon.”

  “Ability, not lineage. Most commonly, witches take one thing to make another: men into newts, maidens into frogs, life from death, and the reverse. From what you’ve told me, that’s the best I can dredge up from your scatterbrained Northern lore. The woman you so vainly sought below the city was called the Pact Witch, and she was kin to you, should the emblem be a connection. It fits with the one you saw in the dream as well. She created heat from cold, and you did the reverse when you came in touch with a minion of Fire.”

  Even the memory brought a shiver. Bones of ice. So unbelievably cold.

  “Since you mention it, I do have something new. I saw another one, a few days past.”

  “Another dream?”

  “Visions. They’re too vivid to be dreams. It was in a rocky desert canyon between red mountains ridged like the scales on the back of a lizard.”

  Giroon’s eyes ignited with flared interest. He pushed his book aside and folded his hands. “Please go on,” he said.

  “She was like you, in skin and lack of hairstyle, and had those bright red tattoos, too. But hers were much more elaborate and had the emblem inked between her shoulders.” Tyrissa filled in the rest of the details of the vision, the girl with the winged shield emblem, the three Fire Pactbound, and the interplay of frost and fire. Giroon listened, rapt and asking no questions.

  “It looked like they were training,” she finished. The vision had been the inspiration to create a similar set-up with Settan.

  Giroon looked pleased. “Well, I’m glad my countrymen have a new young warrior like you in our ranks.”

  “Your countrymen? And what country would that be?”

  “Zegun’da, a hot little nation holding off the greedy fist of Shadow by virtue of geography and well placed fires.” Giroon pulled down the collar of his fiery red shirt to reveal the brilliant red tattoo of red chain links. Tyrissa saw that the text was the same as the book, harsh corners and sinuous flares. “What you saw were the jwundla, traditional tattooed markings with a three-fold purpose. Firstly, all Zegun youth receive them as a mark of passage. Second, they are an appellation to the Flames.”

  “Flames? You mean elemental flames?”

  “Indeed. The Zegun, we are called the Burnt People, blessed by Fire. Or so the mythological logic goes. Why else did the gods char our skin black?” Giroon rolled his eyes at that. “Those three men you saw are warrior acolytes of the Flame, bound by the Burning Oath. Pactbound, as you call them here. They are marked as such with more elaborate jwundla, a symbol of their greater devotion to the grand deal we made with Elemental Fire itself.”

  “Your entire people made a deal with an Elemental Power?” Visions of the burning of Vordeum and the Fall of Hithia came to mind, the result of so many aligning with the Outer Powers. She felt slightly sick at the idea that there were more nations willing to make that mistake.

  “Don’t act so shocked, Tyrissa. It was a decision made long ago and it was our only option. The last reason for the jwundla is the most pertinent. Security. Our neighbors look like us, talk like us, can meld into shadows thanks to an elemental deal of their own, and would love nothing more than to add Zegun’da to their imperial collection. The jwundla is impossible to fake; the inks can only be made in Zegun’da from a very specific plant that thrives amidst the heat of the Zegun deserts. It is our means of identifying outsiders. We had to make a grand deal with the Flames in order to survive, to place us on equal footing with our neighbors to the north.”

  “Your neighbors. The Vitu’ka?” Tyrissa said. She figured Giroon and Wolef were from the same land, and was glad she never broached the topic until now, though Giroon was a few degrees lighter than the Shade.

  “Indeed, Vitu’ka,” said the bard with all the venom of a curse. “But back to the topic at hand. This revelation of a link to my people is fascinating. I’ve been focusing my search on Northern lore to little benefit, but if one of the four sisters is in my homeland, we’ve at least that much more to comb through. Better than the witch connection at this point, as you’re hardly stirring a brew.”

  “Four? You think there are four of us?” Tyrissa wasn’t surprised at his implying all four were women. She expected that, though couldn’t explain why. It just felt right.

  “We have confirmation of at least three, correct? Your previous vision was of a woman trudging through snow. That implies winter, though you saw it late in the summer. On the south side of the world, the seasons are flipped. Our summer is their winter. That places her in the South. This Zegun girl is most certainly in my homeland. The mountains you described are known as the Kasa Milun and lie at the very heart of our lands. Furthermore, the world is made up of four landmasses so it only follows there would be one of you for each continent. Why else would the shield be of four sections?” Giroon smiled to himself, “Clean and simple. Just like your crest.”

  The Khalan bard returned to the stage and launched into the second half of A King Brought Low. He was much more on key this time around, though continued to shoot occasional nervous glances at Giroon.

  “That means I should see one more. A vision of the East.”

  “That is a reasonable assumption, yes.”

  “And what of the feathers, the wings?” Wrapped in feathered warmth, silver all around.

  Giroon gave a carefree shrug. “I don’t know. We’ll se
e.” He rapped his knuckles against the book on the table. “This is one of the few items I brought with me from Zegun’da, a collection of creation myths and ancient legends, the beginning of all. I had an inkling that my search wasn’t broad enough, but if one of your kind is in the homeland, well, perhaps I was looking in the wrong place. My next steps will be to make some careful comparisons to what is already familiar to me. Is there anything else?”

  Tyrissa had nothing more, but remained in the booth for a time, once again trading bits of stories and variations of lore with Giroon. On stage, the bard finished his tale strong to light applause. Giroon raised his glass in respect and the relief in the younger performer’s face was clear.

  Tyrissa walked home while mentally toying with the idea of intentionally overloading herself with elemental energies in pursuit of another vision, of a glimpse of her theorized Eastern counterpart. If she did it in a controlled situation, what was the harm? She knew Settan would never approve and Hali was like a ghost these last few days, to say nothing of the danger of toying with the opposite of Life. That left the Vitu Shade and she had barely spoken to him. She would have to remedy that in the coming days.

  Chapter Thirty

  Tyrissa’s chance to hear the other side of the Evelands story arrived by mail. A folded note pinned to her front door laid out the details in clean, practiced script. Tonight, at an address in northeast Crossing, and a request: prepare for a night for shadows. Signed, Wolef.