The Iron Phoenix

by Rebecca Harwell

  A memory flew through Nadya’s mind: Shay and the fire she could call. She clenched her teeth hard to keep from being sick.

  “What kinds of gifts?” Lord Marko asked.

  “Impossible to say. The abilities of the nivasi, as we call them, are violent and unpredictable. And far more powerful than normal Nomori. From what I’ve heard, it seems that this man has incredible strength as well as speed and fighting reflexes.”

  “Almost a combination of a male Nomori’s skills and a woman’s psychic gift,” Kesali said softly.

  Marko patted her hand, and Nadya was too preoccupied with her grandmother’s words to feel the usual pang of jealousy.

  “Can one of these nivasi be stopped by the Duke’s Guard?”

  Drina’s eyes were hard. “Not one in their prime. You do not understand these creatures. But you know of one. Durriken was his name.”

  A collective gasp filled the epic silence following Drina’s pronouncement of that name. Nadya felt a squeezing pressure on her heart. Durriken the Butcher? He was a nivasi like her?

  You do not know if you are nivasi, yet. You can’t be sure. Not yet. Not without proof.

  “Durriken the Butcher was nivasi? So he was Nomori?” the Duke asked slowly, echoing her thoughts. “He killed hundreds of Erevans centuries ago.”

  “Ay, hundreds and Erevans and even more Nomori,” Drina said. “He found his way to this city after slaughtering a great many of our people, running the rivers red with blood. He developed powers that could not be matched. Our histories speak of his ability to rip someone’s heart out with his mind.”

  Nadya tried to swallow the lump in her throat, but she couldn’t.

  “The Elders wanted him destroyed when he was discovered as nivasi. While strong in their gifts, these creatures are weak of mind. Durriken went insane and murdered hundreds.” Drina looked directly at the Duke. “Do you now understand what has taken root in your city?”

  Nadya couldn’t breathe. The room spun around her.

  The Duke sighed and was silent for several moments. Nadya heard only her heartbeat, smelled only blood, and was barely aware of his words when he said, “Search the entire city, both for the Phoenix and the zealot. I want them both found and interrogated before the solstice. That is still our deadline. The food stores will not last beyond it.” He turned to the deputy Guardmaster. “Can you hold the city against an uprising?”

  The confidence vanished from the man’s drawn face. “No, Your Grace. If enough people wish for the Lady’s head, even this place will not be safe for her. We cannot question everyone in the city to know their loyalty, and while your Guard will do its best to stop a frontal assault on the palace gates, I fear a knife in the dark might be a greater threat.”

  His words rang out with a somber reality. Marko finally let go of Kesali, who was pale and quiet. “A civil war, even if we can hold the palace, will ruin Storm’s Quarry beyond repair,” Marko said. “We have been free of invasion for centuries because the city is defensible to the point that an enemy would have to survive the storms to be able to siege it. But with a war within, I fear that one of our neighbors that covet the gem mines might decide we are weak enough to strike. Wintercress, while always diplomatic, has long desired a larger share of our wealth, and our alliances with Shikra and the South Marches may not be enough to deter them if given the opportunity.”

  “War with Wintercress, or one of the barbarian tribes to the north, is not something we will survive unscathed. Or even at all.” The Duke’s words rang out, somber and final. “Find these two men, and do it with all haste,” he ordered everyone at the table. “At the same time, have all tiers of the city notified that I am making a public address on the day before the solstice.”

  “That is exceedingly dangerous, Your Grace,” the deputy began.

  “My people are hurting, and I must reassure them. Now is not the time for aggression and locked doors. The zealot sent a message. I will send one of my own.” Beside him, Marko shook his head, but the Duke either missed it or ignored it. “I want answers. I want peace, and I want this city to survive the coming storm.”

  Storm’s Quarry had weathered tempests from the sea and sky for a thousand years, but Nadya did not think he was referring to rain and lightning and winds. The greatest of the Great Storms would come from hunger and jealousy and the darkness in men’s hearts.

  The Duke dismissed them, staying back to talk to his son and his future daughter-in-law. Nadya left without looking at Kesali. Their kiss, so beautiful at the time, now seemed like a distant memory as the weight of revelation pulled Nadya down.

  She waited until the room emptied to sneak out.

  As she made her way slowly home, clutching her injured shoulder, Nadya knew three things.

  The murderer was nivasi. Her grandmother had said so, and the solid black eyes of all the murderers proved there was some sort of power at work. Nadya knew the mysterious man who watched the attacks was part of it. Somehow, the zealot and magistrate fit into the picture, but she couldn’t quite figure out how.

  She was nivasi. The thought made her heart ache harder than her shoulder. Was her lack of control in the throne room the first onset of madness?

  Finally, Nadya knew now what would truly happen if anyone discovered her abilities. The Elders, led by her grandmother and assisted by her parents and the Guard, would try to kill her to eliminate the threat of another Durriken the Butcher.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Behind gray clouds, the sun crept toward the horizon and the city grew darker. Gedeon felt a twinge of sadness. Night was his domain, the shadows his temple, but he could not deny the thrill that coursed through him as he wielded his power during the day. Darkness provided protection, but using his abilities in the light brought a rush of power that was nearly as intoxicating as the cheap ale served in this tier.

  He stood on the corner of two narrow streets. Nomori swept past him, heading home from a day of grueling work. They avoided eye contact and did not speak to one another. Cloaked in black with his face covered, he was another potential threat to them, a rioter who could be brought to spark at any moment, and nothing more.

  The Nomori girl walked down the street, keeping close to the edge. Her face was lined in pain. One hand clutched her right shoulder where the faintest bit of red seeped through her vest. Gedeon watched as she rounded the corner. Her eyes never found him as they feverishly scanned the crowd.

  The magistrate had been right. Gedeon was glad he hadn’t simply taken over the man’s mind and used him as another pawn in his war of chaos on the city. The magistrate, Levka Puyatin as he had so suavely introduced himself, had sneaked up on Gedeon as he left the palace just after the attack on the Duke.

  “Your work is quite impressive, you know.”

  Gedeon jumped. Not many things could surprise him. He cursed himself for letting the need for a speedy departure cloud his senses. Whirling around, he grabbed ahold of his power, ready to render this man before him into a sniveling puppet.

  The man, well-dressed and covered in jewels—such an Erevan fad—held up his hands. “I am not armed, no need to worry. And I’m not here to arrest you.”

  Gedeon licked his lips. “I care not why you’re here, Erevan.”

  “But I care a great deal why you are, Nomori. My name is Levka Puyatin, and I’m a magistrate to His Grace, the Duke.” The man held out his ringed hand.

  “If you think a title will save you…” Gedeon glanced around. They were fairly concealed, just behind the main gate to the palace, next to one of the storehouses.

  “No, no, of course not. You don’t plan to spare anyone, not Erevan, not Nomori. You are something more, are you not?” Levka did not wait for his answer. “I admire what you have done. The way you started before the Great Storm, just one murder. Then another, another. The feat at the theater. Now, an attack on the Duke. You’ve got the city practically tearing itself to bits.” He held up a hand when Gedeon opened his mouth to speak. “Impressive,
yes. But a few concentrated attacks can only be the beginning. I can help you sow chaos in every crevasse of the city.”

  “You?” Gedeon had to admit, he was slightly intrigued. The magistrate carried a certain self-assurance that bordered on suicidal. Amusing enough to let him live for another few moments.

  “Yes.” Levka’s face darkened, and Gedeon found himself wanting to flinch away from the murderous look in the magistrate’s eye. “You see, I have a goal, too. One that coincides rather nicely with yours, though it’s a bit more focused than simply bringing chaos to the city. From what I can deduce, we both work much the same way. Through surrogates.”

  This man was clever. Gedeon narrowed his eyes. Cleverness could get one killed.

  “What I am proposing is a partnership. I will let you in on my plans, and I think you’ll be nicely surprised.”

  “Why would I work with an Erevan?” Gedeon hissed.

  “Because I have the knowledge, wealth, and power to do what you cannot.” Levka smiled. “And because I know the identity of someone who might prove very interesting to you.”

  Gedeon stared at him for a long time. Levka held his gaze. Finally, he said, “Tell me more.”

  Now, watching the girl the magistrate had pointed him to, Gedeon could not stop the little shivers of pleasure that raced up and down his back. This was the girl who turned what would have been another wondrous display of chaos into a fight that ended in the defeat of the five armed men he had gotten through the guardsmen at the gate. This was the girl who had leapt over crowds as if they were stepping stones, broke bones with bare hands, and walked away after being shot from five paces out.

  If the rest of the magistrate’s plans were as good as this, then Gedeon did not regret letting the man live.

  He watched the girl enter one of the ramshackle dwellings. He stared at the door for long time after she had disappeared within and thought, this was a girl he could use.

  *

  Nadya staggered in through the door of her house. Her hand gripped the doorway with white, bloodless knuckles. She tripped and fell through the flap, cracking her knees on the stone floor.

  “Nadya? Nadya!” Her mother ran through to the workshop. She crouched next to Nadya, cradling her face in both hands. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

  She opened her mouth, but words wouldn’t come out. Her throat was too dry. She swallowed, and it burned. Everything burned. Her shoulder, her forehead, her mother’s soft touch.

  “Your shoulder?” she asked, gently removing the hand that clenched it.

  The scent of blood, iron and sharp, filled the room, and Nadya threw up. The bile burned her throat, and even after it landed on the stone floor, a pile of yellow and red, she couldn’t rid the taste from her mouth.

  Her mother gasped when she lifted the edge of Nadya’s vest and saw the bullet wound beneath. Nadya glanced down at it. Blood had congealed until it was thick and black, a lump of unnatural ooze spreading from her collarbone to her seal. Mirela touched it with careful fingers, and even they burned. Nadya cried out.

  “I’m sorry. If only the hospitals weren’t already overrun.” She squeezed Nadya’s good arm. “We’ll just take care of it ourselves. Can you walk to the bed? Come, it’s not far.”

  Leaning far too much on her mother’s frail frame, Nadya limped toward the living room. Her mother started to cough, each hack rippling through them and throwing off their careful rhythm. “Mama, I can do it. You don’t have to—”

  “I’m fine,” Mirela said quickly. She guided Nadya over to the bed and slowly sat down with her. “I need to take your clothing off, to be able to clean it. This might hurt.”

  Nadya bit her already injured lip against the tiny fires that ran up and down her arm as Mirela struggled to get first the vest, then the shirt underneath off without jostling her arm too much. She wore only her breast band now, but it was stained red and black on one side, and yellow with sweat on the other. Mirela removed her seal of the Protectress and Nadya bit her lip. But her mother just set it on top of the bloodied vest showing no signs that she had taken a psychic reading of it.

  “Nadya, what happened?” Mirela asked again. She rose and went over to their water pitcher, lighting the kiln as well before returning with water and a soft cloth.

  Nadya looked at the ground. When she wasn’t stumbling in delirium and pain, she had considered this question on the way back. “I…I was attacked on the third tier.” Her voice trembled. “I went to get more medicine.”

  “Oh, Nadya, you shouldn’t have.” Slowly, Mirela dipped the white cloth into the cool water and began dabbing the thick dried blood away. Nadya’s back straightened, but she refused to let the pain get to her.

  “I know you’re running out.” She bit back a yelp as Mirela touched the leaden bullet. “The floodwaters have not receded any, and the solstice is so soon.” She gasped at the pain.

  “Such a risk is not worth it.”

  The water in the pitcher was now a light shade of translucent red, the cloth dyed nearly black. Her skin was now visible under the mess, and Nadya regretted looking. Spider tendrils of muscle underneath shot out from the green-tinged center that contained a black lump—all that remained of the bullet intended for the Duke.

  “A group of Erevans. They had muskets.” Her voice choked at the memories of the men she had killed, and her mother was there, embracing her and whispering words of strength into her ear.

  “You will be fine. It’s over now. You made it.”

  Nadya swallowed. “I was so scared.”

  “I know, love, I know.” Her mother returned to her work. Every time she touched the bullet, Nadya jerked. “They must have been far away when they fired, else this would be have a fatal shot.”

  The image of the smoking pistol in front of her flashed through Nadya’s mind, and she shivered.

  “This will hurt, Nadya, but it must come out. Its poison has already begun spreading. If we leave it in longer, it will only get worse.” Mirela’s voice was calm and confident, but Nadya heard her thundering heartbeat. She wasn’t sure her daughter would be all right. If Nadya wasn’t unnatural, she wouldn’t have been.

  Mirela left her for a moment, going to fetch pliers from her workshop. She dropped them into the kiln for a few moments to sterilize their sharp edges. Nadya’s stomach threatened to revolt again.

  “I’m here. It will be over in a moment, I promise.” Mirela gave her a hand to hold as the other deftly angled the pliers toward the bullet. As soon as their edges touched the lead chunk, Nadya dropped her mother’s hand to avoid breaking every bone in it. She dug her fingernails into her palms, her teeth clenched, as fire ripped from her shoulder and spotted her vision.

  “It’s out now. Are you still with me? Nadya?”

  She blinked, and her mother slowly came back into focus. Blood flowed freely from the wound now that the bullet had been removed. Mirela smiled and began dabbing at its edge again with the red cloth. “You were lucky. This should be far worse. The Protectress truly was watching over you.”

  The Protectress does not watch over creatures like me, Nadya thought as tears sprung to her eyes. The Protectress shields the rest of you from me.

  Mirela gently cupped her hands around a mug of tea. “Here, drink this. It will help calm you down.”

  Nadya obediently drank the hot tea, avoiding her mother’s gaze. She felt as if she was drowning in an ocean of things she did not know, and answers, straight answers, were her only way out of the clinging waters.

  That man, the one who controlled the murderers with their black eyes, knew what it was to be a nivasi. She could get answers from him, to know if she was to go mad like Durriken the Butcher.

  A few minutes after taking the tea, Nadya fell into a dark sleep.

  When she woke, her bandages had been replaced and tied neatly, a small loaf of hard bread waited on a plate next to her, her seal of the Protectress was gone, and her mother was not in the house.

  Nadya did not sto
p to wonder about it. Sleep had pushed back the pain in her shoulder. An iron resolve built in her chest. She scarfed down the bread in three bites, put on a shirt, then left the house. She stopped in the alley to pick up her disguise. Despite the spots of dried blood that dotted the damp cloth, it went into her belt pouch. She would walk to the stairs leading up to the city’s top tier. No need to provoke the Duke’s Guard—not yet, anyway.

  Today, the Duke would stand before his city and offer reassurances. Nadya, like Marko, did not think such an approach would work, but if anyone could bring peace to Storm’s Quarry by talking, it was the Duke.

  Nadya wasn’t headed there to listen to lies thinly veiled as hope. The solstice was tomorrow, and the very future of Storm’s Quarry could be at stake. The Duke’s Guard were spread thin through the city, trying to quell riots as they started. At their numbers, they wouldn’t be able to save the city from chaos, but the Duke might.

  The mysterious man, the nivasi, would be there, and Nadya would find him and question him. Whatever he did to those men to start the fire in the Guardhouse, he could not do it to her. She was too strong for that.

  The Nomori tier was nearly deserted. She heard whispers as she passed. The floodwaters had not receded at all, and now even the Nomori doubted the psychic powers of their own Stormspeaker. Doors were clamped shut and windows barricaded as the Nomori prepared themselves for the storm tomorrow would surely bring.

  Nadya would do anything in her power to prevent that, and that started with finding the man at the root of it all. She needed to know how the nivasi, Levka, and the zealot all figured into this, and what their final plan was. She was the only one who could do it, because she was the only one who knew enough of the truth to see past the lies.

  Erevans in the second tier watched her with shielded eyes and dark scowls. One man, corralling a woman and a small child through the empty market, shouted at her, “Go back to your tier, Nomori filth. You’re not welcome here.”