The Iron Phoenix

by Rebecca Harwell

  The wave roared past them, through them, and suddenly, it was gone. Nadya blinked. She straightened, her chest and back aching. She was soaked. The blood had been washed clear of her hands. In front of her, Kesali sputtered.

  She turned around. Three hundred paces down, a gaping hole punctured the wall that had stood for a thousand years. Barrels of still-smoking gunpowder stood around its base as the water continued to pour in, flooding the entire first tier. A great sucking sound filled the air as the Kyanite Sea poured through the gap, into the city, and down into the open mines. The initial wave had passed, but the water was at least seven paces deep, filling buildings and streets. Cries echoed around the eerie stillness left in the aftermath of the wave.

  On top of the wall, next to the smoking hole, the zealot stood and waved his arms triumphantly.

  “He did this,” Nadya said, hardly able to believe it. “To make a point.”

  “He still wants me dead,” Kesali said softly. “He was no puppet of the nivasi, only a fanatic who saw an opportunity.”

  “One given to him by the magistrate.” Nadya almost leapt off the building then, ready to take down the zealot, but she calmed herself. Her hands had spilled enough blood, and she was not eager to spill more. She turned toward Kesali. “Go. The royal family of Storm’s Quarry needs to bring that monster to justice.”

  “And the Iron Phoenix?” Kesali faced the hole in the wall. She did not look at Nadya.

  “The Iron Phoenix is needed to save lives today,” Nadya said, knowing there would be no reply. Without pause, she leapt off the building. Her stomach was a tight knot. Now was not the time for guilt or punishment. Now was the time to save as many as she could.

  She dove down into the freezing waters. A man in a crimson uniform floated by. Nadya grabbed him and, with a strong stroke, broke the surface. Hauling him up to the roof of a building, she made sure he was breathing before she dove in again.

  After the sixth man was pulled out, half guardsmen, half rioters, she heard a confrontation on the wall. Marko and Kesali and the few members of the Duke’s Guard who had been on high ground when the waters hit cornered the zealot. She watched for a moment as the zealot threw himself off the wall to the waters below. After a moment, his body floated up to the surface, tossing limply on the waves like a broken doll.

  So much death for so little purpose, she thought, and resumed her rescues.

  When she broke surface again, strong hands grabbed the young woman from her and pulled her onto a dry roof. Nadya looked up, treading water, and saw her father. He was soaked in water, sweat, and blood, but to her relief, the blood did not look as if it belonged to him. His face was hard, and he turned slightly, barking an order to another guardsmen. He looked back and offered Nadya a hand.

  She took it gingerly and pulled herself to the roof. She was wet to the bone and cold, the pain of her injuries slowly coming back as the power she found to defeat Gedeon faded into fatigue.

  He didn’t look at her for the longest moment. “I always wondered,” he said finally. “You came from a line of such strong psychics, but you never had their power.”

  Her throat tightened. What was he trying to say?

  Shadar tentatively reached out, hesitated, then laid a hand on her shoulder. “I interrogated the magistrate,” he said. “With a blade to his throat, he was very…talkative.” He pulled her close, and Nadya felt safe for the first time since all this started. There was nothing between her and her father, no secrets, no lies. When she let go of him, he handed her a bundle.

  She glanced down at it. It was a gray cloak, soaked through, but clean of blood.

  “I saw this ten minutes ago floating out of a tailor’s shop. I don’t think she’ll mind.” Nadya took it with trembling fingers, and Shadar said, “You’re needed. Talk will come later. Go, and be safe.”

  She pulled on the wet garment and leapt off the building, but she was warm despite the chill.

  The sun sank lower and lower until it was hidden by dusk, and still Nadya worked. She spent hours diving in and out of the seawater that now engulfed the first two tiers of the city after completely filling the mines. Body after body was pulled from the dark waters, some alive, most dead. The guardsmen who took the wounded from her did it with cautious hands and suspicious, even murderous glares. After a while, Nadya stopped looking at them. Her new cloak made it more difficult to swim, as it billowed around her in the water and hung heavy when she emerged onto a rooftop, but she was not ready for the entire city to know the identity of the Iron Phoenix, especially since few would believe the story of a second nivasi.

  Fires still burned on rooftops and floating piles of wood and rubble, giving the flooded tiers an eerie glow after sunset. Nadya and the Duke’s Guard continued their work. She moved slowly around the city, going into every dwelling. Many of the people she had found had been dead before the waters came, from bullets or blades or blunt weaponry. Her insides went numb after the first hour.

  The injured were boated up to the third and fourth tiers, where most courtiers opened their homes to the refugees. The rioters were sent to the storehouses on the top tier, where they received treatment and a watchful guard. But without the zealot, their nameless leader who managed to stir their hunger and fear into a murderous fervor, they were scared and trembling. The injured guardsmen who secured them didn’t report a single problem.

  Nadya saw her father leading her mother and grandmother toward one of the boat stations, across the hastily laid planks that joined rooftops. They looked uninjured, but the smoke that still hung in the air made her mother cough violently. Across the waters, Shadar met Nadya’s gaze and shook his head.

  Her heart ached, but Nadya turned away and finished lifting rubble off a man’s trapped leg. Her mother and grandmother were not yet ready to face the truth of what she was—the mantra of the villainy of the nivasi had been drilled into both of them. Nadya swallowed her tears and continued her work.

  When the sun rose, the clouds were gone. It sparkled off the seawaters that now occupied the bottom two tiers of Storm’s Quarry, turning the entire island into a glittering sapphire. The Duke made an official announcement outside the palace steps. Using the information Shadar had received, he condemned the zealot and the nivasi named Gedeon. He mentioned nothing of the Iron Phoenix, and Nadya knew the city did not yet know how to handle her. The death toll for the Blood Sun Solstice, as it would be forever known, was in the thousands, with more bodies being dragged out of the water every hour. Levka was in custody, and she feared what he might say. Marko had returned to his father’s side. The city was broken, and it needed its leaders to begin to heal. Kesali, however, did not stand with the Duke for this announcement.

  Nadya tentatively walked along the wall. Fatigue chained her every step to the ground. She had worked for twelve hours without ceasing until she had rescued every soul she could. Finally, she had stopped, and that’s when she saw Kesali standing on the wall alone, next to the hole.

  It was more impressive and terrifying from this height. Marble that had never seen the light of the day gleamed in the sunlight, its ragged edges blackened and as sharp as bayonets. The wall was ten paces thick, and the explosion knocked a triangle out of it, the chunks of marble now submerged in the waters below. Nadya looked out across the Kyanite Sea to the distant sharp edges of the coast. The waters below lapped calmly at the walls, and the Mark of Recession gleamed with moisture, announcing to the world that the sea had receded enough for trade.

  “The waters receded on the solstice,” Kesali said quietly without turning. “As my vision always showed it. The sea has gone down, disappearing into our city.” She looked up at Nadya, her eyes wet. “A self-fulfilling prophecy. My own words caused this.”

  “This is not your fault. I’m the one with blood on my hands.” She did not deserve to be standing up here, next to Kesali.

  “I know you were being controlled,” Kesali said.

  Hearing those words from her should have meant m
ore. Nadya stared down at the ragged marble edge of the wall, knowing the truth. “The public square, yes. The times before that, no. And not here, not with Gedeon.” As she spoke of painful memories, the great crushing weight of so many lies lifted.

  “And how do you go on?” Kesali asked, looking out over the plains to the mountains in the distance. “After so much that is evil around you, how do you still see the light?”

  You find someone who makes you whole, and you fight with everything you have to give them a world of light. But all she could say was, “You learn.”

  The corners of Kesali’s mouth twitched. “Learn not to trust the gift that was given to me at birth?” Her hand clutched her right arm just below the shoulder. Someone had seen to her injuries, and it no longer seemed to be paining her. “I prayed to the Protectress, and she has forsaken me.”

  Nadya slowly walked closer until they were an arm’s length apart. “I understand.” Slowly, she dropped her cloak to the ground and rolled up her right sleeve. Her seal, a plain metal band with the flower symbol of the Protectress, shone wet in the sunlight. “I’ve lost everything. My greatest secret has been exposed to those I care about, and the city thinks I am a murderer.” Her voice dropped. “I guess I am. And all the time, I prayed for guidance and protection, and I got none. I thought I was cursed.” She looked up and met Kesali’s watery gaze. “Until it mattered most, when I dove off the wall to catch you, and the Protectress wrapped us both in her arms and saved us. Her strength poured into me to resist Gedeon. I believe…it will be all right,” she said, realizing that, despite everything, she actually did.

  Kesali reached out and brushed her seal. She looked down into Nadya’s eyes and slowly rolled up her right sleeve. She winced as the fabric gave way to bandages and to a simple metal band around her upper arm with the seal of a flower pressed into it.

  “The Elders say that those who wear the Protectress’s seal in the same spot are destined for each other.” Kesali reached out, and Nadya, hesitating only a moment, met her halfway.

  Their hands entwined as they looked out over the ruins of Storm’s Quarry. The future of the city was perilous, and Nadya knew it would need both the marriage of Kesali and Marko and the strength of the Iron Phoenix to heal what had been broken. But she relaxed in the warm grip of Kesali’s hand, inhaling the sweet scent of the woman she loved that stubbornly clung underneath the day’s blood and ash. For that moment, she was not the Iron Phoenix. She was Nadya Gabori, and as she gazed out over the city, holding on to Kesali, she was home.

  About the Author

  Rebecca Harwell grew up in Minnesota and has since lived around the Midwest, which has given her a love of winter and the prairie. She holds a BA in creative writing from Knox College and is currently pursuing her MS in library science at Indiana University.

  Her writing reflects the comic books, space operas, and high fantasy epics she loves to read. When not writing, Rebecca can be found studying, watching Star Trek reruns, playing with her rabbit, and staging imaginary battles in her head. She remains unconvinced that unicorns aren’t real.

  Rebecca can be contacted at rebeccajharwell@gmail.com

  Website: http://www.rebeccaharwell.com/

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