Heir of Thunder (Stormbourne Chronicles Book 1)

by Karissa Laurel

  A lock pick? Antonio sent me to rescue Nathalie and the other girls with a lock pick? Or should I call him a cat burglar?

  I had read of such characters in some of my more sensational novels, but never had I thought I would come across one in real life. My father had either heard my prayers, after all, or fate had taken pity on me after sending me into the hands of pirates. Either way, with Morello at my side, my chances of success had vastly improved.

  Thunder rumbled again, closer this time, and Morello grumbled under his breath. He grunted, twisting one of the picks, and something mechanical clicked in the lock’s mechanisms. He turned the knob and the door swung open, but the old hinges announced our entrance in a high-pitched whine, and I cringed. Morello put a hand out, stopping me from moving forward. He stepped into the room, and a man’s voice called out. His words sounded like warning, or threat. Feet shuffled, someone grunted, and then came a meaty thwak.

  Then, silence.

  Morello returned to the doorway and raised his lantern. He motioned for me to enter, and his light fell on the crumpled figure of a large man. The light reflected on the blood at his temple. I gasped. Morello yanked my arm and grunted something under his breath. I turned away from the grisly sight, gritted my teeth, and followed him.

  My mysterious companion slunk across the room, silent as a snake. The night sky glowed weakly through a set of tiny windows bordering the basement ceiling, and the ambient light outlined his silhouette. I tiptoed behind him, holding my breath as if the soft susurrus of air passing through my nose might somehow make things worse. We stepped up, passed through a low doorway, and entered a smaller and impossibly darker room—no windows this time, only blackness. Morello flipped open the lantern door again, and a soft beam of yellow light fell on the iron bars of a holding cage identical to the ones aboard the pirate ship.

  “Nathalie?” I hissed and crouched before the cage.

  A scuttling sound came from the shadows beyond the lantern’s reach. A moment later, the Gallandic girl’s sallow face appeared in the soft light. She blinked and her mouth fell open. “Evie? What are you doing here?”

  “Trying to rescue you. Mr. Morello here is handy with a lock pic... and a truncheon.”

  Morello moved to the lock on the cell door. He removed his wallet again, selected several tools, and went to work. In no time, the lock clicked opened, and he swung the cell door open. Nathalie hissed to the other girls. “Marie, Salma, Heba, Suivez moi. Follow me.”

  The four girls trundled from their cage, and Marello led us back through the doorway. The man Morello had dispatched still lay on the floor as we passed by. “Is he dead?” Nathalie asked.

  “I don’t know. I’m afraid to ask.”

  “No está muerto,” said Morello. “Está dormiendo.”

  I looked to Nathalie. She shrugged. “He says he is sleeping.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “Does it matter?”

  We exited into the night, and Morello ascended the stairs first. I motioned for Nathalie to go next, and the other girls followed her. A cool dampness had settled in the air, and the winds blew stronger. At the top of the stairs, Morello turned towards the street and motioned for us to follow him, but we had taken only a few steps when shouts went up behind us.

  Morello issued a terse command, “Corra!”

  “Run!” Nathalie echoed.

  Morello flew over the cobblestone street, legs spinning like pinwheels. Nathalie, the three other girls, and I raced after him. Shouts followed us, and thunder crashed and boomed overhead. The sky tore apart and great bullets of rain fell on us, drenching us as we ran. The streets turned slick under our feet. One of the girls cried out and slipped, falling to her knee. Nathalie and I grabbed her, hoisting her up by her elbows, and we carried her until she found her footing.

  Shouting voices closed in on us, and I imagined them breathing down our necks. Someone fired a shot. The rain dampened the sound, but the bark of gunfire was unmistakable.

  “Faster,” I urged.

  Morello turned a corner, his lantern light bobbing. If he extinguished the light, we might have stood a better chance of evading our pursuers, but he might have eluded the other girls and me just as well. Without him, I had no idea how to get back to the Bull and Ram.

  Another shot blasted the cobblestone, and fragments of rock and brick pelleted my ankles. That was too close. A streak of lightning illumined the sky, and a crash of thunder answered, loud enough to ring my ears. The storm’s force thrummed in my gut and electrified my veins—it spoke to me in the voice and language of my father and our ancestors.

  Peace swelled inside me as if my father stood at my side, holding my hand, assuring me everything would be well. I slowed and stopped while the others kept running.

  “Evie, what are you doing?” Nathalie called as she raced by.

  I turned and faced our pursuers as another bolt streaked down from the heavens. Lightning crashed into a streetlamp and exploded in a ball of electric blue sparks just as two of our pursuers passed. A deep, raw bellow of pain tore apart the night.

  The light blinded me, turning the night into a world of glaring, bright whiteness.

  Someone whimpered.

  It might have been me.

  When my vision cleared, two dark forms lay crumpled on the ground, and the streetlamp leaned to one side, its glass housing shattered and its iron frame warped and twisted.

  “Merde!” said Nathalie, standing several feet behind me. Rain dripped from the tip of her long, thin nose, and her hair hung in limp strands over her forehead and cheeks. She looked like a surprised, drowned rat. “I have never seen anything like that before.”

  I swallowed and stepped back, moving away from the men and the deformed lamppost. “Neither have I.”

  Thunder rumbled overhead, quieter this time, and the rain softened. Nathalie cut her eyes to the sky and then back to me. “You must have a remarkably powerful god looking after you—Stormbourne. Perhaps the legends are real after all.”

  My breath froze. Nathalie had deduced my true identity. But then she must have been a clever girl to know languages like she did. She waved a hand and turned on her heel. “Do not worry, m’lady. I can keep a secret. I owe you at least that much, no?”

  I fell into step beside her, and we hurried to catch up to Morello and the three girls who had stopped next to a streetlamp several yards away. We regrouped in silence and marched away without speaking another word.

  I had assumed Morello would take us back to The Bull and Ram, but he turned off the street again and led us down another ally, one I was certain we hadn’t traversed before. My stomach turned over. Where is he taking us?

  We walked a short distance before Morella stopped us at a door stoop set in the side of huge stone building. I leaned back and stared up at the arching roofline, the spires, and the grotesque statues positioned like sentinels in the corners. We had approached from the rear, so I hadn’t recognized what it was until now—a cathedral, a grand imposing structure rising above the town, casting its shadow over all of San Mareno.

  No such thing existed on Inselgrau—there was no need, the Stormbournes’ divinity had sufficed the people of Inselgrau for a thousand years or more—but I had read about holy worship places in one of my father’s compendiums. As the power of elemental deities waned on the Continent, a new god had risen to take their places. Apparently, he preferred to abide in dwellings of outrageous grandeur.

  Morello stepped onto the stoop and raised the doorknocker. He tapped it twice and waited. Moments later the door opened, and a woman in red robes and a stiff head covering peered out.

  I recognized her the same way I recognized most foreign things: from reading about them in my books. She was a kareeyatid—a priestess of sorts—an unmarried woman who lived in the temple and dedicated herself to the service of her god. A soft lamp glowed beside the door, and its light emphasized the wrinkles and lines in her wizened face. Her gaze touched on each of us before s
ettling on Morello. “Morello, qué es esto?”

  Morello motioned to Nathalie and the other three girls—Marie, Salma, and Heba. “Madre,” he began, and fell off into a long explanation.

  “What are they saying?” I whispered to Nathalie.

  She rolled her eyes at me. “How can you be who you are, but you have no languages?”

  I glared at her and huffed. “I can speak Dreutchish. Now tell me what they’re saying.”

  Nathalie snorted. “Dreutchish. A language of growls and coughs.” She shook her head, apparently dismissing her complaints. “He is asking this woman to help us. To take us in, give us a place to stay. Food, too, if she can spare it. He is telling her about our situation with the pirates and the slave merchants.”

  “And what does she say to that?” I asked, but Nathalie didn’t have to translate. The priestess opened her door wide and waved for the girls to come in. I started forward, but Morello took my arm and held me back.

  He shook his head. “Antonio. Anatella.”

  I bit my lip and nodded. He was right. This was not my place. Antonio and Anatella had provided for me, and I had no reason to put more burdens on this woman and her church. Besides, I had Malita and Jenna to consider.

  Nathalie peered at me over the priestess’s shoulder. “Go, Evie. We will be fine here. I am certain we will see each other again, soon enough.” She smiled. “And thank you. If there ever comes a day when I can repay this thing you have done, you can be sure I will.”

  A bubble of emotion swelled up from my heart and lodged in my throat. My eyes burned, but I held back my tears. I smiled at Nathalie and nodded. The kareeyatid said something else to Morello, then she ushered the girls away and closed the door behind her.

  I turned to Morello. He stared back at me. I lacked the words to express my gratitude. The dangers he had faced; the risks he had taken—how could I ever repay him? Maybe he understood the expression on my face, though. His gaze dropped to his feet. He threw out his hands and shrugged. I would have hugged him, but he seemed too cold and stiff to want such familiar affection. Instead, I did the only thing I could think of.

  I dropped low, bending into the deepest and most elegant curtsey I could muster. “Gracias,” I said—the one word of thanks I knew in his language. “Gracias, gracias, gracias, señor.”

  My gratitude clearly unsettled him. He snorted and towed me up from my curtsey. He flapped his hands and shook his head. “No, no, señorita.” His mouth worked as if he had bitten into something hard, but then he swallowed and said, in halting Inselgrish, “Is my pleasure.”

  ***

  Morello deposited me at the Bull and Ram’s back door and dissolved into the shadows. Antonio, having waited up for me, welcomed me into the kitchen. The stress of his worry showed in the white lines around his eyes and mouth.

  “All is good, Evie?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Yes. All is good. They are safe.”

  He exhaled a trumpeting sigh, and deflated, sinking into his chair at the kitchen table and rubbing a hand over his smooth head. “I am very happy.”

  I smirked at him, taking in his rumpled clothing, his mostly empty bottle of port, and the circles under his eyes. Antonio and I had different ideas about what happy looked like. Antonio straightened and sucked in a huge breath. He raised his glasses, rubbed his eyes, and stood. “This night has been too long for me. I must go home and sleep.”

  He stumbled to the back door, and I followed him onto the stoop. “I can’t thank you enough, Antonio. Without you and Mr. Morello, I don’t know what would have happened to them.”

  Antonio flapped a hand at me as he turned and tottered away. “Yes, yes. I am not so useless as they say, after all. No?”

  “No,” I said. “You are a miracle.”

  Chapter 17

  As the days passed, I succeeded in keeping Jenna and Malita’s presence in the attic secret. Most of our luck hinged on the narrowness of the attic stairway and the wideness of Anatella’s hips. Jenna withstood her internment for close to a week before I discovered her absence late one night after finishing my chores in the kitchen. She returned before my worry forced me out onto the streets to search for her, and she announced she had found employment in a household on the outskirts of town as an all-purpose house girl assigned to cook, clean, and serve as an occasional playmate for the master’s young children.

  “Living in this attic is too much like living in the bottom of that ship,” Jenna said in a haughty tone. “And I got no reason to go back home or on to Galland. I have a job and a place to stay now. That’s all I ever wanted in the first place.”

  During the short time I had spent in her company, I learned a deep vein of pride coursed through Jenna, and she protected herself by hiding behind a chilly exterior. I liked her anyway and would miss her company.

  “I wish you luck,” I said as she made to leave.

  Jenna dipped her head in a slight bow and left the Bull and Ram without looking back.

  As the days passed, I squirreled away bits of food for Malita and saved my paltry pay like a miser. I had no idea how much it would cost to purchase our passage to Galland, but Antonio had taken to practicing his Inselgrish with me when he visited, almost daily, and I mentioned the subject on a day near the end of my second week in his sister’s employ.

  “How much does it cost?” He rubbed his chin. “It depend on the method. Boat, train, carriage, you see?”

  “Which requires the least amount of money?” I asked, also meaning which would require fewer days of hard labor on my part. My nails had worn to the quick, and my knuckles and cuticles cracked and bled. Malita, through pantomime and her slowly growing Inselgrish vocabulary, had conveyed that I should find a bag of wool, and she had rubbed the lanolin from the fluffy wisps on my hands at night. The remedy soothed my skin, but left behind an unpleasant odor akin to wet dog, or wet sheep, more like.

  “I say... a wagon maybe, or an old mule,” Antonio chortled at that thought. I waited for him to compose himself, which took some time, considering the number of glasses of port he had already consumed. “You pay a merchant wagon, maybe. You find someone going to Galland and share the ride. This is least expensive.” He drained the remainder of his glass and shoved it out toward his sister for a refill, but Anatella ignored him. “But why do you want to leave?”

  “There is someone I’m looking for,” I said.

  “They are in Galland?”

  “In Pecia, yes.”

  “Oh, Pecia. This is a city where I love to teach.” His eyes and his smile turned dreamy. “The people love to go to school in that place.”

  Pecia was an old and sizeable city and home to several universities, so maybe he was right. “Have you been there?” I asked.

  Antonio sat up straighter and squinted out of one eye. “To Pecia? No, never. Not without my sister, and she never leave San Marena.”

  Before I left Antonio to return to work, the front door of the tavern burst open. A group of men blew into the bar, voices raised, laughing and jeering among themselves. Some were young with glossy hair in such a deep shade of red that the color bordered on crimson. Some were older with streaks of pale copper and white mixed in. One elderly gentleman in the group wore pure moonlight bound in an elegant braid that trailed halfway down his back.

  My fingers flinched with the urge to stroke it and find out if it felt as soft as it looked.

  “Ugh,” Antonio grumbled beside me, “Fantazikes. Watch the money you have. With them in town, it will disappear when you look the other way.”

  Antonio sounded as though he spoke from experience, and I smothered a smile. I knew the Fantazikes. They entertained the locals with games of chance with nearly impossible odds in whichever town they alighted. As long as anyone could remember, those nomadic peoples had traveled the world in their amazing zeppelins: massive, silken bags filled with a substance lighter than air. Underneath the bellies of their mighty balloons, the Fantazikes attached airships with engines that dire
cted the dirigibles across every imaginable landscape in the world.

  A certain band of Fantazikes would travel to Inselgrau from time to time when my father was alive, but he never allowed me to visit their camps, or watch the boxing matches they organized, or have my fortune read. However, he did once let me accompany him when he went to inquire about purchasing a Rhemonie, a horse bred by the Fantazikes to travel calmly aboard their airships as if they were nothing more than floating stables. Father had kept our visit short and businesslike, but the Fantazikes’ crimson hair and bejeweled gazes had left an indelible mark on my memories.

  “Bahh, this is no good for me. I am leaving now.” Antonio shoved back from the table, bowed his head in my direction, and strode to the door. He threw one last glance over his shoulder toward the Fantazike men before he disappeared through the doorway.

  I chuckled at Antonio’s hasty retreat. I had a feeling he didn’t dislike the Fantazikes as much as he disliked losing money to them. I gathered his dirty glass and several others from the surrounding tables. A young man close to my age returned my smile when he saw the humor on my face, and it set his violet eyes sparkling with the color of ancient gemstones. The Fantazikes all shared the beautiful red hair, but their eyes varied from emerald and peridot to sapphire, aquamarine, and the violet of an amethyst.

  Legends said the Fantazikes descended from a race of people who once acted as guardians for the treasures of the gods, and their eye color had resulted from centuries of looking over the gods’ endless piles of riches. Set against their pale skin, their striking features spawned songs of love, but also of heartbreak because, while beautiful, they never married outside their race.

  Back in the kitchen, I dumped a collection of dirty tableware into my sudsy sink and scrubbed them meticulously. Anatella accepted them no other way. As I finished rinsing the last cup, a whisper gusted through the kitchen.