Heir of Thunder (Stormbourne Chronicles Book 1)

by Karissa Laurel

  “Evie.”

  I turned and found Malita peering at me from the stairway to the attic. My heart skittered at finding her there, so easily seen. I ushered her back up the steps so I could find out what she wanted with less risk of Anatella overhearing.

  “Fantazikes?” she asked. She had slid a steamer trunk close to the window so she could have a hard surface and plenty of light when she worked on her sketches. I had parted with a tiny bit of my precious pay to buy charcoals and paper for her to use to help pass the time in the attic. Not only did Malita have talent as an artist, but her drawings bolstered our communication. I struggled to learn her language, but she gathered Inselgrish words the way a jackdaw collects sparkly trinkets.

  “Yes, Fantazikes,” I nodded, marveling that the roaming population had made it as far south in the world as her continent and village.

  “We go?” she asked and dragged me to the light to show me a new sketch. On a piece of parchment, she had rendered images of horses in a corral, food booths arranged in a semicircle, and a boxing ring in the center with two brawny men baring their fists. Although I had never seen one in person, I had heard and read enough descriptions to recognize Malita’s drawing as the depiction of a Fantazike fair.

  I pointed to the drawing. “Go here?”

  She nodded. “Yes, yes!”

  “I don’t know....”

  Malita hugged my hand and clasped it against her chest, her eyes pleaded into mine. “We go? Yes?”

  My heart twisted for her, and I relented. She had tolerated so much mistreatment for so long, I reckoned she deserved a reprieve, even if only for a night. “Okay.” I nodded. “We go.”

  ***

  After Anatella left for the evening, Malita helped me finish the remaining dishes so we could head for the Fantazike camp. We eased into the shadows of the alley behind the tavern, watching for unwanted attention. By that time, I no longer feared the threat of slave traders or pirates. Both had probably cut their losses and moved on. Still, if I learned nothing else in my time with Gideon, he had instilled in me an appreciation for the use of caution whenever possible, and two young girls travelling alone might attract unwanted attention.

  My heart squeezed at the thought of Gideon, and his worried face flashed in my memory. If only he could see how I had managed to take care of myself. But he wouldn’t have praised me for it. He also wouldn’t have appreciated my thoughts lingering on him instead of focusing on my safety, so I pushed him out of my mind and reached for Malita’s hand.

  We scuttled to the end of the alleyway and turned onto a side lane that brought us out to San Marena’s main thoroughfare. We fell in behind a crowd of revelers, laughing and jeering among themselves. Most of the foot and horse traffic headed in a similar direction, so we followed, darting between carts and carriages rolling toward the outskirts of town.

  Eventually, Malita and I arrived at a meadow large enough to accommodate the components of a Fantazike fair, its borders festively lit with strings of colored lanterns. The crowds arriving along with us disbursed—the gentlemen mostly heading for the boxing ring while the ladies sought the trinket sellers, potion makers, and palmist. The Fantazikes marked the camp boundaries with tall torches, and the smoke from their burning oil rolled off in fragrant waves of citrus herbs. Along the farthest edge of the field, an armada of air ships lingered like ghostly shades, undulating in the evening breeze.

  Malita tugged my hand toward a food vendor who sold some kind of treat—a crisp shell filled with a creamy, sweetened cheese mixture drizzled with a dark syrup that I guessed was chocolate. But how this Fantazike came to have any of the expensive luxury baffled me. Father only ever allowed it on our menu on special occasions.

  I gave a precious coin to the girl in charge of the booth, and she handed us a gnollita. Malita and I split the confection and savored each bite. When I finished my half, I almost went back to buy another, but Malita pointed to a booth selling some other kind of food, a fried pie. I might have had to work another week to make up for the money I spent, but it was worth it.

  My friend yanked me away again, and I gulped down a bite of something like a steamed leaf rolled around a blend of rice and vegetables as she led us toward the sound of a strumming guitar. We arrived at a small stage as a mandolin and harmonica joined in, and a band of young men entertained the crowd with songs in their Fantazike tongue. The crowd clapped to the rhythm as another young man jumped on the stage, beating a small hand drum like the one we called a bodrum on Inselgrau. The drum player smiled as he looked out over the crowd.

  Malita gasped.

  She froze with her hands in mid-clap and stared at the drummer, her eyes wide, and her mouth half-open.

  I tugged on her shoulder. “What is it?”

  She turned to me, raised a finger, and pointed at the drummer. “Niffin.”

  “You know him?”

  She clutched my arm and repeated the name again as if uttering a prayer.

  The Fantazikes traveled huge distances, but I could hardly calculate the chances of this same band traveling to Malita’s village, only to show up again, in this random Espiritolan field. The disbelieving look on Malita’s face shifted into something softer and desirous. That she knew him was certain, but I never could have guessed how or to what extent.

  Niffin’s eyes scanned the crowd again. He didn’t notice Malita, who had gone still as a statute, her grip on my arm as hard as stone. I debated trying to catch the boy’s attention myself before the circulation in my arm completely stopped, but the next time he looked up from his drumming, his eyes locked onto Malita and his hands stumbled over the drum skin before he recovered the beat and pounded through the last few bars of the song.

  Before they could start a new tune, he leaned over to one of his band mates and whispered something in the other man’s ear. Niffin’s hair caught the light from torches bordering the stage, and the red strands shimmered as if spun from garnets. The harmonica player took up the drums while Niffin made his way in our direction.

  “Malita?” he said when he stopped before us, disbelief showing clearly on his face.

  She didn’t answer at first, but soon shook herself out of her stupor. “Niffin,” she whispered and dropped my arm as if it had turned into a poisonous snake.

  I turned away from the intimacy of their embrace and watched the colorful crowds roam through the Fantazike camp. The Espiritolan women dressed in tailored gowns in subdued colors, while their Fantazike counterparts wore slim fitting dresses or loose skirts with snug black belts fastened over homespun blouses. The older Fantazike women tucked their red hair under yellow or gold scarves, but the younger ones let their hair hang loose down their backs in crimson waves.

  “Evie,” Malita patted my shoulder and I turned my attention to her. She motioned to the young man who had laced his arm around her waist. “Niffin.”

  The bliss on her face startled me, but before I could ask for an explanation Niffin bowed low and came up smoothly, catching my hand in his so he could brush his lips over my knuckles. Then he rose up again and smiled at me. “Niffin Tippany,” he said in a voice tinted by a soft Fantazike accent. “And it’s a pleasure to meet you... Evie?”

  I nodded and offered an amiable smile.

  “I haven’t gotten the whole story from her yet,” he said, “but I take it you have had much to do with bringing Malita out of her internment.”

  “Internment? I met her when we were locked up in the hold of a slave ship, if that’s what you mean. She had as much to do with our escape as I did.”

  “Whatever the circumstances, I am deeply grateful to you.” Niffin bowed again from his neck.

  “I hope you’re thankful enough to feel like giving an explanation. How do you know Malita?”

  “That is a long story,” Niffin said. “Let me take you to my place, and my grandmother will give us refreshments. We will all tell our parts, and then the tale will be complete.”

  He put a finger to Malita’s cheek. S
he turned her eyes up to his, and he said something in her tongue. She responded and gave me an expectant look, waiting for me to come along.

  “You speak her language?” I asked.

  Niffin’s eyes crinkled as he smiled. “Fantazikes speak all languages, don’t you know?”

  “I thought it was a myth.”

  He chuckled as he turned on his heel, pulling Malita along with him. I followed behind, anxious to hear of their history together. I was also ecstatic to find someone to translate between me and my friend. He led us toward one of the smaller airships—a rig about half the size of the LaDonna. It resembled an old sailing ship without its masts, attached to a large balloon patched together from iridescent fabrics. The dirigible was anchored in place, tied to series of pilings the Fantazikes traveled with and sank deep into the earth at every stop.

  Niffin motioned to a rope ladder unfurled to the ground and Malita hopped onto the first rung without a hint of reluctance. I scaled up after her and tried not to think about the ground dropping away from my feet. The ship rocked in response to our shifting weight, and I clung tighter to the ropes as I climbed.

  Once we ascended to the deck, Niffin lead on us a tour of his home, which he said was named Charosvardo—a Fantazike term meaning “Home Above the World.” He showed us a large hold for storing supplies, and on the biggest ships, I could believe there was ample room to carry their stock of Rhemonies in comfort. Then he showed us his berth outfitted with a small bed, colorful linens, and blankets. His whole family, including mother, father, sister, and grandmother lived on the ship. It carried all the comforts of home with tatty furniture—most of which was bolted to the deck—and hand woven tapestries hanging on the walls. He ended our tour in the galley where his grandmother had left a kettle steaming.

  Armed with several mugs of a hot, butter flavored tea, we settled on the wooden benches at the table and attempted to weave the strands of our three individual tales into a complete story.

  “We travel to every corner of the world, in our lifetime,” Niffin began. “I have already seen the northern limits of mans’ civilization, where white snow covers the entire landscape, even in the summer, and I have been through the desolate deserts that cross the Agridan continent, stopping along the way at the oasis towns like the one Malita came from.”

  He stopped and said something in Malita’s language before continuing in Inselgrish. “Before I die, I will go to the East, to the lands where they say women speak the language of birds, and the men change into fiery salamanders when they go to battle.”

  I had read about the East, but no one from that far away had ever made it to Fallstaff while I lived there. Someday, I might like to visit the places Niffin described.

  “But,” he continued, “in all the places I’ve traveled, among all the people I have seen, there has never been a spirit like the one Malita possesses. She is one of a kind.”

  Before I could voice my agreement, he launched into the tale of how they met, and Malita filled in with details from her perspective. I sipped at my butter tea, oblivious to the way it made their images spring to life, as if I, too, had once stood in the desert oasis of Chagda, the village of Malita’s birth.

  Chapter 18

  Niffin and Malita

  When the armada of floating ships had appeared through the distant shimmering heat waves, Malita wondered if she was experiencing a hallucination. The older people in her town who made long distant treks spoke of the visions they experienced after too many hours walking in the hot sun. Malita had never endured such a journey herself, and the day was still too early and cool to imagine such sights, but, at first, she could devise no other explanation.

  She had never seen such things as the flying zeppelins, and the people piloting them were just as bizarre. The foreign women wore scarves over their heads and faces to protect them from the blistering sun. The men wore broad brimmed hats, shaded goggles, and gloves, but their faces were all paler than the bleached desert sands.

  She had once seen saw a man with light brown skin and long, straight hair pass through her village on his way to the huge Gytshan city of Cro. She was told that people from Gytsha often looked like that man, but no one knew what to think of these people who, as well as she could tell, had hair the color of the blood that flowed in her veins.

  Malita stared as if seeing a new creature, or maybe a band of ghosts or djinn. Perhaps these people were unnatural, or a possible portend of something evil. Most villagers backed away, giving the strangers a wide margin of space. Some ran away or hid. Malita, ever an intrepid and defiant spirit, found the strangers intriguing. Curiosity planted her feet, and she watched with wide-eyed wonder as the strangers traipsed into her town.

  “Water?” someone asked, jolting Malita from her trance. Behind her stood one of the amazing young men, and he smiled at her from beneath the brim of his big hat. When he removed his dark goggles and left them hanging about his neck, she felt more at ease.

  She stepped back from the stranger and pointed at a nearby well. The young man nodded and tipped his hat before striding away. She didn’t recognize the gesture with his hat—it made her laugh—but she thought he meant something nice by it. Before he turned away, she had glimpsed the vivid color of his eyes—like the sky at dusk. Although she saw him no more that day, she dreamed of those eyes that night.

  The next morning, when Malita went out to milk her goats, she found the strangers had created a magnificent dreamland at the edge of her village. They had arranged their airships into a city of wonder, full of new colors, smells, and textures. One airship opened its hold into a sort of indoor market similar to the small one at the center of Malita’s village, but instead of baskets, beads, and clay pots, this place sold incense, glittering jewelry, and strange new foods.

  Malita spent much of the day admiring the Fantazikes’ wares and even traded a bit of her goat milk for one of the chocolate covered gnollitas. Word of the Fantazikes’ presence carried beyond Chagda to nearby towns and to the roaming camel and horse tribes. The villagers eventually gave into their mounting curiosity and by nightfall, the Fantazike camp had become a bustling carnival with music, dancing, wrestling matches, and horse trading.

  Malita’s friends, who ran away in fear the day before, now joined her, and they all agreed the musical pavilion provided the best entertainment. The foreign musicians invited the local men to accompany them with native instruments. Together they made rhythms with roots in the Nri soil that supported melodies from the foreign places where Fantazikes traveled and somehow made the two traditions complement each other.

  The music enthralled Malita, and so did the young man who played the hand drums with the band. She recognized him as the one who had asked her for water the day before. As night settled over the village, her eyes locked on him as a thirsty woman in the desert seeing water for the first time. She shouldn’t have found him attractive. He was so strange and foreign, and her girlfriends had gone on and on about the Fantazikes’ bizarre looks and habits. Interacting with him might bring chastisement from her parents and village elders. Her friends might shun her.

  Despite all that, she couldn’t rid him from her thoughts.

  Niffin had noticed Malita, too, particularly her bright smile. He wondered if her kisses were as warm as that smile, but he drove the thought away. The Fantazike culture frowned on the intermingling of races, a convention borne from enduring centuries of persecution and bigotry from outsiders. To toy with affection for a foreigner was to toy with disappointment and heartbreak.

  Even with Niffin’s conscious resolution to ignore Malita, their paths crossed more and more frequently until he could no longer ignore the whisperings of his heart. They found each other in the twilight shadows between the airships on the next to last night of the Fantazikes’ visit, seemingly by accident.

  “Why are you here?” Niffin asked in the tongue of Malita’s people.

  “I was taking a shortcut,” she said and let loose a warm grin that shot st
raight through the façade he had tried to erect between them.

  “Where are you going?” he teased. “To bat your eyelashes at the boy who juggles fire, or to sweet talk Farrin into letting you pet his golden mares?”

  Her smile widened, and her eyes were like a midnight ocean with the moon reflecting in the waves. “There is a boy who juggles fire? Where is he? Are his eyes as lovely as yours?”

  A blush burned in Niffin’s cheeks. Foreign women often flirted with Fantazike men, and he had experienced it before, but to have Malita find him lovely meant something more. “His eyes are green like swamp weeds,” he said.

  They talked until the night covered them in its thickest darkness. By morning, their voices were hoarse, and they could barely hold open their eyes, but neither wanted to leave the company of the other.

  “We leave tomorrow morning,” Niffin said. “I fear I will never see you again.”

  Malita feared the same thing, but before she could voice her feelings, screams erupted from out beyond the Fantazike caravan. They clasped hands without a care for the scandal it might inspire, and dashed toward the outcry. No one noticed the Fantazike boy and Nri girl running hand in hand. No one objected or raised an alarm because Chagda had fallen under attack. A mob of Gytshan bandits had stormed the village and was ransacking Chagdan huts and Fantazike ships alike.

  The panic of the crowds forced Malita and Niffin apart, their fingers straining to keep their connection until a frantic mother burst between them, chasing after a bandit carrying her daughter over his shoulder. Niffin struggled against the crowd, shouting for Malita, but lost her in the masses. He made his way back to his airship, hoping he might find her there again.

  Niffin looked and looked, but never found his beloved. He spent a weary morning with his brethren, fighting the Gytshan intruders. When the Fantazikes and Chagdans finally chased away the last bandit, they spent the day numbering their damages and losses.