Heir of Thunder (Stormbourne Chronicles Book 1)

by Karissa Laurel

  “What is it that troubles you?” she asked. She didn’t release her grasp on my arm, but leaned against my side, relying on me to support some of her miniscule weight. She was hunched and grizzled, but her hair was still thick and white as fresh snow. Her eyes were milky emeralds in the low light and, when she smiled, her face crinkled into warm and welcoming wrinkles. Niffin said she was so ancient no one remembered her age.

  Justina’s family’s airship—the largest of the armada—hovered nearby, and she directed me to escort her to the fortune telling booth set up in its shadow. I had yet to patronize Justina’s table, having reservations about using her services. Not that I doubted she could read fortunes or tell the future, but did I really want to know my fate? Especially if she saw things ending badly for me?

  “I think I may finally be taking my leave, Madame,” I said. “I’m waiting for a friend to bring me news, and then I hope to be on my way.”

  “Have my people treated you kindly?” Justina lowered herself with popping joints and creaking bones onto her padded stool.

  She motioned for me to take the seat across from her, then patted the tabletop, indicating I should place my hand there for her perusal. A breeze flowed past us, and I caught a whiff of her scent, a mixture of something exotic that made me think of foreign places in the East.

  “Yes, ma’am. I have been treated kindly. I almost regret having to leave, but I don’t want to impose any longer. I know it’s not the way of your people to host outsiders.”

  She grimaced. “It is the way of my people to do what is honorable and right.”

  “And they have done that for me and more. I hope my friend can say the same.”

  “Your friend?” Justina rubbed a fingertip across my palm. Her touch tickled and my hand clenched shut involuntarily, like a flytrap plant. “The dark one that comes from the southern continent?”

  “Yes, her name is Malita, and she is beautiful in body and spirit. She was my bright light during a bad time. I only wish to see her taken care of.”

  “She has grown attached to one of our boys—to a Tippany. Am I correct?”

  I nodded. I didn’t want to make trouble for Malita, and I hoped bringing her plight to the matriarch’s attention wouldn’t do her harm.

  Justina traced the lines of my palm again, this time with more pressure. She studied my hand and clucked over it a few times without saying anything. Finally, with her other hand, she closed my fist and raised her green eyes to mine. “I know who you are, but do you?”

  What a strange question. Typical for a fortune teller, right? “Of course I know who I am.”

  “Your father left you before it was time,” Justina said. My breath caught and turned cold in my chest, but she continued without heed for my discomfort. “It was his duty to show you who you are, but he left you before he was finished.”

  She waited a moment, but I had nothing to say. She bobbed her head. “You will be the age of a woman soon, yes?”

  “I’ll be eighteen in a month,” I said. “Is that what you mean?”

  Justina smiled and cackled. “This is the time when you will come into your own. You will receive the right that was yours upon your birth. But without your father to guide you, it could all be lost.”

  “It’s already lost.” I had been chased out of my home. Without Inselgrau under my feet, without Fallstaff over my head, none of it mattered. Without my father, I wasn’t sure I wanted it anyway.

  Justina shushed me and a bit of spittle flew from her lips and landed on my wrist. I resisted wiping it away. She narrowed her eyes at me. “You have a gift, but you don’t know what to do with it. Your father is gone, but his death was not the end. You will not be lost forever, child. Your place is in the one your father once held. You will return there. You will be queen.”

  I yanked my hand away and jumped to my feet. “How can I take back a kingdom all by myself? How can I take back a kingdom I’m not sure I even want?”

  She cackled. “You want? You want? It is not what you want. It is who you are, but you do not know it.” Justina rose to her feet and pointed a gnarled, arthritic finger at me. “You do not know it yet, but you will.”

  Crazy old woman, I thought and cringed, wondering if she could read minds.

  “You will know it,” she said. “When that happens, if you come back to me, I will show you how.”

  “You’ll show me?” I asked. “What do you know about being the Lord of Thunder?”

  “You are not the only one who knows the secrets of the storms. The Fantazikes have lived in the heavens for centuries. I can show you things, when you are ready.”

  “Why would you help me?”

  Justina paused and considered my question as if realizing she had offered her help without thinking about it first. “Why indeed.... Why indeed.”

  Justina sank onto her stool and looked up at the sky. The first bright stars had poked through the twilight. She pointed at each one as if counting them. I waited for her to utter a response, but she went on counting until I wondered if she had forgotten me. Her eyes slid back to mine and she grinned, revealing her hole-ridden gum line again. “I think that maybe we will be needing each other, and this is only the beginning.”

  I inhaled, expanding my chest, and exhaled with a whoosh. The fine hairs around Justina’s temple swirled in the current of my breath. She patted them back in place and stared at me expectantly.

  “Madame, I respect your insight,” I said. “But what you’ve said is too much for me to accept. If it is true, then I look forward to seeing you again one day. For now, I must make my way as I see fit, and I can’t see how that way will ever lead me home.”

  Justina dismissed me with a grunt and a wave of her hand. “We shall see. You go back to marching in circles, my dear. Someone should be arriving for you shortly.”

  I don’t know how much Justina foresaw as the basis for making that statement, because if she had known, I would like to believe she would have given me more warning.

  Chapter 23

  On my way back to the Tippany’s airship, a rabble of loud voices, punctuated by yelps of protest, caught my attention. The others in my vicinity turned toward the commotion, too. A raucous group of Fantazike men yelled back and forth with several uniformed figures wearing crisp, blue, woolen tailcoats and shiny black caps.

  “Politzen!” someone hissed.

  I spun around, looking for any familiar face, and spotted Emorelle. She rushed toward me, but her attention was trained on the fracas.

  “Emorelle, what’s going on?” I asked, hurrying to her side.

  “The politzen, the city guards, are here,” she said. “I do not know why, but Puri says Niffin and Timony are in the middle of it.”

  Fantazikes from all over the camp streamed toward the conflict. Emorelle and I squeezed in closer. Both the Pecian guards and Fantazike opposition yelled at each other, their faces red, mouths screwed into sour grimaces.

  “Can you understand them?” I asked.

  “Hush, girl.” She swatted me. “Let me hear.”

  A Pecian guard—one wearing a tall, plumed hat and a blue, military style jacket bearing a collection of official looking ribbons, braids, and medals—shook a fistful of papers in Timony’s face. Only then did I recognize Niffin standing beside him, his face so distorted by rage that he looked almost like the grotesques on a cathedral.

  “He said we need to pay for a permit,” Emorelle hissed in my ear, “but Timony said we have already paid.”

  The confrontation seemed to be at an impasse, but then someone spat. I didn’t see who, but I did see the resulting gob of saliva slide down the politzen’s cheek and drip from his chin. The air stilled. No one moved and an expectant quiet settled over the mob. The politzen’s leader snapped a handkerchief from one of his pockets and swabbed his face.

  He turned on his heel and shoved his way out of the crowd. Then he turned toward the cobblestone street leading into the heart of Pecia. Before he reached the road, he yell
ed something over his shoulder and marched away, disgust and anger evident in each step.

  I didn’t understand his words, but I understood the reaction of his guard. They jumped to arms as if someone had turned the keys in a battalion of tin soldiers. Great wooden cudgels appeared as if wrenched from the air, and they beat back the crowd, clubbing anyone who came within range. The Fantazikes fought back with fists, rocks, nails and teeth.

  I clutched Emorelle’s arm as my stomach went sour. “Emorelle! What do we do?”

  “Get Justina!” she yelled without turning her attention from the fight.

  Fear made my feet leaden and slow, but I nodded and made my first trudging step. Before I could follow with a second, the fight burst its seams and the violence swelled like a rising tide, rushing over the observers at its perimeter.

  A stiff elbow glanced off my ribs, and I spun away to dodge further assault only to wind up stepping into the stiff arm of a soldier as he reared back to punch a Fantazike man. Rocked from my feet, I whirled and tried keep my balance, but the noise of the fray engulfed me and sent my senses into a tumult. The earth churned beneath my feet and smelled of copper and iron, or maybe that was the scent of the blood spilling in great fat droplets and gushing streams.

  I clamped my hands over my ears, closed my eyes, and held my breath, waiting for the dizziness to pass. Another jab in my kidney sent me to my knees, and someone stepped on the hem of my skirt, pulling me fully to the ground. I sobbed, expecting the trampling tide to crush me beneath their boot heels any moment, but a rough hand grabbed my elbow and jerked me to my feet.

  “Run, Evie,” the voice urged. “Get out of here!”

  Niffin had found me somehow. The relief of seeing him cleared my dizziness. “Where is Malita?” I shouted.

  “If she is not with you, then I do not know. I hope she is back at the ship.”

  “I’ll go see if I can find her.”

  “Find her and get her away from here.” Niffin pushed me forward and turned in time to duck a flying fist.

  My heavy feet sprouted wings, and I took flight, running as fast as I could. I pinned my gaze to the silver balloon of the Tippany airship, but as I dashed past the empty music stage, a politzen guard caught my ankle with the tip of his boot and pulled my foot out from under me. I fell to the ground face first.

  The guard laughed as he fell on top of me. Through mustachioed lips, he uttered a string of incomprehensible words, but his tone was slimy and repulsive. For once I was glad I didn’t understand the language. His hand slid up along my rib cage and pinched my breast. I yanked my arm free from where he had crushed it between us and slapped his sallow face.

  The guard yelped. His expression snapped from greedy pig to murderous beast, and he hooked a hand around my neck. He chuckled again, his breath smelling of sour wine and rotten beef. I struggled beneath him but with no success. Although he was long and lanky, the scoundrel outweighed me by at least half my own weight.

  “Get off of me you disgusting swine!” I screamed as he leaned forward, possibly trying to kiss me.

  I bit at him. He turned away, but my teeth nicked his bottom lip. The soldier leaned back and touched his fingertips to the wound. When his fingers came away with a smudge of his blood, he backhanded me. His knuckles felt like rocks as they smashed against my cheek. Stars exploded across my vision and my consciousness wavered.

  I had never, never, known such violation. Anger and outrage welled up in me, straining against my chest like a physical presence trying to explode past the barricade of my ribs. I cried out, my voice ripping its way from my throat with sharp claws.

  A concussion of thunder and lightning shredded the air, answering my cry. The noise deafened us both and the explosion of light turned everything momentarily white and blank. The guard threw his hands over his ears. He howled, rolled off me, and buried his face in his knees.

  I sat up and scrabbled away from him.

  The thunder cracked again, calling my attention to the heavens as rain sliced through the sky and landed in cold, angry plops on my battered face. When I looked back at my attacker, he had recovered enough to draw his pistol from his belt. He pointed it at me unsteadily and said something in a wobbly voice as he jabbed the gun in my direction. I held up my hands to show I had no intention of trying to run.

  The storm distracted him from his previous intentions, and the rain dampened his spirits as well as his hair and clothes. I didn’t resist when he bound my wrists behind my back in slim, brass shackles. With his pistol shoved against my back, he marched me toward his uniformed comrades.

  The guards had gathered a group of Fantazikes and loaded them onto a large, enclosed wagon with iron bars for doors. I saw neither Niffin nor Timony’s face in the crowd and hoped that meant they had escaped arrest. Perhaps they would come looking for me.

  Inside the wagon, the captured sat shoulder to shoulder. Most were men, but a few were women. Some sobbed and others stared listlessly at their feet. The group of captives smelled of damp fabric, sweat, and the musk of spent adrenaline and anger.

  The situation reminded me of another time not so long ago when I had ridden, shackled, in the back of a wagon. Was this the way my life was meant to go? If so, then Justina’s predictions had missed by a wide margin.

  Chapter 24

  The wagon trundled along the cobblestone streets of Pecia, bumping and jarring. I rubbed intimate hips and shoulders with my companions. No one spoke, but their downturned mouths and flashing eyes conveyed misery and anger.

  Thankfully, the ride was short. The driver’s voice carried through the wooden walls of our wagon when he called his horses to a halt and shouted to our escorts. Tension and nervousness swelled in our little hold, and the Fantazikes looked at each other with worried glances. The wagon’s iron gates swung open, and the hinges squealed like a high-pitched alarm, announcing our arrival.

  The politzen jabbed rifles in our direction, ordering our exit in gruff commands and gestures. When one younger Fantazike men tripped at the wagon’s threshold and fell against a guard, another uniformed bully crashed his rifle stock into the young man’s temple. Blood bloomed from the wound and Gren’s legs crumpled.

  I uttered a cry of protest. Someone else sobbed, but the politzen shuffled everyone away before anyone formed a rebuttal for the boy’s mistreatment. A large guardsman wrenched the young Fantizike from the road by his armpit and dragged him away like a child might drag a stuffed dolly off to bed.

  I was the last to mount an exit, but when I stepped forward into the light of the streetlamp, two guards crossed their rifles in front of me and pressed them against my thighs forcing me to take a step back or lose my balance. I watched the last of my traveling companions trickle through the stone arch doorway of the politzen headquarters. The tall rock and mortar building peered ominously over the street in homage to Pecia’s penal system, and urged all who entered to abandon their hope.

  The leader of the politzen, the one who had been spat upon at the Fantazike’s camp, appeared at the doorway of the wagon. “My dear,” he said in accented Inselgrish. “I shall have the pleasure of your company for a while longer. This is no place for a lady such as yourself, hmm?”

  “What do you mean? Where are you taking me?” If I hoped for rescue or release, it would have been with the Fantazikes when the rest of their clan came to pay their fines and taxes. If the politzen separated me from them, I would be alone and forgotten.

  “Please take your seat, Madame. Your journey will be brief and you shall find your accommodations much improved.” He dismissed me with a curt nod.

  I started to ask another question, but he turned and marched away. The remaining guards slammed the iron gate, and the wagon started with a jolt, setting me hard on my rear. I clenched the edge of my bench and closed my eyes.

  “Father, please...” I begged him with an unnamable plea. I was anxious about my captivity before, but now, separated from the Fantazikes and moving away from the jail, I couldn’t beg
in to guess what was in store for me. A cold ball of dread lodged in the pit of my stomach.

  The captain of the politzen had not lied when he said my journey would be brief. We traveled a short distance and made only a few turns before we stopped. The driver yelled something, and the protesting gate at the rear of the wagon opened again.

  The captain stood at the tailgate with his palm upraised, waiting for me to accept his assistance. Several of his men had assembled nearby holding weapons at their sides. No doubt they were loaded, primed, and ready should I decide not to cooperate. The captain took my elbow as I stepped down to a walkway lining the street in front of a row of impressive townhouses. He motioned to one of his men who produced a ring of keys and removed my cuffs.

  “This is the residence of Monsieur Ruelle Thibodaux,” the captain said. “You shall find his hospitality much more welcoming than what you received among the Fantazikes.”

  “The Fantazikes were perfect hosts.” I rubbed my wrists. “I have no complaints.”

  The captain snorted, but said nothing further. My gaze roamed over the broad expanse of Monsieur Ruelle Thibodaux’s brownstone—one of many located in a residential district unsullied by the shadow of the politzen headquarters and jail.

  Surrounded by the captain and his officers, I had no choice but to follow when they moved en masse up the steps to the front door. The captain lifted a big brass knocker threaded through the mouth of a grimacing beast and pounded the wooden door. Moments later a shrunken old man in starched livery and a dark suit opened the door, revealing a cavernous, but elegant foyer behind him.

  “Capitaine Trousseau,” the servant said in a grave voice. He kept his eyes trained somewhere around the top of the captain’s knees.