Inkmistress

by Audrey Coulthurst

  “Well, it was nice meeting you. Good luck with whatever trouble brought you down that alley.” He turned to walk away with a casual wave.

  “Thank you,” I said. The longing to follow him rose up again, and I shoved it aside. His kindness had been pure luck—not something I could count on. I needed to get away before more city guardsmen turned up. Moreover, I needed to resume my search for Ina. A deep breath brought the Sight so I could look for her as I had before, but I had barely opened myself to it when light blinded me.

  Even halfway down the street, almost gone from my line of sight, the boy burned with magic—just as brightly as I did.

  CHAPTER 10

  “WAIT!” I SLUNG MY SATCHEL OVER MY SHOULDER AND chased after him.

  At the sound of my voice, the boy turned back, pausing for me to catch up. I ran to the end of the block. Standing in front of him, I barely knew how to put my question into words, much less ask it of a stranger.

  “What are you?” I finally whispered. I’d never expected to meet another demigod. I couldn’t help it—I reached out and touched his hand. A spark of invisible energy leaped between us, familiar and strange. We both jerked back in surprise.

  “You’re like me,” he said, his eyes lighting up.

  “My name is Asra,” I said. I wanted to know him. I needed to.

  “Phaldon,” the boy said, “but I go by Hal.”

  He cast a furtive look around us, then offered his hand to me again. I stared at his tapered fingers, wanting to touch him, but a little bit afraid. I had never met another demigod before. I certainly hadn’t thought it would be under these circumstances. I took his hand to shake it in a proper greeting, cautiously at first. When nothing happened, it almost disappointed me. Now that I knew it was there, I could feel his magic, but it didn’t leap between us as it had the first time.

  “Listen, I don’t want to stay in one place long enough for the city guards to find us, especially if they figure out we’re more than mortal. Walk with me?”

  “All right,” I said. I fell into step beside him. I had so many questions I barely knew where to start. “How did you get those guards to do what you wanted?”

  “It’s one of my gifts as a demigod,” he said. “I’m . . . persuasive. To the point of compulsion if I make eye contact while I use the gift. But if I compel people for too long or to do something particularly irrational, it gives me a headache. The blinding sort. Takes hours, sometimes a day or more, to recover.”

  So that was why his voice was so sweet and his tongue so silver—and his gift had a cost, too. I was fascinated, and a little alarmed. Would his gift work on me? Did I need to fear that he’d try it? “Do you have any other abilities?”

  “I can hear things far away.” He inclined his head for a moment. “Right now the guardsmen three streets over are having a conversation about whose turn it is to take patrol in the Quova quarter. Nasty neighborhood.”

  “What else?” I asked.

  “A few other things that aren’t magical in nature. I’m handy. Locks, coin purses, the usual.” He grinned impishly.

  Something clicked in my mind. “The coins you put on the table before we left . . . those belonged to the guardsmen, didn’t they?”

  His smile widened. “You’re clever. I like that in a person.”

  “And you’re a thief,” I said, raising an eyebrow.

  “Only when the occasion requires it. I wouldn’t take something from someone who didn’t deserve its loss.” He put on a lofty expression, but I somehow doubted he always acted for the greater good.

  “Right,” I said, not really in the mood or position to argue over his flimsy morals. Who was I to take positions on laws or morality when my actions had directly led to the destruction of an entire village and another subsequent massacre?

  “What powers do you have?” he asked.

  “I was apprenticed to an herbalist, so I’m good with potions and tinctures. I can see the magic in all living things, or enchanted objects. That’s it.” I wasn’t going to destroy the first chance I’d had to speak to another demigod by telling him about my blood and its power to twist fate. He’d run for the hills before I could speak another word.

  He tilted his head. “That’s odd. Most of us have the Sight to some extent, though yours sounds more vivid than most. I’ve never heard of that being someone’s only gift. My sister Nismae would be intrigued.”

  “Is she one of us as well?” I tried to ignore the twinge in my chest. The reminder that other people had families and communities might never cease to sting.

  He shook his head. “No, Nismae is mortal—my half sister. A scholar. She spent years in Corovja researching magic and enchanted objects.”

  “She still does that now?” I asked. I wondered if she’d ever heard of a gift like mine.

  “No, not exactly.” He hesitated. “Nismae joined the Nightswifts to fund her education, then never left. It gave her more power than she would have had as a scholar alone.”

  “Who are the Nightswifts?” My frustration bubbled over. Everyone kept talking about them like I ought to know who they were.

  Hal looked at me strangely. “You must live under a rock. The Nightswifts used to be the boar king’s elite assassins. They took their new name when they split from the crown a couple of summers ago. Now the king has put a bounty on their heads.”

  No wonder the guards had been so eager to catch Nightswifts—they must have wanted the money for bringing them in.

  “Why is there a bounty on them?” I asked.

  “The boar king doesn’t appreciate turncoats, and he doesn’t want people with their knowledge and abilities freelancing. If they’ll take money from anybody, it’s only so long before some of the advisers and knowledge keepers he relies on become targets,” Hal said.

  “Will they come after you?” No matter how badly I wanted to know another demigod, that didn’t sound like the kind of trouble I could risk.

  “No, I don’t think so. My sister is the one who worked for the crown, not me.” He frowned a little, like there was some history there he didn’t feel like explaining.

  “So your sister was employed by the king as an assassin and now he’s trying to kill her.” I didn’t like the sound of this.

  “An assassin and a researcher,” Hal corrected me. “Who better to track down rare and dangerous artifacts than someone who is an expert at stealth and killing? She loved her job until the king tried to have her killed.” His voice was carefully neutral.

  “What for?” I said, shocked. Why would the king turn against someone who loved what she did and was so useful to him?

  “Nismae was researching a special artifact for him, some imaginary chunk of rock that supposedly grants eternal life—the Fatestone. When she got a few promising leads on its location, the king sent her on a suicide mission to try to dispose of her because she knew too much. I suppose he didn’t trust her not to take it for herself. Needless to say, she survived. She took the rest of the Swifts and broke away from the crown. How have you not heard most of this already?” He cast a puzzled glance my way.

  “I’m from a remote town in the mountains. We don’t get much news in winter.” Up on my mountain I had received less than most. Perhaps the elders in Amalska would have known, but they hadn’t lived long enough to spread the word. Guilt made my stomach clench.

  “Must be in the middle of nowhere. What do you do for fun all cut off from civilization? Have competitions to see who can build the best lewd snow sculpture? Surely that gets old a few moons into winter,” he joked.

  I gave him a withering look, but he only smiled in return.

  With his jovial manner and rather unthreatening appearance, he didn’t look like an assassin. Maybe that was intentional—he was certainly tall and strong enough to do some damage if the occasion required it. Still, my anxiety grew the more I found out. I had enough problems already. I didn’t want to get involved in vendettas that put assassins at odds with kings.

  All I wa
nted was to find Ina, stop her from killing the king, and then maybe start over somewhere new.

  “Well, if you’re a Nightswift, you might be able to help me. I’m looking for my friend. I thought I sensed her with you in that building when the guards attacked. Her name is Invasya. Dark brown hair, blue eyes . . .” Creamy skin. Soft lips. Hands that could melt me with the slightest touch.

  Hal frowned. “I’m not actually a Nightswift, though I know a lot of them. Haven’t ever seen or heard of your friend, though.”

  My heart sank. When I’d thought I sensed her in that building, maybe it was just the glow of his power all along. “What were the Nightswifts doing in Valenko, anyway? That’s awfully far from Corovja.”

  Hal gave me an appraising look, as if deciding how much information he could safely share. “My sister is still looking for details about the Fatestone. She had reason to believe that its creator lived somewhere close to Valenko. We were trying to ferret out more information about him. Plus, there were those massacres south of here. The Nightswifts weren’t involved, but she wanted to get a look at what they were being blamed for before anyone cleaned it up. The scene was straight out of a nightmare.”

  “That sounds like a terrible errand,” I murmured. Tension coiled more tightly in my chest. I felt bad that someone else was being blamed for something that had started with me, but how could I talk about it to a stranger when I still couldn’t think back on it without tremors racking my body? The horror of the bloody memories was stronger than my ability to speak of them.

  He nodded, his eyes a little haunted.

  “So why is your sister still looking for this artifact if she nearly got killed over it in the first place?” I asked.

  “It’s priceless, for one thing. And there would be no sweeter revenge for her than keeping it from the king,” he said grimly.

  “Hey! Hey, you!” someone shouted.

  I looked over my shoulder. A city guardsman was jogging toward us, his short sword drawn.

  Hal cursed, colorfully, and took off. If the guard had a swift manifest, we were doomed. I dashed after Hal, terrified of losing him. We raced through streets and alleys, my satchel slapping uncomfortably on my back.

  Hal seemed to know where he was going as he wove through Valenko, always quickly shifting direction if he spotted a guard. We headed north, the sun drifting toward the horizon to our left, painting the buildings with yellow light fading into dusk. Lamplighters walked from block to block, igniting the gas lamps on each corner that would burn through the night.

  “Slow down,” I said, panting, after we’d finally gone several minutes without seeing a guardsman. “Please.” After so many days of travel and so little food, keeping his brutal pace was impossible, and if he truly wanted to lose me in the city, I had no doubt he already would have done it.

  He eased up to match my walk, bouncing on his toes as though the run had energized him. I eyed him balefully, and then looked at the sky. Stars had just begun to sparkle into life overhead, and never before had I been so grateful to see them. Until spending a day confined by the buildings of the city, I never knew how much I needed the vastness of the sky, the reassurance of empty space around me. Room to breathe. Room to live.

  “We’ll be out of town soon,” he said. “Where are you going next?”

  The truth was, I didn’t know. “I need to find Ina. I suppose I’ll spend the night outside town and then come back tomorrow to look for her.”

  Hal laughed. “You’re the strangest person I’ve ever met.”

  “Why?” I bristled.

  “Today a corpse fell on you, you dosed two city guardsmen, and now you want to march right back into the city where it all happened.” He laughed again. “You might be more fearless than anyone I know, and that’s saying a lot since I spend most of my time with the Swifts.”

  “I’m not fearless.” I sighed, wishing I could explain the importance of finding Ina, but I couldn’t trust someone I’d barely met with my darkest secret. “Honestly, I could use some company to keep me out of trouble for a change.”

  “Well, I’d be flattered to keep you company for a day if you’ll have me,” he said. “Though I hope you won’t blame me if trouble finds us even outside the city.”

  “I doubt I can easily find more trouble than I already have,” I grumbled. I was already in enough trouble to last a mortal lifetime. It seemed like a small risk to take to gain some temporary companionship—especially from another demigod. I wanted to know more about him. It didn’t sound like he’d grown up in isolation, like me. What else might he know that I didn’t?

  “Never underestimate trouble,” he replied.

  I shrugged, though I wasn’t sure he saw the gesture.

  As we made our way closer to the edge of town, the taller buildings gave way to single-story thatched cottages surrounded by low fences of stone. Chickens clucked from within their coops, already settled for the night. A mixture of wispy pines and bare deciduous trees dotted the yards, clotheslines strung every which way. Children played under them, waiting for their working parents, then greeting them with squeals and laughter as they returned.

  My eyes welled. Amalska had once been like this. A place of family and love, if not always prosperity. A place of lives lived.

  A place that I had destroyed, in spite of only ever wanting to be part of it.

  “Are you all right?” Hal asked.

  “Yes,” I lied, hoping the falling darkness hid the agony that had to be clearly written on my face. “I miss home. I never thought I’d leave.”

  “Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have a home to miss,” he said, his carefree tone not matching the expression on his face. He took in our surroundings, his jaw tightening against some kind of emotion.

  “But you have your sister. You have family,” I said. I wondered how he could feel homeless with people who loved him in his life. I had never been close to anyone except Ina and Miriel, and both of them were lost to me now.

  “Yes . . . but it isn’t that simple.”

  I waited for him to elaborate, but instead we walked on in silence. I didn’t want to drive him away by prying, so I pushed my questions down. He didn’t owe me any explanations—not when we had only just met. We avoided the north road where guards might be patrolling, instead sneaking through a few yards and out into a farmer’s orchard, grateful for the thin camouflage provided by the rows of naked trees. Word of our escape might not yet have reached the guards in this part of the city, but we’d already used up our luck for the day.

  “Will that be a safe place to rest for the night?” I asked, pointing at a forest that appeared as little more than a jagged shadow on the east horizon beyond the orchard. I was eager to be back in a place that felt even half familiar. I wanted branches to shelter me.

  Hal’s expression was inscrutable in the dark, but his voice sounded uncertain. “The Tamers’ territory begins where the farmland ends. They don’t like trespassers, but if we stay near the edge, it will probably be all right. At least there’s no way anyone from the city would take the risk of following us there.”

  “We don’t have any better options, so let’s go,” I replied. There was no sense waiting until the middle of the night to find a place to settle. Exhaustion had caught up with me after our day on the run. I knew very little of the Tamers—only that they took Tamed animal companions instead of manifests and were dedicated to the preservation of nature. Their role in Zumorda was to protect the natural beauty and wildness of the kingdom, preventing cities from encroaching on their lands or upsetting the natural order.

  We skirted the edge of the farm fields, heading toward the forest. The wind picked up and the night cooled, making the bare branches of the orchard trees click and the grass hiss. The time for my vespers had passed, but I began to hum a tune anyway, letting the melody drawn from everything around me help the place feel more familiar and safe.

  “That tune,” Hal whispered, his voice filled with wonder.
/>   I stopped humming and mumbled an apology.

  “Don’t be sorry,” he said. His fingers brushed my arm, and that spark of magic jumped between us again. “Are you the one I’ve heard singing?”

  I froze, and Hal came to a stop beside me.

  “Vespers,” he continued. “For half a moon, every day at sundown I’ve heard the saddest, most beautiful songs.”

  “But how?” A strange feeling welled up, a muddle of fear and comfort. The gods might not have heard my prayers, but Hal had. It didn’t make sense. I hadn’t reached Valenko until today, and hadn’t spent a night there when I would have sung my vespers.

  “The gift of Farhearing is from my father, the wind god. It’s the one thing his children all have in common,” he explained. “Like your Sight, I have to open myself to it, but it’s always there in the background. And someone as powerful as you? I could hear you from leagues away.”

  I stared at him numbly, trying to make sense of his words.

  His father, the wind god.

  My father.

  “But . . . I can’t hear things far away,” I said, confused. If all Hal’s siblings shared his gift, and I didn’t have it . . . My thoughts raced like animals trying to take shelter before a storm. The wind god had left me with Miriel. He had to be my father, didn’t he? I knew nothing of my mother, but I’d always had the wind to cling to as the place from which I’d come.

  “Why would you be able to?” Hal asked. “It’s a gift unique to children of the wind. I’ve been able to hear most of my siblings since I was small. Pretty confusing when you’re a kid surrounded by mortals and they’re convinced you have a lot of imaginary friends—never mind that your ‘friends’ always seem to know when a storm is about to blow in and helpfully give you a warning about it.”