Blood Storm: The Books of Blood and Iron

by Steven Harper

  She wet a cloth in the first bucket and handed it to the first woman so she could clean herself. Aisa had learned from experience that people were more likely to trust her if she let them do something for themselves, like wash or eat a bit of food. Some slaves became violent if she offered too much too fast.

  “Thank you, lady,” the first woman said.

  “Now you, dear.” Sharlee wrung the cloth and gave it to the second woman, and then the third.

  “May I see the cut on your hand?” Aisa asked. The first woman’s cut was indeed infected, and Aisa cleaned it with supplies from her pack and bandaged it while the woman sucked in her breath. “Do your best to keep it clean. I’ll check on you later.”

  “If no one buys me, you mean,” the woman said sadly.

  The second woman coughed hard and spat out a throat full of phlegm. “Why are you here, if you don’t work for the slavers?”

  This question Aisa had heard often. She poured some water from the bucket into a cup and crushed a handful of different medicines into it. “I used to be a slave. Now I help where I can.”

  “Can you help me escape?” the woman asked boldly. She had greasy brown hair and hard lines around her mouth. “I have a son back home.”

  Sharlee shot Aisa a glance. The request pulled at Aisa’s heart. She wanted to say yes, she could help. The unfairness of this place fanned an outrage that swelled her chest with tears—and made her want to explode. She wanted to beat the guard over the head, take his keys, and let every slave free. But she also knew what would happen if she did. Perhaps two or three slaves might actually escape. The rest would be recaptured and beaten for their trouble. Aisa would be arrested, imprisoned, and probably executed.

  It was the suffering that drew her here. She couldn’t look at these people without stopping to help. It was too little, but it was something.

  “I know of no way to escape,” she said. “But if you try, I will not stop you. This will help your cough.”

  Aisa started to hand the second woman the cup, but she caught Aisa’s wrist. “You say you used to be a slave,” she hissed. “But now that you have your freedom, you won’t help me? Traitor!”

  She dashed the cold cup down Aisa’s front with a snarl and turned her back with a clanking of chains. Aisa stood there for a long moment, dress dripping, face flaming. The other slaves either stared or looked carefully away. Sharlee bit her lips. Aisa trembled as tears warred with anger. Perhaps she was a traitor. But how dared this woman?

  After a few deep breaths, Aisa sighed and took up her packs and the buckets, intending to move on to the next group of slaves. For a moment, she remembered the little blossom falling beneath her scissors. Sometimes a small sacrifice must be made in order to help the whole, and sometimes that sacrifice was her own self.

  Sharlee touched her shoulder. “I’m sorry, honey. You’re only trying to help.”

  “We’ll check her again later,” Aisa decided. “Come on.”

  They worked together, along with a too-tiny group of priests from the temple of Grick. Some slaves accepted aid gratefully, some barely noticed her presence, others raged and snarled at her. The unfairness of the place continued to press at her, but Aisa knew if she didn’t do it, these people would suffer, so she kept at it. Sharlee stayed with her the entire time, and for that, Aisa was grateful. It was good to have more female friends. Kalessa was a wonderful sister, but sometimes it was like befriending a pile of swords and needles, and it felt nice to be with someone a little less … prickly. And while her hands were filled with work, her head remained empty of screams.

  “So. How are things with your friends, if you don’t mind some motherly prying?” Sharlee asked while they refilled the buckets at the well outside.

  Why was everyone asking this today? Aisa’s thoughts rushed back to the rooming house and the argument with Danr. A guilty flush came over her. “Er … fine.” Aisa pretended to check her pack for burdock. “We are well.”

  Sharlee’s lined face softened. “I’m so sorry.”

  “What?”

  “This is me you’re talking to.” Sharlee hoisted a dripping bucket from the well. “You don’t need to lie, honey. Not between us women. What happened? Was it something to do with Danr and the Battle of the Twist?”

  “Ssss!” Aisa glanced around while Sharlee poured water over their hands to clean them. “Not here!”

  “Honestly! You’re heroes, all of you! I don’t know why you want to keep so quiet about it. I figured out who you really were. Do you think no one else will?”

  Aisa scrubbed her skin in the cold water. “Some may see us as heroes, yes, and an equal number wish us dead. Best just to keep quiet. Besides, I do not—Danr does not—wish for the attention.”

  “Of course, honey.” Sharlee sent the bucket back down the windlass. “But what happened today? I can see you’re upset. Tell Auntie Sharlee, and you’ll feel better. Is it your young man?”

  Aisa could not keep another guilty look from crossing her face. Wearing a scarf for so many years had gotten her out of the habit of disguising her expression. Sharlee noticed.

  “Maybe I can help,” she said. “What happened?”

  The screams came back. Aisa looked down at her hands. For a moment, they were covered with blood. Then the blood vanished. She shook her head at Sharlee. If she wasn’t going to talk about it to Kalessa or Danr himself, she certainly wasn’t going to talk to Sharlee, a woman she barely knew. “It is nothing. I am fine.”

  Liar.

  “Well, that’s good, then.” Sharlee patted Aisa’s shoulder and let the subject drop, to Aisa’s relief. “Are you hungry, honey? I’m absolutely starved.”

  As if in answer, Aisa’s stomach growled. She had been so busy she had not noticed the passing time. “I could eat a wyrm’s tongue.”

  “In this town, you could probably find a cook that serves it,” Sharlee laughed, “but I was thinking about a place I know two streets over. My treat.”

  “Oh.” Aisa hadn’t meant to hint. “There are more slaves who need—”

  “Aisa.” Sharlee took both her hands, and Aisa was glad the blood had vanished. “You are a kind and giving person, but you can’t clean up all the misery in the world. There will always be slaves who need treatment, and meanwhile you need to eat. Now come along! Auntie’s orders.”

  Still a little reluctant, Aisa let herself be led away. Sharlee took her to a tavern north of the Docks, a place that was quieter and did not cater much to loud, vulgar sailors. This place seemed to specialize in food and drink more than rooms, and the great room smelled pleasantly of bread and mead and spices. Sharlee talked quietly with the proprietor, a balding thin man who reminded Aisa of a vulture, and they took up a table to themselves.

  “You needn’t feel guilty, you know,” Sharlee said as a serving girl brought them fried apples, glazed carrots, beef ribs heavy with herb gravy, and mugs of mead. “The Gardeners have been kind to you. Enjoy the fruits of your fate.”

  Aisa thought of her own time as a slave. “I do not know that I can say the Gardeners were ever kind to me,” she said, sipping from her mug. The mead was sweet and had a new taste Aisa could not identify. Quite good, and she wanted to share it with Danr. Then she remembered she was angry at him, and then she remembered she was not truly angry at him, and then she was confused. Perhaps bringing him here, just the two of them, could make things up. “The elven hunger … I lived with it for so long.”

  “And now you don’t,” Sharlee finished. “The entire world knows how to end that hunger, thanks to you.”

  “Sss!” Aisa glanced around, hoping no one heard. “I do not wish—”

  Sharlee clucked her tongue. “You’re too nice, Aisa. Do you know how many people—rich people—would love to have you at their homes to tell your story? Or who would pay to have you grace their gardens at a party? You could make a tidy living, dear.”

  “I do know,” Aisa said. “And I do not wish it. We do not wish it.”

  “
Have some more mead,” Sharlee sighed.

  It was good mead, especially with the fried apples, and Aisa was a little surprised at how fast the first mug went. Sharlee called for seconds.

  “It must be so sad,” Sharlee said after a while.

  “What is?” Aisa reached for more bread and missed. The table seemed to be wobbling. Or maybe it was her chair. Was this funny? A bubble of laughter rose, and she swallowed hard to keep it down.

  “The fight you had with your young man,” Sharlee said. “You never did say what it was about.”

  “It was not a fight,” Aisa said, and her words were a little slurred. “Not really.”

  “No?” Sharlee rested her chin on her hand. “Tell me.”

  Suddenly, it seemed unreasonably difficult and silly to keep everything back, especially with Sharlee. Sharlee was kind, so gentle, so like her mother. A well of emotion for the other woman burbled up inside her, bringing tears to Aisa’s eyes and spilling words from her like wine from a jar. “I have lied to him all this time. I just today told him that I was angry at him because his fame delayed us in our travels.”

  “So that’s a lie?” Sharlee prompted.

  “Maybe a little lie.” Aisa held up a shaky thumb and forefinger to show how little. “It’s part of the lie. And I told him that if we get married, other people will see me as some kind of abnomin—ablomin—aboomin—”

  “Abomination?” Sharlee supplied.

  “Monster,” Aisa agreed. “So he thought I was calling him a monster, and I was not. I said other people will think I am a monster. If Danr and I get married. ’Cause he is half troll and lots of people hate half-bloods, even if they have never seen one.”

  “I see.”

  “Oh, good. Because I do not.” Aisa hiccupped and waved her mug, which was not quite empty and probably made her at least one enemy at the next table. “But that is not what truly bothers me.”

  “And what’s truly bothering you, honey?”

  She did not truly wish to say, but the words kept coming. “It is the Battle of the Twist.”

  “What happened at the Battle of the Twist?”

  The truth popped out of its own accord. Aisa did not fight it. “Sometimes … sometimes I see blood. On me. On my food. On other people.” She looked into her horn. It was almost empty, and then a barmaid handed her a full one. Aisa took it gratefully. “I hear screams in my head, too. Screams of elves and sprites and fairies. They scream because … because …”

  “Because why?” Sharlee asked softly.

  “Because Danr is killing them,” Aisa whispered.

  “With the Iron Axe.”

  “Yes.” The room was spinning a little now. “I watched him kill them. He cut them in half by the dozens with the Iron Axe. He set fire to the trees and they burned to death. He made earthquakes that crushed them. I hear their screams. I see their blood.”

  “I thought you hated the Fae. You killed the king yourself.”

  “Yesh. It makes no sense. I despised the Fae. The king raped me and he was going to kill us all, so I killed him. But then I watched Danr slaughter so many Fae. All at once. Like candles drowning in blood. All that blood. And he was doing it.”

  “Your love had become a killer of the masses,” Sharlee observed.

  Aisa nodded, which made the room swim. Her cheeks were wet. When had she wept? “I had to stop him. And I did. Barely. But sometimes … sometimes I have dreams when I fail to stop him, and he stands on a pile of bloody corpses and cracks the world in half with the Iron Axe. I wake up and my sweat is cold. I know Danr had no choice. The Fae had already killed dozens and dozens of Stane, and they planned to kill the rest of them. Danr stopped them in the only way possible. He did nothing wrong. But those thoughts do not keep the blood and the screams out of my head.”

  “You poor dear,” Sharlee said. “You’re afraid to tell him because it’ll hurt him, but not telling him is hurting your love for each other.”

  “Yes.” Aisa wiped at her face with her sleeve, and Sharlee gave her a handkerchief. “But that is not all of it. We are supposed to find merfolk, and we cannot because of the stormy season, and it’s been more than a year, and it makes me even more short-tempered. I blame him, and I should not, and it is all mixed together.”

  “Mermaids?” Sharlee came upright. “You want to find mermaids? Really?”

  “Yes.” She blew her nose and reached for her horn again, but Sharlee pulled it away. “It is foolish, I know, but I have wanted to swim with the merfolk for a long time. We always seem to do what Danr needs or what Talfi or Ranadar or Kalessa needs, but not what I need.” She sniffed again. “Heroes in stories never have such problems.”

  “That’s because those are stories and this is real life.” The warmth had left Sharlee’s voice. She got to her feet and dropped a coin on the table. “I have to get home, honey. Use this to hire a carriage for yourself, all right?”

  And she was gone, leaving Aisa with a tableful of empty mugs and dishes and the strangest feeling something significant had just happened.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The gold-liveried footman helped Sharlee Obsidia down from the carriage, but she hardly noticed. Wrapped in urgency, she hustled across the great stone portico, barely giving the golems enough time to snatch open the massive front doors of the big house. Once inside, she dropped her patched cloak. A golem caught it before it hit the floor.

  “Where is my husband?” she demanded.

  “In the library, lady.” The golem’s voice was dead and dry, like stones rubbing together. It looked like a pile of clay flowerpots with arms and legs, and two glassy sapphires made up its eyes. Runes crawled across its head and body in blocky, artless script, and the runes at the top of the golem’s forehead were smeared red-brown with blood. The golem had no mouth—the dead voice came from somewhere inside.

  Only the dwarfs could make golems, and more of them were coming on the market now that the doors underhill had opened and more Stane were showing up. Dwarfs could make nearly anything, given enough time and the right materials, and golems were better than slaves. They didn’t have to be fed, they never slept, and they never disobeyed. The only disadvantage was that they were blood-all expensive. Sharlee had, in fact, balked at buying golems at all, but Hector had pointed out that in the long run, golems paid for themselves in food alone, and she had given in. Then the Battle of the Twist had caught up to the slave market, and Hector’s foresight in hiring dwarfs to make golems had turned out to be the most prescient move in all history.

  Or it would be, once the final pieces were put into play.

  For a tiny moment, Sharlee considered heading upstairs to bathe and change out of the nasty, itchy peasant’s disguise she wore whenever she was spying on the fool girl Aisa, then just as quickly decided against. This was too important, too much fun, to wait. Instead she all but scampered across marble floors and thick rugs toward the library. Slaves, servants, and golems all jumped to get out of her way. It was always a treat to bring good news to Hector.

  Light and bright air filled the library. Its floor-to-ceiling windows, which they had spared no expense to have built, let in every bit of Rolk’s golden fire to make reading easy, and Sharlee drank in the warmth and heat like wine after the filth of the slave pens. Why people allowed such things to happen to them, she didn’t understand. Three entire bookshelves, each six feet high, were crammed with books. Two bookshelves were fitted with pigeonholes for scrolls. It was the largest library in Balsia, outside anything the priests might have, and no guest was ever allowed to see it.

  Hector was standing at a table, looking dapper in his sun-red silk shirt and dark, perfectly cut trousers. A proud smile crossed Sharlee’s face and mingled with the anticipation. Even now that he was over forty, he hadn’t lost his fine figure, and his hair was still thick and black, with only a hint of silver that called for her fingertip to brush across it. Her heart fluttered a little to see him, even after twenty years, and she liked that he could do that.


  Across the table from Hector huddled a pale, pudgy man in brown whose name was Irwin. Sharlee knew his name because she knew the name of all the people in their employ. She also knew that Irwin was a damp sponge of a man who had a drab wife and two daughters just entering marriageable age. Lately, he had made a number of mistakes, and judging from the look on Hector’s face, Irwin was in for it. That would be fun, too. Hector did know how to put on a show. Partly interested to see what Hector was up to and partly annoyed that Irwin’s presence was spoiling her grand news, Sharlee approached the table.

  “The dwarfs you hired have all left me,” Hector was saying to Irwin. “All but one. They’re defecting to the temple of Bosha just when I need them most.”

  “All but one?” Sharlee interjected, her previous pleasant thoughts thrust aside. “When did this happen?”

  “Moments ago, darling.” Hector didn’t take his eyes off Irwin. “I wasn’t able to alert you, and now I have to deal with the aftermath.”

  Sharlee’s hands chilled, and she glared at Irwin with barely concealed ire. Losing the dwarfs was a complete disaster! And just when she was bringing good news, too. “How could this happen?” she demanded.

  Arranged on the table between Hector and Irwin were nine small goblets with wine in the bottom. A golem stood to one side, arms at its sides. Whatever Hector planned, it wouldn’t be enormously entertaining for Irwin, the little sop. Good. If he was responsible for letting the dwarfs go, he would deserve it, whatever it was. Interested despite her pique, Sharlee came around to Hector’s side of the table. He raised his eyebrows at her.

  “Please, my lord,” Irwin quavered. “The temple offered more than you authorized me to pay. I’ll find more dwarfs. We’ll build all the golems you need. I won’t fail you again.”

  “I know you won’t,” Hector replied in a mild tone Sharlee recognized with a little thrill. She almost felt sorry for Irwin, but he had been well paid for his work, and if he couldn’t live up to Obsidia expectations, he shouldn’t have entered employment with them. Honestly.