Riot of Storm and Smoke

by Jennifer Ellision

  “Not even the ghost of one,” I say grimly.

  Masonstone has been sick for some time.

  And now that I’m informed, things are suddenly clear. Why they have a skeleton staff. Why we dine in this small room rather than the main dining hall. They’re trying to keep things quiet.

  People will prey on the uncertainty in leadership if they knew. Elsbeth has taken over running the household and lands, but if word gets out that Masonstone is no longer in charge, there are fools who would underestimate her.

  “It’s not that I doubt my ability to hold off any sort of attack from the enemies we’ve made over the years,” Elsbeth says. She pushes her plate aside. “But I would prefer not to have to.”

  If that’s the case, she’ll surely dislike what I have to ask her next. But perhaps I’m wrong. I’ve always had a better relationship with the daughters of the house than Masonstone himself. It may be that speaking with them directly will work out in my favor.

  “You’ve got a look on your face,” Lilia informs me.

  “As opposed to a blank canvas?”

  “Don’t play coy,” she says. “You know exactly what I mean. Spit it out.”

  My gaze drifts to the youngest among us. “Perhaps you should be off to bed, Dorna,” I suggest.

  She lifts her little chin stubbornly into the air. “If what you have to say concerns Masonstone, I will stay.”

  I should have expected no less. “Very well,” I say with a nod and launch into it. Their staff is whittled down—but not their guards. Not the village that rests on their lands. Not their soldiers, their warriors, their willing bodies. That’s what we need. That is what I ask for.

  I need to build an army against my father, and I need their help.

  Elsbeth’s immediate reaction is calm. “No. Not for all the gold in Egria’s holdings.”

  I lean forward, intending to make my case, when she stops me.

  “He had the guards killed, you know. The ones who let you escape from the dungeon,” she says. Her tone is almost conversational. She swills her wine in her glass, studying me.

  My stomach lurches, but I keep my expression still. I hadn’t known. Mentally, I add it to the list of my father’s crimes.

  “And the ones who didn’t stop you from fleeing the city,” she adds as an afterthought. “I’m told that when our…fair and just king reached the gates and heard that no one had found you, he thrust his sword into the belly of the man who was unfortunate enough to be standing beside him. Those are the sort of consequences those who ally themselves alongside you can expect.”

  I push my plate away, looking down to cover my disappointment. “So you won’t help me.”

  “I can’t.” Elsbeth’s expression grows contrite. “I have to protect our position with the crown. And I can’t allow the king to find out that you left my hold without action on my part.”

  “What are you saying?”

  She twirls her dinner knife’s point on the surface of the table. “We are friends, Your Highness,” she says lightly. “I am saying that, should you stay, you will be visited in your chamber tonight. And your visitors won’t be the pleasant sort.”

  The bandits bind our hands in wet gloves, and I have to laugh a little at my situation because if I don’t laugh, I’ll surely scream.

  The soaked-through gloves keep Tregle and Aleta from Torching, but their eyes light and skitter when they make the connection from water…to me. I don’t meet their insistent glances as the male Shaker tightens a rope around my wrists.

  One of Meddie’s knives is deposited into the pocket of the man she fought; the other, he tosses aside. She watches him with death in her eyes. If—when—we break free, he won’t be long for this earth.

  Lady Kat is nowhere to be seen. I can be grateful for that at least. I hardly need her malevolent purring, her silky voice whispering doubts into my ear.

  I close my eyes, shaking my head in an effort to clear it. I have to stop believing that she’s anything more than a delusion. I can’t let the mere thought of her affect me like this.

  My feet falter and the Shaker woman pokes me in the back. “Move.”

  Glaring, I obey.

  We don’t walk for long. When we land in the bandits’ camp, I’m amazed we didn’t stumble upon them immediately when we landed in these woods. It certainly didn’t take them long to find us.

  We’re shoved over to a tree bordering the tents and sleeping pallets. “Stay. There,” the female in the party says menacingly. She leans close, leveling a threatening look at each of us in turn. Her hot breath is putrid and I twist a disgusted face at her, while Aleta stares forward. Meddie spits in her eye, and she wipes it away with an irritated hand.

  The woman straightens. “I’ve got to talk to Tofer,” she says. Her eyes land on the thin Shaker. “Watch them, Quil.”

  She marches into the center of the camp. Those who glance our way seem more measuring than curious. They go about their work, moving from tent to tent.

  Meddie bares her teeth at a woman who stares too long, tossing a bauble from hand to hand.

  Sometimes, she reminds me so much of myself… who I was a year ago, anyway. Defiant. Strong. Da used to say my thoughts would leave my mouth before I’d finished thinking them. But I’ve changed. I’ve had to with what I’ve learned.

  The tent flap that the woman entered opens, and a man strides out after her. I blink, surprised. He can’t be much older than us. Twenty-five at the most. His cheeks are bronzed, but spiked with brown stubble. Bright blue eyes pierce the space between us, and he grins like he’s found a gold coin he’d forgotten about, a distinct bounce in his step as he makes his way over to us.

  “He’s your leader?” I ask the spindly Shaker.

  The Shaker—Quil—picks something from beneath his fingernail and looks at me warily. “Yeah.”

  “Interesting.” Aleta doesn’t say anything more, and though Quil’s expression shifts to perturbed, he doesn’t probe her.

  The other man—the one who battled Meddie and me—speaks up gruffly. “I wouldn’t call him our leader.”

  “What would you call him?” Tregle asks. Aleta silently appraises the man walking toward us.

  Quil gives him a warning glare. “Roch…”

  The big man shrugs. “Just…not that.”

  Their leader—or whatever they’d like to call him—stops before us and splays his legs wide, hands on hips, surveying us each in turn before breaking into a wide grin. “You all have come at the perfect time,” he informs us.

  I blink. I didn’t quite expect that.

  “Why’s that?” Meddie asks.

  “Funds are low,” he says merrily and turns to address the woman. “Fi, will you see that they’re fed and watered?”

  “Sure, Tofer,” she says, as Aleta spits out, “We’re not horses.”

  Tofer puts a hand to his heart. “I would never call such lookers as yourselves horses, ladies.” He nods to Tregle. “Gentleman.” His eyes drop the playful glimmer. “But know that if you try to run, I’ll cut you at the knees just like one.”

  If there’s anything to be gleaned from our capture and subsequent entrapment inside one of the tents, it’s this: we’re not meant to be a part of determining our own fates.

  Sitting in a huddle, arms secured before us, Tofer looks down at his bounty. “Make yourselves comfortable.” He claps the large brawler on the back. “Come on, Roch. Camp meeting. You, too, Fi. Quil.”

  After they exit, Meddie begins to thunk her head rhythmically against the pole of the tent. “I. Warned. You. That. There. Would. Be. Bandits.” She says each word with another clunk of her head.

  “This is hardly the time for ‘I told you so,’ Mistress Medalyn.”

  My mind races. They’ve bound our hands, but the idiots didn’t bother to bind our feet. And Tofer said it was a camp meeting. We’re unguarded. I shove to my feet.

  “Bree—” Tregle says, wide-eyed.

  I shush him hurriedly. I know that
back in the capital we’d said my name was common enough and therefore safe, but I’d rather not take the chance. They’re already looking for a reward, thinking we’re ordinary truants. Makers forbid they find out who we are beyond that.

  He continues in a whisper. “You heard what he said. If we run—”

  “I heard him.” I cut him off. I don’t plan to run…yet. “I just want to hear what they’re planning. Don’t you? It concerns all of us.”

  Meddie nods. “Good idea. I’ll go with you.”

  The spark of competition ignited, Aleta pushes to her feet, scowling. “I will go.”

  “What use do you think you’ll be?”

  Before the two of them can be reduced to bickering, Tregle cuts Meddie off, frowning at Aleta. “You think it wise to put yourself in danger’s path, Highness?” He asks it stiffly, clearly still sore with her, and ignores my frantic attempts to quiet him.

  She beams at him falsely. “Do you think it wise for our friend to go alone, Adept?”

  By the ether, enough of this. “Actually…” I step into the storm of titles before this conversation takes a turn I’d rather not witness. “It’s wiser if I go alone.”

  Tregle throws a nod at me. “Thank you.”

  “Four of us tromping through the camp?” I ask as Aleta and Meddie protest. I shake my head. “Bad idea. That’ll only draw attention to us. But if there’s only one of us, it’s fewer of us to hide. Less noise that we can make.”

  Aleta concedes the point with an unhappy mutter, and I examine the cloth and ropes around my wrist. They’re sloppily done, at best. The knots are loose and the ends jut out, practically crying to be unmade. I set at it with my teeth, but don’t have much luck.

  “Could one of you try?”

  “Your mouth was all over that. You fancy sharing spit with us?” Meddie waggles her eyebrows obscenely.

  “If it means getting my hands loose, yeah.”

  Tregle stands up and sighs, muttering. “I still think this is a bad idea.” Nevertheless, he takes my wrists awkwardly between his bound hands and lifts them toward his mouth, halting at a squeak from Aleta.

  Both of us turn to her questioningly, and she clears her throat. “I’d wager I have the strongest teeth among all of us. Perhaps I should try,” she suggests.

  I shrug and hold my hands out to her instead. Her cheeks have pinkened. She delicately takes the outside loop of the knot between her teeth and tugs.

  “Didn’t want his mouth on anyone else?” I whisper innocently.

  Her eyes threaten my death, but the rope and wet cloth fall from my wrists. I twirl them to get the blood flowing again. The ropes hadn’t been overly tight, but holding my hands stiffly has minimized the feeling in them.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” I promise and slip from the wide tent.

  Creeping between the trees, my hands are wrinkled and damp from the cloths, but my unencumbered feet move swiftly over the uneven terrain. The sun’s gone down, and the sky is a light purple tinged with red, twilight at its end. The moon smiles down, a grin of a crescent above me.

  The bandit’s meeting place is clear enough. They’re gathered around a large fire pit. It’s no wonder they hadn’t wanted Aleta and Tregle near it. They already know the two of them possess Torching powers and it wouldn’t be wise to trifle with them.

  Tofer holds both hands up for quiet. “Please,” he raises his voice, beseeching his fellows. “You know how this works. We’ve had an unexpected bounty come into our possession. We need to decide how best to dispose of it.”

  Dispose? That sounds like... My hands drift to my neck, where my pulse pounds. That sounds an awful lot like they mean to do away with us.

  “Who are the potential buyers?” Fi scowls.

  “Hard to say for two of them—the girls with brown hair. They’ve haven’t displayed any power.”

  Me, I realize. Me and Meddie. That’s who they’re talking about.

  “They might fetch a fair price in Clavins,” he says.

  My heart jumps. They mean to sell us like cattle. But we do need to get to Clavins and we’ve been bumbling around in the woods uselessly. It might turn out to be fortuitous that we wound up in their captivity—if they take us to Clavins and if we can find a way to escape when we get there.

  “How about the Egrian market?” someone shouts.

  “Don’t think you should be making these decisions for the lot of us, Tofer!”

  “Not tryin’ to. It’s why we’re all here.” He massages the back of his neck. “I could just as easily have talked it over without involving you. Sure, though. It could be they’d fetch a fair price in Egria, too,” Tofer says, nodding. “But it’s a little more chancy that we’d find a profit that way. We’re not far from the Clavish border, but if we want Egria, we’d have to travel markedly south in order to make the deal. The only sales worth anything for non-Elementals are in the capital.”

  My breath speeds up, and I dig my nails into the bark of the tree I hide behind. No. We can’t go back there already. We just got away.

  “The king does pay top dollar for rogue Elementals,” Tofer says. “And it’s a lower-priced market for that sort in Clavins, but we may get a good price for the Torchers. The Clavish are a little more sparse on Fire Elementals. And the Clavish are under King Langdon’s thumb anyway. We’d be selling to the same people at day’s end, and it’d cost us less.”

  They have to take us to Clavins. Have to.

  What would Da do here? I know the answer without needing to dwell on the question. He’d pick the right moment and make his move, wheedle some clever manipulations to get the outcome he wanted.

  Taking a chance, I step from behind the tree. “Pardon my intrusion,” I say smoothly, channeling the more formal manner of speech I’d picked up at court.

  “What—” Tofer looks around furiously at Quil, who shrugs.

  Fi bursts forward from the group and thrusts out a fist, the earth rushing up at me, trapping me where I stand. My breath catches as rock shoots over my torso, but stops short of my neck.

  Phew. I breathe a bit easier—no small feat when my lungs are encased in stone.

  “How did you get out?” Quil demands.

  I raise my eyebrows, one of the only movements available to me right now. “Does it matter?”

  “It damned sure does matter,” Fi mutters, dusting her hands against her legs. She elbows Quil hard in the side. “Your shitty knots are to blame again.”

  Scowling, he rubs where she prodded him.

  I don’t blame him. Her elbows look quite pointy.

  “Wait. Where are your friends?” Tofer’s eyes sweep behind me.

  “They’re back where you left us. It’s just me.”

  With a nod, Tofer sends someone to check. Turning to me, his expression darkens, eyes filling with the oddest combination of annoyance and regret. “I warned you, didn’t I?” he asks.

  Warned me? He’d told us not to run. I hadn’t. I’d thought...

  “I didn’t run,” I say, opening my eyes wide. My pounding heart betrays me as I try to keep a cool head. “And you can check—the others, they’re still there. I just wanted—”

  He strides over to me and grabs my chin, forcing me to look down. “It seems I wasn’t clear enough before. I don’t care what you want. I could have been kind until we decided what to do with you, but you’ve forced my hand.”

  “Wait.” I catch my breath. How had I misjudged the situation so badly? It’s spiraling out of my control. “Wait,” I say again, trying to stall for time. “You’ll lose whatever price you’d get for us if you kill us.”

  “Who said anything about killing all of you?”

  I sigh in relief, and the Shaker’s stone releases me. I slump on the ground, weak with gratitude. “Thank you,” I say earnestly. “You won’t regret this—truly, you won’t regret this.”

  A look of melancholy touches Tofer’s lips, and he looks almost sorry. “Ah, lass. You misunderstand. We won’t be killin
g all of you. Just you.”

  With the Masonstone halls vacant of servants and nobles alike, I encounter no one as I clip back up to my room to fetch my things. The night and long journey are beginning to pull at me. Not even a night’s rest before I must run from my father again.

  I suppose I thought it would be easier than this, but I can’t even depend upon those I would call friends.

  I slip down to the stables in the dark. Not even the hall torches of Masonstone are lit. Hay shifts over my boots and a soft whinny exits one of the stalls.

  “Shhh.” I hush the black stallion peeking over the stall door. He’ll do just fine. I ease the door open and squeeze inside, showing him his prize: a carrot, pocketed during dinner, held flat in my palm. I’m hoping against hope that I can get him saddled and off of the grounds before anyone finds me here.

  I’d like to imagine that Elsbeth would allow me this. The loan of a horse is such a small thing for a family like hers. And she had seemed to imply that if I left the grounds, she wouldn’t pursue me.

  In truth, though, I’m not certain that I can rely on her generosity. A friend she might be, but the head of a major estate like Masonstone has people to think about, just as I do. I may be the prince—I may even hope to one day claim the throne—but right now, I am an enemy of the state. Right now, I am wanted for treason against the crown, and I need to leave before someone stops me. I’ve managed to be quick in getting to the stables, but—

  “I’m coming with you.” Lilia’s voice outside the stall nearly makes me jump.

  Not quick enough.

  When I turn to face her, her chin lifts, impudent and daring me to tell her no.

  Scooting around the stallion’s other side and slipping a saddle onto his back, I look at her with incredulity. Coming with me? I can’t have heard that right. The sisters have made their position very clear.

  “You’d tell me if I’d started to hallucinate, wouldn’t you? Because either I imagined an entire dialogue at dinner or I’m imagining this one.” I squint at her, pursing my lips in mock-consternation. “You don’t look like a delusion.”

  “I agree with Elsbeth’s decision for Masonstone to stay out of this conflict. It’s for the good of the estate. But that doesn’t preclude an individual Masonstone from taking part.”