Riot of Storm and Smoke

by Jennifer Ellision

  As our troops had ridden forward, our Adepts had split off as I’d commanded, concealing themselves for a moment like this. I knew Father’s Adepts would reveal themselves sooner, rather than later. It is the Egrian army’s fatal flaw. Before reaching for sword or thrashing with sinew, the Adepts are taught to react with their powers.

  I had counted on it. For our Adepts to be able to pick them out of the crowd, to incapacitate them.

  Finally, the current of this battle is changing, turning back to us. Still more of my troops are working at cutting the horses at the knees, to fell their masters to the ground. They’re using bows and slingshots to take out any open enemy eyes that come into their line of fire.

  I dodge a blow to my head and suppress a grin. My opponent scowls, his strikes growing more erratic. Desperate. He can see things shifting in our favor, just as I can.

  But my smiles fades as a fog rolls over my vision. Gray clouds obfuscate the faces around me and a chill needles my entire body.

  Turn, a woman whispers below the roar of battle. Turn, boy. I don’t know where the voice is coming from, but I obey her anyway, the fog clearing.

  And by the ether, I wish that this was only a nightmare, one that I could wake up from.

  With horror, I watch as an Egrian solider sprints toward one of the Torchers that my Shakers incapacitated. He pulls frantically at a vial around his neck. It’s small, no more than an inch of clear green glass on a simple string.

  Innocuous.

  Exactly what I’d use if I wanted to transport Ruin’s Reaping without notice.

  With a mighty shove, I push away the soldier I’d been engaged with. I swing my steed around, heart pounding, and lower my head, shooting toward the man with the Reaping.

  I can make it. I have to make it. Gritting my teeth, I kick my horse’s side. Nearly there. Come on…

  Arm outstretched, I shout “Don’t—” as the Torcher takes a deep breath and exhales a breath of flame onto the liquid the soldier drops onto her waiting lips.

  Lilia slams into me as Ruin’s Reaping ignites above our heads.

  We roll wildly over the ground, twisting in a whirl of dust and breathlessness. Lilia looks at me, wide-eyed. “What in the hell—”

  I cut her off. “Retreat,” I pant when I have breath. Turning behind us, the Reaping, an unnatural blue flame, roars like a wave over the ground. I gag on the smell of burning flesh and smoke that fills the air. Shadowed figures warble and fall in the flame’s depths.

  I gulp in a deep breath. “RETREAT!” I bellow again, scrambling to my feet for my sword. I push Lilia before me as she echoes my order in a hoarse scream. My fingers reach blindly for the reins of a horse that sprints past, eyes rolling and white with terror, and swing myself aboard, the wound in my arm screaming. I use my good arm to hold out to Lilia and haul her on, too.

  Our troops, heeding my call, stagger toward us at a dead run, blue fire nipping at their heels.

  “Eyes forward and ride,” Lilia yells in my ear, legs tight about my waist. She reaches behind us to slap the horse’s rump, spurring him on. “You cannot help them. But you’ll be able to help no one if we die here.”

  I ride forward, eyes on the horizon.

  Makers help us all.

  Lilia,

  Matthias and Lady Danyse visited several weeks ago. While Matthias’s yells about the estate were a bit distracting as I attempted to balance our ledger, it was…pleasant. I took a few moment’s respite to unearth some of our old playthings for him and he seemed to enjoy them.

  Last week, he and Dorna commandeered the kitchen from the few servants we have left there, insisting that they would prepare dinner that evening. It was the worst cake I have ever tasted, but Dorna beamed when we tried it.

  That is, until she sampled it herself. Then she’d blistered my ears for daring to lie to her.

  I told her she could expect manners or honesty from me, but not always both.

  So you see, we very much need you to return. I can handle the tact, but we need you to never hold back the truth.

  Without a rider sent from your associates, I’ve been unable to reach you. My last letters have returned unopened, and all of the messengers I’ve sent have been unsuccessful in their attempts to find you. Nevertheless, I send this one off, with the aim that it will reach you somehow.

  I hope that you and your companion are safe. The last farewell you wrote cannot be the last one I receive.

  Be well,

  Elsbeth

  I’ve travelled with Liam and his company together for nigh on a week now. Were it not for missing and worrying sorely over my friends, I might even say the experience is preferable to my travels before. Liam’s men and women have been kind, if distant, and my dreams have been few and far between. And, as we’re traveling under the guise of troops loyal to Langdon, we’re able to stay in inns a fair number of nights. I barely even spare a thought for my missing Throwing abilities. Even Kat has made herself scarce. Maybe she’s bored of me.

  One morning, I stir, waking to find all of them gone. Doubt twinges, unease. Am I to be alone again so soon? I stomp down on the thoughts determinedly. Unlikely, but there’s only one way to know for certain.

  I wrap a blanket about my shoulders before I leave my bed at the inn; the further north we get, the cooler it’s been.

  The innkeeper nods at me as I cautiously plod downstairs. “Missed you among the rest of your party this morning,” she says.

  I pull my blanket tighter around myself. “They are still here then?”

  A smile crinkles the creases around her eyes. “Worried they left you behind? They’re just outside the paddock. Steel clanging, sweat flying, all that nonsense.”

  I let a quirk of my lips thank her for me and trod through the wet grass to find Liam and the others.

  When I locate them, I find the innkeeper’s description of their activity is an accurate one. I see them long before the ring of their steel reaches my ears, but even from a distance, I can catch the sheen of sweat glossing over their faces as they run drills, the steam rising from the heat of their bodies as if they smoke from inside.

  At the edge of the property, I dangle my wrists over a disreputable-looking fence. Liam catches sight of me and neatly disarms his opponent to stride over, grimacing in greeting. He gestures to my blanket, still draped about my shoulders.

  “Didn’t know we’d recruited a caterpillar to our ranks,” he says, swiping his wrist across his forehead.

  “Just wait,” I answer wryly. “I’m going to make quite the butterfly, too.” I open the blanket wide, mimicking the effect of wings, and regret the action instantly as the cold claps its frigid fingers around me. I shiver, securing it tightly around my body again, prancing in place.

  “Cold, are you?” he asks.

  “Freezing.” My breath clouds around my mouth.

  “Could have sworn I heard you were from the northern borders.”

  “Yes, well…” I huff into my hands and rub them briskly against each other. “Know what we had back home? Coats,” I say emphatically.

  “You know how you might warm up—”

  “Why do I suspect that whatever you’re going to say will involve me leaving this lovely cocoon?”

  He cuffs me lightly on the side of the head, and I scowl as he levels a look at me. “Ever trained before?”

  “Physically? No.” I think fleetingly of those few sessions I’d had with Tutor Alyss and our attempts to mold my Throwing into the shape of something useful. And then, just behind that memory, comes another. Of Da and me behind The Bridge and Duchess. His fingers curl warm around my palm, wrapping my thumb around my other fingers as he shows me how to make a fist.

  I cough and turn to cover the sudden welling in my throat. “Not true training anyway. Basic defense for working in a tavern, you know?”

  “I do.” His smile widens. “Stretch those wings, butterfly. It’s time you emerged from that cocoon.”

  My instructions begin mere mome
nts after that. Kat glimmers into visibility for the first time in days, the promise of my humiliation apparently too big a lure to resist. Liam pries me from the embrace of my blanket and claps himself lightly on his unarmored chest with an instruction to hit him with the heel of one palm “as hard as you can now.”

  When my glare fails to move him, I strike, and my wrist bounces harmlessly off.

  “Ow,” I mutter. “If your chest is that hard, I shudder to think of the state of your head, Sir Liam.”

  His chest rumbles with suppressed laughter, but he keeps a straight face as I strike again. And again. And again. Finally, I am no longer cold, but frustration burns hot in my cheeks and my arms are afire with unfamiliar movement.

  “This is foolish,” I burst out at last, swiping clinging hair from my wet cheeks.

  “So your usual method of operating, then,” Kat chimes in.

  Liam raises a single, sardonic brow. “Giving up, are you? No wonder we found you in that tavern alone.”

  My blood, so warm a moment ago, runs cold. How dare he. The loss of my friends is too fresh, a lake with only thin ice glazing over it, and I snarl angrily as it fractures under Liam’s clumsy feet. Using both hands, sweat streaking my arms, I shove at him violently.

  Surprise crosses his expression as he loses his balance and stumbles with little grace onto his behind.

  “Ha!” I survey him with my hands on my hips. “That will teach you to use the mouth on your face instead of the one on your rear.”

  “Good!” he says, grinning up me.

  My arms drop. “Good?” I ask incredulously.

  “Lesson one,” he says, holding up a finger. “Don’t limit yourself. I told you to use one palm. It was only when you used two that you were able to knock me flat.”

  Doubt flits across my features. “Is that really the lesson you intend—ack!” I land face-first beside Liam and lift my head up from the grass to glare at him once again.

  “Lesson two,” he says cheerfully, addressing the clouds. He withdraws his legs from where they’d swept under mine to uproot me. “Never let your guard down.”

  And so it goes. Liam doesn’t take sole responsibility of my training, having me work with whoever has time and breath to spare. The other soldiers are respectful and courteous, correcting my form and supplying me with helpful exercises meant to strengthen muscles unused to the strain. They don’t pull their punches, but nor do they employ the underhanded tactics I find Liam readily capable of.

  On the mornings when I cling too greedily to my bed or sleeping pallet, he drags me away from it, screeching, by the scruff of the neck like a mother cat with an errant kitten. At least, he did until I managed a precise kick to his nether regions.

  After that, I was treated to a bucket full of icy water kissing me awake in the mornings.

  I’ll never admit it to him, but I can see the wisdom in training me. It keeps my mind preoccupied, gives me something to do beyond wonder over whether I’ll be able to find Aleta and the others, whether we’ll make it to Nereidium before King Langdon does. It channels that fear into something productive.

  Though I doubt the various innkeepers we meet on our trek find it productive. I’m not swathed in armor like the rest, so they see only a young maid, pocked by purple bruises and foreboding maroon cuts, when I walk in with the others. After a week of strictly hand-to-hand, I’m deemed capable enough to grasp a knife without killing anyone inadvertently.

  I’m not a natural warrior, not like Meddie. But neither am I incompetent. I doubt I’ll ever be able to take on a seasoned soldier like Liam without a significant element of surprise, but I may be able to hold my own.

  One morning, I wake without the aid of a bucket. A quick glance outside tells me dawn broke hours ago, and yet no one’s come to get me up.

  A day off? I dismiss the thought. I haven’t know him long, but Liam’s not that generous. Today, we’re housed among friends of the Underground. I’m sharing a room with a miller’s daughter, who is already up and about her chores, bed neat and tidy.

  I emerge from the room and find Liam sprawled in the small sitting room, running his hand over the scruff that’s sprung up there over the past few days.

  I bounce into the room. “You didn’t wake me. Keep up that attitude and they’ll start to call you layabout—” He looks up at me and the expression in his brown eyes is so bleak it stops me. “Liam,” I finish lamely. I clear my throat. “What’s happened?”

  His mouth tightens as he looks from me to the piece of paper in front of him, and something cold gathers itself in my chest. “Liam.”

  Sighing, he passes the paper to me. “I’m sorry,” he says.

  Lips parting, I look at him questioningly. I’m not sure I want to read this letter. My throat is dry, and I swallow, turning it over in my hands.

  “It’s a report,” Liam says gently. “About His Highness.”

  No. Liam’s expression hadn’t been a happy one. I take a breath to steady myself, my heart somewhere in the vicinity of my ankles.

  A few words leap out at me instantly.

  Ruin’s Reaping.

  Rescue and search efforts barred by fire.

  No sign since.

  Presumed missing or dead.

  Missing.

  Or dead.

  Dead.

  There’s more to the letter. A wax seal with the Underground’s symbol. Worries over how to proceed with the revolution without a figurehead and other such practicalities that make my stomach roil right now. Like it may burn me, I put the letter down and step cautiously away from it.

  “They’re looking for him?” I ask. My voice sounds high.

  He hesitates. “No. We haven’t the time.”

  I whip my head around. “Haven’t the time? Funny, it seemed just a short while ago that everyone cared a great deal about what Prince Caden could do for them.”

  Liam regards me like an unpredictable force of nature. “If we unseat King Langdon, things would have been a degree easier with Prince Caden available to assume the throne, it’s true. But we must forge on without him now.”

  “Forge on without—” A sea bucks inside of me. Makers, what I would give to be able… I storm up to Liam and put a threatening finger beneath his chin. “You didn’t—you don’t know him,” I say lowly.

  “I did not,” Liam agrees.

  “Caden is… He’s just good,” I say around a lump in my throat. It warbles uncertainly, and I have to pause before I go on. “He believes in people. He encourages them. He makes me…makes those around him smile and he…he loves logic.” His gray eyes crinkle in my mind’s eye.

  I shake my head. “And he hid under his father’s nose for years, convincing him of his loyalty, until my da and I blew it all to shreds. That’s just what he’s doing now. Running. Hiding. He’s not dead,” I say resolutely. I wipe at my nose to mask a sniffle and turn away from Liam.

  “He’s not dead.”

  I almost believe it this time.

  Our travels return to a semblance of normalcy. Since the other option is too painful to consider, I force myself to operate on the assumption that my friends are alive—all of them—and Liam has the foresight not to bring the subject up again.

  We keep moving. We keep training. Three weeks later, I’m as relaxed as I can be in a tavern. Training with the others has shortened the distance between us. I don’t know that they see me as one of their own, but perhaps I’ve now earned the status of an adopted pet or mascot of some sort.

  My muscles are limp and pliant after the bliss of a hot bath after training. The innkeeper had taken one look at me and insisted I allow her servants to prepare one. I barely begrudged her the highway robbery that was the price of such a luxury—divulged only, of course, after I was already sitting naked and pruned in the hot basin.

  Cheered after the experience, and despite the possibility of it stirring memories, I had been willing enough to indulge in a pint with the rest of the soldiers.

  Though now, Li
am and I remain the only two sitting around the table, watching the others be taken in a game of cards. Gimby, a younger man of the company, loses his tokens to a local player, and his face falls in a credible imitation of a child told that his favorite fairy stories are naught but myth. The local pats Gimby on the back and consoles him with a few words gently spoken in another language while sweeping his coins into his pocket.

  I laugh quietly into my drink and turn to Liam to find him looking at me already. “What language was that, do you think?” I ask.

  “So,” he says, ignoring my question. “Why are you really going to Nereidium?”

  My heart stops.

  But I recover quickly with a high, false laugh. Liam keeps his eyes on me as he takes a healthy bite from his turkey leg. “Told you, didn’t I?” My laughter halts, and my eyes turn down. “The king’s the reason my father’s dead.”

  The reason two fathers are dead. And the reason I’ve never known two mothers.

  Liam isn’t satisfied, I can tell, as he washes the turkey down with some ale. He exhales as he places his flagon back down onto the table and steeples his fingers.

  “It’s the truth I asked for, if you recall.”

  “That is the truth,” I snap, jovial mood evaporated. He does not know me.

  “I know liars, madam. I make a fair one myself. And just as I know when I am telling the whole truth, it’s plain as anything that you are not.”

  I start to protest, but he points his turkey leg at me and fixes me with a hard stare. “The way I see it, a man kills your father, you kill him. Simple. You don’t flee for enemy shores in an elaborate plot to stop him. And that, lady, is how I know that what you’ve given me is the suggestion of truth. It was the bud of it. I want the root of it. Or better still, the full blossoming flower of it.”

  I’m tired of his double speak and metaphors. I signal the barkeep and pay my tab, glaring at Liam. The truth, is it? He’s known me for a couple of weeks. If I haven’t told Aleta the truth, I’m certainly not going to tell him.

  “You want honesty, Sir Liam?” I lean across the table, palms flush against the wood, expression intent.