Shadow of the Phoenix

by Rebecca Harwell

  The finality in his words washed over Nadya, chilling her to her core. Not even Shay’s natural heat beside her could warm the biting cold that settled within her. It had come to pass, just as they had been warned. Storm’s Quarry was no longer free.

  She glanced to Shay, who surveyed the crowds with calculated precision. Not if we have anything to say about that. This Prince Trillium might have soldiers enough to defeat the Duke’s Guard, but he cannot overcome the power of two nivasi.

  “Your Duke and his heir brought this upon you.” The Prince’s voice rang out as he swept his hands toward the ruins of the great gate below. “This war. Your kin have died, your homes brought down because of this man’s selfishness.”

  “How can he say that?” Nadya asked. Her fingers gripped the stone, cracking it. “Wintercress, Councillor Aster, they—they violated us! With their poison, the sickness it brought. That damned treaty they drew up was a noose around this city’s neck.” Her blood pounded in her ears. Nadya felt helpless. There were too many crowds between them and the dais. Not to mention the scores of Cressian soldiers, sabers drawn, ready to cut down civilians at the first sign of trouble. Your city. Your city and you failed to protect it. Left it alone like the selfish little girl you are. Her thoughts took on Gedeon’s voice, and his black eyes rose in her vision, clouding out the proceedings below.

  “Nadya.” Shay’s voice cut through Gedeon’s, and her burning hot hands wrapped themselves around Nadya’s.

  She exhaled.

  “I know. We know,” Shay said, tracing circles around Nadya’s whitened knuckles. “Everyone here knows what you said to be true. Doesn’t help. Wintercress is building its own story, something they’ll tell their grandchildren. About the great battle of freedom against the tyrannical duke of Storm’s Quarry or some nonsense. We can change that.”

  “You’re right.”

  “’Course I am,” Shay said, returning her attention to the scene below.

  Nadya allowed herself a small smile before doing the same.

  The Prince pushed Duke Isyanov to his knees. Marko cried out, struggling against the grip of the two Cressian soldiers who held him. Beside him, Kesali stood stoically, watching the scene unfold with the same iron will that she had faced Gedeon with.

  Beside her, Shay whispered, “This is not good, Nadya.”

  The Duke of Storm’s Quarry, dressed in the torn remains of once-fine clothing, knelt before his entire city. The gathering had been quiet before; now, it had gone completely silent as the people, both Erevan and Nomori, beheld their ruler so helpless before them.

  “Do as you will to me, Trillium. But spare my people. Swear to it. It was my choice to forfeit the treaty. They are innocent,” Duke Isyanov pleaded. He stared up at the Prince without flinching.

  Perhaps, Nadya thought as her chest swelled with emotion as the Duke’s words, the highest compliment that could be paid him was that his words were utterly unsurprising. No matter what the Erevans of the run-down second tier or the Nomori still stubbornly clinging to the old ways said, Duke Isyanov lived and breathed this city; he was devoted to it in the way that Kesali was devoted to the Nomori people, and Shadar to the Guard. Absolutely and without reserve.

  The Duke’s plea, however, fell upon unhearing ears.

  “The High King of Wintercress will brook no disobedience. Not from the vigilantes of Storm’s Quarry, nor its citizens.” He leaned down until his face was a mere hand’s length from the Duke’s. “Nor its leader.”

  Trillium straightened. He drew the saber at his side. Its ornamental golden hilt shimmered in the sunlight. Nadya stiffened. She glanced down to the crowds below her.

  “Don’t be a fool!” Shay hissed. “They’ll start slaughtering civilians if you interfere now.”

  “People of Storm’s Quarry,” Trillium said, sweeping his blade aloft, “welcome your new governance, and see what becomes of those who cross us.” With practiced movement, he spun on his heel and brought his saber streaking downward.

  The head of Duke Aleksandr Isyanov, ruler of Storm’s Quarry for these past twenty-six years, hit the stone of his beloved city with an empty thump.

  “Father!”

  Marko’s scream reverberated against the stone, searing itself into Nadya’s heart. In that moment, she left caution behind and acted.

  The gray cloak of the Iron Phoenix billowed in the air as Nadya launched herself over the rooftop’s edge.

  “Damn it, Nadya!” Shay shouted behind her.

  Wind thundered around Nadya as she fell. The ground rose up to meet her, and she landed on one knee. Underneath her boots, stone cracked.

  The Iron Phoenix rose.

  Instantly, the crowd erupted. Erevans and Nomori stumbled away from her, some with wide-eyed fear, others triumphant smiles. From up on the dais, Trillium’s gaze hit her like a pail of ice water. He shouted in Cressian, and the soldiers mobilized.

  Nadya dodged the first wave of the Cressian regiment. They tried to surround her, sabers flashing in the midday sun, but she was faster. She wrenched blades out of their owners’ hands and snapped them. Her kicks smashed rib cages and broke arms. Blood pounded in her ears and her vision began to turn hazy. Her mind went back to the last time she had fought in this place, to the darkness and the blood that drenched her hands…

  “Kesali!” Marko’s voice again, grief stricken and frantic.

  Nadya snapped out of her memories. Duke Isyanov was dead, but his heirs were not, not yet. Nadya’s boots slammed into the ground as she surged through the crowds, desperate to reach the dais where Marko and Kesali were held. She caught a glimpse of Marko’s fiery locks before a sea of Cressian white swallowed her again.

  “Marko!” she shouted, rushing forward.

  A pillar of stone appeared out of nowhere. As wide as a man, stretching up from the shattered cobblestones as if it had stood there since the city’s founding. Nadya registered its existence only an instant before she slammed into it, shattering the stone and falling limply to the ground.

  The world rumbled and fell silent as if the rest of the battle had suddenly disappeared.

  What in the Protectress’s name…? Nadya winced. She lay on her back amidst broken shards of stone. Her vision swam with grays and reds, and when she coughed, she tasted copper.

  “Nadya! Nadya!”

  “Kesali?” she croaked. She heaved herself up on her elbows, and then slowly sat up. A blurry figure stood in front of her, and Nadya vaguely registered a warm touch on each of her shoulders.

  “Sorry to disappoint, but it’s me. Come on, let’s get you up.”

  She was being pulled upward, despite her protesting legs. One of the hands on hers suddenly disappeared, and flashes of fire erupted from it, slamming into a squadron of Cressian soldiers who had begun to approach them.

  “Shay,” Nadya whispered.

  Her partner’s lips quirked up in a grin, though it did not soften the venom in her eyes. “Glad to see you didn’t get hit too hard. What happened?” She looked around them. “And why has everyone retreated?”

  Nadya glanced around. An uneasy feeling rooted itself in the pit of her stomach. The Cressian soldiers stood back along the perimeter of the destruction. Most of the civilians had escaped the area, but too many bodies lay buried in the rubble. It looked like a keg of gunpowder had exploded, tearing up the ground and raining stone down upon the city. She smelled no trace of smoke, however.

  “I’m not sure.” Nadya’s thoughts still spun from the impact. “Where is Kesali?”

  “Don’t know.” Shay faced away from her as she said it, and the part of Nadya that wasn’t fuzzy groaned. They would need to talk again, but not now. Not in the middle of a battle against…What? The city itself?

  The remains of the stone pillar that Nadya had crashed into stood rooted in the ground in the middle of the great staircase of Storm’s Quarry. Nadya studied it with puzzlement as she shifted her feet to remain balanced, scrutinizing the scene. “How—”

 
The stone in front of her feet erupted. Nadya cried as the ground vanished. Her boots scrambled for purchase against a waterfall of tumbling stone. Only her supernatural reflexes saved her from falling into the black abyss that now cut its way across the staircase. Pieces of marble bent and broke from the edges, streaming down into its hungry maw. Nadya found her footing for a moment and leapt away. Her knees hit the stairs going up, and her arms flailed as she fought to keep from tumbling backward into the canyon.

  Shay!

  Nadya lurched forward, struggling for purchase. She couldn’t see Shay anywhere, and her chest grew tight. No, Protectress, please let her be safe. She gazed down into the depths of the canyon but saw no one.

  The stairs she stood upon suddenly crumbled. Nadya sank into the ground up to her knees. The marble constricted her legs, and for all her strength, she could not free herself. Sweating, fingers scrambling frantically at the stone that had latched on to her, Nadya realized that this might be it.

  This might be the end of the Iron Phoenix.

  Above her, the regiment of Cressian soldiers parted. Nadya expected the Crown Prince to appear, but it was a woman who stepped forward. She wore chain mail under the white jerkin of the Cressian army. Her blond hair was done up in a smart bun, and her eyes surveyed the carnage of the battlefield, unfeeling. Around her, the soldiers stumbled backward to give her a wide berth, as if she carried a plague upon her breath.

  The ground rumbled once more as the strange woman raised her hand. Chunks of earth broke away from the cobblestone at her feet and rose into the air, suspended as if held upon invisible string.

  Her stone prison temporarily forgotten, Nadya gaped at the woman. This was impossible. A scene from a nightmare, where her city stood at the mercy of a creature with the power to control the very ground it was built upon…

  Without a flicker of emotion, the Cressian woman’s hands moved, and a mountain of rock hurtled straight for Nadya. The earth released her legs as the sky pummeled her, knocking her down and cutting off any means of escape.

  Stone rained down upon her, concealing the midday sun and burying her in darkness. Beyond the crushing weight of stone, Nadya thought she heard shouts and the clashing of blade upon blade, but that too faded. Nadya had only time for a single panic-stricken thought before the darkness consumed her: They have a Cressian nivasi. Protectress save us all.

  Chapter Five

  Shay was sure she had died.

  Darkness surrounded her, a comfortable suffocating black that weighed down her limbs. Shay groaned and tried to remember something, anything. A searing pain threatened to split her skull in two, so she stopped trying to think. Instead, she floated through the haze.

  Death wasn’t the worst fate. Acceptance brought some form of relief, and any regrets she might have had fell back. Plenty of time in the eternity of darkness to linger over what might have been. She imagined the home she might have built with Nadya, after the itch to adventure left both of them. It would have been built of stone, she decided, with a flat roof to lie upon and watch the stars.

  Her eyes flickered open. An orange glow scorched her eyes. She shut them again, moaning.

  A soft groan reached her ears. Not her own. Shay frowned. Who else was struck down in this dark after-death with her? Another groan. Familiar, this time, and Shay forced her aching eyes open again.

  Nadya’s fuzzy form came into view. She lay prone, head lolling to her side. Her chest moved up and down with a constant rhythm, and her eyes fluttered. The background remained indistinct, but Nadya came into sharper and sharper focus.

  This wasn’t right, Shay thought, ignoring the splitting pain in her head.

  Shay knew little about the afterlife, only that Nomori and Marchers and Cressians and Erevans all disagreed about where a person went. Good places, bad places, the stars, the earth, the nothingness of the vast universe—she did not know what was true, and she’d never cared enough to dwell on it.

  I’m dead, but Nadya…Nadya shouldn’t be here. Shay knew that for sure. If any bit of morality was taken into account for a final afterlife destination, there was no possibility that she and Nadya would end up in the same place.

  Damn it, she was still alive.

  Drawing a ragged breath, Shay began taking stock of herself. She was being carried, strong arms gripping her shoulders and legs; beside her, Nadya was similarly trussed up, her hood and breastplate gone in favor of a simple tunic and trousers. Numerous aches spotted Shay’s body, and she knew she’d have a mosaic of bruises in the coming days. Her jaw cracked as she tried to move it, and her skull spiked with pain. Something was sprained, but she’d deal with it later. She was in bad shape, she knew, but the heat of her flame still flickered within her, and she was fit enough to put up a fight with her captors.

  Which is exactly what she did.

  Fire ignited in her hands, and her captors dropped her with a yelp. Shay slammed into the ground—rough stone and dirt—and bit back another groan. Lurching to her feet, she willed her flames hotter and hotter until their white light formed into thin blades, illuminating the walls of the tunnel.

  Tunnel? Shay inwardly swore. She did not know where she was, but she was going to get out of here, Nadya in tow.

  Her captors did not remain idle as Shay struggled to regain her balance. They surrounded her with rapiers and bayonets and shouts that she could not make out through the thudding behind her ears.

  Nadya. She whirled around, desperately trying to find her.

  “Where is she?” Shay demanded.

  “Calm down. We are on your side.” One of the figures, a man wearing a nondescript tunic, stepped forward. Within reach of her blades of light.

  Shay frowned. “You expect me to believe that? After you take me, take us, down to who knows where, trussed up like pigs for the slaughter?”

  “Come with us, and everything will be made clear.”

  “Not likely.” Shay snorted.

  “I have orders to bring you two in,” the leader said as, around Shay, his soldiers gripped their weapons more tightly.

  “I do not give a rat’s ass about your orders. Where is—?”

  “Shay?”

  “Nadya?” Shay lashed out with a whip of flame. The soldiers jumped aside, giving her a clear path to where Nadya lay on the tunnel floor. She rushed to her side, leaving her back vulnerable. “Are you all right?”

  “Am I dead?”

  Shay chuckled. “I thought so too. Guess we aren’t that lucky.” Her throat tightened. Flashes of their fight with the mysterious Cressian woman came back to her. Shay swallowed and stroked Nadya’s hair. She had come so close to losing her.

  Behind her, the soldiers’ leader said to one of his men, “Go and get them. We don’t need a fight here if we can help it.”

  Nadya sat up, grunting. “Where are we?”

  “That’s what I’d like to know.” Shay gave her a hand as Nadya got to her feet.

  Four men stood at their backs, six in front. A strange mix of Nomori and Erevan, armed with rusted rapiers and ill-fitting bayonets. Shay’s blades flickered with hungry light. Her head throbbed, and she knew she could not keep up any sort of fight for long. Nadya looked just as bad, swaying a bit on her feet as she moved into a defensive crouch.

  “Hold on, we aren’t the enemy here,” the leader said. “Just come with us. We’re nearly there, and your questions will be answered.” He made a show of sheathing his weapon. Around them, his men did the same.

  “Shay,” Nadya whispered.

  Her meaning was clear, but Shay wasn’t about to extinguish her blades. “Not until we get some answers. What happened and where are we?”

  “I was told you were attending the speech,” the solder said. “You were nearly killed by what appears to be a Cressian nivasi, as impossible as that sounds. And you’re in Storm’s Quarry. Or, rather, underneath it.”

  Nadya and Shay exchanged unbelieving glances as more footsteps echoed in the tunnel. The soldiers in front of them soon
parted for two figures.

  The Duke and Duchess of Storm’s Quarry: Marko Isyanov and Kesali Stormspeaker.

  Shay remained rooted to the spot. “What the—”

  Beside her, Nadya whispered, “Kesali?”

  “Nadya. Shay. Apologies for the means of transport. We don’t have a lot of other options at the moment,” Marko said.

  “What is this?” Shay asked sharply. She had not yet let her blades vanish.

  “This is what is left of Storm’s Quarry. The true Storm’s Quarry.” Kesali spread her arms wide. “Welcome to the resistance.”

  * * *

  Storm’s Quarry was named centuries ago for both the frequent and unrelenting storms that ravaged the island and for the precious gemstone mines that lay beneath it. On the Blood Sun Solstice, when the magistrate-backed zealot blew up the outer wall, releasing the floodwaters into the city, most of the waters found their way into the mines. Tunnels and walkways were flooded completely, and the mines shut down by the late Duke, as the city had more pressing needs to attend to.

  Now, it seemed like new life had come into the old mines.

  “We have been making preparations since Councillor Aster’s retreat months ago,” Marko was saying. “War was inevitable, with the greed of Wintercress and the weakened state of the city from the Blood Sun Solstice and the poisoned waters. My father”—his voice hitched slightly—“my father had been siphoning off provisions to safe houses in the lower tiers for months. After Wintercress destroyed the main gate and entered the city, we began moving people as well. Members of the Guard. Craftsmen and Nomori psychics. This became our base almost by accident, but it has served us well.”

  Marko and Kesali had led them through the tunnels to an innocuous pile of boulders, a routine collapse in the tunnel’s roof. What seemed like an impenetrable barrier, however, was soon shown to be a carefully concealed entrance. After sliding through an all-too-small gap in the rocks, Shay nearly fell at the sight before her.