The Riders of Thunder Realm

by Steven Lochran

  ‘This is the heart of the forest. A sacred place,’ Bittersweet explained as she darted ahead of them, pulling back a branch to reveal a small hut that was hidden among the tree trunks. ‘And where I make my home.’

  The hut had stone walls with mud for mortar, a roof thatched from fronds, and flowers wreathing its small windows. It was woven so naturally into its surrounds that it looked like it had grown there, and had been left for centuries to quietly thrive.

  ‘Quickly now. We don’t have much time. The mantises’ venom is swift,’ Bittersweet told them as she hurried into the hut. Lugging Drake as if he were a rolled carpet, Joss, Zeke and Hero trudged awkwardly in behind. Joss was struck first by the heat of a small fire that flickered at the centre of the circular room, and then the heady aroma of incense that burnt alongside it.

  The walls and ceiling were festooned with dried herbs, preserved mushrooms and bunches of wild flowers, all of them strung upside down to dangle like ornaments. Jars were assembled on shelves and tabletops, each of them shining like precious jewels, while mats made of dried bamboo shoots crunched underfoot.

  ‘Place your friend on the cot,’ Bittersweet said, pointing to a bedstead at the far end of the room. As delicately as they could manage, they carried Drake past the fire to place him on the cot. His face was streaked with sweat, his chest heaving as he coughed.

  ‘We’ll need to remove his clothing …’ Bittersweet said as she knelt beside him.

  ‘– no –’ Drake gasped, and Joss blinked. He hadn’t realised that the boy from Starlight Fields was still conscious.

  ‘Now is not the time for pretence, my young friend,’ Bittersweet tried to persuade him, but Drake pushed her away.

  ‘No!’ he said, more firmly this time.

  The spriggan nodded. ‘I understand. A secret is not so easily revealed, is it? Not even in the direst of times. I will need a spare set of hands to help me, though. There’s no way around it.’

  Drake hesitated, staring up at his three Bladebound brethren. Hero stared back at him resolutely, ready to do what needed to be done, while Zeke puffed his chest out the way someone would after a lifetime of being handpicked for every task that presented itself.

  ‘… Joss,’ Drake finally wheezed, his eyes falling shut. ‘I choose Joss.’

  Both Hero and Zeke looked at Joss with confusion, though whatever they were feeling paled in comparison to Joss’s own sense of shock. ‘Me?’ he asked.

  ‘It would seem so,’ Bittersweet replied, running her hand across the jars beside her as she selected what she needed. ‘I must ask your friends to wait outside.’

  Hero frowned, while Zeke tapped Joss on the shoulder. ‘If you need us, just call.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Joss replied, lost for any other words to say.

  Begrudgingly, the two older prentices shuffled out of the hut. Bittersweet paid them no mind as they went, focusing on the job at hand.

  ‘I need to draw the poison out. Unfortunately, the methods by which I do this are not without pain. You’ll need to hold your friend down as I administer the treatment,’ she said, quickly pulling off Drake’s bloodied fur coat and handing it to Joss. As he laid the coat out beside the bed, Joss noticed the dozens of tubes that had been woven into its lining, each of them cool to the touch.

  While Bittersweet gathered the instruments she would need, Joss focused on removing Drake’s tunic. It was torn almost in half, stained and sticky, but somehow he managed to wrestle it free of Drake’s body without causing his Bladebound brother too much unnecessary pain. But then, beneath the tunic, Joss found that Drake’s chest was already bandaged tight.

  He set off on the Way while injured? Joss wondered.

  ‘We’ll need to remove these as well,’ Bittersweet said as she plucked at the bindings, and Joss moved to help her. The material was sticking to the wounds, making it even harder than the tunic to remove. But little by little they managed to unravel the bandages to reveal Drake’s bare skin, as well as the secret that the prentice from Starlight Fields had been so desperate to keep.

  Ganymede Drake wasn’t who he said he was. Ganymede Drake was a girl.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  A SWARM OF CONFLICTING THOUGHTS

  JOSS knelt by the small stream that ran past Bittersweet’s hut and plunged his hands into the cool water. It had been only a few short hours since he’d last been here, washing Drake’s blood from his hands. In his time as a prentice he had tended to all manner of injuries, sustained by people and animals alike, but he’d never heard anything like the cry that had erupted from Drake when Bittersweet applied the anti-venom to his wounds.

  To her wounds, Joss corrected himself, trying to work out exactly how he felt about the revelation that had inadvertently been made to him. He hadn’t known Drake long enough to feel tricked or betrayed … though should he have felt those things at all, no matter how long they’d been acquainted? He didn’t know. And he didn’t understand. He’d never thought it possible to defy how you’d been born the way that Drake had. A girl became a woman. A boy became a man. That was just the order of things. Wasn’t it?

  Drake certainly hadn’t been in any shape to answer questions. Once the poison had been burnt out, Bittersweet had set to stitching the wounds. She’d used what looked like a cactus spine for a needle and spider’s silk for thread, working quickly but thoroughly to sew Drake’s skin back together. Mercifully enough, Drake had fallen unconscious, leaving him – leaving her – free of the pain.

  Joss heard a rustling behind him. He assumed it would be Zeke or Hero, whom Bittersweet had invited to make camp for the night behind her hut. She’d even prepared a dinner of nettle soup for them, which had left Joss feeling queasier than a vegetarian at a slaughterhouse. If the others felt anything like he did, he was surprised they hadn’t joined him sooner.

  But it wasn’t Zeke, or Hero. Picking his way through the darkness of the forest, Drake was little more than a ghost given flesh. He wore fresh bandages beneath a loose tunic that Joss could only assume belonged to Bittersweet, and he was grimacing in pain with every step.

  Not he. She. The thought ricocheted around in Joss’s head as Drake joined him by the water’s edge.

  ‘You’re up,’ Joss noted with some surprise. Now that they were closer to one another, Joss could see the dark circles under Drake’s eyes, the pallor of his skin.

  ‘It’s so stuffy in there. I needed some fresh air,’ Drake said, struggling as he gradually knelt and then finally sat beside Joss.

  ‘I was impressed with your thermals. That lining … I’ve never seen anything like it before,’ Joss said, searching for whatever polite conversation he could come up with.

  ‘My own invention,’ Drake explained. ‘It regulates my body temperature no matter the external conditions. Just one of the things I’ve tinkered with over the years. It’s a hobby of mine. Inventing things, that is.’

  ‘I see,’ replied Joss, still rubbing his hands long after he’d dried them, his attention entirely taken up by the effort. But Drake wouldn’t be so easily dissuaded.

  ‘I thought we should talk …’ he said.

  ‘We don’t have to. It’s not like you owe me an explanation or anything.’
/>   ‘No. But I’m sure you have questions.’

  Of course he did, but where could he even begin? He decided to start with what felt like the most obvious one. ‘What should I call you now?’

  ‘Drake. Ganymede Drake. Just the same as before.’

  ‘But that hasn’t always been your name,’ Joss replied. ‘Has it?’

  ‘When I was born, my parents called me Gwendoline. But in my heart I’ve always been Ganymede.’

  ‘So … does that make you a “he”? Or a “she”?’

  ‘What do you think?’ Drake asked, his tone taking a hard edge.

  ‘You were a “he” when I met you, so it feels strange to think of you as anything else,’ Joss admitted.

  ‘And “he” is how I prefer it.’

  ‘But – why? There are plenty of female paladeros. I’m prenticed to one, and we’re Bladebound to another …’

  ‘No offence intended, Joss, but if you honestly think it’s that easy being a woman in Thunder Realm, you have a lot to learn,’ Drake said, shifting uncomfortably.

  ‘So then does that mean …?’ Joss stopped, keeping himself from asking a question that felt far too bold, even if it was the question that had been bothering him all along.

  ‘What?’ Drake asked.

  Joss thought of Regent Greel’s feigned sympathy at the Tournament. He thought of all the times he’d wished he could hide his past from every nosy loudmouth who sought to interrogate him about it. But that wasn’t possible for him. He couldn’t abandon his name or change his face or dye his skin in pursuit of some new identity. Just the idea of it pricked at him like a bramble in his boot.

  ‘Does that mean you’re ashamed of who you are?’ he asked, then immediately wished he could take it back. Drake was trembling, and Joss couldn’t tell if it was from his injuries or the insult of the question.

  ‘You think this is about shame? This isn’t a mask, Joss. This isn’t a way for me to hide, or to deny anything about myself. Yes, I was born a girl. But that was never how I saw myself – never how I felt inside. That was never me. This is. I am Ganymede Drake. Being anything else would be the real denial, the real act of shame. And if I choose not to share all the details of my past with every stranger I meet before I’ve had any chance of getting to know them, that’s because – well, frankly? It’s none of their damned business. I am as I want the world to see me. As I want it to treat me. Nothing more.’

  They lapsed into an uncomfortable silence that was broken only by the rasp of Drake’s breathing, which had grown increasingly laboured.

  ‘So I shouldn’t say anything to Hero or Zeke,’ Joss said finally.

  ‘I’d appreciate it.’ The young man nodded as he rose to his feet again, wobbled, then righted himself. ‘Is that everything you have to ask?’

  Joss considered. ‘Why me, out of the three of us?’

  ‘I don’t know, to tell you the truth. You seemed trustworthy, like maybe you would understand,’ Drake said as he started back towards the hut, limping with every step. ‘I hope I wasn’t wrong.’

  Watching Drake leave, Joss tried to make sense of everything he was thinking and feeling. His mind was still buzzing with a swarm of conflicting thoughts over an hour later, when he finally left the water’s edge to return to Bittersweet’s hut and the camp that Hero and Zeke had set up there. Neither of them was awake as he approached, which came with some relief. He didn’t feel like facing any questions right now.

  Climbing into his bedroll, he forced himself to close his eyes and rest.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  A MOTH AND A MONSTER

  THEY spent the following day and night as Bittersweet’s guests. Drake was asleep most of the time, recuperating from his injuries, while Hero lost herself in the battered paperback copy of Ichabod Boon’s On Leather Wings: My Life as a Skyborne Paladero that she’d brought with her. Zeke, meanwhile, grew increasingly restless. He busied himself by stripping and cleaning the engine of his cycle, explaining each step to Joss as he went.

  Though he found the process fascinating in its own right, Joss was also relieved to have a distraction from the incessant noise of his own thoughts. He was still sifting through everything Drake had told him and trying to grasp it as best he could, though true understanding eluded him like a locust in overgrown grassland.

  When the engine was spotless and reassembled and there were still hours of daylight left, Zeke invited Joss to go on a hike with him.

  ‘But what about the mantises?’ Joss asked.

  ‘Take this balm and rub it into your exposed skin,’ Bittersweet said as she selected one of the smaller jars among the many in her possession. Popping the lid, Joss was immediately struck by an odour that smelled like the inside of a dead man’s boot. ‘That should keep them at bay.’

  ‘As well as anything else with a nose …’ Zeke grinned at Joss as they left the hut.

  They kept to the stream as they made their way through the forest. Away from the undergrowth, Joss found the rest of the surrounding area far less dense. There were even a few saplings and bushes among the cacti, from which Zeke now ripped a branch.

  ‘To be honest, I’m not that worried about another mantis attack,’ he said, using the branch to swish the water around as they hiked beside it.

  ‘How come?’

  ‘Because I’ve got this,’ Zeke reached into his jacket pocket and took out a little metal box that was no larger than the handle of a dagger.

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘A neutraliser.’ Zeke handed the device to Joss. ‘My father gave it to me before I left. We use them at Zadkille Station to pacify stampeding livestock. A herd of charging brontosaurs will stop dead in its tracks the moment you press that button.’

  ‘Really?’ Joss turned the device around in his hands, studying its design. It was made from the same black metal as the gun that Zeke had used at the Tournament, with a red trigger embedded on top. ‘So how come you didn’t use it on the mantises?’

  ‘I had it in my pack. I was trying to get it out when the spriggan showed up.’

  It struck Joss as odd that, even though Zeke knew Bittersweet’s name, he still exclusively referred to her as ‘the spriggan’.

  ‘Helpful thing to keep on you, I’d imagine,’ Joss said, handing it back.

  ‘Believe me, I’m not letting it out of my sight from now on,’ Zeke replied, and tucked the neutraliser into his pocket. ‘Who knows, if I’d had it on me I might have kept Drake from getting injured …’

  Joss shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You have any idea why he was so set on having Hero and me leave the room yesterday?’ Zeke had been sneaking up on this question with so much forced subtlety that it had just made the prying more obvious. And Joss had to admit there was a small part of him that wanted to reveal the secret that had been burning in his brain ever since he’d discovered it. Though how could he ever look Drake in the eye again – let alone form the kind of bond with him that Bladebound brethren were meant to share – knowing that he’d betrayed his confidence so readily?

  ‘I think he was just feeling vulnerable and needed some privacy,’ he said, and was
relieved when Zeke didn’t push the matter any further.

  All this intrigue was doing nothing for Joss’s nerves. It almost made him wish he was back at Round Shield Ranch, where the greatest mysteries revolved around what dubious meat Hadley the cook had used in his chilli stew, or how Edgar’s bed had made its way out into the stockyards in the middle of the night while he was sleeping in it.

  When finally the river had thinned to a trickle, Joss and Zeke turned around. As they trudged back through the forest, Zeke took the opportunity to describe his life on Zadkille Station. Joss thought Zeke sounded a little homesick as he spoke of the industrial pens where they kept their livestock, the fleet of mechanoids that laboured day and night to service all their vehicles, the compound where all the fieldservs, prentices and paladeros lived, and the palatial manor that he shared with the rest of the Zadkille clan.

  But with all those details, Zeke never actually said anything of his family. It struck Joss as being quite odd, though perhaps it was only because he felt the absence of kin so much more strongly than others did.

  ‘It occurs to me …’ Zeke said, wrenching Joss from his thoughts as he reached up under his collar to pull the Constellation Key free. ‘We should probably be sharing this around.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ asked Joss. He watched as Zeke slipped the chain from around his neck. Light danced joyfully on the key’s surface, leaping in every direction.

  ‘Positive,’ he replied. ‘Go ahead. Take it.’