Storm Raiders: Age Of Magic - A Kurtherian Gambit Series (Storms Of Magic Book 1)

by PT Hylton

  The Magistrate stroked his beardless chin, resisting the urge to punch Benjamin. “Very well. I’m listening.”

  It was Jarvi who spoke next. “I spent some time with your bookkeeper yesterday. She had an interesting story to tell.”

  The Magistrate sat up a bit straighter at that. Cybil had worked for him for years. What could she have to say to these criminals?

  Jarvi continued. “She told me that Captain Tor came to see her some days ago. He told her you’d asked him to review your appointment book.”

  The words were out of the Magistrate’s mouth before he could stop them. “I did no such thing!”

  Jarvi smiled. “Even so, that’s what he told her. And he’s Captain Tor, so she allowed it. Tor asked her some questions about what he read. He seemed especially interested in your upcoming meeting with Benjamin here. He pressed her for details, and Cybil told him Benjamin had a crackpot theory that a traitor was working among the stormships, and that you’d agreed to hear it. Just to humor him. Again, this was Captain Tor. How could she not answer his questions?”

  “How indeed?” The Magistrate felt a twinge of worry. He didn’t like what these men were implying. “Why would Tor want to see my appointment book?”

  Benjamin shrugged. “Who’s to say? I’m sure he had his reasons. But we found out something else. That very night was the festival. We have a witness who saw your son leave. And he didn’t leave alone.”

  The Magistrate put a hand over his mouth. How had these two men found this information when he himself hadn’t? And he’d looked. “Who left with him?”

  “Randall,” Benjamin said.

  The Magistrate took a shaky breath before speaking again. “First mate of Thunderclap.”

  Jarvi nodded. “The very same. So, you have Tor looking at your appointment book and learning Benjamin is coming to speak with you about a possible traitor among the stormships. That night, Benjamin’s sword goes missing, your son leaves the festival with Tor’s first mate and is murdered shortly thereafter. As Benjamin said, not rock-solid proof. But perhaps something you’ll want to investigate.”

  The Magistrate couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Was this possible? Could it be that Tor had ordered Bronson’s death? It seemed outlandish, and yet…

  It made a certain kind of sense. Tor was notoriously territorial about his assignments. He demanded the jobs he wanted, and he dictated which other ships would accompany him. He’d been furious when the Magistrate had forced him to take The Foggy Day along on his most recent voyage.

  But the Magistrate wasn’t going to turn on the captain of Thunderclap on the claims of these criminals. He’d need to investigate.

  There was a knock at the door, and Benjamin and Jarvi tensed.

  The Magistrate held up a hand. “It’s all right. I want to talk about this further. Let me see who it is; then we’ll continue.”

  Jarvi and Benjamin exchanged a worried glance before nodding their agreement.

  The Magistrate opened the door to find a young boy standing there. It was one of the kids who worked on the docks, running errands for Storm Captains. “What is it, boy?”

  “Sir, it’s High Tide. They’ve returned to Holdgate, and they need to see you immediately.”

  ****

  Abbey walked the decks of The Foggy Day, enjoying the open air.

  It was a crisp, cool morning and there were no other ships in sight. It was just them and the open sea. For the first time since starting her journey, Abbey felt like she truly understood the allure of being a sailor. You had to put up with a lot: cramped quarters, bad food, the occasional crazy Storm Caller lady trying to kill you. But being adrift on the sea, alone with just your crew on the vast ocean, it made the rest almost worth it.

  Unlike her first day on the ship, no one had ordered her to scrub the bulkheads or haul rope. No one had asked anything of her. She almost felt bad, especially when she saw how hard everyone else was working. They all knew their jobs so well she’d probably just get in the way. She’d volunteer to help tomorrow. Today she was going to enjoy the sea.

  She saw Dustin coming through a hatch onto the deck, and she sauntered over to him. “Hey, didn’t you just go down there?”

  It had been a difficult struggle to convince him to take a break. Only when the sun started to rise and they could clearly see Thunderclap was not behind them did he finally agree to get some rest.

  “I was down there like two hours. I’m fine.” He stifled a yawn. “Besides, you’re one to talk. If you’ve gotten more than two hours sleep since we got off that wagon to Bode, I’ll prepare dinner for the entire crew tonight.”

  As funny as it would have been to see him wearing a chef’s hat, she couldn’t deny his statement. She’d only gotten about thirty minutes of sleep. She was still too fired up from the battle.

  Syd saw them from across the deck and waved them over. When they reached her, she gestured toward the captain, who stood on the quarterdeck. “Captain said he wants a word with the three of us.”

  They made their way up to him, and Roy greeted them with a nod. “If it’s not our heroes.”

  Abbey cocked her head at that. “Well, that’s subjective. You wouldn’t have had to escape from those guys if I hadn’t, you know, gotten you captured.”

  Roy chuckled. “Honestly? I should have figured it out years ago. The way Tor and his friends jealously guard the voyages north. And everywhere I go, I hear stories of Storm Raiders. But it’s never a first-hand account. It always happened to the friend of the cousin of someone who lives in the next village. I assumed it was just prejudice rumors. I guess I had my head up my ass.”

  “We all did,” Syd said. “I never had any love for Tor, and even I didn’t figure it out. My only question is what’s he doing with all the loot? He brings back more than the average Storm Captain, and Holdgate has certainly benefited from his ill-gotten gains, but if he’s regularly raiding, there has to be more.”

  Roy nodded. “Even more important is why he’s raiding. When they had us prisoner, Tor sat me down and offered to let me join the Storm Raiders.”

  Abbey was surprised at that. “No offense, but you don’t seem like the other Storm Captains in their group. You’re too, I don’t know, humble.”

  “You’re not wrong,” Roy said. “I got the sense that he’s getting greedy. He wants to grow his fleet, and he wants to do it fast.”

  “But why?” Dustin wondered.

  “Conquest.”

  Dustin and Abbey exchanged a concerned glance.

  “Seriously?” Syd asked.

  Roy nodded. “He wants to rule nations.”

  Abbey shook her head. “Holy shit. This guy is even crazier than I thought.”

  “Exactly,” Roy said. “That’s why he teamed up with the Barskall. He needs a land army.”

  Abbey was still having trouble wrapping her mind around the idea. A Storm Captain who wanted to be a king.

  “There’s something else.” Roy looked around to make sure none of the crew was eavesdropping before he continued. “I’m not the only one Tor tried to make a deal with.”

  Syd’s eyes narrowed. “Who else?”

  Roy waved his arm, indicating the entire deck. “Everyone. He offered every single member of the crew a spot on Thunderclap and an equal share of the profits from the Bode raid as anyone already on his crew. They all turned it down. They turned down riches and a prestigious posting on the flagship of the fleet.”

  Dustin blinked hard as he surveyed the deck.

  Roy nudged him. “Remember what I told you your first day? I told you we have the best crew in the fleet. Do you believe me now?”

  “Yes,” Dustin said meekly. “I do.”

  Roy patted him on the back. “Anyway, I thought you should know. Now, Storm Caller, I’m going to need you at your best when we get to Holdgate and give our report. How about you go back below deck and get some more shut eye.”

  Dustin shook his head. “Not yet. I have to do something fi
rst.”

  “What’s that?” Roy asked.

  Dustin turned toward the crew. “I’m not going to sleep until I’ve learned their names. Every last one of them.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  It was midmorning the next day when they spotted the ship approaching from the north.

  The previous day had been pleasant and uneventful. Other than constantly looking over their shoulder to make sure Thunderclap wasn’t on their tail, the crew were back to their normal routine. Dustin hadn’t succeeded in learning all the forty-seven crew member’s names, but he was well on his way.

  As for the crew, they seemed to be enjoying the attention from their young Storm Caller. They made a game of it, testing him when they passed him on the deck or bumped into him in a passageway, then razzing him if he failed to recall their names. Some of the crew had taken to calling him Daniel or David, pretending they couldn’t recall his name either.

  Abbey’s guilt at not pulling her weight had finally gotten the best of her, and she’d returned to scrubbing bulkheads that morning.

  Syd came across her in an empty passageway and laughed. “You know, you don’t need to do that. We’ve only been at sea a couple of days, and you gave it a pretty good scrubbing on the trip north.”

  Abbey frowned at her. “Can you please just let me feel useful for a few minutes?”

  Syd started to walk away, still laughing, but Abbey stopped her.

  “That story you told in the village,” Abbey said. “About your brother. You never found out what happened to him?”

  A shadow crossed Syd’s face. “I haven’t yet. But I will.”

  Abbey nodded. “Listen, we don’t know how long Tor’s been Storm Raiding. We shouldn’t assume your brother was part of it.”

  “I don’t.” Syd’s voice was cold, but it softened when she spoke again. “I’ve had many years to consider what happened to him. Maybe he was a coward, or a traitor, or a Storm Raider. Or maybe he was a hero who was killed because he refused to follow Tor’s evil orders. Honestly? It doesn’t much matter. He was still my big brother, and I loved him. I’m not going to judge him harshly no matter what I find. I just want to know.”

  Abbey thought of her father and his past as a Hunter in Arcadia. “I get that. We don’t love our families because they’re perfect.”

  “Wise words, Arcadian. You know, when this thing’s all over, I’m going to try to convince you to permanently sign on to the crew of The Foggy Day.”

  Abbey considered that a moment. “You might not have to try that hard.”

  “Syd! You down here?” It was a male voice, and it was coming through the hatch.

  “I’m here,” Syd called back to him.

  “We need you topside. We’ve spotted a ship.”

  Syd glanced down at Abbey. “You’d better come, too. Unless you’re having too much fun scrubbing those bulkheads.”

  They made their way above deck and found Captain Roy, Dustin, and a few key crew members standing at the rail on the quarter deck, staring at the ship far behind them. It was so far away that it looked like little more than a dot to Abbey.

  Captain Roy shielded his eyes from the sun as he stared over the water. “Well, it’s a Holdgate ship. That much is certain.”

  The others standing at the rail all muttered their agreement.

  “Wait,” Abbey said. “How the hell can you all do that?”

  A few of the crew members looked at her like she was stupid.

  Roy’s voice was patient when he answered. “The build of the ship is the clear giveaway. You can see the cut of it, even from this distance. But also, look at how it’s moving. It’s made up some serious ground in the ten minutes we’ve been watching it, and there’s hardly any natural wind. That means they’ve got a Storm Caller aboard.”

  “Huh.” Abbey couldn’t see any of that, but she wasn’t about to say so.

  One of the crew, a man named Tanner, said, “Could it be a ship on its way home from the Storm Wall?”

  Syd grimaced at the suggestion. “Look at the direction, man. If it were coming from the Storm Wall, it would be coming from farther west. This one’s clearly coming from Bode.”

  “That leaves only two possibilities,” Abbey said.

  “No.” Roy nodded toward the mysterious vessel. “There’s only one ship that could be. You burned Thunderclap’s mainsail. No way they had time to repair it or make a new one and catch us this quickly. And you saw High Tide pass you on its way back to Holdgate. That has to be Summer Wind.”

  Abbey nodded. She agreed with his logic. “What do we know about them?”

  “Their Storm Caller’s a real bastard,” Dustin said. “His name’s Wallace, and he takes Storm Calling even more seriously than my old mentor, Harald. The way he sees it, he’s blessed by the sea. He probably looks at Storm Raiding as his sea-given right.”

  Tanner spat over the edge at that. Abbey couldn’t disagree.

  Roy nodded. “That’s been my experience with him, too. Think you can outrun them, boy? It’s not all that far to Holdgate.”

  Dustin glanced at Roy. “All due respect, but I’m not sure that’s the best play here. It’s going to take time to explain things in Holdgate. It won’t be easy to convince the Magistrate and the other Storm Captains of what we saw, especially if High Tide beat us home. Do we really want to show up in port with another ship hot on our tail and looking for a fight?”

  Roy stroked his beard. “Perhaps not. You got a better idea?”

  Dustin stared at the ship for a moment before answering. “Let’s angle toward shore a bit. Then we’ll let them catch up.”

  Roy looked surprised. “Why would we do that?”

  “We should angle toward shore because I’d like them to at least have a shot of swimming to dry land. And we should let them catch up so I can sink them.”

  ****

  Dustin stood on the prow of The Foggy Day, watching the other ship approach. He’d calmed the sea, and the crew had lowered the sails. It occurred to Dustin that—as he’d learned as an apprentice—calming the sea had been the original purpose of weather magic. A bearded man with a robe and a wooden staff had come to Holdgate and taught them to quell the vicious waves so they could safely travel the seas for fishing and trade.

  He wondered how different the world would be today if the original magic users in Holdgate had stuck to that vision. Instead, it hadn’t taken long for them to take what they’d been taught and twist it into something new: storm magic. And as a result, there Dustin was, getting ready to do battle with another Storm Caller for the second time in as many days.

  He took one last look out over the glassy water. It wouldn’t be long before the weather the Storm Caller of Summer Wind was conjuring reached them.

  Captain Roy approached him. “You ready to do this, Storm Caller?”

  “I’m ready.” It wasn’t bravado or even overconfidence that caused him to say that. Unlike the battle with Dahlia, he felt a peaceful certainty in facing Wallace, Storm Caller of Summer Wind. Dahlia had warned him that he might burn himself out in fighting her, but instead, something else had happened. He’d grown stronger. It was like facing someone so powerful had unlocked a new part of him, a part that allowed him to draw in more magic from the sea and the earth and allowed him to shape it more precisely.

  “Anything I can do to help?” Captain Roy asked.

  Dustin just shook his head. As much as he’d come to disagree with his old mentor’s teachings about how a Storm Caller shouldn’t fraternize with the crew, he understood the philosophy behind it, misguided though it might be. In a battle, a Storm Caller had to act alone. As much as the captain and the crew wanted to help, all they could do was watch and hope.

  He glanced back at the deck and saw Syd, Abbey, and a few others gathered there, watching him. He turned to Roy. “Captain, I’m going to do my best to make this as quick as possible. Be ready to raise the sails on my mark.”

  “You got it.” The captain hovered for a
nother moment, then wandered off to join the crew.

  The Foggy Day began to move in the water, swaying from side to side as Summer Wind approached, bringing their angry weather along with them.

  Dustin had learned as an apprentice that every Storm Caller had his or her own style for drawing power from the sea. For some, like Dustin, total concentration was the key, and part of his training involved learning to shut the world out while he Storm Called. For others, like Dahlia, it was about calmness, emptying themselves of emotion and letting the power flow into the void. For still others, like Wallace of Summer Wind, it was about passion.

  As the ship approached, Dustin could see Wallace standing at the prow, one hand on his staff, the other waving wildly in the air. He was turning his head left and right, shouting orders over either shoulder. The water seemed to mirror his aggressive attitude, and the rolling sea became choppy.

  Dustin decided he’d waited long enough. He’d wanted to confirm Summer Wind was coming here for a fight before he attacked, and he was now confident that they were. He closed his eyes and began.

  Pulling the power of the sea into him was natural now, like breathing. The power gathered and swirled inside him; he only had to shape it.

  ****

  Abbey watched from the deck as the sky suddenly darkened and distant thunder rolled.

  Syd stared up at the black clouds. “Our Storm Caller isn’t messing around.”

  “Good,” Abbey replied. “We need to get to Holdgate. My father’s still in that cell, and I’d prefer he not stay there much longer.”

  The ship was swaying pretty hard now, and Abbey gripped the rail for fear of going over the side. Syd, on the other hand, seemed to have no trouble keeping her balance on the wildly rocking ship.

  The Storm Caller on the other ship was gesturing wildly and yelling at his crew. He raised a hand toward The Foggy Day, and a huge wave rolled toward them, sending them rocking even harder.

  “Anytime, Dustin,” Abbey muttered.

  As if on cue, a lightning bolt shot down from the sky and hit the mast of Summer Wind.

  Syd flinched. “Holy shit! Storm Callers don’t usually use lightning at this close range. Too difficult to control. I’ve never even seen Dahlia do that.”