They reached a canal and he heard Etienne yelling to the gondolier – was there something familiar about that gondolier? – but he could hardly think, hardly even make his pounding heart slow down long enough to listen.
He stumbled forward, his vision darkening. Rough hands tossed him into the boat and then he was huddled in the bottom of the gondola as it shot down the canal and Etienne continued to scold the gondolier.
“I’m telling you, I’ll pay you, just get us out of here.” Frustration dripped from his tone. “Stay with me, Tamerlan!”
There was a crash in the distance and Tamerlan heard Etienne calling something to his pursuers, but he didn’t make out the words. Pain pulled him into a hot embrace and blackness quickly followed, swallowing him up.
14: Wind Rose
Marielle
IT TURNED OUT THAT Allegra owned the inn next door. It also turned out that she grew impatient quickly and when Etienne took longer than expected, she opened a secret door from her warehouse to the inn and moved the Harbingers there.
“But don’t expect me to do this for nothing,” she told them. “You owe me now.”
“How much?” Liandari had asked with a curl of her lip. “What is your price, shopkeeper?”
Allegra’s lips had tightened then but her expression turned to one of shock when Lindari flicked a finger against her thumb and one of her silent harpooners pulled three pearls the size of large peas from a small leather bag and handed them to Allegra.
“For a week. Food included,” Liandari said. Allegra opened her mouth and the Ki’squall bared her teeth with a puff of garnet and pitch fury. “Try to negotiate and we will spear you where you stand.”
Allegra’s mouth shut with a click and she escorted them through the hidden door and up to a suite of rooms in the top floor of the inn.
“Send refreshment up. I grow weary of this city,” Liandari had said and though Allegra’s mouth tightened, and her scent was filled with sulfur and lime scented agitation, swirling around her in dusty clouds, still she left without a word.
Satisfaction surrounded the Ki’squall in bright apricot hues. And no wonder. She’d been left to cool her heels in a storage warehouse instead of being shown here right away. Would Allegra have treated a Landhold that way? Why was she so eager to push these people around when Lord Mythos wanted them for allies?
“Why did you come to the Dragonblood Plains?” Marielle asked as the Ki’squall settled in a padded ottoman, looking out over the city from a wide balcony where filmy curtains hid her from view while still allowing her to see everything beyond. “Was it only that prophecy?”
“One of the dragons has risen into the sky,” she said, her voice tired. “And for that crime, Queen Mer will demand retribution.”
Marielle shivered.
“The Bridge of Legends has been opened once more,” the Windsniffer said, casting an unreadable glance toward Liandari and then pouring water from a jug at the central table.
The harpooners had settled in without a word – two guarding the door, two taking to their rooms in the suite immediately. They worked in silence. Marielle was beginning to wonder if they could speak at all.
“And this time,” he said, moving to the wide window to look out, too, “there are new Legends. New problems.”
“What is the Bridge of Legends?” Marielle asked.
“A path from one world to another. From the land where the heroes and villains wait to rise once more – to our world.”
“Like the Legends from the stories? King Abelmeyer? Lady Chaos? Queen Mer?”
They glanced at each other and it worried Marielle that they smelled of silver truth and certainty. It worried her more that this sounded so familiar. What had Tamerlan done, after all, but access these Legends – if Jhinn were to be believed?
“Those are the new Legends. Before they rose to take that place, there were other legends. Darker Legends. The Legends that commanded the dragons ... and other creatures.”
Marielle shivered. “Other creatures?”
“There were many dark evils fighting man for this world in the days of the former Legends. And then men found a way to take the Legends and use them for their own purposes. It was a dark time. A time of chaos and deep evil.”
“Why doesn’t anyone talk about that?”
He shrugged. “Maybe it’s easier to forget. Maybe it’s simpler. But the People of Queen Mer’s Retribution do not forget. And we have returned to teach your people and remind them again of what they have forgotten.”
“Then why are you the only ones who have come from the ships?” Marielle asked. She felt Liandari stiffen at her question, but Anglarok merely smiled.
“You can’t go outside right now.” They’d heard a rumor as they were taken upstairs. Things were worse in the city. Mobs were forming. Scenters being snatched off the streets. What they had seen had only been the beginning. “So, it seems that now would be a good time to begin your lessons, hmmm? I’m surprised you are so untrained. Even in this backward land.”
“Untrained?” Marielle almost laughed. “I spent my youth in the Scenter Academy, learning to hone my senses and being educated in the ways of the world, the laws of Jingen, the catechisms of the Dragonblood Plains and our traditions.”
He waved a hand as if that mattered little, his scent – sea salt and strange spices she couldn’t identify mixed with the silver and mint of certainty – was steady and unruffled. “But no magic, it would seem.”
“Magic?” Awe filled her voice and a tiny thrill of anticipation. She could almost taste the lilac and vanilla of magic on her tongue at the very thought of it.
His eyes were bright and a smile began to form on his oak-hard face. “Sit with me.”
They sat in a pair of upholstered chairs a little off to the side from the ottoman where Liandari continued to observe the city below.
Anglarok ran a hand through dark hair, “There are many kinds of magic in this world. Our gift – the gift of scent – is not magic at all, but rather just a heightening of the senses. It can be refined and encouraged. It can also be augmented and for that, we can use magic.”
Marielle licked her lips and Anglarok tilted his head like he was smelling something coming from her.
“But now I see that I have made you overeager,” he said, an agitated look flooding his face as he bit his lip, watching her. “It is a long time since I have been a Wind Guide. The balance of this is delicate.”
He wiped his brow and then tore off his coat and the light shirt beneath it, revealing a chest and arms as tattooed as the harpooners’. Small trails went up the edges of his neck and as far as his hands, wrapping around his body in whorls just a little darker than his already dark skin.
They really were maps! She could see coastlines picked out in careful detail and small islands, towns and cities, mountains, eddies, and whorls in the sea. Each named. There were coordinates beside some. And over his heart was a starburst inside a circle. The points of the starburst reached past the circle. Small, but significant and located on an isle in the sea.
He tapped on his heart. “These tattoos show where I have been and where I am from. Starting here, at my home island. I add to these as I travel, recording the places I have been and the things I have seen on my skin – a memory stamped forever on my body. Magic is like that. It leaves a mark. Every bit of it you touch will change you. Which is why you need more caution. You need more care before you can touch it. Because the unwary can be quickly consumed, burned up by the power of the unknown and the fires they start can burn the world.”
Marielle shivered. They’d woken the dragon by playing with magic. And the world was already beginning to burn.
“But can’t you do good with magic, too?”
He nodded. “But magic is used much more often for evil than for good. And even the good we cause can accidentally do evil, too. Power is always dangerous. The more of it that there is, the more dangerous it becomes. Long, long ago, Queen Mer rode the wav
es, dispensing justice and mercy at her will.” He tapped on an eddy in the waters on his ribcage. “And in this place, she waits, ready to return, ready to judge. We feel her waking from her slumber. We must be ready.”
“And that’s why you are here,” Marielle nodded.
“The dragons are rising. The Dragonblooded have broken their vows. If the world is in chaos when the Queen returns, she will bring judgment on us all,” his words were quiet but grim. “We must restore order. We must close the Bridge of Legends. We must find the key. We must lock up the dragons again.”
“I want that, too,” Marielle said. “I want to restore order. I want good laws and justice.”
He smiled, cider-scented contentment rolling off him like heat waves. “Then don’t be too eager to leap into magic, Marielle.”
“Enough,” Liandari said from her seat on the ottoman. “If you plan to fold her into our ranks, Anglarok, then have her accept the Wind Rose. If she does not agree, then she knows too much already.”
“The Wind Rose?” Marielle asked.
He tapped his chest where the starburst and circle sat. “This. The sign that you are pledged to Queen Mer and the sea.”
“What does that mean?” Marielle asked nervously. For Jhinn, it meant never leaving the sea. For these people, it seemed to mean vengeance, but also order. She wasn’t sure she wanted that.
She had expected Anglarok to answer, but it was Liandari who spoke, “You will take the vow of our ancestors, ‘Seas send as you may, wind blow as you may, I am but a ship on the waters. I am but a vessel of justice and righteousness. Though many waters roll below me, though waves crash all around, still I am whole on the peak of chaos, still I climb to the top of the spray.’”
Marielle shivered.
“It’s a pledge of justice and righteousness and a promise not to let chaos sink you. There is more to it, more to learn from us Windsniffers – but that is all you pledge to begin. It’s a solemn vow. You can’t turn away from it once you begin. It will set your compass and guide your path.”
“But who wouldn’t want to promise to be just and righteous?” Marielle asked. “Who wouldn’t be willing to promise to keep trying?”
Liandari snorted derisively. “Lazy oafs. The twisted. Anyone who is not woven of moral fiber. Weak ropes and rotten docks, all of them.”
Anglarok cleared his throat and she blushed, looking back out the balcony window, her eyes glued to the white sail in the distance.
“I grow weary of waiting,” she declared. “I will rest until this Etienne Velendark returns or until morning, whichever comes first. Then we will act.”
She strode to one of the bedrooms and shut the door behind her.
“And you, Marielle?” Anglarok asked. “Will you take the Wind Rose?”
Jhinn had warned her not to accept gifts from the Harbingers, but he was only a boy. What could he know about this? If the Jingen City Watch still existed, that would be different. She could keep protecting the people and keeping the law, but it didn’t exist anymore, and it wouldn’t exist again unless they brought down the dragon.
“I’ve promised to help Etienne stop the dragon. I’ve promised to guard him,” she said, hesitating.
“And you think a pledge to do what is right would interfere with that?” his words were silky smooth, but he smelled only of determination – peppermint and crisp blue. He was serious about this. And he wasn’t trying to trick her.
She wet her lips with her tongue. Order sang to her like a distant siren. Her laws were gone, washed away with the emerging dragon, but she could uphold new laws – laws baked into a culture so dedicated to them that they made each member swear to live a life of justice. It was hard not to feel giddy at the thought of that, but she had to be certain before she made any kind of pledge.
“And that’s all that will be required of me – only what is said in that vow?”
“Of course.” There had to be a catch, didn’t there? And yet Anglarok’s expression was open and honest and he smelled of silver and mint truth with only the barest hint of lavender. What could possibly be wrong about that? “Join us in upholding the law, Marielle. Join us in pursuing evil and destroying it. Let us give you tools beyond what you could imagine to conquer this evil in your land. And pledge to pursue justice and righteousness with us.”
She was nodding before he had even finished already wanting it so badly that she felt she could taste justice on the tip of her tongue and purpose in the scent she breathed in.
“I want what you have,” she said, feeling almost giddy as she made her decision. She never even noticed the vanilla and lilac tinting the air so slightly that it was hardly discernable at all.
15: Black and White
Marielle
MARIELLE’S TEETH WERE on edge when she finally returned to Spellspinner’s Cures. The Wind Rose on the upper part of her chest burned and since getting it, she felt both lightheaded and as if she really was riding a wave of passion and certainty. It felt so good to have a driving force behind her again. She was like a sail in need of a wind, like a gondola in need of the water. And it felt so right to have the wind at her back again and the tide under her feet.
Allegra was closing her shop when Marielle returned. She lifted her eyebrows as Marielle stepped into the main shop as Allegra was pinching out the candles in the window.
“You seem to enjoy the company of our guests,” she said mildly.
“Etienne asked me to watch them.” Allegra was hard to talk to without sounding stilted. You could feel hostility radiating from her like a stove. And yet that was not what she smelled of. She smelled of passion and secrecy, a strange mix of birch smoke and fragrant lilies, swirling around her in reds and pinkish purples. She glowed so brightly from her powerful emotions that she outshone the candles.
There were other smells in Spellspinner’s Cures laid out over the powerful scents of the spices in the back, and Marielle could smell the comings and goings of the day. Customers with worries lacing their steps, ambitions swirling in their movements, anxiety frizzling off them and leaving residues across everything they touched. And something else. Deceit swirled in the air in greenish-yellow, smelling of caramel. Something was going on a Spellspinner’s Cures – some plan that Marielle knew nothing about.
“He’s not back yet.” Worry puffed around her in ochre clouds, but before Marielle could respond, a rap sounded at the door.
Allegra, already nearby, lifted the bar and the door burst open.
Etienne stumbled into Spellspinner’s Cures, carrying a dazed Tamerlan in his arms.
“He lost consciousness when we hit the Spice District,” he said with a gasp as Marielle rushed forward to help. “The city has gone mad. Lady Saga doomed us all with this hunt. Here, help me.”
“That’s not the only way,” Allegra said with an angry twist to her mouth but there wasn’t time for Marielle to wonder at the puff of mushroom scent surrounding her.
Etienne stumbled as he tried to hold onto the bigger man. It was amazing that he’d carried Tamerlan as far as he had. Etienne was short and compact, and while his slender frame was strong, he was more than a head shorter than Tamerlan and not nearly as thick in the shoulders.
Marielle slipped an arm under Tamerlan’s, letting his head loll onto her shoulder. A dark patch spread across his shirt and he was missing his blue cloak.
Allegra clucked her tongue, taking the other side of him.
“How are we going to get him up the stairs?” Marielle asked.
“Just let me catch my breath a moment,” Etienne said, leaning against the barred door as he sucked in huge breaths. Marielle watched him, mesmerized by his youth. He carried so much weight on him – so many plots and hopes and tragedies – for such a young man. And he never smelled of anxiety, only certainty and truth, swirling mint and sliver and intermingling with the royal blue and gardenia power and his own scent – tangerines and cloves. He was a puzzle. And she wanted to figure him out.
But not ri
ght now. Right now, they needed to help Tamerlan.
“What were you doing together?” she asked him.
“Hunting the Eye. We’ll need it to tame the dragon. To bind him once more.”
She shivered. That was all she wanted, too. It was why she shied away from Tamerlan’s slumped body every time it brushed against the burning skin of her upper chest where the Wind Rose had been tattooed only an hour ago.
“Everyone will want the Eye,” Allegra said coolly, “for good or ill.”
She smelled of ambition – roasting meat and russet swirls. She wanted the amulet, too. And the way her cold eyes were turned on Etienne, Marielle thought that perhaps if he found it, that would be the payment she would exact for all her generosity. Just watching that hawk-eyed glance made Marielle’s hackles rise.
“Yes, they do,” Etienne said, taking Allegra’s place under Tamerlan’s arm. “You take his feet.” As she scrambled to pick them up, he continued. “I watched a Scenter ripped apart in the street – Xin City Watch – two groups wanted her. Neither would back down, not even when her screams shattered the air and then stilled as they clawed through the rags of her clothing.”
Marielle felt light-headed as they climbed the stairs. What would have happened to her if Liandari hadn’t stepped in?
After a moment, Etienne added, “You need to stay out of sight, Marielle. You need to stay here while this hunt continues. You understand?”
Marielle nodded as they crested the last stair and hurried to Tamerlan’s bedroom. “I will.”
“I need to see to Queen Mer’s people,” Etienne said after they laid Tamerlan on the bed. He looked bone weary.
“And I want to speak to you about them,” Allegra said, her eyes narrowing and her scent smelling of jasmine concentration. She turned to Marielle, pointing to a small fireplace in the room. “Strip him to his small clothes and boil water. I’ll be back to clean and dress the wound. Fool man. He should have returned hours ago.”
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