Stormfire

by Jasmine Young

  The warm night air suffocated his lungs—the last person in the Kingdom he wanted to see was the City Captain.

  Achuros appeared instead.

  “Jaime!”

  His mentor shoved his way through several more Jaypan mercenaries. Jaime scanned the forests. No horses in sight. Their coursers were probably hidden somewhere in the pines. And so were their archers—they shot at a few foolish Waterfolk who continued to fight.

  “Are you alright?” said Achuros. His wrists were chafed, his white robes sullied.

  Both of them were sweating by the pitchers.

  “I’m okay,” Jaime replied. “You?”

  Before the priest could answer, a scream split the air.

  “Stop, stop!” Lady Eridene yelled, her bound hands pressed to her face. “Sons of Glaidde, lay down your weapons!”

  They didn’t need to be told twice. The Glaiddish straightened, dropping their swords at her command.

  Four riders appeared through the shadowed trees: Lord Florin, Lady Prescilla, and a fully-armored officer with a black-plumed helm. Only one man in Arcurea had a helm like that.

  Sojin.

  If he was back, how many mercenaries from their ally City-State—Korinthia, Jaime recalled—rode behind him? More and more gathered behind him, slinking out of their hidden campsite, awaiting his command.

  Jaime swallowed.

  What was the last thing Sojin swore to him?

  If you cannot draw Air by the time I return in the spring, I will make you the Archpriestess’s chattel.

  A round, fat shape writhed in the fourth saddle.

  “Beanie!”

  An Arcurean guard held him tightly by the tunic.

  Lady Eridene dropped her wrists. “Toran!”

  She started to rush forward, but two of her guards lowered their spears in front of her chest.

  “What happened?” Florin shifted his eyes to Achuros, now at Jaime’s side.

  Sojin scoured his dark eyes over the lady’s barbarians. Stinking men, with mops of stringy hair and full beards and belted jackets like the skin peeling off a snake’s back. He ripped off the cap of the nearest one.

  A unanimous gasp.

  The hair beneath it was an undyed, bright yellow. The City Captain spoke in a hush.

  “Glaiddish.”

  “Seamen?” Florin blinked. “In southern Jaypes?”

  “Well,” Achuros muttered, “I heard Glaidde has a fervor for discharging its seamen over every land.”

  “I do not presume to know your business in Jaypes,” the Captain continued, “but you shall answer to the royal authority for it.” Sojin turned to the Mayor. “Tomorrow morning, you will prepare the barathron. These seadogs will be executed.”

  Achuros knit his brows. “Are you mad? You will ignite a war with the Water Kingdom.”

  Toran raised his hand. “I’m not Glaiddish. Do I still count?”

  The heat in Jaime’s chest ebbed. He didn’t know what this Glaiddish ambush meant—or what Toran had to do with a highborn lady from the Water Kingdom—but Jaime made a promise. They were going to find the light and the sun together. He wouldn’t let Toran die.

  “Sojin,” Jaime forced the words out, “let them go—”

  The Captain swerved around.

  “You,” he snapped. “What have you done for our City in the time I have been gone? Besides letting these mongrels of the sea lay hands on you and your endearing mentor?”

  His face flushed sudden heat. “I’ve been mastering air sequences. Aren’t I going to Duel the King in the fall?”

  The lines on Sojin’s face tightened. He faced the other leaders with the vigor of a horned dragon breathing fire.

  “Why should we keep the Prince here any longer? He is useless! Every day he stays, he endangers all of us!”

  Florin sighed. “Truly, Sojin, he is the Lord’s chosen—”

  “I will hear that no longer!” he roared. “I put aside my judgment last time, but this time we are doing things my way. In the morning, I will sentence him to the barathron myself. So the Royal Decree will end, and justice will be served for the deaths of our children!”

  Jaime took in a dry breath. His dream of the barathron flashed back, coating his forehead with sweat. Fire. Hilaris. Please, don’t let them. Burning in flames. Soon it would be his turn—

  “This is not Kaippon.” Achuros slapped his forehead. “In your home Kingdom, you may take human lives at will, but we are in Jaypes. The boy is a Sage—”

  “Lord Haigen has laid a bounty on my head!”

  The hysteria in that scream stunned them to silence. The veins on the City Captain’s temples bulged.

  “While I have been negotiating for a force large enough to defeat him, while I have risked my life and my son’s on this voyage of hell, this so-called Sage cannot even protect himself!”

  “Sojin,” Florin murmured.

  “An Ottega is an Ottega.” The Captain wiped the sheen from his face. “I will rid Jaypes of them all.”

  “Gods.” Achuros sounded unimpressed.

  “Be silent, priest!” Sojin shouted. “You have disgraced this Kingdom as much as he has.”

  His mentor went stiff.

  Jaime winced at Sojin’s jab. Never in a day of his life had he heard anyone rebuke the old air priest.

  Achuros stormed forward, batting aside the Captain’s single-edged kendao. Their faces were a hairsbreadth away.

  “I do not fear you, Sojin Tadamora! I speak for everyone when I say I’ve had enough of your colicky tempers.” Achuros shoved his finger at Jaime. “To assault my honor is one thing, but it’s quite another matter to put up with your constant harassment of our future King. That boy saved my life when I commanded him to run, and he came defenseless! But put aside his recklessness, I’d like to see any of you step up and learn Air! He cannot hold a pole weapon, perhaps, but in two seasons he has memorized techniques that would cause a grown man years of mental constipation. Buzz buzz buzz! Go away, you gadfly! O, before I smack you with my flyswatter!” The City Leaders struggled to keep their faces deathly straight. “We’ve all sacrificed and lost loved ones! Don’t any of you smile—I speak to all of you!” Achuros whirled around to face the growing crowd. “All of you halfwits who forget that he learns not shield, nor bow, nor those manmade play-sticks you all swing around, but a holy element that is not even his own!”

  Jaime nearly fell over.

  Was this the same old man who once swore never to train the son of Usheon Ottega?

  Against Achuros’s broiling glare, Sojin was the first to break eye contact.

  “If all that you say is true, let him show us Air. Let him prove he is a worthy Sage, and he may keep his life.”

  “Come to your senses, will you? He cannot draw elemental power, it’s been under a year—”

  “Then it isn’t worth keeping that prince of pusillanimity. As our children die in his place, he hides and hides.”

  Pusillanimity?

  Politicians and their big, stupid words. This one he knew from reading with Achuros. Jaime bit his tongue so hard that he tasted blood.

  “You accuse me of being a coward . . . ”

  The winds around them picked up, surging past the pine branches. The forests hissed at them in sibilant whispers.

  “But what about you?”

  Florin peered at the sky, murmuring a low prayer. Achuros doubled back and gripped Jaime’s arm.

  “Boy, stay out of this—”

  “Let go!” he yelled. “All of you think you know me, but you know nothing.” His chest heaved. For a second, lightning whitewashed the skies. “Where have you been for the last fourteen years as thousands of boys like my brother were seized and murdered? Where were you when Lairdos Ascaerii’s bondlords bled in the Storm of Flames?” His throat thick, he screamed
, “Where were you as Chori wiped manure over our Lord Mayor, and the daimyo dishonored the Lady you swore to serve?”

  The City Leaders around him gasped.

  Worst of all, the Captain’s own words hit home.

  Snarling, Sojin wrenched his kendao into both hands. He slid off his saddle and lunged at Jaime.

  Jaime slung his head backwards only by impulse.

  A puff of breath clouded the massive whetted point that hovered over his nose. His own terrified reflection stared back at him for one heartbeat before the blade withdrew.

  Sojin pivoted and lashed again. Jaime twisted his body to the side. None of the City Watch moved in to protect him. Achuros’s eyes were wide in alarm. He wedged himself between them.

  “Oh you fools, stop!”

  But the Captain thrust the priest aside and lunged again. Half a dozen Jaypan men rushed out of the way, another two helping Achuros up. Sweat formed a river down Jaime’s neck. Every time he dodged, the blade missed him by mere hairs with each thrust. It breathed on him every time it shaved off strands of air above his nose. When Sojin spun around again, Jaime was still caught in a rushed backflip, and the angle and speed that the kendao was coming at him was all wrong.

  Florin threw himself in front of Jaime.

  “Enough!”

  Gasps and screams. Sojin pulled to a halt—at the last second.

  His kendao grazed the surface of the Mayor’s speckled cheek. Blood trickled down his chin, splattering onto the dirt. Florin glowered at the smaller man, unflinching.

  A ragged breath escaped the Captain. The fury in his black eyes flickered out, replaced by horror. He lowered the weapon and staggered backwards in a bow.

  The Mayor’s hard gaze fell on Jaime.

  All around them, the giant pines continued to sway. Their tips trembled. Giant wolfs of wind bolted westward in the skies, tossing the land in shadow and light.

  “Do you believe you are the Lord’s chosen?” the Mayor said, peering at the unruly winds.

  Jaime wet the roof of his mouth.

  “I . . . ”

  “For years I have prayed,” Florin murmured. “I pleaded the Holy Lord to deliver us. Fourteen years, he was silent. But the second you came to our city gates, I knew. You were the one he sent.”

  Water broke from the young Mayor’s eyes. He fell to his knees.

  “You have to be.”

  Jaime took a deep breath.

  Until tonight, religion was a stench to him—gods, how the incense clinging to Florin’s toga suffocated him—but in this second, as the power of Florin’s love, welling from the love he had for his god, penetrated Jaime’s avai, Jaime saw a sliver of Lord Jaypes’s spirit in that man.

  Gradually, more Jaypans took after the Lord Mayor, falling to their knees, bowing to him, until the only men left standing were Achuros, Sojin, and the Glaiddish.

  Tears blurred his eyes.

  “I am,” Jaime whispered.

  Suddenly, he was as certain of it as his heart hurt. He took the Mayor’s hands, tugging him upright.

  “I am, Florin.”

  The stormwinds around them began to ease, and the Krete Forests shivered back into tranquility.

  Lady Prescilla pointed at Sojin.

  “That man has betrayed House Menander and the Council of Arcurea. Arrest him.”

  Hold on—what?

  Jaime jolted.

  The combined Arcurean and Korinthian spearfighters obeyed her without question, turning on their commander.

  Chapter Twenty

  Sojin’s teardrop-shaped eyes widened into full moons.

  The trains of Lady Prescilla’s wisteria dress washed over the hindquarters of her towering courser. Two standard-bearers with the Arcurean sigil flanked her as she emerged into the moonlight. Despite her belly, a round apple over her lap, power blossomed from her presence.

  It hit Jaime—with all the male leaders on foot, and Prescilla Menander mounted above them all—she held true power over the combined lochos, and thus the council, the city, his life, and the fate of the Kingdom of Air. Jaime shivered. She was his righthand in this war, not Florin or Lord Gaiyus or any man in the Kingdom.

  All of them had miscalculated her, Sojin most of all.

  Lady Prescilla raised a letter into the air. “Last night, a guardsman on night patrol delivered this to me.”

  Its broken wax seal was a swift flying above a crisscrossed spear and shortsword. That was the official signet of Arcurea’s Captain of the City Watch.

  “Our guards also brought us the messenger.” Her cold eyes fell on the Captain. “Dead now. But alas, the recipient remains at bay: the letter was addressed to Her Grace the Archpriestess.”

  The silence erupted with gasps.

  “She knows the Arcurean Council gives sanctuary to the Prince. Damasia will be here within the fortnight.”

  Invisible hands were closing Jaime’s throat. Air leaving his lungs. One. Two. Three. Four. But counting didn’t help. In a puff, he was that knobby-kneed, wheezy little kid on Mount Alairus again, fumbling his pocket for the breather. Without it, he didn’t know how to inhale air.

  The Archpriestess.

  The King made the decrees from his throne, but she rode out and delivered—the single woman who had killed the millions of boys born in Jaime’s same year. The face who murdered his brother. Jaime’s own burning wouldn’t be on Mount Alairus, no, no, but in the Capital, on Jaypes’s largest pyre—

  Lady Prescilla bellowed, “What have you say to this, Sojin?”

  The City Captain shook his head, his face white.

  Behind him, tears glistened down his son’s face. Sojin opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again.

  His voice was hoarse.

  “If you believe I would ever betray you, my lady, then I have failed to serve House Menander.”

  He didn’t put up a fight as two broad men of the City Watch seized his kendao and shackled his wrists behind him. As Sojin passed his Mayor, he opened his mouth again. But nothing came out. Florin’s dark eyes averted as they marched his Captain away.

  Achuros squeezed Jaime’s shoulder and gestured his head at the white mare waiting for them.

  The sky felt upturned. He was walking the earth upside-down. Though Sojin would no longer be a threat to him, Jaime’s belly writhed and turned.

  For some reason, he felt no satisfaction over Sojin’s arrest, only a growing storm in the pit of his avai.

  When Florin announced in City Hall that he was going to throw a pepkos, a city-wide festival to worship the God of Air, Jaime was the only one who didn’t roar in assent.

  Hida used to tell him about the pepkosi she celebrated every year as a girl. This was before the Temple prophecy, before Usheon declared a New Jaypes. In the ancient days, their Jaypan ancestors hosted pepkosi before going to war to please their god and ensure victory.

  “Lord Jaypes will help us destroy the Archpriestess’s lochoi,” Florin orated. “And this season, I will kill Lord Haigen. The time for hiding is over. The Lords of the Air Alliance have wavered, but Arcurea will step up and take her place as the Lord’s Holy Spear. When the other City-States see us, they, too, will fly their pennants behind us.”

  The Hall broke into crashing applause. He glanced at his wife sitting silently in the corner of the front tier. How am I doing? Okay? The gray in his eyes were blazing with life again, its sheen enraptured with love for her.

  Jaime caught everything.

  She nodded, exchanging a smile, though Jaime understood now she was the better orator. It was her gift. Not Florin’s. But the public theater only had one plinth, and she willingly stepped aside so her husband could take it, thus giving great power to them both.

  Wow.

  For a second, he almost prayed to Lord Jaypes that one day, he would find this sort of true
love, and a woman like Prescilla, or else he would die—but he caught himself in time.

  You don’t believe in Lord Jaypes, remember?

  “Prince Jamian is our god’s chosen,” Florin called. “The Holy Lord delivered him to our gate—this is unequivocal. We, my councilors, were hand-picked to serve him. Let us refuse to be fettered any longer; let us march into a red dawn of courage and strength. The Temple prophesized that with our Prince, Usheon Ottega will fall. In a fortnight, so it will begin with Archpriestess Damasia, the traitor airpriest.”

  More roars.

  You’re all wrong.

  Nausea crawled up his mouth. He still couldn’t draw a breath of air since his training, and worse—they didn’t know that he not only didn’t believe in the gods, but he hated their supposed God of Air for pitting him against his own father.

  “Jaime,” said Florin.

  He shook his head into the present. The assembly was adjourning.

  “You will be our guest of honor. Prescilla and I have something special planned at the end of the festival. Will you join us in the akropolis tomorrow night, twelfth hour?”

  His heart fell. Despite his affirmations last night, he didn’t want to have anything to do with worshipping Lord Jaypes.

  “Is it something I said, my Prince?” Florin bent down to eye-level. “You are upset.”

  Jaime looked away. “No, I—I’m fine. I just don’t think openly throwing a pepkos is a good idea, my lord.”

  “We mobilized a lochos under the Emblem of Air; we cannot go back to slavery and subjugation now.”

  “I know.” Jaime forced himself to meet the Mayor’s face. “I’ll be there tomorrow night. What’s planned?”

  “You’ll see,” Florin smiled.

  The next day, Achuros went missing. Jaime resolved to meditating and studying the tomes on his own since his mentor left him with no direction. Probably advising City Hall with the pepkos.

  But the banestorm’s winds were ferocious today, and the lump in his stomach wouldn’t go away. The more Arcurea broke into reckless celebrations and athletic competitions, the more he felt as restless as the gusts.