She Who Rides the Storm (The Gods-Touched Duology)

Anwei pulled out from under Knox’s arm, her ears straining for the sounds of footsteps he could hear but she couldn’t. All she could smell was the cinnabar stench coming from Knox, the edge only barely taken off by the herbs she’d jammed down his throat.

Everyone should have been running out of the ballroom by now. Who would run this way?

She hitched up her skirts and cinched the medicine bag’s strap tight around her hips, letting the bag itself hang against the backs of her knees, where it would be hidden under the long gown’s ruffles. Knox stumbled toward the window, one hand against the wall for balance.

Anwei beat him to it just as the first footsteps in the hall reached her ears. The door jiggled and she was glad she’d thought to lock it. Anwei hopped up into the deep window well and stood between Knox and the leaded glass, the sticky, clotted red of his breath still harsh in her nose. “We can’t get out this way,” she whispered. “You can hardly walk.”

He tried to pull himself up next to her but tipped sideways and stumbled, as if the earth had suddenly tilted under his feet. “We can’t fight them.” He swallowed loudly. “They’ll see we took… the book. Shapeshifter will know… we’re looking for him.”

His words slurred and fell apart at the end, and he put a hand to his forehead as if his neck could no longer hold up his head. Anwei cursed the weight of her medicine bag under her skirts as the doorknob rattled. So many useful things inside, but no way to use them. Knox falling out the window to his death wasn’t going to help anyone, though, so she stood her ground in front of the window, batting his hands away when he tried to unlatch the fancy new lock on the frame. They didn’t have much time before the poison would eat him through.

A key slid into the door’s lock.

Knox managed to pull one of the windows open. Anwei could feel the confusion in his mind, the frustration of his body moving too slow. The book she’d gotten from the secret drawer weighed on her, begging to be taken back to the apothecary. She’d only been able to look at the first pages—a map of the tomb, tiny notations showing where traps had been set—but the book had to contain the worker lists and guard rotations they were after.

The door cracked open, the hinges squeaking.

Getting caught wasn’t an option. But neither was leaving Knox. So Anwei did the only thing she could think of and kissed him.

Or she tried to. She grabbed a handful of his hair and shoved her face toward his. Knox jerked back, pushing Anwei away hard enough she almost fell through the open window. He staggered backward, toppling off his feet to land on the floor, knocking his head against the ornate desk.

Three men stood in the doorway, their mouths open. The one in front seemed to have frozen, his hand fused to the latch, key clenched in his hand. “What…,” he sputtered. “What in Calsta’s name are you doing in here? This part of the house is not open for… for…” His cheeks went cherry red as he found the top of Knox’s head, the only part of him visible from the door. “For entertainment. How did you get in here?”

“We wanted a place to talk, is all.” Anwei whispered it, hardly grateful for the heat blooming in her face, because it was real.

Knox clapped his hands over his ears as if she were speaking too loud. His face had turned an awful, embarrassed red under his light brown skin, his expression about ten degrees worse than horrified as he stared up at her.

“Well, I’m sorry to inform you, but the governor’s personal study is not a suitable place for trysts, young lady.” The man brushed away the guest behind him who pointed to the single knot in Anwei’s scarf, his lips peeling back to show the governor’s house mark on his left canine. “No, I don’t care who she is. In fact…” He squinted at Anwei, and she drew herself in, trying to decide how she could get to her herbs under her skirt. “I don’t recognize you, young lady. I hope you know impersonating a first khonin will get you two days in the stocks.” He strode forward, edging around the desk to get a look at Knox. “And this young man… that’s not a real house uniform.” He pulled Knox up by his collar, and Anwei willed Knox to be still as she felt his fists clench. “It’s not even the right color. You”—he pointed at one of the two men still standing in the door—“bring me two guards. And then inform the governor of this breach.”

“Yes, Master Gein.” The man took off down the hall at a run.

Master Gein. The governor’s house steward. That explained his single braid and house mark somehow paired with so much authority. Anwei pushed between the steward and Knox, thrusting a hand into one of her dress pockets. She tore through it, and her fingers glanced across the calistet bag with its distinctive button. Shoving it aside, Anwei grabbed the bag of corta leaves instead. She wrenched them free and threw them in the steward’s face, though without being ground up, the petals weren’t smelly enough to do more than make him rear back in alarm.

But it was enough of a distraction. Anwei bowled into the steward’s stomach, knocking him into the desk. His head hit the edge, and he fell to the floor. The man in the doorway surged toward her, fumbling for the knife in his belt. Anwei threw herself behind the desk, the bag knocking into her knees and throwing her off-balance. Her knees hit the floor just as the man swiped with his knife toward her neck.

But then Knox was there, popping into existence where he hadn’t been before. He batted the knife away, sending it through the air to stick, trembling, in the governor’s ornate bookcase. Knox crashed into the man, slamming his head into the wall, then jabbed his knuckles into the man’s airway. The man fell to the ground, limp.

Knox turned to face Anwei, standing straight, as if there weren’t a single ounce of poison in his system. In that second Anwei thought she saw a sort of glow about him, golden flecks skittering across the air like sparks around a bonfire. Even the connection she felt to him seemed to have cleared a little, the poison smell in her nose dulling to a tarnished rose. The herbs she’d given him had taken full effect, but they wouldn’t last.

Anwei jumped up from the floor, skipped over the fallen man, and grabbed a fistful of Knox’s jacket, then towed him out of the room behind her. It only took a few steps before he started stumbling again, the slick, silvery red showing through. She pulled him down the hall toward the main wing and settled him behind a column in the candlelit entry hall. All was calm, the sound of music and laughter echoing from the ballroom. None of this was right. What had happened to Noa and her ghosts?

“Stay here,” she told Knox, her stomach lurching when he began to laugh.

“I… I don’t think I can move my legs.” He giggled. “Why are you holding me like this? It reminds me—”

“You have to be quiet,” she whispered. “Stay still, so the poison doesn’t spread as fast. Can you do that?”

“This is like my dream.” He grinned, looking up at her, his face completely open. “You kissed me. But it wasn’t against the rules.”

A spark flared in Anwei’s chest, something inside her unlocking. Knox had dreamed about kissing her? And… there were rules? There had always been rules between them, but she didn’t remember that one coming up. Was that why… She shook the thought away, holding him up against the column, her hands starting to shake. “Shut up and sit still, Knox.”

“Why?” His words slurred, his eyes glazed and unfocused.

Because you could be dying. Anwei’s fingers pressed hard into his shoulders, her stomach sick. “Because if we don’t get Noa and ride out of here in the next few minutes, the governor is going to find two unconscious men in his study and shutter the whole compound. Don’t move.”

She left him there in the shadows and ran toward the ballroom, her bag hitting the backs of her legs with every step. After skidding to a stop in front of the ballroom’s ridiculous, gold-mottled doors, Anwei forced herself to walk in, her chin held high. The dimly lit room was full of clothing meant to glitter in candlelight, horned and flowered headdresses, red-heeled boots and peacock plumes imported from the west, and so much alcohol that the air seemed to distort over each guest’s head, as if the room were full of ghosts. Anwei tried to focus her nose, to shut everything else out but Noa. She had to find Noa. But there were only traces of Noa’s lemongrass perfume in the air, leading Anwei nowhere.

A buxom first khonin—Lady Brehlan, whom Anwei had relieved of a very muscular clay rendition of the magistrate only last year—stumbled into Anwei, spilling her goblet of amber malt across Anwei’s silvery dress.

“Oh, my dear child, you were standing right in my way!” the old lady began, but Anwei couldn’t hear anything else because a sudden, animalistic keen filled the air.

The lines of couples dancing at the center of the room floundered to a stop, bumping into one another as people looked up to find the source of the noise. Knox burned at the back of Anwei’s head, a sudden flare of pain rocketing through her.

No. Noa was starting now? Anwei turned away from Lady Brehlan, frantically looking for stairs that would lead to the upper balconies.

“Six hundred years he slept.” The voice hissed out from above. The musicians’ instruments screeched to sudden silence, matched by the stillness of five hundred people all holding their breath.

An otherworldly shriek rocked the air, and a bloom of flame spurted up from each of the four corners of the room. Anwei searched wildly for the men who had done it. Noa said she’d bring people from her fire-dancing troupe to help.…

It was too late to stop it, but maybe Anwei could finish it early. Before the governor came storming in with guards, looking for thieves. Before Knox crumpled to nothing in the entry hall. She stuck a hand into the pocket she’d torn through to get to her bag. Another screech echoed from behind the musicians, and there was another bloom of flames.

“Six hundred years he lay buried in the ground,” the voice from above cried. “Who dares to wake the shapeshifter? Who dares to wake the nameless god’s servant who devoured so many of my brothers and sisters …?”

Anwei found the leftover cluster of oil-soaked capsules she’d concocted for Noa, the smell of them charring in her head when she pulled them out. She’d kept back only a few, but they would do.

“Let him sleep, or he will return. He will return!” Noa’s voice rose to a ghostly shriek. Anwei purposely bumped into Lady Brehlan to cover her movement as she threw all the little capsules. They ignited in sparks and skittered across the floor with ugly hisses, issuing black smoke. A flash of flame flew from an upper alcove like a firebird, soaring across the ballroom to crash into the table behind Lady Brehlan.

Anwei hadn’t given anything that big to Noa.

She sprinted for the door, barreling past merrily burning drapes, a cluster of the little pellets she’d made dead ash underneath them. In her head, Knox seemed to be on fire too.

“I’ll visit you in the night.” This time a man spoke, a laugh bottled up behind the words. Anwei couldn’t stop to listen, but she knew Bear’s voice. A new line of trepidation lanced through her as she ran—of all the silly things Noa could have done, she’d brought in the governor’s own blasted son? The very same man she was trying to escape from?

“I’ll make your eyes bleed, your cheeks hollow, and your bones turn brittle.…” Bear’s voice trailed off into a ghostly wail that chased Anwei and the other fleeing high khonins down the hall. “I’ll eat your souls!”

Anwei sprinted to the sitting room just off the entryway where Noa had agreed to meet her. It was empty except for two long white couches before the blazing fire. Anwei forced herself to stand by the stone fireplace, the yellow green of burning pine blocking out all the smells threatening to overwhelm her. She counted the quills and books carved into the stone, the homage to the scholar god Castor keeping her mind focused as she waited one minute. Terrified guests were running into the entryway. During minute two Lady Brehlan stumbled past the sitting room door with her makeup smudged, a yellow malt stain on her dress, and her attendants crying. By minute four the guards patrolling outside had come running into the house, heading for the ballroom.

But no Noa.

Without Noa there was no way out. Not with the book.

Had the governor found his steward in the study? How long could it have taken for that servant to fetch him? They’d lock the whole compound and interrogate guests one by one until they found her and Knox.

And by that time Knox would be dead.

The medicine bag felt too heavy, the straps pulling against Anwei’s hips. The book inside was all they needed to find the snake-tooth man. To end him.

But Noa wasn’t going to come. Not in time.

The heat of the flames burned into Anwei’s skin. She reached into her pocket, unknotted the medicine bag’s strap, and let it thump to the floor around her ankles. Then she wrenched the book open and flipped through the pages. She ripped out something that looked like a map. A list of shipping notes, a ledger with names… scholar, scholar, archeologist, Director Brellan Van. The name was at the bottom of the page, in normal ink, as if it didn’t belong to a murderer.

Anwei folded the pages and stuffed them down her undertunic, then threw the bag, the book, all of it, into the fire.

The smell of charcoal burned in Anwei’s nose as she shouldered her way through the stampede of frightened high khonins and servants to where Knox was hidden behind the column. His face was pale, but his eyes were sharp, taking in the pandemonium. The poison was pulsing inside him, her herbs muting its effect on his mind for the moment. “How long do we have?” he rasped.

“Maybe twenty minutes?” Anwei helped him up from the floor, barely managing to pull his arm across her shoulders before he fell. He was heavy, his arms limp and his head lolling to the side. Easing him toward the doors as high khonins crowded around them, Anwei got her first view of the gates.

A line of guards stood at attention, barring the frantic crowd from leaving the compound.

“We can’t go that way. We have to get out of here.” Knox veered to the side unexpectedly. His face had gone pale, the air around him hard and bright somehow, as if, for the first time, she were seeing him completely out of the shadows.

“Could you possibly try to balance on your feet—”

“No. We have to run. Ewan Hardcastle is coming.”

“Who?”

“The Devoted who chased me here a year ago. He’s coming.”

Anwei shoved herself past a weeping high khonin, an army of maids clustered around her with handkerchiefs. The gates were closed. Maybe they could get over the wall.

Knox sagged forward, all his weight threatening to pull Anwei over as she dragged him toward the compound’s ten-foot wall. It took to the count of thirty before she heard cloven hooves ringing against stone. “Come on, Knox.…” He wasn’t helping at all, his feet skidding across the cobblestones. She could hear the auroshes panting, snapping at one another.

“Out of the way!” The Devoted’s voice cut through the crowd like a storm just as Anwei tugged Knox into the wall’s shadows. She huddled next to him as a monster cantered past her, high khonins screaming as they threw themselves out of the way. Two more auroshes followed, but it was the first beast’s rider who drew Anwei’s eye, his hair pulled up to show off the shaved sides of his head. Three burn marks marred his skin just behind his ear on the right side.

Knox had said Devoted would see them. That any Devoted would kill them both the moment they saw their auras. Anwei suddenly couldn’t stop thinking about the gold she’d only just seen sparkling in the air around Knox when their minds had rushed together for that one frightening moment in the governor’s study. The purple mist that had folded across her vision, as if she were seeing herself through Knox’s eyes.

One hand fisted in Knox’s shirt, Anwei pressed him against the wall to keep him upright. To keep him there. Did shadows help disguise an aura?

The Devoted wheeled his auroshe to the side, the man himself dismounting in one fluid movement, the two Roosters following. He walked toward the stables. Or maybe he was walking toward Anwei; she couldn’t tell.

Anwei’s fingers dug into the stone, into the ivy clinging to its face. She could smell every stem, every leaf, the purple blooms that had closed for the evening. Earwigs and ants, a hunting spider. And Knox, inside her head.

Ewan Hardcastle. His name sounded like vomit in Knox’s thoughts. A storm they couldn’t weather. The Devoted walked toward them, his auroshe snuffling from side to side, sending frazzled servants and high khonins darting out of the creature’s reach. Closer every step. She’d burned her medicine bag. Now she had no weapons. No way to fight.

They can’t have Knox. It was a clear thought in her head. If Knox is right and I’m somehow still connected to a god somewhere… She looked up, around, down at the ground, not sure where the nameless god was supposed to be. Now would be a really good time for some help, nameless god, whoever you are!

Knox jerked to the side, pulling away from her as something dark snaked across her vision. The plants behind her almost seemed to sing, all their voices coiled together, answering her call for help, their smells turning sharper than swords.

Ewan drew the sword at his back, his eyes sparking. The auroshe tried to rear, but he pulled it down with his lead, and the creature pranced forward with flecks of rosy spittle raining from its mouth. Knox pushed himself hard against the wall, and a shower of stone and dust trickled around him, the dull brownish gray of earthen brick and mortar crumbling in Anwei’s nose.

Anwei gasped as the bricks gave way behind her, leaving a thin opening between the fingers of ivy that had slithered straight through the wall. Looping Knox’s arm over her shoulders once again, she dragged him through the hole. He collapsed on the other side. She propped him up against the wall and stood over him, fists clenched, as if she could somehow fight off a Devoted holding a sword.

One second. Three.

Nothing came through the hole after them.

Breathing too fast, Anwei hauled Knox and his drunken steps down the road to the water, frantically waving once they got past the barriers to where carriages for hire were clustered. Their boat was moored clear down in the Ink Cay, where they’d thought wardens would be less likely to take note of it. Getting Knox to the apothecary was impossible; it was too far, and there wasn’t a ferry that would take them directly to it. Any other apothecary would be closed at this time of night. And that Devoted—

A carriage separated from the others to meet Anwei’s wave. The driver hopped out and opened the door to help Anwei lift Knox inside. “Too much to drink?” he asked.

Knox tensed, bending forward to dry-heave. He grabbed at Anwei, his eyes bulging. Ten minutes, that’s all Knox had. Anwei could trace the lines of his humors, the paths of his airways, the blood pulsing inside him as if it had all come alive.

“Yes. Too much to drink.” Anwei hopped into the carriage and pulled from above while the man lifted from below to get Knox onto the carriage floor. When the driver climbed back into his seat, she handed coins over the partition. “Gold Cay, please, as fast as you can—the Broken Arrow Malthouse. You can get across the channel?”

Knox curled toward her, his hand circling her ankle. “He’s…”

“Don’t try to talk.” Anwei’s voice shook. “We’re almost there.”

“He’s… a… pineapple.”

The word jabbed in her brain. Pritha in the northern language. No, priantia. A Trib holy man. A Trib.

Altahn.

The driver’s nose and mouth were covered by a scarf, like so many workers in Chaol, and Anwei couldn’t smell anything past Knox’s poison. But she knew to trust Knox.

Climbing onto the seat, Anwei reached over the partition and locked her elbow around the driver’s neck. He let go of the reins to pull at her arm, the horses continuing haphazardly down the road. Something inside his coat twitched, and then it was scurrying up her arm. Anwei held her grip around the man’s neck firmly, grabbing hold of the thing climbing toward her shoulder. Out of the corner of her eye she saw horned scales, long claws, and—

Flame bloomed from its mouth. A firekey. Anwei swore, not letting go. Instead she groped with her other hand, took the thing by the neck, and threw it from the carriage, then batted at her smoldering sleeve. Altahn struggled, trying to loosen her arm, but Anwei held firm until his head drooped and his arms went slack.

She had to squeeze to get over the partition, but Altahn’s hands and feet weren’t so difficult to tie with strips of Noa’s ridiculous silver dress. His dead weight strained her muscles as she flopped him over the partition into the carriage. She didn’t look at the burn, her sleeve charred and the skin under it red. It was nothing to Knox’s poison.

After driving the carriage to the Gold Cay ferry and then to Yaru’s temple, she tied up the horse behind the malthouse. Knox’s skin was hot where she touched his neck, his eyelashes fluttering only inches from her face.

“Lady of Blue. Queen of the Sky,” Knox whispered, turning his face into her shoulder as she helped him out of the carriage. His breath was hot through her thin sleeves.

“You should probably wait until you’re not dying to start thanking Calsta,” Anwei whispered, ignoring the Trib, who was still a boneless heap on the floor. As she dragged Knox into the malthouse and down the stairs, she tried not to think of the bricks, the plants growing and twisting through the wall, and the Devoted with his sword flashing, because it was impossible. It had been since the day of the storm. The same day she’d decided that gods were no more than stone and stories made up by people who wanted to feel like there was someone watching over them, keeping them safe.

But a plea still bubbled up inside her: Please. If you’re listening. Please help me get this poison out of him.

It was impossible. Gods were impossible, but for one fleeting second Anwei wondered if Knox had been thanking the wrong one.