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

Lia was more than cross by the time she and Aria arrived at Mateo’s gate, Aria’s little voice an unending stream of ridiculousness. She scowled at the Montannes’ house. Who chose to live on the edge of a sea cliff, nothing but wind, sea spray, and a deathly drop? In an attack the only place you could go would be over the cliff and into the angry waves below.

“I just think you need to consider it, Lia.” Aria was still talking as she directed her horse into the courtyard, wind coming off the sea making a riot of her red curls. “If you’re going to get married, a duel is necessary. Just to make sure he isn’t a sissy. And if Daddy won’t do it, it has to be me.”

Maybe normal people didn’t think about attacks. The wind smelled like salt, picking at Lia’s scarf as she followed her sister through the gate on Mateo’s little mare, her head ducked as if she were a servant. Aria impatiently adjusted the large hat and scarf Lia had insisted she wear, because if Ewan was going to remember anyone, it was the little girl who’d manage to bloody him. “I don’t see why any of this is happening anyway. You just got home. Surely, you don’t need to get married right now.”

“If anyone duels Mateo, it will be me.” A stinging bead of sweat slid down Lia’s temple, and she glared up at the morning sun. How could it be windy and hot at the same time? She swung her leg over Bella’s saddle and slid to the ground, then handed her over to the hostler who’d come out to greet them. “I’ve taken care of her,” she said quietly to him, “but please be sure to check her over for me?”

The hostler gave a curt nod and took the horse’s lead. Lia gave the mare a fond pat before the man led her away. Mateo’s mare was the most placid little thing Lia had ever ridden. It made her miss Vivi and his penchant for attempting to bite passersby even though he knew she would never stand for it—one of the many games he liked to play.

Maybe there was a way to extract Vivi from the governor’s stables? Lia sighed, letting her auroshe sit at the back of her mind as she looked up at Aria. “Father’s only going to be busy at the governor’s compound for a few hours—until the governor is done blaming him for whatever happened at his party last night, I guess. We have to do this quick, so keep your mouth shut and don’t embarrass me.”

The hostler waiting to take Aria’s horse looked down, uncomfortable.

“Embarrass you?” Aria slid off her horse, then took off her hat and scarf with a smirk. “Didn’t cross my mind even once.”

“Right. You’re officially restricted to this courtyard. Do not move, I’ll be back in a minute.”

Just as Aria’s lip began to protrude in a pout, the manor’s front door creaked open, and Tual Montanne himself came out onto the steps. “Lia! You’re so kind to come check on my son.”

Lia swallowed, ignoring Aria’s goggling eyes looking up at her. Checking on Mateo had not been her purpose at all—they had things to discuss, namely how he was hiding his aura from the sky-cursed Warlord and the entire rank and file of Devoted—but saying so out loud seemed rude, so she met Tual on the stairs. “How is he doing?”

“Much better, thank you. Won’t you come in?” His eyes moved to Aria, and he put a hand to his forehead. “Oh dear, I’m being unpardonably rude. I don’t know how I could have missed seeing you there, Miss Aria. Your hair stands out like rubies set in gold.”

Aria wrinkled her nose.

“Too much?” Tual smiled. “I appreciate a girl who can’t be flattered into good humor. Come along! Let’s see if apricot biscuits and cream will do the job.”

Inside, Tual left them in the sitting room where Mateo had lain like a corpse the day before. Aria settled on the blue paisley couch next to Lia, her feet kicking at the expensive Beildan carpet as she took everything in.

“He may have let you inside, Aria,” Lia growled out of the corner of her mouth, “but you aren’t allowed to say a word.”

“How else am I going to find out if you’ve kissed Mateo yet?”

“Gross.” Lia shuddered.

“So you have?”

“No!”

“Like I can trust you to tell the truth.”

Lia opened her mouth to ask why Aria was so interested in kissing, but Tual came in before she could, a tray with apricot biscuits and a bowl of cream in his hands.

Mateo trailed in after him, dark circles under his eyes. His face seemed as if it had been shaved down an inch or two since the day before, his cheekbones sharp. His hair was perfectly combed, and his shirt and unbuttoned coat had more color in them than all the sitting room furniture combined.

Aria’s eyes went wide. “You’re much floppier than I remember. Is Daddy really going to make Lia marry you?”

Lia bit her tongue, blood coppery in her mouth.

Mateo moodily threw himself into the chair farthest from them, then crossed his ankles and let his head loll back. “That’s what I hear.”

“Well, you don’t have to be so snooty about it.” Aria frowned.

“Believe me, I can be much snootier than this.”

Tual laughed, setting the tray on the low table in front of Aria. “Now, Mateo. If you hadn’t been with Lia yesterday—”

“I know.” Mateo took in a long breath and let it out with a huff. Sat up. Looked directly at Lia. “Thank you very much for dragging my limp body back here, Lia Seystone. I owe you my life. May all our years together be littered with similarly embarrassing incidents.”

Lia rubbed a hand across her face, fingers meeting the cloth of her scarf. In all her years of being a Devoted, no one had spoken to her with so much wounded pride and so little respect. She had to hold herself very, very still in order to keep from laughing.

“You’re right, Lia.” Aria took a biscuit and crammed half of it into her mouth, dribbling crumbs down her front as she tried to speak around it. “Dueling him would be mean. He probably can’t even pick up a sword.”

Mateo groaned, pulling himself up from the chair. “I’m going to the dig.” He pointed at Lia. “That’s really why you’re here, right? You brought my horse back? I’ve been trapped here for almost a whole day.”

“Yes, I brought Bella.” Lia sprang to her feet, wondering how to get Mateo on his own so she could bully him into telling her what she needed to know. “She’s a good little horse. Made me miss my mount.”

“Your… auroshe?” Mateo squinted. “Not quite the same thing, is it?”

Lia blinked, suddenly feeling teary. They’d hardly let her ride Vivi once she’d begun studying with the spiriters two years before—it was only because no other Devoted had managed to bond with him that she’d been able to keep visiting him at all. She’d been allowed to brush and feed Vivi. Take care of him. Watch as Devoted took him out and tried the dominance ritual over and over, attempting to get close enough to touch the base of his long, twisted horn and only getting bucked off, chased out of the arena, and sometimes gored for their trouble. They were alike, she and Vivi.

She shook her head, starting for the door. There must be something she could do to get Vivi back. “Stay here for a second, Aria. And you”—she pointed to Mateo—“I’ll walk you out. I need to show you—”

“Where my horse is? At my own house?” Mateo followed her, though.

Pausing in the entryway, Lia waited while Mateo took his hat from its peg before opening the door to the courtyard and walking out onto the veranda. The hat had a dirt spot on the back from where his head had hit the ground the day before.

“I need your help.” She said it as quietly as she could manage, looking over her shoulder to make sure Tual was too far to hear. Not being able to sense people made everything two steps harder than it should have been. “You fainted very conveniently yesterday when you were supposed to be telling me how you hide your aura.”

“I don’t know why you can’t see my aura, but I’m not doing anything to hide it, so you can stop trying to browbeat me into telling you. Harlan!” He waved to the hostler, who came running from the stable, a gust of wind almost taking his hat before he clamped a hand down on top of it. “I really do have to go to the dig, so you and your sister can scamper off now. This tomb might mean the difference between a lot of people living or dying, so…”

He trailed off, turning to look over his shoulder at the gate.

“We need Mateo’s horse,” Lia instructed the hostler, and waved him off before he could speak, then whirled to face Mateo. “I can’t see your aura because I’m diminished. There will be at least six other Devoted with the Warlord when she comes, but that doesn’t seem to matter to you or your father. They can’t see you. How?”

Mateo’s back suddenly went very, very straight. “Lia, get lost, would you?”

“Excuse me?” She took a step toward him, and he stumbled back, his spine hitting one of the veranda supports. “Your father said he’d cause trouble for me and my family. Seems like I could hurt you just as easily if I wanted.”

“The Warlord already knows everything she needs to about me, but thanks for asking. And she’s going to know about you, too, if you don’t get out of here.”

“Is that a threat?”

Mateo pointed toward the road, and suddenly Lia heard the distinct scratch of auroshe hooves on dirt. She turned, and there they were on the road: three Roosters headed for the gate. She grabbed Mateo’s ridiculous coat. “Did you—”

“I didn’t do anything. Come on.” He darted into the stable, and Lia followed, her mind flicking through calculations of where they’d go, how she could get out… but Aria was inside. She couldn’t leave Aria, no matter how bratty she was.

They ignored the waving hostler, Lia keeping right on Mateo’s heels despite her sinking heart. The Warlord already knew about Mateo? That still didn’t account for how she hadn’t seen him when she searched the city twice. Could he be naturally hidden somehow? Maybe something to do with his diet, or something Tual had done accidentally with medicine? He was an aukincer, after all, and no one really knew what those old remedies did.

Mateo dove into a box stall at the very back of the stable and ducked down into the hay. “They won’t see us back here.”

“They won’t see us…?” Lia groaned, looking around the little stall. She’d thought he was taking her to a back way out, but no, Mateo meant to hide here. Maybe aukincers’ sick sons skipped the don’t-trap-yourself-in-small-quarters-when-fleeing-an-enemy lesson at their fancy universities. She peeked up over the edge of the stall’s barrier, catching a glimpse of fancy braids and auroshe teeth outside. The worst fight Mateo had been in had probably involved the peacock he’d denuded to trim his coat.

She could fight Roosters easily enough—at least, she could have with Calsta’s power flowering her aura. Now, after two years stuck under the veil without training, and Calsta leaving her a dry husk? Lia’s jaw clenched. She would not go back to the governor’s house. She would not go back to Ewan.

The stable door slid open, and the hostler threw himself inside, the Roosters just behind him. He ran to the horses stabled near the front. “… it isn’t fair to the other animals!” he was saying. “This isn’t at all how things are usually done.…”

Ducking back down, Lia hissed, “Is there another way out?”

The horses began to snort, the sound of their fearful shuffling loud in Lia’s ears. Mateo looked up from where he was slouched in the hay. “Hiding in here will be fine. We wait until they leave, and—”

“They’re going to stable the auroshes back here, Mateo.”

“They wouldn’t dare.…” Mateo sat bolt upright, his brim catching on the wall and knocking his hat into the hay. His little mare began to scream. “Those sky-rotted, bloodthirsty—” Lia grabbed hold of Mateo’s coat before he could launch himself into the aisle to yell at the three Roosters leading their mounts into the stable. It went against the rules to put auroshes with just about any other kind of livestock without proper barriers, but she’d broken the rules enough times herself to know most people wouldn’t argue too much with Devoted. A wooden thump echoed through the stable as one of the horses threw itself against its stall door in an attempt to escape.

Lia slipped through the box stall door, towing Mateo behind her past the rest of the enclosed compartments. The place had open rafters and high windows set into the wall, but no way to get to them without putting themselves on complete display. A loft… She redoubled her grip on Mateo’s arm. “Where are the stairs to the loft?”

“You’re inviting me up into the hayloft? When my horse is right there screaming her head off? I’m not sure how I—”

“If you say another word, I will break your skull.” She wrenched him around the corner just as the first Rooster stepped into the area in front of the box stalls. His auroshe looked right at her and gave a nasty chirp. “Show me how to get up there.”

Mateo breathed in, his head cocking to the side as if he was giving himself some kind of internal pep talk. The air was full of frightened horse noises and the hostler’s low voice as he tried to soothe them. One of the Roosters laughed as he led his mount into a stall, an ungrateful, callous sound—it was Balan, she thought. All muscle and furious nods whenever Ewan spoke.

Lia hated him for it.

Finally Mateo started down along the other side of the stalls, casting a concerned look toward his mare. But he turned into a small passage with stairs at the end.

“Was someone back here?” Balan’s voice rang out. “There’s a hat.…”

Both Mateo and Lia froze, Mateo reaching up to touch his head as if he could somehow make it reappear where it was supposed to be.

“I saw Master Mateo come in with his lady friend. But if they were still here, he would have come out to help his mare,” the hostler yelled over the horses’ noise.

Lia bolted for the stairs, Mateo a clomping signal flare behind her. One side of the loft was covered, shielding them from sight, but she could feel the auroshes quieting, their eyes all pointing toward where she and Mateo slid to a stop against the loft’s enclosed railing. The roof was thatched, so maybe if she pushed her way through…

“There’s someone up there.”

“Well, I did say Master Mateo came in with his lady friend.…”

Mateo’s face twisted. “Great. As if I need my father to hear—”

“We’ll need to clear the area to ensure the safety of the household.” The Rooster’s voice quieted, speaking only to the other Roosters. “You two go talk to the aukincer. I’ll bring the little master in.”

Lia swore under her breath, climbing up to where the straw roof met the wall.

“What are you doing?” Mateo rasped.

“Trying to make sure they find you alone.” The straw bit at her fingers, too tightly tied to get through without a knife. “But our conversation about aura hiding isn’t over. I’ll be back tonight.”

Footsteps rang out on the stairs. Balan wasn’t even trying to be quiet. And there was no way out.

“Do you have a weapon, Mateo?” Lia snarled. “Anything?”

Mateo dug a hand into his satchel, coming up with a selection of pencils.

“Here.” She held out her hand, catching them when he threw them over.

Balan faltered when he got to the top of the stairs, his gaze darting to Mateo, who was pressed against the wall, then coming back to her. “Is that… Spiriter Seystone?”

Lia’s heart fell at what she’d have to do. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. She let him start to draw his sword, his hesitation both sweet and unfortunate, because it was exactly what she needed. Lia was on him before he could get it free.

Her foot snapped against his ribs and then into his stomach, though it didn’t do much good through his leather armor. At least he was wearing only light riding leathers. Lia spun, swinging her other foot up to crash into his jaw.

Balan staggered back into an aggressive stance, but he’d been trained to fight with Devoted, not against them. Against shields and spears and people in armor who moved a hair too slow. Lia had never been a hair too slow, even without a drop of Calsta’s gold.

She heard Mateo gasp as she rolled to the side, kicking Balan’s front leg out from under him, sending him staggering toward the rail. His sword was out now, held in front of him with a snarl. He lunged, and Lia darted closer, turning her shoulders so it swished by her ribs, her dress ripping on its blade. But then she was close enough, rapping a fist against his bicep to make him drop the sword, then skewering the pencils toward his throat.

He blocked the sharpened pencils just in time, grabbing hold of her wrist and throwing Lia to the floor. Her head and back hit one of the railing support beams, knocking the breath from her lungs. Lights popped into existence at the edges of her vision, but Lia forced herself up, spun a kick into his knee, then reversed into a jab to his throat.

“Lia!” Lia looked up in time to see a thin razor between Mateo’s fingers, suited for sharpening pencils. And ending this fight.

She turned into Balan’s chest, stabbing under his arm through the gap in his armor with the pencils. He yelped as they pierced his armpit, hunching forward over Lia and gasping for air. His hot, awful breath was in Lia’s nose, gusting across her cheeks, trapping itself under her scarf to strangle her. And one horrible image flickered across her vision.

Ewan. Ewan with his hands on her.

She froze, Ewan’s awful smile like an ice pick in the middle of her brain. This was what she should have done to him. This was—

“Lia!” Mateo’s voice sliced through her thoughts, jerking her back to reality just in time to see the blunt hilt of Balan’s sword swinging toward her face. She ducked, stumbling toward the railing.

“I…” Balan’s voice was thick. Pained. “I don’t want to hurt you. We need to get you back—”

Lia surged forward, slamming Balan’s head into the support beam. “Throw it!” she yelled at Mateo, opening her hand for the thin razor. “Do it.”

“You want me to throw a razor at you while you’re…” Mateo gestured quite vigorously.

“For Calsta’s sake! If I move too far away from him, he’ll be able to use the sword. Throw the sky-cursed razor!”

Mateo tossed the tiny blade toward her, not nearly enough force behind the throw. Lia ducked Balan’s arms grabbing for her and dove for the razor, snagging it between her fingers. Rolling out of the dive, she latched on to one of the support beams and swung around it, then landed light on her feet behind the Rooster. Slashing the razor at his cuirass buckles, she managed to detach two. She followed his movements to keep behind him, slashing the third and fourth buckles before he could get around, leaving his side exposed. Lia snapped a kick into his bare side, then swung the second into his spine. He tried to stumble away, but Lia kicked up off the floor, meaning to lock her knees around his neck. If she could knock him out, he might forget—

Her skirts caught on his gauntlet, twisting tight around Lia’s leg as her flip turned into a fall, slamming her to the floor with a spine-shattering thump. May Calsta destroy all skirts.

She groaned, hands going to her head. The razor had made a bloody mess of her hand. Balan’s outline was blurred as he lurched toward her. Head screaming, Lia pulled her knees in and arched up from the floor, landing on her feet. Something fluttered through the air—did Mateo just throw hay?—into Balan’s face. The Rooster jerked back just as she barreled into his legs, cutting them out from under him. His back hit the rail. Which snapped.

And he went down. Right into the auroshe stall beneath them.

A horrible snarl filled the air, and a frantic scream. A second auroshe began to keen, the awful sound pulsing in Lia’s head. She couldn’t look—Balan’s own auroshe would try to protect him, but he must have fallen into a different auroshe’s stall. Auroshes were loyal only to their master and skittish enough that falling down from above was enough of an invitation.

The scream cut off in an awful gurgle.

“You…” Mateo was still gasping as if he couldn’t breathe. “You just…”

Lia couldn’t move. She hadn’t meant to kill him, but that didn’t change the wet tearing sounds coming from below.

Who else in this place would kill a Rooster and risk the Warlord’s wrath? Who else even could? Ewan would know she’d been here. Lia pulled herself up and started for the stairs.

“You kill a man and run?” Mateo was huddled in the straw, hands over his face as if he couldn’t accept even his own small part in the fight. “What happens when the other Roosters come out here and find…” He gulped, pointing straight down. “That.”

Lia’s chest was made of iron, welded shut. “I don’t know. I have to get out of here. Come with me so they don’t think—not that they would think you could do this.”

Mateo was staring at one of his pencils, bloodied on the tip and lying dead in the straw.

The stable’s main door cracked open, light flooding into the darkness. Lia dropped down beside Mateo as two forms entered: Tual and Aria.

The auroshes screamed.

“She’s supposed to take it every morning with some food.” Tual’s words barely filtered through the noise, the auroshes lunging toward Balan’s body, the one on the very end striking at the door’s lock as if it could open the stall to save its rider from the others. “Make sure her attending healers know,” Tual continued even as he ran a casual eye across the back of the barn, weighing first on the auroshes and then on the loft, where Lia and Mateo hid. He turned his attention back to Aria, pulling out a packet of what looked like herbs. Lia’s chest panged. They’d been inside discussing her mother and medicine? While she’d been doing what Calsta had taught her to do.

Calsta. Lia sent her thoughts up toward the sky. Balan served you. He was trying to take me back to where you probably want me to be. But is that really what you want for me? Every moment before Ewan attacked me made me unhappy. And after…

The next thought clenched inside her, twisted tight with desperation. What am I supposed to do now? And is it the same as what I think you’d ask me to do? Lia tried to breathe, but it was like she couldn’t get enough air. There was blood dripping down her hand.

“Mother’s already looking a little better,” Aria’s little voice piped up, so much more serious than Lia would have expected. “Daddy won’t even let Lia see her yet, she was so bad. But I think maybe soon…”

Mateo leaned a little closer, listening.

But Aria didn’t continue, looking up when one of the auroshes crooned in her direction. The creature had turned away from the meal it couldn’t reach, poking its horn out of the stall toward Lia’s sister, trilling as if it meant to sing to her.

Grip on the railing painful, Lia tried to see how she could stop Aria from coming any closer. She’d see the Rooster, the blood.…

“I wouldn’t.” Tual casually stepped between Aria and the closed stalls. “They’re vicious creatures, even if they are beautiful. It’s always beauty that fools us, isn’t it?”

Lia could almost hear Aria rolling her eyes. “If you say so. And you’re sure Lia went into town with Mateo? Without even telling me she was going to abandon me here?”

“Young love. You’ll understand someday.”

Lia could feel Mateo gagging next to her, though it was hard to tell if it was over the dead man or the sentiment. Once Aria was on her horse and out of the stable, Tual turned to face the auroshe stalls. He walked back slowly and stopped in front of the stall with the dead man and the creature that was eating him.

Finally he tipped his chin up toward the loft. “Let’s get you out of there, shall we?” he called softly.

Lia felt a tear burn down her cheek.

“Get who out of where?” Mateo called back. “I wish you’d come to save me ten minutes ago, before Lia… destroyed three of my favorite pencils.” He looked quite pale in the dust-flecked beams of light coming through the thatch, the back of his hand to his mouth as though he might vomit.

Lia’s stomach was similarly unsettled. She offered a hand to Mateo to help him up, not understanding his grimace until she looked down and saw the blood dripping from the razor cuts on her palm. “Sorry,” she whispered, switching hands. It was oddly gratifying when Mateo accepted the help up, though his legs were shaking. Poor butterfly boy with his peacock wars and his coloring pencils.

“What happened?” Tual took in the sight of the dead man and the snarling auroshe with a sad eye, flinching when the creature charged at him, stabbing through the slats with its two horns. “No, I don’t want to know.” He looked back up at Mateo. “The rest of the Roosters are inside waiting. Would you please keep them entertained for the next half hour so I can… take care of this?” He frowned down at the body. “Apparently, Director Van has discovered something new, and he’s coming to appreciate your special talents, Mateo. Say I sent this one”—he gestured toward Balan’s body—“on an errand or something, and I’ll be sure his auroshe is gone when they come out. They came to escort you to the dig, and the other two can do it just as easily.”

Take care of it? This one? Lia hugged her arms about her middle, still unable to make herself look down at Balan. Tual was so cold. Was her own father this bad? He had tried to hire someone to murder the governor. Lia’s arms squeezed tighter. Killing people was Devoted work, work she’d hated. But those fights had always been dangerous—kill or let yourself and everyone else be killed by dangerous magic. This was different.

And why was everything centered around this dig? Ewan had been there, according to Mateo. The Roosters were going today. How was it she hadn’t heard a single mention of the place, not even in Ewan’s thoughts… though she supposed he’d been quite preoccupied for most of the trip. She shuddered and leaned back against a supporting beam, her breaths still coming too fast. I’m sorry, Calsta. I’m supposed to hunt Basists, but what do I do when my fellows are hunting me?

Tual jabbed his chin back toward the house. “Go on, Mateo. I’ll take Lia home in the skiff after I deal with… everything.” He didn’t look back at Balan’s body.

Mateo did not look down at the bloody stall either as he brushed the straw from his coat and trousers. He saluted Lia and turned toward the stairs.

Something inside Lia softened just a little. He’d been scared and tried to help anyway… and this was awful. Watching had to have been awful. She couldn’t blame him for not looking at her as he walked away.

But she also couldn’t let him walk away. Not now. Balan disappearing would only make the hunt for her intensify—might even focus it on Mateo’s house. Now it was twice as important that she find a way to hide, to run, to fight.… If only she had Vivi, two of those things wouldn’t be so hard.

Perhaps getting him back would be a good start.

“Tonight,” she whispered, wishing she didn’t mind the way his shoulders tightened at the sound of her voice. “In your courtyard.” Maybe he really didn’t know how his aura was hidden, but he could do one thing: get into the governor’s compound, where Vivi was stabled. “Sundown. If you don’t show up, I’ll drag you out of your window.” She was proud of how calm she sounded, every inch a Devoted. “You know I could.”

She thought she saw Mateo shudder before he disappeared into the stairway’s shadows only to reappear in the light of the main door. Tual spared a smile for his son as he passed. “Bring some of your medicine to the dig with you. And don’t let Van keep you down there for more than an hour.”

Mateo nodded, not looking back even once as he walked to the stable door, stopping only to pat his frightened mare. Once he was gone, Tual tipped his chin up to look at Lia once again. “Seems like you have a stomach for politics after all, Lia Seystone. Why don’t you come down from there? I think it’s time we talked, just the two of us.”