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

Knox hopped off the driver’s seat of the wagon when Noa and her three friends tried to climb up next to him, singing a bawdy song about a girl with no knees. He went around to sit in the wagon bed, lodging himself between the wall and one of the hay bales. Five little goats lay in a cluster at the center, fast asleep. Drugged, so they wouldn’t wake up and call attention to the wagon on the road. Based on the way they’d bleated the whole way to the apothecary, Knox could appreciate the need for herbs.

“Come on, Knox!” Noa twisted around to look at him in the wagon bed. “Sing with us!”

Knox found an approximation of a smile but didn’t join, not that Noa or the others cared. They were loud enough to outbleat a whole herd of goats. The three dancers around Noa were laughing so hard, it hardly counted as singing anymore.

Screwing his eyes shut, Knox pulled the bow and the sheaf of arrows Anwei had doctored for him into his arms, hugging them to his chest. She was late. His life, Anwei’s life, hung on this job going well, and he was sitting in the back of a wagon with Noa and her troupe straight out of A Thousand Nights in Urilia.

He could feel Anwei getting closer in his head, and he thought at her to move faster. Willow stirred in interest, as if she were analyzing this new thing in his head and how she might go about destroying it. Or eating it. He couldn’t tell.

Anwei’s purple glow appeared only a moment before she vaulted over the back of the wagon. “Let’s go!” she called in a singsong voice before kneeling next to the goats to pat one on the head. “You’re supposed to be put away,” she whispered, lifting the trapdoor they’d made in the floor, and set the goats one by one into the compartment hidden under the wagon. It was big enough for a person, or two if those people were small.

Altahn wasn’t so small, and it was hard to know what size or shape Anwei’s snake-tooth man would be, but they’d both have to fit.

Noa took up the reins and flicked them against the horse’s back. The wagon lurched forward as Anwei snapped the compartment door closed, smoothed some hay across it, then wormed her way in next to Knox. There shouldn’t have been room for more than just him beside the hay bale, but Anwei managed to rearrange him so they both fit, just like she always did. He breathed in deep, worried about their argument the day before and how they hadn’t spoken since she’d stormed away from him. The flood from their bond ever since had been angry. And sad. And angry.

“Did Altahn go down okay?” he asked quietly, not sure how to speak to her.

She fussed with her bag, not looking at him. “Facedown in his tea. I tied him to your bed. I told Gulya I’m observing one of the Fig Cay plague victims upstairs, so hopefully she’ll stay clear. If she goes sniffing around up there, she might have questions for you when we get back.”

“Hopefully, she won’t ever see us again.”

The flash of sorrow that came through the bond took Knox by surprise. Anwei was going to miss Gulya, if he wasn’t mistaken. It didn’t show on her face, though. She squinted at the wagon bed, then rapped her knuckles against the floor. “This thing isn’t going to fall to pieces before we get there, is it?” It had taken him and Altahn most of the afternoon to exchange the carriage for the wagon, and then to build the compartments.

“Might be good to go quickly while we’re carrying two people under there, but yes, I think they’ll hold for now.” Knox contemplated the wagon bed between his feet.

Anwei pulled open the flap of her bag and extracted a small jar of white paste, looking up as a flurry of lights streamed across the sky like stars falling. The clop of the horse’s hooves changed to a muffled thud when the road turned from stone to packed dirt. They were already to the fields, it seemed. This was going too fast—and too slow, too. He hated the way there seemed to be so much more space between him and Anwei than usual. “Why were you late?” he finally asked. “I was worried something happened.”

After unscrewing the lid from the jar of white paste, Anwei stuck her fingers in, wrinkling her nose. “The truth serum took more time than I expected to drain.”

Knox held his breath a second, waiting for Willow to begin screaming at him—that he was betraying her by trying to find the shapeshifter, that he was trying to kill her again. But instead she was just a cold shiver that listened. Waited.

She wouldn’t be waiting long. After they had the sword and the shapeshifter, after Knox’s deal with Calsta was done and Willow was untethered and sent to her afterlife… after he and Anwei were on the road…

What then?

Knox focused on the paste on Anwei’s fingertips, the way the jar sat in her hands, leaving no room to finish that thought. Calsta’s energy seemed to flare inside him, a grim approval of his decision to chop that line of thinking at its base. This wasn’t over yet.

And Anwei was angry enough at him that he wasn’t sure there would be an after.

“What is that stuff for?” he asked.

Anwei turned toward him, one hand darting out to grab his chin. She swiped her fingers across his cheekbone, leaving the sticky feeling of paste. “It’s your ghost makeup.”

Knox bit his lip, looking up at the sky as Anwei smoothed another gob across his forehead, her fingers rubbing it down his temples and along his chin. “I’m sorry about earlier. You don’t have to—”

“You’re sorry for what?” She dabbed more across his forehead and between his eyes.

“Sorry I pushed you, sorry for everything. I just want things to be right between us again.”

“Are you just apologizing so you don’t have to wear face paint?”

Knox pulled back, swearing when his head slammed into the wagon’s edge. “Yes, so I don’t have to wear face paint. That makes the most sense for sure.” He rolled his eyes. “Anwei, I didn’t mean to make you upset. I just think we’re going to need you before this is done.”

“You’re going to need a monster, you mean. You want my claws to come out. But I don’t have claws.” Her fingers on his face poked a little too hard.

Knox put his hand over hers, flattening it against his cheek. “Anwei, honestly, you used to scare me. What you can do. Maybe even up until a few days ago.”

She pulled her hand, trying to get it away from him. “I can’t do what you want.”

“But I’m not scared anymore. If you don’t want to be a Basist, then fine. You’re just the Beildan who saved my life. And the best thief on this side of the Commonwealth. The pretty healer Gulya wants to save from me. But can’t you just… keep an open mind tonight? Just in case? I’ll help you if I can.”

She raised an eyebrow at him, but her eyes twitched toward her hand against his cheek, and he could feel the hum of something new coming from the bond. “You think I’m pretty now?”

Noa tumbled backward into the hay, almost hitting them, in a burst of giggles. She hoisted herself up onto the hay bale next to where they were sitting and peered down at them. “That face paint’s nice and messy! Don’t hog it all. We’re the main ghosts, after all.”

Anwei looked away, pulling her hands back from him and wiping them along her robe. “I think Knox is done. I’ll need your help with mine, though.”

Knox’s chest was so tight he could hardly breathe. The pretty healer… How had that come out of his mouth? “Why do you need help with your makeup?”

Anwei grinned, the toothy one that showed all her sharp edges. She relished the words, watching him, as if his reaction would fail or pass a test. “Because I’m going to be dressed as the shapeshifter king.”

The walls seemed to stand twice as high as Anwei remembered, the air holding a chill that didn’t sit well with the late-summer weather. She breathed in deep as they approached the cliffs from the shelter of the sugarcane field, searching for hints of the nothingness the snake-tooth man left in his wake. All she could smell was wood and dirt, cut sugarcane stalks, the sticky brown clay of the paint on her face, and the wintry green of the bael wreaths hung up to ward off ghosts. She looked over at Knox, then had to look away, still a bit angry. “You see anything?”

He shook his head. “There are people in the buildings just inside the wall—worker barracks, Lia said. But I can’t see much farther than that.”

“Not even if you… do whatever it is to make yourself see farther? Ask Calsta for more energy?”

Knox shifted. “No. I’ll let you know when I see… him.” He glanced back at Noa, who had gone very quiet and was sitting with her eyes closed, her three friends arranged to either side of her. “Are you all ready?”

“Shh. Let us focus.” Noa didn’t open her eyes. “We have to get into the right mindset. Ghosts are very nuanced, especially victims. It’s got to be a perfect balance of despair and thirst for revenge—”

“Ethereal but dangerous,” the one on her left interjected. “We need to spark pity, but more terror than anything else for this to work properly. Otherwise, they’ll catch us.”

“We can’t get caught.” This one was a dancer Anwei recognized from Noa’s troupe. He pitched his voice empty and low, as if he’d already begun his ghost routine. “A true haunting requires a repeat performance.”

Anwei couldn’t help but laugh, glad to have a moment to smile before going inside the compound.

“Are we ready?” Knox nudged her, pulling out one of the arrows she’d made for him. There was no arrowhead, just a few grains of calistet mixed with some other herb in a bag, ready to mist out and incapacitate the guards they chose. Anwei had promised it wouldn’t kill them.

“Are the guards in place where Lia said?” With the torches, she couldn’t see anyone on the walls, the hirelings lurking behind the blaze of light.

Knox nodded, apparently seeing auras where she could see only darkness. Anwei pointed to the spot in the center where a guard was supposed to be. Knox pulled the arrow on its string to his cheek and sent it lancing toward the wall. The moment it hit, she fancied she could smell the calistet in the air, poison dusting over the man as he slumped to the ground. Anwei waited until Knox gave a confirming nod that the man was down before he did the other two guards.

The moment the second arrow was shot, Knox launched into the naked area around the compound, scurried up to where a bael wreath hung, and shoved one of the slow-release incendiaries she and Altahn had made among the leaves. Not so slow as the ones they’d sent into the compound, but these would give them a few minutes. Knox immediately took off around the side of the compound, more bael wreaths to burn. Anwei shepherded Noa and the others toward the cliff’s edge but stayed inside the shelter of sugarcane. “You have your fire-dancing gear ready?” Anwei hissed.

Noa rolled her eyes. “You focus on whatever it is you are doing, Anwei. Leave the rest of it to us.” She pulled the hair stick from her bun, her hair falling in long, stringy clumps around her. She kissed the flower, offering a prayer to Falan before turning to the wall.

After a few minutes a rope dropped down the exposed wall perched above the cliff, rapping against the wood. Noa ran out first and stuck her foot in the loop at the bottom, then gave an elaborate salute as Knox began to pull her up. By the time it was Anwei’s turn, all she could smell was fire and bael, as if it would somehow ward her away. She stuck her foot into the loop and held to the rope with both hands as she slowly rose. At the top she pulled herself up over the wall’s lip, while Knox disassembled the pulley he’d rigged and stuck it back in his bag. Noa and the others had already climbed down off the barracks roof.

Most of the compound was dark, except for the walls and the catwalk around the top. Torches flared at the main gates across the compound, lighting a line of horses and a few smaller buildings. The workers seemed to be congregated in a cleared space that was brightly lit in the left-hand corner of the compound, as far as possible from where the tomb entrance was marked on Lia’s map.

The tomb opening was where the most light came from, torches in a blazing circle around what looked like a hole to the center of the earth. Anwei flinched when Knox touched her arm. He pointed to the wall a bit farther from where all the people were congregated, a little gate surrounded by piles of dirt. Their escape route.

“Do you see the shapeshifter’s aura yet?” she whispered.

Knox gave the whole area one more scan. But he shook his head. Anwei blinked twice, trying to find some kind of calm. The shapeshifter was here. He had to be. She’d seen him. Smelled him.

What if he was down underground? Inside the tomb itself.

“I’ll find him. Then we’ll meet outside just like we said,” Knox whispered. “The doors are already barred for the night, but I can make sure the stops are jammed as I go by.” He nudged her toward the edge of the roof. “Calistet?”

“You’re sure you’re going to find him first?”

“He’s not going to be down in the tomb. They rely on the sun to light the place, so it’ll be pitch black. You do have something to subdue anyone you come across down there, just in case?”

Already this wasn’t going to plan. Anwei extracted a packet of calistet-laced corta from her bag, hesitating only a second before she handed it to her friend. “I still don’t like splitting up,” she murmured.

“I don’t like anything about this job. But it’s all we have. We decided—”

“I know what we decided.”

On the ground beneath them, a flare of unnatural fire bloomed. It lit Noa’s ghostly painted face, spun up over her head, then twisted around her like a live snake. She had cricked her head awkwardly to one side, her eyes wide and her voice vacant. “Save us!” she moaned. “Save us from the king!”

The three dancers lit their fires behind her, spinning their tethers in long, lazy circles above their heads.

Immediately in front of them, the workers began to scream.

Anwei watched the flames flare, shadows dancing around Noa and her friends like ghosts waiting to feed as they pushed the workers tighter into their corner, away from the tomb. Anwei glanced over at Knox, his eyes reflecting green flame, his hair tied back tight, white paint smeared across his cheekbones and forehead in the shape of her fingers.

He looked at her, and for a split second she knew he could feel what she was feeling. Despite their argument, she loved that he was here. Knox gave her a tiny, hopeful smile, and she returned it. “Ready?” he whispered.

Anwei nodded, turning to gauge the ghosts’ progress before she started climbing down. The sight of Noa twirling around like the free thing Anwei wished she could be sat in her chest, like a promise to herself. She was glad the high khonin had elbowed her way into their job.

A loud crack shattered the air, and renewed screams came from around the corner as Anwei’s feet hit the ground, and she couldn’t help but grin. It helped that Noa knew how to put on a show.

Anwei started into the darkness between buildings. She had a tomb to rob.

Past one group of horses. Two, three. Mateo curled in front of Lia on the saddle. Lia held tight to the reins as she kicked Bella faster, gasping when Mateo listed to the side, his weight almost pulling her off the horse. He was a lot sicker than she’d realized.

She pulled him back into place, praying that the Warlord’s retinue wouldn’t appear, then wondered whose side Calsta would be on if it did. A ripple of nausea washed over Lia at the awful realization that reaching for the goddess she’d followed for so many years was pointless. Calsta wanted servants who did her bidding, and Lia was definitely not doing that. She spurred Bella even faster.

If the Warlord had brought Master Helan, then there was no future for her. It was over. She was caught.

Mateo was hardly breathing by the time she rode through the Montanne house gate, Tual waiting for them just inside. He held out a hand to help Lia down, a sly smile on his face until he caught sight of his son.

“Help me!” she yelled.

Mateo tipped off the horse, Tual barely catching his shoulders and head while his legs twisted awkwardly on the saddle. Lia threw herself off Bella’s back, grateful the little mare was so well behaved, standing there so patiently while she and Tual dragged Mateo the rest of the way out of the saddle.

“Help me get him into the house.” Tual looped one of Mateo’s arms over his shoulders, impatiently waiting for her to do the same. Lia grabbed Mateo’s hand and pulled it around her neck, his coat gritty with dirt from when he’d been on the ground.

“We’re doing this again?” Mateo murmured. “Why don’t you just let her carry me, Father? Women really love that whole vulnerable, gentleman-in-distress bit.…” He spasmed forward, a horrible racking cough rattling his entire frame. Lia put an arm around his waist to steady him, finding Tual’s joining hers from the other side.

“Don’t talk.” Tual started moving faster, Lia’s muscles bunching and straining to keep up. “We need to get both of you inside.”

“Is he…” Lia shut her mouth when Tual waved her off.

When they spilled into the entry hall, servants suddenly appeared from all sides. One moved in to take Mateo’s weight off Lia’s shoulder, two others immediately unbuttoned his jacket, and a third pulled off his boots. Tual pointed at a younger servant hovering just inside the doorway that led to the sitting room, then jabbed his finger at Lia. “Take her to the blue room.”

“But…” Lia hesitated, then took a step back from the ants’ nest of people crawling all over Mateo. His eyes had closed entirely, his breaths coming in jerky gasps. Tual was helping to lower him onto the floor, unbuttoning his collar, then putting an ear to Mateo’s mouth.

“Lady?” The servant touched her elbow, and Lia startled away. That someone would touch her without asking…

Lia took a deep breath, the air sticking inside her. She wasn’t Devoted anymore. She wasn’t a spiriter anymore. The scarf she wore was no armor. She couldn’t do anything, and her presence in the hall would just be in the way. So Lia let the servant pull her away from Mateo and the crisis hemorrhaging on the floor, heat climbing up her neck and into her eyes the farther she got. He’d come for her—come for her even though he was sick. Dying. About to fall off a horse. What friend did that? He wasn’t her father, her lover, her family at all.

What did he expect in return?

Lia climbed up the stairs into the gloom where torches hadn’t been lit, the hallway musty, as if the windows had never been opened. This had to be the end for her. For all Tual’s talk of protecting her, what could he really do? The Warlord was practically here. Ewan had seen her with Mateo. They’d know exactly where to look even if Master Helan hadn’t come.

The servant opened a door on the landing, then stood with her hands folded and her head humbly bowed. “In here, Lady.”

Lia couldn’t make herself look at the woman, frightened and angry all at once and not able to trust herself to be civil. “Does he…” She swallowed, looking back toward the stairs. “Has he been this bad before? This attack? Is it worse?”

The maid inclined her head. “It’s hard to say.” But she left without another word, a taste of blame in the air behind her. If he’d been here at home where he belonged, maybe it wouldn’t have gotten so bad. Maybe he’d be better already.

Maybe he couldn’t get better now, and it was her fault.

Lia walked into the room, ignoring the beautifully draped bed to open the window that looked out on the courtyard. Jaxom hung low in the sky, two hours from his apex, when Aria and her father would meet Anwei. Castor peered down from so much higher, the stars between them like arrows shot in an impossibly slow war. Shocks of light streaked across the sky.

It wasn’t their war that worried Lia. Aria would get Mother and Father to safety—away from the Warlord and Tual both. But Lia didn’t have a road to escape down. She couldn’t fight against a goddess who wanted her and had a whole army to do her will. And she didn’t want to fight Calsta; she wanted the goddess to understand. “How can you ask me to go back, Calsta?” Lia whispered. “The path you gave me is death. I cannot follow it.”

“Is that what you think Calsta wants?”

The voice froze Lia’s humors to ice. Every inch of her went solid, every muscle tensed. She wished for a sword, a knife, a shield, a rope. Anything. None of it would help anyway.

She turned slowly. Faced the figure shrouded in a white veil who sat on the bed, not an inch of his skin showing.

“Hello, Lia.” Master Helan’s voice was so soft and fragile, but she could almost feel his mind prying into hers. “I’ve been looking for you.”