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

Jecks, the Blackheart from the plague house, tapped on Anwei’s window as she packed the last of her herbs. Every movement still felt as if she were underwater, the tiredness of a night without sleep sitting heavy on her eyelids.

Knox couldn’t find a single trace of Altahn. He’d ranged out through all the Coil, down through the Sand and Fig Cays. He’d even gone to Yaru’s temple. The Trib’s aura was nowhere to be found. The maps and the last of the explosives were missing too.

Anwei pushed open the window for Jecks, hardly remembering what she’d asked him to do for her.

“They’re outside the city,” Jecks whispered, holding himself back from the window. “Near that dig everyone is talking about.”

“The Trib clan?” Anwei blinked slowly, trying to think what that could mean. “What are they doing?”

“Digging. There are others with them. I think they might be wardens.”

Anwei’s mouth went dry. Wardens? Why would the Trib involve wardens in a plot to steal from the Warlord? She blinked at Jecks, pulling all her emotions in check. “Perfect. Thank you for your help. How is your family doing?”

A smile cracked his lips. “Better. Most of the quarantine seems to be a little better. You really are a miracle worker.”

His eyes touched her braids but then dropped down to the floor, the stink of superstition enough that Anwei could almost smell it. She frowned, thinking of the quarantine. When she’d been there the other day, the nothing smell had been stronger than ever, and none of the patients had looked as if they were getting better. She’d done all she could to get food and water into Jecks’s daughter and partner, but curing a sickness that wasn’t attacking a person’s physical body wasn’t something Anwei knew how to do.

Jecks continued, scuffing a foot against the ground. “I guess they’re confining any other sick people they find to their cays. The Warlord herself is here and shuttered up in some high khonin’s house, hoping she doesn’t catch it. Even the governor is in bed with a rash.”

“The governor?” Anwei looked up in alarm. Gamtooth poisoning didn’t spread between people. It was a poison, not a sickness. Even if someone had dumped gamtooth poison the whole length of every canal, it would have been long gone by now. Which meant she’d been right. The shapeshifter had to have seen the original mass poisoning down in the Fig Cay, then used it as a cover to… do whatever he was doing. Burrowing into people, taking from them, the effects being blamed on a sickness that had started before he even came back to the city. Then, when those initial victims weren’t enough, he’d poisoned more people so it looked like a spreading plague. But what was he doing?

Last night he hadn’t been at the excavation, unless he’d learned how to mask his smell. There had been only a voice, that whip against her skin, and Knox.…

Anwei’s stomach twisted.

Jecks squinted at her. “You didn’t know it had spread so far? The Warlord is only going to be here for the day, I guess. She’s going to go out to the shapeshifter tomb to cleanse it of any foul presence, so they say. Hopefully, that will take care of the sickness once and for all.”

Nodding, Anwei looked away, trying to let the thoughts about last night drain before they could form. I have to keep my oath to love only Calsta. And every day I’m with you, I break it.

What goddess commanded you to love her and no one else? That wasn’t even possible, not if you had a single human relationship. The link to Knox felt tenuous in her mind. She could feel him coming from the direction of the Sand Cay just then, bone tired and worried.

And angry. Hurt just as much as she was. It made her cross—he wasn’t allowed to feel hurt or angry. He was the one who had said…

No. Anwei took a deep breath, forcing herself to focus on the Blackheart standing before her, an odd expression on his face. Knox was her partner. She needed him. Not just for the shapeshifter and the sword. He was her only friend.

Well, that wasn’t true. Noa had proved to be more than a contact. It had been almost a relief to have her here in the apothecary. But Noa hadn’t almost kissed her and then rejected her.

Why had Knox’s being anything other than her partner occurred to Anwei in the first place? It was ridiculous to realize how much she’d wanted Knox, because she’d thought he was saying yes, but he’d said no instead.

Anwei’s chest seemed to squeeze. Everything was falling apart.

She forced herself to focus on Jecks, his eyes shifty as he edged toward Gulya’s outer gate. “You say the Warlord is going to the dig today?”

The man nodded, inching back another step. “If you aren’t needing anything else…” He was already halfway to the gate, as if he could creep away from Anwei and her scary healing abilities before she called up the earth to swallow him down. Dirt witch. She could almost see the thought on his face.

“Anwei?” Gulya’s voice called from the apothecary. “The governor himself wants you to come! Something about the plague—apparently, you’re the only healer who managed to help?” The woman appeared in the doorway. “What an honor, the governor knowing your name!”

Anwei blinked, the beginnings of a plan starting in her head. “Yes. What an honor. I’ll… go as soon as I’m done with…” She looked down at the blank table. “Something very important.”

Gulya’s mouth squished into an unpleasant sort of smile, but she returned to the apothecary, calling to a customer who must have just come in.

“You cured the plague?” Noa’s voice made Anwei jump.

She turned to find her friend on the stairs, hair tousled by the night’s sleep. “You scared me. I thought you were asleep, Noa.”

Noa wound her hair up on top of her head and stuck that double-pronged hair stick of hers into it, Falan’s flower jauntily poised above her ear. She hopped down the last steps to sit next to Anwei at the table. “I’m surprised you are awake.” Noa’s nose flared as she looked Anwei over. “You look better than you did last night. What happened down there? And then Altahn… what happened to him? All I found in Knox’s room was that box full of money.”

Anwei snorted, trying to cover it with a cough. So many questions, just like Noa. “I’m feeling better, thank you.”

“Good.” Noa didn’t speak for a moment, as if she expected answers to the rest of the questions, but Anwei only smiled. “So when do we head back to the dig? It’s going to be today, isn’t it?”

The dig. Today. Anwei was so tired, she had a hard time finding a smile for her friend. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you and Knox went down into the tomb and came out with nothing to show for it. The Warlord is probably here to purge the whole place.” Anwei glanced at the window where Jecks had been, wondering how long Noa had been standing on the stairs. How she could have known about the shapeshifter purging unless she’d grown ears as sharp as Knox’s. “And after whatever performance the Warlord puts on with her Devoted, she’ll bundle up the prize they were digging for, then leave.” Noa’s eyes glinted, and the back of Anwei’s neck prickled. “Taking with her whatever it is you’ve been risking so much over. Right?”

Anwei hadn’t told Noa anything to do with the dig other than needing ghosts to scare the workers. Not about the Warlord or time frames or any of it. And yet Noa knew. Altahn had spent enough time looking at the dancer out of the corner of his eye—he could have told her. But when? And why would he?

Altahn was gone.

Noa was still talking. “I mean, if you’d gotten what you were after, we’d all have left already. That was the plan.”

The tone of her voice felt so eager, so full of things she wasn’t supposed to know. Exactly as Noa always sounded, like she was about to take a bite out of something, but suddenly Anwei felt as if the target was her.

“Are you worried your father is going to find you?” Anwei asked slowly, standing up from the table. “Or did you decide poisoning people at balls is more fun than having to hide all the time?”

“Oh, Daddy’s never going to find me here. I’m sure he already stormed the Firelily and probably tried searching Bear’s house, though I suppose they wouldn’t have let him in.”

Because his father’s taken sick. Like all the other people around Noa take sick. The thought struck Anwei hard. It had taken Anwei almost five years to confide in anyone what she was doing. To include Knox in her missions. She’d known he wasn’t a threat long before she’d allowed him even that close.

But Noa… Noa was a contact. Anwei usually didn’t even meet with contacts in person, and yet she had with Noa. From there, Noa had wormed her way into Anwei’s circle awfully quickly. Had seemed to put together all the pieces of Yaru and the tomb when no one else had.

“So if you’re safe, what’s it to you if we stay a few more days?” Anwei asked, reaching up to extract a few stalks of linereed to cover her confusion.

“Nothing at all, of course. I just want to help. I want to know what we’re after and how we’re going to get it.” Noa looked around the workroom with such interest, as if she could divine exactly what each herb was, where the doors and windows were, where the secret panels might be. She’d already gone through the upstairs, if Anwei wasn’t mistaken. Knox had found her sitting in the middle of his floor with his money box open in her lap the night before.

Noa’s Firelily theater was right there next to the Fig Cay plague house. She’d been in the governor’s house, where Noa had particular reason for rancor. In the Coil, where all the different gamtooth cases had popped up. Anwei’s own stash of gamtooth spinners had been producing less than they should, as if they’d already been milked.

“I’m still thinking about what we should do. I’ve got an idea, but I have to talk to Knox about it first.” Anwei shook away the ridiculous line of thought, arranging the linereed stalks on the table so they didn’t touch, then gathered them up together again. The spinners produced differently every time; it had to do with time of year, the heat.… Her eyes touched Noa’s hair stick as the high khonin reached up to pull it out, twine her hair into a bun, then stick it back in. The two prongs seemed altogether too sharp for something anyone should like stuck in their hair.

Two prongs. Like a spider’s bite.

A shapeshifter could change. The only things that had ever stayed the same about the leads she’d tracked were the nothing smell that followed the shapeshifter and the snake on his tooth—it was as if he couldn’t change his bones, just rearrange them, make them swell and shrink. Would Noa show her teeth if Anwei asked?

Anwei shook her head again, wondering whether, if she lost another night of sleep, she’d start believing Gulya was the shapeshifter next. Noa didn’t have a dark aura or Knox would have noticed. She didn’t smell like nothing.

“Are you feeling all right?” Noa stood up and leaned across the table. “Is it whatever happened down in the tomb? How can I help?”

“Nothing. I’m fine.” Knox’s smell wisped by Anwei’s nose, and the back door opened behind her. Anwei swallowed, keeping her eyes on Noa. What had happened in the tomb last night? She’d been attacked by something with no special smell, no aura.…

Noa had been at the dig that night. Just like she’d been at all the other places where gamtooth poisoning had appeared.

All these years Anwei had been chasing her brother’s murderer. What if the snake-tooth man had gotten tired of it and decided to stay in one place? Wait until Anwei wasn’t paying attention, then slip into her life, gain her confidence, and…

Knox stepped into the empty space beside Anwei, spoiling her concentration. And what? Anwei laughed at herself, rubbing her temples. Why would the shapeshifter want to get anywhere near her?

Why had Noa wanted to get near her?

Why had the shapeshifter killed Anwei’s brother in the first place?

The problem was that Anwei didn’t know. And questions—maybe it was because she was tired—but they hit one after another, ringing with clarity. Years and years had gone by without Anwei letting a single person into her house, into her heart. Then Knox had come with his nothing smell, and she’d treated him like a lead until it became obvious he wasn’t. Then Noa… but there had been no reason for Anwei to grow close to Noa. Yet here the girl was, living in her house, twisted up in the one thing that could give Anwei her life back.

How had it happened? It was almost as eerie as the idea of her parents forgetting they had a son despite his blood spilled across their floor, their minds and memories changed into something new. The shapeshifter had done that.

What if… what if Noa was the snake-tooth man? Bent into a new shape. Watching Anwei for the better part of a year. What if she’d been wrong about the dig? Wrong about Director Van?

“The whole governor’s house is infected with the plague.” Knox cleared his throat, grabbing one of the apples at the center of the table and biting into it. Noa’s presence seemed to darken as she looked between Anwei and Knox. She’d already known about the governor.

Was Bear one of the victims? Or had all that gossip and angst over forced marriage contracts been a story for Noa to present like a treat, because she knew Anwei would swallow it?

“And Lia’s family didn’t go to Gretis last night. The Warlord is staying in their house,” Knox continued, then took another bite of apple. But she could feel him tense next to her, all the thoughts running through her head manifesting as fear to him through the bond.

Anwei felt the soft connection between them twinge. He wanted to know why she was afraid. Wanted her to look at him. But Noa was standing there like a shadow. Like a great big nothing darkening the workroom.

“What about Lia? Is she safe?” Anwei drew the words out slow, sending her mind into the flowers and leaves hanging from the ceiling. Her medicine bag with the gamtooth serum, the corta, and even her tiny pinch of calistet was upstairs.

Knox shook his head, giving Noa a quick glance. “I didn’t see her at the house.” Her aura was what he meant. Noa probably already knew about his aurasight, his sword, that the Devoted were hunting for him, too. “There were Devoted guarding the gates, the windows. They didn’t see me, same as last night.” He cleared his throat. “What’s wrong, Anwei? Last night… didn’t go well, but—”

“It’s not you.” Didn’t go well? As if it were as simple as cross words that they could leave behind them. But there were bigger things to worry about. Anwei couldn’t pull her eyes away from the hair stick jutting out from Noa’s bun. Such a simple weapon. Beautiful. Unremarkable. Underestimated.

Noa suddenly moved. Anwei jerked forward in anticipation, grabbing hold of Knox’s wrist as if she could force him to come to attention. He sprang up, confused, as he looked at Anwei. “Well, what is it, then?”

The sudden movement had only been Noa reaching for a stalk of pretty dried flowers. She paused before touching them. “These won’t give me warts or anything if I touch them?” She looked from Anwei to Knox, then pulled the stalk down. “She’s worried about how we’re going to get into the dig, Knox. I have some ideas. But the secrets need to stop. If I don’t know what we’re after, then how can I help, really?”

Anwei stood slowly, energy arcing painfully down her muscles. Knox’s arms tensed, his head slowly turning to look between Noa and Anwei. Flexing her hands, Anwei gathered up her branches of linereed. Not poisonous. Not even prickly. But they were the only thing vaguely weaponlike within reach. “You’re a lot more interested in the dig than I would have expected, Noa.”

There was no denying she’d sensed the shapeshifter there at the dig that first night. Or had she?

“It’s interesting.” Noa shrugged, picking the flowers apart and letting the pink petals rain down on the table. “A real shapeshifter is down there, and you want something from him.” Noa looked up, the light sick on her face. Her smile prickled, but it wasn’t wide, because Noa never smiled big enough to show anything but her front teeth. Never wide enough to reveal a house mark. “You’re a puzzle, Anwei, and if I’m going to be a part of your group here, I want to know more of the pieces.”

What if the nothing smell didn’t follow the shapeshifter himself, like Anwei had believed all these years? What if it marked where he’d been, the scent of energy being stolen and the void it left behind?

“You’re right. If you’re going to be a part of the group, you should know.” Anwei’s mind raced. “We’ll show you once we’re done at the dig today. I think I’ll need your help to get in.”

Knox’s head swiveled slowly to look at her, confusion on his face going from thin to thick.

“Do I need my friends from the Firelily?” Noa’s dimples creased her cheeks.

“No. I need you to set the wall on fire. The southern end, where we were yesterday. I’ll be coming with the Devoted.”

Knox’s chin shot up, alarm in his eyes.

Noa flinched. “You’re coming with the Warlord? She saw me last night, so if she sees me at the dig as well…”

“Show me, Noa. Show me I can trust you.”

“I did. I helped you steal salpowder. I went into the excavation last night dressed as a ghost, lied to the Warlord’s face. What is setting a fire going to do to help you?” The girl swallowed, all affectations and laughter suddenly scrubbed from her countenance.

“It’s a distraction. You’re so good at distractions.” Like pretending all she wanted was to be free. Just like Anwei wanted. To be free.

The snake-tooth man could rearrange people’s minds. Had he looked inside hers to see what she wanted most, then used it to make her feel sorry for him? You didn’t watch the people you felt sorry for as closely because it was easy to think you knew exactly what they wanted.

A plan was beginning to whirl in Anwei’s head. “I want you to set the fire right after the Warlord goes inside the compound. Her retinue won’t see you that way.”

Noa licked her lips. Drew in a shaky breath and touched the hair stick, Falan’s rose peeking out through her fingers. The god of actors. Of thieves. Of gamblers.

If she was the shapeshifter, then what was this gamble?

Nodding ever so slowly, Noa backed out through the door and shut it behind her.

Anwei threw herself onto the bench, unable to meet Knox’s eyes. “I think Noa might be the shapeshifter.”

“What?” Knox’s voice hollowed down to nothing. He slumped next to her at the table, as if every bit of his energy had been sucked clean from his bones. “I mean, she’s annoying, but not… what about the dig director?”

“I don’t know. She was there last night.” The muscles in Anwei’s throat clenched as she whispered. “She knew about the dig. She was even already playing ghost. Do you remember Shale getting angry at us because someone broke into the dig dressed as a ghost? It happened the same night as the governor’s party. Noa didn’t get us out of the party like she was supposed to, she disappeared. What if she went to the dig instead, then blamed it on Bear?”

“What would she want at the dig? Besides, her aura isn’t marked.”

“Our auras aren’t marked either, Knox. At least, no one else can see them.” Anwei looked at him, tears dry in her eyes. “I don’t know what she’d want at the dig, though. Something a shapeshifter needs. Why would Director Van want to open the shapeshifter’s tomb? Why would the Warlord? There’s something down there—”

“The sword, probably. If it’s anything like my sword, I don’t know why anyone would want it, but it does seem like a lot of very important people are digging in the same place.” Knox shook his head. “But you saw the shapeshifter at the dig the first time we went out there. Noa couldn’t have been there then.”

“I could smell him. I can smell him all over this city, Knox. I’ve smelled him on you when you’re holding the shapeshifter sword. I don’t think the nothing smell is from the snake-tooth man. I think it comes from his victims.”

Knox’s eyes traced around her, looking at the aura he could see but no one else could. “What do we do?”

“We need the sword, and we need the shapeshifter. We’re going to the dig today because the Warlord is going to open that room, and the shapeshifter has definitely been involved there… whether it’s Noa or Director Van or someone else entirely. He’ll be there.”

“You’re not sure.”

Anwei breathed in, hating everything. “I’m not sure about who. But I have to believe I’ll know when I see him.”

“Will you? Right now you don’t know if it’s the flighty noble who has been sleeping on your bedroom floor. Even if you do suddenly recognize him, then what? Are you going to throw serum all over him and drag him away while the Warlord is watching?”

“I’ll have to! This is our last chance.” She slammed a fist against the table. “This is my last chance. I’ve been following this monster for more than seven years with nothing to show for it. If I don’t get to him today, he’s going to get me or he’s going to disappear forever. Gamtooth serum will slow him down enough that I’ll have time to figure out the killing part. If you don’t want to come—”

“You always say that. As if you think I won’t follow you.” Knox’s voice was so soft. “You have a plan. What is it?”

Anwei forced herself to look up, to meet his gaze head-on. “The Warlord’s worried about her Devoted getting the plague.”

“And?”

“I can make sure they do get it. It’s just gamtooth venom that causes the rash, and I’m the only healer in the city who’s been any help. The governor himself sent a message for me to attend him.”

“You managed to cure people of whatever the shapeshifter did to them?”

“No, they started getting better on their own, but no one else knows that. I’ll go present my services to the Warlord when her Devoted start showing symptoms, and from there I’ll figure out how to make sure I’m one of the party going to the dig.”

Knox closed his eyes, his hands coming up to rub them. When he opened them again, the air seemed to crackle between them. His body tipped toward her, waiting for something to happen.

Every day I’m with you…

He looked away.

Anwei forced herself to breathe. “She knows your face, so you can’t come. I’ll meet you in Gretis. By then I’ll know how to fix your sword and how to kill this monster… it’ll all be done.”

Knox stood, shaking his head. “Anwei, no—”

“Can you think of another way to find him?” Her voice broke. “This is how we save your sister. How you get away from the Warlord forever. You won’t need… whatever this is anymore.” She pointed between them, the bond turning to an odd mix of stinging and soft.

Knox’s face twisted, but then he nodded. “I’ll come with you to Lia’s compound and help poison the Devoted if I can. I’ll make sure they don’t see me. Then I’ll go find Shale outside the dig and stop him from interfering. And after…” He trailed off.

Anwei looked away. Maybe there was no after. Knox was Calsta’s, and the goddess didn’t seem to be the type who shared her spoils of war.

That, by itself, was an answer. Knox was here to lay his sister to rest. Anwei was here to do the same for her brother, and nothing else mattered.

It couldn’t. Because it didn’t to him.

Anwei traced the shape of Knox’s face in her mind, the tilt to his shoulders, the straightness of his back. His hair too short to stay in its tie. The lines that crinkled his mouth and eyes when he smiled. Anwei let it fill her to the brim.

She took the image of him, so carefully preserved, and set it on fire in her mind. Let it burn. He didn’t belong to her, and he’d end up abandoning her like everyone else in her life had the moment Calsta asked. That was her lot, it seemed. She’d taken him in, and that deviation meant she’d have the shapeshifter now. She just… wouldn’t have anything else.

Anwei stood from the table, trying to ignore the ashy hole in her chest, as much a void as what the shapeshifter himself had left her. “I’ll get the serum from upstairs and all the leftover venom. And while I’m at Lia’s family compound, I’ll see if I can find out what happened to her.”

“This is going to end badly,” Knox whispered. But he followed her out the door, as she knew he would. The connection between them felt like a fungus that had spread from her mind down through her humors, invading her heart.

An infection she’d had before—her parents had left a much larger, bloodier hole. And she had yet to sniff out the complement of herbs that would close it.

She stopped as Knox stuffed a hand into his pocket and drew out a long purple ribbon that sparkled with beads. “I bought it for you a while ago.” He handed it to her. “I guess the color reminded me of…” His eyes traced around her, the ghost of what she was. “It reminded me of you. I’m… sorry. About everything.”

Then he left.

Anwei held the ribbon. It reminded me of you. The idea made her glow inside for a split second, a sparkling hint of a future that could include things like ribbons when she hadn’t worn something so pretty in years.

A new life. With Knox.

But his future didn’t look the same as hers, not with his Devotion to the goddess. So it wasn’t real. And Knox might say he was there, that he was by her side, but in reality, her biggest threat the night before had been him.

The only thing she could rely on was her own two hands.

She left the ribbon in a sad bundle on the table and walked out.