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

Knox waited until he heard Gulya’s naturally ire-filled tones directed at Anwei downstairs before he shut off the water pipe, leaving the half-filled tub untouched. He crept out of the washroom, still stinking of sweat and dirt from his forms that morning. It was a little embarrassing to sneak behind his partner’s back, but Anwei wasn’t going to follow up on the mysterious bid from the temple, and Knox couldn’t afford to ignore it. He went to Anwei’s room and picked up the little folded prayer to Yaru. Twenty thousand in silver.

He stuck it into his pocket and turned toward his room. Why did Devoted have to show up in Chaol today? The thought was a black hole of panic inside him, but the promise of so much money—enough he could leave and never see the Warlord’s insignia again—was one he couldn’t put out of his mind.

What if Lia had been sent to track him, like those karavte hunts high khonins seemed to enjoy so much? He couldn’t imagine his best friend—his chosen sister, the only family he had remaining—howling like a parchwolf to the Devoted over his scent. But Lia was still in the seclusion and had no choice but to sing when the Warlord pointed at her, even if she hated every note.

The cold female presence that lived at the back of his head—the one that Calsta wanted him to ignore—shifted, as if she could be restless and pacing in her state of… nothing. Willow was her name—at least, he still called her that. He wasn’t sure how she thought of herself since being trapped inside his head instead of going to Calsta as she should have.

Lia wasn’t the only sister he’d betrayed.

Unlike Willow, Lia was still alive. Still trapped under her veil instead of outside under the sky as he knew she would have preferred. But she was still breathing, able to feel the warmth of the sun through her veil. Knox had thought through his escape from the seclusion a million and a half times, and he’d always come to the same conclusion despite the thought of Lia at the seclusion alone. His going missing had merited an entire search party of Devoted. Lia’s disappearing would have turned out an entire seclusion with the Warlord herself at their helm. Asking her to come wouldn’t have been fair anyway—to drag the one person who meant something to him into a life on the run. Knox wished it weren’t so, but he knew Lia could take care of herself.

Willow was another matter. When Knox had left her, she’d lost her hands, her voice, her life. If Knox didn’t fix it, no one would.

Knox went back to his room and pulled on a shirt, grimacing as the cloth stuck to his still-sweaty back. Anwei’s laugh rang out from below, Gulya’s old-woman cackle joining in. He frowned, splashing some water across his face from the basin on his washstand. Anwei always knew what to say.

Every time he tried to do something nice for Gulya, it made things worse between them. Anwei could joke and laugh and quietly close the calistet jar, but Knox only knew how to address the issue directly. Look Gulya in the eyes and say, “I’m nice!”

It hadn’t worked yet. If Gulya had her way, she’d probably have him cut open like in a backwater purging ceremony, hoping to catch a glimpse of whatever she thought was wrong inside him.

Knox had spent months watching the way Anwei gathered people around her, collecting them just the way she’d collected him. Her world was made up of doors in all shapes and sizes, the people on the other side smiling the moment she stepped through. No matter how hard he tried, Knox’s world remained a straight path. It started where he was standing, ended where he wanted to go, and the only time anyone else figured into it was when they stood directly in front of him.

Anwei’s confidence always seemed to end with her sleeves, though. Despite the awful wet summer heat in Chaol, Knox had never glimpsed an inch of skin south of Anwei’s chin except for her hands.

Not that he wanted to see more than that.

Knox reached up to touch the scars marking the side of his head, the oaths he’d made heavy in his mind. It wasn’t just Anwei he’d learned to block out, though she probably would have been pretty enough if he allowed himself to look.

That was a lie. He knew she was pretty. Beautiful even, and he wasn’t the only one who noticed. Since the first day he’d been well enough to make it down the stairs, Knox had seen the steady stream of young men who stumbled into the apothecary with very large grins and very small complaints, all asking for Anwei. But Knox couldn’t be one of them. There was much more than pride for him to lose in looking at any girl that way.

Grabbing his shoes from their rug by his door, Knox sat down to buckle them before wrapping a scarf over his face. He slipped his favorite knife into his pocket, then pushed open the window, listening hard when the chatter downstairs went quiet. Anwei would probably take the boat, so he’d have to use skybridges and tunnels all the way to the ferry to get him to the Sand Cay. Anwei didn’t want him to check out the mysterious job, but if the magistrate was sending wardens their way, being ready for it seemed like a better idea than ducking when the cudgels started swinging. If it was somehow Devoted who had left the note, Knox wanted to know now, not when they came through the windows and the roof, swords drawn. And if it turned out to be a real job?

Knox swung a leg over the window frame, sea air in his lungs.

Willow’s freezing whisper chittered in his head. You’re not leaving me here alone again, are you?

He stopped and looked back toward the dark space under his bed, Calsta’s warnings— Anwei’s warnings—hanging over him like lead.

You need me. Her voice was stronger this time, the shadows under his raised mattress breathing.

Where was Calsta when he needed her? Probably sleeping in, if that’s what goddesses did. Knox swallowed hard and turned back to the window, Willow’s voice a comforting buzz in his head. It made his chest relax, his heart beat a little slower, the threat of Devoted and the draw of the mysterious job fade. His sister’s voice had always soothed him when he was growing up. Then the Devoted had come.…

Hold me, Knox. We could fix all of this. Your crabby landlord. The Devoted. Your friend’s broken aura. Suddenly Knox was kneeling next to his bed, not remembering the space of time between leaving the window and bending down to peer at the huddled blanket lurking in the shadows.

None of them would matter much if you let me have them.

“Hello?” Gulya’s voice wrenched Knox back to himself, the stairs creaking under her feet. “Silly little boy, are you up here still? I need your disproportionately long arms to get something stuck in the chimney.”

The sword was in his hands, the heavy blanket wrapped around the sheath bulky and awkward.

Wait, in his hands? Knox shoved the sword away and kicked the bundle back under the bed. Wrapping his arms around his head, he crouched there on the floor, willing his heart to begin beating again.

Willow’s voice crooned in his head. Knox, please?

Going for the window, Knox fled the voice just as much as Gulya’s knuckles rapping against his door. He jumped to the ground, then slipped through Gulya’s courtyard gates. Knox wouldn’t let himself run, but his hands didn’t stop shaking until he was two canals away, the trade road in sight.

It wasn’t just Anwei who had a problem with banned magic.

The Greenglass Malthouse was near the trade gate, where the trade road made a bridge to the mainland, if Knox wasn’t mistaken. The name sounded like the Sand Cay, and the color and inclusion of “glass” pointed toward a rough neighborhood near the old city wall built along the island banks. When he finally got to the ferry dock, Knox had to concentrate, putting Willow and the sword out of his mind.

She wasn’t really his sister. Not anymore. Willow’s croon at the back of his head sounded like skeletons and carcasses and murder, not the girl who had stayed up late telling him boring stories about high khonin ladies falling in love with wandering printha… priantia… holy men who wished Calsta had chosen them. That was before the day Devoted had come to take the two of them away. Willow had started seeing auras almost a year before Knox (they’d terrified her, even after their parents had managed to figure out what was going on and explain it). She was two years older and much more interested in lace and the cobbler’s son than becoming a sword protecting the Commonwealth for the Warlord, but when a passing Devoted noticed her and Knox glowing with gold—Willow two whole years past time to enter the seclusions—there wasn’t much room to argue.

The Warlord sent a whole group of Devoted to collect them, giving Knox and Willow time to say their goodbyes while the soldiers put on a demonstration for the little eastern town. Their parents wanted them to stay home for one last night together, but Willow knew Knox wanted to go watch the demonstration, so she distracted their parents while he snuck out the window. He sat there on a stone wall, watching the Devoted flip and walk up walls and fight so smoothly it looked as if they were dancing—maybe that would be some consolation to Willow!—thinking how lucky he’d been to have a passing Devoted catch sight of his blossoming aura.

Watching that night, Knox was filled with a fire that only grew as he ran home to tell Willow. But when he came to their lane, the door was hanging open, candlelight leaking out into the darkness like blood from inside. There were two lumps in the entry hall, Mother and Father sprawled on the floor in impossible shapes, completely unmarked, their eyes dull.

Everything turned a bit fuzzy after that. “Willow!” he called into the cold, empty house, running past his parents without quite being able to look at them, pretending that maybe he didn’t understand why their auras had disappeared. Willow was on the second floor, her eyelashes still fluttering, a gaping wound in her chest. And the sword—that awful sword.

It was bubbling, blackened, melting into the floor at her feet. Knox grabbed the hilt to pull the awful thing away from his sister, and it suddenly snapped back into a solid sword shape. Willow convulsed forward when he touched it, then went limp.

And then, her voice. It started in his head.

Knox? she cried. Knox, I’m scared. A man came and he hurt me. His face was like a snake. Where are Mother and Father?

Knox tried to drop the sword, but it stuck to his hand like flesh against frozen metal. His heart began to pound, his body started to shake.…

And then a new voice. One that burned, lighting him up from the inside like the sun, filling him to the brim. Put it down, it commanded.

“I can’t!” His voice echoed in the empty air, a pained scream of panic because he couldn’t, and his heart was flapping, fluttering. Stopping, as if whatever made him him was going to be sucked into the sword right alongside Willow.

Don’t put me down, Knox. Please, help me. I’m trapped, Willow cried.

Knox. Listen. Concentrate. Let it go. That new voice put space between him and the icy cold of his sister’s panic, and the sword dropped to the floor with a clatter. Find something to wrap it in. It’s too dangerous to leave here, the voice said next, though it didn’t say why, nor how… nor what Knox should do with his poor sister’s body, or his crumpled parents downstairs. So he hid the sword in a blanket, stuffed it inside the bag his mother had packed for him, and then did exactly as the burning voice commanded next: he went to the Devoted.

It wasn’t until Knox arrived at the seclusion that the burning voice made sense. He’d been too afraid to question it at first, and then, when they got to the seclusion gates, he knew.

A statue of Calsta was standing there in her broken helmet, her long sword held up over her head, the very goddess his parents had prayed to. The voice didn’t speak as he passed the statue, just warmed him inside as he looked at it, as if Calsta was identifying herself.

The thought choked inside him even as it made him sit up a little straighter. Calsta, the goddess herself, had seen fit to speak to him directly. To save him from whatever Willow had become.

Not that Willow ever stopped reaching for him. At first she whispered to him during lessons, over meals, when he was trying to sleep in his hard bed in a room full of boys and girls just like him. Where am I? Please hold me. And then when he didn’t respond, she’d snarl and tell him to use the weapon for much worse things. It grew harder to ignore her every time she spoke, but it wasn’t until Knox’s body began to obey his sister’s voice against his own will that Calsta’s voice appeared again, sliding between Knox and his sister’s ghost like a shield. That was just about the only time he could count on the goddess: when things were about to break.

Looking up at the sky now, Knox squinted at the sun, flaring like the one behind Calsta’s golden helmet. When the ferry came in, he flipped a coin to the captain and took a seat by the rail, testing the walls inside his head that Calsta had taught him to build against Willow. She’d gotten stronger over the years, and it was becoming harder to listen to the goddess rather than the ghost.

When the boat docked at the Sand Cay, Knox pushed out onto the walkway, the other passengers flooding out behind him into the twisting streets and rickety dwellings piled high on top of one another. Three auras from the boat followed Knox toward the trade road. He kept them at the back of his mind, watching out of habit to see if they were going in the same direction or following him. Devoted couldn’t afford to ignore such things, and thieves couldn’t either.

The walkways around the trade road were clogged with beasts and wagons and shouting traders as they always were, though not so bad as the road itself. Knox followed alongside it as best he could, sellers hawking bits of food, phony silver, and talismans to ward off shapeshifters, thrusting their wares toward him with more violence than he could have done with his sword. He was pretending to admire a tray of still-twitching fish when a trio of wardens swept toward him. Flurries of movement down the walkway marked sellers who didn’t have proper licenses as they scooped up their wares and disappeared into the alleyways. Auras bobbed around him like fish in the river waves.

They are beautiful, aren’t they? Calsta’s voice. Now, she chimed in. You need to watch it, by the way. Don’t let Willow catch your attention. Remember your training. Remember me.

So beautiful, Knox wanted to snark back. Almost as beautiful as being alone inside my own head. How many more years of this would he have to endure? It had been years already, and Knox was no closer to freeing his sister’s soul from the sword. Calsta had promised she would help him do it, so long as he kept his oaths.

But just like that terrible night when she’d first spoken to him, Calsta hadn’t told him how. Or why. When. Anything useful, really.

Knox knew from all their years together that he could trust the goddess with… everything. It was everything he was trusting her with. And, somehow, she was trusting him when she hadn’t trusted anyone for half a millennium.

Or maybe it was the thing in the sword that had made Calsta wake from her sleep and speak to him.

I’m not a thing. Willow’s voice came like an echo from far away. Knox stumbled, accidentally splashing through something that was definitely not water. He clutched a hand to his head at the prickling cold the voice brought, pretending to adjust his scarf when a passing woman pulled her child away from him, her eyes wide.

That was twice Willow had spoken to him from far away in the last two days. And she’d almost made him take the sword from its wrappings back at the apothecary. Had something changed? Knox forced himself to walk, his sensitive ears eating up the trade road’s booming silenbahk bugles, clattering horse hooves, and wagon wheels on stone. Not that they could drown out a voice coming from inside his head.

Can’t worry about this now. He had to stay alive, and that meant earning enough money to bribe his way over the border into Lasei, which meant finding out if the Greenglass job was real. He turned into the muggy glass tunnel that went down into the water, leading to the other side of the canal. It was close quarters, the tube clogged with merchants dragging their wares and farmers leading livestock. Knox slowed at the tunnel’s exit, near the crumbling city wall—a relic of less peaceful times, when shapeshifters had carved the whole of the Commonwealth into little kingdoms that did not get along. “Green” was for the Green Waterway—one of the smaller ones dug across the island itself. “Glass” would be…

The three auras he’d been lazily keeping track of were meandering through the tunnel behind him. Great.

Knox slipped sideways through the milling crowd and darted into a side alley that wound between the ramshackle buildings. It was in moments of unexpected trouble that he was most vulnerable—Calsta’s power was right there within reach, and after so many years of training with the Devoted, reaching for it was a reflex. A part of him. But Knox couldn’t touch it, not unless he wanted to draw Devoted to him like flies.

The three auras started faster, cutting through the crowd to follow. Knox broke into a run, following a lane that twisted this way and that, blocking his pursuers’ line of sight. Visions of fancy braids, of swords and Roosters and auroshe teeth, danced through Knox’s head as he threw himself into an alleyway piled with trash. He scaled the craggy brick wall and pulled himself onto a windowsill wide enough to shield him from the lane.

This was who he was now. Someone who hid.

The three auras turned the corner and slowed. They were white, untouched by Calsta, so Knox risked peeking over the edge of his perch. Three men walked past the alleyway’s mouth, their rough leathers, uneven ponytails, and spurs enough to tell him they were Trib horsemen. He caught a glint of silver at the leader’s neck before they passed out of sight.

Trib? Knox waited a few minutes before climbing back down, keeping his aurasight open to make sure they didn’t double back. He hopped to the ground, his feet squishing when he landed, the smell of rotting fish and greens filling his nose. The Commonwealth’s northern border was shared between Lasei and Trib land—the Lasei enforced their part of the border, but Trib clans didn’t so much, mostly staying on their own side, so long as Commonwealth people didn’t start building on their land. Even traders who wanted the explosive powder Trib extracted from firekeys that roamed their high mountains had to go to the clans to get it.

What could three Trib want with him?

Knox watched the auras turn the next corner, then fade out of sight on the next street over, before he stepped out of the alley and headed in the opposite direction. Stopping in front of a boy selling silk ribbons, he asked, “Do you know the Greenglass Malthouse?” Wandering wasn’t a good idea if someone was after him. The prickly auroshe smell from the night before still sat in Knox’s nose.

“What’s it worth to you?” The boy’s front two teeth were crooked, making him lisp.

“I’ll buy the purple one.” Knox pointed to a length of silky purple ribbon, flowers embroidered down the middle. Maybe Anwei could use it.

“That’ll set you back half a copper round.…” Knox scoffed, and the boy smiled. “Okay, fine. Five coppers.”

“How about one?” Knox pulled a copper from his pocket and tossed it to him. “Which way?”

The boy smiled and handed over the ribbon. “West side of the gate. Third level up on the wall.”

“Thanks.” Knox shoved the ribbon into his pocket and started toward the gate.

“It’ll look nice with your hair!” the boy called after him. “Maybe after it grows, anyway.”

Knox pulled his scarf a little higher over his nose as he walked. At the far side of the market, he found the rows of precariously balanced shops that had been built out over the water to lean against the old wall, a green glass door on the third level, about thirty strides from the trade gate.

Instead of taking the series of ladders and platforms that led up to the shops, Knox strolled past to climb the next set of stone steps that led to the top of the wall. There, Knox walked until he was nearly above the Greenglass Malthouse, then leaned against the parapet, giving the expanse of city a good country stare. There was a girl a few paces down in a university tunic with an easel and a half-painted canvas in front of her. “Nice day!” she said, looking at him expectantly.

“Yeah. Sunny.” He licked his lips when she kept looking at him expectantly, as if he hadn’t fulfilled some social contract. “Um… I like your painting? The colors are nice.” From what he could see, she’d made the drum tower an uncomfortably bright shade of pink.

“Thanks. You know, when the light hits that tower, it just…” Her mouth stayed open, as if she couldn’t find the words. Knox backed away a step, and then another, not sure how he’d gone from standing there, minding his own business, to having a whole conversation.

“I’ve got to… go. Over here.” He ignored the odd look she gave him. That was one thing he missed about baring his Devoted scars: people before had left him alone.

There were hours to go before the meeting, but whoever had sent the note would be watching too. With some luck, Knox would see them first. Not that Knox needed luck. He’d spent enough time hunting people to know how it was done. He stared down at the malthouse’s dirty roof, watching the people clustered below until—

Until—

Willow suddenly unfolded in a vengeful war of hunger and thirst. Knox convulsed forward, a hand to his head, an attack like she’d never tried before. Finally! she crowed. Enough to make me alive again! Finally someone feeds me—

I’ve never fed you. I don’t even know what you eat. He fought her back, his breaths coming fast, sweat dripping in streams down his temples, and his vision blurring. Why is this happening now? What has changed? Where are you, Calsta? It came out as a snarl inside his head. Willow liked it, nodding in approval. Yes, where is your goddess, Knox?

He fought, forcing her back behind the walls in his mind, but it was like trying to pour water into cupped hands, bits and pieces of her streaming through cracks he hadn’t known were there. By the time Knox had wrestled Willow out of his thoughts, he was out of breath, his fingers sore from pressing against the stone parapet.

“Are you all right?” The artist was looking at him again, a drop of pink paint dripping from the end of her brush onto her smock.

“I’m…” Before Knox could brush her off, he saw them. Three familiar auras at the edge of his range. One stood on the stairs just behind Knox, the other two down the wall less than fifty paces away. Three Trib horsemen.