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

Noa sat primly at the front of the canoe, paddling absently as Anwei steered them through channel traffic toward the Water Cay. Her dark brown hair streamed behind her in a loose braid, the two knots marking her second khonin caught up in a double-pronged hair stick with a lily carved into the end for Falan, the god of performers and thieves. Not that he gave his devotees anything more than advice. It was only Calsta and the nameless god who shared power.

“So, Bear asked you to braid a bridal wreath. The governor’s son. The most important and eligible bachelor in this city. He wants to marry you, and you want to… poison him?” Anwei asked.

“Only a little.” Noa switched to Elantin—a southern dialect Anwei had learned during her first year away from Beilda. Sometimes Anwei thought maybe the reason Noa had glommed on to her so quickly was because Anwei could answer in her own language. It was hard to find Chaol natives who could speak anything but Common outside the docks, and even Noa knew the docks were a rough place for someone like her to go looking for friends. “Daddy’s been so smug about the two of us spending time together, and he still won’t tell me when we can go back home—”

“I thought you liked Bear.”

“I do like him. Vandalizing stupid statues and taking him to street performances when his father isn’t looking is fun, but that doesn’t mean I want to be shackled in his dusty old house wearing crimson and gold the rest of my life. He’s not that entertaining.”

“The governor’s colors?” Anwei maneuvered them to the common dock. “He wouldn’t really make you wear them all the time, would he?”

Noa twisted to look at Anwei, the paddle flinging drips of water back to dot Anwei’s skirt. “I just want to go home. Or to be able to go home without having to ask permission—from my father, from my husband, from my new father if I marry Bear. I mean, who needs two fathers? One is bad enough.” Noa unspooled the mooring rope and threw it to the dock attendant.

Anwei pulled the boat in the rest of the way and tossed the attendant a coin before stepping out onto the dock. Noa’s plight—too much money and time, and not as many options to waste them on as she’d like—always left Anwei wishing she could laugh in a way that wouldn’t offend the girl, but she didn’t let it bother her just then. With the snake-tooth man’s scent calling to her, Anwei could almost smell her own future opening up. She started down the dock. “Well, tell me how I can help.”

Noa stepped out of the boat after her, the customary smile on her face a little bit strained. “You think I’m being silly.”

Anwei stopped and turned to look at her friend, trying to find space inside herself for some sympathy. “No, I wouldn’t want to be chained up in some high khonin’s house and forced to wear gold either. It would wash me out.”

Noa snorted, her smile returning. “Well, the galrot would be a start. If I don’t stop my father from talking to Bear’s father at that ball, they’ll draw up the contracts, sign them, then package me up with pretty paper and a bow and send me over by post before I have a chance to push Bear into the cape for the narmaidens.”

“Bear just… assumed you were going to say yes?”

“He hardly even asked and didn’t wait for an answer. That’s how he does everything. That’s why he was fun. That’s about how I like to do things too, but not to other people.”

Noa’s scowl nagged at Anwei, surprising her. Noa was a contact. A nice contact, one she liked talking to, but Anwei couldn’t afford friends. Not outside of Knox, and even him she barely knew. It was jarring to wonder all of a sudden if she was asking questions in order to use the information later or if Anwei just wanted to make sure Noa was all right. The two were very different.

Anwei kept the smile lodged on her face, suddenly anxious to keep moving. “You don’t think anyone will notice if the governor’s son washes up half-eaten on the beach?”

Noa shrugged, her dimples carving deep lines in her cheeks. “I’d have to find a narmaiden first. They don’t usually come this far north.”

Adjusting her medicine bag, Anwei glanced toward the trade advisor’s compound. She had to stay focused. Friends were probably nice things to have, but nice wasn’t a part of Anwei’s life. It couldn’t be until she’d found the snake-tooth man. “I’ll bring you what you want, Noa, so long as you’ve got gossip for me. Have you heard anything about someone new staying up at the trade advisor’s house? I hear the advisor has been seeing an aukincer. Or do you know anything about the Devoted in town?”

“There are Devoted here?” Noa’s eyes widened, her teeth clacking together in a diamond-hard smile. “Do you think they’d kill someone for me?”

“Kill someone, probably. For you, less likely. See if you can find out why they’re here. I’ll come by your house tomorrow.”

Noa shook her head. “Come to the Firelily. I’ll be rehearsing all morning. And bring the good stuff. In the meantime, I’ll dig up everything I can. Maybe the Devoted will be at the ball! Everyone will be too scared to dance or talk or anything else. Maybe I won’t even have to drug Daddy! He might just hide in a corner until they’ve gone.” She groaned. “Why don’t you come, Anwei? We could send the entire government of Chaol face-first into their coconut cream.”

Anwei laughed. “Someday, Noa. I don’t know why you’re worried about Bear locking you away. He is the one who should be worried—that he’ll marry you and you’ll take this city away from him. You’d make the whole Ink Cay dance for you.”

Noa rolled her eyes. “Who would want that? I want to be the one dancing, Anwei. But I want to be doing it because I want to, not because someone made me.”

Isn’t that what everyone wants? Anwei couldn’t help but think Noa could hardly see the world around her. Everyone wanted to do exactly as they pleased, only there was bread to be earned, work to be done, revenge to be had, all of which made dancing a little hard. But Anwei kept her sympathetic smile and waved goodbye. When she turned toward the trade advisor’s house, a thrill of anticipation mixed with fear inside her. Finally Anwei would be getting the one thing she wanted, but it wasn’t going to be much of a dance.

When she got to the gate, the guard sitting just inside threw down a hand of cards. “What do you want?” he growled before getting a proper look at Anwei, his eyes stopping on her hundred braids. She caught sight of the rough circle carved into his canine as he gritted his teeth, the trade advisor’s house mark. Rich households had marked their servants since before the shapeshifter wars.

“Pardon my rudeness, healer.” The guard fingered the tails of his single long braid, free from any embellishment that would mark high position among his fellows. Two other guards stood to stare at her over the wall. “Are you here to see someone in particular?”

“The advisor sent for some medicine. He’s lucky to have such a good-looking group of guards.” Anwei pretended to marvel over the not-quite-cleanliness of his armor. The night guards were different from the day, but she still felt a glow of relief that this man wasn’t the one who had tried to take her head off. “He’s expecting me.”

“I doubt it.”

“You think I’d lie to someone with muscles like yours?” Anwei inhaled surreptitiously, itemizing the smells and blocking out the ones that didn’t matter. The cheery green of grass peeking up through the brittle gray brown of paving stones, the dirt under the guard’s fingernails. One dull yellow line of inflammation fuzzed underneath the smells coming from him—a rash of some kind. Her mind flicked back to the outbreak of rashes Gulya had asked her to look into. She’d said it was isolated to the Fig Cay.

Anwei shook her head, focusing. Last night the shapeshifter’s scent had been over by the aviary, on the other end of the house. Far enough away that there was little chance of following it without the guard letting her inside. “I heard there was an aukincer working up here. Any chance he’s here now? I wanted to check with him to make sure he approves of the remedy I brought.”

The man rubbed his neck, and Anwei caught sight of red blotches across the back of his hand. “I promise, your services are not needed, healer.”

“Maybe once I’m done helping the advisor, I could check your rash—” Anwei started to point at it, but he cut her off.

“The advisor’s dead. Now get out of here before I call the wardens.”

Anwei blinked, the packet of herbs crunching between her fingers as they closed into a fist. Dead? She’d gone into the man’s house. Diagnosed his illness. Stolen his property. Then she’d run, as if sicknesses were something that sat and waited.

She turned and started walking away, a hole inside Anwei opening up. The same hole she’d run from all these years after Beilda. When Anwei used her hands to heal, they touched people. They memorized people’s faces, their stories, their families. Their lives. And then, when she couldn’t do anything to help them, it somehow felt as if it were her fault.

Just like her twin’s murder.

When Anwei stole and poisoned, everything was her fault. But it was a fault she chose. Arun had always sat next to her—so much better at pulling apart the flowers to dry the petals, knowing all the hundred remedies and earning his braids a full year before she did, though they were the same age. Born the same day, she with a smile and he with…

Anwei closed her eyes and inhaled, steadying herself. In a single moment she was blessedly overrun by Chaol’s scents: weeds poking out between the street’s paving stones, dog excrement clinging to a passing maid’s shoes, dirt, pollen in the air, leaves on the trees, sweat and linen and cotton and leather… and that fuzzy yellow line wafting from the guard.

No. Anwei couldn’t think about Arun. She couldn’t think about the advisor coughing out his last breaths on the stairs. What mattered was the nothing smell. If she couldn’t get in the front gate to find out where it had come from, she’d have to find another way in.

“Healer!” The shout brought Anwei back to the present. She turned to find one of the trade advisor’s guards running toward her. “You said he was sick. Come quick!”

“Who?” The fuzzy yellow smell grew stronger. The sick guard.

“He’s fainted. Please, can you help him?”

In that moment something pulsed. And the smell turned from yellow to… nothing. A burning hole in the air.

The stink of shapeshifter.

Knox stared at the Trib horsemen who’d found him somehow, the two on the wall walking fast in his direction. The one below stood at the base of the stairs, blocking his escape. Calsta’s power flickered inside his chest. He forced his hand away from his shoulder, trying not to grope for the sword that wasn’t there. No armor, no shield, no weapon except for the knife in his pocket. They shouldn’t have been able to follow me after I lost them in the alley. His eyes darted across the battlement, looking for a way out.

What if they were working for Devoted?

“Did you steal something from them?” The artist gestured toward the men with her paintbrush. It flicked droplets of the awful pink across his tunic.

The auras were thirty paces away. Knox could run down the wall toward the gate. They’d only follow. He could face them with nothing but his favorite knife. A knife fight on the wall would attract too much attention.

Twenty paces. Ten.

The shops below, the Greenglass Malthouse…

Knox hopped up on the battlement and stepped over the edge.

He caught himself on the stone lip, the battlement giving an ominous groan, bits of chalky mortar peppering his face. If he climbed down to the highest shop, lost the Trib men in the maze of ramps and ladders, then…

Then he’d find Anwei. She’d hidden him this long.

At least, that was his plan for the split second before the stone gave a great crack and Knox was in the air. Everything slowed, all of Knox’s muscles clenching at once, as if he could somehow grab the ledge that was no longer there. Inside, his mind clenched too, so much closer to touching Calsta’s energy than usual that it seemed to reach for him. A tiny fissure opened in the barrier he’d built between himself and the goddess’s power, a drip of gold from his aura swirling into his blood like milk in a cup of water.

Knox shoved his hand out, jamming his fingers into an impossibly small chink between stones. His fingers and arm held when they caught his weight, as if he were made of feathers, his body swaying back and forth.

The glow of energy he’d been craving dribbled inside him, a sense of power chasing everything else away. Until he saw the painter gaping at him over the edge of the broken parapet. Her arms were outstretched as if she meant to somehow catch him midfall, horror in her face because she knew there was no way she could, and even more horror layered on top of that when she realized she didn’t need to. He was impossibly balanced against the crumbling wall, breaking every law of nature she’d learned at the university.

Hands pushed her out of the way, the two Trib elbowing into view.

Knox’s fingers pinched, Calsta’s energy thrumming through him with a healthy dose of dread. He scuttled down the wall like a spider, frantically trying to rebuild the wall between himself and Calsta’s power, but the break wouldn’t close, the drip of golden energy turning into a river. Light streamed into him faster and faster, panic burning through his whole body. They would see. There was no way they couldn’t see.

The world seemed to quiet around him, narrowing to nothing but the churn of pure light inside him. Knox could feel every line in the stone under his boots, every fiber of his tunic, sunlight burning into the skin on his face and bare arms.

Birds hung in the air overhead, mosquitoes hovered over the cool waterway abutting the wall under the shops, flies investigated beads of sweat pearling on his forehead. It rushed through Knox, flooding all his senses, the city lighting up with energy signatures until his mind was nothing but white.

He started to shake, losing his grip on the wall as the power burned through him, and landed on his back with a thump that tore the breath from his lungs. “Anwei!” He choked it out, rolling onto his side. Every time he’d woken from a nightmare of auroshe teeth and spiriter veils, Anwei had been there to assure him he was well and truly safe. But Anwei wasn’t here now. What would Calsta think of him calling out for his partner instead of her?

But it was Calsta who was the problem. Her energy roared inside him like a beacon for anyone with aurasight to see.

Lia’s lungs froze, the flicker of gold aura on the wall twinkling. Knox was here. He was right there.

No. Her mind circled him once, twice. Demanding that he disappear. NO.

“What do you see?” Ewan whispered, his breath leaking wet through her veil.

“I…” The flicker exploded to a golden bonfire, aura ripples shooting up so high even Ewan should be able to see them.

Feet moving too fast for her skirts, Anwei tripped as she entered the gate, then skidded to a halt at the fallen guard’s side. Her fingers shook as she undid the buckles on his armor, shouting for servants to bring water. The guard’s eyes had rolled back in his head, faint breaths panting out from his throat. All Anwei could smell was the tiny hint of nothing spiraling through him like a worm’s hole, thinner than a thread. Blood leaked from the corner of his mouth.

Coughing up blood. A rash.

Anwei pulled a little knife from her medicine bag and sliced open the guard’s undershirt, finding the red blotches across the man’s stomach and chest. Cross-humor, Gulya had said, and this rash covered three at least. “Has he been to the Fig Cay?” That’s where Gulya had said the outbreak was. This man couldn’t be the shapeshifter. The smell was like a foreign object lodged inside him. Was this what she had smelled the night before?

What was it?

“Pausy moonlights for the Crowteeth. He was down there last night.” The guard who had brought Anwei hung back, staring at the rash. The other guard came running with a ceramic jug of water. “Is it catching?”

“I don’t know. Give me that.” Anwei held her hand out for the jug.

“Excuse me, young lady.…” A young man ran toward them, smelling of rinoe, hael, and other aukincer nonsense. “If you could just step back, I believe I can help.…”

He had burn marks on his hands that stunk of chemicals—burn marks from his own remedies.

Anger boiled up inside Anwei at this man, this guard, this rash, this ridiculous puzzle that made no sense when it was supposed to point to the snake-tooth man. She dug her free hand into her medicine bag, meaning to teach the sham aukincer a lesson, but just as her fingers touched the leather flap, something in Anwei’s head stiffened. The world seemed to blur around her, the water pouring from the jug going fuzzy in front of her. The nothing smell receded to make room for a voice.

Anwei! it screamed.

Knox’s voice.

Anwei scrambled to her feet, dropping the water jug. It shattered, the pieces skittering across stone as she put her nose in the air, searching for the source of the voice. Only, it wasn’t a smell. It was inside her, prickling like all of Gulya’s knitting needles were under her skin and trying to get out.

The sick guard’s eyes flickered open, one hand going to his chest as if his lungs wouldn’t inflate. The aukincer skidded to his knees, his hands already greedily groping for some remedy that would, at best, do no harm.

Anwei! the voice pled.

“I’m here,” she whispered. But the shapeshifter… the nothing smell right in front of her…

Knox’s voice swelled stronger, and suddenly it was as if she were looking inside Knox’s mind, his emotions scrolling along like the narration in a puppet show. Fear. Pain. Fear.

“I’m here!” She yelled it this time, stepping back from the fallen guard, though it was exactly what she shouldn’t be doing. “What’s wrong? Where are you?” The words felt slippery with sweat in her head. The guards were staring. The world had stopped.

She gawked at them, her eyes landing on the aukincer with his hands full of powder. “Don’t let him”—she pointed at the aukincer—“touch your friend if you want him to get better. I’m at the Coil Apothecary. Tell him to come when he wakes up.” Then Anwei hitched up her skirts and ran.

Lia dropped her gloves, one bare hand clawing free of the veil toward Ewan.

“What’s wrong?” Ewan’s voice pulled tight, his back going unnaturally straight at the sight of her fingers. His eyes were full of her, so full, the explosion of golden energy behind him didn’t catch his attention. “Lia, what are you doing?”

She clutched her hands to her throat, pretending to choke. She stumbled forward.

Into him.

Lia crashed into Ewan’s chest. His arms clutched around her waist to steady her, his heart racing, the cloud of thoughts around his head turning to fire. He was touching her. All the places he wanted to be touching her. And, before her eyes, his aura corroded. The golden flecks sickened to a brackish green, then winked out.

Tears burned in Lia’s eyes at the feel of another person against her skin, of her face pressed against Ewan’s chest, even with the veil and his armor between them. Her bare hand was touching him.

Lia’s aurasight was made up of long tentacles and arms that snaked through the city, but with her own two broken oaths—touch no one and let no one see you—they shriveled and writhed, disintegrating into golden flecks on the dirty streets.

Suddenly Lia didn’t have to pretend she couldn’t breathe anymore. It started with the beacon on the wall, her view of Knox’s aura winnowing down to nothing as Calsta withdrew her power from Lia. The wave of darkness crested high, washing out all the little halos between Lia and the wall—the families, the old women, the little children clinging to their parents in the streets—each disappearing one by one until it got to Ewan, whose arms were still tight around her.

Touch no one.

“Lia! What’s happening? Are you hurt?”

Then even his thoughts were gone, the world around her silent and dark without Calsta’s glow, and Lia was no longer a spiriter. No longer threaded through with Calsta’s power. She was only a girl wearing a veil.

Knox felt as if his head were splitting open with Calsta’s power as it rushed into him. Willow’s bony fingers stabbed into his brain. She was excited, ecstatic, but then—

Then—

A net of darkness circled him, dimming the air around Knox. The fingers were gone. Calsta’s power was there around him but not burning him from the inside. He could see. He was alive. He was lying on a hot tile roof, the scent of ocean in his lungs. The invisible net seemed to settle across him, like a shield to neutralize his aura.

It was purple. Like Basist auras. Like Anwei.

Skin crawling, Knox rolled off the shop roof and tumbled onto the walkway below, narrowly missing a display of pewter mugs and plates. The Trib aura on the street was climbing toward him, and the two above him were running down the length of the wall toward the stairs.

A voice whispered in his head. Not Calsta’s burning tongue, nor his sister’s ghostly decay. It was Anwei.

I’m coming! she whispered.

Knox forced himself up from the splintery walkway and toward the shop’s open door. Willow was still there in his head, but now she was crying. They’re going to take you, Knox. And if they take you, they’ll take me, too. We’ll both die. It’s her fault. You saw her aura all around you! She’s been doing it this whole time, touching you with that dirty Basist magic. She’s going to hurt you if you don’t hurt her first.

The shop proprietor stood to meet him, a stern pinch to his mouth telling Knox he wasn’t the first person to come stumbling into the shop as if he’d had enough malt for two.

“Quick.” Keeping his voice level, Knox pulled everything he had from his pockets. A few coins. The purple ribbon. Purple like Anwei’s net of magic somehow looped inside him. He hadn’t known. How could he not have known?

Knox shoved the ribbon back into his pocket and held the coins out toward the man. “Is there a back way down? I can pay you more if you get me out of here.”