She Who Rides the Storm Read online

  “Watch out!” Knox grabbed Anwei’s arm and wrenched her backward into a stairwell. The Trib maiden’s angles and curves pressed into Anwei’s spine through his pocket. Still elated, Anwei didn’t freeze completely until she heard it. The hollow clop of cloven hooves on stone.

  An auroshe? She shivered at the thought of those monsters with their long serrated teeth and razor-sharp horns—and that was nothing compared with the soldiers who rode them. But there hadn’t been Commonwealth soldiers in Chaol since a year ago, when Anwei had first found Knox. Why would they be here now? And would they be ordinary Roosters, or… they couldn’t possibly be Devoted, could they?

  The threads of triumph in Anwei’s stomach pulled tight, then snapped with a painful twang. She’d run across many Roosters in her travels throughout the country, although Chaol itself was a little out of the way for them to be stationed. But she’d never seen a true Devoted until the day Knox fell into her life with a whole group of them chasing after him like parchwolves hunting their prey.

  That’s what Devoted did when one of their own tried to escape.

  Anwei could feel Knox’s breathing slow against her back, her partner going stone still as two auroshes rode into view, one black, one white. Their manes and long tails were tied in intricate knots that mimicked their riders’ distinctive braids, the white with one slender horn protruding from its brow, the black with two that stuck out from its head like twin lightning bolts. The sight of the creatures curdled Anwei’s belly, but when she spotted their riders, she released a breath. “They’re just Roosters, Knox, not—”

  Knox’s hand slipped over her mouth to stop her from saying more. The Roosters passed by the stairwell, their auroshes bowed and tired. They didn’t seem to notice the hush that fell over the closest market stands as they passed, nor the eyes in the crowd that were glued to the Warlord’s crest on their uniforms. The two Roosters broke away from the road and hugged the edge of the market, making for the Water Cay bridge, the silence that their presence brought hovering like mist after the riders themselves had melted into the night.

  Anwei flinched when the night market patrons began calling to one another once again, drunken students loudly trying out new curses like bits of sugar. A minute passed. Two. “Knox?” Anwei mumbled through his fingers covering her mouth. He still hadn’t moved.

  “Just… wait,” he whispered.

  She grabbed a handful of his tunic, as if she could anchor him in place. “They weren’t Devoted, and anyway, Devoted can’t track you unless you use your…” Biting her lip, she trailed off, not knowing what it was exactly that he couldn’t use, because the two of them had silently agreed not to ask questions when they’d started working together. Devoted weren’t allowed to say anything about the goddess Calsta or the power she lent them. They had hardly even left their seclusions in the last few years except on the Warlord’s business.

  Of course, Knox wasn’t just a Devoted; he was also Anwei’s friend. But even bringing up Devoted magic felt like stepping over a line drawn between them that they had both promised not to cross.

  “They can’t find you unless you use your whatever it is on purpose,” Anwei tried again. “Back in the compound, you heard the old man coming before I did. And you got out without a single guard even noticing—”

  “I haven’t been using it.” Knox’s voice was choked. He shrank back against the wall. “At least, as much as I can help.”

  “And the sword?” She hated even thinking about that gods-forsaken thing. “You haven’t touched it lately or—”

  “No.”

  Anwei let out the breath trapped in her lungs. “Then we’re okay. Those soldiers have no reason to be looking for you.” She turned to face Knox when he didn’t answer. He didn’t look at her, his gaze turned to the crowd, darting from person to person as if he was searching for something she couldn’t see. He smelled of the bland noodles and broth they’d eaten before going to the trade advisor’s study, hints of smoke and meat clinging to his shirt from the night market. But underneath she could scent the salty odor of an agitated sweat.

  “It’s been a year since you left them. It’s going to be okay.” She said it firmly, as if she knew it to be fact.

  Knox’s eyes refocused on her, one hand coming up to touch the empty space where that cursed sword hilt would have stuck out above his shoulder if he’d been carrying it. Anwei’s heart sank even as he changed the gesture to smooth back his dark hair.

  “They’ll never stop looking,” he whispered. “It is never going to be okay.”

  She peered after the auroshes. Even now, out of sight, the soldiers seemed to radiate power, the force of law, the Warlord herself and everything she stood for, almost as frightening as the shapeshifters they hunted. If Roosters were in Chaol, their masters—Devoted—would likely soon follow. Anwei’s grip on Knox’s tunic tightened, the thought of Knox leaving her sharp in her chest. It was only when one of the students from across the street sent a suggestive whistle toward them that her grip loosened.

  Knox was right, of course. The last dregs of triumph from a job well done funneled away as Anwei stepped out of the stairwell. She had known from the moment she found Knox lying almost dead in the street, his head shorn and his hands clutching a shapeshifter’s sword like his life depended on it, that nothing was going to be okay.

  But the nothing smell she’d caught earlier? That could change everything.

  CHAPTER 2

  More Useful Than Dead Plants

  Knox could hardly walk straight as he followed Anwei toward the ladder to the rickety rope skybridge that would take them across the channel to their home on the Coil. He closed his eyes, as if that would somehow shut out the soldiers and their mounts. Devoted could already be here in the city.

  Scrubbing a hand through his hair, Knox pressed a finger to each of the scars he’d been given when he made oaths to join Calsta’s warriors. He knew a rogue Devoted was a risk the Warlord couldn’t take. How could she keep the peace if there were warriors who could move faster, jump higher, hear better—warriors who could defy the laws of gravity and possibly use those powers against her?

  I told you to abandon the seclusion. The voice burned through Knox, leaving him charred inside just as it had the first day the voice had spoken to him when he was young. Calsta. Goddess of sun and storm. Speaking in his head as she hadn’t to anyone else in five hundred years. I don’t really feel like going over it with you again, Knox. Stay clear and they’ll leave you alone.

  It was both a relief to hear her voice and a pain. None of the old records talked about how grumpy Calsta was.

  No. A second voice that wasn’t quite so warm threaded through Knox’s thoughts, sending shivers down his spine. Don’t you remember how horrible Ewan Hardcastle was to you and your little Devoted sister, Lia? Ewan was the one they sent to hunt you. Why not find him first? We could end it all now before he does.

  Lia. Knox blotted her name out almost as quickly as the voice said it. The two together—the icy voice and the thought of the best friend he shouldn’t have left behind—were too much. They twisted together like poison waiting to be released into his heart.

  “Eyes open please.” Anwei’s husky voice jolted him back to the warm night, the steaming cobblestones, and the little Trib statue in his pocket. “Much as I feel sorry for you, I will not refrain from laughing if you step off the walkway and go headfirst into the channel.”

  She pulled him to the base of the skybridge ladder. It led to the first island in the cluster that made up the Coil, lamps and torches flickering in the distance from the bridges and underwater tunnels that strung the rest of the little clump of islands together like a necklace. Anwei’s fingers still clutched at Knox’s shirt as if she were afraid he’d float away. One plait—one of the even hundred that covered her scalp, marking her a healer from Beilda—had slipped free of the scarf covering her head, the braid black against her tawny complexion. Anwei grudgingly let go, then scurried up the ladder, waiting for him to join her. The old wooden rungs creaked under Knox’s weight as he followed, the bridge itself swaying when he stepped out onto it. Half the wooden planks were broken and the ropes looked frayed, but short of swimming or hiring a boat, there wasn’t another way to get back to the Coil. Before she scurried across, Anwei flashed a grin at him that was directly opposite to the tension he could see riding her shoulders.

  “Even with your eyes open, you’re still off-balance,” she called. “Would it help if I pushed you in?”

  “You push me into a channel and you’ll wake up with all those braids undone,” he returned. But he did reach out to the ropes to steady himself. “You’d look like a…” He racked his brain, trying to remember the word. “A pritha.”

  Anwei paused for a second, already starting down the ladder on the other side. “A pineapple?”

  “Did I mean printha?”

  “Are you trying to say priantia? One of those wandering Trib holy men who spend all their lives hoping Calsta will touch them?” Anwei continued down the ladder to the street below. “Two things: One, I’d make an amazing holy… person. Especially if I’m allowed to keep one of those fiery lizard things that the Trib carry around. Two, would you please stop trying to speak… well, anything but Common? You’re good at Common.”

  Knox sighed and followed her down the ladder. On the ground, he kept close to Anwei, watching for anyone who might be tailing them like he was supposed to. They were only one thin channel past the dry market, but the buildings were much taller and dirtier than the compounds they’d left behind on the Water Cay.

  It was the people who were hard to look at, though.

  A man tripped past them, a dimmed, distorted aura that matched his wobbly, drunken steps suspended around his head like a
globe of light. A wrinkled old woman hobbled by, her aura gleaming the bright, almost painful white of one near the end of her life. A pair of students hopped a narrow spot in the waterway just ahead of them, one not quite making it and falling in with a splash. The one who landed safely on the bank started laughing while his friend pulled himself out of the brackish water. Ripples of fatigue waved through both their auras like antennae.

  It took every ounce of concentration Knox could muster to keep himself from looking at any auras beyond those of the people immediately around them. Having taken Calsta’s oaths, he couldn’t help but see the halo of glowing white energy around each person who passed them. But if he were to use Calsta’s power to push his awareness farther—down the street, to the next island over—searching for the gold flecks that would mark a Devoted’s aura… that would be dangerous. That would get him found.

  And then there was Anwei, of course. She pulled him down a side street that closed in tight around them, the bricks smelling as if they were wet with something other than water. Unlike the auras bobbing down the waterway and the walkways around it, Anwei’s aura was an inky smear where light should have been. At the end of the alleyway, she gave an experimental sniff that sent a shiver of ice down Knox’s spine despite the heat still steaming up from the cobblestones. Anwei’s nose, however she played it off, was not natural. Nor was the inky purple of her aura.

  He’d spent most of his life chasing dark auras like hers, before their owners could destroy the people around them.

  “Give me the figurine.” Anwei held out a hand for the little statue when they got to the bridge leading to the next little piece of the Coil. “You head home to the apothecary, and we’ll decide what to do about the Roosters when I get back from delivering the statue to the magistrate.”

  Knox shook his head. The idea of sitting in his room in the dark waiting for Roosters to find him was more than he could stomach. “How about I deliver the statue? I’ll check the drop over at Yaru’s temple, too. That way Gulya will be too tired to kill me by the time I get back.”

  Anwei turned toward him, a dimple creasing her cheek to the left of her mouth when she smiled. “I don’t understand why she hates you so much. You pay rent, you haven’t broken anything.” She caught her bottom lip in her teeth, looking up at him with that quiet way she had, as if she could see more of people than showed on the outside. “You can take the Trib figurine if you want, but don’t follow the Roosters, okay? Following them is like betting on that snaggle-toothed auroshe at the fights and not expecting to lose.”

  Knox wasn’t going to go after the Roosters. He hadn’t needed Calsta’s warning to know better—the goddess’s advice was always good, even if he didn’t know why she’d decided to descend upon him of all people. Still, it was comforting to know a goddess was watching over him in the mess that was left of his life. “Auroshe fights are illegal.”

  “So is stealing. We’ll just avoid the Water Cay until the Roosters leave.”

  Knox did not look at Anwei’s dimple or her mouth. He untangled her hand from his tunic, where it had once again lodged itself. “Fine. We can split at the next waterway. Meet you back at the apothecary?”

  She nodded, looked both ways down the channel, then started up the ladder that would lead toward home.

  Home. Shoulders hunching, Knox followed her. The word tasted like salt and savor, unsuited for Knox’s tongue no matter how much it watered. Why would Devoted come to Chaol now?

  The only thing he could come up with was that Chaol was the last place Ewan had found traces of Knox. A lot of traces, actually. Knox had been so far spent that day that the people he’d staggered past had seemed to be on fire, the white of their auras flickering and dissipating overhead as if they were all draining into the sky. He wasn’t sure why Anwei had stopped when she found him, the backward twist to her aura making it an umbra instead, glowing deep purple black instead of white.

  A dirt witch’s aura.

  He almost drew his sword at the sight of her, even though Calsta had forbidden him from taking it out of the scabbard. If there had ever been a moment for last resorts, that had been it. But then she tucked the braids lining her face behind her ear, and her husky Beildan accent stopped him short.

  “I hear Roosters will chase even if you cut their heads off.” Her eyes skated over the prickles of hair still too short to hide his oath scars. Putting a hand on top of his where it gripped the sword, she kept her voice quiet. “If you’re game, we can try burying you instead of them.”

  He wanted to laugh even as the sound of cloven hooves on stone thundered in his chest. She couldn’t have heard them, couldn’t have seen anything but the panic that had chased him every step he’d taken away from the Warlord, a forbidden sword on his back. Still, Knox followed her across a channel and two streets over to the apothecary, lay down in the room above Gulya’s shop, and winked out like a candle for three days.

  When Knox finally opened his eyes, Anwei was there, setting a bowl of clear broth next to his shoulder. Alarm flooded him, his eyes full of the bruised purple aura hovering around Anwei where white should have been. “Where’s my sword?”

  She nodded to the blanket next to him. With shaking hands he pushed back the cover. The blade was underneath, sheathed and shrouded the way he’d left it.

  “You need food more than you need that sword.” Anwei drew her eyes away as if watching him clutch at the weapon were somehow indecent. He covered the sword, drank down the broth, and closed his eyes, waiting for Devoted to break in through the leaded-glass window. When nothing happened, he followed Anwei’s aura downstairs to the apothecary, where he watched her treat a man’s blisters, and then followed her again that night on a job that had nothing to do with apothecaries or blisters at all. That was how things had been ever since.

  Knox had been buried somehow, just the way she’d said. Anwei had taken him into her potted collection of herbs and remedies, though he liked to think he was more useful than dead plants. Anwei would probably not agree. He liked “finding” with her, as she called it, as though they were helping old ladies retrieve their spectacles. Finding was a good deal different from taking in Knox’s mind. But it was easy to forget the sword under his bed and the soldiers on auroshes hunting him when he was sneaking through the city with Anwei. There was something sky-blessedly escapist about helping corrupt, rich, and mighty men stab one another where it really hurt—their art and wine collections, mostly. It was a relief after so many years of finding people for the Warlord.

  The icy voice hummed happily at the back of Knox’s head, as if remembering those bloody days. Knox pushed it back. It didn’t really matter if his life was better now. Devoted would keep coming, searching for the gold flecks in Knox’s aura just as they had a year ago.

  I promised you that if you kept your oaths, I’d help you. Don’t make me say it again.

  Knox cringed at Calsta’s voice. Giving up his oaths to her had never been an option. She’d saved him long before Anwei and had continued to save him over and over, but her voice burned.

  Even if he were to give up his oaths, it wouldn’t fix his aura. The gold flecks would always be there, lurking around him like tattered fireflies, a testament to what he was. Lying low wouldn’t be enough if Devoted had figured out Knox was still in Chaol. Not unless there had been something else hiding him this last year.

  Knox’s eyes traced the line of Anwei’s back, her confident stride. The darkness of her aura that felt like clenched fists and murder. Only two kinds of people had auras that weren’t boring white. Devoted, who were swirled over with Calsta’s gold, and dirt witches—Basists—who practiced banned magic. They belonged to the nameless god, the very creature who had broken Calsta’s mask. The same monster whom the goddess had strangled in her temple.

  Anwei abruptly stopped in front of Knox, bringing his thoughts back to the present. She gave another deliberate sniff when he almost bumped into her, though he thought it was mock irritation this time, not whatever darkness flowing through her humors that allowed her to scent impossible things. “Not too close. I don’t want any of your Devotedness getting on me.”