Dream Storm Sea (4 page)

“You act as if war weren’t natural,” Emesea said. “Now, do you think Hiresha would do it? A war for her freedom?”

“Well, we don’t worship your Winged Sun, and Hiresha doesn’t like hurting people.”

“Think of it as saving people through war.”

“Forget it.” Inannis stood. “I’d never let you take an enchantress to the Dominion.”

Fos blinked up at him. The fire’s shadows covered the thief from the waist down, but he seemed to be upright and on his own feet. Somehow, he had freed himself.

6

Escaping the Night

Fos could not hold in his surprise. “Your chains…your legs?”

Inannis slipped a twisty metal object into his collar. He gave no answer.

Emesea said, “When they lifted the block for you, he pulled his legs from his boots, tucked his knees against chest. Had some stuffing to make his pants look normal. Didn’t need much for his twig legs.”

“He did that with everyone watching?” Fos asked.

“I knew I couldn’t manage that sleight of foot,” Emesea said. “So we distracted for him. You did fine, for your first time.”

“Oh, I’ve been shackled before,” Fos said. “Wait, what happened to Inannis?”

Fos whipped his head around but could see nothing of the thin man. Nor had Fos heard him walk away. In the pulses of firelight, the empty stalls looked like stilt-legged creatures.

“He’s getting a mallet and chisel,” Emesea said. “Or getting savaged by Feasters.”

A scream ripped out of the darkness. It wobbled between low notes and shrieking, the sound of a man being unmanned. The cries were only interrupted by sounds of urgent pleading.

“We have to help him.” Fos tried to rise. The block scraped his knees and held him down. For the first time he felt vulnerable, with no sword and nothing but a few feet of firelight for protection. He knew enough not to trust his chain armor to stop a Feaster.

“That’s not my Inannis.” Emesea gazed in the direction of the wailing. “Lungs are too strong. What a shout! That Talrand had some pepper in that barrel chest of his.”

“They left him to die on the street?”

“He tried to steal from them,” Inannis said, appearing beside Emesea. “No one forgives a thief.”

“Less talking. More unlocking.” Emesea lifted her shackles. She cocked her ear, grimacing at the screams that were now broken up by echoing sobs. “Burning worlds! We have to hope the Feasters linger over him. They’ll take our escaping as an insult, and even I wouldn’t want to fight more’n one.”

“One may be too many,” Inannis said. The shackles clicked open. He flipped a pick into the air, handed Emesea a mallet and hammer, then caught the spinning shine of metal.

Fos asked, “You’re going to hammer through this granite?”

“Why would we do that?” Emesea lowered the chisel into the shadows below the block. “When the plaza under our legs is limestone. Soft as llama yogurt.”

The hammer cracked down. Fos could only guess she aimed by feel. The following blows made jaw-clenching pings.

“They must be coming now.” Fos was not one to be frightened of a brawl with men, but right then it felt as if ice shards were scraping their way through his veins.
At night, Feasters might as well be gods.

“They’ll hear it, sure.” Powder sprayed over Emesea. She scrunched forward to position her next blow. “They’ll think it’s us banging our shackles against the block again.”

“We’ve acclimated….” Inannis broke off in a wheeze. He scrounged in the darkness beneath Emesea. Stone scraped.

“Slide this chunk out. I think we’re close.” Emesea pushed against the block. She yanked something in the shadows—her leg, perhaps—and stood free. “Ha! Lost some skin there. Now for the big man.”

Inannis strode toward Fos. The thief’s eyes flicked to where the merchant screamed.
Had been screaming.
The silence frightened Fos more than anything he had heard before.

Emesea pounced on Fos. She angled the chisel between his knees, swinging the hammer behind the metal spike.

“Tuck in your cock,” she said.

Fos winced but felt nothing worse than stone shards digging into his trousers. Inannis stooped over him, sliding a pick into a shackle. The single curving instrument became two, then three in the lock, and Inannis flicked his wrist to open it. When the thief moved on to the shackle around Fos’s neck, breath heated Fos’s cheek. It smelled of metal.

Emesea smashed down again. “Did they teach you how to fight Feasters?”

The chisel pinched off skin from his leg, but he did not let himself grunt in pain. “Mainly they taught us to keep our enchantresses inside at night.”

“Yeah. Hard to surprise Feasters. Hard to close with them.” Emesea ripped a flagstone out from under Fos. “Their magic can outrun us, so that makes it simple. We win or we die.”

The last shackle fell from Fos. He could shift his legs but not yet get them out. Reaching below his calves, he pulled out rubble. Shadows writhed around the circle of the fire. Nothing stalked into view yet.

He understood a normal man could never encounter a Feaster and hope to live. Fos also knew he was destined to survive the night.
So what do I do that no other would?

“Has to be another way,” he said.

“Unless your blood starts glowing with magic, we take the hard way.” Emesea gripped his shoulders and heaved him out of the block.

Trousers ripped. Boot buckles burst. Skin stung, but he could stand.

He towered over Emesea. He would never have believed a woman her size could move him if she had not just proven it.

“Maybe Feasters should be scared of you,” he said.

She spun the hammer and chisel around her hands. The fire tinted her smile red. “Let’s go.”

Fos wanted to run. Into blackness, into a mad flight, every nerve urging him on. He forced himself to a measured pace.

The mountains blocked half the sky’s stars. Fos could not see much beyond dark shapes of hulking buildings. The tangle of Emesea’s hair bobbed in front of him. He felt something cold pressed into his hand and only then saw Inannis handing him a sword.

The thief said not a word. His breath rasped and made clicking noises. He bent over, muffling a cough in the crook of his arm. He could not keep up with the fast walk.

“Pick him up,” Emesea said.

Fos hesitated, remembering the spine-searing pain from Inannis's poison.
Like picking up a scorpion.
 Fos still preferred that to another moment’s delay.

The thief seemed to weigh nothing. Fos handled him like he would any venomous creature, with great care. When Inannis was nestled over Fos’s shoulder, the thief whispered in Fos’s ear.

“One block further and to the left. A paper shop with a weak window. Ground floor. We’ll smash it. Then barricade it. May have to gag anyone inside, and leave before sunrise.”

Away from the glare of the fire, Fos’s eyes began to adjust. The flat of his scimitar shone with moonlight.
Not much further,
he thought.

His stomach clenched and flipped. He felt as if claws raced across his back and down his calves.

Emesea chuckled. “Feels like a fight.”

In front of them hovered a leaf design, festooned with spirals and crescents. The curving shapes interlocked in artistic perfection. Vines and flowers and curling rosettes all were stenciled in the air, on nothing. Fos recognized them as henna patterns, more complex than he had ever seen. They swirled across pale buildings. They etched the street in curving labyrinths, pulsing in and out in tides of filigree.

He could have stared at any one design for hours, details growing within it, lines ever twining and looping. Instead, his gaze was pulled to the center of the henna, to the hub of the stylized jungle.

A woman stood there, her skin black with pigment. Layer after layer of henna peeled off her. “You broke free,” the Feaster said, “all to play with me.”

Fos was not surprised by her beauty. Neither was he shocked when her foliage of brown lines shredded a carpet hanging above a doorway. They peeled wood from a shutter and bit wedges out of buildings.
Pretty or not, the henna’s edges will be sharper than my sword.

He glanced down at the weapon in his hand. It seemed so puny.
This can’t be the way.

The thief had already slipped from Fos’s grasp. Emesea had closed her eyes and set her feet to charge, seemingly ready to fight the Feaster blind.

Fos pulled back on Emesea’s shoulder and stepped forward. He rammed his sword into the flagstones. Its blade broke. His voice did the same when he tried to speak to the Feaster.

“I—I’ve been looking for you.”

“Liar.” The Feaster smiled, her mouth full of stars.

She’s right. I don’t want to tell her this. But I’d better.

He hammered his words out. “You’ll need to carry a message.”

“What of
my
needs?” The Feaster's henna tilted forward to enfold Fos like a lily enclosing a bee with its petals.

“The message is for your lord.” Fos had to stifle a groan. Chills raced each other up his legs and around his body. “Lord Tethiel. He’ll want to know this. Tell him Enchantress Hiresha is in trouble.”

7

Descending

A desert fox sniffed the bandage on Hiresha’s hand. His black nose grazed the linen twined around her knuckles. Dark whiskers curved downward from his petite snout, and they twitched as he explored.

The fox chattered in a variety of high noises, some chirps, others mews. He yipped and hopped around the bed as Hiresha stirred. His tail was a puff of white, its tip black. With a muffled bark he began what sounded like an urgent dialog of squeaks.

“Fennec.” Hiresha’s hand swayed as she reached out to the kitten-sized creature.

His cone ears were each larger than his head. They shifted and perked up at the sound of her voice, and he bounded to stand on her bandaged chest.

She winced and stroked his whiskered cheek with a thumb. Her fingers traced below his chin and around his neck to pet his back.

“You don’t seem upset. They stole your garnet collar,” she said, her words faint with sleep. “And your earring.”

The fennec fox plopped down on her belly and turned his head to scratch the inside of his ear with a hind paw.

Hiresha’s smile was shattered by a memory. “Fos!”

The enchantress struggled to rise. She felt herself slipping downward. She sank into the bed, and the world faded as blankets coiled about her and silk sheets held her prisoner.

She dreamed with perfect clarity. The fennec fox swam through the air of her laboratory, a dome of black rock. Jewels orbited her, though they were not true substance, merely reflections of her power. Trying to carry them to the waking world would only dissolve them.

She tried to rouse herself from her dream a hundred times. She met with a hundred failures.
When Fos needs me most, I’m trapped within myself.
Nothing remained for her to do but watch her wounds heal and try not to imagine the ways in which Fos might die to Feasters.

Her confinement ended when hands shook her awake. “Mistress Hiresha! You can’t sleep another day. We must leave. Please get up, or I’ll have to strap you to a chair.”

Hiresha’s full bladder pained her. She shambled out of bed and reached for the chamber pot. Only it was not where she expected. This was not her room. Instead of her matching furnishings, a wardrobe nauseated her with pastel colors as gaudy as a cheap pastry.

The woman in grey who had woken her was not Maid Janny. This young person, almost a girl, had a strong brow that swooped upward from spiny eyelashes. She handed Hiresha the chamber pot.

“You’re not Maid Janny,” Hiresha said because her mind took some time to wake up. In truth, most days it never did.

“Naroh. My name is Naroh Sen.” The girl averted her gaze to allow use of the chamber pot. She opened the wardrobe. Her voice was proud. “I serve Enchantress Cosima, Arbiter to the Empire. She goes with you to Nagra.”

Hiresha set the chamber pot aside. Despite the throb in her midsection, she had not been able to relieve herself in the strange room, with the strange maid, and with her worry for Fos.

Maid Naroh lifted colored fabric. “What dress—”

“What happened to Spellsword Fos? Do you know?”

“Some women would not want to hear,” the girl said, “but you are Mistress Hiresha, so I will say. He has died.”

“That—that can’t be possible.”

Part of Hiresha knew too well that death was not only possible but likely for a man sentenced to the Stone of the Sleepless. She still rebelled against the notion. They had survived so many hardships together that she could not bring herself to think of him dying with her abed.
The Fate Weaver would be cruel to spin so.

Without realizing it, Hiresha had picked up the sleeping fennec fox. She cradled the pet against her chest, near the reddish brown dot on her bandages.

Hiresha could think of only one reason to hope. “It’s been only two nights, has it not? Curious that the Feasters would kill with another night to savor.”

“I wouldn’t know. Where I come from, we don’t worry much about Feasters.” Naroh folded a purple and a red gown, leaving one of blue before Hiresha.

“You have seen the body then? There is no question?”

“They say they found three stains of blood. Nothing else was left at the block.” The girl unlaced the blue dress and lifted it to Hiresha.

The enchantress waved it away. Her mind was slogging but determined. “Three bloodstains?”

“From the two men at the Stone of the Sleepless and one woman.”

The jewel duper, Fos, and the traitor novice.
A new possibility excited Hiresha, and she squeezed the fennec more than she would have wished. He yipped awake.

They escaped.
That conniving Inannis and that fiendish Emesea must have found a way, bless them.

Hiresha knew that a Feaster would leave a whole body.
Cold, dead, but intact.
Not a mere bloodstain. They don’t eat flesh.

Feeling more composed, Hiresha said, “Kindly bring me Maid Janny.”

Naroh glanced down at the dress she held. “Isn’t blue the color of mourning?”

“Not in my homeland. Janny wouldn’t need to ask what color dress I want.”

“There’s only me, Mistress Hiresha. You’re not to see anyone from your past life.”

For the first time, Hiresha realized she was being called “mistress,” not “enchantress.” A lump scraped its way down her throat, as if she had swallowed a peach stone. The thought of never seeing her maid and friend again hurt her almost as much as the rumor of Fos’s death.

Hiresha had also promised to tutor the maid’s daughter. The girl had used Feasting magic, and Hiresha worried what would become of the girl without her guidance.

“Enough of that ‘mistress’ nonsense,” Hiresha said. “I’m an enchantress, no matter what it says in their precious Hall of Crystalline Records. And I wear only purple.”

A smile was a subtle thing on Naroh’s small mouth. “Many of us don’t like what’s happened to you, to Fos. After you saved Arbiter Cosima, I wanted to be like you.”

“An enchantress?” Hiresha threaded one arm into the purple dress. It was silk but bare of jewels.

“Strong,” Naroh said.

Hiresha’s fingers ran over her wounded hand. She could feel divots through the bandage where her jewels had been cut from her skin. “If you wish to help, bring me a gem.”

Naroh’s face might as well have turned to stone. She stepped behind Hiresha and jerked the dress laces tight.

“We might help each other,” Hiresha said. “And it might be any manner of jewel. Except opal. Or clear diamond.”

“Arbiter Cosima has said you must have no jewels. And I will never disappoint her.”

Naroh tidied up the dress then pulled Hiresha toward the door. Hiresha thought the girl’s grip was plenty strong enough already.

They met the arbiter outside the Academy at the cliff’s edge. Wind gusted over a tiled lip of stone, where an enchanted road traveled straight down from the Academy. Hiresha touched her throat. Without her magical amulet, she could not travel down safely. She would plummet.

Arbiter Cosima gave a half bow to Hiresha. The arbiter wore a dress with green diamonds that shone like droplets of lime. The woman’s face was dark and wrinkled before its time by the sun. Her eyes appeared older still. She lifted an amulet for Hiresha to take.

Hiresha could not bring herself to hate the arbiter.
Even if she played a part in this travesty.
Hiresha respected how Cosima used her enchantress powers of lucid dreaming in a practical application. The heightened state of awareness aided the arbiter’s judgments. In the Lands of Loam she was known as a woman of justice.

Returning the bow, Hiresha said, “Thank you, Cosima.”

“Do not thank me yet.” The arbiter slipped the amulet over Hiresha’s head. Its emblem depicted a bronze and silver maze. “Spellsword Sagai.”

The man with the tattoo garden leaned in to Hiresha. At his touch, a magic in the amulet contracted. The links in the necklace tightened into Hiresha’s skin.

“You may now traverse the Skyway.” The arbiter waved to the road going off the cliff. “That amulet will also permit Sagai to find you.”

The spellsword pulled a pendulum from a pouch. The silver ball bobbed side to side on its chain then leaned toward Hiresha.

“Should you try to remove the amulet or tamper with its enchantment, Sagai will know of it. Now, Hiresha, may we proceed?”

The arbiter offered her hand. Hiresha took hold of the green glove, if only for the added security. She had no great trust for the amulet that now felt too close to a choker. The two enchantresses stepped off the edge.

Hiresha had no sense of falling. Rather, the world rotated around her, with the cliff now the ground. The Skyway stretched across a plane of rock, a field banded with different layers of sediment.

“I gather you’re my escort to Nagra,” Hiresha said. “Do you approve of my expulsion?”

“Hiresha, the other elders consulted me. I designed your sentence.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.” Hiresha imagined dragging the arbiter by the arm and hurling her off the Skyway. “Tell me, then. A woman dedicates twenty years innovating enchantment only to have her life’s work pried from her skin. Where is the justice in that?”

“What was done to you was cruel.” The leaf designs of the arbiter’s hem flitted over the blue tiles of the road. “It was also just.”

Hiresha lifted her bandaged hand. “At least we agree on the cruelty.”

“Justice is what society needs for stability. Your magical research could imbalance the empire. No enchantress should both create power and wield it by throwing gems. Such a woman might cause untold harm.”

“Only if she were a nitwit,” Hiresha said.

“Can you guarantee all your students would use your research responsibly? Or your students’ students? What if one mad woman chose to rain a destruction of gems on a crowd using the Hiresha Method?”

Hiresha scowled at a flock of cranes flying ahead of them in arrowhead formation. Because of her cliff-road perspective, the birds appeared to be flapping on their sides, one black-feathered wingtip pointed to the ground, the other to the sky.

I could devise a crushing counterargument if only I weren’t so sleepy.
Hiresha could think of but one thing to say just then.

“What if I agree never to teach impact enchantment?”

“Having one person unopposed in her power would be worse,” the arbiter said. “Think of the vizier, a genius of organization who has guided the Oasis Empire through years of prosperity. Yet would we be comfortable if the vizier did not have to answer to Pharaoh?”

“Yes, I would. Pharaoh is—to phrase it generously—a divine idiot.”

The arbiter turned her head to glance behind. The dyed ostrich feathers in her headdress swayed in the cross breeze. Hiresha followed her gaze.

Spellsword Sagai and Maid Naroh walked abreast. She leaned forward, carrying a chest of drawers on her back. A strap wrapped around her brow.

Neither she nor the spellsword appeared shocked, so the wind must have carried the blasphemy against Pharaoh out of hearing. Hiresha did not see the two speaking, but she had to think it significant that a prince of Nagra—even the third son—would walk apace with a maid.

The arbiter faced forward again. “Pharaoh has a child’s heart.”

“I shouldn’t wonder if someday she decrees all the empire’s pack animals be replaced by hummingbirds.”

“An edict the vizier would neither implement nor enforce. Thus power is divided,” the arbiter said. “Thus do we avoid tyrants.”

“Some tyrant I would have been. I only wished to cure myself and study in peace.”

“I am sorry for you, Hiresha.”

“But not enough to do anything about it?” Hiresha found it increasingly difficult to hold the arbiter’s hand. “I hope you don’t expect me to forgive you.”

“No, not that. Yet understanding may help you accept your new role in life. Because we will never permit you to be free.”

Hiresha yanked her hand away from the arbiter. Hiresha did not fall, but the force of her motion woke the fennec fox.

He tried to squirm from her arms. She held him because only her amulet protected him from a fall. She cooed to him, her lips brushing against the sand-colored fur on the top of his head.