Heir of Thunder (Stormbourne Chronicles Book 1) (20 page)

Early that next evening, I left Melainey to the trinket
booth and Malita to whatever chores the Tippany family had asked of her.
Restlessness buzzed through me as I waited for my meeting with Cicely
Faercourt. I roamed the Fantazikes’ grounds, my thoughts in a whirl, stirred by
impatience and expectation. On my third trip around the camp, a bony hand caught
my elbow and tugged. I spun on my heel and found myself facing Justina, the
ancient matriarch of the Fantazike tribe.

“What is it that troubles you?” she asked. She didn’t
release her grasp on my arm, but leaned against my side, relying on me to support
some of her miniscule weight. She was hunched and grizzled, but her hair was
still thick and white as fresh snow. Her eyes were milky emeralds in the low
light and, when she smiled, her face crinkled into warm and welcoming wrinkles.
Niffin said she was so ancient no one remembered her age.

Justina’s family’s airship—the largest of the armada—hovered
nearby, and she directed me to escort her to the fortune telling booth set up
in its shadow. I had yet to patronize Justina’s table, having reservations about
using her services. Not that I doubted she could read fortunes or tell the
future, but did I really want to know my fate? Especially if she saw things
ending badly for me?

“I think I may finally be taking my leave, Madame,” I said. “I’m
waiting for a friend to bring me news, and then I hope to be on my way.”

“Have my people treated you kindly?” Justina lowered herself
with popping joints and creaking bones onto her padded stool.

She motioned for me to take the seat across from her, then
patted the tabletop, indicating I should place my hand there for her perusal. A
breeze flowed past us, and I caught a whiff of her scent, a mixture of
something exotic that made me think of foreign places in the East.

“Yes, ma’am. I have been treated kindly. I almost regret
having to leave, but I don’t want to impose any longer. I know it’s not the way
of your people to host outsiders.”

She grimaced. “It is the way of my people to do what is
honorable and right.”

“And they have done that for me and more. I hope my friend can
say the same.”

“Your friend?” Justina rubbed a fingertip across my palm.
Her touch tickled and my hand clenched shut involuntarily, like a flytrap
plant. “The dark one that comes from the southern continent?”

“Yes, her name is Malita, and she is beautiful in body and
spirit. She was my bright light during a bad time. I only wish to see her taken
care of.”

“She has grown attached to one of our boys—to a Tippany. Am
I correct?”

I nodded. I didn’t want to make trouble for Malita, and I
hoped bringing her plight to the matriarch’s attention wouldn’t do her harm.

Justina traced the lines of my palm again, this time with
more pressure. She studied my hand and clucked over it a few times without
saying anything. Finally, with her other hand, she closed my fist and raised
her green eyes to mine. “I know who you are, but do you?”

What a strange question. Typical for a fortune teller,
right?
“Of course I know who I am.”

“Your father left you before it was time,” Justina said. My
breath caught and turned cold in my chest, but she continued without heed for
my discomfort. “It was his duty to show you who you are, but he left you before
he was finished.”

She waited a moment, but I had nothing to say. She bobbed
her head. “You will be the age of a woman soon, yes?”

“I’ll be eighteen in a month,” I said. “Is that what you
mean?”

Justina smiled and cackled. “This is the time when you will
come into your own. You will receive the right that was yours upon your birth.
But without your father to guide you, it could all be lost.”

“It’s already lost.” I had been chased out of my home.
Without Inselgrau under my feet, without Fallstaff over my head, none of it
mattered. Without my father, I wasn’t sure I wanted it anyway.

Justina shushed me and a bit of spittle flew from her lips and
landed on my wrist. I resisted wiping it away. She narrowed her eyes at me. “You
have a gift, but you don’t know what to do with it. Your father is gone, but
his death was not the end. You will not be lost forever, child. Your place is
in the one your father once held. You will return there. You will be queen.”

I yanked my hand away and jumped to my feet. “How can I take
back a kingdom all by myself? How can I take back a kingdom I’m not sure I even
want?”

She cackled. “You
want
? You
want
? It is not
what you want. It is who you
are
, but you do not know it.” Justina rose
to her feet and pointed a gnarled, arthritic finger at me. “You do not know it
yet, but you will.”

Crazy old woman
, I thought and cringed, wondering if
she could read minds.

“You
will
know it,” she said. “When that happens, if
you come back to me, I will show you how.”

“You’ll show me?” I asked. “What do you know about being the
Lord of Thunder?”

“You are not the only one who knows the secrets of the
storms. The Fantazikes have lived in the heavens for centuries. I can show you
things, when you are ready.”

“Why would you help me?”

Justina paused and considered my question as if realizing
she had offered her help without thinking about it first. “Why indeed.... Why
indeed.”

Justina sank onto her stool and looked up at the sky. The
first bright stars had poked through the twilight. She pointed at each one as
if counting them. I waited for her to utter a response, but she went on
counting until I wondered if she had forgotten me. Her eyes slid back to mine
and she grinned, revealing her hole-ridden gum line again. “I think that maybe
we will be needing each other, and this is only the beginning.”

I inhaled, expanding my chest, and exhaled with a whoosh.
The fine hairs around Justina’s temple swirled in the current of my breath. She
patted them back in place and stared at me expectantly.

“Madame, I respect your insight,” I said. “But what you’ve
said is too much for me to accept. If it
is
true, then I look forward to
seeing you again one day. For now, I must make my way as I see fit, and I can’t
see how that way will ever lead me home.”

Justina dismissed me with a grunt and a wave of her hand. “We
shall see. You go back to marching in circles, my dear. Someone should be
arriving for you shortly.”

I don’t know how much Justina foresaw as the basis for
making that statement, because if she had known, I would like to believe she
would have given me more warning.

On my way back to the Tippany’s airship, a rabble of loud
voices, punctuated by yelps of protest, caught my attention. The others in my vicinity
turned toward the commotion, too. A raucous group of Fantazike men yelled back
and forth with several uniformed figures wearing crisp, blue, woolen tailcoats
and shiny black caps.

“Politzen!” someone hissed.

I spun around, looking for any familiar face, and spotted
Emorelle. She rushed toward me, but her attention was trained on the fracas.

“Emorelle, what’s going on?” I asked, hurrying to her side.

“The politzen, the city guards, are here,” she said. “I do
not know why, but Puri says Niffin and Timony are in the middle of it.”

Fantazikes from all over the camp streamed toward the
conflict. Emorelle and I squeezed in closer. Both the Pecian guards and
Fantazike opposition yelled at each other, their faces red, mouths screwed into
sour grimaces.

“Can you understand them?” I asked.

“Hush, girl.” She swatted me. “Let me hear.”

A Pecian guard—one wearing a tall, plumed hat and a blue,
military style jacket bearing a collection of official looking ribbons, braids,
and medals—shook a fistful of papers in Timony’s face. Only then did I
recognize Niffin standing beside him, his face so distorted by rage that he
looked almost like the grotesques on a cathedral.

“He said we need to pay for a permit,” Emorelle hissed in my
ear, “but Timony said we have already paid.”

The confrontation seemed to be at an impasse, but then
someone spat. I didn’t see who, but I did see the resulting gob of saliva slide
down the politzen’s cheek and drip from his chin. The air stilled. No one moved
and an expectant quiet settled over the mob. The politzen’s leader snapped a
handkerchief from one of his pockets and swabbed his face.

He turned on his heel and shoved his way out of the crowd.
Then he turned toward the cobblestone street leading into the heart of Pecia.
Before he reached the road, he yelled something over his shoulder and marched
away, disgust and anger evident in each step.

I didn’t understand his words, but I understood the reaction
of his guard. They jumped to arms as if someone had turned the keys in a
battalion of tin soldiers. Great wooden cudgels appeared as if wrenched from
the air, and they beat back the crowd, clubbing anyone who came within range. The
Fantazikes fought back with fists, rocks, nails and teeth.

I clutched Emorelle’s arm as my stomach went sour. “Emorelle!
What do we do?”

“Get Justina!” she yelled without turning her attention from
the fight.

Fear made my feet leaden and slow, but I nodded and made my
first trudging step. Before I could follow with a second, the fight burst its
seams and the violence swelled like a rising tide, rushing over the observers
at its perimeter.

A stiff elbow glanced off my ribs, and I spun away to dodge
further assault only to wind up stepping into the stiff arm of a soldier as he
reared back to punch a Fantazike man. Rocked from my feet, I whirled and tried
keep my balance, but the noise of the fray engulfed me and sent my senses into
a tumult. The earth churned beneath my feet and smelled of copper and iron, or
maybe that was the scent of the blood spilling in great fat droplets and
gushing streams.

I clamped my hands over my ears, closed my eyes, and held my
breath, waiting for the dizziness to pass. Another jab in my kidney sent me to
my knees, and someone stepped on the hem of my skirt, pulling me fully to the
ground. I sobbed, expecting the trampling tide to crush me beneath their boot
heels any moment, but a rough hand grabbed my elbow and jerked me to my feet.

“Run, Evie,” the voice urged. “Get out of here!”

Niffin had found me somehow. The relief of seeing him
cleared my dizziness. “Where is Malita?” I shouted.

“If she is not with you, then I do not know. I hope she is
back at the ship.”

“I’ll go see if I can find her.”

“Find her and get her away from here.” Niffin pushed me
forward and turned in time to duck a flying fist.

My heavy feet sprouted wings, and I took flight, running as
fast as I could. I pinned my gaze to the silver balloon of the Tippany airship,
but as I dashed past the empty music stage, a politzen guard caught my ankle
with the tip of his boot and pulled my foot out from under me. I fell to the
ground face first.

The guard laughed as he fell on top of me. Through
mustachioed lips, he uttered a string of incomprehensible words, but his tone
was slimy and repulsive. For once I was glad I didn’t understand the language.
His hand slid up along my rib cage and pinched my breast. I yanked my arm free
from where he had crushed it between us and slapped his sallow face.

The guard yelped. His expression snapped from greedy pig to
murderous beast, and he hooked a hand around my neck. He chuckled again, his
breath smelling of sour wine and rotten beef. I struggled beneath him but with
no success. Although he was long and lanky, the scoundrel outweighed me by at
least half my own weight.

“Get off of me you disgusting
swine
!” I screamed as
he leaned forward, possibly trying to kiss me.

I bit at him. He turned away, but my teeth nicked his bottom
lip. The soldier leaned back and touched his fingertips to the wound. When his
fingers came away with a smudge of his blood, he backhanded me. His knuckles
felt like rocks as they smashed against my cheek. Stars exploded across my
vision and my consciousness wavered.

I had never,
never
, known such violation. Anger and
outrage welled up in me, straining against my chest like a physical presence
trying to explode past the barricade of my ribs. I cried out, my voice ripping
its way from my throat with sharp claws.

A concussion of thunder and lightning shredded the air,
answering my cry. The noise deafened us both and the explosion of light turned
everything momentarily white and blank. The guard threw his hands over his
ears. He howled, rolled off me, and buried his face in his knees.

I sat up and scrabbled away from him.

The thunder cracked again, calling my attention to the
heavens as rain sliced through the sky and landed in cold, angry plops on my
battered face. When I looked back at my attacker, he had recovered enough to
draw his pistol from his belt. He pointed it at me unsteadily and said
something in a wobbly voice as he jabbed the gun in my direction. I held up my
hands to show I had no intention of trying to run.

The storm distracted him from his previous intentions, and
the rain dampened his spirits as well as his hair and clothes. I didn’t resist
when he bound my wrists behind my back in slim, brass shackles. With his pistol
shoved against my back, he marched me toward his uniformed comrades.

The guards had gathered a group of Fantazikes and loaded
them onto a large, enclosed wagon with iron bars for doors. I saw neither
Niffin nor Timony’s face in the crowd and hoped that meant they had escaped
arrest. Perhaps they would come looking for me.

Inside the wagon, the captured sat shoulder to shoulder.
Most were men, but a few were women. Some sobbed and others stared listlessly
at their feet. The group of captives smelled of damp fabric, sweat, and the
musk of spent adrenaline and anger.

The situation reminded me of another time not so long ago
when I had ridden, shackled, in the back of a wagon. Was this the way my life
was meant to go? If so, then Justina’s predictions had missed by a wide margin.