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

You say he just collapsed?”

The voice echoed in Mateo’s head as if it were coming from down a long stone corridor.

“Right in the middle of the market. I was yelling at him. What is… how… what can I do to help?”

“You’ve already done quite a bit. It was lucky he told you where we were staying.” That was Tual. Mateo couldn’t help but hear the croak in his father’s voice as it came out. This was not good. “I’ve given him his first dose, and that will get him awake enough to take the rest. If you hadn’t brought him here…” The words died into nothing. A hand settled on Mateo’s shoulder. “I can’t thank you enough, Lia.”

Lia. A familiar anger budded inside Mateo even before his eyes would open. Lia, the girl he was supposed to drop everything and marry right before he dropped dead. “Butterfly,” she’d called him.

How appropriate. Beautiful. Fleeting.

“You two arranged to meet today?” The note of hope in his father’s voice made Mateo’s teeth grind together. “Wait, he’s moving! Thank Calsta above.”

The hand on Mateo’s shoulder pushed him onto his side, scratchy upholstery itching against his cheek. He forced his eyes open just in time for the spoon to shove up against his lips, hitting his teeth.

“I’ll help you.” Lia’s voice. Her hands grasped his shoulders, pulling him gently into a sitting position. When Mateo’s eyes opened, Lia was there right in front of him. The blue scarf still concealed her nose and mouth, but a red weal peeked out from between the loosened knots at her neck.

“You’ll stay for the evening meal, won’t you, Lia?” Tual’s relief seemed to flood every inch of the room, cool and grateful where Mateo was burning up with rage. This never happens. Two episodes inside of two days? It should be Lia lying here. A Devoted dying from wasting sickness. Not me. Mateo managed to open his teeth, letting the spoon past to drip medicine down his throat.

“No, I can’t stay.” Lia’s eyes followed the spoon, her fingers pressing harder than was strictly warranted where she held him up. Mateo wanted to squirm away from her, but his body didn’t care much what he wanted. “I have to get back before Father finds my room empty.”

“In that case, I have something for you. I sent Mateo into town with medicine for your mother—such a sly boy, he didn’t tell me he was going to try to see you, too!”

“He wasn’t. We only bumped into each other by accident.”

“A happy accident, I hope? It’s fairly important your mother gets this medicine soon—I’ll go get it. It was in his coat, I think.” Mateo’s eyes followed his father as he left the room, then appeared through the window in the courtyard outside, where Mateo’s horse was standing unattended. How did Bella get back here?

How did I get back here?

Embarrassment curdled inside him. Lia had brought him back. Saved him like he was a helpless princess in a fairy tale.

“Are you all right?” Lia whispered, easing him back down onto the couch.

“No.” Mateo was proud of his mouth for being able to form the word.

“If I had any doubts about what you are, wasting sickness proves it. You’re Devoted.” She picked up the spoon, turning it over in her hands. “But this medicine… it helps?” There was an unholy note of hope in Lia’s voice.

“No. Go away. Go home.”

Lia moved to the chair across from him, fists on her knees and her back straight as if she meant to kick the low couch out from under him if he didn’t answer her properly, but she kept still until his father walked back into the room. Tual held out the cloth-wrapped package he’d given to Mateo once he’d finished his morning at the dig.

Lia took the package and tucked it under her arm.

“Are you going to be in trouble if your father finds you gone?” Tual’s voice dripped with sympathy. “Why isn’t your father allowing you out of the compound? I suppose he must be very worried about you.”

Mateo let his head fall back on the pillow, exasperation sour in his mouth. Leaving any card on the table was beyond his father. He would use every strategy, every argument; every string that could be pulled would dance under Tual’s fingers. It was the only reason they were still alive, but Mateo didn’t much like having it used against him.

Standing, Lia started for the door. “Save your sympathy for someone who can’t see through it.” And she walked out.

Thank you! Mateo gripped the sofa hard, relieved that Lia wasn’t letting his father manipulate her.

But then Tual started laughing. He leaned over to brush Mateo’s hair out of his eyes. “I like her! Don’t you like her?” His expression faltered as he looked Mateo over, and suddenly Mateo didn’t have room for annoyance or anger, because if Tual was that worried, that meant even more was wrong than he knew. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

He followed Lia out of the room, his voice muffled when he caught her in the entryway. “At least take the horse. I’ll send Mateo for her when he’s feeling better.”

“No!” Mateo struggled to sit up, the muscles in his neck straining. “She can’t have Bella.”

“If he’s so sick, it’s not safe for him to be out alone, is it?” Lia’s voice was almost too low to catch.

“I’m afraid this is all quite new, so it’s hard to say.” Tual looked back at Mateo through the open doorway, and Mateo leaned sideways, trying to coax his body into getting up. To stop Tual from telling the killing machine in the entryway everything about him. The lean was all he could manage, and it unbalanced him so much that he tumbled off the low couch.

Couldn’t you have at least let me land on the rug? he complained to the nameless god as he tried to roll over. The flowered decoration on the rug whirled in dizzying circles, his vision burning at the edges as if the sickness were eating away at him from the inside. Eletoria flowers and plince vine, purple and blue…

Tual ran to his side. “Easy, son. There’s no need—”

Mateo shuddered, his anger shaking him now. I’m going to die, and somehow my brain is calling up the names of obscure flowers on the rug? “I wouldn’t want to be rude.” His voice was coming back. “Got to walk Lia out. Wave goodbye and smile while she steals my horse.”

Lia, framed so prettily by the front door, gave a very unladylike snort.

She did give him one last concerned look before walking out. To his horse. Which she took.

It wasn’t until hours later, when Mateo was capable of sitting on his own and halfway through a goat cheese and onion pie, that Tual found him in the kitchen.

“I stayed at the dig after you left this morning, and it’s a good thing we had you roped into a harness instead of touching down in the new room. They didn’t find any traps on the ground, so they sent workers in.” Tual dumped an armful of reports onto the table, drawings and notations from the team of archeologists gray against the vellum. “Three of them collapsed before Van realized the floor was coated in poisonous paint. He managed to get them out in time for me to help, luckily. It’s some kind of byanti concoction, meant to slow people down in smaller doses, but Van had them down there for hours. It was lucky I got to them so quickly.”

“It’s on the floors?” Mateo grimaced, putting his spoon down.

“See for yourself.” Tual pushed the drawings toward him and sat down at the little table Mateo had appropriated despite Hilaria, the cook, threatening him with rat ears for dinner if he didn’t get out of her way. Mateo pulled the topmost roll of vellum closer. It was one of his drawings of the new room, with all the reliefs and statues. The extra notations around the outside marked paint and wear, symbols with speculation about what they could mean, and there at the bottom, capital letters noting poison contamination across the floors and up the walls.

He pointed to the back wall. “There’s a door through here.”

Tual squinted at the drawing, pulling Mateo’s satchel from his shoulder and setting it on the table. “You felt it while you were down there?”

“No.” Mateo’s humors tingled. While he’d been at the dig that morning, he hadn’t dared use the nameless god’s power. Using it to watch Ewan’s aura ride by must have been what made him collapse directly into Lia’s arms. “It was just a hunch. I’ll go back later today and…” His eyes blurred. Blinking, Mateo tried to force his eyes to focus on the drawing. It didn’t work. His head began to pound, the edges of his vision blackening. He closed his eyes and tried to breathe.

“Mateo?” Tual’s hand was on his shoulder. Then a spoon was at his lips.

Mateo opened his mouth and let the foul stuff slide down his throat. When he opened his eyes, they were still blurry.

He pushed the drawings away from him, the top few sliding off the table and fluttering to the floor.

Tual watched them fall. “Son…”

Picking up the next illustration in the pile, Mateo couldn’t quite make the lines unblur, though he’d drawn them that very morning. He remembered Patenga, the burnished gold paint edging the shapeshifter’s likeness, which Mateo had spent an hour matching. And the sword, the beautiful sword… Mateo balled the drawing up and threw it across the kitchen, barely missing Hilaria’s frizzy head. She turned to glare at him.

“Mateo!”

Mateo grabbed his drawing satchel next. Lia must have brought it with her when she’d carried him in. His life was made up of moments where other people had to decide to help him. A life of depending on everyone else’s charity. A life that would end no matter how hard they searched for an answer. Mateo upended the whole bag, his charcoals and inks skittering across the marble floor and rough vellum fluttering like birds’ wings.

“One little episode is not worth this tantrum.” Tual’s voice was quiet. “We’re so close to finding what we need. If we can persuade Lia to—”

“I’ve never had episodes so close together.” Mateo’s hands clawed through his hair as he searched for the power that was supposed to be his, sweat dripping from his nose, down his cheeks, cold drops plinking on the floor as he groped for the nameless god and his magic. But there was nothing. Not even the salty aftertone of Devoted aura on the air, not a single song of stone or herb, not a whisper from the wood. He was blocked off from it after wasting all his energy to track Ewan’s aura from the gate and down the road, all to protect Lia, who didn’t need protecting.

At least she’d given him one answer. He’d thought her aura—Ewan’s, too—had looked starved and sad because he was rubbish at magic. But no, they were diminished. For once he wasn’t seeing it wrong. Mateo looked at his father. “What if the caprenum isn’t down there? What if we can’t even find the burial chamber?”

Tual pressed his lips into a thin line. “We will find it, Mateo.”

“Good. Then stop pushing me at the Seystones, and let’s go to the tomb.” Mateo couldn’t help that his voice was getting louder. Hilaria suddenly found reason to go into the pantry and shut the door behind her.

“You need to rest. And Lia…” Tual licked his lips, looking down. “I love you, son. I want you to be all right. She plays a larger part in this than you think.”

“The only thing I’m interested in right now is not dying.”

“Yes. She plays a larger part in you not dying than you realize.”

“You think she’s going to be the one to pull a caprenum sword out of the tomb?” Mateo shook his head, the room whirling around him. “Is that some shapeshifter trap that I don’t know about—it has to be a Devoted who goes in?” Lia had latched on to the idea that he was a Devoted. For someone who was supposed to spend her life hunting Basists, she was pretty terrible at it. The whole court was.

Tual didn’t say anything, his brow knotted.

Mateo was too wound up to stop. “And even if that were the case, which it’s not, you think the only way she’d do it is if we’re bound together legally in marriage? Even if Lia and I fell madly in love the moment we set eyes on each other—something that hasn’t technically happened on my side unless you count blue scarf as a facial feature—you’d be making a widow out of her before we braided our wreaths. Even if I had years to look forward to, I’d want to choose who and what were in them.”

The words felt final. Horrible. Real in a way his sickness never had before because there were no choices. There was no future. All Mateo had was right there in front of him. A dangerous tomb sketched across a collection of crumpled papers with no direct path forward. A tear etched a line down his cheek, burning like acid.

Tual slid off his chair to gather the littered papers and pencils. “I won’t stop fighting until—”

“Until what?” Mateo pushed back from the table, his insides churning. He wanted to make his father say it.

His father looked up at him, tears glossy in his eyes. “Until you are well again. I’m not letting go of you, son. You’re all I have.”

“I’m going to the tomb.” Mateo started toward the door, stumbling into the wall when his knees turned to jelly. “I am the only reason they found the lower room. Maybe I’ll find more. Are they covering the floors, or did you take something down to neutralize the poison?”

“Mateo—”

“I can’t lie in bed and wait. I’m going.”

“Studying these would be more help.” Tual held up the crumpled pages. “Besides, Lia has your horse.”

“Then I’ll take your horse.” Mateo slid along the wall, barely making it to the door, his boots’ soft soles too quiet to satisfy him as he tried to stomp out.

He stopped just outside the doorway, his lungs like wet paper, each breath tearing them a little more. Walking was hard. Breathing was hard. Even standing in the hallway, his back to the wall, was like trying to balance on a single suspended rope. Mateo closed his eyes and waited for the dizziness to fade.

Tual came out of the kitchen, his arms full of reports. He stopped when he saw Mateo, his face lanced through with real fear. But he recovered himself and held up the reports once again. “I really could use your eyes on some of these. I think you’ll find the one of the wall you mentioned of particular interest. I’ll put them in the office for you.” He smiled. Then left Mateo to battle alone. Tual knew him well enough not to hover.

It took the better part of fifteen minutes for Mateo to manage another step, tears burning down his cheeks. Another half hour got him to his father’s crowded office. Inside, he flopped into his father’s chair and stared at the pile of drawings. Comparisons to past tomb structure, parallels to known burial ceremonies of the time, sketches of artifacts… he swept them all from the desk’s surface and let his head rest on the polished wood, his heart still thumping too slow.

This was the end, wasn’t it? Maybe not today, but soon.

One paper was still on the desk, partially under his cheek. His eyes tried to focus on the words: “Dark or corrupted auras… or any manifestation of unexplained power even without an augmented aura… I will provide restraint until they can be evaluated.…” Mateo sat up and wiped the tears from his face. Dark auras. That’s what a Basist aura was supposed to look like, though Mateo had never seen one. It was part of the nameless god’s many quirks—Mateo could see Devoted, but not the aura hovering around his father. Maybe his father had done something to hide their auras, or maybe not all Basists had them. It was even in this letter—unexplained powers with no aura augmentation. It was hard to know.

Mateo’s fingers brushed across the document, fiddling with the blown-glass paperweight that had saved it from being swept off the desk. It was signed by one of the seclusion heads. “All potential candidates will be referred to Tual Montanne… special attention to any unhealthy attachment to objects, including, but not limited to, unauthorized weaponry.”

Candidates. With a dark aura. A corrupted aura—Mateo didn’t know what that meant—or no aura and magic. Like Mateo.

You’re all I have. That’s what Tual had said.

But Tual said a lot of things. Tual had smiled through that interview with the valas as if he were not threatening to have the whole family killed if they didn’t do as he wished. He always had plans, then backup plans.

That was why they were still alive.

But what would Tual do if Mateo weren’t still alive? What would his backup plan be then? He always talked about how he’d been so alone before Mateo, unable to feel safe in a country where his magic—wanted or not—was a death sentence. The two of them together, working together, studying together, planning together…

And here Tual was looking for other Basists. Candidates to replace the faulty one he was stuck with.

The paper crumpled in Mateo’s fist, his teeth grinding tightly together. There was a deeper violence, a deeper anger, clawing at his arms and hands, twitching in his legs.

We will find it, Mateo.

Son. Adopted son. He seemed so sure they’d find caprenum before Mateo succumbed to wasting sickness. Tual had been alone before he’d saved Mateo as a young child. He’d be alone again if Mateo died.

A possibility Tual seemed to be taking very seriously.