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

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.”

“It doesn’t rub off.” He edged around her, looking up the walkway that would lead him toward the Ink Cay, where the magistrate lived—he was only a third khonin, not fancy enough for the Water Cay.

The Trib figurine felt thin and frail in Knox’s pocket. He pulled it out, opening the handkerchief wrapped around it to make sure it hadn’t come off worse for wear after escaping the trade advisor’s compound. “Do I need to wash this thing before I leave it for the magistrate, or are we okay with poisoning him?”

“Just give it a good rub with your handkerchief.” Anwei started down the road toward the apothecary, turning toward him to walk backward as she spoke. “And maybe don’t handle it directly. I’m okay with the magistrate being a little poisoned. Maybe he’ll pay me for an antidote.” She narrowed her eyes, her feet slowing. “I’ll check you over when you get back, just to make sure none of that aukincer’s rubbish got inside you. Honestly, the things people will believe when they don’t like what a healer says…”

Knox started up the hill without answering her, a shudder running up his spine. Anwei probably didn’t really know what she was doing with those herbs. He’d never heard of a Basist with a nose like hers—her skill was probably a manifestation of being able to match herbs to illnesses or something like that. She hadn’t hurt anyone that he’d seen, but Knox had his history lessons along with everyone else in the Commonwealth. Basists had started just like Devoted. Taking oaths just the way Knox had done with Calsta, giving up parts of themselves in order for their god to give them power. Stories had Basists building castles from rocks that burst from the earth, shaping water into ice and rain, growing flowers and herbs into forests, or even growing someone injured back together.

That was before. At some point one Basist found a way to step around the oaths. To take power instead of having to sacrifice for it. A new oath, perhaps, that twisted him into something corrupted and wrong, allowing him to strip energy from the people around him down to their very souls and take it for himself. Basists after him became something inhuman, creatures that were far more powerful than any god’s devotee had ever been before, their lives spanning long, their fingerprints more like claw marks on history.

Knox pulled his scarf back up over his nose and mouth, pretending he was no different from any other late-evening walker, trying to block out the smells of smoke, beast, and the ripe fragrance wafting from the canals. Ever since Basists had been banned, aukincers had cropped up trying to replicate the miracle cures of old, but without the power from the nameless god to bond elements together into medicine, it was mostly rubbish, as Anwei had said. Harmless at best, but usually aukincers didn’t stop there. Knox had spent most of his time as a Devoted hunting down reports of banned magic only to find a fool like the one who had left the pot in the trade advisor’s study.

Anwei, though… somehow, oaths or not, Anwei was the real thing.

Breaking into the magistrate’s compound wasn’t difficult. Those who expected “Yaru” to answer their prayers tended to leave their shutters unlocked—they knew what their offerings to that goddess were paying for. Knox left the little Trib girl on the magistrate’s bedside table, the man himself too well fed and accustomed to uninterrupted dreams to notice the company.

Once that was done, Knox headed toward the one drop Anwei let him check. It was on the long, thin island that ran the length of Chaol: the Gold Cay, where malthouses would be open all night. Auras tickled the back of his mind as he hopped onto a ferry to cross—there were no bridges or tunnels to the Gold Cay—and the shore was crowded with white globes of light. When Knox got to the docks, he started for the temple, ignoring the auras glowing at tables with dice and cards and in their rooms above the street.

A fight broke out in an alley just as he passed, knives flashing in the lower moon’s pinkish light. He shut his ears to it as best he could, but the slurred shouts and grunts chased him all the way to the little temple where Anwei’s clients could bid for her services. Candles glowed red and yellow in the open doorway, and two university students knelt before Yaru’s statue inside. A tray of dried herbs burned at her feet, the smell peppery and harsh in Knox’s nose.

The little shrine never felt quite far enough from the Temple Cay, where Calsta stood with the rest of the gods and goddesses watching over Chaol. New deities slipped in and out of fashion all the time, so adding Yaru hadn’t been difficult, but Knox still tried not to think of the fake goddess as he slipped into the malthouse next to the temple, her statue’s hair wild, eyes closed, her hands clenched in fists as if there were nothing in this life she could ever let go of. Anwei had commissioned the sculpture long before she’d ever met Knox, rented the space where bureaucrats went to forget their shipping manifests and trade reports. She’d sent whispers into their ranks inviting patrons to “pray” away their problems, and they’d come.

Knox knew that “finding” for high khonins wasn’t all Anwei did as Yaru. He’d seen Yaru’s mark down on the Fig and Sand Cays, where gangs held court more freely than Chaol’s wardens, but Anwei kept her mouth shut about it, and he didn’t feel the need to ask.

Dodging a gaggle of drunken students leaving the malthouse, Knox looked away when they staggered straight toward Yaru’s outstretched arms. Some went to Yaru’s temple knowing exactly what she was—a confidential way to hire a thief—but there were many who didn’t know, and it was they who bothered Knox most. Their hands were clutched just as tightly as the goddess’s, people who dreamed only of things they didn’t have. After the dreams came wanting; after wanting, a resolution that wanting and deserving were the same; and then, with no more thought than it took to put on a pair of shoes, they went to Yaru. As if she or any goddess could make dreams materialize out of thin air.

Giving the malthouse keeper a nod, Knox slid through the clusters of patrons at their round tables to Anwei’s rented storage under the malthouse. He dodged the towering crates of herbs and stones and bones that apothecaries seemed to think were necessary but mostly made Knox sneeze. At the back of the room, Knox slid a few boxes back from the wall, then crawled through the tunnel hidden behind them that led to the space under Yaru’s temple. Anwei had dug it herself. Probably not with the nameless god’s energy, but Knox still didn’t like to think about it.

The room beyond was hot and not quite tall enough for him to stand. Knox went to the box of gathered offerings that had been lowered from above by the temple attendant Anwei paid very well for her silence.

There were only a few papers in the box today. One asked for a beautiful wife with small feet, hair past her hips, and hands that could cook and sew at the same time (accompanied by an offering of three fresh palifruits). One asked for a woman to be killed—Knox didn’t touch that one or the money attached to it, his skin crawling with memories. Then there was a red-dyed paper with a message written in a student’s carefully squared letters asking for passing marks on an upcoming exam—but not a specific class, so there wasn’t much they could do to help. (Not that Anwei would have in any case. The student had left only two loose coppers in offering.)

The last piece of paper stuck to the bottom of the box. Knox couldn’t quite get his fingernails under it, swearing when the stiff paper cut his fingertip. He was tempted to leave it—there wasn’t an offering attached to the paper, and Anwei didn’t work for free. After finally managing to peel the paper out of the box, Knox sucked on his bleeding finger as he read the words:

Greenglass Malthouse tomorrow at the third drum. Twenty thousand silver rounds.

Twenty thousand silver rounds?

First, Knox bit back a laugh. Was the offer a joke?

Then a sort of hope filled him. His cut of twenty thousand in silver would be enough to bribe his way across the Commonwealth border into Lasei, where Devoted couldn’t reach him. He wouldn’t have to rely on Anwei, wouldn’t have to keep worrying that she’d done something worse than mixing herbs to keep him hidden for so long.

And then, reality. Who would pay twenty thousand in copper for a thief? You could buy whatever you wanted with that kind of money. It had to be a ham-handed attempt to unmask Yaru for what she was. The hairs on the back of Knox’s neck prickled at the idea of one of Chaol’s wardens kneeling before Yaru, trying to see down the drop. Or maybe one of the gang bosses from the lower cays, angry at jobs lost to a goddess. Either could somehow notice the tunnel to the malthouse. Follow Knox home to his room next to Anwei’s over the apothecary.

He pocketed the odd note along with the student’s coins and snuck back out through the tunnel, the itch of being watched between his shoulder blades. Keeping to the shadowed edges of the malthouse on his way out, Knox grunted as a man in Trib furs knocked into him, scraping his side with the knife handle sticking out over his belt. Ignoring the sting, Knox kept walking, anxious to be gone.

Bad things always came in threes. Roosters in town. A tempting offer that was likely a baited hook. What would it be next?