She Who Rides the Storm (The Gods-Touched Duology)
She Who Rides the Storm: Chapter 39

The thick fog that had settled over Mateo wouldn’t lift. His head pounded. When he opened his eyes, the world seemed to have been made small, nothing but a tiny room that rocked back and forth. A carriage.

His father sat across from him, a long sword on his lap. The air smelled of burning, and there were black smudges decorating Tual’s shirt and sleeves.

“What… what happened?” Mateo’s voice crackled painfully in his throat. “I was down in the tomb, and all I remember are flashes. And Lia… Lia with a sword.” It had looked so natural in her hand, as if she’d been born to be a Devoted.

“We were attacked.” Tual set the sword on the seat next to him. “You know how dangerous it is for people like us. You opened the burial chamber and it caused an episode, but I managed to get you out before they got to us. We have the caprenum.” He patted the long, twisted weapon. Mateo had seen it among Patenga’s bones before he’d blacked out in the tomb. Now, in the better light, he could see the northern curl to the hilt, the shadow of a horse in the design. Trib-made.

It had been in Lia’s hand, the tip at his father’s throat, but those thoughts were slippery, as if they wanted to wash away. Mateo blinked, looking down at his hands. Remembering the way it had felt to want something and then to have that thing stream into him from the very air. The burial chamber wall had fallen because of him.

“Caprenum isn’t going to help me.” Mateo whispered it. Finally understanding—why caprenum, why Lia, why the two had to go together. After all, like Lia had said, what healing compound would be crafted to look like a sword? The sword Patenga had used to become a shapeshifter had been a specific kind, made by a Basist.

Maybe that’s why it had been so easy to blame Basists all those centuries ago. Why the images of caprenum had been scratched from history. It wasn’t just anyone who could turn shapeshifter. You had to have the right tools.

Mateo scrubbed a hand through his hair, turning toward the window. “Everything to do with shapeshifters had been destroyed, so you didn’t know how to do it, exactly. You didn’t know until it was too late why turning worked for you and not for me.”

Tual breathed in, the sound loud in Mateo’s ears. “How did you…”

“I heard what you and Lia said. I saw… I saw enough. What you can do—what you did with the narmaidens, what you did with our auras… that’s not something Basists can do, is it?” Mateo closed his eyes even before his father could nod. “You knew the change had to be done with caprenum, but not that the person sacrificed had to be someone I loved.” Mateo forced himself to open his eyes, to make sure the nightmare he was spinning for himself was true. “You tried to turn me, and it worked… but not all the way. So now you want to use Lia to finish it.”

“You would have died if I hadn’t done it when you were younger.” Tual’s words were small. Not apologetic, but quiet, as if the information would be softer if he used the right voice. “You are my son.”

“Your son. I thought you took me when I was a baby. So much of my life is a blur.…”

“Your life is blurred because it was easier to make it that way. Easier for you to forget.”

“You took my own memories away from me. My own thoughts. Silenced them like you did with the narmaidens?” Mateo swallowed the gall in his throat, an image of a young man with a sword through his belly frozen in his mind. He groped for this one truth, this one thing he knew. Tual loved him. All the notes he’d found on the desk about Tual looking for someone… had he been looking for that boy? When he’d walked into the tomb with that sword—another sword of caprenum, just like Patenga’s—Mateo had felt the void inside him grow teeth and claws, rear up into something that thought and felt and hungered. He was connected to both of them, his soul being eaten away because they existed. His father had been looking for them, the source of his wasting sickness, not a new child to replace the faulty one he’d taken on. “Why?”

Tual’s head bowed. “I didn’t get to you in time. You weren’t in good shape. The town council had assembled to cleanse you—they pretended it was for something else, a final braiding ceremony for your sister—after some incidents in the town made it clear you and your sister were better at healing than any herbs could make you.”

“I was old enough to be a healer?” Mateo choked on the words, fumbling through his memories to somehow place this life that wasn’t his. “And what do you mean, ‘sister’?”

“You were also aware of your power and saw what was about to happen, so you snuck away. Some of them followed and tried to cut your aura themselves. They started with your fingers because of your art. That’s where they thought you kept your magic.”

Mateo flexed his hand, whole and unbroken. “If they cut off my fingers…”

Tual swallowed, looking down. “It wasn’t just your fingers. I got you away, managed to keep you from dying, but it wasn’t enough. It took a while before I found a suitable candidate to change you, and that healed you he rest of the way.” He swallowed again, leaning forward to rub his hands across his face. “And your sister…”

Mateo leaned forward too, every inch of him aching. “Yes?”

“I tried to make them all forget that she was like you. But she was so upset by your disappearance that they didn’t need their memories to know what she was. They tried to kill her right after I took you. She is strong and managed to escape. But no one else in your village did.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean she lost control. Like she did today.”

“The girl from the tomb?” Mateo’s brain was a horrible fog, ghosts of what had happened down in the tomb dancing in and out of his consciousness. A Beildan girl crying. A murdered boy. Lia with a sword. “She’s my sister?”

Tual nodded again. “She is dangerous. Her life has been stealing and lying, starving and hiding, where yours has been safe.” His eyes closed. “I have regrets, Mateo. So many regrets. But I have you, and I wouldn’t give you back for anything. I was so alone before, but the two of us together…” He looked down. “You are my family.”

Mateo swallowed, sitting up as he remembered the reliefs, Patenga bowed over in grief even as his sword stabbed another man through. “You said it took you a while to replace a suitable candidate. Who did you kill to change me? They must have had something to do with that boy and his sword.”

“Yes. His older sister. The Devoted were coming for them. Her family—”

“Would have liked her to be alive, probably?”

“Probably. But why should they get a few extra days with her rather than you getting a whole life?”

The words sat on Mateo’s chest, a lead weight.

“She didn’t melt away like she was supposed to, though. I believe she must have latched on to her brother, and he’s fed her with Calsta’s power all these years. Your episodes should stop now that she’s gone. With her brother dead and you too far to feed on, she’ll be unmoored and will fade. But the hole she made inside you isn’t going to go away.”

“So this whole time, what I thought was wasting sickness was actually some spirit draining my energy away? Especially when I try to use extra energy like a Basist should be able to. Except for in the tomb.” That feeling of exultation, of strength, of power—

Tual’s head was already shaking, his hat gripped in his hands. “You’re not a Basist anymore, Mateo. You haven’t been since you were twelve. And you still can’t use your power until we fix this. When we weren’t close to the sword, she didn’t notice you enough to actively steal from you, but you were still sick. I’ve had to feed you slowly all these years.”

“Feed me slowly…” Mateo gripped the door’s handle, trying to anchor himself in this new version of his life. “So what is wasting sickness? I got sick because my energy was draining away, then got really sick when this ghost thing started actively feeding on me. So what is wasting sickness for Devoted?”

Tual smiled, a fatherly, soft expression.

“You’ve been stealing energy from them? Just like the ghost was from me?”

“I’ve been keeping you alive, Mateo. It took so much to keep you from fading away—energy from a goddess. And when no Devoted were available, I had to take from her more casual worshippers, the little drips of power she leaves in people.”

Mateo’s head lolled to the side, hitting the window. “Like Lia’s mother?”

Tual’s smile dropped away. “She was going to die anyway. My healing is magic, but there are some sicknesses I can’t fix.”

“So wasting sickness… all wasting sickness—it’s only cropped up in the last decade. Because of you? No, because of me. You started draining Devoted to feed me, then set yourself up as the healer who could save them.” The truth was black and deadly. It must have been easy for Tual to convince the Warlord he could cure Devoted. All he had to do was stop taking their lives.

No, not their lives—their souls.

Soul stealers. That’s what shapeshifters were.

“I changed by accident. It’s…” Tual’s eyes went to the sword. “Not important right now. But there’s no information on any of this, Mateo. No records. It’s all been destroyed. I didn’t realize that regret, pain, were important to the sacrifice. It has to be someone you love. But after years of study, years of searching through old reliefs and tombs and paintings, I saw hints of what I’d gotten wrong.”

Mateo closed his eyes, suddenly feeling as if he were nothing but a clay figurine, fragile, and empty inside. So many things they thought they knew about the past came from tombs and paintings and books. But the reliefs with Patenga and the love he’d killed seemed clear enough. A bond made just like Tual said, Basist and Devoted working hand in hand. And then Patenga had taken that bond and destroyed it.

“I hardly know Lia,” he whispered.

“But you like her.”

“Yes, I like her alive.”

But an ugly truth peeked through behind it: I want to live too.

Mateo opened his eyes. He was hollowed out, as if now he could finally feel the void sucking at him from the inside. “What about a normal bond, like the ones you said used to exist? It’s obvious Patenga and the Basist in the tomb…”

Tual shook his head slowly. “Mateo… you aren’t a Basist anymore, so how could you bond in that way? No, I don’t think half measures will do.”

“There aren’t any measures left to take,” Mateo interjected. “There aren’t any other Devoted for me to cozy up to and then stab. And Lia’s not going to come skipping after us.” She had seen the reliefs. She’d been the one to say it out loud: “shapeshifter.” And even if she hadn’t, Mateo wasn’t… he couldn’t… the idea of connecting himself to her was still so new. Adding her death as a foregone conclusion was impossible. Monstrous.

I want to live. The words snaked through his head, a truth even the narmaidens had been able to agree was his most terrible.

Tual patted his arm, glancing out the carriage window to the wagon behind them. Mateo’s brow furrowed, and he looked too, but there wasn’t anything he could see in the wagon worthy of his father’s interest.

“I have a plan to bring her to us, Mateo. This will all come to right.” Tual smiled, pointing out the window. “Did you see I brought Bella? I knew you’d be sad without her. She’ll help you to feel better.”

Mateo looked where his father pointed, ashamed to feel tears pricking in his eyes, because with everything so very amiss, the sight of his horse walking along in front of them did make him feel a little better.

But his stomach twisted tight when he saw the shape just beyond her, ranging between stalks of sugarcane, there but not really there, like a thief or a spy. A much taller beast, skeletal and fanged. As if Lia herself were running after them through the fields, a sword in her hand and Mateo’s name like a curse on her lips.

It was Rosie, the broken auroshe.

You like her.

Mateo put a hand to his head at the thought that was not exactly his thought, cold prickling through him.

You like that auroshe, don’t you? If you like her, I think you will like me, too.

Lia left Vivi tethered in a field outside the markets that spilled through the trade gate. She traded Noa’s hair stick for a scarf wide enough to cover the blood dribbled down her front. The seller looked askance at the brown staining Lia’s dress but asked no questions. It seemed no one asked the questions they should.

It took the better part of an hour to sneak her way past guards, looking out for Devoted glows and ducking magistrates to get to the apothecary. The doors and windows hung open, and it didn’t take Lia’s barely budding aurasight to feel the prickling emptiness of the place. She slipped through the back gate and into the workroom.

It was in complete disarray, the table overturned, herbs torn from the ceiling and trampled on the stone floor. Cabinets were on their sides, their contents of spines and petals spilled out like entrails. Lia pushed open the door to look in the store and found glass shards coating the floor like salt. A jar with a heavy clamp stood in the center of the pandemonium untouched, the one stalwart after a massacre on the battlefield.

Upstairs, Knox’s bed was on its side, copper and silver rounds strewn across the floor like hailstones, each feeling as if it weighed more than it should as Lia collected them into her purse. Anwei’s room was too still. Completely untouched, except for the old woman sleeping in her bed.

No, not sleeping. She had no aura.

Gulya, the apothecarist. Lia walked to the bedside, hands shaking, and grasped the woman’s shoulders, hoping she was somehow wrong, but the old woman’s head fell sideways, her arm flopping lifelessly out of the bed. The old woman’s skin was pockmarked with a blistering rash, just the way Lia’s mother had been.

The plague. The plague that Tual had sent down on Chaol.

And Gulya was still a little warm.

Lia startled back, a thread of fear pushing through. She retreated to the doorway.

Horrible certainty flooding through her, Lia ran to the skybridge that would take her toward the Water Cay. Tual had said so many things. So many things. But why would he have come to the apothecary to kill this old woman and trash everything left in the store?

To upset Anwei? He had to know the Beildan would be coming after him.

But it was what he’d said to her down in the tomb that set her feet running. Remember my promise.

He’d promised her that going against him would destroy her.

Smoke hung over the drum tower as she ran past, an acrid fog of ash coating her throat. It thickened as she ran across the bridge toward her home. It wasn’t until she was a few streets away that Lia started seeing scorch marks on gates, on the walls and rooftops, a plume of black smoke rushing into the air as if it meant to battle Calsta herself. Lia couldn’t make herself stop to look, running with every drop of energy she had left, hoping, praying. Calsta! she sang in her heart. Aren’t you merciful? Aren’t you on my side? You didn’t return Ewan’s aurasight.

A horrible ache erupted in Lia’s chest, as if the goddess wished she could answer. Her aurasight blazed, replaceing no one in these scorched compounds.

She ran into her own street. Came to her own gate, the high wall blocking sight of the house beyond, that fantastical place of paintings and silly jokes and arguments with Aria. The smoke was coming from inside.

The gate wouldn’t open when Lia barreled into it, the latch tied shut with a length of twine, a little paper fluttering like a gift tag on its end. Lia tore the twine from the gate, shoved it open, and found…

She found…

Lia collapsed onto her knees, staring up at the blackened, dead thing where her house was supposed to be. A body lay in the charred, open doorway, nothing left but bone. Lia combed the house for auras, but there was nothing alive inside. Nothing.

The paper that had been attached to the twine at the gate blew in a gust of wind toward the house, catching for a moment against her shoulder before fluttering toward the red embers still glowing hungrily in the wind.

Had they all been at home? Locked inside because of Mother’s illness—no, because the Warlord herself was enacting justice on a disobedient valas. Mother, who had lain in her bed not even knowing Lia had returned. Father, who had just barely accepted her. And Aria, little Aria.

This is not my doing, Lia Seystone. The voice burned in Lia’s head, burned until she couldn’t think, couldn’t feel, leaving no room for anything but certainty that Calsta really could speak. It left her staggering, one hand to the compound wall, her muscles all quivering. I cannot control you little humans, only hope you will listen.

Wind turned the paper over and over, whisking it toward the flames. There was something written on it.

Darting forward, Lia skidded on her knees to grab hold of the paper before it could disappear forever into the embers left of her home. Her name was on one side. On the other:

Your sister misses you.

Lia dropped the paper like it was on fire, every breath burning in her lungs. Aria was alive. Aria was alive.

You are the only one who can stop him, the voice whispered. You and Knox and Anwei. The Commonwealth has long been unbalanced. You three can set it straight. Or you can fail, and shapeshifters will rule again.

Forcing herself to stand, Lia felt her knees wobble. Flames poured from her home’s windows and doors. Eating at the roof. At the tile and stone.

Was it only that morning she’d thought of bringing Mateo here as a guest instead of an interloper? Of living here herself as a person instead of a commodity to be traded? Was it only this morning she’d marveled at being free?

What do you want to do, Little Spot? Her father’s voice echoed in her head. And Master Helan’s: This power is a choice.

A choice that was no choice, not with Aria in Tual’s grip. Lia pulled the hood of her cape up over her head. Tugged her sleeves down so they covered her hands, sheltering her from the sun. The wind. The bite of flame on the air. Lia let the long drapes fall around her, hiding her hair, her cheeks, her lips and eyes.

Like a veil.