The war of winds, p.1
The War of Winds, page 1
part #1 of The Seven Isles Series
The War of Winds
The Seven Isles
A.R. Knight
Contents
1. The Stone of Souls
2. The Sky Palace
3. Split Savior
4. The Long, Dark March
5. Dockyard Brawl
6. The First Blow
7. Weapons Trade
8. Surfacing
9. On The Sea
10. Boarding Claws
11. Charity
12. Gliders and Glory
13. Sea and Stones
14. War-torn Reunions
15. The Missing Man
16. Invasion
17. Ship to Ship
18. Top of the World
19. The Hard Truth
20. A Stand
21. Lives Are Lives
22. A Far Fall
23. Pursuit
24. One Man, One Isle
25. Arrival
26. Fall and Fight
27. Drinking with the Dead
28. Rising Reunion
29. Among the Flowers
30. Bugged
31. Becoming Legend
32. Changing Minds
33. The Last Hope
34. Jungle’s Bite
35. Elysium
36. Immortal Sword
37. Descent
38. Fight or Flee
39. The Balance
40. Factions
41. Hero’s Promise
42. The Defense of Mottilan
43. Salvation
44. War Council
45. Monsters and Dead Men
46. Torches and Traps
47. Thieves of Joy
48. Flight Plan
49. Death’s Desires
50. Cliff’s End
51. Denied
52. Animals
53. Hero’s Due
54. The Last Hunter
55. Homeward
56. The Next Battle
57. Survivor’s Quest
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Chapter 1
The Stone of Souls
Wax feared he’d never get used to the voices in his head, and now he had another.
The Tamas skar shone in its lower left spot, warmth not making it through the thick Tamas tunic Wax wore for the ceremony. The show. The performance. It was hard to gauge what the crowd thought all this was, as their expressions, sitting amid the same theater where Eujo’s attempted etching had been narrowly prevented only a day ago, mixed in bemusement with boredom.
“Congratulations,” said the masked man who’d handed over the skar, the same one who’d called out Eujo’s fate.
He was Wax’s sole partner on the otherwise empty stage, the exchange marked by a few feeble musicians in a nearby pit, plucking at their instruments. Eujo and Wax’s Guardians, the bandit Torny and Wax’s sister Bliss, were out front, waiting for the pomp to end so they could head to the docks and get off the damned isle.
Tamas hadn’t exactly been a pleasure, and, when the masked man, his crimson robes ruffling, leaned in, Wax expected the problems to continue.
“Leave quickly,” the man whispered, extending an arm to usher Wax off-stage. Unsaid apologies tainted his rueful tone. “Normally, there’d be a more grand affair for this. A play, honors, feasting, and far, far more drinking.”
“But?” Wax asked when the man fell silent, answering the cue.
“It’s the Najahn. They’re being aggressive. That skar you carry now? It’s my own. They’ve refused to let us gather any more.”
“You’re giving me your own—”
As curtains closed about them, the masked man chuckled, “I’ll get another. What’s important is that we hold to tradition. You performed, you deserve the reward. Now go.”
Wax didn’t need to ask why the man still sounded nervous. The Najahn didn’t just want to keep the skars, they wanted to take the stones from anyone who had them. They’d know, now, that Wax and Eujo were present in Tamas’s capital, and would probably have their purple and black thugs running right this way.
In fact, the masked man might’ve turfed the Tamas skar onto Wax just to avoid getting in trouble himself. Convenient.
If Wax had wanted to confront the Tamas about it, though, the time had passed: a look around backstage confirmed only workers bustling around, setting the theater for a later show, one blissfully free of Renewals, skars, and the fate of the world.
Torny, bandit and best dressed of their bunch, in svelte, fuzzy greens and blues, whistled as Wax approached and lifted his necklace. The Tamas skar did its job, glittering, even as, inside his mind, Wax heard the stone whisper alongside his friend’s approval. Less in real words, more through impressions and flavored gibberish, the skars were imperfect assets. Capable of miracles, capable of mass destruction, Wax had nevertheless grown used to their constant jabbering.
Like being back home, in crowded, bubbling Kitaye.
The bandit’s counterpart, Bliss, stood nearby, working on a fresh staff with a whittling blade. Every stroke cut aside stripes to replace with iron bands, a technique she’d learned on Foti, the fiery isle. Too many hard heads among their enemies, Bliss signed, and she didn’t want her staff to break mid-battle.
A head far from the hardest stood near the cart’s head, watching the meandering Tamas crowds going about their cool, but not cold, day. Livier, Kance assassin and one-time foe, kept a hand near his rapier and the other on the cart itself, helping to hold the man upright. Despite getting Vis skars from both Eujo and Wax, the man was taking his time recovering from a burning brawl a couple weeks back. Not that Wax minded: a Livier compromised was a Livier he didn’t need to fear.
Much.
“How’s it feel?” Torny asked, following her whistle, “You’re tied, now.”
“Tied?” Eujo, the Kance Queen and looking it as she sat on the cart’s piled satchels drinking something from an earthen mug. “He’s going to win. I’ll never get a Tamas skar now.”
“Unless I steal it for you,” Torny said.
“Thought you were my Guardian?” Wax asked, coming up to the cart and slipping the necklace back beneath his shirt.
“She’s a Queen, Wax. I gotta follow the power.”
‘She has a point,’ Bliss signed, glancing up from her metal work. ‘There’s no Renewal anymore. Eujo is real.’
“I’m plenty real,” Wax protested. “Just need Kance and Noctia, and then . . . “
He trailed off, a too-common trait when this topic came up. Torny and Bliss didn’t push him on it, because they knew as well as Wax did that anything following the seven skars was murky at best. Getting a Noctia skar seemed impossible anyway: the whole isle had flipped from peaceful watcher over the isles to a marauding force, attempting to control everything through their voulges and armored soldiers.
And even if he did manage to get all seven, what then? He’d promised Pan to get the stones, and that promise had been enough to keep Wax going, but to what end?
A question he could put off answering till Wax had all the skars, perhaps, but one growing louder nonetheless.
“We should be going, my queen,” Livier said, “now that the Vis is back. Your ship should be coming into port soon.”
“Then let’s go,” Eujo replied, looking up from the short, scrawled missive next to her mug. “I hate this place anyway.”
That note, urgent, was the one naming Eujo Kance’s sole Queen and requesting her immediate return. She’d been staring at it for most of the last day. Wax would like to say he could understand why, but Pan’s dying promise was the closest he’d come to any real destiny. Still, he climbed the cart and sat next to Eujo, hand finding hers, a grip returned.
What that was, what those intertwined fingers, hinted at was still unknown. The last night had been burned in deep conversations with Livier, the Queen catching up on what Kance was like now, what she needed to expect. Wax, soothed with ale, had slept.
The Tamas skar tried to read Eujo’s mood, burbling over the other stones only for Wax to push it away. Like choosing not to listen to a conversation, or to ignore a rumbling stomach. He’d rely on old fashioned smiles, touches, and the soft crinkle around her eyes as Eujo held his look for a long moment before returning to the note, her mug—black tea—and what it meant for today, tomorrow, and beyond.
Bliss joined Livier at the cart’s driving bench, the sole sun-dappled pony hitched up ready to pull them towards the dock. Torny, as she preferred, took her own seat on the cart’s rear, humming some tune, tossing a stiff carrot up between bites.
The Tamas port buzzed with Winter’s slow decline. Fresh ale barrels dominated, though wines and other foods added just enough variety to keep things interesting. Heavy galleons rested near the docks, recently returned to waters from dry wintering slots. Southern trading trips would be starting soon, to hear the clamber say it, and nice days like this one made for a good chance to get ahead.
What Wax didn’t see amid the port’s bluster was the Storm’s Edge, Eujo’s personal ship captained by the inimitable Deux. They’d last bid the vessel an aborted farewell on Whent’s southern coast, dashing away under night’s cover after Wax had, well, immolated an estate. Wax cringed at the memory, a reminder the skars were hardly servants ready to do his bidding. More like wild friends, willing to listen and then take matters into their own hands.
“We’re early,” Livier said as Bliss guided the cart to an open spot before a dockside warehouse.
“Or Deux’s late,” Eujo replied.<
Their entourage drew mild attention, mostly from other carts and porters having to dodge around them. Otherwise, the port bustled enough to keep Wax and his friends at the bottom of anyone’s concern. Anonymity sat well, and Wax stayed in the cart, watching the horizon, while Eujo and Livier bantered back and forth about Deux’s timeliness.
“The Najahn could have found him,” Livier said. “We ought to slip away, Eujo. Find some sailor’s hole to hide in until Deux arrives.”
“He’ll give us away the moment he shows,” Eujo countered. “If the Najahn are really hunting us, then we’ll need to board as fast as possible. Drinking ale in some dark tavern won’t help that.”
“Don’t think that’s going to work anyway,” Torny said, stepping off the cart’s back and brandishing the dagger down the dock. “Guessing we’re about to get noticed.”
A galleon bearing Foti’s red and orange flag slipped out to sea, shoved by dockworkers with long poles. As the massive vessel moved, its bulk revealed a purple and black frigate in the next slot down. Najahn soldiers, armed and armored, stood near keeping watch. The ship’s sails were furled, provision crates sitting along its chosen pier. Reloading for a journey.
Maybe not, then, tasked with finding Wax, Eujo, and their skars.
“Then get on this side of the cart,” Livier snapped. “Don’t stand in the open.”
Torny laughed, “What, you think they know us by sight? Got some great drawings of Wax on hand?”
The bandit’s snark, though, shriveled quick as their quintet formed up near the pony. A new dockside sound approached: collective curses and the scrapes, bangs of goods on the move. Wax looked northward, the same direction their pony pointed in and opposite the Najahn ship, to see a purple and black contingent heading their way. The group held no voulges—the curved spears were hard to hide—and sported robes, not armor, looking less like soldiers and more like scholars. Stuffed packs and satchels hung heavy in the group.
“Leaving?” Eujo asked the air. “Why?”
“Noctia wants the skars,” Torny answered. “Bet these are a bunch from Tamas.”
The scholars walked on by, seemingly oblivious, until a pair slowed, their eyes falling not on Wax, not on Eujo, but on the Kance killer next to them both.
Livier muttered a unique curse, one that had Eujo blushing.
“Now this is a strange coincidence,” said the first scholar, an older woman with more than one mark across her face. As she spoke, the rest of the scholars slowed, turned, putting almost two dozen stares on their group. “Last I saw you, you were pawing through our library on Noctia. Looking for information on Whent and its Golden Gash. Now you’re here.” The scholar weighed Livier, gauging his limped appearance. “Did you find what you were looking for?”
“I did,” Livier said, offering up a slight bow. “Your assistance very helpful.”
“So they’re dead, then? The traitors?” The scholar let her look drift to Wax and the others. “You said they had a committed a grievous offense against Kance. You were so angry, and your hand . . . “ The scholar nodded towards the marks on Livier’s palm, brought about by Wax and his deadly dinner fork. “At least that’s healed.”
Livier began to answer, and Wax would’ve listened save for a soft tap on his left arm. Bliss, partially hidden behind the cart. She flicked her head southward, along the dock.
Running towards them, their satchels abandoned, were two Najahn scholars. When they started shouting, Wax didn’t have to guess their words.
He only hoped Deux wouldn’t be too late.
Chapter 2
The Sky Palace
Kance spread below him, its many spires and their offshoots a girded web Quik had only begun to understand. An evening and now a morning, and a late one, going by the sunlight filtering all around him. Quik had to suppress a shiver, even a shout as he shifted beneath the light blanket, the small pillow.
Even in winter, he’d been advised, the nests would get hot.
Molded glass formed the enclosure, save the steps and small circular door to Quik’s right. Two bronzed metal loops kept the glass container in place, holding it to the Sky Palace, a bland name that nonetheless conveyed exactly where Quik was. Guests of the two Queens, one they’d left to die and another . . . lost?
Quik rubbed his eyes, blinked at the gliders, the plant strings, the birds filling the air beneath, around, and above him. The usual needs—food, drink, somewhere to expel them both—burbled to life.
Where would his brother be right now? The last Najahn report put them on Whent, fleeing east, but that’d been some time ago. Quik hadn’t had much chance to get information after that, what with Gladdring’s rebellion.
Which left Quik where, exactly?
The original reason to stay on Noctia, to give Quik time to recover, to build a relationship with the purple and black, to get their support to help his brother had failed. Had collapsed so completely that Quik was now an enemy of that same organization. He’d lost his friends, family, and what little help he had came from an even bigger traitor, one manipulative and taciturn enough to all-but guarantee Quik would find himself betrayed or cut loose before long.
But without knowing where Wax was, Quik couldn’t go after his brother. Not with the fiends, the fighting, the turmoil.
The isle below, though, presented something different. Kance wasn’t Vis, was, with its lancing spires, mountains, and misty valleys, far from it, but the natural beauty brought with it a home Quik realized he missed, realized he might be better off returning to.
Vis, so rumor had it, was fighting the Najahn too. His parents might be laboring under a voulge’s threat.
One Quik could try, at least, to fight.
Some clarity restored, Quik tossed off the blanket, pushed through the circular door into the odd round node serving as entry for at least four nests. A slim hallway, similarly sporting curving glass on top and straight clear slats below, would bring him into the palace proper. Before then, said a silver-blue Kance robe hanging from a hook next to his door, the Vis would need to get dressed.
Gladdring’s voice did as much work to guide Quik as did his dim memories of the tour the night before, a walkthrough that came after so much exhaustion on the seas. Tension compounded by fears the Najahn crew would turn on him and Gladdring, leave the pair either dead or dead in the water, the Najahn cutter now holding a few more corpses. Quik had passed out hard last night, and found the late morning reprise a confusing one.
Kance, it seemed, loved portraits, and all done in a dappled style. Framed in dried filaments, soft rainbows haloing past Queens, Kance soldiers, and, according to the gilded nameplates beneath each pearl wall-hugging portrait, random citizens. What had Jonas Mylien, merchant, done to deserve his pasty visage hung in the palace? Or Paliva Veen, caretaker to the infirm?
Did Kance pick its heroes at random?
Beyond the portraits, the Sky Palace adored blues in all shades, and plastered the color on chairs, benches, hard tile at Quik’s feet. Servants, soldiers, and bureaucrats bustled here and there, more than a few stopping to stare at Quik’s inked face, the heavy gauntlets hanging at his waist.
Those weapons, wood-carved and now, thanks to a Najahn blacksmith, metal-tipped, would never leave Quik’s side again. There’d been too many times chaos appeared with little clue, that deadly force was demanded, to err on the side of politeness.
