The Storm Witch (21 page)

“Indeed.” Kendraxa’s eyes had returned to the work in her hands. The needle gleamed in the sunlight streaming in the window.

Xerwin leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “I saw my sister yesterday,” he said. “Or rather, I saw the Tara Xendra.”

Kendraxa’s hands stilled, the needle halfway though a stitch.
She knows,
he thought.

“How long?” he asked. “Come, you can tell me.” He saw her consider it, and thought it a mark of the woman’s desperate isolation that she chose to answer.

“Since the accident,” she said, her fingers pulling the thread through the stitch. “Or rather, since the Marked saw to her, the Healer and Finder. When she finally came to herself . . .” Kendraxa’s lips trembled.

“She was not herself.”

The woman inclined her head, just once. “At first, I couldn’t be sure; after such a fall, some confusion was only to be expected. So the Healer said. And I so hoped—” Kendraxa pressed her trembling lips tight for a moment before she continued. “But she only became more watchful, more cautious in what she said. Xendra was always ready to talk about herself, the Slain One knows.” Kendraxa’s smile was hard to see. “And her smile, so ready, so joyous. But this one,” she shook her head, “this one asked too many questions, and studied the answers to things Xendra knew very well. And once or twice, in the night, she called out in a language I have never heard.”

Xerwin stared at his clasped hands, saw the knuckles standing out white.

“What do you think happened?”

“Can I know? I’m a lady page, Tar Xerwin, you can guess what my education has been.” She shrugged, half holding out the embroidery in her hands as evidence of what she said.

“I know you for nobody’s fool, whatever your education might be,” he said. “An emptyhead is not chosen as companion for a Tarxina, nor as nurse for a young Tara. Tell me what you think.”

Something in his tone—or in his face—must have convinced her. She licked her lips. “How much do you remember, did you know, of your sister’s illness?”

Xerwin thought. “She fell from the wall around the palace precinct, injuring her head. She was unconscious for many days. I remember you crying.” He glanced up. There were tears in Kendraxa’s eyes now. “The Healer came from the Sanctuary, and then she was getting better.”

“You didn’t know about the Finder?”

Xerwin shrugged. “I knew the Healer had come with both a Mender and a Finder. I assumed that was part of their normal practice.”

“They told your father the Tarxin, Light of the Sun, that your sister’s spirit was missing from her body. Your father told them to find it.”

“And the Finder Found . . .” Xerwin didn’t really need Kendraxa’s nod to answer him.

“Someone’s spirit, that’s certain. But Xendra’s? Not so far as I can see.”

Xerwin’s hands formed into fists. “How can I tell my father?”

He felt Kendraxa’s fingertips on his arm. “Tar Xerwin, your father already knows.”

“Put up your swords!”

As the man to his right stepped back, Parno flicked out with the point of his right-hand sword and opened a cut the length of his first knuckle in the man’s right pectoral muscle, where it would bleed but do no harm.

“Lionsmane, stop. You will kill someone at this rate.”

No voice but Darlara’s would have reached him through the concentration of the Mirror
Shora
. Parno blinked, licked away a trickle of sweat that neared his mouth. There was another voice that could have reached him, but he would never hear that one again. He stuck his left-hand sword into the wood of the deck and smoothed his oiled hair away from his face.

He glanced around at the three fighters Darlara had chosen for him. A man of his own age, Deniss showed a white swatch of hair from an old scalp cut and wore the scaled jerkin. The other two were women, Tindar and Elian, clearly twins, as alike as two grains of sand. And now even more alike as he had given each of them identical cuts, on their right collarbones. All three were pale and sweating, breathing hard.

A chink of metal to his left and Parno spun, both swords up, and took a step toward the sound before he realized it was unarmed crew who backed away from him, wide-eyed people with the money they’d been wagering in their hands.

“Can’t have you killing people, Lionsmane,” Darlara said.

“None of them are dead.” Parno looked around, but she was alone. Her brother must be off watch. He lowered his swords again and straightened.

Dar shook her head. “Nevertheless. Teach them to move as you do, or find some way to even the match. Five people? You unarmed?”

Parno took in a great lungful of air and let it out slowly. He was tempted to say he wouldn’t bother with the sparring at all, that they should leave him alone. He couldn’t face another day of staring at the maps and drawings Malfin Cor had found for him and seeing nothing more than colored lines and meaningless shapes. He rubbed the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. What was so difficult about this decision? What was so important? What matter of life or death hinged on it?

His gaze dropped to the hilt of the Teliscan blade he had in his left hand. In his mind he saw Dhulyn’s face when she’d given it to him. Just after Arcosa, it had been, when they’d decided to Partner. But the expression he saw her wearing now wasn’t the one she’d had then. Now she was showing him her wolf’s smile. His hand closed tightly enough that he could feel the steel tang under the corded grip of the sword. He had a score to settle. A reason to stay alive. He’d almost forgotten.

The Storm Witch.

Darlara and Malfin were right. To get to the Witch, to defeat her, he needed a clear head. If nothing else, a workout would help him sleep, and sleep would clear the clouds and cobwebs from his brain.

After a moment, he said, “Get me a blindfold, then.”

At the edge of his senses, Parno could feel the communication going on between the crew members as those watching used their Pod sense to summon those still below.

“Captain.” It was the older man. “Done for this morning. Be excused.”

Darlara nodded. “Done, Deniss. You two?”

The twins grinned, showing identical gaps in their front teeth. “Like to try him blindfolded,” said one, as the other nodded. Parno felt an answering grin on his own lips.

“Deniss,” he called the older man to him. “Hold this for me, will you?” He handed Deniss his sword and pulled the long dagger from the back of his belt. Two swords
or
a blindfold he could manage. Just now he had his doubts about two swords
and
a blindfold.

The Hunter’s
Shora,
one of the basic twenty-seven taught to all Mercenary Brothers, was a little
too
basic for this fight, Parno thought. It taught you to feel the direction of the wind on your skin, to move without making noise enough to frighten a mouse. But to be blindfolded he needed something more than that. He needed the Stalking Cat
Shora
. In addition to stealth, the Stalking Cat would give him heightened senses beyond what the basic Hunter’s could do. If he was blindfolded, he would need to locate each opponent by their smell, feel every shift of air, hear the movement of clothing, of weapons. Dhulyn said that, properly done, the Stalking Cat would allow you to feel the beat of your opponent’s heart.

And in addition to the Stalking Cat, the Crab
Shora
for the shifting of the deck, and for, Parno bared his teeth, the large claw he had in his right hand and the smaller one in his left.

A third fighter had stepped forward to replace Deniss, a tall, clean-shaven youth with the marks of frostbite on his cheeks. He carried a shorter sword than the twins did, Parno noted automatically, one with a slight curve which would be sharp along that edge.

“Conford, isn’t it?” Parno said, recognizing him. “Hope you’re not as angry as you were. Anger’s no reliable ally in a fight.”

Conford inclined his head. “Keep that in mind, Mercenary Brother.”

Darlara pulled a silken sash from around her waist and approached him with it held up in her hands. Parno went down on one knee.

“Give me a moment,” he said, loud enough that all could hear him. “Keep the watchers well back. I’ll stand when I am ready to begin. Attack from any direction, but be so good as to come at me one at a time.” He waited until his three opponents had nodded before closing his eyes and tilting his head up for the blindfold.

Darlara’s fingers were cold on his skin as she wrapped the sash around his eyes twice, tying it at the back of his skull. As she moved away, Parno began to repeat to himself the trigger words of the Stalking Cat
Shora
. The first thing he felt, even before he began to breathe slowly, was the presence of the Crayx, like the hum of a crowd in the distance. Parno shut them out of his conscious thought as his heartbeat slowed, and he pricked up his ears, flared his nostrils. His skin shivered as the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stood up.

The deck rose and fell beneath his feet. The wind came from . . . there; with it on his left cheek, he was facing aft. The twins Tindar and Elian stood to his left, their drying sweat making them easy to locate and identify. They were slightly closer together than they were to Conford, who was behind him and to his right. From the gurgle of his stomach, the man had not eaten yet this morning.

Parno rose to his feet, and in the same movement, feeling the rush of air, raised his right arm, sword in the guard position and heard/ felt the jar as his blade met Conford’s and the blow’s weight shivered through his arm bones. He heard the man’s grunt, and the drawing in of a dozen breaths. Parno pushed off with his left foot, spinning, and bringing his left hand around to where the other blade must be, to catch it with the guard of his dagger, twisting and pulling it out of his opponent’s hands.

There was a gasp from the crowd of watchers as the sword fell free and clattered to the deck. From the sound, several had had to step back out of the way.

The twin sisters smelled different now, their sweat was fear sharp. They had moved apart, but thanks to the wind, and the Stalking Cat
Shora,
Parno was able to point to the right-hand one with his sword, and the left-hand one with his dagger.

“One down,” he said. “Two to go.”

Apparently, the twins felt that the loss of one for their side freed them to attack together, or perhaps, Parno thought, they simply could not break themselves of the habit. In either case, it worked in his favor. Even sightless, he knew that anything he struck was an enemy, and even sighted, they had to take care not to hit each other. There was no movement of air, so they ran forward with blades raised. In the last possible moment Parno ducked, rolled forward, and heard with satisfaction the sound of their bodies colliding.

An unexpected calm fell over Parno as he rolled to his feet and spun around to face in the direction of the twins. Even as he trusted to his timing, lunging forward and kicking out, knocking one of them over and apparently—judging from the sound—into the other one as they tried to get up, he could feel the
Shora
working through him, calming him with its familiar touch. A tightness he had not been aware of loosened, and he felt freer, more alive, and somehow more himself than he had done since the storm.

A shift of air, a rasp as a foot slid along the wood of the deck before being lifted clear. Conford had found his weapon again. Parno spun toward the noise, his own sword at high guard, dagger at low. Conford’s sword was a slashing weapon, and the chances were he’d bring it down, or across from . . . there! Parno parried, stepped quickly within the man’s reach and elbowed him in the face. He felt the contact, and smelled the blood as it burst from Conford’s nose. A shuffle behind him, he ducked, bringing Conford down with him as the swords of the twins sliced through the air where he’d been standing.

“Enough,” Darlara said.

Parno pulled off the blindfold and wiped his face with it. He touched his forehead to each of his opponents, just as if they had been Mercenary Brothers, and set off across the deck.

 

Parno looked up as the door of the cabin swung open, letting in cool sunlight filtered through streaky clouds. Darlara Cor came in and closed the door behind her, leaning against it and folding her arms across her chest. Parno almost smiled, reminded of one of his sisters. He was wiping the swords he’d used with an oiled cloth.

“Was a good workout,” he said. “Thank you for suggesting it. Ready whenever you are to examine those maps.”

Darlara stayed silent and, except for the tapping of her left index finger against her right elbow, she didn’t move. Parno stowed the extra sword and turned to meet her eyes. They seemed darker than usual in her heart-shaped face, her full mouth set in a thin, firm line.

“Promised me a child.”

Parno felt the muscles in his jaw tighten as he gritted his teeth.
Demons!
The woman couldn’t be serious. In the face of his loss—his Partner and, in a very real way, his future, since he could not imagine surviving his vengeance. No. Some of the calm that the
Shora
had brought him melted away. It was too much that he should be asked to consider the future of others. But he could tell from the set planes of her face that Darlara was very serious indeed.