She Who Rides the Storm (The Gods-Touched Duology)
She Who Rides the Storm: Chapter 27

Mateo sat on a bench in the manor courtyard watching waves crash high up on the cliff below him. Down the coast, little torch flares made tiny spots of orange in the evening’s purple and gray where the dig site sat perched on the cliff. As Mateo squinted at it, his insides roiled like the waves below. How could he stop Van from taking everything he and his father had been searching for?

Tual hadn’t been home all day, but he’d know what to do about the director’s threats. Breathing in hurt as Mateo switched his gaze to where Jaxom had risen, the moon mottled black, gray, and red. The ghost of his brother moon, Castor, was bluish and angry above him in the sky, the two aligned for the night. Story went that the scholar god Castor was jealous that his sister, Calsta, had seen fit to hang him so much farther away than his brother, Jaxom, and they fought whenever their paths crossed, making the sea jump its shores. It was their fault the waves were so high.

It was their fault people were extra worried about shapeshifters in their midst.

Everyone knew wars between gods were bad luck. Though it happened only once or twice every decade, Jaxom always won when he crossed paths with Castor, blocking the higher moon’s blue light. That didn’t stop their devotees from brawling in the streets. Jaxom was the patron of warriors, and Castor that of scholars, so the fights were, perhaps, a little unbalanced.

Mateo sucked in a breath as a spot on Jaxom’s red-and-black surface suddenly swirled with white and blue, almost like smoke from a salpowder explosion. The sudden change chilled Mateo, the gods and their wars too large and too far away for him to understand. Everyone knew that when Jaxom changed color, the warrior god was about to launch some kind of attack. Even if the god did mean for it to warn off Castor’s icy glare, it would be the Commonwealth that saw the effects in a few days, leftover bits of the gods’ war streaking across the night sky like hundreds of burning arrows.…

And Tual would probably want Mateo to stand out here with Lia when the streaks painted a map between the stars. As if staring up at godly carnage next to a killer would be romantic.

She’d be here soon. She’d promised.

Threatened, really.

A lantern flickered to life inside the house. Mateo lurched up from his bench and threw open the door, wondering how his father had managed to sneak in past him. He ran to his father’s office and burst through the door, Tual jumping back with a hiss. Quickly covering his surprise with a smile, Tual waved the still-lit tinder he’d used to light the lantern. “What are you doing here? I thought you were meeting Lia.”

“Something happened at the dig. Things were stolen. Burned. Director Van thinks I’m a shapeshifter, and he’s going to tell all the angry people in Chaol if I don’t get him into the burial chamber soon. He’s not following proper archeological protocols.” Mateo dragged in a breath when he ran out of air. “Father, I think he knows we’re after caprenum. I think he might be after it too.”

“Wait, slow down.” Tual set the smoking tinder in a dish on his desktop, then sat in his leather chair. “Artifacts were stolen from the dig?”

“The workers think it was spirits of the dead, and apparently, there’s a plague in Chaol? And some kind of ‘ghost attack’ at the governor’s house? Everyone’s ready to cry shapeshifter, and Van is going to point them toward me.”

“Ghost attack?” Tual sat back, putting his feet up on his desk and crossing them at the ankles. “I do know about the plague. I was in the Fig Cay today, and it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. I’m going back in the morning to study it further.” Tual frowned. “And you say Van suspects you. Because of everything you’ve found?”

“He practically threatened to turn me over to the magistrate.”

“That’s a pretty good play, you know?” Tual tapped a finger against his lips. “People are already wary of aukincers, why not just confirm their bias? Very well done indeed.” He took off his hat and set it on the desk. “But what would Van want with the burial chamber or caprenum? Hardly anyone knows of its existence, much less its value.”

Mateo slumped into a chair. “Who else would need it except for another Basist? Or…” He blinked, sitting up a little straighter. “Or a shapeshifter? That sickness in the Fig Cay—you said it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen. I have an episode every time I go to the dig. If shapeshifters feed on energy, and all of us touched by Calsta or the nameless god have extra…”

“Mateo—”

“I thought it was because I’ve been trying to use my energy down there.” Mateo sprang up from his chair, hope rising in him like the explosion of smoke that had burst out from Jaxom above. “Devoted have fits just like this when their energy starts siphoning away from wasting sickness. What if Van is taking it?”

He paced the room, trying not to feel the deathly silence emanating from Tual. Mateo wanted it to be true, wanted to find a sky-cursed shapeshifter despite all the damage they’d done to Basists. Because if his episodes were caused by a shapeshifter, that meant they weren’t part of his sickness.

It meant he wouldn’t die. Not yet, anyway.

He’d have enough time for his father to melt the caprenum sword into whatever it was that would cure him, and he could be a real Basist. A real person. Not half of one, only one foot in life, the other sliding inexorably toward a black sky full of dead stars. “Something down there isn’t right. Even the rocks feel wrong, like they’re in pain somehow. If Van has made oaths to the nameless god that let him steal my energy—”

“Mateo, stop.” Pulling his coat open, Tual took out his blacknut pipe. A little ceramic box came next, which he opened to smear a bit of the nutty paste into the bowl of his pipe. He extracted a bit of tinder and held it to the lantern’s still flame, watching as it flickered to life before holding it to his pipe. “Even if, somehow, Van is a shapeshifter, we need to focus on the issues at hand: namely, getting caprenum and getting Lia.” He puffed once, a cloud of smoke streaming from his lips. “Who thinks you’re a Devoted, by the way. We should probably hold on to that as long as we can.”

“Oh, you mean I shouldn’t tell the girl who just killed a Rooster that we don’t have as much in common as she thinks?” Mateo looked back toward the window. Where was she? She’d said she would come at dusk, and dark had already fallen.

Tual sat back in his chair again, chewing on his pipe stem. “Mateo, why do you think Lia ran away?”

“What do you mean? Who wouldn’t want to, given the opportunity?”

“You know spiriters aren’t allowed to let anyone touch or see them.…” Tual waited until Mateo nodded before blowing out a ring of smoke. “Unless their numbers grow so small that more little spiriters need to be made.”

Mateo stopped in the doorway, turning to look at his father. “Devoted don’t—”

“No, Devoted don’t. Calsta doesn’t give power to those who divide their attention from her. I can’t think that all Devoted from the beginning of time have lived their lives that way, though. How else do we explain so much Devoted blood in the population, Calsta’s little minions cropping up throughout the Commonwealth without any obvious Devoted ancestors.”

“You mean people don’t get magic from being touched by the gods?” Mateo frowned.

“Some do, probably. But I think the chances are much higher if they have drops of magical blood in them. And the Warlord knows it.” Tual puffed on his pipe, then pointed it at Mateo, blowing out a stream of smoke. “In fact, all this seclusion nonsense seems awfully convenient for the leader of our country—keeping Devoted from getting married and having families. Any Devoted with divided loyalty from Calsta is a Devoted who might have divided loyalty from the Warlord. Every person with Calsta’s power in the Commonwealth is directly under her control. Either that or hunting down the ones who aren’t under her control. But with wasting sickness, she doesn’t have the resources to go find all the little children manifesting Calsta’s power.”

“Great. Fine. What does that have to do with Lia killing one of her own people today?”

Tual’s heavy brows folded together. “I think you noticed Ewan, the other Devoted? He’s missing his aura, the same way Lia is.”

“So?”

“Do you think they both came here on the Warlord’s business that way?” Tual waited until Mateo was looking at him. “He knew that Lia had been set aside by the Warlord for some of those little Devoted babies.”

Mateo’s stomach twisted, because he could see what was coming. He could see it and he didn’t want to look. “You think he…”

Tual shrugged, looking out at the sea.

“You don’t know.” Mateo swallowed, leaning against the doorway, suddenly not sure he could bear all his own weight. The wild look in Lia’s eye came back to him again, the way she’d fought after the Rooster had said all he wanted was to take her back, but he shook the thought away. His father could come up with whatever theories he wanted, but Mateo knew what his father really was after—he wanted Mateo to go along with his plan. “Even if Ewan did try something, Lia ran away. She got away and she probably left him less a few fingers and toes. She’s all right.”

“I suppose you could put it that way, though I wouldn’t, personally.” Tual shook his head. “She’s had a lifetime of people telling her what to do with no option to refuse. Even her auroshe—the one thing she did like, if you haven’t noticed from talking to her—was gone from the governor’s stables as of this morning. Probably sent to the fights, since auroshes turn into berserking monsters when their owners disappear, unless someone new manages to bond with them. I had to send that dead Rooster’s auroshe there myself today. Everything Lia knows and loves has been taken away from her. Perhaps bear that in mind when next you speak.”

“She’s not the helpless little victim you are making her out to be, Father.” Rebellion boiled up inside Mateo. “Her life hasn’t been so different from what we—”

“No, it’s very far from the life you’ve led, Mateo. You are sick, and that is difficult, I know. But we’re here, free to look for the medicine that will cure you. We’re going to be all right. You’ve gone to the best schools, had food, water, nice places to sleep, and the ugliest clothing I’ve ever seen in my life to wear.” A trace of a smile turned up his lips, and Mateo couldn’t help but smile back. A smile that vanished when his father continued. “You have a choice to love or not love Lia. Your body doesn’t belong to a goddess who feels free to share it around.”

Mateo swallowed his anger, though it didn’t want to go. It burned him down to his stomach, and he couldn’t help but wonder why they had to compare hardships at all. So Lia had run from something terrible. It didn’t change the fact that living under a cloud of inevitable death hadn’t exactly been easy for him, either. Were the two even something you could stack up next to each other?

“Lia’s outside.” Tual looked down at his pipe, gesturing half-heartedly toward his window and the fields beyond it, the long-stemmed crop beyond their gates shuffling in the wind. “I know staying in Chaol linked to a girl you met only a few days ago isn’t ideal. But the lives we have been given don’t contain as many options as others. We have to take what’s in front of us.” He looked Mateo in the eye. “It could be so, so much worse, son.”

Mateo reached out with his mind to find Lia’s aura before he went outside, glad despite what his father had said that it was a sad, diminished echo of what it should have been. He sighed and opened the door. No one would be clawing their way into his mind uninvited that night.

Lia was dismounting just inside the gate. As he walked toward her, she stroked her mare’s neck and laughed when the horse swiveled her head to gum Lia’s fingers. The scarf was still tight over her nose, mouth, and forehead.

“Good evening.” Mateo gave a beggar’s imitation of a bow when she stepped past the horse to greet him, though he doubted she would know the difference. “Where are we off to? I assume I’ll need my horse?”

Lia fidgeted with the horse’s reins. “We’re going to the governor’s mansion.”

“We’re… what?” The moons overhead were midclash, washing Lia’s face in red and blue light as she stared at her boots, eyes flicking back and forth as if she were composing a poem of hatred to recite for him. “Why?”

“Because Vivi is there, and I want him. My auroshe. You can get inside, and I can’t.”

Mateo’s stomach turned to lead, his mind going to Bella in the stall behind him. If someone told him she’d been sold off to fight for her life while people watched, he’d…

He’d do something. Writing a very angry letter didn’t seem quite enough.

Mateo reached for her horse’s reins and started toward the stable. “Vivi isn’t at the governor’s mansion.”

Lia darted forward, blocking his way. “I’m not arguing about this. I want him, and the only way—”

“He isn’t there. My father just told me.” Mateo stopped, his heart beating sad, heavy thumps. “He said they probably took him to the fights.”

It was awful, watching her scarf blow in and out against her mouth, her eyes tear, her hand pressing against her cheek. “That’s not… they wouldn’t…” The sparks in Lia’s aura weakly spat and stirred around her head. But then her chin snapped up. “The fights are probably in the Sand Cay, or maybe the Fig? One of the lower ones. We’re going to get him.”

“What are you going to do, stick your head in every door across two gang-infested islands?”

She took the reins back from him, stuck a foot in her stirrup, and mounted the horse. “I’ll wait while you get Bella.”

“I guess… my father might know where they are.” Mateo turned uncertainly toward the house. “I’ll ask for you, if you like, but after that—”

“You’re coming.”

“You need me to spring your monster horse out of a violent killer gambling ring? Me?” He put his arms out, giving her a spin so his jacket flared around him. It was green and the perfect texture to catch moonlight, so at least he looked nice. “Think very hard about this, Lia. I’m an artist.”

“Then you can draw mean caricatures and pretend to get drunk to distract everyone while I get Vivi.”

“Caricatures? What exactly do you think happens at auroshe fights, Lia Seystone?”

“Are you telling me you know?”

Mateo tried not to fume when she shooed him back toward the house.

Tual was waiting at the door, clearly having been eavesdropping on the whole conversation. “On the far side of the Ily Canal. East side under the private docks. Take the skiff, follow the green fairy lights.” He raised his voice, waiving to Lia. “He could use a little trouble! Bring him back in one piece, please!”

“I hate you so much right now,” Mateo growled.

Mateo tried to hold his balance against the way the skiff lurched this way and that, the trade road looming overhead as they rowed up the Ily Canal. Lia pulled the oars like a dockworker, assuming everyone in the boat knew how to swim. Regret for his moment of weakness in thinking about how Lia might feel missing her auroshe was firm in Mateo’s chest.

“So, I’ve been thinking.” Lia’s voice was unnervingly cheery.

Mateo looked around to see if there was a whirlpool handy that she meant to push him into. “About something other than your bloodthirsty monster horse?”

Lia’s laugh rang out, and Mateo sat back a bit, wondering if she’d been at her father’s malt before riding over to the manor. Hopefully that was it, because it meant her aura would stay gone. “No. You’re studying to be an archeologist, right?”

“Yes?” They rounded the edge of the Sand Cay, the city wall looming tiredly above them.

“This dig you came for must be really important.” Lia’s voice was stilted, as if she was trying to sound eager but didn’t know how to lie very well. “It was mostly undisturbed, wasn’t it? Early shapeshifter?”

“One of the few shapeshifter tombs ever found, the only one intact. There are some lights up here.” Mateo leaned out, swearing inside his head when his fingers began to tremble. He still wasn’t back to normal after mucking around in the dig all afternoon. He hadn’t collapsed this time, but his head still rang with the wrongness of the place. “There’s the first dock.”

Lia glanced over her shoulder, adjusting their trajectory with one oar. “I’d love to see it if you can take me. Most shapeshifter things were destroyed after the first Warlord started striking the nameless god’s name from records, weren’t they? Tombs. Temples. I hear there are traps?”

No. Not you, too. The one thing he’d actually liked about Lia so far was that she’d put his father in his place as surely as she’d done to him. Mateo jumped from the boat almost before they were close enough to the dock, the skiff jerking out from under his feet. Stumbling, he grabbed one of the pylons and immediately regretted it, sticky tar coming away on his hands. “Stop it, Lia.”

“Stop what?” She brought the boat in close and threw him the mooring line.

Mateo put out a sticky hand to help her out of the skiff, but she didn’t take it, jumping onto the dock herself. “Stop pretending you are nice and that you’re interested in the things that I’m interested in.”

“I didn’t say I was interested in—”

“You’re not. I know. So don’t playact about wanting to see the excavation or that you’re interested in archeology beyond destroying any evidence that anything came before the Commonwealth. All you Devoted are the same.” Mateo started down the dock, the whole length of it bristling with boats. Under the swell of water noise and the chatter from the higher docks built up above the water level, he thought he heard a muted, feral screech. “I think we’re here. Now how do we get in?” The tremble in his hands had turned to a shake, and his heart had begun to beat in triplicate, each third beat aching in his chest. He shouldn’t have looked for Lia’s aura before going out to find her. It was a stretch, what with whatever Van was doing to him at the dig.

Lia’s voice took on a much more familiar salty edge. “My mother is dying,” she said.

“My father’s helping her recover.” He offered her his arm because that’s what gentlemen did.

She didn’t take it. “I want to be here when she’s better. Not back at the seclusion trying to forget I have a family at all.”

“Maybe this way?” He followed the glow of green lanterns to a set of stairs that seemed to go directly down into the ground. Shivers of anticipation ran up his arms as he descended, the walls turning to glass. This place had been made by Basists before the shapeshifter wars, like all the glass tunnels crisscrossing the cays. “Did my father get to you? Maybe he threatened you on that chummy ride you took together earlier? Or he wrote you a scary note, or—”

Lia put her hands up as if in supplication. “I need you to understand—”

“Understand what?” Mateo wasn’t in the mood to be supplicated. Chatter from the bottom of the stairs filled his ears. “Didn’t you leave because the Warlord tried to match you up with Ewan? And now you’re letting my father do the same thing?”

They turned a corner and suddenly there were people, so many people all lined up in their not-quite finery. The room went back about twenty feet to where an open arch led to another room, the space from Mateo to the arch squished tight with tarnished silver collars, limp feathers stuck in khonin knots, and the jarring smell of raw malt. Beyond the arch Mateo caught a glimpse of a sunken, sawdust-strewn ring.

He turned to help Lia down and saw that the few visible inches of Lia’s face had gone dead white. Her palms went to her cheeks, the scarf pulling sideways, so he got a good glimpse of brownish-red freckles clustered across her cheekbones and down the bridge of her nose.

She took his arm, her fingers gripping the crook of his elbow too tight, all fingernails and bones. “What exactly do you know about Ewan?”

“Nothing.” He pulled her through the crowd to where a man stood checking a list of some kind. “But it does seem kind of odd you’d let my father bully you into running from him to me. Especially when I wasn’t offering.”

Her silence was awful, as if he’d broken something inside her, and the aftermath of it left him wishing he hadn’t spoken.

He tried to shunt the regret aside, tried not to see the way she was still pressing a hand to her cheek, all the words his father had said bombarding him. You have a choice to love or not love Lia. Your body doesn’t belong to a goddess who feels free to share it around. It left him grasping for an apology, for anything that might give her an inch of solid ground to stand on rather than pulling it out from under her.

But then someone from the crowd shoved into them, knocking Mateo. Lia pulled her arm away just in time to let him fall. Then left him there in the middle of the floor. It was the first time Mateo thought maybe he’d deserved it.

“So sorry,” the man who’d bumped Mateo blustered down at him, looking like an overripe tomato, only with an unconvincing mustache. A single khonin knot sat just behind his ear, the rest of his hair twisted into a simple braid. He held out an unsteady hand. “Up you go, little man. You just got here? I hear they’ve got some fresh blood for the later rounds. Not those old nags from Borlouth.”

“Right. Not interested in nags.” Mateo allowed the man to pull him up but pushed his hands away when he produced a handkerchief to dust Mateo off. Anger writhed inside him just behind the regret, and it was funny both to feel sorry for Lia and to want to shove her into the channel for going against their plan not to humor any more talk of the ridiculous marriage idea.

He forced his knees to unbend and started to walk, only to have the overripe man pull him back. “Not that way, son. Come on, let me make it up to you for pushing you over.” He snaked a hand up his sleeve, scratching at his arm, and Mateo spied a patch of red, flaky skin peeking out from under his cuff.

Steeling himself, Mateo refrained from wiping his hands on his coat and followed, the tomato man looking both ways before taking him to a disguised break in the wall that Mateo would never have been able to find on his own. At least, not without magic. “Where does this go?” he asked.

“Down underneath, where the real cream watches. Your lady friend coming?” The high khonin jerked his head toward Lia, who had made her way through the arch that led to the ring. Her head twisted around when she got there, looking back toward the assembled guests with what Mateo thought might have been rage. It was hard to tell under that scarf.

Mateo peered into the opening, the draft from below ruffling his curls. They had come to find an auroshe, not bet on one, but maybe there was a way to access the pens from below.

The tomato man flapped an arm in Lia’s direction to get her attention, then jogged Mateo’s shoulder. Sighing, Mateo joined him in waving until Lia finally saw and began picking her way through the crowd toward them, a scowl on her face that Mateo could see even through those layers of silk.

“You’ve money, yes?” The man’s breath made the inside of Mateo’s nose burn, but he nodded, hoping his face held some kind of compliant smile. He’d brought a few silver rounds just in case he had to bet, or possibly bribe captors out of a hostage situation.

“Good, good. You look very clean, my boy. Latch on to your lady and let’s go.” The man barely waited until Lia had made it to them before grabbing Mateo by the shoulders and dragging him into the opening. On the other side he pulled open a heavy, brass-banded door and picked up a lantern, revealing a long, narrow hallway that cut deeper into the rock. One wall was glass, a ragged school of bioluminescent fish swimming in the murky water on the other side, giving the place an unnerving greenish cast. The inside wall, ceiling, and floor were all slick stone, and the awful malt reek of the man’s breath was replaced with blood, unwashed animal, and misery. A guard stepped out of the shadows long enough to look their guide up and down before letting them past.

Lia slipped in next to Mateo when a curdling sort of squeal wafted up from below. Her hand clutched at his arm, and Mateo couldn’t help but clutch back. He didn’t much like auroshes, but the thought of Bella down there left his heart with something new to boil over. The tomato man gestured for them to follow him when the hall split. Mateo could see hulking shapes in the dark down one path, but the high khonin took them the other way, leading them to a cozy little room crammed with tables and booths where people spoke in hushed tones over fried bread and drinks.

“You do realize,” Lia hissed in his ear, “that your father threatened to have my entire family killed if I don’t at least try to make something work between us. And that he’ll hand me straight back to Ewan if I don’t do what he wants.”

“My father wouldn’t…” But Mateo couldn’t say the words. Tual was already looking for a replacement son to sit in Mateo’s chair once the sickness took him. And it hadn’t been a dance across a ballroom that got them into the Warlord’s inner circle, either. Tual Montanne was a loving father, a sympathetic, dynamic man full of smiles and jokes until he wasn’t. Mateo pushed the thoughts away, trying to focus his blurry eyes in the darkness of the room. “I fail to see what any of this has to do with me.” Anger had taken hold of him again, each word feeling heavier and dirtier than the last, plunking out of his mouth and leaving a coppery tang on his tongue. They were easier than the image of her bloodless face from his words before. “I’m sorry your father decided to try assassinating the governor, but I don’t really feel the need to assassinate myself by going along with any of this.”

“I didn’t want to braid a bridal wreath, you idiot. I just need you to help me buy some time. Help me make your father believe we’re going along with his plan so he’ll protect my family from the Warlord. If I have to go back…” She swallowed, looking down. “Mateo, if I have to go back, Ewan—”

“You don’t have to tell me.” Mateo shook his head, because that wasn’t quite right. “I don’t want you to tell me.”

“Why, because it will make you realize there are other people who exist on this planet who aren’t you? I wasn’t planning to run away, Mateo. But then…” She swallowed, her voice hitching. “I… I froze.”

Mateo watched the people as they walked by, focusing on a beaded scarf, a pair of leather boots with jeweled buckles, some battered and fried squid on a plate, anywhere that wasn’t Lia. “Could we stick with you manipulating me into helping you find your bloodthirsty horse thing for right now?”

“Right. Perfect. Let’s do that.” Each of Lia’s words splintered with fury. “You go with… whoever that is.” She jabbed a finger at the high khonin leading them through the tables. “I’ll look for Vivi.” One second she was there and the next she was gone, leaving Mateo with the overripe-tomato man who wanted to be sure there was money in his purse.

Sweat beaded under his shirt, soaking him. If I come out of this with a stained shirt and coat, I’m going to—

“Here we are!” The man led him to a booth. There were heavies with scuffed armor plates sewn to their tunics just outside, all with a scraggly black feather stuck into their braids, which probably meant something, but Mateo didn’t know what. Inside the booth, a little man was hunched over a pile of silver, his eyes yellowed and his fingers long and spindly like spider legs.

“Reathe?” He arranged the little pile of silver coins into a tower in front of him. “I thought you were cleaned out for the night.”

“This one wants to look the beasts over, Bastion. Give them a good inspection before he chooses.” Reathe presented Mateo to the man with a bow that befitted a very low stable boy. “Come on now, I know you can get us back there.”

“Not without money.” Bastion sniffed, wiping his nose with a finger.

Mateo shuddered. But Reathe’s drunken, almost puppylike hope was too much. He sighed, reaching into his pocket for a single silver round, and slapped it on the table in what he thought was a very rakish manner. Bastion merely slid it away from Mateo, flipped it up from the table, gave it a flick to hear it ring, then stowed it in his money bag. He stood, gesturing back toward the hallway they’d come from. “This way.”

“Oh, I don’t need to see them.” Mateo’s mind caught up with what exactly it was he’d just paid for. Lia would be in with the auroshes, and Mateo didn’t like the look of Bastion’s nails, much less the look of the men hulking by the doorway, their battered armor glinting in the candlelight. “I mean, not right now. Maybe later, when I’ve had a chance to—”

“You want to see them early in the night, son,” Reathe broke in. “I got you down here, and I’ll lend my expertise, of course, in choosing which one to back. We’ll split our winnings—I’ll only take seventy percent, and you’re welcome.” His brow scrunched. “Where’d your little lady go?”

“She… saw someone she knew.” Mateo cleared his throat, trying to breathe through his mouth at the sudden onslaught of malt breath. He turned to Bastion. “I heard something about new blood in the stables. I’ll put my round on—”

“Does the new one have one horn or two?” Reathe burst in. “Branded or straight from the Devoted? Those Devoted beasts have practically forgotten how to fight another of their kind.…” His voice took an abruptly grumpy turn. “Calsta burn it, we paid to see the beasts, and I—”

“I paid to see them.” Mateo clutched his drawing satchel to his stomach. “And I just realized I haven’t brought my scented handkerchief, so perhaps you could just return my silver round—”

“Listen to your friend, son.” Bastion sniffed again and started down the hall.

“Well, all right, I guess.” Mateo tried to keep his voice from becoming shrill when Reathe grabbed hold of his sleeve and towed him back through the smoky cubbies toward the auroshe stalls. Lia was in there doing Calsta knew what, and Mateo couldn’t imagine what would happen if Bastion found her. “Hang on, I think I know someone over…” He tried pointing into the formless gloom of money and illegal betting, but Reathe hardly broke his gait, dragging Mateo after Bastion past the two guards standing to either side of the hall. How had Lia gotten past them? They both seemed to have their throats intact.

Mateo pretended to trip. “Oh dear, I think I’ve scuffed my shoe!” But Reathe towed Mateo into the long hall beyond the guards with a loud hiccup that smelled like onions and malt. The hallway opened into a narrow room, both walls edged with iron bars, the awful smell of blood and unkempt animal thick in the air.

They were stalls, each with an angry auroshe staring at Mateo from behind the bars. Reathe dropped Mateo’s arm, striding deeper into the cages, but Mateo couldn’t make himself move until the creature in the cage to his left lunged at the bars, long tongue licking toward his arm. He jerked away, trying to stand exactly in the middle of the space between cages, where the beasts couldn’t reach him.

Where was Lia? Mateo threw his aurasight as far as he could into the stalls, despite the way it made his knees wobble, feverishly looking for the spiriter. Her aurasparks were no more than fifty feet away. Only a few more steps and Bastion would see her.

“Calsta above,” Mateo said a touch too loudly, hoping she would hear. “Is it stuffy in here or is it just me?”

Reathe hardly looked back, his eyes measuring horns and forelocks and tooth length or whatever it was he wanted to see as he followed their guide. Bastion. Who was muttering the exact wrong thing: “Someone’s upset my ladies. Those sky-cursed guards aren’t worth half what I pay them.”

Lia’s aurasparks darted about, but before Mateo could see where she went, his magic winked out and threatened to take him with it.

Bastion stopped dead at the partition that led to the next row of stalls. It was dark on the other side, the gloom skittering with little movements. “Only way out’s into the ring or through me,” he shouted into the dimness beyond the partition. “Were you hoping for a knife in the gut or a horn through your chest?”

Mateo hurried to catch up, his skin prickling as the beasts to either side of him knickered and twisted to watch him as he passed. He stumbled when a horn sliced between bars toward him, his wobbly knees almost dumping him to the ground. “Wait.” He grabbed for Bastion, who had pulled out a knife. “I think maybe this might be some kind of misunderstanding.”

A person stepped out of the shadows to face them, only it wasn’t Lia. It was a young man, embroidered neck to waist and malted up enough that he was leaning against one of the cage doors, the auroshe inside making frenzied attempts to bite his hand through the bars.

He burped. “Hello there. Wasn’t I just talking to you?” He turned himself in a circle. “I was just talking to you. But you were a girl.”

Mateo cleared his throat, trying to look around without making it seem as if he was looking around. Where had Lia gone?

“If you like your head attached to your neck, you’d best get out of here.” Bastion adjusted his grip on the knife.

“I do like my neck.” The high khonin stretched up his chin and framed the body part in question with his hands. “Just look at it. Rosalyn was saying just yesterday…”

Reathe pushed past Mateo to stand in front of the last auroshe cage, ignoring the only half-intelligible argument blossoming between Bastion and the high khonin. “This is the new one, isn’t it?” He peered into the darkness behind the bars, muttering to himself, “Double horns, and he looks healthy enough. He—whoops.” Reathe darted back as a horn jutted through the bars, barely missing him. “He hasn’t been here long enough to be mopey.”

Mateo turned around slowly, eyeing the stalls. Surely Lia hadn’t gone into one of them to hide. But there wasn’t anywhere else she could have gone.

A muted auroshe squeal filtered in from somewhere beyond the end of the enclosed stalls, and a sliver of light appeared on the floor as if a door had been pushed open by the wind.

“That door shouldn’t be…” Bastion left the high khonin, who was now sniggering into his elbow, to stare down the flood of lantern light and the series of grates beyond the door. “Did someone go out there? There’s a fight happening right now.”

A sudden roar of applause flooded the room, jeers and screams of laughter skewering Mateo in the stomach.

He turned and ran back the way they’d come. Because for a moment, with just one flicker of power, he’d seen Lia’s aura. And it was in the ring.

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