Aethersmith (Book 2) (41 page)

“Master Tiiba, thank you for coming on short notice and at
this unseemly hour. I do apologize,” Jinzan greeted the men. Strong as he was,
he was still wary of the power the blade-priests wielded. While none of them
could hope to stand against him in a purely magical encounter, while within
theoretical reach of those rune-blades, he was at best on equal footing.

“You would not have done so if there was not cause, I am
confident,” Tiiba replied. He sounded neither sleepy nor annoyed by the
summons. It was better than Jinzan could have said for himself, earlier that
night.

“Of course. I have received a report that there is an
insurgency beginning in Munne. The sorcerer who made the report, a Ghelkan
named Dembeck Drall, believes that the demon, Rashan Solaran, is at the heart
of it. There were strikes this very night against our forces, and we need to
act quickly to counter this threat.

“There are very few options we have at our disposal for
dealing with a warlock. Until such time as we recover the Staff of Gehlen, you
priests are the best option we have,” Jinzan told them. There was no point in
putting up a pretense before the blade-priests. They were as unlikely to object
to the order as they had been to being awakened hours before dawn.

“You pay us a great deal of respect, Councilor. The privilege
of facing a great monster such as Rashan Solaran is no small gift. There have
been few warriors of such renown,” Tiiba responded. “I will relish the
opportunity to destroy him myself.”

“Do you think you five can handle him?” Jinzan asked,
skeptical but hopeful. He wanted the honor of killing Rashan himself, but more
than that, he just wanted the demon warlock dead. Without the Staff of Gehlen,
he did not like his own chances.

“No, Councilor, I do not. But war is a tricky thing.
Sometimes fortune favors the righteous. More often, it just favors the lucky.”
Tiiba smiled. Jinzan could not help but chuckle. He had not expected an attempt
at humor from a Safschan blade-priest.

Jinzan studied the man a moment, seeing a warrior born and
bred. Tiiba’s father had been a blade-priest, and his grandfather before that.
The priests took no wives but fathered children out of duty to the order. Girl
children would be raised by the mother’s family; boys fostered with the mother
until the age of eight, when they were given to their fathers to train as the
next generation of priests. Tiiba had been fairly young for the Freedom War but
he might have served, Jinzan reasoned.

“Where were you, during the war?” Jinzan asked. It was a
common pleasantry among those who had lived long enough to see Megrenn throw
off Kadrin rule. Most veterans of the war loved nothing better than to brag of
their exploits.

“My father left me behind in Safschan when he sailed for
Zorren,” Tiiba began. “But he never forbade me. I found myself passage on a
stripe-cat vessel, bringing cavalry for the war. I fought in three nameless
battles before earning my blade in the Battle of Boots.”

Jinzan knew of the battle, though he had been closer to the
main fighting around the capital. The Battle of Boots was a nighttime ambush by
Kadrin forces desperate not to be responsible for letting Megrenn slip from the
Empire. They had stalked barefoot into a Megrenn campsite after their sorcerers
killed the sentries without raising the alarm. There had been few survivors,
but the Megrenn force had prevailed. Upon tracking back to the Kadrin camp,
many of the men had taken the unused boots of the Kadrin soldiers as trophies.

That was the sort of man he was sending to his death: a
hero. Jinzan hated command at times.

Chapter 23 - Choosing Teams

Brannis awoke to a swaying sensation that reminded him
instantly that he was on a ship. A warm, heavy pressure on his chest turned out
to be Soria using him for a pillow. It was such a strange feeling, an echo of
Veydrus following him; Kyrus had found Juliana in much the same way when she
shared his bed.

The captain’s quarters had windows facing out the rear of
the ship, and two port-holes to either side, covered with glass. Pale light
streamed through, but it was plenty bright enough to see by. Brannis turned as
best he could without disturbing Soria’s sleep, and looked outside. The sky was
flat grey; a ceiling of clouds hung over the Katamic. It might have foretold a
coming storm or it might have just been a cloudy day, Brannis could not say.
Either way, he was neither sailor nor sorcerer; there was naught he could do to
help even if it was to be a storm. He settled back in and waited until his love
awakened.

After a time, she stirred. By the time she came fully awake,
Soria found Brannis’s arms wrapped tight around her. She relaxed and just
allowed him to hold her for a time. Despite the very strange reality that she
had only just met him the day before, Soria felt as if she had known Brannis
all her life. Through Juliana’s memories, she nearly had.

“Good morning,” Brannis spoke softly, brushing a lock of
hair away from her face.

“Mmm,” she cooed back. “Good morning, Kyrus,” she made a
point of remembering the name that he used in Tellurak.

“You do not have to call me that outside of the crew’s
hearing. Once we are rid of them, you may as well just call me Brannis from now
on. Kyrus Hinterdale is a wanted criminal,” Brannis said. “I still find it odd
calling you Soria, Juliana.”

She stretched, one limb, one joint, one muscle at a time,
squirming about in Brannis’s embrace as she worked herself awake for what
seemed to be a conversation steering its way clear of insipid pillow chatter.
“Think of it as playacting. You are who you are, whatever you are called. The
difference between Kyrus and Brannis is only as wide as you make it out to be.
You
are
Kyrus, Brannis.”

“You of all people should know better than that. You have
met us both now, though Kyrus is doing much more playacting than I am. You can
see the differences,” Brannis argued.

Soria worked her way free of Brannis’s grasp, and propped
herself up on an elbow, looking down at him. “I know
better than
better
than that, actually. You are fit and strong, and Kyrus looks like a strong wind
would carry him off; that’s superficial. If he spent years in the practice yard
working with sword-masters, traipsing about in armor, and generally living like
a knight, he would look just like you.”

“Yes, but no amount of study can make my Source anything
like his,” Brannis countered.

“Well, that is one key difference with twinborn. Your
Sources might be like the sun and moon—a new moon at that—but they are your
own, at least. The two parts of the split Source seem to be what bind a set of
twins together, from what I have been told, at least. It is in here that is the
same, though.” She tapped Brannis on the forehead.

“Well, that is where you are wrong,” Brannis quickly
replied. “We do not think alike or act alike. Kyrus is playing at being me, and
probably only getting by at it because they are all so confused about the
sudden change in him.”

“You two boys don’t think alike, huh?” Soria asked
sarcastically, looking meaningfully at the two of them in bed together. “Kyrus
had not met Juliana before a few days ago, but certainly remembered her well
enough to betray Iridan’s trust to have her. There are prettier girls in the
Empire, I figure; so why me?”

Brannis had no ready answer for that one. Soria pressed her
advantage while he struggled to find one.

“And how about you and me? You
know
I am not Juliana,
at least not the way you thought of Juliana, but I am close enough. I know all
the words to convince you I am. I remember little details neither of us would
have told from when you tried courting me years ago. You were so adorably
chivalrous about it, treating me like your lady when you were barely old enough
to grow fuzz on your face, and call it a beard.”

“But it is not like that with me and Kyrus,” Brannis
protested. It was not much—not anything really—but it was all he could think
of.

“It will be. Soria and Juliana have been aware of each other
since I was a little girl,” Soria explained, hurting Brannis’s brain by
referring to herself in the third person by two different names in the same
sentence. “It takes some getting used to. You have been aware of Kyrus for how
long, a season, perhaps two? When we were searching for you, I found out your
trial had been held on the fourteenth of Gladewatch, which was about a season
ago. How long had you known by then?”

“Oh, maybe a week or so, I guess, truly. Thinking back on it
of late, I think I had a vague awareness for years that I had just never paid
much attention to.” Brannis suspected that talking to Soria and Juliana was
going to be confusing if she insisted on mixing months with seasons or other
similar misuses of Telluraki and Veydran standards.

“Give it time. Someday when you talk about Kyrus, you will
find yourself referring to him as ‘I,’ even in your own head.” Soria smiled
down at him. “Whether you choose to call me Soria or Juliana, or any other name
you like, you will think of me as Juliana. That’s fine. It’s all the same to
me.” Her smile turned mischievous as she continued. “And I think Juliana has
had just about enough talking for now.” She leaned down and kissed him.

To her faint surprise, she found herself being lifted gently
but firmly into the air and off of Brannis as their kiss concluded. She was a
fair bit heavier than Juliana, with actual honest-to-goodness muscle on her
frame, but Brannis still hoisted her up as if she was filled with straw.

“Kyrus has not,” Brannis joked. “There will be time enough
for that later, and plenty of it, mind you. There is nothing in this world to
keep us apart. You work where and when you choose. I am a fugitive, if anyone
ever makes the connection between me and Kyrus, at least; even at that, I think
we ought to be able to keep at bay any trouble from that front. For now,
though, things are going on that need attention.”

“Well, if I had any doubts about you being Brannis, you
certainly have shattered them.” Soria sighed. She twisted in his arms, breaking
his careful hold on her, and collapsing faceup into the crook of his arm. “If
you insist on being all practical, go ahead.”

“I need to know about these companions of yours. If I am
going to be trusting them with secrets of two worlds, there are things I will
need to know,” Brannis began.

“What sort of things?” Soria asked with an irritated huff.
Brannis surmised that she hoped they would be short things and few of them.

“Well, you gave me the ‘we are surrounded by pirates’
version last night, but I would like to know who they each are, in
both
worlds. What is their story, how long have you known them, what is it they do,
how well do they fight? That sort of thing,” Brannis said.

Soria turned to look Brannis in the eye, and when she saw no
hint that the conversation could be forestalled, she took a deep breath and
began. “Well, you know Zellisan is Varnus, so he ought to be easy enough to
explain. I met him as a girl in Veydrus, and as a fifteen-year-old here. He has
been nearly as much a father to me as Shador Archon has been. There may be no
blood relation, but he was always there, and my father rarely was. He guarded
me for a shift each day of my young life until I went to the Academy, and any
time I was home after that. Merciful One, he was the one who found me in
hysterics, and called for a midwife to calm me down after my first moonflow
scared me witless. Around here, he spent some time in the Acardian army before
leaving for better coin as a mercenary. He tried the ‘noble blade’ routine for
a while, but there wasn’t enough work in it, so he got himself mixed up
settling scores for one group of scum against another. It wasn’t exactly
knightly stuff, but it was keeping the wolves fighting amongst themselves at least.
Eventually he gathered up a little group of fighters who were twinborn, and
they were able to make some real coin at it.

“Those twinborn would be Tanner and Rakashi. I never did get
the story of how
those
two met, but it somehow involved a duel as far as
I could gather.” Soria paused for a moment as if trying to remember something.
“Anyway, Zell took over as their leader, and in addition to earning coin, they
looked for magic stuff. It seems that twinborn have been polluting Tellurak
with magic for centuries, at least, and some of the stuff is still floating
around here and there. They figured if they armed themselves with enough magic,
they could carve themselves out a little fiefdom somewhere, and live like
royalty.”

“So how did that work out?” Brannis asked.

“It’s still working out. None of us is ready to hang up our
blades yet, but we could buy a bit of land in any kingdom we wanted. I have
enough trade bars on me now to buy this ship,” Soria bragged, and then giggled
as Brannis made an exaggerated search of her for them. “Well,
with
me, I
meant. Anyway, we have a fair bit of magic among us as well, enough that we do
not get pushed around by anyone without some connection to Veydrus and the
ability to fight back with magic of their own.”

“Are there many of you—of us—around?” Brannis asked.

“Enough, I guess. I mean, we are still a tiny minority, but
there are enough that you need to watch yourself letting slip details of
Veydrus around here, and of Tellurak back there. You should always be more
careful around sorcerers. Zell is the exception; one of every pair usually has
magical ability. For you, it is Kyrus.”

“I guess you are the opposite side of exceptions?” Brannis
guessed.

“Yeah, Juliana’s fingers get a lot more practice at spells,
but I could manage most of what she does. I concentrate on silent casting,
since anything overt might cause trouble if I got found out. You saw how that
goes, with the whole witch trial,” Soria said, once again fluidly mixing
Brannis up with Kyrus.

“Is that why you did so poorly in the Academy? You had all
the talent you ever needed. You could have been Fourth Circle by now if you
ever tried,” Brannis prodded. Juliana could have been a top student if she had
shown the interest that Brannis had.

“I guess so. I never really thought about it like that at
the time. I was just suspicious in general. Getting held back a year was
embarrassing, so I tried a bit more after that, but I never really cared to
devote my whole life to the Imperial Circle. I just sort of got carried along,”
Soria mused. Brannis wondered how often she fell to introspection. He would
have brooded for years over his own failings if that had been his path through
the Academy. In fact, he had brooded over his failings, insomuch as being
devoid of talent was a failing.

“What about the others?” Brannis knew Juliana always hated
getting caught up talking about herself, so he did her the favor of changing
the subject. He would learn about Soria’s past when she was ready to tell it.
It was not
her
that he was worried about.

“Well, Tanner is Tanner, I suppose. It is his Kadrin surname
he uses: Tanner. First name is Elmin but he hates it, so he just goes by
Tanner,” Soria said. “I suppose he has to answer to it in the army, so he had
to keep that bit at least.”

“What is his name in Tellurak?” Brannis asked. He felt like
a pest, interrupting her to pick at details, but one day he might have to make
inquiries about the man, and knowing his given name could prove useful.

“Dunno,” Soria admitted. “I only got the ‘Elmin’ bit out of
him betting on the outcome of a street brawl in Khesh. I tried to get his
Acardian name out of him over a game of dice, but I didn’t win that time.”

“What was your stake?” Brannis asked, teasing her.

“A kiss,” she admitted. “Only one he’s ever gotten, and I
stopped trying to weasel his name out of him after that. I only gamble for coin
now, not secrets. You’re welcome to try him, though. I’m sure you’ve got plenty
of secrets to barter.”

“I can do better than that. I’m his senior officer in
Kadrin, remember?” Brannis chuckled. “I can get him the post of his dreams, or
make his life miserable. If I decide I want to know, I have plenty of
leverage.”

“Just promise me I can be there to watch if you try the
‘miserable’ route.” Soria grinned. “Even if it’s a bluff, the look on his face
ought to be worth it.”

“Fine. Deal,” Brannis agreed.

“When we thought we were still chasing Kyrus around, Tanner
mentioned something about wanting to duel him. He may still have some thought
of it. We dissuaded him by pointing out that it wouldn’t be a fair match, since
Kyrus was … you know … sort of a weak, skinny, bookish sort,” Soria managed
with barely suppressed laughter as she teased Brannis. He glared at her, but
since they were both more or less looking up at the cabin ceiling, it lacked
the intended effect. “Since you’re not Kyrus, he may still want to try you.”

“Do I need to worry?” Brannis wondered. He knew he was not
the greatest technical swordsman, but he held his own well enough.

“Use Avalanche and you should be fine, so long as you’re
well armored. That suit you have with you will be plenty,” Soria joked.

“That good, is he?” Brannis asked.

“Yeah,” she replied. “He and Rakashi used to spar more
often, years ago. It was something to see. Rakashi really knows how to use that
half-spear of his, but Tanner would still win almost every time. If you ever
see Rakashi without his shirt on, you’ll see dozens of little scars; they used
to duel to first blood.”