“The Grace must have been drained from the alchemies while it was in flight.”
Kathryn sat straighter. “How? A saboteur? Did someone pour black bile into the mekanicals?”
“No, I spoke with several of the crew. The problems all started when the ship was caught in the front edge of the storm that besets us now.”
“The storm?”
Gerrod nodded to the window. Kathryn stepped closer, sharing the opening in the drapes.
The world beyond the panes was misted with a swirl of snow. The branches of the wyrmwood tree that shaded her balcony were heavy with white shoulders. And the snowfall grew thicker.
“I don’t understand it,” Gerrod mumbled. “But I mistrust this storm. Even my own mekanicals grew stiff when I was out there. At first I blamed it on the cold and dampness, but even once inside, out of the ice and snow, the sluggishness persisted.”
He moved an arm, and she heard the wheezing struggle.
“And your armor is driven by air alchemies.”
He nodded. “Along with fire, too. I suspect the remaining fire alchemies are the only reason I’m still able to move at all. I plan on testing the flows within my armor once I return to my study.”
Kathryn pondered all he had described. “So then what are you saying? You believe the storm is somehow siphoning air alchemies unto itself?”
He shrugged. “It is air that drives every storm. And as strange as the weather has been of late, perhaps this odd blizzard may offer some answer as to why. Maybe some wild Grace is loose upon the winds, born out of this prolonged winter. Either way, until the storm blows out to sea, it will be death to fly into or out of Tashijan. And I’m not even sure it’s safe to travel afoot through the blizzard.”
Kathryn watched the blanketing fall. “So no one should come or go?”
Gerrod nodded. “I’m sorry to add another burden.”
Kathryn rubbed a finger along her cheek’s lowermost stripe. “No matter. Better to know this now and proceed with caution. I will spread the word to the outer village and lock down our gates until we know more.”
She had begun to turn away from the window when she noted something else in his eyes, a deep-set worry reflected in the pane.
“What?”
“The timing of this storm…” He shook his head. “Tylar’s knighting…everyone gathered here.”
“Surely you don’t think it was planned. Not even a god can control the path of a storm.”
He continued to stare through the window.
“Gerrod?”
He shook his head-agreeing, disagreeing, she couldn’t tell.
She finally turned away, trusting Gerrod’s judgment enough to lock everything down until this storm blew itself out. But she refused to believe worse. There were limits to even a god’s reach.
Gerrod spoke, as if reading her thoughts. “But what if it were more than one god?”
She had no answer. All she could do was take precautions and hope Gerrod was wrong in this last regard. All she knew for certain was that no one should be out in this storm.
“Colder than a witch’s teat,” Rogger grumbled.
“And I’m sure you’ve had the necessary experience to make that observation,” Tylar said as he passed under the spiked portcullis and exited Tashijan.
Rogger considered Tylar’s words. “That be true. But that Nevering blood witch was at least warm everywhere else. There’s nothing toasty beyond these gates.”
The thief was buried under rabbit furs, a woolen scarf over his face. Behind him strode the Wyr-mistress, Eylan, in a heavy greatcoat with a collared hood. Tylar had tried to encourage her to remain behind, to guard their rooms, but Sergeant Kyllan had already secured the wing after all the talk of daemons.
So as a group they crossed the bridge that spanned the frozen moat and entered the boarded-up bazaar that lay between the village and the thick walls of Tashijan. Normally it was a raucous strip of alehouses, inns, trading booths, and makeshift tents, brimming with the drunken, the slatternly, the wily, and the quick. It continually rang with shouts and screams and song.
But no longer.
Snow fell in a heavy hush. Even the winds had died down, though they could be heard whispering farther out, beyond the village, as if a great sea rolled and churned upon a beachhead. Closer at hand, the world had been drained of color and depth, leaving only a half-finished landscape, an etching of charcoal on white parchment.
“Stay close,” Tylar warned as they trod through the ankle-deep snow.
He lifted the lamp he held and opened its shutters to reveal a tiny flame, flickering like a frightened bird in its cage. The glow cast by the lamp hardly reached past his outstretched arm.
He led them past the bazaar and into the narrow streets of the village. Here there were at least a few signs of life: the filtered glow through a shuttered window, the lone minstrel strumming a lyre from behind a barred door, the scent of woodsmoke from a few stone chimneys. But as they moved farther from the great shield wall of Tashijan, even these faded into darkness, cold hearths, and held breaths.
“I don’t see anything untoward,” Tylar said, stopping and stamping his boots to clear the snow. But even he kept his voice to a whisper, suddenly wary of being overheard.
Rogger shivered beneath his furs. “I’ve never felt a late-winter storm carry a chill like this one. Perhaps the rats merely had enough sense to flee to the warmth of our halls and cellars.”
Tylar noted that Eylan had her face raised, nose to the air. She lowered her chin and matched gazes with him. Framed by the lynx-furred hood, her beauty warmed through the cold, a pretty trap intended to catch his seed when he was ready to bow to his oath. But beyond her high cheekbones, narrow flare of nose, generous lips, there remained something icy in her eyes, a reflection of the winter storm, reminding him yet again that she was of the Wyr, birthed under strange alchemies in an unending quest to instill godhood into human flesh.
But at this moment he read something beyond the ice in her eyes.
Fear.
“What is it?” he asked.
“We should not be here,” she answered and turned to search beyond the last of the village homes. “The storm…the snow…it smells wrong.”
Tylar tested the air, drawing a fuller breath through his nose. He scented nothing unusual in the crisp air. Just ice. His body, though, shuddered in its haste to warm the cold from his chest. And something else noted the chill, stirring away from it.
Tylar rubbed at his chest, momentarily unmoored. Ever since the death of Meeryn, it had lurked inside him- Meeryn’s naethryn, her undergod-hidden behind the black palm print burnt into his chest, trapped in the bony cage that was his body. He had not summoned the shadowy creature since the Battle of Myrrwood, preferring to leave it undisturbed, perhaps even forgotten. But as it stirred now, the movement stripped Tylar of his delusions. All that was not skin or bone shifted inside him, illustrating again how little of his flesh was his own, leaving him feeling hollowed and empty.
It took three more shallow breaths to resettle and moor himself.
Rogger watched him, eyes narrowing as if sensing his unease. Then he merely shrugged. “We can always turn back. A warm fire and a nip of wine is more inviting than all this skaggin’ snow and wind.”
Tylar shook his head. They had come this far. He wanted to see the true face of this storm. Its low moan swept to them through the remaining crooked streets. These last homes, farthest from the walls, were built less stout. Some were plainly abandoned long ago, while others leaned toward each other, as if sheltering against the cold.
He led them again. The drifts grew between the streets. A wind kicked up, scattering dry snow that stung the face like sharp pebbles. They made a final turn between a set of abandoned stables. Gusts had already peeled away the roofs’ thatching and now tugged at the doors, rattling and banging them, like a dog worrying a bone.
Past the last buildings, the view opened up.
“Sweet gods above,” Rogger gasped. “Who stole the world?”
He was not far wrong.
Beyond the village, the storm swirled in a solid wall. The winds whipped straight across the hills, east to west, seemingly endless, with the force of a gale. Yet where they stood, only the occasional fierce gust snapped at
