Phoenix Rising Read online

  In three steps, he had disarmed her. Nadya gritted her teeth. This fight wasn’t quite a fair bout. He was a master of the rapier with the preternatural fighting ability of the Nomori men, and captain of the Duke’s Guard to boot. Every movement came as naturally to him as breathing. For her, on the other hand, most of her concentration was taken up by controlling herself and her blade.

  It was hard to believe she’d once envied Lord Marko, the Duke’s son, for the private lessons he received from her father. Now getting them near-daily herself, it was all Nadya could do not to scream in frustration.

  “Do you see the mistakes you’re making?” Shadar wiped the blade of his rapier on the corner of his tunic, polishing off some invisible smudge.

  Nadya sighed and retrieved hers. “Besides not using everything that’s available to me?” She shook her head. “I know, I’m thinking too much. But I have to think. If I don’t…” If I don’t, I lose control.

  And people have died because of that.

  “No excuses. We are training so Nadya Gabori will be able to win a fight, not the Iron Phoenix.” Shadar’s tone took on the peculiar hesitation that always came when he mentioned the name Storm’s Quarry had bestowed upon her masked self, a vigilante who was now equally feared and revered throughout the tiers. It seemed impossible that it had only been mere months since she’d first donned the gray cloak for her nightly adventures on the city’s rooftops, her only peace in a life of failing to be a normal Nomori woman. She felt like a lifetime had passed since she had rescued her father from an explosion at the headquarters of the Duke’s Guard, emerging unscathed from the flames and earning herself the name.

  Her father seemed all right with her nivasi nature now, though how much of that was a brave face for her benefit, Nadya didn’t know. Shadar, like all the Nomori people, had been taught to fear and hate the nivasi, the rare Nomori whose innate gifts were powerful and uncontrollable. To learn his daughter was one, especially the one who committed a massacre at the Duke’s open address, was not something one grew used to. Even if she was being controlled by another at the time.

  “You’re struggling because it’s hard,” Shadar said, his tone strong once more.

  Nadya pushed her darker thoughts away. “You should become a scholar, Papa, with those incredible insights.”

  “No,” he said more sternly, “it’s hard for you. When was the last time physical training was difficult for you? With all your gifts, you are used to everything coming naturally. Strength and speed do, but skill does not. You want control. No one is born with control. You have to learn it, to earn it.” He gripped her shoulder. “You’ve come far in two months. Now, again.”

  Sighing, Nadya returned to her stance.

  She could beat him, she knew that. Maybe not in an actual fight to the death, though the time they did that it had come out fairly even. But in a sparring match, she could win. She was stronger than him, faster too. Than anyone she’d ever met. Her nivasi blood, a perversion of the Nomori gift many would say, gave her physical abilities beyond any kind of training. She could hit through stone, leap across rooftops, but as Shadar attacked once more, she could not master this stars-cursed parry maneuver.

  After about ten seconds, Nadya landed on her back again, and Shadar held out a hand to her. “I think that’s probably enough for today. I’m expected at the Guardhouse this afternoon.”

  She took his hand carefully and stood. “Thanks, Papa. Send a pigeon when you have time again.”

  “You know,” he said slowly, belting on his rapier, “you might come home. Then we won’t have to engage in this hassle in order to continue your training.”

  Nadya’s throat grew dry, her arms heavy. She turned toward the wall. Large chunks of stone were missing, the edges of the gaps charred. Outside, the street below was full of Nomori and Erevans, all heading toward the aid stations to receive what little medicine and food and clean water there was in Storm’s Quarry. Many more would boil the tainted floodwaters and eat roasted rat and pray to the Protectress not to fall victim to the scouring sickness.

  “If you spoke with her, perhaps you could mend what has been broken,” Shadar said, coming to stand beside her. He put an arm around her shoulders and squeezed.

  “She is afraid of me.” Nadya stared straight ahead. If she spoke with enough detachment, the words could not hurt, or at least that’s what she tried to convince herself of. “She knows what I am, and she hates me for it. There’s no fixing that.”

  “You’re our daughter, and nothing will change that.”

  Grateful as she was to her father for his acceptance, Nadya knew he was wrong, and his words, their optimism, hurt. “If my nivasi blood had been discovered ten years ago, it would have definitely changed everything. I was not the only one, you know, just the only one who survived.” Her childhood friend Shay had disappeared after exhibiting an unusual gift, and her family denied her very existence to this day.

  Shadar sighed. “Some things…the Elders, we, our people are not always right. Your mother is not always right either. The past can’t be undone, but look to the future.” He cupped her chin so that she would look at him. “Promise me you’ll think about it?”

  Nadya swallowed. Her father defied the Elders by continuing to love her, and she knew how much he risked in that defiance. This was the least she could do. “I will, Papa.”

  “Good.” He smiled. “Let me see you to the aid post. Make sure you get something to eat.”

  “I’m fine,” she protested. There were plenty of citizens, Erevan and Nomori, who needed whatever aid came to the city far more than she did. Though her stomach gave a low growl in protest. “I can borrow food from the fourth tier.”

  Shadar sighed and held out wooden ration tokens. “Stealing is still stealing, even if it is from those who can afford it. And you need to be careful. The rooftops are being watched at night. There are many who want to see the Iron Phoenix hang, thinking his death will bring some measure of hope to the city.”

  The thought brought sourness up Nadya’s throat as she took the tokens. As ugly a notion as it was, she couldn’t exactly blame the city. There were many orphans, widows, and widowers because of actions committed by her hands, if not her mind.

  Outside, a cry went up in the streets, saving her from having to respond. “Caravan! Caravan from Wintercress!” Dozens of people raced east toward the gate, clogging the road.

  “I thought a Wintercress caravan just arrived a few days ago? At night?” Nadya asked.

  “They did, bringing craftsmen, water treatments, and food. Wintercress has been incredibly generous,” Shadar said, a low growl entering his voice.

  “You don’t sound pleased. We need those supplies. A third of the city has come down with the scouring sickness, and only the Cressian compound keeps our waters potable.” She saw the starvation and disease firsthand every day as she walked the streets of the city.

  “Of course, and I’m grateful.” He looked out the window with a frown. “Have you heard anything from Kesali about the negotiations with Wintercress?”

  “No.” In truth, she had not heard anything from Kesali since just after the solstice. The Nomori Stormspeaker and betrothed of Marko, the Duke’s son, was busy keeping the city alive alongside her intended. Lord Marko was a maddeningly friendly Erevan, and as much as Nadya had tried to hate him for taking Kesali away from her, his good nature made it impossible. He never treated her and other Nomori with the disdain common among upper tier Erevans, and reluctantly, she had grown closer to him during the fight against Gedeon and the events of the Blood Sun Solstice. Despite her friendship with both Marko and Kesali, Nadya had avoided going anywhere near the palace for months. Kesali had found out about her secret identity during the fight on the solstice, and she did not want to see what time had done to her opinion of Nadya.

  No matter how much not seeing the woman she loved hurt.

  “And I have not spoken to Duke Isyanov or Lord Marko about the negotiations. Wintercress
has not been the staunchest of allies in the past. Their stronghold just beyond the Kyanite Sea was built as a challenge to Storm’s Quarry. Now, they wish to help us, clean our waters, bring food and workers and drop them at our feet.”

  “With the city stricken with the scouring sickness, we are short on both of those things. All the more reason to be grateful for what is sent.” Nadya headed toward the stairs, but Shadar’s arm caught her.

  “More caravans mean more Wintercress soldiers. By the Protectress, I hope they mean well. But it does mean reinforcements for the Guard. I meant what I said, Nadezhda. Do not wear the cloak, and think carefully where you go after dark.”

  Gently, she pulled away. “I know, Papa, just like I know I can get away from any guardsmen who find me.”

  “The point is not whether you can escape. It is whether you can escape without hurting them, or worse.” Shadar’s voice was flat, but Nadya heard the roiling emotions underneath. She was his daughter, but those were his men, and he desperately wanted to avoid a collision between the two.

  “Papa, I can do it.” It wasn’t a lie, though her surety was. “I know—”

  His rapier interrupted her, drawn so fast even she barely saw it before the blade pressed up against her throat. Not hard enough to draw blood, but firm enough that it would not easily be dislodged. Shadar’s eyes held hers. He said nothing, but the challenge was there: If you’re right, then prove it.

  Nadya swallowed. She tried to move her arms. One was pinned behind her back, one held by Shadar. She could throw him off, but it would have to be hard enough so he wouldn’t have the opportunity to slice at her throat. Not that he would. But to throw him that hard would be to break his back.

  Marko would have been able to get away from her father, along with most Nomori swordsmen. She could not, not without hurting her father. She looked down.

  Shadar lowered his rapier, point made. “I just want you to be careful.”

  “I will.” She tried to keep the despair that twined around her chest out of her voice. How was she to help her struggling city if she lacked the control to act without hurting people? As she left their secret training building and followed her father through the crowd, Nadya took several deep breaths.

  There were many among the Nomori, and now the Erevans of Storm’s Quarry, who believed every nivasi was destined for madness. History spoke of Durriken the Butcher, and now of Gedeon the Chaos-maker. Both lost their minds and brought endless bloodshed to the city. Some of that bloodshed had come at the hands of the Iron Phoenix, her mind supplanted by Gedeon’s dark power in order to slaughter attendees at the Duke’s address on the eve of the solstice. She winced, fighting back the flashes of carnage, the sounds of bones breaking and children’s screams. Gedeon had tried to force the fate of the nivasi upon her, and many in the city regarded the Iron Phoenix no differently than the Butcher and the Chaos-maker.

  Nadya straightened. She was going to fight against that destiny with everything she had. Gedeon was not going to win from the grave. Her seal of the Protectress, a metal flower engraved on a band around her upper arm, grew warm. She would master control over her mind and her powers before the Iron Phoenix brought any more suffering to a city rife with it.

  This, she swore.

  Chapter Two

  People flooded the bottom tier of Storm’s Quarry, anxious to see the caravan and the supplies and laborers it brought. After saying good-bye to her father, Nadya found herself stuck in the masses as she tried to head back to her home.

  Home. Not exactly anyone’s Natsia, their Nomori long way home. A burned-out structure, once a feedstore, now just the blackened stones. It was quiet and empty, and the patchy roof kept out the worst of the summer sun. It sat nestled in one of the poorest neighborhoods of the second tier of the city, once belonging to the least of the Erevans. Now, with large swaths of the lower tiers crumbling, disease-ridden, and uninhabitable, the lines that once separated the races so strictly had faded to smudges, and a Nomori girl like herself wasn’t given two glances as she walked toward the stairs.

  In one way, Nadya thought as she slipped between bodies and through crowds, Gedeon and Levka Puyatin, the orchestrators of the solstice’s tragedies, had utterly failed. Prior to the falling of the wall, the Erevans and the Nomori had been at each other’s throats, circling one another and wishing death on their neighbors. Now she passed an Erevan man, no older than twenty, helping a Nomori woman clear rubble from around what had once been a public well. Blue-gray patches mottled their skin, the early gift of the scouring sickness. Such blunt tragedy had a way of erasing hate, or at least putting it to the side, as the need to survive trumped all.

  It should not have taken the end of all we know to have peace, she thought sadly as she passed huddled bodies clutching smelly rags, their boney wrists peeking into the sunlight. Dark scabs riddled pale skin. And if we survive this, there’s nothing to say it won’t all go back to the way it was. When the Nomori people had settled in Storm’s Quarry a generation ago at the Duke’s request, their strange customs and abilities earned them the scorn and fear of the native Erevans. No matter that the Stormspeaker of the time, Kesali’s mother, had saved the city from a Great Storm. It seemed that nothing less than impending mutual destruction, brought on by the Blood Sun Solstice, could bring uneasy peace to the city.

  “Caravan!” The word rose in Erevo and Nomori, cried out in relief.

  Elbows thrust out around her as people clamored to the edge of the main street. Guardsmen held on to the perimeter, escorting the line of mules, wagons, and weary travelers to the rail, where the new supplies would be taken to the palace storehouses and distributed among the tiers.

  Nadya was a stone in the mists of a swirling river of bodies. Any who tried to push past her found her a curiously immovable target. She tried to ignore the surrounding chaos as she studied the faces of the Wintercress caravan come to her city. Shadar’s uncertainty about the aid rang in her ears.

  None of the craftmasters, laborers, and soldiers looked particularly threatening, their grim expressions and curt tones in their unfamiliar Cressian tongue more likely born of fatigue than anything else. Except…

  Nadya’s breath caught in her throat. One woman rode at the head of the caravan. She passed the swarms of Storm’s Quarry citizens without expression, her eyes taking in the desperation all around her.

  This woman was undoubtedly in charge. Her blond hair was cut short, framing her pale face and sparkling eyes. Light eyes, so blue as to be almost silver. They shone as she rode past where Nadya stood. The Wintercress leader wore fine white linens, a half skirt, half trouser combination that the Erevan courtier ladies wore when out riding. Her mare, silky white despite the long journey, arched its neck as if it knew it was higher bred than any of the crowds in awe over it. Amidst the dirt of the Nomori tier, she appeared as a beacon of bright.

  The leader leaned over to the only other person on a horse, a man riding carefully two paces behind her, and spoke. Nadya strained against the noise of the crowd. She took a breath and calmed down. Slowly, she filtered away the crying children and muttered prayers lifted up to the Protectress and storm gods alike. The noise receded, muffled.

  She spoke in Cressian, but Nadya caught the Duke’s name. The man addressed the leader as Aster, preceded by what was no doubt an honorific. Aster smirked just before she rode out of Nadya’s line of sight, and one word formed on her lips. “Braka.”

  Her seal of the Protectress prickled. It could have been her own unease, projected on her still uncertain relationship with the Nomori deity. But Nadya could not deny the bad feeling this Aster gave her. Suddenly, her father did not sound so paranoid.

  But the aid was needed, and the wells of Storm’s Quarry could not be purified on hope alone. Though the melons and rice of the caravan’s supplies brought wide-eyed children to its edge, it was the compound, held tightly by Cressian soldiers, that was truly so valuable, so desperately needed. She watched the end of the caravan wind out of
sight. When the last guardsmen retreated, the streets flooded with the crowd, and Nadya allowed herself to be swept up in it.

  She climbed the great staircase to the second tier. Turning off the main road and onto the narrow side street that led to her little dwelling, Nadya heard the shouts.

  She swept her gaze over the street once more. Here, it was near empty now. Those fortunate enough to be able-bodied enough for work were at the job, and the rest conserved their energy and tried to stay out of the sun. Every mouthful of water was another chance to catch the scouring sickness, no matter how much of the compound Wintercress provided, and people stayed away from the wells as if the ghosts of the solstice haunted them.

  She did not always have that luxury.

  Nadya slipped in through the door to her new home and sighed. Her pallet, straw covered in old clothes, was tucked away in one corner. Next to it was her cloak, carefully rolled up, and the few supplies she had. She suppressed a few pangs for her real home, the one in the Nomori tier behind her mother’s jewelry shop. Now, this was all she had. The rest of the meager space was cleared for the exercises she did every day, except for the back corner, which still held all the baskets and boxes that were here when she staked a claim on the place.

  The bucket that held her purified well water lay in the middle of the shack on its side. She grimaced and picked it up.

  Looks like the new shipment came from Wintercress just in time, she thought, heading back out to the nearest well that still ran with water, however tainted.

  Her constitution meant she had little to worry from the scouring sickness, but for the rest of the city, from the Duke to the lowliest second-tier beggar, every drop of water could hold death beneath its surface. None of the sages or advisors at the palace, according to her father, knew what kind of taint the Blood Sun Solstice had wrought upon the city’s wells. The only thing that kept the sickness from overrunning Storm’s Quarry was the compound that Wintercress created and guarded carefully.