Prodigal Steelwielder (Seals of the Duelists Book 3) Read online

  “Your face, I remember it during your first storm,” Teos called back. “Your trousers, you nearly soiled them.”

  Calder shuddered. “Aye. ‘Godsmaw’ has the proper ring of terror to it.”

  His eyes swung south toward Muggenhem and the broad, open beach that formed the public docks. Villagers swarmed the sand like ants, sawing tree trunks into replacement planks for their lost docks, forming shovel lines that redistributed the sand deposited by the last storm and smoothing the dunes. Others floated off shore on barges as the men aboard attempted to replace the sunken pilings that had become lurking, jagged teeth, hungry for boat keels.

  The Godsmaw looked calm, but Calder knew it was a rarity. The swirling sea got restless during winter storms, and he couldn’t wait for the warming of spring to tame the wild waves. He’d spent too many days that winter smoothing unruly dunes. The winter before that, Calder had been new to the duel den, and Hanna, the Head Duelist, had crammed his mind with far too much social etiquette. Kiwani should have been assigned to this duel den. She already knows all those unspoken rules. I was probably the worst choice of all of us for such a posh placement. His expression soured. Sure an’ that’s why they stuck me with it.

  Calder’s water jets accepted another heavy chunk of stone from the wiggly green arms of Teos’s avatar. Beneath his calm surface, Calder felt his irritation grow. Aye, we got scattered to the winds. But thanks to Tala, we all still train. I’m a hexmage in truth, aye, but I canna show any of my new skills without risking everyone else’s security, too. The flip side of the savant coin is a bitch and for certain. The emperor knew what he was about when he ordered us hexmates topped out at Avatar Duelist. Tarin and Taban may be able to bend the rules way out east in the wildlands of Nunaa, but they’ve stuck me straight in the heart of the empire’s nobles, and no one clings to tradition more than they do, not even the Duelist Academy. And that’s saying something.

  “Am I boring you?”

  Calder snapped out of his dark funk. “Sorry.” Fogbreath spun up a vortex to receive the rock Teos’s avatar offered.

  Teos looked up at him from the damp sand and crossed his long, lanky arms.

  Calder swallowed hard.

  “Come down here for a moment.”

  Calder swished onto the beach, landing safely on the sand without even dampening his boots. “My fault. I’ll attune better to your avatar.”

  Teos didn’t answer right away. He glanced to the right, down the beach toward the hive of activity, then out to sea, then back at Calder. “I’ve seen you leave. Hushed voices, I hear them late at night in your room. And then you just disappear. One time, I saw you vanish through a bright circle in the middle of your room.”

  Oh, sints. “It isna what you think, I’m just… There’s this girl. Tala. She’s a Singer, she can portal. Sometimes she comes to see me, and we… We go.”

  Teos raised a doubtful eyebrow. “That’s not what I’m talking about. Your skills, they’re what’s on my mind. I’ve been watching you since you got here, on Hanna’s orders, on account of… let me name it your situation.”

  Calder ducked his head. He knew exactly what Teos referred to. He’d been in Muggenhem for less than two years, but he’d long since noticed the nobility were good at putting people in their place. And his place, apparently, would always be under suspicion. He hadn’t gotten any duels for nearly a score of holidays after he first arrived. Only his sheer strength at avatar duelism had finally garnered him his share of jobs. And the Muggenhem nobility would never let him forget it.

  Teos pursed his lips, and his eyes narrowed. “You’re still not following me, newnik. In the handful of seasons you’ve been here, I’ve actually seen your magic improve. You and I, we both know that’s supposed to be impossible. And yet your avatars, they grow consistently larger, especially your Flame avatar, Firedust. You’ve been very careful to avoid spilling your ducats in the mud, and while you have succeeded in some areas, there are things you simply cannot hide. Not from me.”

  Calder’s heart rate increased, and he struggled to keep his face impassive. The void wasn’t something he reached for very often, but he did at that moment, desperate for calm.

  Teos reached out and tapped a finger against the heavy beads on Calder’s necklace. “Funny how, every so often, you add another bead to this necklace. I can’t help wondering what they mean to you.”

  A black stone on the left of the necklace lent Calder its angry focus, and he slapped Teos’s hand aside like it was an irritating mosquito. “Get your own jewelry. I’m no trade duelist to make you pretties by request.”

  Heat entered Teos’s pale eyes for a moment. “That favorite phrase of yours, how does it run? ‘Great stupid idiot’? Well, Calder, right now, that’s you. I’m not trying to get you in trouble, you prat. I’m trying to be subtle about asking for your help. I didn’t realize I needed to bash you over the head with one of these rocks to get you to understand me. Dunfarroghans, I thought they were canny.”

  Calder froze for a long moment, making sure and sure again, that he understood Teos correctly. Inside, his magic swirled, uncertain. “What do you want from me, then?”

  Teos’s eyes shifted up the beach again, then they met Calder’s. He lowered his voice, despite the incessant crash of the Godsmaw waves a stride behind Calder’s heels. “Your skills, teach them to me. Teach me how to improve. Your skills ranked you in the top half of the duel den when you arrived. I’ve been here for fourteen years, but you have dashed right past me with your magical ability. The other duelists, they comment on it when you’re not around. We don’t know what to make of you.”

  “You don’t think of me the same way as the nobles do, though.”

  “No. We see you when you’re not dueling, too, and we understand what we see when you do duel.”

  A smirk pulled at the old flame scar on Calder’s cheek. “Any consensus? Pet theories?”

  “Hanna, she says that you just got topped out for political reasons, that you are actually a very strong avatar duelist, and you simply hadn’t reached your potential when you were booted off campus. She says, and many of us agree with her, that being in a duel den, continuing to practice with us, it has simply raised your ability to its top level. That if you had remained on campus, you would have reached this level in the same amount of time.”

  Calder shifted his weight and watched seawater seep into his footprint. Something in Teos’s voice told him that his fellow duelist didn’t subscribe to that theory. “You disagree.”

  A smile tugged at one corner of Teos’s mouth. “We’ve all heard the rumors about your brush with savantism—that the exile was trying to teach it to you. I know you passed the test that proved you didn’t have wild magic. But that test, it didn’t prove what everyone thought it did, did it? It only proved your magic wasn’t wild. It didn’t prove whether or not you are, in fact, a Duelist Savant. You are. Aren’t you?”

  Calm now, easy. There’s no way I trust him, but I think I can be willing to listen a little longer. Calder jerked his chin down in the affirmative. “Aye, and what’s it to you then?”

  Teos eased his shoulders back. “The exile, he taught you. He’s the natural savant, not you. That means he managed to show you how to be like him without killing yourself along the way. I want you to teach that to me. Teach me how to be a savant. It has to be possible.”

  A slice of Calder’s soul thrilled at Teos’s request. Isna this exactly what I’ve always wanted? To have someone else see the value in what we went through. To see how I once saw it: my salvation. “You don’t even know what it will take.”

  Teos gave a dismissive twitch of his head. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll do it. If you can do it while you’re still a student at the academy, I can do it in my duel den. Right?”

  Calder gave him a judicious, thoughtful frown. “It’s still winter. Muggenhem is practically deserted. If you train hard, train now, you’ll be ready by the summer crush, and you’ll have more invitation scrolls t
hen you’ll know what to do with.”

  The full import of what Teos was about to get seemed to take him by surprise. Calder’s denmate stepped back, maintaining eye contact. Then after a long moment, he dipped his head and swung it to the side, like an oar slipping into a new current. Looking at the beach, he asked, “My first task, what is it?”

  Calder grinned. “First, the jetty, as fast as we can. Push it. Push yourself, and push your avatar. Then we’ll see where we stand.”

  Teos nodded, and Calder summoned Fogbreath once more, stepping onto its flat, bubbly surface and gliding out over the sea. Teos’s Wood avatar snatched boulder after boulder from the cliff, ripping them from the living rock even faster than before. Yet Calder was always ready for them. No matter how quickly Teos handed over the stones, Calder always had a water vortex ready to receive it. In addition to his speed, Calder began to hurl taunts at Teos, teasing him for being slow, unsteady, and even Akrestoi. Overworked and distracted as he was, Teos never seemed to notice that Calder was controlling several Water vortices at the same time, each one an identical avatar.

  Given Calder’s finely honed taunting abilities, it wasn’t long before he had goaded Teos into hurling the stones up through the air, straight from the cliff side. Calder caught every one of them in a vortex, and in just over half the time Teos had scheduled for the task, the two of them had completely replaced the jetty that arced out into the Godsmaw.

  Calder wafted back to the beach again, landing beside the sweating, grimacing Teos. “Oh, aye, very well indeed. I think you have potential I can work with.” Disregarding Teos’s flat, hard stare, Calder tossed an arm around the older man’s shoulders and guided him up the beach. “Now, then. Tell me about your boyhood. Any irritating siblings?”

  Still grumpy, Teos begin to relate a few anecdotes from his childhood in Pallithea, where he did indeed have an annoying older sister. Calder nodded along, pleased. It seemed that Teos had a very salient emotion to work with for his first bonding.

  Calder caught sight of a small rowboat, separate from the barges and their flotilla of tiny support vessels. It pulled away toward the distant, stormy center of the Godsmaw. He’d heard of such final voyages, but he’d never seen one in person before. His feet drifted to a stop.

  Teos paused as well and looked out across the waves. “You know we can’t stop the sacrifices, Calder. It is their right and their blessing.”

  Calder's molars ground together. The empire sanctioned few forms of suicide, but the most popular, especially by those who lived anywhere near Muggenhem, was to sacrifice themselves to the Godsmaw. The most disturbing part about their deaths was that they actually were followed by periods of calm seas. I canna decide which is worse, living on the shore of a bloodthirsty sea or Muggenhem’s support of suicide. “Well, at least we know that our jetty will last for the next holiday or two.”

  Teos was still beside him, seemingly contemplating whether he should offer his usual disapproving glance for Calder’s dark humor. Instead, he gave his braided head a small shake and said, “That’s one way to look at it.”

  Oh, sints, now he’s going easy on me because he wants something from me. I’m turning him into a bloody Dunfarroghan. I’m so proud.

  We Used To Talk

  Kiwani sat with her back to the wind, letting her legs dangle off the edge of the arena rim fifteen strides above the ground. Air currents whipped at her loose black leggings and teased strands of hair from the long braid down her back. The tiny, twirling hexlings she had crafted around her told her someone approached from behind, up the central steps in the arena stands. The heavy gait told her it was Gorwin, one of her denmates. Without turning, she asked, “Gorwin, what do you need?”

  The footsteps paused, and Gorwin’s rich baritone reached her ears. “One of the villagers is offering to tend the arena land for us. Unpaid. We dueled last year for his daughter’s right to own a field under dispute. The family already paid us, but he wants to help more. What do you say?”

  What do I say? I say, what were they thinking when they made me Head Duelist of this sints-forsaken arena in the middle of nowhere without a decent scarf shop for a hundred leagues? “Who is it?”

  “Washaw Gulaat. He’s a good, solid man.”

  She shrugged. “He can’t live here. But give him a shed for his supplies. He can walk over once a week and tend to our land all he likes. But if he has a question, Gorwin, he deals with you. Not me. Understood?”

  “Of course. I’ll inform him. Thank you.” The footsteps retreated, and soon Kiwani was alone with the wind again, her eyes locked on the distant, dimming horizon as if it held all the mysteries of the universe. For all she knew, perhaps it did. She knew she didn’t.

  Then a voice spoke out of nowhere. “Kiwani?”

  Her eyebrows lifted, but she remained otherwise still. Between her growing magic and her fading social skills, little surprised her anymore. “Hello, Tala. Are you here for your news or mine?”

  “You have news?” Tala stepped through the bright white ring of her portal, bearing crystals on their brass stands. The singer sat beside her, facing the opposite direction. Her portal closed as she clasped her crystals. The singer’s hair, long and dark like Kiwani’s, wasn’t braided and floated freely in the breeze, wafting out over the edge of safety.

  If she falls, her magic won’t be fast enough to save her. Lucky. “No. Nothing new since your last visit.”

  Tala cocked her head. “Then why did you say you had news?”

  “You don’t want to hear my news. It’s not relevant.”

  Tala sat up straight. “Well, I don’t really have news, either. But everyone says the only hex sessions you come to are your own. I thought you might like to visit the campus tonight, as an observer. It’s Eward’s turn.” Tala’s hand closed over hers unexpectedly. “I know you’re lonely out here. I’m so sorry. But you know this was never the plan. We all must do what we can. Just remember, you’re never truly alone. You have us, as often as you like.”

  Kiwani let her hand go limp beneath Tala’s grip. None of you are the one I want to see. I’m alone. And thanks to my former godfather, I always will be.

  She turned her stunned expression back to the distant horizon and simply waited until Tala’s patience ran out and the singer left. Eventually, Kiwani stepped off the edge of the arena, let Stratus, her Wind avatar, catch her a stride above the ground, and made her way into the arena tunnel toward the living area.

  Voices caught her ear: Akha and Gorwin, her fellow den duelists. Kiwani paused and leaned against the wall to listen.

  “You really don’t think she’s losing it? I mean, look at what she wears. What is that supposed to mean?” Akha asked.

  A sigh. “She’s fine, really. Remember what she’s been through. Considering that, I’d say she’s pretty stellar right now, compared to, say, Duelist Tarin. No one wants her handicap, even if she is one of those folk-hero Hexmates.”

  “But Duelist Tarin had that handicap even at the Academy. She’s always been broken. No matter what all these Hexmage-worshipping nutmeats think, I’m frankly shocked that they wasted an entire duelist on minding her so she’s able to duel, and one from her own crazy hex, at that.”

  Gorwin’s voice sharpened. “Enough of that now. You and I both know that even if we could hex our magic together, we’d still be no match for Duelist Kiwani. We get duel requests from as far away as Shaiwak and Najunaw. We even had the governor come all the way from Yewakma. That’s all because of her. All the attention we get? Her credit. Not to mention the creation of this duel den in the first place: it wouldn’t be here if Kiwani wasn’t. You let it be. Don’t draw attention. In fact, consider yourself lucky that you get to serve with a duelist of her repute.”

  Akha grumbled under her breath. “It isn’t all bad, but I wouldn’t go so far as to count myself lucky to serve under this particular Hexmate. She’s not even truly here most of the time. She just stares whenever I talk to her. Even for simple things like ‘
pass the salt.’ How are we supposed to live with someone like that, let alone duel with her?”

  Eventually, the other duelists’ talk turned to other subjects, boring and pedantic. Kiwani had no appetite, so she returned to the outer edge of the arena tunnel and sat in the grass. She had no love for any denizen of the three towns that sat roughly equidistant from her arid southern home. The prison where they had made her Head Duelist. The only member of her hex to be given such distinction. The only member of her hex to be cast so far from civilization as to need an entire duel den to contain her.

  Dark, wet clouds slugged by overhead, slicking their way from the Twervel Sea, blocking out the stars. The deepening dark of the evening matched her mood, her hair, her soul, her clothing, even the polish she applied to her nails. She clicked the lacquered beads of her necklace together. Unlike her hexmates’ necklaces, every bead on hers was black.

  Tarin has her title now: Mistress of Flame. I am no one. A soul trapped in a chrysalis of my own making. I have given up what I was, but I’m nothing else yet. I’m still empty, so empty inside. The beads clinked against one another, and she wrapped her fist around them, squeezing, feeling the firm edges bite into her palm. And yet, overflowing.

  The depths of her emotions sickened her—the leftmost bead represented self-loathing. Some nights, always the darkest ones, she toyed with the idea of casting Waarden’s Oblivion. But I haven’t. Maybe I just like torturing myself too much to end it all. But I can’t stay here, not right now. Not sitting by the tunnel entrance like a beggar, for sints’ sake.

  As she stood, Stratus formed beneath her feet, lifting her from the grass. Just below the cold, feathery brush of the clouds above, Kiwani halted her ascent and looked down. Her night-wide eyes could barely make out the gray stone ring of the arena near a crossroads of three dusty, crooked lines that twisted away to the nearby towns. The land at the southern end of the Shawnash Peninsula was rolling, scrubby. Its foliage grew large leaved and low to the ground, unlike most of the nearby tropical areas that were populated heavily with palm trees and the like. Further south, the pale, jumbled stones of the Shadow Canyons beckoned. The area was rife with strange geological formations as well as legends both dark and violent.