The Worlds of J D L Rosell Read online

  In the way the Guilder held me, unflinching and steady, I sensed I wasn’t alone in my guilt. That at some point in the past, he, too, had felt as I did now. I wondered again about that shadowed past of his. It wasn’t exactly a comforting realization, but somehow, it made a difference.

  After I had calmed, I pushed away from Talan and walked unsteadily on my own. “We must hurry,” I said faintly. “We can’t be seen like this.”

  Talan nodded. “I have a place nearby I can change at. But I can return you to your tower.”

  I considered him for a moment. How long had the Guilder watched us before he stepped out from the shadows? Somehow, I couldn’t summon up the unease I knew I should feel at that. The unease I did feel was that it felt comforting instead. So he was a Guilder, and a feral warden. None of that matter. When I had been in danger, he had come and saved me.

  “Come with me,” I said. Reaching out, I took his bloody hand in mine. And after a moment’s hesitation, he nodded and let me lead him along the street and back to Canopy.

  The reunion in Canopy went as well as could be expected. Xaron and Nomusa were in a panic and rushed to the door as soon as I knocked. I couldn’t help but notice the red mark I left on the wood. As soon as it opened, Xaron jumped to conclusions and nearly started a fight with Talan then and there, and I was only just able to talk him out of it.

  Once we’d both cleaned up and wore new clothes — Talan looking comical in one of Xaron’s bright tunics — they sat me down on the divan and managed to pry the tale out of me. Both were wide-eyed by the end of it.

  “Airene,” Nomusa said in a hushed voice, her hand squeezing mine.

  Xaron looked stricken as he stood before the bay window. “I can’t believe we weren’t there,” he muttered. He cast a sulky look over at the Guilder, who leaned next to the balcony door, his head bowed. Yet I thought I detected the hint of a smile at my friend’s look.

  I shook my head. “I’ll be okay,” I said, my voice breaking as I said it. Nomusa folded me into her arms anew.

  A little while later, though, I pushed away again. “I really will be,” I told my companions. “I just need some time to think things through.”

  The rest of that day, I allowed my friends to comfort me, and give me food and water, with promises of coffee at Zipho’s cafe later. Even as a quiet resolution for a further hunt formed in the back of my mind, I let myself relax. I thought Thero would have liked that. He’d always loved having a good time, always had a smile on his face. I closed my eyes and, for the first time in my living memory, felt hope for someday understanding who had done this to him. And for the first time in a long time since his death, the guilt eased a bit.

  Before he left Canopy, Talan informed me that before he had come to my aid, he had alerted a fellow Guilder of Iela’s intentions, and that they would have recovered the body. I couldn’t help but wonder what they’d do with it. Burn it? Throw it out to sea? Or leave it in some deep, dark tunnel below the city? I didn’t have the nerve to ask.

  Instead, I turned the conversation to the apothecary. “Will Eazal have gotten away?”

  Talan shrugged. “It’s likely, at least for the moment. But the Underguild has an extensive network. We’ll catch him before he can go anywhere.”

  I wondered when I’d see Talan next. True, it seemed I had a new working relationship with the Underguild, one which I expected I’d need to find out who this powerful, mysterious man was behind Iela and her operations. But if I was to avoid their business, that didn’t exactly indicate I’d be working often with a Guilder. “I think I owe you a thank you.”

  A softness settled over his expression unlike anything I'd seen him wear yet. “You don’t owe me anything,” he said quietly.

  My heartbeat sounded louder in my ears. “Thank you all the same.”

  I don't know who looked away first, but the moment passed as our gazes broke. Talan looked down the stairs of my tower, then leaned conspiratorially forward. “If you should ever need me again,” he said in a low voice, “go to the tavern the Ignorant Ignoble in Bazaar, and ask the barkeeper for ‘a chalice of unrequited intoxication.’”

  I nodded. It was a curious passphrase, but I’d heard stranger. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  He leaned back once more, his usual smile returning. “And even if you don’t need me…”

  I cocked an eyebrow. “Don’t push your luck.”

  Talan bowed sarcastically. “Take care of yourself, my Finch,” he said. Then he slipped down the stairs without a backward glance.

  I stood there a moment, thinking again of the passphrase he’d given me. I knew myself well enough that I wouldn’t call after him unless I did need him for information or a job. But I hoped it wouldn’t be long.

  The next day, Maesos sent a bird begging for me to visit, so us three Finches stopped by his glass shop. As soon as I’d entered, he folded me into his arms. “Oh, Airene,” he said, and for a time, he just held me. I didn’t even mind the ash he spread all over my clothes.

  When I managed to gently pry him away, he looked at me with watery eyes. “Your friends told me everything. I feel responsible,” he admitted. “I set you onto this hunt. If I hadn’t mentioned anything—”

  “Maesos,” I said severely. “None of this is your fault. Xaron, Nomusa, and I knew what we were getting ourselves into.” I took a deep breath. “And if you ever hear anything like this again, I want you to tell us first thing. Okay?”

  He shook his head with a look of amazement. “You’re one strong girl.” The glass blower cleared his throat. “I’m proud of you, little Finch.”

  “Stop that, Maesos. You’ll embarrass her,” Xaron observed with a smirk.

  My old friend’s face grew serious. “I have heard of strains of pyrkin that might help against those like that silver-haired woman,” he said in a low voice. “I promise you, Airene, I will do my best to find them if they exist. And if you ever need them…”

  “I’m sure we’ll be fine,” I said, hoping it was true. “But thank you, Maesos. Truly.”

  Soon after, we said our farewells to the glass smith, then set out for another day of leisure around the city that my friends had forced on me. I supposed there were worse fates to bear.

  When we returned that evening, I found two messages waiting for me.

  The first was from a hand I didn’t recognize, though I knew the name signed on it from Xaron’s recent house-break. Kako, Feiyan’s righthand honor.

  Airene of Port,

  My mistress has come to the understanding that you recently paid a visit to her estate, and learned something of her business dealings that puts her in a compromising light. I trust this information will remain undisclosed. For if it is revealed, I can assure you, one of your companions will be unable to infiltrate manors with their remarkable gifts any longer.

  My heart was in my throat as I read it a second time. She knew. Somehow, Feiyan knew either Nomusa or Xaron was a feral warden. Perhaps she had that much confidence in her compound security. Or perhaps she’d had reports from other sources. I pushed away doubts of Talan immediately; after what we’d been through, I doubted he would betray us. But the mystery didn’t change one thing: Feiyan was even less a woman that we wanted to cross.

  The second finch was from someone I’d been looking forward to hearing from, yet it was no more pleasant. The message inside was simple: The apothecary fled the city. Little I can do now, but I’ll still try. I am sorry. Talan hadn’t signed it, but I knew it was him all the same.

  I slumped against the railing and looked out over the drizzling city. Eazal had been my main hope for finding out who Iela’s master was, yet I hadn’t even tried looking for him myself, but instead indulged in two full days of leisure. Now, with Feiyan making threats against my accomplices, I had only the Underguild as a lead. But if Talan had not already told me anything, I had little confidence that would bear fruit.

  I should have felt angry at the apothecary, or at least at myself, but I wa
s too empty for rage at the moment. I hoped he had saved his family, if he had ever had family threatened in the first place. But I hoped even more that one day, he would think himself safe to return.

  I would be waiting.

  Join Airene and her companions as they hunt for their king’s murderer in the first book of The Famine Cycle: City of Whispers.

  * * *

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  City of Whispers

  The Famine Cycle: Book 1 (Preview)

  The Festival of Radiance, a celebration as old as Oedija, is a reminder of the Hunger War that drove our ancestors across the Lighted Sea, when the daemon god Famine slew the Foremost of our gods and nearly swallowed the world…

  - The Traditions of the Eleven: Eidolan worship in the demotism of Oedija; by Oracle Iason of deme Iris; 1164 SLP (Succeeding the Lighted Passage)

  Perched on the edge of the rooftop, I searched for the smuggler.

  It was the wrong time for a hunt. Forum Demos was packed as tightly as fish in barrels after a day's ample catch, a full third of Oedija gathered for Despot Myron's address. Expecting to spy one man among thirty thousand was a fool's wish.

  But though my back ached and my legs had gone numb from hanging off the eaves, I didn't let up. I didn't have a choice.

  "We should give it up, Airene. We're never going to find him." Xaron, who sat next to me, stretched and yawned, then reached back for his cup of festival wine, nearly spilling it in the process. Though he dressed like a fop and possessed the athleticism of a gymnast, he had the manners of a boar, and his yellow coat and scarlet trousers sported many stains from the day's activities.

  "We need the coin," I reminded him drily.

  "But we won't get it today," Nomusa, our third accomplice, spoke up from my other side. "Zotikos will need to surrender the goods before we can pick up the coin from Maesos."

  "Thanks for having my back." I gave her a long-suffering grimace.

  She smiled back, a teasing curve to it. Her dark, olive skin and revealing robe accentuated her natural beauty. When we'd been younger, standing next to her had made me self-conscious of my own middling looks. But nine years of working and living together had cured that small jealousy. Her bared arms revealed the intricate, blue tatu that wound up to her elbows. They told of her Bali heritage and displayed the truths of her past, for those who could read them.

  Xaron leaned into me, his breath sour. "How much longer until we can convince you to leave it off? Radiance ends today, and with it goes the free wine."

  I was hanging on by a thread myself. But I forced myself to say, "Until we find him."

  Xaron lapsed into a morose silence and took another drink. Nomusa held her tongue. Not to be made a liar, I renewed the search, if half-heartedly. The dying light strained my eyes further, promising an aching head that night.

  The great amphitheater spread out below us. A quarter-mile of marbled tiers cascading down to a colonnaded dais, every tier was filled to overflowing, their occupants from all echelons of society.

  Patricians, in their fine robes and polished jewelry, took the best seats among the columns close to the dais. They sat in marble chairs and were waited upon by their household honors, a caste of people little better off than the slaves of Avvad.

  Citizens — landowners who possessed the right to vote — congregated closer to the dais on stone benches, their dyed clothes a splash of color amidst the sea of plebeian brown.

  All the rest were common folks like me and my companions. With no say in who was elected to the People's Conclave, and barely enough food and clean water to survive, we occupied whatever spot we had carved out for ourselves, taking what we could just as we scrambled for coin and jockeyed for position.

  The thought brought me back to the hunt at hand. Somehow, Xaron, Nomusa, and I needed to spy one particular man from this rooftop at the back of the forum. But though the man would be wearing the colored robes of the mercantile class, I'd searched the tiny figures below for far too long. My eyes felt too large for their sockets; my head buzzed with festival wine; my vision swam.

  It was a pyr hunt, and I knew it.

  I broke off my search for a moment, kicked the blood back into my legs, and stared up at the sky. Finches, each with small scrolls tied to their legs, flitted above, flecks of fast-moving colors in the sunset light. Even now, just before the largest gathering of the year, the messenger birds of Oedija received no rest. A gentle breeze, the last of the warm summer winds, blew against my face. Shouts, laughs, and shrieks from orphans underneath our feet filled the air; no doubt many of them had gotten ahold of their fair share of the festival wine. Freely dispensed by the People's Conclave during the five days of the Festival of Radiance in a flagrant facade of generosity, this was the children's last chance to indulge and escape the misery of their daily lives.

  A new voice broke through the other noises to rise over the tumult of the crowd, slowly quieting them. Squinting at the dais, I found an oracle of the Eidolan faith, the religion of Oedija's ancestors, stood there between the grand marble columns. The old man's voice was worn as pilled wool, yet loud enough to be heard all across the public square, thanks to the present Hilarion's mystical aid.

  "Our story begins long before our demotism and the Conclave," the oracle said, voice echoing through the now-quiet amphitheater. "Before the Tyrant Wardens took Oedija for their own, and set those attuned to the Pyrthae to rule over those who were not. Long even before the first Wreath occupied the Laurel Palace. Our tale goes back to just before the Lighted Passage, when our ancestors sailed from their blighted homeland in the west to a faraway land in the east — this land, settling the stones on which we now stand."

  The oracle paused, then spoke as if reluctant, "The story begins with Famine. Some have called Famine a serpent, a great serpent. But he was no more a snake than a phoenix is a finch. Some have called him a dragon, yet this can still not do him justice. For when Famine opened his mouth wide, he could swallow the whole of Telae."

  Famine. Despite the joviality of the festival below, the specter of the daemon god loomed large over the city. A drought in Oedija's farmlands promised food shortages soon. Prices were already rising, and would only climb higher as stores ran low. With famine would come strife. Robbery. Rioting. Perhaps even revolt, if this drought was as bad as the reports promised.

  As much as I wished to give up my search, I couldn't. Without the much-needed coin, Nomusa, Xaron, and I might soon find ourselves among the starving.

  Xaron stirred and pointed. "There! By the Pillar. Is that him?"

  I followed his direction, peering at the immense column of gray stone that rose high into the sky above. One of the remnants of an older civilization, it and the other Pillars scattered across Oedija made for convenient landmarks. I picked out a man standing near its base in bright red robes, easy to pick out from the browns surrounding. Next to him stood a man half a head taller than everyone else.

  A thin smile found my lips. Zotikos, the man we'd been searching for, and his bodyguard, no doubt.

  Nomusa leaned forward. "Can you see who he's meeting with?"

  I reached into my satchel and pulled out my peering glass. Looking through it, I brought the man in red robes into focus. He was turned away from me, but his close-cropped, curly hair was the same as Zotikos sported.

  I lowered the glass and shook my head. "Too far to tell, and too many surround them. We'll have to move closer."

  "Meeting by the Pillar." Xaron tutted. "You'd think people would be a little less obvious."

  I shrugged. "I won't object to a straightforward venture for once."

  "Don't speak too soon," Nomusa chided. "This job isn't over."

  We made our slow way off the roof to the street below and endured the gibes of the orphans surrounding us. As we made it to the street, I muttered to Nomusa, "Is it just me, or are we getting too old for this?"

  She drew me in with an arm around the waist. "You just need to practice Ixo
lo with me. Then you'll be as nimble as any street orphan."

  "Or as naturally graceful as I." Xaron leaped the last several feet to the ground and stumbled as he landed.

  I rolled my eyes. "Graceful as a three-legged mule. Hurry up."

  As we pushed through the crowd, the stench of unwashed bodies filled my nose. From the dais, the oracle finished his story.

  "Tyurn Sky-Sea knew we could not face Famine unarmed. So giving all of his strength, he granted us his gift. Attuning the First Wardens to the Pyrthae, humanity gained the gift of magic. Wardens drew on the power of the Pyrthae and fought alongside the gods. Wielding the energetic elements like soldiers use swords and spears, they worked together to drive Famine and his horde from the world and, once again, bound him."

  As he concluded, there was a spattering of applause, then silence — the quiet of anticipation. Soon, Despot Myron Wreath, purported ruler of Oedija, would take the stage for his annual Radiance address. Though the royal family continued to be named monarchs, the majority of power had been transferred to the People's Conclave. Yet all around me, folk murmured their hopes as if Myron could bring about change himself. They dreamed of a year of plenty, not of famine. They dreamed of quieting streets rather than dangerous ones. But Myron could do little for them. Even if the Despot still possessed the power of his forebears, nothing could be done for the hunger that would soon come. No amount of trade with the other nations of the Four Realms could change the fact that our granaries were near empty and our fields fallow. Each realm had to watch out for themselves now, not wait for another to save them.