Heir of Thunder (Stormbourne Chronicles Book 1) (16 page)

As the days passed, I succeeded in keeping Jenna and Malita’s
presence in the attic secret. Most of our luck hinged on the narrowness of the
attic stairway and the wideness of Anatella’s hips. Jenna withstood her
internment for close to a week before I discovered her absence late one night
after finishing my chores in the kitchen. She returned before my worry forced
me out onto the streets to search for her, and she announced she had found
employment in a household on the outskirts of town as an all-purpose house girl
assigned to cook, clean, and serve as an occasional playmate for the master’s
young children.

“Living in this attic is too much like living in the bottom
of that ship,” Jenna said in a haughty tone. “And I got no reason to go back
home or on to Galland. I have a job and a place to stay now. That’s all I ever
wanted in the first place.”

During the short time I had spent in her company, I learned a
deep vein of pride coursed through Jenna, and she protected herself by hiding
behind a chilly exterior. I liked her anyway and would miss her company.

“I wish you luck,” I said as she made to leave.

Jenna dipped her head in a slight bow and left the Bull and
Ram without looking back.

As the days passed, I squirreled away bits of food for
Malita and saved my paltry pay like a miser. I had no idea how much it would
cost to purchase our passage to Galland, but Antonio had taken to practicing
his Inselgrish with me when he visited, almost daily, and I mentioned the
subject on a day near the end of my second week in his sister’s employ.

“How much does it cost?” He rubbed his chin. “It depend on
the method. Boat, train, carriage, you see?”

“Which requires the least amount of money?” I asked, also
meaning which would require fewer days of hard labor on my part. My nails had
worn to the quick, and my knuckles and cuticles cracked and bled. Malita, through
pantomime and her slowly growing Inselgrish vocabulary, had conveyed that I
should find a bag of wool, and she had rubbed the lanolin from the fluffy wisps
on my hands at night. The remedy soothed my skin, but left behind an unpleasant
odor akin to wet dog, or wet sheep, more like.

“I say... a wagon maybe, or an old mule,” Antonio chortled
at that thought. I waited for him to compose himself, which took some time,
considering the number of glasses of port he had already consumed. “You pay a
merchant wagon, maybe. You find someone going to Galland and share the ride.
This is least expensive.” He drained the remainder of his glass and shoved it
out toward his sister for a refill, but Anatella ignored him. “But why do you
want to leave?”

“There is someone I’m looking for,” I said.

“They are in Galland?”

“In Pecia, yes.”

“Oh, Pecia. This is a city where I love to teach.” His eyes
and his smile turned dreamy. “The people love to go to school in that place.”

Pecia was an old and sizeable city and home to several
universities, so maybe he was right. “Have you been there?” I asked.

Antonio sat up straighter and squinted out of one eye. “To
Pecia? No, never. Not without my sister, and she
never
leave San Marena.”

Before I left Antonio to return to work, the front door of
the tavern burst open. A group of men blew into the bar, voices raised,
laughing and jeering among themselves. Some were young with glossy hair in such
a deep shade of red that the color bordered on crimson. Some were older with
streaks of pale copper and white mixed in. One elderly gentleman in the group
wore pure moonlight bound in an elegant braid that trailed halfway down his
back.

My fingers flinched with the urge to stroke it and find out
if it felt as soft as it looked.

“Ugh,” Antonio grumbled beside me, “Fantazikes. Watch the
money you have. With them in town, it will disappear when you look the other
way.”

Antonio sounded as though he spoke from experience, and I
smothered a smile. I knew the Fantazikes. They entertained the locals with
games of chance with nearly impossible odds in whichever town they alighted. As
long as anyone could remember, those nomadic peoples had traveled the world in
their amazing zeppelins: massive, silken bags filled with a substance lighter
than air. Underneath the bellies of their mighty balloons, the Fantazikes
attached airships with engines that directed the dirigibles across every
imaginable landscape in the world.

A certain band of Fantazikes would travel to Inselgrau from
time to time when my father was alive, but he never allowed me to visit their
camps, or watch the boxing matches they organized, or have my fortune read. However,
he did once let me accompany him when he went to inquire about purchasing a
Rhemonie, a horse bred by the Fantazikes to travel calmly aboard their airships
as if they were nothing more than floating stables. Father had kept our visit
short and businesslike, but the Fantazikes’ crimson hair and bejeweled gazes
had left an indelible mark on my memories.

“Bahh, this is no good for me. I am leaving now.” Antonio
shoved back from the table, bowed his head in my direction, and strode to the
door. He threw one last glance over his shoulder toward the Fantazike men
before he disappeared through the doorway.

I chuckled at Antonio’s hasty retreat. I had a feeling he
didn’t dislike the Fantazikes as much as he disliked losing money to them. I
gathered his dirty glass and several others from the surrounding tables. A
young man close to my age returned my smile when he saw the humor on my face,
and it set his violet eyes sparkling with the color of ancient gemstones. The
Fantazikes all shared the beautiful red hair, but their eyes varied from
emerald and peridot to sapphire, aquamarine, and the violet of an amethyst.

Legends said the Fantazikes descended from a race of people
who once acted as guardians for the treasures of the gods, and their eye color
had resulted from centuries of looking over the gods’ endless piles of riches.
Set against their pale skin, their striking features spawned songs of love, but
also of heartbreak because, while beautiful, they never married outside their
race.

Back in the kitchen, I dumped a collection of dirty
tableware into my sudsy sink and scrubbed them meticulously. Anatella accepted
them no other way. As I finished rinsing the last cup, a whisper gusted through
the kitchen.

“
Evie
.”

I turned and found Malita peering at me from the stairway to
the attic. My heart skittered at finding her there, so easily seen. I ushered
her back up the steps so I could find out what she wanted with less risk of
Anatella overhearing.

“Fantazikes?” she asked. She had slid a steamer trunk close
to the window so she could have a hard surface and plenty of light when she
worked on her sketches. I had parted with a tiny bit of my precious pay to buy
charcoals and paper for her to use to help pass the time in the attic. Not only
did Malita have talent as an artist, but her drawings bolstered our
communication. I struggled to learn her language, but she gathered Inselgrish
words the way a jackdaw collects sparkly trinkets.

“Yes, Fantazikes,” I nodded, marveling that the roaming
population had made it as far south in the world as her continent and village.

“We go?” she asked and dragged me to the light to show me a
new sketch. On a piece of parchment, she had rendered images of horses in a
corral, food booths arranged in a semicircle, and a boxing ring in the center
with two brawny men baring their fists. Although I had never seen one in
person, I had heard and read enough descriptions to recognize Malita’s drawing
as the depiction of a Fantazike fair.

I pointed to the drawing. “Go here?”

She nodded. “Yes, yes!”

“I don’t know....”

Malita hugged my hand and clasped it against her chest, her
eyes pleaded into mine. “We go? Yes?”

My heart twisted for her, and I relented. She had tolerated
so much mistreatment for so long, I reckoned she deserved a reprieve, even if
only for a night. “Okay.” I nodded. “We go.”

***

After Anatella left for the evening, Malita helped me finish
the remaining dishes so we could head for the Fantazike camp. We eased into the
shadows of the alley behind the tavern, watching for unwanted attention. By
that time, I no longer feared the threat of slave traders or pirates. Both had
probably cut their losses and moved on. Still, if I learned nothing else in my
time with Gideon, he had instilled in me an appreciation for the use of caution
whenever possible, and two young girls travelling alone might attract unwanted
attention.

My heart squeezed at the thought of Gideon, and his worried
face flashed in my memory. If only he could see how I had managed to take care
of myself. But he wouldn’t have praised me for it. He also wouldn’t have appreciated
my thoughts lingering on him instead of focusing on my safety, so I pushed him
out of my mind and reached for Malita’s hand.

We scuttled to the end of the alleyway and turned onto a
side lane that brought us out to San Marena’s main thoroughfare. We fell in
behind a crowd of revelers, laughing and jeering among themselves. Most of the
foot and horse traffic headed in a similar direction, so we followed, darting
between carts and carriages rolling toward the outskirts of town.

Eventually, Malita and I arrived at a meadow large enough to
accommodate the components of a Fantazike fair, its borders festively lit with
strings of colored lanterns. The crowds arriving along with us disbursed—the
gentlemen mostly heading for the boxing ring while the ladies sought the
trinket sellers, potion makers, and palmist. The Fantazikes marked the camp
boundaries with tall torches, and the smoke from their burning oil rolled off
in fragrant waves of citrus herbs. Along the farthest edge of the field, an
armada of air ships lingered like ghostly shades, undulating in the evening
breeze.

Malita tugged my hand toward a food vendor who sold some
kind of treat—a crisp shell filled with a creamy, sweetened cheese mixture
drizzled with a dark syrup that I guessed was chocolate. But how this Fantazike
came to have any of the expensive luxury baffled me. Father only ever allowed
it on our menu on special occasions.

I gave a precious coin to the girl in charge of the booth,
and she handed us a
gnollita
. Malita and I split the confection and
savored each bite. When I finished my half, I almost went back to buy another,
but Malita pointed to a booth selling some other kind of food, a fried pie. I
might have had to work another week to make up for the money I spent, but it
was worth it.

My friend yanked me away again, and I gulped down a bite of
something like a steamed leaf rolled around a blend of rice and vegetables as
she led us toward the sound of a strumming guitar. We arrived at a small stage
as a mandolin and harmonica joined in, and a band of young men entertained the
crowd with songs in their Fantazike tongue. The crowd clapped to the rhythm as
another young man jumped on the stage, beating a small hand drum like the one
we called a
bodrum
on Inselgrau. The drum player smiled as he looked out
over the crowd.

Malita gasped.

She froze with her hands in mid-clap and stared at the
drummer, her eyes wide, and her mouth half-open.

I tugged on her shoulder. “What is it?”

She turned to me, raised a finger, and pointed at the
drummer. “Niffin.”

“You know him?”

She clutched my arm and repeated the name again as if
uttering a prayer.

The Fantazikes traveled huge distances, but I could hardly
calculate the chances of this same band traveling to Malita’s village, only to
show up again, in this random Espiritolan field. The disbelieving look on Malita’s
face shifted into something softer and desirous. That she knew him was certain,
but I never could have guessed how or to what extent.

Niffin’s eyes scanned the crowd again. He didn’t notice
Malita, who had gone still as a statute, her grip on my arm as hard as stone. I
debated trying to catch the boy’s attention myself before the circulation in my
arm completely stopped, but the next time he looked up from his drumming, his
eyes locked onto Malita and his hands stumbled over the drum skin before he recovered
the beat and pounded through the last few bars of the song.

Before they could start a new tune, he leaned over to one of
his band mates and whispered something in the other man’s ear. Niffin’s hair
caught the light from torches bordering the stage, and the red strands
shimmered as if spun from garnets. The harmonica player took up the drums while
Niffin made his way in our direction.

“Malita?” he said when he stopped before us, disbelief
showing clearly on his face.

She didn’t answer at first, but soon shook herself out of
her stupor. “Niffin,” she whispered and dropped my arm as if it had turned into
a poisonous snake.

I turned away from the intimacy of their embrace and watched
the colorful crowds roam through the Fantazike camp. The Espiritolan women
dressed in tailored gowns in subdued colors, while their Fantazike counterparts
wore slim fitting dresses or loose skirts with snug black belts fastened over
homespun blouses. The older Fantazike women tucked their red hair under yellow
or gold scarves, but the younger ones let their hair hang loose down their
backs in crimson waves.

“Evie,” Malita patted my shoulder and I turned my attention
to her. She motioned to the young man who had laced his arm around her waist.
“Niffin.”

The bliss on her face startled me, but before I could ask
for an explanation Niffin bowed low and came up smoothly, catching my hand in
his so he could brush his lips over my knuckles. Then he rose up again and
smiled at me. “Niffin Tippany,” he said in a voice tinted by a soft Fantazike
accent. “And it’s a pleasure to meet you... Evie?”