Heir of Thunder (Stormbourne Chronicles Book 1) (17 page)

I nodded and offered an amiable smile.

“I haven’t gotten the whole story from her yet,” he said, “but
I take it you have had much to do with bringing Malita out of her internment.”

“
Internment
? I met her when we were locked up in the
hold of a slave ship, if that’s what you mean. She had as much to do with our
escape as I did.”

“Whatever the circumstances, I am deeply grateful to you.”
Niffin bowed again from his neck.

“I hope you’re thankful enough to feel like giving an
explanation. How do you know Malita?”

“That is a long story,” Niffin said. “Let me take you to my
place, and my grandmother will give us refreshments. We will all tell our
parts, and then the tale will be complete.”

He put a finger to Malita’s cheek. She turned her eyes up to
his, and he said something in her tongue. She responded and gave me an
expectant look, waiting for me to come along.

“You speak her language?” I asked.

Niffin’s eyes crinkled as he smiled. “Fantazikes speak all
languages, don’t you know?”

“I thought it was a myth.”

He chuckled as he turned on his heel, pulling Malita along
with him. I followed behind, anxious to hear of their history together. I was also
ecstatic to find someone to translate between me and my friend. He led us
toward one of the smaller airships—a rig about half the size of the
LaDonna
.
It resembled an old sailing ship without its masts, attached to a large balloon
patched together from iridescent fabrics. The dirigible was anchored in place,
tied to series of pilings the Fantazikes traveled with and sank deep into the earth
at every stop.

Niffin motioned to a rope ladder unfurled to the ground and Malita
hopped onto the first rung without a hint of reluctance. I scaled up after her
and tried not to think about the ground dropping away from my feet. The ship
rocked in response to our shifting weight, and I clung tighter to the ropes as
I climbed.

Once we ascended to the deck, Niffin lead on us a tour of
his home, which he said was named
Charosvardo
—a Fantazike term meaning “Home
Above the World.” He showed us a large hold for storing supplies, and on the
biggest ships, I could believe there was ample room to carry their stock of
Rhemonies in comfort. Then he showed us his berth outfitted with a small bed,
colorful linens, and blankets. His whole family, including mother, father,
sister, and grandmother lived on the ship. It carried all the comforts of home
with tatty furniture—most of which was bolted to the deck—and hand woven
tapestries hanging on the walls. He ended our tour in the galley where his
grandmother had left a kettle steaming.

Armed with several mugs of a hot, butter flavored tea, we
settled on the wooden benches at the table and attempted to weave the strands
of our three individual tales into a complete story.

“We travel to every corner of the world, in our lifetime,”
Niffin began. “I have already seen the northern limits of mans’ civilization,
where white snow covers the entire landscape, even in the summer, and I have
been through the desolate deserts that cross the Agridan continent, stopping
along the way at the oasis towns like the one Malita came from.”

He stopped and said something in Malita’s language before
continuing in Inselgrish. “Before I die, I will go to the East, to the lands
where they say women speak the language of birds, and the men change into fiery
salamanders when they go to battle.”

I had read about the East, but no one from that far away had
ever made it to Fallstaff while I lived there. Someday, I might like to visit
the places Niffin described.

“But,” he continued, “in all the places I’ve traveled, among
all the people I have seen, there has never been a spirit like the one Malita
possesses. She is one of a kind.”

Before I could voice my agreement, he launched into the tale
of how they met, and Malita filled in with details from her perspective. I
sipped at my butter tea, oblivious to the way it made their images spring to
life, as if I, too, had once stood in the desert oasis of Chagda, the village
of Malita’s birth.

Niffin and Malita

When the armada of floating ships had appeared through the
distant shimmering heat waves, Malita wondered if she was experiencing a
hallucination. The older people in her town who made long distant treks spoke
of the visions they experienced after too many hours walking in the hot sun.
Malita had never endured such a journey herself, and the day was still too
early and cool to imagine such sights, but, at first, she could devise no other
explanation.

She had never seen such things as the flying zeppelins, and
the people piloting them were just as bizarre. The foreign women wore scarves
over their heads and faces to protect them from the blistering sun. The men
wore broad brimmed hats, shaded goggles, and gloves, but their faces were all
paler than the bleached desert sands.

She had once seen saw a man with light brown skin and long,
straight hair pass through her village on his way to the huge Gytshan city of
Cro. She was told that people from Gytsha often looked like that man, but no
one knew what to think of these people who, as well as she could tell, had hair
the color of the blood that flowed in her veins.

Malita stared as if seeing a new creature, or maybe a band
of ghosts or djinn. Perhaps these people were unnatural, or a possible portend
of something evil. Most villagers backed away, giving the strangers a wide
margin of space. Some ran away or hid. Malita, ever an intrepid and defiant
spirit, found the strangers intriguing. Curiosity planted her feet, and she
watched with wide-eyed wonder as the strangers traipsed into her town.

“Water?” someone asked, jolting Malita from her trance.
Behind her stood one of the amazing young men, and he smiled at her from
beneath the brim of his big hat. When he removed his dark goggles and left them
hanging about his neck, she felt more at ease.

She stepped back from the stranger and pointed at a nearby
well. The young man nodded and tipped his hat before striding away. She didn’t
recognize the gesture with his hat—it made her laugh—but she thought he meant
something nice by it. Before he turned away, she had glimpsed the vivid color
of his eyes—like the sky at dusk. Although she saw him no more that day, she
dreamed of those eyes that night.

The next morning, when Malita went out to milk her goats,
she found the strangers had created a magnificent dreamland at the edge of her
village. They had arranged their airships into a city of wonder, full of new
colors, smells, and textures. One airship opened its hold into a sort of indoor
market similar to the small one at the center of Malita’s village, but instead
of baskets, beads, and clay pots, this place sold incense, glittering jewelry,
and strange new foods.

Malita spent much of the day admiring the Fantazikes’ wares
and even traded a bit of her goat milk for one of the chocolate covered
gnollitas. Word of the Fantazikes’ presence carried beyond Chagda to nearby
towns and to the roaming camel and horse tribes. The villagers eventually gave
into their mounting curiosity and by nightfall, the Fantazike camp had become a
bustling carnival with music, dancing, wrestling matches, and horse trading.

Malita’s friends, who ran away in fear the day before, now
joined her, and they all agreed the musical pavilion provided the best
entertainment. The foreign musicians invited the local men to accompany them
with native instruments. Together they made rhythms with roots in the Nri soil
that supported melodies from the foreign places where Fantazikes traveled and
somehow made the two traditions complement each other.

The music enthralled Malita, and so did the young man who
played the hand drums with the band. She recognized him as the one who had asked
her for water the day before. As night settled over the village, her eyes locked
on him as a thirsty woman in the desert seeing water for the first time. She
shouldn’t have found him attractive. He was so strange and foreign, and her
girlfriends had gone on and on about the Fantazikes’ bizarre looks and habits. Interacting
with him might bring chastisement from her parents and village elders. Her
friends might shun her.

Despite all that, she couldn’t rid him from her thoughts.

Niffin had noticed Malita, too, particularly her bright
smile. He wondered if her kisses were as warm as that smile, but he drove the
thought away. The Fantazike culture frowned on the intermingling of races, a
convention borne from enduring centuries of persecution and bigotry from
outsiders. To toy with affection for a foreigner was to toy with disappointment
and heartbreak.

Even with Niffin’s conscious resolution to ignore Malita,
their paths crossed more and more frequently until he could no longer ignore
the whisperings of his heart. They found each other in the twilight shadows
between the airships on the next to last night of the Fantazikes’ visit,
seemingly by accident.

“Why are you here?” Niffin asked in the tongue of Malita’s
people.

“I was taking a shortcut,” she said and let loose a warm
grin that shot straight through the façade he had tried to erect between them.

“Where are you going?” he teased. “To bat your eyelashes at
the boy who juggles fire, or to sweet talk Farrin into letting you pet his
golden mares?”

Her smile widened, and her eyes were like a midnight ocean
with the moon reflecting in the waves. “There is a boy who juggles fire? Where
is he? Are his eyes as lovely as yours?”

A blush burned in Niffin’s cheeks. Foreign women often
flirted with Fantazike men, and he had experienced it before, but to have
Malita find him lovely meant something more. “His eyes are green like swamp
weeds,” he said.

They talked until the night covered them in its thickest
darkness. By morning, their voices were hoarse, and they could barely hold open
their eyes, but neither wanted to leave the company of the other.

“We leave tomorrow morning,” Niffin said. “I fear I will
never see you again.”

Malita feared the same thing, but before she could voice her
feelings, screams erupted from out beyond the Fantazike caravan. They clasped
hands without a care for the scandal it might inspire, and dashed toward the
outcry. No one noticed the Fantazike boy and Nri girl running hand in hand. No
one objected or raised an alarm because Chagda had fallen under attack. A mob
of Gytshan bandits had stormed the village and was ransacking Chagdan huts and
Fantazike ships alike.

The panic of the crowds forced Malita and Niffin apart,
their fingers straining to keep their connection until a frantic mother burst
between them, chasing after a bandit carrying her daughter over his shoulder. Niffin
struggled against the crowd, shouting for Malita, but lost her in the masses.
He made his way back to his airship, hoping he might find her there again.

Niffin looked and looked, but never found his beloved. He spent
a weary morning with his brethren, fighting the Gytshan intruders. When the
Fantazikes and Chagdans finally chased away the last bandit, they spent the day
numbering their damages and losses.

The Fantazike men were trained to fight the attacks they
often suffered as a consequence of their lifestyle. They fared better than the
villagers, who lost some food stores and livestock, but the greatest toll was
the loss of their daughters. Four young women disappeared in the chaos, and,
Niffin discovered, Malita was one of them.

Farrin, the Fantazikes’ horse breeder, lent Niffin the
fastest beast in the herd. By the time he rode into the desert, following the
bandit’s tracks, the sun had risen high and the oppressive heat, without more
provisions and better planning, made going after the brigands a deathly
pursuit. In bleak defeat, Niffin gave up and returned to Chagda.

The wailing of distraught mothers echoed throughout the day.
When his people could no longer bear the misery of the villagers, they packed
their airship and flew out of Chagda as quickly as they came into it. He
wondered, in the dark hours when he could not easily find sleep, if his
forbidden feelings for a foreigner brought the curse of the Gytshan bandits
upon his and Malita’s people.

Malita made Niffin translate the parts of her story he didn’t
know, the parts about how the Gytshans rode hard for several days, and one girl
died on the cross desert journey. They left her body to the sun, wind, and
sands. The men only stopped when they arrived in Cro. The city boasted a large
port built on an ancient river called the Iteru. The bandits took two girls
into the heart of the city, and Malita never saw them again. The men loaded her
onto a barge that traveled the river until it emptied into the Meridian Sea.

Pirates met the bandits in the Iteru delta and paid the
Gytshans to transfer the Chagdan girl into the hold at the bottom of their
ship. Along the way, the pirates filled the other cages around Malita with
girls of other nationalities, including me.

“She never lost her joy,” I told Niffin. “She was like a
firefly in the darkness. She made a horrible situation seem bearable.”

His violet eyes slanted in my direction. “I can’t believe I’ve
found her again. I left my family for close to a month hunting her trail. I
even found one of the bandits in Cro, but he would tell me nothing.” Niffin
turned back to Malita and said something in her language. Her face hardened for
a moment, but she shook it off, patted his cheek, and replied in her usual,
sweet tone.

“I’ve told her that I searched for her,” he said. “I told
her I killed that man for refusing to speak.”

My heart shuddered and my blood turned icy. He spoke of
killing in such a casual manner. I wondered if he had done such a thing before?
Again, Gideon’s voice echoed in my thoughts, chiding me for trusting so easily.
Niffin’s purple eyes now seemed a bit colder.

I sat up and stretched. My back and shoulders popped in
protest, but I felt less like a mound of slowly rising dough than before. The
time had come for me to take my leave. “I appreciate your hospitality Niffin,
but I should get back to town before I’m missed. Will Malita be coming with me?”

He translated my words and Malita’s eyes sharpened.
Excitement bubbled in her reply. Whatever she said was more than a simple
answer to whether she planned to return with me or stay with him.

“She said you want to go to Pecia,” he said. “She asks if I
can help you.”

Malita’s bubbles spilled over into me. “Can you? I have some
money put away. I can pay you,” I said.

He laughed and waved his hands, dismissing my offer. “It’s
your lucky day, my friend. We happen to be traveling to Pecia in two days’
time. That is the next destination in our journey.”

The sudden change in my luck startled me. Tears prickled in
my eyes, and I blinked to chase them away. “You can take me? Your family won’t
mind?”

“I will speak on your behalf, and I believe they will
accept. If you have money, though, it would not harm you to pass some of your
coins through the hands of our craftsmen and trinket makers as we go.”

I grinned and nodded, and the room sloshed. I put my hands
over my ears and closed my eyes until the sensation subsided. “What was in that
tea?”

Niffin chuckled and changed the subject. “I will take you to
Pecia, dear Evie. It is the least I can do for bringing Malita to me again.”

We walked as a group back to the Bull and Ram, but when I
opened the door and turned back to usher in Malita, Niffin had slipped a
possessive hand about her waist. She had pulled him close to her side, and I
couldn’t mistake her intentions.

“Goodnight,” I said. “I hope to see you again soon.”

“Two days,” he said, nodding. “I will come for you myself.”

I motioned to Malita. “Be good to my friend.”

Niffin bowed before sweeping her toward the road. When the
shadows had swallowed them, I scuttled up to the attic, anxious to get as much
sleep as possible before another grinding day of work. Sleep did not come
easily, though. The attic was lonely and eerie without my roommates. The
excitement of finding passage to Pecia and the possibility of reconnecting with
Gideon kept sleep at bay for a long time.

My stomach grumbled when I once again considered that Gideon
might have been glad for our separation and the release from his obligations.
Maybe he didn’t wait for you in Pecia. Maybe he thinks you drowned and has gone
on to Dreutch without you.

I sighed.
Don’t worry about Gideon and what may or may
not be,
I told myself. Jackie had pursued me to Braddock and seemed to
cherish our brief friendship. Perhaps he cared for me enough to help me, if I
could find him in Pecia. But it was a huge city, and searching for Jackie might
have been like looking for a grain of rice in an oat feed bag.
What do I
expect Jackie to do for me, even if I do find him?

As a stranger on a strange continent, Malita was a friend,
but she had lost as much as I had, and she probably longed to return to Chagda,
to her home. I had no home. Not anymore. I could have stayed there in that
attic for the rest of my life and no one would have cared. Maybe Gerda would
have cared, and maybe Jackie, but he would forget me quickly—our time together
was so brief.
Would Gideon care?

One step at a time.

I would get to Pecia. Then I would decide what to do from
there.