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CHAPTER 1
Rutnaast
"Salmon? That's what you're looking forward to?" My cousin Dunehein laughed behind me in the canoe stern. "Thought you'd say your friends or a proper bed."
"Not just any salmon." My muscles strained with each stroke of the paddle. Droplets streamed off the wood. "Hot from the smokehouse, oily, flaky, and steaming, with that sweet, hazy scent of burnt alder."
Right now, all I could taste was salt. Sea spray kept my leggings and shirt constantly damp. To our right, snow-capped cliffs rose like crooked walls. To our left, the inlet's far bank was a green smudge wreathed by mist.
I glanced over my shoulder. Dunehein's brown hair stuck to his face, escaping its braid. "What do you miss? Dry clothes?"
"Holding my daughter," he said. "And my wife. Don't tell her she comes second."
"Hah, I'm so telling."
Dunehein flipped cold water at my back. I shrieked and dropped my paddle. He snorted with laughter.
"Kaid," I swore and leaned over the gunwale. Our boat rocked and listed precariously close to the water. Slimy seaweed spilled in. My fingertips brushed the paddle, only for it to float out of reach. I stretched out with my mind, calling the water around it, but the heaving current pulled it back.
A canoe veered toward us, its dolphin-head prow cutting through choppy waves. Ilani, a thin-faced girl around my age, plucked my dripping paddle from the surface. "Don't you Rin learn how to paddle?"
"It needed a wash." I yanked it from her grip.
She rolled her eyes. "A few more days until home, then I never have to hear your voice again."
Her boat glided ahead to the other two canoes in our small fleet. I flicked my fingers. The seawater that had pooled around my boots swirled into the air. I nudged it into Ilani's craft and through a gap in the sealskin protecting her bedroll. Her older brother, Esiad, twisted to look at me from their canoe stern. I held a finger to my lips, and he grinned.
Esiad and I were antayul, trained to call water since we were children. Our skill was marked by the fan shapes tattooed just below our collarbones. His was faded by a few more years than mine, and arrow scars dotted his chest and back.
"Don't stare," Dunehein teased. "You know Esiad's taken."
"Shut up."
Of everyone in our fleet, I was the only member of the Rinjouyen, our confederacy's oldest but smallest tribe. The others were from the Iyo, the largest. For now, both jouyen lived at the Iyo settlement of Toel Ginu. There, in the damp chill of a late summer dawn a month after the Blackbird Battle, ten of us had packed our canoes and hugged our loved ones goodbye.
I'd argued against Dunehein coming. He had a newborn daughter and a limp from a wound that still bothered him, but he'd out-stubborned me. We were used to travelling together — paddling the same canoe, collapsing in the same tent, waking at sunrise, and still not wanting to strangle each other.
Officially, this had been a trading trip. We'd paddled up the inlet to Ingdanrad, a settlement built deep in the mountains by itherans, the immigrants who settled in our lands. Their mages had dug underground homes, workshops, even a university where they studied everything from theology to metallurgy. Above ground, fields of golden barley rose up the settlement's terraced slopes.
Everyone on this trip was used to dealing with itherans — I spoke fluent Coast Trader and decent Sverbian — but half the people in Ingdanrad spoke neither. We'd haggled by pointing and occasionally laughing at offers. I'd been glad of Dunehein's presence then. No one wanted to challenge me with a burned, tattooed man the size of a grizzly at my side.
Now, finally, we were returning to Toel Ginu, bringing something more valuable than the coins in my purse, more dangerous than the steel blades under my canoe seat. Our real goal had been information on Suriel, the last known air spirit. Why he'd been silent while his human soldiers, the Corvittai, mutinied and attacked us earlier that summer. Where he'd been since then. If any humans still followed him.
As we travelled homeward, the mountains softened, turning green with dense rainforest. Foam churned against our dolphin prow. Paddling an Iyo canoe felt like wearing someone else's clothes, but in the bow, I could see the kinaru carved inside the hull — wings spread, long neck outstretched, like the Rin bird inked on my left arm. Dunehein's Iyo wife had carved it into the auburn wood after he had married her, a quiet tribute to his Rin origins.
"Ai. Look out." I nodded ahead.
A pair of rotting masts jutted up from the water's surface. We steered around them, gliding over the shipwreck. Taut ropes still snapped in the current. Greenish-white sails billowed underwater. I couldn't see deeper than the upper rigging, but when we'd passed it before, Ilani had swum down and found corpses and Sverba's pale blue flag. I tapped two fingers to my forehead in salute.
Last winter, Suriel had sunk half the ships on this inlet in a windstorm. Rutnaast, the only major port between Ingdanrad and Toel Ginu, had fallen to a Corvittai attack the next day. Sea traffic had abandoned these waters after that, along with many of the area's survivors. We'd seen just three intact ships on our whole trip — a galleon carrying plows and harrows forged in Ingdanrad, a heron-prowed canoe from a southern jouyen, and a cod trawler.
Ilani stared into the cloudy water. "Think Wotelem would let me swim down again? There's stuff to salvage."
Esiad snorted. "Whatcha gonna do, porpoise girl? Haul crates up with your flippers?"
"Hush," Dunehein said. "Mereku's back."
An osprey streaked across the grey sky. The bird dove and struck the ocean with a plume of water. A tanned woman broke the surface, flipping black hair out of her face. Mereku hauled herself into a canoe. "Ship coming," she called.
The foremost canoe spun and looped back. We manoeuvred together, holding each other's boats so we didn't drift apart. Wotelem, the Okoreni-Iyo and second-in-command of their jouyen, wound up next to me. Esiad dried Mereku's clothes with a few waves of his hand.
"Armed and moving fast," she said, shivering. "Shot crossbow bolts at me when I flew too close. Their shields have Suriel's kinaru sigil."
Dunehein swore. "Corvittai. Guess we only killed their army, not their navy."
Esiad squinted back east. "They're not here by accident. Someone in Ingdanrad must've sold us out. They don't want us passing on what we've discovered."
"We can lose them on the creek," a heavily scarred man said.
"Too far." Wotelem closed his eyes, lips moving in a plea to his ancestral spirits. "Make port at Rutnaast."
Mereku's mouth twisted. "I'd sooner step into my own grave. Suriel's stench is all over that place."
"It is the last place they will expect us to go."
Grudgingly, Mereku shifted back into her osprey form and launched off the prow. No one else argued. Wotelem's callouses and wind-worn skin proved his time on the sea, but if that wasn't reason enough to obey him, the okoreni band tattooed around his arm was.
Our canoes shot across the water. My arms ached, but I pushed on. Landmarks on tree-lined peninsulas slid past — a massive fallen salt spruce, a rowboat lodged between cottonwoods, Rutnaast's crumbling lighthouse.
Broken boards floated in the harbour. We glided over the wavering silhouette of a seaweed-mottled ship, sideways with its mast on the ocean floor. Our fleet ran aground on a stretch of gravel sheltered by evergreens. I leapt into the shallows and held the canoe while Dunehein climbed out.
"Ilani, Esiad, Dunehein, Kateiko." Wotelem split us from the others with a sweep of his hand. "Search the town. Retreat if you see anyone. We will hide the boats and meet you on the granary road."
I dug my belt out from under my bedroll, buckled it around my waist, and sheathed my knives and flail. Dunehein strapped a double-edged battle axe to his back and picked up a lumber axe. We touched the carved kinaru in our canoe, our private ritual.
Sverbian immigrants had built Rutnaast as a trading post a century ago. With the discovery of silver ore nearby, it had swelled into a mining town. I was the only person in our fleet who hadn't been here, but I knew plenty about Sverbians. I'd lived with one. Loved one. Attended his wedding and his wife's funeral. Tiernan Heilind, the burning man who was never mine.
We climbed over the ashy rubble of cabins. In the docklands, a pier lay underwater, pinned down by a capsized ship. Warehouse doorways yawned dark and hollow. An elk flag, its scarlet dye already faded, twisted at half-mast outside a two-storey log building. I sounded out letters etched on the window. Customs House. Fingernail-sized scratches scored the porch like someone had been dragged outside.
Dunehein gripped my shoulder. "Better keep moving, Kako."
We fanned through dirt streets speckled with puddles. Wind and rain had smoothed the mud. The town was a loose grid, its steep shingle roofs orange in the setting sun. The stench of rotten hay oozed from a stable. Farther inland, I glanced through a door hanging from one hinge and saw burlap sacks strewn across the floor, tables upended, a broken baker's paddle by a stone oven.
The sacred stavehall's arched windows were shattered, its west wing a pile of blackened timber, its bronze bell cracked on the cobblestones. The gable carving of a leafless nine-branched tree was criss-crossed with gashes. A rusty nail pinned a bloody white cleric's robe to the door.
I'd heard so many people speak of Rutnaast. Refugees, soldiers, Iyo who once traded here. But his voice filled my head — Councillor Antoch Parr. His words that day he berated his colleagues in Council Hall for ignoring Rutnaast's pleas for help. By the time the navy had arrived, there was nothing left to save.
"I don't get it," Esiad said at the far end of town. The streets converged into a dirt road that wound north into a shadowed valley. "Three thousand people lived here. You'd think someone would've moved back."
"Not if they believe it's haunted by Suriel." Ilani slung her bow over one shoulder. "We're done. Let's go."
"Wait." Dunehein held up his lumber axe. "You smell that?" Esiad's nose wrinkled. "Reeks like rotting seal."
I scanned the valley mouth, a tangle of waist-high ryegrass. It had grown wild without livestock to graze it. Then I heard buzzing. I clamped my hand over my nose and pushed through the yellowing stalks, following the trail of flies.
A man lay face up in the grass, his skin black and patchy. He was Sverbian, judging by his trousers and tunic. Crossbow bolts stuck out of his chest and leg. Maggots wriggled across the wounds. I choked back vomit and waved the others over.
Ilani gagged. "How long's that been there?"
"Ain't near long enough for a massacre that happened last winter," Dunehein said. "Probably a looter caught by the itheran navy."
I crouched by the body. "These bolts aren't military issue. Look at the fletching. The feathers are cut differently."
"How do you know?" Ilani asked.
"I have friends in the military. Point is, if the navy didn't kill him, who did?"
"If any Corvittai were lurking, we'd be dead already." Dunehein pulled handfuls of grass aside. "More bolts here. Looks like they came from the north."
Esiad drew an arrow from his quiver and climbed a hillock. I followed with one hand on my throwing dagger, Nurivel. The logged valley gave us a clear view of the dirt road leaving town. It crossed a creek via a timber bridge and forked on the far side. Both routes zigzagged into the hills.
I pointed at the fork. "Where do those roads go?" "North to a silver mine, northwest to a tannery," Esiad said. "We sold furs there last year."
"Come on," Ilani said. "Wotelem's waiting."
Esiad didn't move. "Maybe we should —"
He choked and toppled back. I spun. He tumbled down the hillock, a bolt in his stomach.
Ilani screamed.
Something streaked past my head. I swept my arm in an arc. A crescent of fog swirled up, shielding us from view.
"Back south! Hurry!" Dunehein scooped up Esiad as if the younger man was light as goose down.
I skidded down the slope. Bolts thudded into the dirt. I leapt over one and kept going, my braid streaming behind me. Run. Just run.
We wove down laneways, around stacks of logs, anywhere we had cover. I cleaved apart a pond, holding the water aside until Dunehein caught up. We stumbled to a halt in a dark alley. Dunehein set Esiad down and collapsed into the mud.
Ilani knelt by her brother. "Esi. Esi!" "Move," I snapped, fumbling through the leather purse on my belt.
She shuffled aside. Of us all, I'd spent the most time helping healers. I pressed gauze packets of dry bogmoss to Esiad's gaping stomach. The bolt had torn his flesh when he fell. The moss swelled with blood, reeking like mouldy timber.
Esiad coughed. Red froth bubbled from his mouth onto his bare chest. He wiped it off his antayul tattoo and stared at his dripping fingers. I gritted my teeth and started binding the bogmoss in place.
An osprey whistled. Mereku landed on a wagon, talons scraping the wood. She leapt off and shifted to human in midair. "What in Aeldu-yan happened?"
"Ambush," Ilani said. "We have to reach the others."
"You can't. The Corvittai ship's in view. If they see you, we're all in danger."
Ilani whirled on her. "Then what do we do?"
"Ask the aeldu for a blessing." I knotted the last bandage. "Esiad's already bleeding into his lungs. I can't mend that."
"You're wrong." Ilani shook me so hard my teeth cracked together. "You're wrong! Fix him!"
"Ai!" Dunehein hauled her off me. "You think we'll let him die?"
Mereku sighed. "The stavehall's just ahead. Wait there. I'll tell Wotelem where you are." She was gone with a few flaps of her wings.
I crept to the alley end. The cobblestone courtyard by the stavehall was empty. I beckoned to the others — just as a bird screeched.
"Nei!" I cried, snapping my head up. Mereku tumbled through the sky, one wing limp. "Nei, nei, nei!"
Pain tore through my shoulder. I reeled back. A bolt had struck me. Another burst through a wall, raining splinters.
Ilani dashed up, arrow nocked. "Where are they?"
I scanned the courtyard. "There! On that roof!"
Her hands moved in perfect rhythm. One man went down before he could reload. She turned on another, hammering him with arrows. He dropped too.
A bolt skidded across the ground, leaving a furrow in the mud. I saw a reflection in a puddle. A third archer stood in the crumbling bell tower. No way could I throw my dagger that high.
I thrust my arm up. A water whip shot three storeys into the air and curled around his leg. I yanked. He plummeted through the air and hit the cobblestone with a crack.
I wanted to throw up. I focused on the broken bell instead, trying to block out the red smear in my peripheral vision. When nothing else happened, Ilani rushed back down the alley to Esiad.
"Kako!" Dunehein called.
I turned. His eyes widened.
He threw his lumber axe. A man dropped a few paces behind me, the axe in his chest. A dagger slid from the man's hand and clattered into the gutter.
All I could hear was wind and the gurgle of the dying man. Blood oozed across his jerkin. Then I realized why he looked odd. Sverbian clothes, blond, pale. Every Corvittai I'd fought had darker colouring.
Dunehein drew up next to me. "Kako, one of us has gotta reach Toel Ginu. They need to know what we learned in Ingdanrad."
"We should find Wotelem first."
"He could be dead already. Ilani ain't gonna leave her brother, and you've got a better chance of making it than me. My leg's still no good."
He was right. That didn't make it easier. I climbed onto a windowsill, gripping the roof as I peered over Rutnaast. The last rays of sun lit up the bottom of heavy clouds. Just beyond the lighthouse, a ship glided across the water, white sails billowing.
I dropped back to the ground. "Let me say goodbye."
Esiad's eyes were unfocused, wandering from the plank walls to the sliver of indigo sky overhead. Ilani sat with his head in her lap, stroking his black hair. I knelt and took his cold hand. His breath came in shallow gasps.
I forced a smile. "Too bad we can't go fur trapping together like we planned. You Iyo boys are more fun than our Rin. But you'll be back soon, haunting us from Aeldu-yan."
He grinned, his teeth red.
"There's something we Rin say." I touched the dolphin tattoo on his upper arm. "Today you flew."
Shakily, he returned the gesture on my kinaru tattoo, blood running down its ink wings. He understood.
Dunehein led me through the streets, muttering instructions as he peered around corners. We were a few blocks away when Ilani's tortured wails reached us. I closed my eyes and whispered a death rite.
We stopped at the edge of town. Our planned route to Toel Ginu had been to paddle a network of creeks, but it'd take too long even if I could reach our canoe. I had to go by land. Beyond the mat of forested hills were the plains, and from there, rolling farmland. It'd take a person thirty hours to walk if they never tired. I hoped to be there in less.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Call of the Rift: Veil"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Jae Waller.
Excerpted by permission of ECW PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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