6th Illost, 998 NE
“Ah me!” The weasely man in armour raised his visor; the prop helmet might’ve looked convincing at a distance, but Emrelet could tell with her power that none of it was real metal – just painted wood. “How couldst thou think the Grand Marshal highborn, Low Motty? Forsooth I am so crude in mine eye e’en as thou!”
The actor’s seriousness was perfect – not just his face and voice, but the foppish way he touched his clothes, adjusting and readjusting them constantly.
“Yer right, me lord,” said the second man. “Yer gonna eat that there rat or yer savin’ it?”
The Oldtown crowd roared with laughter. Emrelet joined in despite her frustration, and when she looked at Kas in the seat beside her she was gratified to see he was in stitches.
“Oh, oh, owwww,” he moaned, clutching his sides as he stared down over the rail at the stage. “Twelve Hells, this is better than weaving. Thanks for this.”
“My pleasure.” She put her hand on his knee and he covered it with his own.
Mistress Henthae was always going to the theatre, and Emrelet had longed for months to see what all the fuss was about, but she’d had no idea where to start – then Ilitar had recommended the play to her when he overheard her grumbling, and said she ought to take Kas. She understood his meaning, now. She didn’t suppose it was the kind of thing she could talk to Henthae about, though. She got the impression the theatres Henthae attended were a little more ‘highbrow’. She doubted the Tale of Low Motty and the Grand Marshal’s Weapon was of much historical significance, outside of the opportunity it presented to ridicule the upper classes.
“Then behold, Low Motty, this most fantasmalous of inventions, the chamberpot.” The armoured weasel was gesturing enthusiastically. “Lo, should it be filled thou canst leave it be, and ere the morn dawns it shall yawn agape, empty once more!”
“Where’s it go, d’yer suppose, me lord?”
The ‘highborn’ looked shocked at this. “Best man of all men; I know not!”
His expression unchanging, completely devoid of any trace of slyness, Low Motty pressed: “Then, doth tonight not present yer with an opp-tunee-tee unlike any other?”
“My good man indeed!” The weasely face was fixed in cunning aspect as he brandished an upraised finger in the direction of the bucket. “Prithee awake shall I stayeth this night, and watcheth the potteth with both eyes unclosedeth!”
She sighed, then caught Kas looking at her with an appraising glint in his eyes.
“Vot?” she murmured, nestling closer to him.
“Oh, nothing… I was just, you know – thinking.”
“Yes?”
“You know – maybe we should get out of here. Get changed…”
“Kastyr,” she said reproachfully, thumping his chest lightly with the heel of her hand.
“Not like that! I mean – you know…”
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Ahh. She recognised his smile.
Now that was an offer she couldn’t refuse. She nodded, and followed him up the aisle, out through the lobby, and into the nearest alley.
It didn’t take Kas’s fairy long to find them a spot of trouble. Feychilde and Stormsword interrupted some dark druids trying to poison the drinking water where the Blackrush came flowing down to Sticktown out of Hilltown. While the arch-sorcerer interrogated the leader she put on her gloves of stone, gave the others a well-deserved clobbering, then transported the captives to Magicrux Jelix. And when she was finished talking to him, the local magister-captain hailed her as Stormsword.
It was the first time someone she didn’t already know had used the name, and she liked it. For the first time since arriving in the city, she was a champion. It wasn’t just some dream. It wasn’t theoretical, as it had been when she’d attended the Gathering. This was real. She'd received recognition from someone who wasn’t an archmage.
Soaring back up over the jail, she closed her eyes, let the coldness of the night blanket her. She couldn’t feel anything.
Stormsword. She loved it; she loved hearing it – it sounded just right in the watchman’s mouth. Just like she’d imagined, since the twenty-seventh, since the Incursion.
Since she died, and almost shied away from her destiny.
Feychilde was fluttering over to her a little unsteadily, his azure wings flapping – more for show than out of necessity, she believed. Or maybe it just came instinctively to him now, to flap, as though the wings interacted in any comprehensible way with the air…
She was smiling, probably deliriously, given the way his own smile seemed cautious, almost nervous.
“Ahhh, Feychilde – you know the way to a girl’s heart.”
“Better than the theatre?” he asked, putting his arms around her.
“Beating up bad guys was never so much fun!”
“Then my pleasure.” He sank down a couple of feet in the air, awkwardly placing his hand on her knee through the folds of her robe.
She laughed, sank down with him, kissed him.
Once they parted, he spoke huskily. Her head was against her own; she couldn’t see his expression but the touch of the wind on his face told her he was no longer smiling.
“So… Zadhal.”
“Kas.” She almost growled his name.
“I know – we’ve been over it…”
“Isn’t it obvious zat I vont to come? You really ought to know, you know.”
“No, Em – no, because if it was that obvious, you’d just come. You're not only her employee, you know. You’re one of us now.”
But do I want to go?
She hadn’t even asked herself the question, till now.
Isn’t it obvious that I’m glad I don’t have to? That I don’t have to tell Mama and Papa that I’m going to through a portal into a city filled with things that want to eat me…
Isn’t it obvious that I want to pass my test? That I want to have Mistress Henthae smile her usual pleased little smile, when she congratulates me on my score…
“One of ‘us’…” she said at last. “Because you’ve been a champion for so long!”
“Fine – fine. It’s just… Of course I don’t actually want you to come with me, but…” He sighed, looking down at the round magicrux far below them. “Zel’s pointed out something we passed on the way here. Want to take a look?”
She nodded, lips pressed together firmly, and she let him take the lead, guiding her back towards Oldtown.
It was always the same thing with Kas, always the Magisterium versus everything else – and every time he was pressed he backed down. How could she continue the argument when he reverted back to his ‘fine, fine’ chatter? How could she stay angry, when he voiced his little, non-judgemental sigh, frowning in that incredible cute manner, displaying all his vulnerability right there on his face?
But this is what he does, she said to herself. He wears me down – just look at me now.
Yet as she split the air in his wake she couldn’t help but feel that he was right, fundamentally. Henthae was in the wrong, for once. There wasn’t enough of a difference between disintegrating rays of light from a tiger-woman’s hands and the claws of imps tearing through arteries. Not enough of a difference for it to matter.
Death was death.
She sensed the disturbance ahead of Kas.
Another wizard.
She put out her hand to the skies and they reacted, filling her palm with the energy of her namesake, the crackling, blinding blade which she would wield as one of the legendary defenders of Mund.
She was a champion. And she was home.
She was Stormsword.
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