Spring 2
The delinquent daughter of the Wavespeaker returned to the Conclave square in the dead of the night, her backpack laden with tools. The festival stalls provided the perfect cover for slinking across the red brick expanse, and she paused in the shadows several times as the sweeping crews came too near.
She shivered in her hiding spot, her peasant dress no protection from the chill, and waited out the crews.
Then it was around the wide corner of the Conclave, tight against the murals. She found the servant’s entrance by feel; tested the door; and found it locked. Scrounging into her backpack, she pulled out a screwdriver and gave the door the Conner special!
Or tried, anyways. Even a boy twice her size probably would have left no more mark on the sanctuary of Fire than her.
Valkyrie shook her smarting hands, dumped the tool back in her bag, and hurried east.
Soon she ducked down the slope to the loading bay. Two wagons waited, parked for the night. Peeking, she spied hundreds of fancy glasses upside down on trays, and the stiff reek of wine kicked into her eyes.
“Ugh. No better than a two-copper drunk.”
She briefly mulled stealing a few. Or even the whole wagon if she could find a horse!
Then again, what am I going to do with three hundred glass cups?
She was here to etch a better mark. Leave the petty larceny to Conner!
Hopping up onto the dock, she found the service door unlocked! Easing into the servant’s hallway, she crept along by the dim light of intermittent electric bulbs and nearly stumbled over a mop bucket.
“Hells!” she hissed. “Don’t leave your bucket in the hall!”
And how typical for the nobles to spare no expense for lightning their gala while the servants grope in the dark!
Two minutes later she finally fumbled into the Livery changing room, dominated by rows of the black and white Livery uniforms. A cleaning schedule in the corner had been updated just today and proved helpful.
“Looks like the only crew are the waxers.” She frowned. “Isn’t this thing indestructible? Do you really have to wax?”
She had no idea. Then again, this building never made sense to her. If the Conclave was built before electricity, how did they wire it for lightbulbs? Could gods plan out their monuments for technologies of the future? How many of the tiny bumps and incongruities in the corners were hints for marvels yet unknown?
So many secrets lurk here, and the only thing it hosts is farce!
The waxers were busy in the main audience hall, leaving both wings unguarded. Of the two, she discarded the west out of hand. The old museum had been closed years ago; some scandal about Aure’s sacred tools being forgeries or something; and now the wing hosted offices for noble administration. The east wing, home to the lesser deacons, was much more her style.
She scanned the notes on the Livery board for anything else, and one leaped to mind. A small note stated: E-2 basement off-limits!
“Duly noted,” she purred, rooting through for anything else of use.
Lucky! She dug an impressive keyring out of a corner locker. “Thank you for your service!”
She picked up the pace, pausing only to listen to the echoes of the janitors with their mops in the auditorium, and crossed the wide expanse of the atrium. Passing under the dome of Aure, she brushed its whispers off as the echoes of the cleaners, and she took advantage of her brand new keyring to admit herself into the eastern wing.
I’ll drop a few holy trophies into Mrs. Hewes desk. Maybe one for the principal too. Make sure the constables hear about contraband. Oh, it's such a shame, really. Mrs. Hewes loved Aure so much she just couldn’t help herself! You know how they are at that age!
Touching the bruise under her eye, she smirked. And maybe I can keep something for myself. A little souvenir for compensation right off a deacon’s desk.
The Conclave hummed beneath her shoes, but Valkyrie preferred her glorious retribution to echoes of her imagination like a distant voice chiding her choices.
Now safely into the deacon’s home turf, she helped herself to any trinket or ornament that caught her eye. Keyring in hand, she tore through the offices, making sure to scatter papers and knock over the smug self-portraits of fat deacons in their heavy robes. Soon her backpack jingled louder than the keys, and the straps groaned against her shoulder blades.
Some trinkets for Mrs. Hewes, some for her room, and quite a few shiny gold pens and other desk flare to fence for a silver or two!
After two full sweeps of the plush offices, she hummed, “Now, about that off-limits basement…”
The girl leaped down the steps, ready for all manner of subterfuge, but found only a bare hallway blocked by velvet stanchions.
“Lame.”
Left and right – equally bland options.
A chill breeze wafted from the left, nudging inquisitive little thieves away with its bite.
This is no place for mischief, little one
Reason enough for the stubborn girl to immediately turn that direction!
“What’s so bloody well forbidden about a service tunnel? Whole city is lousy with them!”
She hopped the stanchions and hurried down the straight tunnel. She passed storeroom after storeroom, the hall lit only by intermittent lightbulbs. After a few minutes, even those ceased, and she navigated by the golden glow of the walls.
When the last manmade light faded, she hesitated. Maybe this is enough…
But then she spied the faintest flicker of candle light far ahead.
Adjusting her grip on her stolen goods to smother their clink, she marched east.
A hundred paces later, she arrived at a candle set naked on the floor. It melted into its predecessors, forming a lake of old wax, and dozens of footprints marred the puddle in both directions. A trail of dripped wax bid her further.
To the next; and then the next.
At the fifth candle, she discovered a true oddity: cheerful white plaster slathered across the corridor!
Who plasters a service tunnel?
Kneeling, she put her screwdriver to the plastic, raining flakes onto the floor. Carving a hole, she plucked up a candle to stare beneath. By its flickering light, she spied a blotch of turquoise like a bruise marring the infallible Conclave wall.
She set her thumb over the aberrant color. Her nail tingled with a thrum like electric current, and the ache of her black eye quietly faded from her mind.
“I’ve gotta be under the skyscrapers by now,” she mused. “A plastered cover-up beneath the streets!”
Valkyrie sensed a real scoop here! Something bigger than rotten fruit!
The walls slowly rounded, the hallway transforming into a smooth tunnel like a pipe, and a hint of sea salt tickled at her nose. She found older plaster, its cracks showing, and beneath were fragments of familiar murals.
Having been south repeatedly, Valkyrie recognized the blotches of teal and white as fragments of a famous mural: a woman proud and regal, her features twisted into a roar and her teal hair lashing behind her.
The Tempest.
She reclines on the Azure throne, the Maiden at her side, hand on her chin
Before her a gaggle of nervous nine-year-olds fumble the steps of an ancient dance
But she holds her tongue
Tolerance from the divine
Well-traveled embarrassment rising again, Valkyrie thought, I can’t help it if the rest of them have lead feet!
Mortified at their showing, she had skipped out on the next routine. Served the troupe right anyways.
Reviewing the Tempest again, she frowned at an odd sense of recognition. What sense did that make? The Tempest is a walking divinity! Everyone knows what she looks like!
Why, then, was she nagged by the feeling like they had just brushed paths?
“Tch! If I saw the Tempest in Ruhum, I think I’d notice.”
The turquoise spot beneath her thumb thrummed.
Would you now?
She yanked her hand away like she had been burned, shook her head against stray thoughts, and continued her journey into mystery.
Next, she found candles placed into clumps: three, five, seven, nine. All carved with prayers of Fire. Then plaster, older and thicker, splattered over larger blemishes like the makeup of an aging woman’s vanity. Prayers and the sigil of fire dotted the plaster, sporadically at first, but growing more common until the walls resembled the graffiti in the boys’ bathroom.
“Wards, wards, wards for what?”
Her own voice echoed back with an undercurrent of rushing water.
Turn back, daughter
Valkyrie scowled at her own fear. Was she a sniveling altar boy, lugging around a thurible for fear that the slightest brush with the outside world would contaminate her soul?!
Such hunger for vengeance
They might still be your brethren
The current carries us all, child
A vision of Azure skirts and outstretched hands teased at the edge of her vision.
“Like hells I will!” she muttered. Like I’m gonna walk up and hug Mrs. Hewes! She’d plant a Fire-blessed dagger in my belly!
And what did the Azure skirts have to offer her for the risk? That she might be Azure dancer ninety-five out of one thousand and thirty? Perhaps she might be so blessed as to pick up the Maiden’s slippers for the next sixty years!
Whether her mother shoved her off to a finishing school or a dancing academy – what was the difference?
Both minted shallow copies with see-through smiles.
“This place doesn’t scare me! I’ve braved worse storm drains!”
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Though she still remembered the sudden, powerful pull of the current beneath a seemingly shallow storm drain. In mere moments it had seized the young Valkyrie and carried her twenty feet downstream. She remembered how terrified she had been as she lunged and caught the brittle wood of a bridge post, convinced the current would carry her out to sea…
Growling at her own dithering, she hopped up and stomped forward!
Her feet squelched in a river of old wax now. When the tunnel suddenly rattled like an earthquake, she slipped with a panicked squeak and slammed butt-first into the muck.
After a moment, a second quake precisely followed the first, and she belatedly recognized the hum of tires above.
We’re under Main halfway to Firstborough!
If this tunnel continued long enough, would she emerge at the Cathedral of Fire in lost Lumia?
A third and fourth quake followed as heavy trucked rumbled overhead, and Valkyrie finally decided to turn back. She could hardly walk all the way to Lumia!
Her choice came too late. As the rumble faded, she heard the voices of new company.
“God above, God above, God above, God above…”
“Our Lord to save us, our Lord to save us, our Lord to save us…”
“Deliver us from evil, deliver us from evil, deliver us from evil…”
Three priests approached through the golden gloom, their censers obscuring their faces but not their black robes of mourning. They shuffled through the wax, clicking rosary beads between skeletal fingers, half blind and half mad.
Aw, hells. Penitents!
Even delirious with hunger, they would surely notice her in a straight tunnel!
She shuffled a step back in panic, and her backpack rattled with all those stolen goods.
Prayer stopped, and the nearest raised his candle high. Even through the swirling smoke, he made out the form of a girl in a peasant dress with bright blonde hair.
“Trespasser!” rasped the first priest.
“Blasphemer!” growled the second.
“Heretic!” hissed the last.
“Oops, wrong turn!” she squeaked, leaping backwards.
Her heel caught in the wax, and she slammed sideways into the wall of the pipe. Trinkets spilled from her sack, rolling into the light, and the priests wailed at the sacrilege.
All three old men charged, their haggard lips drawn back over yellowed teeth.
Scrabbling, Valkyrie shouted, “Somebody help!”
The tunnel resounded with an answer.
Little might I spare from my duty, my errant daughter
Yet I would not leave you to the tender mercies of Aure’s fanatics
From the east, the ground rumbled.
The plaster stained turquoise, color bleeding through the façade.
Churning water roared closer.
The priests twisted, bracing themselves against the approaching wave.
“Again with these visions!”
“Hold fast! The harlot will not claim our souls!”
To which Valkyrie snapped, “Watch your mouth! This is a church!”
Laughing, the storm surge swelled. White foam water filled the tunnel and their vision. Everyone sucked in one last, desperate breath.
The waters caught and carried the priests away, smothering their censers and peeling the wax from the walls…
…and bore Valkyrie up like a teasing aunt, tickling at her sides.
The girl’s mind brushed against another’s. One she recognized from hazy, infantile memory.
Ah, the ravenous babe
You wanted cake
Sweet mouse-daughter
Soul yearning for both heaven and earth
Weight like the crushing depths brushed across the surface of her mind. She beheld a vision of golden tendrils – or arteries – or sutures – racing mile after mile beneath land and sea. A web, spun out from a golden core where–
And still you hunger for more
Careful of that appetite, little Valkyrie
Aure’s sycophants are washed away
Now go home
The waters deposited her on the scrubbed tunnel, seated in an inch of salt water. With the plaster and wax removed, the entire tunnel now gleamed in soothing ripples of blue.
Heart racing, she pulled her hair in front of her face.
Hoping beyond hope to find an Azure-touched blessing.
But her usual blonde locks, now sopping wet, clung to her fingers.
Rumbles from the west reminded her of her predicament. When those waters cleared, the priests would be back.
This way, mouse-daughter
Making a snap decision, she dumped the contents of her bag across the tunnel floor. Then she shoved to her feet and sloshed through the water away from the scene of the crime.
After a hundred paces, the waters ebbed to a trickle, and she broke into a furtive jog.
“Stormmother?” she whispered after five hundred paces. “Are you there?”
The Goddess remained silent, drawn once more to her Work.
Ah, to have seen just a tiny bit more!
The air cooled swiftly, and her worries rose. They saw me dead to rights! The damned Stormmother saved my sorry hide, but what about tomorrow?!
She needed to go to ground and do it fast.
Time slipped away as she jogged. Her legs ached; then cramped. A minute passed; or maybe an hour. The dim glow of the Azure murals urged her on, dolphins and fish her racing companions, the Tempest and Maiden her cheerleaders…
Exhausted, Valkyrie stumbled.
The world slipped.
Her shoulder hit the clammy concrete of a storm drain, and the air suddenly swirled with bitter cold. Faint moonlight trickled from ahead, and only darkness lay behind.
“Icy hells…” Shivering, she ducked out of the storm drain into the depression of an old creek. Dead reads crunched underfoot, and she picked over a bevy of litter on her way up the embankment.
Once ascended, she recognized Main Street – the only street in Mel marked both ways by red paint. What she didn’t recognize was the dark and silent borough to her left or the empty fields to her right!
This must be the eastern edge of the boroughs; the last stop for the desperate; the dumping ground for heretics and fools.
“Sevensborough!” she swore.
As if she wasn’t in enough trouble with her mother already.
Following Main west, she entered the borough. Streetlights lined the boulevard, but none were on. Many were ransacked, no filament in their shells. The shops were dark and still, and few lights flickered in the smudged darkness beyond.
Sevensborough couldn’t be as bad as the rumors, right?
‘A warren! A tumor clinging to our fair city!’
‘No constables. No churches. Just a jungle where the law fears to tread.’
‘Someone ought really to do something about it!’
She hurried along, and her imagination helped by conjuring roving gangs into every shadow.
Three minutes later, she came to the first intersection. The road forked straight north, lined by barbed wire and functional lamps, to a fortified compound of hangars and warehouses patrolled by armed men at a high fence. The men strode in alert pairs, enemy to their host borough and wandering adolescents both.
“Guess the land is cheap this far out,” she muttered, staying on Main.
Then, despite the dead hour, she heard the pounding of a Deepbloom jungle drum! A man’s deep voice rang out the jungle song of seasons, urging Winter to her bed. That song alone should have summoned a gaggle of constables to bludgeon his skull, regardless of the hour!
Though, as she stared into the vague darkness of ramshackle buildings with no obvious roads or ways, she guessed why the constables stayed out.
“At least curfew won’t be an issue…”
Main Street curved south for half a mile, and she finally discovered a shop still awake: a cheerful diner on the north side of the bend. Its deactivated sign read: The Mayor’s Dive, but the lights inside revealed neat metal tables covered in checkboard sheets. Festival streamers lay heaped on the middle table, and six bags of trash waited by the front door.
A middle-aged man with thinning brown hair and an advancing gut ducked out of the kitchen with a wet rag and wiped down his chrome bar with tender care. He polished to the rhythm of a song, courtesy of a small radio, and his diner lights flickered across the ripples of burn scars running up and over his forearms.
Valkyrie snickered. The way he rubs that chrome, I bet he spends more money on the bar than his wife!
The chef stepped onto a chair and pulled down a papier-mâché Azure star. Rather than dumping it straight into the trash, he set it on an empty table. A few moments later he pulled down papier-mâché seeds of the Jungle and even a little paper cragbear!
For Valkyrie, shivering and far from home, that sign of respect was enough. She turned her course to the diner, prepped her tears – rather easily, at that – and burst through the unlocked door.
“You’re the mayor, right? Just the man I need!”
***
Oliver Oshton, former Inventor and current mayor, deposited a second wad of festival streamers on the table. “You know what time it is? We’re closed.”
His intruder continued right in, hopping over bags of trash. Her shoes squelched against his just-mopped floor. “You have to help!” she wailed, working herself towards tears.
“I’m not a hostel for truants,” he replied. Don’t even have the sense to pack a jacket before you run away from Mommy and Daddy? The cold will send you home faster than any lecture I could give.
Her lower lip trembled. “Do you have any idea how far I’ve walked tonight?!”
“About halfway to your destination.”
She stifled a growl and redoubled her sniffling.
The mayor glanced at the petite blonde, nagged by a vague sense of familiarity. An out-borough minx wandering down Main alone after dark? How had she made it past the ruffians camped out at the Sixborough bridge? No way in the icy hells the girl had navigated the warren by dark!
Blast it, where have I seen her? He sighed, wishing for the thousandth time that he could steal angelic eidetic memory.
“How old are you?” he stalled. She’s dripping everywhere. Where’d I put the towels?
“Sixteen,” she lied.
“Must be the shortest in your class,” he drawled. More like twelve.
“I’m in serious trouble here!”
“No, serious trouble is what happens when people randomly wander around the borough alone in the dead of night,” he replied, dropping his rag. He crossed the diner to stare her down. “A half-block up where the bend straightens back up, knock at the barber shop. Light’s off, but someone will answer. Tell them that Mayor Oliver is asking that you get off with a warning. They’ll escort you to the Sixborough church on Main, and you can figure out the rest.”
As he spoke, her tears dried, and her face settled into a deep-creased pout.
Twelve and spoiled. Relenting a little, he stated, “Things go smoother when we’re both honest, you know. You’re running; it’s clear as day. What’d you do?”
She weighed her options.
“If it’s a new one, I’ll let you have a shake before I take apart the machine,” he dared.
The girl straightened. “I snuck into the Conclave, stole half the deacons’ pens, and discovered some half-crazed Penitent lunatics trying to fight the ghost of the Stormmother in the tunnels below the square! They were gonna brain me, but the Stormmother summoned a tidal wave and washed them out. I ran, and here I am!”
Oliver coughed. “Points for originality!”
“Tch, knew you wouldn’t believe me, you–”
“What was the Stormmother like?” he asked.
Caught off-guard, she rocked on her foot. “She…she didn’t sound like I expected,” the girl murmured, stroking a damp lock of hair. “Distracted? No, distant. Her voice was warm, though, and…and familiar.”
Despite his theatrics, Oliver paid careful attention. Would his own origin story have sounded any less absurd to a stranger? Maybe she was making it up, but…maybe not.
Best to–
“A really long time ago…I was somewhere dark and warm…but I could hear…hear terrible things…”
Dragon!
We are not done here!
Lynne’s echo rang clear through them both, and Oliver realized where he recognized this girl from.
“You’re Belle Osh’s kid,” he remembered. She was pregnant when Lumia fell.
Which made the girl fifteen approaching sixteen, appearances to the contrary. She would become an adult with the Spring birthday alongside the rest of the common born. Though a girl this spoiled probably plays noble and marks her own name day.
“You’ve met my mom?!” Valkyrie squeaked.
“I’ve met everyone,” Oliver assured her. Shrugging, he walked behind the bar and kicked the ice cream machine back to life. “Well, a promise is a promise. Have you eaten yet?”
“Had an elephant ear at the festival this afternoon,” she admitted, starting to shiver less.
He tossed her a wad of rags. “Dry off and then turn off the main lights. Switch is by the stairs.”
By the time she found the right switch, he had the heater back on. He ducked into the kitchen to reheat some leftovers, and soon he presented her with a plate of steaming potato wedges doused in a heaping sea of cheese.
“One strawberry shake and one plate of double cheese chips,” he announced. “Always lightning service at The Mayor’s Dive. Eat.”
“Uh, actually, I may not have any cash on me…” she mumbled.
He rolled his eyes. “Divine revelation! You’ll pay with a full accounting of your night.” I want to know why you’re carting around an echo of Lynne fresh as a gold bill. “First, though, eat your food. Leave the rarified heights to the ang– to the heavens.”
Quit echoing so damned loud before you draw something’s attention.
“I can do that!” She popped a potato wedge into her mouth and melted on her stool in bliss.
And she’s chipper again. He missed being able to live in the moment like that sometimes. Course, all my problems back then blindsided me. Even the obvious ones. Especially the obvious ones.
While she ate, Oliver finished locking up. He drew down the blinds, left a note that the diner would open late tomorrow, and locked all the doors and windows. Yawning, he returned to his bar as she finished the plate and started on the shake.
“Feel a bit more grounded?”
The girl nodded.
“Good. Now, your story.”
She dutifully recounted her afternoon at the festival and her hare-brained scheme to break into the Conclave. He listened, noting the eight-fold excuses for petty larceny, and refilled her cup with water when she lagged.
She finished her tale just after third bell in the morning. Immediately, she slumped, slouching until her chin tapped the counter. “What am I going to do?!”
“Tell your parents.”
“My dad’s dead,” she grumbled.
“Ah.” Right, Lumia. “Then tell your mother. She’ll be beside herself.” Poor woman – Wavespeaker, widow, and guardian of this adolescent hurricane!
Valkyrie coughed. “Hardly my first surprise sleepover.”
“I’m not an inn. You’re Azurite. Shouldn’t be such a shock the Stormmother would look after you. If you’re looking for doctrine, ask your mother.” I answered to Mirielle, not the sea. “As far as your larceny, as an adult, pretend I told you to do the right thing and turn yourself in.”
She snorted.
“Then don’t. Discretion is the better valor for our type.” For us mere mortals. “So now that you’re fed and warm, I’ll be nice and walk you to the barber shop and your wagon home.”
The girl dropped her elbows on the bar. “We’re going back to Mel? When I’m the world’s biggest heretic?!”
“I’ve met a couple bigger,” Oliver muttered.
“A trio of Penitent nutcases saw my face!”
“Penitent nutcases? But you repeat yourself.”
She scowled.
“By candlelight, kid. Dazed out of their minds on incense and hunger. Right before they got walloped by a tidal wave.”
“And how many short, blonde delinquents are there in Mel?”
He winced at that point. “Uncommon, yes, but not unique. Oshton had flaxen twins just last year. You see it all the time up north. Even a couple of the houses like Visage and Cecille run blonde.”
Except House Visage was famous for its crimson-haired minx as far as the public knew.
Thankfully, Valkyrie missed his slip. “What about the Stormmother transforming the roots of the Conclave?!”
With the echo too fresh on his mind, he retorted, “I watched Lynne hold this cursed planet together by her teeth. If she wants Ruhum, who’s to say she hasn’t earned it by blood?”
The girl gaped at him. “What?!”
Oliver raked a hand through his thinning hair. “Sorry. Look. There’s no need to worry about–”
“Go back a step to the part where the mayor of Sevensborough calls the Stormmother ‘Lynne’!”
Scowling, he ordered, “Finish your shake.”
She offered a vicious pout.
He stared at her, nonplussed, until she realized how little he cared for her dimpled scowl. “Good. Once you’re done, we go.” I’ll have to walk you. You’d find a landmine in a half mile of road. “Do me a favor and mind your words when you tell everyone about big bad mean Mayor Oshton. Those kinds of tall tales can travel far and fast.”
She slurped as loud as possible.
Heavens above. Rolling his eyes, he turned on the radio for some late-night music.
Instead, they received the breaking news:
…any additional information on the fugitive should be forwarded to the authorities at once. The vandal was described as approximately five-foot-tall with a slim build and blonde hair. She wore a peasant’s dress, but authorities believe she may have been associated with southern fringe seditious movements even now plaguing our fair streets!
Reached for late night comment, several deacons have already called for the Wavespeaker to appear in a special Conclave session. As the emissary of that southern nation, the Wavespeaker must take responsibility for these violations!
For the moment, the constables have begun…
Oliver smacked the radio, his complexion pale.
Valkyrie bit into her straw, staring at her chrome reflection.
“…can I stay here tonight?”
The mayor swore. “Fine.”