13. THIRTEEN
THIRTEEN
FANKALO
Location: Rollard Isles
Astorm drove the gig toward Solutium faster than Fankalo had anticipated.
The rain cascading from the gray wash of cloud overhead was so dense, it nearly blended with the sea.
Beneath it, the water writhed and crashed in a violent, frothing dance.
The gig pivoted and fell so erratically that, in a rare instance, she looked forward to bringing the vessel ashore.
Several from their squad gave the contents of their stomach in tithing to the sea.
Solutium was a spattering of dark ink flicked across the western Casowhatan by Creation’s pen: a string of uninhabitable, obsidian isles lacing the neck of an underwater volcano.
Their jagged rock formations varied from the size of the Rogue’s Rapture to the size of a mountain.
Some clung low to the sea; others jutted toward the heavens.
Fankalo’s insides spun like the tempest overhead. There. A small isle rose from the depths. Hollow caverns and crags pockmarked its ebony stone, carved by the lapping of waves over centuries. Whatever beckoned her was there.
The gale and rain would wash out her words, so she raised a fist and signaled,
The squad’s first, a man named Kershee, responded.
As the squad removed excess clothing to move through the water unhindered, Fankalo closed her eyes and honed into the void where she usually found her Luck.
It remained as it had since the morning’s meeting: like a sail without wind.
Neither a good path nor a dangerous one became apparent, but the overwhelming summons had grown stronger the closer they came.
For the first time, she had misgivings. Whatever this was, it handicapped her.
“Ready?” Mitek shouted, bare chest slick and prickled with gooseflesh.
Fear would not make decisions for her.
she instructed.
They left a ship watch and swam through the torrents, crashing awkwardly into the rock with the storm’s wake and scrambling to find purchase on its slimy surface.
Rain was a riot of percussion against volcanic stone.
They moved wordlessly through it, splashing through shallow pools until they were so close to the source that it vibrated in her bones.
Fankalo pulled the group to a halt, squatting behind a man-high boulder. She gestured for Mitek, behind her, to wait. Water assaulted her face in rivers. She squinted through it as she crept around the stone, tanka-bearing forearm raised.
Her quarry was there: a child.
Not four body-lengths away, the boy faced her, sitting cross-legged, knuckles pressed together in meditation. He might have been eight, maybe ten. The rain parted around him as though he was encapsulated by a bubble.
His eyes opened. Like his crop of hair, they were stark, shining silver. Those moonlit irises locked on Fankalo, and her body went cold.
Winds of Chaos. It was everything she’d feared. Calver had told her what had been done to him, but he’d never known the extent of Cul’Mon’s intentions like she had. His project’s success sat before her.
A Ruxian under Tera’thian control.
“Hello,” she said, never lowering her tanka. “Nephew.”
The boy’s brow furrowed. He didn’t understand Nelfinden. This creature, which bore her brother’s face, was a product of the Tera’thian Tohatu.
A sneer twisted his face. “Do urdenka.”
Fankalo didn’t understand Tera’thian either, but hatred did not require translation. They needed to get out of here. Perhaps if he thought she was alone, the others might have a chance at getting away. She took a step backward. If she could just signal to Mitek—
The boy turned his palms outward and a torrent of wind threw Fankalo from her feet.
Her gut wrenched; her body flailed, searching for something to cling to.
She slammed into the sea, sending the breath from her chest. Water surrounded her.
She clawed through it, fighting to surface.
When her head finally broke above the waves, she had time to gasp only once.
On the isle, Mitek screamed, “Take him down!” before the water rose to smother her.
The Ruxian was controlling it.
The ocean consumed her. Fankalo kicked and pulled to fight it, disoriented. It fought back, smashing her into the rocks. Her leg shattered against them before the ocean pulled her back into its belly. It filled her. Her lungs screamed as if they were simultaneously tearing open and set aflame.
A hand seized her wrist.
Her head broke free into the rain. She fought for air, hacking and coughing liquid from her lungs.
A warm body moved beneath her, stumbling as it made contact with the isle, then her back scraped across the rock.
Mitek crouched over her as she vomited, his chest heaving, teeth bared, tanka aimed at the scuffle ten meters away.
Through the blur of the elements, her squad had coordinated to overwhelm the boy. He must have lost focus on her and Mitek as he faced the more imminent threat. A weak point: the Ruxian could only stretch so far.
The boy sidestepped every attack from the ten set against him, spinning his dowaga with the adeptness of a veteran.
With a flip of his wrist, a swath of ocean rose—like in the stories of King Seraphindo—and crashed onto the isle.
It pummeled her squad into the rocky crest behind them.
Some did not regain their feet. Those that did fired openly or launched forward with daggers.
The boy raised a hand again and the rockface behind them crumbled, crushing Kershee and Gai.
Mitek yelped and launched his tanka again and again. The Ruxian blocked each bit with his dowaga, a levitated chunk of rock, or a whip of seawater.
Fankalo tried and failed to speak. Her leg throbbed.
she signaled, but her motions went unseen. Too much chaos.
She closed her eyes, listening to her magic. It was no longer blocked; the summons was gone. Its origin, now distracted, wielded the three-sided dowaga against her six remaining men. Their blood spewed through the air, blending with the rain—as if the skies themselves were bleeding.
Methu’su had written that, in rare instances, truly gifted conduits could distort.
In a moment of dire need, their powers would manifest. That was what she had come here for.
If there was ever a time, it was now. She dove deeper into void space, where only the Fates trespassed.
Bad Luck pressed down from every direction.
There was nothing here for her. No breakthrough. Only death.
With a guttural growl, she propped herself on her forearm, aiming her tanka into the fray. Her heartbeat thrashed in her ears. She searched for any course of movement that felt lucky.
One.
Just one. Like a drop of water in all the Casowhatan. She clung to it.
“Brat!” Mitek was screaming for directions. “Brat!”
Whatever else he had to say, she did not hear.
She floated in the void, focused on their singular hope for survival.
The moment came as the Ruxian extended his focus to both an attack and a deflection, swinging the dowaga while using a wave to knock her men’s feet from under them.
She released her bit at the only angle her Luck guaranteed would make contact. Not at his head, but his abdomen.
The boy reeled backwards. A hit. He scrambled away, sending a wall of water skyward between him and her men.
“Fall back!” she screamed at the ones who remained. Just five? Her stomach clenched. This was her fault. She’d been wrong. Her powers had failed her—just like they had with Calver in Pazir. How could she have let it happen again? “Fall back!”
Mitek half-dragged her across the isle toward their anchored gig. Time passed in a blur. Her chest ached. She coughed up more seawater with every other breath. When she finally comprehended that her right leg hung like a loose sack beneath her, she looked down. Shining sinew and bone looked back.
“Don’t look at it,” Mitek barked. “Eyes on the sea.”
Her spare leg collapsed beneath her. Mitek caught her before she hit the ground, shouting something she didn’t hear. Another Ghost, she couldn’t tell who, stepped up to help carry her. Blackness pricked her vision.
They hit the sea on the other side of the island. Someone kept her head above water, and then someone else pulled her into the gig. The wood of the tiny vessel cradled her back. It tossed in the waves beneath them.
Fankalo tilted her chin to look at her leg. It had been wrapped in linen without her noticing. Crimson bloomed around the edges of the cloth.
“Brat.” Mitek patted her face. “Hang in there. You’re keeping that fucking leg, I swear it.”
“I…” Her tongue was thick in her mouth. “Of course I am.” She couldn’t lose a limb.
Couldn’t. “I am the daughter of Captain Keane. I am the White Flower.” She spoke to convince herself, more than anything.
Pitted against a true Ruxian, she was nothing.
“I am the Queen of the Raiders. I am the Shadewalker’s Hand. ”
“You are the ocean. You are the storm.” His voice shook like the boat beneath them.
She closed her eyes. Felt his fingers holding hers. Heard the wind and the rain and the sea.
Fankalo woke on a cot in the Dreiden base’s warehouse. A dull ache echoed through her lower half.
Night blanketed the windows. Dark, silhouetted palm trees swayed beyond them. In the moonlight, Drogus sat cross-legged on the floor beside her, facing the door. His position reminded her of the Ruxian boy. Her chest clenched.
She should have died.
Because of Mitek’s insistence, several others had died for her.
“Drogus.” She wouldn’t have recognized that rasping voice as her own if she hadn’t been sure she’d spoken.
Drogus leapt to his feet more nimbly than ought to have been possible from a man his size. “Fankalo.” An easy smile touched his lips. “Preservation, is it good to see you.”
“Have you been sitting there with your eyes closed, then?”