40. FORTY #3
He stomped toward the door. It creaked open, but he hesitated over the threshold. She couldn’t see his face, but his words hissed through his teeth. “I always used to wonder why you were so surly and serious all the fucking time. Turns out it’s genetic.”
“Fuck you.”
The balcony door slammed, leaving her alone, just like she’d wanted. It seemed as though her Luck went with him. The night grew deeper. The breeze blew colder. She wasn’t sure how long passed before a gentle knock sounded on the balcony door.
“Go awaaay,” she sang.
The door cracked. “It is I.” Drogus’s deep baritone was almost soothing to her ears. Almost.
“While more acceptable than most, your presence is still not appreciated.”
“I would like to ask you something.”
Her second Hand seldom asked anything of her. She sighed. “Well?”
“Cam tells me your meeting with Avelius did not go well.”
“He did, did he?”
“Not intentionally. But the mood was tighter than the rigging upon your return. And I knew who would be easiest to slip information from.”
Cam was a fated liability.
“What is your question?”
“What was going to be your plan in the instance that you could not receive training from Methu’su?” As her Hand, Drogus was the only other who knew her truths. But she’d needed him at the dock preparing their departure today.
“Train myself,” she grumbled, her nails digging into opposite forearms.
“Wonderful. And so, we embark upon your secondary plan. I hear it can be a beautiful journey.”
“I… I needed someone to train me, Drogus.”
“Being that you are the only conduit in recorded history—with any mind to them—I think you are a wonderful person to train you. You just need a tactic beyond looking for Luck when it fancies you. And you need someone to coach you along the way. Like me.”
“What do you know about distortionists?”
“Very little. But I have trained many people in many things, and there is something to be said for methodology.”
He made it sound so simple. Like everything was still on track when it wasn’t.
They’d only recruited a dozen ships and a fierce reputation.
To think she had believed that she could build an army capable of toppling the world’s most dangerous empire!
She had been deranged. She couldn’t distort.
She couldn’t even keep her friends close.
“Fankalo?”
“Drogus?”
Drogus opened his arms wide.
She fell into them before she could think straight. He held her for so long, she forgot she was even there until he patted her back. “Now. What does the little queen know about distortionists? Let’s see what we have to work with.”
She pushed away, embarrassed, and tried to press her tangled mane behind her ears. Again, it flew forward and stuck in her mouth. This was why women kept turbans. “There were four classes among the Ruxians. Each had the power to distort matter at their will, but they all did it in different ways.”
“Creation, Destruction, Preservation, and Chaos.” Of course, leave it to Drogus to have read the same texts. At least one of her Hands retained useful knowledge.
“Right. Ninety percent fell into the classes of Preservation or Chaos. Their ability to distort is governed by space. Preservation holds space together, Chaos pulls it apart. But I’m not really sure what that means.”
“And the others?”
“Also opposites, but governed by energy. Creation distorts by pushing energy out. Destruction by pulling it in. Those abilities were more limited, but also more dangerous.”
Drogus closed his eyes and nodded slowly. “Balance.”
“I suppose so.”
“You must be Chaos aligned.”
“That was my best guess too. King Seraphindo was Chaos, and considering the records of his abilities, pulling space apart might mean moving things away from where they should be into somewhere different.
But when it comes to foresight, Chaos takes to seeing all possible futures more easily where the others have limitations.
“Distortionists all have the same skills, but it’s like they’re channeled through a different lens.
Preservation, for example, usually only sees things immediate to their survival.
And Destruction…” She thought about her brother.
“Will always fixate on what could cause them harm.” Constantly seeing every imminently deadly future had to have an impact on a person’s psyche.
Add that to six years of torture, and you got Calver.
“I’m glad you are not a Destruction conduit.”
While Destruction distortionists were inherently more valuable than Chaos, Fankalo couldn’t help but agree. She rubbed at her arm. “Methusu wrote that a distortionist’s gift is also their curse.”
“What do you think?” Drogus asked.
“In the histories, Destruction conduits usually died prematurely, and nearly always from self-infliction. There are a lot of presents I would hurl into the ocean.”
They looked at it: the sea. Endless and boundless, and what would it hurt to pour more of herself into it?
“There are cases of conduits who have distorted. Accidents, mostly. But others that became so attuned to their sense of stratum and flow—Dreiden called it the void space— that they had a breakthrough. I had this hope that, if I trained hard enough, I could be more than what I am.”
Drogus sighed into the wind. “I, too, dared to dream once.” She waited for him to say more. He only winked. “Now I use my decades of education and experience to play advisor to a couple of raider brats.”
“At least one who listens, anyway,” she muttered, secretly appreciative of his slight. “So. What do you advise I do?”
“Early sailors did not have charts to guide them. They watched the sea and stars. I recommend you spend some time alone with your Luck and listen to what it tells you.”
Any renewed hope she might have had from Drogus’s chat fizzled out. “You mean just sitting still?” If Creation knew there was only one thing she was not well suited to…
“I mean a focused meditation. Remove other senses and distractions.”
“And how are you going to coach me?”
“For one, I’m going to make sure that you do it. For two, I will listen when you want to talk about it afterward.”
“I’m not sure that I will.”
Drogus leaned back with arms crossed. “Let’s return to this ‘need’ to be trained. Why?”
“I want to pull off as many hauls as I can so we can grow. Better Luck, more funds.”
“Even if you were to triple your current production”—she loved the way Drogus shared seeing thievery as a business—“you are not on track to feed an army in six years. Not by half.” And the way he surfaced the hard truths that had been sitting on her shoulder since the start, waiting for her to admit them.
To get to where she wanted to be before the Tera’thian coronation, she couldn’t keep doing things the way she had been. She needed Nelfinden silver. She needed enough of it to rival the Oligarchs. And she needed it soon.
Fankalo licked at her wind-cracked lips.
“The Chori built a naval force that nearly took out Casowhatan at the end of the Gray Period.” That single moment in history had left her without a blood father, and Drogus without a legacy.
“The texts say Nelfindar was caught unprepared because, a decade prior, your country had no navy to speak of. How did you do it?”
Drogus squinted and hummed. “People. Process. Procurement.”
“It’s that last one I’m interested in.” She had assumed that they could make enough Aetech lamps to sell their way to the top. But it took more resources than she’d anticipated to make money.
“To go to war with Nelfindar, the Chori took out a loan from the King of Pazir.”
Her mouth fell open. “You didn’t.”
“We did. I was a diplomat in the vie for Pazirian aid. And in repayment—a decision I did not agree with—we set the Tera’thians on them to bait Nelfindar’s Blue Wing to their capital.
” Which had left Seraphinden vulnerable to Chori attack.
Drogus’s eyes went distant. “We should have known the Tera’thians had set us up for betrayal in Casowhatan, even then.
We were a pawn in their game.” She didn’t know much about the family he lost, taken by the Tera’thians in the aftermath of the war.
She also didn’t feel keen to return to the well of melancholy she’d only just surfaced from.
“But Pazir. They gave Chori command the sums to build and man hundreds of ships?”
“They did.”
“Drogus.”
“Yes, Captain?”
“Can you arrange a meeting between the King of Pazir and the Queen of the Raiders?”
Drogus nodded slowly, stroking his immense beard. “For an ornery little queen who refuses to practice her magic? I’m not sure that I can.” The teasing in his voice brought her more joy than she could express.
“You know that if you were anyone else, I’d put my knuckles between your eyes?”
“This I know. A fifteen-year-old girl should not say these things.”
Fankalo laughed. “Alright. I’ll have a quiet contest with my Luck, eah? Just for you.”
Drogus ruffled her hair, the way her father used to. “For the king of Pazir to give his willing attention, we’re going to need to make ourselves look very, very big. Much like your training, this will take time and an exceptionally regimented plan.”
“Now planning, I like.” She smiled. It felt good to smile. “This might just be the most fun we’ve ever had.”