Prodigal Steelwielder (Seals of the Duelists Book 3) (4 page)

“That was beautiful, Bayan,” Sabella murmured in his ear. “Your best yet.”

“You could open your own performance center with a show like that.” Ordomiro, in black leather
pantalones
and the large, dark ink symbols from his earlier performance, punched him in the shoulder.

Ansio, the props master, flicked Ordomiro’s ear and hissed, “Sew your lips, Ordo. We lose the Wanderer now, we go back to playing the outer circuit of the mining towns in obscurity. You ask me, we need to chain Bayan to the palisade so he never, ever leaves, and we can all actually make some money at this performance trick.”

Bayan heard Cresconio begin to introduce the final act of the night and remembered his first, clumsy performances nearly two years ago, when the dust from his exiled wanderings still seemed to cling to his scalp despite Ordomiro’s borrowed soap. Cresconio had learned of his talents, and within ten days, Bayan was practicing on the noonday crowd as the first act of the show, thrust into their regard with nothing to follow and no way to let them down. His had been the act that everyone else was supposed to be better than. And that very first night, everyone was. But Bayan had studied the audience, seeing what they liked best, for nearly forty days. Over his next ten performances, Bayan worked on his showmanship, his gestures and timing, and it wasn’t long before Cresconio moved his act smack in the middle of the show.

Bayan had Sabella to thank for all of his success. She anchored every performance, every night. She danced her way into the hearts of everyone in the audience without fail. And she danced for Bayan after the show was done. True, her dancing had begun as practice, experimentation, once she had recognized Bayan’s skill with elemental magic. She knew her place in the circus, and that place was at its heart. Bayan was both humbled and thrilled that he had drawn the attention of such a powerful performer. But deep down, he suspected that her attention, her affection, was nothing more than a “thank you” of the highest order for his small contributions to her own performance improvement over the past year.

Not that I’m not grateful. Any man, in the circus or in the audience, would trade places with me in far less than a heartbeat. I know three performers who would literally try to kill me if my magic weren’t stronger than theirs, just for the chance to bed Sabella.

“And that’s my cue,” Sabella chirped, offering an expansive wave to the gathering. She slipped through the curtain and spiraled her way through the air, letting the green fabric tendrils of her skirt twirl around her legs like tender vines, until she stood atop the palisade next to Cresconio. The audience cheered once again, though its tone had become distinctly manlier.

The musicians hidden in the wings at each end of the arena struck up a sultry tune. Cresconio descended the center steps and joined Bayan and the others behind the curtain, then folded back one edge so he wouldn’t miss his cue at the end of her performance. Others crowded behind Bayan, forcing him forward to the edge of the curtain as well. He had seen Sabella’s public performances hundreds of times, as well as dozens of private ones, but he never tired of watching her graceful motions. Not to mention the magic they produced.

As the music rose in sinuous rhythm, Sabella danced and twirled her way from one end of the palisade to the other, throwing swirls of bright color out across the audience, teasing them with hints of jasmine and spice, giving them moonlight, starlight, sunrise. She drenched herself in honey-light, created a forest glen with Biona’s mythical milk pool, danced her way into it, then transformed it into a sparkling waterfall that was lit by the radiance of a languorous bonfire and bore her sinuous silhouette.

Long-tailed birds glided around her, and their pale feathers grew across her skin. Gold and ruby snakes twined their way up her calves. She threw her head back, rippling her arms from side to side, swaying her torso in one of Bayan’s favorite motions, and letting her head loll, eyes closed, before falling backward, gracefully and slower than humanly possible, into a black, starry void that caught her a hand’s breadth above the floor. Her back arched, and her long blond hair rippled on unseen wind. Delicate tendrils of vine grew across her skin, sprouted lacy leaves, and blossomed delicate pink trumpets that hid and drew attention to her most delicate areas.

Sabella’s body rose higher, twirling slowly, rotating her so that the audience could see her from all directions, and all the while she held her pose of ecstasy, mouth open, eyes closed, limbs outstretched.

Bayan felt himself harden.
Every time. I should never have taught her that anima magic. At this rate, every town we visit is going to have a population explosion three seasons later.

Her act over, Sabella descended to the palisade, where she accepted the ardent cheers of her adoring audience. As usual, at least a dozen hot young blades called out proposals of marriage, to which Sabella simply blew kisses and turned away.

She traded places with Cresconio, who went out to bid his aroused audience a fortunate night. The other performers congratulated Sabella in a kind but perfunctory way—everyone knew whose acts kept the circus in coin, and Bayan knew well that none were so jealous of creativity as other creatives—then dissipated into the darkness to pursue their own ends. Ordomiro gave Bayan a goodnight punch on the shoulder. “See you at breakfast.”

Sabella shifted to her other foot and tipped her chin down. Her left eyebrow rose, and a look of invitation sparked in her eyes. When she stepped closer, Bayan felt her body heat radiating against his skin. “Someone’s up.”

He breathed in her scent. “Someone is too skilled at anima for her own good.”

She stepped closer still, pressing her taut body against his. “But not for yours.” Her fingers twined with his, and she led him from the arena’s back entrance to her tent. Though it was made of silk like all the others in the encampment, hers was not only the largest personal tent, but it was made of the rarest golden silk, a mark of importance so rare that Bayan hadn’t heard of Cresconio ever granting such a gift to anyone else.

As they entered, she ignited a low orange light in each of her three lamps and used a puff of wind to secure the clasps on her tent flap. She pulled him past her to the edge of her round feather mattress, laden with round pillows stuffed with sweet spices and aromatic flower petals, and gave his shoulders a push with two fingers each, toppling him backward. He grinned as he let himself fall.

She flowed forward and settled atop his hips, then bound his wrists with bands of air, trapping them against the mattress. Her smug smile tantalized him. “What, no gag this time?”

Her voice was like silk. “Surprise me. You’re the hexmage. I want you to prove it.”

The beads of his necklace lay heavy across his neck. So many beads, so hard won. The magenta stone, third from the right, he’d added after he and Sabella had first lain together. Their first coupling had happened over a year ago, but it had taken him over a season to earn the stone that symbolized his mastery of passion. Not only was she distracting, but the effect she had on him had made it nearly impossible to concentrate on his magic. But he had eventually managed it, and it was the nights when she demanded proof of his skills that he found his efforts most rewarding.

You want the hexmage, you get the hexmage.
The silk and bright sparks of metal that made up what little costume she wore were made of anima and Earth. His trousers were Wood. He grasped all three substances, poured his consciousness into them, identified them as individual items within the world, and then disintegrated them. Sabella’s hot skin suddenly pressed against his own, and he gave an aroused hum at her impressed gasp. He let his focus slip inside her mouth with her breath, rode it down to her lungs, enjoyed the warmth of her flesh, then sent his anima lower within her.

He was hard as a rock, pressing against her soft warmth from below. His consciousness warmed her from within. He heard her moan in anticipation and pleasure. She rolled her hips involuntarily, and wetness slid across his hot, throbbing skin.

Just you wait.
His focus split, part of it returning to his own body, anima and anima. Then he bent the world around them and bent himself within her. Without moving, he suddenly occupied her most precious space, and Sabella arched, throwing back her head just as she had during her performance, and swayed her torso, arching her breasts over his eyes.

“Nearly cheating, Bayan,” she gasped, even as she rocked her hips atop his.

“Nearly.” He felt the spiral of his own need begin deep within him. Sabella’s own anima was spreading through his body, invading and mastering him. “And that’s nearly treason, where I come from.”

Her fingers traced their way along the flushed skin of her torso, letting her nails scratch, her fingers pinch, her palms cup. Hex tattoos formed and vanished upon her skin, accentuating her curves with fluid motions. Her body seemed to twin for a breathless heartbeat—one Sabella arching her hips against him, the other studying him with unblinking focus—and Bayan’s body shivered with thrills. At once helpless and in control, he lay on his back, quickly losing the battle against Sabella’s elemental magic hexed with anima. If he let himself, he would reach his fall in mere moments.

She sensed his nearness to completion: his anima felt her anticipation rise. “Don’t wait. Pleasure is our toy, not our master. Take it.”

He embraced his own pleasure, holding on to his focus even as it quaked through him in white-hot waves. He directed its overflow back into Sabella’s body—she always let her exquisite control over her anima slip when she was with Bayan. Her body arched as she rode him in his ecstasy, and she out flung her arms, skin alight from within, letting fire trail under her skin and spiced breezes tangle her hair. The golden tent lit like the sun, and Bayan didn’t care who knew. His hands clasped Sabella’s hips, held her hard against him, rode out every last spasm of pleasure, until she collapsed atop him, weeping and laughing.

He held her close, extinguished the tent light, and wrapped them both in sleep. Tomorrow, the circus would move on, and he and Sabella would need all the energy they could spare. Tomorrow, the world moved for others. Tonight, he’d made it move for them alone.

“If you had been here longer, Calder, you would get to stay warm and dry in the duel den, sipping spiced cider, waiting for one of the nobles to hire you,” Teos said. “You’re the back-end plow horse.”

“Sure an’ you’d still be out here, though, wouldna you, with whoever was that plow horse?” Calder asked.

“Someone, they have to teach you newniks how to do the basic repairs around here,” Teos’s sentences were as twisted with their strange Akrestan construction as Calder's old friend Odjin’s. “The Godsmaw, it’s entirely unforgiving, especially in winter.” The Akrestoi nodded his stiff, short blond braids toward the water that lashed hungrily beneath Calder’s Water avatar, Fogbreath, a giant ice crystal. “When I was first assigned to the Muggenhem duel den, this cliff extended another forty strides toward town.”

As Calder watched and waited, balanced atop his fountain spell, the viny arms on Teos’s wood avatar ripped another chunk of stone from the living cliff and passed it toward Calder, keeping it several strides above the Godsmaw’s crashing surf. Fogbreath accepted the heavy stone into the midst of a swirling vortex that kept it afloat. From his vantage point on the topmost fountain jet, Calder saw the dark stones of the jetty underwater. He spun the boulder out to the end of the construction then let the vortex dissipate. The heavy stone immediately sank two strides under the rough surface and came to rest on the pebbly sea floor.

Calder took a deep breath and rolled his shoulders, easing the ache, and felt a small weight brush against his thigh. He slipped a finger into his pocket and tapped his nail against a dueling walnut, which contained a steel ball within its shell. Though he’d never used such a walnut in a duel—it wouldn’t do to show off the impossible in front of a crowd—he’d seen actual battle, and he didn’t want to be caught wishing he had one and finding only empty pockets. Cracking the shell and hurling the steel ball through one of his avatars would destroy its physical form and allow him to remake the avatar in a different shape—a potentially critical advantage in the middle of a fight. The ancient book of duelism that Tala and Bayan had found under the Temple told him and his hexmates that such a practice had been commonplace long ago, but it had fallen out of favor along with the potioneers. But no self-respecting Dunfarroghan would ignore an advantage in battle simply because it wasn’t socially acceptable.

Calder pressed his pocket flap tight and turned his attention back to Teos, whose avatar was busy ripping out the next chunk of rock. Calder studied the sheer cliffs that ringed the Godsmaw for as far northward as he could see. “Bloody contrary water,” he called to Teos. “When I first arrived, I dinna understand why everyone used the Karkhedonian term for the Gyre when the rest of the empire stuck to the Waarden word.”

“Your face, I remember it during your first storm,” Teos called back. “Your trousers, you nearly soiled them.”

Calder shuddered. “Aye. ‘Godsmaw’ has the proper ring of terror to it.”

His eyes swung south toward Muggenhem and the broad, open beach that formed the public docks. Villagers swarmed the sand like ants, sawing tree trunks into replacement planks for their lost docks, forming shovel lines that redistributed the sand deposited by the last storm and smoothing the dunes. Others floated off shore on barges as the men aboard attempted to replace the sunken pilings that had become lurking, jagged teeth, hungry for boat keels.

The Godsmaw looked calm, but Calder knew it was a rarity. The swirling sea got restless during winter storms, and he couldn’t wait for the warming of spring to tame the wild waves. He’d spent too many days that winter smoothing unruly dunes. The winter before that, Calder had been new to the duel den, and Hanna, the Head Duelist, had crammed his mind with far too much social etiquette.
Kiwani should have been assigned to this duel den
.
She already knows all those unspoken rules.
I was probably the worst choice of all of us for such a posh placement.
His expression soured.
Sure an’ that’s why they stuck me with it
.

Calder’s water jets accepted another heavy chunk of stone from the wiggly green arms of Teos’s avatar. Beneath his calm surface, Calder felt his irritation grow.
Aye, we got scattered to the winds.
But thanks to Tala, we all still train. I’m a hexmage in truth, aye, but I canna show any of my new skills without risking everyone else’s security, too. The flip side of the savant coin is a bitch and for certain. The emperor knew what he was about when he ordered us hexmates topped out at Avatar Duelist. Tarin and Taban may be able to bend the rules way out east in the wildlands of Nunaa, but they’ve stuck me straight in the heart of the empire’s nobles, and no one clings to tradition more than they do, not even the Duelist Academy. And that’s saying something.

“Am I boring you?”

Calder snapped out of his dark funk. “Sorry.” Fogbreath spun up a vortex to receive the rock Teos’s avatar offered.

Teos looked up at him from the damp sand and crossed his long, lanky arms.

Calder swallowed hard.

“Come down here for a moment.”

Calder swished onto the beach, landing safely on the sand without even dampening his boots. “My fault. I’ll attune better to your avatar.”

Teos didn’t answer right away. He glanced to the right, down the beach toward the hive of activity, then out to sea, then back at Calder. “I’ve seen you leave. Hushed voices, I hear them late at night in your room. And then you just disappear. One time, I saw you vanish through a bright circle in the middle of your room.”

Oh, sints.
“It isna what you think, I’m just… There’s this girl. Tala. She’s a Singer, she can portal. Sometimes she comes to see me, and we… We go.”

Teos raised a doubtful eyebrow. “That’s not what I’m talking about. Your skills, they’re what’s on my mind. I’ve been watching you since you got here, on Hanna’s orders, on account of… let me name it your
situation
.”

Calder ducked his head. He knew exactly what Teos referred to. He’d been in Muggenhem for less than two years, but he’d long since noticed the nobility were good at putting people in their place. And his place, apparently, would always be under suspicion. He hadn’t gotten any duels for nearly a score of holidays after he first arrived. Only his sheer strength at avatar duelism had finally garnered him his share of jobs. And the Muggenhem nobility would never let him forget it.

Teos pursed his lips, and his eyes narrowed. “You’re still not following me, newnik. In the handful of seasons you’ve been here, I’ve actually seen your magic
improve
. You and I, we both know that’s supposed to be impossible. And yet your avatars, they grow consistently larger, especially your Flame avatar, Firedust. You’ve been very careful to avoid spilling your ducats in the mud, and while you have succeeded in some areas, there are things you simply cannot hide. Not from me.”

Calder’s heart rate increased, and he struggled to keep his face impassive. The void wasn’t something he reached for very often, but he did at that moment, desperate for calm.

Teos reached out and tapped a finger against the heavy beads on Calder’s necklace. “Funny how, every so often, you add another bead to this necklace. I can’t help wondering what they mean to you.”

A black stone on the left of the necklace lent Calder its angry focus, and he slapped Teos’s hand aside like it was an irritating mosquito. “Get your own jewelry. I’m no trade duelist to make you pretties by request.”

Heat entered Teos’s pale eyes for a moment. “That favorite phrase of yours, how does it run? ‘Great stupid idiot’? Well, Calder, right now, that’s you. I’m not trying to get you in trouble, you prat. I’m trying to be subtle about asking for your help. I didn’t realize I needed to bash you over the head with one of these rocks to get you to understand me. Dunfarroghans, I thought they were canny.”

Calder froze for a long moment, making sure and sure again, that he understood Teos correctly. Inside, his magic swirled, uncertain. “What do you want from me, then?”

Teos’s eyes shifted up the beach again, then they met Calder’s. He lowered his voice, despite the incessant crash of the Godsmaw waves a stride behind Calder’s heels. “Your skills, teach them to me. Teach me how to improve. Your skills ranked you in the top half of the duel den when you arrived. I’ve been here for fourteen years, but you have dashed right past me with your magical ability. The other duelists, they comment on it when you’re not around. We don’t know what to make of you.”

“You don’t think of me the same way as the nobles do, though.”

“No. We see you when you’re not dueling, too, and we understand what we see when you do duel.”

A smirk pulled at the old flame scar on Calder’s cheek. “Any consensus? Pet theories?”

“Hanna, she says that you just got topped out for political reasons, that you are actually a very strong avatar duelist, and you simply hadn’t reached your potential when you were booted off campus. She says, and many of us agree with her, that being in a duel den, continuing to practice with us, it has simply raised your ability to its top level. That if you had remained on campus, you would have reached this level in the same amount of time.”

Calder shifted his weight and watched seawater seep into his footprint. Something in Teos’s voice told him that his fellow duelist didn’t subscribe to that theory. “You disagree.”

A smile tugged at one corner of Teos’s mouth. “We’ve all heard the rumors about your brush with savantism—that the exile was trying to teach it to you. I know you passed the test that proved you didn’t have wild magic. But that test, it didn’t prove what everyone thought it did, did it? It only proved your magic wasn’t wild. It didn’t prove whether or not you are, in fact, a Duelist Savant. You are. Aren’t you?”

Calm now, easy. There’s no way I trust him, but I think I can be willing to listen a little longer.
Calder jerked his chin down in the affirmative. “Aye, and what’s it to you then?”

Teos eased his shoulders back. “The exile, he taught you. He’s the natural savant, not you. That means he managed to show you how to be like him without killing yourself along the way. I want you to teach that to me. Teach me how to be a savant. It has to be possible.”

A slice of Calder’s soul thrilled at Teos’s request.
Isna this exactly what I’ve always wanted? To have someone else see the value in what we went through. To see how I once saw it: my salvation.
“You don’t even know what it will take.”

Teos gave a dismissive twitch of his head. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll do it. If you can do it while you’re still a student at the academy, I can do it in my duel den. Right?”

Calder gave him a judicious, thoughtful frown. “It’s still winter. Muggenhem is practically deserted. If you train hard, train now, you’ll be ready by the summer crush, and you’ll have more invitation scrolls then you’ll know what to do with.”

The full import of what Teos was about to get seemed to take him by surprise. Calder’s denmate stepped back, maintaining eye contact. Then after a long moment, he dipped his head and swung it to the side, like an oar slipping into a new current. Looking at the beach, he asked, “My first task, what is it?”

Calder grinned. “First, the jetty, as fast as we can. Push it. Push yourself, and push your avatar. Then we’ll see where we stand.”

Teos nodded, and Calder summoned Fogbreath once more, stepping onto its flat, bubbly surface and gliding out over the sea. Teos’s Wood avatar snatched boulder after boulder from the cliff, ripping them from the living rock even faster than before. Yet Calder was always ready for them. No matter how quickly Teos handed over the stones, Calder always had a water vortex ready to receive it. In addition to his speed, Calder began to hurl taunts at Teos, teasing him for being slow, unsteady, and even Akrestoi. Overworked and distracted as he was, Teos never seemed to notice that Calder was controlling several Water vortices at the same time, each one an identical avatar.

Given Calder’s finely honed taunting abilities, it wasn’t long before he had goaded Teos into hurling the stones up through the air, straight from the cliff side. Calder caught every one of them in a vortex, and in just over half the time Teos had scheduled for the task, the two of them had completely replaced the jetty that arced out into the Godsmaw.

Calder wafted back to the beach again, landing beside the sweating, grimacing Teos. “Oh, aye, very well indeed. I think you have potential I can work with.” Disregarding Teos’s flat, hard stare, Calder tossed an arm around the older man’s shoulders and guided him up the beach. “Now, then. Tell me about your boyhood. Any irritating siblings?”

Still grumpy, Teos begin to relate a few anecdotes from his childhood in Pallithea, where he did indeed have an annoying older sister. Calder nodded along, pleased. It seemed that Teos had a very salient emotion to work with for his first bonding.

Calder caught sight of a small rowboat, separate from the barges and their flotilla of tiny support vessels. It pulled away toward the distant, stormy center of the Godsmaw. He’d heard of such final voyages, but he’d never seen one in person before. His feet drifted to a stop.

Teos paused as well and looked out across the waves. “You know we can’t stop the sacrifices, Calder. It is their right and their blessing.”