Page 37 of Silverbow (The Godsung Saga #1)

nineteen

Louissa

P archment littered Louissa’s writing desk in the room that passed for the best in a shabby little inn in a shabby little northern village.

Supply reports mingled with scribe’s scrolls and tiny scraps carried by pigeon and hawk.

She let out a vexed hiss as she read the report of the burning of the outpost in Trout Run again.

There were two versions of that calamity on her desk.

The official report, the one sent on to Misthol, claimed it was an accident with a forgotten lamp.

But the other held a whisper of a rumor.

A rumor that a girl was seen skulking around the outpost just before it went up in flames.

The fire had burned five city blocks before it could be stopped and it took an armory with it.

She swept the reports aside to run a finger along the map at the bottom of the stack.

Innesh had been an archer. Trout Run, an arsonist. Seemingly unconnected, though both were spawning rumors of rebellion.

Trowbridge sat quiet, but one of the parchments on her desk held a reported sighting of Peytar’s bounty.

It remained to be seen whether or not the trouble would spill beyond the Trydent.

Peytar was making his way up the Queen’s Road. He hadn’t continued on with her from Westforks. She tapped a lacquered fingernail on the dreadful little town. The Westerlands had been quiet until …

What are you up to, Peytar? She skimmed the dates of the reports again. Quiet until he took an interest in the girl who wasn’t what she seemed.

For weeks, Louissa had been puzzling over Enya Ryerson.

She still had little of use to report to Pallas.

She turned back to the map. From Windcross Wells, one could go anywhere.

The next flare up might tell her more, though what she could do about it on this blasted path through the North, she didn’t know.

Crissa

Crissa sat with her arms wrapped around her knees rocking back and forth on the narrow little cot pushed up against the wall.

At least she had a cot in this inn. In the smaller inns that couldn’t accommodate all the wielders and scribes that traveled with Louissa Adler, beds were assigned by rank, and as the newest recruit, she often found herself on a floor or in a barn.

She picked at a loose thread in the hand-me-down wielder blacks she’d been shoved into.

These bore a fire wielder’s badge. Crissa sometimes thought fire would be a better gift.

Water was useless, not that she could wield it at all, and that had made her first few weeks as a new recruit almost unbearable.

The first lesson a recruit learned was that the collar was inescapable. She could not try to escape. She could not think of wanting to escape. She definitely could not touch it. She could not even think of touching it without feeling as if she’d dipped her fingertips into boiling water.

The second lesson a recruit learned was obedience.

To disobey the wielder holding the link was pain.

Through the unseen bond created by a collar and its link, a wielder could inflict the pain of a lash or the slice of a blade with nothing more than a thought.

Even when it sent her to her knees or set her sobbing uncontrollably, when the pain faded, it left no mark.

Not on her skin, anyway. Her soul was another matter entirely.

The third lesson a recruit learned was acceptance. The wielders seemed particularly frustrated with Crissa’s lack of it. Her fate, she could accept, but no matter what they did to her, she couldn’t seem to find her gift, and they considered that a problem of acceptance.

Crissa couldn’t help the whimper that escaped her.

He came every night for her useless lesson, and she could feel his approach through the collar.

It was Recruit Trakaw who most often held her link, though it mattered little.

All of the link holders were the same, but a few seemed to take particular pleasure in delivering punishment to the new recruits.

Recruit Trakaw wasn’t one of them, but she shuddered at the memory of his hand on her waist in the Thornson’s ballroom.

He’d known before her Testing, it seemed.

The hook-nosed black clad wielder let himself in without knocking. “Good evening, Recruit Blakwell.”

He carried his usual bucket of water and set it on the floor between them.

Crissa eyed it like she might have once eyed a bear.

Now, the bear didn’t seem so bad. The bucket, on the other hand, was perhaps her greatest fear.

She started to shake before the lesson even began.

Without twitching a muscle, Recruit Trakaw lifted a stream of water from the bucket and formed it into a little ball that hovered between them.

He beckoned it forward, and the ball went to his hand, where he divided it into three.

He started spinning them between his hands like a court juggler.

“Focus on the space between,” he said in the same bored monotone he always taught in. “Look for the wielding.”

Seeing the wieldings of other water wielders was one of the first steps toward wielding her own gift, but Crissa only stared at empty space, wondering what in Sakaala’s watery domain a wielding was supposed to look like.

“What do you see?” He asked.

She braced for the blow. She didn’t answer, and the lash fell against her back. The three balls rushed toward her and spun as if she were juggling them. She shrank back from the godsong she had no sense of.

“What do you see?”

“N-Nothing, Recruit.”

She whimpered as another blow landed between her shoulders. The balls dropped into the bucket with three wet plops. Recruit Trakaw leaned against the door, his perpetual disappointment evident.

“Blocks are common in wielders that come from families like yours.”

Families like hers. Families where wielders are so openly despised. What must my mother think now? Crissa swallowed. She could never go home, but she supposed it didn’t matter much. She never would go home. She belonged to the crown now.

“Wielder Adler has been asking about your progress,” he went on. “If we do not break the block soon, I will have to give her your link. ”

Crissa’s knuckles went white as she gripped her arms. She saw little of the air wielder, but she knew enough to know that she did not want Louissa Adler to hold her link. Louissa Adler was not someone wielders disappointed.

A stream of water leapt from the bucket and swirled in a ring around the center of the room. “Look for the wielding.”

Crissa braced for the lash that didn’t come when Recruit Trakaw finally let the water fall back into the bucket.

He sighed and stepped toward her. “Perhaps we ought to try something different.”

Crissa held her breath.

“Perhaps, we ought to jump right to wielding.”

Wielding? How am I supposed to wield anything? It was absurd. She could wield no more now than she could in Westforks. “I don’t know how.”

“It comes naturally for some…” He took another step so he was towering over her and Crissa tried to make herself smaller.

He beckoned her forward, a tingle of warning passing through the collar as she tried to resist. Crissa trembled as she slid toward the edge of the cot.

Fear, raw and exhausting from her weeks of knowing nothing but fear, rose in her chest. None of the link holders had raised a hand to her outside of the leash, but Recruit Trakaw stood close enough to share breath.

“...with the right motivation.”

Crissa went rigid as his hand cupped the nape of her neck, and then her face was surrounded by a bubble of water.

She reeled back, trying to pull free, but Recruit Trakaw’s fingers dug in, holding her firmly in place.

Water rushed into her mouth and nose. Pain shot through the collar, seizing her limbs as she tried to jerk away again.

Oh, gods.

When she thought it might never end, Recruit Trakaw released her, and Crissa sat back, coughing and spluttering.

Her eyes streamed from the burn in her throat as she desperately gulped down air.

She eyed the globe of water that floated before her face with horror.

He watched her with an impassive face and went back to juggling again.

Still she could see nothing of his wielding.

She could feel nothing of the gift they claimed she possessed.

“Please,” she whimpered.

“If you want out of the water, Crissa, wield it away.”