Page 3 of Voidwalker (Beasts of the Void #1)

Cardigan chuckled. “Oh, you know. A daeyari passes them off to a governor. Governor slips one to a mistress. And off they go into the world.” He closed the box with a snap. “Other half is yours on delivery.”

Fi weighed the prize, jaw tight as she tallied outstanding debts, a new harness for Aisinay, maybe a second set of silviamesh.

“Load it up,” she said.

Cardigan’s assistant snapped into motion, hauling apple crates from the top row to get at the contraband underneath. Fi tugged Aisinay’s bridle, moving her cart closer for transfer. The Void horse pawed the soil, but a stroke along her scaled neck quietened her.

Fi stepped aside to let the assistant work. Unfortunately, Cardigan joined her. While she stood stoic, hands folded behind her back, he fidgeted with his suit cuffs.

“This delivery,” Cardigan said, “requires the utmost discretion.”

“I have nearly a decade of experience moving cargo between Planes of reality,” Fi recited—because business cards also left a paper trail. “I’m well familiar with navigating among all four Season-Locked Planes, and the Winter Plane especially. Your wine is in good hands.”

“You plan to take the Bridge from Autumn to Winter?”

Fi stood a little stiffer, guard raised. “Seeing as a Bridge is the only way to pass from one Plane to another? Yeah. That’s the plan.”

“What about the customs checkpoint?”

“I won’t be using any public transit routes.”

“You know another way across?”

She held back an eye roll at the poorly veiled prodding. It never worked. “A Void smuggler never shares her routes.”

Most traders and tourists crossed the Bridge from one Plane to another using well-established entrances, bustling transit hubs between worlds—complete with guards and customs officers.

More discreet business called for discreet paths, lesser-known doorways from one reality to the next.

The more hidden routes a smuggler discovered, the greater advantage over competitors and law enforcement.

And Voidwalkers like Fi, able to see the doorways that normal humans couldn’t? The greatest advantage of all.

Cardigan’s assistant lifted the first sealed crate. A box full of wine ought to be heavy, yet he didn’t strain as he shifted the load, producing another clink of glass. Fi scowled.

“And what about the daeyari?” Cardigan prodded.

A chill hit Fi, an old instinct buried in her bones—in the bones of every human raised across these Planes, alert for the predators who stalked their forests.

Her reply came taut. “The daeyari who rules in Thomaskweld is one of the most lenient of his species on the Winter Plane. I assume that’s why you’re shipping there.” Didn’t make the possibility of crossing paths with one of the creatures any more palatable.

“Have you ever met one?”

The chill sharpened, ice through her gut. “Once.” Once was more than enough.

“How do you deal with them?”

“Void smugglers don’t deal with carnivorous immortals, Cardigan. We avoid them.”

The ice on her tongue should have shut him up, but Cardigan laughed. “Not all of you avoid them. Last year, I saw a sentence go out in the territory next door. Execution, for stealing from a governor. Dragged him to the daeyari screaming. Drew a crowd and everything!”

“Charming,” Fi gritted.

Her fist clenched, knuckles tight against silviamesh gloves. She imagined herself serene. Composed. A glassy mountain lake who wasn’t tempted to clock her client in the jaw.

Another crate moved onto her cart. Aisinay flattened her ears, blind eyes tilted to the load.

“I hope you’ll manage better,” Cardigan said. “I’m told you’re familiar with Antal Territory, enough to ensure—”

Fi left him mid-sentence. She pushed past the assistant and smacked her palm to a crate.

Heat swelled at her fingers. Every living creature had energy, a force to keep organs pumping and cells working.

To Shape that energy was a matter of redirecting, leaching out of living tissue and concentrating into physical form.

Fi drew a current from her forearm, fed by a breakfast of toast and too much sweetened coffee.

Cold prickled down her arm as she pulled the energy from her muscles. Hot, as a silver glow condensed in her hand. She pushed, sending a small pulse of her magic into the wood.

Something inside the crate shuddered, static thick enough to taste.

Fi recoiled. “Are these energy capsules ?” Bigger than the glass vessels affixed to her gloves, judging by the current. A type of energy storage like Cardigan’s box of chips, but made for quicker access. Made more volatile .

The assistant looked to the ground. Cardigan’s lips thinned.

“Our goods are our business.”

The nerve. The sheer audacity. “Did you not register my question about potentially explosive materials?”

Cardigan . As Fi rolled over the name, it poked a fuzzy memory, some connection to the energy production sector…

“What does it matter?” he demanded.

“It matters if you’re stacking a fucking bomb on my cart.”

He waved a dismissive hand. “Your payment is more than generous.”

A younger Fi would have backed down. Alone and freshly run away from home, pockets empty and her father’s shouts haunting her heels, the allure of twenty daeyari energy chips would have silenced her sharpest protests.

The allure of twenty daeyari energy chips was still pretty motivating.

Only now, Fi would have them on her terms.

She squared up with Cardigan. He stood taller than her respectable five-foot-seven, but Fi didn’t blink, her irreverent tone and barbed exterior drawn up like a cloak of armor.

“Listen, Cardigan. I’ll deliver this cargo. Because it’s my job, and I’m Void-damned good at my job, or you wouldn’t be here. But for that to happen, you’re going to tell me what’s in those crates, and how dangerous—”

She tensed at the snap of a branch. Aisinay’s ears perked.

Fi moved without thinking. Thinking was a delay, an invitation to take an energy bolt through the neck.

The moment she heard the click of a crossbow, she shoved her clients behind the carts.

A burnt taste laced the air. Two bolts of pure silver energy whizzed past to strike a tree, flaring out with a snap . Bootsteps crunched the leaves.

“Trade wardens!” a man called out in an Autum accent: crisp, and curt, and hand-crafted to ruin Fi’s day. “Come out with your hands up!”

Fi banged her head against the cart, exhaling an emphatic, “ Fuuuck …”

“ Trade wardens? ” Cardigan hissed. “Were you followed?”

“Was I followed?” Fi pointed to the decoy apple crates. “While you’re out for a pleasant stroll with your apples, fifty miles from the closest market ?”

“Can you get rid of them?”

Fi squinted through a slat in the cart, counting four figures. She pressed a hand to her temples, the throb of a hangover set aside, but not forgotten.

Twenty energy chips. Anything less wouldn’t be worth this.

“Sure. This is…” An existential sigh. “ Suboptimal . But I’ve handled worse—”

A rustle of loam was her only warning. Without so much as a “thanks, goodbye,” Cardigan grabbed his assistant and fled into the forest. Fi gawked after them.

That useless coward. That husk of moldy pine needles .

She hissed several more curses as two wardens broke away in pursuit, leaving two to deal with her.

“Fionamara Kolbeck!” one called. “You’re wanted on charges of tax evasion, illegal territorial entry, illegal possession of hazardous substances—”

She banged her head against the cart again, harder. Fuck Fi in the Void, of course they recognized her. One of the perils of rainbow hair. And her glowing personality. Not to mention her all-around iconic approach to the profession of—

“—blackmailing, trespassing, and harassment of livestock. Surrender now!”

She peered out from cover. Two men entered the clearing, uniformed in scarlet jackets with a double row of gold buttons—colors of this territory’s governor.

One wore the badge of the regional police, but the one with the trade warden bars on his chest…

Fi vaguely recalled that wiry mustache tilted in equal displeasure a year ago, when she’d passed a shipment of Summer Plane cinnamon trees under his nose. What a quaint reunion.

Both men raised crossbows, metal constructs with bolts of silver energy Shaped onto the tracks. Standing next to several crates of volatile capsules was the last place Fi wanted to be if those bolts went off. She stepped out of cover with hands raised.

But not before popping an energy capsule off her glove and into her palm.

“Afternoon boys,” she greeted with a smile. “How’s the bounty looking these days?”

The warden twitched his moustache, finger itching for his trigger. “Five chips.”

“ Five? ” Fi scoffed. “Territory next door is offering eight. Get your shit together.”

She clenched her hand, crushing the glass capsule in her palm.

Fi had started charging her own capsules at age twenty-five, after a bootleg one exploded and nearly took her eyebrows off.

She spent too much time sculpting those eyebrows.

Basic Shaping drew energy from her own muscles, but mortal reserves only lasted so long before needing rest and food to replenish.

Pre-charged capsules created an external energy bank to draw from.

A handy power boost, when jobs turned sour.

That, and Fi adored the shock on the warden’s face when the glass cracked in her hand, releasing a pulse of silver energy.

She seized the magic before it could dissipate, fingers curled to Shape the external deluge.

As she clenched a fist, the energy condensed, flashing a shield in time to catch two crossbow bolts fired at her thigh and shoulder.

The air hissed where magic hit magic. Fi’s shield extinguished with a snap.

Her attackers pressed palms to their crossbows, a delay as they Shaped energy into new bolts.

Fi yanked the sword hilt from her belt. She popped another capsule off her glove and cracked it into the base of the hilt. As energy pulsed into the conductive metal, Fi Shaped it to form a silver blade, crackling ozone at the edges.

The warden fired first. Fi dodged. The graze of his bolt stung her shoulder, but her silviamesh diffused most of the energy. She caught his thigh with her blade, a slice that sent him howling to his knees. The second man hadn’t fired yet. Afraid to hit his superior?

His mistake. Fi swung her sword, striking the crossbow where an energy capsule was embedded into the stock. His eyes widened as glass cracked, but no time to react before—

BOOM.

An explosion shook the clearing, rattling leaves from maple trees.

Even with another shield in place, Fi careened backward from the impact.

Three energy capsules exhausted on a single meetup.

What a waste. She caught her footing in the loamy soil, ears ringing.

The trade warden slumped in the dirt, clutching his bloody leg.

The second man sprawled face down. Unmoving.

He might have been dead. Fi avoided that outcome when she could, but survival came first. Especially when the alternative meant getting dragged to a daeyari. Her retirement plans included a cabin in the woods and a century-old bottle of whiskey, not being eaten alive.

Shouts sounded from the forest, a slurry of voices and splintering branches.

Fi had precious seconds to appraise her escape route, the vanished Cardigan, the crates of bombs he’d loaded onto Aisinay’s cart.

Abandoning the load would be easy, and though she grimaced to think of sacrificing a lucrative payout, she could stomach lost funds if it meant saving her neck.

The damage a forfeited job would do to her reputation, however? Unacceptable.

Only the worst cowards let fear get the best of them.

Fi closed the metal compartment of her cart with a latch.

More shrapnel, if the load exploded, but at least nothing would tumble out.

When she vaulted onto Aisinay’s bare back, the Void horse snorted and stomped her hooves.

Fi lay a hand on the beast’s neck, accompanied by a gentle pulse of energy.

Reassurance that she was there. Eyes for both of them.

Aisinay charged forward, the cart rumbling behind.

Fi guided her not with reins, but soft hands on either side of her neck, flicks of energy to urge the blind horse left or right as they dodged between trees.

Impossible to gauge the number of voices swarming the forest, but she wouldn’t stay long enough to find out.

She’d chosen this meeting spot for a reason.

They skidded into a ravine. Deep mud dragged the cart wheels, exposed tree roots lashing Fi’s shoulders like grasping hands. At the end of the ditch: salvation. A distortion rippled the air, the translucent folds of a Curtain, barely visible amidst slanted Autumn sunlight.

At Fi’s urging, Aisinay charged straight in.