Chapter 4

A Taste of Potential

Prospect of escaping became a distant thought soon after.

Femira wasn’t sure if she even wanted to escape. What do I have to escape to? A bunk in Lichtin’s safehouse? Safe was not an apt description of the place either as most of his crew were thugs. Her brothers had protected her from some of the worst, but they were both gone now. They were in the ground, like everyone else who ever tried to care for her. She wasn’t sure how long she had slept, there weren't any windows in their hold so she couldn’t even tell if it was still daylight or not. Soldiers came and left, dropping off crates of looted spoils from the palace, she would hear them argue over ‘quarters’ — sounded like the shit end of the stick to Femira. You risk your life in a battle and for everything you find, you only get a quarter of it and the rest goes back to the army or your boss or something like that. I suppose it’s not much different to me having to give half of what I steal to Lichtin. She toyed with the earthstone still around her neck, ‘if you run off with that, trust me, girl I will find you. And you’ll be fucking sorry you crossed me’, Lichtin loved to remind her of all the things she’d be sorry for doing or not doing. Well, you’ve been crossed Lichtin and I’m not sorry… yet.

She had noted when she woke that some of her group had changed. Not as many highborn as before, mixed in were some servants and other palace workers in their purple and blue liveries. Officers would come, take some people and leave. Sometimes they dropped new people off. All of them were confused and terrified, as if this was the worst place in the world to be. A lot of worse places right here in your own disgusting city, trust me. Altareans in palace staff uniforms came eventually with food every few hours, being escorted by a Reldoni soldier they often brought news for the group. From what Femira gathered; there were still remnants of stormguards holed up in different parts of the palace still fighting. Still! The King was definitely dead as were most of the royal family who resisted. Most highborn had either surrendered or were captured. That Keiran highborn, Lady Annali, it seemed had finally stopped resisting and was apparently aboard one of the warships. King Amenia Solodan’s infant son was now the only member of the Altarean royal family still alive.

An important looking soldier came after a while and announced he was looking for ‘Vreth’. It had taken an embarrassingly long time for Femira to remember that she was Vreth. The soldier took her to another similar hold in the ship but with nicer bedding. She was fed again, slept more and when she awoke the ship was heaving in repetitive lurches. She woke to General Garld entering the hold, he told the other Altareans and soldiers to leave and made his way to her sleeping cot, pulling a wooden chair from the single table in the room. He was still wearing the same stiff dark red uniform she had seen him in before.

“I had half expected you to slip past your guards and disappear, little Vreth,” he said with a smirk.

“I considered it,” she replied, sitting up in her sleeping mat. She felt unrested despite the amount of sleep she’d had, “But you’ve made a tempting offer. Besides, why would I give up all of this,” she said gesturing around the room; a dozen sleeping cots aligned in a tight row, each with its own grimy bucket for washing with, there was a shared table and a couple of chairs that they ate at. Adjoining the room was another privy where they could shit in a bucket and have one of the Reldoni soldiers empty it over the side of the ship. If that isn’t luxury, I don’t know what is.

“My apologies, I couldn't find you sooner. As you might guess, I was preoccupied with the take-over administration”

“Take-over administration,” she mused, “is that fancy talk for ransacking and stealing—don’t get me wrong, I’m all for it—Never liked the Altarean highborn much myself. And I can’t exactly judge someone for stealing now can I?”

“Your work for me will be much the same as it was before,” he said, “I was impressed by your skills in Osiri. To make it that far on your own, with such little resources. You’re from Keiran, yes?” People loved to point that out all the time, her dark skin was like holding a big sign that said ‘Hey! Just so you know, I’m Keiran!’ So why did people always have to state the fact to her? - She didn’t respond and they spent a few uncomfortable moments just watching eachother.

“If we’re to work together, we’ll need to learn to trust one another,” he said eventually.

“Why do you need me? Do you not have a thousand soldiers out there to kill for you?”

“On this ship, not so much as that,” he replied with a smile, “but there are some tasks that require a more subtle approach than a team of soldiers swinging swords. I saw what you did in Osiri, how you opened that door. Pulling in that much metal so quickly, even for my most talented stonebreakers, it would have taken days, yet you managed it in—what?—a few hours, if even?”

She nodded, “maybe an hour” she replied.

“And I’m going to take a guess here that you have yet to learn shaping,” he said, looking pointedly at the still glowing earthstone around her neck. She’d thought once that maybe it just re-charged over time and so she had avoided giving the runestone back to Lichtin for a week, but the time hadn’t dulled the light even slightly. Don’t run before you can walk child, he would chime at her whenever she asked him how to drain the light. And so, she was bound to always return to him.

“Of course I can,” she lied. Garld narrowed his eyes at her. Then got up from his seat, “I will not work with you if you continue to lie to me” he said and moved to leave.

“Fine!—Ok, I’m sorry I don't know how to use it properly, not yet. Lichtin, my boss—former boss—wouldn’t show me. I’d been trying to figure it out on my own but...”

He sat back down on his chair, and leaned close to her. “May I?” he said, reaching for the earthstone around her neck. She nodded stiffly, uncomfortable with the idea of him taking her only valuable possession. His hand clasped around it but he didn’t make any moves to yank it from it’s cord, instead he raised his other free hand in the air and in it black sand gradually began to appear from nothing. More and more of it coalesced, floating and twirling above his open palm. The sand began to consolidate into a rough solid black rock — the same type of rock that the Altarean palace was built on, that Femira had climbed, sinking her hands into. Gears in Femira’s mind were aligning for the first time as the runestone finally made sense to her. It just moves the stone. It doesn’t dissolve or destroy. It holds it! She leaned back on her cot stunned, not in awe of what she had seen but in shock over her own stupidity for not realising it sooner.

“You have never seen stoneshaping?” Garld asked, seeming genuinely surprised.

“He never showed me this,”

“I can teach you, nothing will be held back, I promise you. But you must learn to trust me”

“How?—Not the trust part—How do you do that?” She asked, eagerly pointing at the lump of black rock in his hand. Answers to the secrets she’d been craving ever since Lichtin first lent her the earthstone a year ago.

“It’s a simple technique, once you know the basics. It will take time to learn, very few can master it. I, myself, would be considered an amatuer. But I have stonebreakers in my ranks that will teach you.” he said, and then abruptly changed the conversation, “Can you speak Keiran?”

She was so rapt by his promise of knowledge that she didn’t even notice that he had switched to Keiran to ask the question.

“Yes,” she answered in the same language, “I was born there”

“Good,” he replied, switching back to common, “how are your fighting skills? I’m guessing you haven’t had much formal training, but have you ever fought armed before?”

“Fist fits, yes. A lot. With knives, not so much,” she answered quickly and then continued before he had the chance to push her for further questions, “Does stoneshaping make the light fade from the stone? And when can your stonebreakers show me how to do it?”

“This is called the transference, when you draw in the mass of rock or metal it is converted to energy in the earthstone — this is the light that you see — when you siphon the energy away and back into physical form, the light fades. When we return to Epilas, your full training will begin. But first, my questions. How long have you lived in Altarea?”

“My mother took me and my brothers here when I was very small—younger than ten, maybe—I can’t remember,” she said and then salted with her customary lie, “she died sooner after we arrived” She might as well have for all the woman had done for Femira.

“I see,” he nodded, “I’m sorry to hear that. Will any of the Altarean highborn recognise you?”

“If they did, I wouldn’t be a very good burglar now, would I?”

“You’ve never worked for any of them before is what I mean”

“No, I only worked with Lichtin. He would get the jobs and assign them.”

“You said you worked alone when you broke into Osiri, did you know what you were looking for?”

“I was working alone—I paid off a palace guard for information on the layout of Osiri. He was the one who told me about the room with the metal door,” she didn’t want to tell him that is was Lichtin that had strong-armed the stormguard with his skaga addiction to garner the information, a part of her loved that Garld thought she had done it all on her own. And I pretty much did. I was the one that did all the hard part of actually getting inside the palace. She continued, “I didn’t know for sure what would be inside, but it’s pretty clear if someone makes a big door out of metal, they’ve got something valuable they’re hiding.”

“How did you know where the soulstone was hidden?” soulstone? This topic gave him an intensity that made Femira withdraw slightly.

“The diamond chip?” She asked

“Yes.”

“I knew they were hiding something” she responded truthfully, “it didn’t make sense to store all that stormstone in one place. Even if you do have mounds of it, it’s smarter to stash smaller caches. The whole place just seemed off and then I noticed that column just looked out of place, it was just a guess that it was hidden in there.”

“You have good instincts,” He replied, “those columns didn’t look stoneshaped, not many people would have guessed something was hidden inside. The jobs I have in mind for you will have need for this ingenuity.”

Femira suspected in the back of her mind that Garld was similar to Lichtin, he would use her desire to learn more of stoneshaping to get her to keep coming back to him and working for him. Despite his words that he was offering up all this knowledge up front.

“Are any of your stonebreakers on this ship, can they show me now?” She asked. Garld leaned back on his chair assessing her. He was silent a moment before calling out to the soldiers waiting outside.

“Misandrei,” he called out and a tall Reldoni soldier entered the room, “is one of our elite.” The woman had short burnt-red hair, and striking blue eyes. She had a strong build and Femira noticed that her black uniform differed from the other Reldoni soldiers slightly. It was trimmed with silver and she had steel pauldrons emblazoned with a shield. It was not unlike Garld’s own uniform but seemed more practical, it looked like—if she needed to—the soldier could very easily fight in it.

“She is one of the most skilled soldiers in our ranks, adept in stonebreaking and the other elemental runestones. In our ranks, she is what we call a bloodshedder.” Femira couldn’t help but feel intimidated by the imposing woman, she nodded to Femira in acknowledgement.

“Lady Annali will be training with you for the duration of our return trip to Epilas, she is already quite an accomplished stonebreaker but she will require assistance in mastering stoneshaping, and the other runestones. Her bloodshedder training will begin in earnest upon our return to Epilas,” Garld said.

“It would be my pleasure to train you, Lady Annali. The other highborn have proven more reluctant than yourself to learn our Reldoni ways of runewielding.” Femira was dumbfounded.

Lady Annali?

She recalled the other Keiran woman she had seen in the palace, the one who had argued with Darza and Garld. She remained slightly agape, looking between Garld and Misandrei. Garld nodded slightly and rose from his seat.

“I will check in on you again in a few days, Lady Annali. I hope you find the journey to Epilas to be educational” Garld said and then left the room unceremoniously. Leaving her alone with the bloodshedder.

This woman has answers.

“I want to learn how to stoneshape,” Femira said, abruptly sweeping aside her concern over Garld calling her Annali and holding up her glowing earthstone, “how do I drain the light from this?”

“You can stonebreak already?” Misandrei asked, stepping closer to Femira. Femira was not particularly tall to begin with and sitting on her small sleeping cot Misandrei towered over her. Femira nodded.

“The transference, the feeling when you draw rock into the stone,” Misandrei said.

“The vibrations?” Femira asked.

“Yes, some describe it like that. Like a pulsing, you can feel it now?”

Femira closed her eyes, and tried to feel the vibrations. She gripped the earthstone in her non-bandaged hand, the familiar pulsations running up her arm as she did so. She nodded.

“Good, this is the transference. You already hold the energy in your body, you need to make it take form in your mind. Hold out your other hand.” Femira did as commanded, and held out the palm of her bandaged hand.

“Concentrate,” Misandrei said, “feel the energy move through your body and guide it into that hand” Femira kept her eyes closed and felt the pulsations moving up her arm, and brought her attention to other parts of her body, the pulsing seemed to shift through her. Why had I never tried this before? It seemed so obvious now. She focused on her chest and felt the vibrations thrum against in her heart and breastbone. She shifted her focus to her open hand and felt the vibrations move to congregate there. Her hand shook with it.

“Good, now force this energy from your body,”

Femira wasn’t exactly sure how but she focused on expelling the vibrations out from her hand. A cloud of dust and sand exploded from her hand. Femira let out a shameful yelp and jumped at the sudden burst, getting a mouthful of grit and dust. Misandrei, calmly brushed the dust from her uniform and bits of gravel from her hair.

“Interesting,” she said, “you’re not as practised as I thought”

“Well I have—”

“—Not a question,” Misandrei interrupted, holding up her hand, “you are clumsy… but not without talent and—with practice—you might be useful”

Clumsy! She thought incredulously, she was Vreth! She climbed the Altarean palace wall undetected, she had stolen Lady Harestas jewels when she was in the same room, albeit she was asleep—and Femira had in fact woken the woman when she had crept back out the window, but still!

“You will practice more, I will have you moved to a private cabin as befits your station,” she said looking around at the tightly packed sleeping cots, “this will also protect your Altarean friends from stray chunks of rock flying into their faces, I think.”