50

Ash

“Wake! You were meant to be up!” my inner voice cuts through my dreams.

I’m jolted by a knock at the door that quickly turns into pounding. My eyes don’t open, and my arms and legs are dead weights. “Come in,” I speak into my pillow.

The pounding continues.

I lift my head. “Come in!”

“It’s locked.”

B’rack the bones, it is. “Hang on.” I swing my legs over the side of the bed and wiggle into sheepskin-lined boots. It’s freezing in here. Over my nightdress goes my winter coat and I head for the door, glancing at the window. There hasn’t been a hint of the shadow all week and thank the old gods for that. My recording duties, with the shortened time on Aku, have accelerated, and so has the research. I was up late last night, delving deeper and deeper, but hit a wall. It’s exhausting. Kaylin’s been gone every night—I’m not sure he ever sleeps—which has been disappointing, but still, no nightmares, no tapping.

I swing the door wide.

“You aren’t ready?” Marcus strides in. “We’re late.”

I yawn. “For what?”

“Festival day? Don’t tell me you forgot.”

I most definitely did forget.

Marcus groans. “Hurry up, Ash. The best spots are already gone.”

I sweep my clothes off the back of a chair, shuck my coat, and dash to the en suite. “Get my pack, will you?” I come tearing out a moment later, face wet, buttons undone.

He throws me a towel.

“Where’s my hairbrush?”

“Use your fingers. Let’s go.”

I thump down the steps with only one hand in my coat sleeve, a piece of last night’s bread in the other. “Has it started?”

“Not yet.” We burst out of the hall and into the crowded street. All of Aku is gathered on the training field, leaving clear a large, raised platform in the center and five wide “spokes” leading to it through the crowd. Most of the audience sits cross-legged on blankets, or lie propped on elbows, chatting to their neighbors, cheering for it all to begin. Food vendors circle the grounds offering all kinds of divine-smelling drinks and snacks, but Marcus won’t slow down.

I spot Belair’s red hair as he scans our way and waves.

“He’s saved us places.” Marcus pulls me along.

I hurry to keep up as a huge gong sounds, followed by clacking bone sticks, warning us that it’s about to start. Every year on Aku, when training is in full swing, they declare a festival, a day of performances called the Spectacle of Realms. For the initiates, it’s mostly about eating way too many sweet cakes, dancing in the drum circles, and playing games of chance and wit, but also, each realm shares their traditional dances, stories, and songs at set times throughout the day and night. How could I have lost track?

“Perhaps your mounting workload explains it?”

I guess it does.

I look around for Kaylin, wondering if he’s watching, but all I see is a mass of colored robes and cowls.

Yuki steps up to a thunder of cheers, gives a short speech, and instructs us to have fun. Whatever cloud of concern she had when we met isn’t showing in the slightest. I find myself cheering along with the best of them, until Marcus interrupts me.

“I learned something about her last night,” he says, leaning in.

“Go on.”

“The Nonnovan war dance!” Belair points as the performers make their way up the spokes to the raised platform in stylized, exaggerated movements. The only music comes from the women chanting in the background, a fiery chorus. They all wear leather armor breastplates and split skirts of leather and chain, with red and black snakes painted around their bare arms. I startle, pulling on Marcus’s sleeve. Some of the snakes are live, phantom or not, I can’t tell from here.

Soon bells, whistles, and drums join the chorus, creating a staccato beat that rises to the sky. Even if I was savant, I wouldn’t want to face such ferocity, spears thrusting and stabbing in mock battle.

I lean against Marcus and whisper in his ear. “Tell me more about Yuki.”

“You know how you overheard that five messengers were sent when we arrived, not just one?”

I nod, eyes on the performance.

“Those ships are missing. Sunk, they think.”

“Deliberately?”

“Five separate ships accidentally sinking within days of one another? Has to be an attack.”

“By whom?”

His face darkens. “Don’t know, but Yuki was going to inform the realms of the Gollnar and Aturnian alliance. Now Father doesn’t know anything about it.”

I let my breath out in a rush. “Worse, Marcus. It means your father doesn’t even know we arrived.”

The dance finishes and I look over my shoulder toward the harbor. There, far away, a figure stands on the stable rooftop, watching. I know by the regal posture it’s Kaylin. “Always in the crow’s nest.”

Marcus sees him, too. “What’s he doing up there?”

“Watching the performance?”

“Looks to me like he’s watching you.”

“Hardly.” I let slip a nervous laugh as my face heats.

“The Gollnar hunting dance!” Belair waves at the performers running and tumbling with their colorful silk robes and streamers. The music shifts in tempo and sound, the field filled with rhythmic tambourines and lilting reed pipes. Their movements are like bouquets of flowers bursting into the sky and raining down on us.

Marcus is back in my ear again. “Ash, don’t get me wrong. I’m glad Kaylin is here, especially when I can’t be, and I know you’re friends…”

“But?”

He hesitates.

“There’s been no breaking of the initiate journey rules of conduct, if that’s what has you worried.” I think about the kissing and clear my throat. “We did, um. I mean, there was a moment, or two…in the library.”

He waves it away. “I don’t care that you broke in. The information you gained is important, and you’ll put it back, right?”

“We’re going to, yes, but what I wanted to say is, we kissed.” I wait, but he doesn’t speak. “It will not happen again. Nothing in all of Amassia would keep me from my task as your and Belair’s recorder.”

“I’m a task, am I?” The audience applauds the dancers on stage like a thunderstorm.

I punch him in the arm, and he grunts. “Marcus, I promise you, I am pledged to my—”

“Duty?”

“Privilege!” My eyes well. “Your friendship has always been that to me, ever since our first day on the training field. You’re my champion.”

He nods like an overlord. “And don’t you forget it.”

I’m about to cry when I see it. His eyes, they sparkle. He’s laughing at me! I laugh back and punch him again just for making me worry. We chuckle until a hush comes over the training ground. Extraordinary music strikes up, slow at first but building until every hair on my body stands out.

I close my eyes and drink in the harmonies. “They’re playing the whistle bones.”

When I look again, black-robes advance up the spokes. The novices with shaved heads beat bone drums and the elders with long, decorated locks play the whistle bones. They float to the stage in a dance that has the whole crowd enthralled. In their long robes, it appears their feet never touch the ground. They play and chant, their phantoms undulating around them like curtains of light, evoking the distant stars, the folds in the sea before sunrise, and the secrets hidden in the deepest parts of the forests. I can’t pull my eyes away.

There’s a breath-holding silence when they finish, followed by deafening applause. I look down, realizing I’ve gripped Marcus’s arm like a vise. The Baiseen Bone Throwers seldom perform in public, at least not in any events I can attend. It’s extraordinary. I hope they will do it again tonight.

They exit down the spokes with a livelier tune and the Sierraks take their place on stage, brassy horns blaring as they perform the Dance of the Four Elements. I know this one and cheer. The performers for each element wear brilliant colors—red for Fire, green for Earth, yellow for Air, and blue for Water. When they enact the water story, a romance between the sea and a river nymph, I lean forward, taking in every sound and nuance.

“This is better than I even thought it would be.” Belair cheers with us when it’s over. “What next?”

“Breakfast!” I beam a smile. “As your dutiful recorder, I think you two should buy a big one for me. There are pancakes today, I hear.”

“I’ll get you a stack two miles high,” Belair says.

“And apple butter? Melted on top?”

“Anything you like.” Marcus stands first and helps me up.

I smile and squeeze his arm again. But we hold each other’s gaze and slowly the corners of my mouth turn down.

Five ships lost. Messages not delivered. One more week for us here on Aku, and much still to be done. What more could possibly go wrong?