She had struck out on her own once before-she’d flown to Vathirond, found Gaven, and rescued him from his pursuers. She could do it again.
On the other hand, leaving Stormhome presented its own set of challenges. House Lyrandar operated the only ships passing to and from the mainland, and it would be hard to find a captain who didn’t know her, at least by reputation. Jordhan would have helped, of course, but he might still be half the world away, as far as she knew. What, then?
She had called in plenty of favors before leaving in search of Gaven the first time, but that was no longer an option. She had also turned much of her wealth into a more portable form, a small bag of tiny, perfect gemstones she kept next to her skin. Selling a single stone would provide her with living expenses for weeks. The money, at least, would serve her well.
If she only had some idea of where to look for Gaven.
Her thoughts were going in circles, running through every possibility she could imagine of finding help, departing the city, and leaving word for Gaven. She replayed the last few days in her mind, from her arrival in Rav Magar to Gaven’s sudden disappearance and Lissa’s farewell. Her dream in the shrine of the Prophecy played itself over and over in her mind-Maelstrom in her hand, portentous words describing the Blasphemer, and the tumult of a battlefield.
A battlefield where she, in her dream, had played a decisive role. Perhaps Gaven had been right and Maelstrom was indeed a sword of legend, the weapon of a champion. In her dream, she had faced the demon at the heart of an army. Could it be that her destiny was to kill that demon, thus preventing or at least putting an end to the devastation described in the Prophecy? The idea turned her stomach. She didn’t want the crowning accomplishment of her life to be ending another life. Any other life.
Her eyes drooped and her head nodded, and she slept where she sat beside the fountain.
Maelstrom clashed against a sword that burned red, a ceramic urn shattered on the cobblestones, and a girl’s shriek jolted Rienne from her sleep.
The sky was a little brighter, and sounds indoors suggested that the household was beginning to stir. A girl of perhaps thirteen cowered behind a pillar, peering out at Rienne with round eyes, pieces of the urn littering the floor around her bare feet. She must have been a serving girl, sent to fetch water for the kitchen or bath, shocked to find a stranger sleeping by the fountain.
“I’m sorry,” Rienne said, and the girl stood a little straighter. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“What are you doing here?” the girl said, but her voice was more curious than frightened.
“I need to speak to the master of the house. But first let me help you clean up that mess.”
“No no, I’ll do it, Lady. After I take you inside.”
Rienne grimaced. Her accent betrayed her noble birth, despite the dirt and dust of travel matted in her hair and plastered to her skin, after months at sea and weeks spent slogging across a distant continent.
“Please,” she said, “it’s my fault. I’ll help you.”
She crouched down and started gathering the larger fragments, stacking them carefully and setting them aside. Hesitantly, the girl joined her, working from the other side.
“What’s your name?” Rienne asked.
“Ava.”
“I’m Rienne.” She smiled at the girl, and Ava finally seemed at ease. “Is the master of this house an artificer, Ava? Working with magic?”
“Not the master, Lady. But my mistress is very skilled.”
The mistress, of course. Why had Rienne assumed it was the man? A thought jolted her to her feet. A female artificer in Stormhome-“Is this Chanda’s house? Chanda ir’Selden?” Chanda and Rienne had been childhood friends and stayed close up until the time that Rienne fell in love with Gaven. Chanda disapproved of Gaven’s adventuring lifestyle, prospecting for dragonshards. Rienne had made a few efforts to get back in touch with her after Gaven’s imprisonment, but she had always been rebuffed.
Ava looked puzzled, but she nodded. “Shall I take you to her, Lady?”
Would Chanda help her now? Not if word had spread that Rienne had helped Gaven after he escaped from Dreadhold. For the sake of their old friendship, Chanda might refrain from summoning the Sentinel Marshals immediately, but she would not help.
“Actually, Ava, it’s probably best if I just get on my way.”
“Should I tell her you were here?”
“Will she punish you for the broken urn?”
Ava shrugged. “She’ll take it out of my wages.”
Rienne produced a silver coin and pressed it into Ava’s hand. “Best not to tell her I was here. Thank you.”
Ava stood gaping at the coin as Rienne slipped out the front door and into the quiet morning street.
As a girl, Rienne had practiced her sword play on a bluff just outside Stormhome, overlooking the crashing waves of the sea. Under the city’s perpetually crystal blue sky, she learned to still her mind and harness the energy flowing through her body. In her adolescence, she came to the same spot to find quiet and search for some sense of peace. She hadn’t been back there in years.
So she slipped out of the city before the streets grew crowded and noisy and retreated there, seeking the same stillness and solitude she had found there in her youth. As the sun cleared the horizon, she drew Maelstrom and moved through the forms of her fencing style, quieting her racing thoughts and focusing in on the still point at her core.
She froze, Maelstrom’s blade before her face, her sword hand pressed against her other palm. “We balance on the razor edge between past and future,” she had said to Gaven, “but that edge is what matters.” She saw Maelstrom’s sharp edge and it became clear.
On one side of the blade, eternity. The unchanging landscape of Argonnessen’s wilds, untouched by the passage of time except the cyclical turning of the seasons. On the other side, history, the constant churn of events, wars, nations, people, and relationships-motion with progress, destination. She felt she stood on the razor edge between, not past and future, but history and eternity. The edge was her destiny, the intrusion of history into the eternity of the world. It was not a foreordained destination, but the result of her action. Her destiny, she realized, was the ultimate consequence of her actions.
What did she want that consequence to be?
She swung Maelstrom in a circle around her. It caught the sun, surrounding her in a ring of blazing light. Sliding the blade back into its sheath, she walked back to the city, a plan forming in her mind.
Leaving the city was a challenge, but one she could overcome. She couldn’t buy passage on a ship to the mainland, so she’d have to stow away. She knew the routines of the harbor well enough to sneak aboard a galleon bound for Thaliost, and she knew the galleons well enough to find hiding places aboard. It was risky, but it was nothing she couldn’t handle, nothing she needed Gaven’s or anyone’s help to accomplish.
She made her way to the harbor, her bedraggled appearance drawing some stares. Among the sailors and merchants at the wharves, she blended in to the crowds. A few inquiries revealed that a galleon would be sailing for Thaliost in a week’s time. She would have liked to leave sooner, but in the meantime she could enjoy a taste of life in the city again. She sold one of the small gemstones she used as a portable form of wealth, since she could no longer access her Kundarak accounts, and spent freely. She savored the taste of anything that wasn’t journeybread. She slept in a bed, on a filthy mattress under scratchy blankets, grateful to be out of her bedroll and off the floor. She bathed and bought new clothes, with the unfortunate consequence that she drew more attention as she walked in the streets. But the sword at her belt frightened off the lonely sailors and drunken revelers who might otherwise have accosted her.