He was rarely called upon by the stewards or sectorians—even the richest of them—but more often by the King of Fyrio, his governors, or the small council members of Hearthenge. It was said that the King was the only person left in the kingdom to remain in debt to the man. The price was too high for the rest of us. All the stewards bearing his mark had died within a year of obtaining it, the burden of their debt crushing them into their graves. The sectorians were said to last longer—sometimes years—but never as long as the King of Fyrio.
I grew rigid with cold as his eyes drifted from my face to my toes, an icy vapour breathing onto every inch under examination. He noted the rip in the knee of my pants. The loose, windswept tendrils of hair about my face. My bare feet. The dirt on my toes. The burn on my neck, just above the collar of my shirt. The gooseflesh on my arms. That strange, icy gaze touched every part of me and then passed clean through me. Once his assessment was complete, he released a sound. Gravelly, utterly without inflection. It gave away nothing, and yet it seemed to drip with dissatisfaction all the same.
He took a step closer, and I matched it with a quick step backwards, the icy fear inside me quickly melting away to reveal a deeper, more urgent terror.
I had always possessed a stubborn, bullheaded kind of bravery, but this was not a man to be messed with. If fate was a force best left alone, then the Weaver of Fate was a force to expel considerable effort to flee from. At all costs.
“Ex-Excuse me, I was just passing by,” I forced out the words as I finally came to my wits, scurrying to the side. He followed me with his eyes but made no move to stop me, and that was all the opening I needed.
I turned and ran, the water singing out to me as I passed, woefully calling me back. I ignored it, my attention straining so fiercely for any sound of pursuit that I missed the length of fishing wire before me. It caught around my ankle as my other leg slammed into the wooden post that it had been secured to. In a matter of seconds, I was on my knees, the dislodged post in my hands, utter disbelief deflating my shoulders, making my body heavy as I sank into the damp pebbles. The line tugged gently against my grip as the bobbing tide toyed with me. The Weaver’s shadow fell across my back. He knelt behind me, blocking out the rising sun. The smell of the mist clung to him.
“You have chosen your fate, Tempest.” His voice carried through me with so much gravelly force that I felt immediately ill, and the fishing wire began to shake before my eyes.
He had given me a Fated name. A self-fulfilling prophecy. Fated names—while sounding like normal Fyrian words—actually carried the sound of an Aethen word. The language of power. They sounded different to other words, and carried the essence of their meaning in their cadence. When the Weaver spoke the word Tempest, it sounded like violence and death, a violent storm to end storms.
“No.” My voice was strong. Far stronger than I felt. “It was a mistake. I tripped. I didn’t ask for this. Release me from this deal, and you’ll never see me again. By the king of this world and the next, I swear it. I’ll disappear.”
“It is done, and it cannot be undone,” he countered plainly, reaching around me to grasp the wire.
His hand was twice the size of mine. A little darker, covered in scars and callouses from years of casting the vevebre. How many years, I didn’t know. He didn’t have the posture or voice of an old man, though the tales of his deeds seemed to go back—impossibly—for hundreds of years. It was a testament to his great power.
“Stop.” I tried to stand, but I was frozen again. I willed my arm to move and watched as the muscle jumped beneath my skin. I was trying to move, but some unnatural force was preventing me.
Of all the five sectors dividing up the great sectorians, there wasn’t a single one that could have frozen a person to the spot. Not the fate magic of the Skjebre, the soul magic of the Sjel, the war magic of the Vold, the mind magic of the Sinn, nor the spirit magic of the Eloi. There wasn’t a single person—magical or otherwise—who should have been able to seize my body without even an uttered incantation.
The Weaver wrapped the wire around his hand again and again, winding it in as the sun clawed over his shoulder, shedding a bare beam of light onto the back of his hand. He crouched further over me, dousing me in mist and ice, his voice sounding different, as though the voices of many men spoke through his mouth.
“Tempest-born and tempest-dashed, be wary of the forces of chaos that brought you into this world, as they would see you leave it the same way. Bathed in blood and screaming. Look to the deep waters for your fate, for your soul is not your own.”
“Stop.” I threw all my weight into the word and it exploded out of me with a force that shook through us both. “I didn’t ask for it, and I won’t hear it!”
The ring around my finger hummed. It was something that happened whenever my slumbering magic attempted to surface—a magic that I wasn’t supposed to have. The ring worked as a barrier, dousing both my emotions and that little spark of magical energy in cold water, sending it all beneath a heavy blanket. For seven years, it had held strong, but now the silver metal was darkening and burning against my skin. The enchantment that froze my body in place faltered before dissolving away completely, overpowered by the surge of energy that escaped from somewhere deep inside me. I could move again. My magic had broken free.
The Weaver’s cold form slipped away, but I didn’t pause to find out why. The post tumbled from my hands and I surged to my feet without hesitation, dodging posts and striving for the road that would take me home.
To my real fate.
The mist thickened and swelled, trying to envelop me, filling my lungs to overflowing as pain shot through my chest, stars swimming before my eyes. Somehow, that thick haze was becoming a living thing, pleading me with vaporous breath, wrapping me in a smothering embrace, begging me not to flee. My ring burned again and this time I definitely felt my magic answering, leaking out from imagined cracks in the smooth metal, spreading over my skin and bringing clarity back to my vision, allowing me to cut through the fog.
I ran to the stepping stones and made it to the top of the wall without looking back, energy tickling through me and leaking into my muscles. My magic was injecting speed into my step, enhanced focus to my vision, determination to my desperation. The ring was burning painfully hot.
I would get away … because my blood willed it. My birth demanded it. In that moment, it didn’t matter that there would be consequences to my actions. The story that had been hammered into my mind for seven years began to chip away, the words that had easily sprung to my lips so many times before flaking to the back of my mind, drifting about like ashes in the breeze.
I am a steward. I live to serve the great sectorians. I was born without magic. I am unworthy.
None of it was true.
The magic of war ran through my veins, unable to part from me and me from it. It belonged to me just as the magic of fate belonged to the Weaver.
I was not a steward.
I was violence, strength, and power. I belonged to the unbroken sector. The warriors of this world and the next.
I wasn’t unworthy.
I was war.
I was a …
“Vold.”
The word, spoken in the Weaver’s voice, followed me all the way home. It was the word I longed to hear every night in the darkness, an acknowledgment I yearned for every morning as the sun rose … and I had finally heard it as a dogged condemnation, nipping at my heels as I fled from my fate.