The Dukes of Odwego finds Astra (secret necromancer, former nun, and displaced librarian of Qordashi) drifting ever farther from the only life she knew and deeper into a world she never expected to see. The powerful, winding Hoshikwazu river leads her, her injured best friend Traz, and the ever-enigmatic Xavai to a city that glitters with wealth but reeks of corruption. Within its walls, sour magic whispers, alliances shift like silt, and every kindness hides a price. To save the people she loves, Astra must rely on her wits, her courage, and maybe, maybe, a little necromancy.
Previously: Astra saw what she’s not supposed to...
Astra walked through the dark hallway to the inn’s courtyard, feeling woozy from working so hard on the translation. Reading the first book had been relatively easy, but translating it was slow going and mentally taxing. It was familiar work, and she was used to what Zochur had called “reader’s hangover,” but that made it no less exhausting.
She stopped when she got into the courtyard and stared.
Traz was on a pallet bed, propped up and awake, although looking half asleep with his eyes nearly closed as he basked in the late afternoon sunlight. Xavai sat on a stool next to him, whittling a small, white piece of wood. Around them sat what was perhaps one large family: a giant of a man holding a baby, three young children screeching and running around the courtyard at breakneck speed, and an elderly woman working with a drop spindle.
The woman looked up. “Ahhhh! Your wife!” She cawed and waved Astra over to her side.
Astra approached diffidently, looking at Xavai for an explanation, but he focused on the wood in his hands and ignored her. The woman patted the ground next to her, and Astra, too used to following the orders of old nuns, sat down promptly and took the drop spindle the woman wordlessly handed her. She watched Astra work with a slight frown—Astra had only basic training in fiber arts, enough to pass her preliminary exams—and then corrected her movements before moving to pick up something that was very odd. She was holding two sharp sticks and wrapping yarn around them as they clacked together, creating a weaving of some kind.
“What is that?” Astra motioned at the project while trying not to break the yarn she was spinning.
“Knitting.”
Astra studied it. “You are using sticks to tie knots?”
The woman looked at her like she was the crazy one. “Knitting! Have you never seen anyone knit before?”
“No, although it reminds me of nalbinding. I was never very good at it,” she hurried to add, lest the woman decided to try and teach her the esoteric art she was practicing.
“Harumph. Nalbinding uses one needle, I am using two, to create loops. It is a practice my mother taught me.” She focused on her project again.
“We are from Pheke,” the man offered by way of explanation.
Astra stopped the spindle before she dropped it. “But that is on the Gilded Plateau!”
He sighed in agreement. “The snow dragons have made Bitter Pass impossible to travel, and the trade caravans cannot get through. My wife is a horse doctor. She joined one of the last caravans to come through, headed to Tsaka. We mean to join her there.”
Astra made a general noise of agreement. The old woman poked her in the side and she got back to focusing on spinning again. She glanced up to see Traz smirking at her, probably because he had always been much better at such work, his hands stronger and more agile. She stuck her tongue out at him and was pleased when he let out a sputtering laugh. Xavai glanced between them, but contributed nothing.
There was little else to do until dinner, and Traz was obviously free of pain for the moment, so Astra kept at her inept spinning while the children yodeled and tripped over each other and the old woman chattered about how spicy all the food was in Odwego.
“What is your name?” She finally asked Astra.
“Ashatur.”
“I am Lectra. That is my son Bosippo.”
“Are you sure you want me spinning this?” Astra held up her meager attempts.
“Practice makes perfect. You need to sharpen your skills to make a good wife.”
Astra did not groan, but Xavai snickered loudly. “She makes for a terrible wife, she loves her books more than any husband.”
“Hey!” Astra sat up, duly affronted.
“There are those who prefer the bookish kind, I suppose,” Lectra said politely, eyeing Astra’s presumed husband. “Your children will be smart, at least?”
Xavai snickered again and Astra threw him a hostile look, which he of course ignored. Then a child slammed into his back and started crawling up onto his shoulders and he nearly staggered off the stool, dropping his wood and knife.
“Enon!” Bosippo bellowed at his son.
In one smooth motion Xavai stood up, reaching for the boy as he moved and tossing him like a sack of beets over his shoulder. He grabbed his ankles and held Enon upside down in front of him while the boy hollered for mercy.
“Dump him in the pond. He can swim,” Bosippo said dismissively, and the boy howled.
“Sorry! Sorry!” He repeated it a dozen more times as Xavai walked over to the fish pond.
“Don’t jump on men holding knives!” Xavai said fiercely. Enon’s apologies stuttered to a halt. “You understand, boy-child?”
Enon nodded, his eyes tearing up.
Xavai let one hand go and wrapped it around Enon’s waist, righting him before setting him down. Then he squatted down in front of him. “What did you mean to do?”
Enon whispered something in a language Astra did not recognize.
“He thinks he’s a wrestler like Harato,” Bosippo said with a sigh, bouncing the infant in his arms.
“The God of Snakes?” Astra asked, having read the myth.
Bosippo nodded.
Xavai looked at the boy, who trembled under the fierce warrior’s gaze. “Tumble first, wrestle second. Here. We fall.” He motioned the boy over to a grassy area. Enon’s sisters followed cautiously and soon it was a full on comedy show as Xavai taught the children how to fall down, roll backwards, and tumble forwards without hurting themselves, or leaving vulnerable body parts open to attack. Bosippo stared at them all in a state of wonder, while Lectra looked on fondly.
“Teach them how to kick! It’s a good defense for children!” Traz called out.
“I am a farmer, this is not something I would know,” Bosippo admitted softly to Astra.
“My husband certainly knows how to kick,” she said, and he laughed loudly.
After a while, Xavai left the children to practice on their own, and came back over to pick up his whittling again. He glanced at Bosippo. “I hope I did not overstep, good father.”
“Not at all, I appreciate it. Times are dangerous now, and everything my children learn that can help protect them…I cannot do anything other than thank you for that. You obviously know wrestling well. I prefer a good teacher for them.”
“Hard times, indeed,” Traz chimed in.
“As you would know,” Bosippo said with a grimace, looking at Traz’s bandaged shoulder.
“It seems much is changing, and no one knows why,” Astra sighed.
“Bad luck!” Lecta announced without looking up from her knitting.
“Luck is not one of the Winds,” Astra said by rote. Traz nodded, but the others looked at her oddly. She shrugged, because it was true.
“Perhaps. But they say the Lost City is burning!” The old woman cackled.
Traz continued to lay on his pallet, still as stone, but Astra knew all too well that meant he was listening in carefully. Xavai focused on whittling, although his shoulders were tense.
“Before we were attacked, we saw distant smoke off Broken Hump mountain. But I have never heard tell of a city there,” Astra said dismissively, continuing to spin the drop spindle.
Bosippo shook his head, never looking up from the dozing baby in his arms. “It’s an old Feld legend. Doesn’t mean anything.”
“I know many legends, good father, but none of a lost city,” Xavai said, still focusing on his knife and wood.
Lectra cackled again. “I shall tell you! It was a city of weavers, adherents to a lost god of looms and thread.” She plucked at the thread of yarn Astra was working on, laughing again when Astra yanked it away from her. “They coveted a cloth belonging to a great sorceress of the East, and used trickery to steal it from her. She put a dragon in thrall to her and rode it over the Gilded Plateau to find the weavers, but they had found a way to magic themselves away in the blue forests, never to be seen again. In vengeance, she cursed the forests to a living death, so that they could not sustain the people of the city. But it is said by some that the city still exists, that the people are as gaunt as stick men, forever locked in hiding and also forever cursed.” She leaned back, pleased at the terrible fate of the city. “If it is burning, it means the curse was broken,” she said with a grim smile.
Xavai snorted, still whittling. “As you say, blessed grandmother. But I have never seen or heard of such a thing, and do not believe in curses.”
It was Bosippo’s turn to snort. “You speak like a follower Olah’ah, not a believer in the Gods of the Four Winds.” He shushed the baby. “Whatever the legend says, the important part of it is that the Lost City would be revealed when the Dragon’s Grail is found. So you see, tongues are wagging about it. That, and the attack on the ancient Qordashi monastery…ah, it’s going to be bad times.”
Lectra nodded. “Yes.”
Astra tried to focus on the spindle. “No one will find the Grail. I doubt it is even lost. I put my bets on the fire dragons; they have it.”
Bosippo nodded thoughtfully. “I suppose that makes the most sense. But it was nearly a year ago that all these strange things started happening, and word has been coming in for far longer than that of unrest in the far east, past the Gautwoull Steppes. Whatever magical discord started there has been making its way West for a good while. It is said—” he leaned over, lowering his voice. “It is said that the mighty kingdom of Am’Ayat is readying for war, and their king has sent out men to find the Grail, to save him from ruin.”
Xavai’s whittling turned a little ferocious, but their companions did not seem to notice.
“We have seen no such men,” Astra said, focusing on the spindle. “Have you?”
“No, but our travels are counter to theirs, I suppose,” Bosippo admitted, turning his attention back to the baby in his arms.
Astra looked cautiously over at Traz, who held her gaze for just a moment. She knew they had both come to the same thought, as Xavai whittled with more force than the soft wood allowed: what if the Dragon’s Grail itself was at the heart of all the strange and terrible things plaguing the world?
Next: Duke Fari’o and the Dolphin
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