Chapter 2

Desh anannes petur Kayno. Ten years after Kayno.
,

Almost directly east of Lopus, after a distance of three months on camelback, the desert met the ocean. This battleground of sapphire waves and golden sand had washed the coast with greenery. Inside a skirt of its smaller palm trees, a city wall four men high rose to greet the annual rains. This was Pomirus City.

Of all remaining cities not colonized by the northern continents, Pomirus received the most rainfall. Rain season, in fact, had come early this year. Inside its walls lay farm, estate, worker, and industrial districts intersected by cobbled streets and merchant squares. Near the sea, the city’s eastern wall had been beaten away to make way for traders and fishermen, and where Pomirians could not build their ports, boulders and cliffs testified to the stubborn power of the earth. The desert-facing western wall still stood, boasting most of the city’s rich estates and government buildings. At its north, sentries guarded the Great Gates. Temple Hill, its greatest attraction, rested at its south. Just before sunset, students left the school on Temple Hill, apprentices returned home from their masters, while workers left their mills and factories.

A sudden torrent of rain once snuffed out the violet and orange of sunset. The sky turned a morose blend of gray. Soon, the water drenched all traffic returning home, and all the workers unleashed their own torrent of curses. A particular student among them limped by the elaborate pool of Fountain Square. Like other Pomirians, Morin wore overalls over a fisherman’s shirt. He swore to himself in a foreign tongue and slipped on loose cobbles. As he turned onto Traveler’s Street, his sobs and tears joined the pitter patter of trickles from his hair. His attackers had spoken a truth. “You’re not one of us. You don’t even look like your mother, and she’s a yellow-skinned piss!”

Morin reached a particular Gullock’s Inn. Though he had returned early, the ground floor’s tavern had already filled to the brim. A wet reek stung his nose as he navigated a sea of grimy fishermen, gathered at the bar counter and asking for their wooden tubs. One of them shouted to another, “The big shower of the year, Dwane! Haven’t had a good wash in a week!” Meanwhile, the boy twisted his face, reined in his woes, and squeezed through to the stairs.

He and his mother lived on the second floor of Gullock’s Inn, at the end of a crooked hall. While the inn’s other tenants boasted good varnished doors, his mother’s plank boasted brawl punches and nailed driftwood patches. Varnish had never touched it. Morin opened the plank slowly so it would not creak, praying his mother had yet to return.

To his disappointment, his mother sat at their only stool table, observing something by the candle. After watching a man lose his scalp to a machine, Morin’s mother had shaved off her ink-black tresses and resorted to wearing men’s overalls. Her name was Shara, the only rogue to inhabit Pomirus. Hearing the floor creak, Shara jumped and stuffed her possession into something else. “Morin?” she snapped.

Morin looked up. In the faint candlelight, his fingers worked at untangling a nasty, muddy knot that had formed returning from school. His nails stung.

“Morin, what did you—mills above, what’s on your arm?” His mother left her chair and rushed over.

Morin leapt up and fell against the rattling plank. “It’s nothing, Miang.”

“Show me your arm!”

Morin shook his dirt-brown hair. As she snatched his hand, a sting shot his elbow, and she inspected the dark lines running down his unrolling sleeve, his chin, and his neck. “Mills above, Morin. Your face is swollen.”

He quietly looked at his feet, which he could barely see. “It isn’t, Miang.”

“Who did this?” she asked. Morin shook his head. “Who did this? That gang? Tell me!” she demanded. “Morin, tell me!”

“No!” Morin kept his face down.

Shara grew silent, and her old cloth shoes padded quickly to the wardrobe next to her bed. Opening it, she took out a towel and draped it over him. Water instantly soaked through, and it squished to the floor. “Damn rag.” She kicked it and fetched her quilt.

Morin knelt back down to untie the knot. “I’m fine, Miang,” he managed through his sore, swollen lip.

“No, you’re not fine.” After a rustling struggle, she came back with her quilt. “And stand up!” Obeying, he allowed her to wrap the quilt around him. The quilt also squished to the ground. Outside, the rain began to pour in tubfuls on the cobbles below.

“S’rry,” Morin managed, looking down at her.

Morin expected an explosion of rogue curses, but instead, Shara’s eyes grew horrified. “Morin, repeat what I say.”

“Why?” Morin managed. Stupid slippery lichen, he thought. He felt like jumping into the Fountain, taking a bath, and freezing the pain from his face.

“It’s a secret rogue word, alright?” The sudden dip in her voice gave him goose bumps. “Repeat after me: eh-oi.”

“Eoah?” As soon as it escaped him, a profuse, chilling sweat seeped out of Morin’s skin, dripping from his forehead, his nose, his chin, his fingers, his back.

A shiver racked his body, and Shara closed her eyes. “Oh, blessed spirits.”

BAM! BAM! BAM! Knocking rattled the door, hitting the back of Morin’s head. A loud, raunchy voice blasted through Shara’s driftwood patches. “What are you doin’, you pisses? Here, I’m closin’ the kitchen for the night, and your water’s drippin’ into my barrels! If my ale gets ruined, I’ll squeeze the sour money out of you, I will!”

As the Innkeeper hollered, Morin stumbled to the side, watching Shara rush back to the stool table, open a drawer, and pull out a chain and pendant. She tossed the crimson thing at him. “Wear it!”

Morin mumbled, “What?”

“For gods’ sake, Morin! Please!”

He obeyed, sorely pulling the steel chain over his head as the Innkeeper hollered and pounded. Suddenly, the chill dissipated, and he was dry.

Outside, the tenants had begun to open their doors, shouting, “Will ya shut up? I’ve got three jobs tomorrow!” and “What’s all the noise chaps?”

The Innkeeper shut them up, yelling, “You won’t have a place to rest if the piss skin kicks my ale out of business.” Outside, the rain had slowly come to a stop.

“Ale?” The tenants caught on. “Stupid piss, I bet she’s told her son to take the bucket to the Fountain—” And the banging resumed tenfold on the door.

Shaking her head, Shara walked over and flung the plank open. All the half-naked men stopped talking and stared down at her in loathsome fear, and the Innkeeper stepped forward, allowing his lantern to light the ridges of face. “Look, Innkeeper, we have the Inn’s only leaky roof over our head. It’s rainy season. It’s your inn. Fix it.”

“A leaky roof?” The lot of them looked up as he cast his lamplight into the room.

“But we don’t have--” Blinded, Morin shielded his eyes and looked up. Drops of water pitter-pattered into his face. “Leaks?”

A minute later, the Innkeeper had left, the tenants had returned to their rooms, and the dripping had stopped. As Shara closed the door, Morin felt a heavy weight on his chest. “Miang?” He could barely talk through the swell on his face. A poison was surging under his skin, and he began to rub his arms.

Shara rushed to him and grabbed his muddy hands. Begging him in her tongue, she said, “No, don’t scratch. Don’t scratch.”

Suddenly, Morin clawed at his skin, needing to rub out all the poison. “Miang, it’s the necklace.”

Shara squeezed his hands together. “No, wait for the Innkeeper to--”

“The necklace!” Morin yelped.

“I know, Morin. Quiet!” she snapped. “I’ll take the necklace off if you stay quiet. Clench your teeth. Be a man.”

Morin obeyed. Shara kissed his hands and his forehead, smearing mud on her face as she whispered a Rogue lullaby. Below them, the Innkeeper trotted loudly around his kitchen, checking the ale barrels, and headed for his bedroom. Morin began whispering something through his teeth. Shara hushed him. “Shhh.”

“Oh gods, oh gods.” His legs writhed wildly, but he was quiet. Shara stared at him for a moment, leaned forward, and pulled the necklace over his head. His legs went still. Shara wrapped the thin, steel chain around her hand, and back at the stool table, the candlelight flickered. Morin swallowed hard, calming down. For a moment, the two of them listened to the muttering fishermen return to their rooms. Morin observed the blood-red drop of quartz dangling over Shara’s knuckle scars. “Is that what suppressed the water?” asked Morin.

Shara nodded. “Also stopped the rain. It was once an illusion mage’s blood.”

“How’d you know I would be a mage?”

-----

A while later, the two of them had cleaned themselves over a face bowl, Shara had pinched out the candle, and both of them had gone to bed, as always, in their clothes. The swell on Morin’s face had eased a little, and he could speak more clearly.

Cold sweat seeped through his skin. “How do I control the water?”

Shara sat up. “You need to calm down, Morin. Keep your emotions out of your blood. Let them dissipate.” There was a creaking noise as she shifted around uncomfortably.

“Dissipate?”

“Just do it,” she snapped. “Before you wet your bed.”

After a long pause, she heard a great, long sigh. “Am I leaving you?” Morin asked.

“No. I won’t let them.”

“But I’m a mage, and the rain--”

“And if they want you to be a priest, they’ll have to rip you from my dead body.” Shara lay back down, yawning, and turned over. Morin grew quiet, listening to her shift around. “From now on, you must wear the pendant wherever you go.”

Silence.

“Did that gang insult my race again?”

Feeling his cheeks flush, Morin buried his face in his pillow. “They said something true.” The cold sweat threatened to come back, and he breathed slowly to calm down. “I don’t look like anyone.”

“Stop it,” said Shara.

“I’m not Pomirian like them. I’m not a rogue like you. What am I?” Amid the sounds of a coastal drizzle, all Morin heard was a hushed snuffle from his mother’s bed.

Morin was ten that year. Eight years later, the answer would come knocking.