Song of the Forever Rains by E.J. Mellow

CHAPTER ONE

Larkyra knew the blade was too dull before it swung down to sever her finger. A scream shot like arrows up her throat before she clamped down on it with the force of falling boulders. Her magic fought against her quiet control like a petulant child, scratching and kicking through her veins.

Stay quiet!Larkyra silently yelled, gritting her teeth as her finger sang in searing pain, waves of heat erupting up her arm.

The blade came down again. This time with a decided thunk as it passed through bone to wedge into the wood countertop.

Bile rose into Larkyra’s mouth. But that, too, she forced to return.

Through a blur of tears and sweat, Larkyra stared at the tip of her left ring finger, now separated from her hand. The dim candlelight lit her bloody stub, cut at her second knuckle.

“Yer a brave one, to be sure,” said the pawnshop owner as he slipped off the emerald ring from her remaining nub. “Dumb, but brave. Most would be a sobbing mess right about now.”

His thugs released their grip on Larkyra’s shoulders, where they had been holding her in place. As she cradled her injured paw to her chest, warm crimson liquid soaking her shirt, Larkyra kept her body rigid with intangible self-control. She dared not speak, for if she did, Larkyra feared it would not merely be her blood decorating the room.

Her magic was angry, howling for revenge. She sensed it waiting to erupt, impatient as a boiling kettle. It wanted to sing from her lips, overflow, and saturate everything in sight. Pain for pain, it demanded.

But Larkyra would not let it out, not trusting her control in this moment. Too many in her life had been hurt by her sounds.

Plus, this suffering was entirely her own making.

No one had forced her to steal the ring.

If anything, her lesson of the day was to travel farther next time to pawn it. The lower quarters of Jabari were a tightly woven network, and she should have known better than to do business so close to the crime. But how was Larkyra to know the recent wearer of the ring would be the pawnshop owner’s own wife?

Still, this mistake Larkyra would suffer alone. For she alone was at fault. Certainly the men in the room had no idea what creature they had maimed, what terrible powers she could unleash within this shop with a mere whisper from her lips. Her companions were giftless souls, after all, and could not sense the magic stirring in her.

“Now begone with you,” barked the pawnshop owner, wiping a smear of Larkyra’s blood on his smock. “And let this be a reminder of why you don’t go stealing from the likes of me and me’s wife.” He shook his wife’s ring at Larkyra. The green gem winking mockingly in the candlelight.

Then perhaps you should tell your wife not to display it so prominently in the lower quarters,thought Larkyra morosely as she stood, gathering what remained of her dignity. Which was rather hard to do, given that the thugs roughly turned her about and threw her out the door.

Larkyra fell into the wet street. Her injured hand stung in agony with the impact.

The evening had turned to night, and people stepped over her rather than helping her up as they hurried home before different shops, ones that were an acquired taste, opened for business.

Larkyra let out a deep breath as she picked herself up, wanting nothing more than to yell into the open air. To give in to what her magic begged of her. But Larkyra wouldn’t.

She couldn’t.

And not only because she was in the midst of her Lierenfast—her time to be without her magic—but because again, she could not risk hurting innocents. It had taken years of practice for Larkyra’s voice to expand beyond mere magical notes of sorrow and pain, to be controlled past pure destruction and tempered into complex spells. But when Larkyra was this emotional, her power’s intent was that much harder to control.

By the lost gods,thought Larkyra in frustration as she wove through the lower quarters, hugging her hand close. If I could just be free to feel! To laugh and scream and yell and call out a name, without the fear of her magic being laced into her words.

Larkyra’s eyes stung with the threat of more tears. Soon she would not be able to hold them back.

She needed to find a place to be alone.

So Larkyra left behind the Midnight Market and did not stop until she’d entered into Huddle Row.

The smell of body odor and piss mixed with the burning of small fires attacked Larkyra’s nose as she picked her way through tents crammed together like makeshift fortresses of children. Here were people not merely destitute but wanting to be forgotten. They clung to the shadows like she clung to her now-deformed hand.

Look away,they all said.

“Pigeon,” croaked a woman who appeared like a pile of rags with two blue eyes. “Yer leakin’ like a casket of wine on a Council member’s birthday. Come here and let me tend to that.”

Larkyra shook her head, ready to march on, until the woman added, “Ya might lose the whole thing if ya don’t keep it from gettin’ infectious.”

Larkyra hesitated.

Alone,she thought. I need to be alone.

“It’ll take a right few grain falls, is all,” insisted the pile of clothes. “Now come here. That’s right. Hold it to the fire so I can see what yer suffering.”

I suffer more than what’s on my hand,thought Larkyra as the woman inspected her finger.

“This will burn, no doubt, but we gots to stop the bleeding.” The woman took a flat piece of metal from her small fire. Larkyra swallowed her hiss of pain as it was pressed to her severed finger. The scent of her burning flesh filled her nose, and a wave of faintness dizzied her surroundings for a moment. “There ya go. Worse part is over, pigeon, and ya took that better than most around here.”

Because I’ve taken a lot worse,thought Larkyra, tiredness weighing down her shoulders.

Today had not been a good day.

“I hope it was worth it,” tutted the woman as she set to work. “I know mine was.” Yellow teeth grinned at Larkyra as she displayed her missing pinkie. It was an old wound. Perhaps as old as the old lady. “Was the biggest pearl I ever saw,” recalled the woman. “And my stone of birth too.” She held out her hand as though she could still see the very jewel on her finger.

Larkyra smiled weakly.

“It really were a pretty ring,” continued the woman. “But I suppose so were my hands. Pretty things never do last. Best ya remember that, pigeon.”

Larkyra nodded, feeling a slip of calm settle into her tightly wound muscles, listening to her companion as she cleaned and wrapped her hand. Or did the best she could with collected rainwater and rags cut from her own worn clothes.

“There, as good as new,” said the woman as Larkyra held up her gauzed finger.

Despite her emotions, Larkyra forced every bit of restraint and poise she had into her next actions. Forced down her recent frustrations to remember all she had been taught in controlling her gifts. Keep steady, she commanded her magic as she breathed in and breathed out. Larkyra did all this so she could say two words: “Thank you.”

The old woman nodded as she sat back into her pile. When she closed her eyes, it was as if she were no longer there.

Larkyra made her way into the darker section of Huddle Row. Where pockets of shadow went from being cut with pricks of firelight to solid forms. Only the crescent moon above faintly lit the crouched bodies who muttered their thoughts against walls.

Here was where Larkyra found an empty alley, not even the moon’s light daring to creep toward the back, which was filled with damp garbage. Sliding to the ground, the cool stone a relief along her back, Larkyra curled herself around her injured hand.

She was finally alone.

And with this knowledge Larkyra allowed herself to make the smallest sound.

A sound that turned into a sob.

Yellow tendrils of her magic seeped from her, unchecked, as Larkyra cried in hiccuped gasps. Not for her missing finger, however. She still had nine others, after all, and knew there were souls far worse off than she.

No, Larkyra cried for every time she could not. For all the moments, and there were many, when she had to remain silent, quiet, controlled, happy, when she otherwise felt sad. She cried for the nineteen years of attempting to be good. Or rather, better than she had been. Larkyra cried because it was safer than to scream.

And it wasn’t until sleep took her that she stopped.

In the morning Larkyra would find the rats. The only creatures she had not thought of as she had sat alone in her alley. All sliced open, as though her ribbons of tears had been knives instead.

Larkyra found herself in a decidedly better mood three days later.

Not that she ever lingered long in melancholy.

But today was a special day. For after a month of living as she had, her Lierenfast was over! Or would be as soon as she reached home.

Plus, it was her birthday.

With a quiet melody in her head, Larkyra made her way from the lower quarters toward the outer rings of the city. As she walked the thin, packed lanes, sweat slipped down her neck as the humid air pressed against her. Summers were always intolerable in Jabari, but Larkyra found them especially so here, where the sun crept high in the early morning, baking the russet stone streets that barely a breeze dared enter.

As she turned a corner, the sweet scent of carts selling rice squares filled the air, as did the low murmurs and raspy coughs of residents living tightly, intimately together. Larkyra had become well acquainted with this part of the city, as she was meant to. And despite the hardships she had encountered, she found she would miss it. The lower quarters reminded her of sections of another city, very far from here, that she called home.

Gently scratching the bandage on her finger, the throbbing pain a continuous companion, Larkyra shifted in her well-worn clothes. What had started as a plain but pristine outfit of tunic and trousers had withered into a mess of splotchy strings grasping thinner threads in a desperate attempt to keep her modesty intact. Not that there was much to gawk at. Larkyra had always been the skinny one beside her two sisters. The frail bird no amount of pecking could plump, as Niya liked to say.

The thought of her redheaded older sister brought a wide smile to Larkyra’s lips.

The first since she had lost her finger.

Oh, how I can’t wait to be home,thought Larkyra brightly as she quickened her steps.

That was, until a wet, warm ooze squeezed between her toes. Glancing down, Larkyra found she had walked through a pile of horse droppings.

For a moment all she did was stand there, staring at her sandals, which were already on their last pace, now covered in manure.

And then she began to laugh.

With her magic a slumbering beast in her belly, the sound was free to float, harmless in the wind, a thrumming of hummingbirds. More than one passerby glanced at her as though her mind had flown away with them.

But nothing was going to impede Larkyra’s happiness this day. “I’m going home,” she said to no one in particular, doing a little jig on the pliable mound. Squish. Squash. “And when I do, I will go straight to Niya’s room and lie on her bed, under the covers. Or better yet, wrong way round, so my feet rest on her pillow.” Another twinkling laugh burst from Larkyra at the thought, and she continued on.

Her mind was bubbling with such glee that she momentarily forgot how she must smell and look and the fact that one of her hands had four fingers rather than five.

She was going home!

As she crossed a small bridge that led to the last ring of the lower quarters, a commotion brought Larkyra to glance down a side alley.

A group of people who looked a lot like her was surrounding a man who looked nothing like any of them. His well-sewn clothes gleamed with a higher standard of living, and his boots were waxed to shine with a glint that matched the sword in his hand.

While he was armed, he was surely outnumbered, and the crude shivs and iron-spiked balls resting in his opponents’ grips didn’t help matters.

Now, normally those who lived in the lowers learned to pay no mind to scuffles like these. Survival was not just for the strong but also for those who kept their noses clear from others’ troubles. But Larkyra was not “normally” anything, and the pang of empathy she felt in her chest at seeing anyone cornered pulled her into the alley.

“I do not want to fight,” said the man, his accent thick with well-bred education.

“Thens don’t.” One of the street dwellers, his shoulders broad enough for two men, smiled. “Hands over whats you’ves gots in yer pouch—”

“And yer sword,” said another.

“And that pretty cape,” added one more.

“The boots,” concluded the last. “I’d like thems shiny boots.”

“Then we leaves you right be,” finished the first.

“Why stop there?” challenged the man. “Why not take all my clothes?”

“Nah, that would be right greedy.”

The man raised a shocked brow. “Good to know you all are not without reason.”

The larger street dweller stepped threateningly close, blade raised. “I thinks he laughs at us, gents.”

“If he does not,” chimed in Larkyra from where she was leaning against a wall, watching, “I certainly am.”

“Who are ya?” barked the leader, his crew all glancing her way.

“I’m here to tell you to leave this poor man alone.”

A laugh burst from the giant. “He ain’t poor anything, little mop. Now be on yers way, and we’s promise not to hurt ya next.”

“I can’t do that,” said Larkyra, her magic beginning to stir in her belly.

“And why’s that?”

“Because today is my birthday, you see, and I’d really like it if I could spend it without seeing anyone get robbed . . . or killed,” she added for good measure.

“Then I’d spend yer day in bed, little mop, or pop out dem pretty blue eyes, fer no grains fall down here without all dem things happenin’.”

“Yes,” agreed Larkyra. “But I’d still like to try. Now, as I said, you should leave.”

More amused chuckles from the group.

“Please, miss,” said the cornered man. “I have this under control.”

“But for how much longer?” challenged Larkyra.

He appeared to think on this as he sized up his opponents.

They sneered and raised their weapons.

Larkyra wasn’t in the mood for a fight, but she also didn’t want to merely walk away. Not now. Yet currently, with only one proper working hand . . .

Ours,crooned her magic. Let us do it for you.

Larkyra internally stroked her powers, which paced restless in her lungs, a master calming a hungry tiger.

Gentle,she coaxed.

Larkyra had already sensed this group was without the lost gods’ gifts, a common finding in Jabari and one reason she had decided to intervene. She wanted to help, but quickly and without drawing attention. And though she wasn’t meant to use it, was supposed to be without, today, the last day of her Lierenfast, she decided a little magic wouldn’t hurt anyone. At least not as she was now: calm, collected, controlled.

With Larkyra’s mind made up, her powers tickled up her throat as she commanded, “GO.”

A burst of her yellow magic smacked into the thugs’ faces, cutting off the last of their laughter.

Larkyra moved closer, her voice dripping with warning. “Be on your way, or you will have more than blood to pay.”

If any passersby possessed the Sight, as all who held the lost gods’ gifts did, they would have seen warm honey-colored mist pouring from each of Larkyra’s words, clouding the heads of her victims. But no one here held such gifts, so no one here saw a thing.

With glazed eyes the men blinked before they each turned and left.

The alley sat quiet as her magic retreated.

“Well,” said a deep voice from behind her. “That was rather . . . odd. But I thank you.”

Larkyra found the genteel man sheathing his sword, while his curious gaze lingered on her.

Now alone, Larkyra had a chance to get a good look at him as well.

She instantly knew one thing; he was beautiful.

Annoyingly so.

His deep-copper hair sang with a glint of light that cut through the alley and contrasted nicely against his pale skin and dark attire. His crisp, clear features shone with youth, yet his green eyes held walls, calculated distrust. Larkyra wondered if this young man always wore this look, or only now because of what he gazed upon: another street urchin after his fine things.

“You’re a fool for coming here dressed like that,” said Larkyra.

The man glanced down. “Yes, perhaps I should have done better. But these were the plainest clothes I had near.”

“You’re twinkling like a shiny copper coin in a pile of dirt,” scoffed Larkyra. “Anyone passing will want to snatch you.”

“Is that what you’re doing now? Snatching me?”

Larkyra raised her brows. “I thought it was clear. I was saving you.”

“Yes,” mused the man. “That was impressive. How did you get them to listen to you like that?”

Larkyra pushed down her twinge of annoyance. “You stand here, still with your pouch of coin and cape and sword and shiny boots. What does it matter how anything came to be? Now, hurry back to where you came. I don’t know if I’d be inclined to save you again today.”

She set off toward the main street.

The man followed. “That’s just the thing. I was trying to go back to where I ‘came,’ as you put it. But you see, I seem to have . . . well . . .”

“You’re lost,” said Larkyra.

“Yes,” said the man.

She let out a sigh, catching the strange glances from those around them. They no doubt assumed she was a girl trying to turn tricks, standing and conversing with such a well-bred man.

“Follow me,” said Larkyra.

“Where are we going?”

“You aren’t very quick, are you?”

“So you’ll take me back?”

“I’m taking you out of here. Wherever your ‘back’ is, you’ll need to find it once we reach the middle ring.”

“I can do that.”

One would hope,thought Larkyra as they turned and twisted through the maze that was the lowers.

Larkyra’s gaze kept creeping to the man beside her. He was rather tall, she noted, and thin but not scrawny. She could tell his strength lay in quickness rather than brute force. “Why are you here anyway?” she asked after a moment.

Green eyes slid toward her. “I’m in Jabari for a Eumar Journé.”

Larkyra knew he knew she was asking why he was in the lower quarters, but the man obviously didn’t want whatever business he was attending to here be known. Larkyra appreciated a good secret, so she let it slide.

“That’s a birthday celebration for a girl who has come of age,” explained the man as they walked over a crowded bridge. “Who has turned nineteen—”

“I know what a Eumar Journé is,” cut in Larkyra. “Who is the family?”

“I’m sure you do not know them.”

“And why are you sure of that?”

“Well . . . I, that is . . .”

Larkyra bit back a grin at his flushed features. Despite the delay this caused in reaching her destination, Larkyra decided she was rather enjoying his strange company.

“They are the Bassettes,” he admitted eventually.

“Ah,” said Larkyra, a flutter filling her belly at the name. “A Council family. That will be a grand party, indeed.”

“Yes,” said the man, studying her, and then, “you said it is your day of birth as well?”

“It is.” Larkyra grinned.

“Happy day,” said the man. “I hope you spend it as you desire.”

“Once I leave you, I’m sure I will.”

He smiled at her jab, and for a moment a street urchin and a gentleman walked side by side with shared expressions.

“Does it hurt?” he asked, his gaze going to what she cradled to her chest. “Your hand?”

Larkyra’s cheeks warmed as she realized she had been holding the dirty bandages for some time. Which made her remember she was rather dirty all over and no doubt smelled, given the manure on her shoes.

She hid her injury at her side. “Not nearly as bad as it did.”

“What happened?”

“I decided I no longer liked a few fingers, so I bit them off.”

“You do not have to lie,” said the man.

“How do you know I lie?” countered Larkyra.

“Because lies and I are well acquainted.”

She met his gaze, saw a flicker of frustration pass. Not toward her, however, but to whatever he referred.

“Here we are,” said Larkyra, pushing past the subject. “Can you get to your destination from here?”

The man looked to their surroundings. They stood in the middle ring’s market. The sound of vendors yelling prices to passing buyers twirled with the salty scent of street food being grilled over open flames.

“Yes,” said the man. “I can find my way.”

“Good.” Larkyra nodded.

“Thank you again,” said the man as he extended a gloved hand. “It seems I owe you a great deal for today.”

Larkyra stared at the offered palm, at how clean the leather was compared to her own dirt-stained skin. Even though she’d saved his life, he was being very kind to a creature such as her. A street vermin. A nobody compared to the likes of him.

Tentatively, she placed her good hand in his. It was warm and firm as he gave it a shake.

“My name is Darius, by the way,” he said. “Darius Mekenna of Lachlan.”

“It was interesting to meet you, Darius Mekenna of Lachlan,” said Larkyra before she turned.

“Wait!” he called.

She glanced at him over her shoulder.

“I could repay you a portion of what I owe now,” offered Darius. “Are you hungry?”

A part of Larkyra wished very much to say yes, because in truth she was. Plus, she was growing quite curious to find out more about this man whose smile brought forth a lightness in her chest. But alas . . . “Afraid not,” she said. “You’ll have to repay me another time.”

Darius frowned. “But what if we don’t meet again?”

To this Larkyra grinned. “The lost gods work in wondrous ways,” she began. “Who knows? We just might.”

Larkyra walked on then, darting into the mass before her, making sure to not glance back.

Soon she found herself in the wealthiest part of the city, the center ring, where her appearance stood out like a festering cut on ebony skin. While all of Jabari had its pockets of beauty, here at the highest point, the buildings literally sparkled with gold, ivory, and silver.

This was where Larkyra found herself admiring the city of her birth. As tall as it was wide and as deep as it was narrow, Jabari’s epicenter gathered upward from the coastal edge over a mountain’s crest, the finely stretched architecture searching for the lost gods in the clouds. Larkyra’s heart warmed as she stopped to take in the sea of buildings stretching out below.

Though the lost gods had abandoned Aadilor many generations ago, the trail of their magic still lingered in pockets, in faraway isles and jungle-covered cities. Jabari was deemed to be a place without their magical gifts, yet it held no less splendor. And there were still the bedtime stories: Parents gently whispering to their wide-eyed children that a blessed few could still be found among them. Usually hiding in plain sight. Like me, thought Larkyra.

Approaching a grand estate that dominated the end of the street, Larkyra paused at the gate. Its large, spiraling columns ran the height of several floors and took up an entire three blocks. Beautiful framed windows jutted forward, and though it was unseen from the street, Larkyra knew an immense, domed glass hall cut through the middle. Exotic purple, red, and blue flowers lined a stone path leading to the front door.

Larkyra took a deep breath in, savoring the rich fragrance. She knew the servants’ entrance was to the side, a small path that could be taken unseen, and with a quick whistle from her lips, the locked gate clicked open. Stepping through, Larkyra did not turn left, to the back of the building, but instead crossed through an invisible veil of magic, a thickness in the air that caressed her skin and, finding her familiar, allowed her through. She strode straight up the front walk and stopped before an intricately carved gold door.

As Larkyra pulled the rope, ringing for entry, she studied the story expertly fashioned on the surface, the tale of three girls and their magical gifts.

The figures were in half relief, as if trapped between two worlds, each with one foot stretched out toward the sun while the other disappeared behind a flat surface to an unseen beyond. Higher, Larkyra’s gaze rested on an older woman in flowing robes. The elegant lady sat smiling beside a large bearded man, his attention solely on her as she gazed down at their children. Larkyra’s throat tightened as she stared into the woman’s empty eyes, the smile that looked so much like hers, before turning away as the heavy entrance opened.

A skinny, parrot-faced man dressed in a butler’s uniform peered down at Larkyra. He did not blink at her appearance, recoil, or show any signs of shock at finding a wounded Jabari urchin on his doorstep.

He merely bowed his head in greeting and stepped aside. “Lady Bassette, welcome home.”