The Wizard's Daughter Read online

  Brieze chewed her lower lip. How could she help her mother? How could she free her of this delusion that kept her stuck in the past, that kept her from marrying a good man like Tobias and being happy? To her logical mind, there was only one answer. Gently, she gathered up her mother’s flying hair and tied it into a windproof knot. She put her arms around her and held her until the sobbing fit subsided into sniffles. She found a handkerchief and offered it to Patentia, who used it to dab her eyes and blow her nose.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do,” Brieze said. “I’m going to find this man. This Kaishou Fujiwara from the city of Kyo. And I’m going to bring him here, willing or unwilling. He’s going to look you in the eye and explain himself. He’s going to tell you what he’s been up to the past seventeen years, and whether he loves you or not. And then you can get on with your life.”

  TWO

  The Cygnet was a small, creaky old ship, Tak noted with disappointment as he and his platoon of cadets climbed aboard. It was crewed by equally creaky old airmen, those too old for more dangerous duties and who needed easier work as they coasted toward retirement. The ship had been stripped down of everything not necessary to train cadets. The sails and rigging had been simplified. Six light cannon sat at regularly spaced intervals along either edge of the deck, their barrels pointing out at the sky, but all their gear, powder, and shot were stored securely below. They were tied up tight, and each fitted with a sign that said, DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT TOUCHING THIS.

  Tak sighed and pulled at the stiff collar of his cadet uniform. The gray wool uniform was a little too small for his tall, lanky frame. It felt tight and constricting around the shoulders, and the cuffs of its sleeves didn’t quite reach his wrists. Also, it itched. Being a cadet at the academy was a lot less exciting than he’d imagined. In fact, so far, it had consisted of little more than following a bunch of strict and pointless rules. He and his fellow cadets had to be up at the crack of dawn, fully dressed and with their beds neatly made. They had to arrive at the mess hall precisely at six a.m. for breakfast and be finished by six-thirty. Every hour of the day after that was scheduled for them—an endless series of lectures and drills and physical training.

  Failure to follow any of the rules or to be where you were supposed to be at the precise time you were supposed to be there resulted in demerits, which resulted in punishments. The punishments mostly involved scrubbing. Scrubbing pots in the mess hall kitchen—or worse—scrubbing the latrines. Tak, who had recently turned sixteen, was not a rule follower by nature. Already, he’d done his share of scrubbing. He hadn’t realized how free and easy his life had been before.

  “Don’t even look at those cannons!” the drill sergeant growled, noticing some of the cadets gazing longingly at them. “We’ll not be taking cannon practice today. We’ll be seeing how you keep your feet on an airship while swinging a sword.”

  Some of the cadets’ hands went to the hilts of the swords strapped to their belts, as if to make sure they were still there. Tak tried to stick his hands in his pockets—but discovered for the umpteenth time that his cadet’s breeches had no pockets. He ran a hand through his short-cropped, bristly brown hair, which had once been long and shaggy. He felt his sword hanging like a dead weight from his hip. He knew they would get to sword practice eventually, and he’d been dreading it. He hadn’t swung his sword since the siege of Selestria, and the idea of wielding it filled him with an inexplicable fear.

  The sergeant ordered Tak’s platoon to stand at ease in the bow, out of the crew’s way as the Cygnet was launched.

  Like most airships of Etherium, the Cygnet looked something like an old-fashioned wooden sailing ship. But it was much wider and shallower in the hull, and the long keel dipped much deeper below it, the better to keep the ship upright and stable in the thick atmosphere. The Cygnet was tied snugly in its berth at the academy dock, built near the summit of Larkspur, a spur of Selemont that was home to the airfleet academy. With the sail furled, the ship hung heavily on its mooring lines, stretching them taut. But when the crew unfurled the sail and raised it up between the tall mainmast and slightly shorter foremast, the ship began to rise. The huge triangular sail filled with wind. It stretched on a long, flexible yard well over both sides of the ship, looking like a giant wing.

  The Cygnet tried to rise on the wind, straining and tugging at the mooring lines that held it down. The wooden deck under Tak’s feet came alive, thrumming and pitching. He smiled. He couldn’t help but be reminded of his own little craft, the Arrow, and how with a raised sail it always seemed eager to slip its mooring lines and soar into the sky.

  “Launch!” the captain called from the command deck.

  “Brace yourselves,” the sergeant ordered.

  The crew tugged on knots and released all four mooring lines simultaneously, and with a whoosh the Cygnet took flight. Tak felt the thrill in the pit of his stomach as he was momentarily weightless and the ship skimmed out into the sky. The wind ruffled his hair. The cadets grinned. The old crewmen grinned. Even the dour drill sergeant had something like a grin on his face. This was the soaring feeling of freedom every sky rider craved. The cadets kept their feet as the ship listed one way, then the other, finding its balance. The crew adjusted the angle and position of the sail. They unfurled a stabilizing sail from the bowsprit.

  The crew had orders to cruise the sky around Larkspur, keeping the Cygnet steady but throwing in the occasional surprise lurch or roll. Some crewmen hauled up practice dummies from below deck and placed them in the spaces between each cannon. The dummies were just wooden poles with straw-filled sacks tied around them and much-battered old helmets nailed to their tops. Each cadet took his place before one of the dummies, back straight, hand near the hilt of his sword.

  “Present arms!” the drill sergeant shouted.

  The cadets drew their swords and held them upright for inspection. Tak’s sword parted reluctantly from its sheath. The weapon felt heavy and clumsy in his hand, not at all like an extension of his arm as it should have felt. It trembled slightly as he held it up, and Tak silently cursed his shaking hand.

  The drill sergeant walked down the line of cadets, inspecting each weapon. Some were family weapons, given to the boys by their fathers as Tak’s had been. Others were issued by the academy. Regardless, the fledgling cadets were expected to keep the weapons in tiptop shape. The sergeant grunted approvingly as he moved down the line of boys, eyes running expertly up and down each razor-sharp and freshly gleaming blade.

  That is, until he got to Tak.

  “What’s this?” the sergeant frowned.

  Tak’s sword gleamed as brightly as any of the others. But the edges of the blade were nicked and dull. Tak flushed. Still, he stood with his back straight and eyes forward, as cadets were supposed to do.

  The sergeant was disappointed. He’d been eager to see what the boy could do. Taktinius Spinner junior was famous for fighting in the siege of Selestria—among other things. The King himself had presented Tak with a medal of valor and ordered his acceptance into the academy. The sergeant had hoped the boy would give a performance of swordsmanship that would inspire the other cadets.

  “This weapon is a disgrace,” the sergeant said. “That blade’s not fit to cut butter. What have you been doing with it, hacking at mill stones?”

  “No sir,” Tak replied. “Gublin armor.”

  The sergeant’s eyebrows shot up. The cadets didn’t dare whisper among each other, but they exchanged glances. “So!” the sergeant said. “You think because you fought in one short battle you’ve got the right to show up with an unfit weapon and give me back talk?”

  “No sir,” Tak said. “I meant no disrespect.”

  “And you mean to tell me you haven’t sharpened your blade since the siege? What kind of soldier are you?”

  Several replies occurred to Tak, but he wisely kept his mouth shut.

  “Well,” the sergeant took a step backward, put his hands on his hips, and raised his voice
to make sure every cadet and crewman heard. “Our young hero has earned himself another demerit. And cleanup detail after mess tonight.”

  A few snorts of laughter, quickly stifled, escaped from the cadets. The drill sergeant ignored them. Some of Tak’s fellows at the academy were in awe of him, but just as many, if not more, were jealous. There were even rumors going around that Tak hadn’t fought in the siege at all. That the story was made up.

  The sergeant raised his voice another notch. “And if our hero doesn’t want a second night of cleanup duty, he will demonstrate an expert two-handed crosscut blow followed by an overhead blow that knocks the helmet clear off this dummy. Think you can handle that, boy?”

  Tak nodded.

  The sergeant took a few more steps back, giving Tak space to swing his sword. “Then get to it. Show us how you killed those Gublins.”

  Tak stepped up to the dummy, gripping his sword with both hands. His palms were sweaty. His mouth had gone dry. He was keenly aware that every pair of eyes was on him. Silence fell over the Cygnet. The old ship’s wooden beams groaned. Ropes creaked. From somewhere in the rigging above, a crewman coughed. The practice dummy loomed over Tak. It had grown taller, somehow. The empty eye slits of its rusty, dented helmet glared at him menacingly.

  Show us how you killed those Gublins.

  Tak swung—and in that instant he was no longer on the deck of the Cygnet.

  He was on the walls of Castle Selestria, trying not to die.

  Men were screaming.

  The city was on fire.

  His fighting partner, the huge lumberjack Jon Cutter, collapsed in a heap, the life leaking out of him from a gash in his neck.

  Instead of a dummy looming over Tak, there was an armored Gublin soldier with a curved sword in each hand. He easily parried Tak’s blow and struck back blindingly fast—as if with four or five swords at once. Tak’s shield shattered. His sword was knocked out of his hands. A blade stabbed into the center of his chest. Tak screamed and toppled backward.

  At least, that’s what happened in Tak’s head.

  On the Cygnet, everyone saw Tak give the dummy a clumsy blow, lose his grip on his sword, fall to the deck with a scream and curl up into a quivering ball.

  After a moment of shocked silence, they all crowded around him and began jostling and talking at once. “Stand back! Back, everyone!” the drill sergeant ordered, shoving curious cadets aside. He knelt next to Tak and put a hand on his shoulder. The boy was shaking like a sail torn loose in a storm. The sergeant sometimes doubted whether the boy really had fought on the castle walls during the siege. He wondered if Tak hadn’t at least exaggerated his role in the battle. But the sergeant doubted no longer. He was an experienced soldier, and he’d seen the mental aftereffects of combat, especially in young men after their first real fight.

  To the inexperienced cadets, however, Tak’s actions seemed to prove just the opposite.

  “This is our hero who won the medal of valor?” one snorted.

  “He never fought in no battle,” another muttered.

  “They should send him back to the spider farms, let him weave sails like the rest of his family,” a third joined in.

    

  They ambushed Tak after dinner as he was finishing his cleanup duties. He pushed a wheelbarrow loaded with trash and plate scrapings up a muddy mountainside path through the woods toward a muddy clearing that was home to the academy’s garbage pit. The pit had been dug far away from the academy buildings. Tak grunted and cursed as he struggled to push the heavy wheelbarrow up the rutted, stone-clogged path. He sweated itchily under his uniform. He was trying, unsuccessfully, to keep the mud off his boots. He’d have to clean and polish them for inspection tomorrow morning.

  The sun sat low in the purple evening sky, dipping toward dusk, its rays slanting through the trunks of the trees. Hairs prickled on the back of Tak’s neck. Someone was watching him. He dropped the wheelbarrow handles and whipped around. There was no one on the path behind him. He turned in a full circle, scanning the woods on both sides and the path ahead. All empty. Of course, there could be a platoon of cadets in the woods around him, hiding behind the trunks of trees, and he’d never see them. Frowning, he picked up the handles and resumed his struggle with the wheelbarrow.

  The garbage pit had been widened each year until it took up the entire clearing. The academy had in fact hired loggers to cut down trees and make more space. Tak had seen some of them eating in the mess hall, at a table in the back by the kitchen. Rough-looking men with bushy beards and bulging arms. He knew they had a camp somewhere out in these woods. Freshly cut stumps ringed the clearing, and several felled trees lay on the ground, in the process of being sawed into lumber. Tak’s ambushers let him dump his load of garbage into the pit, wipe his sweaty brow, and turn around, making ready to head down the path back to the mess hall, before they emerged from the woods.

  There were three of them. Older boys. All with the short-cropped hair and gray uniforms of cadets. Tak recognized their faces, but couldn’t recall their names. With hundreds of cadets at the academy, there hadn’t been time to learn all the names yet. He especially recognized the leader of the group, the biggest boy who emerged from the woods first. Tak had heard his brash voice raised in the mess hall and seen the way he shouldered ahead of the younger cadets in the chow line. The other two ambushers stood on either side of him, smiling wickedly.

  Tak shoved the wheelbarrow aside and faced the leader, who had a few inches, not to mention several pounds, on him. The bully looked down at Tak with mock disgust. “I thought we’d find this piece of garbage out here,” he said.

  His buddies snickered.

  Tak flushed and his hands instinctively balled into fists. But he made himself breathe slowly and calmly. He unclenched his hands. Fighting was strictly forbidden among cadets. It was cause for immediate dismissal from the academy. Even so, from what Tak gathered during mess hall conversations, it happened all the time. He was sure there was going to be a fight. That’s why the boys chose this isolated ambush spot. But he wasn’t going to be the one to throw the first punch. That way, at least he could claim he’d been defending himself.

  “That’s very clever,” Tak said. “You’re a funny guy. What do you want?”

  “What do you want?” the boy snorted and mocked Tak’s tone. “I heard you were real impressive at sword practice this morning. Put on quite a show.”

  Tak flushed again. His failure that morning had been mortifying. They’d taken him to the infirmary and let him rest for a few hours. When he’d recovered, they’d let him go back to his lessons and drills. He’d fixed his gaze on his boots for the rest of the day, embarrassed to look anyone in the eye, to see the disappointment and pity that was sure to be there. At dinner, some of the guys in his platoon, all decent boys who he considered friends, sat with him to show their support. But no one knew what to say. They’d eaten in awkward silence. He had been grateful for his cleanup duties which allowed him to escape the mess hall and help the kitchen staff wash dishes.

  “You wouldn’t understand,” Tak said.

  “You wouldn’t understand,” the boy echoed. “Well, I understand this. You’re a coward. And a liar. You never fought in the siege of Selestria. You don’t deserve a place at this academy. So we’re gonna teach you a lesson.”

  There was a time, not long ago, when being called a coward and a liar would have had Tak instantly swinging his fists. Just a few months ago, but seemingly forever ago, he’d overheard Admiral Scud call him a liar while he was spying on a meeting between the admiral and the wizard. The accusation had been enough to make him blow his cover and confront the admiral. Things had not gone particularly well after that.

  This time Tak kept his cool. He’d grown up a bit since then. He knew what the truth was, and that was all that mattered. What other people thought mattered less to him. “Speaking of cowards,” he said. “What do you call a guy who needs three-to-one odds to teach me a lesson?”


  That barb hit home. The boy’s face twisted into an ugly snarl. He would have attacked right then had not all of them been startled by a loud crack! behind them. It was the sound of a large branch being broken off a tree. They all turned to see where the sound came from. A boy stepped out of the woods near the path that led back down to the mess hall. He carried the large branch casually over his shoulder.

  Boy was not the first word Tak would have used to describe the newcomer. Scrawny giant was the phrase that came to mind. He couldn’t be much older than Tak, but he was already close to seven feet tall. His frame was huge, all wide shoulders and long limbs, but it looked as if he’d been growing so fast there’d been no time to put any meat on his bones. His arms were thin and wiry, with knobby wrists and elbows, and the knotty tree branch seemed like an extension of them. He wasn’t a cadet. He wore workman’s clothes. Something about the boy was familiar to Tak, especially his curly, fiery red hair and his scruffy, patchy red beard.

  “Them odds just got better,” the boy said in a deep, gruff voice.

  The lead bully sputtered for a moment in confusion. “Who the hell are you?” he asked.

  The scrawny giant didn’t answer. Instead, he chewed the beard under his lower lip, cleared his throat with a growl, and spit at their feet. With that, Tak realized why the boy seemed familiar. Tak’s fighting partner during the siege of Selestria, the tree-sized Jon Cutter, had chewed his red beard and spit over the castle ramparts in just the same way before the battle. This boy must be one of the Cutters, a family of loggers who lived on Pinemont. He must be part of the group hired to clear the trees.

  The bullies seemed to recognize the boy as a Cutter as well, judging from how they hesitated. The Cutters of Pinemont were well known throughout the Kingdom of Spire for their size and toughness, their ability to fell prodigious amounts of trees with huge axes, and for their bad tempers when crossed.