to do. She’d never imbued before. She didn’t know how to imbue. Pa’s lessons seemed like dreams. She’d been thirteen when the Tayemstvoy had beaten him and dragged him away. She wanted to help the resistance, wanted to imbue weapons that let them destroy the State—but she didn’t know how.
“What happened to her?” Ela whispered. “The old woman?”
The gaunt rezistyent grimaced and started rummaging in her rucksack. The wheezing one said, “Red shoulders loaded her on a train.”
The words felt like falling off a horse, all the air struck from Celka’s lungs. Ela’s hand found hers, fingers gripping tight, and Celka finally drew a breath. “Why didn’t the resistance save her?”
Silence filled the compartment, big enough to march an elephant through.
The gaunt woman finally turned from her bag, falsely cheery as though a smile could free the old woman starving in a labor camp. “We have plates for printing the photographs. You need to make leaflets.”
Celka wanted to throw them both out into the railyard and tell them to take their own sleeting chances if they didn’t care that the Tayemstvoy had arrested that old woman. Instead, she folded the page and made herself say, “We’ll handle it.”
Grandfather would have contacts that could print the leaflet, and Celka would find a way to ensure that she met them. With proof the bozhskyeh storms had returned, Grandfather would have to answer her questions. She’d finally be able to use her storm-blessing to help the resistance.
CHAPTER FOUR
WIND PUMMELED GERRIT with rain as he crossed a field, sinking ankle-deep in mud. He and Filip had left the troop transport behind, crushing early spring shoots beneath their hobnailed boots, sudden gusts threatening to tear their caps from their heads. Lightning arced above them, cutting the thunderstorm’s darkness. Out of every dozen flashes, a few were coppery bright—Gods’ Breath—and those yanked at Gerrit’s skull as if trying to lift him into the clouds. Along with that tug, sousednia pressed against his senses—noon-day sun searing from a cloudless alpine sky as icy wind sighed across snow-shrouded boulders.
As each flare of Gods’ Breath faded, true-life startled him, the rain pelting his cheeks incongruous with sousednia’s alpine sun. He fought to hold both realities equally, as he’d been taught, but excitement made him want to reach into sousednia, brushing fingers across the storm-thread that seemed to grow from the base of his spine.
With his back to the others, he let soldierly neutrality fall away. Filip mirrored his grin, teeth bright white against his brown skin.
As ordered, a dozen meters from the others, Gerrit stopped. Schooling his expression, he turned back to his audience. Alongside Captain Vrana and the other Storm Guard cadets, Colonel Tesarik watched with a haughty sneer. At Tesarik’s side stood Gerrit’s sister, Iveta, resplendent in her gold bozhk bolts, lieutenant’s stars, and red Tayemstvoy shoulders. She was Tesarik’s attaché, which meant Gerrit should have expected her here; but he’d thought this bozhskyeh storm would be his, not something he’d have to share with his perfect sister.
Filip stepped behind Gerrit, laying a hand on the back of his neck—right over his storm-thread. Then, in sousednia, Filip’s touch vanished. Gerrit shifted his attention to the neighboring reality.
As merely storm-touched, Filip appeared as a humanoid ripple—a heat mirage better-defined than a mundane, but without a storm-blessed bozhk’s lifelike presence. Normally, Filip’s true-form and sousedni-shape moved in unison; now, however, Filip crouched in sousednia, wavery hands disappearing into what Gerrit saw as snow.
Gerrit wasn’t sure what memory Filip used to create a protection nuzhda—one half of the desperate need he’d use to ensure Gerrit’s safety during his imbuement—but it looked oddly like gardening. Within heartbeats, protection nuzhda’s violet glow sluiced Filip’s sousedni-shape. He briefly rejoined his true-form at Gerrit’s back before his heat-shimmer dodged away, throwing punches. It took Filip bare seconds in whatever violent memory he used to draw upon a combat nuzhda, then he stood again at Gerrit’s back, rippling crimson and violet.
Expertly, Filip built a strazh weave from the base of Gerrit’s skull, threading together the two nuzhdi into a pulsing glow that wrapped Filip’s arm and body to plunge into the ground like the roots of a tree. Filip’s weaves were a sensible precaution. If Gerrit lost control of any storm energy, the weaves would dump it through Filip to dissipate harmlessly into the ground.
Not that Gerrit would lose control.
Finished, Filip clasped Gerrit’s shoulder. Gerrit double-checked his best friend’s weaves—flawless, of course. Of all the strazh cadets, Filip was the best. Shifting his attention back