Chapter 1: Ikara

(AUTHOR’S NOTE: hey Juke here! this novel is multi-POV, switching from third person to first, depending on the character. I recently finished writing the full manuscript, yet all of it is still in editing and the plot is wonky, so the days i post chapters will vary. Please bear with me as i make changes. Anyways, enjoy! Welcome to Sora … make sure you bring a coat or two, because this world is cold.)

1

IKARA

I never wanted to be a thief.

Someone pious would blame the gods for the way things have turned out; someone practical would blame fate. There’s a saying that us Sorans love to use: May the storms turn in your favor. Some people add another line to it—unless fate finds you first. I could apply either line to any situation in my life and come away with a more-than-accurate picture, depending on where I’m standing.

Up until my father died, my childhood was a normal one. We were never rich enough to live in luxury, let alone board the trains that run through Siang like a metal network, but we got by. Pater worked with other Kijra merchants in our city, even a few Yulai, if he got lucky. Most of the time he came home with supplies both foreign and native that were similar only in their sustenance. There was always a Zhenguanese rice sack curled in the corner of the sitting room, always a Geujinese scroll painting hung up by the hearth, praising gods he didn’t believe in. My father’s job gave the illusion of abundance, but supplies faded quickly with seven mouths to feed—at least until seven became six.

Ikorin and I were the oldest of our parents’ five children. The two of us caused enough mischief to last a lifetime, sneaking off when the rest of the house slept to share stolen candy in hidden alcoves we called hideouts. I never used the word stolen, only borrowed, even though none of those borrowed items made it back to their owners. We danced around the topic like we were avoiding fire, convinced that every leaping flame was there simply to entertain us.

Then one day, Iko just . . . disappeared. I went to sleep with his back against mine on the mattress we shared, but when I awoke from a muddled dream, he wasn’t there. He did not come back, no matter how I called for him until my voice was almost hoarse from imaginary yelling, my hand pressed to my mouth to stop myself from waking the others. None of my family—not even my siblings, who had favored him over me because of the sweetmeats he snuck them—mentioned him again, as if he’d always been gone, as if he’d never been there.

As if they’d forgotten him.

Things only really fell apart six months later, when my father died. I say died like it is a solid, time-hardened fact, when really he just left one night and never returned. We didn’t forget him the way my family forgot Iko, but none of us were brave enough to talk about him, not even in the places where his absence swelled in too-long nights and too-loud silences. We wanted to make him a Haniwa, but my mother—who couldn’t get out of bed for weeks—regained her sense long enough to say that there was nothing to bury.

And besides, she’d said with a valiant attempt at a laugh, he’s not an ancient emperor or ancestor. He is a man, just like anyone else.

And men could die, all right.

One day when I was barely ten, standing by a prominent corner of the market where beggars usually sat, a Yulai man happened to pass me. There was a half-open coin pouch secured to the belt on his hip that caught my eye. When no one else was looking, I slipped between the crowd of bodies and made my first steal. By the time I emerged, the leather pouch was clutched roughly between my fingers and the man, oblivious to what I’d done, had already been swallowed by the crowd. No one in my house went hungry that night.

Eventually I got good at it. It started with stealing simply to feed, but then I moved up to stealing to trade, and then trading to feed. Every day when the cycle was done, whatever I’d stolen originally had been swapped for something much better; something I could bring home.

So I became a thief. I didn’t want to, but for the last seven years, I have been one.

My rucksack is empty now, but when I run my hands along the coarse fabric, I can imagine the contents it will soon hold. The house is nearly quiet this time of day but for the sound of laughter trickling through the window shutters. Our old place was in the Kijra district of the city and looked just like any other, but this one is in the Xi Qeh district, where the Dominance had rows upon rows of square houses built on every street in lieu of the traditional style—all in the name of innovation. These houses look more like the ones in the other two Realms—probably Ether—with flat roofs and ‘modern’ changes not many of us are fond of, my mother included.

“We’ll never be able to navigate these new appliances,” she grumbled the first day we arrived in the neighborhood.

I’d looked at her. “It’s better than nothing.”

She hadn’t replied, but the way she pursed her thin lips told me of her displeasure.

Avairis and Ether—the other two Realms—call us the modern Realm, yet to us, modern is just anything we haven’t seen before, anything we can prod and marvel at. We are a Realm of glass and ice and steel, of tech and art and wind, but it barely shows in our district. After all, us lowers don’t have the privilege of innovation.

I finish lacing my boots and tug my parka farther up my shoulders. Pater gave it to me when I was six; it was way too big for me then and the hood fell over my face anytime I wore it. Ten years later, though, it fits me well enough. At least the hood stays over my head, at any rate.

As I stand, a flash of motion catches my attention, and my gaze drifts to the mirror hung up by the hearth. In it I am reminded, once again, that I inherited most of my mother’s features, save the slanted eyes my father passed to me—they’re a dark green shade that is almost black, its true color slipping through only beneath light, like shining a lantern across thick foliage in an otherwise dark jungle. Besides that, I look like my mother, down to the same light ash-brown skin and silver hair.  

They call Yatahama the snow-touched nation. All of Sora is covered in shivering, unyielding winter, but it shows in the Yatahamans the most: pale hair, dark depthless eyes like the deepest waters of a frozen pond, and tilted accents. Even our language is flat-tongued, bare as the barren windswept plains scattered across our Realm.

Another laugh draws my eyes away from the mirror and toward the front of the house. Pulling my gloves on, I pad toward the door and swing it open, poking my head out into the cold.

 My younger siblings, Ahnyuki and Kkaidvin, chase a few neighborhood kids around the deserted street, kicking up loose stones as they run. Kaddy looks exactly like my father, and Abby like my mother. The only difference is the fact that they’re kannikkai, part winter-goat. They lack the telltale hooves of their Otherrealm equivalents, satyrs, but they definitely have the nubby horns and fur-tufted tails—and all the mischief. Our ancestors must have had some strong kannikkai genes for them to show so prominently in these two, especially since their kind are rare nowadays, and for good reason. If my people were captured, enslaved, and then slaughtered all in the course of a decade, I wouldn’t fancy claiming to be one of them.

“Abby,” I begin, raising my voice to be heard over the children’s squeals of fright. I address her first because she’s probably gonna be the hardest to settle before I leave. “Kano hei jindoru, wa to.”

My little sister screws up her face when I tell her to come back inside in our native tongue, Hantake. She loves to speak in Geujinese, the tongue of Geujun’s people, whenever the chance arises. I don’t teach her anything related to the enemy country if I can help it, but she picked up on a few words my father taught me years ago and hasn’t forgotten them since. So I’m not surprised when she stops running long enough to shake her head and reply in Geujinese, “Ezdan.”

I raise my eyebrows. “A naki!” Now!   

Abby pouts, looking for a moment at the neighborhood kids as if they will object, but they’re too nervous to. She stops running and comes toward me at a slow trot, Kaddy following close behind. My brother is just as mischievous as his twin sister, but he is shy enough to wait until I’m gone to wreak havoc on the house.

Or to get us into the Xi Qeh neighbors’ bad graces. I grimace. Again.

The spring cold drifts into the room and traps itself inside as I close the door, melting when I flick my hand toward the fireplace without looking at it and murmur, “Nadriék.” Bright yellow fire roars to life in the hearth, spurred on by the touch of magic. The incantation is a Geujinese one, and so is its countercommand, Drikaoldus, but the words themselves hail from the ancient Soran tongue.

I watch the flames apprehensively, biting my lip. As a Kijra, I am not supposed to possess such magic, let alone use it. By law, only the Yulai—and the ones above them on the hierarchy—are allowed to use it. The Yulai use their abilities for practicalities or display, though more of the latter than the former. Twin washi fans adorned with balls of light that streak and twirl whenever the dancer holding them moves; long pink ribbons bewitched to trail the heels and frothy kimono sleeves of Yulai women like serpents of silk; water statues guided by the hand of their enchanters, adorned in lilies and draped in pearl-studded shawls of seaweed; and a singer enchanting her voice so the actors around her can feel the lyrics of her song resonating within their bones before they hear it are only a few examples of how the rich choose to use their magic.

At least, that’s what the Dominance calls it. They only use the word magic when it comes to the ones who deliver heavily on their taxes: the ones who pay generously for new roads in their city quadrants and fresh Otherrealm fruit deposited neatly in their unblemished palms. When it comes to our side of the political throng, they call it danger. The word raises bile to my throat.

Then again, I don’t even know where my own magic originated. My parents are Batsu—Sorans without magic—and so were my grandparents. And if my father wasn’t spinning tales when he told me, storm magic is an ability that hasn’t been seen in centuries. He taught me the two incantations, Nadriék and Drikaoldus, for defense, but more often than not I end up using them for minor things such as lighting fires—which confuses me, as lightning has nothing to do with fire.

It’s hot as fire, I think, and vice versa. I suppose I’ll never know.

“Are you going to Kaguri?” Abby asks me after a moment, having pulled her seal plush, Yugi, out from under the couch on which Kaddy dangles his short legs.

As a matter of fact, I am. Today’s trip will be the farthest I’ve gone from Siang, the capital. One of the Yulai men Pater used to work with, Danyu Hiunjie, has offered a few sacks of essentials in exchange for a dress that will go to his wife, Kkaitlin; I’m supposed to drop the clothes off at his shop. I know he wants an excuse to give me the items for free, but I turn him down every time he slips the notion in. My mother wouldn’t let me live it down, and neither would my own conscience.

Speaking of my mother. Mater comes into the room holding my baby sister, Vladya, on her hip, with Koda clinging to the other. I find it odd that of her six children, only her three oldest—me, Ikorin, and Ahnyuki—have Yatahaman names. Her younger three—Kkaidvin, Nekkoda, and Vladya—were given Geujinese names. Abby and Kaddy are the same age, but in terms of maturity . . .

Even though war has whittled Mater down, she is still beautiful. Her mouth is flat, but even now it crinkles with laugh lines, and her silver eyelashes are Yulai-long.

“Yes,” I say in response to Abby’s question. I reach over and flick her nose, causing her to laugh, then ruffle Kaddy’s hair. “Just for a few hours. I’ll be back before you can blink. They should be opening the gates soon,” I add over my shoulder to Mater, turning to face her. “If I get going now I could be there before a line starts.”

“Then get going,” she says, reaching up to push my hair back. “Give Danyu my greetings. And remember: if you give little, expect to receive little. If you give much—”

“—expect to receive much,” I finish, almost exasperatedly. “Right, well, I’ve learned that lesson.” I think of my siblings, then add, “Make sure they eat breakfast, alright? And you too. You’ve barely eaten today.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Neither have you.”

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.” I lean down and kiss her cheek, then straighten—I’m not exactly tall, but my mother is a short woman—and smile to tamper her concern. It doesn’t exactly dissipate, but she does nod in acquiescence, agreeing we’ll continue this discussion when I’m not in such a rush.

“Zaoshin hei,” I say in Hantake, assuring them I’ll be back. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Abby screw her face up again, and this time I really smile. But my mouth returns to a pursed line the second I’m out in the cold.

That’s the thing about being a thief. We never steal to feed ourselves.