Duke shook his head. “There’s no shortcut unfortunately. Hunters have to earn their hearts the old way. But Stormhearts are valuable for more than just the magic they can channel for Stormlings.” He moved aside his long coat to reveal a complex leather belt with pockets and loops, all filled to the brim with various bottles and tubes and capsules. Duke flicked open a snap with scarred fingers and withdrew a small cylindrical tube, smaller than her pinky finger, with a fine scarlet powder inside. There was so little that it barely covered the rounded bottom of the tube.
“This is powder from a firestorm heart,” he said. “Ingesting it can make your skin temporarily fire resistant. The embers still hurt like hell when they hit you, but bruises are better than burned flesh. This small amount would sell for ten gold pieces.”
Thinking of Etel trying to sell Rora firestorm powder, she asked, “So it won’t burn you from the inside out if you ingest it?”
He laughed. “Oh, it can. But you’d need an entire Stormheart’s worth to do it. There are cheaper ways to do violence.”
“Do the other hunters have firestorm affinities?”
He shook his head. “Only Locke. Some don’t have any interest in the more dangerous stuff. Sly, for instance, only has a few affinities. Doesn’t want more. Bait’s our novie, sorry, novice. He’s still apprenticing under Jinx, and a little too eager. Eager hunters make for dead hunters. So I’ve got him capped at thunderstorms for now.”
There was no point trying to hide her emotions—they were bursting out of every pore of her skin. “I want to know everything.”
“Remember what I said about eager hunters?” Duke said with an arched brow.
“Eager for information is not the same as reckless behavior.” She should know—she was prone to both.
“True. But in this place, we trade. For everything. Even information.”
Her face fell. She had not thought to bring coin with her. All she had were the clothes on her back, and … the Stormheart ring. But she couldn’t. Not even for the answers she so desperately desired.
“I have nothing of value I can trade.”
“Nothing of value to you, perhaps.” He looked at her for a moment, then said, “The man you asked about. What can you tell me about him?”
She blanched. “Nothing. I know nothing about him.” She frowned. “I don’t have any coin on me, but I could get some and come back. Would you tell me then?”
Already, she was calculating whether she could make it back to the palace and return without getting caught. She turned to go, knowing the sooner she did it, the better. Servants would wake to prepare for tomorrow’s wedding before dawn.
“Wait,” Duke called before she had gone more than a few steps. “What do you want to know?”
She turned. “What about the trade? I did not give you information or goods.”
His intense green eyes fixed on her. “You gave me information, just not with words. A man comes to me with Stormhearts to sell, and Locke tells me you were afraid of someone in the market last night. And here you are today asking about my customer. That tells me enough.” Those intense eyes fixed on her again. “For now. Ask your questions.”
For now? Rora swallowed her discomfort and peppered him with questions, starting with the items for sale in his stall. Some were familiar. Lightning lanterns and the eternal embers she’d been introduced to the night before, but she listened with rapt attention as he explained the rest.
Duke held up a bottle with a twister inside and explained that some people bought the raw storm magic for nefarious purposes. Someone might throw a bottle like the one he held through a window so the short-lived twister created when the bottle smashed would destroy the building from the inside out. But the hunters used raw magic for defensive reasons. Duke said, “Most storms are about momentum. Disrupt one storm by throwing another in a mix, and they’ll both dissipate.”
“What if they don’t? What if they join together and become twice as dangerous as before?”
“It can happen. Has happened. But I’ve been hunting these beasts for decades, so there’s not much I haven’t come across. I know what works and what doesn’t.”
Rora wished she could open up his mind, his memories, and read them like a book. But she couldn’t; all she could do was ask every question that popped into her head. “What about the rest?” Rora asked, waving a hand at all the merchandise. “The stuff that’s not raw magic in a bottle.”
“You met Jinx. She’s the witch of the crew,” Duke answered. “Earth witch by nature. But with the right incantation, she can do just about anything. She’s the one who makes all our imbued pieces. And she enchants our hunting equipment to aid us. You can’t have a hunting crew without a witch.”
Rora’s tutors had always taught that witches had been wiped out with the first tempests. Those who claimed to practice witchcraft now were more masters of deceit than anything. Stormlings held the only true magic.
Or so she had been told.
Duke handed her a necklace, and its white crystal pendant was warm against her skin. “That’s our bestseller. It will burn hot when storm magic is in the immediate vicinity. It gives those who can’t afford more complex magic a shot at finding shelter before it’s too late. It’s popular among those who work the fields outside the safety of the palace walls.”
Rora returned the necklace and glanced at the other jewelry and baubles laid on the same table. “And those?”
“More storm alerts. A few are imbued with elemental energy. They give the wearer a minor ability to manipulate either earth, wind, water, or fire. They’re typically only good for one use, but in a pinch they can be the difference between life and death.”
The more she dug, the more lies she uncovered. Her mother had said there was no other choice. That marriage to Cassius was the only option. That Stormlings were the only option. But here she was, surrounded by more options than she could even fathom. Rora’s eyes grew watery, and she turned away under the guise of studying a few more trinkets. Grief and anger warred in her, the latter gaining control.
“Why must this be done in secret? Surely all this could be used in bigger ways to make the world better, safer. I’ve seen the lightning lanterns and the eternal embers, but what about Stormling inventions like the palace gate that can only be opened with skyfire magic? Has anyone thought of doing something that big? You could create warning systems in villages without a resident Stormling. You could install the eternal embers in homes to provide warmth in the winter rather than burning wood that’s in short supply. We could change the way the world works with this.”
Duke smiled, something sparking in his eyes that she couldn’t quite define. “We’ve not done much in the way of combining magic and machinery the way the Stormlings have, not more than necessary anyway. Hunters spend most of their time out chasing the weather. There’s no time to tinker with inventions when the raw stuff is in such high demand. And inventions are big, flashy. Which means they’re risky. There would be a fair few in this city who would see an invention along those lines as a threat to be neutralized.”
“A threat? Making people safer is somehow dangerous?”