Excerpt – Imbue the Sky (Bourshkanya, Book 3)

Read the opening of Imbue the Sky by Corry L. Lee…

1. Summary of the Bourshkanya Trilogy thus far…
2. Chapter One

Summary of the Bourshkanya Trilogy thus far…

Darina Bartos, Strazh Mage and Storm Guard Sub-Lieutenant

You could definitely say that Celka Prochazka Doubek brought disaster into our lives. Or maybe you see her like a hero. For me, I hardly knew her when this story started, and didn’t know half of what I’m about to share.

When the bozhskyeh storms unexpectedly returned, filling the sky with Gods’ Breath (the lightning that makes it possible for the strongest mages to imbue new magical objects) Celka Prochazka was pretending to be a simple high wire walker in a traveling circus. Hiding her magic from the State (illegal as sleet, and a good way to get a one-way trip to a labor camp), she nursed a singular goal: use her magic to destroy the State that had arrested her pa. But practicing magic that requires getting struck by lightning is a good way to get caught by the Tayemstvoy, the brutal State police. Celka thought she was staring down the barrel of that arrest when Storm Guard Cadet Gerrit Kladivo discovered her performing in the circus. So Celka ambushed him—no mean feat for a civilian. The Storm Guard Academy trains elite military mages. We don’t mess around. Though Celka’s not the first person to want to knock Gerrit up the side of the head with a board.

Gerrit is… Well, so the Stormhawk, Bourshkanya’s all-powerful Supreme General, is his dad. Expectations galore, and Gerrit has never liked following rules or doing as he’s told. Made him a pain in the ass in the Academy, though you’ve got to admire someone who stands up to the Tayemstvoy and survives. Anyway, Gerrit and Celka settled on an uneasy truce. Celka had little training but great magical intuition, and Gerrit needed a place to regain his true-life grounding and practice magic outside State control. Imbuing new magical objects requires immersing yourself in sousednia, a secondary reality; but if the bozhk (our word for a mage) doesn’t hold strongly enough to true-life when imbuing, they risk permanently breaking themself from reality. Gerrit was convinced that would be him if he stuck around, thanks to nudges from Captain Vrana, his most trusted teacher.

Turns out, Captain Vrana—one of the Heroes of Zlin, who ended the Lesnikrayen War twenty years ago with her badass magic—was actually running the resistance this whole time. That woman is better than a spider at weaving webs.

Filip Cizek, Gerrit’s best friend and strazh mage, went after him, going undercover as a circus knife thrower. A strazh can’t imbue magic of their own, but we train to protect imbuement mages and keep them grounded. Filip had orders (Captain Vrana, again) not to make contact until Gerrit successfully imbued something big. And while Celka was suspicious of Filip, he’s as charming as he is brilliant, so she ended up accepting his help in her resistance work and they became flirty friends. Filip’s loyalty, however, remained with the State. That boy is intense in his convictions.

Despite their wildly different backgrounds, Celka and Gerrit grew to like each other—which we are not going to talk about—and began to tame their magic, all while Celka was getting Gerrit involved in the resistance. When Gerrit learned that his father had started the Lesnikrayen War to gain power, a war that cost tens of thousands of lives, it shattered the last of his loyalty. Contrary to what you might think when you meet him, Gerrit’s not a total sleet-licker.

Before Celka and Gerrit could escape deeper into the resistance, the Tayemstvoy caught up to them. Celka imbued a powerful weapon, and Filip ran to their rescue. But they were badly outnumbered and things went pear-shaped: Celka’s magic out-of-control, Gerrit desperate, and Filip determined to keep them all alive. Somehow they imbued a talking python instead of dying in a magical conflagration.

While Nina is not a snake you want to cross, she couldn’t save them from a platoon of armed Tayemstvoy, so Gerrit revealed his identity as the Stormhawk’s son. It saved their lives but put them under State control, which Vrana managed to twist into an opportunity, because webs. She ordered Gerrit to find a way to kill his famously unkillable father.

To find a crack in the dozens of imbuements protecting the Stormhawk, Gerrit walled off memories, warping himself into the son his father wanted to see, cruel and power-hungry. All the while, Gerrit was imbuing weapons and leading a platoon of imbuement mages, overseen by his sister Iveta. Smart and ruthless, Iveta wears red Tayemstvoy shoulders, but she’s not a sadist like her father or their older brother Artur.

Filip, meanwhile, initially relieved to be back in uniform, began to struggle. Sousednia’s neighboring reality began intruding on his mind, which shouldn’t be possible for a strazh. Helped by Yanek (who finally got Filip to see him as more than a friend), Filip realized he’d somehow joint-imbued the python with Gerrit and Celka. Wielding storm energy had changed him, making him an imbuement mage. He should have reported this to Iveta, but the State had begun cracking down on civilians singing religious songs during storms. These songs, sung in fugue, allow civilians to imbue “minor miracles,” like expanding their meager food supplies. With rationing hitting hard and Filip’s deep religious convictions, the State oppressions became too much. Filip switched sides, joining Celka and Gerrit in their assassination plot.

Their first attempt to kill the Stormhawk nearly worked, but one of their co-conspirators—a childhood crush of Gerrit’s—got captured. With no way to get her out, Filip snuck in and executed her to save her from interrogation. (Trust me, it was a mercy.) Gerrit didn’t take it well, pushing Filip and Celka away, solidifying his mental walls to escape his grief, and blaming Vrana and the resistance for the assassination’s failure.

While Celka and Filip worked on a new assassination strategy, Gerrit stepped fully into the role his father had prepared, becoming a Tayemstvoy captain (not a good look) and gaining his father’s trust alongside Iveta. The resistance intended to start a succession war after the Stormhawk’s death, splitting regime loyalties between Iveta and Artur, and Gerrit decided that not only should his sister win that war, but she should keep power afterwards—storms take the resistance.

After Tayemstvoy-Gerrit forced Celka to attempt a joint-imbuement with him, despite her protests, then monumentally sleeted the whole thing up, Celka and Filip dragged him more or less back to himself. Reluctantly, he aided their successful assassination. But Artur was better positioned than his sister to gain control of the regime at that point, so Gerrit and Iveta fought to keep word of their father’s death from getting out, buying Iveta time to solidify her powerbase.

Convinced Iveta would be a good ruler, Gerrit tried to persuade Celka and Filip to throw in with Iveta over the resistance, but by then he’d shattered their trust. And Celka dumped his ass, which I am definitely not cheering about. (A lie. I might have squealed when I learned they’d spilt.)

Taking a huge risk, Filip shared his loyalties with Yanek, who’d stolen his heart. But Yanek couldn’t believe in a resistance victory, and his attempt to get Filip to stay ran into the unshakable wall of Filip’s convictions. Although it broke Filip’s heart, Yanek stayed behind with Gerrit, helping falsify Filip and Celka’s deaths, while the pair of them snowshoed off into the resistance…

For a refresher on Bourshkanya’s magic, see the Storm Magic Primer.

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Chapter One

Rope tight around his middle, Filip stepped backward off a cliff in the moonlight, trusting a stranger to lower him to one of the labor camp’s rear watchtowers. Being armed only with a belt knife made him feel naked, and the wind whipping across the frozen taiga cut straight to his bones despite his winter layers. He hoped that the prisoners they’d come to rescue were still alive.

Gripping the rough hemp, Filip craned over his shoulder as the rope played out, careful where he put his feet. Snow and rocks had piled in crevices and, though a concealment imbuement hid him from view in true-life, he could put the whole compound on alert if he accidentally knocked free a minor avalanche. With only four resistance fighters attacking an entire labor camp, that would be a disaster.

With a steadying breath, Filip touched his chest where his storm pendant hung around his throat beneath layers of wool and fur. Silently, he mouthed the traditional prayer to the Storm Gods’ Protection Aspect: May I protect those who are vulnerable.

Finally, after too long ignoring the State’s brutality, he had a chance to act on that prayer. No more hiding; no more running. Time had come to fight.

If only he were fighting alongside Yanek.

He imagined Yanek at the top of the cliff, his strong, confident hands gripping the rope, keeping Filip safe. But it was just a fantasy. Filip had asked Yanek to join him in the resistance; Yanek had refused. Despite weeks with too much time to think while fleeing the State’s clutches, Filip still didn’t understand why. Oh, he knew Yanek’s reasons—how his partner didn’t believe the resistance had a chance, how he thought that Iveta Kladivo would make a better dictator than her father, the now-dead Stormhawk.

Filip just wished… what? That he’d dared share more than the tiniest sliver of his own beliefs? That he’d trusted Yanek enough to bring him into their assassination plot? If he had, maybe Yanek would be with him now.

Or Yanek might have stayed loyal to the State. Even turned Filip and Celka over to the Tayemstvoy—like a good soldier—before they could assassinate the Stormhawk.

Filip’s boot slipped, and pebbles rained down the cliffside, chillingly loud.

Expecting a shout and a beam of light from the watchtower below, Filip’s heartrate quickened. But the villager above kept lowering him, and Filip forced himself to focus, breathing a little easier each second that passed without a reaction from the guard.

Yanek’s betrayal was in the past. Filip needed to focus on the present—where a moment of distraction could get him killed.

He’d trained all his life for this kind of mission. Time to put that training to use.

Nearing the watchtower, Filip angled his path to the side facing away from the prison yard. There, he discovered a window large enough to fit through. Perfect. Then he heard voices inside—voices, plural—and his hope for an easy assault died.

They’d expected each tower would contain only a single guard—relatively easy to kill without sounding an alarm. But Filip had no backup and no way to turn back. He’d just have to be fast and not make mistakes.

Cupping his hands around his mouth to obfuscate the sound, Filip hooted for the villager to halt his descent. The rope jerked him to a stop, and Filip braced his feet wide against the cliff, dropping one hand to his belt knife. If a guard stuck their head out to investigate the sound, the concealment imbuement would keep them from spotting him, but they could still spot the suspiciously taut rope arrowing straight at him. Bourshkanyans grew up on tales of heroic bozhki using magic to infiltrate enemy lines. A smart guard would shoot first and ask questions later.

Tensed for action, Filip craned over his shoulder to look through the watchtower window. He needed to get inside where he’d have room to maneuver.

Instead of a clear view of the two guards, Filip’s head was level with the watchtower roof. The villager had stopped him too high. He couldn’t see more than the floorboards in front of the window without flipping himself upside-down. Sleet. Could he reach the windowsill if he stretched? Filip risked walking his feet down until they dangled in midair, the rope riding up to cut in below his ribs. Even stretching out his toes, they hung two handspans above the windowsill.

Two more owl hoots would get the villager to lower him a little more, but he was already lucky that the guards hadn’t gotten curious about his ‘owl.’ Filip was skilled at many things, but bird impressions were not one of them.

His only advantages right now were surprise and invisibility. More noise could ruin the former, and if he got caught out here, dangling from a rope above a dozen-meter drop, the latter wouldn’t do him any good. Which meant he had to cut the rope and jump.

Gripping the rope near his chest with his off-hand, he planted one leg against the rockface, his other boot pressed against the watchtower’s outer wall, just beneath its roof. The position was precarious, but he didn’t need to hold it for long. With his free hand, he drew his knife and sawed through the rope.

The lurch when it cut free shocked his shoulder, but he held, biceps straining against the weight. Carefully, he walked another half-meter down the cliff, straightening his arm as he went, nothing to save him from falling if his grip slipped. His thin leather glove protected his hand from the rope but made his hold tenuous. Still, he sheathed his belt knife and walked enough to the side that momentum would give him a nice swing into the window.

Lining up his angles, he kicked off the cliff and jumped. His boots hit the windowsill, his right hand curling around the frame. He should have been able to perch there like a cat, poised to leap inside, his reindeer-hide boots nearly silent. Except the windowsill was icy, and he slipped.

Flinging his weight forward, Filip barely managed to fall into the watchtower instead of out of it, then he was tumbling, wrenching his arm as he tried to catch himself and failed. At the last second, he turned the fall into a roll, but the watchtower was too small to come up from it properly, and his shoulder slammed into the wall, his leg impacting something softer—a guard.

“What in sleet storms?” they muttered, looking around.

Shoving to his feet, Filip used the guard’s confusion to elbow them in the face. They stumbled, reeling, and Filip drew his knife and slipped behind them, grabbing their scarf to bare their throat. Then he sliced his blade deep.

Blood sluiced hot over his hands, his knife catching and tearing free of their windpipe. He’d practiced the move at the Storm Guard Academy on farm animals, so he knew from feel that the cut was clean, knew the guard wouldn’t be able to call for help as they died.

Clamping down on his rush of satisfaction—and the bile-flavored horror that this wasn’t a pig or a sheep—Filip kept moving. No time to think.

Shoving the guard’s body aside, he turned to find the second guard swinging their rifle around. He snapped his left hand out automatically, catching the barrel, yanking and twisting the gun down to jerk the guard off balance. They hadn’t gotten their finger on the trigger yet—thank the Storm Gods—so no shot went off, and the guard made the mistake of trying to wrest back control of their weapon. Filip dropped it, punching the hilt of his knife into their larynx. The guard grabbed for their throat, gasping and gargling, rifle dropping to hang from its strap, and Filip kicked their knees out from under them.

Yanking the guard’s hat down over their face, Filip bared the back of their skull. Shifting his grip on the knife, Filip tightened his hold on the guard’s face through their hat. With just enough moonlight to see the knobs of their spine, he drove the point of his blade into their neck, one clean thrust sliding between vertebrae to sever their spinal cord.

The guard went limp. Dead.

Filip let them drop, breathing hard, searching for the next threat.

On the floor, the first guard made a horrible gargling, choking noise through their severed windpipe, blood still spurting from their carotid to slick the watchtower’s floorboards. In the shadows, it looked like black ink. Filip’s stomach spasmed. Locking his jaw, he sheathed his knife and grabbed both guards’ rifles. One, he slung across his back; the other, he raised to the window, careful to expand his concealment imbuement to cover both guns.

The fight had lasted less than a minute, but the scuffle of their boots and the first guard’s coughing would carry in the frozen air, and it was possible that another watchtower’s guards had seen their comrades fall.

The other rear tower against the cliff face was dark, shadows making it impossible to see inside. Jolana Kohout, an old Academy classmate, had taken that tower, and he trusted her to handle whatever she’d found there. At the front of the prison, in the tower diagonally across from his own, blue light glowed from the windows. His heart lurched before he realized it was a concealment imbuement, visible only to someone storm-blessed like him. That tower was Celka’s, and he squinted, trying to make out details.

Blue flickered in the windows of the other front tower, as well, but that was a relief. It meant Captain Vrana was inside, and if he could trust anyone to pull off their mission silently, it was the resistance’s leader, the Wolf. She’d made history in the last war alongside Celka’s father—the Heroes of Zlin—and could probably handle covert night missions like this in her sleep.

But Celka…

Filip’s hands had started to shake, the fight’s adrenaline hitting him, and he let his rifle hang from its strap, instead gripping the windowsill, only vaguely aware of his fingers going numb without his heavy mittens, his leather gloves tacky with freezing blood. He wanted to slump to the ground and hug his knees to his chest until the tremors ceased, even as he wanted to cheer—he’d done it! His first real mission, a success. He swallowed the taste of bile, refusing to look at the bodies at his feet. He would not throw up. Not here, not now. Not even though he’d murdered two people.

You always knew you’d have to kill people. At least you’re doing it for the right reasons, not because the Tayemstvoy ordered it. Focus. He needed to focus on the rest of the mission. He’d silenced his own guards, but had the others? If any of them were going to have trouble, it would be Celka. She was skilled with imbuements, but she wasn’t a trained killer. Not like the rest of them.

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