Dark Heart by Russell Kirkpatrick

Bregor. ‘Nor of his children.’
    ‘We’ll wait here a moment then.’
    Captain Cohamma pushed between the lines of people patiently waiting at Suggate, leading his men through the gate.
    ‘Oy, that’s not fair,’ one man cried, and received a cuff for his trouble.
    ‘Fair or no, do you fancy explaining to a man with a sword why he has to wait?’ Bregor replied.
    The man nodded, apparently satisfied by this pragmatic answer, then resumed his nervous study of the rapidly closing wind funnels.
    Bregor watched with him. He’d earlier estimated perhaps two hundred people would remain this side of Suggate when the whirlwinds arrived—which they would, and soon, if they continued their present heading. Maybe only one hundred, he thought hopefully. The winds had slowed down, as though they searched…No, the fisherman was the one who always seemed to come up with a supernatural explanation for events. It’s a spring storm, that’s all. An enormous storm. No, an unheard-of storm. One that had chosen—no, not chosen, surely—had come ashore coincidentally at the same time as an invading Neherian fleet. One that had spawned five whirlwinds—four slender fingers and one enormous thumb—that searched the city, looking for…well, by all evidence, looking for Noetos.
    Of course it’s not a natural storm.
    Noetos put his hand on his belt and discovered the huanu stone was gone, along with his sword.
    Belatedly, he realised what some part of his mind had been trying to tell him. The stone and the sword have been missing for some time. At least since…since when? When had he lost the stone? A wave of nausea washed over him. He’d fallen in the water. No doubt the stone now rested at the bottom of the muddy harbour.
    Find it, Noetos told himself. Find it or die.
    There had been so many other times it might have been shaken loose: diving for cover when the lightning struck; during his swordplay with the Neherians; even wading Lecita Stream. He’d done that last twice. Ought he track every move he’d made in this cursed city?
    He was forgetting something, he knew it, but he had no idea what it was. Curse his fogged mind!
    The Oligarchs District obscured his view of the harbour. Half an hour there and back at a brisk walk, the best he could manage. Half an hour for Anomer and Arathé to survive the attentions of their unnatural stalkers. And this took no account of the time it would take to dive and recover the stone. Given he could find it, given he had the energy to make the dive, given no Neherians remained by the wharf to resist him. Every moment he hesitated added to the time his children would have to dodge the whirlwinds.
    His feet made the decision for him. The shortest route and hang the whirlwinds, they told him, and bore him along Artisans Way towards Midtown Bridge. The bridge will have been destroyed by the finger that chased us, his mind said, but his feet didn’t listen. They had chosen their path.
    But as the wreck of the Man-o’-War inn came into view, both mind and feet slowed him to a stumbling shuffle. Again his feet led the way, taking him from the wide roadway, its cobbles strewn either side of the whirlwind’s path, and into a narrow, debris-choked alley that led behind the inn.
    A memory had arisen in his mind, a remembrance of glancing around the bedroom he’d taken, checking no one was watching, then removing the huanu stone from his belt and placing it behind the mirror leaning against the wall. Of placing his belongings beside his pallet, of making his way to the taproom. Of seeing Omiy the faithless alchemist from the taproom window. Then witnessing the Neherian fleet and the storm. The alarm had sounded, he and his men had grabbed their swords from their rooms and run out into the street.
    Leaving the stone behind.
    He remembered. That was why he’d been able to touch his daughter on the dock.
    He’d left the stone to be…to be what? Taken by the whirlwind? Could the fingers touch the