by JA Andrews
None of them answered her right away.
“No one knows him better than you, Sin.” Will pushed his empty plate away. “But the number of people who can control a dragon is quite small.”
“He wouldn’t kill all those people.” She was angry at the idea, angry at the thought the Keepers believed it, and angry at herself for how obstinate she sounded.
Will raised his eyebrow. “He killed a lot of people with frost goblins on the Sweep.”
“They were enemies of the Morrow.” She knew it didn’t sound convincing, but this just didn’t make sense. “He wouldn’t kill all those people for gold.”
“It is possible that he is not taking it for himself as much as keeping it from everyone else,” Gerone said.
“Did they see anything that pointed to Lukas besides a dragon?” she demanded.
Will’s expression said the dragon was enough. He held her angry gaze. “The only other thing they found was a…warning, maybe? There was a man hung so high on a cliff over the pass that the hunters couldn’t retrieve his body to bury it.”
“Someone from Gulfind? Or Queensland?” Mikal asked.
“With the condition of the body, it was impossible to tell. The only thing they could tell was that both his hands and his feet were shackled with gold.”
Sini’s heart caught in her throat. She could almost hear Lukas’s voice. That gold merchant chose his slavery. It’s just his shackles are made of gold.
Chapter Six
“Shackles is what Lukas called gold.” Sini glanced out the window. The Sweep felt like another lifetime. Like a different world. The colors were all different there. Everything here was more vibrant. Even the memory of Lukas’s words was faded. “Worse than our slave tunics, or,”— her gaze dropped to Will’s black robe—“Keeper robes.” Out of the corner of her eye she saw Mikal’s face tighten in disapproval, but none of the others looked surprised.
“We need you in Queenstown, Sini.” The earnestness in Will’s voice brought her attention back to him. “You know so much more than we do about him.”
Sini looked down at the grain of the table. The old men waited patiently. They always gave her the time to think, unlike on the Sweep where she’d been expected just to obey. She glanced at the Shield. Was this the change he’d felt?
Everything in her rebelled at the thought of leaving.
“I’ve been telling you everything I can remember about Lukas for years.” There couldn’t be much they didn’t know by now. “And who knows how much he’s changed? I never would have expected him to do this in Gulfind.”
“It isn’t facts about him we need,” the Shield answered. “You don’t know what he’s doing now, but you know him. You know his dreams and his fears and his heart in a way that maybe no one else does. If it weren’t for you, we’d all assume he’d taken Gulfind out of greed. Now we know there is another reason, and it gives us a chance to understand him.”
When she still didn’t answer, the Shield continued, his voice kind. “It is through you that we’ll be able to see his humanity. It’s a dangerous thing to forget a man is a man, but it is far too easy to do with those who set themselves up as our enemies. Even this first step he’s taken is hard to see as anything but savage. If we are to remember the man behind the actions—and it is of the utmost importance that we do—we’ll do it through your eyes.”
A fear from deep inside her worked its way up. “What if he isn’t the man I remember anymore?”
“The man you knew is still there,” the Shield said. “He may have taken himself deep into darkness, but it will be because he still wants what he always wanted and fears what he always feared. He’s just lost track of any good paths that would bring his desires to him, and now he is trying forge his own paths, by whatever means.”
What had Lukas always wanted?
Freedom. He’d always wanted freedom. And to make those responsible for his slavery pay.
The room waited quietly for an answer she didn’t have.
“Take today to think about it,” the Shield said.
Sini nodded.
Gerone pushed himself up. “I’ll start some soup while we catch up on everything else.”
Sini stood up from the hard chair. “I’ll help.”
“The council chamber is a little messy.” The Shield gave a self-conscious smile. At Will’s raised eyebrows he added, “Drawings of the library roof.”
“And piles of books and scrolls,” Sini said over her shoulder, pulling the bowl of onions down from the shelf. “And a clay model of the library.”
Will laughed and the Shield’s grinned as well. “All essential, I assure you skeptics. But we might as well talk here. Sini?”
She glanced back to find the Shield watching her with an inscrutable face.
“Whether you leave or not, it would be helpful if you shared with us everything you know about Lukas.”
She paused. “That would take ages to write out.”
“I wasn’t talking about writing it.”
It took her a moment to realize what he was saying. Her hand tightened around an onion. “The Wellstone?”
The Shield nodded. “Most likely it’s the details you’d never think to share that will become meaningful as we try to understand what Lukas is doing.”
“The knowledge you have could be essential,” Mikal agreed.
The idea of the Wellstone felt daunting, but it was certainly better than going to court. She nodded and the Shield looked pleased.
Sini helped Gerone start the soup while Will caught them up on everything else. The vast majority of the discussion was boring. Sini tried to pay attention to the different economic ramifications of the gold trade coming to an abrupt halt. The discussion about the poor harvest was troubling, but it was just a small part of the country and a few select crops that were affected.
The Keepers circled around continually to Lukas, guessing at his involvement. Their questions to Sini skirted along the edge of accusations and she tried not to be frustrated. If even the Keepers here were tempted to see Lukas as a heartless killer, how much more would the people at court? And when Lukas was killing people in Gulfind, what were they supposed to think?
The entire conversation made her feel vaguely sick. She couldn’t bring herself to believe that Lukas had killed all those people. But she couldn’t quite bring herself to think he hadn’t.
The valley fell into shadows and dinner time arrived, bringing even the twins down to the kitchen. Will greeted them warmly and the three of them fell into a discussion about some obscure Gringonnian tale. Sini watched the twins closely, but she couldn’t see any obvious signs of discomfort. Rett came in as well, his face and hands newly washed. The twins settled themselves on either side of Sini.
Gerone had made a pastry, and the smell of the season’s first apples cooking wrapped around her. The voices of the Keepers, from the quiet words of the twins to Will’s rolling laughter echoed off the stone walls, brightening the kitchen until it almost glowed. Sini lost track of the words, looking from one face to the next. Never could she have imagined a place like this, where there were no servants or masters, no rich or poor. Where her own wellbeing was valued as highly as everyone else’s. She could not have imagined how deeply she could love a group of men so old they’d had a hand in the histories she read.
The twins laughed with Will and a tightness formed in her throat. She couldn’t leave. What if she didn’t get back before…No. She couldn’t leave.
Will entertained them all with stories of his latest adventures, and it was later than usual when the old men drifted back to their rooms. By the time the oven fire had burned down to coals, only Will and Sini remained.
“I need to go back to Queenstown tomorrow.” Will stood. “Will you come with me?”
She shook her head. “But send me any questions you have, and I’ll answer them immediately.”
Will pressed his lips together but didn’t argue. “Then I’m headed up to use the Wellsto
ne. I’m sure I’ve forgotten to tell the Shield half the things I should have. If you want to use it, I’ll show you how.”
“I suppose it would help them to know Lukas better,” she admitted.
“They certainly won’t get any good memories of him from me.”
“I forgot the Wellstone has your memories of him.” She grimaced. “Those can’t be good. He hated you.”
Will shrugged. “I’d hate someone, too, if I thought they were supposed to protect me and they hadn’t. But if you want us to know more about him than I know, it has to come from you.”
Will started out of the kitchen, and Sini fell in beside him.
“Does it really take all your memories?” she asked. Someone had lit the torches along the ramp and the tower glowed with firelight.
“‘Take’ is misleading. You share your memories with it. Like you’re telling it a story. You keep your memories, but the Wellstone does, too. And yes, it sees all of them.”
“That feels…”
“Invasive?”
Sini nodded.
“It’s not as bad as it sounds. No one ever goes up and rummages through people’s memories. They’re too busy researching things that actually matter.”
“They’re going to go look through mine, though.”
“Your memories of Lukas, but not your entire life. No one cares what you ate for breakfast on your tenth birthday. And even if they did, it’s almost impossible to find that out. It’s challenging to direct the stone. I’m terrible at it. Alaric, of course, can do a decent job of finding what he’s looking for.
“The memories swirl around in it like a storm. The Shield can control it. He says he can ‘follow the threads’, whatever that means. But sometimes I wonder…”
Sini waited, but he didn’t continue. “You can’t stop there.”
Will grinned. “Sometimes I think he’s more connected to the Stronghold than the rest of us are.”
“To the building?”
“The whole valley. It’s different here than the rest of the world, right? And sometimes I think he’s connected to that. The man’s one hundred and thirty years old, but besides the fact that he shrinks a bit each year, he never seems to age.”
They passed the Shield’s closed door.
“Maybe,” Sini said quietly, “he’ll just keep living until he gets so small we can’t find him.”
Will laughed. “Maybe all the previous Shields are still here too, wandering around too tiny for us to see.”
They passed the council chamber and Will glanced in the door. His eyebrows shot up at the blanket of paper that covered the table and the floor. In the torchlight shining through the doorway, they could just see the clay model of the library in the center of the table. He opened his mouth as though he wanted to comment but closed it again.
“I agree,” Sini said. “I’ve asked him what exactly the problem with the library roof is, and he says it’s not strong enough. When I asked for what, he said the library wouldn’t tell him.”
Will let out something almost like a laugh. “See? I almost believe it could tell him. He’s the same with the Wellstone, he talks to it in a way we can’t.”
“Is the stone alive?”
“If you ever want a really boring lecture that essentially ends up at, We don’t know, ask the Shield that someday.”
“What part of my memories does it get?” The question wasn’t quite what she wanted to ask. “How I felt? What I saw?”
“What you saw and heard. But it doesn’t get your emotions. It’ll take our memories of dinner, but if someone else finds them in the stone, it will be like they were sitting with us. They’ll hear all the words, and see the room. If they’re skilled they might even smell or taste the apples, but they won’t know what parts of the twins’ chatter made us happy and what parts were too bittersweet to enjoy.”
The ache that hadn’t quite left Sini’s chest flared again. Will nodded toward her. “This place won’t be the same without them. I used to eat breakfast with them years ago. I always put off Gerone’s lessons so I could stay longer. They are my favorite storytellers. Or storyteller? I’m not convinced they’re two separate people.”
“What if,” Sini started, a fear suddenly occurring to her, “one of them dies before the other?”
Will looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “Do you think that’s really a possibility?”
“I hope not,” she said quietly.
“They’ve lived a good life, Sini. It’s not all sad.”
She walked past the twin’s door in silence. “It’s mostly sad.”
Not far above, the ramp they were climbing passed through an opening in the ceiling and they stepped into the open room atop the tower. The valley was painted in dark blue shadows and the sky was black enough that most of the stars were visible.
The Wellstone glittered on its small table.
There was only one chair, and Will sank into it. He set his hands on the sides of the crystal, closed his eyes, and bowed his head.
Sini waited, mesmerized by the glittering lights. Slowly the stone calmed. More surfaces took on a steady grey color, flickering with bits of candlelight. Will let out a long sigh. She tried to stay quiet. The final stars came out and the breeze ran chilled fingers along her neck.
Will finally lifted his hands off the stone and shook them out. He glanced up at Sini ruefully. “Whenever I come out of this stone I’m sure I’m missing out on so much.” He pushed himself up and offered her the chair. “Can you imagine how many good stories are locked in there?”
Sini forced a smile and sat. The chair was made of thick oak, the table the same. Heavy enough that they wouldn’t be blown about if the wind rose. Not that it did often, this low in the valley. The Wellstone sat nestled in an intricate silver stand carved into a tree trunk with roots spreading out across the table. Her hands felt clammy and she wiped them on her tunic.
“It doesn’t hurt,” Will said. “Just touch it, and it will do the rest. When it finally notices you, it will look for memories it doesn’t already know. Besides the unsettling experience of watching all your own memories float through your mind, it’s not unpleasant.”
She nodded, her eyes fixed on the stone, trying to follow the flashes of color, her mind trying to make sense of them, reluctant to sit. It was too vulnerable a thing to do.
“It’s an intimidating thing to use.” Will stood against a stone column between open archways, his dark Keeper’s robe blending into the gathering shadows. “But the Wellstone gives us a unique chance to see the most personal stories of each other’s lives from someone else’s perspective. And once we’ve lived a story with someone, it’s nearly impossible to hate or judge each other.
“Sometimes being a Keeper is difficult. Some have been put in situations where there are no good answers. Some have lied, some have hurt, some have killed. Not always for the right reasons, because no matter how long they’ve lived or how much they’ve studied, they’re still human.
“But no matter what, they’re still my brothers”—his smile was white in the darkness—“Or sister. So I believe that whatever of my humanity I reveal in this stone, they’ll love me anyway. In fact, I think the amount of humanity we reveal to each other is one of our greatest strengths.”
She did trust the Keepers. But the idea of them seeing the worst of her gave her pause.
She steeled herself. Showing Lukas’s humanity was what had brought her here, and if it took revealing her own to accomplish that, so be it.
Taking one last bracing breath, she focused on the flashing Wellstone and set her hands on the cold, sharply faceted sides.
Chapter Seven
Chaos swirled around her. Or maybe inside of her. All sense of the Stronghold disappeared. She could still feel her hands pressed against the hard edges of the stone. But there was no breeze, no sounds of the evening.
Images blurred past her, flashing into sight then dimming, skittering away like wind over the grass. Snippets o
f sound caught at her ear, conversations just out of reach. The Wellstone was vast. She’d imagined something small. Something she could talk to. But this was an entire world spreading out far beyond what she could understand. There was a weightiness to it, too, an agedness. Certain sounds and images were old. That woman’s face that blew past her shoulder, for instance. Although Sini didn’t know how she knew.
It wasn’t quite chaos. There was some sort of pattern here, some sort of purpose.
On the Sweep in the hottest parts of the summer she’d swum in the ocean and once found herself in a school of tiny silver fish, darting around her in just this way. Her movements had sent ripples of chaos through them, but as a whole, they’d moved together. The Wellstone moved together, as well, with the same chaotic fluidity.
Something caught at her. A tendril of curiosity. The maelstrom around her calmed and something focused on her. Her attention caught on a faded memory of a dirty street. Everything was cold and crumbling. Her mother’s legs came closer, then her face. They stood in a hovel somewhere in the Lees, but not one she recognized. Which wasn’t surprising. They’d been driven out of a new place every season.
Sini realized she’d been holding on to the memory, watching and listening to it. But all that was too long ago to worry about right now. She released it and the stone drew out more and more of her childhood in a dirty grey blur. Stealing, hiding, learning to be as quiet as she could, sneaking through alleys, away from her mother’s tongue, out of range of her father’s anger. The chill of it all seeped into her again. The way her bare feet always ached with cold.
The flow of memories slowed a bit with a flash of color. A wayfarer’s wagon sitting in the dingy streets, Vahe’s face on stage as he tossed a finger of flame through the air that lit up the world when it passed over her. A tangle of anger and regret filled her. She tried to get the Wellstone to move faster, but it seemed fascinated with the moment, focusing less on Vahe than on the magic that stirred in Sini’s small body. Everything about her had tingled, like the time the innkeeper woman had given her skin a hard scrubbing. A pinkish haze seeped out of her fingertips.