Skykeeper (The Drowning Empire Book 1)

by S. M. Gaither

  Blood bubbles up along the line now, tiny pinpricks shining a strange purplish color in the green light.

  “Watch.”

  A precise flick and a roll of her right wrist, and the concentrated magic leaps from her palm and seals itself over the cut, which heals within seconds.

  Brynn wipes away the drying blood, grins proudly and says, “Impressive, right?” She throws a smug look over her shoulder at our other sister. “And Nell thinks it’s all just me showing off, but I’m fairly certain that’s only because she’s jealous.”

  “I’m fairly certain you’re right,” I agree, joining in. But the words swell in my throat on the way out, and I’m thankful that Brynn doesn’t seem to notice how I’ve almost choked on them.

  One day, she will close the sky’s wounds the same way she has closed her own, yes. But for now? Nell is right: it is just a silly, harmless bit of showing off. Brynn’s scar is shallow, already healed enough that it is hardly visible without squinting.

  So I don’t know why my throat aches so badly. Or why I can’t stop staring at her hands, at the vapors of magic still hovering around them.

  I give my head a quick shake and force myself to stop thinking about all of these things.

  To remember my purpose.

  To keep walking.

  Eamon slows his pace and falls into step with us a few minutes later, leaving Varick. He’s been talking to him for most of our journey—likely giving him last-minute advice on leading the ceremony. And for all the talk and excitement surrounding this Alturian boy and his abilities, he looks much more nervous than I expected.

  The twins pounce on Eamon the second he reaches our side, demanding all at once to know which of them he thinks will eventually become the most famous keeper, and why, and how and if Brynn is a terrible know-it-all, isn’t she?

  He listens patiently to their chatter, but “Go on and see if Lord Fane and Mother would like some company, why don’t you two?” is his only reply, which earns him a chorus of exaggerated and disappointed sighs.

  But they listen to him, just like they always do, and turn their competition instead into a fierce race for the back of our caravan. There, Fane and his advisors, our mother, and a handful of highly-ranked servants are riding in grand carriages of silver curves and silk curtains.

  “Just stay out of the royal carriage,” Eamon calls after the girls. “Remember, feet on the ground—”

  “Eyes on the sky,” Nell interrupts with hardly a backwards glance, “one with the world and onwards and so forth. Yes, yes—we know, thank you and goodbye.”

  Eamon sighs as he watches them go.

  “They both already know everything there is to know about everything, in case you were wondering,” I tell him, and I manage a slight grin, which he returns in full earnest.

  “Almost as insufferable as you were at that age.”

  “I was not that bad.”

  “You were precisely that bad. Still are, actually.”

  “It isn’t as if there are that many years between us, you know.”

  Only three years, though it often feels like I’m much older than I am. Perhaps because the twins were only just born when our father died, so Eamon has always had to be their father, and—given what we have for a mother—I’ve often found myself acting as their other parent.

  Eamon still insists on treating me like a little sister most of the time. And right now, he is still looking at me as if I am worse than the twins ever were.

  “I am not that bad,” I repeat. “And either way, at least you won’t have to put up with me much longer, now will you?” That bitterness is back in my voice again, and it makes his smile abruptly disappear.

  I don’t want to look at the frown that replaces it, so I quickly tilt my face away and lift my eyes to our sky instead.

  It is still peaceful here.

  Inky black right now, of course, because our drom—one of the four great, rotating pillars of light just on the other side of the barrier in each of the kingdoms—turned its shadowy face to the capital city an hour or so ago. But every so often, a beam of blindingly bright lantern light swings upward, or one of our parade tosses a homemade firework into the air and it ignites with a crack! and a flash that illuminates that makeshift sky’s gently rippling watery surface.

  It’s beautiful.

  Everything about my kingdom is, really.

  I glance back at the small cluster of the royal carriages clattering over the rocky ground. My sisters are there, and they’ve already struck up a lively conversation with the emperor. I can’t hear what they’re saying, but there is plenty of wild hand gesturing going on, along with occasional deep ripples of laughter from Fane.

  And I have a sudden, fierce urge to try to convince my brother that he’s wrong to have even thought about slipping away from all of this.

  I still don’t think he would listen, but part of me thinks I should try anyway.

  Because after everything the emperor has given us, I don’t understand how Eamon and the others can justify abandoning him now. Not the way I understand why my sisters run so easily to the emperor’s side: because the emperor is charismatic, the best kind of eccentric. And I was never especially close to him, but he is always entertaining my sisters, telling them ridiculous stories, singing them even more ridiculous songs. And he protects all of us. Provides for all of us. Provides for our entire kingdom, which in turn provides so much for the rest of the empire.

  Or so I’ve always been told.

  All this, so long as we do what he and his council ask of us.

  The noise around us begins to dull as we approach the actual sealing site. People are still laughing, some of them still chanting, but for the most part, a sort of awestruck hush has fallen over the crowd.

  By the time we reach the shore of Isce, the silence has become almost eerie.

  Everyone is too busy staring at the sight above us to interrupt the quiet.

  The rift looks every bit as monstrous as it has started to feel, the sky around it a rolling, thunderous shade of black, while the threatening tear itself is a dangerously thin, almost broken grey. A continuous sheet of mist drifts down from the lightest parts of it, falling to and disrupting the smooth surface of the lake below.

  If we could ignore the potentially treacherous Sea-Above, the mist would have an almost peaceful magic to it. One that seems a perfect backdrop for the crowd of captivated children who are weaving in and out of us keepers, clutching their brightly colored ribbons and oversized pinwheel flowers and trying to get a closer look at the lake.

  My palms are drenched in sweat. I try wiping them on my tunic, but the waterproof satiny material proves a useless drying rag.

  I’ve almost forgotten that Eamon is still by my side, until I feel light pressure on my arm. I glance over and see him tying a navy-blue cloth in a secure knot around my bicep. I recognize it immediately: the ragged remains of the scarf that was part of our father’s ceremonial outfit. There is a small symbol stitched into one of the frayed ends, an image of an upside-down triangle, with four rays in its center—one for each kingdom—converging toward a single encircled point at the bottom.

  The symbol of the four unified skies.

  I’ve never seen Eamon not wearing this tattered ribbon.

  “For good luck,” he says, meeting my questioning gaze.

  I stare at it for a moment, fingers lightly resting on the knot. “What about you?”

  “I’ve been doing this long enough now, haven’t I?” His smile is unconvincing. “Surely I don’t still need luck.”

  Neither do I, I want to say. But I can’t manage to clear the dryness in my throat, so instead I just smile and nod.

  I turn and find the Alturian boy again. He’s looking a little less anxious now, talking to a younger boy barely half his height. An admirer, it seems like; the city’s children usually follow Eamon around with the same wide-eyed look on their faces.

  A moment later, he’s walking toward us.

&
nbsp; My eyes immediately seek the safety of the ground, hoping he might keep walking if I pretend I haven’t really noticed him—as if it is really that easy not to take notice of him.

  Aidan Varick does not walk like someone who is used to being ignored.

  And even with my eyes mostly downcast, I notice the way people's gazes follow him, taking in the sight of his bare chest, of his golden-brown skin decorated with the traditional protective charms painted across the well-defined muscles. The way those people subtly—and not so subtly— try to catch his intelligent, jade-colored eyes that rest in the shadows of his thick, dark eyelashes.

  What was it my mother had called him?

  Charming?

  Charming is… well, it’s one word you could use, I suppose.

  But I am not sure it completely does him justice.

  He stops directly beside me, close enough that I can see his bare feet sinking into the soft mud. I can hear the smile in his voice when he says my name. And although the thought of my mother seeing us talking together is physically painful, I have no choice but to look up unless I want to seem unforgivably rude.

  “I’m happy to see you’re joining us.” He offers me the small blue flower in his palm. “From him,” he says, nodding back toward the young boy, who gives him a cheerful wave and then shyly darts back into the safety of the other spectators. “Nice kid. He was explaining how his father grows these flowers in the hot spring by their home. Apparently, they have soothing medicinal qualities?”

  His accent is obvious, but he’s not especially difficult to understand; each word, each syllable, is sharp, pronounced and to the point. His gaze is softer. Self-assured, but not overly so, and almost relaxing in a way that makes this flower seem like a fitting offering.

  “Soma,” I tell him, running my finger along one of the velvety blue, silver-veined petals. “You let it steep in hot water, drink it, and it’s supposed to calm anxiety, nerves. Create confidence, even.”

  I know the hot springs he is talking about, too; some of the city’s keepers occasionally visit them before they perform sealings, to soak in the so-called miracle steam the flowers help create. Too much of that steam, though, and you end up dazed and useless. I’ve heard a lot of stories about delusions created by these flowers—some of them humorous, others bordering on horrifying.

  My brother clears his throat beside me. Varick turns as if he’s just noticed him standing there. He looks flustered for a fraction of a second and then quickly says, “The Energeia will be performing the setting shortly, and I’ve told them to freeze all of the lake within sight. It looks like it might be a difficult seal, even with all the help we have… I just want to be certain it goes smoothly.”

  His gaze seems to be searching my brother as he speaks—either for approval or disagreement, maybe. He receives neither. But silence is apparently encouraging enough, because he turns back to me.

  “You’re certain you’re ready?”

  There is nothing condescending about his tone, but the words still irritate me.

  “I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t ready,” I say.

  “Of course—I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.” The beginning of a frown threatens his lips. He fights it off, but I still feel a rush of embarrassment for being short with him. Mostly because I know that I’m only acting this way because I want so badly to dislike this boy that my mother thinks so highly of.

  “You have bigger concerns right now, Varick,” my brother points out.

  Varick nods, and I don’t miss the quick, nervous glance he gives Eamon before he turns and hurries away.

  “Well done,” I say, mildly. “You’ve terrified the poor boy.”

  “A little bit of fear never killed anyone,” he says. “But it’s saved plenty of people. Besides,” he adds with a smirk, “flowers? He’s going to have to do better than that, isn’t he?”

  “Is this how you plan on treating every boy who shows any interest toward me at all?”

  “More or less,” he says. “Or you could just take that vow of celibacy you mentioned, and save me the trouble.”

  I roll my eyes and fight off a smile.

  There is movement in the crowd then, people shifting and standing back as the Energeia step to the edge of the lake and crouch down.

  I suck in an excited breath and hold it, force myself to be still as I watch the creatures move about in their long, concealing robes of deep purple. They never take off those robes, and they never show the faces beneath their grey masks to anyone, either. The only skin they do show is their bone-white wrists above gloved hands—and only the right ones, which are stained with a deep crimson symbol. If you squint, the mark looks a bit like an upside-down tree.

  The Energeia have always served our kind. In the beginning, they were the Creator’s original advisors, great scholars from the surface world above, chosen to accompany the gods and help them stay true to the people who followed them when they set out to build this utopia. And in exchange, they were granted some power, limited dominion over the things they were so knowledgeable about: some over the water, others over the rocks, the air—a few of them can temporarily control these things, even.

  The one thing they weren’t granted, however, was the freedom to use that power, that knowledge, however they liked. Because the same Creator gods who gave them that power, in their very next breath, prevented the Energeia from denying any direct order from a keeper with Pure blood such as mine. They granted them unnaturally long lives, as if in exchange, but after centuries of servitude and worsening relationships with our kind, the Energeia started to disappear from our world anyway. Taking their own lives as an act of ultimate rebellion, most people believe.

  It has been an ongoing effort for the past few decades, since Emperor Fane came to power, trying to repair the rocky relationship between us and what is left of the Energeia. We’re partners now, and I have been raised to treat them as such, regardless of how my ancestors saw them. When we need their help for sealings like this one, where the lake would otherwise prove an obstacle, there is an added step to the ceremony rituals to acknowledge them, even. My brother leaves my side to perform it now, joining the elders in a series of symbolic bows and gestures.

  Then the keepers step aside.

  A hush falls over the crowd.

  The Energeia run their fingertips over the surface of Isce, collecting droplets of it in one hand, snatching grains of sand in the other, and then they palm both hands together as if in prayer. They stay like that for several minutes, one knee on the ground, heads tilted toward the sky, eyes closed in meditation.

  Complete stillness.

  Quiet tension, finally disrupted by a whispered chant, the words like drops of water sinking into the surface and sending rings spreading outward.

  The chant grows louder.

  Louder and louder and louder still, until those words are a rhythmic pounding in the air, a tingling across my skin.

  And then a flash of motion—the Energeia leaping to life as if they’ve been waiting an eternity for this moment, as if all the world’s energy settled in their bodies long ago, and it has been fighting for this release ever since.

  They cast the damp grains of sand out over the water.

  A violent crack of light splits through the still surface of the lake where each of the grains fall, glows brighter and brighter for every inch they sink.

  The waves pick up and roll away from us, toward a single point in the center of the lake. There they collide and rise up, up, up into a cascading column of foaming white water. It reaches nearly to the sky before crashing back toward the shore, leaving a shimmering silver path of solid ground in its wake.

  The Energeia step out onto this pathway, gingerly testing their weight with one foot at a time before bounding forward and into a crazed sort of dance.

  Towards the center of the lake they dance, their hands thrusting wildly out over the water that is still unfrozen. With every thrust, the solid path spreads further, as if it’s
a carpet being unrolled. By the time they reach the center, the entire choppy surface of the lake has turned to something like glass, wet and glistening in the grey light of the rift above.

  They end their dance in a dizzying series of flips and spins, then circle around that column they sent upwards—which is now as completely solid as the rest of the lake—and fall abruptly back to their meditative poses.

  “That’s our cue,” Eamon says, walking back to me.

  My fingers reach for the cloth tied around my arm, for the comforting memories woven into its threads.

  I nod, and I follow my brother out onto the water.

  Chapter 5

  By the time I step into my place within the sealing circle, the energy in my blood is raging almost beyond control, demanding release.

  But to unleash it all at once would be a fatal mistake.

  Which is why, even as the rift continues to rumble above us, all of our poses mimic the still, meditative Energeia at first—only a bit tenser, perhaps, from the added weight of the moments between the setting of the lake and the beginning of this sealing.

  Varick begins his separation much more quickly than I expect him to.

  He is directly across from me, and the light that erupts around him encourages my eyes to open just in time to see the magic pool in his chest and break swiftly through his skin. Its exit leaves a welt of blistering red behind.

  There is no blood from its passage, though, and no ripped skin—and that’s impressive, I have to admit.

  It is even more impressive when the magic circles easily back through the air and collects in his cupped hands, and then just as swiftly spirals upward and collides with the center of the rift, forming the foundation we will build our seal around.

  The wispy strands that Brynn practiced with were nothing compared to his magic.

  This magic he controls is more solid looking, and a blue so dark it is nearly black. The color seems stranger to me the longer I watch it, and I wonder if it’s a matter of the substance’s strength, or simply different bloodlines. Perhaps this is the shade of all Alturian-based keepers’ magic?