Skykeeper (The Drowning Empire Book 1)

by S. M. Gaither

  Without meaning to, I’ve wandered into the memorial hall, where portraits of great keepers hang between teal banners bearing the crest of the Fane family. From within intricate silver-plated frames, the dead faces stare at me as I walk past and trail footprints through the plush plum-colored carpet. My father is here. My grandfather and his father before him, too. I’ve visited their portraits so many times before, but it feels different this time, something stirring in me that never has every other time I’ve met their painted eyes.

  Then I notice the new portrait hanging beside my father’s.

  It shouldn’t shock me the way it does, because Eamon has been gone for over a month.

  So of course he is here now.

  There is still something so devastatingly final about it, though, each well-planned brushstroke like another stone sunk into the water alongside his body. I run my fingers over the raised paint for a moment, as if I could feel something of him from this still life. Something warm, something comforting.

  I feel nothing like that.

  I take a step back. Atlas brushes against my ankles and makes a low, sorrowful noise deep in his throat, then turns several circles before curling up at my feet. I lean back against the wall, hands clasped behind me, and gaze up at my brother. The painter did a particularly good job on his eyes. My eyes.

  That’s what Brynn’s eyes used to look like, too.

  “I’m trying to make everything all right,” I whisper, as if the painting could hear me. “I’ve been trying, but it all keeps coming up wrong.” I pull his funeral stone from my pocket and fall back to my comforting ritual of flipping it over and over in my hands.

  I hear someone approaching, and I force myself to look away from my brother, to meet the emperor’s gaze as he approaches.

  And I had a mountain of words prepared for him, but anger rises too quickly into my throat for me to get them out. Anger, and then confusion stops them next; because it’s odd, seeing his actual, physical being once more, after I’ve heard so many things and watched so many of his likenesses burn.

  He is dressed more plainly than usual. No jewelry or ornate headpieces, only a plain floor-length robe of red, its embroidered trim a dusty golden color. And maybe it’s this lack of decoration, or the dim orange light of the hall, but he seems…strange, somehow. Or perhaps he has always looked like this, but I just never noticed it. Maybe he’s always had that thoughtful permanent crease in his brow, or those crinkles in the corners of his eyes, or those grey streaks through his long hair. Maybe his skin has always looked a bit too loose, as if he received it secondhand and has yet to quite grow into it. Either way, up close he seems less extravagant, less imposing… collectively less of something I can’t quite place.

  All the more proof that this is not the man I ran from. That he is someone different, made up of all the new truths and lies I’ve gathered about him—all of which are so tangled up in my head that I may never completely unravel them.

  Perhaps now is not the time for unraveling him, anyway.

  Because war is marching on my city, and the one thing I do know is that the emperor has much more experience at winning wars than I do.

  “You…” That anger still pulses through my voice, but after a moment I manage to keep talking through it. “Would you like to know what’s become of the world outside?”

  His eyes have drifted to the painting of my brother, but at the sound of my voice, he glances back at me. “I received your message. Several days ago, now.”

  “There is more to it than that.”

  “There always is, isn’t there?” He starts to turn back to the portrait, but his gaze catches on the stone in my hand. “Have you been carrying that with you all this time?”

  “I… It didn’t seem right to let it go that day.”

  He’s quiet for a while, considering my words. “I’m sorry for what happened,” he finally says. “Truly. I am.”

  I look away, back to my brother’s eyes.

  Fane bends down and picks up Atlas, lets the slender dragon perch in the crook of his arm and wrap his tail around it. He seems indifferent to the tears the sharp scales rip into the delicate sleeves of his robe, and he spends several minutes rattling off facts about Frey dragons and remarking on what an “exquisite little creature” Atlas is. Then he abruptly turns back to me and picks up our conversation from before as if he never dropped it.

  “I don’t usually apologize for these things,” he says, nodding to the portrait. “Because there’s no time for it. No room for feeling sorry, when the future of the empire depends on the way I decide to spend my days.” He shrugs. The gesture looks odd on him. It seems impossible that a man with so much resting on his shoulders can still manage to lift them at all. And I think this impossible shrug is the end of our conversation at first, but then he continues: “But I felt you needed to hear this apology, before we go any further. So if it’s any consolation to you, this is not the way I wanted things to go. Things so rarely go the way we want them to, do they?”

  “Very rarely.”

  “And yet we soldier on all the same, as though we were in complete control, making choices as if we could will the outcome into whatever we’d like it to be, if only we are decisive enough. Life demands that much of us, I suppose.”

  “Is that why you killed Varick’s parents? Because life demanded it of you?” The question is quick, blunt. I am tired of not having answers, and I am not wasting any more time getting them.

  “Yes.” He doesn’t even have to think about it. And if this is news to him—if he truly didn’t know that anyone was aware he was responsible for those deaths, as Varick claimed—then he doesn’t show it. “Not my life,” he goes on, “but the lives of the thousands in this empire. Their lives are what I base most of my decisions on, as it were.”

  “But they are dying now, while you’ve hoarded so much of their protection around yourself.”

  “Not myself,” he corrects, frowning. “Around Garda. Because the world is old, now; older than the Creators ever intended it to be, perhaps. And I am more aware than most of just how thin the keeper bloodlines have become. Not just the Pures, but all of them. And tell me, Aven, what do you do when the magic is fading? Who do you save?”

  I open my mouth, so ready to let my anger keep arguing for me.

  But I can’t tell him. Not any more now than I could when I asked myself this same question in Solvel.

  “So, yes,” the emperor continues, “I made the choice to start fortifying this kingdom soon after I took the throne, to prepare it to withstand whatever destruction might fall on the rest of the world. I didn’t expect destruction to come from the places it is now, though. There were legends of keeper magic being used this way, but I had never seen it. Perhaps because I didn’t want to see it, if you can understand that.” He glances at my brother’s portrait and looks uncomfortable for a moment, an expression that seems even more out of place on him than the shrug did. “And I didn’t expect his death, or take it well,” he adds, “for whatever that is worth to you, too.”

  It is worth something, at least. But I don’t say so. I just nod.

  “I don’t take any sort of death well.”

  “Even after so much of it?” My voice is flat with disbelief.

  “Even now, every morning when I wake up, I still weep for them”—he sweeps a graceful hand at each of the painted faces—“for each of the dead, the lost, and then for the ones not pictured here. For those choices that I’ve made, sacrifices I’ve arranged. But then I set these things carefully down as I must, and I carry on as if they never were. At least until the following morning, after I’ve had a decent night’s sleep. Call it a matter of efficient living.”

  “You make it sound so easy,” I say quietly.

  “Oh no, not at all.” He glances over at me through eyes rimmed with sadness, and his next words are even softer than mine. Tender, almost. “It’s never easy to let go of choices we’ve made—or of the past we’ve come from. But I have
found that it is far, far easier than living there. And that sometimes we must let things go, simply because they are too heavy to carry around with us.”

  I don’t look back at the portrait this time. I only stare up into Fane’s sad oak-colored eyes until he clears his throat. “So, then,” he says, his tone turning businesslike, “Varick will be back soon, and he is not coming alone this time.”

  “I could have killed him. I should have killed him when I had the chance.” The statement fills me with regret and disgust, both stirring together until I can’t tell one from the other, until I am not sure which to feel.

  How many more people will die now, because I didn’t kill him?

  In one moment, that’s all I can think about.

  But in the next, I am wondering how letting someone live could ever be a mistake.

  “If you had killed him,” the emperor says, “another would only have risen to lead in his place.” He stretches an arm out in front of him and lets Atlas prance up and down it a few times before glancing over at me. “So never mind that. Right now, you should be focusing on raising your army.”

  I choke down a harsh laugh. “I saw the way this city watched me on my way in. They think I am a traitor. A heretic, a runner—”

  “Well, this seems like the perfect opportunity to convince them otherwise, doesn’t it?”

  “I am also a terrible judge of character, apparently—enough that I trusted Varick.”

  “You are not the only one.”

  “I don’t know how I can possibly tell the good keepers from the bad anymore.”

  “You obviously believe those good ones are still here, though. Or else you would not have come back. And that belief—that hope—is something this city desperately needs right now.”

  “Hope is not enough. And so I came to you with the information I had because you are the one with experience leading armies, not me. I have barely managed to keep my own magic under control these past weeks, anyhow—so you can’t expect me to know what to do with anyone else’s.”

  “Perhaps. Or perhaps not. But what I know for certain is that my leadership wouldn’t be the same as yours. Because you know what sort of power Varick possesses— you’ve seen it firsthand. And you escaped it once.”

  “Barely.”

  “But now he will be foolish with desperation not to fail again. You are an incredible threat to him—even more so than he thinks, I believe.”

  “And I believe you are mistaken. I don’t want to lead anyone. I never did.”

  “Well, that is unfortunate,” he says, tickling Atlas under the chin until the dragon starts purring. “Because I have already arranged for you to address the people of this city, and I think a lot of them were looking forward to hearing you speak.”

  I stare at him for a long time, waiting for him to tell me he is joking.

  He doesn’t.

  “With all due respect, sir, are you completely mad?”

  If my mother heard me talking to him like this, she would faint.

  But he seems to consider the question for a second, holding out his finger and letting Atlas nibble on the end of it. “A little bit, I think, yes. Nothing will drive you quite so far outside your mind as power will. Be sure you remember that.”

  His nonchalant tone makes me angry. “And what if I simply lead everyone to their death?” I ask, using every bit of self-restraint I possess to keep my voice calm. “What then?”

  He doesn’t answer. As if it’s not a valid question; as if the possibility of failure is something he hasn’t even given thought to. More frustration boils up in me, flushing my skin red-hot and pushing more words, more excuses from my mouth. “My magic isn’t like Varick’s. I don’t have the power to fight or destroy—I can only heal things after the damage is done, which will be useless if there is nothing left to heal!”

  “People are always so concerned about fighting fire with fire,” he patiently replies, “that too often they forget that water would be more effective, and that darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only light is capable of that.”

  My fists clench, and my brother’s stone squeezes out of my hand in the process. It hits the floor with a quiet thunk. I move immediately to pick it up, but something stops me midway down, and I leave it there. Instead of holding it in my palms, instead of turning it over and over in them, I just study my hands. They glow to life without a mindful effort now, magic rising from my skin and lighting the lines branching across it.

  Lifelines, my brother told me once. And then he made up all sorts of crazy things that they supposedly meant for me, pretending to read them like the fortune-teller woman who used to set up her tent in the middle of the town square.

  Health. Happiness. Heroic feats and daring adventures. Oh, and it says here that you’re going to grow a third eye, and that you aren’t going to date any boy that your older brother doesn’t approve of. Huh. These are some oddly specific lines, aren’t they?

  The magic settles back into those lifelines, heavy and solid feeling. Giving my life weight.

  I sigh, because I can tell by the way the emperor is looking at me that he knows as well as I do why I really came back. Why I didn’t keep running after sending my warnings to them.

  And we both know exactly what has to be done now—what I have to do.

  Fane picks up the funeral stone and sets it in my still-outstretched palm. He stares at it for a minute, and then he closes my fingers over it and gently squeezes my hand. “Keep it for now. Maybe you’ll decide to let it go, maybe not.” He backs away with a slight bow of his head. And then he turns and he leaves me, alone with my decision, with all the faces of those who kept the world together before me.

  Chapter 30

  The memory of West keeps fading, only to return in quick, painful bursts. Like a fresh sore in my mouth that I keep accidentally biting.

  My brother’s stone, the one Fane insisted I keep for now, is in front of me, propped against my jewelry case. The eternity symbol seems to blaze unnaturally brightly in the strange light the sky is casting through the glass ceiling, and it’s what started this dangerous train of thought in the first place. What keeps me thinking about the last conversation I had with West, and how stupid that fight was, and how I didn’t even say goodbye—not to him or to Coralind.

  I’ve dismantled one of my ceremonial necklaces, taken the charm from its hemp string and replaced it with the stone instead. It would match the leaf-green gown that I’m wearing perfectly, but I can’t bring myself to fasten it around my neck the way I’d planned to.

  I can’t even pick it up.

  Maybe I shouldn’t bother trying to. I left the city on my own, and it seems that is how I will finish this, too. No sense in dwelling on it.

  But I keep stealing glances at that stone all the same. Keep trying to forget about it as I finish pulling up my hair, which is still a bit damp from washing, and secure it in a knot on top of my head. Powder and rouge have done wonders for my face; the person staring back at me in the mirror looks like an actual human for the first time in forever. I clip bronze-colored hoops to my ears. Take a deep breath.

  And then I reach for the necklace and slip it over my head.

  Because try as I may, I can’t just set things down, or let them go the way Fane claims to be able to.

  There is a soft knock at my door, and I spin around to see Brynn standing there. Her arms are crossed over her chest again, but only to give Atlas a place to hook himself over. His long, lean body is hanging down in front of her, his tail lazily sweeping back and forth and the tip of it nearly brushing the floor. He looks like a perfectly content ragdoll.

  Brynn doesn’t seem as cold now. She puffs an unruly strand of hair from her face and offers me a small smile. “You look a lot less dreadful,” she says.

  I shrug. “The magic of powder,” I say, waving the brush like a wand in the air.

  Her smile brightens a bit more, but then her lips fall quickly to a serious line. “There’s quite a crowd gatheri
ng in the pavilion outside,” she says.

  I nod, rise to my feet, and start to clean up the mess of jewelry and brushes.

  “What are you going to tell them?” Brynn asks.

  “The truth,” I reply, crossing to her side. “And hopefully that will be enough.” We’re about to move into the hall together when someone else appears in the doorway.

  My mother.

  There are circles under her eyes, darker than I’ve ever seen them, and her hair—her natural raven-black hair, not some absurdly colored wig—is hanging in limp ringlets around her face.

  She looks beautiful to me.

  More beautiful than I ever remember her being.

  “Give us a moment?” I say to Brynn.

  After she’s left, my mother takes a long time meeting my gaze, and when she finally does, her words pour out in a rush: “I’ve been meaning to come see you since I heard you were back. I should have been here sooner.”

  I nod, absently picking and tugging at the flared arms of my dress.

  “You’ll stretch the sleeves too long, pulling them like that,” my mother whispers.

  “I like them too long,” I reply automatically.

  I expect her to keep scolding me, but instead her lips part into an almost-smile. “Of course you do. You’ve never been content with settling for the way things are, have you?” She reaches and tucks a loose strand of hair into my bun; not in her usual, fussy manner, but in a borderline affectionate sort of way. “Your fool of a father always said you would do great things because of it.”

  I feel embarrassed, suddenly. Perhaps because I had braced for an argument, for this to be just like nearly every other interaction we’ve ever had. This is strange, though. She seems different. And I suppose I am too, because instead of finding something else to fight about, something else to blame on her, I say, “I meant to be here sooner too, you know. I was much later coming back than I planned on. So I suppose it’s all right that you were.”

  She nods, her eyes lifting fully to mine. I feel something like understanding pass between us—more understanding than we’ve shared in our entire lives, maybe—all in the span of an instant.