The Storm Weaver & the Sand (Books of the Change)
Page 10
Grabbing a change of clothes, he opened the door and joined the other boys for a shower.
This was only the second time he had used the bathroom with other students present, and he had assumed that he was still immune to the rivalry that typified the relationships between boys of his age. Not making eye contact was the key to avoiding confrontations in the short-term, he knew, but he hadn’t learned what to do in the long-term, since he and his father had moved around so much. He hoped he wouldn’t find out the hard way in the Haunted City.
But the usual ploy wasn’t working that morning. As he lathered up the soap and gingerly applied it to the scab on his back, he became aware that he was being pointed at. He ignored the sensation as long as he could, but when a small knot of boys gathered to stare, he turned to face them, trying to ignore the fact of his nudity before them.
“What?” he asked.
“You tell us,” said one of the boys.
“Does it hurt?” asked Weyn, the student from Fairney’s tutorial group who had spoken to Sal on his first day.
“Does what—?” He didn’t get any further. Glancing down at his right leg, he saw what they were pointing at. It was the tattoo. Somehow it had moved from his back down to a point just below his knee. And it was still moving.
He goggled at it for a good five seconds, in which time it slid slowly across his knee and a hand’s width up his thigh. Then he grabbed his towel and ran from the showers.
In his room, he stood back on the chair and studied himself more closely in the glowing mirror. The tattoo, spinning slowly as it went, had crawled as far as his hip. Without warning, as though it had bounced off something he couldn’t see, it suddenly changed course and headed off at an angle across his stomach. He felt nothing at all as it moved. When he put his fingers in its path, they registered nothing either. The ink seemed somehow to have developed a life of its own, underneath his skin.
“It’s impossible,” he breathed. Skender hadn’t said anything about this. The tattoo drifted under his armpit and up his back. It curled around his neck and made a beeline for his left ear. He thought he heard a faint hum as it passed, then it ricocheted again and, instead of vanishing beneath his hair, went diagonally across his face. His vision faded to black for an instant as it crossed his eyes, one at a time. From there, it went back down his neck and out of sight.
So much for hiding it, he thought. They might as well have tattooed it in the middle of his forehead for all the effect putting it on his back had had.
There was a heavy knock at the door.
“Who is it?” he called. “I’m not dressed yet.”
The stern attendant’s voice replied, “You’re to miss your lecture this morning to be somewhere else. Hurry up and get moving.”
Goddess, Sal cursed under his breath. Now what? “Okay, hang on!” He thought furiously. There wasn’t much he could do except get dressed and hope for the best. He chose a long-sleeved top and long-legged pants in Novitiate grey. That way, with luck, the tattoo wouldn’t draw too much attention to itself.
As he pulled his left arm through the sleeve, the tattoo crawled up his forearm and ran into the bracelet.
There was a soundless flash that left Sal sitting on the floor, shaking his head. The bracelet fell from his wrist like a strip of dead skin, leaving a pink band in its wake. When he struggled to his feet and checked his back, the tattoo was exactly where it was supposed to be, as though it had never moved.
That solved that, he thought. Still slightly dazed, and amazed as always by the mysterious workings of the Change, he picked up the loose leather strap and tied it back around his wrist so it looked as though the charm was still in place. Then he opened his bedroom door and let the attendant in.
“Are you ready?” asked the gruff voice.
“Yes. Does every student get to skip classes like this?”
“Of course not.”
“I guess I’ll enjoy it while I can, then. Where are you taking me this time?”
“Your grandmother wants to show you something.”
“Are Shilly and Skender coming?”
“No.”
Great, Sal thought behind the brave face he was trying to put on. That’s all I need.
The attendant led him through the corridors of the Novitiate and out into the morning light. The day was clear and smelled of salt. Seagulls called raucously on the air above him, as though gloating. The ghosts moved silently behind the glass windows of the gleaming towers, and Sal wondered if they noticed the difference between day and night. Perhaps they didn’t notice anything at all. For all he knew, they could have been optical illusions—like a mirage of life. The towers could be as dead as those in the other cities he had seen, despite their appearance.
His mind turned inevitably to the golem. When he had first encountered it in the Broken Lands city, it had told him three things: that Lodo was still alive; that they would meet again; and that creatures such as it congregated in certain places. Sal hadn’t seen any golems in the Nine Stars, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any, or creatures like them.
Given that the golem had come to him so readily meant that there were golems in the Haunted City—or one, at least. Why it hadn’t come to him a second time was a mystery, though. Either the fact that he hadn’t used the Change, as he had the night before, made a difference, or else it had been deterred by the charm Shilly had tattooed on his back. Or it was still playing with him. Whatever the reason, he was no closer to knowing what he should do about the deal it had offered. He didn’t want to do the wrong thing. But he had few other options to choose from. He could either stumble around in the dark, hoping to trip over the information they needed, or take it from the one person—creature, anyway—who had offered it.
Wherever the attendant was leading him, it was somewhere new. The towers around him assumed a uniformly slender, pointed aspect, as though he was a bug crawling among giant, crystal stalagmites. His stomach gurgled loudly. He hoped there would be breakfast, wherever they were going. He felt as though he hadn’t eaten for weeks.
They came to an open space between the towers, a triangular depression where numerous paths converged. Since Sal had arrived in the Haunted City, he hadn’t seen a single motorised vehicle and there weren’t any animal-drawn buggies. There wasn’t room between many of the towers for such traffic, and everyone got around on foot happily enough. But there were some gaps large enough to accommodate normal city life. The reserve where Belilanca Brokate’s caravan was parked was one such, as was the space before him now. It was easily as wide across as Fundelry, and stretched a surprising distance away in front of him.
The space was covered with moss and seagrass, the only vegetation he had seen anywhere on the island. It had been clipped neatly back to form a green swathe across the dead earth of the city. Paths wound across the lawn, skirting numerous wooden and stone monuments in myriad shapes and sizes. Sal couldn’t guess how many there were, but his first estimate put them in the thousands.
He knew where he was the moment he saw the tree in the centre of the space. It was either very dead, or a very good likeness carved out of a dark grey stone. Its crooked, pointed arms reached in vain for the sky far above, while around its trunk multicoloured bunches of flowers had been placed to wilt and die.
He was in a memorial to the dead—probably the same one he had heard about on his travels with his father, for he doubted there would be many such places in the city. It honoured those who had fallen in the service of the Alcaide: everyone from the highest Sky Warden to the lowest administrator was remembered by name, if not actually buried there. Most wardens, Sal recalled, were despatched to the sea upon their deaths, just like most Stone Mages were cremated.
When he saw his grandmother and his real father standing among the monuments, he understood why he had been brought there. The attendant led him to them, then departed.
For no ripples curl, alas!
Along that wilderness of glass—
No swellings tell that winds may be
Upon some far-off happier sea.
Below that were the dates of her birth and death, which Sal hadn’t known before. He did his best to memorise them through a growing fog of unreality.
This was all that remained of his mother. He would never get closer to her than this. Yet he felt nothing. It was just a lump of rock. It revealed nothing of her that mattered. It couldn’t hug him, sing him to sleep, or teach him to love her as much as she had once loved him.
It was dead, just like she was.
“Will you eat with us?”
Highson Sparre’s voice surprised him. He hadn’t realised just how long he had been staring at the memorial, as though expecting it to do something. His real father was watching him, waiting for a reply, and the yawning emptiness in his gut urged him to say yes.
“All right,” he said, hunger winning over his natural wariness.
Highson smiled tightly, but he didn’t say anything else. He turned and walked slowly up the path, leaving Sal’s grandmother to guide him.
“I’m glad you’ve decided to be sensible this morning,” she said, going to take his arm.
He pulled away, giving her a don’t-push-your-luck look. She tutted and raised her eyes in irritation to the sky above.
“You’re a wilful boy,” she said. “Where that came from, I’ll never know. Your mother was a perfectly obedient child, and Highson knows his place. Personally, I believe that the man you insist on calling your father was responsible for corrupting both you and your mother, but I know you will refuse to believe this. You prefer the explanation he gave you: that the three of you were victims of injustice. And that I am the main vehicle of that injustice.”
“I was never taught to hate you,” said Sal as they walked across the memorial’s grassy paths. “I didn’t even know you existed until a few weeks ago.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
He glanced at her and saw what might have been a flicker in the cool facade. “It’s not supposed to make you feel anything,” he said. “It’s just the way it is.”
She walked steadily on through the memorial grounds without looking at him. Her arms were tightly folded over her chest, as though she was trying to keep herself warm. “We are in limbo, Sal. You and the rest of your family. I’m still housed at the Novitiate, by the grace of the Syndic, and I have managed to find accommodation for the rest of us nearby. I want you to know that we are here for you if you need us. But we cannot be here forever. We cannot settle while your intentions are in doubt.”
“I don’t understand how you can have any doubt at all about my intentions,” he said. “I thought I’d made them perfectly clear. I never wanted to come here. I don’t want to be here. I’d go back to the Keep in a second if you gave me a chance.” He tucked his left wrist behind his back in order to hide the fact that the bracelet was simply tied on rather than permanently attached. “If it’s so difficult for you to be here, go home to Mount Birrinah where you belong and stop pretending that you’re trying so hard for my sake.”
She did look at him, then, but only briefly. Her eyes conveyed an impression of great fatigue. “We have no home, Sal. We abandoned all claim to that when we came here with your mother.”
“To make her marry Highson Sparre.”
“We didn’t make her, Sal. She did it willingly enough.”
“Why should I believe that?”
“Because she was my daughter,” Radi Mierlo said with no trace of rancour. “She was one of us, and she wanted to do the right thing. The problems only began when she lost sight of what was right, and I don’t blame her for that. I blame me. I should have done more for her, made it clearer for her. Even though she betrayed her family, I am still proud of her. She did what she thought she ought to do, and that takes great courage. Consider what she gave up, Sal: wealth, prestige, power. I couldn’t have done it. Never.”
Sal softened slightly at that. It must indeed have taken great courage to throw away the fine future his mother had once had—as a powerful Change-user married to the man everyone had said would one day be the Alcaide—and she had done so not just willingly, but with unflinching determination. If his grandmother could appreciate the strength of will behind such actions, then she wasn’t as blind as he had thought.
That didn’t mean, though, that he would ever sympathise with her goals, or condone her motives.
“We are homeless,” she said, hammering home her point with an iron sledgehammer. “You are our only chance of security.”
“I didn’t ask for this,” he said. “I have enough problems of my own without taking on yours as well.”
“Our problems are your problems, Sal. We are family. That makes us one.”
“You aren’t my family. You’re strangers. Just because some of your blood flows in my veins doesn’t give you a hold over me.” He thought of the baker of La Menz, who had died to make a similar point. “You don’t just waltz out of nowhere into my life and declare yourself part of it. You don’t have the right.”
“Oh, it’s a right, is it?” his grandmother shot back with a trace of her usual fire. “And you’ve set yourself up as judge and jury over our fate, I suppose. Don’t you think you should get to know us, first? You’ll find we’re not so contemptible if you give us a chance. At least grant us that boon, mighty Sal Hrvati. Maybe we won’t prove so unworthy after all.”
Sal retreated into himself, embarrassed by the accusation. Who was he to damn every one of his mother’s family just because his grandmother was acting in ways he didn’t like? Aron, the cousin who carried the man’kin Mawson for her, may not have said a word to him on their journey to the city, but that was because he was mute. In his silent way, he displayed no antipathy toward him. The others had avoided him on the long journey south just as he had avoided them. Perhaps because he had avoided them. From their point of view, he was the one to blame.
They walked in restrained silence for a long moment, until his grandmother said, “This man you call your father. Did he teach you to talk like this?”
“No,” he replied, “I had to learn it all by myself.”
“You probably think of it as a survival trait.”
“At the moment, yes.”
His grandmother tilted her head back in something that might have been a silent laugh. “That’s not so far from the truth. You’re honest, and you’re strong. I admire that in a person, even—especially—if they’re locking horns with me. Don’t ever think that I don’t admire you, Sal. We may not see eye to eye, but I think we deserve each other’s respect.”
Sal wasn’t sure he agreed. Was this the buttering-up part of the discussion, where she praised him in order to make him look more favourably upon her? He wouldn’t put it past her.
But he didn’t want to accuse her of it, just in case she really meant what she was saying. And also because he hadn’t told her the entire truth, either. When he stopped to think about what was coming out of his mouth, it wasn’t him he heard at all.
It was Shilly.
They reached the northern edge of the memorial, where Highson was waiting for them. Two paths led off into the distance at angles between the towers, and Sal’s grandmother chose the left. They walked with Sal in the middle along a series of narrow thoroughfares lined with shops. This was the first sign of trade that Sal
had seen in the Haunted City, and he studied the area closely as they passed. It wasn’t the sort of market he had seen in Fundelry or Ulum. These shops sold finely crafted goods from all over the Strand and beyond. There were mirrors, waterfalls, sculptures of glass, pottery dishes of all shapes and textures, and carved wooden poles that reminded Sal of the memorial stones behind them. There were also knives, jewels and stone ornaments from the north. The sellers didn’t holler to advertise their wares; they sat among their glinting produce with welcoming smiles, confident that the quality on display would be lure enough.
Sal had only ever seen markets like this in the richest areas of the Strand’s larger towns. He had never bought anything from one, and he doubted he would ever be able to. His grandmother walked determinedly forward with a pained expression on her face. He couldn’t decide if she found the market beneath her, or if she was yearning for lost affluence. He was still watching her, trying to work it out, when they turned a corner and left the market behind them.
At the end of a short lane between two looming glass monoliths they came to a narrow, irregularly-shaped building perfectly filling the available space in its corner of the ghostly metropolis. Its whitewashed exterior had seen better days but it was elegantly designed, with sharp corners and boldly angular windows. His grandmother produced a key to open the front door, then guided him inside, along a corridor barely wide enough for the two of them, and to a kitchen. Through a wide, glass window, in a narrow garden lined with closely pruned trees, Sal could see the rest of the Mierlos waiting.
As the door separating them opened and Highson ushered him into their midst, Sal reminded himself that he’d survived walking into the lecture theatre and the Syndic’s awkward diplomatic party. How bad can it be? he asked himself.
The answer unfortunately was: Very bad indeed.
First, although he already knew everyone’s name, having spent four weeks in the same caravan with them and unable to avoid at least the awareness of their existence, his grandmother insisted on introducing him to each of them in turn and giving him a potted history of who they were. His uncle, Ranan, a burly man with ornate moustaches, was trained in finance and had worked for many of the large bureaucracies and businesses in the Interior. His aunt, Roa, was a camel trainer, a profession seemingly ill-suited to her slight frame and delicate crystal necklace. Her husband was a tall, stringy man with hair like a mushroom cap who spoke only in monosyllables.