The Storm Weaver & the Sand (Books of the Change)

by Sean Williams

  “You heard the judgment of the Conclave,” said the Syndic, without preamble. Sal’s great-aunt looked suitably stern and impartial, although Sal wondered if he could detect a hint of triumph in her eyes. “We are here to carry it out.”

  “You can’t do this,” said Shilly as Sal was urged closer to the Syndic.

  “We can and will. Highson?”

  The Syndic stepped back and Sal’s real father came forward. In his hands he held a length of twine that had a glassy sheen, as though it wasn’t entirely solid.

  “Put your hands behind your back, Sal.”

  Sal met Highson’s eyes and shook his head.

  “Please, Sal. Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”

  “It’s a little too late for that.” Sal felt the Change gathering in him, wanting to lash out, but he kept a tight lid on it. He couldn’t fight every warden in the room at once, and he could feel them waiting, ready to defend themselves against anything he might attempt. “Do you really think this is the right thing to do?”

  “It’s not my decision.”

  “It’s your decision to accept it or not.”

  “Trust me, Sal. It’s for the best.”

  “Is that what you told my mother?”

  A flash of hurt passed across Highson’s face. “You don’t know anything about that.”

  “You’ve had plenty of chances to tell me.”

  “Would you have listened?”

  Highson nodded at his attendants. They gripped Sal’s arms tightly and forced him forward. Sal expected them to tie his hands together, but all they did was hold him as Highson approached, twine upraised. Sal felt a strange tingling through the background potential, but couldn’t discern what it was going to do to him.

  Not until his father raised the twine and went to tie it around his throat did Sal feel the true threat. The Change gathering in him immediately began to ebb, pushed down like sand down an hourglass. He felt it rushing out of him, unstoppable, and he automatically resisted. The tattoo burned like a brand on his lower back. He twisted away from his real father’s touch. The attendants grabbed his head and held it still. He reached deep into himself to raise the Change up against the suffocating pressure, to thwart the binding that was placed upon him, to leave a chink in the prison through which he might tunnel out, and—

  “Submit.”

  —it met a will as powerful as his own. In the brief time he had had the Change, he had never encountered someone so strong. And where he was rough and poorly focused, operating on sheer strength alone, this talent was finely tuned and precise. It slipped through his blunt defence and subdued him almost before he saw it coming.

  And so it was over. The twine tightened gently but firmly around his throat. All sense of the Change rushed out of him. His connection to Shilly went with it. There was no chink; his prison was complete. He was empty, impotent, alone.

  “I’m sorry, Sal,” his father whispered. “You’ll understand in time why I had to do this.”

  Sal shook his head. The hands holding him fell away, but he was no longer free. His freedom was gone, along with the Change. He had nothing left to fight for or with.

  “I’ll never forgive you.”

  If the words stung, Sal couldn’t tell. His real father had turned away.

  Then it was Shilly’s turn. After too many wild emotional swings in too short a time, she was beginning to feel numb. Nervous relief, first of all, had come with the decision that she was going to be expelled from the city rather than kept captive. Even if that meant she wouldn’t be trained in the Change, at least she would be free. She had joked once that she would try necromancy as a means to escape the Haunted City if she could think of no better way; it had seemed to have worked perfectly.

  But now Sal wasn’t going to be freed with her. They were going to be separated. It wasn’t the first time she had been threatened with such a thing, but this time it seemed particularly harsh, and struck her very forcefully. The last-minute change by the Alcaide hadn’t helped at all. They would be closely watched in the Haunted City, more captive than ever. Losing him and the Change was a double blow.

  “You can’t keep us here forever,” she said to Highson Sparre as he approached her with another length of charmed twine.

  “It is not our intention to,” said the Syndic. “Once you have demonstrated that you can behave responsibly, your case will be reconsidered.”

  “How long will that take? Months? Years?”

  “That depends entirely on you, my girl.”

  Shilly stiffened as the twine went around her throat, but she felt no obvious effect. As Highson Sparre’s hands fell away, he explained: “Your binding will only activate if you attempt either to access the Change or to come too close to Sal. You are currently at about the minimum distance. I’d advise against going any closer.”

  She ran a finger around the twine, prompting a warning tickle. It was tight but not uncomfortable. The knowledge of its purpose was far worse than its physical presence.

  “You will return to your normal schedule as of tomorrow,” said the Syndic, standing between and in front of them. “For the first few weeks, you will be under severe probation. Your every move will be monitored. We will not allow a repeat of recent history.”

  “The only way you can make us behave is by locking us up,” said Sal. “Is that really what you want?”

  “Is that really what you want?” the Syndic shot back. “It’s about time you started taking responsibility for your own actions, Sal. You can’t blame us for everything.”

  Sal’s face reddened. Shilly thought that the Syndic had finally done it: she’d finally cracked Sal’s reserve. After all the times his family—on both sides—had worked against him, lied to him or been blatantly rude to him, she had rarely seen him lose his cool. He would defy them and resist them, perhaps even hate them, but his actions spoke louder than his words. At times when Shilly would have been shouting, he had merely fumed.

  But not now. He looked as though he was about to explode. Veins stood out on his forehead, and tendons bulged in his neck.

  He didn’t say a word. He just spat at his great-aunt’s feet, as the golem had done three days earlier. Shilly felt a rush of affection for him, then. She admired his control and his determination; she envied his ability to strike back without looking immature. And the look of outrage on the Syndic’s face told her that the gesture had hit home. He had achieved what words could not: expressed his utter contempt for her, with one simple gesture.

  The thought that this was the closest Shilly would ever get to Sal for a very long time was like a blow to the heart.

  “Take him away from me,” the Syndic growled, waving at the attendants. “I don’t want to see him again until he’s learned some respect. And you—” The woman’s attention was suddenly directed at Shilly, aimed along one shaking finger as though a bolt of lightning was about to launch from it. “Don’t think, girl, that you have friends here because your sentence has been commuted. Dragan is soft, and it is his right to be. But I hold the whip he commands. I wield the axe hanging over your neck. Give him a reason to regret his lenience, and you will feel my wrath unchecked.”

  On that, the Syndic turned and swept away, closely followed by Ranan Mierlo and Highson Sparre. Shilly’s attendants motioned that she should leave with them, and she had no choice but to do as she was told. Sal had already left, and she didn’t know when she would see him again. There would be no rescue. Lodo could only sacrifice himself once for her.

  Twice, she corrected herself as the attendants took her out of the hall and into the corridors. The earthquake, first, and then the golem. No one had ever done so much for her; not even Sal. There was no one left to help her.

  Not that she had ever relied on anyone else’s help to get through life. Lodo had been like a father to her, as well as a teacher, but he hadn’t
got her through School, where being an outsider was considered the perfect excuse for ridicule and abuse. He hadn’t helped her in her early battles with Kemp, when Kemp had tried to project his own vulnerability onto her. He hadn’t been there in Ulum, when she had been forced to reconsider what she wanted, and how she was going to get it.

  All she had wanted, in the end, was control over her life—the chance to be herself, to find out who Carah was—and now she had less control than she’d ever had. But she hadn’t voluntarily given it away. She hadn’t sold herself short, and it wasn’t too late, really, for things to change. She had the rest of her life ahead of her. Unless she made a mistake, like Sal’s mother, she might still find a way to escape.

  Her attendants locked her in her room, and she sat on her bed, unsure what to do next. There was an oil lamp burning on the desk and a dark rectangular patch on the wall where the mirror had once been. It was the same room she had always been in, but for that.

  She looked up at the grille in the ceiling. They had never mentioned Skender’s midnight excursions to anyone, not wanting him to get into trouble, but the wardens had taken the precaution of bolting it shut anyway. Not that she could have reached it. Her injured leg was still far too inflexible to allow her to climb. But knowing that that last avenue of escape was closed made her feel even more trapped.

  There was a book on the bed. She picked it up and read the title: Elementary Principles of Transmutation. She opened it and flicked through the pages. The topic was a new one, something she’d heard advanced pupils talk about but never before seen or attempted.

  A carrot, she thought, to dangle before the donkey.

  Or a taunt. You can read about it, but you’ll never use it.

  She briefly considered burning it, page by page, but in the end settled on reading it as she waited for dinner. You never know, she thought. When the opportunity came her way to turn Syndic Zanshin’s hair to cobwebs, she wanted to be ready.

  Skender heard the news as the nurse took away his and Kemp’s plates.

  “That sucks!”

  “You were expecting something different?” Kemp asked, folding his hands behind his head and leaning back on the bed with a smug smile on his face. All day, Skender had been trying to determine exactly how much the albino had overheard of his midnight conversation with Luan Braunack, but details came only in the form of sly hints, like this one.

  “I guess I didn’t know what to expect,” he admitted, “but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. They’re going to hate being cooped up here.”

  “Who could blame them?”

  Again Skender noted more than a touch of yearning at the thought of being elsewhere, a yearning he understood all too well. Now that he had decided he wanted to go home, he was keen not to drag his feet.

  He lowered his voice so the attendant standing guard over the ward entrance couldn’t hear.

  “I wish there was something we could do to help them.”

  Kemp didn’t immediately rise to the bait. “Don’t be stupid. You’d end up in as bad a spot as them if you failed.”

  “No, I wouldn’t. I’d just be sent home, and I’m leaving anyway. So what if I go a little earlier than expected?”

  “In disgrace.”

  “As if I care what they think. And that’s only if I get caught. Ideally, we all go home together, as free as fish.” The Strand phrase rolled awkwardly off his tongue, but the familiarity of it helped make his point to Kemp.

  “Do you really think that’s likely?” the albino asked.

  “I don’t care if it’s absolutely impossible,” Skender said with all honesty. “I have to try. This could be my last chance.”

  Kemp shushed him. His voice had risen without him noticing.

  “What did you have in mind?”

  Skender leaned closer. That Kemp was acting to keep their conversation secret was a good sign.

  “First, we have to get out of here.”

  “They’re not going to let us go off on our own. They’ll know you’re up to something.”

  “Not if we’re careful.” He thought furiously. “Homework. They’ll like that. We can say we need to go to the library, or to my room to get some notes. They’ll want to come with us, but that’s okay. They can’t watch us all the time.”

  “And what about you? Are you okay to walk?”

  “I don’t know.” He wasn’t game to try. The cuts on his feet were still oozing. “But the less mobile I look, the better.”

  “Eh?”

  “Who’s going to expect a boy in a wheelchair to get up to trouble? Especially when I’ve got you keeping an eye on me.”

  Kemp nodded. “Even so, we’ll only get one shot.”

  “That’s all we need.” I hope, he added silently to himself.

  They pulled apart and called for the attendant. She seemed dubious at first, but acquiesced in the end. They managed to talk her into letting them go to his room, and she left to get a wheelchair.

  “So far, so good,” said Kemp. “When we get to your room, then what?”

  “You help me up into the crawlspace.”

  “And then?”

  “We find Sal and Shilly.”

  “And then?”

  “We’ll play it by ear, okay?” Kemp’s constant questions were beginning to get on his nerves. “Let’s not jinx it by thinking too far ahead.”

  “Right, ’cause planning too much is going to get us caught.” The big albino looked as though he was enjoying watching Skender squirm.

  “You don’t have to come with me if you don’t want to.”

  “Yes, I do. Someone’s got to be there to pick up the pieces when you fall.”

  “I’m not going to fall. I’m—”

  “Shh!”

  They froze as the attendant returned with the wheelchair. Skender eased himself out of his bed, not really needing to feign a wince as his feet briefly made contact with the floor. His soles felt as though glass was still stuck in the wounds. The slippers he had to put on only made the pain worse, so he held them on his lap. He would need them later.

  Kemp took the handles of the wheelchair.

  “Right.” Skender pointed imperiously at the door. If Kemp was going to doubt him, he’d be annoying right back. “Onward!”

  Skender’s knees and footrest bore the brunt of the impact as they crashed through the door. Kemp put on an impressive turn of speed through the hospital corridors. Skender was determined not to show any sign of nervousness as they rocketed along straight stretches and careered around corners. It was all he could do to keep his hands on the slippers instead of white-knuckled on the armrests.

  The attendant called directions after them and followed as best she could out of the hospital and along a short road to a rear entrance to the Novitiate rooms. Skender heard Kemp’s heavy breathing in his ear as they wound their way to the student rooms. Skender’s doorway approached rapidly and Kemp showed no sign of slowing, obviously intending to bring the chair to a sudden halt just as it seemed about to shoot past. A moment sooner, Skender applied the handbrake tucked under one armrest, and almost ended up with Kemp headfirst in his lap.

  When they’d stopped laughing, the attendant opened the door to the room and stepped back to let them through. Although he couldn’t see her face, Skender sensed disapproval radiating from her.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Homework is no laughing matter. We’ll get to it. Don’t mind us.”

  Kemp shut the door behind them and pushed the chair to the centre of the room.

  “We’ve come this far,” he whispered. “Are you sure you want to go the rest of the way?”

  “Are you?” This question was still bothering him. Kemp hadn’t answered it properly before. “It’s not as if you can push me into the vent then just walk off. You’ll have to come with me, if I go.”

 
“I know that. I’m not stupid.” The albino looked at him with unnerving frankness. “Look, do you think you’re the only ones the wardens have their eye on here? I thought the Novitiate was going to be somewhere I could get away from Fundelry, from my father. But it’s not. I don’t want to be like him, and I don’t want to be like Tait—pushed around and dragged halfway across the world, then just discarded. There has to be an alternative.”

  “Pushing me around instead?”

  “Well, it makes a change.” White teeth flashed in a pale grin. “Let’s just do this and see what happens afterward.”

  Satisfied, Skender nodded. “A man after my own heart. Okay, move the desk. Quietly!”

  Kemp rearranged the furniture, firstly to block the door, and secondly so they could reach the grille. Skender put his feet into the slippers and gingerly stood. Gritting his teeth, he climbed onto the table and let Kemp boost him up. He experienced a moment’s hesitation as he hooked his elbows on the edge. The second-last time he had gone into the crawlspaces, he had watched Radi Mierlo die. This time, he reminded himself, the golem was safely out of the way, and it was the people who walked openly in the halls he had most cause to be wary of.

  With a grunt, he hauled himself into darkness. When he was safe, he turned and offered his hand to help in return.

  “It’s okay. I can do it.” Kemp followed easily despite his large frame, swinging his legs up and over and promptly banging his head on the low roof above. “Ouch! And phew. Someone needs to look at their housekeeping.”

  “Quiet.” Skender heard a thump from below. The attendant was trying the door. “Quick—the grille!”

  They put the grille back where it belonged and peered nervously into the room, not daring to make a sound.

  The cupboard blocking the door rocked, then was scraped backwards into the room. The black-robed attendant squeezed through the widening gap, followed by another figure in grey. They looked around the room. The attendant cursed.

  “They’ve gone,” snarled the figure in grey. “You should have been more careful.”