“I thought he already made it, in the Nine Stars,” Skender said. His head was spinning from all the new information. It was all he could do to keep up.
“That decision was forced upon him. With the Syndic at his heels, who wouldn’t have done the same? It was good for him to experience the Interior, however briefly, but he also had to see the other side. The decision to send him here was a harsh but necessary one. Now that he has seen the alternative, what he stands to lose by sticking with that decision, we think he is properly equipped to re-examine that decision. Our function is to give him the opportunity to do so without hurting anyone in the process.”
“The Syndic wants to keep him here,” he said, thinking through everything he had learned and trying to force it into shape. “Does that mean she’s not one of you?”
“That’s right. She was simply in the right place at the right time, for a while. As was Radi Mierlo and Shom Behenna.”
“For a while,” he repeated darkly, remembering the golem throttling the life out of Sal’s grandmother, and the anger-filled hopelessness of Behenna’s life since the Nine Stars. Any excitement he had felt about potentially escaping drained out the soles of his feet. “You abandoned Behenna when you didn’t need him any longer, and you killed Radi Mierlo. Will you kill me, too, when I’ve outlived my usefulness?”
“You’ll note that Shom is now working for us—for the first time, not as a reward for earlier service. Until now, he has been the Syndic’s unknowing puppet. As for the death of Radi Mierlo, we had nothing to do with that, and I hope we’ll have nothing to do with yours,” said Luan Braunack. “This I vow to you, Skender. It’s true that we no longer needed her, but we neither ordered the golem to murder her nor encouraged it to consider her as a victim. It was an outcome we had not foreseen.”
“Would you have saved her if you had foreseen it?”
Braunack shook her head. “To be honest, probably not. We are not normally in the business of rescuing people, particularly people like her, who don’t make it easy to help them. You must understand that we aren’t puppeteers, pulling strings and making people jump. We use those who are suitable in ways they often do not see, then when they are no longer suitable we let them go. What happens to them then is irrelevant to us—and yes, sometimes they do come to harm, through no fault of our own. Those standing in the spotlight are always the easiest targets.
“Our eyes are set on a goal much larger than individuals. For the most part—except at pivotal times such as these—we don’t even acknowledge individual lives. They get in the way of the bigger picture, the encompassing…”
She trailed off as though searching for a word.
“Aesthetic?” Skender suggested.
“Yes,” she said with a smile. “That’s the perfect word. Thank you. It’s not a plan. There’s no grand finale we’re hoping to achieve. It’s more like life itself, or evolution. The journey is what’s important.”
They walked in silence for a while. Skender’s head was spinning.
“So where do I fit in?” he asked. “You offered me a lift home with you. I don’t need the Way. If I’m here, it must be for a reason.”
“We need you to remember the charm the golem gave you to open the Way. Every potential entrance has a different key, you see, and only you have the key to this one.”
“Why not use another entrance?”
“Because those known to exist in the city are guarded, and it’s very difficult to create new ones. They either form naturally and rarely, or at great cost to individuals. Few today are strong enough to accomplish the feat.” Braunack studied him again. “And you have a choice to make, as well as Sal. Shilly, too. We all do. Everyone touched by this affair has to decide where to go next. It is a time of great upheaval for us all.”
Skender could understand that sentiment. It echoed uncertainties expressed by both Tom and Mawson over their occasional glimpses of the future. Things were shifting underfoot, like sand. He felt as though he was trying to climb to the summit of a particularly steep dune, slipping back two steps for every one he took forward.
“And Lodo?” he asked. “Why is he here? He can’t talk. How will you know what he wants?”
Braunack’s expression was solemn. “We know. Payat Misseri has made his choice many times over.”
“And that is?”
“I can’t tell you. It would be wrong to influence anyone in the decisions they must make.”
“Isn’t that exactly what you’re trying to do, by telling me the truth? Assuming it is the truth, finally,” he added, forcing himself to acknowledge the possibility that he was still being lied to.
Braunack smiled. “I can see you’re nicely paranoid by now. That’s good. You shouldn’t trust anyone too far. Everyone has an agenda, hidden or otherwise, and that includes us. We are setting Sal and Shilly free only in order to maintain the balance between the Strand and the Interior—to preserve the aesthetic. That is our goal. Where a decision will make no difference to the outcome we seek, we allow complete freedom for all those concerned. We only apply coercion or punishment when we have no other choice, and we do it safe in the knowledge that our aim is not an ethical one.”
He shook his head, bothered again by the image of Radi Mierlo, abandoned to the golem because she was no longer necessary. “You’ve lost me again, I’m afraid.”
“The ends justify the means, Skender. That’s all I’m trying to say. Remember that in the years to come, and it might help you sleep at night.”
Behenna was waiting for them at the top of the crack in the earth. Sal found it ironic that the man who had hunted him so doggedly across the Strand and the Interior was now helping him escape from his former masters. Whether the ex-warden was thinking along the same lines, Sal couldn’t tell. The man’s pitch-black features were closed, and his words were curt.
“Are we the last?” asked Highson.
“They’re waiting for you.” Behenna indicated the rope ladder. “I’d move quickly. There are search parties combing the city.”
Highson waved Sal forward. “That didn’t take long. Thanks for the warning. Will you be all right?”
“I’ll manage.”
Sal wanted to say something to the ex-warden, to apologise for what he’d done, but he couldn’t find the words. Instead, before he climbed down, he turned to Mawson, tied securely to the back of the buggy, and asked him instead.
“Are you happy like that? Do you want to come with us?”
“I am content.” Mawson nodded once, perhaps in gratitude at the question. “I have freedom and mobility. They will be sufficient until I am next needed.”
“Will I see you again?” Sal was surprised by sadness at the thought that he might not. Irascible and incommunicative though the strange being was, Mawson had been an interesting companion, and of some help.
“There are an infinite number of futures diverging from this moment,” the man’kin said. “In some of them we will meet; in others we don’t. As time passes, it will become clearer which future you are most likely to inhabit.”
Sal frowned. “Is that a no or a yes?”
“I don’t know, Sal.”
“Well…thanks anyway, I guess!”
Sal couldn’t think of anything else to say. It wasn’t as if Mawson seemed to care much. To something as old and strange as a man’kin, Sal assumed, people flitted by like moths: there one day and gone the next. It was unlikely Mawson would remember him at all, if they ever did meet again.
Without another word, Sal turned and backed down the ladder. His last glimpse of the buggy was as an angular silhouette against the faint glow of the Haunted City. Saying farewell to it was becoming a habit.
He waited restlessly at the bottom as his father followed, unsettled by the thought that the Sky Wardens were already looking for him. The small sliver of beach was deserted. He did his best not to
look at the two desiccated bodies swinging silently on either side of the catacomb entrance.
“You know,” said his real father as he dropped from the ladder onto the beach beside him, “this is the only sand anywhere on the island.”
Sal didn’t know how to respond to this. “Really?”
“Unless there are other hidden pockets like this one, of course.” Highson bent down and scooped up a handful of the fine sand. “This was a mountain, once. We and all our works will end up just like it, far in the future. Ground down into dust.”
“Why bother doing anything, then?”
“Because this isn’t the end.” Sand feathered through Highson’s fingers. “Some of this dust may go on to lay down new strata, even further in the future. Those strata may buckle to form new mountains. Our works will return in unknown, unknowable ways. What we call sand or dust is the beginning as well as the end.”
“That reminds me of something Lodo said.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.”
“He said that the beach was unique. It’s not water or earth, but somewhere between.”
“Between beginning and end.” Highson nodded as though that made perfect sense. “Come on. We don’t want them to start without us.”
They hurried into the tunnel, leaving behind the remains of mountains and dead guardians alike. A feeling of anticipation was growing in him. He was being offered a way out of the Haunted City, not just out of the clutches of his great-aunt and the Conclave, who would do everything in their power to bend his talent to their ends. He was being offered his freedom. Not even the memories of what had happened last time he had walked along the gloomy tunnel could get rid of that feeling. If everything Highson had told him was true, he wouldn’t be coming back this way ever again. It was a one-way trip.
Part of him still half-expected it to be a cruel joke—that at any moment the Syndic was going to appear and put him back behind bars.
“There’s one other thing you should know,” Highson said at the halfway point, where a cluster of glow-stones created a relatively pleasant place to take a breather.
Here it comes, he thought. The catch.
“Okay,” he said.
“It’s about your mother.”
“What now?”
“Just that I knew she was pregnant when I let her escape. And I knew the child was mine. I deliberately kept the knowledge from my family because, if they had known, the hunt would have been all the more intense. I couldn’t have deflected them.”
Sal waited for more, but that seemed to be it. “So?”
“So…” By the light of the glow-stones, Highson’s expression was strained. “I knew you were there, Sal. I knew there was a child growing inside the woman I loved. I gave you away, for her sake—and yours, too.”
Sal’s stomach seemed to be sinking faster than he was down the tunnel. “Was it hard?”
“Unbelievably so. Even then I think I had an idea of what you could be, given the chance. But I wouldn’t be there to find out. Your mother was never supposed to be found. No one was ever supposed to know you existed. That was supposed to be the end of it.”
“But it wasn’t.”
“No. And that still feels strange to me. All my life I’ve put thoughts of you from my mind. I couldn’t let myself wonder where you were, what you were doing, what you were like. I couldn’t hope that I might meet you one day, and tell you the truth.” He smiled crookedly. “I certainly never thought I’d be in this position.”
“What position?”
“Helping you escape from my family, and Seirian’s. It’s like the past is repeating itself. I’m losing you again. Only now I’ve seen you, come to know you—my child and Seirian’s—it’s so much harder to let you go.”
Highson trailed off into awkward silence. Sal didn’t know what to say or feel in response. He was more confused about his real father than ever. Just an hour ago he had hated him with a blinding passion. Now they were grieving together over his mother. And only a subtle feeling remained that he still wasn’t being told everything. That, he told himself, was probably just habit.
They walked on down the tunnel, side by side, their pace perfectly matched.
“It’s stupid, I know,” Sal’s real father said, “but sometimes I imagine what might have happened if I’d kept you here, if you’d grown up with me instead of Dafis.”
“I’ve wondered that too,” said Sal. “I might’ve been a completely different person.”
“And my life could have been happier.” Highson offered a slight chuckle, as though attempting to lighten his words. “I like to think that we would have been close, but there’s no way of knowing, now. And there’s no point forcing anything. It’s too late. If I took my chance to keep you here, the second time, I suspect I’d do more damage than good.”
Sal nodded, knowing that second thoughts about Highson would never be enough to counterbalance staying under the Syndic’s thumb.
“You could come with us,” he suggested, somewhat nervously.
“I don’t think you really want that,” Highson said, “although it’s kind to mention it. I couldn’t do it, even if we did both want it. Someone has to look after Gram. Until she dies, I have obligations here.”
Sal nodded, understanding that completely.
“And besides,” Highson added, “I think you’re my chance to redeem myself. Nothing more. If I can’t—couldn’t save your mother, then I can at least save you.”
“So you’re doing it for her, not me?”
“In a sense. Her memory, anyway. And I don’t think that’s unreasonable. I knew her better than I know you.” He half-smiled. “Were my concerns genuinely for you, I would keep you nearby as long as possible. Your great-aunt is quite right, in one sense. You are a great danger to yourself and others, the longer you remain untrained. I don’t think you’ll do anything stupid, out on your own, but I have no guarantees. And I took that risk once already, when I let you go the first time. It is a chance I am still prepared to take. If there are consequences, I will bear them. And if you come back to me a second time, then I’ll know it was for a reason. Wherever she is, I think Seirian would be happy with that.”
“If I was her,” Sal said, “I’d want revenge.”
“Would you really?”
“It’d be tempting.”
“A lot of things are tempting that ultimately lead to harm. Think of the storm you summoned, Sal. Think of the lives it could have disrupted, had it crossed inhabited territories. Who’s to say that Seirian’s revenge couldn’t have been just as dangerous to the innocent around her?”
Sal nodded, understanding what Highson was trying to tell him. The memory of the storm’s ferocity was still vivid, reinforced as it was by the numerous times he’d dreamed about it in recent weeks. When the Change flowed unchecked through him, there was a wild edge to it. He had seriously hurt the Alcaide, the first time he had let it loose, and there had been other occasions on which he had felt it fighting to be freed. He wondered sometimes what would happen if he went too far and couldn’t rein it in. Golems and ghosts weren’t the only things he had to be frightened of.
But he had controlled the outpouring in the face of the ice-creature. Despite his panic and his fear that Shilly had been hurt, he had kept his mind coolly on the charm and let the Change flow only as he wanted it to. It had bucked and fought, but he had contained it. He had had the measure of it, then.
Controlling the Change, though, was just the beginning. As Highson said, the storm could have wandered across vast tracts of the Interior, laying waste to farms and homesteads. That was a consequence of his actions that he hadn’t foreseen and couldn’t control, that stood separate from the Change. Similarly, his grandmother had died partly as a result of one of his decisions, as had the man he called his father. He remembered the moment of pain when he had instinctively reache
d for the Change to fight his real father in the streets of the Haunted City. But for the charm keeping him contained, Highson Sparre might have joined the roll call of the dead.
So much for self-control, he thought. How many more have to die before I manage to get myself under control?
None, he swore. I’m going to teach myself restraint. I’ll never use the Change against another person again—even if that means never using it at all.
And as for storms…
He stopped then, on the heels of a new thought.
“How did you know about the storm I summoned?” he asked.
Highson cast him an unreadable look. “How do you think I knew about it?”
“Someone must have told you. Was it Shom Behenna?”
“No.”
“My grandmother?”
“Not her, either.”
“But they were the only people there who…” He trailed off into silence, feeling like an idiot. “No. There was Skender’s father, the Mage Van Haasteren. It has to be him. He’s been talking to Mage Braunack ever since we left. He could just as easily talk to you.”
“That’s right, Sal. He told me what you’d done so I would know what you were capable of.”
“He warned you about me?”
“Not in so many words. He advised me to be careful, as did the Alcaide.”
Anger flared in him at the thought that they were all talking about him behind his back. “What would you have done if I had turned on you? Do you think you could have stopped me?”
“I hoped it wasn’t necessary. I took precautions, and I trusted you.”
The Storm Weaver & the Sand (Books of the Change) Page 41