Skykeepers

by Jessica Andersen

  His mouth was tight. “This was it.” As if conceding defeat, he gave her hand a last squeeze and released it. Anna, too, stepped away from their uplink, leaving Michael the only one still touching her. After a moment, he too broke the connection and moved back.

  “I’m sorry,” Sasha said hollowly, failure echoing alongside grief. She hated that she hadn’t come through when her new friends and family had needed her. Did that mean she wasn’t a ch’ulel? Or was Michael right, and she and Rabbit were simply incompatible? But if that was the case, did the fact that she couldn’t hear Michael’s song mean that the two of them weren’t compatible, either?

  It seemed depressingly possible.

  “What now?” Strike asked. It seemed like a rhetorical question.

  “Let me try,” Myrinne said unexpectedly.

  “Not an option,” Strike said flatly. “You’re the one who got him into this.”

  “Then I should be the one to get him out, don’t you think?” The young woman uncoiled from the chair. With her average height and dark, Gypsy-lush looks, wearing jeans and a hooded sweatshirt that was cropped off at her hips, she would’ve come across as just another college kid if it weren’t for her eyes, which looked far older than her chronological age, and her mouth, which tipped up sensually at the corners, somehow seeming to suggest that she’d been there, done that, and no sort of depravity on earth could surprise her.

  The look in her eyes nudged Sasha’s mind back to her time with Iago, pushing at the filters and making her chest ache. What in gods’ name had the girl lived through? What had happened to her?

  “Maybe we should let her try,” Anna said slowly. “Her ritual put him under. Maybe she can bring him back.”

  “No fucking way,” Strike said. “For all we know, the next woo-woo shit she tries on him will kill him. Besides, whatever’s going on, it’s nothing more than self-hypnosis bringing out Rabbit’s latent talents—and gods know what else he’s got hiding in there that we don’t know about yet. He’s caught in Nightkeeper magic, maybe Xibalban. The woo-woo shit doesn’t work.” Sasha didn’t think he’d thank her for pointing out that, given the existence of magic, it wasn’t logical for the Nightkeepers to claim its sole possession. But something of her thoughts must’ve shown on her face, because he fixed her with a look. “You think I should let her, don’t you?”

  She started to give him a whatever you think is best answer, but then stopped herself. Maybe it was her warrior’s mark, maybe the feel of Michael’s eyes fixed on her, silently challenging her to step up into the life she’d chosen, the one that had chosen her. “I think,” she said carefully, “that unless you’ve got a viable plan C, you should give her the chance.”

  “If she could’ve woken him up, she would’ve done it back on campus,” Strike countered.

  “Not after he lit the dorm.” Myrinne faced the king with a scowl, looking very young and slight in comparison, but defiant as hell. “You don’t think it’s magic? That’s fine with me—let me do my self-hypnosis shtick. Can’t hurt if that’s all it is, right?”

  Caught in his own logic, Strike cursed under his breath. He glanced around the room, tallying a silent vote. Sasha and Anna had already cast their votes. Jox opened a hand, as if saying, Beats the hell out of me.

  Michael held the king’s eyes for a moment, then nodded. “I say let her try. He’s fading fast.” The gray cast to his skin predominated now. “Alternatively, you could ’port him to that hospital in Albuquerque. But you’ve got to do something.”

  Strike shook his head. “There’s no point giving him over to human doctors. He’s lost in his own magic.”

  “Then give him a reason to come back,” Michael said bluntly. His eyes were fixed on Sasha as he said it.

  Irritation flared—with him for making it seem like she mattered, and with herself for the quick buzz brought by the words. Damn hormones.

  “Fuck.” Strike turned back to Myrinne. “What do you need?”

  “Nothing from you,” she said sharply. She slipped from the room, returning quickly with a small metal dagger inset with crystals at its hilt. Taking the seat beside the head of the bed, she pulled the nightstand slightly away from the wall. On it was a fat red candle, halfway burned down in a saucer decorated with flying pigs. She opened the nightstand drawer wide and fished for a box of matches, smirking slightly when Strike looked away from the big box of condoms, torn open and most of the way empty.

  He’s got a life that doesn’t include you, the action—and the expression—said.

  “Make a circle,” she ordered. “No bloodletting, and don’t lean on your magic. Clear your heads. I don’t care if you believe in this, but keep the negative thoughts out.” Her eyes flicked to Jox, who was edging for the door. “You too.” Something in her voice said, Especially you, as if the winikin had more power here than the others combined. Which didn’t make any sense, really, because a winikin’s marks might be magic, but the winikin weren’t magic users, hadn’t ever been. At Strike’s nod, though, Jox joined hands with the others in a circle that surrounded the bed and included Rabbit, with Myrinne on one side of him, Strike on the other. Sasha ended up between Michael and Anna; she caught a buzz of sexual heat and frustrated anger from one, a trill of harps and song from the other, but suppressed both to focus on Myrinne’s ritual. As she did so, she sent a second prayer: Gods help us all.

  Instead of using the knife to cut herself or Rabbit, Myrinne placed it on his blanket-covered chest. She lit the candle and put it, pig saucer and all, on Rabbit’s stomach, which dipped flat beneath the covers. The assemblage wobbled for a moment, then stabilized as Myrinne took Anna’s hand on one side, Rabbit’s on the other, and said, “We welcome the element of fire, symbol of willpower and courage. We call to the south for inspiration and passion. We call on the goddess Nephthys, ruler of magic and secrecy. And we call on Rabbit to return to us. He is fire, willpower, and courage. He is my inspiration and my passion.” Releasing Anna’s hand, Myrinne leaned in and kissed Rabbit on the cheek. “It’s time to come back now. Follow the sound of my voice and the energy of the people who love you.”

  There was no hum of red-gold Nightkeeper magic, no song, no change in the air or the flickering candle flame. For maybe half a minute, absolutely nothing happened. Then, as if someone had thrown a switch, Rabbit’s chest rose in a long, drawn-out inhale, and the knife and candle set on his chest moved with the ripple of a long shudder racking his body. Then his eyelids flickered.

  Relief curled through Sasha like a song, and she instinctively tightened her fingers on Michael’s. Whatever Myrinne was doing, it was working.

  Rabbit’s consciousness swam up through the sticky layers of gray, fighting inertia, fighting the tide that threatened to suck him back down. He didn’t know where he’d been, didn’t know what he’d been doing, didn’t even know where he was going, only that the familiar contralto voice drew him onward, to a glittering silver interface where the grayness met something else. There was light beyond the interface, and the sense of motion and life. And the voice. Her voice. As he struggled up to the surface, the clinging layers started to fall away and he started reconnecting with himself, with memory.

  He affixed the voice to a name—Myrinne—and an emotion: desperate love. At the same time, he saw flames and heard himself scream her name. A waxy face. Blood dripping from a knife.

  No! Instinctively, reflexively, he threw a mental block over the nightmare. It wasn’t a true vision, he knew. It’d been a projection of his own terror that no matter how hard he tried to do the right thing, he always fucked everything up, usually destroying shit in the process. But not her. Never her. She was a metaphor for the good stuff he screwed up. That was all. He wouldn’t ever hurt her.

  “That’s it, kid. Open your eyes,” another familiar voice said, accompanied by the brush of cool fingers over his forehead. Anna, his mind supplied.

  “Rabbit, you’ve got to come all the way back.” That was Myrinne’s voice, and those were
Myrinne’s fingers holding his, squeezing encouragement. He latched onto the promise of her, the reality, using that to pull himself the last little bit through the grayness to the interface, then shove himself through.

  He jolted back into his own body and spun, disoriented, as his consciousness fought to reconnect with the shell it was supposed to inhabit. When he finally got his eyes open, he found himself blinking up at a whole damn crowd gathered around the bed in his old man’s cottage back at Skywatch. Which reminded him that he’d set Myrinne’s dorm room on fire. Shit.

  “You’re back,” Strike said.

  Rabbit’s knee-jerk response was something along the lines of, Duh, but he managed to squelch it, saying instead, “Sorry it took so long.” He braced to get his ass chewed up and spit out. Gods knew he deserved it—he’d broken his “no Nightkeeper magic” vow, if not to the letter, then certainly by intent. Worse, he didn’t have a damn thing to show for it except more property damage. He hadn’t gotten the answers he’d been looking for, and didn’t know what to make of the answers he had gotten.

  There was an awkward pause, as though Strike couldn’t decide whether to hug him or strangle him. In the end, the king didn’t do either; he just turned away, muttering, “Glad you’re okay,” under his breath.

  “You scared us,” Anna said, but instead of censure, there was mostly relief on her face, and in Jox’s eyes. Which made Rabbit realize that they were pissed, yeah, but they were also damn glad to have him back. The knowledge warmed him. It humbled him, to the extent that he could be humbled. Why did he keep forgetting that they weren’t his old man? Why did he keep assuming the worst about their reactions, and then being surprised when they went the other way?

  “He should rest,” Myrinne said pointedly. In case the others didn’t get the nonhint, she followed it up with, “Go away. I’ll let you know when he’s up for an interrogation.”

  Strike ignored her to lean over the bed. “I’ll kick your ass later for pulling this stunt . . . but given that it’s a done deal, I’ve gotta ask: Did you get any answers?”

  Yeah, Rabbit thought. I’m just not sure which question they belong to.

  What is my destiny? he’d asked. How can I make Myrinne mine? And he’d gotten a response of sorts. He just wasn’t sure what the hell it meant. Choosing his words carefully, he said, “The images I got were all jumbled up. I have a feeling they weren’t anything, really, just pieces from inside my head . . . except for one of them. Just before I passed out for good, I blinked into a ceremonial chamber and felt a hell of a power surge. Like maybe it was an intersection.”

  There was a collective indrawn breath. Strike said, “Can you describe it? Could you get back there?”

  Rabbit grimaced. “I didn’t really see the room; it was mostly a blur. But there was a stone tomb in the middle of it, a big one with a scorpion carved in its side, along with some wavy lines.” He paused. “The thing was . . . the symbols weren’t Mayan, I don’t think.”

  “What were they?” Strike asked, his voice deadly intent.

  “Egyptian.” He looked from Strike to the others, and raised an eyebrow. “Anybody up for a field trip?”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The next morning, after catching up on sleep and calories, the residents of Skywatch assembled for an all-hands-on-deck meeting, at the picnic tables set beneath the big ceiba tree. Rabbit was there, with heavy circles beneath his eyes and a faintly mulish look on his face. But at least he was vertical. Myrinne sat beside him, with Anna on his other side. Sasha had originally taken a seat between Jox and Sven, in a cowardly effort to avoid dealing with Michael. Her best efforts were foiled, though, when he arrived, big and grumpy-looking, and thumped Sven on the shoulder. “Move.”

  Clearly hungover, Sven merely winced and slid down. Sasha divided her glare between the two men, annoyed with Sven for being oblivious, with herself for the kick of physical reaction that coursed through her when Michael’s shoulder touched hers, and with Michael for being . . . hell, for just being.

  Before she could decide whether or not to change seats, Strike brought the meeting to order, standing up at the head of the table and saying, “Okay, gang. Suffice it to say that a whole lot of things have changed over the last forty-eight, some for the better, some not.” He paused and looked at Sasha. “First and foremost, I want to officially welcome Sasha to the family, quite literally. I’d like to start by having Jox go over what we’ve pieced together so far.”

  The winikin, clearly prepped, stood up from his seat. Once he had everyone’s attention, he began, dropping into what Sasha had learned to recognize as his sto ryteller mode, eyes half-closed, as though he were describing vivid pictures seen in his mind’s eye. “Nearly two years before the massacre, the queen gave birth to a baby girl. As far as anyone alive today knew, it was a stillbirth. The funerary bundle was made and burned, the child’s ashes added to those beneath the altar here at Skywatch.”

  Sasha was aware that everyone might be looking at Jox, but their attention was on her. She hadn’t heard the story, but suddenly couldn’t sit still for it. She’d waited so long to learn about her mother; now that the time had come, all she wanted to do was get up and pace off a sudden case of restless nerves. Just when the jitters were nearing the breaking point, though, Michael touched his booted foot to her sneakered one beneath the table, a brief, supportive pressure that said, You can handle this. And she could, she realized, exhaling a long breath and drawing in the next. But she didn’t like that he’d been the one to remind her.

  She shifted her foot away from his as the winikin continued, “Based on what the nahwal said about Sasha being his second daughter, and the way the timing fits, it seems that the baby was either stolen from the queen and replaced somehow with an appropriate substitute . . . or that the queen herself was involved in the deception. We don’t know which of those was the case; we may never know. Sasha’s mother made Ambrose memorize the triad prophecy, and insisted that it related to Sasha. In a way, this suggests the queen’s involvement. She was the most powerful itza’at of her generation, so it’s certainly possible that she foresaw Sasha’s importance to the end-time war, and knew she had to keep her alive at all costs . . . perhaps even by lying to her husband and her people.”

  Sasha’s head buzzed as thoughts collided and separated within her, threatening to tip her brain toward overload. “But why send me away?”

  It was Anna who answered: “An itza’at can foresee the future but not change it. If she envisioned the massacre, or a dark future at the very least, she might have thought to spare you.”

  “Why not send all three of us away, then?” Sasha asked, then wished she hadn’t. Because if their mother had sent her to safety, it meant she’d knowingly left her two older children in harm’s way.

  Strike didn’t look offended by the question, though, saying only, “Either she’d seen Jox raising us—but not you—in relative safety . . . or she had no foreknowledge of our fate, but couldn’t risk sending us away, because it would look like she didn’t believe in the king’s plan to attack the intersection.”

  “Treason is one of the few things considered a true and absolute sin,” Michael said out of the corner of his mouth. “It’s good for a one-way trip to Mictlan.”

  “That’s—” Sasha broke off, not sure what she wanted to say, what she could say. She was only beginning to understand what it meant to be a Nightkeeper, how her decisions had suddenly become plural, impacting so much more than just herself.

  “The king’s writ spells out the responsibilities of the leaders,” Strike said. “Personal desires are pretty far down the list.” He glanced at Leah. “Lucky for us, the jaguars are known for being not only stubborn as hell, but willing to rewrite the rules to suit themselves.” He returned his attention to Sasha. “Our mother made the choice she made—I have to believe it was her choice, in retrospect. She grieved deeply when the baby died, and again around the time of the funeral, which was a few months later. She and the k
ing drifted apart for a bit too. In retrospect, what Anna and I remember of that period is pretty consistent with her having made some hellish personal choices.”

  “If that’s true . . .” Sasha trailed off, trying to find the right question amidst the clamor of them in her brain. “If this was her plan to keep me safe and make sure I made it to the end-time, then why did she send me with someone like Ambrose? Why not a winikin?” But what she was really asking was, Why not someone stable, who had half a clue how to raise a child and introduce the Nightkeeper ways gently, rather than like magical boot camp for the criminally insane?

  It was Jox who answered: “Even narrowing it down to the inner circle of the royal jaguars and their close friends, we’re still not sure who Ambrose was, for the same reasons as before—lack of records, too many people to choose from. But I think it’s safe to say he would’ve been someone the queen trusted implicitly, someone she thought would keep you safe and raise you well.” The winikin had clearly guessed her unspoken question, because he continued, “We have to assume that his orders from the queen included his severing his connection to the barrier. Every mention of the spells capable of breaking the barrier connection suggest that they are, quite literally, hell. If we take the trauma of the spell, and add that to his being abruptly cut off from the culture he’d spent his entire life training for, he must have . . . broken inside somehow. The queen would have picked him thinking he could handle it. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.”

  You can say that again, Sasha thought. But for the first time in a long time—maybe ever—the anger and regret that tainted her memories of Ambrose were overlaid with a new degree of empathy. She’d been a part of Skywatch for only a few weeks, but already her life was intertwined, to different degrees, with her teammates, and the winikin. What would it be like to have that feeling of belonging, multiplied several hundredfold, and then have it yanked away? More, he would have been a functioning mage, capapble of tapping the barrier for power, for answers. Maybe he’d even had a cool talent. A lover. Gods, a family. Then, on his queen’s order, he’d left all that behind to undergo the worst sort of trauma, severing his connection to his entire life. And after that he’d been alone, adrift with a newborn baby, acting on standing orders to protect her and raise her as befitted a princess. Was it any wonder he’d lost it, that his priorities had gotten badly skewed, the delivery harsh in the extreme? Could she really blame him for breaking?