The Sky Warden and the Sun

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The Sky Warden and the Sun Page 26

by Sean Williams


  “Do you—” Sal’s voice broke again. He shook his head in annoyance. “Do you have other grandchildren?”

  “Why, yes, of course. Your mother had a sister and a brother, both older than her. They have two and three children respectively. You will meet your cousins in due course. No doubt you wish to learn more about the rest of your family. I have pictures of your mother at home in Mount Birrinah, when she was young. Your resemblance to her is very strong. Would you like to see them?”

  “Yes, very much.” He glanced up at mage beside him. “Would I be allowed to?”

  “We are open to familial visits,” said the mage, “although not usually so soon in training. The children are to be given their robes tomorrow,” he explained to Radi Mierlo. “They have their studies waiting for them back at the Keep.”

  “Of course, Mage Van Haasteren,” she said. “I understand your concern and I am sure something can be arranged. I feel that a child learns best in the company of those who love and nurture him, and will do all in my power to ensure that nothing comes between them and him.”

  The mage smiled in response, but it was thin, with a tension Shilly could only guess at. Didn’t the mage want Sal to go? The thought suddenly struck her that they might expect her to go with him to Mount Birrinah, and she almost groaned aloud.

  “But I am remiss,” said Sal’s grandmother, as though sensing Shilly’s restlessness. “You must be hungry. Melantha, is everything ready for dinner?”

  “All is as you requested.” The steward bowed and left the room.

  “Excellent. We will retire in a moment to eat. I have requested that we six sit apart from the others so we can talk in private. I hope that will be in order, Mage Van Haasteren?”

  “Whatever suits Sal, Mrs Mierlo. As his temporary guardian and teacher I give him permission to choose in this instance.”

  “Indeed. Well, Sal. Would you like to eat with me?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Very good.” She smiled broadly and put her hands on his shoulders. Sal stared up at her as though hypnotised. Shilly had never seen him like this.

  “You said six,” she blurted out.

  “What’s that?” Radi Mierlo’s pale blue eyes turned on her.

  “You said there could be six of us for dinner. I count only five.”

  “Ah, yes.” She addressed Sal again, her voice solemn. “We have another guest for dinner this evening, my grandson. He’s been looking forward to meeting you very much, I know. He has come a long way to talk to you about your future.”

  “What about his future?” asked the Mage Van Haasteren.

  “About whether Sal should return home,” said a voice from the doorway behind them, “to the place where he was born.”

  Hardly believing her ears, Shilly turned at the same time as Sal to see a man they’d assumed they’d left far behind them.

  “Where he belongs,” said the Sky Warden, Shom Behenna.

  Part Three:

  Judging

  Chapter 12

  Lust for Power

  For a moment, Sal was unable to move. All he could do was stare at the Sky Warden—at the man who had somehow managed to follow them all the way from the Strand into the heart of the Interior—with a feeling like a cold knife point running down his spine. The only outward sign that Behenna was enjoying his surprise was a faint smile playing across his lips.

  “No,” Sal said. “It’s not possible. You can’t be here.”

  “Oh, it is, and I am. It’s nice to see you again.” Sal sensed gloating behind the pleasant facade. “And you too, Shilly. How’s your leg feeling now? Tait has been hoping we’d catch up with you.”

  She just gaped at him. Sal couldn’t blame her.

  The Sky Warden folded his hands in front of his blue robe as he waited for them to say something. His skin was darker than anyone else’s in the room, even Shilly’s. Tiny whorls and details in the delicately fashioned crystal torc fastened around his neck caught the light and reflected rainbow flashes. His deep blue robes seemed undamaged by the journey. Maybe he had a spare set, Sal thought feverishly, trying to accept the revelation.

  He hadn’t felt the Warden tap-tapping once! How had he known…?

  “How—?” he began, but stopped when his voice dropped down into its new, deeper register. “No,” he said again. “I don’t care how you got here. I’m not going to eat with you, and I’m not going back to the Strand. I’m here now, and I’m going to stay here.”

  “At least hear the alternative, Sal.”

  “There’s no point. I’m not going back.”

  “You’re just going to throw away everything you’ve ever known? All those places and people? Your home?”

  “The only home I ever had was with my father on the road, and you took that away from me.”

  “Not I, Sal. I have never harmed you. In fact, I’ve helped you. Doesn’t that count for something?”

  Sal felt an anger rise in him from a place so deep he had never suspected its existence. “Don’t play with me,” he said, barely able to keep his voice level. “I’m not stupid. The Syndic and her schemes killed my father, and you’re on her side. I’m not going to talk to you, let alone go back to her.”

  A sensation like wind rushed through the room. Sal felt it all over his skin, as though he had been wrapped in a miniature hurricane. Small inhalations from Shilly and the mage at his side told him that they had also felt it. Behenna took a step back. But it wasn’t a wind that anyone else could hear. It was the Change, gathering like clouds before a storm. Sal wasn’t aware of where it came from until the Mage Van Haasteren stepped between him and the Sky Warden and raised a hand in command.

  “Enough!” he said in a commanding tone Sal had not heard before. “Stop it, Sal. Do not do this. You don’t have to listen to him. You’ve done enough. Leave it there.”

  Sal was confused for a moment. The wind strengthened. Shilly edged away from him, looking frightened. Behenna’s eyes widened in alarm—and only then did the mage’s words sink in. The wind was coming from Sal. The Change was swirling around him in readiness to attack almost without his conscious control. He could feel its eagerness and its strength coursing through his body. It was all he could do to hold it back.

  “I will not go home, and you can’t make me.” He forced himself to speak calmly, despite the rage still coursing inside him. He urged the Change to recede, and it did ebb slightly, reluctantly. “Tell the Syndic to leave me alone.”

  “Your grandmother—along with your great-aunt—would gladly release you into the world, Sal, if the decision was yours.” Behenna’s posture lost some of its tension as the threat of attack eased. His face assumed an expression of wary nonchalance. “But you’re a minor. You’re not old enough to do whatever you want. You can’t possibly expect your families to be so uncaring.”

  “They don’t know me, so how can they care about me?”

  “But we do, Sal,” said Radi Mierlo from behind him. “Give me a chance to prove that, and we can deal with the Syndic as one. We will be stronger working together than you would be on your own.”

  Sal turned to face her, but felt uncomfortable with Behenna behind him. He walked backward until he could see both of them, even though it meant going deeper into the room, away from Shilly and the mage. “You said we should listen to him.”

  “I did, yes.” She came across the room until she was standing right in front of him again, near enough to touch. This time she didn’t touch him, but her eyes never left his. “You should at least do that much. His case is convincing. I would be keen to hear why you are so opposed to it. After all, you do have family there.”

  “I have family here, too,” he said.

  “Yes. But we have lived in the Strand before. I would accompany you back to make certain of your safety. There would be nothing to fear, Sal. I would let nothing happen to you, I promise.”

  Van Haasteren laughed humourlessly. “Now I know your game, Radi Mierlo.”

&
nbsp; Sal’s grandmother’s gaze whipped across the room. “Do you, mage?”

  “A child could see through it. You are as transparent as you are ambitious, and care no more about Sal than those who killed his father.”

  “And what about you?” she snapped back. “You who put yourself so easily in Payat Misseri’s shoes. Do you, too, want to tutor a wild talent? Is that how you hope to earn your place? To succeed where he failed?”

  The mage went a shade whiter. “I have earned the right to teach anyone who comes to the Keep. Payat has no bearing on what is best for Sal—”

  “And neither do you,” said Behenna, stepping forward. “Sal is a minor, and he’s also a citizen of the Strand. Our law applies. He must be returned to his family there.”

  “But he’s not in the Strand any more. How can your law apply here?”

  “That’s a very good point,” the warden admitted, although his expression lost none of its triumph. “That is why we have petitioned the Synod to hear our case. The decision will be taken out of all our hands and placed in theirs. They will decide what happens to Sal—not you or me, or Radi. When the law of your land determines what is best, you will have to accede to it, will you not?”

  The Mage Van Haasteren looked from Behenna to Radi Mierlo, then back to Sal. He was trapped. Sal glanced at Shilly, but her eyes, wide with surprise, were fixed on the Sky Warden. His grandmother waited to see what the mage would say, while Manton Gourlay, the descendant of the great explorer, stood as patiently as a statue in his corner.

  Sal was frozen in the moment and wished he hadn’t reined in the Change. It would have felt good to vindicate the alarm in the warden’s eyes. Everything would have unravelled if he had set the Change free. All of the Syndic’s schemes to get him back would have come to nothing without Behenna in the Interior. And the warden, so far away from the sea, would have been unable to resist.

  But Sal knew it would have been wrong. It would make him no better than the Syndic herself. When he had struck out at her and the Alcaide before, the feeling of it had been uncontrolled and dangerous, just as it had felt when Behenna had confronted him. Van Haasteren had said that people with the wild talent could tear themselves apart using it, and he could see why. It was an enticing thought, but it could ultimately lead to disaster.

  And besides, the Alcaide’s retaliation to his attack in Fundelry had killed his father. He didn’t want another backlash to hurt someone else he cared about. It might have been Shilly, this time. She had suffered enough because of him.

  Blind force would solve nothing. He needed to be clever.

  The mage’s jaw worked, then he said, “I will accede to the decision of the Synod, as is my duty.”

  “Good,” said Behenna. “They meet at the next full moon, in six days. That gives us just enough time to travel to the Nine Stars to present our cases. You may travel with us, if you like, for safety of numbers.”

  “I can make my own arrangements.”

  “I’m sure you can.” The warden waved the matter away as though unimportant. “We can discuss the details over dinner. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”

  “Yes,” said Radi Mierlo, adopting the role of perfect hostess as smoothly as though it was a mask. “Our meal is waiting. Melantha.” The steward appeared instantly in the doorway. “Be so kind as to show our guests to the dining room.”

  Sal stood his ground as his grandmother tried to sweep him with her to the door.

  “I told you,” Sal said, looking at Behenna and wishing he could erase the smug expression from his face. The Sky Warden thought he had already won. “I’m not going to eat with him.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, my dear,” she said. “You must let bygones be bygones, if only long enough to fill your stomach.”

  “You can’t force me to,” he said, “and if you try, I’ll know you don’t have my best interests at heart.”

  An identical flash of anger, brief but potent, passed over the faces of the warden and his grandmother. “Oh, very well,” she said. “If you insist. Manton, you lead the way while Melantha takes Sal to the boys’ quarters. If he doesn’t want dinner, we wonforce him to eat.”

  The owner of the house stirred and walked through the door, waving for people to follow. They did so awkwardly, in embarrassed silence. The mage cast him a warning look, but followed the others. Sal wanted to shout to Shilly for help, to ask her if she thought he was wrong, but Behenna swept her off with him and he remembered the way she had pulled away from him during their last lesson in the Keep. Was that how it was to go? She didn’t need him any more, so she threw him to the dogs?

  No, he thought. She wouldn’t do that. But he was still alone in the room with his grandmother and the steward, when he most needed help.

  Radi Mierlo leaned close. “I’m giving you this time to think, Sayed Graaff,” she said, using the surname his real father, Highson Sparre, and his mother had chosen after their marriage. His hackles rose on hearing it. “What you do now will decide the course of not just your life but the lives of all those around you. The selfish path may be the easiest for you, but that doesn’t make it right. Remember that, and think hard.”

  The selfish path? he wanted to say. Travelling for thousands of kilometres with nothing certain waiting at the end of it—that’s supposed to be easy? Giving up at any point in the journey would have been far simpler. It would also have been wrong.

  It was still wrong. He could feel it, deep inside him, just as the surname “Graaff” felt wrong. His parents had chosen that name to commemorate their union, and that union had turned out to be hollow. He was Sayed Hrvati, the son of the man he had always believed to be his father. That’s how he thought of himself, and that’s what the golem had called him among the towers.

  And then there was the Syndic. No matter what anyone said, his great-aunt didn’t mean him well. She had imprisoned his mother so that she died of a broken heart. Why would Radi Mierlo even consider dealing with the woman who had done that to her daughter?

  But he said nothing. His grandmother studied him closely for a long minute before releasing him from her gaze. The silk of her robes sighed as she left the room, then the steward’s hand was on his shoulder and he let himself be guided away.

  The dormitory to which he and the other young men in the party had been assigned was on the top floor at the front of the building. It was a long room with a sloping ceiling containing three double bunks and lit by a single gas lamp on the interior wall. There was one small window; through it came the sounds of traffic and a slight breeze. He examined it, looking for a way to get out, but it was barred. Below, there was only a steep drop to the ground.

  The room was empty and unwelcoming. Although the steward didn’t lock the door behind him, he was under no illusions that he was not a prisoner. He would never get down the stairs and out the front door without being seen. All he could do was wait to see what happened to him next. Choosing the bed furthest from the door, he sat down and did just that.

  Time passed slowly. His stomach rumbled, as much from nerves as from lack of food. He tried not to think about the scene in the sitting room but he was unable to let it go. So much had happened in the last hour that defied explanation. How had Behenna beaten him to his grandmother? Why was she listening to the warden? Why would she want to go back to the Strand? Was everything she had said to him about family and forgiveness the truth?

  He dug into his pack until he found the clasp that had once belonged to his mother. Silver, with threads woven into a hemispherical design that Lodo had said represented the Earth, it was tarnished black in places, but structurally whole, clearly very fine work to have survived ten years at the bottom of his father’s pack. He held it tightly in both hands and wondered what his parents would have done in his shoes. Would they have stood up to Radi Mierlo? They must have done, he supposed, when they declared their love for each other, in defiance of her marriage to Highson Sparre. Their union had been forbidden, Lodo had said, becau
se it would have hindered the Mierlos’ rise through the Strand’s social ranks. Was that, then, what this was all about? Social standing?

  His head hurt and his eyes ached with the effort of not crying. He was determined to deal with this in an adult way, in a way his parents would have been proud of. But his thoughts were confused. He kept coming back to seeing Behenna in the doorway and feeling the world fall out from underneath him.

  And there was something else nagging at him: a memory of a dream…he had seen his grandmother’s face before. In the cell at Fundelry, he had dreamed of three women. One was Shilly; the Syndic had been another. The third was his grandmother, Radi Mierlo. He had not known what she looked like then, but her identity was obvious now that he did know. The thought that all three of them might turn out to mean him ill rose up inside him, but he thrust it down as hard as he could. Surely not Shilly, after all they had been through together.

  On leaving Fundelry, his grandmother had appeared in another dream, the one in which he had seen Shom Behenna and Tait. She had been talking to a statue—a man’kin, he assumed—although that particular dream image had yet to be realised.

  So much of that dream had already come true: the Sky Warden following him; the globe Lodo had given him burning brightly in the darkness (although he sensed that this image was in a different darkness, a different time to the Keep); the city half-buried in the sand, inhabited by ghosts; Lodo, crippled and hollow, maybe a golem; his grandmother, crouching jealously, waiting to pounce. There were other images: Kemp and a golden tower; a tunnel leading down into the ground with corpses swinging on either side; the man’kin. He didn’t know when or if they would ever come to pass. Among them, nothing suggested a happy ending to his situation.

  The door clicked open, and he sat bolt upright. So lost in his thoughts had he been that he hadn’t worked out what to say if his grandmother tried to convince him to talk to Behenna again.

 

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