The Sky Warden and the Sun

by Sean Williams

  This time she was spared a difficult decision.

  “This question is irrelevant,” said Behenna. “I came for both of them, not one of them.”

  “Are you saying you wouldn’t take one if that was all we allowed you?”

  “No, that’s not what I’m saying at all.” Behenna looked uncertain, as though the possibility had thrown him completely. “I’m saying that I could hardly leave with half the job done.”

  “You stated to the Mage Erentaite that you would abide by our ruling, no matter what it was.”

  “Yes, I did. But I—”

  “Would you take Shilly if our decision was to keep Sal here?”

  “That’s a little unfair, don’t you think? Asking me to choose between them?”

  “I’m not asking you to choose. I am asking you if you would be satisfied with such a decision.”

  “You’re trying to trick me into something,” the warden said. Shilly caught an urgent look flashing between Sal’s grandmother and the warden. “You’re trying to make it look as though I only want Sal by saying that I won’t take Shilly without him. That’s what you’re trying to do.”

  “Answer the question.” The man’kin swung its massive body one step forward and raised the tip of its ceremonial sword to waist height. Its wings unfolded and seemed to absorb the moonlight, leaving the night dark.

  Behenna swallowed, deflating. “No,” he said, weakly at first. “No, I wouldn’t take the girl alone. But not because—”

  “You do not need to say any more.”

  “Let me finish!” The warden faced the man’kin with wide, desperate eyes. “I wouldn’t take just Shilly because I came for both of them! I wouldn’t take just Sal, either, if you offered me that. One of them is no good; it has to be both.”

  “That is for us to decide.”

  “No. I’m sick of this farce. As a ranking Sky Warden I demand that these children be allowed to return to where they belong immediately. It’s time to stop playing games. These children are citizens of the Strand! Who gave you jurisdiction over them? More to the point, they’re wards of the state. My state, the state I represent!” He was shouting with such intensity it was uncomfortable to watch. “How dare you tell me what I can and can’t do with them?”

  “You’re not in your state any more,” said the woman standing next to Sal.

  “That doesn’t change who I am. It doesn’t change who I represent. I came here with the full authority of the Syndic. I speak with her voice. You—”

  “We have ourselves spoken with the Syndic,” said the man’kin.

  Behenna’s mouth hung open for a second. “What? When?”

  “This evening. You are not acting with her authority. You do not speak for her.”

  “But—but—” The warden looked around him as though seeking help. “But she wants the children.”

  “She does. That is true. She did not explicitly order you to go to such extremes, however, and she dismisses you from her service.”

  Behenna’s dark skin went deathly grey. “What does that mean?”

  “You broke your vows,” said Van Haasteren. “You turned your back on your training. What do you think it means?”

  “No.” The warden looked as though he had been punched in the gut. “No.”

  “Yes,” said the man’kin. “You did not have permission to extend the search beyond the boundaries of your prefecture. You failed to inform her of your movements at all times. You appropriated warden funds without authorisation. The Syndic might have forgiven these breaches of trust, but for your flagrant disregard of your vows. You have been stripped of your rank, effective immediately. We are obliged to return you to the Strand for a disciplinary hearing. You therefore have no power over us as spokesperson for the Stand. You have no right to order us to do anything.”

  Behenna backed away, shaking his head. He stared around at the ring of white faces enclosing him as though considering making a break for it. Shilly imagined him running across the desert, the hunted rather than the hunter—and suddenly realised exactly what Sal had been hoping to do. By making the Sky Warden break his vows and lose his favour with the Syndic, Sal had effectively undermined his plea to the Synod. All Sal had had to do was give Behenna a reason to break them—and it had worked perfectly.

  “So it’s over?” asked a voice that had not spoken once through the entire proceedings. “We’re free to go?”

  The man’kin swung its sword in one swift, startling movement, sweeping it up and out so that it pointed directly at Sal.

  “Silence! You are not allowed to speak here.”

  “But—”

  “This matter is not resolved until we reach a decision!” The sword swung again, this time to point at the Judges one by one. “Who raises a petition is not as important as the petition itself. This man’s fate is irrelevant to the situation before us and the decision we must still make. Make it we must, now, unless anyone else wishes to speak.”

  No one moved. Sal stood frozen as his clutch at freedom slipped through his fingers. It was truly out of his hands, now.

  Shilly’s heart went out to him, even though how she herself felt was still a mystery to her. She didn’t know if she was hoping to stay or to go—with or without Sal. It seemed most likely to her that the Judges would choose separation, since Sal so clearly belonged in the Interior and she didn’t, but that didn’t ease her mind. She was afraid of what the future held—especially when, ultimately, she didn’t know whose fate was really at stake. Where and how did she fit in? Why was everyone so determined to keep Sal and her together, regardless of what they wanted? For all she knew, she and Sal had no great destiny together at all, and she was little more than an impediment to him.

  There was nothing Sal could do now except hope that they would choose to keep him in the Interior rather than send him to the Strand.

  Her mind replayed images from the recent past while they all waited: of the buggy crushing her leg against the ravine wall; of Lodo urging them to run as the combined force of the Sky Wardens in Fundelry rose up against him; of the hurt in Sal’s eyes when he thought she had rejected him; of the desperation on Behenna’s face when success had been snatched from him.

  The Sky Warden was a picture of anxiety. Shilly couldn’t find it in herself to feel sorry for him. He was quite happy to sacrifice Sal’s happiness by taking him back to the Strand, and he was equally unconcerned about her happiness, too. After all his talk of getting her a teacher in the Haunted City, he had in the end refused to take her alone. His promises were empty unless he got Sal as well. He had also kept Lodo’s survival a secret from her when he had known what her first teacher had meant to her.

  As far as Shilly was concerned, Behenna deserved everything he got.

  The Judges said nothing for more than five minutes. She could tell that they were communicating furiously among themselves, although she couldn’t hear what they were saying. The icy regard of the moon twinkled with the Change stirring in the air. So much was going on beneath the surface of things that the skin of her arm lifted into goosebumps. The tension rose until she thought she was going to scream—

  “We have decided,” said the man’kin, lowering its sword to its usual position, point down in front of it. “Both children will return to the Strand.”

  Shock rolled through her as though she had been dunked in icy water. Return to the Strand? Both of them?

  She glanced around, wondering if she’d misheard. Sal was aghast; she could tell that just by looking at him. Behenna clearly didn’t know what to think, still stunned as he was by the news that he had been stripped of his rank. Radi Mierlo displayed no such confusion: her smile was wide and triumphant. Identical looks of surprise were on the two Van Haasterens, old and young.

  “But why?” asked Skender in disbelief.

  “It is in the children’s best interest.”

  “Sal and Shilly?” said his father “I find that difficult to comprehend.”

  “You do not n
eed to comprehend. This is the Nine Stars, and we are of one mind. Our decision is final. You will abide by it.”

  The mage opened his mouth to protest. For a startling moment, the mage reminded her of Lodo, although physically they couldn’t have been more different. Van Haasteren was tall and gloomy where Lodo had been short and grizzled, the only thing they had in common was the look in the mage’s eyes. In them Shilly saw nothing but dismay for her and Sal. There was no thought for himself. For the first time she sensed that he really cared about them—both of them.

  She remembered once wondering why the mage couldn’t be more like Lodo. At that moment she realised that the mage’s moods and silences made him exactly like Lodo. Only long experience with her former teacher had revealed what lay beneath—just as only the wrong decision, in the mage’s eyes, had exposed the depth of his compassion.

  In the instant it took to absorb that revelation, Van Haasteren gathered his resolve and stepped forward.

  “Surrender the limelight, Skender,” said the young-old woman standing by Sal, her voice cutting through the crystalline air like a bell.

  The mage stared balefully at the woman, then backed down, and there was no one left to speak against the decision.

  Othniel stepped forward. “It is over,” he said. “The petition has been heard and the decision made. You must return to your seats.”

  Shilly turned, a sense of unreality creeping over her. The circle of Judges broke apart to give them a way out.

  Tait put his arm around her and kissed her cheek.

  “We did it!”

  Although once she might have welcomed such a gesture, she awkwardly turned away. “You did it, not me.”

  “No, it was you too,” he said. “You said exactly the right thing. We couldn’t have done it without you, Shilly.”

  She stared at him

  You said exactly the right thing.

  He went to help her move through the rows of benches.

  “Don’t touch me,” she said, pushing him back.

  “What?”

  “You heard me.” She saw it now—too late, but better than never. Mawson had told her before the hearing that someone was lying to her: someone much closer to you than I. Tait had been letting her lean on him at the time, and he hadn’t heard the man’kin’s warning.

  While Behenna and Tait might not have wanted her on her own, they had been quite happy to use her against Sal in the hope that where she went he might follow.

  “If you think I don’t know what’s going on,” she said, angry at herself for not realising sooner, “you’re even more stupid than I thought you were.”

  Tait shook his head as though in confusion, but backed off to join his former master as the group moved back to their benches. Sal walked alone, listlessly, as though asleep. Shilly was afraid to approach him in case she only made him feel worse. If she had thought he might retaliate against the decision, she would have been wrong. He seemed dead to the world.

  Behenna had the same look. He had won, but in the process lost everything.

  By the time they had reached their bench and the people waiting there, the obscuring charm had closed back in and the centre of the bowl was no longer clearly visible. Mawson looked smug, but said nothing. She was glad for that, although she resolved to confront the man’kin later about what it knew. The Judges had proceeded to another case, and the moon had moved a short distance across the sky. The night wasn’t done yet, but for them the difficult part was over. When the Synod closed, Shilly assumed, they would begin the long journey back to Ulum and there make arrangements for the journey south. Radi Mierlo would need to finalise things in Mount Birrinah, if she hadn’t already. The Mage Van Haasteren would return to the Keep and his students. Skender would go back to his studies and soon forget the two visitors from the south who had so briefly enlivened his world. His mother would go back to her dig, wherever that was, and everything would soon be back to normal.

  Under the cold sky of the Nine Stars, surrounded by mysterious ruins and people whose motives she was nervous of trusting any distance at all, Shilly wondered if she would ever have a normal life to look forward to.

  Epilogue

  Sins and Wisdom

  The caravan was ready to begin its long journey. Curled like a question mark, the long line of wagons—and one buggy—waited by the gates of Ulum for final farewells to be over. Moving east at first, through Lower Light and Carslake, then south to Leonora, it would enter the Strand at the crossing known as Tintenbar, the one normally taken by official travellers, then continue south through Millingen, Moombin and Gunida. The caravan would finally arrive at the Haunted City, where the Syndic would meet it personally, four weeks and two and a half thousand kilometres from where it had started.

  In Sal’s eyes, it wasn’t travelling forward, but backward. After everything he had done to reach the Interior, he was being forced to return—and worse. Had he been going back to Fundelry, he wouldn’t have minded so much. He knew what awaited him there, after all. Without Lodo it would be a very unfriendly place to live, full of racism and isolation. The Haunted City, on the other hand…

  With a shake of his head, he stopped himself from thinking that far ahead. Not yet. There would be plenty of time during the journey.

  “Ready, Sal?”

  He turned at the sound of the voice. Belilanca Brokate stood behind him, dressed in her riding gear, the thin lines on her face and the rings in her ears adding up to a very welcome sight. When she had heard that Sal was being sent home, she had pulled strings through Wyath’s father to ensure that her caravan would be the one chosen to take him. She had been waiting for them when they had returned from the Synod, and Sal had been happier to see her than he could say. He suspected she knew.

  “I’m not ready,” he said. “But that never mattered.”

  She helped him up into the lead wagon, then climbed up herself, into the front.

  “I hope you’ve heard some new stories,” he said. “We’ve got a long time to kill.”

  “No happy ones.” She lifted a shoulder in an economical shrug. “We’ll manage.”

  The wagon moved forward with a lurch. Behind them, the caravan followed. It was much larger than the one that had carried him from Nesh to Ulum, and consisted of several quite distinct components. The Mierlo wagons were heavy with goods and people. His mother’s family had no intention of coming back, if they could help it. Radi Mierlo rode as high as a queen by the driver of her wagon, eager to put her bad reputation behind her. Around her swarmed the uncles, aunts and cousins he had made no effort to meet, preferring to keep to himself rather than submit to their curiosity. He was their ticket to prosperity, and he, it had been made clear in no uncertain terms, wasn’t going to cheat them out of it.

  The other wagons contained a delegation from the Nine Stars, a party of five Stone Mages ostensibly sent to smooth the way for Sal’s return but really, Sal suspected, intending to take a closer look at the heart of the neighbouring country. Relations were cool between the Nine Stars and the Haunted City and every opportunity to see behind the opposite side’s lines was being taken with both hands.

  Sal recognised one of them from the Synod: a fair-haired, middle aged female Judge who had looked bored during their hearing. She hadn’t made any effort to talk to him, so Sal didn’t know if his ability to get her into the Haunted City had played a part in the Synod’s decision. Privately, he hoped not. There was enough complication in his life without adding politics to the mix.

  The rest of the caravan consisted of small traders and exporters pooling resources to make the trip affordable. It wasn’t often that a caravan was booked to make the journey from Ulum to the Haunted City in one unbroken stretch. Such an arrangement could also, Sal thought, make it easier to get past border guards. He didn’t know what, exactly, the traders were bringing with them, but it was probably an eclectic mix.

  They passed through the city gates and out into direct sunlight. Some of the drivers sang a
short lament in another language that he remembered from his first trip with Brokate. It was a song of farewell, not just to a place but also to the people who lived there—to the spirit of a place. It perfectly matched his feelings. The plants, the sky, the earth, the smells—he would carry the memory of them all the way to the Haunted City, then follow them back, one day, to the land of his mother’s birth. He was sure of it. The magic of the flowers that had bloomed in the desert, after the storm his charm had brought down, demanded that he return.

  First, though, he had to sort out the unfinished business his parents had left him with.

  Perhaps it was the gentle rocking of the wagon beneath him that brought the story of the baker of La Menz back to him. Or else it was the past that hung off him like a ball and chain, dragging him backward with grim fatalism. The baker and Sal had one unlikely thing in common: infidelity had cast their lives in unusual directions. In the story it had been the baker’s infidelity that had saved him from a mysterious death. In real life it was Sal’s parents who had propelled him on the journey of his life. Sal wondered now if the similarities really ended there.

  The baker, in the beginning of the story, had done very little. He had endured the emotions of those around him, no matter how they battered him: his wife’s hatred; Monca’s love; the villagers’ disdain. He subconsciously summoned death to him as a kind of solution to his problem, but found that even that wasn’t what he wanted. If death was “the great Change-maker,” as Brokate had said, then it wasn’t a solution. It just made things different, and often not different enough to fix anything on its own. The baker had to take it upon himself to act in order to make things better.

  The extra ending Sal had given the story now seemed trite to him, and had since they had left Ulum for the Nine Stars. When the baker had finally chosen to act, it was in a way that no one could have anticipated, and he had attained exactly what he wanted as a result: peace of mind. Perhaps Monca had come to understand that, in the end, she wasn’t terribly relevant to the central conflict in her lover’s life. The fact that she, too, had chosen death to achieve her own goals, in Sal’s version of the story, only underscored the point that the rest of the story made. The baker had to act in order to take any control at all over his life, even if it was impossible to act without affecting someone.