The Blood Debt: Books of the Cataclysm Two

by Sean Williams

  She felt Sal withdraw from her as he sat in the buggy's front passenger seat. His posture didn't change, but his mind had gone elsewhere. She sensed him looking for his father through the Change, reaching out beyond the Broken Lands and across the open countryside; looking for the man who had not just given him life, but had also given him a chance to live that life in freedom. She wished she could help him, but she didn't know Highson well enough to have a hope of finding him. Looking for an unfamiliar mind in an unfamiliar place was like searching for a sliver of soap in a murky bath with gloved hands. She was more likely to find a rock that looked like him, or a lizard that smelled like him, than she was to find the real thing. Possessing a biological connection to Highson, only Sal had a chance.

  He sagged after half an hour, giving up the quest. He was as tired as she was; as all of them were. The thought of setting off in rapid pursuit at any moment made her feel wearier than ever.

  A shadow fell over her, blotting out the stars. She looked up at the towering silhouette of Habryn Kail.

  “I'd like a quiet word with you two,” he said, “and I'm guessing you can spare the time.”

  She sat up. “Sure.” Sal turned as Kail folded his elongated frame into the seat next to Shilly. The buggy shifted on its suspension under his weight. His long, craggy face was close to Shilly and she was surprised by the smoothness of his skin. She had expected him to be as weathered as Aunty Merinda, whose face looked like a pear that had been left in the sun too long. Kail's face was a well-worn but well-oiled boot, flexible and far from infirm.

  His eyes were violet, a colour she had never seen before.

  “Where we're headed,” he said, “it's dangerous.”

  “We know,” said Shilly. “We're still going.”

  He raised a hand. It looked as long as her forearm. “I'm not trying to talk you out of it. Having you along, Sal, is only going to make things easier when we do find Highson, since he won't be so likely to run if he knows you're with us. I want to talk to you about something else—about the Homunculus, and what's inside it.”

  “Do you have any idea what it is?” Sal asked.

  Kail shrugged, his broad, bony shoulders lifting under his cotton shirt. “I'm keeping my mind open on that one. As you should, too. All we really know is that it's heading for Laure and it can somehow neutralise the Change. In forty years of patrolling the Divide, I've seen a lot of things. Some of them have names; others defy any attempt to define them. While I can't say I've seen anything quite so driven as this, I have encountered creatures that ate the Change as easily as we'd breathe air.”

  “Golems,” said Shilly, thinking of the horrors she had seen in the Haunted City.

  “Yes, and others. They'll take any charm you cast and twist it back on you like a snake. Or they'll suck you dry and make merry with what's left. I don't,” he said, leaning forward for emphasis, “want to see either thing happen to you two.”

  “You don't have to worry about us,” she said. “We've learned that lesson the hard way.”

  “I mean it,” Kail said, looking mainly at Sal. “No matter what danger your father appears to be in, I don't want you throwing your weight around. That might only make it stronger. Understand?”

  Sal was grim-faced. “You can trust us.”

  “Good.” Kail sat back. “I do believe you. I just think it needs to be reiterated, and Marmion is too chickenshit to do it himself. Like, if he ignores what happened to Lodo, it'll all just go away.”

  A strange sensation swept through Shilly at the mention of her mentor's name. Five years ago, she had thought Lodo dead when he summoned an earthquake to help them escape the Alcaide, but the effort had only emptied his body. The creature that had taken Lodo over had later perished with it, dragged down into death by the last vestiges of Lodo's will. He had died in her arms on the beach at Fundelry, and lay buried there still.

  “You know about Lodo?” she asked, her heart racing.

  “Of course.”

  “Did you know him?”

  Kail smiled. It didn't sit comfortably on his rugged features, but the emotion behind it was pure. “I wish I could say I had. He was quite notorious in his day. I was in my final year of the Novitiate and not doing quite as brilliantly as I'd hoped when he defected to the Interior. He provided a welcome distraction from my own problems.”

  Shilly hid her disappointment. The only thing Kail and Lodo had in common was their age. Even if they had been the best of friends, that didn't mean he would owe her any loyalty or friendship.

  But she couldn't help that momentary twinge of hope. Her parents had abandoned her as a toddler, unable to cope with a brief flash of talent she had displayed before it burned out forever. She didn't remember them or know their names. She had, therefore, no family apart from Sal. Any connection to her past, even if it was secondhand, through Lodo, was something to treasure.

  “He was unique,” said Sal, “and he didn't deserve what happened to him. We'll be careful.”

  But Kail's eyes were on her, now.

  “Did Lodo ever talk about his past?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “It only came out when Sal arrived in Fundelry.”

  “What about family?”

  She shook her head.

  “Lodo had an older sister,” Kail said, “and his sister had a son. I can tell by the look on your face that you're not aware of this.”

  “A sister?” Her mind momentarily baulked at the revelation. “A son?”

  “They spurned him for casting shame upon the family, for being different. They behaved stupidly and heartlessly, without a doubt.”

  “What happened to them? Where are they now?”

  “These days, Lodo's nephew likes to think he's leading this expedition. There are, however, plenty who disagree.”

  Shilly twisted in her seat to stare at Marmion. The balding warden was berating one of the younger Wardens for knocking over a box of supplies. She looked back at Kail, unable to suppress a stunned gape, and shook her head in denial.

  “Marmion?” hissed Sal.

  “Is a hapless peacock who would rather die than admit any disloyalty to the Alcaide. Look all you like, but I doubt you'll see any family resemblance.”

  “I don't believe it.”

  “You don't have to, and I'd rather you didn't tell anyone I told you this,” Kail nodded sagely at Shilly, “but I thought you ought to know, all the same.”

  She just stared at him as he eased himself out of his seat and loped away.

  They barely had time to assimilate the information Kail had given them when Marmion whistled and announced that the Wardens were ready to move. Tom and Banner had recharged the buses and added a barrage of protective charms in the hope of preventing a recurrence of the breakdown. Shilly stared at the balding Warden as he issued orders. Sal could tell that she was confused.

  He wasn't sure what he thought, either. Marmion owed them no allegiance or enmity, regardless of how he was related to Lodo. But the existence of a blood connection did change things, if only in the way they perceived him. That he had failed to bring it up suggested that he didn't want to acknowledge it. Where did that leave Shilly, who wanted to know more about the man who had raised her? Should she ignore her new knowledge, or ignore Marmion's obvious, if unstated, wishes?

  Tom returned to take the wheel of the buggy with Banner in tow.

  “I'm riding with you three again,” she said, swinging a small satchel into the back seat, “if that's okay with you.”

  Shilly made room for the Warden next to her. “No worries.” Her tone was wooden.

  Tom started the engine and awaited further instructions.

  Marmion sauntered over. “You'll be our vanguard,” he told them. “You're smaller and more mobile, so you can scout ahead.”

  They were also expendable, Sal thought. If the Homunculus's wake was still powerful enough to affect them, the Wardens would lose little.

  “At the next junction,” Marmion went on, “just
before the end of the Broken Lands, take the left turn, north. Head westward off the road when you see the lights of Laure across the Divide. There'll be no chance of encountering the Homunculus on the way, since we'll be looping around from the east. Should it change course or do anything else unexpected, don't tackle it head-on. Let us overtake and deal with it. Understood?”

  Tom and Banner nodded. Sal refused to commit himself. Shilly stared at the man as though trying to peel back his face and expose the connection to Lodo beneath.

  Unaware of her scrutiny, Marmion hurried back to his bus and took the forward passenger seat. Habryn Kail sat behind the wheel of the second bus. At a signal, Tom dropped the buggy into gear and they trundled out of the hollow, back to the road.

  The dirt surface showed no sign of either Homunculus or Highson Sparre. The only disturbances were skid marks where the Sky Wardens’ buses had come to a sudden, dead halt in the Homunculus's wake. Sal held his breath as the buggy crossed that point, but either the wake had dissipated or Tom's new charms successfully repelled it. The engine didn't miss a beat.

  Sal sank back into his seat as Tom accelerated through the Broken Lands. They were back on track, hunting Highson Sparre and the creature he had created. That was a good thing, but still not easy. Driving through the Broken Lands was difficult enough in the day; at night it could be deadly. Tom seemed to manage well enough, but Sal still felt a duty to be vigilant, too, watching out for potholes, cracks across the road, or odd patches of colour that might indicate quicksand and other hazards. Having now joined the quest to find Highson, the last thing he wanted was to be left behind with a broken axle.

  Shilly slept, or pretended to. Banner's restless eyes took in the scenery, while the wind flattened her curly hair. Sal wished he could sleep, but apart from keeping Tom company, he also felt off-balance and ill at ease. They were rushing headlong to a collision with so many unknowns he could barely keep track of them all. He rotated Shilly's stick in his hands, finding comfort in its familiar textures.

  “What do you know about Laure?” he asked Tom.

  His friend shrugged. “A lot of artefacts come from the city. It's a great source of Ruin fragments and old machine parts. The people who live there scour the Divide and trade what they find for salt, coffee, spices, and so on.”

  “I thought the Divide was dangerous.”

  “It is, and there's no bridge across like there is at Tintenbar and the Lookout. Trade isn't, therefore, as commonplace as we'd like. That keeps the prices high.”

  “Do you think that's what the Homunculus is heading for, then? Something they found in the Divide?”

  Warden Banner joined the discussion. “There was some talk a few weeks back of a major expedition in the area, but word hasn't come through of what they found.”

  “Maybe they disturbed something,” Sal speculated, “and it's connected somehow to the Homunculus.”

  “Or to your father. Anything is possible,” she said.

  “What did Kail mean when he said the town has an ill reputation?”

  Banner hesitated. “I've heard of Laure,” she said over the engine noise, “but until last week I couldn't have pointed to it on a map. It was certainly somewhere I never wanted to go. Like a lot of border towns, it has to deal with things we can't imagine. Finding a safe way to explore the Divide is just part of it. People can be very resourceful when things like water and food are in short supply.”

  “What are you hinting at?” he pressed.

  “Laure is ruled by bloodworkers,” she said, bluntly. “‘Yadachi’ they call themselves. Unlike Mages and Wardens, they use the energy in blood to keep the city alive, and they take a Tithe annually from every citizen and every visitor on entry to make sure they have enough. They're not vampires and they don't kill people. But the method is—distasteful.”

  Sal stared at her for a long moment, wondering if she was being serious. Her expression left him in no doubt. “Why do people put up with it?”

  “They don't have any choice, Sal. These are the borderlands. Everyone is weak here, so far from stone and sea. Don't you feel it? Are you really so immune?”

  He knew what she was asking, but didn't know how to answer. The Change radiated from living things and flowed through the landscape. Some places possessed more background potential than others, and those particularly rich in the Change were frequently tapped into by practitioners living nearby. Different reservoirs had different flavours, and just as with food, people sometimes preferred one flavour to another. He himself had a natural tendency towards the teaching of the Stone Mages. Only a natural wildness and half a decade of study had taught him to see reliably beyond those inclinations.

  This knowledge is more important than it sounds, Lodo had told him, an age ago. In it lies understanding of the great rift that divides the Stone Mages and the Sky Wardens. It explains why the Strand and the Interior are the way they are—and why, even though skirmishes are common between both nations, one has never succeeded in taking over the other.

  We can't use each other's reservoirs. It's that simple, at the base of it. The Stone Mages draw forth the background potential from bedrock and store it in fire. Sky Wardens, on the other hand, weave into the air what they take from the sea. The sea, in short, is their reservoir. It may not obey their will, but it is theirs nonetheless. They can tap into it and read its humours; when they bathe in it they absorb some of its vitality; and when they die, they are cast back into it, to sink slowly into its depths and become one with the water again.

  The further Banner was from the coast, the less potential she could access. On the northern side of the Divide, should she go that far, she would be powerless. The same would happen to a Stone Mage removed from the bedrock bones of the deep desert. The Divide marked the furthest extents of both Strand and Interior. The political reach of each country was therefore sharply delineated by the alchemical powers employed by their rulers—and that was partly why, Sal was sure, Marmion didn't want to call ahead to Laure for help.

  But these were just conventions, conveniences, even contrivances. Sal had taught himself to follow his own instincts, and he had seen what both Wardens and Mages could do if they had to, no matter how far from home they were. Shom Behenna, the Sky Warden sent to capture him when he had escaped from the Syndic the first time, had been stripped of his rank for using the Change on the wrong side of the Divide. The last Sal had heard, he had been heading for the Interior with Mawson—the man'kin that Sal had set free from bondage to Sal's family—and Kemp, the albino bully who had helped them in the Haunted City.

  The bloodworkers, the yadachi, were another alternative, another system of thought, albeit one that made him feel slightly squeamish.

  Banner was watching him, waiting for an answer, her round, brown face more curious than hostile.

  “Lodo taught me,” he said, “that eventually the Change comes from one single source, no matter who's using it. Wardens and Mages have their differences, yes, but those differences are irrelevant. Someone who doesn't buy into either method of using the Change won't be limited by them. So no, I don't feel any different here than I would on the coast or in the desert, because I don't think the same way as you.”

  Banner nodded. “I've heard of wild talents and what they can do. They flare up and die out fast, breaking all the rules. And I'd heard of you, of course. It just seems so strange. I mean, water and stone are complete opposites. They can't be the same thing.”

  “So where does blood fit in? It's all in the way you're taught. If two people speak different languages, the words they use to describe the world can be very different. They won't understand each other, even if they're talking about the same thing. But the physical world remains the same. Language doesn't alter it. Why should it be otherwise with the Change?”

  “Because the Change connects us to the world. It's not just a way of talking to each other. It binds us, shapes us, just as we bind and shape it in turn.”

  “We also bind ourselves
. If you could look past your training and see the world as I do, you'd be free, too.”

  “I don't feel trapped.” His choice of words clearly unnerved her.

  “Do you think of me as trapped?”

  “I know you can only live on this side of the Divide. There's half a world beyond it that you're not likely to see, because of what you believe. I don't know if that's the same thing as being trapped, exactly, but it's definitely a shame.”

  Banner absorbed that for a while, frown lines creasing the skin between her eyebrows. She was clearly becoming keen to change the subject from Laure and its rulers and her own, perhaps fallacious, assumptions.

  “What's the most beautiful thing you saw in the Interior?” she asked.

  “The most beautiful thing…” He thought about it. “There was so much. The lights of Ulum; sunset over the mountains; the Nine Stars at midnight. It was all incredible. But you know what? Places aren't important. That's the problem with what you Sky Wardens have been taught—and the Stone Mages, too. Places are irrelevant to the Change. It's us who matter—us and the people around us—the inhabitants of the world that the Change makes possible. That's what we should concentrate on connecting with. And in those terms, the most beautiful thing I saw in the Interior is the same as the most beautiful thing I saw in the Strand. And it's not Os, the bone ship, or the glass towers of the Haunted City. It's not even the Change itself.”

  “I know what it is,” said Tom, breaking unexpectedly into the conversation. “I know who it is.”

  Sal glanced rearward at Shilly. Her eyes were open, watching him with liquid intensity.

  “It should be pretty obvious,” he said, “although I managed to miss the point for a depressingly long time.”

  She laughed softly and shifted to a more comfortable position, half slumped against the side of the buggy. “Very smooth,” she said, closing her eyes again.

  Sal felt a familiar warmth spread through him as he turned to Banner. “I don't care if I never travel again. As long as Shilly is with me, the Change is everywhere around me. Wouldn't you rather feel that way than be tied to an ocean, far away?”