Crowchanger (Changers of Chandris)

by A. C. Smyth

  “Adamantara? Big?” Casian laughed. “Oh, you are such a child sometimes. Banunis is the largest city on Chandris, the seat of the king. Once Lucranne was bigger, when it was the high holder’s seat, but Banunis has expanded since. Yes, my love, Banunis is much bigger than Adamantara.” Casian laid a hand on Sylas’s cheek and Sylas felt a warmth that had nothing to do with the wine. Casian stroked the side of Sylas’s nose with his thumb. Sylas’s breath caught in his throat.

  This was the son of the man who had ordered his soldiers into Namopaia. The son of the man whose troops had killed Pietrig, nearly killed Sylas as well. By rights Sylas should hate him. By rights he should be joining his people and taking up arms against the Irenthi. But those thoughts were overwhelmed by the touch of Casian’s hand on his skin.

  “Is it true your father broke your nose again?” Casian murmured. “If so, Ayriene did a good job. Two breaks without a healer talent on hand would have made you look like a tavern brawler. It would be a shame to spoil such a face.” He trailed his finger across Sylas’s lips. Sylas swallowed hard.

  “I’ve missed you,” said Casian. “I didn’t think I would, but I have. It has been lonely here without you.”

  “You have plenty of friends. And many willing and eager to be much more. I’ve seen the way women look at you.” He winced at the petulant words. He tried not to be jealous, really he did, but everywhere he went, Casian drew people’s stares.

  Casian’s fingers grasped Sylas’s hair and pulled him closer. “I don’t want them, my beautiful Chesammos.” Casian leaned forward to crush Sylas’s lips beneath his. “I want you.”

  Ayriene folded the few spare clothes she carried when she travelled. They made a small bundle—little enough to show for her nearly forty years on Chandris. She carried her pack of remedies and her herbal, a sleeping mat and blanket, water skin and basic provisions. She considered the dress she held, weighing its usefulness against the need to carry it on her back when they left Banunis. The temptation to put in one more was great—they would be travelling to the city by wagon, after all—but she learned long ago to travel with as few personal possessions as possible. Reluctantly, she set the dress aside.

  Her chamber door flew open and she took an involuntary step back. Few people would enter a master’s chamber without knocking, even in direst emergency, but the figure who shot through the doorway was one of those who could enter her rooms as they pleased. Her daughter entered, her face flushed, golden hair in disarray as if she had been running.

  “Thank the Creator you haven’t left yet,” Miralee gasped. “I’ve had the most dreadful seeing.”

  Ayriene sat her down and handed her a cup of water. Miralee drained it, shaking visibly from head to foot.

  “I wouldn’t go without saying goodbye; you know that.”

  “You must not go at all! You must stay here where you are safe. Or at least go alone. Please, Mother. It’s Sylas. Creator, but I wish I had never shown you that drawing.” Miralee sobbed and grabbed Ayriene’s arm. Ayriene winced. Her daughter’s fingers were tight enough about her flesh to leave a mark; whatever the girl had seen had left her terrified. Ayriene sat beside her and pulled her close, as she had when Miralee was a child.

  “Calm down and tell me what’s wrong.” She smoothed a strand of hair away from Miralee’s face, wet with tears. “You had a seeing about me?” And Sylas, evidently.

  Miralee wiped her face with the sleeve of her dress, fighting back the sobs that threatened to rip from her throat once more.

  “There is danger coming. Great danger for the Aerie—for all of us. The whole island, I think—it wasn’t clear.” She covered her face with her hands. “I saw fire flying through the sky. The library burning.” She gulped and looked up at Ayriene, eyes red-rimmed, cheeks blotchy and tear-streaked. “I know it sounds far-fetched, but I didn’t see images this time—not like other seeings. This one was more like… knowing. Like I’d always known it and was remembering, like when you go somewhere new and have a feeling you’ve been there before, you know?”

  “What did Mistress Yinaede say? Have you told her?”

  Miralee nodded, wiping her eyes again.

  “It happened in her class. She was showing me a different way to call on the kye: one she uses sometimes to try to have a seeing about something. I was to use it and think about something.”

  “And what did you think about?”

  Miralee sucked in a quick breath and for a moment Ayriene thought she might cry again, but she bit her lip to force the tears back and then answered.

  “I thought of you. I didn’t know not to think of a person; she didn’t say.”

  “And you saw Sylas?” And fire in the sky. For a moment Ayriene remembered the invasion. The fireball engulfing the Lorandan army, burning men and boats in a huge conflagration.

  “You told Sylas that he had to live—that he had to save the island. That there was something coming that only he could stop. And then you were lying on the floor and there was a bloody wound in your chest. I think—I think you were dead.”

  There was no holding back the tears now, and Ayriene held Miralee while her daughter cried like a little girl. Ayriene had been so proud when her daughter had shown talent when she changed, and thrilled she was a seer. Seers were almost as prized as healers among the changers, and Miralee’s talent was strong. Now she wished her daughter could have been as blessedly untalented as her elder son. Garyth had laughed off being the only member of the family with no talent, saying he was happy enough without the responsibility. He had been the wisest of them all.

  “Hush now, my love. Why would Sylas do me any harm?”

  “I don’t know, but please, Mother. You cannot be with him. I know it. I know it like I know my own name. Please don’t take him with you when you go. He may not mean to harm you, but he will. He will.”

  Whatever had happened during the invasion, Sylas’s mother had been involved. And now Sylas was involved in something not of his making. She could not leave him in the Aerie. If Ayriene could work out the connection between Shamella and Zynoa, then so could others. And that, along with his hearing of multiple kye, as his mother had before him, might seal the boy’s fate. When the wagon left for Banunis, Sylas would be on it. Whatever Miralee had seen, he deserved that much.

  “So, I take it that my information about the Chesammos village was correct?” Casian once more sat before his father at the castle in Lucranne. No, not his father, he reminded himself. Just the man who had raised him.

  “It was.” Garvan’s admission seemed grudging, as Casian had expected. “We found a bag of uncut linandra stones in the elder’s house. The man’s son confessed to the crime and was dealt with.” Garvan pushed a bowl of cherries across the table. “Have some of these. They are good.”

  Casian could feel a subtle shift in their relationship since his last visit. Garvan no longer spoke to him as a father to a son, but more man to man, albeit as an older man to one of considerably less experience. It had been a gamble, telling Garvan what Sylas had said in his sleep in the infirmary. It could have been nothing but the mutterings of a sick man, but Sylas had been agitated about this Pietrig—clutching at Casian’s hand and begging him not to hide linandra, as if Casian were the Chesammos Sylas addressed in his dreams. Casian had gathered something else from the ramblings, too—that Pietrig had meant more to Sylas than Casian had suspected. If that one were dead now, so much the better. Casian wanted no rivals for his lover’s affections.

  Casian selected three of the blood-red fruits, pulled the stalk from one, and popped it into his mouth. “I have a proposition for you,” he said around the sweet flesh. He might as well launch into his plan. If he tried to play it clever, Garvan would cut him to ribbons. He realised with a shock that he thought of the man as Garvan, not Father. The shifting attitudes were not all on one side, it seemed.
/>
  Garvan raised an eyebrow. “I’m listening.”

  Casian spat the stone into his hand, licked the juice from his lips. Then meeting Garvan’s eyes he said, coolly, “I do not intend to stay at the Aerie. No, hear me out,” he added quickly, as Garvan opened his mouth to protest. “I have proved my worth to you with my information about Namopaia. Think how much more use I could be to you at Banunis. You said once that every lord holder worth his salt had a spy in every other lord holder’s castle. Did you ever manage to infiltrate Deygan’s staff?”

  The irritated twitch of Garvan’s jaw told him that the lord had not, and it clearly rankled.

  Casian leaned forward, matching Garvan eye for eye. “If you procure me a position in Banunis I can feed back information of relevance to Lucranne’s interests. I will not spy for you in the conventional sense, but I will act to support your house.” Not so long ago he had thought it was his house too. He had still not entirely adjusted to that loss.

  Garvan grunted. “And the succession?”

  “I will not stand down.”

  Garvan slapped the table with the flat of his hand. “And I will not have you inherit my title. It’s out of the question.”

  “I will not stand down, but I will not hand the title on. Yoran can have it after my death, if he outlives me. And his sons will inherit after him. If I achieve a position equivalent to Lucranne then I shall stand down at that point and let him have the title he has coveted for so long—and that you clearly raised him to believe would be his someday.”

  “And your children?” Garvan ignored Casian’s barbed comment.

  “I will pledge never to marry. I will have no legitimate heirs to follow me.” He might be planning to move Sylas into his mother’s household, once the stubborn Chesammos was done fooling around with this plan of his to work as a healer, but Casian did not intend to abstain from female company altogether. He had been careful. There were no bastards of his to complicate the Lucranne succession, at least none that he knew of. But never marrying was the easiest way to win Garvan over.

  Lucranne’s holder considered the offer. “What is to stop you going back on your word? Doing away with your brother once I am dead?”

  “By then, Garvan, I shall be the king’s right-hand man, with your help. Why would I want Lucranne? You see, you have an incentive to help me progress.”

  The lord holder of Lucranne made a face as if the cherry he had bitten contained a worm. His mouth pinched and twisted, he finally said, “I will help you, if you sign your name to that agreement. But you will never, ever, call me Garvan. As far as the world is concerned, you are still my son. You will address me as Father, sir, or my lord, as the situation demands. Do I make myself clear?”

  He did. Perfectly. For a position at Deygan’s side and the opportunity to make a bid for the throne, that was one sacrifice Casian was more than prepared to make.

  Chapter 20

  The city of Banunis was not impressive by mainland standards, but at several times as big as Adamantara, it was the largest Sylas had ever seen. It sprawled across the hillside like a great grey-brown scab, walls of stone and ash brick slashing through the lush green of the surrounding woodland. The city rose in tiers and terraces, fitting itself to the landscape as if conceding that much to nature. The castle itself occupied the highest tiers, with a view out across the sea in one direction and towards the Aerie in the other.

  The seat of House Banunis was not beautiful. Built mostly of ash-bricks formed in the desert by previous generations of brick makers, it was more functional than attractive, but its high grey walls dominated the surroundings. The towers rose so high that as Sylas craned his neck to see the top they seemed to lean towards him, and he lowered his eyes hurriedly as nausea rose in his stomach.

  He stayed close to Ayriene, a knot of anxiety gathering deep inside. He remembered his first sight of the Aerie. To a desert boy, raised where the only hills were the rise and fall of the desert rocks and the ripples in the ash caused by ash storms, the mountain had seemed to go up forever. Despite Sylas’s eagerness to become a changer, his father nearly had to drag the reluctant boy up the hillside. Sylas remembered thinking that not smelling the sulphur of the vents meant there was no air—that his father was taking him to die on the mountaintop. The Aerie’s buildings seemed giant-built to him after the dome dwellings of the Chesammos, and Banunis Castle dwarfed even the Aerie. He would never find his way around a place so vast.

  A queue had formed to enter the city. Pedestrians, people pushing carts or driving pack animals, and wagons pulled by horses or cheen all jostled through the huge wooden gates. Sylas found himself surrounded by the smell of animals and unwashed bodies. Once he was inside, he saw trinket-sellers with trays hung around their shoulders, and tradesmen wheeling handcarts and crying their wares. Farther on the scent of spices and fresh fruit rose from a marketplace. A Chesammos labourer unloaded kegs from a wagon and carried them into the cellar of a tavern. Another Chesammos shovelled horse dung into a barrel which he rolled along the street, stopping at each steaming pile.

  Ayriene saw Sylas watching. “The tanners will pay him in smallcoins for a barrel-full. Not a job many would wish for, but it will keep him in food and shelter.” Sylas was unmoved. Shovelling shit in Banunis, labouring in the fields in Redlyn, or digging linandra in the desert—Chesammos always got the hardest and dirtiest jobs. It came as no surprise, just a vague disappointment that even in the king’s city things were no different.

  From one of the side streets, the chink-chink of a hammer beating iron and the smell of charcoal and burning hooves proclaimed a smith’s forge. Men’s voices rose in dispute over some imagined slight. A boy snatched an apple from a stall and ran, the fruit-seller shouting after him and shaking his fist. Sylas’s head swam, trying to take in the sounds and smells, wishing he could find a quiet spot to hide from the madness. Even in the vastness of the desert, he had never felt so insignificant.

  He lagged behind, part reluctant to commit himself to the noise and bustle, part edged out of the flow by locals with no patience for strangers who stood and gawked like simpletons. Ayriene took his arm and pulled him into a side street to let him catch his breath.

  “It’s something, isn’t it? I grew up here, so I know it well, but a person can easily get lost in this place. We are heading for the castle, so if we get separated, keep moving upwards. There are three more gates. If I lose you I’ll stop there. You can’t get to the castle without passing them, so I’ll find you, never fear.”

  He nodded, his mouth dry. The words meant little to him. Panic had muddled his wits and already he could scarcely remember what she had said. She slapped his shoulder. “Come on. Once inside the castle it will be quieter.”

  “Are all cities like this?” he asked, his boots slipping on cobblestones wet with rain and horse piss.

  “Some are worse,” she said with a rueful smile. “On the mainland they have cities that make Banunis look like a village.”

  He swallowed hard. Then he would never go to the mainland. Banunis felt like being lost inside a madman’s skull; worse than this would drive him insane. How could people live, crushed together in the noise and stink? He would sooner have the sulphur smell of the desert gases.

  Through the next gate the congestion eased a little. Sylas watched wide-eyed as a juggler spun a stream of leather balls. He tried to count how many there were and failed, the motion reduced to a blur. The juggler pocketed the balls with a flourish, calling out, “Coppers for your entertainment, ladies, gentlemen? Any spare smallcoin?”

  He felt for the pouch at his side, but Ayriene dragged him away. “If you leave money, even a smallcoin, in the purse of each juggler or acrobat or tuppenny bard you pass you will end with nothing, and you have little enough to start with.” That was true. Ayriene had given him a few coppers for his work, but he feared he had done littl
e to earn it. “And watch out for that pouch,” she said sternly, and he noticed that she had tucked hers out of reach. “These crowded streets are a haven for cutpurses and worse. If caught, they are strung up as a deterrent to the rest, but there are still people desperate enough or quick enough to try, however small the reward.”

  At the next gate most of the people milling around were soldiers of the king’s guard or Irenthi. Some of the Irenthi had servants in their train, all of them Irmos. It occurred to Sylas that the better dressed the Irenthi, the fairer skinned the servants. He wondered how Casian had persuaded his mother that she needed a Chesammos to wait on her. Someone as high-placed as the lady of Lucranne would have fair Irmos servants, surely. Looking around, he could see no Chesammos here at all. The farther in, the higher up, the lighter the skins of the occupants became. Sylas became aware of people stopping to watch him pass.

  “You are a changer and a healer, Sylas. You have as much right here as they do,” Ayriene said in a tone meant to be overheard. Sure enough, eyebrows arched but no one challenged him and they carried on quickly through these streets and up to the third gate: the one that opened in to the castle itself.

  A guard in the livery of House Banunis stepped forward.

  “All Chesammos to be searched, by order of the king.”

  The man’s hand rested on his sword hilt, the threat unmistakable. Behind him two guards with pikes moved to block their way. Sylas’s pulse quickened; he knew from experience how much damage a pike could do.

  “He’s my apprentice. I vouch for him.”

  The soldier’s gaze took in her healer pack—the large leather satchel healers carried—and he shuffled awkwardly.

  “No offence meant, Mistress, but I have my orders. All Chesammos searched, no exceptions.”