The Skylighter (The Keepers' Chronicles Book 2)
Page 9
He heard a rustle of fabric, and when she spoke again, her voice was closer. “How are you? I’ve been so worried—”
“Just a fever,” he said, wincing at the lie. From the smell rising from his wounds, he was fairly certain his time was short. Blood poisoning was fatal unless treated quickly, and Rafi feared his chance had passed. He was going to die from a simple infection. It certainly wasn’t the glorious exit he’d imagined for himself. And it was happening much too soon. He had plans, hopes to right the wrongs of Santarem, see his family. . . .
He pressed his fist to his mouth, holding it there until he was sure his words would be steady. “Will you do something for me?”
Don Diego repositioned his feet, frowning at them alternately.
“Now?” she asked, and Rafi wished he could see her face. Would she look surprised or would there be humor beneath it?
“Yes, now.”
“What do you want, my lord?”
There it was, the irritation he was hoping for. She’d need to hang on to that fire in the days to come, especially since she’d have to face them alone.
“Will you . . . will you sing for me?”
“Sing.”
Despite the tears pooling in the corners of his eyes, he smiled. “Did you have some other pressing engagement?”
A snort. “Yes, actually. The highest lord in the land was expecting me at his table any moment.”
“I am one of the highest lords in the land, and I’m asking you to sing for me. Please.”
Don Diego grunted and folded his arms. Rafi doubted their guard was overly fond of music, and hoped it would send him scurrying for an early breakfast. A drink. Anything that would leave Rafi alone with Johanna for a few moments.
She let out a long sigh, as if she was so put out to use her talents. “What would you have me sing?”
“Sing ‘Lamento de Amantes.’ ”
Her answer was immediate. “No.”
“Johanna, please.”
“I know what you’re thinking, Rafael DeSilva, and you’re wrong.” The last word came out as two wavering syllables. “The Lovers’ Lament” was the song his mother had sung at his father’s funeral. It was low and haunting, telling the story of a love that reached beyond the grave.
Rafi wasn’t sure he understood a love like that, but he imagined that the protectiveness he felt, the concern, the sweet heat when he touched Johanna, was the beginning. He wished they’d have more time together to find out what it could become.
He crawled as close as he could to the wall and stretched out along its length, wanting to be wrapped around her instead.
“You sang it so beautifully back home. Just this once. Sing it for me.”
She took a breath, and Rafi was afraid she’d deny him again. Instead, when she opened her mouth, she filled the entire prison with sound.
Halfway through the first verse, Don Diego left, stomping away and slamming the door behind him, but Rafi didn’t care. Over her song he heard the rustle of her moving closer, then saw the flicker of a pale hand in a narrow shaft of the dawn’s light.
Lying on his side, he reached through the bars so he could brush her fingers. They were cold and small against his fever-flushed skin, but already so familiar. He cushioned his head against his outstretched arm, relieved by her touch.
The pull of sleep overpowered him, and his eyes drifted shut. He tried to listen to every word, afraid that if he gave in before the song ended, he’d never hear her voice again.
Chapter 21
* * *
Johanna
As Johanna sang, a pall fell over the prison. The moans and screams from the floors above were replaced with the quiet shuffle of feet and the occasional muffled cough.
She didn’t realize it at first, too focused on Rafi’s overly hot fingers clenched around her own to recognize that her private performance had many more listeners. And when Rafi’s hand relaxed, her chest spasmed with fear. She searched for his pulse and found the slow thump against her fingertips, and left her hand there.
Over the sound of her relieved sigh she heard a voice through the thin layer of planking that divided the floors of the prison. “Please, I haven’t heard anything like that in so long. Don’t stop.”
That plea was echoed by one, then a dozen other voices. “Angel! Angel! Sing again.”
Music had always been a gift, an outlet for her feelings. With nothing to do besides hold Rafi’s hand through the cell bars, she sang. Songs of heartbreak, songs of rage, and songs of vengeance and despair. The stone walls of her cell reverberated the sound, and she sang louder, stretching her voice to its furthest range.
She poured every ounce of her own tattered emotions into her music, giving a performance she’d never be able to replicate for its authenticity. And failed to notice the creak of the door and the tread of heavy boots till the heel stomped down on her hand.
Her song turned to a startled inhale.
“Stop,” Don Diego said, grinding his foot. “Stop singing.”
In the sudden silence she heard her bones crack. Pain flared and she screamed.
“Make another noise and I’ll break your other hand.”
He lifted his boot, and she scuttled to the farthest corner of her cell.
“Not another whisper,” he said, kicking the barred door to imply his threat.
Johanna clutched her arm to her chest.
“Angel?” a voice yelled from above. “Sing, angel!”
Don Diego moved toward Rafi’s cell.
“Please! I won’t make a sound,” she promised, and the guard halted.
Angry shouts started on the upper floor. Feet stomped, metal ground. And then the rioting began.
Chapter 22
* * *
Leão
Something about Camaçari made Leão feel claustrophobic.
It wasn’t the walls, exactly. Roraima was a walled city, but the ruins, even in their tumbledown state, had a sense of pattern—as if the generations of builders had followed some master plan, allotting a specific amount of space between buildings and an equal distance to the road.
There wasn’t a straight road in all of Camaçari. In the older sections the homes and businesses were centered on a well or fountain. Those on the immediate square all faced toward the water source, but beyond that the streets branched every which way, winding and twisting till they dead-ended at hovels built right against the barbican walls. The walkways and turrets above, which no guard patrolled, seemed to tilt inward, dangling precariously over the inhabitants.
Maybe that’s what it is, he thought as he shifted the sword on his back. There’s nowhere in the city that lets you see beyond the walls.
The people didn’t seem to notice that they were sheep corralled in a butcher’s pen. They went about their business, heedless to the world beyond.
Jacaré and Leão had arrived late in the day and immediately parted company, each with a specific task and agreeing to return the following afternoon. Jacaré was going to check the inns, asking after girls who matched Johanna’s description, and listening to gossip.
Leão scouted along the city’s perimeter, looking for any sign of Johanna, listening to conversations, and testing the air for any lingering essência.
He found it.
Occasional threads of magic pulled at his attention. At first he chased them, expecting to find a Keeper manipulating slaves, but instead he found a bricklayer with excellent balance, using the merest breath of Air to keep him on a steeply pitched roof. And later, as the sun was beginning to set, a woman haggling with a street vendor used Spirit to get her way. Neither of them realized what they were doing—their gifts were innate and untrained—but it added to Leão’s discomfort.
Ever since Leão had led their party into the ambush that left Tex dead and separated them from Pira and Johanna, he’d tried to stay sharply attuned to the energy of the people and animals around him. He wasn’t going to be caught unaware and let his crew down again.
Once Johanna was found, and safely in Jacaré’s care, Leão was going to find Pira. No matter what commands he had to defy. He’d find her, and they’d talk about that night at Performer’s Camp. She could deny it, but there had been something between them besides exhaustion-driven folly. It had been too real and too intense for it to have simply been a lapse in their judgment. He knew it. Just like he knew she was out there, alive, waiting.
Leão took a room in a small inn and rested uneasily until dawn. He ventured out with the earliest risers, the street cleaners and delivery boys, moving through the city as if they owned it.
A bell sounded on the north side of the city. One on the south side answered. A baker dropped an entire pan of bread in surprise. Shop owners stopped their daily preparations and exchanged interested looks. Boys whooped and dashed past Leão, headed toward the northern bell.
He caught one by the back of his vest and hauled him to a stop. “What is it? Why are you all running?”
The child took a swing at Leão’s arm. “Lemme go! I gotta get a seat!”
“For what?”
“Prison riot.”
Leão let him drop and joined the throng.
• • •
As Leão neared the prison, he felt a tickle against his consciousness. It wasn’t essência precisely, too faint and too fleeting to be of any real power.
He followed the boy up a rickety ladder to the walkway that was suspended above the prison and gave a clear view of the quad.
The prison stood across a walled-in courtyard from the Camaçari garrison’s barracks. Dozens of windows, filled with bars instead of glass, checkered its stone-and-wood face at regular intervals.
“What’s happening?” the boy asked as he sat beside a friend on the walkway, dangling his legs over the edge.
“Prisoners went crazy,” answered another boy.
“Why?”
The other boy shrugged and watched the scene.
Farther down, a child of about twelve answered, “A girl was singing, and someone made her stop.”
“Singing?” Leão asked, hope zipping into his chest.
“Yep,” the boy answered. He pointed to a greasy cloth sack at his side. “I was delivering breakfast to the soldiers. One minute she was singing and the prisoners went scary-quiet listening. Then she stopped and they all went crazy.” He leaned toward Leão and the other boys like he was sharing something confidential. “They were pounding on the bars and walls. When a guard went in to see what was happening, they snatched him and stole his keys, then captured the rest of the guards on duty. They aren’t gonna let them go until Ceara releases all the prisoners.”
“Is it common to sing in prison?”
The group eyed Leão askance, and he guessed that it wasn’t. “Are there lots of women in there?”
The boy who had guided Leão to the walkway answered, “The whole top floor is for women.”
“That’s not where this one was,” the delivery boy replied, pulling a slightly mashed meat pie out of his bag. “I heard her, and her voice was coming from the Crypt.”
All the boys oohed like this was important information. It probably was, and judging from the name, it wasn’t a good place to be. Leão said, “So, the Crypt . . .”
“You’re not from here, are you?” the delivery boy asked around a mouthful of food.
“No, I’m not.”
“No one who goes down into the Crypt comes back alive. You only get sent there if you’re gonna die.”
• • •
Soldiers milled about the garrison quad, waiting for a command for action. Some figured they’d just wait until the prisoners ran out of food and water. Others expected an order to burn them out, and damn the consequences to their captured comrades.
The thick layer of fog that draped the square between the barracks and the prison had nothing to do with the overcast sky. From the walkway above, someone might have noticed that the low-hanging cloud didn’t extend beyond the courtyard and stopped abruptly at the gate. But the walls of Camaçari were, as usual, unattended.
Fog wasn’t like rain or ice. It was too ephemeral, too easily disturbed, for Leão to blanket a larger area without straining, and he knew with a creeping sense of unease that before the day was over, he’d probably need every shred of his power.
The soldiers pacing around the perimeter called out every few minutes, but even their voices seemed stifled by the mist. They drifted closer to one another, leaving a large portion of the yard unchecked.
As the watch switched positions, Leão descended from the barrack’s roof where he’d spent an impatient half hour waiting for clouds to drift in front of the sun and cast a myriad of shadows onto the foggy prison yard. He moved with all the silence his training supplied, staying low. Leaping down the stairs to the Crypt, he landed silently on the balls of his feet and slid two picks from his pocket.
One minute passed. Two. The tumblers in the lock wouldn’t shift, even when he urged them with a hint of Air. Frustrated, and feeling his hold on the mist begin to wane, he resorted to a less delicate tactic.
Using his body as a shield, Leão sent a concentrated blast of fire into the lock. The heavy piece of metal melted, running down the door’s face like tears of mercury. The stones beyond were slick beneath Leão’s feet. Above his head the murmurs of the prisoners planning their revolt were muted.
The corridor didn’t run in a perfectly straight line, but drifted off slightly to his right. A few more steps and he felt it again—the flickering essência, spotty and incomplete, and wholly different from anything he’d ever come in contact with.
Distracted, he didn’t sense the guard till it was almost too late. A dagger lashed out; Leão raised his arm to block it, taking a nasty gash on his forearm. A blast of air slammed the guard against the nearest cell with a skull-smashing crack.
Leão pressed forward, releasing his magical hold and letting the dead man slump to the ground. The cells on either side of the guard’s body were empty. The barred doors were open, revealing piles of moldy hay and lumps that might be old blankets, scraps of clothing, or worse.
Then he caught a whiff of rotting flesh.
He cringed but rushed on. Needing to know, for sure, that it wasn’t Johanna moldering in this hellhole.
The second-to-last cell was windowless, but foggy white light revealed a huddled lump too large to be a pile of blankets.
This lock fell away easily, clicking open in less than five seconds, but the barred door whined as he pushed it open. The body didn’t move.
From the next cell he heard a whisper of movement and tensed.
“Hello? Is someone out there?”
He knew that voice. “Johanna? It’s me, Leão.”
“Leão—”
The rest of her words were cut off when an explosion rang out overhead.
Chapter 23
* * *
Jacaré
Jacaré followed the leads he had received from various barmaids and street-corner gossips, and with no results, he sat at the city’s central fountain, waiting for Leão to report back. After two hours, and with an increasing sense of irritation and impatience, Jacaré went to look for his companion.
He hadn’t gone far when there was a blast of essência and an equally loud eruption. Leão wouldn’t have done anything to draw attention to himself, but someone else with enough power for Jacaré to feel halfway across the township had just blown something up.
Turning north, he ran.
Chapter 24
* * *
Johanna
The explosion was immense—stones churned against one another, and dust showered down on her head. Flames
flickered through the plank ceiling, and men screamed.
“Jo!” The lock on her cell clinked to the floor, and Leão filled the doorway. “Are you hurt?”
She threw herself into his arms, sobbing with relief that the one person who could save Rafi had arrived. “In the next cell,” she said. “You’ve got to help him.”
“No, Johanna. There are other Keepers here. I didn’t cause that explosion—”
Ignoring his words, she brushed past him and into the adjoining cell. “Rafi.” She fell to her knees next to his crumpled form, one of his arms still stretched between the cell bars as if reaching for her. “No. No. No. No,” fell from her mouth in a broken refrain.
Her heart hadn’t had time to heal. The pain from her family’s deaths had been hastily bandaged, still raw and festering, something she could survive till she slowed down enough to inspect the wounds. But seeing Rafi, vulnerable and unmoving, with sunken cheeks and cracked lips, was severing.
“We have to leave,” Leão said gently.
Johanna didn’t hear him and didn’t feel his hand on her shoulder. She reached forward with nerveless fingers to brush the tangled curls off Rafi’s forehead, tracing the line of his brow, the slant of his cheekbone.
His face was hot, practically broiling with fever. “He’s alive,” she whispered, leaning over Rafi’s body.
“Jo.” Leão’s tone was half plea and half command.
“He’s alive, Leão, and you will heal him, or I will not move from this spot.” It was a weak threat and she knew it. Rafi had carried her away from her brother’s body. Leão could most certainly haul her away from Rafi, but she wouldn’t make it easy. He’d be fighting a battle on two fronts, against her and whoever else was out there. “He’s the Duke of Santiago and my . . . my betrothed.” She could see the conflict on Leão’s face. “Please. He’s my Pira.”