Shilah brushed ash from her hands. ‘I guess I’ll need a uniform then.’
Chapter Twenty-Seven
‘Are you awake?’ Shilah whispered.
I kept my eyes closed, but I was no closer to sleep than Shilah was to Langria. My mind was still spinning from our unlikely reunion, the wobbliness toppling any Ideas I’d had for possible uses of the Cold Charge. I’d been wondering if the Charge could lift the heavy slabs of stone to the top of the Pyramid, or maybe could be injected into garden soil to help fig rations, but nothing felt serious, and nothing was sticking.
‘No,’ I said, shifting my sheet. I still wasn’t used to being in a place chilled enough to need a layer on top, but since we had our own private Bellows to crank, the room was practically frigid.
‘If you’re not awake, then I guess you’re dreaming about me,’ Shilah said.
‘I’m dreaming about the Cold Charge.’ I smirked, turning my head so I could face her. Her bed had been set up so it was almost touching mine. My nights had been quiet since I’d left my room with Abb, and I was secretly glad to have her close.
‘You made the right choice, coming here,’ I said, turning towards her fully. She’d taken on a new vulnerability since entering the Tavor Manor. ‘Why can’t you sleep?’
‘I’m trying to figure it out.’
‘It’s pretty simple. The salt and the Cold don’t mix, so the energy gets collected in the water—’
‘Not that,’ she said, pulling out her map again and brushing her fingers over the Opened Eye. ‘This.’
‘Can we please go five minutes without you trying to convince me to leave?’ I asked, pulling the sheet over my chest. ‘Why would you want to leave here? This place has everything.’
‘I know it does.’ She kept stroking the old map, movements slow and poised. Her finger wandered over Paphos, across the Erridian Bridge, around the City of the Stars, through the Glasslands, and up to the Opened Eye. ‘Do you know any stories?’
I couldn’t hide my surprise. ‘Stories?’
She brushed the strands of hair out of her face. ‘Yeah, stories.’
I indulged the thought for a moment. She reminded me of Matty, asking for a game of ‘Whatsit’. ‘I suppose so.’
‘Tell me one,’ she said, her voice small. ‘My mum used to tell me stories, to help me sleep.’
Realization dawned on me. Of course she couldn’t have been alone all this time. She’d lost her own Abb. She knew of the pain I’d been dreading more than anything else. My sheet suddenly lost its warmth as a chill ran across my skin.
I thought hard. ‘What kind?’
‘Doesn’t matter.’
I paused, trying to hold back my smile. ‘One time there was this Tinkerer named Salvidor Suth who wanted to figure out a better way to combine metals without—’
She reached over to my cot, giving me a playful slap across the chest. ‘A story. I’ve had enough lessons for the day.’
I channelled my father, offering a goofy wiggle of my eyebrows. ‘The best stories are lessons, Little Builder.’
I felt a pang in my heart and decided not to joke around with that nickname, at least until I saw Abb again.
‘Crier above,’ Shilah said with a sigh. ‘Send me a new world partner.’
‘Okay, I have a real one.’
She rolled onto her back, looking up at the ceiling. ‘Go ahead, I’m listening.’
So for the next half-hour I told her of Klaus and Rachel as told to me by Abb when I was younger. A classic tale, from before the Drought. It didn’t have any religious connotations, so the story hadn’t been banned, everyone from the Southern Cry Temple to the Great Divide had heard some version of it. It was a story of love lost, adventure found, brave explorers, treasures unearthed, rulers slowly turning evil from greed, family squabbles, and even extinct beasts called ‘horses’ which were like camels, but stronger and faster.
At the end, I let the final words sit heavily in the darkness: ‘And Klaus closed his eyes, never to open them again. He was already on his way to see her.’
The silence stretched until I was convinced that she had fallen asleep. The topsheet gently rose and fell with her breath, and I felt a subtle pride at helping her ease into her dreams. I rolled over onto my back, looking at the still shadows on the ceiling, and thought of flight.
‘Mum always ended it with Klaus slicing his finger before the poisoning,’ Shilah said with her eyes closed.
I groaned. ‘And here was I, thinking she’d asked for any story—’
‘Oh, hush.’ She reached over and gave me another playful slap, the spot tingling after she removed her hand. ‘It’s a good version either way.’
‘Thanks,’ I replied.
She gave me a soft look. ‘Do you have any more?’
‘Stories?’
She smirked. ‘No, sand mites.’
‘How about you go to sleep?’
She turned and looked at the ceiling again. ‘I don’t like sleep.’
‘Everyone likes sleep. You should like it best. Quickest way to Langria.’
She sucked her teeth and turned my way. ‘Can we go five minutes without you trying to convince me not to leave?’
I chuckled. ‘Maybe.’
‘And sleep isn’t that great,’ she said. ‘Your ears don’t work when you sleep. I don’t like it.’
‘We’re safe in here.’ I felt my heartbeat start to quicken. ‘You have to trust me, Cam is—’
‘Do you have any more stories or not?’
I sighed. There was no point in trying right now.
We swapped stories for a few hours, and Shilah was the perfect audience, clapping and gasping at all the appropriate moments. It felt like being back in the barracks again, surrounded by Matty and Moussa, laughing the hours away. Shilah revealed herself through the tales she told. She was well-spoken, with a sharp tongue, and some of the swearwords she threw in could blush the red off a Rose of Gilead. She chose stories with adventure, and stretched those parts for as long as she could. From her inflections, I could detect a fondness for caravans and Peddlers.
Yet when I finished the story of Boaz and the Conquerors and her turn came up again, she seemed more hesitant than before. She sat up, crossing her legs underneath her. ‘Okay. I’ve got another story.’
I pulled myself up too, so our eyes could meet. ‘Tell me.’
‘It’s about the first Khat.’ She’d been holding on to the map this whole time, refusing to fold it up. Now the paper rustled a bit as her hands started to shake. ‘And it’s not pleasant.’
I nodded solemnly.
‘You sure?’ she asked.
I chuckled. ‘It’s just a story.’
‘I want you to be able to sleep tonight. And it can be hard to hear.’
I grabbed my ear and gave it a wiggle. ‘Good thing I’m awake.’
Shilah nodded, and cleared her throat nervously. ‘So, before we were slaves, when Cold was Cried everywhere, and every bit of land was green and prosperous, the whole World Cried looked like Langria, right?’
‘Yes, like the stories about Langria. Go on.’
‘And now the only Cold gets Cried to the Khat,’ she said, leaning in and lowering her voice. ‘Don’t you wonder why?’
‘The Cause,’ I said, thinking of the painting from the Paphos library, my fists clenching at the lie of it all.
She opened her palms and gave me a look that said by all means. ‘And what exactly was the cause?’
‘The Gospels say it’s because Jadans are unworthy,’ I countered, just to see where she was going with this. ‘Evil things we did. Killing each other. Greed over Cold. Things like that. Not that I believe any of it any more.
Shilah nodded. ‘Nobles kill Jadans every day. And no one has more greed than those who have too much. So why would they still get Cold if the World Crier punishes murder and greed? That doesn’t make sense.’
‘I agree,’ I said. ‘That’s why this place is what Jadans need.’
<
br /> ‘Hmm?’
‘Nothing,’ I said quickly. ‘Continue.’
She took a steady breath. ‘Sometimes I go to places. The kind of places taskmasters pretend they don’t know about. Neutral territory. Jadans and Nobles both go there. And they drink and gamble, and do other things.’
I’d heard rumours about the places she might be referring to, the Drifthouses, underground chambers where it didn’t matter who you were but rather what you were willing to do. It was in places like the Drifthouses where the Roof Warden got his Droughtweed supply. And where a Domestic might sneak out to earn extra rations. Fighting pits, gambling tables, rooms by the hour. Obey would just be a warm-up act in a Drifthouse. I nodded for Shilah to continue, petrified to find out what she might have been doing in a place so coarse.
Her eyes darkened and I almost felt compelled to look away. ‘And I overhear things. People like to talk when they can get away with it.’ She rolled up her sleeve and pointed to the tattoo on her arm. ‘Lots of people have these.’
Her words hung in the air for a moment.
‘What did you hear?’ I prodded.
She remained at a distance from herself. ‘That the first Khat made a deal with Sun. And that Sun led him to something hidden in the land, that Sun had put there right under the Crier’s Eyes.’
My throat had gone dry, so I had to choke out the words. ‘In Paphos?’
She gave her head a slight shake. ‘I don’t know where it was hidden. But it was dangerous. And there was a lot of it.’
I knew it was just a story, but the idea unsettled me. ‘What was it?’
‘Things that looked like Cold, but were the opposite. Something Sun created in secret to get back at his brother. The man telling the story called it “Desert”. And that Sun told the first Khat that if the pieces of Desert were buried in the sand they would dissolve, and then no Cold could ever be Cried within a whole river’s span. So the first Khat went to the all the cities in the World Cried, in secret, burying the Desert in everyone’s Patches except for his. And all the crops went brown, except for his crops. And people starved and died from the heat. The rivers only got hotter, and the people got more desperate. So then the other kings and queens of every Jadan city in the land came and bowed to the Khat, promising everything they had if he would share his Cold. And so the Khat offered slavery.’
My hands started to shake, all of this sounding far too possible, especially after my trip to the dark river.
‘The first Khat caused the Great Drought,’ Shilah continued. ‘So that he could rule everything. If he was the only one with Cold, he held life and death. And every Khat since has been keeping the secret. That Desert is buried everywhere.’ She leaned so close I could feel the heat of her breath. ‘Except in Langria.’
She gazed into my eyes, desperate for me to believe. I put my hand over hers, which was now squeezing my knee, and left it there. ‘They put it in the ground,’ I whispered. The words sounded as if they were being spoken by someone else.
‘What?’ she whispered back.
‘Nothing.’ I was trembling all over from rage. ‘Everything.’
She was right.
I found no sleep after that.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
‘Spout.’
I looked up from the little flame, the visions of dying land still in my mind: trees cracked in half, rivers drained into the bowels of the sands, and the birds all falling from the sky.
‘Spout,’ Leroi said again, sitting on the base of the invention and snapping the black gloves over his hands. ‘Focus. It’s the most important tool of an Inventor.’
‘I thought it would be imagination,’ I replied with a guilty grin.
Leroi gave me a pointed look. ‘Imagination is a material and a tool. It doesn’t fit in just one box. Now do you want to see this display or not? You’re the one who’s been begging.’
I nodded, swallowing my frustration. I still hadn’t got the nerve to ask Leroi if the story about Desert could be true, but it had been constantly playing on my mind.
I flicked the button on the Flamespark, bringing the little fire back to life. The device was simple, a bit of flint and a striking post inside at the right angle, but it was quick and useful and lit the candle on the podium with ease. I moved down the line, lighting the candles on the podiums, the tables, and the cabinets pushed to the sides so we could have a clear path all the way through the main section of the workshop. Meeting Shilah at the final row, I dipped the flame to the last wick, completing the tidy row of fire.
‘Okay,’ Leroi said, shrinking towards the wall. ‘Both of you. Come back and join me here.’
Usually he was excited when he showed us one of his inventions, but he had been more reluctant with this one. Shilah and I scampered back through the rows of candles and met at the Sand Glider – the wheelless platform with the giant, caged fan blades on the front; a creation which I’d been dying to know about. Leroi had moved one of his clay pots to the base of the invention, this pot stout, with all sorts of black tally marks notched in columns on its sides. He pointed to one block at a time. His hands were shakier than usual today.
‘Seventy-two Wisps, fifty-four Drafts, thirty-six Shivers, eighteen Chills,’ Leroi said, tracing the little marks with quivering fingers. ‘All dissolved over the course of a year. It’s the most potent Cold Charge I’ve been able to come up with.’
My eyes widened at such an astounding amount of Cold. I knew all too well how much Jadan pain that Cold might have eased.
Leroi lifted the lid of the pot and sighed. ‘I’ve had pots where I’d dissolved more Cold, and ones with less, but this mixture is the most powerful. The problem is, I’ve finally reached the wall.’
‘Did you say ones with more Cold?’ I asked, trying to keep the incredulity from my voice. Leroi didn’t seem to be the malicious type, but I wondered if he knew the extent of the suffering in the world outside his tinkershop.
Leroi nodded, flexing his gloved fingers to keep away the shakes. ‘I’ve been doing this for a very long time,’ he said with another sigh. ‘But I think maybe you two are here now, for a reason.’
‘What reason?’ Shilah asked.
Leroi didn’t answer, instead taking the lid off the pot. Initially I thought the solution had a gold tinge, but I dismissed this as a trick of the nearest Sinai. He stepped up onto the base of the Sand Glider, which was just large enough for him and maybe one other body. The huge caged blades on the front had a copper wire that fed from the gear work through the bars. Leroi picked up the end of this wire and fed it through the mouth of the clay pot.
The blades came to life in a sudden jolt. The Glider itself vibrated, trying to buck away from the vices anchoring its hull to the ground, but the bearings of the fan were smooth, and in less than an instant, the metal was turning at a miraculous speed, hurling wind all the way across the tinkershop. Machines rattled and cabinets shook, and the line of candles behind the invention were blown out row by row in a furious current of wind. Shilah and I backed away in surprise. The candles were blown out all the way across the tinkershop, except for the last three rows, which flickered gently. Leroi let the blades spin aimlessly for a few seconds, and then pulled the copper wire out of the pot, at which point the Glider slowed down and eventually came to a standstill.
Leroi stripped off his gloves, slapping them on the base of the Glider. Kneeling, he moved his hand down to the base, which was made from some shiny green material.
‘I lined the bottom with an alloy I call Slither-metal,’ Leroi said, swiping his finger along the green and producing a slick squeal. ‘No friction whatsoever. The idea is to have the blades propel the Glider across the sands. No roads, no bridges. If it worked, you could explore the whole World Cried, maybe find things out in the deep dunes that we didn’t know about. Maybe secret Patches long forgotten. I’ve tried the Glider outside behind the manor, but there’s still not enough charge to move it properly. I’m close, but I need more if it’s to
ride all the way across the dunes. I figured we might experiment with different potions to mix in to try and solve it.’ He stood back up. In the half-light, I saw how sunken his face had become again, almost deflated. ‘Enough charge, and we might build a different version that could push into the sky.’
‘What if we ruin the charge completely?’ I asked, looking at the final rows of candles, their flames tauntingly still quivering. ‘All that Cold will go to waste.’
‘Perhaps,’ Leroi said. ‘But freedom is not without its cost.’
Shilah broke free from my side, touching the cage that circled around the Glider’s blades. ‘We should try and get a Frost. Maybe that would—’
Leroi cut her off, his knees going visibly weak. ‘Never that. Please never mention that again. Anything else. I’m sorry, but no. Sorry.’ He shook his head. ‘Sorry.’
Shilah and I exchanged a glance. We’d spent long hours at night discussing what secrets Leroi might be keeping. But before we could even change the subject, a furious knocking came from the main door, rattling the chain.
The pounding was frantic, wild even. It was most certainly not Cam.
Leroi’s eyes widened and he snapped his fingers, pointing at the grate. We’d practised this yesterday, and Shilah and I silently flew to our hiding space, lifting the metal and tucking ourselves in. The space was big enough for two, but only just. My chest began beating harder than from just fear as Shilah pressed next to me.
Leroi gently closed the grate and pushed a table over it. The knocking grew even louder, as though the door was being pounded by half a dozen hands.
I pressed my face as high as it would go against the grate so I could see, Shilah doing the same. I could smell the Khatmint Leroi had given us that morning on her breath.
Leroi’s bare feet slapped up to the landing and I heard the scrape of the chain being removed. A flurry of apologetic voices cascaded around the tinkershop, too muddled to make out. Leroi’s voice broke over the din. ‘Where were the taskmasters?’ The Tinkerer sounded frantic, his voice almost unrecognizable. ‘Why didn’t he get it turned? Speak!’
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