Walls of Wind and the Occasional Diamond Thief Boxed Set

by Jane Ann McLachlan

  Whose decision was it to make her my advisor? Is she trying to protect me, or—I remember her strange behavior at the embassy—is she trying to protect herself? To keep that from coming out? Or did she already confess, and this is the O.U.B.’s way of making sure it doesn’t come out?

  I don’t know enough about this process. Enough? I don’t know anything! But if I ask questions they’ll know at once why I’m asking them. I look at Agatha. All I can see is the back of her head, and the blue habit. She doesn’t sit like the other Select and the Adept. She slouches a little. Not really—you have to know her to see it. It’s that intangible slouch that decides me.

  “I don’t care,” I say. Wait. Wouldn’t an innocent person want someone she knew?

  “She was kind to me at my father’s funeral.” I let my voice tremble and wipe my eye. It’s dry with fear. I’m not dumb enough to imagine this will get me any sympathy, but a little dab might explain why I don’t look the Adept in the eye. She’ll see right through me if I let her look in my eyes.

  “I take it then that you accept your present advisor?”

  I nod without looking up, and dab again for good measure.

  “There is nothing wrong with your eye. You may be seated.”

  I walk forward and sit beside Agatha. Drop into the seat, more like, my legs giving out. Well, anyone would be nervous here—it would look more suspicious not to be.

  At a nod from the Adept the male Select gets up and walks around his table. He bows to the Adept, nods to Agatha and me, and then recounts everything that happened at Messer Sodum’s shop two nights ago, word for word.

  There’s no point questioning his story. Even in civil court, if a Select proves he or she was in a position to hear a conversation, not a single word of the exchange can be in question. If their enhanced memory slips—and that’s unlikely—their video-audio scan implant won’t.

  Listening to the Adept recreate my conversation with Sodum, I recognize Sodum’s attempts to downplay my actions. I didn’t pick up on them at the time, but how could I have known? Protecting himself, no doubt, making our joint enterprise look a little less shady—hah!—but maybe I can still use his suggestion that the bracelet was lying on a table and I picked it up on impulse. I didn’t answer Sodum, so the Select can’t record a denial. As soon as he finishes speaking I stand up, glancing quickly at the Adept for permission.

  I should never have looked at her. The concentrated focus of the Adept’s gaze turns on me. I’m caught, half-way between sitting and standing, immobile. I do not want to lie to this woman. It’s essential to tell the full truth. I’ll feel so relieved when I do...

  Agatha’s hand is on my arm. I can see it but I can’t feel it. “Sit down until the Adept addresses you,” she says. Her calm voice cuts through my trance. I gasp, only realizing now that I haven’t been breathing, and sink back into my chair.

  What happened? I peek through my lashes and see the Adept is contemplating Agatha now. Agatha returns her look blandly. Maybe she doesn’t know what she interrupted? Her expression and posture give nothing away.

  They all give nothing. I’m totally out of my depth here: a blind girl taking on the sighted. They can read every thought on my face and I can see nothing on theirs. I look down at my hands folded in my lap, feeling utterly helpless. Beside me, Agatha doesn’t move or say anything, but I can feel her, and I know she deliberately broke the Adept’s hold on me.

  The Adept must know it, too. The silence is so thick I feel like I’m breathing it in, choking on it. I won’t look up. I won’t, no matter how much I want to. My hands are clenched so hard in my lap my knuckles are white, but even an Adept can’t see through a table.

  Like that matters. She can see the tension in my face, whether I look at her or not. Well, who wouldn’t be tense? It doesn’t prove anything, as long as I don’t look up.

  “How did you come by the bracelet, child?” she asks.

  I look down at my lap. Ashamed, I think, trying to infuse myself with the emotion for them to read. That’s got to be what they want, they already know I did it.

  “Stand up,” Agatha says quietly.

  I get up slowly, giving myself time to formulate the story and convince myself of it. To mix in an equal measure of the truth so the false parts can slip by. I’ll only look up when I tell the true parts.

  “I believed Lady Khalida wouldn’t mind if I took the bracelet.”

  “Why would you think that? Look at me, child.”

  “I’m so ashamed.” Good. I think I actually felt that. Now the truth: “I’m very sorry I did it.” Perhaps a little too vehement, but I look up quickly as I say it so the Adept can see truth in my eyes.

  She doesn’t speak. She doesn’t have to, she understands everything. Everyone is sorry when they’re caught. She sees right through me, and now I am ashamed. I have to tell her the truth.

  “I took the bracelet.” Some part of my mind screams at me, shut up! but it’s too distant to matter. I’m overwhelmed by a realization of the futility of lying, by a compulsion to confess.

  “How?”

  “I stole it.” No, my mind cries, don’t answer. But I can’t stop myself.

  “Tell me.”

  Trapped in the Adept’s gaze, I can only obey. “I picked the lock of the safe.”

  “How is it that it was closed with no sign of tampering?”

  I’m silent. I want to tell the Adept, and the longer the silence lasts the more desperate I become to say it, tell it all. But Agatha didn’t tell on me. I grit my teeth against the longing to speak...

  The room begins to spin. I start to feel sick, exhausted by the effort of not speaking...

  Agatha stands up beside me. “I closed it.”

  Chapter Nine

  “You were there?” The Adept’s voice is mild, and yet I wouldn’t want to be Agatha at this moment for anything in the universe.

  “What is done to her must be done to me also.”

  I’d considered making that point myself, but I was going for the opposite twist: let us both go.

  “You participated in a theft?” The Adept looks only at Agatha. There’s no difference in her expression that I can see, but Agatha’s face turns white. I feel like I’m witnessing something brutal, as though the Adept is beating Agatha and Agatha’s barely holding up under the onslaught. And yet there’s no sound, no movement; only the quiet look between them which is so charged it leaves me faint and shaken.

  “It seemed the right thing at the time,” Agatha says finally. Her face is still rigidly inexpressive, but now it’s chalky-gray. Her pale blue eyes are full of that miserable expression that makes me want to slap her and defend her at the same time.

  The tension eases, as though the Adept has pulled it back.

  “Then it must have been.” She turns to me. “You have still committed a crime. With or without an accomplice.” She says the last as if she knows what I considered earlier. As if. Of course she knows; she’s an Adept. Why bother talking at all?

  “It is worth your while to answer my questions. You might still surprise me.”

  I blink. It’s a very small movement, but I might as well shout out loud that she’s guessing my every thought. Agatha, standing beside me, is caught in the same intense scrutiny. Somehow she’s ended up on trial with me.

  “I stole it. She—” I almost use Agatha’s name “—came in and found me in front of the open safe. The Select is innocent.”

  “You must tell the whole truth,” Agatha says softly beside me. “If I had told you not to steal, you wouldn’t have.”

  “I would have gone back later.” The truth is being drawn out of me against my will. I even want to tell the Adept about my father’s stolen diamond. No, not that!

  “You’re holding something back.”

  “It isn’t mine to tell.” I will not shame my father’s memory.

  “But it’s eating at you, child. It’s hurting you.”

  “It isn’t mine to tell.”

&nb
sp; The Adept looks at me a moment longer, then glances at Agatha. “Sit down, both of you. I’ve seen enough.” She nods at the male Select, my accuser. “Thank you. You have fulfilled your role.”

  Agatha sits down carefully. Her face is still gray. The other Select stands up to leave. “She is a common thief,” he says distinctly.

  I hate the way it sounds, dripping out of his judgmental mouth.

  “No.” Agatha’s voice is firm despite the weary expression she cannot hide.

  The Adept looks at me.

  “Not, like, full-time,” I mumble. “...Maybe occasionally...”

  Her face doesn’t change, but something in her eyes looks like if she wasn’t an Adept, she might laugh.

  For one insane second I almost grin at her, but Agatha touches my arm discreetly and I swallow it. Cocky wouldn’t go down well here.

  “You are going to Malem,” the Adept tells Agatha when the door has closed behind my accuser. “You will relieve the Select who is there now.”

  “Thank you, Adept.” Agatha’s voice is as calm as though she’s been offered a post on Earth, not been sent to obscurity on a horrible, disease-ridden, backwater planet further out than even Seraffa. I look sideways at her with a mixture of horror and pity.

  “You may accompany her if you’d like.”

  I’m not sure I’ve heard right until I look up and see the Adept looking at me. There’s no pressure or command in her look this time, just a calm neutrality. I want to laugh but my throat has closed so tightly I can’t even pull air into my lungs. “I should accompany her?” I croak.

  “You may if you choose to.”

  “To Malem?”

  “I believe you speak the language?”

  I want to say no, but there’s no sense denying it.

  “The Select will need an interpreter at—” it sounds like she’s about to say ‘at first’ until she looks at Agatha. “—for a while.”

  “What’s the alternative?” my voice comes out high-pitched, desperate. I can’t go to Malem. Malem destroyed my father.

  “Alternative? The alternative is that you don’t go.”

  “My punishment. How will you punish me?”

  “Where did you hear such a thing? We do not administer punishment. Weren’t you raised in the Order?”

  “You’ll just let me go?”

  “Of course we will.”

  “And the bracelet?”

  “It will be handed over to the pols. We do not keep stolen goods.”

  “So... So I’ll just go free?”

  She allows herself an expression. It is pained. “Surely you can work that out for yourself. The bracelet will be returned to Lady Khalida. She may press charges. The Select who accused you may be asked to testify. You have already heard his testimony. You are young, and this is the first time you’ve been caught stealing. I expect they will go easy on you.”

  Easy on me. I close my eyes. It will be the end of interpreting; the Dean made that clear. And then Owegbé will hear of it. Even if she wasn’t already sick, this would kill her. Etin and Oghogho will never forgive me. Why should they? I’m a monster, killing both my parents.

  “Don’t torture yourself, child. It is self-indulgent. If you were irredeemable, you wouldn’t be here.”

  I consider telling her about my mother, that I took the bracelet to pay her medical costs. But the Adept must know it wasn’t my first theft; they knew that when they waited for me in the back of Sodum’s shop. She would have made sure she knew everything about me before this... meeting began.

  “And if I went? What testimony would the Select give then?”

  “The Select will have to say the thief is no longer on this world. He will not be told where you have gone. He will not give your name unless he can accuse you to your face; that is our way. Lady Khalida will have her bracelet back, but she will have no one to press charges against.”

  She isn’t smiling, but I’ve been so aware of every clue my face and body send, I can’t help being more aware of hers. She isn’t smiling. But she is.

  “Why me?” They could afford to hire any interpreter they wanted; surely they could find someone else who speaks Malemese and Edoan. Why choose a 16-year-old student?

  “You have become... available,” she says.

  That does it. That arrogance! I open my mouth to refuse, but before I can speak she adds, “There has been a vision placing you on Malem.”

  I sit there with my mouth open. The O.U.B. never lie. I know it, but right now I can’t believe it. They do have visions, and usually their visions come true—but a vision about me? I just look at her, not knowing how to respond to such a ridiculous statement.

  “The vision occurred two years after your birth.”

  “What was it?” I play along. “What amazing thing will I do on Malem?”

  “That is not for you to ask,” she says coolly.

  I flush. They never reveal a vision to the subject, I know that. A person cannot know her future. But this is crazy, a vision about me. She must be mistaken.

  “We hope, while you’re doing it, you’ll teach our Select to speak the language.” The Adept glances at Agatha, “and interpret for her until she is proficient.”

  “I’m not an interpreter yet. And I have school...” It’s useless to argue. If they’ve had a vision, they’ll get me there whatever it takes. I am going to Malem. I picture my father’s face before he died. What if I come home crazy and sick with fevers, too? I want to throw up. I swallow hard.

  “Dean Harris will be told we have contracted your services and you’ll resume your studies when you return. Perhaps you will only accompany our Select there and return with the ship.” The Adept’s voice is calm, soothing. I immediately feel reassured. I look away from her, fighting the false emotion, and catch Agatha watching me.

  “Did they see us both? In the vision?” Why wasn’t Agatha taught Malemese if they knew she’d be going?

  “Only you. We hoped the choice of Select would become clear. And it has. The Select herself said we must ask of her what is asked of you.”

  “I can’t go. My mother’s sick!”

  “Our fee for your services will cover her medical expenses. A priority will be placed on finding her a compatible heart. When you return, your tuition and residence at the college will be covered until you graduate. You will have no further need to steal. And you will never do so again.” The last sentence is said in the same calm tone, but with a firmness that hits me like a whiplash. The Adept is done with my delays. She is accustomed to being obeyed.

  For this reason alone I want to refuse her. If only there was some way I could. But they have me trapped. My family, my education, my future: nothing will be left if I refuse.

  “Come with me to Malem, Kia,” Agatha says softly. “It will be alright. It is God’s plan, not ours.”

  I close my eyes. I am beaten.

  “It is settled, then,” the Adept says. She rises to leave. As if it is an afterthought, she adds, “That secret you are keeping, child. You must carry it with you to Malem. It will be important there, I think.”

  Chapter Ten

  The clay tiles of the footpath are warm against my bare feet as I walk through the flowers and redgrass toward the mansion. Imported marble columns rise at regular intervals from the front of the verandah, which is made of burnished Earthoak to match the huge double doors. The roof is tiled in a soft beige with gold inlays that catch the sun and carry the rich look of the marble onto the roof.

  I approach slowly, squinting as the sun blazes off the gold embellishments on the doors. The windows flanking them are opaque and glitter golden even in the shaded recess of the porch. The door opens easily to my touch; I enter with the confidence of a proprietor.

  The interior is full of light and utterly empty. No ornaments, paintings, or furniture mar its impersonal beauty. I breathe in the clean smell of fresh-cut wood, of new paint and sunlight through glass. My bare feet slap lightly on the warm, blond hardwood floor as I
pass from room to room through frosted doors which open by themselves ahead of me.

  In the third room I hear the faint sound of laughter. I pause. Am I trespassing upon another occupant?

  With every step I take the laughter increases in volume, intentional now, directed at me.

  It echoes from wall to wall in the barren house. I turn slowly, trying to determine which direction it’s coming from. I dread meeting the source of that sardonic laugh, yet I’m compelled to move forward. As I approach each frosted door I hold my breath, waiting in horror as it opens before me.

  A second voice joins the first, this one crying. It frightens me more than the laughter, though I don’t know why either sound should frighten me. I should have expected it, I think. The two are inseparable; how did I forget that?

  My own thoughts make no sense to me. I move on.

  The house with all its opulence no longer holds any allure. The white sunlight that filled it minutes ago as though the sun itself were trapped inside has faded away, leaving only a weary dullness to the air. Menacing shadows reach from the walls toward the centers of the rooms as I walk through them. Gloomy, I think. Gloaming: that other word for dusk. The time of tricks of sight. The time of thieves.

  The two sounds, laughter and weeping, echo from every wall, seeking me, willing me onward. The last pair of frosted doors opens and there they are, as I knew they would be.

  My father lies sobbing in his bed, his dark, emaciated arms reaching out to me.

  “Give it back, Akhié. Give it back!” he weeps, his outstretched arms imploring. His eyes are vacant. He stares right through me, seeing someone else even as he cries my name. I am not real to him; I have never been real to him.

  Owegbé’s laughter increases, drowning out Itohan’s weeping. “Everything in this house is yours!” she cries, contemptuous and amused, sweeping out her arm to encompass the empty rooms. “Nothing! Nothing is yours. You have earned nothing!” She throws back her head and laughs, the sound bouncing off the bare walls, louder and louder, deafening...