Skykeeper (The Drowning Empire Book 1)

by S. M. Gaither

  My fists clench. “I don’t understand why people think they should answer destruction with destruction,” I say.

  But it is a lie.

  Because I do understand that, don’t I? I know how badly I wanted to bring ruin on the emperor and everything he had ever done or touched. To make someone suffer the way I was suffering as I watched them carry my brother’s dead body.

  Taryn doesn’t seem fully convinced by my lie; her voice is much more sympathetic than mine when she says, “Does anybody really know what they are doing these days, I wonder? Who prepares enough for the end to know what they should or shouldn’t do when it comes?”

  “The end?” Coralind repeats.

  I follow her gaze as she turns it toward the group that is sealing off the path to us, still outlasting the ones on the other side. We can’t actually see any of them for the rocks, but the light of the barrier is bright enough that it stretches high and reflects, solid and unbroken, against the murky Sea-Above. Coralind’s mouth opens, but she remains silent, staring at that light.

  I want her to finish her thought. I want her to be the one to say what I am trying so desperately to believe myself—that this is not the end.

  But nobody says anything. Not for a long time.

  Not until Taryn turns her appraising eyes to me and says, “The keepers are divided. Too many sides to stand on. A lot are angry at the emperor, and refusing to serve their purpose, to protect our sky, out of what I can only see as spite towards him. And they take their anger out on the ones like us—those who believe in your story and the things you’ve done, the things you plan to do.”

  As she speaks, her fingers touch the ribbon on her arm in the same way I’ve done so many times these past weeks. I shake my head and hold back a humorless, incredulous laugh.

  “You seem surprised that your story has traveled this far,” Taryn remarks.

  “I was only a small part of this story in the beginning. I never really expected so many people to notice what I was doing, I guess. And now I wonder if I’m doing the right things.”

  Because how can I be, when I’m surrounded by so much blood everywhere I go?

  Taryn’s pointed gaze softens a bit before she looks away. She retreats into her thoughts, while behind us a chattering begins—a chorus of relieved sighs and whispering voices. I turn to see that girl’s brother propped up on his elbows, his eyes blinking and attempting to focus as she throws her arms around him. My sigh joins the rest, and I am about to move toward the two of them when Taryn places a hand on my arm.

  “Your Westland friend told me you were searching for answers for these increasing rifts,” she says. “That you ultimately plan to cross the Atesian Sea-Below, to face the problem at its source.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then let me help you,” she says. “Let some of us go with you to face whatever you will find there. I owe you for helping them, after all.” She nods to the boy, who, with the help of his sister, is sitting fully up now. “My sister’s children,” she explains. “Or mine, actually, now that she’s gone.”

  “You can’t leave them, then,” I tell her. “And you can’t stop fighting the ones here, and let those others think they’re right to keep burning things as if this were the end. Because when I come back, I need for all these things to still be here. Otherwise there is no point in what I am trying to do.”

  I don’t tell her the other reason I’m not in a recruiting mood; how much all this violence confuses me and makes me sick. It certainly doesn’t make me feel like someone people should follow.

  “Have you not heard the latest death tolls from the islands?” Taryn asks. “They’re rising. Same goes for the northwestern mainlands—all you see here, it’s only going to get worse as you keep going. So are you even sure you will come back?”

  Her last question chokes the air from my lungs.

  But once I’ve recovered, I avoid answering it, just as I have been doing since the second I stepped foot outside the palace. “I don’t need you to come with me,” I say. “I have others coming. Others from Garda, because she has them to spare.” These last words fill me with fresh loathing for the emperor, which I throw off by starting to walk again. The crowd around the boy and his sister parts as I approach.

  Taryn doesn’t try to follow, to continue our conversation. She busies herself instead with gathering a group of people who best know these cliffs and caves, and sending them to search for our horses. She insists on collecting more supplies to send with us, as well, and while she fusses over that, I sit with the girl.

  And I try to forget, just for a moment, about the world outside the two of us.

  Her brother has already lain back to rest again. His breathing is more regular now, but she still looks worried.

  “How old are you?” I ask, trying to distract her with conversation.

  Her voice is steadier than before when she answers: “Eleven.”

  Even younger than my sisters, then. And certainly not old enough for this, I think, my eyes studying the blood streaked across her cheek. No one is ever old enough for this.

  “Only eleven, and you have that sort of control over your magic?” I say, trying to keep my voice light. “I’m impressed.”

  She only stares straight ahead at the compliment. “Aunt Taryn says necessity is a great teacher.”

  I am reminded of what Coralind said, about the keepers of her village having to learn to summon and seal far too soon.

  The world outside comes crashing mercilessly back in.

  That cut above the girl’s cheek is still bleeding a little. It’s not especially deep; she may not have even noticed it, as focused as she is on her brother.

  “Come here for a second,” I say, and she hesitates for only a moment before doing so. I lift my hand to cup her face, the way I used to do with my sisters when they were afraid and unsure, and I needed them to stop long enough to meet my gaze and hear me tell them things would be okay.

  The magic comes surprisingly easy this time, slipping from my fingertips to heal her. A small summoning, but it’s still enough to irritate the aching in my body all over again.

  “Thank you,” she says once I’ve finished. Still shyly—but then she turns and truly looks me in the eyes for the first time.

  And now I have another clear face collected, ready to be swept away in my nightmares.

  I breathe in deeply, trying to work the feeling back into the hand I summoned from. “What is your name?” I ask.

  “Sora,” she answers, and I shut my eyes and cling to it, because I need more than just nameless faces to keep me moving forward now.

  Chapter 19

  In a crumbling fountain in the center of the Garden of the Gods, I spend at least an hour trying to scrub the blood from my hands, my arms, my clothes.

  Then I give up. I sink back onto the fountain’s loose stone edge, pulling my knees to me. I was so desperate to wash the blood away that I have splashed water everywhere, soaked nearly every inch of my clothing and skin, and before long I am fighting shivers. But I am too exhausted to do much about it, besides gathering my arms and legs more tightly to me.

  Minutes later, I hear someone approaching, and a blanket drapes around my shoulders.

  West climbs up beside me.

  “I thought the water would be warmer once we got out of the middle kingdom,” I say, after several moments pass without him speaking. I wrap the blanket more securely around myself, and we both stare at the debris-littered water for a while, until he points at my reflection—at a smudge of red beneath my chin—and says, “You missed a spot.”

  I don’t move to clean it, staring instead at the way the unsettled sky is reflected in this dirty pool, and the way our mirror images make it look as if we’re floating in it. “I was thinking,” I say, “of simply letting it fall. Being done with it. That would wash the blood completely away, wouldn’t it?”

  “It would,” he agrees. “I think that might be overdoing it, though.”

  I l
ook up at him.

  “It’s just a spot,” he says quietly.

  And then, maybe because he doesn’t know what else to say, or because he needs an excuse to avert his eyes from mine, he picks up a few of the broken bits of stone around us and starts to toss them at the statue in the middle of the fountain. Or what is left of that statue, anyway—so much of its face is chipped and weathered away that I can’t even tell which god it’s supposed to be.

  The same is true of most of the other sculptures in here, too—the ones that aren’t broken are hidden, covered in sheets of spongy moss and wrapped in wild, twisting vines of flowering ivy. And still other parts of the shrine are gone completely—the parts that were made of more valuable materials, likely—leaving empty pedestals, and indentations in the walls and in the base of the fountains like the one we are sitting on.

  Before she went to sleep, Coralind told me about this garden, the way people used to trek for miles and miles to tend it. That trek was a minor pilgrimage of sorts—one with enough people partaking in it that these sacred grounds were always immaculate.

  But now there are no souls here but ours, and this place feels more like a place for worshipping ghosts than gods.

  I shift my weight from side to side, trying to get more comfortable, and West lowers the rock he was about to throw and turns to me instead.

  “How’s the shoulder?” he asks.

  I haven’t given it much thought, distracted by exhaustion and by the dull warnings that have started in my blood again, and so I only shrug. “Just another scar,” I say.

  The rock hits the water with a violent splash. “Why are you like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “So indifferent to what happens to you? Were you listening at all, when Taryn asked you about what comes next? Have you actually thought about that?”

  I watch the rings spreading from the spot where the rock sunk, waiting until long after the water’s surface has gone still again, before I answer. “If I think about it too much, I might have to stop.”

  “So stop, then,” he says. “You said you wanted to go home, back when we were in Solvel. Do you still want to? Because I’ll take you. We can pack up and go right this second if you want.”

  I laugh—even though I know there is nothing funny about any of this—because I don’t know what else to do. “Getting lazy, aren’t we? Thinking you can trick me into going back without lifting a finger?” I cut my eyes toward him. “You’re really a terrible hunter.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “I know.”

  But he is not smiling, not even in the tired, overwhelmed sort of way I am, and he is uncomfortably quiet for a long time after that.

  “That girl yesterday—Sora was her name,” I finally say, once I can’t take any more of that weighty silence between us, “she looked at me as if I was some sort of god.”

  “I’m just guessing,” he says, his voice sounding more lost than violent now, “but I don’t think gods bleed or scar quite so easily.”

  “That isn’t the point.” I turn away from the water, away from that broken statue in front of us, and I get to my feet. But something in the way West is watching me stops me before I can take a single step. “I left home because I was scared and angry,” I tell him, “and because it’s what my brother would have done, and I was afraid of letting him down. But now? Now I can’t turn back, because I am afraid of letting the whole world down. I don’t want people looking at me the way that girl did. I don’t want them wearing those ridiculous ribbons, or fighting and dying in my name, or following me, or starting fires, or any of this. It’s all wrong, and I know it is, and I know I am no god and that I am not the person who is supposed to be playing this part. But I am. And I don’t even know for sure what that part is now. I wanted to find a solution, but people are focusing on how I defied the emperor and so instead I’m starting a war, and how, how could I possibly go home with this blood on my hands and no clear proof or answers. How can I possibly—”

  I have to pause in order to breathe, to choke down the angry cry threatening to escape.

  Once I’ve stopped, I can’t seem to start again, or even remember where I was going in the first place.

  “Why do you care what happens to me, anyway?” I ask. “Aren’t you the one who wanted the emperor to hang me?” I am hoping my words and my bitter, accusing tone might be enough to get him to drop this whole foolish conversation.

  And they do make him stop. They make him draw away from me, and his eyes grow cloudy and distant enough that I feel like maybe I could move now, the tension in my body peeling away to an exhausted indifference underneath.

  At least until he says, in a hushed, hesitant voice: “Well, maybe I changed my mind.”

  His eyes are back on the water, but all of a sudden I can’t stop staring at him.

  “Well, I wish you hadn’t,” I whisper.

  Because it was easier when he wanted me dead.

  I don’t need another person that I can’t bear the thought of letting down. Of losing. I don’t need the way he doesn’t seem to be able to look at me anymore, or this fierce pounding in my chest, or this somersaulting stomach or my hands shaking or head swimming.

  What I need is to keep moving.

  So I clear my throat. “Thank you for the blanket,” I manage to stammer, and I hand it back to him before walking away.

  I pass the next several hours far away from West, picking up bits and pieces of broken gods and goddesses, carrying them to the brightest corner of the garden and arranging them into a new monument there.

  Atlas is my only company. He warms the air around me as I work, watching with his head cocked sideways as I pull weeds and hack away vines, smoothing a plot of ground large enough to contain the collected statues. I try to stand them up in a way that makes sense, to put them in the proper hierarchy and keep related demigods and goddesses together. But there are too many I don’t recognize. Too many who I know I learned about once, but can’t remember now.

  “I doubt most people around here will know the difference anyhow,” I tell Atlas, who replies with a yawn. “Not judging by the look of the rest of this place, anyway.”

  But I don’t want to leave it at that.

  So despite what I’ve said, I keep trying, turning the statues over and over and running my fingers along symbols and stone faces, trying to place them. It gives me something to do, at least; more ways to keep busy, even as I am waiting, and that was the main reason I started this project to begin with.

  By the time the dromlight pressing through the uncertain sky grows weaker, Atlas is asleep, and the air has become colder. I sit at the foot of my nearly completed shrine with one last statue in my hands: a demigod with a cunning smile and pointed ears—or ear, rather, as one of them is missing. I am so lost in thought trying to remember his name that I hardly move when I hear footsteps picking their way through the dense overgrowth.

  “He’s called Dolos, if you were wondering.”

  My heart swells, right up into my throat, and I drop the statue as Varick crouches down next to me.

  “Hello,” he says, and his smile is the same one I remember from our last night together: a little sheepish, a little shy, a little out of place on his normally serious face.

  “You’re here.”

  “Did you think I wouldn’t be?” he asks, that smile lifting in one of the corners. “After I gave you my word?” Then his eyes find the blood still staining my chin, and his face falls a bit when he says, “I only wish I’d been here sooner.”

  I’ve lost my breath somehow, and it takes me a moment to catch it again before I say, “You’re early. Your diplomatic visit wasn’t scheduled to end so soon, was it? How did you convince the emperor to let you leave?” I frown as a possible, obvious solution hits me. “Please don’t tell me you’re a fugitive along with me, now.”

  “Quite the opposite,” he says. “I volunteered to leave, stating I would lead a task force back toward my kingdom, to help settle the sudden un
rest and rebellion growing there and along the way. And of course, I agreed to apprehend the rebel responsible for that unrest, if given the chance.” His smile is slight, a bit mischievous. “The council eventually decided that I would be more useful outside of Garda than in it. They even allowed me to take others with me to aid in my new mission—so I brought as many of your brother’s fellow rebels as I could convince, of course.” He glances back toward the place where I left Coralind and West. I can hear a small crowd’s worth of hushed voices, and the sound ignites a small flame of hope.

  “There are nearly twenty of us,” Varick says, “and I’ve sent word for some of my fellow Alturians to meet us soon, as well.”

  “You moved so quickly,” I say, frowning. “You’re lucky you weren’t caught. When I didn’t hear from you for so long, I thought something had happened, I…”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t stick to the plan. But I couldn’t stop thinking about you, wondering if I’d made a mistake, letting you go on ahead. I believe I would have gone mad, staying in that palace as long as I’d originally meant to.”

  He stands and offers me a hand up. I start to take it, but then I notice something that makes me drop slowly back to my knees and brace my palms against the ground: he has a frayed blue ribbon tied around his arm.

  “I’m guessing you weren’t wearing that when you left.”

  “No,” he says, his expression brightening again. “Though they have become all the rage throughout the empire.”

  “Yes. It seems I’ve managed to start a trend.”

  “And I’ve been doing my best to help spread it. Everyone I’ve brought with me has been—although we didn’t have much work to do. You’ve left something of a legend in your wake, you know. People everywhere are talking about your brother’s death, and your defiance that followed it. They’re eager to align themselves with you.”

  Suddenly all I can picture is Taryn and Sora and the rest of that ribbon-clad army, and I wonder what has become of them since I had to leave them behind.