Skykeeper (The Drowning Empire Book 1)

by S. M. Gaither

  “That wasn’t exactly my intention when I left—to divide people the way I have.”

  Varick reaches for me again, and he looks concerned as he pulls me to my feet. “Not exactly, perhaps.” He uses his knuckle to gently smudge away that last bit of blood on my face. “But I believe people were already divided; the ones wearing these ribbons now were simply waiting for someone to stand up to the emperor. Someone they could follow, who would lead the way toward the change this empire so desperately needs. Aven…”

  The way he says my name makes the restlessness I’ve been fighting all evening finally settle, just for a moment, just long enough to truly meet his eyes.

  “You’ve done a great thing,” he concludes. “And there is more greatness in your future, I believe. I wouldn’t have followed you myself if I didn’t believe it.”

  I sigh. “I just wish I knew the cost of it all. So much fire and blood already… And if people are truly turning on the emperor, that means the palace could be in danger, and my sisters…”

  “Your sisters are fine,” he says. “The emperor isn’t without members of his army still loyal to him—and so all of the capital city, and much of inner Garda, is fine for now.”

  “Fine…,” I repeat slowly, letting the word linger on my tongue, trying to give it time to sink in and let me believe in it.

  “I can’t say how long it will last,” Varick admits. “But we will see Garda again soon enough, after we see to our business in the Westland Kingdom.”

  I nod, numbly, even though I don’t think either of us truly believes that our business there will be simple or quick.

  “So never mind the ones so far away. What about you?”

  I tug my sleeves further down over my hands, covering up palms and wrists that are made almost entirely of scars at this point.

  “It’s been a few years,” he says, “but I remember how powerfully the rifts burned those first few months after I initially sensed them. And the barrier was nowhere near as unsettled back then as it is now. These past weeks must have been excruciating for you. Something else that occurred to me after you left—another reason I hurried after you.”

  I am determined not to talk about this, not to admit how right he is. But it’s relieving, in a way, looking into the sea-glass green of his knowing eyes. He reminds me of home, and he has the same Pure ties to the sky that I do, so I know he understands what it means to be drawn to it in a way that West—or even Coralind—will never be able to.

  And he understands why I left home, and why I can’t go back now, even if it hurts to keep moving forward. Even if I’m afraid.

  So instead of turning away, I quietly confess: “I feel it almost all the time, now. I can’t ignore it. I don’t remember the last time I really slept.”

  He takes my scarred hands in his and squeezes. I lean my forehead against his chest, mostly so he can’t see the exhaustion and tears brimming in my eyes, and he wraps his arms around me and pulls me closer.

  “We will fix it,” he says.

  And more than anything in the world just then, I want to believe him.

  Part IV

  Chapter 20

  The lowlands outside of Silverwater are flooded, and the causeway all but covered by the rising Atesian Sea-Below.

  Finn does better on the soggy ground than the other horses; he is able to pick the safest path through, avoiding the deeper pools and sinking mudholes. So we lead the way to higher ground.

  I keep my eyes on the sky as he climbs. It is the purplish-blue of a fresh bruise, scattered with darker, throbbing pockets of black. My whole life, I have been watching and studying the way our barrier-sky shifts, but I have never seen it look quite like this. I’m not sure what to make of it. All I know is that the pressure inside of me is growing again, the magic pulling this way and that, unsure of which threat it should try to stop first. My skin itches and trembles. My throat is cotton-dry, no matter how many sips I take from my canteen.

  Remember to breathe, I hear my brother saying. Remember that you control your magic, and not the other way around.

  And I have, at least, managed enough control over it at this point that I can keep it inside me. Which I do, despite the fact that it would be much less painful to simply let it escape.

  I won’t risk drawing more attention to our party by creating a show of that green magic.

  I don’t know what will happen to this control once we cross the sea, and that magic gets too close to the center of all this. I have tried telling myself that it will be different, as I will have more keepers gathered around me—the ones trailing behind us, and more still that Varick has meeting us ahead. That the presence of their magic will somehow settle mine.

  But still I have a horrifying image in my head of it all rising, all together, and bursting through and breaking me on the way out.

  Are you sure you will come back?

  I am almost out of room to run from that question, it seems.

  Soon after we pass the gates of Silverwater, we climb a hilltop that stretches to more seaside cliffs in the distance. The ground here is merely damp, with only a few deeper puddles to splash through. Varick takes the lead, then, at almost the same instant a man appears at the base of a mountain path up ahead. I slow to a halt while he rides ahead to speak to him.

  He is an expected sight— one of those Alturians that Varick sent word to— and the leader of a group that’s been preparing a nearby abandoned fort for us to stay in. The plan is for us to rest and prepare for our crossing here, rather than in the busy town of Silverwater.

  Varick rides back to us quickly, and his eyes are on the distant sea-below as he says, “We have one night at most. All this flooding came from rifts just this morning. There are more keepers stationed here than almost anywhere, because of the causeway and because of Silverwater’s importance as a trading hub, so I didn’t think it would be this bad yet. But it seems I’ve underestimated.” He looks up, runs a hand along his arm. “And it feels like there may be more trouble incoming soon.”

  Even he seems unsettled by the magic lighting in his blood, even with all the control I know he has over it. For a moment, that makes me feel better about the way I am struggling with my own.

  But only for a moment.

  Because then I can’t help but think: if even he is this worried, what sort of monstrous rifts must be incoming?

  “Do you think we even have one night?” I ask. “There may be no path left in the morning.”

  He frowns. “It’s nearly a thirty-mile crossing to the other side—and not an easy thirty miles at that. And once we start, there won’t be a safe place to stop. The horses need more rest, and we have supplies to gather and a precise strategy to work out.”

  I nod slowly, reluctantly.

  But as I follow him up that narrow path into the mountains ahead, my eyes are still looking to the Sea-Above.

  Kell’s Hold is the proper name of this place, and it turns out to be about as inviting and comfortable as one might expect of a former war fort: dimly lit corridor after dimly lit corridor; rough, cold floors; and a lingering smell and feel of damp staleness in the air. In some areas, it seems like attempts were made to warm the place up a bit at some point—a few of the old wooden doors are painted a cheerful shade of red, rugs are tossed haphazardly onto the floor, and brightly woven tapestries hang along some of the walls—but most of these things only seem like odd, out-of-place attempts to turn beauty from the dreary stone.

  This place is a relic, left over from nearly a century ago—from a period of darker, more divided days in Caspia’s history—and no amount of decoration can cover that up.

  There is one bright tapestry just outside my room, though, that has managed to distract me from the cold, if only for a few moments. On it, threads of every shade of blue imaginable depict two huge waves, curved and meeting over a green hill blanketed in white flowers. Four figures on horseback stand on top of the hill, dressed in long, flowing robes of gold, their heads bowed and ha
nds holding one another’s. The four Creators, in the center of the world they built. I study their faces. Searching for my likeness, as ridiculous as that might be.

  But I see nothing of myself in these threads.

  Around the tapestry’s border, intricate and strange symbols are weaved in alternating shades of Gardian teal and Alturian gold. I step closer and run my fingers over the worn, velvety cloth, tracing the patterns. I recognize some of them from designs I’ve seen on the traditional clothing and jewelry I dressed in for sealing ceremonies, but exactly what they stand for, I’m not sure.

  A soft rustling sound, coming from the door at the end of the hallway, steals my attention. I try to ignore it, because I know it’s coming from the room West is staying in. There are only a handful of habitable rooms in this place, as most of the lower level apparently flooded some years ago and has since been boarded up. There’s this hall of sleeping quarters, and the one across from it, with rooms that were already occupied by the ones waiting for us here. That’s it.

  So I had no choice but to be on the same hall as West—even though I decided, on my way inside earlier, that from this point on I would just ignore him and stay away as best I could. He’s been ignoring me since that moment by the fountain, anyway.

  It’s the simpler thing.

  The less distracting thing.

  But the longer I stand here, listening to the echoes of his movement reverberating out into the hall, the angrier I get.

  Why should I have to avoid him?

  We made a deal. He is supposed to be helping me. Not making me doubt myself. Not trying to talk me out of my plan, into simply forgetting everything I have already been through, just because he has suddenly decided he is afraid of what might happen to me.

  My feet carry me on their own down the hall. I pause outside his cracked door just long enough to take a deep breath and wonder if I am making a mistake.

  Too late to stop now.

  I try to open the door quietly, but the rusted hinges creak so loudly that people in the surface world above probably hear me enter the room. West is standing by the bed in the corner, his bags piled on the bed in front of him.

  Not a single thing in them unpacked, and we have been here for hours now.

  He glances at me out of the corner of his eye, but then he only goes back to rummaging intently through one of the bags. He doesn’t acknowledge me in any other way, no matter how long I stand there.

  “Settling in?” I finally ask.

  “Get out,” he says, nodding toward the door.

  But his tone is like frost in my veins, freezing me to the spot. “I thought you might have been unpacking. It’s been hours now—if you take much longer, there isn’t going to be much need, is there? We’re leaving first thing in the morning.” I roll my shoulders, trying to shrug off the lingering ice, and I take a few more steps into the room.

  “There’s already no need.” He unfastens the buckle on one of his bags, only to fasten it back again. His fingers, his words—everything about him seems clumsy, uncertain. Much worse than last night.

  Something about this seems much, much worse than last night.

  I am not angry anymore. My irritation suffocates as quickly as it flared up, every one of his unsure movements dampening it further, turning it into a cold lump that settles in my throat. A lump that makes it hard to breathe, and even harder to speak. When I finally manage words, they’re small and unsteady, just barely able to make their way out. “What do you mean there’s no need?”

  “There’s no need, because I’m not staying.”

  “Oh.” That lump rises from the back of my throat. It settles on my tongue instead, makes it feel stupid and heavy in my mouth.

  “You don’t need me anymore, right? You have others now—others like you. There’s no reason for me to stick around.”

  “I see,” I say slowly. “No reason at all.”

  “None.”

  He slings one of the bags over his shoulder and finally turns to face me. Light from the lantern near the door falls on his clenched hand, and I catch a gleam of silver in the cracks between his fingers. My thoughts race back to the night he couldn’t sleep by the fire, to all the times I opened my eyes and saw him staring at that ring, turning it over and over in his hands. And then to the caves, and the moment where he weighed it against the stone I carry.

  But I can’t make any sense of it, because all I can clearly think is…leaving.

  He’s leaving.

  “We had a deal,” I say.

  “I was just having fun.” His voice is even colder than before.

  “The skies breaking and the world rising to war and destroying itself unless we find a way to stop it…all of that is fun to you, is it?”

  “I thought you would have given up by now,” he says. “That you would have realized how pointless it was, and turned around and gone back to where you belonged, and I would have collected my money and carried on with whatever—”

  “Back to where I belonged?” I repeat, temper igniting again. “What do you know about where I belong? You don’t know anything about me.”

  “Wouldn’t it be nice if that were true?” The words drop off sharply, as if he’s tried too late to stop them. “You’re right, though,” he adds in a quieter voice. “I don’t know where you belong anymore. I don’t know where I belong either, and that’s the problem—I had this all figured out before I found you, but then you…” He readjusts the bag slung over his shoulder, clutches the strap so tightly his knuckles turn white. “You just didn’t make things as simple as I wanted them to be, all right?”

  “It’s as simple as it always was: you’re going to keep me alive and in one piece until this is over, whether I like it or not. Those were your words.”

  “I take them back, then.”

  “You can’t just take them back.”

  “I still thought this was just a job when I said that. It didn’t matter if I failed you.”

  “It’s still a job.”

  “Well, I quit, then. And you don’t owe me anything.”

  “I never planned on paying you.”

  He almost looks like he wants to smile, which only makes me angrier. “I had a feeling you didn’t,” he says. And then he turns toward the door and continues, in a voice as irritatingly easy as his smile: “Maybe we’ll see each other again, if you manage not to get yourself killed. A few months from now, once you’ve started to miss me—”

  “That would take years.”

  “So I’ll see you in a few years.”

  “Or possibly an eternity.”

  “An eternity it is, then. But, until then—”

  I grab his hand.

  I don’t know why.

  When he looks at me, eyes wide and searching for an explanation, I don’t have one to give him. I don’t have an explanation, either, for the way my heart is thundering. Or for how very aware I am of each of his breaths, and the way each one is quicker and raspier than the last, as if they’re keeping rhythm with the frantic pumping of my blood.

  I don’t know why my hand is shaking against his.

  The only thing I know for sure is that his skin is warm against mine, and I feel weightless and strange, like all the anger and confusion I felt toward him has dissolved inside me, and my body hasn’t quite figured out what to replace it with yet.

  He still hasn’t pulled away from me. I am fixated, for the moment at least, on this. On the way his fist has unclenched, if only a little. If only because he thought for a second about uncurling his fingers and wrapping them in the spaces between mine instead. But if he did that, the ring in his hand might have slipped through the cracks.

  So instead, his fist stays tight, and the ring stays like a silent, buried curse between us.

  Only for a moment, though—and then I dig it up myself, using my free hand to pull his palm flat and open. I have already made a fool of myself, after all.

  Why bother stopping now?

  “Who did it belong
to?” I ask. I can feel his body tense from the first word, and I am not surprised when it takes him a long time to answer.

  “Someone I failed,” he finally says, and all the world seems to shrink to the space between us, to our hands and everything they’re holding.

  “Someone you loved?” I guess. “Someone from back home, right? So there was more to why you left the islands, other than just what was happening above them—wasn’t there?”

  I think we both already know that I am right, which may be why he doesn’t bother to answer. He only takes a deep breath and stares at me the same way he stared into the flames on that sleepless night by the river. And suddenly I realize what that look is: it’s that awful emptiness, the stare of the lost, of the ones the world has taken too much from. I know it because I’ve seen it in my own reflection. I know it because I feel it all over again now, as he takes a step back, pulling his hand from mine.

  He lifts his gaze, forces it to meet mine.

  “I’m sorry,” he says.

  “You can save your apologies. I don’t need them.” I try, but my voice doesn’t have the edge I want it to. I can’t shout at him, after all. I can’t tell him I hate him. I can’t tell him I don’t understand why he wants to leave, because I do.

  Somehow, that doesn’t make this any easier.

  But I am not stopping him. Not again. As he walks away, I am only standing in the center of this room that feels much bigger now, while perhaps the only valuable piece of advice my mother ever gave me runs through my head: the people who run away from you and your problems are seldom worth catching.

  It’s not that simple, though, is it?

  I would run too, if I were him.

  I would have run a long time ago.

  I walk to the bed as if I am treading water, empty movement that leaves me feeling as if I am still in the same place, even once my knees hit the stiff mattress. I turn and slide down against it, leaning back and ignoring the bent, wayward piece of straw that pokes out, jabbing into my shoulder. My hands are still trembling. I cross them behind my head, grip the edge of the mattress to try and steady them.