Skykeeper (The Drowning Empire Book 1)

by S. M. Gaither

  But I am right. Because in no time at all, I’ve thrown every one of my belongings out on the floor behind me, and I’ve found that drawstring bag that West gave me.

  It’s empty.

  Not a single one of those diamond-shaped pills, the ones he swore did nothing except keep away nightmares, is left.

  At my feet is my empty canteen, and I suddenly remember how eagerly he left to fill it. As eagerly as he left to fill everyone else’s—which, at the time, I thought was only because he wanted a chance to get out of the hold and into the fresh air.

  And I drank the water just as eagerly.

  Varick enters the room quietly, and he silently gathers up all the things I’ve thrown and piles them neatly beside me. He seems to be aware that something very painful is going through my mind, but he does nothing except sit patiently at my side.

  It takes me a long time to work up the resolve to speak first, to explain everything in a somewhat coherent way.

  When I finish, he picks up something from my bag—one of my mother’s pearl necklaces—and turns it over in his hands, stares at it as he says, “I’m sorry. I know the two of you were—”

  “Were what?” I say stiffly. “We were absolutely nothing. He wanted to get away from me, and now he has, and I don’t care. I expected him to leave. I only wish he hadn’t hurt anyone else on the way out. If anybody should be apologizing, it’s me.”

  “He was more desperate to escape us than I thought.” The pearls clink softly together as Varick lifts the necklace, stretches it out with one hand only to let it pile neatly back down in his opposite palm. “There’s been no sign of the girl, either.”

  The thought of Coralind’s face is harder to take. I know why West is gone. And I still haven’t forgotten the way Coralind treated me when we first met—or the doubts I had about her—but she had slowly been proving those doubts wrong.

  What if she tried to confront West, and he did something horrible to her?

  “She may still be here, somewhere.” That firmness in my voice threatens to give way, but I manage to keep the words steady, and then to stand up and move away from the evidence of these empty bags.

  Varick doesn’t look as if he thinks we’ll find her. But he seems to understand that I am not ready to have this last shred of hope taken from me yet, because he says: “We’ll keep looking for her, then.”

  I nod, and then I rise to my feet, grab my bags, and start flinging things into them. I don’t know how much time passed while I was poisoned and delirious. I don’t know what—if anything—is left of that path through the Atesian.

  All I know is I have to get out of this room, to get outside to where I can see the sky.

  Three days. That was the sent runner’s best estimate, based on the people he talked to in Silverwater. That is how much time has been wasted. Three days’ worth of weight added to the barrier above, threatening to buckle it further. Three more days of keepers rebelling, armies rising and burning—and who knows how many people perishing at the expense of all these things.

  It feels like there is three days’ worth of the same weight on my chest, too, as I step outside and walk toward the stables, toward the room where I’ve stored Finn’s tack.

  The night is an unforgiving cold, the kind that hangs ruthlessly on to my skin even after I slip into the warmth of the stable.

  It’s quiet here. Much quieter than in the hold, which seems to have doubled in noise even with only half as many people filling it now. Others have been stumbling back, in various degrees of awareness, but there are still nearly a dozen unaccounted for.

  And there is still no sign of West or Coralind.

  The longer this—the realization that they’re both actually gone—sits on my mind, the heavier it seems to become. I suppose sometimes it’s hard to realize the true weight of things until they aren’t there anymore.

  Everyone left is rushing about, talking about what’s happened. I want to hide from them all. I feel the same as I did when my brother died: as if some part of this is my fault. And now everyone is watching me, whispering about the two that are dead, and about how I was the one who brought West and his dark magic into what was supposed to be our safehold.

  So I am leaving the regrouping efforts to Varick, and in the meantime, I am waiting and thankful for the warmth of this stable, for its comforting scent of horse and dried seagrass and old wood.

  But it does make me think of home, in a terrible, gut-wrenching sort of way; of all the times I helped my brother in the stables. I try to push those memories back as I pull Finn’s saddle from the wall and set it at my feet. I reach for his bridle next, wrap the reins around my arm and let my fingers find the worn places where I’ve held them.

  Then, even though I know I shouldn’t stop—that I should keep going, find Finn and finish preparing to leave—for a moment I simply lean back against the splintered wood wall, and I hold still.

  The moment stretches on, and for once I don’t feel restless. I don’t want to keep moving. I don’t want to do anything unless it involves somehow going back in time to before any of this happened.

  I can’t do this.

  The thought takes me in a brutal grip, and suddenly I feel as if I couldn’t move even if I wanted to. I never should have started to move in the first place. I should have stayed home. Should never have tried to do this, because I am not my brother, however clearly I still hear him in my thoughts. The magic in my blood is useless. Beyond my control, and not enough to fix everything even if it wasn’t—and all I’ve managed to do is to misjudge and divide people, and to start fires I can’t put out, and battles I don’t know how to finish.

  I am also alone, with no one here to see me.

  And so, for the first time in what feels like a very long time, I cry.

  Not silent, dry heaves, or angry hitches for breath, but actual hot tears streaming down my cheeks, muffled only by my hands over my face. I cry for the mistakes I’ve made, for the things I’ve lost. The home I may never have again. The people I couldn’t save. For a world that feels broken and bruised and battered, and that I will never, ever know how to fix. I cry because I am tired of trying, when all of it feels so pointless in the end.

  So, so tired.

  I cry until I’m out of tears. My heart is raw, body heavy with grief, and I am slipping further and further down the wall, sliding into the floor and sinking deeper until I am like a part of it, an ugly statue carved out of the rough stone.

  Another statue to be forgotten and cast aside, just like all the ones in that garden of broken gods.

  I curl tighter against the floor, arms and legs folding to my body as though I could become small enough for this grief to overlook me.

  It feels like I am back on the shore of Isce, watching them carry my brother’s lifeless body; only this time, I haven’t managed to outrun the water myself. I am not up high enough. The waves are rising, crashing over me, and I fold tighter, hold my breath as they batter me about. I imagine the surface far above me now: a wobbling, distorted bit of light, broken beams of it stretching, not quite reaching the depths. Not quite reaching me.

  The waves crash again and again, and my body rocks with them until it is too tired to move, too tired to heave with another sob.

  And this should be it: the moment I’ve always feared. I’ve stopped. I’ve let it all catch up with me: the fear, the uncertainty, and the reality that my brother is truly gone. Gone, gone, gone—and there is no one else to take his place and fill the spaces he left.

  So this should be the moment when it all ends, and I know exactly how it should go. Because for all my attempts to avoid reaching this place, I thought I knew what would happen when I got here. I was so sure of the way all these things were going to drag me to the watery grave my brother wasted his time saving me from.

  Only, they don’t.

  I haven’t drowned yet, and when the waters finish washing over me, and my body goes motionless and silent once more, I am still here, and I am st
ill breathing. And I am suddenly aware of a bit of bluish-white light streaming in through the low window across from me.

  Lantern light.

  Someone is coming.

  Chapter 24

  I have to stand up.

  Just one more time, I tell myself.

  So I do, and then I cross to the dirty window, use my tear-soaked sleeve to clear a spot that is big enough to see through.

  At least six people are walking this way. And though I’ve allowed myself to break down in here, and I don’t regret it the way I thought I would, I still don’t want anybody to see me looking like this. My guess is that they are heading here to collect and prepare their own horses—so I doubt they’ll be in here long. I decide to wait it out, and I dart from the tack room and climb as quickly as I can up the squeaky ladder that leads into the loft. It’s much darker up here, and because of that and my bleary, bloodshot eyes, I have to crawl, feeling my way across the floor to avoid any rotting planks that might prove disastrous underneath my full weight.

  I’ve only made it a few feet from the opening to the loft when I hear hushed voices coming into the barn. Someone must have set fire to one of the torches by the door, because more light—warm, orange light—floods the space below. It stretches up into the loft and dangerously close to my feet. I freeze, afraid they might overhear the creaking and moaning of the planks beneath me, and I listen closely, following the sound of the group as they predictably make their way to the tack room.

  I recognize Varick’s voice, and his clear Alturian accent, although I can’t make out much of what he’s saying. I don’t feel right eavesdropping, so I try to distract myself with something else—anything else—around me.

  It doesn’t take long to find something. Or to hear something, rather, because a moment later those planks are creaking again. But not because of me. I am still not moving.

  Something else is.

  The conversation in the tack room is getting louder, so I chance a low whisper. “Who’s there?”

  A moving shadow, small and quick, is my only answer. It darts from the tiny bit of light shining through the opening to the lower level, and then disappears behind a thick support beam. Not a person; some sort of animal. I rise to a crouch and take a moment to steady myself. My right hand braces against the floor, feeling for any vibrations of movement.

  Nothing at first.

  But then the floor shakes—just barely. The lightest of footfalls quivering through the wood and tingling up the nerves of my arm. My fingers itch toward one of the knives strapped to my leg.

  I’ve only just started to draw that knife free when the creature I’d been preparing to aim for steps back into light.

  Atlas.

  His eyes widen a little at the sight of me, and his tail twitches in a way that reminds me of a pet cat my mother used to own. “You again,” I whisper, pressing the knife back into its sheath. “You have to stop scaring me like this.” His tail twitches again, and he bounds to my side with two very large—and very loud—bounces. “And you also need to be quiet. I’m trying to hide up here.” He seems intelligent enough to understand that much, at least. He settles on my arm and curls up against me, still and silent as one of the many dragon statues that decorated the elder’s house back in his village.

  I stare at him, a quiet question growing more and more insistent as the moments pass: Why is he still here, when his owner is nowhere to be found?

  The two of them seemed inseparable from the moment I met them.

  A sick feeling starts to build inside me, pressing against the walls of my stomach and rising into my chest. It may mean nothing at all. And I am still only just resurfacing from earlier, just managing to rise through those crashing waves—so the last thing I want is to put myself in the path of more. I don’t want to start wondering, all over again, what has really happened to Coralind.

  But I can’t help myself.

  I quietly lift Atlas from my arm and let him balance himself on my shoulder instead. And then I turn, and I start to creep my way across the rafters, keeping as much in the shadows as possible and wincing every time a board creaks too loudly. With every inch closer I get to the space above the meeting room, my heart thumps a little harder.

  I get near enough to make out some of what is being said, and it quickly becomes obvious that they’re in the middle of an argument. Between that and the fact that most of them are speaking in forcibly hushed voices, it’s near impossible to make any sort of sense of whatever they’re meeting about.

  My curiosity won’t let me turn back now, so I drop as quietly as I can manage to the floor and press my ear against a crack.

  Much better.

  I can make out distinct words now, although it still takes me a moment to put them in context. They’re talking about what’s happened during these past three days. I only vaguely recognize the first few voices that speak—one is a Gardian accent, but the other two are Alturian. Then Varick’s rises loudly and clearly above the rest.

  “Things are still perfectly under control.”

  Grumbling. More conversation that means frustratingly little to me.

  But then I hear a woman’s voice say, “How much longer do you think you can keep her in the dark about what we’ve been doing? She still thinks we intend to cross the sea. What are you going to tell her?”

  Somehow I manage not to move, not to exhale the breath I am holding for another few seconds—long enough that I can keep listening for Varick’s reply: “I will tell her the truth—or a version of it at least.” I don’t have to be able to see him to know that his jaw is clenching with the words. “We’ve been over this.”

  “She’s more useful as martyr at this point.”

  “Debatable,” answers a woman with a Gardian accent.

  “She’s amassed more opposition to the emperor than we could have ever hoped for. Why be greedy now? Those rebelling in her name will still rebel if she’s dead—the only difference is that we will be able to direct them in her honor, instead of having to defer to her actual leadership.”

  “Her leadership could prove more useful than anything,” Varick says. “Don’t forget her bloodline.”

  “Don’t forget your bloodline,” another of the Alturians mutters.

  “She is dangerous,” agrees the other. “Too dangerous to be left alive, and if you’re too attached to her to do anything about it, then you could at least let me take care of her for you.”

  “If you so much as lay a finger on her,” Varick says in his deathly calm voice, “you will sincerely regret it.” The argumentative woman hisses something too low for me to hear, something that Varick responds to with, “She will be. If only because there is no one left for her to align herself with now that the other two are dead.”

  I sit up too quickly. The floor squeaks, and I panic even further at the sound. I scramble back several excruciatingly loud feet before I calm down enough to force myself to be still again.

  Too late.

  The conversation below stops. A moment later I hear someone mutter something about Atlas, about the way the irritating little thing was still fluttering around here earlier.

  At the mention of himself, the dragon gives an excited chirp and shimmies down from his perch on my back. He squeezes his head into a crack in the floor, and then jerks it back up and twists it toward me. I press a finger to my lips, but it does no good; he’s too far away, and his chirping only grows even more excited. In one last, desperate move, my hand shoots out and grabs for the tip of his sharp tail.

  The motion makes entirely too much noise.

  I should have just kept still.

  An instant later, cerulean-tinged magic creeps up into the cracks of the floor, filling the space around me with its faint, ghostly light. The boards begin to shake and rattle. The magic grows brighter, bolder, long white-blue tendrils of it rising and clawing for me.

  I try to run, but I am not quick enough.

  The wood splits and erupts in a violent uph
eaval of blue light. Suddenly there is nothing beneath my feet. My hands grab for the edge of the splintering floor, but they tread nothing but air. I fall, twisting and tumbling among dust and wood, and I land on my back, slamming the air from my lungs. I close my eyes. Try to stop the room from churning around me. When I manage to open them again, my dizzy vision finds a circle of people staring down at me.

  Two of the men looming over me grab my arms, jerk me to my feet and throw me back against the wall.

  The cry that escapes me is primal, automatic. My body is stinging and aching in so many places from my fall that I’m not even sure where the pain is coming from. I just know it’s there. And it is making it difficult to see straight, which is why I see three separate versions of Aidan Varick stepping toward me.

  “Let go of her.”

  Whispers and mumbles spread around the room, but he doesn’t have to repeat himself. The pressure on my arms relaxes, and the two holding me step away. My body crumples with the sudden loss of support and slumps against the wall. A low hiss—Atlas—sounds from somewhere nearby me, but then turns into a painful screech that is abruptly silenced. I try not to think about what they might have done to him—to the one creature in this room who may still be on my side—and I brace my hands behind me and try to push myself back to something like a formidable stance.

  The room is spinning slower now. I see only one set of Varick’s striking green eyes boring into mine.

  “What is going on?” My words slip out in between quick, panicked breaths. They’re all I can manage to say. All I can manage to think, over and over again, as my eyes fall on that blue ribbon still tied so securely around his arm.

  “Leave us,” he commands the others. More grumbling and complaining, but again, they obey. They file silently out the door.

  Just the two of us, now.

  And suddenly, somehow, being alone with him is more terrifying than being surrounded by everyone all at once.

  Chapter 25