Skykeeper (The Drowning Empire Book 1)

by S. M. Gaither

  There is blood dripping down between my eyes.

  Atlas is dragging himself underneath a bit of the shattered ceiling in the corner, and once there, he collapses and lies pitifully still.

  I lift a hand and feel the small shard of wood sticking out of my skin, right along my hairline. Varick’s hand follows mine. He gently removes the shard, and then he presses his fingers over the wound and summons. The called magic settles against my skin, warm and tingling as it pulls it back together.

  I recoil from his touch, sidestep my way around him and put as much space between us as the tiny room will allow. He doesn’t try to stop me.

  “Aven—”

  “You killed them.”

  “They didn’t actually die by my hand, for what it’s worth.” He turns and follows me with only his eyes. “I would have spared them, if only for your sake. And I’m not generally the sparing type.”

  I glare at him.

  “We did what we had to do. There is more to this, if you would only—”

  “You were the one who poisoned me too, weren’t you? You framed West. You took those pills from my bag.”

  “Yes—and no, to the last of that,” he says. “Yes, the islander was laughably easy to frame for the crime, but…” He reaches into the pocket of his coat, pulls out a small pouch and tosses it to me.

  It isn’t the one that West gave me. It’s leather and plain, with no gods or goddesses decorating it, and before I’ve even opened it, I can smell its contents: perfumed, flowery citrus and spice. The scent is nauseatingly familiar, and when I open the bag, I understand why.

  Inside, there are dozens and dozens of blue petals lined with thin veins of silver. Petals picked from soma flowers. I haven’t seen these since I left home.

  Not since Varick offered me one before my brother’s last ceremony.

  “I carry my own poisons,” he says, stepping closer to me. “And this particular one, I stocked up on before I left Garda. They’re much more potent than the pills that boy had—potentially therapeutic, as you told me, but like most good things, also debilitating in large quantities. Able to cause long-term hallucinations, trances, hysteria…see, I’m rather knowledgeable about most toxic plants and their effects. Studying them became a sort of hobby for me after my parents were poisoned.” His smile is pressed and thin.

  I lift a few of the petals between my fingertips and crush them, staring for a moment at the smear of blue they leave on my fingers.

  “You’re...I don’t believe this, I—” My gaze darts toward the door.

  “Aven.” He takes a few steps to that closed door and presses back against it. “You were eavesdropping, weren’t you? So can’t you see why I let you sleep through our dealings with your so-called friends?”

  “But I don’t understand why you had to deal with them at all!”

  “I was telling the truth earlier, when I said I fought with the Westlander again. I told him not to push me, and he did. And the girl insisted on interfering as well, and I am sorry about that.”

  “As if an apology fixes it!”

  “If you had been awake to interfere, it would have been all too easy for the others to get rid of you as well. As I’m sure you overheard, they aren’t all convinced that you will end up on the right side—on our side—when this is all said and done. So my point is that I was only trying to protect you. From their doubts, from your association with those

  two—”

  “Those two were my friends. They were on my side, and I thought you were on my side, and all those ones we’ve gathered—”

  “I am on your side. And as for those other ones we’ve gathered…Well, we all want the same things. We’re currently disagreeing about the best way to achieve it. But if you will only cooperate—”

  “What is it that you think I want?”

  I have a quick, desperate urge to run straight for the door, even if it means cutting my way right through him and everyone else on the other side. He stands up a little straighter and crosses his arms across his chest, as if daring me to try.

  “A better world,” he says, taking my hand and brushing the petal dust from it. “Safer skies. An emperor stripped of his power to decide who gets to live and die… Isn’t that it?”

  I can’t disagree, however much I want to, so I say nothing.

  “We’re in a position to change everything about our world’s future. And I want your help in doing so, Aven.”

  My thoughts spin. My gaze finds that ribbon tied around his arm again, and this time it locks there.

  He reaches for it. “It’s true: This symbol—and you—have been far more useful than we could have hoped. And we’ve only just begun.”

  “Useful?” The word feels oddly heavy in my mouth.

  For a flash of a moment, he looks as though he regrets his choice of words.

  “What if I hadn’t proven useful to you?” I ask quietly. “Would you still be willing to protect me? What if I left this very second? Crossed the sea without you?”

  “There is nothing for you to do across that sea.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because.”

  Suddenly it feels like I’ve fallen and knocked the air from my lungs all over again.

  “If we are on the same side, then you tell me or I will—”

  He moves so close to me, so quickly, that I choke on my words. He presses a hand against my cheek and forces my gaze to his. “You will do what, precisely?”

  “I…”

  “Be careful with your words, hm?” I twist my face away from his touch, my pulse roaring in my ears. “Just because I would prefer we work together, Aven, does not mean that I cannot do this without you. And my patience is only so strong. If you are going to insist on being difficult—”

  I shove him away as hard as I can, roll around his reach and stumble for the door. I am still trying to force its handle to turn when the room fills with light—such an unbearably bright blue that it stings tears from my eyes and makes my head pound.

  My fingers slip away from the handle. Cold magic tangles around my arm and drags me away. Then that same magic wraps around the rest of my body, and for a moment I have the strange sensation that I am floating, feet just barely skimming the dirty floor.

  Just for a moment.

  And then I am flying instead.

  I slam into the worktable in the center of the room, my shoulder and the side of my face hitting the leg so hard that I’m surprised when I don’t hear the crack of either bone or wood. I turn over onto my side, fighting the urge to throw up. The room dims, but there are still ribbons of blue light following me. They coil around and around me, snakes slinking and wrapping themselves against my arms and legs and across my chest. They’re not heavy at first, their pressure far from unbearable.

  But then the ribbon that has settled on my chest starts to disappear into my skin.

  A moment later, icy-hot pain rises where the light disappeared. And then comes a stabbing, a tearing—like that light has gathered to solidness again and is trying to break its way back out. My hand grabs for the hollow of my throat and comes away covered in blood.

  I stare at my fingers, splaying them out and turning them over and over.

  Each of Varick’s steps across the room vibrates through me, unbearably loud and excruciatingly slow.

  “So is this what you want, then? For us to be enemies?”

  “How are you doing this?” My voice trembles into a weak cough. I swallow blood and bile and choke out more words. “This is not keeper magic.”

  “Of course it is.” He crouches down next to me and waves his hand in a collecting motion toward himself. The ribbons around my arms and legs uncurl and drift lazily back to him.

  The one on my chest remains—no longer cutting through the skin, but settled like a threat against it.

  “With the power to heal comes the power to destroy,” he says. “Destroying is easier, actually—not nearly as hard on the body as healing. It doesn’t take
as much from you.”

  “You’re wrong,” I say without opening my eyes. “This is all wrong.”

  The pain in my chest disappears abruptly. I blink my eyes open and see a different magic drifting from his hands and into my skin now. Green. Like mine. It’s the color magic is supposed to be.

  “Says who?” he asks. “Your beloved emperor? The one who ordered your father and brother to their death? The one who has been trying to hunt you down, and who refused to see what was happening in the western skies? The one who has blinded his entire kingdom with lies and distracting celebrations? You don’t think he’s right, Aven. I know you don’t. It’s why you and I started plotting things in the first place. And have you been paying attention to the world you’ve been traveling through? Have you seen anything that’s changed your mind?”

  He offers me his hand, but I knock it aside and grab for the edge of the table instead. I pull myself up, eyes narrowed and watching him, body braced for another attack.

  “I still remember that night in the garden,” he says, more softly now. “I remember how angry you were. And you were so very right to be angry.”

  His words are like the magic he summoned—light in the dark, swift and sure as they twine around me.

  But when I lift my hand to my throat, I still feel the raised flesh that light left behind.

  And I’m determined not to let these words twist deeply enough to do that.

  No matter how many times I may have thought them myself.

  No matter how clearly I still remember that moment I sat on the shore and watched the emperor step away from my brother’s dead body, or how desperately I wanted to make it his dead body instead, or how happy I’ve been to let every stick-and-straw version of him keep burning.

  “You remember how you felt too, don’t you?” Varick asks, taking my hand from my neck, pressing it flat against his while summoning more magic that wraps around both our wrists in a makeshift binding. “Don’t you want to prevent anything from happening to any more people you love?”

  I don’t answer him.

  I consider my other options instead, beginning with how easy it would be to jerk my knee into his gut and knock his stomach all the way up into his throat. There is a cup on the table too, within easy reach. Pewter, it looks like. Heavy enough to do plenty of damage if I hit him hard enough with it. And there are always my knives, of course—but he would likely see that coming.

  Could I be fast enough?

  Why haven’t I moved, either way? I’m not sure why I am still listening to him, why I haven’t pulled my hand from his again.

  “I know you’re angry with me. Perhaps you really want nothing to do with me anymore. But if you could only listen, and understand how much we have in common…”

  We have nothing in common.

  The words are so loud and clear in my thoughts.

  So why can’t I say them out loud?

  He tilts his head a bit to the side so he can better meet my eyes, which I am now trying desperately to keep downcast and indifferent. “Do you know why my parents are dead, Aven? Not how, but why?”

  My gaze flickers to his and gets caught there.

  I can’t help it.

  “Because my father refused to serve the emperor, same as you. When I was born, he tried to walk away. But he was famous—one of the Pure, the marked. And the marked don’t get to walk away. You’ve seen that much, haven’t you? They don’t get to walk away, because too many people might follow their lead, might raise rebellions and start riots, and the emperor would never have let that happen. So he stopped him from going anywhere. And he made sure my mother was silenced as well.”

  Is he telling the truth?

  I know, now, that the emperor was hoarding his power. I’ve seen first-hand how he reacts to runners.

  “Fane doesn’t think I know,” Varick says. “He was eager to accept my king’s offer, eager to take me into Garda—likely thinking that he could trap me further. That if he gave me enough jewels or fed me enough elaborate dinners, I would never suspect him of being capable of something like murder. But I know he is. The same way I know I was too late to save my parents, even with this magic that we have, the magic that’s supposed to be able to keep the entire world together. I couldn’t heal them.” He pauses, tightening his grip on the edges of the table on either side of me. “With them gone, there was nothing else I cared about healing, and so I learned that other side of our magic. I learned to destroy instead. And I ended up being much better at that anyway. Good enough that I know I can use it to my advantage. That we can use it. Because I could teach you how to do the same thing, you know.”

  Fresh, true fear creeps over my scalp.

  “How many have you already taught this to?”

  His smile curves in a pleased sort of way; the way a child might smile when someone important to them recognizes their accomplishments.

  “The Alturian army is very well-equipped to go to war with Garda,” he says. “Particularly now that you and your rebellion have helped us sway more into opposition against the emperor. There is still work to do, of course, but we’ve been busy training enough to serve as leaders. It shouldn’t take long for those leaders to teach the rest— you’ve made them so eager to destroy the emperor and his home, after all.”

  “To destroy…”

  And then the full realization hits me, sudden and cruel, dropping my voice to a terrified whisper.

  “The skies above the islands, you…”

  “Clever girl,” he says. “You’ve figured it out, haven’t you?”

  No.

  No, this can’t be right.

  “But why there? Fane is the one you were mad at, and he isn’t there.”

  “We had to be far enough from the emperor to start with—so the islands were our training ground of sorts. Because there, we were close enough to the Endlands that few people would think twice about anything odd happening there. The people there wanted to believe that the breaking skies were something leaking from the Endlands’ darkness, something they could do nothing about, because it made it easier for them to overlook. When evil doesn’t have a clear face, people are much less likely to bother with fighting it. Or even interrupting it.”

  “You’re mad.”

  He laughs. “You could be one of those leaders, if only you wanted it,” he continues. “You could be far above most of those leaders. There are so few of our Pure kind left, so imagine it: the two of us, and our army of floodmakers. No one could stop us.”

  “Us?”

  “I want that,” he says, “more than anything.”

  “And if I refuse?”

  “Well you know too much now, don’t you?” All the softness is gone from his voice. He is smiling, but his words are sharp and cold as they claw into me and set off more shivers. “I have killed for far less,” he says. “I trust very few these days. Most, I’ve killed the second they simply grew too suspicious of my ambitions. But you…I have been hoping you would be different. Worth trusting.”

  Too suspicious.

  “So there were others you dealt with before tonight. Others who were suspicious.”

  His smile wilts a bit.

  I sink back against the table.

  I see the sky from that day, grey and sick and ready to swallow up the land below. And I see us: a small army of what was supposed to be hope. A small army led by Varick. I remember the way he looked at my brother, the tension that I sensed between them. It had been almost palpable.

  Now I understand why.

  “You knew my brother was suspicious of what was happening in the west, didn’t you?” My voice is an overcome kind of hushed.

  “You know he told me as much.”

  “And you knew he planned to leave.”

  “…And take far too many with him. Too many whose loyalties I couldn’t be sure of, whose noble ambitions might have proved troublesome.”

  “My brother never would have helped you. He never would have destroyed anything, if
he’d found out your plans, he would have—”

  “Oh, he’s helped me.” His gaze is measured as he takes a step back from me. “The death of such a beloved hero was precisely the catalyst we needed in Garda. People love to rally around tragedy. Have you ever noticed that? And I was lucky enough to have an opportunity to orchestrate that tragedy.”

  I can’t breathe.

  Murderer.

  The word slams through my brain, pounding like a storm-tossed wave against the rocks.

  Murderer.

  Blue magic. The widening rift. His magic. Magic I thought he was using to hold the lake together so I could reach the shore, when really he was only helping it break completely instead, same as he kept the seal from holding that day. He is the reason I was trapped. The reason Eamon saw me, and the reason for that column of water driving down, down, down.

  And he is the reason my brother is dead.

  Chapter 26

  “I will kill you.”

  The knife is in my hand so fast that I’m not even sure how it got there, and I launch myself at him just as quickly. I don’t want to throw it this time. I want to feel the moment it sinks into his skin, want to revel in the way the blade pierces and sends this murderer’s blood into a gushing, raging river down my arm.

  He moves too quickly.

  I just manage to nick the side of his neck as he jerks aside. I twist my wrist, trying to follow those life-sustaining jugular veins. But he gets a hand on my arm first and swings me effortlessly around, sends me crashing against the wall and pins my wrist to the rough wood. My grip on my knife shakes, his hold so tight it is cutting off the circulation to my fingers.

  “You were worth keeping alive for a bit.” His face is so close to mine that every word rings through my head as if he is shouting them, even though he is hardly whispering. “I do appreciate you helping to grow my army further, and for the helpful role you played in your brother’s tragic death—the girl who should have known she wasn’t strong enough, causing her brother to have to risk his life by rushing to her side like that—”

  “It wasn’t my fault.”

  “Well, the two of you can sort that out when you see each other again—which will be soon, because it seems your usefulness to me truly has run its course.”