by Davis Ashura
“Sorry about that,” he said.
Selene remained silent, further put off by William’s strange behavior. Now he was apologizing to her? How was she supposed to respond to that? Madam had never taught Selene what to do if someone of higher status demonstrated kindness. The lack of understanding had her scowling in frustration.
William must have noticed her frustration and he further slowed his pace. “What’s wrong?”
Fear stole her words, and Selene tried not to tremble. He’d seen her scowl, seen that it had been aimed at him. Selene swallowed, terrified as she imagined his punishment. Her fear worsened when he looked upon her with concern rather than anger.
“Are you all right?” William asked, still showing none of the fury he should have displayed. Even Madam might have been upset with her had Selene looked at her like that.
“Nothing, sir. My side was cramping,” she lied—a useful skill on Sinskrill, and one best mastered early in life.
William didn’t notice her deceit. Instead, he nodded understanding. “Hurts like a knife stabbing you in the side, doesn’t it?” he guessed. “It’ll pass. Give it a few minutes.”
Selene took the reprieve, and pretended to massage her side and flank.
They passed the rest of the journey talking about Selene’s life. William wanted to know about everything: her parents, her past, her present, her friendships. He sounded genuinely interested, and throughout their conversation, he continued to wear a warm, open expression.
Despite Selene’s best efforts, she couldn’t help warming to him, even laughing when he showed her a rock covered in white moss and pointed out its resemblance to Fiona’s head.
Several hours later, she was grinning non-stop when they finally reached Madam.
“I see you’ve met Selene,” Madam said to William when they arrived.
Selene’s face instantly went red. Guilt gnawed at her. She shouldn’t have laughed with William, nor should she have enjoyed her time with him as much as she had. For some reason, it felt like a betrayal of Madam.
“Thank you for bringing him, Selene,” Madam said.
“She’s a sweet girl,” William said, ruffling her hair fondly.
Guilt and pleasure warred within Selene. She liked the warmth of William’s presence. Liked how kind he was, how he talked to her and listened and laughed. But she couldn’t be his friend. Not with Madam staring at him like that.
“Selene is my sister,” Madam said. “She’s the reason why I brought you here. Without me, she might not become the person she should. You understand what I mean?”
Selene didn’t understand, but William seemed to. A series of emotions flitted across his face. Distrust and anger, but eventually understanding. “Is this true?” he asked Selene. “Is she your sister?” He gestured to Madam.
“She is if I pass my Tempering,” Selene answered. “Until then, I’m a drone like anyone else.”
William turned to Madam, eyes glinting like he was mad at her. “You really came back for her?”
“I did, and I wanted you to meet her so you’d understand why I did what I did.”
“I’ll never understand that.”
“What lengths would you go to for Landon?”
William’s mouth shut with snap.
“You see my dilemma?” Madam asked.
William nodded slowly, but Selene frowned, even more confused than before.
Who was Landon? And what dilemma?
“How do you plan on making sure Selene becomes the person you want her to be?” William asked. “She’s going to become a shill, then a bishan, then a mahavan and a slaver. There’s no coming back from that. You know it better than most.”
Madam stiffened, an almost imperceptible twitching of her shoulders. No one else would have noticed, but Selene knew her too well.
Selene pretended to work on a loose plank on the deck while they spoke, but all the while she listened closely.
“Maybe I do know,” Madam replied, “but Selene . . . Once she matures to a bishan, she’ll leave Sinskrill on her pilgrimage. Her Isha will accompany her.”
“How will she leave?”
“The anchor line. Only the Servitor can open it on this side.”
“You intend to be her Isha?” William asked.
“Yes,” Madam said.
“And afterward? What’s your plan?”
“I have none,” Madam answered. “Now help me fix the dhow.”
“You brought me out here to help you repair this little boat?”
“Yes,” Madam said, “and when the dhow’s ready, I mean to sail her into deep waters this summer. The fishing is supposed to be especially good there.”
William pursed his lips and seemed to study Madam through considering eyes. “I see.”
Selene hid a frown. The two of them had discussed something by not discussing it. But if she paid enough attention, maybe later on she could figure out what they really meant.
And what it might be worth to her.
PAST MYSTERIES
May 1987
* * *
Unlike the rest of the world, springtime on Sinskrill did not bloom beautifully. Stiff winds continued to blow down from the island’s rugged northern hills and mountains and off the Norwegian Sea, but at least the air warmed, becoming merely chilly rather than frigid. More noticeable and welcome, however, was the sun’s more regular appearance. For a few hours every day, brilliant sunshine beamed down, uplifting and vibrant. After winter’s icy cold and seemingly interminable overcast, it felt tropical, like how William described Arylyn.
Unfortunately, because of the sunshine Jake and William were temporarily pressed back into farming.
“You will hoe while your partner plants the spring wheat,” shouted the foreman, Josiah Dales. “Five rows each, to my satisfaction, before you’re done.”
Jake mentally scowled. “Why are we back to this anyway?” he complained after the foreman finished passing out the tools.
“Because Serena voluntold us.”
“Sounds like something she’d do,” Jake muttered moodily.
William didn’t reply, and Jake noticed his friend staring at someone in narrow-eyed anger. Jake searched out the source of William’s ire. Justin Cardinal, their former foreman, glared at them.
“You better move those eyes or I’ll knock them through the back of your skull,” William warned Justin. “You’re a drone, and we aren’t. Piss me off, and no one will stop me from beating you into the ground this time.”
Cardinal’s face whitened, and he bowed briefly before scurrying away.
“Would you have really put a beat-down on him?” Jake asked, hoping the answer would be ‘no’.
William hesitated a moment before slowly nodding. “I would hate having to do it, but it’s the way of this piss-hole place,” he said. “If we let Cardinal disrespect us, everyone will. We can’t afford to show weakness.”
“Compassion isn’t weakness.”
“It is if it gets you killed,” William said. “Besides, you did your fair share of bullying back home. This isn’t much different.”
Jake grimaced. “Yeah, but that was then. Now I actually understand those lectures from Father Jameson. Remember how he used to go on and on about the banality of evil? It all makes sense now.”
William lifted his eyebrows.
“There’s no mercy or grace here,” Jake explained. “Only strength and weakness. The user and the used. I don’t want either of us to end up like that.”
William flushed in embarrassment. “Let’s get started,” he grumbled. “The sooner we’re done, the sooner we can go back to learning what we really need to know.” He cut into the ground with his hoe and broke up the soil as he started running a furrow along the edge of the field.
Jake measured the distance they’d have to cover. A hundred yards per row times five. A day’s worth of work or more, but at least they’d already composted the field a few days ago. Jake sighed before following William, laying a l
ong piece of wood into the furrow. Notches cut into the plank told him where to put the seeds. Stoop, drop some seeds, cover them up. Stoop, drop some seeds, cover them up. Over and over as fast as possible, because William’s pace didn’t slow.
Clearly, he meant to have their five rows hoed and seeded before lunch. William’s hoe lifted and fell like a metronome, cutting through the dirt like a plow hitched to a bull. He never wavered as they made the turn at the far end of the field. Most of the other drones had yet to reach the halfway mark of their rows.
Jake privately marveled at William’s strength and stamina.
Where did it come from? He never got winded no matter how hard the exercise, and the stones he lifted to the top of Rock Hill beggared belief . . . His frame shouldn’t have allowed him to move any of those boulders, much less lift them to the top of the slope.
Even though he had the easier job, Jake had to hustle to keep up with William, and in the end, they did complete their rows well before lunch.
Jake plopped down next to William on a small rise and they had lunch: a tough hunk of beef, a raw potato, and a large piece of bread slathered in butter. Clouds rolled in, hiding the sun, and a drizzle fell. Fog blurred the distant borders of the broad valley housing most of Village White Sun’s fields, especially the farther reaches, which butted against low-lying hills covered in heather and stands of pine.
“What’s Serena keep calling you out for?” Jake asked.
“She wants me to help her fix a boat,” William answered. “You know that little girl who comes to get me?”
Jake nodded.
“She’s her sister. Sweet little thing. Only good thing on the island, and Serena wants her to stay that way.”
Jake snorted in disbelief. “How’s she going to stay sweet on Sinskrill? Weakness isn’t tolerated here.”
“No, it isn’t,” William agreed.
He said no more, and Jake mulled over William’s words, trying to parse out what they meant. They held the feeling of a puzzle.
“You remember what Travail told us about anchor lines?” William asked a moment later. “How the one here is only operable by the Servitor?”
Jake nodded again.
“Out in the rest of the world it’s different,” William explained. “Every anchor line out there uses the same key, and if you know it, you can use all of them. That’s how the asrasins used to travel around, using the anchor lines to leap from one saha’asra to another. But sometimes it was easier to do an overland journey. That’s what we did when Kohl chased us, but in our case, we drove.”
Pieces of the puzzle clicked. A boat. A young girl, a sister. Innocent, and Serena wanted her to stay that way.
A picture built in Jake’s mind. Serena meant to sail away from Sinskrill. She meant to save her sister by stealing her away from this island on a boat.
“When Kohl chased you, what kind of vehicle did you drive? How big was it?” Jake asked. He hoped William would pick up on the true nature of his question.
“Plenty big enough for what we needed,” William replied with a wink.
Jake smiled. Steal a boat, and they might have a way off the island.
Serena listened with half an ear as her father droned on about the many supposed virtues of her adopted brother, Sherlock.
Despite the warmth of the noonday sun, she clutched her black robe more closely about her. The docks below the Servitor’s Palace held an assortment of mahavans today, and they reminded Serena of crows at a feeding, single-minded in their focus upon the dead. Serena stifled a shiver at the thought.
No weakness. Especially not now.
Her father spoke on, but his words were ripped away by the hard wind blowing off the gray waters of the Norwegian Sea and the surf pounding the docks. Of course, even if he could have been heard, it didn’t matter. None of what he said was true, but on Sinskrill truth and lies were simply a matter of perspective. Her father—at a funeral his title as Servitor was held in abeyance—continued, and a stranger to Sinskrill would have assumed Sherlock a saint, rather than the senselessly cruel man he had actually been.
With today’s funeral, her brother’s trek through this world ended. He’d wasted away through his urine exactly as Travail had predicted, and now he would supposedly begin his next journey. Her father would set alight the boat meant to carry Sherlock’s husked remains to the gates of Lord Shet’s home, and if her brother’s spirit was judged worthy, he would pass on to Seminal, the heavenly realm of the valiant.
Despite her father’s words, the sobbing of Sherlock’s widow, and the sorrow-filled visages of the mahavans in attendance, Serena doubted any of them would actually miss her brother. As soon as her father finished his speech, the jockeying for position would begin. Every mahavan of note would fight for the Primeship of Paradiso. For all Serena knew, the jockeying had already started last night, or maybe even earlier.
Her father finally finished his speech and tossed his burning brand onto Sherlock’s funeral boat. The torch was followed by those of everyone else in attendance, and the boat caught fire. A stern wind lifted its sail and sent it forth into the waters before the Servitor’s Palace. There, it blazed higher and higher. Smoke billowed, and despite how Serena felt about Sherlock, she said a silent prayer for her adopted brother before his remains sank beneath the waves.
Afterward the somber crowd dispersed, most melancholy for reasons having nothing to do with the demised. Instead, their sorrow was aimed inward. Sherlock’s funeral, like all funerals, reminded the people of Sinskrill that their long lives would eventually end, and they hated the reminder. In this they shared a similarity to people the world over, but for mahavans the idea of a second birth and a more glorious life to follow rested on a faint hope.
Very few actually believed in Seminal, and no one expected any sort of pleasant afterlife awaiting them on the other side of this one. At best, their religious devotions contained a polite pretense based on little more than tradition. Most mahavans reckoned this world was the only one, and they greatly feared life’s final curtain.
“A distasteful spectacle finally ends,” Walker Brandon Thrum said, coming up to Serena’s side. His thick features were shaped in a smirk.
“A distasteful spectacle that offers us an unexpected opportunity,” Rider Evelyn Mason said, approaching Serena’s other side. Her striking auburn hair floated about her plain, pale face, and her blue eyes flashed with excitement.
“An opportunity not to be squandered by loose lips,” Serena warned.
Evelyn didn’t take the hint. “Only two other mahavans can gainsay our claim to the Primeship of Paradiso. We should demand—”
“Air carries all. Be silent,” Brandon hissed. His thick jaw clenched and unclenched.
Evelyn and her stupidity, Serena thought. The fool had been about to blurt out for all to hear whatever thought or plan she had in mind following Sherlock’s death.
“Sorry,” Evelyn said, rightfully abashed.
“Next time, think before you speak,” Serena advised, maintaining her composure despite her annoyance. “If a Walker had been listening . . .”
“No one will be listening now,” Brandon said. “I braided a block. No sound will echo past our conversation.”
“Good. You should have done that the moment you approached,” Serena rebuked.
“How was I to know she’d start discussing our plans right away?” Brandon complained.
“You know now,” Serena said before turning to Evelyn. “As for you . . . what were you going to tell us?”
“I was going to say that we should demand your brother’s support of your claim.”
Serena snorted. “No one demands anything of Devon.” Her mouth barely moved. Some mahavans could read lips. “His services belong to the highest bidder.”
“And what would he want?” Brandon asked, his lips barely moving as well.
“Support for his claim of the Servitor’s Chair when my father’s time is ended,” Serena answered. “He wants to be m
ade Secondus.”
“The last Secondus was hurled from the Judging Line,” Brandon said with a grim chuckle.
“That makes three in the past twenty years,” Evelyn added. “It seems more like a curse than a title to desire.”
Brandon nodded. “Besides, the Servitor is a healthy man.”
“No one lives forever,” Serena reminded them. “And a Servitor’s life burns brighter than any other, but it’s also shorter because of it.”
“You think Devon will—” Evelyn began.
“Don’t speak it out loud,” Brandon shouted, cutting her off.
“I thought you blocked the Air,” Evelyn complained.
“Yes, blocked, but many can read lips. I can.”
“Oh.” Evelyn flushed.
“Never mind that,” Serena said. “I’ll talk to Devon, find out if he’s willing to support me. Meanwhile, both of you go about your duties. I’ll call for you when the time is right.”
The two of them nodded, but as they were about to leave Brandon paused. “What do you plan on doing with the dhow you’re fixing up?”
Serena kept her face calm. “Sail it,” she said. “Some people like horses. I like boats.”
Brandon accepted her lie with a brief nod. “Your Isha’s influence?”
Serena quirked a smile. “Of course.”
They departed, and she watched them leave with a vague sense of guilt. Brandon and Evelyn had tied their futures to hers, and if she successfully escaped Sinskrill, their fortunes would tumble. Then again, as young as they were, they would have many years and opportunities to reclaim their lost status.
Alternatively, if Serena’s plans to leave Sinskrill proved impossible, then what better means to protect Selene than from the office of Paradiso’s Prime?
A few weeks ago, when William had sourced his Spirit, he had found himself floating on a slow, steady river of shining light. In this dream-like state he nonetheless remained aware of the world. More aware, in fact, as his mind languidly swayed upon an endlessly ebbing stream, white and shining. William recognized the wash of brightness as his Spirit, but it didn’t glow from an internal light. Instead, it served as a mirror, reflecting something else, something vast and beautiful. Something like a song captured in light. Cradled in the mesmerizing stream, a peace unlike anything William had ever known descended upon him.
