The Storm Weaver & the Sand (Books of the Change)

by Sean Williams

  Skender rolled his eyes. He was a peon in yet another game. That was fine when a game consisted of nothing but words and ascendancies; he was a master at game-playing back home. But when the stakes became too high, when lives were at risk, that was when he preferred not to play. He didn’t want to end up like Radi Mierlo.

  “You can count me out of your little schemes,” he said. “I just want to see the world, not save it.”

  “You won’t have to,” said Highson, “and you don’t have to do anything more. The process of examination has already begun. The Alcaide and the Syndic are interrogating Sal and Shilly at this very moment. By evening we’ll know their decision. One way or another, it’ll be over soon.”

  Oh, just great, thought Skender with a sinking feeling. It’s all happening while I’m locked up in here, out of the way.

  But one look at the worry on Highson Sparre’s face convinced him that he was probably in the right place. Sal could look after himself. In fact, the last time Sal had come face to face with the Alcaide and the Syndic over anything halfway as serious as this, people had died. Perhaps, he decided, it would be best to stay out of the way for just a little while longer…

  Then an idea occurred to him that was so horrible he knew sitting aside and doing nothing was not an option.

  Ask the ghosts.

  Remember me.

  “We have to find her,” he shouted, tangling his feet in the sheets in his haste to get out of bed.

  “Who?” asked Atilde, frowning at him in alarm.

  “Shilly! We have to stop her before she makes a big mistake!”

  He ran from the room in nightgown and bare feet, with Highson, Iniga and Atilde doing their best to keep up.

  Chapter 16. Three Good Reasons

  Give me one good reason,” said Dragan Braham, his voice barely level, “why I shouldn’t throw you out on your ear right now.”

  Sal faced him squarely. “Because it’s what I want you to do.”

  “Throw you in a dungeon, then.” The massive burn mark over the Alcaide’s face and hairless scalp fairly throbbed with anger. “Pick something you don’t like, and imagine I’m threatening you with it. Come on, boy. Stop being smart!”

  Sal didn’t respond to that accusation. Being smart was exactly what he had to be if he was going to get out of the situation he’d found himself in. Practically a prisoner in the Alcaide’s spacious private audience chambers, Sal was having the consequences of his actions—consorting with a golem, escaping from custody, disturbing a Ruin and unleashing a potentially dangerous creature on the Haunted City—forcibly hammered home.

  At least, he supposed, that was the intention, anyway. As though he himself had never given it any thought: that his actions had partly resulted in the death of his grandmother, and maybe Kemp as well, if he didn’t wake from his coma; that both the ice-beast and the golem were still on the loose; that his friends were tangled up in a plot that seemed to revolve around him—although he still didn’t know why. He was very aware of what he had done. He simply refused to show remorse. Why should he, when he had done nothing wrong?

  The Alcaide glared at him and kept pacing. All pretence of politeness and welcome was gone. Upon awakening, Sal had been brought directly to the Alcaide’s rooms. There he had been handed a light breakfast and subjected to immediate questioning. Despite the gnawing in his gut, his breakfast sat untouched. Anything he put in his stomach just squatted there, as heavy as guilt.

  He felt as though strong men armed with clubs had pounded him for hours. Every muscle in his body ached.

  The Alcaide finally stopped pacing and collapsed heavily into a cushioned chair opposite him. The room was opulently furnished in whites and creams that matched the Alcaide’s robes. Light cotton drapes covered the walls, making the large space feel boundless, as though there weren’t any walls at all. There was a frosted skylight in the centre of the domed ceiling through which soft daylight filtered.

  “Perhaps you could tell me why,” the Alcaide said. He was a solid man with a dominating presence, and the bright purple blotch only made him more formidable. His eyes were a murky green-brown, difficult to read. “Why you are going to such extremes to reject us.”

  “You don’t know?” Sal asked in return.

  The Alcaide waved a hand. “Your father, yes. In your eyes, we started it. But not all of us. The Novitiate is a fine institution, perfectly suited to a talent such as yours. Master Warden Atilde is not unfamiliar with wild talents and heresies.”

  “She knew Lodo.”

  “Yes, she did.” The Alcaide nodded. “You could have a great future here, Sal, if you would only submit to it.”

  Sal had been thinking about that—not that he could be successful if he stayed in the Haunted City, but the concept of submission to the future. Ever since his brief moment of revelation by the entrance to the catacombs, when the golem had struck him, he had had a strange feeling of slippage, as though something had gone slightly awry. In that revelatory instant, he had seen everything laid out before him, quite literally. He had seen how it was all supposed to go. But it hadn’t worked out the way he had seen it. Things had changed. They’d unlocked the Golden Tower, but Tom hadn’t been trapped inside the collapsing Way. They couldn’t now use the light stored in Lodo’s light-sink to drive the golem from the old man’s body, since it had been drained by calling for help. And Shilly had been supposed to stumble across Lodo’s lost mind in the Void Beneath while searching for Tom; she had been supposed to almost lose herself and drain Sal in the process of returning the old man to his body. That couldn’t happen, now. He had forced the train of events off the rails, and the future was careening out of control, which only made the thought of passively accepting it, wherever it led, even more repugnant. Even when things had been laid out for him, one after the other, he had baulked at just shrugging and getting on with it. Throwing the light-sink into the pond had been a small way of saying that he wouldn’t lie down and let the future roll over him. Just because things were supposed to happen a particular way didn’t mean that that way was right—for who did the supposing? Anyone? If the future simply fell into place, and if all Sal had seen in that revelation—if all anyone saw in prophetic dreams, visions or hunches—was just the most likely outcome, who said it was the best or the only outcome? Or that one couldn’t choose a different future at any time? Didn’t everyone do that, every time they made a decision?

  Maybe not, Sal thought. If he didn’t know what the future was, how could he know if he was changing anything or simply going about what had already been foretold? Knowing what was to come and doing something about it was the difference—or so it seemed to him.

  I’m glad we’re on the same side, Sayed Hrvati, the golem had said, otherwise I might almost be afraid of you.

  Sal found those words highly unnerving. He was used to a life of wandering, with no particular destination in mind. He had rebelled instinctively when asked to commit to a definite route? There had to be an alternative—and now he was living it.

  For better or for worse.

  “I think I made my decision quite clear,” he said, “by going to the Interior.”

  “But it was, you have to admit, an uninformed decision. Until you came here, how could you know it was wrong for you?”

  “Your actions—”

  “The actions of a few should never damn the many. I’ll admit we’ve been heavy-handed, but only out of a desire to do what’s best. We all judge ‘what’s best’ differently, of course, and therein lies the problem, but don’t let yourself hate us just because we happen to disagree.”

  Sal felt himself glowering like a sullen child but couldn’t help himself. “You killed my father.”

  “And you did this to me!” The Alcaide leapt out of his chair to thrust his face into Sal’s. The burn was even more hideous close up, gnarled and twisted and filled with blood. “How do y
ou think it feels to look like this? To have children flinch when they glance at me, to see eyes looking anywhere but directly at me? In Fundelry, you turned me into a freak—but here I am, still trying to make you see reason. Am I really such a monster?”

  Sal recoiled as far as he could from the hideous injury. When the Alcaide pulled away and resumed his pacing, Sal felt a flood of relief and shame rush through him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “That makes two of us, boy.”

  Sal rubbed his bruised temple, which he had thought looked bad enough in the mirror when he awoke but which now seemed a paltry thing in comparison to the injury the Alcaide had sustained. “I’m sorry it had to be this way. I’m sure there was an alternative.” If he had thrown his future into such confusion with one simple action, there had to have been similar moments when his mother and the man he had called his father could have arrived at a different ending to their story, with neither of them dead and their child—perhaps children—living happily in the Strand or the Interior, safely trained in their powers. Why couldn’t he have been born into that world?

  “You have only two alternatives,” said the Alcaide. “The Strand or the Interior. You have to choose between them, and your choice must be informed. It must also be the right choice—”

  “Who says there are only two choices? And who decides which is right?”

  “You know who.”

  “Do I?”

  “Yes.”

  The Alcaide looked at him with an expression at once defiant and uncertain.

  The Weavers? Sal wondered. Was that who the Alcaide was talking about?

  At that moment, the drapes parted on one side of the room. The Syndic entered in a rush of robes, leading an entourage consisting of Shilly and four black-clad attendants, one of them carrying Mawson.

  “We are here for the examination,” said Nu Zanshin, Sal’s great-aunt, pointing imperiously to indicate that Mawson should be placed on a table to one side. “You began without us,” she said to the Alcaide.

  He dismissed her scold with a wave of one hand. “We were simply talking, Sal and I. We said nothing of any import.”

  The Syndic studied Sal through narrowed eyes, as though searching for deception. Shilly hovered nervously behind her, unsure where to go or what was expected of her. She looked only slightly less tired than when Sal had last seen her, and he wondered how much sleep she had had.

  “Sit.” The Syndic pointed at a chair opposite Sal. Shilly took it. The way she fiddled with her crutch betrayed her desire to run.

  The Syndic eased herself into the chair between them, facing the Alcaide. Although the latter was theoretically superior in rank—having been elected by the Conclave to judge the Strand with the Syndic acting as his chief administrator—Sal had noted that his great-aunt seemed to get her way most of the time. There was no doubt that the relationship was a turbulent one when not under the public gaze.

  The Syndic’s expression was frosty. For such a slight woman, she had an incredible command of the space around her. Sal refused to let himself be intimidated by her. He had faced far worse things than her and survived.

  “Well,” she said, “here we are. It has come to this.”

  “Did you really think we were just going to roll over and do as you said, like dogs?”

  “Calm down, Sal. You’re allowing a fundamental misunderstanding to—”

  “I understand everything perfectly well. Everything about you, anyway.” He folded his arms across his chest, wishing he was older, able to enforce his opinion with more dignity. He couldn’t help feeling as though he looked like a kid defying his elders—because that was exactly what he was doing. The fact that he was in the right was hard to remember, sometimes.

  “So there’s no point talking,” said his great-aunt. “Is that what you’re saying? That we might as well get on with what we’ve agreed to do without seeing if you agree or disagree?” She nodded at the Alcaide, who didn’t respond in any way. “I don’t like being put in the position of a dictator, just as I know you don’t like being dictated to. But if that’s the only way to resolve this situation, then so be it. If there’s no point talking any longer, separation it is.”

  She raised one hand and snapped her fingers. The attendants closed in.

  “Wait,” said Sal. “What sort of separation?”

  “Of you two, of course.” The Syndic looked at him as though he was stupid. “You can’t very well expect us to keep you together after all the trouble you’ve caused. You broke your restraint, ignored your curfew, explored off-limit areas, and as a result put Kemp’s life at risk. Shilly will stay here with Lodo, when we find him. You and Mawson will be expelled from the Haunted City, forbidden to return. If you so much as look at the island, you’ll be thrown in a cell. Does that suit you?”

  “No—” he started to say.

  “Why ever not?” she snapped. “You’ll have your freedom, and we’ll be well behind you, along with your mother’s family. You can get on with your life as you see fit—whatever sort of life it will be without training. You can burn out happily in the middle of nowhere, for all I care. Had I known how much trouble you’d be, I would never have estimated your worth so highly. We can wait for the next wild talent to come along. Maybe he or she will be more grateful.”

  The thought of leaving Shilly behind stabbed him deeply, but it was she who spoke first. As the Syndic’s hand came up again, Shilly said, “But I don’t want to stay. I want to go with Sal.”

  “Really?” The Syndic’s eyebrows shot up. “I thought you wanted training, and to heal your teacher.”

  “Yes, I do.” She hesitated, momentarily, torn. “But if I had to choose between them or Sal, I’d pick Sal.”

  “You would regret it, I guarantee you.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Well, we care, Shilly, and we are technically your guardians. You are an orphan, are you not? We have the right to decide for you. And we have decided that it is best for you to stay here.”

  “But I’m at least as much trouble as Sal,” she protested. “I’ve been involved in everything he’s done. We did it together.”

  “There’s no denying that. He is the ringleader, however; the bad influence. Without him around, you’ll soon settle down.”

  “How can you say that?” she asked, her colour deepening even further. “You know next to nothing about me—or Sal.”

  “I know that it’s not his fault he was raised away from his family, from the people who would have looked after him properly.”

  “What’s that got to do with it?” Shilly protested.

  Sal could see where this was going. “You leave my father out of this.”

  “The man you call your father is entirely to blame, Sal.” The Syndic’s cold gaze turned on him. “He’s the one who made you what you are today.”

  “Not alone. He raised me—but my grandmother drove him and my mother away from the Haunted City. Highson Sparre hunted her down. You stole me. You’ve all made me what I am, and if I’m a brat, then you’re all partly to blame.”

  Sal felt cold fury seething through his veins. He kept it in check as best he could, even as his great-aunt shook her head in heavy disappointment and looked at him as though he was nothing more than a disobedient pet.

  “You had such potential, Sal. I could feel you in Fundelry, all the way from here. You were like a star, shining brighter in the sky than any other. You could have done such marvellous things.” Her wistful tone became sharper. “Instead you chose chaos and destruction. You chose to waste your talent on foolish quests and thrill-seeking. You throw your life away without the slightest thought for those you might have helped, the good you might have done. I am disappointed.”

  Sal refused to let her succeed in making him feel guilty for not adhering to her understanding of what was good. “Who says I w
on’t meet my potential in the Interior?” he asked. “Why do I have to stay here to succeed? Lodo said—”

  “Lodo was a crank, a charlatan who met a deservedly bad end. That he was used against you by this golem of yours only demonstrates the foolishness of your attachment to him.”

  The harsh words made Shilly’s eyes widen. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  The Syndic mocked her with a laugh. “Isn’t it strange?” she said to the Alcaide. “These children seem to know more about everything than we do. Perhaps they should be offering to teach us, not the other way around.”

  “I think we should talk about what’s important,” the Alcaide said with a scowl. “All this bloody history—all this talk of what might have been and who’s at fault—it’s driving me up the wall. It’s bullshit. We have the here and now to worry about. We have a mess to clean up. We should sort that out first—then I’ll happily leave you three in here to trade insults all day.”

  The Syndic’s face tightened into a cold mask. “My fight is not with you, Dragan.”

  “Nor should it be, Nu. We’re on the same side—supposedly.”

  The tension between the two adults was almost painful. Sal wondered if it was just that the Syndic had a personal interest in the issue of Sal’s future while the Alcaide did not—or if there was a real power struggle going on between them.

  “I agree,” Sal said, surprising both of them. “We should be working together, at least on one thing: to find the golem.”

  “And the thing it brought through the Tower,” added Shilly. “The ice creature.”

  “Exactly.” The Alcaide nodded, pleased. “Perhaps if we could deal with that first of all, and argue later, we might actually get somewhere.”

  “Do you trust them to help us?” asked the Syndic, tight-lipped.

  “I trust them about as much as they trust us. I think that’s reasonable.” The Alcaide turned to Sal. “I’m given to understand that you know how to find the golem.”