Calling the Change (Sky Raiders Book 2)

by Michelle Diener

  “So if we're going to move things and people back to Pan Nuk, it needs to be quick, and we need to think of a place to hide the craft while Taya and I are here. Preferably not near the village in case they decide to scoop you all up a second time.”

  The possibility of that sobered the crowd even more.

  “We have the experience they need. They would much rather take us again than train a new lot of slaves.” Jerilia's words were bitter. There was an anger beneath the surface with her that Garek hadn't seen when they were growing up. Being taken to Shadow had hardened her, and woken her fury.

  But however honestly she'd come by her rage, her words upset some of the children and the elderly who'd been left behind. Faces of all hues drained of color, and he sent her a sharp look.

  “That's why we're going to move quickly and think of a good hiding place.” His look encompassed the crowd. “We all know what we're dealing with this time. We've beaten them once, we can beat them again. And this time we're on Barit, where we're a lot stronger.”

  “They won't be taking me again,” Eli said, grim-faced, and there was a murmur of agreement.

  “You heard Garek. Let's load up.” Kas clapped his hands. “We'll need to do some repairs if we want to sleep in our own homes again, and the day is wasting.”

  Most people scattered back into Haret, to their temporary lodgings, or to the stables where a lot of their things had been stored by Haret's town master.

  Eli, Kas, and Min didn't follow, though, and neither did Taya. She stood with her arms around her nephew Luca, murmuring to him.

  Their hair was the exact same golden shade, Garek noticed. Like liquid light from the Star.

  “We'll need to keep watch,” Kas said, quietly. “Day and night.”

  Garek nodded. “And I can't be more than a few steps away from the craft at any time.”

  “You need to be able to get in and fly off, lead them away, if they're spotted,” Eli agreed with a slow nod. “Makes sense. But I hope it doesn't come to that.”

  “I wish I understood how they knew we were in Juli to take the sky craft back.” This was what weighed on Garek more than anything. “They could have caught sight of us and followed us to Juli after we'd dropped you off here. Or there could be some other way they know, something inside the craft that tells them where it is.”

  “Either way,” Min said, “they know where to find Pan Nuk, because they've been there before, and it's logical you'd bring everyone back home. They know it's possible the sky craft will be here.”

  Garek nodded. “That's why we need to hide it away from the village. The only thing I don't like is that I can't be watching the craft and the village at the same time.”

  Kas and Eli exchanged a look and he thought perhaps he'd insulted them.

  “Everyone will help guard the village.” Kas broke the silence.

  “I'll help guard the village.” Taya had stepped closer, Luca still glued to her side. “With watchers to help warn me when they're coming, I could take them by surprise.”

  There was another silence. Not hurt pride this time.

  Shock.

  And even he was guilty, Garek acknowledged. They kept forgetting Taya could call a Change now. Was, in fact, one of the most powerful weapons they had against the sky raiders.

  She looked around at their expressions, even Luca's, because he didn't know yet about her new skill, and made a face.

  “Shadow ore, remember?”

  Garek tucked a long strand of Taya's hair behind her ear. “Sorry.”

  She gave him a sweet smile and shrugged. “I obviously look like someone who can't go into a tavern by herself, instead of someone who's at least useful in a fight.”

  He laughed at her repeat of Vent's judgment of her. If only the Juli guard master knew how wrong he was.

  “What's that about?” Min asked.

  Taya shook her head. “Just something Aidan's guard master said about me. In a way, it was a relief he thinks I'm so useless. When the sky raiders took the second sky craft back, I used two of the shadow ore spears, but they threatened to kill Garek if I used them. Aidan was unhappy I'd revealed what I could do, but if even his guard master has somehow discounted what some must have seen with their own eyes, it looks as though my secret is still safe.”

  “Aidan might have helped there. Downplayed what the guards saw,” Garek said, thinking it through. It looked as if he owed the princeling.

  “Where will you go after you help us move back to Pan Nuk?” Kas asked, and Garek didn't miss the way Taya squeezed Luca tighter to her, as if she didn't want to go anywhere.

  His heart sank at the thought that she would want to stay here. He wasn't leaving her again.

  “We should go back to Juli.” He watched Taya as he said it, and she looked up and met his gaze. “At least for a little while. We need a permanent solution to hiding the sky craft, and there's the threat to West Lathor from Harven and a few other Illian states. You can be sure the Harven liege will be trying to cast doubt on what we did to help his people.”

  Kas tapped his chin. “He won't do anything until Luci and her people go back to their village. He'll need them gone before he can try to undermine their rescue.”

  Garek gave a nod at Kas's assessment.

  Kas had always had a good grasp of politics. If Aidan wanted Garek as his general when he became West Lathor's liege, Garek didn't think he could go wrong with Kas as his advisor.

  “If or when Habred does make a move, I know Aidan thinks the sky craft will be the deterrent that will make him turn tail and run.”

  “But he already knows we have it,” Eli pointed out. “Wasn't the point of our dropping off Luci and her villagers at Harven's capital Aidan's way of letting their liege know we have more powerful resources than he does?”

  “That was part of it, and partly to make the people of Harven grateful to us, so it will be harder for Habred to mobilize his forces against us. But it depends how far along the other states in collusion with him are with their plans to invade us and how many secret deals Habred has made. If he's committed to action with Fabre or Kadmine, or both, he might be forced to support them, even knowing we have a sky craft.”

  “He'd have to convince his allies it's useless to move against us, and that might be hard to do if they're already set on invasion, already dividing up West Lathor in their heads.” Kas frowned. “It might be worth spending some time patrolling the skies around those three states, see if they're moving troops.”

  That was a good suggestion. Garek nodded. “I think Aidan would consider that an extremely useful exercise.”

  “His father, or rather, his father's advisor, may not.” Taya lifted her head.

  “Why not?” Min asked.

  “He tried to stop us leaving this morning. Aidan distracted them so we could go against his orders, but they don't like Garek in control of what they see as West Lathor's property.”

  Eli snorted out a laugh. “They had nothing to do with it. It's Garek's sky craft. He wasn't even working for them as a guard when he took it.”

  Kas shook his head. “But he is a trained guard of West Lathor. And it is what could be considered a state asset. In fact, I'm sure it is. Which means technically, the liege can confiscate it.”

  “It makes me not want to return to Juli at all,” Taya said. “Or if we do, we find a place to hide the sky craft nearby, and walk in on foot.”

  There were pros and cons to that, Garek acknowledged. The downside would be not having the sky craft near to hand, but the benefit was definitely keeping control of something he'd risked his life to obtain. The sky craft was a strategic advantage he was reluctant to hand over.

  “We'll have to think about that.” He'd been watching the gate into Haret, and saw the first few Pan Nuk villagers coming out loaded with furniture and baskets, and he climbed back up the ladder to open the ramp at the back.

  The irony didn't escape him that they were going to use the very sky craft that had taken everyt
hing from Pan Nuk to put it all back.

  THREE

  It was good to be home, but hard--harder than Taya would have thought--to see Pan Nuk looking like a dead place.

  They'd worked through the afternoon and night the day before, in the end staying one last night in Haret and setting guards to watch for sky raiders while Garek snatched a few hours sleep on the floor of the sky craft.

  They'd been up again at dawn, bringing a lifetime of things out of storage in Haret and putting them back in Pan Nuk.

  The village was not a ruin, but it needed serious repairs.

  The sight of broken clay bowls and ripped curtains flapping from broken windows brought back vivid memories of the day she'd been taken, the shock and the terror of it so real now she was back. On Shadow, it had been about surviving, dealing with whatever the sky raiders threw at them. Here, she could remember.

  And she didn't like it.

  She stood in the small shed that had been her dye workshop and poked a stick at the dried dye sitting at the bottom of one of the barrels.

  It had originally been a deep blue liquid, but had dried to almost black since she had run out of here, on that terrible day, to see what the screaming was about. She'd barely gone five steps before the sky raiders had hit her with white lightning.

  She'd woken in a sky craft, and her life had changed forever.

  A spinner, almost the size of her palm, scuttled on ten legs across the floor in front of her, jerking her back to the present, and she took a breath to center herself.

  The shed had become a haven for insects of every kind, and it would need a thorough clean.

  She picked up a bucket and walked to the back where the water pump was located. She had to lean her whole body into pushing the handle down, and then strain to lift it up, it was so stiff with disuse.

  It took long minutes of effort, but eventually, with the thump of pipes groaning under the strain, the water flowed sluggishly. It was brown and smelled of clay and she filled the bucket to the top and then walked outside and threw it out, repeating the process until the water gushed out, clear and sweet again.

  She poured it into the barrels, hoping the dried residue would dissolve--not so she could start dyeing levik wool again--they had no leviks anymore--but so she could drain the barrels. She wanted to clean them so when she returned for longer than a few days, and when their herds had been replenished, she could start again.

  They had promised Aidan they wouldn't be gone for long, and it wasn't fair to endanger the village by having the sky craft so close for any period of time, anyway.

  She couldn't let herself get too attached to Pan Nuk just yet.

  But it was going to be hard to walk away from the little business she'd built up. Of course, her clients--the wool merchants in Juli and Gara--would have already given up on her. She'd been gone for so long on Shadow, if they didn't know she'd been taken, they would think she was no longer taking orders. So she'd have to start again. But she'd done it before, and she could do it again.

  She took a deep breath as she stepped out of the shed and looked down the length of the street that was the main thoroughfare in Pan Nuk. It had been home for all her life before the sky raiders came, with only a trip to Juli a year ago to expand her horizons.

  Now she'd been to Luf, the capital of Harven, and Valian, the Dartalian capital. She'd been to the Endless Escarpment and flown over the Dartalian Range. She looked up at where Shadow loomed, high above the mountain peaks. She had been there, too. Further away than any on Barit could ever have imagined.

  And while her life might have been altered forever, it hadn't been all bad. She'd found that she did have a Change to call. A type of earth change that was so specialized, she would have gone her whole life without knowing it if she hadn't been forced to dig for her element in a sky raider mine up on Shadow.

  And it was deeply satisfying that the Change she called was particularly effective against the sky raiders. They'd forced her onto Shadow, awakened her Calling, and now she was a danger to them.

  In the distance she heard the familiar rumble of the sky craft, and it made her chest constrict for a moment, remembering what it was like back on Shadow.

  She'd become used to the sound of the transports as they flew in to take the prisoners to the camp or the mine, and she wondered what the elderly and the children of Pan Nuk who'd been left behind made of the noise.

  With a blast of dust, Garek set the sky craft down at the end of the main street, and villagers began dragging the last of their things out of the back.

  Pan Nuk was coming back to life.

  She walked toward the craft along the long main street, pleased to see through open doors and windows that people had started making their cottages into homes again.

  A flash of color caught her eye as she passed the narrow street that angled upward to the village water tank. The water it held came from the lake high above the village via aqueduct, and there was Min in an orange dress standing beside it, her hand on the stone supports.

  Calling her Change, Taya realized. Something must have blocked the flow of water, and Min was trying to fix it so they all had water tonight.

  A small group of children watched her, transfixed. Pan Nuk had never had someone who could call the water Change.

  Taya hesitated, considered calling a hello, but eventually continued on her way without interrupting.

  By the time she'd reached the sky craft there was a small group crowded around the ladder--Kas, Eli and Quardi, waiting on the ground as Opik helped Luca down.

  Garek must have let them both ride with him in front.

  Opik had helped Garek steal the sky craft Garek had used to reach Shadow, and she knew he'd been determined to have a chance to ride in one.

  Garek swung out of the pilot's door, climbed down, and moved across to her, easy and relaxed, and pulled her close.

  Having him back here in Pan Nuk, beside her, made her hands tremble as she slid an arm around his waist. She had imagined this so many times on Shadow, but some small part of her had wondered if it would ever happen.

  “Have we got a hiding place for the sky craft?” She addressed her question to Eli.

  “There're a few options,” he said, “but they're quite far from the village.”

  She felt Garek's arms tighten around her. She didn't like the idea of him being far away, either.

  “Do you think the sky craft would break if we hid it under water?” she asked.

  “You think, because water is a buffer against the shadow ore and their equipment, it might prevent them sensing the sky craft somehow?” Kas looked at her in surprise.

  She shrugged. “If they're tracking it using something inside the craft itself, it would hopefully put an end to that.”

  “The sky craft Garek and I stole from the Garamundo town master was there for months, ever since Garek brought it down, and they never swooped in and took it,” Opik said.

  Taya's gaze snapped to his. “That's a good point.”

  “A very good point,” Garek agreed. “But they may have thought it was too damaged to save. They'd have risked their people to come in and get it, and all for a craft that possibly couldn't fly.”

  There was silence for a moment while everyone thought through the implications.

  “Do we really want to risk damaging the craft by putting it in water, on the small chance they may be tracking it by some method we can't understand?” Eli said at last.

  Everyone was quiet again.

  “I don't think we can risk it.” Garek broke the silence. “But is there somewhere we could put it that's close to water? It would be better than nothing.”

  Eli pointed to the right. “There's the marsh at the end of the valley. It's boggy, but if we built a wooden platform to put the sky craft on and then covered it with sod, it might look like a small bump in the landscape. There might be enough water in the sod to be helpful, too.”

  “That could work, except we'll need time to put the woode
n platform together.” Kas let his gaze drift over the village, and she thought she could see his body droop at the thought of what they needed to do, and how much work they had ahead of them.

  They were all worn out. Exhausted by their escape, and from the grinding, never-ending work they'd done for the sky raiders before that.

  “We could use doors to make a platform,” Luca said, and it was the first time since the conversation began that Taya remembered he was with them, listening avidly. “Some of them are off their hinges, anyway.”

  “Doors?” Opik frowned.

  “Well, ask yourself this,” Taya said. “Do you think having a door on your house, or hiding the sky craft, is more important?”

  “Put like that . . .” Eli turned and looked down the main street. “Let's get some tools.”

  FOUR

  In the end, it had taken more than the doors from every room in every house and barn in Pan Nuk to make a platform the sky craft could land on. They'd had to use wooden window shutters, too--but they'd put together something that Garek could land on in just a few hours.

  Then they'd cut large bushes and set them around the base of the sky craft, and covered the roof with sod.

  The way everyone worked, focused, tense, told Garek more than words how concerned everyone was about the sky raiders returning.

  “Should Taya and I just go now?” he asked Kas, realizing he was speaking up a little late. Everyone had begun packing up.

  “No.” Kas shook his head. “You're both tired, and we've taken precautions. I don't like the idea of cowering from them. Not anymore.”

  There were a few murmurs of agreement around them, and Garek realized more people had been paying attention to their conversation than he'd realized.

  He walked around the sky craft, mud squelching beneath his boots on the marshy ground, with a critical eye. It was a good job.

  Hopefully, from above, it looked like a hillock.

  He wasn't taking any chances, though. He'd stay close to it all night, which meant he wouldn't join the village in their first celebratory dinner since they'd been back home.