The Sky Warden & the Sun (Books of the Change)

by Sean Williams

  She stared at him

  You said exactly the right thing.

  He went to help her move through the rows of benches.

  “Don’t touch me,” she said, pushing him back.

  “What?”

  “You heard me.” She saw it now — too late, but better than never. Mawson had told her before the hearing that someone was lying to her: someone much closer to you than I. Tait had been letting her lean on him at the time, and he hadn’t heard the man’kin’s warning.

  While Behenna and Tait might not have wanted her on her own, they had been quite happy to use her against Sal in the hope that where she went he might follow.

  “If you think I don’t know what’s going on,” she said, angry at herself for not realising sooner, “you’re even more stupid than I thought you were.”

  Tait shook his head as though in confusion, but backed off to join his former master as the group moved back to their benches. Sal walked alone, listlessly, as though asleep. Shilly was afraid to approach him in case she only made him feel worse. If she had thought he might retaliate against the decision, she would have been wrong. He seemed dead to the world.

  Behenna had the same look. He had won, but in the process lost everything.

  By the time they had reached their bench and the people waiting there, the obscuring charm had closed back in and the centre of the bowl was no longer clearly visible. Mawson looked smug, but said nothing. She was glad for that, although she resolved to confront the man’kin later about what it knew. The Judges had proceeded to another case, and the moon had moved a short distance across the sky. The night wasn’t done yet, but for them the difficult part was over. When the Synod closed, Shilly assumed, they would begin the long journey back to Ulum and there make arrangements for the journey south. Radi Mierlo would need to finalise things in Mount Birrinah, if she hadn’t already. The Mage Van Haasteren would return to the Keep and his students. Skender would go back to his studies and soon forget the two visitors from the south who had so briefly enlivened his world. His mother would go back to her dig, wherever that was, and everything would soon be back to normal.

  Under the cold sky of the Nine Stars, surrounded by mysterious ruins and people whose motives she was nervous of trusting any distance at all, Shilly wondered if she would ever have a normal life to look forward to.

  Epilogue

  Sins and Wisdom

  The caravan was ready to begin its long journey. Curled like a question mark, the long line of wagons — and one buggy — waited by the gates of Ulum for final farewells to be over. Moving east at first, through Lower Light and Carslake, then south to Leonora, it would enter the Strand at the crossing known as Tintenbar, the one normally taken by official travellers, then continue south through Millingen, Moombin and Gunida. The caravan would finally arrive at the Haunted City, where the Syndic would meet it personally, four weeks and two and a half thousand kilometres from where it had started.

  In Sal’s eyes, it wasn’t travelling forward, but backward. After everything he had done to reach the Interior, he was being forced to return — and worse. Had he been going back to Fundelry, he wouldn’t have minded so much. He knew what awaited him there, after all. Without Lodo it would be a very unfriendly place to live, full of racism and isolation. The Haunted City, on the other hand ...

  With a shake of his head, he stopped himself from thinking that far ahead. Not yet. There would be plenty of time during the journey.

  “Ready, Sal?”

  He turned at the sound of the voice. Belilanca Brokate stood behind him, dressed in her riding gear, the thin lines on her face and the rings in her ears adding up to a very welcome sight. When she had heard that Sal was being sent home, she had pulled strings through Wyath’s father to ensure that her caravan would be the one chosen to take him. She had been waiting for them when they had returned from the Synod, and Sal had been happier to see her than he could say. He suspected she knew.

  “I’m not ready,” he said. “But that never mattered.”

  She helped him up into the lead wagon, then climbed up herself, into the front.

  “I hope you’ve heard some new stories,” he said. “We’ve got a long time to kill.”

  “No happy ones.” She lifted a shoulder in an economical shrug. “We’ll manage.”

  The wagon moved forward with a lurch. Behind them, the caravan followed. It was much larger than the one that had carried him from Nesh to Ulum, and consisted of several quite distinct components. The Mierlo wagons were heavy with goods and people. His mother’s family had no intention of coming back, if they could help it. Radi Mierlo rode as high as a queen by the driver of her wagon, eager to put her bad reputation behind her. Around her swarmed the uncles, aunts and cousins he had made no effort to meet, preferring to keep to himself rather than submit to their curiosity. He was their ticket to prosperity, and he, it had been made clear in no uncertain terms, wasn’t going to cheat them out of it.

  The other wagons contained a delegation from the Nine Stars, a party of five Stone Mages ostensibly sent to smooth the way for Sal’s return but really, Sal suspected, intending to take a closer look at the heart of the neighbouring country. Relations were cool between the Nine Stars and the Haunted City and every opportunity to see behind the opposite side’s lines was being taken with both hands.

  Sal recognised one of them from the Synod: a fair-haired, middle aged female Judge who had looked bored during their hearing. She hadn’t made any effort to talk to him, so Sal didn’t know if his ability to get her into the Haunted City had played a part in the Synod’s decision. Privately, he hoped not. There was enough complication in his life without adding politics to the mix.

  The rest of the caravan consisted of small traders and exporters pooling resources to make the trip affordable. It wasn’t often that a caravan was booked to make the journey from Ulum to the Haunted City in one unbroken stretch. Such an arrangement could also, Sal thought, make it easier to get past border guards. He didn’t know what, exactly, the traders were bringing with them, but it was probably an eclectic mix.

  They passed through the city gates and out into direct sunlight. Some of the drivers sang a short lament in another language that he remembered from his first trip with Brokate. It was a song of farewell, not just to a place but also to the people who lived there — to the spirit of a place. It perfectly matched his feelings. The plants, the sky, the earth, the smells — he would carry the memory of them all the way to the Haunted City, then follow them back, one day, to the land of his mother’s birth. He was sure of it. The magic of the flowers that had bloomed in the desert, after the storm his charm had brought down, demanded that he return.

  First, though, he had to sort out the unfinished business his parents had left him with.

  Perhaps it was the gentle rocking of the wagon beneath him that brought the story of the baker of La Menz back to him. Or else it was the past that hung off him like a ball and chain, dragging him backward with grim fatalism. The baker and Sal had one unlikely thing in common: infidelity had cast their lives in unusual directions. In the story it had been the baker’s infidelity that had saved him from a mysterious death. In real life it was Sal’s parents who had propelled him on the journey of his life. Sal wondered now if the similarities really ended there.

  The baker, in the beginning of the story, had done very little. He had endured the emotions of those around him, no matter how they battered him: his wife’s hatred; Monca’s love; the villagers’ disdain. He subconsciously summoned death to him as a kind of solution to his problem, but found that even that wasn’t what he wanted. If death was “the great Change-maker,” as Brokate had said, then it wasn’t a solution. It just made things different, and often not different enough to fix anything on its own. The baker had to take it upon himself to act in order to make things better.

  The extra ending Sal had given the story n
ow seemed trite to him, and had since they had left Ulum for the Nine Stars. When the baker had finally chosen to act, it was in a way that no one could have anticipated, and he had attained exactly what he wanted as a result: peace of mind. Perhaps Monca had come to understand that, in the end, she wasn’t terribly relevant to the central conflict in her lover’s life. The fact that she, too, had chosen death to achieve her own goals, in Sal’s version of the story, only underscored the point that the rest of the story made. The baker had to act in order to take any control at all over his life, even if it was impossible to act without affecting someone.

  Sal had acted, too. He felt as though he’d crossed a boundary when he had forced Warden Behenna to break his vows — or earlier, when he had defied the Synod by refusing to speak before them. The question was, would he get what he wanted as a result? Unlike the baker, he suspected that his story was far from over.

  They stopped that night in a gully protected by a wall of dead tree trunks. Sal didn’t leave the wagon except to bathe and relieve himself. He was too conscious of eyes watching him everywhere he went. Even under the cover of the wagon, he couldn’t avoid that. He kept his head down and didn’t meet anyone’s gaze.

  “Does it hurt?”

  He looked up to see Shilly crutching toward his spot at the rear of the wagon, holding a plate of stew in her one free hand. They had barely spoken to each other since the Synod’s decision. Her habit of hanging around the Mierlo camp during the day had made him wary, along with the incidents surrounding the Synod, and before. Back in Fundelry, he had wondered if she was only befriending him to get access to his power. He had convinced himself that it wasn’t the case — but she had certainly jumped quickly enough at Behenna’s offer to find her a teacher in the Strand, and he was sure Tait would be happy enough to let her use him. Maybe he had decided too quickly.

  But here she was now, asking him a question. He glanced down to where he’d been fiddling with the charm around his wrist, then back up at her.

  “No,” he said.

  “Good.” She handed him the plate. “This could be the last red meat we’ll see for a while. You should eat it.”

  “Thanks,” he said. The stew did smell delicious. “What about you?”

  “Is there room here for two?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Good. The company out there is lousy.”

  She hobbled off and returned a moment later with another bowl. He wasn’t sure yet how he felt about that, but he didn’t let her new mobility fool him. Although she might be down to one crutch, the pain lines around her eyes were permanently etched. She winced when she propped herself next to him on the wagon’s edge.

  They ate in silence, which was fine by him. He hadn’t told her the entire truth. The bracelet Behenna had wound around his left wrist hurt when he thought about it, and it was hard not to do that. Fashioned from knotted black leather and tied very tight, it was a constant reminder that he had lost his freedom. It was also proof that Lodo’s theories were right: the Change came from one source, and all Stone Mages and Sky Wardens could use it, if they would only let themselves. Their teachings were simply two different methods of controlling it — and controlling the people who used it.

  Behenna, now that he had broken his vows, had had no difficulty fashioning the charm even though he was as far from the sea as it was possible to get. Mentally, however, he suffered the worst indignities of an outcast. None of the Stone Mages on their journey back to Ulum had spoken a word to him, and Sal could tell that the thought of what awaited him at home weighed heavily upon him. The ex-Sky Warden watched the world moodily from the buggy’s driving seat, answering Tait’s questions in monosyllables.

  “They’ve got you now, boy,” Behenna had said to Sal via the Change, not long out of the Nine Stars. “They’ve got you, and they’re never going to let you go.”

  Sal could still hear the thick edge in the man’s mental voice. It wasn’t gloating at all, but bitterness. Behenna had been talking about himself too, Sal suspected, although he didn’t quite understand what that meant. Since then, Behenna had said nothing to Sal at all, mentally or out loud. Even while affixing the bracelet, he had worked in complete silence. It was his grandmother’s acid-faced secretary who had explained what it would do: that it was designed to incapacitate him if he tried to sneak away or remove it. There would be no more tricks with the buggy this time, she had said. He wouldn’t even get ten metres if he tried.

  Sal hadn’t tested it yet, but vowed to once he had worked up the courage. Whatever the bracelet would do to him, it was bound to be nasty. The way Behenna looked at him said so more clearly than words.

  “Do you think Tom or Kemp will be there when we arrive?”

  Shilly’s question startled him out of his thoughts, and he was glad for it. Just thinking about removing the bracelet made it tighten, sending rhythmic pinpricks of pain up his arm.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “It depends if the wardens forgave them for letting us get away.”

  “Do you remember when we left, though? Tom didn’t come with us, but he did say —”

  “Later. I do remember.”

  “If he dreamed it, like he dreamed the earthquake and Tait coming back, that probably means he at least will be there.” The way she spoke left it unclear whether she thought it was a good thing or not.

  Sal recalled something else Tom had told him. It had been outside School in Fundelry, just before Shilly had first suggested they be friends. “He told me that he thought I’d go to the Haunted City, one day.”

  “Did he?” She sniffed. “It’s a shame he didn’t tell us anything useful — like the details of how you’d get there. He could’ve saved us an awful amount of bother.”

  He looked at her, then looked away. Here he was again: thinking ahead. It was becoming a bad habit. He was caught between the past and the future like a bug between two fingers.

  There was an awkward silence. Sal’s stew was finished, and he put the bowl to one side. Shilly was still eating hers, and he watched her out of the corner of his eye. Her hair was getting long and straggly. The bleached sections were spreading too, thanks to the harsh Interior sun. The warm brown of her skin hid some of her gauntness, but not all of it. She looked exhausted thanks to large bags under her eyes. What, he wondered, had happened to the girl he had met in Fundelry, full of energy and always ready with a sharp comment? Where had she gone?

  He had happened to her, he supposed. He had dragged her from one side of the country to the other, and now back again. No wonder she was looking tired. No wonder she had wanted to go home.

  She looked up and he realised that he was staring at her.

  “What?”

  “Shilly, I’m —”

  “No.” She shook her head firmly. “Don’t say it, Sal.”

  “Say what?”

  “What you’re about to say.” She put down her food. “That you’re sorry.”

  “How do you know that’s what I was going to say?”

  “It’s obvious. How could you not be after all that’s happened to us?”

  “So why not say it and get it over with?”

  “Because there’s no point.” Her expression was intense. “I want to say it, too. We’ve both done things we regret. I let Behenna use my hunger for the Change and my loneliness against you. But saying the words won’t fix anything. What it really says is, It’s my fault, and that’s not the way it is with us. It’s not our fault, really. It just happened. ‘No blame.’”

  “Whose fault is it, then?”

  “Maybe it’s no one’s — or no one person’s, anyway. Your mother is partly to blame, and so is your real father. And so is the man who you thought was your father, and your grandmother, and the Syndic —”

  “I get it.”

  “And so is Lodo and the Mage Van Haasteren and the Alcaide and Warden Behe
nna. They’re all mixed up in it with us. Hell, half of them probably blame us for most of it, so it doesn’t seem fair that we should agree with them.”

  No, it didn’t. He had no doubts that she was right on that point. And he remembered how he had felt in the Broken Lands when she had tried to thank him, and he wouldn’t let her. This wasn’t so different, perhaps. “What do we do, then?”

  “We get on with making it better. That’s all we can do.”

  “How?”

  She shrugged in the fading light. “I’ve been talking to Mawson. He’s been telling me things, in his own way. Did you know that he’s been sworn to help your family in any way he can? It’s like a curse for him, but he honours it anyway. His kind, he says, are bound by their words more tightly than we are, hence the way they talk. Curses and promises are prisons, he says, but riddles set you free.”

  Sal had glimpsed the bust and recognised it from his dream, but had never spoken to it himself. “What’s that got to do with me?”

  “Well, it was him who suggested I patch things up with you. You’re part of the family he’s supposed to protect, right? And he thinks I’m good for you. Maybe vice versa, too, but he’s even more cagey than usual about that. He thinks we’re going to have our work cut out for us, so we might as well start getting used to working together again, despite what we did to hurt each other the first time. If he’s right, that does make a kind of sense.”

  “How do you feel about it?”

  “I’m here, aren’t I?” she said. Her expression was hard to read, though, and neither of them said anything for a long moment. He was glad she was there. Perhaps, he thought, Monca wasn’t as irrelevant to the baker as he had initially assumed.

  The stars came out one by one in the dome of the sky above them. They hadn’t been at the Keep long enough to learn about the Invisible Stars Skender had taunted them with on their arrival — if they even existed. Sal preferred the ones he could see with his ordinary eyes. The world around him was more than enough for one person to deal with without adding whole unseen layers on top of it.