The Sky Warden and the Sun
Page 10
Sal hesitated, but could see the sense in it. “No.”
“Good. That increases our chances of success.”
She whistled softly and the two men appeared again. They had obviously followed her and awaited her signal. Once again she spoke to them in a tongue Sal couldn’t follow. The two men nodded and disappeared. Moment later, the snorting of two camels announced their return with a light wagon.
“Your friend is injured, yes?” Brokate indicated Shilly, who was watching with a stunned expression on her face.
“Her leg is broken.”
“It would be better to have names, if we are to do business together.”
“Of course.” Sal kicked himself for not thinking of it earlier; traders set great store in knowing who they were talking to. Unhesitatingly, he gave their real names, since Brokate had already guessed who they were. “I’m Sal, and this is Shilly.”
“A pleasure.” The woman nodded once, then waved the two men forward.
“Hey—careful.” Shilly resisted their touch at first, but had no choice other than to let herself be lifted off the buggy and placed gently into the wagon. Sal grabbed their packs from among their supplies and followed her. Brokate unloaded some of the boxes from the wagon and put them on the back of the buggy to change its profile, then lashed the tarpaulin back into place. One of the men produced a small bottle of paint and daubed a black circle on the bonnet.
And it was done. Sal hoisted himself into the wagon and let it be drawn away. Behind them, in full view, he watched the men climb into the buggy, start it, and follow. There was a hollow ache in his chest as he watched. What if he was wrong about Lutz and Kalish and had given away the buggy for nothing?
“I hope you know what you’re doing, Sal.” Shilly sat stiff and silent by his side. He couldn’t tell if she was in pain or annoyed. Probably both, he assumed, and there was nothing to be done about either. All he could do was sit and hope that he did know what he was doing, and that Behenna’s ceaseless tap-tapping wouldn’t discover them.
“We’re almost there, Shilly,” he whispered. “Almost there.”
When they reached the rest of Brokate’s caravan, the wagon shuddered to a halt. Its leader appeared once more, to tie a flap over where they sat, leaving a gap for air and so they could peer out. She pressed battered binoculars into each of their hands. “For the view. It’ll be good from where you’re sitting. But I want them back, mind.” Then she was gone.
The rocking motion of the wagon started up again as the rest of her people stirred, responding to her whispered orders to get ready. Then they began to move out. The roaring of engines, the braying of camels and the shouting of humans was deafening. Sal peered anxiously out at chaos behind them as the caravan rolled slowly forward. It was dusty and hot, and he was terrified, but it was good to be moving. They were committed. There was nothing more he could do. Brokate would either get them to the other side or not—and he would worry then, either way, about what would happen next.
At first he saw little but the wagons around them. The buggy had nipped ahead, presumably to take a position at the heart of the caravan. The men and women leading the camels were too busy to notice the two pairs of eyes peering out from one particular wagon, and Sal felt easier for that. The fewer who actually knew about them, the better.
Then the shouting reached a new height, and the wagon slowed. He presumed they had reached the final checkpoint and were braving the resistance of the people who manned it. Sky Wardens were sticklers for organisation and efficiency at the best of times. When they were trying to trap two fugitives, they would only be more so.
Of course, though, that was also the exact moment when it would be best for Brokate to turn them in. He had no more reason to trust her than he did Favi Kalish. What if he had foolishly led them into the worst possible situation?
The tap-tapping grew more urgent as the caravan lurched forward through the checkpoint. Sal concentrated on making his mind smooth and impenetrable, but the Sky Warden’s touch was too strong, too insistent, too urgent. He knew something was up. Sal had to bite his lip to quell the panic rising in him. At any moment, he expected to be discovered.
Then Shilly’s hand was gripping his upper arm. They were passing the checkpoint. Through the flap they could see Kalish, red-faced and shouting at the Warden in charge of the crossing. Engenius Lutz was standing beside him, looking around anxiously. Behind him, dressed in the dirty brown robes of a traveller, standing behind a sheet of cloth so he would be hidden from the staging area but not from the road, was—
Tait. The young journeyman looked annoyed, as though at a sudden change of plans. Sal sat upright and put his nose as close to the slit as he dared. If Tait was there, Behenna wouldn’t be far away. He crouched down in the back of the wagon as Tait looked over his left shoulder at someone who had spoken, then stepped to one side.
And there he was: their pursuer, Shom Behenna, of moderate height yet solidly built, skin deep black and hair to match. His powerful gaze cast about the dusty air, as though he could see through wood, through canvas, to what lay hidden in the caravan passing them. He saw nothing, but clearly he suspected.
Lutz said something Sal couldn’t make out. The Sky Warden reached out to take a handful of Lutz’s smock and pulled the surgeon closer. Even though the surgeon was taller than the Sky Warden, Lutz shrank at the touch. Behenna said something through tight lips. His words weren’t clear, but their relationship was.
“You knew,” whispered Shilly. “Lutz betrayed us!”
“Or Kalish did.” A feeling that wasn’t quite relief flooded through him: he was profoundly relieved to have evaded the trap but dismayed at the same time that his suspicious instinct had proven right. “I didn’t know for sure.”
“Do you think he was hoping for a reward? Enough to mount an expedition back to the city, perhaps?”
Sal shook his head. He hadn’t thought of that. If finding his father meant more to Lutz than Sal and Shilly’s freedom, then it was certainly possible that that was why he had tried to turn them in—especially when he could justify it to himself as trying to save Shilly’s leg.
Sal was more concerned for the moment about getting away. Just because they had slipped past Behenna didn’t mean that they were going to make it to the other side unchallenged.
The sound from hoofs and wheels and feet had changed; their wagon had made it past the crossing and onto the bridge itself. With every extra metre between him and the Lookout, the tension coursing through him rose slightly. By the time they reached the first “island” and turned to enter the new section of bridge, he was trembling. It couldn’t happen so easily.
Through the binoculars, Sal watched furious activity unfolding through the customs and market areas. It was being searched, he guessed, along with the rest of the town, and when it came up empty, Behenna finally knew for certain that he had been tricked. Abandoning all attempts to hide himself from general view, the Sky Warden strode out onto the road and stared at the retreating caravan, a hundred metres away and barely onto the second stretch of bridge. Brokate must have seen him too, for shrill whistles urged the caravan faster.
The Sky Warden rolled up the sleeves of his dusty blue robes and raised his hands. He closed his eyes for a moment. A glint of light reflected from the glass torc he wore around his neck. Sal held his breath, wondering what would come next and what he could possibly do to counter a direct attack from someone like Behenna. What if the caravan was destroyed simply in order to recapture him? How far would the Sky Warden go to get what he wanted?
The expression on Behenna’s face was taut with strain and Sal suddenly realised why he had gone to such lengths to trap them unawares. Behenna was afraid of him! After the outburst that had almost killed the Alcaide and the Syndic, Behenna was doing everything he could to avoid a direct confrontation.
It was too late for subtlety now, though. Behenna shouted in a loud voice, and the cry vanished into the air of the Divide. Seconds later,
a reply came from the walls of the canyon—an echo of the shout magnified into a twisting gale that tore at the canvas and sent the wagons skidding across the bridge into the stone guard rails protecting them from a fall to the bottom of the canyon far below. Shilly grabbed Sal to stop herself from falling as their wagon bounced sideways, such was the strength of the wind. Sal’s ears popped, and he couldn’t even hear himself shouting in alarm.
The wagons were jammed against the guardrail by the wind. They couldn’t move forward, no matter how their drivers cursed. The Sky Warden had effectively pinned them in place. All he had to do was keep them there until a delegation arrived from the Lookout, and Sal would be theirs.
Sal reached deep into himself for a way to counteract the Sky Warden’s summoning of the wind. What he lacked in skill, he might be able to make up for in brute strength. He’d give Behenna a reason to be afraid.
Before he could try, fire sprang into life along both sides of their section of the bridge—towering sheets of yellow flame that burned so hotly they produced a wind of their own, buffeting the caravan from all sides, but not burning a single hair. The elements clashed around them. The Sky Warden’s unnatural gale fought the updraught from the fire, but without success. Strength was gradually leached out of the hurricane until nothing remained but a loud moan.
Sal’s hearing returned. The force building up in his chest drained away as he looked around in amazement. This hadn’t come from him, but from somewhere else. He heard more whistles and shouts as, slowly and carefully, the wagons began to move. He also heard enough voices asking where the flames had come from to realise that they weren’t from Brokate, either. This was something beyond her control. It was as though the bridge itself had risen up to defend them, to protect them from the Sky Warden, although he couldn’t imagine how or why. He could only watch breathlessly as they inched their way forward.
The Lookout was no longer visible, let alone Behenna’s small figure. Sal’s world had narrowed to a wide thoroughfare between two walls of fire. Time slowed as they wound their way along, following the turns of each junction with even more care than usual. Brokate’s voice rang out clearly from the front, urging her team on and berating anyone whose courage flagged.
After what felt like an eternity, the flames fell behind them, and they were on the last section of bridge. The air felt instantly cooler and a natural breeze swept away the stench of fear and fire. Cooking smells, and incense, gradually took its place. The lights of Nesh weren’t visible from Sal and Shilly’s backward-facing vantage point, but every metal surface glimmered. Every trader’s eye gleamed.
Then the hoofs, feet and wheels were rattling on solid ground. The flames burning along the greater length of the bridge died away entirely, and the Divide was again dark.
Sal raised the binoculars to see what was happening at the Lookout, and saw that things had finally calmed down. Kalish had gone, and so had Lutz. No one waited to travel across the bridge; the conflagration had made them nervous. Only Behenna remained, watching Brokate’s caravan limp onto the far side of the canyon, slightly battered and shocked, but intact.
Across the gulf, Sal felt the mind of the Sky Warden grope for him, parting the suffocating fog of the Void Beneath to send him one brief message: “Clever boy.”
Then Shom Behenna turned and walked away.
Brokate appeared before them, untying and pulling back the canvas that had hidden them from view. Her face was flushed and very much alive.
“We made it!” she said, looking as though she didn’t quite believe it herself. “You made it, Sal and Shilly. You’re safe now. You’re on the other side. How does it feel to be here?”
As much to his surprise as Shilly and Brokate’s, Sal burst helplessly into tears.
Part Two:
Learning
Chapter 5
Death, the Great Change-Maker
Belilanca Brokate’s caravan plodded slowly but steadily along the winding road from Nesh to Ulum, trailing a cloud of dust behind it. Shilly was in a bad mood—and knowing it didn’t help. They had been travelling for seven days, stopping every night by the side of the road.
Judging by the smell of the dust during the day, she decided it must have risen from dried-up animal droppings disturbed by the wheels of wagons, carts and the occasional motorised truck. The path was obviously well used and the road camels, especially bred to haul wagons across long Interior highways, were not the sweetest-smelling creatures she had encountered. Their fresh deposits, baked by the relentless sun, soon crumbled to powder, ready for the next set of wheels to run over them.
Brokate had made her a bed in one of the leading wagons from which she could comfortably watch the land approaching and falling by. The view had soon worn as thin as the cushions beneath her. The landscape of the Interior so far was little different to that which she and Sal had crossed on the Old Line: hilly and uninteresting. She had heard, as a child, stories set in landscapes of towering peaks tipped with ice, of sheer walls of rock so high and steep that they could topple at any moment, and she had assumed that the Interior would be like that, immediately and obviously different. But these hills were little more than bumps in the landscape they had to either get over or go around—which they did with relaxed ease. Brokate and her team had clearly travelled this way many times before. They knew the road better than they knew each other. Shilly didn’t know how they endured it, or the flies.
As anticlimactic as the view was, though, it was nowhere near as bad as the heat. If she had thought it hot in the northern fringes of the Strand, she now knew better. By day the air boiled. The sun pounded down like a hammer on molten iron. The wind only brought more heat from the north and burnt as easily as the sun. She consumed litres of water and sweated most of it out. She felt as though she was drying up like the camel turds, and suspected she smelt as bad. The only thing that made it bearable was the thought that she had to go this way to get where she wanted to be. It would be cool where Skender Van Haasteren lived, she hoped; maybe there would be mountains and snow. Until then, she just had to endure.
The fact that Sal hadn’t complained even once only made it harder for her to say anything. Quite apart from the ward easing some of life’s little annoyances for him, he got to sit at the front of the wagon with Brokate, trading stories and songs to while the time away. Shilly could see the back of their heads from where she lay and heard their voices clearly. It was all right for him, she thought: he’d achieved what he wanted. Brokate had confirmed that the Sky Wardens never came into the Interior if they could help it. They were a long, long way from the sea, the source of the Wardens’ power, and getting further away every day. He was safe from Behenna, from his great-aunt the Syndic, and from the Alcaide. Sal had put it all behind him, and could afford to relax.
Shilly wished she had it so easy.
“Between the old times and these,” Brokate said, her accented voice as rolling and dusty as the road they travelled, “the face of the world changed many times. Not in the way a person’s face changes when they look happy or sad, for the bones below a face don’t move: it remains, always, the same face. The Earth’s bones themselves moved. When this happened, many things came into being that had not existed before, and others that had once been familiar were gone forever, sometimes overnight.
“In those in-between times, there lived a baker. He wasn’t a famous baker, a maker of delicate pastries or towering cakes or anything like that. He lived in a small village on the slopes of a tall mountain. This village was no different to any other. Its name was La Menz and, as well as the baker, it had a blacksmith, a mayor, a butcher, tailor, and so on. The only thing that makes it memorable is that, on one of those nights when the bones of the world moved, everyone who lived there died.”
She paused.
“Go on,” said Sal. “I think I know it, but in the version I’ve heard the baker was a carpenter. There might be other differences. And Shilly will want to hear it. Won’t you, Shilly?”
“The baker never learned why everyone died,” Brokate continued. “He didn’t even notice it at first, for he had had reason to be out of the village’s bounds for most of the night. He came home before dawn and napped on a couch so as not to disturb his wife or children. When the sun rose in the morning so did he, sleepily, not noting the silence in the house as he went about his work.”
Brokate’s voice took on the rhythms of the wagon’s wheels and the camels’ hoof steps. “The village bread was late that morning, but no one complained. The baker presumed that his wife had given the villagers warning the night before, telling them that he had been called away and would be too tired to keep his usual schedule. But as time rolled on and the steaming loaves cooled, and still no one came to collect them, he began to wonder. Had his bread been spurned by even those who had once been his most loyal customers? Would people go to work hungry just to make a point?
“He called out to his wife and received silence in reply; this was not unexpected. But his children hadn’t bidden him good morning, as he demanded that they, at the least, should do. Neither could he hear them squabbling in the kitchen while they ate breakfast.
“He wasn’t an imaginative man, but by then even he felt something like sand slipping under his feet. It was the bones of his world moving—shifting, sliding, falling away…”
I know how he feels, Shilly thought, her mind wandering. Everything about the traders unsettled her: the tattoos and piercings, the strange incense they burned, the metal coins they traded with, the strange, rhythmic songs they sang, their accents.
Nesh had been a bewildering kaleidoscope of colours and sounds that had quickly undermined any gladness she had felt about achieving their goal of crossing to the Interior. The people there dressed in robes and kept rat-like creatures called quolls as pets. They shouted in strange languages and stared openly at her dark skin. The caravan had only stayed a night, but that had been more than enough for her. She could understand now why Sal had preferred a life on the road to the towns he and his father had occasionally visited. She had never before felt so isolated, even after years of being Fundelry’s odd girl out.