The Blood Debt: Books of the Cataclysm Two

by Sean Williams

  “I place my faith in what I can see and touch. The story Skender brought back from the Void is nonsense. That wasn't the first time I'd heard it, and I believed it as little from Highson's lips as anyone else. So-called Lost Minds, survivors from before the Cataclysm, some sort of bizarre afterlife—it's ridiculous! This is the only world there is, the one before us, which we touch with our hands and experience through the Change. There is no other.”

  “There's the Void Beneath.”

  “An emptiness for fools to get lost in. I am not a fool.”

  “Then why are you so afraid?”

  “Of what? Of you?”

  “No. The twins, of course.”

  Marmion sighed deeply. “I told you once that I don't have to justify my decisions to you. The same goes for me as a whole. You have no right to question my integrity. I can only forgive so much.”

  “I'm not asking for forgiveness, and I'm not questioning your integrity. There's nothing wrong with fear; sometimes it even makes sense. I just want to understand. When I have that understanding, maybe it'll make things easier. Next time we disagree over something like this, one of us might be killed.” And it won't be me, she added silently to herself.

  “I think,” he started, and then seemed to reconsider. He began again: “I think you already know the truth.”

  “That you are trying to kill the twins because you're afraid of them.” He didn't deny it, so she ploughed on. “But why do they terrify you? They haven't threatened you or harmed you in any way. They aren't evil.”

  “They threaten everything.” Marmion's head lifted; his eyes blazed. “The world breaks down around them. You can see it happening in the man'kin, in the Change, the flood. Things are only going to get worse. The longer they're here the more tenuous our future becomes. That's what I'm afraid of.”

  She was startled by his answer. “How do you know this?”

  “You listen to Tom about his dreams. He's not the only seer in the Alcaide's service. Some foresee a time beyond which they cannot see, when the world as we know it ends. That time is coming soon—and the Homunculus is at the centre of it. That's why it must die.”

  Her first instinct was to disbelieve him. “Kail didn't say anything about this.”

  “Why would he? It's not his place to—and besides, he doesn't know.”

  “All right then, but it still doesn't make any sense. Why destroy the twins without finding out what they want or where they're going? At least hear what they have to say first. Maybe they have the answer for us, and killing them will seal our fate forever.”

  “Would you do nothing as the end of the world approaches, Shilly? I wouldn't.” He sighed again, and his head fell back onto the pillow. “Neither would the Alcaide.”

  “So you have your orders, and that's enough for you. Is that all you want to be? The Alcaide's lackey?”

  “All I want,” he breathed, “is for this to be over.”

  Shilly looked down at her hands. If the seers were right, then things were more serious than she had realised, but there had to be a better means of saving the world than by taking innocent lives. She couldn't accept that plan, if it was all he had to offer.

  It's always too early to give up on someone, Marmion had said. A chance remains that they'll surprise you, no matter how minuscule it seems.

  She cleared her throat.

  “Lodo used to say: trust is cheap; respect is priceless. No matter what you think of him, he was absolutely right on that score. We may never be friends, we disagree on lots of points, and I'm pretty sure I'll never trust you completely—but I do respect your conviction, and your determination to follow through. I wanted you to know that.”

  That was as far as she could go. The issue of how their differences could be resolved was better put aside for the moment. Until the Homunculus was next in their grasp, there was precious little they could do about it.

  As to the rest, he obviously didn't want to take it any further, and she didn't have the energy to force him. The connection they had with Lodo and to each other was less important than the other issues surrounding them. Hard though it was, she knew she had to let it go or go crazy.

  She stood, intending to leave before she changed her mind.

  “Shilly, wait.” His voice was soft, but there was a new tone to it that stopped her in her tracks. “I don't feel that I've done anything to earn your respect, but I am—grateful, I guess, that you think me worth the effort to understand. We're both trying to do what's right, and it's not simple for either of us.” He took a deep breath. “I'll try harder. I know better, now, than to dismiss you, or to cross you.”

  Shilly nodded, wishing with all her heart that she could give him his hand back. She knew what it felt like to lose something fundamental in an instant—like the ability to walk properly or to grasp one hand in another.

  “I also want to say,” he went on, “that I'd like you to come with us when we go looking for the source of the flood and the Homunculus. Tom seems to think they're all connected—and that we'll need you along the way.”

  She thought of home and the people she'd left behind. “I'll consider it,” she said, heading for the door. Her courage was spent. Now she just wanted to get out before he asked her for anything else she couldn't refuse.

  “One last thing.”

  She froze, hearing nothing but the sound of her breathing.

  “I'm sorry that Kail is gone,” he said softly. “He and I weren't close, but I knew his background well enough. He always wanted to meet you. I think he might even have been jealous of you, a little. You knew his uncle better than he ever did, thanks to his family. And now he'll never get the chance to make up for that.”

  “Who?” Shilly felt the gears of her thoughts seize up. “Kail—what?”

  “Was Lodo's nephew. Didn't he tell you? I thought he would have when you met. Perhaps he meant to later.”

  Shilly fumbled for her memories of that first meeting in the Broken Lands with the wardens stranded in the Homunculus's wake. Kail had come to join her and Sal in the buggy, and talked about how Lodo's family had spurned him for rebelling against tradition. He had said that Marmion was Lodo's nephew—or so she'd taken his words to mean.

  Looking back on it now, the conversation had a very different cast. Marmion, Kail had actually said, is a hapless peacock who would rather die than admit any disloyalty to the Alcaide. Look all you like, but I doubt you'll see any family resemblance.

  All true.

  But: These days, Lodo's nephew likes to think he's leading this expedition. There are, however, plenty who disagree.

  Marmion was in charge of the expedition. Habryn Kail was leading it, or trying to. Kail the outsider, the loner, the tracker.

  Not Marmion. Kail.

  Blood rushed to her cheeks. Her embarrassment couldn't have been more profound. All those times she'd wished Marmion could be more like Lodo, and not once had Kail corrected her mistake. Had it been a case of simple misconception on her part, or deliberate misdirection on his? Either way, he had let it persist.

  Embarrassment turned to anger. Why hadn't he told her the truth? Had he been laughing at her expense? Enjoying her foolishness? Secretly betting on how long it would take her to make the connection?

  And now he was gone. He had left the last laugh too late.

  Serves him right, she thought, even as she came to the understanding that he hadn't been laughing at her at all. He had been watching her and relating with her in a way that wouldn't have been possible if she had known the truth. She would have been evaluating him, judging him right back—just as she had been with Marmion. Her expectations would have got in the way of any genuine communication.

  He had, perhaps, wanted her to like him for who he was, not who she wanted him to be. That, after all, was what everyone deserved.

  “Thank you,” she said to Marmion, “for telling me the truth. I think I earned that much, at least.”

  Marmion—free of the burden of her expectations
, which he hadn't even known he was bearing—didn't answer. His mouth hung half-open. The sound of his breathing had deepened.

  She told herself that an apology wasn't worth waking him for, and felt relief.

  Someone knocked at the door behind her. She opened it. Warden Banner stuck her head through the gap. Her eyes took in the entire room with one sweep. Marmion didn't stir.

  “It's gone awfully quiet,” Banner observed.

  “He's asleep. I'll leave now.”

  Banner opened the door wider and Shilly stepped through. “It's good that you two talked. The tension has been putting the rest of us on edge.”

  “I don't think that'll be a problem any more.” Shilly took the woman's arm before she could slip past. “Were you listening?”

  “Not enough to hear actual words.”

  “Good.” Shilly took a moment to gather herself outside the room, then went downstairs. A stiff drink, she hoped, would be just the thing to get the taste of sand out of her mouth—assuming Chu hadn't drunk the bar dry first.

  “…except, perhaps, one's heart.”

  THE BOOK OF TOWERS, EXEGESIS 4:18

  Pain.

  Skender tried to open his eyes and failed on the first attempt. Every movement, no matter how slight, sent agony spiking through his skull. It was worse than being in the cage with Rattails poking him, worse than Pirelius's dirty fingers squeezing his windpipe shut, worse even than seeing the ground come up at him when he and Chu crashed her wing.

  How had he got in such a situation? What had happened to him?

  The last thing he remembered was arguing with Chu. Had she hit him? That didn't seem likely, but it wasn't impossible. How else to explain the utter nothingness that connected that moment to the present?

  A dreadful suspicion began to creep over him, made only worse as he prised his eyelids open a crack and took in his surroundings. He was in his room in the Black Galah, sprawled face up on the bed, wearing nothing but his shirt. He didn't remember coming up to his room after the argument; he didn't remember getting undressed. He didn't remember anything after Chu yelling at him, and him yelling back. The content of even that conversation was hazy.

  He didn't remember!

  The mental breakdown he had suffered was worse than any merely physical pain. He hauled himself upright, appalled at the taste in his mouth. The world spun violently around him, and he supported himself with one hand against the bedpost while his stomach roiled. His new robe lay splayed across the floor. Putting it on required a supreme effort.

  The void in his memory gnawed at him. He had to find out what had happened. The thought of not knowing was unbearable. Staggering slightly, he wound his way along the empty corridor of the hostel's top floor to the bathroom, where he was mortified to discover that the strange smell in his nostrils really did come from him.

  Urtagh informed him that everyone had gone to inspect the waters in the Divide from the vantage point of the Wall. The landlord also offered him breakfast, which he quickly and firmly declined. The sun was halfway across the sky when he left the hostel. Squinting through the light, still feeling as though someone had hammered nails into his head, he hailed a cab. He collapsed into the back with a groan, and tried his best to ignore the rocking motion of the seat beneath him.

  Flashes of the previous night came back to him, disconnected and confused like images from a dream. There had been singing, laughter, shouting, and a lot of drinking. There had also been accusations and hurt and Chu's face before him, mouth moving but words lost in a roar of forgetfulness. The fragments wouldn't fit together, no matter how he tried to force them. How had the argument ended? He needed to know.

  The cab let him out at the checkpoint, and the redhead who had been fooled by Gwil Flintham saluted him through. He barely acknowledged her, focusing instead on putting one foot in front of the other. A cool wind blew from the direction of the Divide, carrying with it the sound of voices. Someone called out to him.

  It was Kemp. The big albino occupied a spot on the far side of the right-hand guardrail, his throat bandaged and legs dangling over what had once been empty space. Now a drop of about six metres led to the surface of swirling, muddy water. Skender took in the mind-boggling view in small pieces, unable to credit the change all at once. The last time he had stood in that spot, the Divide had been exactly as it always had been—a dry, dangerous desert with no reason to recommend it whatsoever.

  Now he could have been standing on the bank of an enormous river. The water stretched almost the entire distance across the canyon. He could see strong currents swirling under the surface, coalescing into eddies and whirlpools and fading again as he watched. A flood line—several metres above the water's present level—revealed just how torrential the surge had been. The exposed rock had a scoured, raw finish.

  “You don't look so good.” Kemp tugged on a makeshift fishing line, surely the only one for hundreds of kilometres.

  Skender shook his head, not trusting his balance enough to approach any nearer the edge than the guardrail.

  A flock of white cockatoos with yellow crests flew overhead, calling raucously.

  “I don't feel so good,” he admitted.

  “Here.” Kemp pressed a flask of water into his hand. “Drink. You'll feel better eventually.”

  He swigged carefully from it, lest his stomach revolt. “What did I do last night?”

  Kemp chuckled. “Boy, you must have got it bad, if even you don't remember.”

  Skender felt a flash of irritation. There was no point stating the obvious. “I just want to know, no matter how bad it is.”

  “Well, the last time I saw you, we were talking about old times with Chu. She wanted to hear the story of how we were caught by the Sky Wardens in the Haunted City. She seems a good sort, that one. Enjoys a good laugh, anyway.”

  Several pieces fell into place. He did recall boasting to someone about his adventures. It could have been Chu.

  “What came after that?”

  “I don't know. You wandered off to get some more of those delicious koftas and didn't come back. Chu went after you.”

  “She did?” That he couldn't remember. The thought of food made him queasy. “Was she mad at me?”

  “Not that I could tell. You seemed to be getting on fine.”

  “Do you know where she is now?”

  “No. Sorry.” Kemp's eyes drifted back out over the water, where his float bobbed fruitlessly among the debris. “Look at that! There's a whole tree in there! Where on Earth does it all come from?”

  The water had a sound to it that reminded him of lizards slithering. Skender remembered the old creek beds in the bottom of the Divide, and wondered if there had been a river there once, ages ago. Perhaps something had stopped it up, dammed it, and now that dam had burst. He couldn't imagine the scale of such a dam, and for the moment he didn't care.

  Thanking Kemp, he headed further out along the Wall, to the next people in line.

  Sal and Shilly were arguing about who had said sorry to whom and why. Skender didn't know what they were talking about, and they didn't know what he and Chu had fought over the previous night, since they had retired early.

  “Do you think Kail might still be alive?” Shilly asked him out of nowhere. “You were down there. You saw him better than Sal did.”

  “I don't know,” he said, “but he's a tough old bird. I wouldn't put anything past him, if he set his mind to it.”

  Skender couldn't tell whether that news saddened or gladdened them. None the wiser on any count, he wandered off.

  More birds glided by, and he followed their trajectory into the sky. A low-flying heavy lifter caught his eye. Tom and Banner and several of the wardens were hanging over its edge, waving as they headed out across the Divide. Now that water had returned to the centre of the world, the Sky Wardens were able to exercise their powers again. He idly wondered what his father and the other Stone Mages would think of that.

  A snippet of information came to him i
n a flash.

  Stone and air don't mix.

  The phrase was a simple one, frequently heard in his training. Fire and water didn't mix either, and the lesson was one drummed into every Sky Warden or Stone Mage raised in their respective countries—summarising the difference between the divergent philosophies. He had heard the phrase on the lips of the quartermaster, when he had offered to help fix Chu's wing, six days earlier. Something told him that he had heard it even more recently than that.

  Again he saw Chu's face before him, angry and hurt. He was stone, and she was air. What had Shilly said about him being like his father? Now you're flirting with a flyer from the other side of the Interior. It's a recipe for exactly the same disaster.

  A hole seemed to open up beneath him. He sincerely hoped he hadn't said what he thought he might have…

  “You look like you're about to either throw up or fall down,” said a familiar voice. He focused on the world around him and saw his mother watching him, concerned. She had changed into new robes; her many scrapes and bruises stood out against her pale skin.

  “Or both,” he said, putting a hand over his face. Cold sweat prickled in the breeze. “What have I done?”

  “Drank far too much, that's all,” she said, ruffling his hair. “Come and sit down. There are seats along here.”

  He followed her towards an impromptu viewing area where someone had had the forethought to provide benches for spectators. His mother walked with the assistance of crutches, favouring her right leg, but she still managed to outpace him. His entire body felt like it needed a crutch.

  When the weight came off his legs, he sighed with intense relief.

  “I think I've been unbelievably stupid,” he said. “Again.”

  She laughed, revealing a cracked tooth on her upper jaw. Combined with a bandaged eye and short-hewn hair, it made her look like one of Pirelius's bandits. “So you've got a hangover. It's not the end of the world—although it might feel like it for a while.”

  “No, not that.” He explained the situation to her: his lack of memory and a growing fear that he might have told Chu something he didn't mean. “I think I told her it wouldn't work between us.”