Minutes later, it was over. There were no injuries or drama, just the placement of the beam where it belonged.
“You did so well!” Farah congratulated him, her hand squeezing his happily.
Silas felt lightheaded suddenly.
“Is there someplace we can sit down?” he asked, as people closed in and began to pat him on the back and shoulder, adding a sense of claustrophobia to the weakness he felt from the two powerful performances of telekinesis in just a matter of hours.
“Here, come with me,” Farah saw the weakness in his colorful eyes, and wrapped her free arm around his waist to help steer him towards the seats of a café across the street. The crowd of followers cleared away, and they sat quietly, sipping glasses of juice.
“Do you feel better?” Farah broke their comfortable silence sometime later. “Are you ready to walk home?”
“I’m ready – a little unsteady still, but ready,” Silas confirmed. He walked back with an arm around Farah’s shoulder to help him maintain his balance, and when they entered the gate of the Movers Guild domain, Silas looked up and saw Mata standing on their balcony, looking down upon him. He waved, then climbed the stairs with Farah’s help and reached the apartment door.
“I’ll leave you now. You rest up and don’t push yourself. Let me know if you ever need help or want to talk; you were wonderful today,” she praised him, then kissed his cheek as Mata opened the door. Farah, gave a silent wave to Mata, then departed.
“You’ve been gone quite a while, but you weren’t alone, I see,” Mata chided Silas.
“Please just let me in. I want to go lie down and rest,” he replied, annoyed that she had no sympathy for his state of unsteady discomfort. He entered the apartment and went directly to the bedroom, where he flopped down on the bed to rest and recover.
“I moved two beams today,” Silas told Mata as she followed him into the bedroom. “I maybe wanted to show off,” he admitted. “It was a little too much.”
“I heard,” Mata’s tone revealed sympathy at last. “The city was very excited. The towers look so different with the beams framing their tops. People are calling it ‘Silas’s necklace,” she told him.
He smiled as he closed his eyes to rest.
“That’s a funny name,” he replied. “It’ll look different when I put the platform pieces up there.”
“Are you sure you can? Some folks think you’re doing too much, maybe showing off. Should you let the other Movers finish the job, or help?” Mata asked.
Silas opened one eye to look at her, as she sat on the far edge of the bed. “Who says that?” he asked, annoyed by the question.
“Oh, just people, at the armory, I guess,” she said casually.
Silas closed his eye and fumed over the comments.
“I’ll let the Guild decide who does what,” he answered after a moment. “They asked me to do the work for them. That’s the only reason we’re here still.”
“It’s not such a bad city. It’s starting to feel like home,” Mata spoke with a casual tone.
“I know what you mean,” Silas agreed. He hadn’t thought about leaving very often, and he’d been consumed with training as well as carrying the beams through the city. He had never heard from the Speaker, or followed up either with further calls to the Speaker of the city, he realized.
“Have you spoken to Jade recently?” he asked.
“Not in a few days; it’s hard to catch her in the dressing room,” Mata replied. “I’m surprised you ever talked to her at all with the mirror.”
“We’ll both have to try to learn more about the outside world tomorrow,” Silas suggested, then yawned.
“You get some rest, and I’ll come get you at dinner time,” Mata rose from the bed and left the room, as Silas slumbered uneasily. He fell into a strange, unsettling dream of being walled away from something important, while he waited for something important, but didn’t know what either of the important things were.
“Are you hungry?” Mata awoke him with the question as the sun started to set.
Silas sat up, and spent seconds orienting himself to his surroundings, so different from the vaguely defined world of his dream. He felt better for having had the nap, troubled though it was, and felt his stomach calling for nourishment.
They left the Guild gates to begin walking along the street, as residents of the city began to throng the public spaces in the evening as well, making for a lively and active environment. Silas kept his head down and tried to keep his eyes hidden from passersby as much as he could.
“Is this the tavern where you had lunch?” he asked at one door. “Should we just go there? It’s convenient.”
“No, let’s go elsewhere; the food’s not that great,” Mata hastily replied, pulling on his arm to lead him away.
They walked on and selected a tavern not far from the shipping port gate, when Mata ordered a chowder thick with the fruits of the sea.
“This is so good,” she approved of the meal as she shoveled spoonfuls into her mouth in rapid succession. “It reminds me of home. I haven’t had much fish in a long time.”
Silas raised his cup of juice towards her in a toast. “Here’s to home,” he offered, and they clinked cups approvingly.
“We will go home someday, won’t we?” Mata asked. “I feel sometimes lately like you’re becoming a part of this city, doing all the Movers’ work and making everything possible for them. You’ll never want to leave them, or that Farah, and they’ll never let you go. I never see you any more during the day.”
“You don’t spend a lot of time in our apartment yourself,” Silas pointed out defensively. “You go to the armory all the time and then out for a drink afterwards.”
They sat in silence for a minute.
“When the work on the platform is done, I’m going to leave,” Silas stated. “We’ll start going north to get to Amenozume again and finally help your sister.”
“I hope so,” Mata said softly, and they spoke no more of the matter.
Chapter 20
The next day, Silas was visited by Cover and Farah early in the morning, just as the breakfast tray was delivered to the upper floor apartment he shared with Mata.
“Farah reports that yesterday’s work was too much,” Cover spoke first. “I’ve come to suggest that you take a day off and allow the other Movers to transport the first pieces of the platform to be attached to the beams, now that they are all in place.”
Silas thought about Mata’s claims from the night before.
“I think it would be good to let the others move some of the pieces,” he agreed. “But I feel fine now; I just needed to rest. Let the others move what they can, then I’ll lift one today as well.
“After they finish and are done,” he added.
“Very good. Come to the studio for lessons this morning,” Cover said.
“Good luck Silas. I’ll see you this afternoon,” Farah, stroked his arm with her hand in a friendly gesture as she followed Cover out the door.
“I’ll see you this afternoon,” Mata mocked Farah in a sing-song voice from the bedroom door a second later. “Has she been with you every day you’ve been doing this?”
“No,” Silas quickly replied defensively. “I just saw her yesterday for the first time while moving the beams.”
Mata looked at him with thin lips tightly pursed, but said no more as she began to eat from the breakfast tray, and soon afterwards, Silas left to meet Cover at the instructional room once again. It felt familiar and comfortable after the many days Silas had been visiting.
They proceeded to try to coax his energies out of him without using any prompts or aids.
“You know Silas, when the construction of the platform is done, and the sprites have come and gone, your obligation to the Guild will be complete,” Cover spoke in a serious tone. “You can choose to remain here and work with us, or you can leave.
“But if you leave, we cannot allow you to take the crystal with you,” Cover spoke forthr
ightly. “You will be on your own to try to ignite your mighty powers.”
“But,” Silas began to protest, then ceased. He didn’t need to try to fight over the matter, and he had no justification. He wanted the crystal, and he felt he needed it, but it wasn’t his. Though after he finished building the platform, he might be able place a claim for justifiable reimbursement.
“Let’s go look in on the platform construction,” the instructor suggested, oblivious to the internal debate raging in Silas’s consciousness.
Together the pair left the Guild and walked to the construction yard, along the now-familiar route they had walked so many times before. When they arrived at the yard, they saw the cluster of Movers who had been assigned to work under Riesta, all surrounding one of the component pieces of the platform. The wide triangular shapes were meant to be sent to the tops of the central towers and then bolted in place, connected to the beams and to each other, to create the flat surface that the Sprites would dance upon as they displayed themselves to the whole city, before carrying out their ceremony of renewal of the friendship treaty.
“What have they carried so far?” Cover asked one of the bystanders in the yard.
As he asked, the Movers began to lift the flat plate into the air over their heads.
“That,” the worker answered.
“What else?” cover prodded.
“Nothing. That’s the first thing they lifted today,” the woman asserted.
The trio stood together as the plate rose high, then began to drift in the direction of the city center. As it did, the Movers began to walk through the yard and then out the gate, into the city streets.
“I would have thought they’d have moved others already,” Silas spoke partially to Cover, and partially to himself.
“I would have too, but they probably had to negotiate a lot over how to handle it, and there were some bruised egos after their calamity with the beam they tried to move, so that meant a lot of extra complications,” Cover replied.
“Let’s go see if there’s another component ready to fly,” Silas said eagerly.
“We can check the inventory, but you need to give the others more time to get their work done first,” Cover restrained Silas’s eagerness. The pair went on through the yard, identifying the parts that were completely fabricated and ready to move, and those that still needed more time to complete. They looked up at the sky at the end of their inspection and saw that the first plate was still moving towards the towers.
Cover sighed. “You can go have lunch and then go sightseeing, then come back here later this afternoon and have your turn moving one of these, but you’ll only get to have one turn this afternoon,” he directed.
Silas nodded silent acceptance of the directive, disappointed that he wouldn’t get to do more. The flat parts of the platform were each smaller than the beams he had carried, lighter and less of a burden. He could have carried a greater load than the instructor was allowing him to.
He parted from Cover and left the yard, then paused out on the street as he pondered what to do next. He could go see Farah, he mused, except that he didn’t know where she lived or worked. Or he could go visit the armory, and perhaps practice with Mata, he concluded.
He walked through the streets to reach the armory, then opened the door and stepped inside. He’d practiced there a time or two early in his arrival in Faralag, before his days had been overtaken by the Guild and Cover’s efforts to train him; for all that Cover had advanced his abilities, he might as well have stayed at the armory and practiced his sword work, he despondently told himself, overlooking the theoretical knowledge and information he had gained about using the Mover energy.
He looked around the armory, checking to see if and where Mata might be practicing among the dozen or so duos that were crossing practice swords. He spotted Mata in his third search around the armory, just as he was ready to conclude she was absent from the building.
She was practicing with a man, fiercely exchanging blows that knocked each other’s practice swords aside, and bumping repeatedly in a physical contest that seemed to Silas to be nearly as much wrestling as it was fencing.
And they were clearly hard at work; Silas could see the sheen of perspiration on Mata’s flesh, and on her opponent’s too. Mata had removed her blouse and wore only a slim strip of undershirt as she practiced, revealing great swathes of skin on her torso. As Silas watched, the man battling Mata repelled an attack from her sword, then stepped in close and hooked a leg behind her leg, pressing her backwards then so that she began to fall backwards.
As she fell, Mata released her sword and grabbed her opponent’s shoulders, so that she pulled him down with her. He landed on top of her, their bodies in full contact along their lengths, and their faces close together. They each burst into laughter, Mata’s face alive with joy in a way that Silas hadn’t seen in days. Her companion leaned in even closer and whispered something in her ear, making her laugh again, then blush, then grow serious. She turned her head at that intimate moment and happened to spot Silas in the doorway.
He closed his eyes, shook his head, then pivoted and left the building.
His romance with the girl was over. It had lasted just a handful of days, he thought as he walked along. They’d traveled together for so long and been friends and supportive of one another for so long, without complications. But as soon as they become lovers, they had somehow managed to wind up in different places.
“Silas! Wait!” he heard Mata’s voice behind him. “Where are you going?” Her voice grew clearer as her words were spoken.
“Silas,” she raced up to and caught him as she called his name again. She pulled a shirt over her head as she ran and smoothed it as she slowed to walk beside him. “Is everything okay?” she asked.
“It appears to be,” he tried to speak calmly, sadness and anger churning inside him.
“We were just practicing,” Mata tried to put the best cover on what Silas had witnessed.
“I saw. I know what I saw,” he said with a trace of anger emerging in his voice.
“That was just a moment of practice!” Mata exclaimed. “Tiller has told me that I need to be prepared to fight against opponents that outweigh me, and he was just demonstrating what happens when I’m underweight.”
“Underweight, or under him?” Silas couldn’t prevent himself from asking.
“That’s not fair!” Mata slugged his shoulder. “You hang all over that pretty ‘counselor’ and bring her to my apartment, and then you say that about me. Shame on you.”
Silas inhaled deeply. There might be a trace of justification to Mata’s retort, but not to the same degree as the incriminating scene he had witnessed.
“She was helping me to our apartment when I nearly passed out yesterday,” he answered. “Your friend Tiller was helping himself to you, from what I saw.”
“You’re being ridiculous,” Mata replied weakly.
Silas wanted to say five things at once. He wanted to embrace and push her away; he wanted to be honest and he wanted to hide his feelings; he wanted to move on and to hold on too.
“I need to get to the yard and get to work,” he brushed it all beneath the surface while he tried to sort out the conflicts in his wounded soul.
“Will you be at our apartment when I get back?” he asked.
“Of course,” she snapped. “Or are you kicking me out?”
“No, of course not,” he snapped back. “I’ll see you later.”
He walked on, as Mata stopped in her tracks, and the other pedestrians in the street quickly came between them, while Silas stewed as he strode along to the construction site.
He knew what he had seen, he told himself. Mata had been happy and joyful while fencing with Tiller. She hadn’t displayed such joy with Silas in many a day.
He reached the construction yard with his mind and soul churning. He needed a release, an outlet for all the anguish he felt.
“When will the master want to transport one of th
e plates to the top of the towers?” he heard a voice ask. It was the same woman constructor who he and Cover had stopped to talk to before.
“How many pieces have the other Movers flown out?” he asked.
“Just the one so far,” she answered.
“Why don’t they get their act together?” he muttered the rhetorical question.
“I’ll go see what’s waiting for me to carry,” he spoke more loudly to the woman. He clapped a hand on her shoulder, then went deeper into the yard and re-entered the section where the triangular pieces were being stacked.
“Are all of those finished?” he asked a foreman as he looked at three pieces piled atop one another.
“They’re just waiting for a ride,” the man grinned.
“Well, we’ll give them one,” Silas said, then he recklessly pointed a hand at the pile and spoke the word, “Rise!”
Chapter 21
Silas was driven by multiple motives. He wanted the platform completed, the sooner the better. He wanted to do his part, and his part was to be the work horse. He wanted to release the pent-up frustrations he felt over his deteriorating relationship with Mata, the girl who he deeply cared about, though he had spent little-to-no time with her recently. And he wanted to use the fantastic power that had come to superficially seemed to be his.
As simple as it was for him to grasp his telekinesis while he was in Faralag with the magic crystal in his possession, when he left the city, perhaps if he left the city, he’d no longer have the crystal or the surety of power. That too was frustrating. He’d be back to possessing a magical knife, his Speaker powers, his enhanced night vision – all qualities that were tremendous, but none that matched up to what the Movers ability provided.
The three stacked triangular plates, each as big as a house, continued to rise into the air while he mused, and they reached a point where they were high enough for him to move them to the building site, he realized.
His arm was up in the air, still pointing at the wooden and metal platform components.
The Pearl Diver Page 23
