The Skylighter (The Keepers' Chronicles Book 2) (16 page)

“It is true. You have more than your father’s fair share of charm. Put it to work. I’ve let you coast for far too long. I’ve been too focused on your father’s death and preparing Rafi to take his place.” She faced him and held his gaze. “I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry I didn’t divide my attention evenly.”

“I didn’t need more attention,” he said, feeling that sliver sink a little deeper. He’d always tried to be endearing, entertaining even, to balance out his brother’s intensity. And he felt a little stab of something—guilt or hurt, he wasn’t sure which—that his mother held him in such low esteem. “I just like getting into trouble.”

She ran a hand down her tired face. “Well, then . . . feel free to get into trouble with Maribelle. As long as that trouble gets us the answers we need.”

Pira slid down the wall, her feet toward the forge at the room’s center. Tendrils of smoke drifted though the chimney, obliterating the scent of her sweat.

She hadn’t slept in two days. Not since Sapo arrived with two hundred of Inimigo’s soldiers. It was only half the amount the men had agreed on—the other half would be sent when the princess had been delivered to Maringa.

The duke had also shorted the leader of the Nata on something else: beryllium. As none of the Keepers could sense the metal, Inimigo was in the prime position to manipulate Sapo and Vibora into doing his will for as long as they needed the beryllium for collars. It was a distinct bargaining chip, but Pira knew that soon the Keepers would be free of that particular dependence.

A fractured piece of something they hadn’t smelted yet stuck to her leathers. She plucked it away and held it to the stream of light peeking through the door that opened onto the yard. It glimmered with a faint silver whiteness. She could see the beryllium, but she still couldn’t
feel
it.

Vibora came into the shop just long enough to direct the fire to melt the metal down, and teach Pira how to shape it into the curved band that would snap closed around a neck. Pira did the heavy labor, and Vibora finished the process.

That was where the secret lay, Pira realized. The metal absorbed power, but Vibora had figured out some way to manipulate it. An idea sat at the edges of Pira’s mind, tickling like a memory she couldn’t quite grasp.

The door to the shop swung open, and Pira expected Vibora to walk in and command her to get back to work, but instead it was someone shorter. The woman Sapo had tortured. The Seer.

She wore her pale-blond hair in a loose braid and carried a basket under one arm. There was something in her face, the set of her cheekbones or the width of her eyes, that reminded Pira of someone else.

Someone from Olinda perhaps? She’s taller than most of the women of Cruzamento, but shorter than Sapo. That might not mean anything, but her coloring is all Keeper.

“Who are you?” Pira asked without preamble.

“No one of consequence.” She smiled, the hollows in her face sinking skeletally.

“That’s not an answer.”

She shrugged a bony shoulder, and the movement made the collar around her throat shift. The skin beneath was smooth and shiny, scarred after years of friction.

Pira looked away, sickened at the sight and what it meant. The skin beneath her own collar was raw and irritated, from tugging on it and searching for the latch that kept it shut. Her fingers simply slid off the metal. How long would she have to be a slave for the collar to stop grating against her skin?

“I have had and lost many names, and I have no way to get them back.”

And there it was. Proof that the woman was unbalanced, as Seers tended to be. Instead of providing helpful information in a clear, concise way, they dropped clues like pieces of a shredded painting. Pira had never been one for games or puzzles. If she couldn’t see the whole picture, she couldn’t be bothered to figure it out.

“What’s in the basket?” Pira asked, hoping it was lunch, and that if she accepted it and got back to the smithing—a job she could do almost as well without
essência
as she could with it—the woman would leave without imparting some senseless phrase that was meant to make Pira second-guess every decision.

The woman pulled back the cloth, revealing two hard rolls and a tiny clump of cheese. Crumbs littered the basket’s bottom, and Pira got the sense that she was the last in a long line of slaves to be fed.

“All right, thank you.” She hoped the woman would go, but she just stood there staring, mouth open a little. “Vibora will be back soon,” Pira said, shooing the woman to the door. “She’ll expect me to have some work done.”

“No, she won’t. She’s counseling with Sapo.”

“Are you going to tell me what they’re counseling about? Or are you going to act like a typical Seer and make me guess?”

The woman gave a confused half smile and said, “You can call me Críquete, if you wish.”

“I only wish to eat my lunch in peace.” Anger at her situation made Pira’s tongue sharper than she intended. “Please.”

The smile disappeared off Críquete’s face, and something sad and empathetic replaced it. “He’s out there, you know. Worrying about you.”

“Who?”

“The warrior,” Críquete said simply, as if that clarified anything. “Make sure you tell him how much you care when you see him. It’ll be the last chance you get.”

Pira’s heart contracted, feeling as if she’d caught the butt end of a staff to her chest. “I don’t really want to know.”

“I know you don’t.” She patted Pira’s hand, though the action was undeserved. “But you need to be prepared. As we leave for the wall in a few days, it will be much sooner than you’d like.”

“What . . .” Pira let the word hang, uncertain if she wanted any more convoluted revelations.

“Finish the collars.” Críquete turned toward the door. “Don’t try to trick Vibora. She’ll notice the flaw you’ve built into that one the moment she touches it. She is a
natural
Earth affinity, you know.”

Pira frowned at the collar she’d set on the worktable. The latch closed but would slip open with a slight tug. She’d hoped to give one person a chance at freedom.

“Fix it before she comes,” Críquete advised. “And be ready for the opportunity when it arrives.”

The list of people Rafi hated seemed to grow every day.

At first it was short, with a roughly scrawled “Inimigo” filling a mental page. The man was responsible for so much death and heartache across Santarem that sometimes it seemed impossible for Rafi to hate anyone else with such vehemence.

Ceara’s name, a new tally, splattered the page with blood. The hate Rafi felt for his underlord was fresh and fierce, and would be managed only when Rafi could authorize a warrant for capture, then Trial and Punishment. Though in this case a beating wouldn’t be enough. Rafi wanted Ceara’s head mounted on one of the pointed pickets over Camaçari’s main gate.

As they marched through the jungle, Jacaré had earned a mark too. It wasn’t because of the way the Keeper carried himself, all arrogance and aggression, or even the way he’d thwarted Rafi’s attack, but that he had the power to heal Johanna’s hand and he’d refused. He’d given some thin explanation about energy and power and wasting it.

Healing Johanna would be a waste.
Thinking the words added a new layer of ink to Jacaré’s name on the list. If Rafi had actually been writing it, the nib of his pen would have bitten through the paper.

Jacaré’s orders chafed, but Rafi swallowed the sharp words on his tongue. They needed the man—and his knowledge, supplies, and weapons. Still, Rafi would have chosen to face a regiment of Inimigo’s troops rather than travel anywhere with the Keeper.

“We’ll stop here for a few hours,” Jacaré said, waving to a flatish spot near a small cluster of jaboticabas. “Rest. Eat. I’d like to push through till full dark. We could reach Performers’ Camp by tomorrow evening.”

The trees’ globular fruit would supplement their meager rations of bananas and water. Johanna plucked one of the purple-black balls that grew on the tree’s trunk instead of on its branches, and took a bite. A line of juice dripped down her chin. Rafi felt a grin tug at his lips, till he realized the knuckles of her injured hand were nearly as dark and glossy as the fruit.

Anger flared anew. “You can’t do anything to help her?”

Jacaré turned slowly. “No. Especially not if it hinders me from saving her life later.”

“You’re a Keeper. Can’t you do both?”

Rafi knew a Keeper’s power was limited, but surely Jacaré could do
something
.

“It’s fine, Rafi,” Johanna interjected. “It’s not bothering me that much anymore.”

He could see the lie plainly on her face, and in the protective way she held her hand over her heart. It made him sick to know that she was suffering, again, and he could do nothing to fix it.

“When Leão catches up to us, he can heal it.” Her voice was light, optimistic, but she was also oblivious.

She hadn’t noticed all the times Jacaré had looked behind them, checking their back trail. It wasn’t merely for protection; he was hoping to see his companion lope up behind them, but as the day stretched on and Leão didn’t appear, Jacaré’s face grew grimmer.

Leão wasn’t coming.

Rafi didn’t know exactly what that meant, but he knew what it was like to expect something and be disappointed. He even knew what it was like to look constantly for someone and never have him appear. One passing hint of sympathy and then Rafi’s anger resurfaced.

“There’s a stream nearby,” Jacaré said, holding out their communal water bag. “Fill this. If it’s cold, Johanna can hold it against her hand. It will help a little.”

“Fine.” Rafi snatched the bag and strode toward the sound of the stream, tracing Jacaré’s name permanently on the list.

King Wilhelm’s necklace had been magically connected with a glass that allowed Jacaré to monitor Johanna’s actions all her life. He’d seen her as a bright-eyed baby taking her first steps, and as an adventurous child facing new challenges. At first she’d been another element of his command, another task to be completed, but now that he knew her as a person—not simply an image—he’d grown to like her. She was tough and cagey, but still young and pliable.

Which made what he was about to do feel underhanded and despicable, and was something that would surely make her unhappy.

Johanna sat against a tree trunk, knees tucked to her chest, completing the picture of youthful vulnerability.

He squatted at her side, trying to appear idle as he peeled away the fruit’s skin. “DeSilva is going to have to make a choice soon.”

“A choice?”

“Of course,” Jacaré said, as if he expected the thought to be obvious to Johanna. “You’ll need to stay near the wall so the barrier remains stable. And he’ll have to choose whether he’ll stay with you or return to his people in Santiago.”

She reeled, the words as stunning as a blow to the head. “But what about my brother? He’s in Santiago.”

“Rafi will arrange for someone to deliver Michael to you.”

“I thought you could do something to reestablish the barrier. I didn’t think . . .”

Guilt tingled at the back of Jacaré’s throat before sliding down to his stomach. “Magic has limits, Johanna. You should have realized that by now.” He waved to her wounded hand. “Distance puts a strain on it. If we restore the barrier but you continue to stretch the magic’s boundaries, then we’ll be back in the same predicament again and you’ll put all the people you care about in danger.”

“You’re saying I’ll have to stay by the wall forever.”

“You could return to Roraima, though it isn’t a very pleasant place to live. And without my crew . . .” Thoughts of Tex, Pira, and Leão dried his throat, and he had to swallow to continue. “Without my crew and an army of supporters, there’s no way for you take the throne.”

“I don’t want it anyway,” she said quickly.

“That’s good. Once the Nata are taken care of and you renounce any interest in ruling, you’ll be safer. With a dedicated guard, someday you might even be able to live at Performers’ Camp. It’s close enough to the wall.”

“Someday. When people stop looking for me, you mean.” Her tone was sour.

“And that makes your relationship with Rafi difficult. He has a duty to Santiago, and being betrothed to you will put his people in danger. The other dukes will always wonder if either of you has aspirations toward the crown.”

It was like watching a dragonfly die. The paired wings of hope and optimism were pinned down under his words.

“I don’t know Rafi well, but he seems honorable,” Jacaré continued. “Would you ask him to give up his seat as Duke of Santiago to stay with you at the wall, or wage a war for you to take the throne?”

“No. Of course not,” she whispered, her eyes looking suspiciously glossy.

Her words were exactly what Jacaré hoped to hear, especially as Rafi’s footfalls were drawing closer.

“His goals are different from yours. He wants to help you
now
, while it serves his purpose and while he’s accomplishing something that will protect his state, but that will change soon enough. You need to prepare yourself to let him go, Johanna.” Handing her another jaboticaba, he added, “Don’t make him choose between his duty and yours. It will be a hard decision. Make it as easy for him as possible.”

Jacaré took her broken hand gently and healed the worst break. He couldn’t do much else to make her feel better.

Dom had done as his mother asked, finding an excuse to pull Maribelle aside nearly every day, pretending to flirt as she shared slivers of information. She had no new word on Rafi or Ceara, but the spy within Dom’s household had sent out another message.

In those quick, private discussions he learned that Maribelle’s eye-catching appearance and vapid air were a carefully cultivated act. And while he hated to admit it, even to himself, Maribelle was growing on him. She was smart and complicated, like her coded notes, a puzzle he couldn’t quite figure or walk away from.

He leaned back in his chair, staring out the library window onto the night-darkened yard beyond, and considered the girl and her games. The room had a fairly good view over two sides of the estate. It also offered him a sense of privacy. The high ceilings and wide windows meant no one could come close enough to listen to a whispered conversation without being noticed. There was nothing between the oversize table and the bookshelf-lined walls except a few padded chairs and a rug.