Crowchanger (Changers of Chandris) (20 page)

“Thank the Creator you haven’t left yet,” Miralee gasped. “I’ve had the most dreadful seeing.”

Ayriene sat her down and handed her a cup of water. Miralee drained it, shaking visibly from head to foot.

“I wouldn’t go without saying goodbye; you know that.”

“You must not go at all! You must stay here where you are safe. Or at least go alone. Please, Mother. It’s Sylas. Creator, but I wish I had never shown you that drawing.” Miralee sobbed and grabbed Ayriene’s arm. Ayriene winced. Her daughter’s fingers were tight enough about her flesh to leave a mark; whatever the girl had seen had left her terrified. Ayriene sat beside her and pulled her close, as she had when Miralee was a child.

“Calm down and tell me what’s wrong.” She smoothed a strand of hair away from Miralee’s face, wet with tears. “You had a seeing about me?” And Sylas, evidently.

Miralee wiped her face with the sleeve of her dress, fighting back the sobs that threatened to rip from her throat once more.

“There is danger coming. Great danger for the Aerie—for all of us. The whole island, I think—it wasn’t clear.” She covered her face with her hands. “I saw fire flying through the sky. The library burning.” She gulped and looked up at Ayriene, eyes red-rimmed, cheeks blotchy and tear-streaked. “I know it sounds far-fetched, but I didn’t see images this time—not like other seeings. This one was more like… knowing. Like I’d always known it and was remembering, like when you go somewhere new and have a feeling you’ve been there before, you know?”

“What did Mistress Yinaede say? Have you told her?”

Miralee nodded, wiping her eyes again.

“It happened in her class. She was showing me a different way to call on the kye: one she uses sometimes to try to have a seeing about something. I was to use it and think about something.”

“And what did you think about?”

Miralee sucked in a quick breath and for a moment Ayriene thought she might cry again, but she bit her lip to force the tears back and then answered.

“I thought of you. I didn’t know not to think of a person; she didn’t say.”

“And you saw Sylas?” And fire in the sky. For a moment Ayriene remembered the invasion. The fireball engulfing the Lorandan army, burning men and boats in a huge conflagration.

“You told Sylas that he had to live—that he had to save the island. That there was something coming that only he could stop. And then you were lying on the floor and there was a bloody wound in your chest. I think—I think you were dead.”

There was no holding back the tears now, and Ayriene held Miralee while her daughter cried like a little girl. Ayriene had been so proud when her daughter had shown talent when she changed, and thrilled she was a seer. Seers were almost as prized as healers among the changers, and Miralee’s talent was strong. Now she wished her daughter could have been as blessedly untalented as her elder son. Garyth had laughed off being the only member of the family with no talent, saying he was happy enough without the responsibility. He had been the wisest of them all.

“Hush now, my love. Why would Sylas do me any harm?”

“I don’t know, but please, Mother. You cannot be with him. I know it. I know it like I know my own name. Please don’t take him with you when you go. He may not mean to harm you, but he will. He will.”

Whatever had happened during the invasion, Sylas’s mother had been involved. And now Sylas was involved in something not of his making. She could not leave him in the Aerie. If Ayriene could work out the connection between Shamella and Zynoa, then so could others. And that, along with his hearing of multiple kye, as his mother had before him, might seal the boy’s fate. When the wagon left for Banunis, Sylas would be on it. Whatever Miralee had seen, he deserved that much.

“So, I take it that my information about the Chesammos village was correct?” Casian once more sat before his father at the castle in Lucranne. No, not his father, he reminded himself. Just the man who had raised him.

“It was.” Garvan’s admission seemed grudging, as Casian had expected. “We found a bag of uncut linandra stones in the elder’s house. The man’s son confessed to the crime and was dealt with.” Garvan pushed a bowl of cherries across the table. “Have some of these. They are good.”

Casian could feel a subtle shift in their relationship since his last visit. Garvan no longer spoke to him as a father to a son, but more man to man, albeit as an older man to one of considerably less experience. It had been a gamble, telling Garvan what Sylas had said in his sleep in the infirmary. It could have been nothing but the mutterings of a sick man, but Sylas had been agitated about this Pietrig—clutching at Casian’s hand and begging him not to hide linandra, as if Casian were the Chesammos Sylas addressed in his dreams. Casian had gathered something else from the ramblings, too—that Pietrig had meant more to Sylas than Casian had suspected. If that one were dead now, so much the better. Casian wanted no rivals for his lover’s affections.

Casian selected three of the blood-red fruits, pulled the stalk from one, and popped it into his mouth. “I have a proposition for you,” he said around the sweet flesh. He might as well launch into his plan. If he tried to play it clever, Garvan would cut him to ribbons. He realised with a shock that he thought of the man as Garvan, not Father. The shifting attitudes were not all on one side, it seemed.

Garvan raised an eyebrow. “I’m listening.”

Casian spat the stone into his hand, licked the juice from his lips. Then meeting Garvan’s eyes he said, coolly, “I do not intend to stay at the Aerie. No, hear me out,” he added quickly, as Garvan opened his mouth to protest. “I have proved my worth to you with my information about Namopaia. Think how much more use I could be to you at Banunis. You said once that every lord holder worth his salt had a spy in every other lord holder’s castle. Did you ever manage to infiltrate Deygan’s staff?”

The irritated twitch of Garvan’s jaw told him that the lord had not, and it clearly rankled.

Casian leaned forward, matching Garvan eye for eye. “If you procure me a position in Banunis I can feed back information of relevance to Lucranne’s interests. I will not spy for you in the conventional sense, but I will act to support your house.” Not so long ago he had thought it was his house too. He had still not entirely adjusted to that loss.

Garvan grunted. “And the succession?”

“I will not stand down.”

Garvan slapped the table with the flat of his hand. “And I will not have you inherit my title. It’s out of the question.”

“I will not stand down, but I will not hand the title on. Yoran can have it after my death, if he outlives me. And his sons will inherit after him. If I achieve a position equivalent to Lucranne then I shall stand down at that point and let him have the title he has coveted for so long—and that you clearly raised him to believe would be his someday.”

“And your children?” Garvan ignored Casian’s barbed comment.

“I will pledge never to marry. I will have no legitimate heirs to follow me.” He might be planning to move Sylas into his mother’s household, once the stubborn Chesammos was done fooling around with this plan of his to work as a healer, but Casian did not intend to abstain from female company altogether. He had been careful. There were no bastards of his to complicate the Lucranne succession, at least none that he knew of. But never marrying was the easiest way to win Garvan over.

Lucranne’s holder considered the offer. “What is to stop you going back on your word? Doing away with your brother once I am dead?”

“By then, Garvan, I shall be the king’s right-hand man, with your help. Why would I want Lucranne? You see, you have an incentive to help me progress.”

The lord holder of Lucranne made a face as if the cherry he had bitten contained a worm. His mouth pinched and twisted, he finally said, “I will help you, if you sign your name to that agreement. But you will never, ever, call me Garvan. As far as the world is concerned, you are still my son. You will address me as Father, sir, or my lord, as the situation demands. Do I make myself clear?”

He did. Perfectly. For a position at Deygan’s side and the opportunity to make a bid for the throne, that was one sacrifice Casian was more than prepared to make.

Chapter 20

T
he city of Banunis was not impressive by mainland standards, but at several times as big as Adamantara, it was the largest Sylas had ever seen. It sprawled across the hillside like a great grey-brown scab, walls of stone and ash brick slashing through the lush green of the surrounding woodland. The city rose in tiers and terraces, fitting itself to the landscape as if conceding that much to nature. The castle itself occupied the highest tiers, with a view out across the sea in one direction and towards the Aerie in the other.

The seat of House Banunis was not beautiful. Built mostly of ash-bricks formed in the desert by previous generations of brick makers, it was more functional than attractive, but its high grey walls dominated the surroundings. The towers rose so high that as Sylas craned his neck to see the top they seemed to lean towards him, and he lowered his eyes hurriedly as nausea rose in his stomach.

He stayed close to Ayriene, a knot of anxiety gathering deep inside. He remembered his first sight of the Aerie. To a desert boy, raised where the only hills were the rise and fall of the desert rocks and the ripples in the ash caused by ash storms, the mountain had seemed to go up forever. Despite Sylas’s eagerness to become a changer, his father nearly had to drag the reluctant boy up the hillside. Sylas remembered thinking that not smelling the sulphur of the vents meant there was no air—that his father was taking him to die on the mountaintop. The Aerie’s buildings seemed giant-built to him after the dome dwellings of the Chesammos, and Banunis Castle dwarfed even the Aerie. He would never find his way around a place so vast.

A queue had formed to enter the city. Pedestrians, people pushing carts or driving pack animals, and wagons pulled by horses or cheen all jostled through the huge wooden gates. Sylas found himself surrounded by the smell of animals and unwashed bodies. Once he was inside, he saw trinket-sellers with trays hung around their shoulders, and tradesmen wheeling handcarts and crying their wares. Farther on the scent of spices and fresh fruit rose from a marketplace. A Chesammos labourer unloaded kegs from a wagon and carried them into the cellar of a tavern. Another Chesammos shovelled horse dung into a barrel which he rolled along the street, stopping at each steaming pile.

Ayriene saw Sylas watching. “The tanners will pay him in smallcoins for a barrel-full. Not a job many would wish for, but it will keep him in food and shelter.” Sylas was unmoved. Shovelling shit in Banunis, labouring in the fields in Redlyn, or digging linandra in the desert—Chesammos always got the hardest and dirtiest jobs. It came as no surprise, just a vague disappointment that even in the king’s city things were no different.

From one of the side streets, the chink-chink of a hammer beating iron and the smell of charcoal and burning hooves proclaimed a smith’s forge. Men’s voices rose in dispute over some imagined slight. A boy snatched an apple from a stall and ran, the fruit-seller shouting after him and shaking his fist. Sylas’s head swam, trying to take in the sounds and smells, wishing he could find a quiet spot to hide from the madness. Even in the vastness of the desert, he had never felt so insignificant.

He lagged behind, part reluctant to commit himself to the noise and bustle, part edged out of the flow by locals with no patience for strangers who stood and gawked like simpletons. Ayriene took his arm and pulled him into a side street to let him catch his breath.

“It’s something, isn’t it? I grew up here, so I know it well, but a person can easily get lost in this place. We are heading for the castle, so if we get separated, keep moving upwards. There are three more gates. If I lose you I’ll stop there. You can’t get to the castle without passing them, so I’ll find you, never fear.”

He nodded, his mouth dry. The words meant little to him. Panic had muddled his wits and already he could scarcely remember what she had said. She slapped his shoulder. “Come on. Once inside the castle it will be quieter.”

“Are all cities like this?” he asked, his boots slipping on cobblestones wet with rain and horse piss.

“Some are worse,” she said with a rueful smile. “On the mainland they have cities that make Banunis look like a village.”

He swallowed hard. Then he would never go to the mainland. Banunis felt like being lost inside a madman’s skull; worse than this would drive him insane. How could people live, crushed together in the noise and stink? He would sooner have the sulphur smell of the desert gases.

Through the next gate the congestion eased a little. Sylas watched wide-eyed as a juggler spun a stream of leather balls. He tried to count how many there were and failed, the motion reduced to a blur. The juggler pocketed the balls with a flourish, calling out, “Coppers for your entertainment, ladies, gentlemen? Any spare smallcoin?”

He felt for the pouch at his side, but Ayriene dragged him away. “If you leave money, even a smallcoin, in the purse of each juggler or acrobat or tuppenny bard you pass you will end with nothing, and you have little enough to start with.” That was true. Ayriene had given him a few coppers for his work, but he feared he had done little to earn it. “And watch out for that pouch,” she said sternly, and he noticed that she had tucked hers out of reach. “These crowded streets are a haven for cutpurses and worse. If caught, they are strung up as a deterrent to the rest, but there are still people desperate enough or quick enough to try, however small the reward.”

At the next gate most of the people milling around were soldiers of the king’s guard or Irenthi. Some of the Irenthi had servants in their train, all of them Irmos. It occurred to Sylas that the better dressed the Irenthi, the fairer skinned the servants. He wondered how Casian had persuaded his mother that she needed a Chesammos to wait on her. Someone as high-placed as the lady of Lucranne would have fair Irmos servants, surely. Looking around, he could see no Chesammos here at all. The farther in, the higher up, the lighter the skins of the occupants became. Sylas became aware of people stopping to watch him pass.

“You are a changer and a healer, Sylas. You have as much right here as they do,” Ayriene said in a tone meant to be overheard. Sure enough, eyebrows arched but no one challenged him and they carried on quickly through these streets and up to the third gate: the one that opened in to the castle itself.

A guard in the livery of House Banunis stepped forward.

“All Chesammos to be searched, by order of the king.”

The man’s hand rested on his sword hilt, the threat unmistakable. Behind him two guards with pikes moved to block their way. Sylas’s pulse quickened; he knew from experience how much damage a pike could do.

“He’s my apprentice. I vouch for him.”

The soldier’s gaze took in her healer pack—the large leather satchel healers carried—and he shuffled awkwardly.

“No offence meant, Mistress, but I have my orders. All Chesammos searched, no exceptions.”

“I don’t mind,” Sylas said. The last thing he wanted was to cause any trouble.

“It’s for weapons, like. Easy done and on your way.” Sylas glanced at Ayriene and she raised an eyebrow, then nodded. Searching Chesammos for weapons would have been unnecessary a few months ago. He wondered if the rebellion had spread to attacks within Banunis itself, for King Deygan to offer an implied insult to Ayriene.

The guard was quick but thorough, making Sylas take off his cloak and boots, going through his bedroll and his pack. He offered his hunting sling, but the soldier passed it back with no comment. Sylas was glad his linandra bead was safely wrapped in its folds of linen and stashed in his pouch, away from the guard’s prying eyes. Satisfied that he posed no threat, the guard called to a servant passing inside the gates, and gave instructions for them to be escorted into the palace.

When the gates swung closed behind him, Sylas forgot his feelings of displacement and stared in awe. If on the outside Banunis Castle was an unprepossessing lump of a building, once inside it was every bit a royal palace. He stared around him, mouth agape. What was he doing in a place like this?

Ayriene chuckled. “Come on. We need to get washed and into clean clothes if we aren’t to look like we’ve been brought in to clean the chimneys. And for the Creator’s sake hold yourself like a changer. You look like you are expecting to be taken by the ear and thrown out at any minute.”

Which, it had to be said, was exactly how he felt. He squared his shoulders, set his face to what he hoped was a look of confident determination, and followed her.

The interior of Banunis Castle left Sylas more than a little confused. He had felt the same way in his first days at the Aerie—walking the flagstone corridors wondering if he would ever find his way out; late for lessons more than once because he had taken a wrong turn. The labyrinth of passages had been utterly bewildering for a boy who had grown up in houses which each had one large circular room. He had learned to find his way around the Aerie, he told himself. He would learn to navigate the castle too, if he didn’t stumble into the king’s apartments and find himself frogmarched to the dungeons in the meantime. He tried to memorise landmarks—a small window of coloured glass here, a cracked paving slab there—and gradually the place seemed less formidable, if never exactly familiar.

Lonely with no company, and Ayriene being closeted away with Deygan as often as not, he asked after Casian. Lord Casian was not expected at Banunis, the servants told him. His scheme to land a position here must have failed.

Left to his own devices, he found his way to the library. Banunis Castle proved to have an extensive selection of books, with an entire section of changer lore and history. This was a subject he had not covered in his lessons, and from the dust on the volumes no one here studied it, either. The writing was hard to decipher, and Sylas’s reading abilities were stretched to the limit, but he passed countless hours with the masters of the past. He worked his way through a learned analysis of talents, their variants and presumed origin; biographies of noted council members; a collection of letters and notes, frail almost to crumbling, on the removal of Lucranne from the position of high holder.

One afternoon he was reading as usual, the index finger of his left hand lightly following the words as he mouthed them. The door to the library opened, the top hinge creaking as it had every time Sylas had entered. Doors in Banunis Castle were huge, half again as tall as Sylas, and as wide as the ones on the great hall at the Aerie. It shut with a dull thump, and Sylas held his breath to listen for footsteps. The person made little sound. The library was carpeted—such luxury—and any footsteps were dulled by the woven wool. Sylas watched the aisle anxiously. He had been given the run of the library, but some instinct told him they had not intended him to go poking about in these old, and doubtless valuable, reference books.

Over the thumping of his heart he thought he heard feet moving on carpet, the shoes or boots occasionally finding a worn patch and making muffled footsteps on the floorboards below. Once he thought he smelled something, the scent of herbal soap briefly reaching his nostrils past the mustiness of old parchment wrapped in slowly decaying leather. Sylas froze. He felt hunted, like quarry driven to ground in a dead end, waiting for the hound to sniff him out. A clean and fragrant hound, who moved softly in Irenthi boots.

When the figure reached the end of the row, it uttered a stifled gasp, hand flying to a face of palest ivory. It was hard to say who was more startled, the newcomer or Sylas. The figure was slender, maybe a hand’s length shorter than Sylas, and carried a fire bowl covered with a glass mantle to light his way through the gloomy stacks. Its glow illuminated his face, showing a generous nose, finely shaped mouth, and eyes Irenthi-pale. His silver-blond hair appeared to glow in a nimbus around his head, caught by the flickering light.

The moon, Sylas thought; his hair shines like the moon. He knew he stared, but at that moment he thought the boy the most beautiful person he had ever seen.

The Irenthi boy licked his lips, holding the fire bowl out in front of him. In a voice intended to be confident but missing the mark by a fair margin, he said, “Who’s there? Show yourself.”

Sylas rose to his feet, being careful not to make any sudden movements. Most of the Irenthi went unarmed around the castle, but he knew many of the nobility, even their youngsters, often carried concealed daggers in case of attack.

“I beg pardon, my lord,” he said. “I was given leave to use the library. I did not know these shelves were forbidden.” But you had a good idea they might be. Fool!

“Keep your hands where I can see them,” the young man said, approaching slowly, weighing Sylas up with his gaze. He was younger than Sylas had first thought. His voice had yet to change to the deeper tones of manhood and his skin was fair and soft-looking.

As he approached, Sylas’s first impressions were confirmed. The lad was Irenthi—as true-born as they came, from the looks of him. He had the high cheekbones and pointed nose Sylas associated with Casian. Green eyes like Casian’s too, he could see by the flickering gold light of the fire bowl. Now the first quaver had gone from his voice, it held a quiet authority and had the air of one used to being obeyed without question.