Raven's Ladder (4 page)

“My lord,” Wynn choked.

Back inside, night after night, he had endured the burden of brooms, shovels, and filth, gnawing on his resentment, counting down the days until Cal-raven’s departure. Abascar’s people were generous. But they were not Wynn’s people. The merchants’ life had taught him to live unencumbered by commitments. And he scolded his little sister, Cortie, when she shadowed a kindhearted woman called Merya and began to call her Mum.

He wanted to shout at them, just as his father had berated him between strikes of the lash.
Think you know better than me? I’ve crossed the Expanse. I’ve lived in the wild
.

Bang!
The horse kicked at the stall gate, jolting Wynn from his thoughts.

“We’ll follow the king, you and me,” Wynn whispered toward the animal’s ears, “but we’ll make it look so easy, he’ll end up following us.”

He was familiar with this feeling—the fits of fright and zeal before a secretive escape.

Once, along the merchant roads, he had drawn in a deep breath of night and tiptoed a vawn through curtains of rain, closer and closer to freedom. When the storm muffled the bullfrog of his father’s snore, he kicked the vawn to a gallop.

But concern for Cortie had caught him on the Throanscall’s banks, a hook at the end of a far-cast line. She was beautiful and fragile. His mother had protected her as if she were a rare greenbird’s egg, hoping the family would earn enough treasure to buy themselves into Bel Amica, where the girl could grow up in peace. To Pop she was just another pair of hands. Wynn had pictured her waking without him, rising with double the chores. He turned the vawn around and ventured back through the storm, spitting. Sure enough, his father stood waiting, that belt of twisted horsetail hair so much heavier and harsher for the rain.

Tonight that memory gave him pause. But if he could win a respectable position among Abascar’s people, he might collect enough prizes to buy himself and Cortie a place in House Bel Amica.

The mare’s breath puffed through the slats.

“Don’t be scared,” said Wynn. “We don’t need any of them. Tomorrow we’ll run.”

And then, the ground shook.

For half a moment, a ghost loomed in Wynn’s imagination—his father, rising alive with the belt in his hand.

Wynn ran from the stable up to the cave where children slept. Finding it empty, he staggered, steadying himself with the broom he still held fast, like a boatman with an oar but no boat, while the ground rolled in waves. He needed to see Cortie’s face, know she was alive.

Emerging from the dust-choked throat of the Blackstone Caves, he plunged into the murmuring crowd. Boys and girls leaned into one another like anxious lambs on the ledge. Parents called for children. Guards shouted directions. Shattering blackstone shrieked deep within.

As the crowd quieted, gossip spread like foam tossed over rapids.
A chamber’s collapsed. Some have been buried
.

“What is it with House Abascar?” Wynn muttered, straining to hear names. “What is it with all the collapses?”

He dropped the broom when he saw his sister. He caught her up just as the news took a terrible turn. Say-ressa, the healer, was among those buried inside when a wall became a cavalcade of rocks.

“Why?” Cortie whispered, wide-eyed. “She’s the one who makes things better.”

“Don’t worry,” he told her, worrying. “I’ll take care of you.”

Cortie put her head on his shoulder. He thought she was crying, but then her tiny hand patted his back. “Don’t be scared, big brother,” she whispered.

That’s when he realized he was the one who was shaking. “This is stupid,” he said. “Come on, Cortie. I’m finding you a safer place to sleep.”

They tiptoed down into the dark, all the way to the armory’s piles of shields and plated armor. Cortie crawled into one of those hollow, burnished suits and hid like a cat.

“Stay here tonight,” Wynn said. “Sleep here from now on. I don’t want to come back and find you’ve been crushed.”

“Come back? Where are you going?”

“Tomorrow night Cal-raven’s gonna…” He heard voices, soldiers approaching from the stable cave below.

He seized a heavy metal shirt made for a massive defender—probably Bowlder—and crouched down within it. He watched reflections from the soldiers’ torches flicker in golden ripples all around. Peering out through the right-arm window, he counted six silhouettes. They carried quivers. And they were angry.

In those urgent whispers, he learned about the ambush, the king’s escape, the quake’s interruption of their pursuit, and their intent to try again before they were found out. Soon.

When the voices diminished, Wynn dared to stick his head out through the suit’s open shoulder. The soldiers had set down their quivers and left a torch in a torchstand. Leaning into one another like hunting dogs, they were halfway up the corridor toward the crowds.

“Conspiracy.” The word was delicious on his tongue. “Cortie, it’s a conspiracy.” He trembled with a sense of purpose, his head rising through the open collar. “This is it. I’ll show Cal-raven I’m useful. And he’ll never assign me to stable duty again.”

In the shine of the armor where Cortie lay hidden, he saw himself—a small head and feeble arms emerging from this massive metal shirt. He jerked his arms inside and ducked down, troubled by the reminder of the distance between him and a full-grown soldier. Then he crawled out, a snail abandoning a shell. “I’m going after them, Cortie. I gotta find out who they are.”

She blinked her eyes sleepily. “Pop says you should stay in the wagon,” she yawned.

Dust floating on the air crackled as the torch’s flicking tongue caught and consumed it.

There goes Wynn
, thought Luci to her sisters. And then her smile boasted,
I told you I’d find him
.

Luci’s identical sister Madi raised her chin in defiance.
Foolish orphan. He’s just spying on the big folks again, jealous of anyone important. Let’s leave him alone
.

The triplets rarely spoke aloud to one another. Thoughts passed between them clearly, but they often confused which one was thinking, and their feelings rarely matched. This frequently left them looking pained as they wrestled in mental entanglement.

Luci thrust out her lower lip. She would take a liking to any boy she pleased, and her sisters would have no say in the matter.
You’re the one who wants to grow up and marry Cal-raven
, she snapped in a wordless retort. Brushing off her weed-woven trousers, she stepped out from behind the stone slab that had fallen across the corridor just outside the armory. Following Wynn, she heard the quiet clatter of her sisters’ stonecrafted jewelry close behind.

Madi, Luci, and Margi were as different in opinions as they were alike in appearance and gifts. Born stonemasters, they took regular lessons from Abascar’s only master of that art—the king. Cal-raven had shown them how fingertips could read a rock. Like the gift of firebearing, healing, or wild-speaking, stonemastery was evidence of direct descent from Tammos Raak, the man who first crossed over the Forbidding Wall into the Expanse, followed by the parade of children he had freed from captivity.

While they were proud of their stonemastery, they kept their telepathy secret. Double blessings such as theirs were rare indeed. Those so greatly gifted were often assumed to be schemers and crooks.

When the triplets’ parents had joined the assembly in the quake’s aftermath to wait for Cal-raven’s instructions, Luci had turned to her favorite distraction—the rascal merchant boy who had, much to his own dismay, charmed her.

But what had begun as distraction turned troubling the farther Luci led her sisters in pursuit. Wynn seemed afraid, his concentration so fierce that he had not noticed his followers.

They emerged from the tunnel to walk along a high tier under the night. Wynn was well ahead of them, shadowing the soldiers as closely as he dared. They followed him up a weedy slope.

Summer constellations glistened—the Golden Heron, the Healerfish, the Wildflower, and the Changeling. And there, low on the northern horizon, the Kite People, six clusters of stars like men and women in flight, trailing strands of dust that bound them to a single blue star with a wavering
aura. The sisters paused together, and not for the first time. Starlight always enchanted them, as if it were a strange music composed only for them.

Luci led them through the bowl where they had helped Cal-raven sculpt a towering Keeper and along narrow ledges, tempting gusty winds to cast them over the cliffs.

Coming around a bend, they saw the soldiers slip into a crevasse in the cliff face. Wynn climbed along the vines just above the entrance and hung there like a bat, upside down.

The girls, seeing him stop, clustered together on the path. He saw them, hissed, and waved them off.

Luci ventured on, bare feet padding along the path. “You’re gonna get in trouble,” she whispered.

Wynn held out a hand to quiet her, listening intently.

Wind moaned through the Red Teeth, the field of stone spears far below the precipice. Margi, who seemed drawn to danger, grew distracted and crawled to the edge to look down. Luci could feel her thinking of things they could sculpt with those jagged lances.

Wynn’s head snapped back as if he’d been struck by what he heard in that crevasse. He let himself down soundlessly and approached the sisters.

“Run, Luci,” whispered Madi. “He’s angry.”

No
, thought Luci.
He wants our help
.

“You’ll get us into trouble,” Madi growled, coming up to Luci’s shoulder.

Wynn wagged a finger in their faces as if they were obstinate children. “If you want Cal-raven to live another day, you need to help me. Right now.”

Luci could see the moon like red jewels in the boy’s wide eyes, but those eyes were on Madi. She stepped closer and rested her wrist’s beaded bracelet on his shoulder to win his attention. “We promise to help,” she said just as Madi said the same thing. They turned and scowled at each other.

Wynn spelled out instructions. All memories of the quake fell away. This conversation made them feel hot and cold at the same time. A different kind of quake had begun, and when the shaking stopped, the world would be changed. They would be changed. Here in the open, under a rising red moon, the sisters’ doubts dissolved. In a sudden decision, as final and immovable as the stone, they sealed the crevasse and trapped the soldiers inside.

K
rawg found the king kneeling in the entry cave, stroking Say-ressa’s bloodied cheek. Lying beside two others nearly crushed in the cave collapse, Abascar’s beloved healer rasped through a dust-choked throat while her apprentices guessed what they could about unseen injuries.

“Would this be of any comfort?” Krawg, his knees popping, approached the king, offering a purple scarf.

Cal-raven took it with cautious hands. “Auralia made this.” He nodded to acknowledge Krawg’s generous sacrifice. “Thank you.”

“Has healing properties, it does,” Krawg muttered. “It’s Warney’s.” He felt the heat of displeasure in the crowd behind him. Some would protest that a scarf with healing powers was just the sort of superstition the Gatherers were prone to believe. Among Housefolk, suspicions lingered that the Gatherers, former criminals, had all gone rather strange in the head during their hard labor outside the protection of Abascar’s walls. But the king had given the Gatherers a chance to prove themselves responsible.

Krawg and Warney, famous thieves, had become resourceful and productive; through the winter they helped House Abascar gather a harvest from this barren region. Krawg approached the king with some confidence, for Cal-raven respected their experience, and he was not one to doubt claims about the power of Auralia’s colors.

“You look like a Bel Amican,” Cal-raven told Say-ressa after binding the scarf around her head. “As lovely now as you were when you caught Ark-robin’s eye.”

Krawg withdrew, wrapped in joy for having provided help. He knew the
subtle ministry of Auralia’s colors, knew the scarf would cool the healer’s fevers. He had a scarf just like it, after all. But his was yellow, and he would never part with it.

Somewhere Warney was sweeping the shaken caves. Stalactites had shattered, cobwebs had come down, and walls had broken to puzzle pieces. Krawg moved instead to help others deep within to sift debris from the shallow reservoir of water that sustained them.

“Didja hear?” That tattling was Hildy the Sad One, a gossipy old Gatherer drifting by on a raft, her sifting net neglected at her side. “Five defenders have gone missin’. Five. Didja hear?”

Saying most things twice, as always, she kept on, speculating about who the five might be and the grisly ways they might have died. Krawg rowed away. He’d heard enough trouble already today.