The Blood Debt (2 page)

A chill went through her. The view flickered. While the reservoir in the latchkey lasted, she followed footprints into the dunes, seeking the person who had made them. Her gaze skidded over a discontinuity and lost the trail. She backtracked, and skidded again. The person making the tracks was deliberately hidden from her sight.

She had just enough time left to see Sal hurrying from the beach. His trail was hidden too, subtle and barely visible but as familiar to her as the dunes themselves. He angled around the interloper, coming up from behind.

Be careful!
she thought, even though she knew he couldn’t hear her.

The latchkey gave out, the store of the Change within it consumed by the wall’s charm. She was left on the wrong side of the exit, anxious and blind. What to do? She couldn’t just sit in the workshop like a rabbit in its hole waiting for the trap to spring.

She had seen enough, though. The interloper was approaching from a point near the outer edge of the dunes. That left him or her, most probably, with no line of sight to the workshop’s entrance. If she was quick, she might just get through without being spotted.

She took a deep breath, and withdrew the latchkey. It slid freely from the sand, unhindered by the arcane mechanism it operated. Turning to another section of empty wall, she outlined a figure eight in the soft soil. With a sigh and a shower of sand, the wall collapsed, leaving a metre-wide hole in its wake. On the other side of the hole was the back of a bush. Beyond that, sunlight and the dunes.

Shilly hurried through, carrying the latchkey with her. The white sand glared bright in the daylight. The smell of salt and spear grass was sharp in her nostrils. She squinted to check around her before running away from the exit, erasing her footprints with her free hand as she went. She ducked out of sight at one end of a wide dune-valley just as a flash of blue fabric appeared at the other.

A Sky Warden? So far from the Haunted City?
It wasn’t Selection time for months, when the young of the village were examined for Change-sensitivity or talent. There was just one other conceivable reason for a warden to be in the area. Shilly forced herself to confront the awful truth: that she and Sal might have done something to give themselves away.

She held her breath and hoped Sal would stay out of sight. The last time Sky Wardens had come to the dunes, her life had been turned upside-down. Pain shot along her right leg, from hip to ankle, and with a worried look she reached down to rub at it.

* * * *

Unnatural silence had fallen over the dunes. Sal’s hearing seemed muffled as he moved to catch up with the person who had triggered the early warning charm on the dunes’ north-eastern perimeter. Just as thick fog could dampen sound, so too could sufficient skill deaden the Change.

That thought sobered him. The chances were that this person was better trained than himself; not someone from Fundelry, then, or a wandering weather-worker, foraging for driftwood. For all the natural talents he possessed, subtlety was not one of them. He couldn’t just rush in and hope for the best.

He inched around the outstretched limb of a dune and caught his first glimpse of the person he pursued.

A thin young man with black, curly hair and ebony skin strode confidently towards the workshop entrance. He wore the bright blue robes of a Sky Warden. A crystal torc hung around his neck — a sign of rank, Sal remembered. Over his right shoulder drooped a black bag shaped like a teardrop. Its contents swayed heavily from side to side.

Whoever he was, he crossed the sand with long-legged strides, making no obvious attempt to conceal himself.

The bush camouflaging the entrance to the workshop stood out against the wall of sand behind it, a suddenly pathetic hiding place, even though it had served Lodo well for many years. Sal had felt the entrance open and Shilly scurry for freedom, so he was spared the worry of her being trapped inside. But that wasn’t the limit of his concerns. If the Warden found their home and reported it to the Syndic, they would be forced to run again. And he wasn’t ready to leave the one place he had felt at home — not yet.

Sal reached out through the Change, fighting the interference radiating from the trespasser, and touched the second line of defence. The buried traps stirred, awaiting his command. They had grown in the years’ since he had placed them in a series of concentric semicircles around the entrance to the workshop. They throbbed with readiness, swollen and angry like bees ready to defend their hive.

The Warden stopped in his tracks and looked around.

Sal ducked out of sight and slithered to a new position. The Warden turned his head from side to side, as though seeking the source of a faint sound. His expression, when Sal got his first good look at it, was one of intense concentration.

Sal went to duck again, but froze. There was something familiar about that face, those long features and dark eyes. He had seen them before. Or
had
he? He’d met only a few Wardens during his ill-fated stint at the Novitiate, five years ago, and none since. Would he remember any of them from that far back, even if his liberty depended on it?

The Warden straightened upon one last inspection of the dune valley. He swung the pack off his shoulder and put it on the sand by his feet. By accident or not, he had stopped just before the concealing bush.

The Warden raised his empty hands and turned in a full circle.

‘Come out, Sal and Shilly,’ he called, speaking slowly and loudly. ‘I know you’re here.’

Sal rolled over and flattened himself hard against the sand, staring desperately up into the sky. Sky Wardens didn’t necessarily need their hands free to cast charms any more than he did. The Warden’s gesture of peace was purely symbolic and therefore meaningless, but symbols had power. So Lodo had tried to teach him years ago, and Shilly had reinforced the lesson many times since.

Silence choked the air over the dunes. The wind had died completely; not even the seagulls dared brave the sudden stillness.

Sal didn’t know what to do.

‘Who are you?’ came Shilly’s voice from the other side of the Warden. ‘What do you want?’

Sal peered over the dune, alarmed by the thought that Shilly had put herself in danger. He reached out for the buried traps as the Warden turned to address the area that Shilly’s voice had come from. It wasn’t too late. She was far enough away not to be hurt.

‘What’s the matter?’ the Warden asked, his words echoing from the walls of sand. ‘Don’t you know who I am?’

‘I know
what
you are. That’s enough.’

‘No, it’s not.’ The Warden made no move, except to sag a little. ‘I dreamed last night that you and I were riding a ship of bone up the side of a mountain, into a cave of ice. Something dark and ancient lived there, under the ice, and it knew we were coming. It had slept for an eternity, but was waking now, and it was hungry. We had to stop it, you and I, before it ate the world.’

Sal listened, hooked by the same odd sense of familiarity he had felt on seeing the man’s face. The Warden’s voice had changed while talking about the dream; it was higher pitched, and had a childlike rhythm. Sal had heard someone talk like that before, under very different circumstances.

For the first time, Sal noted how dusty the Warden’s robe was, his scuffed and worn boots.

The name, when it came to him, was as unbelievable as it was a relief.

‘Tom?’ Sal stood up on the crest of the dune. ‘Is that really you?’

The Warden turned away from Shilly’s hiding place to look at him. Now that Sal knew the truth, he could see the resemblance. Gone were the awkward ears and lack of height. Gone were youthful uncertainties and baby fat. In their place was a lean, almost ravenous, sense of concentration that hit Sal like a physical force as Tom’s gaze fixed on him.

The teenager Sal had last seen as a boy didn’t smile. ‘Who else would I be?’ he asked, appearing genuinely puzzled.

A surge of relief carried Sal down the side of the dune. ‘It’s been such a long time,’ he said. ‘I didn’t recognise you.’

‘You look the same.’

‘Thanks, I think.’ Tom’s equine features took on a younger cast as Sal neared him. Under the dirt, he had pimples. Sal held out his hand. Tom’s grip was uncertain, fleeting.

‘What in the Strand brings you here?’

Tom looked over his shoulder as Shilly came out of hiding. She didn’t look as relieved as Sal. Favouring her weak right leg, she leaned on Lodo’s latchkey in lieu of a staff.

Tom turned back to Sal. ‘It’s your father,’ he said.

The heat of the day vanished at those three words. ‘What about him?’

‘He needs your help.’

‘He sent you to find us?’

‘No.’ Tom shook his head emphatically. ‘I came here of my own accord. No one knows.’

Shilly looked from Sal to Tom when she joined them.

‘A cave of ice, huh?’ she said. ‘That’s not a prophetic dream; it’s the sort of nonsense normal people have.’

Tom opened his mouth to respond, then closed it. Sal could practically hear his mind working. Brilliant in the ways of the Change, Tom struggled when it came to everyday matters.

‘It will happen,’ he said. ‘That’s the way it works. I thought you’d remember, after the golem and Lodo and —’

‘Easy,’ she said, a look of sadness clouding her features. ‘I remember. I just don’t understand how it could ever be possible. I haven’t seen ice in my entire life, let alone a
cave
of ice. The nearest mountains are half the world away, and I’m in no hurry to get there. As for hungry things wanting to eat you and me ...’ She put her hand on his shoulder. ‘Be assured that this is one fate I’ll try my level best to avoid.’

Tom didn’t argue, although her answer obviously didn’t reassure him.

‘Why don’t you come inside?’ asked Sal, indicating the bush and the entrance to the workshop behind it. The deadness over the dunes had faded; the wind had returned. ‘You look like you could get out of the sun for a while.’

‘Yes,’ added Shilly, ‘I’ll get you some water, make you some tea.’

Tom nodded, but stayed where he was. ‘Tell me,’ he asked Sal, his dark eyes very serious. ‘What would you have done if I hadn’t been me?’

Sal looked at the ground around them, wondering how much Tom had sensed. Woven in a thin layer just under the surface of the sand was a pattern of interlinked charms designed by Shilly and willed into potency by Sal. The charms — resembling insects with circular bodies and crosses for heads — caught light filtering through the grains above them and held it there, the pattern growing increasingly powerful with every day that passed. At a word, Sal could release the stored energy in the light-traps and send it flooding back out into the world. He didn’t know how much energy, exactly, there was in the traps, but definitely more than enough to kick up a dense sandstorm, allowing Shilly and him to escape under cover. Probably enough to blow a person standing on the light-traps to pieces ... There was only one way to find that out, and fortunately he had been spared such a decision this time.

‘Don’t worry about us,’ he said. ‘We know how to look after ourselves.’

Tom’s dark eyes took him in with one long glance. Sal’s assurance was one thing Tom clearly understood.

Shilly tugged Tom forward, her sun-bleached hair dancing. He allowed himself to be led up the slope of the dune, first picking up the heavy bag and draping it back over his shoulder, then dragging his leather boots through the sand.

‘Come on down,’ said Shilly, waving their old friend ahead of her along the secret passage into the workshop. ‘Tell us everything you know.’

‘That could take days,’ he said. ‘I’ve been dreaming a lot lately, and not just about you. I think Skender might be in trouble, wherever he is.’

Shilly glanced over her shoulder at Sal. He rolled his eyes. Nothing had changed.

‘What we
need
to know, then. Let me get you a drink, and then you can get started.’

Sal came last, ignoring the sensation of being watched as he closed the door behind him. The birds on the dunes were the last things he had to worry about now.

* * * *

The Miner

‘It is clear that the ground subsided after the

Cataclysm, but before the making of the Divide,

so the city endured not one but two separate and

unrelated catastrophes. The first lowered the city

into a depression several kilometres around, with

sloping sides and a roughly flat bottom. The

second split the depression and therefore the city

into two sections of unequal size. The inhabitants

of the larger portion took shelter behind a sturdy

wall designed to keep the Divide at bay. Some

speculate that the creators of the Wall were the

same as the creators of the Divide, suggesting the

riving of the city was accidental, and that

architectural triage on a massive scale was both

called for and delivered.’

LAURE HISTORICAL SURVEY

kender Van Haasteren the Tenth was stuck. It wasn’t the first time he had been in that situation. His home, the Keep, an ancient cliff-face refuge deep in the heart of the Interior, was riddled with secret passages and unnoticed cracks, most of which he had explored during his childhood. Only on becoming a teenager had he realised the screamingly obvious: that such illicit expeditions were a form of escape that would never lead anywhere. All they did was annoy his father.

The one time he genuinely escaped, he had ended up on the other side of the Divide, fighting golems and worse. It had come as quite a shock that the outside world he had always dreamed of might actually be dangerous. He had gone home with a feeling of relief, his youthful rebellion out of the way nice and early. Time to settle in and do some safer work. No more adventures for him, thanks.