Echoes of Silence (3 page)

At the corner, a man gestured to me, his face cloaked by a hood. I continued forward, my steps sure, but my mind screamed at me:
Wait!

At the corner, he linked his arm through mine, turned his face away before I could identify him, and steered me down an unfamiliar side street. I yanked my arm out of his grip, but kept moving, anxious to put as much distance between myself and the magical imprint I’d left in the market.

“Who are you?” I hissed out of the corner of my mouth. “Why are you helping me?”

The man walked faster. After a few minutes, we emerged into the quad across from my tower. He delivered me to the door just as the clouds turned from magenta to black. “You should not be out in such a storm.”

“Neither should you,” I replied.

I couldn’t see the man’s face, but I felt him smile beneath the darkness of his hood. “Until next time.” He bowed his face against the wind and started across the street.

Next time?
I stood in the protective archway of my tower and watched him. He continued across the quad to the neighboring tower, where he ducked into the second doorway. As he did, his hood blew back, revealing his face. A face I had come to know well today.

I didn’t know this man’s name, but I’d first seen him marching toward me as I left the aristocrat’s house just this morning. He’d broken my hallucinations in the market this very afternoon. I couldn’t comprehend why he had given me yet another pass.

Amid a tremendous clap of thunder, I spun and shoved open the door to my tower. By the time I passed the sixth floor, my heart pounded more from exertion than fear. Still, I knew that man was watching my building.

I wondered how long his silence had bought me the simple life I’d led in Umon. Because he must know what I was, what I could do. Surely it was his job to find and arrest the magicians in the city, but he hadn’t taken me. As I continued climbing, my footsteps in the stairwell rang with a single question:
Why not me?

#

Olive sat in the stuffed chair, her fingers working flowers into beautiful centerpieces. “I need more flowers,” she said, which did nothing to soothe my constant financial worries. I escaped her questioning eyes in favor of our bedroom, where I unwound my scarf and dropped it to the dresser. From the twenty-third floor of the tower, I could see across the city, past the wall, and into the surrounding land. The thick sky bled to the ground, but the northern mountains separating Nyth from Umon appeared darker than everything else.

Rain pelted against the glass, needling the window the same way confusion pricked my mind. The High King from Nyth had only stayed in Umon for a few weeks, and he was gone by the time I had arrived in the city. His soldiers kept the peace, and his magicians took orders from his son, the Prince, who had arrived a week after me. I wondered why he needed the cover of darkness tonight, why he would waste his magicians’ talent to conjure such an annoying storm.

The sound of knocking penetrated my thoughts. I turned to answer the door, snatching an apple off the counter along the way.

Five soldiers stood in the hall, their hats ramrod straight, their black-gloved fingers clenched into fists at their sides. The apple fell from my hands. I tore my eyes from the unsmiling faces of the guards to watch the fruit roll in slow motion across the uneven floor.

A guard spoke in the swirling, vibrant language of Nyth. I caught “king” and something that I believed translated to “wet.”

“We don’t wish any trouble,” I said, cursing my stumbling tongue. My language sounded so harsh against their lilting words. I scanned the guards, and when my gaze landed on that oh-so-familiar face, I stifled a cry of recognition as I took the tiniest step backward.

Had he delivered me to the safety of my tower, only to gather his soldiers and arrest me?

Now, as before, his green-brown eyes searched mine, and they seemed to hold a message. I couldn’t quite decipher it, but I did my best to regain my composure and tear my gaze from his. I felt it important not to give him away, to repay the multiple favors he’d already given me.

“It is time,” he said, which made about as much sense as his Nythinian words. “Perhaps you’d like a cloak. It’s raining outside.”

My feet moved to the kitchen table where I’d left my cloak, my power building toward a peak I must release at exactly the right moment.

Olive stood near the stuffed chair, her fingers now worrying around each other. She shook her head, but I wouldn’t simply accompany these soldiers to my imprisonment—or my death.

With trembling hands, I pulled the hood over my hair and turned. Before anyone could so much as blink, I unleashed my voice, belting a powerful, high note that sent the five soldiers away from me.

The door slammed closed as I changed the music into a spell-song to bewitch objects. The lock slid into position even as my vision blurred and then became crowded with silver starbursts.

I cut off the note still flying from my throat. My knees met the floor, though I tried desperately to stand. I needed to get to the window in our bedroom, climb out, and use the fire chute to escape from the soldiers. “Olive.” The name came out as a moan. She helped me stand just as the sound of singing came from the hallway. “We must go.”

I stumbled with unseeing eyes, hands outstretched, toward the back of the apartment. A voice came through the haze in my head. Low and insistent, it sounded like a woman.

Grandmother.
The thought came unbidden, and sourness accompanied the vertigo cascading through my core. Grandmother couldn’t work her half of the spells from the other side of death, no matter how much I wished it.

The apartment door crashed open; the baritone singing became louder. My vision cleared just enough for me to see the depth of the storm beyond the glass as I fumbled with the lock on the window.

I had just gotten the window open when a soldier barked out a Nythinian order. I sang an old chant Grandmother had woven for me, a song to make a man fall into a deep sleep.

“Not endless,” she had admonished when I’d asked. “We do not use our power to harm permanently. Remember that, Echo.”

Right now, to get away from these armed guards, I couldn’t restrain my power. The guard at the door slumped to the floor, as if dead, and Olive cried out. “Hurry, Echo,” she said. “I will hold them as long as I can.” She secured the bedroom door as I flung my legs onto the platform outside the window.

My whole world tilted as I finished the spell-song. A sharp ache pulsed behind my eyes. “Olive, no,” I said. “You’re not safe here either.”

Not here, not here,
a voice whispered through my head. I didn’t recognize the woman’s voice, though it felt familiar.

The voice rang in my ears so loudly, I expected to see a woman with dark, curly hair, vibrant blue eyes, and a serious set to her mouth. I expected to find my mother, someone I had only seen sitting next to Father in the portrait my grandmother owned.

Though I had not seen Mother in my lifetime, I knew the voice belonged to her. She continued to babble and I clapped my hands over my ears to drown out the sound. Father had died just days after I was born, and Mother had wandered the lands looking for a way to reclaim him.

The legends said that the magicians in the country of Relina had ways to fulfill such a need. Immortal chants; songs entwined with hope and magic. Bits of sky that held swatches of clouds that could make a blind man see, and a deaf child hear, and bring the dead back to life.

Whether any of it was true, I didn’t know.

“Echo.” A man’s voice interrupted my mother’s vibrating words. I spun toward the new sound, and my brain felt like it had knocked into my skull. Black spots appeared, but not before I recognized the soldier who had spoken my name.

“Come back inside,” he said kindly. “Olive is safe. You’re unwell.” He reached for me as my mother’s voice recycled through my mind, as I wondered how he knew my name, as I lost my balance.

His fingers gripped my forearm, and I sang a melody to get him to release me. I’d barely produced three notes before he covered my mouth. “Stop that.”

I wilted into his arms, unable to see anything but blackness. He called for the other soldiers as I sank into unconsciousness.

“We cannot delay much longer,” a man said somewhere beyond me.

“We cannot carry her through the storm,” a second man answered, and this time I recognized the calm, deep tone of the soldier who’d assisted me three times in one day. “Think of how that will look.”

“There’s no one looking.”

“She’s awake.” A third man entered the conversation, and I sensed movement about me.

I took a few moments to center myself, to find my own core of magic and listen to it, just as Grandmother would have cautioned. I found nothing sinister. My neck ached, and a sharp pain radiated through my body from front to back. I tried to sit up, but a magical power not my own compelled me to stay down. I didn’t recognize this magic, but it felt calm, and solid, and flowed through me as if it belonged to me. I sighed into its comfort and opened my eyes.

The bedroom—my bedroom—appeared lighter than it should have, what with the raging storm battling the glass to my right.

“Echo.” The soldier leaned over me, his eyes warm and inviting. His voice sounded like the wind playing through the plain grasses outside my village. “Please come with us. I promise no harm will befall you.”

When he spoke, I believed him. I didn’t fully understand why, but I wondered if the goodness of his magic still swirling with mine had something to do with it.

The soldier reached toward me, but thought better of touching me and pulled back. He regained his sophisticated posture a safe distance away, his hands clasped behind his back just as I’d seen him on the aristocrat’s stoop.

“Can you walk?” he asked, and this time I found his unflappable demeanor maddening.

“Of course.” I slid to the edge of my bed and the room swayed as I found my footing. Determined not to show any weakness, I straightened my back and met the soldier’s steady gaze.

“My sister—”

“Will be cared for.” He nodded to another soldier, who came forward with my cloak. “We need to keep to the schedule.”

“I don’t care about your schedule.” I looked past him to the closed door. “Where’s Olive?”

He remained passive; no one spoke.

“I find that I
cannot
walk.” I collapsed back to the bed. “I cannot accompany you—”

“You’re coming.” The soldier’s eyes gleamed with amusement, but his voice sounded firm.

I raised my chin. “My sister—”

“Is waiting to say good-bye.” He gestured toward the door. “Perhaps if you can manage the few steps to the living room, you can see for yourself.”

I ignored the sarcasm swimming in his words. Brushing past him, I yanked open my bedroom door to find Olive pacing in the living room. Her eyes met mine, and I saw fear in hers. I moved on sure feet to embrace her.

“Go with them, Echo.” Her whisper sounded like a shout. “I’ll be fine.”

“You won’t be able to keep these quarters.”

She gripped me tighter. “I’m not as weak as you think.”

“I don’t think—”

“I know.” She stepped back and held me at arm’s length. “Go. See what you can do for us inside the palace.” She smiled, and though it felt timid, I also detected a trace of hope, of happiness. “We will see each other again.” She took my cloak from the soldier and handed it to me with a steady hand.

I fastened it with trembling fingers, the hope of a better life needling my mind. I mouthed
I love you
to Olive and she repeated it back to me before I turned to the soldiers. I needed to eat and then sleep until the sun met its zenith the following day.

The soldier gestured toward the door, and I stepped in front of him, glad when my legs held my weight. I kept one hand on the railing as I descended the twenty-three flights of stairs. My skirt draped low over my boots, which kept out the rain and cold as I stepped into the street. The wind snaked down the canyonous alleyways and howled around us in dangerous crossroads.

We were the only living things braving the storm. The lamps that usually winked in the darkness had been extinguished. The heavy doors set into the walls, through which I had entered the city, had been closed and locked.

Between the weather and my sheer exhaustion, I could barely see my tower beyond the guards, and I wanted to glimpse it one last time. The idea that I couldn’t sing strongly enough to defend myself, that I didn’t know where I would end up, sent fear skating through my mind.

I gripped my coat closed at the throat. “Where are you taking me?”

The guard cast me a glance, and I thought I caught a hint of sadness in his eyes. “Ah, my beauty
,
the Prince wishes to—” He swallowed, and I caught the nervous movement in his throat. “—speak with you.”

My beauty
rang through my ears, battling against the howling wind, which sucked at my skirt, pulling it tight against my left side.

The Prince wishes to speak with you
howled with the words which had followed. Beautiful—a ploy? Genuine?

I glanced around, finding the sky an unsettling shade of dark green, which seemed to shriek a silent warning. I needed to run. Escape. I felt certain I wouldn’t like what I found behind the palace walls.

“A tornado is approaching.” The guard stepped closer and linked his arm through mine as he had in the market. I realized I’d stopped walking to consider my options. “Please come with us, and we’ll get you to Our Majesty’s safe house.” The low, soothing quality in his voice assured me that I was safe as long as I stayed with him.

I shook my arm from his to clarify my thoughts. I felt as if I could trust him, yet I did not even know his name. I fought against the magic surging through my core and followed Grandmother’s lesson to look and listen first.

The tornado siren swallowed the answer from my mouth. A guard with a spitting oil lamp took the lead, and we slopped our way through the mud.

#

We burst into the dry warmth of an archway on the edge of the city, and somehow that made the angry lantern go out. In the darkness, only the sounds of labored breathing—my own included—met my ears.