The Skylighter (The Keepers' Chronicles Book 2) (17 page)

The dog asleep near the hearth raised its head, and a moment later the double doors swung open, surprising Dom out of his chair.

It was Brynn. And she was crying.

She startled when she saw him and backed toward the hallway. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.” Raising her arm, she hastily wiped her tears on her sleeve. “I didn’t realize you’d be here. I’ll just—”

“No, please. Don’t go.” He hurried to her side, unsure of himself, of where to put his hands. It had been only a few days since their kiss, but every interaction since—even when they passed in the hall—had been charged. “What’s wrong? Is he missing again?”

Her eyes, always a bright and lustrous green, gleamed with unshed tears. She shook her head in confusion.

“Michael. Is he hiding again?”

“No. No, Michael’s fine,” she said, her voice a shade above a whisper. “Michael’s fine. I’m fine. It’s silly. I’m . . . tired. That’s all.”

He did touch her then, fingertips lingering on her shoulder. She didn’t turn away, so he left his hand where it was. “I understand. We’re all worn to the bone. But are you sure that’s all that’s worrying you?”

“Yes. Of course.”

Dom waited, knowing that his silence would force her to talk. She wasn’t the kind of person who could stand an awkward pause, and she always tried to fill it with bubbly conversation.

“It’s just . . .” She straightened, tucking a few wayward strands behind her ears. “Renato, the butcher’s son who makes all the deliveries? You’ve met him before. He asked me to marry him, and it isn’t a bad offer, really. He’ll take over his father’s business someday. Their home is quite lovely. It’s nothing like the estate, of course . . .”

She kept talking, unaware that Dom had stopped listening as soon as she mentioned the proposal.

Brynn can’t get married. She’s not . . . is she even seventeen yet? Why don’t I know when her birthday is? How do I not know this? But even if she is, she can’t get married. She belongs in this house. She belongs here . . . with me.

“You can’t marry him,” Dom said, cutting her off midsentence. “You don’t even know him.”

“Of course I
know
him.” Her face had gone a little pink, but Dom wasn’t sure if she was angry or embarrassed or something else entirely. “I’ve known Renato since Gavin and I moved to Santiago when our parents died. And even if I didn’t know him, it wouldn’t be up to you to decide who I get to marry. You might be the lord of this house, but you don’t get to make those decisions for me.”

Dom opened his mouth, but he couldn’t find the appropriate response. Brynn was actually considering marrying the butcher’s son, who, if Dom remembered correctly, was too pretty for any man to be. Which somehow made this all worse. “Is this what was bothering you the other day?”

She answered with a noncommittal shrug.

“Do you love him?” he asked.

“I . . . does it matter?”

The color on her cheeks deepened. It wasn’t a yes, but it wasn’t a no, either. Imagining Brynn with anyone else, caring about anyone else, made something inside Dom’s chest give a twist. The pain was too sharp for something as simple as petty jealousy; it wasn’t the childish possessiveness of a boy whose favorite plaything had been snatched away. He cared
deeply
for Brynn—it was a surprising realization—and the feelings were more profound than simple friendship.

“I think it matters,” he said, his voice low. “I think you should be with someone you love.”
Someone like me.

She gave a humorless laugh. “I will never, ever be with the person I love.”

He stepped forward and nervously, hesitantly, touched her cheek. “Why not?”

A slow blink and the tears spilled down her face. Dom raised his other hand and wiped the droplets away with his thumbs. “Please don’t,” she said, but didn’t pull away. “You’re making this too hard.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, but wasn’t sure what the apology was for. His eyes dropped to her lips, and he pulled her closer.

She put a hand on his chest, keeping him at bay. “Sometimes it’s too late for apologies.” Straightening, she turned for the library doors and never looked back.

The burlap bags were scratchy and smelled like rotten potatoes, but Pira was too exhausted to care. She fell onto the pile on the smithy floor and tucked her arms, heavy with two days of overuse, close to her body. Flexing the fingers of her right hand didn’t alleviate the ache in her knuckles and tendons.

She’d always been proud of her rough hands and muscular arms, but for the first time in her life Pira wished she’d trained in a softer, less useful art. An entire row of collars, nearly fifty in all, lay spread across the smithy’s workbench. Hinges open, gaping like jaws of some frightful leech, ready to parasite the energy off some poor, unsuspecting creature.

Turning her back to the glinting, silvery metal didn’t put her creations out of her mind, but she managed to doze off, napping lightly till arguing voices drew her out of sleep’s clutches.

“You don’t need her and I do,” Vibora said as she walked into the shop. “She’s not that powerful anyway. She’s weak, really, and there will be so many others to draw from when we reach Performers’ Camp.”

“Don’t presume to tell me what I need.” Sapo pushed past the other Keeper and kicked Pira in the thigh. “Up, girl.”

“Sapo, please.” Vibora’s voice wobbled. “Won’t the wall be enough? What’s one more Keeper in the face of all that power?”

“There are no guarantees. What if the heir is successful? What if she solidifies the barrier before we get there?” He kicked Pira, hard this time, and held a hand out to Vibora as if she could literally hand over control.

Too focused on the interaction, Pira didn’t feel the kick. She knew there was something here, some clue as to how the collars functioned and what their plans were for the future.

“Then we’ll still have all the collars that Pira is creating, and we kill Johanna,” Vibora said, sliding needy fingers down Sapo’s arm. “The barrier will snap and—”

“And all that power evaporates. I’m left no better than I started.”

“You’re the most powerful Mage alive. You’ve got more power than any ten Mages.” Vibora’s voice was gentle, calming.

A thick tube of air wrapped around Pira’s torso and forced her to her feet, holding her against the wall. She didn’t struggle, trying not to draw Sapo’s focus and to glean their plan from the argument.

Sapo couldn’t possibly use all the power from the wall. That was crazy. Wasn’t it?

If they’d discovered a metal that defied her affinity, could they harvest the stored
essência
of one hundred Keepers? And if so, who could possibly stand against that force? No one on this side of the wall, and even Olinda would be in danger.

Sapo gripped Vibora’s upper arm hard enough that she cringed. “Give her to me.”

“No.” Vibora said the word softly, battling the compulsion in his voice. “In less than a week you’ll have all the power you can ever imagine, and an entire country of people worshipping at your feet. You don’t need this one.”

He grabbed the front of Vibora’s shirt with his free hand. With a shove he slammed her to the ground, and stepped onto her throat. Vibora gripped his ankle, no collar protecting her from his bruising weight.

“If you’re wrong,” he said, bending close to Vibora’s face, “then I will take you both.”

He pressed down on Vibora, forcing a strangled half cry, before walking out of the smithy.

The air ropes around Pira dissolved and she sagged to the floor next to her master, both women gasping.

“Why . . .” Pira took a halting breath before continuing her sentence. “Why do you let him do that to you? Why don’t you fight back?”

Vibora didn’t answer immediately, pushing herself upright. “He’s not always like this. The power—you’ve felt the constant pulsing—it does this to him.”

“You want to give him more? You think that’s going to make him treat you better?”

A brief spasm of pain ran through Pira’s body, but it wasn’t the worst she’d felt. Almost as if Vibora had shocked her simply because it was the expected outcome of her disobedience.

“I know my brother would never have treated you like that,” Pira said.

Vibora recoiled as if Pira had slapped her, then shook her head. “Your brother left me to die, Pira. Sapo saved me. He healed my wounds and killed the Mage who hurt me.” She struggled to her feet. “Jacaré left me to die.”

Leão wanted to doubt his senses. The first pulse of energy danced along his skin like a mosquito, the barest hint of awareness. When it became a perpetual hum, Leão dismounted from his stolen horse and led the animal off the road.

He found a quiet spot, near enough to hear the traffic that passed down Cruzamento’s main road, but relatively out of sight. It was almost impossible to ignore the thrum of
essência
once he recognized what it was. The force tugged at him like a string tied through his navel, and he fought the instinct to run to its source. Instead he built a small fire and sat cross-legged, with his hands resting palms up on his knees.

With his body oriented toward the town, Leão listened. What he found both did and did not surprise him. The pulse was many layered, a discordant melody of high and low tones held by a clumsy musician. One person was ill suited to maintain so many notes at once. It was a poor opus compared with the perfect symphony of blended power that created the barrier.

Leão tried to pick out one thread, one alto note that rang like a stone dropped in a cavern—the tone he associated with Pira’s Earth affinity.

He didn’t find it.

Instead he was able to pluck one high, clear note, almost a descant to the rest. He didn’t
know
it, but there was something about it that felt familiar, like he’d heard an echo of it somewhere before.

Focused on that bell-high chime, he tried to match it to his memories. It wasn’t anyone from Olinda, he knew that for certain.

Which meant he could only have heard it on this side of the wall.

His eyes snapped open with realization. It wasn’t the exact pitch he’d heard in Camaçari, but the texture and timbre were the same. Just like Pira’s and Jacaré’s had the same grainy, familial roughness that exposed their relationship. There was a tie between one of the people enslaved in Cruzamento and that spotty power he’d felt outside the prison.

There was something more there. Something he was missing. He listened again, hoping to find the connection between the two different
essências
in two different places.

The pulse of power revealed one other thing he didn’t want to face: He was incredibly overmatched. With that much energy under a Keeper’s control, Leão didn’t stand a chance against whoever was waiting in Cruzamento.

He racked his mind for some of the lessons he’d learned from his grandmother—like how to defeat a Mage who was significantly stronger than you.

Dom dunked his hands into the Keeper’s Fountain, watching as white dust swirled into the flower-laden water. It turned milky, clouds twisting away from his palms as it washed away the evidence of his day’s work.

Working side by side with the masons, mixing cement to shore up weak places of the estate’s wall, had left his hands dry and coated with a layer of mortar he was certain would be ingrained in his skin for decades.

Physical labor was hard but surprisingly rewarding.

He leaned back against the onyx, feeling the afternoon’s heat burn through his trousers, relaxing his fatigued muscles. Dom toiled all day, working himself to exhaustion, so that when he fell into bed at night, he was too tired to think of the impending war, Rafi’s absence, his inability to protect their people, and Brynn and her potential engagement.

“So,” Maribelle said as she entered the clearing, a basket over one arm. “I’ve crossed a few names off my list. I know for certain who our spy is not.”

Standing, he snatched the basket off her arm without an invitation and searched for anything fast and simple to eat. His mother had recently learned that two units of Belem’s men were moving north, and with the daylight failing, he needed to get back to the house to work through the details with Raul. The problem was that no one seemed to be sure whether Belem would be crossing into Santiago via Camaçari, or if he’d cut through the countryside and come from the west. Either way, Dom didn’t want to be caught unprepared.

“Who’s left on your list?”

“I have a few suspects,” Maribelle answered as she sat in the spot he’d vacated. She tilted her chin back, letting the sun shine on her upturned face, as if posing for a portrait.

For a moment Dom just looked at her, studying the clean lines of her profile and her full lips. There was something different about her in that moment—nothing sensuous or sly—and it made her almost likable. Almost.

He reached into the basket for a second meat-and-cheese-filled
pastelzinho
, but Maribelle slapped his hand away and took one for herself, bouncing the hot pie from palm to palm.

“I saw you talking to Raul in the barn. Which list is he on?”

Maribelle regarded him over the top of her pastry. She took a bite, and melted cheese dribbled across her chin. She wiped it away with the back of her hand, but it seemed to stretch and spread. “I haven’t eliminated him as a possibility. He could be the spy.”

“How are you
eliminating
people at all? Where are you getting your information? I see you every day. You’re rarely alone. When do you have time to ask questions and find answers?”

“A girl needs her secrets.”

“Then tell me who’s
not
on your list, Maribelle,” he said as he jammed his hands through his hair.

“Oh, poor boy.” Maribelle smirked. “Are you upset about the spy or about that little conversation you had with Brynn in the library? Must be awful to think that a servant girl might choose a butcher’s son over you.”

“How do you know about that? The library was empty.”

She sucked the grease off her fingertips one at a time. “People talk.”