The Skylighter (The Keepers' Chronicles Book 2) (40 page)

“The deepest wishes of your heart?” she asked with a small, playful smile. “That sounds like something worth waiting for.”

“It is. I promise—”

She stiffened in his arms, her eyes focused beyond his shoulder.

“What’s wrong?”

“Look,” she breathed, pointing over the rampart.

Rafi followed the line of her finger and saw lanterns bobbing in the distance.

The lights were too white to have been flame-lit and too steady in the breeze that rolled out of the mountain pass. The procession made its way down the steep mountainside, moving too fast and disturbing too little shale.

“Well,” he said, the moment of joviality whisked away. “It seems they keep their word too.”

Johanna shivered, and Rafi pulled her close.

They stood together watching the Keepers take up a position beyond Donovan’s Wall.

The day dawned bright and clear. One of those perfect, fall mornings that wiped away the previous night’s chill and erased the mud puddles that littered the steep incline between the Citadel’s foundation and Donovan’s Wall. Keepers lined the mountain’s feet, standing eerily still. Their faces were expressionless, staring straight into Santarem. Johanna couldn’t see any weapons, but the threat was clear. The barrier would be reestablished today or there would be consequences.

The sun’s cheery warmth didn’t reach Johanna. She’d once fallen into a river swollen with icy winter rain. Soaked to the skin, she’d had to hike back to her parents’ wagon, trembling with every step. Walking through the back hall of the Citadel to the small gate that led out to the Keepers’ Mountains was a similarly bone-rattling experience.

Performers had crowded into the narrow space, lining the walls. They were subdued, and came to attention as they caught sight of her, fists clenched over their hearts. Their bodies were unmoving, but their faces betrayed a wide mix of emotions: sorrow, pride, fear, and hope.

Rafi managed a smile and a head nod for all of them, putting on a braver face than Johanna could accomplish. The calm was an act, though. He gripped Johanna’s hand so hard that it hurt, crushing her knuckles together. She didn’t complain. It was the only part of her body that was warm.

Ahead of her, Jacaré swung open the Citadel’s rear gate. Brambles pressed into the space, nearly filling the doorway with twisting limbs and finger-long thorns. It was amazing her mother had once fought her way through the tangle.

Jacaré stepped forward and the branches curled back on themselves, clearing a path, and the Keeper strode forward unharmed. Pira and Leão followed, maintaining their rigid soldier’s posture and the measured distance between them. Their expressions might not have been easily readable, but the camaraderie they’d once shared was clearly missing.

The thicket opened to accommodate the rest of their small group, with enough space for Rafi to slide next to Johanna and for Dom to stand on her other side. It was cramped, but as she scanned the faces of her companions, she was grateful to be in close company with these five.

“Pira,” Jacaré said, nodding to her. “Do you want to . . .”

She gave her brother a long, hard look before reaching for the satchel over her shoulder. Fumbling, she extracted two silver chains with faceted metal pendants hanging at their centers. “This is the best I could do on such short notice,” she said, holding one out to Johanna. “It isn’t fancy and it won’t send images beyond the wall, but Leão worked some
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into them so we’ll know if you’re ever in trouble. I hope that you’ll never be in trouble, because I don’t want to come to Santarem again. Ever.”

The necklace settled around Johanna’s neck, the pendant disappearing down the front of her shirt. “Thank you.”

Pira hesitated, looking down at Johanna, indecision making her lips twitch. “Well . . .” She gave Johanna a quick embrace before shoving the other necklace into Dom’s outstretched hand.

“No hug for me?” Dom asked, drawing a startled laugh from Leão and a frown from Pira. “If you do come back, you’re welcome to rescue me any—” Rafi released Johanna’s hand long enough to cuff his brother on the back of the head.

Leão’s smile held as he shook hands with Rafi and Dom. Then he dropped a kiss onto Johanna’s forehead. “Make your own happiness, my friend.”

His words, an echo of her mother’s, stole her breath. She managed a strangled, “You too.”

He stopped in front of Jacaré, offering a formal salute, and Pira snapped to attention.

“Stop, please,” Jacaré said in a gruff whisper. He snatched Pira, crushing her to him, in the bruising sort of hug reserved for older brothers. She squeezed him hard in return, unwilling to say good-bye.

Johanna closed her eyes against the scene, remembering too well all the times she had wrestled out of Thomas’s embrace. Light, what she wouldn’t give to feel that again.

Rafi swayed closer, and she leaned into his side, looking up as her friends turned toward their homeland. Pira’s hand sought out Leão’s. He stopped on the trail, studying their interlocked fingers, then placed a quick kiss on Pira’s knuckles.

Warmth surged through Johanna, and she couldn’t help herself. She stood on her toes and brushed her lips against the corner of Rafi’s mouth.

“Jo . . .” His eyes searched hers.

“A reminder of what’s waiting for you when this is over.”

His arms snaked around her. “It won’t be a long wait—” Suddenly he straightened, so quickly that he sent her stumbling into Dom. Dom took a step backward, and two thorn-covered branches whipped forward and wrapped tightly around him.

There was a metallic click, and Rafi’s hands flew to his throat. A collar, bright and shiny, pressed tight into his flesh.

“Jacaré!” Horror made Johanna’s voice shrill. “What are you doing?”

Rafi lunged toward the Keeper but came up short, as if he’d run into a solid wall.

“Kneel,” Jacaré commanded, and smiled as Rafi dropped heavily to his knees. “I wasn’t sure if this was going to work.” He rolled up his sleeve, revealing three black bands, as dark and flat as the silver collar was bright and shining, ringing his wrist. “I couldn’t figure how Vibora could drain and transfer the
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. If that fire bolt hadn’t hit her precisely in the shoulder, I would never have noticed she was wearing these around her upper arm. Pira realized that each collar was linked to a bracelet.”

“Oh, Jacaré,” Johanna said, sick with sudden realization. He’d prepared for this moment all along.

Dom thrashed against his constraints, and Rafi railed on a barrier as smooth and solid as glass, both brothers believing the Keeper had betrayed them.

But Johanna knew the truth.

“You don’t have to . . . please . . .” Johanna trailed off. This was Jacaré, determined, stubborn, resolute.

“For sixteen years you were an assignment, a duty. I fulfilled my task to care for you physically, but I failed to protect you from sorrow.” He ran a thumb over the bracelets with a lover’s caress. “I can’t promise this will work. I don’t know if this will save Rafi’s life. But please, Johanna, let me try to save you from this one heartache.”

“Jacaré,” she said, her voice falling to a choked whisper. “You won’t survive.”

He offered her a smile, beatific and bright, happier then she’d ever seen. “If that’s the case, then so be it. I’ll finally rest.”

Her mother’s warning rang clear. This was the first sacrifice of many to come, but there was sweetness with this bitter. Jacaré was leaving this decision in her hands, and the weight of it would stay with her forever.

Behind her, Rafi beat his fists against the barricade, his voice muffled. She could only imagine what he was saying, but she could remember clearly the voices of those people whose power had been trapped in the wall. All of them Jacaré’s friends and family. And if it was their goddess’s will, he’d finally join them.

“Please, Princess. Let me try.”

She nodded slowly, her head heavy with her blessing. “It will be a rest well earned.”

He gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze, then pressed one hand against the Citadel’s foundation. Rafi groaned, raising his fists to his head, then he crumbled to the ground. A band of blue light stretched from the collar to the bracelets at Jacaré’s wrist.

Jacaré threw open his arms and the light intensified, blotting out everything in Johanna’s vision. She could hear Dom shouting in confusion and fear, and Rafi’s pained cries.

The silver pendant flashed hot, and arrows of agony stabbed into her chest. She cried out, cursing Mother Lua’s name, and then the light winked out, replaced by total darkness.

A hand shook her shoulder; a voice called her name; blood and roses flavored the air. She ignored it all, waiting for the cocoon of sleep to wrap tightly around her and cradle her to a place where dreams of love and hope lived on.

The hard slap of a palm against her cheek forced her eyes open, and she looked into the glowing ball of the sun.

“Johanna, you’ve got to wake up. I don’t think Rafi’s breathing.” Dom’s words came out in a hurried rush.

She sat up too quickly; the thornbushes around her wavered at the edges of her vision. “Where is . . .” She answered her own unfinished question, scuttling across the ground to Rafi’s side. He lay on his back, one arm thrown out across the rocky ground.

Her hands shook as she reached out, afraid to feel the chill of death on his skin. “Rafi?” she whispered, brushing one of his wild curls off his forehead.

He didn’t respond.

She’d already done this once—thinking Rafi was dead—but this time there was no heat in his skin and his chest was still. His face was cold.

With a rattling breath, her tears broke free. “You promised.” She reached for the pulse at his throat but found blistered skin and the solid metal of the collar. “You said this wouldn’t be good-bye.”

Dom found the collar’s latch and the band fell free.

“You liar,” she cried, falling across Rafi’s chest. “You promised. You never break your promises. You have no honor!”

A hand touched her back, a few inches too low to be proper.

“What will it take to get it back?” Rafi asked with a wheeze. “You are so difficult to please.”

She didn’t have a chance to answer. His lips found hers, warm and sure and certain.

And as he’d promised, it was a kiss she’d never forget.

Rafi stood at the top of the tower, looking over the craggy mountains and twisted trees that stretched beyond Donovan’s Wall. The Keepers, more than two hundred of them, had disappeared, leaving nothing—not a broken branch or a disturbed patch of shale—to show that they’d ever poured through the pass.

The thorn hedge was another matter. In every story Rafi had ever heard, the brambles stretched the entire length of the Citadel in an unbroken line of gray brown. Now a narrow trail snaked from the castle’s rear gate to the mountain’s feet. It didn’t look like a comfortable way to pass, what with the sharp thorns and twisted branches, but for the first time in anyone’s memory bright blossoms speckled the hedge.

“Do you see the rabbit?” Johanna asked, shifting in Rafi’s arms to point at something his eyes couldn’t pick out. She’d retained whatever Keeper powers should have been hers, and Rafi was adjusting to the idea that she could see and hear things he couldn’t. Including the bright lines of the magical barrier that stretched toward the cloudy sky. “It’s nestled right along the path’s edge.”

Rafi placed a kiss on the curve of Johanna’s neck instead of responding. In a few weeks, when all was settled in Santiago and his mother and Michael reached the Citadel, they planned to complete the betrothal contract their fathers had drawn up so many years before. He smiled against her warm skin, knowing that soon there would be plenty of other places to kiss.

“The hedge will always remind me of him,” Johanna said, unaware of Rafi’s thoughts—or maybe ignoring them. “It’s forbidding and impossible. It looks like something that will tear you to pieces, and it probably could, but it’s also offering protection to so many things we can’t see.”

“Is that how you’ll spin the epic of Jacaré?”

The Keeper’s body had been found a few paces farther into the bramble hedge. The hardness that had traced lines on his brow and around his mouth had softened in death, and Rafi hoped that Jacaré had finally found peace.

“No,” Johanna said, her voice dropping low, the tingle of
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brushing across Rafi’s skin. “His story will be sacred. He will be revered for his sacrifice, and children who bear his name will be expected to give it honor.”

Rafi nodded, a hint of sadness pinching in his chest. Jacaré’s sacrifice had been personal, giving up his own life, sealing the barrier with the last residues of his
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. Rafi would have tried to stop him. Jacaré had known that and had prepared for every eventuality.

He would never have admitted it, but Jacaré had wanted Rafi to have the future that he’d been denied.

It was an honor debt Rafi could never repay, but he’d live the rest of his life trying.

Feet pounded up the steps to the tower and a throat cleared. “May I join you, or is this
another
private moment?” Dom asked as he peeked around the corner.

“We’ll never have a private moment with you around,” Rafi said with a sigh.

“Keeping you honorable, brother.” Dom’s grin was bright, but something in his bearing had changed. He’d never lacked in confidence, but he seemed slightly more conscious about his actions.

“What’s in that letter that’s made you so happy?” Johanna asked, waving to the small scroll in Dom’s hands.

“It’s from Lady Maribelle, formerly of Maringa. She asked me to speak to you and the Council of Lords about supporting her rebellion against her father.” Dom reread the short missive to himself, and his eyebrows rose. “She makes some interesting promises.”

“To you or to the Council?” Rafi asked drily.

Dom didn’t have to answer. His shrug insinuated enough.

Johanna punched him playfully on the shoulder. “Go. Respond to her letter. Tell her you have the Council’s ear.”