Reap the Wild Wind

Chapter 4

“I DON’T REMEMBER.”

“Try again.”

Aryl slumped forward, elbows on her knees, and covered her face with her hands. It felt as if they’d been doing this for tenths. She remained mute, beyond argument. Not that arguing with her mother was likely to work. Taisal di Sarc, Adept and Speaker for Yena, back down first?

The world would end before that happened, Aryl thought bitterly.

“You must.”

She didn’t move.

Aryl.

“No!” She pushed the mindvoice away with all her strength. At the soft, pained breath, she looked up through her fingers. “You can’t make me.”

Taisal laid her long hands on her lap, then adjusted the fall of her robe. Adepts wore the formal garment when journeying to or from the Cloisters, as well as for ceremony. The white fabric was thick with fine embroidery from shoulder to floor, its pleats a sign of rank and power. Not worn to impress her, Aryl knew. Her mother would act as Speaker tonight.

The Tikitik were coming.

“You can’t make me,” she repeated wearily, sitting back. Her own hands were restless, plucking at an imaginary splinter in the wood of the bench. As if any of the well-polished furnishings of the Sarcs would have splinters.

“Then open to me. Let me see what happened.”

“You know what happened. That device exploded. All the webbing ripped or fell apart or—” Her voice shattered. “I should have held on . . . been stronger . . . He shouldn’t have . . .”

A single tear sparkled on her mother’s pale cheek. Taisal turned her face rather than wipe it away. Light touched lines of fire from the chainnet that held her thick black hair; only metal could contain the willful locks of a powerful Chosen. Aryl’s hair, pale brown and fine, obeyed ordinary braided threads. Most of the time. At the thought, she poked an errant strand back in place and waited.

Composed again, Taisal continued her argument, growing stern. “We must learn how Bern saved himself, Aryl. All he remembers is thunder and flame, a moment somewhere dark, confused, then finding himself on the bridge in time to see—to see the others fall past him.” Gentler. Aryl. “You’re the only witness we have. You must try to remember. Anything, everything.”

No, Aryl thought. She would forget it all. Afraid her mother could sense this rebellion, she closed her mental shields even more tightly than ever before. “Why does it matter?” she sighed. “Can’t you be grateful at least one survived?”

“Two,” Taisal corrected, gesturing gratitude with a lift of her hands. She gave her daughter a keen-eyed look. “Enough for now. Council can wait.”

“Council?” Aryl echoed, then was ashamed of the quiver in her voice.

“A new Talent is the concern of Council, Aryl. You know that. Bern’s ability must be understood and dealt with, for the good of us all.”

Power shivered between them, as if a knife had been half drawn to glint in the light. Almost as quickly, the sensation was gone.

Her mother’s lips curved in a tight smile, while Aryl’s eyes widened in dismay. Not at the unspoken threat . . .

Because she wasn’t sure who had made it.

The Adept rose to her feet. “Until tonight. Rest.”

After her mother left, Aryl scowled at her bed. Rest? She went to the window and pulled aside the curtain. The view through the gauze panel was improbably ordinary. From here, she could see six other homes, like hers wrapped around the main stalk of a rastis or a nekis’ trunk, like hers with white walls open to light and air through ceiling-to-floor panels of thin gauze. The remaining panels were so tightly woven as to be opaque, their surface watertight and private. Doors were the same, but bore unique patterns imposed by unbleached threads. The vivid red undulations and blobs might make sense to Tikitik, who had made them, or they might not. They didn’t to the Yena Om’ray, as far as Aryl knew, but—she squinted at a neighbor’s—some were prettier than others.

Narrow slatted bridges led from each door to the main bridge, though as many sloped up to that destination as down. Their homes were where they were, given their living supports grew at different rates. The main bridge was wide and strong, spanning air from the meeting hall—the one place large enough to hold all of Yena, if the unChosen were banned to feed biters on the outer deck—to the varied workplaces and warehouses. Those were the simplest structures of all: roof, window panels and doors, floor. Following Harvest, they’d be full of tables where most of Yena would open pods and sort their contents. There would be others washing and teasing the threads from dresel wings for the waiting weavers, and those stacking pods to dry for carvers. Above all, those packing bundles of fresh dresel and sprouts for delivery.

Any other Harvest. Aryl knew they’d sit empty now.

Nothing was solid. When the M’hir blew and the rastis swayed, the entire Yena village swayed, too. Children learned early to secure their toys or see them fall.

She watched the few Om’ray on the bridges, their steps easily accommodating the occasional shift in wood and rope. Some carried small bundles; she guessed they were supper, perhaps last M’hir’s dresel. Others hurried by on their own business. Most would be inside, midsummer’s habit, when the afternoon brought a heavy, cloying heat interrupted by sudden downpours, and evening was preferred for socializing. The M’hir had begun to clear the air, if only for a brief while. Soon enough the Om’ray would change their ways to suit. The drier, less oppressive feel meant time to pull vegetation from the undersides and roofs of homes, to replace panels, to inspect bridges for rot before the rains returned. What grew here was intent on erasing the Om’ray, or consuming them.

Like now. Determined biters swarmed the gauze, climbing for her face as if they could somehow bite through the fabric. When they blocked her view, Aryl tapped them into flight with a finger, not admitting she was looking for someone.

Bern . . .

Guilt killed the questing thought before it was more than half-formed. Not the familiar sly guilt of having played a good trick on someone. Not the embarrassed guilt of having spied on another’s mind for an answer, or of having followed Bern to where a newly Chosen pair fumbled with each other’s clothing in the shadows in a way she’d thought hilarious and he’d . . .

Bern . . .

Aryl flinched and turned from the window. This guilt? Every thought of him cut. She was vaguely surprised not to bleed.

She left her room for the half-oval of the main hall. It was the largest space in their home, indented on one side by panels to protect the stalk of the living rastis. The floor of polished nekis wood incorporated and revealed the whorl of carefully cut and sealed fronds that supported the building. The resulting lovely pattern of grays, yellows, and rich browns was a pride of the Sarcs.

Her father, Mele sud Sarc, had filled this hall with his booming laugh. Now, her fingers touching this and that, Aryl wondered if laughter could die, too.

Here was the long burnished table they’d used as often for games as meals, set for only two. There were the pulls to bring the yellow sling chairs from the ceiling beams; easy to spin an unwary brother with the flick of a wrist. A pair were now anchored to the floor, unable to move. Other slings, these for storage, filled the ceiling like the clouds she’d seen for herself. The cupboards, sleek and elegant and old, had held hidden treasures—as well as a certain small sister at times.

She opened one at random. Empty.

Taisal lived here less and less, her duties as Adept calling her to the Cloisters, many of her possessions taken there as well. Costa—Aryl moved before her eyes had to fall on the closed curtain to his room, but not before she thought of Leri, his Chosen.

When a pair Joined, both changed. Everyone felt the new bond between them, strong and permanent, closer than that between a mother and her newborn, or heart-kin. There were outward changes as well. Over a span of days both finished maturing in body, ready to be parents themselves. Since this change was greatest in those who would be mothers, they spent that time alone with theirs, receiving the special knowledge they would need to understand the new workings of their body and the demands to come. Her impatient partner would be distracted by friends. It was a time of joy and celebration.

To Aryl’s profound annoyance, it was also a time when everyone else got jokes she didn’t.

But if one of a Joined pair died, the survivor changed again. Everyone could sense it: Chosen, but not. Om’ray, but not. When her father, Mele, had succumbed to a wasting fever, Aryl remembered flinching from the stranger who should have been her mother, comforted by Costa and others until she’d accepted the peculiar, hollow feel now bound to her mother’s presence. Once, maybe twice a generation, those left somehow drew strength from their loss, gaining in Power. Taisal, already in line to become an Adept, had been such.

M’hirs later, once old enough for the truth, Aryl had learned how close she’d come to losing both parents. Most survivors became lost within themselves, their inner voices fading, minds forever childlike. The rest? Died within heartbeats of their Chosen’s end, as if there could be no life apart.

She would be like that, Aryl decided, taking her lower lip between her teeth. If anything happened to Bern, she would have no reason to exist. A sudden, dramatic death. No more of this bell tolling and grief. No more being alone.

She scowled at the table. “Death is better.”

“Than supper?” Her mother pushed through the curtain from Costa’s room, a tray overloaded with bright red sweetberries in her hands.

“I—” Aryl focused on the fruit. “They’re ripe? Leri—” The words died in her mouth. The sweetberries were Leri’s favorite. Hard to find before the flitters, difficult to pick even then, Costa had finally coaxed several vines to take root in his window’s gauze—keeping them as much of a secret as anything could be between Chosen. “Are you taking them to her?” she managed to ask.

“She won’t know what they are.” Taisal’s voice was absurdly normal, as if she didn’t hear what she was saying.

“But—” Aryl choked back whatever else she might have said. To exist yet be mindless? Never, she swore to herself, shields tight. Never that.

Taisal took her silence for concern. “Don’t worry about Leri. She and the others are safe.”

“Safe,” Aryl repeated, and swallowed bile. Her voice rose. “Never to leave the Cloisters, you mean. At best, a—a servant.”

“She lives. The others live. Of the seventeen killed at Harvest, eight were Chosen, daughter. Be thankful only three more died.”

The world, to Aryl’s inner sense, still held spaces where—she made herself think their names—where Oryl, Teis, and Ilea belonged, where all the others should be. The Yena Clan had been decimated while she, while she . . . she trembled, the truth a poison she had to spit from her mouth or die. “I should have held on,” she began, her voice low. “It’s my fault they died—that Costa died and Leri and—”

“No! No, Aryl. Never think such a thing. It was an accident—a terrible accident. There was nothing—what if you—” Without warning, Taisal sank to the floor, her elaborate gown bending in stiff awkward folds as if uncertain how to cope. Berries fell around her like drops of blood. “Oh, no.” With faint despair, “Costa’s sweetberries.”

One rolled to where Aryl stood, frozen in dismay. It stopped short of her toes, rose ever so slightly from the floor, and followed its own shadow back to the tray on Taisal’s lap.

She sensed tendrils of Power reaching out. Berry after berry silently obeyed, rising, moving, their lush red surfaces gleaming when they caught the light. “What are you . . .?” she breathed, then couldn’t say another word.

Eyes down, Taisal tidied her tray with short, fussy movements. When done, she held it out. Aryl took it, careful no more berries would tumble and tempt her mother to . . . to . . . She put the tray of flying fruit on the table. “What did you do?”

“I pushed them,” Taisal answered, matter-of-factly, as if she wasn’t on the floor in the middle of the room. Tears slipped from her eyes and ran down her cheeks. She sniffed.

Her mother never sniffed. This final oddity, of all the rest, drew Aryl to kneel beside Taisal, though she didn’t dare touch her. Not with Power still pulsing through the air and tangling her thoughts. “Are you all right?” she asked, disturbed by this reversal. What could she do? “Should I get another Adept?”

A too-wise look. “Please don’t, for both our sakes, Daughter. I’d hate to explain why the Yena Speaker, of all Om’ray, was using a Talent Forbidden years ago. Especially—” a pause as Taisal accepted Aryl’s help to rise to her feet in the cumbersome robe, “—while on the floor.” Standing, she wrapped dignity around her like a cloak. One hand found the moisture on her cheek and she shook her head. “Forgive me, Aryl. These past days—I should be stronger than this. Must be. The Clan needs me tonight. You do.”

While this was true, Aryl looked into her mother’s sad eyes and her confession stuck in her throat. Tomorrow, she promised herself. She’d find the words; she’d make things right.

Before the silence grew louder, she blurted, “This pushing . . . is it what you think . . . is that what Bern did? To save himself?”

“Sit, please.”

Once they faced each other across the table, Taisal chose a single berry and placed it on the polished surface. “It’s a little thing I can do,” she began. “Most who become Adepts possess unique abilities. I tell you this, Aryl, because I expect you will join us one day.”

Be an Adept? Spend the rest of her life in study, tending the ill and dying, never to climb on her own? Aryl pressed her lips together and held her shields firm.

Taisal didn’t pause. “Within the Cloisters, we share what we can with each other, practice what may in time be useful for all. It is how we learn more about the Power and ourselves, how we decide which abilities are safe to spread through Yena. Outside the Cloisters, beyond Adepts, such abilities are safer Forbidden. Why?” She waited, an eyebrow raised at her daughter.

“You might be seen,” Aryl supplied at that prompt. “By the Tikitik.”

“Or by non-Adepts. Yes,” she asserted as Aryl frowned, “there are Yena—impatient or careless—who underestimate how very closely we are watched. They would risk the Agreement for their own gain. No. We can only afford changes small enough to go unremarked, or abilities that appear gradually, as if they always existed. That is our safety, Aryl. As for what you saw?” Taisal smiled slightly. “Pushing is Power applied thus . . .” She gave the tiny globe a nudge with one finger. It rolled toward Aryl, then slowed and stopped. “The object moves through space as though touched. It never disappears. Is that what you saw at the Harvest?”

Trapped by the question, Aryl stared at the tiny thing. Safer than meeting her mother’s steady gaze. “I didn’t see what happened,” she mumbled. It was the truth.

“The scouts report the Tikitik delegation should arrive shortly after truenight, Daughter. I may have to explain what happened. Don’t make me expose Bern’s ability to them.”

Aryl’s eyes flashed up. “What do you mean? By what right—”

“Don’t play the child with me,” Taisal warned, her face pale and stern. “You know who supplies the light and warmth to our homes—who built these homes for us. The bargain struck by our forebears forbids fundamental change within any race, to protect the peace that is. The Tikitik have every right to ask questions about this disaster and be satisfied by the answers, no matter the cost to us.”

Aryl flattened her palms on the tabletop and leaned forward. “They should be asking who sent that machine to spy on us!”

“The Oud are not our concern.”

“But Costa said it wasn’t theirs—” Too late, Aryl closed her mouth.

Taisal surged to her feet, nothing soft in her eyes now. “You do remember more. Show me what happened, Aryl. Now.” Her Power pressed against Aryl’s, demanding to be allowed through.

“No!” She tightened her shields, tried to hide within. “No! Let me tell you!” She wanted to explain—make excuses—not this.

“Not this!” Aryl sobbed, even as the Adept’s trained strength ripped her shields apart as if they were gauze.

And forced her to relive it all.

Interlude

ENRIS BRUSHED HIS FINGERS along the row of slender punches until he found the finest tip. The wristband was waiting in the grip, its pale green surface polished until the intricate designs might have been water as it curled over stone. Not that he’d seen such a thing for himself. The memory of stream and stones had come with his grandfather, who’d taken Passage from Grona Clan, and Enris liked it.

It was the inside of the wide band that concerned him now. Taking his favorite hammer, the one with leather wrappings worn to the shape of his palm, he sat at his bench and carefully punched tiny indentations into the smooth metal. First, an outer square, no larger than his smallest fingernail, open at one corner. He thickened its lines slightly before moving inside to shadow it with a thinner one. After a moment to stretch and rest his eyes, he returned to work, painstakingly hammering a pattern within the squares. Random dots, to those who never went outside in the dark, or looked up; precisely placed, to someone who did.

These were the first stars he’d ever seen for himself. Two were bright—and hammered deeper—three the same in a line below, then another below these and to one side, faint and blue, invisible if either moon shone. He marked this last with the lightest possible dimpling, unconsciously holding his tongue between his teeth until done.

Enris ran his forefinger lightly over what was a familiar face. Through the seasons, he’d watched them slip around the night sky as if on Passage themselves. Unlike the Om’ray, the stars stayed with their Clan as they traveled; unlike the Om’ray, they always found their way home again.

At the thought, he sent a possessive look around the shop, its benches and furnace generations old. This was his place, all he wanted in the world. Not even for Choice would he leave it.

The metal band grew warm, reclaiming his attention. Enris let a strand of his Power touch it, explore it, know its elegant shape. He would remember this piece. His smile widened. As it would remember him. Hammering his signature was duty to his family and expected, but to him, unnecessary. Everything he made and touched with Power sang his name back to him. Not a Talent of use, since he’d yet to find another able to feel it, but it pleased him.

A quick buff with a polishing leather, and the wristband was ready for its owner. Enris wrapped it carefully and locked it in the concealed drawer beneath his father’s bench. The Oud expected their scraps to be turned into useful things—blades and hooks and fasteners—not adornments for the Om’ray. This close to Visitation, it was prudent to tuck such gauds out of sight.

His lips twisted in a grimace. If only he could tuck Naryn and her followers in a drawer. That would solve a few problems. But the unChosen were rarely asked their opinion. He shrugged on his longcoat before making his rounds. The furnace was already set for the night, its bellows now blowing heat away from the melting vat and throughout the village, carried by pipes embedded within building floors. The air outside Tuana’s homes chilled rapidly after sunset. During the day, the furnace vented to the sky and they worked shirtless.

Sunset also brought lopers. The sly little thieves loved anything with a sparkle, and would carry off whatever fit their paws. For something brainless, they were disconcertingly good with fasteners. He’d had to design locks for the ceiling vents and windows. He tested these now, one after another, ignoring his stomach. Supper could wait; their livelihood lay within these walls and he didn’t take chances.

On that thought, Enris took a moment to check the interior of the shop. The Oud rarely entered buildings; that didn’t mean one wouldn’t this time. The door would do—it passed the wide cart well enough—but the well-swept shop floor was split into two narrow aisles by this summer’s new bench, a wonderfully solid structure positioned beneath the main sky vent to catch the natural light. His idea.

Against the far wall with it, then. He gave the massive wooden structure a tentative push. It didn’t budge. Taking off his coat, Enris flexed his arms, planted his hands on the bench, and leaned into it with a grunt.

It still didn’t budge.

He frowned.

Need he care? If an Oud wanted in tomorrow, the bench would move out of its way, all right. In pieces.

“Not good,” he muttered. Intact, this bench matched all the others. Broken, the pieces would reveal its wood had been used before. Solid beams like this were reserved for tunnels, Oud tunnels. Granted, these came from an abandoned spur and the Om’ray had permission to use what they could take, but all such within Tuana territory had been picked clean before he’d been born. Wood was something precious in his generation, traded for other goods, reused, or hoarded by Council decree.

With Enris coming of age, the shop’s workspace had been increasingly cramped, his father doing his best to share with his son. That son? Enris wasn’t sure if he’d lost patience, common sense, or both—but he’d wanted his own bench.

To get it, he’d traded with runners.

The tunnels beneath the Om’ray stayed as they were. That was the Oud’s side of the Agreement; theirs was to stay where they were. Go outside Tuana territory and Oud tunnels were no longer reliable. For no reason shared with Om’ray, a tunnel would lose its light and heat, remaining empty and unused, a temptation of wood and metal and other supplies. A day might pass. Or a full set of seasons. But the moment would come when, without warning, the Oud would remember this tunnel and violently reshape it, collapsing ceiling and walls, smashing the floor. A tunnel could fill in seconds, obliterating everything within, or restored lighting could reveal new openings, a different direction or slope. There was no knowing.

Except that an unlit tunnel was a trap.

Runners dared go beyond where Om’ray were tolerated. Never to trespass on the Oud—no one was that stupid—but where no others would go. Everyone knew it. They gambled they could glean from such tunnels before their reshaping. Questions weren’t asked, by Council or those seeking what they had to offer. Runners weren’t of one family, or one Talent, though those with the ability to sense imminent change were persistently if quietly courted. They were risk takers, not fools.

Enris laid his hand on the innocent, so-useful bench. The Oud didn’t care if Om’ray took wood. They didn’t care if they died trying. What provoked them was an Om’ray stepping beyond agreed boundaries. This much new runner wood in one place would be proof.

There was nothing else to do. He lowered his barriers to let his inner sense explore the village, finding the warm lights of his Clan. Without making contact, he couldn’t tell who was family, friend, or acquaintance, but he cared more for privacy. No one was near or approaching.

Good enough. He pulled back into himself, raised his shields, then concentrated.

The tools on the bench began to vibrate.

Blinking away sweat, Enris pushed harder. The bench shuddered, then moved. The legs left gouges in the floor, but when he was done, the bench, with its incriminating wood, was safely out of the way against the far wall.

He retrieved a jar of polish that had rolled off and replaced it, then scattered sand over the gouges, grinding it in with his boot until the marks were no longer obvious. Satisfied, Enris picked up his longcoat and turned off the lights.