Chapter 15 #2
éadha had started to shake uncontrollably, shuddering with the power she’d drawn and not fully used.
Gry had already started to move away but glanced back when she didn’t follow him, his eyes darkening as they took in how she shook.
With a shrug he pulled off his Vespers cloak, wrapping it around her.
Overcome with shame at what she’d done, she had to resist the urge to bury her head in his chest, as if it’d let her somehow hide away from her own guilt.
Gry said nothing, keeping his arms tightly squeezed across her shoulders until the shuddering finally subsided.
She didn’t resist when he took her by the hand and led her through the archway that faced out to sea.
The evening was still light, with only the faintest hint of summer’s dusk around the edges.
There was no one around; everyone else was in temple.
They passed the stone jetty on the shore directly in front of the House, where visitors from Second Island docked, climbing the hill to the right of the handball alley and ducking in under the tree line.
Here the trees grew right up to the water’s edge, a dense undergrowth crowded around their trunks.
éadha had never come this way before. Gry pushed ahead, bending the branches so she could pass.
After a little while the land ended, the ground dropping away beneath them into a narrow ledge of shingle, the stones clacking as the sea rolled over them, like a gambler rolling dice in his hands.
“Stand here,” he said quietly, gesturing to her to go in front of him, right to the edge of the tree line, both of them hidden by the undergrowth. “Now look, over there,” he added, his voice by her ear.
Her body could still feel the weight of his from when he’d pushed her to the ground, and, without needing to look, she could sense now how close he was standing behind her, the way his body was shielding her from the breeze that’d started up behind them.
It was different from the awareness she felt with Ionáin; it was more connected to her silver power, the way it always seemed to respond to his closeness, a reaction she couldn’t consciously control.
She forced herself to turn her head to where he pointed, looking across a narrow inlet at a shallow cove beneath a headland.
A ship was moored just offshore, its rowboat pulled up, half out of the water, directly in front of the cove.
Armed guardsmen were helping those on board to climb out.
They moved awkwardly, half falling. After a moment éadha realized it was because their hands and feet were chained; as she watched, one woman stumbled and fell on her knees in the water—in climbing over the gunwale, she’d tried to stretch her chained leg too far and toppled over.
A guard jerked her back to her feet. There were about ten or twelve of these chained people, all dressed in worn, shabby clothes, their hair lank around their faces.
They moved slowly, as if exhausted. A woman dressed in a Keeper’s robe appeared from inside the cove, and a guard handed over a rolled-up sheet of paper.
Moments later the people had disappeared into the back of the cove, the guards were rowing back out to the ship, and the beach was empty.
Gry whispered to éadha, “My aunt Hera was a Keeper novice here thirty years ago. She told me about this place. There’s a whole network of underground passageways, caves, and shafts beneath the island so Fodder can be brought in by boat and held underneath the House to be used for power without ever being seen.
The Masters have been doing this a long time.
They’ve engineered the system to make it nigh on impossible to see what’s really happening unless they want you to. ”
éadha said nothing, but her eyes filled with tears of shame. She’d done it again, what she’d sworn to Magret she’d never do. She felt sick, the stolen power heavy like a stone inside her.
“We should get back.” Gry was whispering.
“It isn’t a good idea to be caught near here.
” They made for a small beech coppice in front of First House.
Heads ducking under the branches, they slipped in and sat on a fallen tree trunk.
Through the leaves they could see the lights twinkling out on Second Island as night began to roll in.
Beside her, Gry drew up his long legs, his hands resting loosely on his knees, saying nothing. éadha had the sense he was giving her time.
“I made a promise,” she said after a little, staring straight ahead. “Not to channel people again. But all it took was one Family girl sneering at me, and I broke it. Drawing power without even thinking about what I was doing to those people beneath me.”
Gry was silent for a few moments before replying.
“These first few months here, all the training, the pampering for the Channeller apprentices, the speeches about them being an elite. It’s all a bit of a conjuring trick.
You know that bit where the conjurer keeps you busy, looking at his right hand waving while the left hand is busy popping the flowers into the hat?
The apprentices don’t need all this preparation to be able to use power. They just use it, channel the Fodder.”
éadha bowed her head at the truth of that, remembering how easily she’d done it at home in the Keep.
“But do you think if, on our first day here on Lambay, they lined up people in front of the Channeller apprentices and said, ‘Off you go, channel the life force out of them,’ they’d do it?
Oh, some would, like Senan. There’ll always be the ones who enjoy hurting other people.
But most, no. They have to be seduced, brought along step by careful step from the moment they pass their Reckoning.
You’re unique. You’re gifted, part of an elite, with everyone from Keeper down bowing to you at every turn. ”
Only then did Gry turn to look at her, and it was like she was seeing his true self for the first time.
A self hidden from the Masters and the apprentices behind a laconic detachment and a grand name.
The absolute passionate clarity and rage on his face as he went on, his voice hardening.
“And, oh, look, see the wonders of channeling, what it can do—the golden crops, the majestic buildings. And, oh yes, this is how it must be, because before channeling, men lived in hovels and starved. Because otherwise the dragons will come and burn us all in our beds. Surrounding them in a web of imperatives, and all the while the one irrefutable truth about channeling, the people being drained for all this wealth and power, are hidden away out of sight, underground.”
Gry paused, his face flushing before he went on, biting out the words.
“What they’re doing here, they call it Purification, but it isn’t.
It’s seduction. Seducing decent people into believing they’re so special it’s their right to drain Fodder.
They deserve to drain other people’s life force because they spent a few weeks going on early-morning runs and learning how to grow tomatoes.
“And us Keepers with our bare dorms and our plain wooden benches, the desperation of those girls to marry the strongest Channeller? Half our purpose here is to make them feel just how very special they are, a handy on-site reminder of their status as the elite. And as they get more and more used to being fought over by pretty girls, to their special apartments and their servants, their cushioned seats and being first in line for everything, they’ll cling for dear life to the one thing that buys them entry to that world, the only thing that separates them from us—their ability to channel.
” He looked directly at éadha and shrugged.
“So don’t be too hard on yourself. This place has been seducing gifted kids for four hundred years. Did you think you’d be immune?”
“How did you know? About me?”
“I sensed it, that first day at Matins. Your thought-wall broke, didn’t it?”
éadha nodded.
“Nothing since then though; you’ve hidden it well. You’d know, anyway; the Masters would be down on you in a heartbeat if they knew you were hiding a Channeller gift.”
“Is that why you’ve been…friendly to me since we got here?” she said. “Because you knew what I was?”
Gry looked sideways at her, the hint of a smile crossing his face. “Are you fishing, Ailm?”
éadha flushed, suddenly mortified and all too aware of the long length of him in the dusk beside her.
“No, no,” she said. “I didn’t mean…” She paused, trying to work out for herself what she’d meant.
“Nothing in this place is what it seems. I suppose I just wanted—some truth, that’s all.
To understand why someone like you would bother. ”
Gry went very still beside her as her voice trailed away.
Almost all the light had gone from where they sat in the coppice with night falling outside.
She could only just see his outline. It looked stark, almost harsh—the tightness of his hair, the planes of his cheekbones—and from nowhere a part of her wanted to reach out to him, to the pain she could feel holding him together.
The pain, she realized, she’d been sensing from their very first day without understanding what it was.
He shook his head. “I wrote to my aunt Hera about you the day after we met. She told me you grew up with Ionáin and his Family, and you barely met a Channeller your whole life until you got here. Maybe that explains it.”
“Explains what?” said éadha.
“How you don’t seem to understand just how extraordinary you are.
Someone with your kind of power choosing not to use it, even though it could make you the most valued, the most cherished apprentice on these islands.
Someone with no name, no Family, giving up a guarantee of power and wealth and fame. ”
éadha stared at him, glad now of the darkness so he couldn’t see the flush racing across her cheeks as he went on. “Why wouldn’t I want to do everything I could to help you? In this place that worships only power and taking and cruelty? It’s like asking me why I wouldn’t choose hope.”
éadha felt her throat close over as she stared at Gry’s outline in the shadows.
Her whole life, she’d always been the protector.
Ever since she’d been a little girl, Ionáin’s shadow.
Even now she was protecting Ionáin’s secret with her own gift.
She’d never thought, even for a second, that someone might want to look after her.
She wanted to put out her hand toward his arm, so close to her own, almost as if she needed to touch him to see if it was real.
Her hand began to lift, almost of its own accord, but then she stilled it.
She didn’t deserve this: to have this beautiful man talking to her about honor and protection. Not when she was a liar. When she was lying not just to Ionáin but to Gry now, too, by not telling him why she was really here. To carry out her lie right under everyone’s noses.
She hesitated. Should she tell him? But, she realized, she couldn’t do it. Even as he sat there breaking the Masters’ spells. It wasn’t, after all, her secret to tell, not if she was to protect Ionáin. So she said nothing, and Gry went on after a moment.
“But, éadha, this is only the beginning. When channeling proper starts next week, the stakes are going to get much higher. The choices we make, they get starker. And the walls you build, they need to be a lot higher.”
He let his words hang for a moment then smiled suddenly, ruefully. “I sound more like my old nana every day. Soon I’ll be walking the halls ringing a bell shouting, ‘Here be dragons.’ But, éadha, you’ve been lucky twice now. Today was your second escape. I doubt you’ll get another.”