‘Are you awake?’ Shilah whispered.
I kept my eyes closed, but I was no closer to sleep than Shilah was to Langria. My mind was still spinning from our unlikely reunion, the wobbliness toppling any Ideas I’d had for possible uses of the Cold Charge. I’d been wondering if the Charge could lift the heavy slabs of stone to the top of the Pyramid, or maybe could be injected into garden soil to help fig rations, but nothing felt serious, and nothing was sticking.
‘No,’ I said, shifting my sheet. I still wasn’t used to being in a place chilled enough to need a layer on top, but since we had our own private Bellows to crank, the room was practically frigid.
‘If you’re not awake, then I guess you’re dreaming about me,’ Shilah said.
‘I’m dreaming about the Cold Charge.’ I smirked, turning my head so I could face her. Her bed had been set up so it was almost touching mine. My nights had been quiet since I’d left my room with Abb, and I was secretly glad to have her close.
‘You made the right choice, coming here,’ I said, turning towards her fully. She’d taken on a new vulnerability since entering the Tavor Manor. ‘Why can’t you sleep?’
‘I’m trying to figure it out.’
‘It’s pretty simple. The salt and the Cold don’t mix, so the energy gets collected in the water—’
‘Not that,’ she said, pulling out her map again and brushing her fingers over the Opened Eye. ‘This.’
‘Can we please go five minutes without you trying to convince me to leave?’ I asked, pulling the sheet over my chest. ‘Why would you want to leave here? This place has everything.’
‘I know it does.’ She kept stroking the old map, movements slow and poised. Her finger wandered over Paphos, across the Erridian Bridge, around the City of the Stars, through the Glasslands, and up to the Opened Eye. ‘Do you know any stories?’
I couldn’t hide my surprise. ‘Stories?’
She brushed the strands of hair out of her face. ‘Yeah, stories.’
I indulged the thought for a moment. She reminded me of Matty, asking for a game of ‘Whatsit’. ‘I suppose so.’
‘Tell me one,’ she said, her voice small. ‘My mum used to tell me stories, to help me sleep.’
Realization dawned on me. Of course she couldn’t have been alone all this time. She’d lost her own Abb. She knew of the pain I’d been dreading more than anything else. My sheet suddenly lost its warmth as a chill ran across my skin.
I thought hard. ‘What kind?’
‘Doesn’t matter.’
I paused, trying to hold back my smile. ‘One time there was this Tinkerer named Salvidor Suth who wanted to figure out a better way to combine metals without—’
She reached over to my cot, giving me a playful slap across the chest. ‘A story. I’ve had enough lessons for the day.’
I channelled my father, offering a goofy wiggle of my eyebrows. ‘The best stories are lessons, Little Builder.’
I felt a pang in my heart and decided not to joke around with that nickname, at least until I saw Abb again.
‘Crier above,’ Shilah said with a sigh. ‘Send me a new world partner.’
‘Okay, I have a real one.’
She rolled onto her back, looking up at the ceiling. ‘Go ahead, I’m listening.’
So for the next half-hour I told her of Klaus and Rachel as told to me by Abb when I was younger. A classic tale, from before the Drought. It didn’t have any religious connotations, so the story hadn’t been banned, everyone from the Southern Cry Temple to the Great Divide had heard some version of it. It was a story of love lost, adventure found, brave explorers, treasures unearthed, rulers slowly turning evil from greed, family squabbles, and even extinct beasts called ‘horses’ which were like camels, but stronger and faster.
At the end, I let the final words sit heavily in the darkness: ‘And Klaus closed his eyes, never to open them again. He was already on his way to see her.’
The silence stretched until I was convinced that she had fallen asleep. The topsheet gently rose and fell with her breath, and I felt a subtle pride at helping her ease into her dreams. I rolled over onto my back, looking at the still shadows on the ceiling, and thought of flight.
‘Mum always ended it with Klaus slicing his finger before the poisoning,’ Shilah said with her eyes closed.
I groaned. ‘And here was I, thinking she’d asked for any story—’
‘Oh, hush.’ She reached over and gave me another playful slap, the spot tingling after she removed her hand. ‘It’s a good version either way.’
‘Thanks,’ I replied.
She gave me a soft look. ‘Do you have any more?’
‘Stories?’
She smirked. ‘No, sand mites.’
‘How about you go to sleep?’
She turned and looked at the ceiling again. ‘I don’t like sleep.’
‘Everyone likes sleep. You should like it best. Quickest way to Langria.’
She sucked her teeth and turned my way. ‘Can we go five minutes without you trying to convince me not to leave?’
I chuckled. ‘Maybe.’
‘And sleep isn’t that great,’ she said. ‘Your ears don’t work when you sleep. I don’t like it.’
‘We’re safe in here.’ I felt my heartbeat start to quicken. ‘You have to trust me, Cam is—’
‘Do you have any more stories or not?’
I sighed. There was no point in trying right now.
We swapped stories for a few hours, and Shilah was the perfect audience, clapping and gasping at all the appropriate moments. It felt like being back in the barracks again, surrounded by Matty and Moussa, laughing the hours away. Shilah revealed herself through the tales she told. She was well-spoken, with a sharp tongue, and some of the swearwords she threw in could blush the red off a Rose of Gilead. She chose stories with adventure, and stretched those parts for as long as she could. From her inflections, I could detect a fondness for caravans and Peddlers.
Yet when I finished the story of Boaz and the Conquerors and her turn came up again, she seemed more hesitant than before. She sat up, crossing her legs underneath her. ‘Okay. I’ve got another story.’
I pulled myself up too, so our eyes could meet. ‘Tell me.’
‘It’s about the first Khat.’ She’d been holding on to the map this whole time, refusing to fold it up. Now the paper rustled a bit as her hands started to shake. ‘And it’s not pleasant.’
I nodded solemnly.
‘You sure?’ she asked.
I chuckled. ‘It’s just a story.’
‘I want you to be able to sleep tonight. And it can be hard to hear.’
I grabbed my ear and gave it a wiggle. ‘Good thing I’m awake.’
Shilah nodded, and cleared her throat nervously. ‘So, before we were slaves, when Cold was Cried everywhere, and every bit of land was green and prosperous, the whole World Cried looked like Langria, right?’
‘Yes, like the stories about Langria. Go on.’
‘And now the only Cold gets Cried to the Khat,’ she said, leaning in and lowering her voice. ‘Don’t you wonder why?’
‘The Cause,’ I said, thinking of the painting from the Paphos library, my fists clenching at the lie of it all.
She opened her palms and gave me a look that said by all means. ‘And what exactly was the cause?’
‘The Gospels say it’s because Jadans are unworthy,’ I countered, just to see where she was going with this. ‘Evil things we did. Killing each other. Greed over Cold. Things like that. Not that I believe any of it any more.
Shilah nodded. ‘Nobles kill Jadans every day. And no one has more greed than those who have too much. So why would they still get Cold if the World Crier punishes murder and greed? That doesn’t make sense.’
‘I agree,’ I said. ‘That’s why this place is what Jadans need.’
‘Hmm?’
‘Nothing,’ I said quickly. ‘Continue.’
She took a steady breath. ‘Sometimes I go to places. The kind of places taskmasters pretend they don’t know about. Neutral territory. Jadans and Nobles both go there. And they drink and gamble, and do other things.’
I’d heard rumours about the places she might be referring to, the Drifthouses, underground chambers where it didn’t matter who you were but rather what you were willing to do. It was in places like the Drifthouses where the Roof Warden got his Droughtweed supply. And where a Domestic might sneak out to earn extra rations. Fighting pits, gambling tables, rooms by the hour. Obey would just be a warm-up act in a Drifthouse. I nodded for Shilah to continue, petrified to find out what she might have been doing in a place so coarse.
Her eyes darkened and I almost felt compelled to look away. ‘And I overhear things. People like to talk when they can get away with it.’ She rolled up her sleeve and pointed to the tattoo on her arm. ‘Lots of people have these.’
Her words hung in the air for a moment.
‘What did you hear?’ I prodded.
She remained at a distance from herself. ‘That the first Khat made a deal with Sun. And that Sun led him to something hidden in the land, that Sun had put there right under the Crier’s Eyes.’
My throat had gone dry, so I had to choke out the words. ‘In Paphos?’
She gave her head a slight shake. ‘I don’t know where it was hidden. But it was dangerous. And there was a lot of it.’
I knew it was just a story, but the idea unsettled me. ‘What was it?’
‘Things that looked like Cold, but were the opposite. Something Sun created in secret to get back at his brother. The man telling the story called it “Desert”. And that Sun told the first Khat that if the pieces of Desert were buried in the sand they would dissolve, and then no Cold could ever be Cried within a whole river’s span. So the first Khat went to the all the cities in the World Cried, in secret, burying the Desert in everyone’s Patches except for his. And all the crops went brown, except for his crops. And people starved and died from the heat. The rivers only got hotter, and the people got more desperate. So then the other kings and queens of every Jadan city in the land came and bowed to the Khat, promising everything they had if he would share his Cold. And so the Khat offered slavery.’
My hands started to shake, all of this sounding far too possible, especially after my trip to the dark river.
‘The first Khat caused the Great Drought,’ Shilah continued. ‘So that he could rule everything. If he was the only one with Cold, he held life and death. And every Khat since has been keeping the secret. That Desert is buried everywhere.’ She leaned so close I could feel the heat of her breath. ‘Except in Langria.’
She gazed into my eyes, desperate for me to believe. I put my hand over hers, which was now squeezing my knee, and left it there. ‘They put it in the ground,’ I whispered. The words sounded as if they were being spoken by someone else.
‘What?’ she whispered back.
‘Nothing.’ I was trembling all over from rage. ‘Everything.’
She was right.
I found no sleep after that.