“Stubborn, is he?” Celestine raised a brow. “Wherever does he get it from, I wonder?”
Archer Crane laughed despite himself and then rubbed his eyes again. “Oh, Cel, all I want is a reason to sail. Nothing too elaborate. Perhaps an uprising. An uprising would be nice. A small one but far enough away to keep me from Lillomet for a season or two. Or three.”
Celestine smiled and rose from her seat. “Come. Watch the peliteryxes with me. Doing so brings me peace. Perhaps it will for you.”
The Admiral rose and stood beside the High Reverent at the window because he knew it would please her. Isle Parish’s northernmost tip nearly brushed Isle Lillomet; only a narrow channel separated them. The Guild’s tall, square-shaped towers sat at the edge of Parish and were visible from the Moon Temple on Lillomet. From the Guild’s squat rooftop, peliteryxes were in training.
Archer thought Celestine’s eyesight must be extraordinary, as the birds were mere flecks of dark against the blue of the sky to him. Watching them did not bring him peace. They served to remind him how fettered he was to the ground, to his duty, when in truth he wanted nothing more than to sail after Skye, even if it meant leaving the Western Watch forever.
I am the best protector of the realm, and also its betrayer, if given half the chance.
The peliteryxes all dove at once, beaks down, wings folded, like sea hawks diving for prey. Archer guessed their handler had called them back when the cloudless blue sky darkened with uncanny speed. Celestine gripped his arm with a gasp as a curtain of clouds drew across it, fat and roiling, obscuring the Guild and Isle Parish, obscuring everything in a thick blanket of gray and black. Moments later, thunder boomed and lightning flashed. Rain lashed against Celestine’s window, and they both stepped back at the storm that had formed and railed within mere seconds.
“Did you see…?”
“How…?”
An urgent rapping came at the door.
“Enter,” Celestine said, her voice shaky.
The adherent was out of breath. “High Reverent. Admiral.”
“What is it, Lanik?”
“It’s Connor, your Reverence. He’s having an episode. A bad one.”
Fear gripped the admiral’s heart. The storm was forgotten. He rushed to the door, Celestine following behind him.
“Where?” Archer asked, praying it wasn’t at the Citadel. His greatest fear was that Connor would have one of his fits while training at swordplay or archery and hurt himself. He was relieved when the acolyte told him his son was in the Temple, just leaving a meditation cell. Other adherents were with him.
“Did they put the stick in his mouth?” he demanded of Lanik as the three of them raced down to the meditation floor. The corridors were dimmed by dark clouds and streaked with rain. “He carries it in his coat pocket. Do they know to cushion his head so he doesn’t bang it on the floor?”
“Yes… and no, sir.”
“Speak plain, godsdammit!”
“Archer,” Celestine said.
“They can’t touch him, sir,” Lanik said, his voice slightly cool.
Archer’s heart rolled. His mind’s eye held an image of his seventeen-year old son convulsing with such violence that the healers could not even go near him. Gods, no…
“We’ll help him,” Celestine said as they rounded a curving passage that led down to the meditation cells. “Keep faith, Archer.”
Lanik led them to the first of a row of meditation cells. Outside the door a small group of adherents had gathered. Rage boiled up in Archer as he thought they were spectators gathered to gawk and stare while his son suffered another of his fits, the sort Connor had been plagued with ever since he was a child. But as they neared, he saw they tried to help, murmuring prayers to the Two-Faced God, and attempting to enter the room. Something was driving them back.
The air felt charged. All the hair stood up on Archer’s arms and he watched as a determined adherent attempted to enter the little cell. There was an earsplitting sound, like tearing parchment, and flash of blue-white light. The young man stumbled back out, clutching his arm. The smell of sulfur and burnt flesh filled the air.
“Stand back!” Archer ordered and pushed his way to the door of the cell. A ragged cry tore from his throat.
His son lay prone on the floor, writhing and flailing as he always did during one of his episodes. Saliva burbled over his lips and his dark eyes were rolled up in his skull, showing the whites. The violence of the seizure was no more or less than usual except that small spider webs of lightning coursed along Connor’s skin, crackled between his fingertips, and even danced in his open mouth, in his ears, in his nostrils.
“Gods be good,” Archer breathed. He took a step inside and reached a hand to his son’s booted foot but Celestine snatched his hand away before he could touch it.
“Don’t!” she cried. “You’ll be burned. Let it pass. See? It is passing.”
The convulsions eased, the writhing stopped, and the lightning burnt itself out with a few pops and a whiff of sulfur. Connor lay still.
Archer rushed to him to make sure he was breathing; sometimes he stopped for a moment or two and it was his father’s greatest fear that some time he would have a fit and stop breathing altogether. But Connor’s chest rose and fell and the admiral cradled his son’s head in his lap.
“What in the name of the god just happened?”
Celestine shook her head. The other adherents—half a dozen or so—looked as perplexed. She rose and conferred with her people and Archer heard them mutter about the sudden storm.
To the Deeps with the storm.
Connor looked peaceful, as though he were sleeping deeply. Archer stroked his hair that was dark like his, but his son’s beauty came from his mother, fifteen years gone. The admiral wiped the spittle from Connor’s mouth and checked to see if he’d cracked any teeth.
It was the same as any other seizure. I must have imagined the lightning. I must have.
Celestine reappeared at the door. “Let’s get him to the infirmary,” she said, her voice low and her eyes dark.
“What is it?” Admiral asked as he lifted his son in his arms. “What’s wrong?” he asked Celestine.
“The storm is over,” she said, and Archer heard it for himself when he stepped into the corridor. The walls were lined with windows, alternating in plain panes of glass, or beautiful stained designs in multitudinous colors. Through the plain glass, Archer saw the clouds dissipating with the speed in which they’d come. The rain had stopped. The sky was quiet.
“It stopped,” Celestine said as they walked down the long gallery, “when Connor did.”
Archer said nothing. Adherents were always looking at everything through the prism of their religion.