Nightsworn | The Whispering Wall #2

Thirty Two: Lightning Tricks

The rain had taken a heavy turn. It had started in the night, and now the sky was bruised blue with clouds. The main body of the storm had drifted closer on the horizon.

Dela hoped their job was over by the time it hit.

She hefted another armful of damp planking and rubble into the open cart behind her. An old warehouse had succumbed to damp and damage and collapsed into the road in the leisure quarter, bringing down several poorly constructed slum homes with it. There were streets like these on the borders of every quarter, usually erected hastily and without care by the residents themselves or handymen who fancied themselves master builders, at a fraction of the price of workers who knew what they were doing. They held up for a few years, normally, but some seasons proved too much, and for others shadelings brought them to early ruin. Dela was only glad no one had died in this particular collapse.

She supposed the temple saw this as a character-building exercise, but she wished that they could have found something within the temple walls to occupy the acolytes – or at least have sent them on shelter rounds. Her practical shirt and trousers were warmer than her acolyte robe would have been, but still didn't hold up particularly well to the endless rain, and it was hard to get warm in anything that was soaked through.

She stood for a moment, feeling the cold drops on her bare scalp and the prickles running across her skin, and massaged her lower spine as pretence to look around her. The collapse had ruined the rune path on the pavement below and damaged the nets of the buildings on either side, so there were Unspoken here, too.

"You have an awfully bad back for a thirteen year old," Lin commented drily, piling rubble into the cart and wiping dust from her forehead. "Not slacking, are we?"

"Of course not," Dela replied. She tore her eyes from the strange shapes one of the Unspoken were making with their hands. "Taking a breath."

Lin followed the direction she was looking and frowned. "How come you're so interested in Unspoken all of a sudden?"

Dela didn't answer, because she didn't know. At first she had just put it down to curiosity, but it was somehow more than that. She had so far seen none of the stories she'd heard about them proved true. "I don't know. I guess they're just interesting."

"And it's nothing to do with the fact that you're enjoying Kerrin's investigations?"

Dela frowned at her friend. "That's not it. I only met them once."

"But you found some important clue, didn't you?" Lin didn't look up from the plank she was trying to tug free. Dela didn't bend down to help; she didn't like something in Lin's tone.

"Are you upset with me?"

"No," Lin said. "Though I would have thought you might find a bit of time for a friend between your important errands."

Dela blinked, unsure how to handle this sudden change in attitude – or had it been sudden? Had Lin been sitting on this for weeks and just not said anything? In her tribe, favour shed upon an individual by the leader made one more popular, not less, and for the first time in a while she found herself up against a culture barrier she thought she'd managed to evade.

"I'm sorry," she said, though she didn't know what she was apologising for.

Lin wrenched the plank free and stumbled a little down the rubble pile. She hefted it, caught Dela's eye, and sighed. "No, I'm sorry. I'm just... It seems so effortless for you. The priestesses all like you, and now even Kerrin has taken you on as a favourite. You don't even get into that much trouble for stuff the rest of us would spend a week in Contemplation for. And then you're the first in our class to get a vigil assignment."