Geist

SIXTEEN After the Tribulation Comes Realization

Raed watched Sorcha and Merrick together out of the corner of one eye. Deacons were always so damn secretive.

The Pretender let out a long breath, one that felt like he’d been holding it in for hours. His nerves were still twitching erratically with the remnants of the Change—and also with relief. Sorcha had not let him down—his trust in her had not been misplaced. No one had ever been able to control the Rossin before, yet Sorcha had done it twice in less than a day.

He glanced over at the woman as he slipped on his breeches and shirt. Her bronze hair had come loose and was full of dust; some of it flew in the air as she argued animatedly with her partner. Sorcha looked tired but unbent. By the Ancients, she was beautiful. Beautiful, powerful . . . and married, he reminded himself, as the faint moonlight glinted off the runes on her Gauntlets.

A very salient point. He was used to postbattle shock, and even the aftereffect of the Beast was familiar; what he wasn’t used to was having a building narrowly avoid falling on him. The rumble of that event was still affecting his ears. Raed shook his head, like a diver trying to remove water from his ears. Hopefully, the ringing would clear eventually.

While the Deacons conferred with each other, he decided to make absolutely certain that the Prior and her remaining minions were, in fact, dead. In too many battles, he’d seen men cut down by foes that they assumed had been dealt with. The human body was remarkable; a man could still pull the trigger of a pistol, even if he was destined to cough out his last breath a second later. What a Deacon could do in their final moments, he really didn’t want to find out.

Strapping on his saber, and thankful to once more be in clothes, Raed turned to this mundane task. Dust and smoke clawed at the back of his throat as he struggled to locate their enemies among the debris. Whatever Sorcha and Merrick would finally determine had protected them from the destruction was immaterial to him; it was a good turn by someone, and that was enough.

Unfortunately for the Prior’s Deacons, that same someone had not been so kindly inclined toward them. He found their two initial attackers beneath a massive column that had managed to crush both of them, like some giant skilled hand. One glance was all that was required; they were well and truly dead. Bugs crushed against a window had a better chance of stirring than these two poor fellows. Victory allowed Raed to be somewhat charitable in his assessment of them now. For the one who still had a face, he even bent and closed the dead eyes. The Pretender muttered a prayer to the little gods, though he had no way of knowing if they had been believers.

Now he had to find Aulis. Just as the whole building had come apart, he’d caught a glimpse of her making a run for the rear exit, and this was indeed where Raed found her. A buttress had given way, flinging rocks down on the Prior just before she would have reached the relative safety of the door. However, there was still life in the old girl. She might have been pinned beneath the rocks, undoubtedly dying, but her bone-white fingers were reaching out for the shredded Gauntlets that lay tantalizingly close.

Raed was taking no chances; he kicked the remains of the cursed things out of the way and crouched down next to the dying woman. The pain had to be significant, yet her eyes were clear and full of rage when they locked on him. “Traitor,” she spat, blood giving extra emphasis to her spittle.

He’d seen this sort of final vigor from many dying men, but he didn’t know how to treat a dying Deacon. Her fine red robes were torn and a silver disc around her neck glowed in a way that froze Raed’s blood. He knew that he had found the foci Sorcha had mentioned. Quickly, as if it burned, he jerked it off Aulis’ neck and threw it away into the rubble.

The fading Prior grinned at him crookedly. Raed might have called Sorcha or Merrick over, but something about her stare stopped him in his tracks.

“Traitor to the Emperor?” His laugh was short. “I am no more his—”

That grin was turning his skin to ice. “Not the Emperor, fool—to that great gift you carry.”

A thundercloud of a frown crossed his forehead. “You have no idea what you speak of—if you had any idea what it is like—”

Looming death had obviously devoured her manners, because Aulis cut him off again. “But I do . . . I do have an idea.” Her smile flickered beatific for a moment, as if she could see something he could not. Raed nervously glanced behind him as he realized that she was looking through him. He felt a sudden, strong urge to pick up a rock and finish her off then and there. Anyone who worshipped the Rossin had to be both mad and dangerous.

She stretched out one arm, bent and twisted as it was, toward him. “The pocket prince sent you, and our lord supplied the rest.” Scarlet boiled up from between her stretched lips. Her last words were, “So close . . .”

Raed crouched still for a moment, processing what she’d said. She may be mad, but he knew truth when he’d seen it in her smile. No further confirmation was needed—Felstaad had deliberately sent him here. But the Pretender doubted very much that the Prince had been able to predict that Raed would pay a visit to his court. No Diviner had been known for four generations. A far more likely scenario was an informant in his own crew—that idea was one he hated to contemplate.

“By the Blood.” He pushed his hand through his hair and stared down at the dead Prior. “Another complication I don’t need.”

“We seem to have found nothing but complications.” Sorcha was standing above the newly minted corpse, her Gauntlets twinkling with green light. “Perhaps we can still wring some answers out of this traitorous bitch.” She gestured, and a very pale-looking Merrick came to stand at her shoulder under the moonlight.

Raed was silent but his skin prickled. The mythical Deacon Bond was obviously working hard, because the glance the two of them shared was loaded with significance.

“She’s dead.” The Pretender rose to his feet, feeling a wave of exhaustion pass through him. “The only answers she will be giving are to the gods.”

Merrick shook his head. “No . . . Not yet, she won’t.” His tone was flat and colder than this winter night. “If we use necromatic cantrips and I use Kebenar to its fullest extent . . .”

“Necromancy?” Raed’s stomach churned and he glanced at Sorcha with a concerned frown.

She brushed away his concern. “We are trained. We are not some peasants foolishly playing with what they cannot understand.”

Raed glanced at her partner, expecting his support, but Merrick shook his head sharply. “We must find out what they are planning. This is only the beginning of the skein.”

“Move,” Sorcha barked, “before the shade escapes.” A wan light was flickering over Aulis’ remains. Sorcha snorted as if something amused her, and green fire leapt to life on her fingertips. Drawing a pattern over the corpse, she seemed satisfied.

“Now,” Sorcha said, her voice ripe with delight, “you shall answer our questions, Aulis.”

Raed had heard of such rituals, but had never witnessed one. Necromancy, the ungifted called it, and despite all his study and reading, the Pretender had to agree with them; it went against the natural order.

Merrick slipped the leather Strop over his eyes and the dark symbols writhed like poked snakes; the effect was both entrancing and disturbing. The younger Deacon inhaled, drawing a great deep breath that seemed to go on forever. The weakened shade wavered, struggled, but could not resist; it was drawn into the Deacon. Most sane people wouldn’t have taken a shade into their body willingly, yet Merrick had the demeanor of confidence that made Raed more curious than worried for his safety. Certainly there was a beautiful irony in the lad sucking down the shade of the person who had meant to kill him.

The twisting symbols on the surface of the leather flared blue-white for a second, and then the light flared again, but this time behind the Strop as if something was looking out on the world. Raed was glad that Merrick did not remove the Strop—he had a sinking suspicion that if he did, Aulis would be looking back.

It was disconcerting enough when Merrick spoke in her voice. For a good minute the only thing the recently departed woman was capable of saying was, “Fool, fool, fool . . .” Though whether this was directed at herself or any of them was hard to tell.

Eventually she ran out of steam, and Merrick’s voice took control. “Name the creature you were trying to summon.” His tone was amazingly commanding and Raed was strangely sure that if the young man asked him a question in that tone, he would automatically answer it. This lad had untapped depths.

Sorcha moved to stand at her partner’s back and rested her hand lightly on his shoulder. Her expression was concerned rather than grim.

“Can’t.” Aulis’ voice was pleading and desperate in a way none of them had ever heard it in life. Obviously death had robbed her of some of her confidence.

“Name it!” Merrick’s voice cracked like a whip.

“Don’t know. We didn’t know. We only took instruction.”

Behind the Strop, blue-white light flickered fitfully as if blown by a distant wind, and Merrick’s body tightened; apparently he was holding Aulis’ shade together by sheer willpower. “Who gave you instruction, then?”

Now his shoulders twitched and swayed, his top half trying to escape the spot his feet were rooted to. However, Aulis couldn’t get away. Raed almost felt sorry for her . . . almost.

“The Unending Knot.” The words were torn from Merrick’s throat like a curse.

Sorcha glanced at Raed blankly, but he only shrugged—the name meant nothing to him either.

“Let me go, let me go,” Aulis’ voice wheezed through the young Deacon’s throat.

Yet now it was Sorcha’s turn to ask a question, and she made it a good one. “Why did the Emperor tell Hastler to only send two Deacons?” She cleared her throat, looking down at her boots for a moment as she wrestled command of her next words. “Is he part of this?”

Merrick’s body heaved with the dry, wracking sobs of an old woman—a truly strange sight. It was even worse when they became a laugh that didn’t seem to stop.

“Can’t hold her much longer,” the young Deacon gasped, pressing his hands over the top of the Strop. The gesture struck Raed as a curiously childlike one. “Answer. Answer or I will swallow you.”

Raed had never heard of such a thing, but it seemed to have the required effect.

“No,” Aulis howled.

“One answer and you can go. The right answer!”

A deadly grin spread on Merrick’s face, a grin that Raed had only just seen on Aulis. The effect was chilling. “You should ask the Grand Duchess Zofiya that question.”

Sorcha jerked back as if hit.

The laughter went on, and the final words were gasped out in terrible dead delight. “You think you’ve won the war? Foolish Deacons—this is just a skirmish. The war will make you wish to be back here . . . with me.”

A long gurgling gasp, a strangled choke from Merrick, and he coughed the smallest hint of white mist back into the air; a slight breeze rose suddenly and dispersed it. Raed didn’t want to know if the spirit was gone to the Otherside or destroyed. That was Deacon business.

Merrick wiped a thin bead of sweat from his forehead. The lad still looked shaky and Raed would have offered the Deacon a shoulder, but he knew fragile pride when he saw it in another man. Instead he gave him a little nod of respect.

“That is what I hate about damn shades.” Sorcha kicked a rock out of her path with ill-concealed rage. “Always with the cryptic answers! What does the Grand Duchess have to do with any of this?”

“I think we can help with that.” Nynnia appeared in the shattered doorway, her father tight under one arm. For such a slight girl she looked like she was holding up much of Kyrix’s weight. The old man had bruises on his face and held his arms half-curled around his belly. Raed recognized the signs of someone who had received a good beating—he’d seen enough of his crew return from shore leave in similar condition.

The expression on Sorcha’s face was priceless; she had no time for the girl and wasn’t afraid to let it show. Maybe she hadn’t wished Nynnia dead under the rubble, but undoubtedly she’d hoped the other had run off. Yet when Raed looked into the woman’s deep brown eyes, he saw nothing like fear. Her mouth was as determinedly set as Sorcha’s.

Merrick darted over to Nynnia and kissed her on the cheek, forgoing her lips in deference to her father’s presence. “Where’d you go?” he asked, lightly touching her hair. “The Hall came down, and—”

Her voice was so soft that Raed strained to hear her answer. “I had to find my father. I’m sorry.”

“It was incredible,” Merrick said, glancing back over his shoulder to where his partner was still glaring at them. “I don’t know what happened. I mean, I should be dead—”

“We should all be dead.” Kyrix brushed blood out of the corner of his mouth and looked through dark eyes at them. “For months I knew something was wrong with Prior Aulis.”

“Well, we’ve taken care of that,” Sorcha snapped. “Merrick here stopped whatever that mad old bat was trying to do. Your daughter would have seen that if she—”

“You are the type of arrogant Deacon that allowed Aulis to prosper.” The old man’s words cut through even the stalwart Sorcha. He raised a trembling hand and patted his daughter’s arm. “You were lucky that Nynnia was here to save your partner.”

Sorcha blinked, her forehead darkening, a dangerous storm drawing in. Raed hoped that the old codger was going to explain himself very quickly.

“It was you?” Merrick was the first to realize, and then he smiled; a broad grin that flashed as bright as his partner’s was dark. “You saved me!”

“A healer, just like her father.” Kyrix straightened with a little wince, though pride beamed from his bruised face.

Raed had seen few miracles in his life, and Nynnia had no weirstone. He could not imagine how the girl had accomplished the feat. “I didn’t think anyone who had lost that much blood could still be walking around.” He glanced at Sorcha and caught the tail end of her own furrowed brow.

The girl glanced away. “I did only what I had to. The important thing is that Father heard more of their plans.”

“And they are much, much wider than this.” Kyrix waved his hands weakly. “This . . . Well, I am afraid this is just the beginning.”

Raed glanced down at the broken form of the former Prior. “Why can’t anything just be simple in my life?” Realizing that everyone was staring at him, he let out a sigh. “Do go on.”

“Come here.” The old man pulled out a sheaf of papers from inside his cloak. “I found Aulis burning these, and I managed to snatch them from the flames—but one of her minions took exception to my actions.” He gestured to his battered face, almost apologetically.

“You shouldn’t have done such a thing.” Nynnia bit her lip.

“Nonsense, child.” Kyrix looked at her sternly. He spread the largest piece of paper out on a fallen column. It was a map showing the countryside immediately around Vermillion.

“In six other locations, six other Priories, the same has happened.” Nynnia’s father pointed. “Seven pairs of Deacons were meant to die tonight, but you did not go quietly.” He bent over and picked up the foci Raed had kicked aside. When he turned it over in his hand, six scorched marks could be seen around the edge of the silver disc.

“Durnis,” Raed heard Sorcha whisper, and saw her face twist in something that could have been anger or despair.

“The Emperor would not let such a thing happen!” Merrick was quick to leap to the defense of his sovereign.

Raed noticed, however, that Sorcha was not. She chewed on the corner of one full lip and stared down at the Gauntlets tucked at her waist. “Presbyter Rictun hands out assignments, Merrick—but it was not he who gave us this one. The dispatch box was from the Emperor himself.”

Despite what that meant for the Empire, Raed felt a warm glow in the pit of his stomach. At last, Kaleva had shown his true colors. Consorting with creatures from the Otherside was not likely to be forgiven by the common folk.

Her partner must have felt some of her doubt across the Bond because he spun around. “Not the Emperor—he’s a great man, Sorcha. Think of all the good he has done!”

“Then why . . .” Sorcha cleared her throat and looked up at him with steel in her eyes. “Why did he instruct the Arch Abbot to send us here alone, Merrick, when he could have sent a Conclave? Can you answer that?”

Merrick pressed a hand into his hair as if his head were going to explode, and Raed’s sympathy forced him to throw him a lifeline. “Let’s not jump to conclusions without any evidence.” By the Bones, defending the Emperor felt very wrong.

Sorcha drummed her fingertips against her thigh. “Indeed. We will need to consult with the Arch Abbot—find some answers if we can, like what part the Emperor’s sister has to play in all of this.”

Nynnia raised her chin and looked the Deacon squarely in the eye—an impressive feat as far as Raed was concerned. Sorcha’s expression was brittle and dangerous, yet the smaller woman spoke with conviction. Raed again found himself wondering at this change in the girl.

“Royal blood is good for many things.” Nynnia’s voice was flinty.

Her words stopped the conversation dead.

“Damned and Holy Bones.” Sorcha turned her back on them and looked up to the newly revealed night sky.

Royal blood is good for many things. Those words. Raed had heard them before, years ago. The wreck of a deposed Abbot had whispered them to him in that room he’d wanted so desperately to get out of. The smell of stale old man and musty clothes flooded his nostrils, mixed with the scent of his young boy’s fear.

Raed shook his head to clear the memory and realized that Merrick was looking at him. The muttering in his head was still there. That was it; he’d been injured and many things had been shaken loose.

“There is one thing more.” Kyrix pulled out another piece of paper. This one was a mere scrap, the fire had consumed nearly all of it, but just legible was one word: “Murashev.”

It was the younger Deacon who let out a gasp. “A geistlord . . . Sorcha, they are planning to release a geistlord.”

Sorcha’s fists clenched at her sides before she turned back to them. “No—not a geistlord, Merrick. The Geistlord.”

All of them stared at one another, and even Raed knew what they meant. The Murashev was the boogeyman under every child’s bed: the mythical creature that lived in the depths of the Otherside, feeding on not just the souls of the living but on other geists as well.

“They wrote ‘first.’ ” Merrick was the first to speak. “But there are other meanings to it—it can also mean ‘family.’ They wrote it in Ancient above me, soaked it into me. The Murashev cannot just come into our world; he needs other geistlords to bring him.”

“Well, you stopped one here.” Raed let out a breath he’d been unconsciously holding in. “So we don’t need to . . .”

Kyrix let out a sound that was more a wheeze than a real breath. “They did not need all seven geistlords.”

Nynnia squeezed his shoulder when he faltered. “If they had all seven, it would have been easier for them to bring through the Murashev, but there are other ways.”

Merrick and Sorcha exchanged another glance. One look at their pale faces told Raed all he needed to know, but he asked anyway. “What ‘other ways’?”

The younger Deacon licked his lips nervously before replying. “Many, many deaths.”

“I overheard her.” Kyrix swayed where he stood, near the end of his waning endurance. “She spoke of a grand event in three days—in Vermillion itself.”

“We can’t get back to the city in three days, and the Priory weirstones are burnt out, so we can’t alert anyone.” Merrick was looking at Sorcha with all the intensity of a young boy looking to his older sister for guidance.

“Even if the ice broke with sunrise, I couldn’t get Dominion near Vermillion in so short a time.” Somewhere along the way, Raed discovered he had given up caring about his Curse and the geists that might bring it on. If the Murashev became real, those things would matter very little. The last words of the decrepit deposed Abbot still echoed in his head—his last ones before he tried to best the Rossin inside him: You’re their tool, foolish boy. The geists will use you like a lever to open the way. He hadn’t known what those words had meant back then, though they had frightened him a great deal all his life. But now he realized that the Prior had wanted him for more than his connections to royalty.

“There is another way,” Sorcha was looking at him, the bleak expression fading from her like a sea mist. The Pretender did not know if he liked it at all, and when she spoke, it was confirmed. He didn’t.

“The Imperial Dirigible depot is four miles from here.” The Deacon beamed. “We fly back to Vermillion.”

“You can’t be serious?” Raed couldn’t help a little laugh escape him. “You want me to load not only my crew, but myself, onto an Imperial dirigible and fly with you to Vermillion?”

“No.” She raised one eyebrow. “Not all your crew. Bring Aachon and five people you can trust.”

Raed glanced at Merrick, but the younger man was going to offer no support. He was talking in a low voice to Nynnia, effectively leaving his partner and the Pretender to sort it out for themselves.

“In case you hadn’t forgotten,” Raed said, shooting a raised eyebrow right back at her, “I am a wanted man—and not just by the ladies of the Imperial Court.”

She gave a short laugh, but her expression remained set. “This cult—or whatever they are—want you for some reason.” She smiled slowly. “To keep you safe, we need to keep an eye on you.”

“You’ll be able to do that admirably as they take me up to the gallows,” Raed muttered. He stroked his narrow beard for a second and glanced at her speculatively. “Are you sure this isn’t just an attempt to take the bounty yourself?”

“At times like this, I wonder about your education.” She sighed. “Whatever are they teaching at Pretender school these days? Have you not heard of the concept of sanctuary?”

A tremor of fear ran through his belly. “You plan on holing me up inside the Abbey?”

He watched as she slipped on one Gauntlet. She whispered, presumably for his benefit, “Seym.” When he took a step backward, she held it up. The rune was colorless but the air around her fingers moved as if with heat. “The rune of flesh, and I promise this won’t hurt.”

He’d already trusted her with everything he had, so when she placed her index finger against his forehead, Raed managed not to flinch. It was, in fact, cool on his skin, like a touch of an ocean breeze. A clean, sharp scent filled his nostrils. The rune of flesh. It made him think about what that word meant. A memory of all he’d seen last night up on the hilltop made him twitch, abruptly aware of how close the Deacon was to him.

“There.” She stripped off her Gauntlet, and he wasn’t sure if he imagined it, but her look was somewhat proprietary. “You are now officially held under the Sanctuary of the Order—not even the Emperor can break the seal without risk of losing the Arch Abbey’s support.”

Raed frowned at her particular choice of words. “So I am effectively your property?”

Sorcha looked smug, like a cat that had finally caught a pesky mouse. “Basically . . . yes.”

It was most definitely the wrong thing to say, and she had to have known it; when his jaw tightened enough to nearly break a tooth, she responded with a grin. For a moment the Pretender considered doing something foolish just to see that look wiped from her face. He was surprised when he felt her hand take his. Its warmth and strength was a shock, even more so when she gave his fingers a light squeeze. He wondered if she was resorting to using her feminine wiles on him, until he looked into the utter honesty of her blue eyes. “Until we find out why they want you, Raed, it is imperative we stick together. The sea is no longer safe for you.”

He looked down at her hand in his, and for a moment neither of them pulled back. His heart was beating fast, and this time it had nothing to do with the Rossin or the swordplay. Out of the corner of one eye, Raed glimpsed Merrick striding over to them, a sudden cold bucket of reality on their quiet moment. Their hands fell away from each other.

Raed could wait for the geist-driven ice to melt away, take Dominion out of Ulrich harbor and sail away, but really, there was nowhere to hide. All of his life had been spent facing up to uncomfortable realities; and besides, this realm was still his by right. He wanted to protect and serve it, even if his father did not. “I’ve been running all my life, Sorcha—I shouldn’t trust anyone, and yet I have already given my life into your hands twice this week.”

Sorcha’s lips twitched upward in a beautiful and cruel smile. “I’m just that sort of woman, my lord Pretender.”