Geist

TWENTY-FOUR Into Apostasy

Merrick held to his training—it was all he had left. He gathered up Nynnia, knowing she deserved proper ceremony. She felt so light, as if her departed soul had been the heaviest thing about her—if she had possessed a soul at all.

Through his numbness, the logical part of him was still working. “We have to take Hastler’s body too,” he mumbled. “There will have to be an Episcopal inquiry. The Presbyters will need to see it, much as it should stay here to rot.”

Sorcha’s blue eyes, dark pits in the dimness of the ossuary, flicked to Raed. “Can you carry him?” She did not complain, but the way she held herself spoke of at least a broken rib. Wordlessly, Raed slung the remains of Hastler over his shoulder.

As they scrambled mournfully up into the light, around him Merrick could hear the creaks and groans of the White Palace, as if they were buried within an arthritic body. The ossuary was sliding back underground; drawn up by geist-power, it was returning to its natural place.

None of these facts made any impact on him. They were distant details to the cooling form in his arms. Perhaps he had been a fool to love Nynnia so quickly, and with so little thought, but he wasn’t going to wish it had never happened. She had not told him what she was, but her actions spoke of a bright being that he would miss. Some inherent Sensitive part remembered her words and knew that in the shadows to come, they would need all the help they could get.

The blazing light of the sun made him blink through eyes still burning with tears and scarred from the light of the Otherside. The people were emerging from their houses—frightened, yes, but aching to see what had happened. Their faces, covered in dust, looked so alien that for a moment Merrick feared that Nynnia’s sacrifice had not been enough; that they were surrounded by damned souls staring at the body of their Arch Abbot tossed so casually over one shoulder of the Pretender to the throne. His mind raced—something was very wrong in a day that had seen enough wrong—yet his mind was too numbed to make hasty connections.

Then the Order arrived. The trio was surrounded by the emerald and blue cloaks of Merrick’s fellow Deacons, like ornamented crows. They moved swiftly between the survivors, shielding them from the view of Imperial troops and commoners. They took Hastler from Raed, and Sorcha disappeared from sight altogether. A knot of panic clenched in Merrick, and he knew it was not an entirely unreasonable reaction.

Their own Arch Abbot had been conspiring with creatures of the Otherside—who knew if this was an aberration or a new policy? Only his awareness of the Bond kept the young Deacon sane. He might not be able to see the others, but he could feel them. Sorcha was as numb as he was, while Raed felt resigned; he would not be able to escape from the Order now.

When kind hands tried to take Nynnia from him, though, Merrick stood tall, clasping her close. “I will carry her,” he said, his voice cracking a little.

It was an uneasy return to the Mother Abbey, flanked by Deacons none of them knew if they could trust. He resisted the urge to fall gratefully into their arms. A lot had happened in a few weeks and he was not the green boy who had ridden out that day.

They took Sorcha and Raed to the infirmary, but Merrick they left alone in the mortuary to lay Nynnia out. He straightened her limbs, cleaned her face and carefully cut away her dress. It was burnt to her skin in many places, but he was able to remove enough to put her in a decent replacement.

He heard Presbyter Rictun come in, but did not acknowledge his superior until he was done. Turning around, he locked eyes with the man who was now, effectively, one of the heads of the Order in the Empire. With Hastler dead, the five Presbyters would speak for the Mother Abbey; and yet Merrick didn’t know if they were as corrupt as the Arch Abbot had been.

It took the young Deacon a moment to recognize at the Presbyter’s back were five others from the Order—a quickly assembled Conclave. Their linked minds were probing his, weighing every word for truth. Well, they were not the only ones who could do that.

Merrick’s eyes narrowed. The woman he had been growing to love had died, the world had teetered on the edge of doom, and the man they had all trusted to lead them had proven false. Before they could stop him, Merrick thrust with his Sensitive power, which had never failed him in the ossuary, even for a moment. Indeed, it seemed to have grown stronger, and he slipped easily within the Presbyter’s mind.

It was not a place he wanted to be, cool and perhaps cruel—but Merrick had his answer. Inside, the Presbyter was shocked and disgusted with Hastler, concerned with what this would mean for the Order, and cautious about what Sorcha, Raed and Merrick had seen in the White Palace. That was all.

The Conclave’s attention swelled and he was unceremoniously ejected from the Presbyter’s mind. One of the Conclave members muttered under his breath, no doubt displeased with the young Deacon’s presumption.

Rictun’s eyes widened slightly as he realized how easily Merrick had plucked his concerns from his mind, but surprise soon turned to anger. “So it was Hastler? You saw him consorting with the Murashev?”

The mental fingers of the Conclave pressed harder into Merrick’s mind, holding him rigid like a bug as he said the words condemning their beloved leader. “Yes, it was Arch Abbot Hastler. He planned the death of Grand Duchess Zofiya to bring the Murashev into Vermillion. Why, I cannot say with certainty.”

Rictun cleared his throat. “A full inquiry is being assembled for two days’ time. There we will examine your partner’s experience, but it has already been decided: the Arch Abbot’s part in this will not be revealed to the public. The only person outside the Order to know of it will, of course, be the Emperor.”

Merrick felt his jaw tighten, and his mind opened to Sorcha. They’re going to cover up that Hastler was behind all of this. He felt her rage boiling over the edges of his own.

It must have been enough for even the Active Rictun to feel, because he raised his hand. “Think for a moment about this, Deacon Chambers. Think what would happen to the Order if we disclosed everything. Do you really want to go back to the bad old days before we came here?”

Merrick glared at him. “The truth is not an option; it is a necessity.” His words echoed in the emptiness of the mortuary.

“Really?” Rictun grinned bleakly. “Think about it: none of the great unwashed would ever believe that the Order is not corrupt. They would never trust us again. They would never turn to us when the geists break through.”

Merrick glanced down at his feet, thinking of his first taste of what geists could do to the unprepared. The bodies of the slain Tinkers haunted his nightmares.

“They would understand, if we explained properly.” Even his own ears could discern the edge of uncertainty in his voice.

Rictun strode over and looked down at what remained of Nynnia, and then he delivered the ultimate blow. “You don’t believe that, Chambers, and you know this woman’s sacrifice will be for nothing if the people lose faith in us. We are the only defense they have against the geists.”

Merrick felt his throat go tight, and he had the sudden awful feeling that if he spoke now, he might cry. Light from the one stained glass window was casting a soft rainbow glow over Nynnia’s body, concealing her terrible wounds. His fingers drifted back to touch her now-cold hand.

He opened himself to Sorcha again, and felt reassured that despite her anger she had come to the same conclusion. Clearing his throat, he turned to face his superior. “A lie is a terrible thing, but what I have seen in the last few weeks is also terrible. One day, the truth will come out.” Pausing, he squeezed Nynnia’s hand as if she could still feel it.

Rictun’s eyes narrowed. “But not today?”

“No, not today.”

The Presbyter nodded. “A wise choice, Deacon.” His concerns assuaged, his tone softened. “You and Deacon Faris will submit yourselves to the inquiry by day’s end. There is much to be decided, if the Order is to survive.”

“Naturally.” Then Sorcha’s concerns flooded over him. “Presbyter Rictun,” he called. His superior paused at the door. “What of Raed Syndar Rossin? He was a great help to us. He even saved the life of the Grand Duchess.”

It was impossible to read Rictun’s expression. “He is also the Pretender to the throne, and one of our Emperor’s greatest enemies. He will be locked in one of the civic prisons until his fate can be decided.” He sighed. “But I believe our liege will be inclined to leniency, given the circumstances.”

“Are you certain, or just confident?” Merrick asked, feeling Sorcha’s rush of rage clog his throat.

Rictun gave him a stern look. “Today no one can be sure of anything, but I will certainly take the results of the inquiry to the Emperor and plead his case.”

Merrick felt something else in Sorcha then, something that she only barely acknowledged herself: guilt.

Her partner asked where she could not. “And Deacon Kolya Petav, Presbyter? Will he be at the inquiry?”

The answer plunged Sorcha deeper into remorse. “No, he will not. He is still in a healing coma in the infirmary. The mess the Arch”—Rictun broke off with a glower—“Hastler made of your Bond will have to wait until more pressing matters have been dealt with.”

It was enough for now. The Presbyter left Merrick to his mourning, and even his partner pulled back her consciousness. He was left alone with the ashes of his love and hope.

The Pretender slept fitfully in the comfort of the Emperor’s prison, but it was not that his host was exceptionally harsh. The cell was clean and tidy, and surprisingly it contained a very comfortable mattress over the slotted wood cot. Nor was it his jailors, who seemed uninterested in torturing him. They fed him through the bars with simple but tolerable fare.

No, it was the chattering of the Deacons in his head that Raed could not stand. He turned over on the bed with many a sigh and tried to block out the whispers of the inquiry he was forced to share with Sorcha and Merrick.

It was impossible. Whatever floodgate they had opened in the ossuary, it refused to close.

In time, it will fade. The Rossin, too, was tired of the connection.

Eventually exhaustion won out over the drone of Deacons, and the Pretender managed to get a few hours’ sleep. The noise of a crowd outside woke him. It was not the cheering noise from the day before, but the shuffle of somber feet and subdued whispering. Wiping sleep from his eyes, Raed stood on his bed and peered out the window.

The jail was on Silk Road, one of the main thoroughfares of Vermillion, and when he peered out into the early-morning light he could see it was already crowded with people. No flags were in evidence this day and everyone was dressed in shades of gray. Raed could, in fact, make out weeping.

Outside his cell, one of his jailors was about to slide a morning meal between the bars, so the Pretender ventured a question whose answer he feared: “What’s happening outside?”

The man’s lip curled, and his brows knitted together in an expression that he had not worn the previous day. “It’s the funeral procession for the Arch Abbot.”

Raed swallowed hard as dread built in every nerve ending. “A state funeral for a traitor?”

The jailor threw the tin tray containing Raed’s breakfast against the bars. Some of it splattered onto him. That was a shock, but the sudden boiling rage on the man’s face was too. “Shut your filthy mouth,” he bellowed. “You’re not fit to lick that sainted man’s boots.”

This was a very bad sign, but Raed couldn’t help himself. “Fond of murderers, are you?”

The jailor’s face grew crafty. “You might be singing a different tune by the end of the day.” He left Raed alone with that prophecy hanging in the air.

Raed turned once more to the window to see how the Order took care of its own. He had to see how it would all end, despite everything. The crowd was filling every cranny of the street, hanging out of every window and clinging to any other vantage point they could find. The whispering was louder too, and there were plenty of angry faces among the grieving. Raed did not imagine it; one or two were turned in the direction of the jail.

The cortege was announced by the low drone of pipes, a fresh wave of weeping and the rattle of carriage wheels. Clenching his hands around the bars, Raed was able to pull himself up a little and see farther down the street. Four ebony Breed horses pulled a shining wagon on which was placed an elaborate brass and oak chair, surmounted by the emblem of the Order, the Eye and the Fist. It had to be Hastler’s chair of office. Another carriage followed up the rear, and this one had a plain coffin on it.

Raed’s dread now filled his stomach and bubbled behind his eyes. The ranks of Deacons followed, made all dark and somber by the fact their cloaks were turned about so that the black lining showed. Only a flutter of occasional emerald or blue indicated who was Sensitive and who was Active. It could have been only his imagination, but he thought he caught a glimpse of copper hair among the ranks. His eyes closed briefly as the Deacons gave way to files of aristocracy and Imperial Guard making up the rear of the cortege.

He’d been betrayed. He’d been stupid. Naturally, the Order would never reveal what their Arch Abbot had been! It didn’t matter that he’d saved the Grand Duchess—such trivial details were of little account.

As the dirge receded into the distance, the Pretender’s hands grew white, clenching harder around the bars. He was so consumed with his own rage that for a minute he took no notice of the change in the crowd. He didn’t drop back when the first of the angry fingers were pointed in his direction—and by then it was too late.

A wave of outraged screams swelled up in the crowd. A deep bellow sounded from many throats, and then came the wave of missiles. Raed jerked back from the window, but the damage was already done. They had seen the object of their anger.

The rattle of objects thrown against the jail was far too loud to be merely soft fruit. It sounded instead as if the crowd, now turning itself into a mob, had pried loose some of the paving stones as well. The impact of these only grew, and now he could make out individual words.

Murderer! Assassin!

Raed glanced over his shoulder. There were thumps in the depths of the building, the rattle of angry fists on the doors of the prison. He strode to the cell door and, grasping it, made to call out to his jailor. The door swung in his grip. While he’d been occupied with the scene outside, his newly unfriendly captor had unlocked it.

So, his guardians were of the same opinion as the mob. The smell of smoke wafted up from outside just as the screaming reached a level to make his ears ring. Even if there was one jailor that didn’t like the taste of a lynch mob, there was no way that man would risk his life for the Pretender. Raed slipped through the door and into the corridor, but after that his plan got very blurry.

“Not staying for the show?” The woman’s voice was behind him, and it was the sweetest sound he had ever heard.

Spinning around, he caught Sorcha’s grim smile—and she was not alone. Merrick, despite the fact that Hastler had tricked him into partnership with the older Deacon, remained true to his vows.

“It doesn’t sound like my sort of party,” Raed admitted, before kissing her. In his mind, there was always time for that.

“Quickly.” Merrick grabbed them both and tugged them down the corridor in the opposite direction from the screaming of the mob. The alarming smashing now sounded very much like a door giving up its hold on its hinges.

Together the three of them ran past the row of cells full of cheering, howling prisoners. Down a spiraling staircase, they found the back door. It was smoking and lying on the ground. Raed shot Sorcha a surprised look, but she smiled back. “We were a little short of time.”

He was not going to question her methods, because behind them they could now hear the sound of pounding feet. Dashing out into the alleyway, however, he found the rescue more than a little lacking. “I hate to be picky—but shouldn’t we have some method of escape?”

Silk Road, to their right, was still packed with angry people; angry because they were unable to get to the front of the lynch mob pouring into the Imperial Jail.

“We had horses!” Merrick’s face was pale.

“You can’t leave anything lying about in this town.” Raed shrugged, feeling that knot of dread tightening up once again.

There was nowhere to hide in this narrow alley, and several of the mob had become aware of the three of them. People had been swallowed by shared anger, losing all inhibition and control. It was now turning toward them like a great beast with many heads. Raed wondered how painful getting torn apart would be. He would have at least liked to have had a sword.

Sorcha tossed him hers without him having to ask, but her next action startled him. She shoved her Gauntlets on her hands and turned toward the onrushing mob. He recalled suddenly her outrage at Aulis when she threatened to use the runes on the public. And along the Bond he could feel her—it was not fear of death that she was feeling; it was something colder. She had lost her faith in the Order and what it stood for. Her concern now was purely about defending those who mattered to her.

Green fire sprang along the length of her spread fingers, and the stony look on her face was one he had never seen before—even when they had faced the Murashev. Join her. The Rossin was aroused by the promise of unfettered violence. Unleash me.

The mob bore down on them and the air tasted like sweat and electricity, as Sorcha raised her Gauntlets and prepared to break every tenet of the Order she’d been a part of since childhood.

“Sorcha, don’t!” Merrick was usually the calmer, tempered one, but his voice cracked with such power that for a moment she did indeed pause. Or maybe it was the world itself—for it dipped into that misty moment that Raed had experienced before; the time before decision and death.

What happened in the next heartbeat, the Pretender could not quite identify. The walls of the alleyway distorted, bending in an optical illusion that stopped everyone short. And then the tide of emotion swept over them. Suddenly Raed was thrown back to that moment when he had awoken with his mother’s blood all over him, her broken and torn body at his feet. The grief washed over him, as fresh and terrible as it had been in the moment when it had dawned on him what the Rossin had done.

At his side, Sorcha was curled in on herself, a strangled sound of utmost despair clawing its way out of her throat. Through his tears, Raed was able to see that the crowd—descending on them angrily only a second before—was also wracked with despair. They huddled on the street, sobbing and clutching at one another, in the throes of the emotional storm; a wash of misery that had been leveled upon them far more easily than anything Sorcha could have done.

Raed was only just able to nail that observation down before the waves of his own emotions crashed over him once more. The rawness of despair ran through his body, the depth of melancholy impossible to resist. That was, until Merrick’s hand touched his shoulder. “Raed.” His voice cut through the grief and pain, removing it as swiftly as it had come.

The Pretender climbed to his feet, noticing that Sorcha had also been pulled free of whatever had happened to them. She was brusquely wiping away her tears, turned slightly away; embarrassment burned along the Bond.

Merrick’s Strop dangled from his fingertips, tucked behind his back as if he were ashamed of it. A flicker of rainbow light played across its surface and was gone. Raed had studied the ways of the Order, and he had never heard of any Sensitive doing any such thing. Yet there it was; Merrick had leveled a lynch mob by reaching in and twisting their emotions—hard.

The three of them stared at one another, and then Deacon Chambers folded his Strop and tucked it inside his shirt. His expression was as flinty as his partner’s had been when she had faced the mob. “It won’t last long.” He flicked his reversed cloak around his shoulders and began picking his way through the still-weeping crowd.

Sorcha and Raed followed after. They had to be careful; people were rolling around sobbing, crying the names of dead relatives, and merely howling incoherently. No one paid the three of them any mind.

The circle of this emotional storm was three streets wide, leveling every citizen—even those beyond Silk Road who had not been involved in the lynching. Sorcha draped her cloak over Raed as they found the edge of the effect, lifting the hood to hide his features. Ahead of them Merrick was still striding, not looking over his shoulder, his back ramrod straight.

“Do you know what that was?” Raed whispered, clenching her cool hand in his.

She shook her head, her eyes wide, concerned and still a little red from the sudden tears. “There are many things that Actives do not know, about what Sensitives do,” she muttered, “but I do not think this is taught in any class at the Order.”

“And by the looks of him, now is not the time to ask.” Raed lifted her fingers and kissed them lightly. “But I appreciate the rescue.”

Her smile was bright, sudden, and concealed immediately. “It was not quite as planned.” She did not say it, but Raed could hear her thoughts. Consequences be damned.

Eventually they passed through another section of narrow alleyways and into the Artisan Quarter. Weavers hung their wares out in front of stores while talking with passersby. It was loud and vibrant, and stood out in stark contrast to the weeping mob they had so narrowly escaped. Merrick flicked aside a tapestry that, ironically, showed the achievements of the native Order, and led them into the depths of one of the shops.

In the basement Raed felt the last of the melancholy lift from his shoulders. “Aachon!” He crossed the short distance and grabbed hold of his first mate before the man could move. The slap on his back was gruff but heartily meant. The Pretender laughed loudly as the rest of his crew crowded around him; not a single one was missing.

Over the tops of their heads, he glanced back and saw the Deacons standing as still as herons by the door. They, Raed realized, had risked a great deal to get him to safety. To extend such loyalty to someone not in the Order was something he had not expected. But the Bond was still there. He might have wanted it gone, but it had saved them all.

Raed cleared his throat. “What now?”

Sorcha’s hands clenched at her sides, and her voice was soft. “There is a ship leaving tomorrow morning, with a captain who asks no questions. He is heading north to Ulrich. You are safe here until then.” She pulled her cloak about her and, with a look at Merrick, jerked her head toward the door.

They slipped out before Raed could say anything, but he wasn’t exactly sure what he would have said, anyway.