Harbinger

ELEVEN A Traitor’s Smell

As a Prince of the Empire, the heir apparent, Raed had been taught from an early age to take care of the people of Arkaym. The fact that his own father, the Unsung Pretender, chose to lock himself away on a distant island and behave as if they didn’t exist did not factor into it. His beloved tutors and instructors had luckily been far more insightful than the man that had given him life.

Later on he’d been given his first command and then his first ship. Raed had immediately chosen to use them as a microcosm of the Empire itself and had lavished care and worry on both of them. However, in the last year their numbers had dwindled—some had even been killed right before his eyes.

Despite all of that, some echo from his childhood and his education still filled him with a feeling of responsibility for those around him. It was what made the devastation that was the Rossin so much harder to bear. Many times the Young Pretender had wished that he didn’t care; that way he’d be insulated from the worst that the geistlord could do. However, as he got older he finally understood he was what he was. He’d learned to live with the curse and learned to run.

When Sorcha went back up the Great Hall to be about Order business, Raed found himself returning to the room he’d spent half his time in this last week. It might have seemed a strange place for a person of Imperial blood to work, but in this citadel of Deacons it was the only aid Raed could offer. He was certainly not going to sit idly by and become known only as Sorcha’s lover.

The makeshift infirmary that the Brothers had created in the basement of the citadel was in fact one of the more pleasant spaces in the cursed building. Despite the fact that it was on the lowest level, it actually opened out onto a small inward-facing courtyard, which a sliver of sunlight punctuated for at least a few hours a day. Some very optimistic lay Brother had planted herbs in a container there, and the scent of lavender and mint filled Raed’s nostrils as he neared the infirmary. It made him think of his mother’s herb garden before he could stop himself. Scent triggered the memory of her down on her knees, in among the plants; nothing at all like the well-bred lady she was. In the garden she’d been the happiest, and thus it was the place he’d been too.

The Young Pretender walked swiftly past the flowering plants and into the infirmary itself. Compared to the scant Actives and Sensitives that Sorcha had been able to find, the number of lay Brothers now in the citadel was well over double what it had been when they left Vermillion.

The people had positively flocked to her, wherever they went. Though most of them had not the talent to become a Deacon, they had quickly offered to take on the cloak of a lay Brother.

Certainly, looking around the infirmary he could have almost imagined that they were in a regular Priory. Brothers in the gray of their profession bustled about, taking care of the sick and injured; though there were far more of the former than of the latter. Something about losing their runes and deprivations of the trail made Actives and Sensitives more prone to illness, and many were coughing up their lungs in the infirmary.

It was yet another worry that Raed knew had kept Sorcha from a good night’s sleep for months. The Young Pretender took up an apron that hung neatly on a row of pegs by the door and put it on without a thought to how it looked. Yesterday he had been learning how to make poultices from Brother Timeon, but he had no idea what was in store today.

“Raed Syndar Rossin,” Madame Vashill said, appearing out of a back room, also wearing an apron, “are you back so soon?”

One of the preeminent tinkers of her time the old lady might be, but she was also rather deaf. Raed leaned in close to her. “Can’t keep me away. I’d get bored if I stayed upstairs all the time.”

She nodded and then thrust a mortar and pestle into his hands. “Brother Timeon said you’d be back, but I didn’t believe him.”

The young lay Brother appeared as if summoned by the mere mention of his name. His flyaway blond hair looked as though he had been running his hands through it for hours. He probably had. “Oh, Sir . . . Your Maj—” Then he closed his mouth with a snap.

The Deacons had struggled at first to find a proper form of address for him, as their connection with the current Emperor meant they had an aversion to using his family name, title or anything else that might suggest he was who he was.

Timeon cleared his throat and bowed his head slightly. “Captain, it is good to see you again. Are you ready for another lesson?”

“Yes, indeed,” Raed replied with a crooked smile.

It was good to spend the rest of the late morning in the simple tasks of cutting and pounding herbs. Madame Vashill learned at his side and seemed glad to do it too. She talked wistfully about her shop back in Vermillion and the work she had been unable to bring with her. What she never discussed was her son and his treachery. Raed knew all about the faithlessness of family and how that hurt, so he did not pry.

However, the same could not be said of Madame Vashill; she wanted all the details of his life, which he felt rather uncomfortable yelling at her in the crowded infirmary.

“I suppose you have heard about the woman in the west claiming to be your sister,” the old lady said, shooting him a look out from under her eyebrows. “They say she is causing quite a lot of problems for the Emperor.”

The problematic question of the person claiming to be his sister, Fraine Rossin, was one he had not yet dealt with. Raed pounded the tansy under his pestle mercilessly. “The truth of it is, there is not much I can do about her. It’s not as if I can stand up publically and denounce her for impersonating my dead kin.”

The old woman flinched at that, and he knew she had to be thinking of her son. “Still,” she said, grasping his hand briefly, “you did hear that your father had come out in support of her?”

It felt as though his stomach had dropped away and been replaced by a fiery pit. His father was not one for proclamations—but perhaps he thought now was a good time to slice himself off a piece of the Empire while it was in turmoil.

“No,” he replied through gritted teeth, “I had not heard that. I am surprised though; my father has spent most of his life doing nothing at all. And he knows very well that woman is not his daughter. I sent word that Fraine had died in Vermillion.” Even saying those words hurt. In the end, Raed had not been able to save his sister. In the end, she had still despised him for the Rossin killing their mother.

He smashed the pestle into the mortar so hard the hard stone rocked off its base, spilling the herbs onto the bench. Several lay Brothers started from their tasks at the sudden clatter, and Raed nearly swore at them too.

Madame Vashill’s hand came down over one of his; wrinkled, warm and not very strong. It nevertheless stopped him for a moment. “You did not choose to come from your family,” she said, her voice low, as if she were speaking to herself. “You cannot be held responsible for their actions, but you can walk your own path that might make up for what evil they have done.” Their eyes locked and understanding filled Raed.

“Sorcha always said you were an old bat.” The words popped out before he could stop them.

Madame Vashill laughed and filled her mortar with more herbs. “I was when I was in Vermillion. Stuck in a trade my father had taught me, and when he died, a husband I despised made me continue it. I find I like this life better. When you get to my age, you learn to appreciate these little moments.” She gestured over her shoulder.

Raed turned and saw what she meant; around Raed and the old woman was a community of people, all thrown together by conflict, but still getting on, doing things, looking after one another. Lay Brothers caring for the sick and the injured while others came in bringing them food and supplies. It was—when examined closely—a well-oiled machine.

A machine. The Rossin’s voice bubbled to the surface. The Beast was nearer today than any day before, a consequence of breaking loose and not having fed, Raed assumed. A sharp tang caught his attention, and it was not a natural substance that burned his nostrils.

Dropping his pestle back to the bench, Raed turned as if he were being pulled on a string. “Excuse me,” he murmured to Madame Vashill, and he began to circle the room like a dog seeking a bone.

Lay Brothers shot looks at him—mostly annoyed that he was in their domain—but they kept out of his way. The Young Pretender ignored them all. Instead, he began to listen to the Beast inside him. The geistlord was, after all, more powerful than he and had sharper instincts. It stung him to admit that—but there it was.

A strange place to bring her leftovers. The Rossin growled, shifting deep inside Raed, who knew at once he was speaking of Sorcha. He felt the Beast was uncomfortable too. A bastion of her greatest enemy.

It was hard for Raed to talk to the creature without seeming like he had run mad. The lay Brothers were eagle-eyed for such things and might whip him off into a bed if he wasn’t careful.

“The Circle had all these outposts originally,” he hissed as he made a great show of peering at the shelf of ointments and lotions. “She hardly had a choice.”

Then she shouldn’t be surprised with what happened two nights ago. The Rossin sounded very self-satisfied.

Ignoring the Rossin’s barbed observation, Raed nonetheless proceeded with a little more caution. The sense of unease he and the Rossin shared led him over to a rack of shelves on the far wall. At present they were stocked with the lay Brothers’ meager supply of liniments and ointments. They barely took up a corner of this vast shelf.

Raed ran his eyes over the rack suspiciously up close and then stepped back to examine how it stood against the wall. His father’s rickety palace had been full of hidden rooms and corridors, and he wondered if it was the same in the citadel.

He was certain that the smell and the sense of unease were coming from here. Raed shot a glance over his shoulder, to ascertain that no one was watching him, and then ran his hands over the wood.

The shelves were beautifully carved with all manner of forms that were obviously meant to be various geists; there was the pair of staring malevolent eyes that had to be a darkling, the spinning whirlwind of a vortex, and one he knew very well, the beautiful, deadly form of a Murashev in all her painful glory.

And everywhere on the bookshelf were the stars that were the symbol of the Ancient Native Order. Raed frowned. The fact that the lay Brothers were moving around, ignoring him and this bookcase meant that they had complete confidence in it. Sorcha and her Sensitives had carefully examined every surface of the citadel before they’d moved into it and made it their base.

They would not have missed any kind of cantrips or runes.

That is because they refuse to acknowledge the rest, the Rossin purred into his brain.

“Rest?” Raed whispered under his breath.

You saw the pitiful Sensitive become not so pitiful. You saw it and decided to ignore it. You never questioned what it meant. The Rossin dug up the memory that he had brushed aside; how Merrick had brought a whole street of people to their knees outside the Emperor’s prison.

He rubbed the space between his eyebrows and muttered into his shoulder, “What does that have to do with this?”

You will see. Look a little deeper. Remember who you are. Even these Deacons do not come from a lineage as great as yours.

It was the first time he’d ever heard the Rossin call his family great—mostly the Beast just belittled them as traitors and weak. Raed let out a faint snort as he realized that most likely the Beast was talking about his own involvement with his ancestors. Literally, his blood was in the Rossin line.

Putting that aside, Raed leaned forward and examined the shelf. He recognized most of the geists, but one that stood out to him was his own sigil. It was the one that the Dominion had sailed under—the rampant Rossin. Without thinking overly on it, Raed reached out and traced the shape of it. Under his fingers it felt sharp. It was a curious thing to see here in the remains of an old citadel of the Order—and what’s more, it looked freshly carved.

Raed was about to turn around and inquire if anyone else had noticed this, when the world went cloudy and gray. The hustle and bustle of the lay Brothers and their patients faded to incomplete shadows, while the sounds reached him as muted whispers.

Move! The Rossin was like a sharp burr under his skin, but one he could not shake or rip off. Hesitantly, Raed took a step forward. He knew about the rune Voishem, but the fact that he was experiencing it firsthand—without an Active Deacon—was terrifying.

You have his Blood, but you do not know that you are not the only one.

He didn’t need to ask whose blood. Merrick and Sorcha had told him all about Derodak and the fact that he was the first Emperor. The knowledge settled in his stomach like a stone.

The Rossin remained silent.

The sensation of moving through the wall was every bit as unpleasant as Sorcha had described it to him; every particle of his being screamed to turn and race back to the real world. The image of being trapped in stone by this abrupt appearance of Voishem was foremost in his mind.

However, the Young Pretender did not have time to panic because the stone wall behind the shelves was not thick at all. He pushed through and arrived on the other side. As he reappeared back into the normal physical world, he glanced back at the wall he had just passed through. Even though Raed knew it was true, he couldn’t help running his hand over the rough rock.

Someone had made Voishem into the wall itself, perhaps to avoid detection from the Sensitives outside. Raed’s jaw tightened as he realized there could only be one group capable of crafting such a thing—the very people who had let in chaos the night before.

Raed flicked his head around, realizing that a faint light was gleaming in the tunnel he now occupied. This, clearly, was how the saboteur had infiltrated the citadel.

That lying traitor, Derodak! The great cat sounded almost as angry as Sorcha had been. The Rossin’s hatred of the Circle of Stars was embedded in more than just recent events. It was all because Derodak, their leader, had been both first Emperor and first Deacon, and it was he who the Rossin had made the deal with. Apparently being trapped in the Imperial bloodline was not what the geistlord had envisaged when he had struck the deal with the first Emperor. He still carried an intense hatred for Derodak and anything he had created.

Deep within his host the great cat uncurled and against the back of Raed’s eyes everything was suddenly awash in golden light.

You cannot deal with a Deacon, the Rossin reasoned with the Young Pretender, but I can.

The Beast spoke the truth; sword and pistol would be very little use against a Deacon of the Circle of Stars. However, if he let the Rossin have his way, there would be nothing left of the traitor but blood.

Think of what they did last night. How many were killed?

Raed ground his teeth hard. He could go back and find the Deacons, but by that time the traitor could have disappeared. And besides, if he was honest with himself, he wanted to do something for Sorcha. She’d carried so many burdens for these last months, and he had felt at a complete loss to assist in any way. It would be good to be able to bring something to her for a change.

Now is your moment then.

In the tight confines of the tunnel, Raed hastily stripped off his clothes, and let the Beast take over. It was getting easier and easier to do that.

The human was correct. It was getting even easier by the moment. The Young Pretender’s mind was weakening, which gave the geistlord hope that the Fensena was right. He would soon have his way. However, right now there was vengeance to be dealt out.

The Rossin shook his great mane and crouched down. The corridor was awash in the smell of human, and suddenly his lust for blood boiled up inside him again.

It was strange that the Young Pretender knew very little of his progenitor or the power he gained from both the Rossin and Derodak. That was the way with humans; they learned so very little in their time. His host had apparently chosen to forget the power they had tasted beneath the streets of Vermillion when facing the Murashev.

The Rossin had not however. He would have that again.

His long, rough tongue ran fleetingly over his nose. For now, there was one Deacon to deal with. He might not be of the line of Emperors, but he still shared the great traitor’s blood. The Beast could smell it on him.

Crouching low, the Rossin began to stalk forward. The light grew brighter quickly because the tunnel was not very long at all—nothing more than a bolt-hole really. It was merely someplace where the infiltrator could work his craft out of sight of the other Deacons.

On huge but well-padded paws, the Rossin stalked the human at the end of the corridor. His target was so engrossed in what he was doing that he didn’t notice golden eyes watching him from the semidarkness. The great pard was intrigued and for a moment merely observed.

Derodak in his cleverness seemed to have outdone himself. The Rossin had little experience with machines; they had always been the preserve of the Ehtia, the Ancient race that had been the cause of the breach into the Otherside. The geistlord hunkered down and let his senses, natural and preternatural, run over the device the cloaked figure was hunched over.

It was gleaming brass, with many intricate parts that moved over its surface and reminded him of scuttling insects. He did recognize some things about it though; the flicker of three weirstones within its boxlike shape and also the writing carved on every surface. Cantrips were scored in the metal, and he knew immediately that they were not the usual kind, though he’d seen them before.

They were necromantic cantrips, which made perfect sense when the cloaked figure sliced at his own outstretched arm and dribbled blood into the vial at the end of the device.

The Rossin’s tongue unconsciously licked over his nose once more. Blood was an Ancient source of power—especially the right blood. It could infuse a geist with strength, let the future reveal its secrets, or open up a little gap into the Otherside. That was why killing was always the last resort of the Deacons of the Order; the path for a geist was easiest when blood was spilled or death was summoned.

Yet now here was this man sacrificing his own blood to a machine; a machine that seemed to grow brighter as the blood trickled into it, and the weirstones began to vibrate. The sound they made was so high-pitched that the mere human could not have heard it, but to the Rossin it was like jabbing spikes into his brain.

Unable to contain himself, he rose to his feet with a roar that shook the rock, and for a moment drowned out the unholy noise the machine was making. The man hunched over it spun around and raised his hands instinctively in defense.

He had no marks of any of the runes on him, but he had a pistol primed and ready. His shot could hardly have gone wild in these tight confines, but its impact on the great pard’s shoulder was as effective as a bee sting. The Rossin did not know the man’s name or face, but he was so enraged by the machine and the pitiful attempt at self-defense that he sprang forward.

In the small space he could not leap as effectively as he would have wanted, but he still fell on the cloaked man like a crazed storm of teeth and claws. In the struggle, the machine was knocked over, breaking the glass vial that had funneled the blood and cracking the metal case. Two of the weirstones rolled free from their settings and bounced across the floor like a child’s marbles.

The Rossin was tearing out the man’s guts while he beat with decreasing vigor on the pard’s head. Eventually he stopped altogether, and the Rossin gave him a final shake, as if he were a rat. With his jaws dripping in gore, the geistlord glanced at the machine. It appeared broken, but there was a familiar smell in the air.

It was the fetid air of the Otherside. Something was coming.

Leaving the corpse where it had fallen, the Rossin turned about and bolted back the way they had come. The cantrip doorway accepted the blood on his jaws, just as it had accepted Raed’s, and he flew through the stone as if it were paper and he a circus tiger.

Covered in gore, the Rossin landed in the infirmary. To say the lay Brothers were excited by his arrival would have been a grand understatement. They might be men of science and healing, but a blood soaked leonine form in their domain was quite a shock.

The Rossin took little note of the chaos that he caused. He did not hear the cries for help, nor see the lay Brothers rushing to remove their patients from his way. He had his senses locked on something else altogether, and his mind was racing over all the possibilities of what it could be. At best a simple rei, at worse the Murashev.

Gathering his hind legs beneath him, he raced from the infirmary, scattering lay Brothers, patients, and furniture in his wake. No one moved to stop him. He powered his way up the stairs of the citadel, still knocking humans aside. He didn’t have the time to stop and see if they were Deacons or not. Finally, he threw the door to the battlements off its hinges and sprang into the open air. Behind he could hear thumps and cries of outrage, but they were nothing.

Farther down the battlements, another door was opened and Sorcha Faris emerged. She looked paler than usual, and there was the stink of the Betrayer on her. The Patternmaker they called him; a geistlord who had thrown his lot in with the humans and taught them the runes to control his own kind. He would have given much to rid the world of that creature, but the Order needed him—at least for now.

Sorcha’s blue eyes, shadowed and bloodshot as they were, met his. Shock would have been an appropriate response, but she had been sharing a bed with his host for months—she had to have guessed that this time would come.

This Deacon knew a great deal more about him than the Rossin liked. Raed had whispered much into her ear, and she had informed him that the geistlord could talk. They had always thought him a killing machine—which he had been in the early days of his emergence—and he liked it that way. He had not wished to reveal any more to them.

The Bond between them had thankfully grown a little thinner, but he still could not be sure if she was inside his head or not. He would have loved to be inside hers. Her gaze flickered over the fresh blood and flesh still staining his mouth and face.

Sorcha opened her mouth, but then she stopped, as her gaze drifted away from his to the far side of the battlements. Only a fool would have missed the stench. The Otherside was here.

The Rossin roared. Perhaps whatever was coming through would think again and return to the Otherside. Unless it was a geistlord. Unless it was the Maker of Ways.

Both Deacon and geistlord stood on the battlements, mere feet from each other, as the tear appeared over their heads. The Rossin glimpsed the Otherside; darkness, swirling clouds, and a plain of endless torture. However, it was not a geist that slipped through—at least none he recognized. Instead it was a fine mist with no particular shape or form. It issued from the Otherside quickly, just before the tear sealed itself closed.

It twisted on itself like a fine scarf thrown into the wind and then moved away down the valley, southward. Strangely, it had not even bothered with the two of them.

The Rossin watched it go and wondered just what the Circle of Stars could be up to. A soft growl escaped his chest. Absolutely no good would come of this. He disliked the smell of it.

He heard the Deacon approach him, and she did so with not a hitch in her step to show any fear or trepidation. He swiveled his attention to her.

She was standing before him, and her gaze was curiously empty. This endgame was draining her. A mere human could not take all that she was being called on to do—even one as unusual as Sorcha Faris. The geistlord was abruptly worried that she might not survive—and he needed her. She still owed the Fensena a favor.

Her eyes darted over him, perhaps weighing him up in a similar manner. She took in the clumps of gore splattered all over his mane, jaws and throat. Then she reached out to the great cat. The Deacon had dared a similar gesture when they’d been inside the Wrayth hive, but then it had been accidental—this time she was very deliberate. He tensed, his back legs bunching.

Then Sorcha Faris’ spread palm came down on the spot between his nose. It rested there for a moment, buried in the fur and destruction.

“You found the traitor,” she whispered, and the Rossin flinched slightly. Everything was changing with the Otherside coming closer. How she had plucked thoughts and memories from inside his head, he did not know—but he most definitely knew he did not like this development.

She was very close to him, warm and full of blood. That was not the only thing though. His golden-slitted eyes locked with hers and for an instant he felt what she was feeling.

The Wrayth inside her, long quiescent, was stirring. The whispers of that hive-mind geistlord were a faint rattle in Sorcha’s brain, like dry leaves shifting on one another. Along the Bond they scampered toward the Rossin.

The great cat let out an outraged snarl and jerked back away from the human’s touch. Indeed, if he hadn’t needed her alive, he might have lashed out right there and ripped her to shreds. The Wrayth had been looking for a weapon, some way to draw all geists together under their dominion for generations. It looked like they finally had what they wanted.

The Rossin was now not sure who he should be more worried about: Sorcha Faris or the Maker of Ways. Her blue eyes didn’t leave him though.

“You hear them too.” It was not a question, and even a geistlord could feel the sadness and desperation in her voice.

The Rossin growled, low and deep, while his ears flicked backward and forward. The voices had subsided, but he had the feeling that they were waiting a very short distance across the Bond.

“Give him back to me,” Sorcha spoke to him. “Give me back Raed Syndar Rossin.”

He growled. He snarled. He even raised one paw threateningly, but she never blinked or moved out of the way. She simply stood there on the battlements, her red hair twisting in the wind like a banner.

“I will have my way,” the Rossin finally spoke, spitting out his rage. “When the Wrayth have torn you apart and made you their blade, I will still remain. I have always remained.”

She looked unmoved by his predictions, only watching him out of eyes full of shadows. This Deacon was so nearly lost, and he still needed her. For now, he would let her pretend she was safe.

The Rossin wrapped his power around him and returned to the depths.

Raed uncurled himself, feeling the wind cut through to his very bones. Before he could shake off the effects of the change, a cloak had been swung around him. He looked up and saw Sorcha standing over him, fixing shut the buttons on the clothing she had given him.

He caught at her hands and looked up at her. “How many times have you given me your cloak?” The Young Pretender was trying to make a joke, but her brows drew together.

“Many times, my prince,” she said, helping him to his feet, “but I think you have not noticed—this is not my cloak.”

He looked down and noticed it was a simple gray one.

“I have given mine up,” she said, “at least for now. I got this from downstairs for you though.” Looking up at her, Raed understood this was something deeper than a fashion choice.

The Rossin had dived deep, but left him the memories of what the Beast had done—for once it was something that he was glad of. He did not regret the blood spilled. That treacherous Deacon had caused the deaths of many good people two nights earlier. He clasped Sorcha’s hands and got to his feet.

Pulling her close seemed like the most natural and most important thing to do. A deep shiver ran through the Young Pretender’s body. He loved her so much, and yet he also knew that a dark path lay ahead. For a second he just concentrated on the feeling of her arms around him, and his around hers. Then he kissed her. Not the urgent, demanding kiss they had shared that first time in Ulrich, but one that lingered. He was trying to remind her that she had him—if nothing else.

Sorcha squeezed her hands around his neck, and then slowly, reluctantly pulled back from him. She pressed her forehead against his, making just enough space between them for the wind to enter.

Finally, he spoke. “The Circle of Stars knows we’ve discovered them. Since I—I mean the Rossin—killed their informant here, we have to move before they do.”

She sighed, but nodded. “I guess it had to come. I had hoped to stay here just a fraction longer, but you are right; we must move if we want to live.”

And despite it all he did want to live; to be with her and to fight.