by A. C. Cobble
“Yes,” agreed Director Raffles. “Bishop Yates expressed his interest in continuing the investigation in his conversation with me this morning. He’d like to find the source of this… ritual that Countess Dalyrimple was a victim of. The Church has no means to quickly send a representative to Archtan Atoll, and as you know, their presence in the tropics is not formidable.”
Oliver’s eyes darted back and forth between his brother and the director.
Prince Philip tilted his head, waiting on his brother.
“I’m to depart for the Westlands in two days,” Oliver mentioned. “There’s an airship being loaded with supplies as we speak. The men are already assembled. It’s a massive opportunity for the Company — the largest unexplored territory in the world!”
“The Westlands are not going anywhere,” replied Philip.
“We found levitating rock in Archtan Atoll, red saltpetre in the Vendatt Islands, fae lights and glae worm filament in the Southlands… I’m sure you are aware, there have been early reports of star-iron in the Westlands. There’s flora and fauna no one has ever seen before. We don’t even know the size of the territory yet, except that it is multiples larger than Enhover itself. The commercial opportunity is, well, it’s unprecedented.”
“Our flag has been planted on Westlands soil,” drawled the prince. “There is no nation with strength to contest our claim there. A month, two months, it will matter little in the life of our empire. The Company has plenty of sterling in its coffers. It can wait a little bit longer as well.”
“He’s right,” agreed Director Raffles. “The Company has existed for over a century — a small period compared to the Wellesley line, but a little delay isn’t enough to stop us! The opportunity is as rich as you describe, Oliver, but it is not going away.”
“What will come of the expedition?” asked Oliver. “We’ve already invested substantially in it, and while I agree the Westlands are not going anywhere, the sterling we’ve spent on that airship will. Financial commitments both you and I have made, Director.”
Director Raffles grinned. “You’ve become a true Company man, eh? Do not worry. The profit from the expedition will still be yours. Instead of the Westlands, the airship could be dispatched to Archtan Atoll with you on board. You’re our chief cartographer, a certainty for director the moment you are ready to settle down, and our only partner that shares blood with the royal line. Oliver, your personal gain will be delayed by this unexpected detour, but it’s not going away. The other directors have no desire to step in front of what we all believe is rightfully your opportunity.”
“Crown and Company, brother,” added Prince Philip. “It is part of our bargain as Wellesleys. We have great power, great wealth, great opportunity, but we also have great responsibility. You saw what happened in Harwick. You are part of the royal line and a shareholder of the Company. You’re the best man to go to Archtan Atoll and settle this matter.”
“Crown and Company,” grumbled Oliver. He set down his teacup. “Do you have anything stronger to drink, brother?”
The Priestess IV
The ring of the bells stifled their conversation and they sat back to wait. Three bells rung six times each to signify the start of the day.
“I don’t know how anyone lives near here,” complained Sam once the vibrations and echoes had faded from the soaring, stone-arched room.
“I lived here once,” reminded her mentor.
“Rarely.”
The old man shrugged. “It was a good home.”
“If you ignore the bells,” complained Sam, “and they do not treat you like this is your home. I’ve seen the way Bishop Yates looks at you. It’s as if he’s seeing a stray, mangy dog.”
Thotham grinned. “The bishop is a different generation from mine. To him, sorcery is about defying the Church’s rule. It’s an irritant, like the purported prophets of the One God you occasionally see in the market squares or a member of the peerage who decides they’d rather keep their sterling than tithe the Church. Gabriel Yates has never witnessed actual dark magic, even like what you saw in Harwick. He only half-believes it even exists. It doesn’t stop him from using it as a bludgeon during his sermons to scare the populace into hanging on his words, but sorcery does not frighten him. To him, it isn’t real. The Church has already eradicated the threat. It’s not even worth considering, and that’s what truly keeps the man up at night. If there is no sorcery, is there a need for the Church?”
“It’s not just Bishop Yates, though, is it?” asked Sam. “From the prelate down, the Church claims there is no more sorcery in Enhover.”
“They can make the claim because since the Coldlands War, no one has seen it. Do you think they are right?”
She frowned at the old man.
“What you saw was real, wasn’t it?”
“It was,” she responded. “You knew it would be, didn’t you?”
The old man bobbed his white-haired head. “I did.”
“Then why did you not go yourself? Why send me?”
“You are my apprentice. You have to learn,” he replied.
She snorted. “To instruct me, you have to be present. My mentor? It’s been years since that has truly been the case. Your increasing disappearances, your reluctance to answer direct questions… We can call you the mentor and me the apprentice, but is it still so?”
“It will always be so, Samantha,” answered the old man. He leaned back in the pew and looked up at the soaring arches that flew into the dark recesses of the sanctuary far above their heads.
Half an hour before dawn, the sanctuary was quiet. It was the quietest place in the building and the perfect place to talk. It wasn’t very comfortable, though. Sam shifted on the hard wooden pew, cursing whatever ancient church leader had decided that uncomfortable congregants were congregants more likely to pay attention. More likely never to return, she thought bitterly, but return they did. Return and return with tithings in hand.
“The time of my prophecy is nigh,” claimed Thotham suddenly.
Sam blinked at him.
Her mentor’s eyes remained up, scanning the blackness above them.
“You always told me to ignore prophecy,” she said, “that it is false more often than it’s true.”
He lowered his head and met her gaze. “It is false more often than it’s true, but what separates dream from prophecy? Future from the present? Truth from lie?”
“That sounds like some philosophical garbage to me,” remarked Sam. “Truth is truth.”
Thotham laughed, the sound of his mirth bouncing around the giant, empty chamber. “Fair enough, but I didn’t just train you to be a warrior, I trained you to be a thinker.”
“Wasting time by twisting words and avoiding my questions is not thinking,” retorted Sam.
Her mentor rubbed his hand across his face and glanced toward the narthex, where she heard one of the priests beginning preparations for the day’s worship.
“I had a dream,” he said, evidently deciding that whoever was there was not yet entering the sanctuary. For the moment, they still had their privacy. “I dreamt that there was a growing darkness, but not from the Darklands, not the Coldlands, not from some unexplored piece of the world, but from within Enhover. I dreamt sorcery would regain a foothold here, and it would spread to encompass the world. I dreamt of the dead here and in the underworld, rising like a tide that swept over the living. In my dream, that balance between life and death, between maat and duat, was permanently broken. Was my dream true? I do not know.”
Sam sat back in the pew, her arms crossed under her breasts.
“Most prophecies are false, Samantha, but some are true. In my dream, a seed from the tree of darkness will be our salvation. I could feel the importance of that idea, then and now. I wish I knew what that meant.”
She scowled at him.
Undeterred, Thotham continued, “Others have dreamed other dreams. Others have claimed other prophecies. Did those prophets truly believe what they
saw, or did they have doubts as I do? I do not know. I do not know if what I saw was merely an echo of some unknown fear I have inside of me or a reflection of the future. What I do know is that it felt true. It felt like I was seeing a possibility, a possibility of the end times, and because it felt true — and still does — I have dedicated my life to stopping it.”
“And my life, too,” complained Sam.
“And your life, too,” agreed Thotham. “Not fair, perhaps, to bring a girl of just ten winters into my world, to enlist you in responding to my dream, but I did.”
“You did.”
“I have no regrets, and I hope you have no sorrow. You missed having an ordinary life, but perhaps that is no great loss,” said Thotham, his violet eyes holding hers.
“I don’t know what I missed,” she said, her voice wavering. She drew a deep breath and brought herself under control.
“Life in the Church does not have to be as difficult as it is for us. The acolytes in the bishop’s church live comfortable lives, as long as they can avoid the worst of the priests. Your life was not easy, not easy at all. It had to be difficult, though, to make you what you are today, and I’m afraid, my girl, if you stay with this, it will not be getting any easier.”
“You want me to go to Archtan Atoll?” she guessed.
“All the clues lead us there,” he replied.
“Why do you not go?” she demanded. “If this is so important, you should be there.”
He shook his head. “I have other matters to attend to.”
“Other matters the bishop is directing you to?”
Thotham smirked. “The bishop does not direct me, but yes, he asked me to deal with something. I cannot travel to Archtan Atoll and do what he asked. There may come a day I will need to defy him, but I do not think it is today. Instead of directly refuting his authority, I will go behind his back. Specifically, you will go behind his back. Bishop Yates has no idea I am asking you to do this. It is my earnest hope he doesn’t even know who you are other than a name and a description on a report. We do not answer to that man. We answer only to the prelate, the cardinal, and the Council of Seven. There’s no need to remind the bishop of that until it is time.”
“The prelate hasn’t left the Church grounds in Ivalla in decades. The cardinal isn’t in Enhover and hasn’t been for years,” she argued, “and I’ve never seen the Council of Seven. No one else I’ve spoken to in this building acknowledges they even exist. All of these things you’ve told me… these things that no one else in the Church knows…”
“The bishop knows,” responded Thotham.
“Then why does he look at you like a mangy cur?” snapped Sam, letting the anger rise in her voice.
Her mentor laughed again. “He looks at me like a mangy cur because he knows.” Thotham stood from the pew and waved his hand around, gesturing to the giant hall that formed the sanctuary. “In here, in the administrative quarters, in this church complex, the bishop reigns. As long as the cardinal remains in the United Territories, there is no one he answers to. Except me. That, my girl, is why he hates me.”
She glared at her mentor, unsure if he was jesting with her.
“In the Church’s organization, the Council of Seven supersedes the authority of the cardinals. The Knives of the Council answer to no one but the council and the cardinals. The hierarchy of the Church, its rules, is its foundation. The Church is truth and order — maat — and that is the reason it exists as a guiding beacon for so many in this world. Life is unpredictable, but the Church is not. At least, that is what Bishop Yates and his ilk tell us. In our world, unseen by the masses, there is unpredictability and disorder, and we are meant to stop it. To do so, we cannot be restrained by bureaucrats and the chains of hierarchy. We must be free to act, so we are. We must be free to command resources, so we are. We must be free to ignore the restrictions placed on us by others, and we do. We, my girl, are why the ancient Church was formed.”
“That seems rather grand for a man who slept in a cell barely longer than he is tall,” commented Sam.
Thotham’s broad smile split his wrinkled face. “You will see, girl. You will see.”
“When?” she asked, keeping her arms crossed and tilting her head to convey her doubt.
“Soon, I think.”
“What are your instructions?” she asked, her voice clipped, her stare hard.
Thotham shook his head. “Maybe you were right. Maybe you are no longer my apprentice. Perhaps, like me, you are ready to be unbound. I will no longer command you, Samantha. You are free to do as you see fit.”
Her arms fell to her side and she looked at him uncertainly.
“You told me the clues lead to Archtan Atoll,” he hinted. “Do you want to pursue the thread and unravel this tapestry?”
“How would I even get there?”
“I should not have to tell you this, but I believe the easiest way would be to catch a ride with your new friend, the duke.”
“He’s going to the Westlands,” she muttered.
“Is he?”
“Is he?” she asked, pinning Thotham with another glare.
“He leaves for Archtan Atoll tomorrow,” answered her mentor. “If you want a ride, I would go about securing it this evening.”
The Cartographer V
“I’m still upset with you,” lilted Baroness Aria Child.
She kept her arm looped through his, but her lips were pursed in a tight pout. She lifted her chin, trying to look down on him even though he stood half a hand taller than the top of her upswept blond curls.
“You didn’t enjoy the performance?” asked Oliver. “I thought that man’s baritone was masterful, and the set pieces were beyond extravagant. Not even Bishop Yates had better seats than us.”
“The show was rather nice,” admitted the baroness. “I’m still upset, though, because you left before our last appointment so unexpectedly. Why, I had no time to arrange other plans and was forced to spend the evening dining with my sister. You can imagine what she spent the entire meal talking about.”
Oliver winced.
Supporting the baroness, he led them down the carpeted marble stairs of the theatre, listening to the bubble of conversation as the general admissions let out behind them. It had been a spectacular performance and a pleasant dinner before that. During the show, they’d sat alone in Prince Philip’s box. He hadn’t misspoken when he said they were the best seats in the house. It was the best he had in his arsenal, truth be told, and if it didn’t please the baroness, there was simply no pleasing her.
“My sister claims the two of you got rather drunk.”
He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye.
“She said it made you… adventurous,” continued the girl, “even more so than usual.”
He coughed and focused on his footsteps. It wouldn’t do, a duke and a baroness tumbling down the stairs of Westundon’s premier theatre.
“Shall we get drunk, then?” pressed the baroness. “I’d hate to think you would do such a thing with my sister but not with me. It would make me feel, well, that you preferred her company. That isn’t true, is it?”
“No, of course not, Aria,” he mumbled. “Ah, you know I leave tomorrow, right? At dawn. There’s an airship already loaded and two score men will be waiting on me…”
“To Archtan Atoll, I know,” she said, stepping off the broad stairs, the heels of her shoes clicking on the glossy floor. She tugged him toward the towering, iron-framed glass doors of the theatre. “You should have a little fun tonight before you leave civilization.”
“I’m sure Winchester will fetch us a nice bottle or—”
“No,” she said, turning to face him. “I want you to take me out. Take me somewhere exciting, where I’ve never been. Get me drunk, and then have your way with me!”
Oliver flushed and hoped the approaching horde of well-dressed theatre goers descending the stairs behind them couldn’t hear the pretty blonde’s demands. Wondering if he was getti
ng old, the duke reluctantly led the girl out the doors and took her past the line of waiting carriages.
“We’re… walking?”
“You wanted exciting, didn’t you?” he asked.
“I’m in heels,” she squealed as he stepped off the curb into the cobblestone street.
“We’re not going far,” he assured her. “If necessary, I’ll carry you.”
That quieted her down. He noted the sly smile on her lips and escorted her through traffic to a noisy pub across the street and half a block from the theatre. It was brightly lit and quickly filling with revelers who poured out of the show. Catering to the wealthy clientele of the theatre, it was likely the cleanest pub in all of Westundon, but he hoped the baroness wouldn’t know that. He was counting on the hope that neither of Baron Child’s twins had ever seen anything resembling the inside of a public pub before.
The crowd parted unconsciously as individuals saw who he was. With little effort, he led Aria through the packed room and found an open table on a raised dais that was normally home to musicians when it wasn’t a night of the theatre. From the table, they could look out over the crowd and see through the tall windows that lined the front of the shop.
He deposited her at the table and was about to turn to elbow to the bar and order drinks when he looked down and saw Aria lean back in her chair, stretching her body cat-like. Her full-red lips were curved in a lascivious smile, contrasting with the milk-white shoulders that peeked into view as she let her shawl slide down. Her breasts were well-supported and half-exposed in the form-fitting gown she wore.
Sighing, he turned and waved toward the bar. The place likely didn’t have table service, but he was a duke, and it only took a moment for a barman to come scurrying out to their table.
Settling himself across from the baroness, Oliver ordered, “Two white… You know what? Bring us a bottle of your best sparkling wine. Chilled, please, and with clean glasses.”
“Of course, m’lord,” said the man, proffering a deep bow before rushing away.
