by A. C. Cobble
“Aye, she didn’t tell you?” he questioned. “Thought she was your mum. Guess not, ey?”
Kalbeth spit at the man’s feet.
Rance peered around the angry seer, looking like he was prepared to use his giant muscles until he saw Oliver’s attire.
“M’lord,” he murmured, “the Lusty Barnacle is no more. This new place will be fit for a man like you. Come back next week, m’lord, and I’ll see you’re taken care of. Just ask for Rance at the bar, and anything you need, you’ll have.”
Kalbeth turned. “My mother has owned this place since I’ve known her. She’s never been away for more than a few days.”
“Where would they have gone?” asked Oliver.
Kalbeth stared back at him, uncertain, worried.
“How is the ministry?” asked Prince Philip.
Oliver grunted, pacing about the room.
“I’m told Isabella Child accompanied you north?” asked Princess Lucinda. “I suppose she is accompanying you many places, now? I have to admit I’m surprised.”
“Surprised she’s accompanying me or that I’m allowing it?” asked Oliver, glancing at his brother’s wife.
“I’m surprised you’re willing to settle down,” replied Lucinda. “Those ministers tamed you quickly.”
He kept pacing.
“Not that we don’t appreciate the visit,” said Philip, watching his younger brother stalk back and forth across the plush carpet, “but what are you doing here?”
Oliver stopped and sighed. “I was told a friend needed help, but now I cannot find her.”
“Can the inspectors assist?” wondered Lucinda.
“Not with this,” said Oliver.
“What? Then—” began Philip, but he was interrupted by a knock at the door. He called for it to open, and Herbert Shackles peeked in. Philip asked, “Yes?”
“There’s a wire off the glae worm transmission from Glanhow, m’lord.” The prince’s chief of staff walked in and handed a slip of paper to Philip. He glanced at Oliver. “How is my brother doing, m’lord? He was quite pleased at the appointment on your staff. Just three years out of university, he’s making our father proud.”
Oliver nodded absentmindedly. “Yes, yes, Herman’s doing quite well. A bit stiff, to be honest, but I’m sure he’ll come around.”
“Not all the Wellesleys have your, ah, casual demeanor, m’lord,” said Herbert with a wink.
Princess Lucinda rolled her eyes.
Philip looked up from the wire. “I don’t understand, Shackles. What is this saying? The fleet spied greenery in Northundon?”
The chief of staff shrugged. “I’m not certain, m’lord. As you know, nothing has lived in that city since the attack. The fleet claims there is vegetation sprouting near the keep. It looks to be encroaching on the walls, as well.”
“I don’t understand,” repeated Philip.
“I do,” said Oliver.
As the eyes in the room turned to him, he regretted speaking. He understood, but he would not explain it. Twenty years ago, Lilibet Wellesley had escaped. She’d lived in the Darklands since then, and the spirits had haunted Northundon, bound by her sorcery. Now that she was dead, the bindings were broken, and the spirits must have returned to the other side of the shroud. It hadn’t occurred to him with everything that had happened, but the logic was sound. Northundon was freed. She must have lied about her involvement. She was the one.
“The spirits are gone,” he said to his brother and the others. “I-I know it is true. We must go investigate. I will go investigate.”
“No!” said Philip. “It’s too dangerous, Oliver.”
Oliver grinned. His brother didn’t know that he’d been inside of the city while it had still been haunted. Philip didn’t know Oliver had confronted their mother. Oliver couldn’t tell Philip all of that, so instead, he said, “There’s no longer any risk. Besides, it is my duty. I am still the Duke of Northundon.”
Oliver had left messages everywhere he could think of that Sam might find them. He’d asked his brother to alert him if she turned up and said similar to Kalbeth and Andrew, but he couldn’t wait. Northundon was freed of the presence of the underworld. He had to see it. He had to walk those streets, to breath that air.
He leaned on the gunwale of the Cloud Serpent, watching as they crested the final ridge of the Sheetsand Mountains. Down on the other side, they would find the ruins of his childhood home, his duchy, the land he was to have been responsible for.
“It feels different than the last time we were flying up here,” mentioned Ainsley. She held a hand out, palm up, the bright spring sun reflecting on her pale skin.
Oliver nodded but did not reply.
No doubt sensing his mood, Ainsley left him alone, turning back to harangue her crew.
The bright sun, the specks of green strewn across the mountain slope below them, the knowledge that after twenty years, his home was no longer a haunted ruin. It should feel different. It should feel entirely different. This was an awakening, a rebirth. But it didn’t feel different at all. Yet again, he was flying north, searching for answers.
Half an hour later, they cleared the top of the range and began to sail down the other side, the shadow of the airship racing out in front of them. He filled his lungs with the salt air that blew in off the sea, rising in a column against the height of the mountain range.
To the west of them, Glanhow clung to the north coast of Enhover. After the fall of Northundon, it’d grown, serving as the primary fishing port in the province, but it’d never grown to rival Northundon’s old might. It would never be near the size of the large cities in the south. There was a stigma to the north, and no one from outside had ever been convinced to move there. Much of it was like the Coldlands, abandoned and empty.
But not dead. Not anymore.
As they sailed closer, Oliver could feel the pall of sorcery had been lifted from around his old home. He couldn’t explain it and wouldn’t mention it in front of the sailors as they had enough superstitions, but even before Northundon emerged from the haze of the sea air, Oliver knew they would find it empty of the spirits from the underworld. It felt warm despite the chill that remained in the air on the far side of the mountains. It felt full with the tentative thrust of new life. After two decades of hibernation, Northundon was ready to bloom.
“Set us down right outside of the city,” he called back to Ainsley.
She perked an eyebrow, as if to ask as if that was wise, but she held her tongue. The crew had seen enough in the Darklands that they would approach cautiously. Ainsley had seen enough that she trusted Oliver.
He smiled at the thought. After all that he’d taken her through, after all that she’d seen and overheard, she still trusted him. People were funny.
It was several hours before they came beside the tumbled walls of the city and lowered the airship to where Oliver and Ainsley could easily slide down to the ground. During that time, it’d become obvious that the city was changed, even to the untrained eyes of the sailors. The open space around the city was covered with a field of knee-high grass. The cracks between the fallen blocks of the city’s walls were filled with weeds, sprouting where they hadn’t been seen in decades.
As soon as their boots touched the soil, Oliver could see that light filled the streets instead of shadow. The place was abandoned, and it hadn’t felt the trod of a boot outside of his and Sam’s months before, but it was alive.
Ainsley, for two city blocks, kept her hands wrapped around the butts of her pistols, but as they progressed, she relaxed and released her weapons.
Desiccated corpses still lay where they’d fallen, and doors and windows gaped like the ruined faces of retired pit fighters, but there was no threat from within the dim interiors of the buildings, just the dusty scent of undisturbed air.
Unerringly, Oliver led Ainsley to the druid fortress at the center of the city.
“This is your home, eh?” asked Ainsley. “Where you grew up?”
&n
bsp; “Here and the palace in Southundon,” he responded, looking at the dark stone that formed the structure. “Mostly Southundon, actually, but my mother was from here, and this is where she spent much of her time. I would come visit in the summers and stay for a cycle of the moon or longer. In the winters, we’d visit and quickly leave. I think my father wanted to convince me the climate in the capital was far more welcoming. Of course, he still named me Duke of Northundon, so I suppose that wasn’t entirely it. Back then, I don’t think he ever imagined I’d be anything but the ruler of this place.”
“Hunh,” said Ainsley, staring at the huge building.
“With people on the streets and life inside, it was a more welcoming place,” he told her.
Walking in the open door, they stepped over the same corpses he and Sam had passed before. He followed the same steps that they’d taken, walking directly to his mother’s old garden. Without knowing why, he felt compelled to go there, to see it again.
Ainsley walked silently in his wake, looking curiously at the bodies and empty hallways. She muttered, “Now this reminds me of home.”
He looked back at her. She shook her head, unwilling to continue the thought. Her time before she had joined the royal marines was a mystery to him, and he allowed her that. He guessed her childhood had not been a pleasant one, and that was all he needed to know.
“Here,” he said, pointing at the ruined glass and iron doors that barred the garden from the rest of the building.
They were open, the glass shattered where he’d broken it. It seemed wind and weather had continued the assault, and there was more broken glass in the barrier than there was whole. Air, driven by the wind of the sea, blew steadily into their faces as they stepped outside.
The garden had exploded into a tangled mess of vegetation. Vibrant greens, bright orange and reds, flowers and herbs sprouted from long neglected beds, filling the air with their heady aroma. It was as if after twenty years dormant, the plants could not wait for full spring to burst into life. There was little of the manicured organization that he remembered from when his mother had spent time in the garden, but the return of life filled him with… He frowned. It filled him with nothing. There was no joy at seeing the garden back alive. He’d felt relief, walking through the streets and seeing that the city was free, but the garden itself meant nothing to him now. It was his mother’s place, not his, and she’d left it just like she’d left him and the rest of his family. It was alive and thriving but not because of her nurturing, but because she was dead.
He walked across broken tiles and growing weeds to the structure his mother had raised in the center of the garden. The skeletons were still there, still affixed to the pillars that they’d been chained to. The block of black stone, druid stone, was still there, with the corpse splayed across it. The obsidian lance still stuck straight up from the poor creature’s ribcage.
Who was it, he wondered? Who had died so that his mother could live?
The city, the building, felt warm to him, full of vigor. The keep itself seemed to bubble around them like a kettle on the fire, life and steam whistling out of it, unable to be contained, but the circular block of stone in the center felt cold. It retained some taint from the underworld. He did not know how, but without touching it, he knew it would be cooler than the space around it. It was foreign, unwelcome.
“Well, the spirits are gone,” remarked Ainsley, “though this is a rather grim scene to wake up to. You planning to move back in, to recolonize this place? First thing I’d do is take this out of here. Then, I suppose, all of those corpses we walked past.”
“I agree,” he said.
He knelt beside the circular block of druid stone and put his hand on it. The cold froze his palm, tried to seep up his arm, but he would not let it. He could feel it pushing, as if it was sentient. Some legacy of his mother’s sorcery was trying to maintain a grip from the other side of the shroud, trying to sink its claws into him.
Scowling, he pushed it back, pushed it down and away. There was a surge of resistance, as if he was sliding on an icy lake, unable to maintain his footing. Snarling, he gritted his teeth and imagined himself shoving harder, imagined the heat of the sun, the heat of the fortress, coursing through his body, and he flung the alien chill away, flung it back from where it came.
A grating crack split the air, and he fell back on his bottom, shocked at the noise.
Ainsley, cursing behind him, had already drawn both of her pistols.
Oliver stared at the circular block of stone, now split in two. The chains that had bound the skeleton crumbled into rust, and dry bones slid off to one side, falling gently onto the weed-covered lawn. Around them, the remains of his mother’s sacrifice fell to the dirt, the ties that bound the sacrifices vanishing. The obsidian lance collapsed into hundreds of tiny slivers, tinkling as they fell, forming a pile between the half-circles of the altar the lance had been stabbed into.
“Hells,” breathed Ainsley. “What did you do?”
“Now the city is free,” stated Oliver. “Now people can return.”
The Priestess XIV
Middlebury was a city of industry and movement. Bright steel ribbons spun out from it like the strands of a spiderweb, connecting it to the far-flung corners of Enhover. Middlebury’s factories and warehouses pumped goods into that network and supplied the nation’s domestic trade. In some ways, it was the heart of the thriving empire, and it wore its purpose proudly, the rail running along the surface, the factories employing the citizens of the place and intricately weaving into all aspects of their lives. With gleaming steel and billowing smoke from manufacturing, it wasn’t a place one expected to find secrets.
It was a contrast to Southundon, the capital of the nation, the place Enhover conducted its international affairs. There, the rail ran beneath cobblestoned streets and layers of soot. The merchants of the place met in the dusty halls of Company House and other restricted enclaves. They congregated in exclusive clubs that common residents of the city were barred from. Few understood how those wigged, pompous men built their wealth, how they leaned on the backs of natives in the colonies, and how they seized and exploited resources that they took through force. Secrecy, the backdoor deal and handshake arrangement, was Southundon’s stock and trade.
While Southundon operated outside of the view of the common man, Middlebury invited him in and asked him to work. In some ways, that was refreshing, though the economics of knowledge were law there just as anywhere. Whatever new technologies one factory owner developed would be spread like spilled milk throughout the industrial complex. Employees flowed between the buildings, met in the pubs, and spread what they knew. Industrial concerns thrived on knowing first and longest.
Few peers bothered with the frantic pace of innovation in Middlebury. The wealth there was new and volatile. The peers waited, letting others experiment, sweat, compete, and die. Then, the peers would purchase the properties of the winners. They would purchase it in silver and an open door into high society.
The peers maintained their supremacy by carefully expanding their population with the most innovative and industrious of the commons. They would tie that person into their network by titles, social connections, marriages, and business arrangements. In two generations, that new blood would be mixed thoroughly with the old, and the pressing need to innovate would be stifled. The new families would fall into line, wait for another exciting innovation, and then bring its creator into the fold the same way they’d been bought in. Like plants in the forest, new life burst from the detritus of the old.
Sam shook her head and sat down her ale. She was becoming rather intoxicated from it and from the smoke that billowed around Goldthwaite. The combination of the intoxicants and the weeks she’d spent sequestered with the seer were making her thoughts strange. She told the other woman, “That stuff is making me fuzzy-headed.”
Goldthwaite smirked. “A clear head is rarely an advantage in my line of work.”
“Decipherin
g the future or prostitution?” questioned Sam.
Goldthwaite shrugged. “Either, I suppose.”
“With your talents at sorcery and prognostication,” asked Sam, “why do you bother with the other? You could make a fortune dispensing truth.”
“Few people really want to know their future, girl,” claimed Goldthwaite. “They want to be told a story, a happy one. You can make some coin doing that, telling people what they want to hear, and sometimes it might even come true. Eventually, though, for most of your clients, it won’t. Something bad will happen, and they’ll blame you for not warning them, but worse is if you do tell them the truth from the beginning. Who wants to know that they’ll meet an early end? Who wants to know that their partner is cheating on them? Who wants to pay silver to hear their child is going to be a lazy degenerate, drowning themselves in ale and poppy?”
“You can see all of that from looking at someone’s palm?” asked Sam skeptically.
“I can see some of it from looking at their faces when they sit down across from me,” replied the seer. “When I do a reading, most often, I simply tell them what they already know. If they believe their husband has been sleeping with their sister, he probably has been. I just offer confirmation. They go on, not necessarily happier, but at least content they know what they thought they knew. It’s no sorcery. It’s just knowing people, and that is not so different from my other occupation.”
Sam nodded. Knowing people, knowing their desires, it’s what Goldthwaite did. Sam wondered, was it what the woman was doing to her as well? Was she simply telling Sam what she wanted to hear so that Sam left Kalbeth alone?
Goldthwaite, guessing or knowing what Sam was about to ask, waved the tube of her water pipe at the priestess, a streamer of thick, white smoke trailing in the air. “I can show you some truth, girl, and it won’t take long for you to decide for yourself whether or not you wanted to hear it, but what I will teach you is not some far-off promise. You don’t need to learn to read palms. You need to learn how to breach the shroud, how to command the spirits that lurk on the other side of it. You’ll know the efficacy of what I teach right away.”
