In Dreaming Bound

by J. Kathleen Cheney

  In Dreaming Bound

  An EQP Book / 2019

  UUID# 02EBBC45-5292-4D5B-AFC5-9BE60F76E8E1

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Copyright © 2019 by J. Kathleen Cheney

  Cover by Kate Marshall Designs

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

  For information contact the author at:

  http://www.jkathleencheney.com

  Editing and interior design by:

  EQP BOOKS

  The logo consisting of the letters “EQP” over an open book with power cord is a registered trademark of EQP BOOKS.

  http://EQPBooks.com/

  PRODUCED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  PRAISE FOR DREAMING DEATH

  “Cheney is very good at sensory detail, especially blind Shironne’s perceptions as she begins exploring Mikael’s world.” —Publishers Weekly

  “Dreaming Death is a book of mystery, magic, and overwhelming potential which promises more good things to come from J. Kathleen Cheney.” —The Speculative Herald

  “This imaginative new fantasy world is based on a tasty mixture of psychic talents and deadly magic.” —Kirkus, February’s Speculative Fiction You Can’t Miss

  The Palace of Dreams Novels

  * * *

  Dreaming Death

  In Dreaming Bound

  Forthcoming

  Dreams from the Grave

  Twilight of Dreams

  Related works

  Shared Dreams

  The Horn: Oathbreaker, Original, Overseer

  Special thanks to Michelle Muenzler,

  who gave this book its name

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Epilog

  Some Notes on the Families

  Cast of Characters

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  * * *

  MIKAEL LEE DREAMED of fear. Hands held him in the darkness, dragging him against his will. Unseen fingers touched him, determined to subdue him, spirit him away.

  He jerked awake, for a terrifying moment thinking himself still blind, until his eyes reconciled to the dark of nighttime. A sliver of moonlight slipped through the black draperies in his quarters. Terror beat through his thoughts, coupled with the desire to fight, to escape. His breath came in shallow, fevered gasps, inexplicable with nothing to fear here in his own quarters.

  Death—he usually dreamed of death. Only there had been no death this time, just the fear, which belied all the patterns he’d learned in the last ten years.

  Mikael heard whistling in the hallway beyond his room—the sentries’ way to show their annoyance over emotions out of control, leaking out to disturb others’ calm. He drew a deep breath, and then another, trying to subdue the racing of his heart. The terror at the back of his mind slowly stilled, like a wounded animal bleeding out and losing the will to fight for its life.

  Hands shaking, he sat up and located the matches on his chair. He lit the lamp on his desk, and the comforting flare of light reassured him.

  Even in the dim light, he could see bruises, blue-red against his fair skin. He stared at them, recalling the hands in his dream. He hadn’t been able to see those hands, but he’d felt them. His sympathetic injuries—normally when these arose from his dreams, they reflected those of a murder victim, someone tied to him in their moment of death, but there hadn’t been a death, not in his dreams.

  Only one person was tied to him in her waking moments—Shironne Anjir, her mind bound to his.

  Worried now, Mikael rose from his bed, opened the chest at the foot of the bed, and caught sight of his face in the small shaving mirror he kept there. The imprint of a strong hand mottled his jaw and cheek, as if someone had gripped his jaw to force his mouth open.

  “Mr. Lee, are you all right?” the sentry in the hallway called to him through the door.

  Mikael dropped the mirror on his bed and opened the door. The girl outside paused, her hand raised to knock again. Young, given that she’d drawn sentry duty on this hallway, probably one of the eighteens or nineteens. Inexperienced as well, based on the lack of trim on her black uniform jacket. Her blond hair was worn tied back in sentry braids—the style in which all the Lucas Family sentries wore their hair—making it harder for him to distinguish her from others. Not surprisingly, he couldn’t recall her name.

  “Are you all right, sir?” she repeated as he blinked numbly at her.

  A wave of nausea hit him. Mikael sank to his knees in the hallway, dizzy and sick. “No.”

  This isn’t mine, either. This was Shironne’s nausea, relayed to him. What was happening to her? Fear gripped him, his breath going short again.

  “Fetch a doctor,” the girl yelled at someone else down the hallway.

  Whistling started up somewhere in the stone hallways as his uncontrolled emotions bled out to terrorize the others. Another door opened, and someone else knelt before him, bare feet and faded black trouser legs.

  The newcomer’s hands gripped Mikael’s bare shoulders. “Get it under control, Mikael,” a familiar voice ordered—Kai. “Who died?”

  Mikael closed his eyes and counted out each breath. He closed his mind in on itself, folding in every trailing rag of emotion and sentience until he stood solitary in the darkness of his mind, where he could never be alone.

  She’s not here.

  She should be there, always there in the back of his mind. He was alone, completely and utterly, in a way he’d not known for years.

  “Oh Hel,” he whispered. Stomach-cramping panic washed over him, driving away the young sentry. Mikael batted away the hands on his shoulders, not caring if he hurt anyone, only wanting free.

  He forced himself to his feet and snatched up the mirror, studying again the finger marks transposed onto his own skin. They must have pried her mouth open for a gag perhaps, or a drug. A drug could make her insensible enough that he lost contact with her, couldn’t it?

  “What are you doing?” Kai stood outside Mikael’s door, arms folded across his bare chest in the cold. Kai had inherited his mother’s fair Family complexion, but otherwise looked very Anvarrid, tall and dark-haired. Just returned from a month’s retreat at a family home in the countryside, he was only staying on this hall because he and his new wife hadn’t decided yet where they would live. At the moment, Mikael merely wished Kai far away, so he’d not interfere.

  He grabbed a jacket out of the open chest and pulled it on without shirt or vest. His boots went on over bare feet. He couldn’t look at Kai’s ‘be sensible’ expression. “They took Shironne. I have to go find her.”

  For once, Kai chose not to arg
ue. “We’ll follow.”

  Mikael nearly escaped down the hallway before his heavy wool overcoat tried to swallow him, causing him to stumble on the edge of the beige runner. Kai had thrown it at him. Mikael sorted it out as he ran and nearly plowed into another black-clad sentry at the top of the stairwell. He managed to put his arms into the sleeves and pull up the hood as he jogged down the steps to the ground level of the palace.

  Designed by a people who’d foolishly transplanted their airy architecture from warmer climes, the place was always cold. In early winter the wide hallways were chilly, so it wasn’t much colder outside. Mikael pushed his way out the arched main doors of the palace, down the wide stair, and headed toward the wrought iron fence that surrounded the grounds.

  Running seemed the fastest way to reach the Anjir home; waiting for a carriage would drive him insane. The sentries sensed his over-loud urgency and cleared out of his way as he bolted across the palace grounds, past the sentry line, and out into the city. In the darkness of the city’s night, he crossed through the Old Town market square, stripped of its bright colors and noise in the moonlight. The snow confused his eyes, but Mikael knew the streets even in the dark and ran on. The cold stung in his nostrils, bitter as he ran in the overwarm coat. His breath came in great pale puffs of steam. The pounding of his feet against slick cobblestones gave focus to his thoughts, control where he’d had none standing still.

  At least he was doing something.

  In the darkness, Antrija Street looked much like any other, but Mikael recognized it and ducked into the alleyway, heading for the mews behind the house. As soon as he came into the back courtyard of the Anjir house, he could see faint lights from the upper floor, an oddity in the middle of the night. That chilled him more than the weather.

  The small stables were abandoned. At least two grooms should have been there, Filip Messine and Tossa Pamini, both of whom were actually army personnel, assigned by Colonel Cerradine to keep watch over the house.

  If they’re gone . . .

  Mikael licked his lips, calming himself. He’d never been inside the Anjir house before, but he knew which balcony was Shironne’s; he’d stood under it in the evening light a month before. That wouldn’t tell him how to find that room from the inside of the house. A servants’ door opened onto the courtyard, though, and that gave him somewhere to start. Mikael forced it in, suddenly aware that he’d left the Fortress without even a pistol.

  The door led into a kitchen, distinguishable in the dark by the scent of spices and flatbread. A sliver of light showed under the door to what must be a servant’s stair. Mikael heard muffled voices somewhere below but couldn’t locate the source without light. Instead, he skirted a table and headed up the stair to the floor where the family lived.

  A hallway led out on the dim second level, gaslights turned down for the night. Faint light came from two of the rooms, though. The first would be Shironne’s. That door stood open and Mikael peered inside. A single light had been turned up, and he saw a burgundy coverlet embroidered with gold thread that had been dragged halfway across the room. A table was overturned, the small glass containers that had once been atop it smashed on the floor. Mikael stood still for a second, grasping what he saw in this room. She was taken by force. He’d been right about that. Damnation!

  A whimper came from farther down the hall. Recalled to himself, Mikael followed the sound. The hall’s third door also stood open. Mikael entered the room and immediately dropped to the floor when he saw a pistol pointed at him.

  “Mikael?” a voice asked—Filip Messine. The younger man was compact and dark, and clearly of Larossan birth even if he’d been raised by the Family. He lowered the pistol and motioned for Mikael to come in.

  A few feet away from where Mikael crouched, a small Larossan girl lay crumpled against the wall as if thrown by a giant. Mikael went to her, recognizing her by description even if he’d never seen her before. This had to be the youngest daughter, Melanna, only eight or nine if he remembered correctly. The girl’s coarse reddish-brown hair straggled about her, and her nightdress showed a bloodstain at the neck.

  “Don’t move her,” Messine warned from across the room. “Not until a doctor gets here.”

  Mikael gazed at the broken girl as he rose. She was breathing, and he didn’t see much blood, so he guessed she could wait. He surveyed the room instead.

  The balcony door was shattered, glass sparkling in the flicker of the single gaslight, scattered across the wood floor and a fine rug. Someone had come into the room via those doors. A second girl lay in the room’s bed, whimpering. This was the elder of Shironne’s two sisters—fifteen or sixteen. Mikael couldn’t recall her name. Messine crouched by the bed, speaking to the girl as if she were a frightened animal, his voice soothing and low as he dragged a brightly embroidered coverlet across her. The girl’s mind spun out fear, shapeless and cloying, combined with guilt into a tapestry of horror and denial.

  To Mikael’s recently revived sensitivity, her emotions were jarring. This close to her, it made his jaw clench involuntarily. He forced her emotions to the back of his mind, focusing on his own concerns. “Where’s Shironne?”

  Messine pried something from the girl’s rigid fingers and slipped it into his pocket. “I don’t know where they took her,” he whispered. “They had a coach. Are you alone?”

  “Kai said he would follow me,” Mikael answered just as quietly. “What happened?”

  “I think you should try to find the others, sir,” Messine suggested. “Madam Anjir.”

  He offered Mikael the pistol, butt first. Mikael walked slowly over to the bed so as not to further frighten the girl. When he approached, she huddled into the bedclothes, a red-stained hand hiding her pretty face. This close, her anguish beat like a pulse through his mind.

  The gun felt cool in his palm, unfired. Messine hadn’t shot at anyone. It looked like he’d arrived too late. One bullet, then, if he ran into trouble.

  Mikael backed away, leaving Messine soothing the frightened girl. The kitchen, he reasoned, where he’d heard voices. He stepped back into the hallway and stopped to turn up the gaslights. Now that the hallway was lit, he could see the intricate floral wallpaper had been smeared with blood, where someone had stumbled against it, perhaps. Drips and splatters of blood showed that the victim had gone down the front stair into the entryway and escaped out the front door.

  It wasn’t Shironne’s blood. Mikael felt sure of that. His brief sense of her in his dream hadn’t carried a feel of injury beyond the bruising. No, this blood belonged to whoever had attacked the two younger sisters. Good.

  Mikael followed the servants’ stair down into the dark kitchen. There weren’t any gaslights in the kitchen, so he found the hearth by smell, then a box of matches. He located an old kerosene lamp on the wall and, once he’d lit it, he could see a short stair that led down to a cellar door. Someone had placed a bar through the door’s handle. Mikael pulled at it one-handed, trying to dislodge it. Voices yammered at him then, begging him to let them out.

  He put the gun into his coat pocket and wrenched the bar loose. The door opened abruptly inward into blackness. Mikael backed out of the way, hoping he’d chosen wisely.

  A young woman came up the steps, with teeth bared and grasping a broken shank of bone in one hand like a weapon—Kirya Aldrine, another of the colonel’s operatives. She took one look at Mikael and drew a shuddering breath. Fresh bruising flowered across her swollen left cheek, and blood colored that eye a bright red. “It’s all right,” she called down.

  The prisoners began straggling out of the darkness, another young girl—more delicate in build and demeanor both—and then a largish Larossan woman with a pugnacious jaw, her arm about Savelle Anjir, as if the lady couldn’t support herself. They were all dressed in nightclothes. Mikael suspected that proper Larossan women considered that state of dress inappropriate for strangers’ view, so he averted his eyes. The large woman half-carried Madam Anjir to the table and ordere
d her to sit down. Madam Anjir touched his sleeve though, drawing his gaze back. Her own eyes looked unfocussed, purplish bruises marked the side of her face, and her upper lip was split. “They took her, Mr. Lee.”

  He’d only met Madam Anjir once, but the woman knew of his connection to Shironne. “Who? Who took her?”

  Kirya Aldrine set herself between them, a more efficient presence. “Seven men broke into the house, sir, looking for Shironne.” She delivered that information as if reporting it to the colonel himself. She nodded in Madam Anjir’s direction and quietly added. “The one in charge said they would start cutting off her fingers if we didn’t cooperate. I didn’t see any choice.”

  Aldrine was here specifically to guard Madam Anjir, not Shironne or the other girls. Few people realized it, but those old enough to recall the gossip would remember that Savelle Anjir, wife of a scandal-touched Larossan politician, was a by-blow of the former king. As such, it wasn’t surprising that she was guarded. The king and his brother had both extended offers to recognize her as part of the Royal House of Valaren. That made the attack on this household all the more daring.

  “Any idea who they were? Who did this?”

  “We only saw the hired men, I think, Mr. Lee. They had paperwork, though. I don’t know how old, but her father clearly planned to have Miss Shironne committed back when he was alive.”

  Frost sank through Mikael’s body at those words. It was certainly possible Shironne’s father had done such a thing. The man hadn’t been fond of his eldest child who was not only blind and thus unable to contract an advantageous marriage—in many Larossans’ eyes, the only use for a daughter—but who also refused to enter the priesthood as was expected of a girl with talents like hers. Mikael drew in a slow breath through his nose, hoping it would calm him. “Which asylum?”

  “Sir?” Kirya had evidently been talking while his mind wandered, something about the men leaving them in the kitchen cellar and buying time. “I’m sorry, sir, but I didn’t get the name.”