“You’ve stopped again,” Brand complained. “This shit is getting old. Is this how you always work when I’m not around? Did you find a sofa?”
“I put the go-ryo to rest.”
“I thought it wasn’t attacking?”
“It wasn’t. I used a spell Lady Priestess taught me.”
“Why didn’t you save it for something that was attacking? You’re not even inside the mansion yet.”
“I just wanted to see if I could do it.”
Through the Companion bond we shared I felt the echo of his emotions. Anger. Resignation. Maybe a little shame.
“Rune, you’ve got eight sigils,” he said carefully.
“I do.”
“You wasted one of them on something that wasn’t even a threat. That’s . . . I know you’re upset, but you don’t have the luxury of wasting spells.”
Most scions stumbled through life with an armory of sigils behind them. My own ragtag collection was small. “I’m here,” I said, floating up to a weathered green door draped in rose vines.
“I can change the subject back just as fucking easily, you know.”
“If I run into trouble, I’ll abort. I won’t take any risks. I promise.”
“You’ll abort if our connection fails, too.”
“And I’ll abort if our connection fails,” I agreed. “I’m heading in.”
We owed this approach to Max, our teenaged ward.
A couple weeks back—insisting he wanted to be more useful to us—he researched old, undigitalized blueprints of Sun Estate in the New Atlantis Archives. He discovered that a structure we’d always assumed to be a shed was actually the entrance to a back stairway that led straight to the smallest attic. In all the decades since Sun Estate fell, I’d barely made forays into the first two floors. I’d never got as far as the attic level. The very nature of the estate’s haunting limited my excursions to only a handful of minutes.
The back stairway was both a plus and a minus. On one hand, it gave me direct access to an unplundered level. On the other hand, while I was in it, I was more or less boxed into a fifth-story coffin.
Excepting Lady Priestess’s spell, I’d filled my sigils with some of my more aggressive magics. I was confident I could get out of a tight spot, but smart enough not to be cocky about it.
The warped, peeling door cracked open with a tug. Autumn sunlight fell into a narrow space, tangling in spider webs and clouds of dust. I murmured a cantrip—a quick, common form of magic—and a ball of butterscotch light manifested above my head. I sent it up a flight of rickety stairs that were nearly as steep as ladder steps.
Other than my sigils, my most powerful weapon was my sabre, one of the few weapons I retained from my childhood. It was currently curled around my wrist in the shape of a wristguard. I shook my hand, and the wristguard softened and stretched, scraping over my knuckles. I shaped it into a sword hilt. As it settled in my palm, I extended a blade of garnet-colored metal. Innate fire magic made it spark with fat, drifting embers.
“Still with me?” I asked, as I used the sabre blade to burn the cobwebs from my levitating path.
“Still with you. Any beasties?”
“No.” I peered upwards to where the stairway switchbacked. “If this works, we may have to start paying Max an allowance.”
“Let’s see what’s in the attic first. If we’re taking this risk for an armful of old National Geographics, I’m going to be pissed.” There was a pause, and Brand swore softly. “I’ve got movement from the drone.”
“The what now?”
“I bought a drone.”
I stopped floating up the stairs. “You’re spying on me with drones too?”
“Are these really the questions you need to be asking right now? There are ghouls in the orchard. Doesn’t look like they know you’re here, though. And I’m not spying on you, I’m watching your back, you ungrateful shit.”
“I can’t believe you bought a drone without telling me. How much did that set us back?”
“Well, I bought it at the discount department store down the street, not the one in 19-fucking-89. Do you even know how cheap drones are now?”
I continued floating up the stairs, slowing at all the turns. The blueprints were right so far; there was no access to any other floors. “Attic door ahead,” I breathed.
“The ghouls still aren’t moving. I’ll keep an eye on them. Sound off every thirty seconds, okay?”
“Roger.” I tried to open the door open-handed, but it was jammed in the frame. “I’m touching down. I can’t do this while levitating.”
“Roger,” he said back at me.
I drew the Levitation spell back into me, and lowered to the ground. As I connected with the dusty floorboards, I kept my senses—my willpower—extended, trying to see if anything had reacted to my presence. Nothing pinged. I put my hand back on the doorknob and applied my shoulder. The top panel made a brittle splintering sound, but I was able to scrape the door halfway across the threshold.
A home as big as Sun Estate had more than one attic. This was the west wing’s attic, above the family suites. Brand and I had had rooms on the third floor, once upon a time. My father had opted to occupy a tower on the other side of the compound. I’d heard my mother had lived in this wing, too; but she’d died before I was even capable of conscious thought. I had little of her in my life, not even a memory. Just a sigil shaped into an antique, yellowing cameo necklace.
The attic was at least a hundred feet wide. It was the smallest of them, but you could have still stacked ten of my current bedrooms side by side, with space to spare. It wasn’t sectioned—just a wide, cavernous space rising to a crossbeamed peak. The hardwood floor was littered with dirt, animal scat, and mice skeletons. The walls were shadowed with water stains. Mother nature hadn’t been as hard on the roof as I’d feared; there were no outright holes.
I wondered if the estate would ever be anything other than salvage. The effort to reclaim it was so far beyond my current resources, I didn’t even know the shape such a recovery would take.
“Did you find another goddamn sofa?” Brand asked.
“No. Just checking for exits.”
“Sure you are.”
“Three doors. The one behind me; the one that leads down to the fourth floor; and the servant stairs. The servant stairs are blocked. Looks like a beam fell. See. I was checking. Tell me you’re impressed.”
“Not everything you do needs to be stuck on the refrigerator with a fucking magnet.” But I sensed a warm flicker of approval through our bond.
I whispered a cantrip to send two more balls of light above my head, and ran a gaze across the sparse clutter. There didn’t seem to be much except two rows of cedar wardrobes, likely for seasonal clothes. I went to the first one and tested the door. It opened in a waft of worm-eaten wood and mothballs. Winter jackets—expensive felts and furs—were arranged on cedar hangers.
“Clothes. Many clothes,” I said. “We need a coat for Max, don’t we?”
“We’re not risking your life for a coat.” He paused. “Is my old leather jacket there?”
“The one that made you look like an extra in an ‘80s action movie? With lots of power ballad soundtracks?”
He ignored me. “Any chests or strongboxes?”
“Oh, tons of them. I just decided to check out the coats first.”
Then I reached the end of the wardrobes and saw three cast-iron, fili-greed chests. They could literally have been a Wikipedia picture in an article on buried treasure.
“You just found chests, didn’t you?” Brand said.
“Three of them. It looks like there are . . .” I bent down and looked at the latch. There wasn’t a traditional lock, just a shallow indentation on a deceptively fragile clay disc. “Bloodline wards. They’re sealed with bloodline wards.”
My mouth went dry. Bloodline wards were expensive ways to seal family secrets. I can’t imagine any of my father’s people using them, and it was my family attic.
Which meant these chests likely belonged to my father.
“Wait!” Brand said, as I transmitted my sabre back into a wristguard, to free up my hands. “Could they be trapped?”
“I’m not sensing any. Just the ward. Why trap it? Only someone keyed to the bloodline can even open it. I’m going to try.”
“Be careful.”
I put my finger on the clay disc. The hard surface seemed to warm and soften. I pulled my finger away, and saw that the clay retained the oils of my fingertip. I heard—or felt, really—a whirring. The chest clicked.
“It worked,” I breathed. I put my hands on either side of the chest, and pushed the lid up.
The air inside was not stale. It smelled, for just a moment upon release, like the last person who had sealed the ward, and the last day on which it had been sealed. Freshly cut grass and rosewater cologne.
I gently ran my hand along the top of the contents. There wasn’t much. No precious gems, or stock certificates, or bars of gold. Yet for all that, it was a treasure of sorts.
There was a strange sort of pillow, with a belt-like elastic strap. There were crisp, sepia photographs. Some beaten brass jewelry—old, old things, from the days when metal was as rare as diamond. They didn’t have the tingling hum of sigils, though. I experienced a brief, stuttering disappointment. What would it have been like, to open a chest filled with sigils?
“Rune?”
“Just . . . mementos, I think. And some old jewelry. I only opened one chest.”
“You should open another. You can come back for mementos another time. Shit. The ghouls are moving. I’m firing a distraction. Get ready to run, just in case.”
From my crouch, I shuffled to the next chest, but only after I pocketed a couple pieces of the jewelry.
“Launched,” Brand announced. He’d come armed with a grenade launcher filled with flesh-bombs we’d borrowed from Lord Tower’s head of security, Mayan. Flesh-bombs had as much stopping power as water balloons, but were filled with bits of blood and fat from the butcher shop. They hit the ground and created a very intoxicating blast radius for things that didn’t get fresh meat often. “They’re pulling towards it. You’ve got to start making your way out.”
“Just let me check the other two chests,” I said. I disengaged the next bloodline ward, and opened the lid. Snow? It smelled like snowfall. And . . . ambergris cologne?
My father’s scent. The flesh on my arms tingled. I flexed my fingers nervously, as if they’d gone numb.
Inside were stacks of clean, manila folders. The tabs were numerically coded.
I picked a few at random and fanned them open. Copies of property deeds—long since irrelevant, in the aftermath of my court’s fall. Copies of reports from the Arcanum.
A photograph fell from the third folder. It landed faceup. My brain had trouble making sense of what I saw, because it was Brand, but he was much older than we were now. And then I thought that maybe the picture had been age-progressed, which also made my brain hurt, because it was a stupid thought.
I picked up the picture and realized I was staring at a photo of someone related—biologically related—to my Companion. I thought I was looking at a photo of his father.
I opened the folder.
Reports from private investigators. Medical records. Birth certificates. Addresses.
“What’s happening?” Brand demanded. “Rune, you’re freaking out. Tell me what I’m feeling.”
“I . . .”
“Rune!”
I shut the file and took a shaky breath. “It’s okay. Just . . . a lot of pictures. There’s a picture of my father.”
I hesitated for a moment, then kept the file before sealing the chest shut. I shoved the file down the back of my pants, and pulled my shirt over it.
“We . . .” Brand trailed off. He wasn’t very good at verbalizing sympathy. “I know it’s tough. But you don’t have time to linger. Pull out.”
“Roger,” I said, and leaned over to shut and seal the first chest too. It wasn’t a good angle, though, and I pinched my finger in the lid. Swearing, I shook my hurt hand, just as blood began to well from the cut.
“Oh shit,” I said.
I could almost feel the house vibrate. It was not a physical sensation; it was just the way my willpower interpreted the stirring of spirits. The ghouls outside were very suddenly the least of my problems. There were things inside the house that smelled my blood, and now knew I was there.
“I cut my hand,” I said, springing up. “It’s bleeding. I’m not going to be alone for long.”
“Extract,” Brand ordered.
“Tell me twice,” I said, running for the stairs. I squeezed through the half-open door and began to skip, sideways, down the steep steps, the better to keep my balance. At the first switchback, I came to a dead stop. My magical senses were useless—I’d stirred up too much activity to spot any single threat. But my normal senses told me all I needed to know. From somewhere below me—and not far—came ragged breathing. There was a gentle scraping sound, like broken fingernails running along wood grain.
If I needed another sign, spiders and beetles began skittering up the stairwell, disappearing into the safety of the attic.
I ran back upstairs with them. I could hold my own in a firefight, but the mansion couldn’t. Needing to blow a hole in the stairwell wall would only hasten the ruin.
Since the servant stairs were blocked, I jogged toward a larger stairway that led down one floor, transmitting my sabre back into hilt form as I did. I ran through the floor plan in my head, the memory of it cleaner and brighter than the reality of the molding wallpaper and rugs. At the bottom of the steps, a wide hallway lined with tarnished light fixtures led in two directions—a small schoolroom and chapel on one end; a desanctified sanctum and conservatory on the other end. I started toward the conservatory. There were windows there, a good egress.
As I passed the larger stairway that led to the third floor, a wight crawled up the rotting green runner.
Wights were decaying corpses, undead creatures that enjoyed a sort of painstakingly conditional immortality. They survived as long as they fed. The abandoned estate had no shortage of vermin, though, and the wight had eaten recently. Blood smears from a messy feeding had rejuvenated whatever skin it touched. The decaying monster had smooth, red lips; a single dimpled cheek; and one clear green eye opposite a shriveled socket.
It saw me, and sprang.
I ran a finger across my white gold ring, releasing the Fire spell I’d stored in it. I threw a sphere of superheated air in front of me. The wight passed through it, and its hair and clothing burst into flames. It hit the ground in a panicked roll.
“Wights,” I said, before Brand could ask. “If there’s one, there will be more. I’m going out a window.”
“Go,” Brand said.
I ran for the conservatory, hearing coughing gasps from the stairway behind me as more wights closed in. The hallway veered left, and brightened with a tepid gray light. Through a doorway ahead, I spotted a bank of dirt-stained windows. One out of every three panes was broken and covered with dead ivy.
Before I could cross the threshold, my foot broke through a bad floorboard. I managed to recover in a roll while brushing fingers across two of my sigils—my gold ankle chain, the circlet attached to a leather strap around my thigh. The sigils’ stored spells flooded loose. Flight and Shield—their release balancing into a gassiness crossed with a bright, fractal light that shimmered around my body. I drew the Flight magic into me for later use, and let Shield sink into my body with a warm glow.
I shifted Fire into my sabre hilt, bolstering its own innate fire magic, so that when I shot the nearest wight with a firebolt it had the potency of a blowtorch flame. It went through the creature’s head and it dropped like an emptied sack.
Six other wights, including the one I fought first, were crawling over each other in a seething, cautious approach.
I shot one in the heart; another through the mouth.
More wights staggered from the bend in the corridor, joining the mob.
“The ghouls are moving toward you now,” Brand said. “They know you’re there.”
“Almost out,” I said. There were too many wights for combat. I scooted back from the threshold, into the conservatory proper. With a raised hand, I peeled the Shield magic from my body and threw it across the open doorway, fastening it to the worm-eaten wood.
I’d have to make my exit from this room. Easy enough. Walls were just a suggestion, really, when you were strong enough to blow them apart.
I ran a finger across my emerald-diamond ring. The Shatter spell slid loose, vibrating along my fingernails. I studied the bank of windows as I walked toward them, hand outstretched. The broken panes had already done enough weather damage; fingers of mold and fungus spread from the openings.
Behind me, the wights beat against my Shield. Their blows made faint crackling sounds.
Lifting my arm, I punched through the wall with Shatter in an explosion of brick and metal and vine. Glass shards sparkled in the light of the rising morning. In the smoking aftermath, fresh air seeped into the room, and I walked to the opening I’d made.
Before I reached it, someone coughed.
Sitting at a leaf-strewn desk at the back of the room was a wight, a very old one. Its posture was prim and unnervingly proper, as if it waited to conduct a lesson. It possessed a vanity unusual for wights—it had spread blood across its entire face, restoring it to a full, mocking beauty. Violet eyes narrowed at me.
It launched itself with the speed of a bullet.
I barely had time to pivot. It landed on the wall, clawed hands and fingers digging into the soft wood. I sent my willpower into my sabre. The garnet blade extended. The Fire spell made it burst into flame, setting floating dust afire.
I ducked under its next leap, bringing my sword in a backhanded slice. A line of fire cut across the creature’s rags. It shrieked and hit the ground in a crouch. Before I could regain my balance, it jumped at me. Its claws raked along the sleeve of my jacket. The wards in the leather held; but the wight’s nails created deep, bleeding wounds along my wrist and the back of my hand.
The Hanged Man Page 2
