She turned back to him slowly. He had reclined once more, wearing a smug look.
She struck him in the face, as hard as Marie could muster. Bless the woman for a life of hard work in the fields of Oreste, and a frame well built enough to deliver a solid blow. She knew from the way his head snapped back, eyes rolling up into his skull, that she’d produced the desired effect. Without waiting for further confirmation, she gathered her skirts and fled the tent.
The sounds of an army camp on the cusp of a march came to life around her when she emerged through the flaps. Couriers made their way between the tent lines even while the tents themselves were being struck by soldiers and camp followers alike. Thank the Gods for the chaos of it; on an ordinary day she’d never have escaped a general’s tent unnoticed. As it was she fell into the familiar stance of urgent, deliberate movement, the old scout’s trick of moving among enemies by hiding in plain sight. For Marie’s sake, she would try to find someplace in the camp, somewhere she could hide and perhaps make an escape in the rush of what would come. There. A wagon ahead, at the edge of the camp, near the tree line, already loaded with tents and provisions, only awaiting a team to arrive to be hitched to drive it. She’d make for the wagon and slip among the cargo. If the Gandsmen succeeded in breaching the barrier, Marie could stow away and escape once they crossed into Sarresant territory. And if not, the wagon was near enough to the edge of the camp that she could make for the wilds. It was unlikely the enemy had sentries posted here—little need for that, considering.
A slim chance in either case, but preferable by far to another minute in the company of the monster in command of the Gand army. Ignoring the soldiers who moved through the camp paths around her, she affected not to notice the few stray curious looks she drew as she moved toward it. Gods be praised, none of the soldiers did more than look. She’d be at the wagon momentarily …
The Need binding withdrew, and her vision snapped back into her own skin.
“Chevalier-General!” one of the priests cried, shaking her arm.
“What is it?” she demanded, voice flush with anger as she shook loose the brown-robed man’s grasp.
“Chevalier-General, it’s begun.”
Even without seeing the Shelter bindings, it was clear the priests had not been able to blunt the onslaught of Death from the Gand binders. That had been her plan: to rebuild the barrier as the Gandsmen tore it down, to trap the enemy army in the savage wildlands after they exhausted their reserve of Death. Yet now the swirling haze of the Great Barrier had paled to a thin white, almost pink hue. Where the color normally rushed with patterns like inks dripped down a page, it had slowed to a crawl, hardly moving. The priests focused as they stared up at the barrier, but the sweat dripping from their brows, the pained lines on each of their faces made clear the toll it had taken.
“Brother Antonin, Sister Jolene, the top-left quadrant,” Sister Elise called. “Now!”
A ripping sound filled the air from high above as trails of blue haze vented out over their heads.
One of the priestesses shrieked, sinking to her knees before she slumped over onto the ground.
“No!” Sister Elise shouted. “Brother Marc, cover for her!”
Erris wasted no time, rushing to the side of the fallen priestess. She tethered thick strands of Body, purging the woman of every lingering bit of fatigue in her system, all save the exhaustion of working with the leylines, the deep exhaustion beyond her ability to heal.
Erris shook her head. “This one is out, Sister.”
Sister Elise managed a few curses, the sort of which only a priest could know.
“It’s going,” called one of the men. “I can’t—”
Another sound like a sheet torn in half, still far overhead. Nothing close to the ground, nothing low enough for troops to pass through, thank the Gods.
Sister Elise turned to her, a look of panic in her eyes.
“Sister Elise,” Erris said to her, “the lives of every man and woman in New Sarresant depend on you. Is there any more that can be done?”
“I … there are so many. I need more strength. I need …” She trailed off, shame welling up in her eyes.
Erris nodded. She’d been preparing herself for this for the last hour, watching Sister Elise and her priests losing their struggle to repair the barrier. They couldn’t stop the Gandsmen breaking through. No sense in dying here for the sake of pride, not when their horses might be able to speed them away with whatever measure of strength remained to them.
The order to withdraw formed on the tip of her tongue, and just as suddenly turned to ash.
Need.
A glimmer of light sparked and bloomed in Sister Elise, standing across from her. Perhaps if the other woman could not muster the strength required, Erris herself could step in and lead their effort.
She embraced the light, and felt her vision leap into the other woman’s skin. She whirled about, ignoring the disorienting feeling of watching her body through another’s eyes.
“Focus,” she cried in Sister Elise’s voice. “We must stop them!”
The rest of the priests started, but seemed to take heart from her unexpected words, knotting their faces in grim determination. Erris closed her eyes, shifting her vision to the leylines.
It was as if she saw another world.
In place of the familiar greens of Life, the red motes of Body, and the ink-clouds of Death, she saw only one, new pattern: white spheres like links of pearls, wrapping themselves around the leylines emanating from beneath the Great Barrier. Shelter. Breathing deep, she opened herself to the new energy, aiming to tether a full-strength binding, with all the power she could handle.
Nothing.
She tried again.
Nothing.
Her heart sank. Was this it, then? She could see the Shelter bindings through Sister Elise’s eyes, but could no more tether them than if she had tried while wearing her own skin. Perhaps there was some technique, some trick to Shelter that differed from the leyline energies with which she had experience. Perhaps …
No.
If there were such a technique, she didn’t have time to learn it now. She faced the cold reality of it like a blow to the gut. She let the Need binding fade.
“What was—?” Sister Elise sputtered, in control of her own body once more.
“I will explain later, Sister,” she said. “For now, we must ride.”
“It was as if I … such strength …”
“Move!”
The other woman blinked, then nodded. She turned to give instruction to the priests as Erris rushed to their makeshift horse line to retrieve their mounts. Jiri snorted in frustration, sensing her rider’s mood. Erris shifted her vision to bind Body through Jiri to energize her for the ride ahead—and she froze. Body was there in abundance; it was always so in the wild, where beasts hunted beasts, and they were near an army camp besides. But there was more. Strands of pearls, white pearls along the lines where always before she had seen only hazy, formless strands of energy.
Shelter. The same energy she’d seen moments before, behind Sister Elise’s eyes.
She tethered it, feeling it surge through her with all the force she could manage. The Great Barrier now rose before her in an entirely new light: Instead of formless energy coursing over swirls of ever-paler color, she could see the strands themselves, being ripped apart by the Death bindings of the Gandsmen. In anger, she tried desperately to rebuild the patterns as she saw them torn down. She could see similar efforts now, where the priests continued their struggle to maintain the barrier’s strength.
“Sister Elise!” she called, even amid the distraction as she worked. “Do not stand down. I’ve found a means to aid you. We can stop them!”
If the priestess made any protest, she didn’t hear. It was enough that the rest of the priests maintained their efforts. Erris lost herself in the struggle, pouring all her energy into rebuilding wherever the enemy tried to destroy. Where before the barrier had paled,
its color seemed to stabilize. If they could hold on like this …
One of the priests cried out, drawing her attention back to the clearing in which they stood. A sickening feeling gripped her as she realized the cause: Another of their number had collapsed under the strain, the exhaustion taking a toll beyond his ability to maintain.
“No,” she cried. “Hold on!”
They tried.
Another priest crumpled to the ground, and the white strands of Shelter began to slip once more.
Moving as fast as her senses allowed, she focused all of her will on the strands of the barrier. She tethered Body to speed her reflexes, and Life to sharpen her vision. And though she was untrained with Shelter, she was a fullbinder with more raw strength than any four half-trained priests. She sensed a crack forming in the wall and snuffed it out, pouring Shelter into the holes left by the enemy’s use of Death.
She missed one. A fissure erupted above, a gash like torn cloth ripping in the wind.
She grit her teeth as she worked, pouring herself into each moment. The other priests worked around her, with Sister Elise barking commands in response to Erris’s efforts. A crack welled up near the base of the wall, and she fought it down in a fury. But she missed another seam torn out above, cracking and breaking in a rush of wind. The barrier seemed to groan, as if the entirety of the wall bent in on itself.
And then it stopped.
In a moment, her efforts went to repairing and strengthening the barrier instead of staying one step ahead of the Death trying to rip the wall apart. It was as if the enemy had abruptly ceased his attack, and in mere moments the worst of the ripped seams knotted themselves together as if they had never been breached.
Only then did she realize the ink-clouds of Death were gone. Empty. The enemy had run out of prisoners to kill.
Her mood soured even in the moment of triumph.
“Is that it?” one of the priests asked.
“General?” Sister Elise looked to her.
She met their eyes, seeing a reflection of the exhaustion she felt caked into her bones. She nodded.
A whooping cry went up among the priests still standing.
“Rest now,” she said. “And prepare ourselves for the enemy to try again.”
Whatever celebration had been coming, it died with those words. She saw in their eyes a halfhearted protest, perhaps thinking their part was finished. Still, at that moment an order to rest was not like to be disobeyed. Most of the priests dropped to sit where they had stood, grateful for reprieve, however temporary.
That it would be temporary she had no doubt. Whoever that creature was, the strange, cold man who had spoken to her behind golden eyes in the Gand command tent, he’d ordered hundreds of innocents slain to fuel his plans. He would not balk at ordering his own soldiers slain for Death once his binders were rested enough for another attempt.
She slumped to the ground at Jiri’s side. Her mount had already given in to sleep, too weary to remain standing. She felt the same exhaustion washing over her. She needed a week’s rest, and she might have a few hours, if the Gods were good.
Golden light woke her, and she gasped, bolting upright quick enough to startle Jiri as she rose.
Too long. She’d slept too long. The sun’s light dimmed in the west, above the Great Barrier. Panic flooded her before her vision focused on the barrier’s swirling haze. It stood, thank the Gods. Somehow it stood.
“Up,” she barked, rousing the priests arrayed among the trees. They’d slept as she had, exhausted from the ride to reach the barrier and their struggles to keep it whole. The fog she’d purged from her senses played again among the priests, but she paid it no mind. They’d proved their worth. They would be ready when the enemy tried again.
She shifted her sight to the leylines, and her stomach lurched.
Death.
Inky clouds of Death as wide as she had ever seen. Sour blackness clinging to the leylines, enough to drown a city, pooling on the far side of the barrier.
“It’s coming!” she shouted. “They’re trying again, now!”
Her words dispelled any vestiges of fatigue from the priests, and they locked eyes on the barrier, blinking to signify they’d shifted sight to the leylines, ready for whatever came.
The barrier stood. Unchanging, and undisturbed.
Death remained. Vast pools of blackness, a hundredfold larger than the enemy had used in their earlier assault. And golden light. It pulsed among the ink-clouds, bright enough she’d seen it even without shifting her sight to the leylines. She hadn’t paid it attention, confronted by the shock of the barrier still standing, and of Death, but turned to it now. Marie.
She made the connection, and shifted her senses into a sea of blood.
Marie had tucked herself inside the wagon on the edge of the Gand camp, but the smell cut through the crates and canvas, thick enough for her to retch even through the bond of Need. Somehow the woman had stayed hidden from whatever had transpired outside the wagon. Prudence shouted at her to stay there, to stay cloistered away from whatever had produced the tide of Death. But even had it been her skin she risked, she needed to know. She dislodged herself from Marie’s hiding place, rose from beneath the covered wagon, and stepped down into horror.
Dead soldiers in red coats, torn in pieces and strewn across grasses stained crimson from calf-deep pools of blood.
And dogs. Scores of dogs; hundreds. Corpses of dogs mixed in with the men and women, each one a copy of the others, their fur a twisted shade between red and black.
29
SARINE
The Revellion Coach
Southgate District, New Sarresant
No quarter of the city was truly foreign to her, but the twisting, narrow roads of Southgate came close. Perhaps it was merely the vantage offered by the Revellion coach, or the anticipation as they drew nearer to Reyne d’Agarre’s manse. The district was a mix of work and wealth, a place where textile looms could be found alongside the estates of wealthy families, housing citizens who lacked only the requisite surname to have a place among the nobles of the Gardens, or at Rasailles. Always before the factory owners and other moneyed commonfolk residing in Southgate had seemed closer to the nobles than to the red-knuckled workers they employed. Now, riding beside the heir to the Marquis Revellion, the distance seemed greater in the opposite direction. Here where they had everything—lives of luxury, comfort, and the means to do what they would—the difference marked by blood could be seen for what it was: an insurmountable, inexorable divide.
She saw it on Donatien Revellion’s face as the carriage rolled forward. For all his protestations of égalité and the principles of philosophers like Fantiere, it was clear even he could sense the height from which his family descended when they came to Southgate. Bless him for reacting as he did, with uncomfortable reserve rather than haughty disdain.
She put words to the thought. “Do you think the nobles could ever see them as equals?”
He turned to regard her as they rode, weighing the question. “The commonfolk, you mean?”
She nodded.
“That’s part of our purpose tonight at Master d’Agarre’s salon, no? To effect change, we must begin to bring down the barriers between us, between all men and women of all creeds and class. If they see me today as a nobleman, I hope they will soon regard me as no more than the sum of my talents.”
“A noble sentiment, my lord,” she said, eliciting a grin at the wordplay. “But I worry it will be easier by far for the commonfolk to see enemies, and not equals.”
Despite her concerns, she appreciated the ideal. It was a fine vision: real equality, rule by merit and place by desert rather than the accident of birth. They’d passed the afternoon in just such conversation, after she’d agreed to attend Master d’Agarre’s salon. Her agreement had melted away a tension in Lord Revellion she hadn’t known was there. To her, the principles of égalité were a captivating intellectual exercise and little more. To Lord Revellion, they
were barely short of treason, if they were short at all. He had more to lose by far, and when he showed that side of himself to her, he made himself vulnerable in a way she had not considered before. To find she embraced his ideals, and would accompany him as he began his journey to do more than think censured thoughts, to act on the strength of shared conviction, together—it had been a powerful exchange, on both sides.
Now they rode toward Master d’Agarre’s salon. By itself such a thing was far from remarkable. The wealthy among New Sarresant’s citizens hosted such affairs nightly, both nobles and moneyed commonfolk, and the circles mixed often enough to pass without comment. It was possible Donatien expected no more than talk—incendiary though it might be—but she’d seen enough from d’Agarre to know his organization ran deeper than idle sedition and rumormongering. He was behind the thefts that had racked the city for months. He’d fed the citizens of the Maw in the face of violence from the city watch. And he’d spoken to her of effecting change, real change. A chance to shape the world according to her will. She had no illusions of herself as some power-mad despot, but she’d seen firsthand what the kaas could do. Curiosity drove her to listen when d’Agarre spoke, as much for a chance to learn more about Zi’s gifts as to help shape a better world for people like her, people who had grown up in the shadow of the powerful. It was a dream, but like her meeting with Lord Revellion, it was a dream that might yet prove true.
The d’Agarre manse was opulent, designed to make clear its residents lacked for little. Tall hedges ringed the boundary, with a canopy of evenly spaced trees providing privacy from the street and a line of blazing lanterns beckoning visitors toward the receiving grounds. Footmen in well-tailored livery received the coach as they pulled into the circle and halted the team. Lord Revellion made his exit first, then reached back to take her hand as she descended—no mean feat in the long blue skirts she’d chosen earlier in the day. They produced invitations for the benefit of the crier, and were ushered across the threshold into the manse with the appropriate acclaim.
Soul of the World Page 27
