Harbinger (A BOOK OF THE ORDER)

by Philippa Ballantine

  “I am afraid marriage is quite out of the question without you asking my father first.” She caught a glimpse of his white teeth gleaming in the fading light of distant torches.

  Sorcha wasn’t sure if she should smile back. She settled for a short laugh, and then called on Yevah, just a little. The red fire ran through the designs on her arm, providing a useful if slightly strange light as they descended deep into the roots of the citadel.

  The question Sorcha was burning to ask Raed was weighing her down, and it was harder to get out than she had expected. She found her mouth was a little dry since she’d not revealed to anyone—not even Merrick—how the Wrayth had been whispering to her of late. Finally, she choked out, “I need to know what it feels like to have the Rossin inside you . . .”

  For a moment there was only the sound of their boots on the stone, and Sorcha worried that Raed was too stunned by her question to reply. She wheeled around in the narrow confines of the corridor and held her arm, burning with red fire, up slightly so she could see his face.

  It was not fear or disgust she saw there, though his brows were drawn together and his jaw was tight. Raed’s voice, when it came out, was hoarse and strained. “You know, no one has ever asked me that.” He swallowed. “It has become . . . easier . . . if that is the right word for it.”

  Neither of them was happy with this conversation—Sorcha didn’t need to be a Sensitive to figure that out—yet she pressed on. “Does he . . . does he speak to you?”

  “Sometimes,” Raed confessed. “Usually when he is trying to get me to do things, or when there is some immediate danger that he doesn’t want his body involved in. Since Fraine’s death he’s been more interested in keeping me alive.”

  Sorcha clenched her jaw hard and turned away before whatever feeling was bubbling up could show itself on her face, but Raed’s hand pressed against her shoulder. “Is there a reason you are asking, love?” he asked softly.

  She didn’t want the Patternmaker to be the only one who knew . . . just in case something happened later on. “It has to be the weakening of the barrier,” she stumbled out. “The Wrayth like every other geist are gaining power . . . and I am starting to hear them . . . just now and then . . . sometimes . . .”

  If the fledgling Council she was creating got wind of this, the remains of the Order would fall apart completely. Merrick in good conscience couldn’t keep it from them, and by not revealing her Wrayth heritage he was already lying to them. Raed at least had none of those allegiances.

  The Young Pretender stared down at her, his fingers still grasping her shoulder. “Have they asked you to do anything . . . anything that you feel compelled to do?”

  She shook her head while choking back the desire to throw herself into his arms. It was an unfortunate truth that she cared too much what he thought of her to break down—but it would have been nice.

  “Then you can live with it,” Raed said, his breath making tiny white clouds in the cold air around them as he leaned closer to her. “The Wrayth is probably just trying to unnerve you and sway you from your course. The Rossin does it all the time to me, but neither of us needs to listen.”

  They were the very words Sorcha needed to hear. Her lack of sleep had to be caused by the extreme stress of these last few months. A long-held-in breath escaped her. “Right, then,” she said, “let’s see what is going on down here.”

  Holding her arm in front of them, she took his hand with her left. It felt good to be able to do that since they were down where no one could see. It was almost as if there was no one in the world but the two of them.

  Soon, the light around them was coming not just from Sorcha’s rune. Other twinkling colored lights began to appear on the face of the rock tunnel.

  “Cantrips?” Raed breathed. “I’ve never seen so many.”

  Sorcha glanced up at the complex patterns. “I have heard tell the roots of the palace at Vermillion are also very complex, but I don’t think there is a Deacon alive that has seen them.”

  “Except maybe for Derodak,” Raed breathed.

  Her heart leapt in her chest, but the Emperor had run mad and was no longer her concern—though she feared for the people of the capital.

  Her lover cleared his throat, and tried to change the subject as quickly as he could. “So, what are we looking for?”

  “Changes in the pattern,” she said, pointing to the concentric rings that rose from the floor upward. “The lower-down ones are the more ancient, and they get newer the higher they get.”

  He frowned as his eyes focused on the tiny inscriptions. “I feel like I might need eyeglasses for this task, love. How on earth do you read . . .”

  Sorcha wasn’t quite sure how to tell him what he was really here for, but it wasn’t as if she could put it off any longer. “I read them, Raed. You touch them.”

  The Rossin was not active in him and thus was not going to be affected by the cantrips; however, direct contact to his flesh should be the only experiment that needed to be conducted. It couldn’t be the first time that he’d felt the sting of a cantrip.

  “I see . . . it is not just my charm and good looks you were after,” he replied with the faintest hint of a sigh. “Very well.” He bent down, and touched the first ring of cantrips. The snap of blue power struck his finger.

  The Young Pretender leapt back. “By the Blood!” He stared at Sorcha, and she—only just managing to conceal her smile—gestured to the next line of cantrips carved into the root of the citadel.

  With a slow shake of his head, he obediently touched the next one. It went on for another hour, as they circled the foundations, testing the lines of cantrips.

  “I think you are starting to enjoy this,” Raed grumbled in a slightly overly hurt tone.

  “Starting?” Sorcha shot back, but applied a kiss to the end of his fingertips. “I promise I will make it up to you somehow . . .”

  He stared down at her, those hazel eyes locked with hers, and the shiver that ran up her spine was not at all related to the chill in the foundations. Raed must have felt it too, because he smiled slightly before turning back to his task. “How many more to do?”

  Sorcha flicked her eyes up. “I think we should go upstairs. I don’t know how the cantrips were breached; perhaps there is something Derodak can do that we don’t know about, something not written in any book.” That idea had been haunting her thoughts since the attack.

  “Perhaps you’re right, I can think of—” Raed stopped suddenly, and squeezing past Sorcha in the tight confines of the tunnel walked to where it finished abruptly. The glimmer of the cantrips danced over his skin as he reached out to touch one that gleamed pale green. Nothing happened.

  Sorcha hurried to his side, as Raed repeatedly touched the line. Still nothing.

  They shared a look, and she dropped into a crouch to examine the cantrips more closely. “It looks like some kind of fissure opened up here,” she muttered, running her fingers over the surface of the rock, and feeling a sliver of a gap. “The cantrips here were added fairly recently to seal it, but . . .”

  She stopped, suddenly, as her touch found a dip in the rock.

  Raed swiftly joined her, leaning down on all fours to see what she had found. He brushed away a layer of gravel and rock that had been piled up along the edge between wall and floor. “Looks like a chisel has been used to knock the last few cantrips out and the damage was covered by loose earth. I would say rather recently.”

  Sorcha sank back on her heels as the realization washed over her. “Someone in the citadel is a traitor . . .”

  With everything else they had to deal with, now they had to watch their backs. She’d thought everyone she’d saved and led through endless portals to this place had shared her determination to preserve something from the shards of the Order.

  It was possible here to let her feelings out. Sorcha leaned against Raed. “I don’t know what to do,” she whispered. “We have to find Derodak and the rest of our Brothers. We don’t have t
he time to ferret out a traitor. Besides, if they can hide from our Sensitives, then how do we even . . .”

  “This is a distraction,” Raed replied, giving her a squeeze. “Derodak wants to harry you to a standstill. You mustn’t let him.”

  They both stared down at the disturbed earth, which signified yet another problem. Sorcha relaxed into his embrace for a moment, letting the calming sound of his heartbeat become hers.

  Then with a jerk, she got to her feet. “You’re right. Onward is the only direction we have.”

  As they turned and walked back the way they had come, she slipped her hand into his. “Just don’t tell anyone, Raed. We can’t afford to start doubting each other now.”

  “I know,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t keep an eye out.” He touched her shoulder lightly, almost a stroke. “Don’t forget I have more than one set of eyes.”

  It was a strange world indeed where an allusion to the Rossin served as comfort—yet oddly enough it did make Sorcha feel better.

  ELEVEN

  A Traitor’s Smell

  As a Prince of the Empire, the heir apparent, Raed had been taught from an early age to take care of the people of Arkaym. The fact that his own father, the Unsung Pretender, chose to lock himself away on a distant island and behave as if they didn’t exist did not factor into it. His beloved tutors and instructors had luckily been far more insightful than the man that had given him life.

  Later on he’d been given his first command and then his first ship. Raed had immediately chosen to use them as a microcosm of the Empire itself and had lavished care and worry on both of them. However, in the last year their numbers had dwindled—some had even been killed right before his eyes.

  Despite all of that, some echo from his childhood and his education still filled him with a feeling of responsibility for those around him. It was what made the devastation that was the Rossin so much harder to bear. Many times the Young Pretender had wished that he didn’t care; that way he’d be insulated from the worst that the geistlord could do. However, as he got older he finally understood he was what he was. He’d learned to live with the curse and learned to run.

  When Sorcha went back up the Great Hall to be about Order business, Raed found himself returning to the room he’d spent half his time in this last week. It might have seemed a strange place for a person of Imperial blood to work, but in this citadel of Deacons it was the only aid Raed could offer. He was certainly not going to sit idly by and become known only as Sorcha’s lover.

  The makeshift infirmary that the Brothers had created in the basement of the citadel was in fact one of the more pleasant spaces in the cursed building. Despite the fact that it was on the lowest level, it actually opened out onto a small inward-facing courtyard, which a sliver of sunlight punctuated for at least a few hours a day. Some very optimistic lay Brother had planted herbs in a container there, and the scent of lavender and mint filled Raed’s nostrils as he neared the infirmary. It made him think of his mother’s herb garden before he could stop himself. Scent triggered the memory of her down on her knees, in among the plants; nothing at all like the well-bred lady she was. In the garden she’d been the happiest, and thus it was the place he’d been too.

  The Young Pretender walked swiftly past the flowering plants and into the infirmary itself. Compared to the scant Actives and Sensitives that Sorcha had been able to find, the number of lay Brothers now in the citadel was well over double what it had been when they left Vermillion.

  The people had positively flocked to her, wherever they went. Though most of them had not the talent to become a Deacon, they had quickly offered to take on the cloak of a lay Brother.

  Certainly, looking around the infirmary he could have almost imagined that they were in a regular Priory. Brothers in the gray of their profession bustled about, taking care of the sick and injured; though there were far more of the former than of the latter. Something about losing their runes and deprivations of the trail made Actives and Sensitives more prone to illness, and many were coughing up their lungs in the infirmary.

  It was yet another worry that Raed knew had kept Sorcha from a good night’s sleep for months. The Young Pretender took up an apron that hung neatly on a row of pegs by the door and put it on without a thought to how it looked. Yesterday he had been learning how to make poultices from Brother Timeon, but he had no idea what was in store today.

  “Raed Syndar Rossin,” Madame Vashill said, appearing out of a back room, also wearing an apron, “are you back so soon?”

  One of the preeminent tinkers of her time the old lady might be, but she was also rather deaf. Raed leaned in close to her. “Can’t keep me away. I’d get bored if I stayed upstairs all the time.”

  She nodded and then thrust a mortar and pestle into his hands. “Brother Timeon said you’d be back, but I didn’t believe him.”

  The young lay Brother appeared as if summoned by the mere mention of his name. His flyaway blond hair looked as though he had been running his hands through it for hours. He probably had. “Oh, Sir . . . Your Maj—” Then he closed his mouth with a snap.

  The Deacons had struggled at first to find a proper form of address for him, as their connection with the current Emperor meant they had an aversion to using his family name, title or anything else that might suggest he was who he was.

  Timeon cleared his throat and bowed his head slightly. “Captain, it is good to see you again. Are you ready for another lesson?”

  “Yes, indeed,” Raed replied with a crooked smile.

  It was good to spend the rest of the late morning in the simple tasks of cutting and pounding herbs. Madame Vashill learned at his side and seemed glad to do it too. She talked wistfully about her shop back in Vermillion and the work she had been unable to bring with her. What she never discussed was her son and his treachery. Raed knew all about the faithlessness of family and how that hurt, so he did not pry.

  However, the same could not be said of Madame Vashill; she wanted all the details of his life, which he felt rather uncomfortable yelling at her in the crowded infirmary.

  “I suppose you have heard about the woman in the west claiming to be your sister,” the old lady said, shooting him a look out from under her eyebrows. “They say she is causing quite a lot of problems for the Emperor.”

  The problematic question of the person claiming to be his sister, Fraine Rossin, was one he had not yet dealt with. Raed pounded the tansy under his pestle mercilessly. “The truth of it is, there is not much I can do about her. It’s not as if I can stand up publically and denounce her for impersonating my dead kin.”

  The old woman flinched at that, and he knew she had to be thinking of her son. “Still,” she said, grasping his hand briefly, “you did hear that your father had come out in support of her?”

  It felt as though his stomach had dropped away and been replaced by a fiery pit. His father was not one for proclamations—but perhaps he thought now was a good time to slice himself off a piece of the Empire while it was in turmoil.

  “No,” he replied through gritted teeth, “I had not heard that. I am surprised though; my father has spent most of his life doing nothing at all. And he knows very well that woman is not his daughter. I sent word that Fraine had died in Vermillion.” Even saying those words hurt. In the end, Raed had not been able to save his sister. In the end, she had still despised him for the Rossin killing their mother.

  He smashed the pestle into the mortar so hard the hard stone rocked off its base, spilling the herbs onto the bench. Several lay Brothers started from their tasks at the sudden clatter, and Raed nearly swore at them too.

  Madame Vashill’s hand came down over one of his; wrinkled, warm and not very strong. It nevertheless stopped him for a moment. “You did not choose to come from your family,” she said, her voice low, as if she were speaking to herself. “You cannot be held responsible for their actions, but you can walk your own path that might make up for what evil they have done.” Their eyes
locked and understanding filled Raed.

  “Sorcha always said you were an old bat.” The words popped out before he could stop them.

  Madame Vashill laughed and filled her mortar with more herbs. “I was when I was in Vermillion. Stuck in a trade my father had taught me, and when he died, a husband I despised made me continue it. I find I like this life better. When you get to my age, you learn to appreciate these little moments.” She gestured over her shoulder.

  Raed turned and saw what she meant; around Raed and the old woman was a community of people, all thrown together by conflict, but still getting on, doing things, looking after one another. Lay Brothers caring for the sick and the injured while others came in bringing them food and supplies. It was—when examined closely—a well-oiled machine.

  A machine. The Rossin’s voice bubbled to the surface. The Beast was nearer today than any day before, a consequence of breaking loose and not having fed, Raed assumed. A sharp tang caught his attention, and it was not a natural substance that burned his nostrils.

  Dropping his pestle back to the bench, Raed turned as if he were being pulled on a string. “Excuse me,” he murmured to Madame Vashill, and he began to circle the room like a dog seeking a bone.

  Lay Brothers shot looks at him—mostly annoyed that he was in their domain—but they kept out of his way. The Young Pretender ignored them all. Instead, he began to listen to the Beast inside him. The geistlord was, after all, more powerful than he and had sharper instincts. It stung him to admit that—but there it was.

  A strange place to bring her leftovers. The Rossin growled, shifting deep inside Raed, who knew at once he was speaking of Sorcha. He felt the Beast was uncomfortable too. A bastion of her greatest enemy.

  It was hard for Raed to talk to the creature without seeming like he had run mad. The lay Brothers were eagle-eyed for such things and might whip him off into a bed if he wasn’t careful.

  “The Circle had all these outposts originally,” he hissed as he made a great show of peering at the shelf of ointments and lotions. “She hardly had a choice.”