Spectyr

by Philippa Ballantine

  “Yet it is the place we will find Raed,” she said finally.

  Sorcha closed her eyes for a second and tried to gain control of her emotions. She and the Young Pretender had shared a passionate few days, but whatever else she might feel for him was unclear. The desperate loneliness she’d suffered in her marriage had left her uncertain of her own feelings for the first time. It almost made her afraid to see Raed again—and yet she was not about to let him go to his death.

  Sorcha swallowed hard. “Is this a mistake, Merrick?”

  He chose his words carefully. “Perhaps. But we owe Raed a great debt and a Bond.” His mind tugged on the connection lightly, sending a shiver down Sorcha’s back. “It is not something to be lightly cast asi.”

  She’d had enough of that sort of talk from the Council, but if that was what he believed, and it would get them out of the city, she was willing to go along with it.

  Beyond the portico the servants pulled the oxen into the traces, so Sorcha stood up, finally convinced that they might be moving soon.

  “What is that?” Merrick leaned forward and yanked her sleeve back from her wrist. On her hand she had slipped the one other thing she kept hidden in the Abbey. It was Raed’s ring, embossed with the rampant Rossin of his house, the item he had given her before leaving Vermillion. It had felt right to put it on.

  Sorcha jerked back, unable to find words that would not reveal how embarrassed she was. The damn Bond meant he probably knew anyway, but she was certainly not about to wrench it off her thumb. Instead she stared at him, until eventually it was he who flushed and looked away.

  Luckily at that moment chaos broke out. “Wait! Wait! Don’t forget this!” A burly Imperial servant came racing out of the palace with a large painting tucked under one arm. It was of the Emperor himself, in full dress uniform.

  Relieved at the distraction, Sorcha got up and helped the distraught servant find a place for the portrait on the last cart. It was so handsome that perhaps the Princess Ezefia would think it painted with too much appreciation for the Prince’s status. In fact, Sorcha knew it did not really capture her Emperor—his handsomeness yes, but not the charisma and charm he possessed as well.

  Bandele, the ambassador from Chioma, finally appeared. He was hard to miss: over six feet tall and wrapped in orange and bright green silks that set his dark face in shocking contrast. When he smiled, which he did often, the flash of white teeth was broad and startling. Apparently the Princess Ezefia’s suit for the Emperor’s hand had gone very well, because her representative was in a fine mood. He nodded to the Deacons before taking his place at the head of the procession to the Imperial Dirigible Station.

  Merrick and Sorcha were just behind him.

  “All ready, then?” Bandele asked, as if it had been the sparsely equipped Deacons who had caused the delay.

  Merrick stifled a grin while Sorcha was not nearly so amused. “For hours, actually,” she snapped.

  It might as well have been water off a duck’s back. “Excellent—then let’s move out.” He waved his hand, and the gates were finally opened. The whole wagon train, including the dozen guards, wrapped far more somberly in dark silks, moved out.

  Sorcha let out a long breath that felt like she had been holding it all day. Glancing to her right, she was slightly disturbed by Merrick’s broad grin—but then the younger Deacon had somehow managed to keep his boyish enthusiasm for most things.

  If he stayed with her, Sorcha thought morosely, it would soon wear off.

  Three days lingering in the port of Londis was driving Raed more than a little crazy.

  Certainly the Saal River mouth was busy. The Sweet Moon was tied up among other ships, some fellow slavers, some carrying other cargo such as wheat, spice and oil. However, the delays in getting the proper forms from the Imperial Trade Office were ridiculous.

  If the Sweet Moon had in fact been full of slaves, a goodly number of them would have died in the sweltering hold. Bureaucracas something none of his crew was used to dealing with, and Raed chafed under it.

  So for the third day in a row, Raed and Tangyre stood on the bustling quayside in the Imperial port town of Londis and breathed in the real heat of the south.

  “I had forgotten how wonderful it is here,” Tangyre said, flicking open a couple more buttons on her shirt.

  “Watch yourself, Tang,” Raed laughed. “We need to keep the illusion of respectable slavers.”

  If he did not think about his sister lost somewhere in the vast Empire, he might have enjoyed this. Since the confrontation under Vermillion, the Curse of his family, the geistlord Rossin had not stirred inside him. He had almost forgotten what it was like to live without fear of turning into the great cat and killing those he cared for.

  As they strolled through the yelling, cursing traders and toward the Customhouse, Raed’s mind drifted much farther. The space on his finger where his signet ring had been was still pale, the skin there not yet as tanned as the rest of his hand. He wondered what had happened to Sorcha. Her place in the Order had felt precarious, and smuggling him out of the city had without doubt endangered it further.

  He had no idea what her feelings for him were, and he was still uncertain on his own. Yet he thought of her often. Raed had never wanted the eldritch connection of an Order Bond, but he liked knowing that they were still joined—even if he could not feel it.

  “Shall we go in?” Tangyre, who naturally knew nothing of Sorcha, was standing at the impressive ironbound doors of the Customhouse and eyeing him curiously.

  Tangyre had been his friend almost as long as Aachon, but she was considerably less demanding and far more relaxed about his princely duties.

  “Sorry, Tang.” Raed rubbed his beard. “I was miles away.”

  Inside were more accountants than Raed had ever had to deal with. His heart sank a little on seeing the rows of desks manned by sharply dressed clerks, all with their heads down, writing and stamping piles of paper. “By the Blood—more lines!”

  His words echoed in the chamber. A couple of resigned-looking men standing before the desks turned and glanced over their shoulders. The looks said it all.

  Tangyre laughed and guided them over to what appeared to be the shortest line. “My captain is in fine form today.”

  It was warm, stiflingly warm, and Raed shifted from foot to foot, holding in an exasperated sigh. The people ahead of them moved at a snail’s pace, and all he could think was that every second wasted, Fraine traveled father away.

  Eventually the line dwindled until only two men stood between them and the sweating paper shuffler. That was when the bells began to ring. Not the polite bells that stood on the table to summon a Customhouse manager—no, the great bells at the end of the pier. Everyone was suddenly on their feet, and the orderly room dissolved into scattering people. The clerks were folding up their books and disappearing behind sturdy office doors.

  “Is it for us, do you think my P—” Tangyre caught herself in time. “—my captain?”

  “Our reception would be guards, not ringing bells, I think.” Raed muttered. “Come on, let’s see what’s going on.”

  They joined the general rush outside toward the piers. Harbor officials and wharf>

  “Sister,” the first sobbed, rocking the comatose other, “let me have him.”

  This only made her tighten her grip on the thing she held. It looked more like the leavings from a butcher’s shop than anything human. The Young Pretender’s stomach turned. Flayed fingers peeked from the bundle. It had once been a person.

  A whisper passed through the crowd, then a ripple of indrawn breath.

  “She took them! She took them!” The woman soaked in blood began to scream. “They’re all dead . . . all dead!” She waved her hands back toward the small ship, tethered there with all the other vessels of trade. Now beyond words, she began to wail like an animal caught in a trap, thrashing around in her sister’s arms, her mouth stretched in a painful circle.

  Raed and the rest
of the crowd flinched as she went on and on. It took a while for words to become apparent. “Hatipai! Hatipai!”

  He recognized it—as a young boy he had been forced to commit to memory the names of the little gods. So that explained it—she had to be mad. He watched as horrified as the rest of the gathered crowd, as she rocked the bundle of stripped flesh.

  A couple of brave souls, wharf workers by their stature and dress, boarded the ship. When they emerged pale-faced, staggering and retching, Raed knew it had to be awful; tough port workers were not known for their sensitive dispositions. “Fetch the sheriff,” one groaned. “It’s a bloodbath in there!”

  “Not the sheriff—the Deacons!” another bellowed. “Get the Deacons!”

  Then the crowd’s mood changed to panic. Raed, however, was thinking of the last bloodbath he’d seen on a boat: an Imperial warship scattered with bodies. One glance told him that Tangyre was thinking the very same thing.

  “It is not the Rossin,” Captain Greene whispered under her breath. “The woman went mad and killed her own family.”

  It made sense, yet something in the haunted woman’s eyes told Raed she had seen too much. They were taking her away, though none of the workers could get her to relinquish her gruesome burden. Her sister looked down at her soiled apron and hands in blank dismay—as if she didn’t know if she should head to a laundry or slump down on the pier.

  Raed stepped forward, took her under the arm and guided her out of the way. People were in such a rush to follow after the deluded woman or crowd as close as possible to the scene of the crime that she was in danger of being trampled.

  She appeared ready to tumble, so Raed sat her on a large crate and handed her his kerchief. For an instant she looked at the neat piece of silk.

  “This is too fine to get blood on it,” she whispered.

  “Nonsense.” Raed felt badly enough about what he was going to ask her that the loss of one of his few remaining fineries was trivial. “I am sorry to ask this, ma’am. But . . . was your sister well before this? Did she and her amily fight often?”

  She looked up at him, her face twisting while her fingers still squeezed the kerchief. “No, never! Joi’s a good woman. She loved Yorse and the boys. They loved one another so much . . . ” That was when weeping once again overcame her.

  Tangyre took him by the elbow and pulled him away. “We must get back to the Customhouse.” She leaned in and whispered, “Especially with Deacons coming.”

  Raed nodded, allowing himself to be guided away from the sobbing woman. Though it had ebbed away as far as it could, he could feel the supernatural tide from the Otherside now rushing back. Whatever respite he’d enjoyed these past months was over—and it couldn’t have happened at a worse time—but there was no chance he would turn back. Fraine still had to be found. He could only hope the Rossin would remain somnolent and agreeable.

  SEVEN

  Fallen Dreams

  In the dark of the third night of their voyage, Merrick woke. The Imperial Dirigible was silent around him—at least as silent as anything made of wood and silk could be. The tiny creaks were like that of a ship, but without the comforting slap of the ocean against the sides. It served as a constant reminder that they were flying hundreds of miles above solid ground.

  He lay looking up at the beams for a moment. Only a few feet away, Sorcha slept, emitting a slight rumble that he wouldn’t have dared called a snore. Usually a Deacon would have been afforded the comfort of a cabin, but the Chiomese delegation took priority, and he and Sorcha were far more comfortable bedded in the empty hold reserved for horses. They would have both loved to bring the Breed horses with them. Melochi and Shedryi would at least have been comfort on nights like this.

  “Better we be mistaken for an honest beast than for a diplomat,” had been Sorcha’s comment as she’d unfurled her bedroll.

  In three or four more days they would reach Orinthal. It should have been exciting to Merrick, since a journey into the heart of Chioma had been his boyhood dream, yet he could not shake the feeling of impending doom.

  That Sorcha, Raed and he had been manipulated into nearly causing the destruction of Vermillion still rankled. A Sensitive was supposed to See clearly, if not all, then at least what was happening to him.

  Merrick glanced to his right. Sorcha was lying curled on her side, her long red hair almost hiding her face. Despite her being the elder, it was his responsibility to look after her.

  So he slipped out from under his regulation blanket, his Strop clasped in one hand. Here on the swaying deck of the dirigible, Merrick was able to let out a breath. The ship was running under a hunter’s moon, overripe and ominous—if one believed in such things. His mother had remained a believer in the small gods, and those superstitions implanted at her knee had been hard to shake. A hunter’s moon had been called that as it gave nighttime stalkers the best light to see by. After the Break it was found to be the most preferred time for geists to appear.

  Sailing up here they were safe from geist activity—it was thought. As Merrick peered over the edge at the landscape sliding below them, he wondered what the folk down there were experiencing, but he had not ventured out into the chill night air merely to think dark thoughts.

  Locating apace that was small and out of the way on the efficient deck was hard, but eventually he found a box tucked behind the main cabins that was part of the overflow from the delegation. Sitting himself cross-legged on it, Merrick took out the Strop.

  The long, thick piece of leather was tooled with the Seven Runes of Sight, and its making had been his final achievement before becoming a Deacon. Under his fingers the runes were slightly warm.

  Merrick slipped the Strop over his eyes, tied it into a knot at the back, closed his eyes and opened his Center. It was the calm place that all Deacons had: their seat of power, where all things passed away and only knowledge mattered. At least that was how it was experienced by Sensitives.

  Masa, the Third rune of Sight, was always tricky to use. Seeing into the future was inexact. Whatever he would be able to squeeze from it would not be as accurate or obvious as anyone with a wild native talent, or even the Possibility Matrix, could find. That damned device that had provided their enemies prescience was gone—he was relieved about that, yet he could have done with its foresight at this moment.

  Merrick’s Center flew forward like an arrow. He saw the Hive City, though he only knew it from picture books, so it was indistinct and fluttered in the winds of his mind. Overhead the stars gleamed in a carpet of beauty, deeper and more magnificent than even the real night sky. Then as Merrick watched, the stars all dimmed, except for five. These grew brighter and pulled themselves from the sky. The young Deacon held out his hand, and they flew to him, twisting around his outstretched fingers to lie in a circle. They twinkled bright and lovely, yet somehow to look upon them made Merrick sick. Such a visceral sensation was something unexpected while wearing the Strop.

  He was used to the signs and interpreting them—what he was not used to was the feeling of not being alone that now came over him.

  Once, as a child, he had lost his mother in the bustling market. Wandering the streets alone, he had heard footsteps behind him, and he ran. But the shadow had given chase, and though his mother had eventually found him, that memory was still a powerful one. He felt that fear again—right into his bones. And so his spirit ran in a display of panic that his tutors at the Abbey would have despaired of. As his discipline crumbled in the face of such a primitive force, he heard it—words in a space where there should have been none.

  Come back to us, Brother. Come back . . .

  It was a voice of such yearning and familiarity that he turned. The young Deacon caught sight of a man, cloaked in darkness and circled by stars. Merrick only had time to make out his hawklike profile and the eyes that were focusing on him.

  Then the real world called. Merrick gasped, feeling the Sight being ripped away from him deep down in his gut. When he yanked off his Stro
p it took a moment for his head to stop spinning enough to focus on the woman standing in front of him.

  Captain Vyra Revele had her hand raised to her mouth in shock. “Damnation, I am sorry—”

  “So you should be,” Merrick snapped, caught unawares by his own annoyance. His heart still pumped fast, so that he was forced to wipe the sweat off his palms and onto his trouser leg. In Captain Revele’s eyes he saw how he must look and was not pleased. The captain of the Summer Hawk had only shown them courtesy this trip, and on their previous encounter she had assisted them at risk of her own life and commission. “I am sorry, Captain.” He unfolded his legs and slid down to the deck. “Using the runes sometimes makes me forget my manners.”

  In her smart Imperial air navy uniform, her short dark hair ruffling in the wind, she was very much part of her ship but completely clueless about the world he walked in. Her smile was hesitant. “I did not see it was you, Deacon Chambers. I thought it was one of my crew hiding from his duties.”

  He laughed at that, trying to dispel the final fears that still clung to his brain. “I wouldn’t think any of your crew would dare such a thing.”

  She tilted her head, nodded slowly, but did not reply. For some reason, it seemed she was suddenly out of words, and Merrick found himself struggling for something to fill this mysterious gap.

  “So, Captain Revele—”

  “You may call me Vyra,” she said as they walked the deck of the dirigible, heading forward where the clouds could be seen skidding around the airship’s hull.

  Merrick heard the tone in her voice, a slight intensity that made him feel uncomfortable. So he did what he had been trained to do—he faced it. “It is a wonderful coincidence that the Summer Hawk is the ship assigned to take us south.”