“Unholy Bones,” Sorcha whispered and slumped back on her heels to slide her head into her hands. Passing through so many walls and using Voishem more than she ever had before had taken every ounce of her strength. She was unsure how much more she had to give. Without Merrick she was risking her life and her sanity drawing on the runes.
Though Raed was out there, if she made any move toward him, she was bound to get caught by the guards. Sorcha clenched her jaw tight, feeling a very odd sensation—a mixture of panic and desperation. Yet driving it was something even stranger—loneliness.
“What do I do?” she said to absolutely no one.
Ever since she could remember she had been surrounded by Deacons: teachers, fellow Initiates and her partners. Even before she had mastered the runes she had felt part of something greater and had known that whatever she did, they would be there to catch her.
No, Sorcha thought, I am not going to cry. To do so would have been weak and pointless.
Taking a deep breath, Sorcha pulled out a cigar from her pocket and lit it as a way of trying to find her focus. Pulling the thick smoke into her mouth, she held it there, letting it tingle on her tongue as she thought as logically as she could.
She could go to the Abbey in the city to throw herself on the mercy of her fellow Deacons, yet there was Hatipai hanging over that option like a dark cloud. The Prince himself had said he could not trust his Deacons—so there had to be some corruption there that the Mother Abbey was not aware of. It would not be the first time, she thought with a wry twist of her mouth. The Order she had once thought of as a towering megalith of protection for the common folk had lately been proven full of cracks.
Since the goings on in Ulrich, she was disabused of her former certainty in the sanctity of the Order. The Deacons, which Sorcha loved and believed in, had been compromised in both Ulrich and the capital of Vermillion. The Chiomese outposts were very different from any she’d ever seen—but the attachment to Hatipai made every one of her instincts prickle. Lately she had been forced to rely on her instincts more and more, but comfort she had once had in the Order she really did miss. Especially at moments like this.
However, throwing herself on the mercy of the Prince was just as dangerous. Looking down, Sorcha realized both her shirt and her arms were caked in blood, some of it dry and some of it still damp and sticky. If she was to do anything other than cower in this place, she had to fix that.
Burying her fingers in the sand, Sorcha used a handful to scrub as best she could. It got rid of most of the blood but dirtied her in equal measure. Her cloak was easy enough to turn around. The strange thought that popped into her head that the last time she had done this was at the funeral procession for Arch Abbot Hastler. Shortly after that, she and Merrick had broken the Young Pretender out of prison.
Raed . . . She swallowed. This was another mess for them—another one that meant more running and less time to be together. Even so, it wasn’t as if they could ever be an actual couple—a Pretender to the throne she had sworn to protect. Yet apparently her emotions knew none of that. She’d run through all the possibilities—and only he remained.
Propping her cigar on her boot, Sorcha closed her eyes and pushed out. The Bond, which she had made with so little thought, connected them and made it impossible for him to be lost as long as he was in the same world.
Something was wrong. Sorcha’s head began to hurt as she concentrated. Pain flared suddenly along every nerve ending she had, and the cause was the Bond. The Deacon pressed harder even as the agony continued. The Rossin was there, wrapped around Raed, but somehow shrinking and sliding away. The smell of sweat and panic filled her nostrils right up until the moment she could take no more.
With a shuddering breath she had to let go of the Bond. With the second round of the shakes setting in, Sorcha picked up her cigar and sucked a mouthful of smoke. It helped distract her from the echoes of pain still running through her body—since it felt like every muscle was spasming to its own rhythm. So she sat very still until it passed, focusing on the fact that, whatever else may be happening, Raed was still alive. What she did hold on to very tightly was that he was still alive.
Once Sorcha had finished, she stubbed out the cigar, brushed off her clothing as best she could, then with a little twinge of guilt, turned her cloak inside out and tucked the badge of the Eye and the Fist into her pocket. If the Order wasn’t going to look after her, then she would have to look after herself.
Merrick, she thought as she set off toward the Temple: Come back soon, because, by the Bones—I need your help.
TWENTY-FOUR
Return to Reality
Merrick could not recall having fallen into sleep—yet he must have. His last memory was the smoothness of Nynnia’s skin, the warmth of lovemaking and the feeling of completeness. Unfortunately these were not sensations that could last.
I had to have this. He heard her in his dreams, her voice ringing like a crystal bell far off in the distance. I had to have this moment with you. I had to not just because it happened but for us. When I saw you that first time I had not forgotten your touch, your love. It was because of you I chose to be born back into the world.
The light of the Ehtia building on the Otherside burned against his eyelids, but he would not look. He didn’t want to see the Nynnia who lived there; he didn’t want the cold, bodiless image of her to overtake the one he had been holding just minutes before. She lived beyond his reach, and there was no comfort in that fact.
Instead, Merrick waited until the light receded and he could not hear her voice in his head anymore. He was empty. Only then did Deacon Chambers open his eyes.
He was lying in a pile of straw while a set of beautiful brown eyes were watching him. They were, however, not the ones he had fallen to sleep beneath. A very curious camel was breathing heavily on him—and herv heigth was not sweet. In fact, it might have been the worst thing he had ever smelled had he not been dealing with geists for a long time.
Levering himself upright, Merrick found himself dressed when he most assuredly had been naked when last he lay down. More of Nynnia’s magic.
The young Deacon got to his feet and picked hay out of his cloak, while the offended camel jigged sideways, snorting and shaking its head on its long, shaggy neck. Thankfully she did not spit.
Looking around, the red mud buildings told him that he was once more in the Hive City, but when in time that might be exactly was another question. It came back to him with a rush. The Bond. The connection. Merrick’s vision blurred, and he was immediately relieved; Sorcha was nearby.
And if she was here, then Nynnia had managed to drop him back in the right place and time. The Ehtia were indeed powerful. Some part of him wished that he’d taken more notes, asked more questions—perhaps have brought back some of that power for the Deacons. Another part altogether wasn’t sorry for an instant of the time that he had managed to snatch with Nynnia.
Merrick walked in a somewhat tentative fashion from the yard and peered out onto the street, trying to orient himself. Turning his head to the left, he felt that was where Sorcha was. Her mood was easy to read: dark and despairing. Even in the madness under Vermillion, she had not felt like this.
Reaching along the Bond, he alerted her to his presence. Her reaction was an almost overwhelming surge of relief and delight. They had come a long way from that first awkward pairing that the Arch Abbot Hastler had thrust them into.
We are a good team. Her voice in his head was clear as a matins bell. Many partners in the Order would have been jealous of Merrick and Sorcha’s powerful Bond—if they had dared reveal it.
Raed! Sorcha directed Merrick’s attention to the other part of the Bond: the Young Pretender. Immediately he flinched back as pain burst through the connection.
Merrick groaned and doubled up, his hand going against the smooth mud wall to stop himself from falling. What exactly had happened while he’d been gone?
Find me. Sorcha’s call was her usuall
y abrupt tone but mitigated by her genuine fear. Things are happening.
Like a needle seeking magnetic north, Merrick turned and strode toward her. After a moment he broke into a jog. He was not the only one running. It didn’t take a Sensitive to notice that everything was wrong in the city. Where before there had been organized chaos, with the streets full of merchants and citizens, now there was no one in the streets except for the occasional person darting for their house. Until Merrick turned onto one of the main streets—and then he discovered just where nearly everyone was.
The main street of Orinthal was choked with its citizens, and every single one of them was wearing the mustard yellow of Hatipai, either cloaks or merely torn strips of cloth bound around their arms. Merrick stepped back and hugged the wall. Maybe it was some local festival.
He opened his Center wider, tasting the air like a dog sniffing the breeze. A crowd, any crowd, could be a frightening thing; but this one full of religious fervor frightened him down to his bones.
And there was more. A sensation akin to turning his back on a lurking danger. Every hair on his neck was standing up, and every muscle was twitching. As he spun ad, he wouldn’t have been surprised to find someone coming at him with an upraised knife.
Taking a chance, Merrick peered out onto the street again. The people were moving silently and smiling, but he spotted disturbances at the edge. Some of the citizens of Orinthal were not entirely happy with this display of religious zealotry. Unbelievers were being beaten and kicked in the side streets. The crowd ignored all that, moving like a sluggish beast but not toward the palace.
Wait, he projected to Sorcha. He couldn’t walk away from this situation—he had to see more. With dread knotting his heart, he found a building with soft stone steps leading up to a flat roof. Until he reached the top of them, Merrick kept his eyes cast on the ground. Before he raised them, he opened his Center wide, flinging open everything that he had as a Sensitive. The sun was beginning to fall toward the horizon, sending beams of scarlet and umber light darting over the buildings and making them glow. It would have been a beautiful sight, but for Merrick it was a bloody vision, punctuated with shadows and dire portents.
The spectyrs were no longer content with occupying the distant mountains; like the humans, they were heading east into the desert. The sky was thick and dark in his vision—though none of the citizens seemed aware of it as they trooped off under its shadow.
Merrick’s fear rattled through the Bond, and he could feel Sorcha’s response, like an echo on a taut string. With a wrench Merrick closed his Center and staggered back into the real world.
I’m coming, he called along the Bond to Sorcha. As he leapt down the steps back to the road, he saw her in a nearby alley. She was wearing the cloak of the Order but turned wrong way around, the blue of the Active hidden by the black. It reminded him starkly of Hastler’s funeral and the long ranks of the Deacons mourning that liar. Sorcha’s face then had been calmer than the one he saw under the hood now. He had never seen her paler or with wider eyes, and she smelled of blood. She was running too—like they were two parts of something broken that needed mending.
Merrick darted forward, and they threw themselves into each other’s arms. It was not the embrace of lovers, but it still contained love. The Bond wrapped around them until for a brief heartbeat there was nothing but the two of them. It was an echo of the time under Vermillion—the time when they had in fact been one.
Finally Sorcha tugged him off the street into a darker part of the humid alleyway. “By the Bones,” she whispered, not letting go of his forearm, “it is good to see you, Merrick.”
His partner had a lovely way of repeating emotions that their Bond already told him, but this was not the time to chide her. This close, his Deacon senses told him that she was indeed soaked in blood and sweat under the cloak.
“What happened?” he asked, his eyes already darting into the shadows, though he could not sense Raed anywhere. In fact...
“He’s gone,” Sorcha snapped. “I couldn’t stop the Rossin without you, and he transformed right in the palace. People died, and they’re hunting me, thinking I did it.”
She delivered a hint of an accusation to go with his sliver of sudden guilt. Yet that was foolish—Nynnia had shown him things, taken him places he needed to be. Instead, Merrick clasped her arm right back, completing the link. “Then that is what we need to do—find Raed and sort this out.”
As Merrick turned to go back out onto the street, his rtner stopped him. “Where were you, Merrick?” The crack in her voice was something that he had not expected.
He wasn’t ready yet. The tumble of time and death was something that he needed to sort into words. But he knew Sorcha would not let him get away without some form of explanation. “Nynnia saved me,” he said simply, surprised at the steadiness in his own voice.
Those blue eyes widened, and then a frown creased her forehead. “Nynnia is dead, Merrick.” She was afraid for his sanity.
“I am not crazy—you would feel it if I was.” He smiled. “And yes, Nynnia is dead . . . but also alive.”
Sorcha sighed, her lips twisted into a knot of frustration. “You Sensitives are hard to understand at the best of times. What do you mean?”
“I will tell you all soon.” Merrick found he was rather enjoying flummoxing his partner. He clamped his hand around her arm, giving it a firm squeeze when she looked ready to demand more. “They have taken Raed, and we need to get him back quickly.”
Sorcha’s gaze unfocused slightly, her head lifting and turning east where the spectyrs had disappeared. “Yes.” Her voice was soft, concerned, not the usual from his sometimes prickly partner. It remained unspoken how many cruel and evil things the blood of his ancient line could be used for.
“What do we do?” Merrick couldn’t be sure, but that could have been the first time Sorcha had turned to him for advice so completely. She was older, more experienced and far more confident than he was. Usually.
He thought back on what had happened during his trip into the past: the determined, dark face of the Ehtia and the great crushing despair in the divine face of Onika. They were in a strange city, unable to trust their own Brothers and Sisters of the Order, and far from the protection of the Arch Abbey. Only one person remained who knew the way of things here.
Merrick straightened. “We go to the Prince and lay the case before him.”
His partner jerked upright. “Remember when I said people died? One of them was his daughter. I think going back there would be a quick trip to the gallows or maybe a rapid introduction to a bullet.”
“I think, with me standing at your side, we should be all right.”
“I don’t care what the Bond says—I think you have gone raving mad!” Sorcha snapped, her voice reclaiming some of her usual bravado.
“We’ll be fine.” Merrick pressed the flat of his hand against her back, guiding her toward the palace. “Onika owes me a favor.”
She batted his hand away and glared at him. “You better explain yourself before we get there. I hate mysteries.”
Despite the situation and what he had lost, Merrick couldn’t help but laugh. By the time they reached the palace, he just knew she would be convinced of his madness.
Raed felt the world claim him again, and it was not a pretty thing. His muscles ached right down to his bones, so he knew that the Rossin had taken a lot from his body. The taste of blood in his mouth confirmed it.
His eyes were glued shut, and he wasn’t sure for a moment if he had enough strength to lever them open. So the Young Pretender lay still, trying to take in his surroundings.
As the aching subsided, he was able to perceive that he wa lying on something that was swaying, so it had to be a carriage or cart. No, a carriage, because under his left cheek he could feel the softness of some kind of brocade.
Outside, wheels were turning, but it did not sound as though it were on gravel or cobblestones. Instead, he could hear the hiss of somethin
g far softer than any of those surfaces. His mind made the connection only slowly; the wheels were running over compacted sand.
And if they were doing that, then they were no longer in the Hive City. Raed struggled to control his breathing as he flicked through the images of what had happened before the Rossin took him.
Something had attacked them in the library. He’d been standing next to Sorcha and had felt the geist only for a second before the Rossin inside had reacted as he always did.
The Young Pretender inhaled sharply though his nose, because there was another familiar sensation he suddenly recognized: the pull of blood dried onto his skin. Was it Sorcha’s? Had he killed the one woman he had dared to have feelings for just as he had his own mother?
“You did take life, Raed Syndar Rossin.” The voice was just across from him, low, accented and somehow familiar—he just had to sort through memories to get to it. But everything was too sluggish, just as it always was after awaking from possession by the Rossin.
So he yanked his eyelids apart, and Grand Duchess Zofiya looked back at him. If Raed could have picked anyone to be sitting opposite him in the fine carriage, it would never have been her. His one and only contact with the sister of the Emperor had been back in Vermillion when he had taken a bullet for her.
In that split second she had looked grateful—even if her brother had later thrown Raed into prison. Now her beautiful dark eyes were leveled on him with far less grace, and more than that. If he hadn’t known better, he might have thought she was growing cataracts. Yet she didn’t appear to have any trouble seeing him.
In the impossible heat she was wearing a sheer white garment that only barely concealed her admirable curves. Again, the last time he had seen the Grand Duchess she had been wearing the Imperial Guard red uniform—and from what he had heard, that was all she ever wore—even to state events. Another strangeness.
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