Dreaming Death

by J. Kathleen Cheney

  Mikael suppressed a smile at Cerradine’s proprietary air. He suspected the colonel did it just to irritate Dahar, who sat frowning at his table. “No, sir. I don’t have the stomach for it right now.”

  “Come and sit down, Mikael,” Dahar snapped, likely tired of being upstaged. “Cerradine needs to talk with you about your dreams.”

  Mikael settled uncomfortably on one of the stark wooden chairs. Had Deborah not talked to Dahar yet? Surely if Dahar knew about the blood, he would have said more.

  “Will you need me any longer, sir?” Eli asked from where he waited inside the doorway.

  “Why don’t you return to your post, Eli? If we do, we’ll send for you.” Dahar waved him away, and the young man slipped out, closing the door behind him.

  “Tell me about your dreams, Mikael,” Cerradine commanded.

  Surely Cerradine’s sensitive had already told him about the dreams. Otherwise the colonel wouldn’t be asking. “I’ve had the same dream twice in the last three nights. The victim is grabbed on the street at night. They cut him up and leave him to bleed to death.”

  Cerradine ran a hand through his white hair, disarranging it. His dark eyes gave him a hawklike appearance as he leaned forward, placing his elbows on the table to observe Mikael more closely. “Anything else?”

  “The men who did the killing. Their actions were . . . ritualistic. They made cuts across the victim’s upper chest that must have been writing, but I’m not sure what it said.”

  “Why not?” Cerradine asked.

  Mikael mimicked looking at his own shoulders. “Couldn’t see, sir. Not in the dream. And when I looked down, I couldn’t breathe.”

  “You couldn’t breathe?”

  “Yes, sir. My lungs and throat felt numb. I couldn’t move, as if I was paralyzed.”

  Cerradine leaned back again and folded his hands together, his eyes closed. Dahar got up and stalked around the room, unable to sit still any longer. He picked up a letter opener from the desk in one corner and flipped it in his hand as he paced before the fireplace. Mikael decided to wait them out.

  “You can’t be sure,” Dahar said.

  “I never said I was,” Cerradine answered mildly. “But given the markings, we need to investigate this as if it was.”

  Mikael sat up. “They found the body, then?”

  Cerradine gazed at Mikael over the tips of his steepled fingers. “One of them. Aldassa has teams out looking for the second.”

  A chill settled in Mikael’s stomach. It had been so obvious, but he’d missed it. That blow to the face . . . that hadn’t happened in the first dream. The slight differences that he’d put down to faulty memory and alcohol hadn’t been figments of his imagination after all. “Are you certain?”

  Cerradine nodded. “My sensitive told me there were two different victims. The first was taken to the city’s morgue. Unfortunately, Faralis walked in on her when she was viewing the body and therefore he knows that she knows about it.”

  “The city’s morgue? Why would she have gone there?”

  “Kassannan has a friend who works there. The man sent word he had a body we needed to look at, so Kassannan took her with him. Unfortunately, Faralis arrived and found them there. He ordered the officer in charge not to let anyone see the body.”

  “He’ll damn well let the Daujom in,” Dahar snapped.

  It was notable that the police were trying to conceal the first death, but Mikael was more curious about why Cerradine would take a sensitive to view a body. After all, bodies didn’t have emotions for a sensitive to pick up.

  “You’re welcome to try.” Cerradine reached into a jacket pocket, withdrew a piece of paper, and unfolded it. “In Andersen Province, fourteen years ago, I was with the army detail assigned to investigate the Farunas massacres. This slash across the lower chest immediately made me think about that, though, which is why I came to you. I’m not certain about the lettering, but they used that same method to bleed them dry.”

  The Farunas massacres? Mikael vaguely remembered his mother citing the gruesome murders as the sort of thing that happened to boys caught outside the fortress after dark. He’d been only nine when the massacres took place, out on the eastern border between Larossa and Pedrossa. Dozens of homesteaders were murdered, making it one of the more horrific series of crimes in Larossan history. “I thought the Andersens investigated that incident, not the army.”

  “They did,” Cerradine said. “But most of the victims were Larossan, so the Larossan authorities in Aldranos asked the army to investigate as well. They didn’t trust the Andersen Family to show as much concern as was warranted, since the victims were Larossan.”

  “Not too surprising,” Mikael said with a shrug. He’d never been to Andersen Province, much less to the provincial capital of Aldranos, but he’d heard enough about the Andersen Family to believe that claim. While the Lucas and Lee Families rarely had problems working with their local governments, the Andersens seemed to thrive on discord, much as the Jannsen did. And whenever an investigation required interaction between the different races, there always seemed to be suspicion of cutting corners. But while the Larossan authorities controlled the cities, issues in the countryside or on the borders usually fell to the national government—the Anvarrid government—to handle. That was why the Andersens and the army had been there rather than any local police force.

  “We arrived on the border a few days after the Andersens,” the colonel continued. “It was over by then. We just helped bury the bodies.” Cerradine pinched the bridge of his nose as if his head ached. Then he shoved the paper over to Mikael. “Does this look familiar?”

  The sketch was a near-complete version of the one Kai had drawn earlier that morning when looking at Mikael’s false injuries. Of the one that Mikael himself had made two days before. Mikael recognized it, almost as if he’d felt every stroke of that word cut across his own shoulders. He swallowed. “Yes. This is it.”

  “I think this is the same thing that appeared on the bodies in the Farunas massacres. I just need to look at the Daujom’s records to be sure.”

  Ah, that explains this visit to Dahar. It was usually Deborah whom Cerradine came to see when he showed up at the palace, but Cerradine wanted Dahar’s professional help.

  “Weren’t most of the foreign priests killed?” Mikael asked. “Why would they come back? And why here? There’s no reason for a priest looking for a warm body to sacrifice to make his way—what? almost three hundred miles?—across the country to Noikinos.”

  “We’ve asked the same questions, Mikael.” Cerradine whistled at Dahar to get his attention. “I’d like to see any files the Andersens turned over on this, Dahar. I’m asking as a friend. I’m aware your files are confidential, but it would take time to get an answer back from the Andersen Family, if they bothered to answer at all.”

  “I’ll consider it,” Dahar said after a moment, looking peeved.

  “If you don’t mind, then,” Cerradine said, “I’ll head back to the headquarters to see if my people have located that second body.”

  The colonel retrieved his blue jacket from the back of a nearby chair. He pulled it on and buttoned it, and then wrapped the brown sash about his waist. The uniform seemed almost garish next to Mikael and Dahar’s unrelieved black.

  Dahar frowned, his face worried. “Give me a day or so to get our files together. I’ll turn them over.”

  Once the colonel had left, Dahar stalked around his sitting room, picking up items and then putting them down. After a moment, Dahar stopped his pacing and gazed out of one of the windows that overlooked the courtyard. “The Andersens may have made some questionable decisions. My uncle had charge of the Daujom then and chose not to question their reports.”

  Mikael searched his memory, trying to recall anything he’d heard about the Andersen Family at the time of the massacres. Andersen Province lay to
the south of Lee—far enough away that to a nine-year-old boy, events there had seemed a distant fable. “What did they do?” he asked, unable to rummage any specific memory out of his mind.

  “I don’t know that they did anything, but I had my suspicions. They found nine of the so-called priests dead, rifle shot. The Andersens claimed that vigilantes killed the nine priests and drove the others away. I believed then that the Andersens did it themselves, deciding to forgo the expense of a trial.” Dahar sighed. “I suppose I still do.”

  That would be a violation of the treaty. If true, it could trigger a very unpleasant incident between the Daujom and the Andersens. “Is that why you don’t want to turn their files over to Cerradine?”

  “Yes.” Dahar ran a hand through his short hair. “I don’t mind your going down to the morgue to check, but be discreet. I don’t want to offend the local Larossan authorities by interfering with their police investigation. They complain enough about us ‘Warbirds’ meddling in their petty politics.”

  The term Warbirds for the Anvarrid dated back to the invasion, when the invaders painted their faces with hawk or falcon motifs to show their allegiance to various Anvarrid Houses. The name wasn’t meant any more fondly now than it had been then.

  Dahar glanced back at Mikael. “I don’t want to drag us into this. I don’t want my brother forced to ask questions about what happened then.”

  Mikael understood Dahar’s reluctance. Back then, an uncle of Dahar’s had run the Daujom, and he apparently hadn’t revealed any concerns about the Andersens’ actions to the king. But should the issue be raised now, if they found evidence now that the Andersens had acted outside the law, Dahar would feel bound to pursue it to the point of prosecution.

  “I’ll keep that in mind, sir,” Mikael promised, rising to take his leave.

  “Well, if you’re going to help out the colonel, you’d better go.”

  Mikael didn’t argue.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Cerradine trotted down the grand stair toward Below. All the sentries on duty knew him, but he signed his name on the log as an outsider. Whether the fortress acknowledged him when he reached the entryway arch, he never knew.

  Clutching his hat in his fingers, he made his way through the cavernous mess hall, which was empty at the moment save for a few workers in the far back toward the service area. He went out one side and then along a secondary hall in the direction of the infirmary wing, his heels clicking on the hard stone. It always took him a few minutes to become accustomed to the odd lighting and faint tang in the air. He ignored the difference, intent on reaching his destination. His blue coat drew a quick glance from the few people he passed, but he was a familiar enough figure in these halls that no one actually stopped his progress.

  He found Deborah in her office in the back of the infirmary, brooding over one of her notebooks. She held up her hand to forestall interruption and continued writing without even glancing at him.

  He smiled at that gesture. When his mother died and his father—or rather, his father’s secretary—dumped him on the Lucas Family like a sack of onions, he’d been given as a foster child to Deborah’s parents. He and Deborah had both been six and had immediately become fast friends. Some people misunderstood their relationship, but they remained like brother and sister to this day. When he needed to talk, Deborah was the one he usually sought out, even if he had to come down into Below to find her.

  Her office could have fit in Dahar’s water closet. Space was limited in Below, so she crammed all her medical books and journals into the tiny room, stacks upon stacks resting on every level surface. She needed more shelves, Cerradine thought. He spotted her formal jacket hanging over her chair and decided she must have been out at the City Hospital again, reminding the poor of Noikinos that the Six Families might be required the serve the Anvarrid, but they were willing to help Larossans as well.

  “Oh, Jon. I didn’t realize it was you.” She finished her notations and set the book aside to dry. “I’m glad you came to see me.”

  She edged around the small desk, and he hugged her, placing a brotherly kiss on her cheek. She looked tired, the fine lines around her eyes more marked today. Every time Mikael had a dream, Deborah ended up losing sleep.

  Cerradine gently nudged a pile of books aside so he could sit on the edge of the desk, dropped his hat on his knee, and picked up a leather-bound journal to flip through its handwritten pages. It looked very old, the ink sketchy and the pages yellowed. “What are you researching now, Deb?”

  “The writings of Lucasedrion. I thought they might be pertinent.”

  He stared at the worn journal. He doubted anyone outside the Family had ever seen it. “May I borrow it?”

  “No, give it back. That’s irreplaceable, Jon.” She took it away from him and returned it to its stack. “These are his private journals.”

  He gave the leather-bound book a second glance. The first Anvarrid to marry into the Lucas Family, Lucasedrion had masterminded the Six Families’ evolution from pacifist victims of the Anvarrid invasion to the military protectors of their former conquerors. The private journals of the man who’d orchestrated that would be fascinating. “Can I read it when you’re done?”

  Deborah gave him a wry look. “Them. There are twenty-seven volumes, Jon, and I don’t seem to recall your ever completing an entire book as a child.”

  He shrugged. She was right about that. “Just curious.”

  “As always. The elders wouldn’t let you anyway.”

  Not too surprising, Cerradine decided. He might have been raised by the Lucas Family, but once he’d chosen to leave Below to see the outside world, he’d ceased to be one of theirs. “How are they pertinent?”

  “Historical precedent. If you’ll recall, Lucasedrion’s wife was a touch-sensitive, and bound to him.”

  “Ah, of course.” Bound in that sense meant more than their marriage ties. Their minds had become linked. “Like Mikael and Shironne.”

  “We don’t know that they’re bound, Jon.”

  He gave her a dry glance. Deborah hated to jump to conclusions, but they’d been discussing this possibility since Mikael returned from Jannsen Province and confirmed that he’d suffered dreams that matched Shironne’s . . . because he’d been the source of hers. “You said that’s an Anvarrid thing, and they both have Anvarrid blood.”

  The Six Families hadn’t known of binding before the Anvarrid came to their lands, making that one anomaly—Jon didn’t see any way it could be called a power—that could definitively be traced to the invaders. Anvarrid actually cut their hands during their wedding ceremonies; the exchange of blood was supposed to promote a closer bond between the two parties involved. In rare cases, though, it provoked a bond so close that the two parties involved eventually lost any sense of individuality. They shared one mind, if he understood legend correctly.

  Deborah just shook her head, refusing to discuss the topic further. “Did your girl pick up on Mikael’s dream last night? I assume that’s what you came to tell me.”

  “Yes, she did,” he said. “But I actually came to tell you she went with Kassannan down to the morgue in the city this morning.” He had the satisfaction of seeing Deborah’s mouth hang open for a split second. He repeated most of what he’d told Dahar.

  She frowned. “Could it be the real thing? The massacres starting over again?”

  “Perhaps, but here? Why come here? To a city crowded with police and military?”

  Deborah looked withdrawn for a moment. “It’s a possibility that should be considered, Jon.”

  “I know,” he said. “I want to bring Shironne here. She needs to meet Mikael. Working together they can give us more information.” He held up a hand before she could protest. “I know you don’t want me interfering with your boy, Deb. I just think that . . .”

  Deborah sighed. “I don’t think I can, in good conscien
ce, let him go on the way he is any longer. Elisabet told me after the previous dream that Mikael was in far worse shape than he’d been letting on. She wasn’t any more specific than that, but I accompanied Kai when he went to find Mikael this morning. We found him covered in blood.”

  “What?”

  “Mikael’s bleeding,” she said. “A reflected injury incurred during his dreams. The blood seeps through the skin. He also mimics other symptoms: shortness of breath, pain, even bruising. Reflection of injuries is rare but not unheard of. Something only the strongest sensitives do.”

  Cerradine gazed at her, baffled. He was familiar enough with Mikael’s history that he knew the young man had been a sensitive once, but that had been before his ability to broadcast became evident. “Mikael’s not a sensitive, is he?”

  Deborah shook her head. “The only time he connects with others is in their moment of death, via his dreams. I think his injuries may be a result of his inability to let go of the victim, an effort to record the death by writing the evidence on his own body. What he needs is someone to interpret his dreams, to remember them for him so that he doesn’t have to do that to himself. And to . . . anchor him, to keep him from following the victim down into death.”

  That was a great deal of responsibility to lay on Shironne’s shoulders. When he said so to Deborah, she just shook her head.

  “This is all conjecture on my part,” she added. “I have little to go on, but I think she’s the only one who can do that. She’s his complement.”

  He sat back. Apparently Deborah thought this was part of the binding between them. “Complement? How is that possible? He doesn’t even know her.”

  She opened her mouth to say something, caught herself, and closed it. A faint scowl crossed her features.

  “You can trust me, Deb,” he reminded her.

  “It’s not a matter of trusting you, Jon,” she said. “It’s a matter of not violating my oaths to the other elders. There are things I can’t say.”