Reaper's Awakening

by Jacob Peppers

  It didn’t matter if Izzy had gotten pregnant out of wedlock, if, even now, she wouldn’t tell their mother and father who the man was, hadn’t even told her sister despite the fact that they’d always been very close. She found that even the anger and resentment she’d felt at Isabelle for not trusting her with the man’s identity was gone as if it had never been as she stared at the pink-skinned baby. How, she thought, could it be wrong? How could any of it be wrong, if it led to this? My niece.

  A powerful feeling of responsibility, of privilege, came over her then, and she promised herself that no matter what happened, she would keep the child safe. The thought brought the fear back, stronger than ever. “Izzy, please,” she said, “We have to go now. There’s no time.”

  Her sister nodded, half-delirious from the pain of the delivery, barely able to move, let alone stand and run. Memory struggled to get her to her feet, tears of fear and frustration running down her face. She’d just managed it—was beginning to believe that they’d be in time after all—when the door slammed open. “Isabelle Quinn,” a voice thundered in a tone that spoke of complete righteousness, “You have been chosen by the Divines to be given the Rites of Sanctification.”

  She winced, remembering her mother’s screams, her father’s shouts of rage, remembering the blood and the silence, that most of all. She remembered watching first her father and then her mother cut down as they tried to keep the men from Isabelle, remembered her sister being killed, as she watched, frozen, wanting to attack the men but being too afraid. She’d stood there, unable to move until the men were finished with their bloody work, leaving nothing behind but her, a coward, and an unnamed child who’d lost its mother on the day of its birth.

  “You think of them often, don’t you?”

  Memory looked up, forcing away the ghosts of the past, to see the priest studying her with mournful eyes. “Always.”

  He nodded, “You have to stop blaming yourself.” He reached out a hand and laid it on top of hers, “It wasn’t your fault.”

  Memory wiped at the tears in her eyes, cursing herself for her weakness. “I should have tried to save them. I should have done something. Maybe if—”

  “You would have died,” the old man interrupted in a gentle, yet firm voice that left no room for argument. “The Harvesters are trained from the time they’re children. What hope would a fourteen year old girl have had of stopping them?”

  She swallowed hard and cleared her throat. “You’re right. I know that. Its just … I miss them. And Anna, too.”

  Perdeus nodded, “I check in with the family often. Barbara and Aldrick are good people. The Callens will do right by Anna until you’ve finished what you must do.”

  “And when will that be?” She sighed, shaking her head, “I’m sorry, Perdeus. You’ve done so much for me, and all I seem to be able to do is complain. If you hadn’t been at the Church the day ... the day it happened, if you hadn’t taken us in, I don’t know what we would have done.”

  He smiled, “Oh, you would have figured something out, I’ve no doubt of that.”

  She shrugged, thinking of her niece, of the child she hadn’t touched since the day she was born, the child that didn’t even know she existed. “She looks so much like her.”

  Perdeus nodded, “She looks like you both.” She didn’t respond and, after a moment, the High Priest sighed, “Prefect Daven came to see me yesterday.”

  Memory looked up, forcing thoughts of her niece away, telling herself the same promise she always told herself. There would be time, after it was finished. Never mind that it felt a little more like a lie each time she thought it. “Oh?”

  “The Church wants to raise the numbers of the Drawing. They claim that the current amount of sacrifices is no longer sufficient to cleanse the Ether.”

  Memory found herself gritting her teeth, “How much have they raised it?”

  “I didn’t say they have, only that they want to. The king … declined the offer.”

  Memory’s eyebrows shot up at that, “But … what about the princess?”

  Perdeus nodded, his eyes sad, “From what my source tells me, it was the princess who fought against it. Apparently, there was a scene in the throne room. Suffice to say … the prefect did not leave happy.”

  Memory smiled, though there was no humor in it. “Good for her. But surely … she must know what will happen. What they’ll do.”

  Perdeus shook his head, “The princess—I’ve been told—knows nothing of the necklace’s special properties.”

  Memory raised an eyebrow in surprise. When she’d first heard of the necklace, she’d been shocked, angry. People that came down with the Withering Fever didn’t survive. Ever. The fever was the fairest sort of cruel. The poor and rich alike succumbed, no matter the amount of supposed curatives they drank or how many prayers the priests sent to the Divines. It was a death sentence, always. At least, almost always. Apparently, the Church had somehow devised a way to hold the disease at bay, creating a necklace that was regularly infused with the essence of life itself, life stolen from others.

  It wasn’t a cure, of course, but as long as it remained charged and touching the princess’s skin, the necklace would keep the disease at bay. It was clever, Memory had to admit. The problem, of course, was that someone else had to die to make it work. Only a select few knew of the necklace’s existence—Perdeus himself wasn’t supposed to—and, High Priest or not, would face almost certain death, should his knowledge be discovered. What’s more, the necklace had not been given freely but been bought and paid for with promises from the king, promises that—having refused to raise the numbers of the Drawing—the king had broken.

  “Ashes, that poor girl,” she breathed. “The Church won’t stand idly by … surely the king must know this. They’ll be looking for revenge.”

  Perdeus met her eyes, “I believe they already have. My source told me that the princess hasn’t been wearing her necklace since yesterday. My source doesn’t know where it has gone but….”

  “But it’s an easy enough guess,” Memory finished. “The Church.”

  “Yes,” he said, his voice laden with grief, “so I, too, believe. The prefect is a cruel man, but he is no fool. Since the queen’s passing, the king has been obsessed with his daughter’s safety and won’t so much as let the princess step foot outside of the castle without a dozen armed men to accompany her. Which means ….” He trailed off, shrugging.

  Memory rubbed at her eyes, suddenly exhausted. “Which means that the king will agree to raise the numbers of the Drawing, despite what he may want.”

  The priest nodded, “So I believe.” He sighed, “But never mind that, for now. Tell me, how did the meeting with Cameron go?”

  Memory winced. Apparently, Perdeus hadn’t heard, and she hesitated, hating to deliver any more bad news to the older man. His face was pale, his eyes sunken, and she’d noticed a distinct tremor in his hands, proof that the stress of what they were doing was taking its toll. Still, after all he’d done for her and Anna, he deserved the truth. “He … met with me. I’m still not sure if he believed me or not. He came to me, wounded, after Harvesters broke into his house and tried to assassinate him. Then ….” She took a deep, hitching breath, the tears closer than they’d been for some time as she stared into the priest’s worried eyes, “I tried to get him to stay, Perdeus, I did, but he wouldn’t listen.”

  “What are you saying?” Perdeus asked, leaning in, his hands on the table, and Memory couldn’t help but notice the way they shook.

  “He wouldn’t stay, Perdeus,” she said again, hating the weakness in her voice, “He went after Marek at the Harvester’s grounds. He said he had to pay for what he’d done to his family and … to his partner.”

  The High Priest ran a shaking hand over his face, looking as if he’d aged ten years in a moment, “Falen? What happened to Falen?”

  Memory met his eyes, wishing she could protect him but knowing she could not, “Falen was killed, Perdeus. The
Church sent two groups. One for Falen, another for Cameron. When Cameron found out … Perdeus, he could barely stand.”

  The priest sat back slumping in his chair, the defeat on his face so strong that Memory felt the tears start once again. “Divines help us. The poor stubborn fool,” he said, “Pit take it he is so like his father … it’s my fault. I was a coward, and now he’s paid the price for my cowardice. I should have told him sooner or not at all.”

  Memory reached out, grabbing the older man’s hands in her own, hating the way they felt like little more than bones in her grasp, “Don’t say that, Perdeus, please. You did the best you could. Besides, perhaps there is still hope. I sent my best men after him. If he’s alive—”

  The High Priest shook his head, a tear gliding down his face, and when he spoke it was in a barely audible whisper, “He won’t be. Marek will make sure of that.”

  She didn’t know what to say to that and so, for a while, she said nothing. Time passed, Memory wasn’t sure how much, but she finally spoke, hating herself yet knowing it had to be done. They were running out of time. “What do we do now?”

  Perdeus sighed, a weary, broken sound that broke Memory’s heart. “You have to find the necklace and get it back to the princess. Soon. The Midyear ball is tonight, and the king will speak to those gathered as he always does. If the necklace isn’t found before then … well, I suspect that we will be seeing a dramatic increase in the Drawing.”

  Memory leaned back in her chair, a feeling of hopelessness settling in her heart. What chance did they have of finding a single necklace in a city this large? Where would they even start looking? It wasn’t as if the Church would leave it lying out in the open to be snatched up. But what choice did they have? “Do you have any idea where to begin searching?”

  “I’m sorry, but no,” the priest said. “I only know that they will have to keep it close to the king. It will do them little good for the king to agree only for the necklace to arrive too late to save his daughter, and the symptoms of the fever will move quickly.”

  Memory threw her hands up in frustration, “Little good it does us to know they’ll keep it close. It’s not as if we can just walk into the castle and search for it.”

  Perdeus nodded, “I know that it’s not a good answer, but it’s the only one. Once the ball begins, you’ll have a few hours to find the necklace before the king makes his speech.”

  “A few hours,” Memory said dully, “to search a castle for something that we know the bastards will have taken great pains to hide, to find it and get it to the princess before it’s too late. Not much chance of that.”

  “Perhaps not. But it is the only chance we have.”

  Memory sighed, rising. They’d spoken for too long already. They conference rooms were private enough, but that wouldn’t keep people from marking who came in and out of them and the longer she stayed the better chance that they would be found together. “Very well,” she said, “then I’ve no time to lose. It will be dark in another hour, maybe two. When will the king address the people?”

  “The king’s speech always takes place at night, the first minute of Midyear. The ball will last for a few hours after that, I’m sure, but by then it will be too late.”

  Memory bit back a curse, nodded her head sharply and turned to go.

  “Mira.”

  Memory looked back, surprised by the use of her given name. The priest watched her from his chair, his blue eyes filled with worry. “Whatever happens, I want you to know that it’s been my privilege to know you. I know you lost your faith in life when your sister and parents were killed. But know that the world is not all darkness, not all death. Even the darkest of nights fades and flees in the light of the morning.”

  Memory nodded again, not trusting herself to speak, then turned and left.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Memory made her way through the city’s streets in a near daze, her mind focused on the problem at hand. Strategies for getting into the ball and finding the necklace rose rapidly in her mind, one after the other, and were dismissed just as quickly. There was a way to fix this, she believed that, she had to believe that, but try as she might she could not see it.

  She wished desperately that she hadn’t sent Nicks and Blinks away. Many people, upon meeting the pair, thought of them as a joke, two men who couldn’t seem to take life seriously, but Memory knew how much they were capable of and had relied upon them often in the past. Nicks was a clever man, perhaps the most clever man she knew, and Blinks—although many people thought him slow and, perhaps, in some ways he was—had a way of seeing to the root of a problem that sometimes shocked her. The two would no doubt return soon with news of the Harvester’s death, but would they return in time?

  She was exiting an alley across from the abandoned warehouse concealing the entrance into the caverns when something—an inexplicable feeling of danger—jerked her out of her thoughts, and she abruptly came to a stop, alarm bells ringing in her head. She scanned the street around her but saw no one, yet she felt … something. She glanced at the openings to two side alleys she could see, but the deepening gloom of the approaching night made it nearly impossible to discern anything much further than a foot or two down their length.

  She paused again, trying to discover what had brought on the feeling of unease and then, in a moment, she knew. There were no houses in this part of the poor quarter, only old, abandoned warehouses. Once, wealthy merchants, taking advantage of the cheaper price of land in the poor quarter, had used this section of Carel for storing their goods, but after the latest outbreak of plague ten years ago, they’d decided that while saving money was good, saving their own lives was better. The warehouses had sat vacant and abandoned for several years before their owners had decided to sell them at a significant loss.

  They’d all sold for cheap since nobles and the richer families—terrified of the plague—refused to buy any product that had been stored in the streets hit hardest by the disease. The new owner, likewise, had left the buildings standing but unused and, even stranger, had remained anonymous, communicating only through messengers. Still, the merchants had been happy enough to rid themselves of the property, so happy that they cared little about the identity of the man—or woman—who purchased it. Stories cropped up, from time to time, of the warehouses being haunted by spirits or ghosts, as is often the case when any place is left unused for so long. These rumors further dissuaded anyone from venturing into one of the old buildings.

  This, of course, was just as Memory liked it. She’d only ever actually wanted the one building—the one with an opening, now covered by a concealed trap door—that led to the caverns, but she’d purchased the others to avoid unwanted attention.

  With no residences nearby and the warehouses being on a side street, not connected to the main road through the poor quarter, the street was often quiet. Still, there was almost always a person or two, sometimes kids who would come by, daring each other to enter one of the buildings, or muggers hoping for a careless traveler to wander too far from the city’s center. At times, young couples, eager for privacy, would find their way to this out of the way street. Today, however, there was nothing. No one. Suddenly, a thought, no, a certainty, came to Memory that there were people inside those buildings, people maybe peeking out of the dirt-stained windows at the woman standing frozen in the street.

  Don’t be a fool, she chided herself. You’re just nervous, that’s all, and you’re letting your mind play tricks. Still, the feeling of being watched, of being stalked did not abate, and she stood for another moment, studying the warehouses around her. In the growing darkness, their filth-stained windows looked like large, malevolent eyes, watching her, waiting until she’d gone too far to escape before—before what, exactly? While you stand here like a child scared of the bogeyman, time is running out.

  She’d just started moving again when the door to the warehouse—not any warehouse, but the only one that mattered—burst open and a bloody form came flying
through it, crashing to the ground and rolling to a groaning, gasping stop only feet away from where she stood. Memory stared at the man lying on the ground in shock. Blood covered his face, obscuring his features, but he turned his head and she gasped in recognition.

  “Magister?” Memory fell to her knees beside the old man and took his face in her hands. She wiped away some of the blood and cried out as she realized that one of his eyes was missing, in its place a ravaged, bloody hole.

  “Memory,” he wheezed in a hoarse, rattling voice that sounded little like the man she knew, “They know … everything … you have to go … run.”

  Movement in the corner of her eye caught her attention, and she raised her head in time to see a figure emerging from the open doorway. There was something strange about his movements, each step jerky and uneven, and she saw, her heart hammering in her chest, that the man’s skin was so pale as to be almost white. He held a bloody sword loosely in his hand, the way a child might carry a favorite doll. There was a knife sticking out of his chest, but if it pained him, he gave no sign. Still, the most terrifying thing about the man—if he was a man—wasn’t his skin or his walk or even his lack of care for the knife sticking out of him, but his eyes. They shimmered a dull, lifeless gray, eyes that held no human thought or emotion, eyes that seemed to be portals to the Pit itself. The man moved closer, his head cocked at an unnatural angle, his unnerving, hitching strides bringing him closer with alarming speed.

  As he drew nearer, Memory saw that no blood came from the wound in his chest, and she gasped in horror as recognition dawned. Bloodless.

  “Run. Memory. Plea—” Pellin gasped, but his words turned into a groan as she grabbed both of his hands and began to drag him down the street, groaning and cursing at how much the older man seemed to weigh, the screams of her muscles matching the old man’s own cries as she pulled him along.