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 Strop 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.”
Vyra leaned on the ropes. “I confess, Deacon Chambers—”
“You may call me Merrick.”
“That would be inappropriate—and against regulations.” She stood suddenly military straight, and then shot him another glance. “But thank you. I must confess that when the assignments were handed out, I volunteered Summer Hawk for this detail.”
“Why would you do that? This delegation must be the dullest use of an Imperial Dirigible possible.”
Vyra shrugged. “I have a feeling, Deacon Chambers, that wherever you and your partner go, it is never dull.”
Merrick let out a breath. He had been worried that the captain’s interest was related to him—never thinking that it was just a desire for action. The Imperial Air Fleet was still new, and the Empire largely quiet—so much of what it did was act as a courier service for goods all over the continent.
“I am afraid that this is a mission that even Sorcha cannot make more than a civilized delegation.”
The captain shrugged. “The marriage of Emperors is perhaps not as simple as you think.”
The tone of her voice was enough to raise Merrick’s curiosity. “Have you heard something?” It was one of the risks of being a Deacon; gossip and scuttlebutt tended to not be passed on to the Order.
Vyra’s lips pursed as if she were considering the wisdom of doing that very thing. “Let us say that the jockeying for the position of Empress has not been . . . gentle.”
A stray fact, one of the many he had learned of Chioma, suddenly emerged from the depths of Merrick’s recollection; the principality was not only the home of every strange and exotic spice in the Empire but also some of the most powerful and hard-to-detect poisons. Suddenly their trip seemed to become far more complicated.
“It is good then to know you are our backup, Captain Revele.”
Her smile was sudden and brilliant in the moonlight, but she did not reply. Instead she squeezed his arm in a most familiar manner before she turned and strode the rest of the way up the deck toward the wheelhouse.
Merrick was left looking over the night of tumultuous clouds and angry moon. He didn’t need the Sight of Deacon Reeceson to know bad things awaited them in the rich principality of Chioma, but that was not what made him shiver.
It was instead the memory of the man that had chased him in his own sacred space. He would not sleep this night—and for many more, most likely—because of what he had felt. Merrick would be glad when they reached Orinthal and its Abbey. Maybe it was an illusion, but he felt sure he would at least be able to sleep there.
EIGHT
The Wakened Dark
After getting the appropriate paperwork, the Sweet Moon sailed up the Saal without much ceremony, but Raed couldn’t shake the memory of the blood-soaked woman holding her kin in a dripping bundle and screaming to an impotent goddess. Tangyre had tried to distract him to little effect. The surroundings of a slaver ship, even an empty one, were not that conducive to laughter.
Only Raed and Tang were above deck on the third morning, while the crew breakfasted below. The Young Pretender had felt very little like eating since leaving Londis. Instead he watched the riverbank slide away from the ship.
Despite it being over a season since he had been tormented by the Rossin, Raed was still wary of being this close to land. The urge to turn about and head for the
open ocean, as he had done for most of his adult life, was powerful. Only the thought of his sister Fraine somewhere out there kept him on course.
The land they were sailing deeper into was unfamiliar to him, hotter and more parched than any he had seen. Yet it was part of the Empire and by rights should have been ruled by him. His grandfather, he knew, had sailed this very river heading north to Orinthal. Naturally, it had been with considerably more pomp and ceremony than their current circumstance called for.
Raed gripped the railing of the ship hard. “Life is never quite how you imagine it.”
“Indeed, my Prince”—Tang leaned on her elbows next to him—“but how we overcome adversity is the ultimate test of who we are.”
Raed swallowed hard. “I just hoped—well . . . I hoped that—” He stopped short, realizing the words he was about to say were ridiculous. His hopes were ridiculous. This world had to live with the geists, and more powerful men than he had tried to change things to no effect. Instead of letting out words that would make him sound like a petulant child, Raed shrugged. “I just feel as if something is waiting for us. For me.”
She squeezed his shoulder. Neither of them mentioned the Rossin and the fate of his mother, who had died beneath the geistlord’s claws.
“No one knows we are coming.” Tangyre turned around and said the next few words in an offhand manner that he did not buy for an instant. “Perhaps you are merely thinking of distant places—distant people?”
Raed arched an eyebrow, glad of the distraction from thinking of his sister or the Rossin. “I did not realize that Aachon had time to spill all my secrets to you.”
Captain Greene grinned broadly. “You just have to know which handle to crank to get everything out of him.”
Raed laughed.
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