Harbinger

by Philippa Ballantine

  Both brother and sister were gone now. Only Empress Zofiya remained.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Vision of Battle

  For a coyote, the Fensena would have made a better sheepdog than Merrick could ever have imagined. The young Deacon might have thought Sorcha was a hard taskmaster, until he fell under the tutelage of the geistlord.

  Word of the success at Waikein spread from city to town to village. Soon the outpost they had wrestled from the geists was inundated by as many people as could find their way there. An airship, a commandeered vessel from the Imperial Fleet, had even arrived within a week. It was damaged beyond the repair of anyone in Waikein, but it had been commandeered by a brave contingent of Deacons from the west, who had answered the call Sorcha had sent out from the citadel. An extra hundred Deacons put a strain on resources, but also made Merrick feel a little more confident.

  Then there were the throngs of normal folk who poured into Waikein asking, pleading and sometimes demanding to be tested. Merrick snatched what sleep he could from time to time, but all of the trained Deacons found themselves working every hour they could keep their eyes open.

  However, there was one problem: getting all these Deacons to Vermillion. Certainly without Sorcha they could not make use of the Wrayth portals. So Merrick thought of another woman who was just as powerful as his partner.

  She did indeed come when he called.

  Merrick stood on the hill just outside the city of Waikein and watched as the ships of the air appeared from among the clouds. They were very beautiful, too beautiful to be part of the world that seemed to be falling down on itself. The sharp wind from the east made him blink his eyes and draw the cloak of silver fur closer.

  It seemed to be the right thing to do to wear it. With Sorcha gone, the Order needed someone to follow, and the cloak distinguished him from everyone else. He was First Presbyter now, after all. Young as he might be, he was all they had now.

  “It suits you, boy,” the Fensena, who lounged at his side, commented while his golden eyes remained fixed on the approaching airships, “but those better not be tears in your eyes.”

  Merrick pressed his lips together and chose not to answer. The coyote kept quiet when in earshot of other Deacons, but all of them knew what he was. It was disturbing how none of them questioned the fact that their de facto leader had a geistlord at his side. They swallowed his statement that he and Sorcha had quelled and tamed the Fensena, and it was he that had given up the information that would lead them to victory.

  The world had become such a hardscrabble place that any little hope—even from a geistlord—was eagerly grasped. Merrick turned his head away from the oncoming airships and spared a glance behind him.

  The Order may have grown in the weeks since Sorcha’s abduction, bulging to almost three times the size it had been in the citadel, but he wondered if it was going to be enough.

  It was not the Order that Merrick’s previous Arch Abbots would have recognized—there were not enough cloaks to go around, so many had provided their own. Consequently, the group waiting below him was a variegated patterned quilt of a gathering. Their lack of proper training was the thing that still haunted him though.

  Merrick’s bleak thoughts were interrupted by a sharp nip on the ends of his fingers. Merrick jerked back from the Fensena, who had drawn blood with his sharp fangs. The coyote’s gold-coin eyes were narrowed and fixed on him.

  “You must not think of things you cannot have,” the beast growled. “You cannot give proper training without time—and you do not have time. What you have is what you have.”

  Merrick pulled his cloak tighter with a frown. He didn’t think the coyote was inside his head, but he very much disliked the impression the beast gave that he was. “It does not seem much to take on Derodak and his Circle of Stars—let alone the Maker of Ways . . .”

  The Fensena did not deign to reply, but raised his muzzle as the three airships approached. “You have transport to get where you need to, that should be enough.”

  It was the Summer Hawk. The First Presbyter smiled; even in these dark times something as familiar as that airship lit a small fire of hope in his chest. This had been the very airship he and Sorcha had first commissioned to take them back to Vermillion. Afterward they had defeated the Murashev. He could only hope it was an omen of things to come.

  Captain Revele—if it was she, still in command—maneuvered the airship down to a hundred feet off the mountaintop and secured her position with landing ropes. Finally, a sturdy, yet swinging ladder was dropped. Still, apparently someone couldn’t wait.

  A person, dressed in white, slid down one of the ropes to land only a body’s length away from him. For a moment Merrick was caught completely off-guard. Zofiya had come to meet him, but he knew immediately something had changed.

  She was dressed in a white jacket and Imperial scarlet trousers, with her dark hair braided up at the nape of her neck. On her left ring finger she wore a thick strap of silver, surmounted with a massive sapphire. It was the Imperial Ring he had last seen on her brother’s hand. Encompassing her forehead was a band of gold decorated with a strand of silver leaves. Each of those leaves represented a principality of Arkaym. It was not the Imperial Crown, but it might as well have been. Merrick knew the only thing this all meant.

  The Grand Duchess was no more. The person standing beside him was the Empress Zofiya of Arkaym.

  Merrick’s throat was suddenly dry, and his hands dropped to his side instead of wrapping around her. Automatically, he stooped into the deepest bow a Deacon could give.

  “Rise, First Presbyter Chambers,” she said softly. Their eyes met and he saw with some relief that she was still herself—though there was a deep, abiding hurt hidden in there. She had said nothing of her change in status in the brief weirstone missives she had sent.

  A frown darted across her Imperial brow. “I wanted to tell you myself,” she whispered, for a moment looking very vulnerable.

  He swallowed before answering. “That is entirely your right, Imperial Majesty. May I ask . . .”

  Zofiya looked about, and seeing that they were alone except for the silent coyote, threw herself into his arms. Suddenly she was just his love: warm, soft and hurt. She whispered the horror of it into his neck. “I had to take the throne, Merrick. Kal . . . Kal killed himself in the end. I couldn’t stop him . . .”

  The feeling that she had been holding all this in for weeks was immediate.

  Merrick let her hold him for a little while, but there was no time for much more. Eventually, he pulled back and wiped her tears with the sleeve of his shirt. By the time he was done, no one would have been able to tell that the new Empress had a heart.

  “You did what you had to,” Merrick said, holding her quite still in his grasp. It was entirely inappropriate for a man—even if he was Presbyter—to hold the Empress in any way at all. “When Derodak worked on your brother for months, he got his claws deeply into him. You cannot blame yourself for that.”

  Her jaw tightened slightly as she straightened. “I spent all my life looking out for Kal, Merrick. I thought I was doing a good job, but I didn’t move quickly enough when I suspected something was wrong with that man. I’m not ever going to forgive myself for that. Never.”

  Zofiya would hold on to that until her grave; it was what she was like. “Then you must learn to live with it,” he replied softly, “because it is not just your brother who has endangered the world.”

  “We have no time for this,” the Fensena, who had been mercifully silent until this moment, said, getting to his feet. His ears pricked forward. “You need to tell the Empress about all this, but we must be off immediately.”

  Zofiya’s saber was out of its sheath and in her hand in a flash. “What is that? Another talking beast?” Her gaze fixed on Merrick accusingly. “Another geistlord?”

  The coyote did not help his cause by folding one front leg and performing a bow like some well-trained dog. “Indeed. The Fensena.”
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  Her brother would most likely not have recognized the name, but Zofiya had spent hours learning about the dangers of Arkaym. “The Broken Mirror? The Widow Maker?” She turned slightly on Merrick, but kept her eyes and weapon pointed at the coyote. “Are you the new Derodak then, Merrick? Would you make pacts with geistlords as he did?”

  A headache began to form itself at the base of the First Presbyter’s head. He’d known that this meeting would not be easy, but he did not want to argue with the new Empress. “The Fensena is not to be trusted—”

  “I am right here you know,” the coyote broke in dryly.

  Merrick shot him a dark look and continued, “But he is as invested in this world as we are. On the Otherside he was one of the weaker geistlords.” The coyote growled but held his peace. “He knows more of this than even a Deacon can, and he says that Derodak is planning to contact the Maker of Ways.”

  The Empress blanched and reluctantly sheathed her saber. “Why would he do that? If the Otherside came through, there would be nothing but chaos and death.”

  The Fensena answered before the Deacon could. “Derodak has lived in this realm for hundreds on hundreds of years. He was both the first Deacon and the first Emperor. He thinks his knowledge and power is limitless, so when the Otherside spills into this world he imagines that he will control the geists as he has the ones here.”

  “He is a fool!” Zofiya spat, kicking a rock out from under her boot.

  “Indeed,” the coyote said, shaking himself as if he’d received a sudden dunking, “but he thinks he knows best. All will look to him, and he will be their father. However, when the Maker of Ways comes, Derodak may have cause to remember the true horrors of the Otherside.”

  Merrick watched his lover out of the corner of his eye, because he did not want to interrupt her thinking. When she spoke, there was more than a touch of weariness in her voice. “I have spent the last weeks fighting and negotiating my way around Arkaym. Even the false Rossin woman has been dealt with. I think I have mended much of what my brother did, but now you tell me it is all in vain—that the geists are coming and there is nothing I can do about it?”

  “Nothing.” The coyote sat up tall, his brindle head at the height of her chest. “Nothing except get those who you can to Vermillion.” He regarded her with his tongue lolling out of the corner of his mouth. “I expect you remember the tunnels and vaults under your palace?”

  Zofiya looked for a moment as if she might strike the beast, but eventually she nodded. “Yes, I remember very well. Is that where the breach will happen?”

  “It was where it happened before.” When she looked aghast, the coyote made that peculiar yipping noise again, his version of a laugh. “Humans forget so easily! Important things too, like the fact Vermillion was built by Derodak in his early days as protection against the geists.”

  Zofiya took the scolding with good graces and nodded slowly. “Then let’s get your new Deacons aboard, Merrick. You can tell me the rest while we make all haste back to the capital.”

  It was not easy work to do. The seasoned Deacons that had survived the scourging of the Order were used to airship travel for the most part, but the newcomers were not so comfortable to climb up a swaying rope ladder. Merrick made sure to be the last to go up and held the bottom of the ladder as steady as he could manage. Several times it looked as though there might be a dreadful accident—but eventually they were all aboard. Most looked as unhappy as Raed Syndar Rossin on his first trip during their ascent though.

  However, it was only when they had all climbed away from him that Merrick considered what was to be done about the Fensena. He was a large beast. Perhaps they could throw down a net?

  He need not have worried. By the time the First Presbyter had held the rope ladder for the last of his Deacons and turned around, there was a naked man standing on the stones next to him. He was older with gray in his hair and beard, but he did not look ashamed of his state of undress.

  Merrick blinked. So did the man. For an instant it looked as though a shiver of gold passed through the stranger’s eyes.

  His voice croaked a little when it came out. “As you see, Presbyter, I am true to my word, the folk I travel with do not burn and die when I can help it. As you can see, it is sometimes most useful to be able to use hands rather than paws.”

  While Merrick was still bemused, the Fensena used said hands to climb the rope ladder as quickly as a monkey. The First Presbyter did not look up for obvious reasons, but once the rope was clear, climbed up to the Summer Hawk himself.

  Captain Revele was standing next to the Empress talking to her in an undertone. Merrick felt a surge of awkwardness; he knew Revele had harbored some feelings of attraction toward him. However, he only knew it because Sorcha had pointed it out to him in no uncertain terms. The little flick of her eyes toward him and then away made him realize that his partner had been right.

  And now Revele had presumably found out from gossip about his relationship with Zofiya. Still, these were petty, childish things when laid next to the arrival of the Maker of Ways.

  The captain of the Summer Hawk gave a snap of a little salute. “Reverend Presbyter, it is good to see you well.” He knew he looked different from last time they had spoken. The warmth of the fur on his back reminded him of that.

  “Thank you, Captain. It is good to see you and your ship have survived the recent tumult.”

  “Captain Revele has been a loyal and valiant servant of the Empire,” Zofiya said. “She and her ship have been invaluable in the fight . . . but now it is time to return to Vermillion.”

  Revele took the hint, saluted her Empress and retreated back to the bridge of her airship. Soon enough, sailors were setting about their tasks, reeling in the ropes and starting the propeller that would power them on their way.

  “I would talk with you, First Presbyter,” Zofiya said loudly, and spun on her heel. The Fensena looked up at Merrick with burning gold eyes, and the Deacon could have sworn that there was a hint of amusement in them.

  Still, despite the look, Merrick really had no choice but to follow Zofiya. In the captain’s cabin, Merrick had just closed the door before the Empress in all her finery was slamming him against the door.

  As her mouth pressed against his, Merrick barely had time for surprise. That he was now embracing the Empress—though not yet crowned—of Arkaym was an event he had not foreseen. Zofiya pulled back from him and stared him in the eyes. “Do not think of it,” she whispered. “I am the same person, and this crown means about as much as one made of paper at the moment. The geists are coming, my love. We do not have much time.”

  When he looked at her, Merrick knew she was right. The breach could be opened in a matter of days, and then there would be no Empire for her to rule, just a lot of terrified people. Everything would break down after that. Airships, and all the trappings of civilization would be lost as the world descended into the grip of the geists.

  So Merrick kissed her back, because it was all he had to offer. Her mouth was soft and sweet—just as he had remembered it. In all that had happened, he had still managed to miss her.

  Zofiya unbuckled his cloak, letting it fall to the floor, and then pulled apart his shirt. The jacket she wore was stiff and covered in braid and military honors. It scratched his skin, but her mouth soon followed to act as balm.

  A fine swinging bed occupied the corner of the captain’s cabin, but the Empress seemed to have no thought of that; she instead pulled Merrick down with her onto the fur cloak that she had only just crumpled there. Outside, he knew that there were soldiers, Deacons, and members of Court that would all be waiting for them, but there were also days to go until they reached Vermillion.

  As Zofiya’s hands unbuckled his belt, Merrick abandoned worry, or rational thought. Just for a little moment. Just to remind himself what the struggle ahead was for. Life was precious and could be remarkably short.

  When they finally had spent themselves on each other, Zofiya rolled o
ver onto the fur cloak. Her fingers idly traced through its lushness.

  “A beautiful animal must have died for this,” she said, resting her head on Merrick’s shoulder.

  He nodded, for a moment content not to move. In fact, he was afraid if he did that the tiny bubble of time they had stolen would be whipped away. “Raed gave it to me,” he replied, kissing the top of her head, “so most likely it did.”

  Zofiya sighed. “The Rossin Emperors were not a kindly bunch.” She wriggled her head back and forward like a child trying to get comfortable. “Do you think I shall be remembered as Kind Empress Zofiya?” Her tone was deliberately light.

  Merrick knew that unless they stopped Derodak there would be nobody to remember anyone, but he also knew that was not what his love wanted to hear in this naked, intimate moment. “You shall be as kind as you can be. You will do all you can to be a good ruler because that is your nature. You are a good person, Zofiya. Remember that.” He placed a kiss on the top of her tousled head.

  They did not have time for more, and considering all that had happened, not much energy for it either. So they slowly climbed to their feet, washed off with water from the pitcher hanging from the chain, and got dressed once more. They shared a moment of unintentional laughter when they had to untangle Zofiya’s gold braid on her jacket from Merrick’s shirt buttons.

  “That wouldn’t do, would it,” she whispered to him. “Imagine the gossip?”

  It remained unsaid that their world was narrowing to one where gossip was a luxury. He smoothed back her hair and kissed her lips once more before they left the cabin. In the meantime, the Deacons had all been tidied away into cabins and to temporary accommodations in the hold. Sailors were about their business and even Captain Revele was not on deck.