It was an embarrassing admission, but Merrick sat up straighter in his chair, and she noted his hand went to the length of leather tied to his belt—the Strop that was the focus of a Sensitive Deacon’s power. His frown was deep, making him appear so much older, and he pressed his lips together. Finally when he looked up, his eyes scanned her enough to make her think that she was some insect under scrutiny. “It could be,” he finally offered, “that your closeness to the geistlord Hatipai has woken an awareness in you that has lain latent.”
Zofiya could not stop the words escaping her. “You think I am some kind of Sensitive?”
Merrick grew suddenly bold, taking her hand and tracing a design in it. She let him, because his hand was warm, and she wanted his touch rather badly. “No,” he leaned back, placing the Grand Duchess’ palm once more on the table. “There is a glimmer there, but nothing that could be trained up to the level of Deacon. It seems you just have had your inner eye opened to certain things.” He smiled reassuringly. “In your position, Imperial Highness, it could prove quite useful.”
“Well, having to excuse myself and rush off to be sick while at a state dinner is quite inconvenient. Rumors get started that way.”
Now it was the Deacon’s turn to blush. “I will try and find a way to bump into your Lord del Rue and see if there is something deeper to these feelings. It may be that he was merely the target of an unliving attack sometime in his life. Such things do leave scars.” He stood up. “If you could arrange for me to mix with the Court tomorrow, I am sure I can put your mind at rest.”
She looked up at him and smiled. “I will tell the seneschal that you will attend as extra security when the Prince Gyor arrives from the west. The Emperor has arranged a state ball for him, and that should give you a chance to run your eye over del Rue.”
The Deacon bowed. “Until tomorrow then.”
Just as he turned to go, Zofiya found another way to prolong his visit. “How is your partner faring?”
Merrick’s eyes dipped away from hers. “No better and no worse, Imperial Highness. No one has been able to penetrate the coma—not even myself. All I can feel is her frustration and anger. The Presbyters are almost on the verge of assigning me a new partner, and I can only put them off so long.”
Zofiya felt a twist of jealousy at his concern. She knew the Bond between Active and Sensitive was a powerful one, but Deacon Faris was a woman. Still, she managed to conceal the stab of resentment. “I’m sorry to hear it. I imagine you are heading back to sit vigil?”
He shook his head. “I did when we first returned from Chioma, but after a couple of weeks her emotions bled so much into my own that I could not sleep.”
“I am sure it is not deliberate on her part,” Zofiya murmured. “I will look for you at Court then tomorrow.”
As he bowed once more and withdrew, she was able to consider the rashness of her actions. She was used to taking risks, with blood and body, but she wondered if the young and handsome Deacon Merrick Chambers might be a risk of a totally new, and more dangerous kind. Still, what was life without risks?
FOUR
Dealing with Shadows
As he crouched in the shadows of buildings looking across the lake to the fortress of Phia, Raed heard the rumble of his burden.
She is in there. The traitor. The vermin.
“She’s my sister,” Raed replied under his breath, “remember that.” He was fully aware how bad it would look to be found talking to himself on the street. He couldn’t risk another incident like the one yesterday with the bounty hunter.
Tracking his sister, far from friend and family, he’d had to rely on the Rossin, but that didn’t mean he liked it. With Fraine and her collaborator Tangyre Greene stirring up rebellion in every principality they could find, the Emperor had raised the price on Raed’s own head. Things had gotten that much more difficult—and without his crew he felt as vulnerable as a turtle out of its shell. Bounty hunters were coming out of the woodwork left and right.
Which was why he had turned to the Rossin. Somewhere in the humid jungles of the west, he had lost all hope—and fallen back on the one resource he still had. Inviting the geistlord to occupy the upper portions of his conscience was a risk, but it was what the Rossin was willing to accept in return for his help. As much as it pained the Young Pretender to the throne, he knew that he would have died on the street yesterday without the fell creature’s warning. Only months before, the idea that he would be bargaining with the creature he had despised for decades would have been laughable. Now it was a grim reality.
The town was quiet at his back. The death of the bounty hunter had been swift, but plenty of citizens had seen the huge, agile shape of the Rossin on the rooftops. If Fraine didn’t know already, she would soon hear that her brother was nearby. What she would do with that information was a mystery. The uncomfortable fact was he didn’t know his sister very well. Evidenced by the fact he’d never suspected she harbored such hatred for him, and that she was capable of slaying members of his crew in cold blood.
Snook’s face as her throat had been slit and her blood had poured down to the sands of Chioma still haunted his dreams.
Fool. Don’t think of the past. Think of what you must do.
The Rossin’s voice was seductive again; a velvet wash across his senses, reminding him how good it was to be strong and mighty. It was an effort of will every day to not just give up to the geistlord. He couldn’t yet—not when Fraine was in danger of bringing the Empire to its knees.
If Fraine succeeded in launching a revolution, countless thousands of citizens would be swept up in civil and regional wars, as old feuds and rivalries were released with the death of Imperial control. It would be generations before the continent would know peace again—they would all be plunged into another time of darkness—as when the Otherside broke through into the world. While few written records had survived from that period, stories and dark legends had been passed from parent to child. The light had very nearly been extinguished in Arkaym. His family had rekindled that flame. Raed would not let them be the ones to now blow it out.
First, he had to reach Fraine within the fortress. The ruling family of Ensomn, the Shin, were renowned for their paranoia, cunning and ambition. It was said their shadow guards were trained in four hundred and thirty ways of killing in silence, and that their homes were mazes fraught with deadly traps. All of these things had helped keep the Shin monarchs of this principality for hundreds of years.
They were also well-known for their hatred of the Emperor—who lived on the east coast of the continent and taxed them, in their opinion, far too heavily. No one ever liked taxes, though they kept the roads safe, and petty wars from breaking out. Provinces far from the bright heart of the Empire rarely saw Imperial Dirigibles or the Imperial Guard, and so tended to forget they existed.
“Nothing to offer then?” Raed whispered, as he slipped closer to the river. “No great geistlord insight about the Shin?”
The wash of malice made his jaw tighten painfully. Trapped in your bloodline for generations, I know little of the petty doings of humans. All I know is the taste of their blood.
So all he had to rely on was his own teaching about the Shin—and that had not included knowledge about the internal layout of the fortress. Luckily there were still some people here who remained loyal to the Rossin family. Not everyone had been delighted with the Conclave of Princes’ choice to bring a foreign Prince in to take over as Emperor; some still remembered or held tight to “the good old days” when Raed’s grandfather had ruled. That was how he had managed to find someone in town willing to give him basic information about what he might find in the fortress.
It was for these same reasons that his sister had found her way here. In their grandfather’s time, the Shin had been allowed far more latitude to rule their own kingdom. She was undoubtedly reminding them of that. Every minute that she was left to negotiate with them was another step closer to civil war. Unless he could preve
nt it.
The Emperor sitting back on his warm throne in Vermillion would never know he owed his rival such a debt. Perhaps though, Sorcha would hear of it.
Raed inhaled sharply, recalling the last time he had seen the Deacon, hanging limply in Merrick’s arms, like a discarded puppet. The Young Pretender wondered every day if the Sensitive had held to his promise to save Sorcha. If only there were gods to honestly pray to for that.
Weak mortal. The Rossin growled. You think of her at a moment like this?
For once the creature was right. He had to focus on the here and now, not on the what could never be.
The sky above was clear and warm, and the stars bright and sharp with no clouds to hide their beauty. Before he could lose his nerve, Raed quickly stripped his clothes and boots off, and shoved them into an oilskin bag. Already the bag contained the maps he had secured the previous night, his sword and his pistols. The satchel was the kind sailors used to keep their belongings dry while on deck. He had one too many times found himself naked in the wilderness, and he didn’t want to be that vulnerable in the fortress.
“I’m ready,” he whispered more to himself than to the Rossin. Nude, he crouched by the water’s edge for a moment, running out the waxed cord that secured the bag’s mouth. “You remember the deal?” he asked the geistlord as confidently as he could. Raed knew it was useless to try to hide his real emotions from the beast, but it made him feel better.
I fly. You break in. I feed.
“We find my sister first—then you feed.”
Unless we are discovered.
It should have been impossible for another consciousness in his head to sound so cunning—but the Rossin did. Raed was becoming aware that his lifelong assessment of the geistlord as merely a beast running on bloodlust was quite incorrect. It was convenient to think of the geistlord as an animal, but they were more tightly connected than ever now, and Raed was catching glimpses of something else; an immense patience, and a fearful delight that all was coming to fruition. Just what that might mean however was still wrapped in shadow. Not for the first time Raed wondered what the beast had gained by allying himself with the bloodline of Raed’s ancestor, the first Emperor-Deacon.
“Only if we are discovered,” Raed said as he stood tall by the lake edge. “Then you may have at it, and see how the dice roll—but if you break our agreement, back into the depths you go, and I will never call you out again. It is as we agreed.”
Something about the pact they had made bound this creature of death and mayhem. Raed was not going to question how it worked—but perhaps a Deacon would know more of it than he did.
Previously, whenever the geistlord had taken control, the Young Pretender was always subsumed. He awoke from the Rossin’s rampages with only a scattering of memory, the taste of blood in his mouth and terrible guilt. However, since he had drawn the beast into his own consciousness—they shared an awareness. This was, Raed reasoned, a fair cost for the Rossin’s help. Just how much control he had over his passenger in this state, he had never tested. Sooner or later he knew he would have to.
Pain. That was another change. He felt a deeper pain as the Rossin bent and twisted his flesh to make its own shape. Bones snapped and were remade. Every nerve and sinew was severed and spun by the geistlord’s will. He wanted to scream to release some of the agony, but even his throat would no longer obey. He had nowhere to hide from the agony.
The Rossin took his flesh and snarled in hunger. The head of its aerial form was that of a great eagle, while the body remained feline and huge. A pair of long feathered wings snapped angrily in the air. The beak was curved and wicked and could carve human flesh as readily as the teeth of its other forms. The Rossin was beautiful and deadly. Magnificent—if you were anyone else but the Young Pretender. He was carried along like an unwilling rider on a runaway mount.
After snatching up the bag in its beak, the beast leapt into the air. Flying was something that many people dreamed of; being carried aloft, leaving the world below, and touching the ultimate freedom. As the Rossin sprang into the air, Raed felt elation, but he tried to repress the emotion. It was wrong to find any enjoyment in anything the geistlord did.
Lying in his arms, Sorcha had spoken of the giddy rush of power a Deacon felt when wielding the Gauntlets, and how she had to fight it; how it was a constant struggle and a deadly temptation. He now understood what she had meant.
Deacons should be destroyed, not loved. They are liars and manipulators. We should kill them all.
The Rossin naturally loathed the Deacons; not only did it hate the first one that had traded with the geistlord, but Sorcha, who had put controls on him with the Bond. The beast did not like restrictions of any kind.
Raed wanted to think about Sorcha some more, but he dare not. The geistlord hated her so, and she was a complication in his already broken life. He didn’t expect to see her again. He didn’t expect to live very much longer.
The air was cold up here, in the clouds, but the heat of the Rossin was greater. Birds scattered from the great shape, like pebbles thrown across the sky. The natural world was always so much better at sensing the unliving than humans.
It was not far to the stronghold of the Shin, but the Rossin wheeled above it, careful to keep himself low and away from the sliver of the waxing moon. It was a good night for dark deeds. The feathers that lined the wings of the Rossin were like owls’, soft and silent. In all his forms the creature was a predator. His eyes were sharp too. He could make out details of the fortress and its defenses; a collection of low, curved roofs capped the towers that jutted sharply out into the clouds. All in all a very unwelcoming sight.
As the Rossin turned and banked away he could make out a handful of human shapes moving atop the curved roofline. They smelled of steel and gunpowder, but now they were fodder for the geistlord. Folding his wings, the Rossin dropped down from the dark skies and aimed for a guard leaning against his polearm and looking down toward the city. He never saw his end coming, until it was upon him. The Rossin knocked him to the ground, wrapping his wings around the guard, and plunging his beak into the man’s unprotected throat. The taste of blood flowered in Raed’s mouth; thick, rich and terrifyingly satisfying. To his horror he found he was enjoying it.
The geistlord fed on flesh, blood and bone until he was sated. Having gorged on the bounty hunter only a few days ago it did not take long. As the geistlord sucked down the last of the blood, Raed reasserted control. Its hunger satisfied, the beast gave way without any hesitation and retreated into the depths of the Young Pretender’s soul, much as he used to before they had made their new pact. Then he was on the ground, covered in blood and with the foul taste of it stuck to the back of his throat. Raed lay there for a moment, steeling himself to get up and do what needed to be done. He rolled over, opened the bag, pulled out his clothes, and slid them onto his stained and fouled body.
Every part of the Young Pretender ached, like he’d been trampled by a horse, but Fraine was close now—closer than she had been since their meeting in the desert. She had led him into a trap, sold him out to a geistlord masquerading as a goddess, and killed five of his crew members in cold blood.
Raed could understand why Fraine had turned on him—her childhood had been marred by the death of her mother in the jaws of the Rossin. What, if any, affection she had retained for Raed after that had then been twisted by Tangyre Greene’s lies. That did not mean he would let her rip the Empire apart. Whatever feelings he had for his sister, guilt, love and anger, didn’t really matter. The entire Empire was at stake.
The map, obtained at so much risk in the city, was still not complete—it showed only the upper and outer levels of the fortress that was constructed like some elaborate puzzle box. At least that was how it looked on his first examination of the map. The mapmaker had even struggled to draw it, but had settled on three layers, like a peeling away of an onion.
Raed strapped on his pistols and sword and went to the first door. Opening i
t, and stepping inside, he immediately understood the mapmaker’s dilemma. Everything inside the fortress was designed to confuse the eye and befuddle the brain. The corridor he walked down was tilted at an odd angle, and wound its way deeper in the fortress. Along the way, there were doors that opened straight outside again. Others were set in the ceiling, or half-buried, and only passable by a child.
The map saved him from going mad in the first instance, as Raed quickly lost his bearings. He found a shaft indicated in red, and by virtue of wedging his legs against one side and his back against another, shimmied down through it and to the next level. This all seemed a very useful way to hold off intruders and stymie assassins, but he couldn’t help but wonder how on earth the Shin traversed their own fortress in any comfort at all. Even if they memorized the passages and odd doorways, it would not have been comfortable. On the first level he had not seen a single guard, and he understood why—surely they would have been driven mad by the illogical and crazy layout.
Raed’s feet touched down in a new, deeper layer of the fortress, and for a moment he stood there swaying. This looked like any number of corridors in any number of palaces he had visited: stone walls, lined with tapestries. However there was a deeper hush on this place than anywhere else he’d ever been. He stood there contemplating which way to go and examining the map. It had marked out a straight path to the right and then deeper.
As he walked the corridors Raed contemplated how much better this would be if Sorcha and Merrick were with him. A couple of Deacons would have been most useful at this point. But that wasn’t all. This was the first long stretch of time he’d been alone in his entire life. As a Prince and then as a captain, he’d been surrounded by servants, soldiers, crew and friends. Though he had been the one to make decisions, he’d always had someone else to confer with.
You have me. I will never leave you.
Raed had never before considered if the Rossin had a sense of humor—not that it was one that he appreciated overly. It was merely a distraction that he didn’t need since reading the map was becoming harder and harder. The designer had drawn a series of strange red circles on the map, but the map had no key.
Wrayth to-3 Page 3
