Merrick wondered what the punishment for daring to breach the mental defenses of an Arch Abbot would be. As he threw up a subterfuge of contrition tinged with an edge of outrage, he traced the lines of the rune Sielu and pressed it toward Rictun.
The Arch Abbot’s mind was a pit of unexpected fear. For a second Merrick teetered and almost fell into it. Everything was dangerous in the world. Everywhere in the Empire of Arkaym was danger and menace. Rictun was quite the consummate actor, the younger Deacon found. So much terror about what could be waiting around the corner was stuffed deep down inside him it really was amazing he didn’t just panic there and then.
His surface thoughts were easy to read: Rictun was relieved to be free of Sorcha and the trouble she always seemed to carry about with her. From her earliest days within the Order she had been a problem. A powder keg rocking on the edge of a great fall. The Deacons in charge at the time had foolishly accepted her, and for a while Rictun had been forced to deal with her. Now she was, with every moment, moving away from Vermillion and the Mother Abbey. Never had a thing been better done.
It was a tantalizing look into Sorcha’s past—a glimpse of something Merrick had in idle moments contemplated. Every Deacon had a past. Most were brought to the Order as children, and some of those children had been traumatized by geists before even getting there. Those that could best wield the runes were also the best focus for the unliving to attach themselves to, so the various Abbeys and Priories were used to dealing with problem children. Yet in Rictun’s mind Sorcha stood out.
Merrick was tempted to probe deeper, but the thought that she was moving away with every minute spurred him on. As quickly and efficiently as possible he let Sielu die away. After this, he would look differently at the Arch Abbot—but since he planned never to come back to the Mother Abbey that really did not matter.
“There is one other matter,” Merrick said, folding his hands into his cloak, just in case they shook a little. “Grand Duchess Zofiya has requested my presence tomorrow night at the Imperial Palace.”
“The Council are going to weigh the matter of your new Active partner.” Rictun smiled. It was as condescending and vile a smile as Merrick had ever seen. “I want you Bonded with someone more appropriate before the new moon. The Order has much for a Sensitive of your capacity to do—however it is the Emperor’s sister. I suppose the matter can be deferred until the day after.”
“Thank you, Reverend Father.” The title stuck in Merrick’s throat, but he comforted himself by thinking he would not have to choke it out much longer.
“You may go.” Rictun waved his hand. He paused and eyed the younger Deacon. “I can only apologize for you being paired with Deacon Faris. A more inappropriate pairing I cannot imagine, but as you know, that was my predecessor’s decision.”
Merrick nodded slowly, bowed, and made his exit. As he strode back to the dormitory he knew that the one thing he needed, but was unlikely to get this night, was sleep. After tomorrow, once he left Vermillion he would be a renegade, hunted down by every Deacon and Imperial Guard. If they considered him a real threat they would most likely form up a Conclave of Deacons and set them after him.
With those odds stacked against him, he would need a very good ally—a very powerful one. He would wait one night, because fortunately he knew where he could find one of those. Tomorrow night, he best dress the part.
SIX
Unholy and Unhappy Choices
Aachon did not like flying one little bit. He had not enjoyed it on his first occasion when traveling from Ulrich to Vermillion. That had been a mission of deadly importance—just like this one. Only grave matters would get the huge first mate of the Dominion on board a flying deathtrap.
Not that he said as much when he handed over his documents to Quent Lepzig, the captain of the Autumn Eagle. He was a small, neat man, with a ruddy mustache and the gleam of command in his eye—the same look Raed possessed. That at least made Aachon feel marginally better and he took it perhaps as a sign of good luck.
Captain Lepzig glanced up at Aachon and frowned slightly. “It says here I am to go wherever you need to. This is a little strange; to have no destination is dangerous for an airship. If we need to refuel and there is no station…”
“Would you care to pop back to the Mother Abbey and ask the Presbyter himself?” Aachon rumbled sternly. “I am sure he would not mind being woken up at this hour.”
The captain swallowed and glanced up and down the length of his deck, perhaps checking that none of his crew were near enough to hear. No man in command liked to be dressed down, especially on his own vessel, but Aachon could not afford to let this captain think he had the upper hand. “I understand the needs of the Order come above anything but the Emperor himself.” He straightened as he spoke, but it was a pointless exercise against Aachon’s height.
As they stood awkwardly to one side of the gangplank of the Autumn Eagle, the half dozen crew of the Dominion he had brought with him appeared from the darkness. Most were only lightly encumbered, their covert methods of traveling to reach Vermillion had seen to that. However, Serigala and Arriann were not so lucky; they carried Sorcha between them wrapped in a blanket. They were both strong lads from the isles and hefted her as easily as if she were a bundle of laundry.
Captain Lepzig flicked aside the covering and stared at the comatose Deacon for a moment.
“This looks like Deacon Faris,” he said with a raised eyebrow. “I had heard she was struck down, but what use is she to you now?”
Aachon folded his arms in front of his barrel chest. “What use she is to us is quite frankly no business of yours, Captain. Now where shall we put her?”
Lepzig’s mustache fairly bristled. “The aft cabin is available. May I be permitted to ask what direction we should head, since we have no destination?”
“Cast off and set course for west for the moment, but I will give you course corrections as they need to be made.” Aachon stared down at Lepzig and realized that they could be stuck together for quite some time. Taking that into consideration he decided to soften his approach. “I apologize that I cannot tell you our eventual heading.” He jerked his head in the direction the lads were carrying Sorcha. “She will tell us that as we go.”
Lepzig’s brow furrowed at that, but he was part of the Imperial Fleet and used to obeying orders. Aachon knew how lucky they were to have the right papers as this man did look the sort for protocol.
“The Autumn Eagle is at your command,” he muttered, and then strode away to hurry his crew to their tasks.
Aachon set off after Sorcha and her bearers. Serigala grunted and called out to Arriann, “Hold on a moment!”
The two lowered the Deacon to the deck. Serigala bent over and rubbed at his arm with his face contorted in pain.
Aachon caught up with them. “What’s the matter, lad?”
“It’s nothing,” the young man grunted, but held out his arm revealing a nasty and quite deep bite. “Some damn Vermillion dog took a disliking to me.” He twisted the wound back and forth in the air, but was careful not to touch it. “Hurts like the bloody blazes.”
That was all they needed right now. The crew were few in number as it was, and all were committed to finding their captain; Aachon knew he would require every one of them.
Taking Serigala’s arm in a not quite gentle grasp, he held the weirstone over the wound, and peered at it. “A dog you say?”
“Yes, a huge brute of a thing, rushed right at me while we waited for you outside the Mother Abbey.” The crew member winced as the first mate poked at the edges of the bite. “The others pulled it off me, but it got away.”
“Frothing at the mouth at all?”
“Thank the little gods, no.”
Under weirstone light, Aachon could detect no inflammation that looked out of the ordinary. It would probably take a while to heal, and be painful, but with the right treatment Serigala would survive. “Get some of Aleck’s healing salve and keep it clean,” Aacho
n growled.
Serigala nodded and took up his burden with Arriann once more. Two men was more than enough to carry the Deacon. She was a deadweight but not a great deal of one. Her long time in bed, unable to move had whittled her curves down to sharp lines. Aachon had thought her beautiful once—now she was a shadow of that glory. Once they got her into the cabin, he dismissed the crew members and took care of her himself. As Aachon tucked her into the bed, he couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for the Deacon. To be sure she had caused a great deal of trouble for his Prince, and had dragged Raed Rossin into more scrapes than were necessary—but she had also risked much to save him.
Garil had given him the details of her flight to save the Young Pretender in the soaking heat of Chioma. Her partner Merrick had relayed them to the lay Deacon, and it was quite a tale. The desert principality was not a place Aachon would have cared to go—but like Sorcha he would have for duty.
He looked down into her face, and all belief that the Deacon was merely a sack of meat was lost. Those open blue eyes had lost none of their power, and even though her face did not move, her eyes flicked back and forth—focusing on him with the kind of baleful intent he had only ever seen on the face of a geist-possessed person. It must be terrifying and frustrating to be trapped in your own body, and then whisked away in the dead of night.
Aachon did not consider himself a cruel man. With a sigh, he squeezed himself into one of the chairs by the bed. The tight confines of an Imperial Airship had not been made for a man of his size. The engines of the Autumn Eagle began to thrum, and outside he could hear the shouts of her crew making ready to cast off.
Dipping into his coat pocket he withdrew a swirling orb. The weirstones were illegal, dangerous the Order said. No one should deal with them but their Deacons.
Aachon had never made secret his dislike of the Order of the Eye and the Fist. While most sane citizens were cautious of them and the power they wielded, they were mostly just grateful to them for ridding Arkaym of the geists.
The first mate of the Dominion had another opinion entirely. He had wanted to be one.
“I will tell you a little tale, Deacon Faris,” he began resting his arms on his knees, and staring into the orb swirling in his hands. “And you will have to do me the service of keeping quiet.”
It was a foolish joke to break the tension, but he could see by Sorcha’s eyes it was not one well taken. Aachon cleared his throat. “When I was a lad, my father sent me across the ocean to Delmaire to train with your Order.”
It felt so long ago that it was like telling the story of someone else entirely. “I was lucky to have a tutor by the name of Garil Reeceson.” Aachon tilted his head back, and closed his eyes, smelling some of the musk of cigar smoke that had even then lingered around the Deacon. “Back then he was rather handsome, and I was smitten with him immediately, but it wasn’t until I was just about to take the final tests that we became lovers.”
The flames died in Sorcha’s eyes as realization spread there instead. Aachon looked down at the weirstone again, feeling old regrets beginning to bubble up. “Perhaps we would have become Bonded partners.” He let out a short laugh. “Then you and Garil would have just been colleagues. What might have been is now lost however. Instead, my research on weirstones offended some people, and then when I tried to defend myself…well let’s just say I had to quickly return to Arkaym.”
He glanced across at the still Sorcha before continuing. “When you brought us here to Vermillion chasing the Murashev, we met again,” the first mate of the Dominion went on, his fingers tracing patterns on the surface of the weirstone. The swirls of water in the deep blue orb mimicked his motions. “He told me of his wild talent—told me of a dark shadow that lay ahead for you and my prince.
“Then when I lost Raed in the heart of Chioma, where he went looking for his sister, I came here to get Garil’s help locating him. But my prince’s path had fallen into such chaos that even he couldn’t discern it.”
Aachon leaned across and touched her hand. “We both knew that because of your Bond with my prince you could be the only one to track him—Garil has had a vision of you well again and with my prince. I know not, however, how this will come to pass.”
He sighed. “You must know that the ability the Prince of Chioma placed over you should have been temporary and faded at the next sunrise. No mortal creature can hold on to a truly geist power as you have done. Not without some kind of foci.” With one hand on Sorcha and the other cupping the weirstone, Aachon looked down. He did as Garil had tried, to see into the flame-haired Deacon’s past. His was a much more blunt instrument than the Order’s Rune of Sight Aiemm—but he should have been able to see more than he did—only her time within the confines of the Abbey. The moment of her first hesitant kiss with another initiate under the bowers of a flowering jasmine. The time she passed the test and carved her first rune into her Gauntlets—the pride swelling in her chest. He caught glimpses of her running as a child through the infirmary garden, smelled the lavender in her nostrils, and heard the squeal of excitement in her mouth.
Yet, if he tried to push back further there was nothing but a void. Aachon closed his fist about the weirstone. When he looked up, a tear had trickled free of Sorcha’s eye, so he carefully wiped it away with the edge of his sleeve. “How anyone let you into the Order with such a nothing for a history even Garil doesn’t know. Any Sensitive could look back and see this hole in your past if they cared to.”
The Autumn Eagle began to lift beneath them, and the thrum of the weirstone engines could be felt running through the ship. So many wonderful uses for them—and yet every one exposed the population to danger. Aachon looked deep into his own stone. Without access to the runes that the Deacons used, it was his only way back to power, but he’d accepted that danger long ago.
With a sigh, he put his own weirstone away, and exchanged it for the one Garil had given him. He moved it closer to Sorcha. Her eyes blinked rapidly, as if she were trying to tell him something. It was a nightmare he would have spared anyone the living of, but there was nothing he could do about it.
Best to think of her as a compass—a compass that he needed to keep a cautious eye on. “My prince,” he muttered, and narrowed his eyes, looking at Sorcha through the weirstone. Through her, and to his friend and charge.
The Bond was so powerful that it was confusing, deep and wide, so as to almost swallow up the rest of her. Aachon felt the strength of it, like a magnet stone drawing him. In that moment, a stab of jealousy hit. Something like this could have been his if the past had run differently.
He had to get past that. Focusing his etheric vision on the Bond, he traced where it ran back to Merrick; disappearing behind them in Vermillion.
Sorcha! Sorcha, where are you? The lad’s voice was so strong, that for an instant Aachon was sure that somehow the young Deacon had found a way to smuggle himself aboard the Autumn Eagle.
The first mate took a deep breath and tried again. While Merrick was a powerful Sensitive—stronger than the last time he’d seen him—he was not the target. Besides, a powerful Deacon like that would find another Bond soon enough.
His captain was in far more deadly danger. Pouring all of his concentration into the weirstone, strengthening it with a lifetime of care and friendship, Aachon saw beyond the looming part of the Bond between the two Deacons.
Far away and to the north his Prince was in danger. Alone, angry, guilty and with the Rossin riding very close to him. Aachon caught a glimpse of the great leonine head turning to him. A snarl of rage and victory echoed in his ears and the connection was abruptly severed.
The first mate sank back on his heels and stared blankly at Sorcha. She was staring right back at him. Both of them had seen where Raed Syndar Rossin was, and how he was surviving.
The Autumn Eagle could not go fast enough for Aachon, and had he the power and the right paperwork he would have insisted Captain Lepzig burn all the weirstones he had to reach his own captain. How
ever, at least now he had a direction. “North,” he whispered, “and then west to the land of Ensomn.”
He levered himself up, and glanced down at Sorcha. “I give you my promise I’ll find him and bring him back.”
She couldn’t utter a word in reply, but instead she closed her eyes: a mute acceptance of his terms. It was, after all, the only thing she had to offer.
SEVEN
Dancing with Royals
There were no two ways about it; Merrick knew that he was going to stick out like a donkey in a horse sale at this ball—no matter what. The Order’s plain clothes and cloak harkened back to the style of at least a hundred years ago, and so it was not as if he were going to make some incredible statement that would set the Court aflame with his fashion sense.
And yet…
Merrick swallowed. He had made up his mind, but the prospect was still daunting. He was about to turn his back on the world of the Order—the place he had journeyed across countless miles and a wide ocean to find. It would give anyone pause, but still he knew in that uncomfortable place where his conscience resided that it was the right thing to do.
“It will have to be this then.” He seized up his best-kept cloak, shirt and trousers.
Charming the Grand Duchess was uncertain territory that no Order teacher had ever instructed him on. A young man his age should have many conquests under his belt, a few notches on his bedpost—but while the Order did not demand celibacy of its members, it did not exactly provide normal social relations either. Deacon Merrick Chambers had only ever had one lover, and through a strange set of circumstances she had been taken from him. She now lived on the Otherside, surrounded by geists and quite without a body.
This thought propelled him from his room out into the hall. The tall mirror that stood at its end was etched with the mantra of the Sensitives; SEE DEEP, FEAR NOTHING.
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