Merrick pointed to the east wing. “Third floor. Not quite on the same level as the Emperor himself, but very close to it.”
“And are we just supposed to shoot the guards to gain access?” Aachon growled. Being without a weirstone had not improved his mood any.
However, there mightn’t be a need for it—not if Merrick’s wild talent worked. He hoped it would; these were guards that the Order had worked with, and he knew many of them by name. He’d hate to have this terrible week culminate in slaying those that were in fact on their side.
“No,” he snapped rather forcefully. “Let me deal with this.” Then, before any of them could argue or stop him, he darted out from the shelter of the building and toward the gate. As he reached the point where he wasn’t going to be pursued by his friends, he slowed down, and strolled toward the palace as if he were in fact expected.
His heart was pounding, and at any minute he expected the guards to shoot him. It was a very tenuous and vulnerable position. Without the comfort of the Bond, and with the knowledge that it might never come back, he felt as though he were stepping out into space with no surety that there would be anything under his foot when he put it down. This was the spot where, last year, Sorcha had fought a geist-powered mob, and Kolya had been badly injured. This was, then, in reality, where his adventure had begun. It was fitting.
As Merrick approached the gate, he was very glad that he had left his cloak, folded reverently in the Vashill attic, behind. Two guards stood by the gate, while another two were talking with each other in the guard post. He could discern nothing particularly alert about them, but then without his Center he couldn’t be sure of anything.
“State your business,” the guard standing in the shadows barked. He was holding a staff with a weirstone the size of his fist embedded in the top. Merrick knew its purpose; to summon more guards if needed. In the flickering lantern light he recognized only one of them, but couldn’t recall his name. They were on nodding acquaintance from when Merrick was coming and going at Zofiya’s insistence.
The young Deacon’s heart began to race. He had no time to mess about; he had to use his wild talent and quickly before he was in turn recognized. The trouble was, he really had no clue about what he was doing.
“I said, state your business,” the guard reiterated, taking a step forward. Out of the corner of his eye, Merrick saw the others shifting, turning and beginning to wonder what was going on.
Panic started to surge through Merrick’s body, and he became aware how foolish this was. They might not think immediately that he was a Deacon, but he was a man, unannounced at the gate in the middle of the night; a night that the rest of the guards had been summoned to do battle with the Order.
Within, he groped furiously for the talent, but that meant Merrick was nearly incapable of doing anything else—such as replying to the guard’s challenge. He caught sight of one of the men raising his rifle to his shoulder.
What feelings would guardsmen have foremost in their mind? What would they respond to? Merrick pushed down deep, letting their emotions wash over him like a river of confusion. One trait was shared by all of them: dedication to their duty.
It was not like it had been outside the prison, or in the Mother Abbey, where emotions were already running high and easy to tap into. These were calm, centered individuals, but they shared this one thing. Merrick’s talent reached out, wrapped itself around that and twisted it.
When he looked at them, their eyes were gleaming with intensity, and they listened to him, though he could not tell what they were seeing. Still, the words that came out of his mouth rang with command. “Your Emperor needs you, report to the Mother Abbey immediately!”
They swayed slightly, caught in the breeze and influence of his wild talent. Merrick could feel his heartbeat banging in his throat, certain that he was about to be shot down. The guards’ eyes flickered from side to side, as if seeking something that did not exist. Then they snapped to attention and marched from their post like windup children’s toys. Merrick stood alone there for a moment in the rain, feeling light-headed with his hands shaking just a fraction.
“You’d make a fine general.” Raed and the others had run up quickly to him as soon as the soldiers left. He gave Merrick a sharp little nod.
Sorcha caught his elbow, lending him physical strength even if she could not offer him anything else without the Bond. “Well done,” she whispered, “but pace yourself—we may need that power again.”
He nodded and, gathering himself, followed after, as they all slipped in through the gate. The pleasure gardens beyond were gray and smothered in low mist. No lantern light punctured it and nothing moved. Yet, Merrick couldn’t shake the feeling that something was hovering just beyond the perception of his eyes.
Aachon and Raed led the way, with the crew and the Deacons taking the rear of their little assault force. Even in his worst nightmares, back in the novitiate, Merrick could never have imagined he would be helping the Young Pretender to the throne break into the palace.
Raed knew the way through the palace, and led them to a side door. Obviously his father had made sure his son knew everything about Vermillion, including the layout of the royal lodgings. What he probably hadn’t taught his son was lock picking. Merrick shot Sorcha a glance over the Young Pretender’s back as he bent and worked the door open. She shrugged, as if to say he was just as much of a mystery to her.
They slipped inside the quiet palace. A building like this should not be silent. Merrick’s skin ran icy cold. As he passed the halls and the doorways, he recalled their visit to another royal home in Chioma, as well as the death and disaster they found there. The religious riots that Hatipai had stirred up were unlikely to be repeated here, but he had the feeling that the Circle of Stars was waking with far more wide-reaching consequences. What they would find in the Vermillion palace terrified him.
They padded down corridors and should have met at least servants or guards, yet it was as if the residents of the building had all vanished. Merrick longed to investigate the matter, but caution held him back from opening doors. They had to find del Rue as quickly as possible.
At last, the group reached the carved and gilt-worked main stairwell that led up to the top floors of the building. Barely had Sorcha put her foot on the first tread when cold enveloped them. Merrick saw her breath outlined against the flickering lantern, as if she were outside in the depths of winter.
He might not have his Sensitivity, but any citizen of the Empire knew the signs of a geist appearance. All the Deacons, including Sorcha, automatically drew together in a circle. Raed spun around, his eyes wide like a feral animal. His connection with the Rossin had to mean he felt the Otherside in a far more visceral way than any of them. Merrick was almost jealous of that.
“Something is coming,” he growled, as his eyes darted around the stairwell.
“The Rossin!” the young Deacon hissed, suddenly aware that they could be swallowed by the Beast that lived inside Raed if a geist made a sudden appearance.
“Don’t worry” was the only thing the Young Pretender had time to say, before the geist made its presence felt in a more powerful way.
Vermillion was bound to have many memories and echoes of people who had lived in it for nearly a thousand years, and every Deacon was taught how dangerous such old places could be. That was why the palace had been the first building that the Deacons had cleared out when Kaleva arrived to take up his mantle of Emperor. Now it seemed that work had been quickly undone.
While the group looked upward in increasing horror, lights filled the dim stairwell. Groups of gleaming rei orbs spun on each other and floated down the staircase toward them. The smell of old roses clogged Merrick’s nose with an almost funerary scent.
The crew shrank back, but the Deacons, acting on training rather than good sense, did not. In fact, Merrick felt Sorcha step forward. She was too used to taking the lead in these matters—even when she was no more powerful than the sailor
s.
They were so fixated on the oncoming undead attack that no one—not even Merrick—noticed Raed shrug off his clothes behind them. The only thing that made them turn was the chorus of indrawn breaths from the crew members, and then the massive feline bulk of the Rossin was shoving them out of the way.
Merrick stumbled back feeling the heat of the great cat and its thick fur brush against him. He should have been killed instantly by the Beast—probably before he even realized it—and yet he remained breathing. The truth was immediately apparent that something had changed with the Rossin. The geistlord was in control of himself and in control of his hunger for blood. What exactly that could mean he could hardly identify right in this moment.
The geistlord filled the corridor, blocking out the lantern light and somehow smothering that from the rei. The group of Deacons and crew held their breath. As if sensing this, the Beast turned and looked back at them in contempt, his golden-flecked eyes flicking over them. Aachon was the only one capable of movement. He bent and picked up his Prince’s clothes, folded them precisely and draped them over one arm. The other humans stood fixed to the floor as if nailed there. It was as good a response as any; Merrick knew that the pistols and swords they carried would be no use against the Rossin.
After a long moment, the Beast let out an exhalation of air, as if disappointed with the whole situation before him.
The rei spun around on themselves faster and faster, then fled in the face of the threat like a cloud of insects that could fly through the walls. It was the only thing to do; consumption was an inevitability when confronted with a lord of the unliving.
The Rossin padded up the stairs and then paused. The Beast turned his head and regarded them. It took a moment for them to understand he was waiting for them.
Merrick swallowed hard. “We should all be dead.” His whisper stated the obvious, but he felt it needed to be pointed out. They were all moving into uncharted territory.
“I, for one, will take what mercies we can get and sort out the mystery later,” Sorcha said, leading the way up the stairs. The others followed quietly in her wake. Merrick took his place next to his partner, while Aachon acted as guard at the rear.
Following the geistlord so close that he could hear the constant low rumble in the Beast’s chest, Merrick nonetheless had the urge to grab hold of the lashing tail. He thought of his father’s favorite saying: “When you have a tiger by the tail, it is best just to hold on.” This was certainly a situation that more closely matched that than anything he’d ever thought to find. Though the Rossin was far worse than any tiger could possibly be.
The upstairs rooms and corridors were as deserted as the downstairs ones. Twice, Merrick caught the glimmer of the pale shape of a shade out of the corner of his eye, but they blew away quickly, as frightened of the geistlord as the rei.
“The residents are surely hiding,” Sorcha said under her breath to Merrick. “Everyone remembers what it was like before our Order came. They must be terrified of what is going to happen.”
“A perfectly justifiable concern,” Merrick replied. “But hiding is not going to save them from geists.”
Those who could must have fled to their own city houses, or perhaps to their outlying country estates. Behind these doors would be servants, the foolish, the brave or those who had no other choice. His concerns for them were great—these were, after all, the people who he’d been sworn to protect.
It was not just the Order that was falling apart—it was the mechanism of the Empire itself. Only it, and the Deacons, kept the population safe. Del Rue’s plans were ripening faster on the vine than even he could have expected, and Merrick could only hope that would mean the conspirator would make mistakes.
Clinging to such hopes was all the young Deacon had at this moment. He glanced up and realized the Rossin had come to a stop, like a very fierce bloodhound. He now stood, glaring at the humans, silent.
“What now?” Natylda asked her partner Murn, in an aside. It was certain she was feeling the same disconnect Merrick and Sorcha were. Asking something of one’s Sensitive in this kind of situation was very strange.
Merrick shook his head in sympathy, but replied for Murn. “We have to go in…but carefully.”
The group looked around, but Raed and his skills were no longer available. Finally, Aleck of the Dominion bravely dared to creep up next to the geistlord, withdrew his own picklocks and began working on the door. He couldn’t help looking up occasionally though, as if to reassure himself that he wasn’t about to have his head bitten off.
“Everyone has always assumed the Rossin is just a Beast,” Naleni, the youngest of their crew members, said, her eyes gleaming with interest. “Perhaps there is something more to him than—”
Sorcha, having had enough of this banter, pushed her way past the petrified and befuddled, and opened the door with the far simpler method of kicking it hard. Vermillion’s palace doors were not made for security, and the wood around the lock shattered after two blows. Reaching in, she slid back the lock and flicked the door open. She smiled at Aleck, who was staring at her with some concern.
Merrick couldn’t help it—he let out a little laugh. In all this madness some things remained constant; his partner’s temper was one of them.
“Sorcha!” Aachon snapped. “By the Blood, could you be more—”
“What?” she retorted. “This del Rue is going to know we’ve been here anyway, and the longer we stand in the corridor the worse it is.” Then spinning on her heel she entered the room.
Aachon shared a look with Merrick. “Deacons are supposed to have more control,” he muttered, before slipping in after the Active Deacon. The Rossin waited by the door, his golden eyes tracking each human that went past him, like a wolf might count sheep.
If there were any traps, magical or mechanical, in the room, Sorcha apparently was going to trip them all just from sheer rage. Her recent trials had not changed her that much, and her partner was very glad of it.
After a moment, the humans were able to ignore the Rossin and concentrate on the search. However, no matter how many drawers they opened, or how thoroughly they turned over the bed, the room looked like nothing more than any other stateroom in the palace.
“Strange how very few personal items are here.” Aachon pulled one of the watercolor paintings away from the wall. It was so tiny that it could not have disguised a tunnel, but the frustration in the first mate’s voice was obvious.
Merrick knew how he was feeling. “Not an image of a loved one,” Merrick agreed, “any letters, or even any kind of distinguishing clothing.” He tossed the piles of folded white shirts onto the floor.
“It’s like he doesn’t live here at all,” Sorcha grumbled, throwing herself backward onto the bed in a curiously childish manner.
“Almost like one of our cells back at the Mother Abbey,” Sibuse mused. He pressed his dark hand over his eyes as if to wipe away the whole situation.
“That would make sense,” Merrick began, “as he is—”
“Merrick!” Sorcha half sat up on the bed. “Merrick, do you remember the marks on the Priory ceiling in Ulrich?”
The cantrips, incantations and curses had hung over him for a long time, so he’d had plenty of opportunity to study them. Quickly, the young Deacon took up a place on the bed next to his partner. It was such a wide piece of furniture that Aachon was able to do the same. The crew and remaining Deacons had to make do with craning their necks. Even the Rossin padded to the bed, sat down and peered upward.
“Truly beautiful,” Merrick breathed, for a moment in awe of the artistry.
Most ceilings in the palace were painted, with landscapes or scenes from history, and this one was as well. It showed the first Deacon, Saint Crispin, making the original bargain with the geistlord—the very one that sat like an immense house cat at the foot of the bed. Merrick wondered what the Rossin would make of the depiction he was looking at. It was impossible to tell through those great yellow ey
es.
The first Deacon was shown as a handsome hero, golden hair flying in the wind along with his green and blue cloak. The Rossin was a hovering black shadow, having not yet taken full form, though he had gleaming red eyes and ethereal, shadowy arms, which were reaching out toward Crispin. Merrick tilted his head. It was strange, but in the streaming depictions of wind and smoke there appeared to be another figure, lightly sketched, but definite, there behind the Rossin.
“I hardly think it is coincidence that del Rue picked this room for his own.” Sorcha glanced across at her partner. “Do you?”
Merrick wriggled uncomfortably. “Maybe there was something he found comforting about it.”
He was so busy examining the image that he almost missed the one thing they were looking for, and when he did see it, he felt an utter fool.
The medallion directly above the bed was indeed decorated with weirstones and cantrips. It looked new. It looked handmade.
He pointed to it, “Sorcha, is that—”
No sooner had he done so than his partner was leaping up.
“Get off the bed,” she barked, shooing Merrick and Aachon off the bed and the others away, like a child scattering chickens. Briskly she ordered them to help her swing a chest of drawers onto the bed, which gave her enough room to climb up and touch the ceiling.
Merrick shivered as she pressed the stones. Sorcha had always been very loud in her dislike of weirstones and those that meddled with them.
“Sorcha,” he cautioned, “that stone-and-cantrip mix looks dangerous. You shouldn’t be…” His voice trailed off as he observed her eyes go suddenly blank, and he had the feeling she was somewhere very distant that he did not like. However, just as he was about to pull her down and damn the consequences, the stones under her fingertips became suddenly fluid. As they all watched, she shifted them around.
Her voice was slurred slightly when she spoke. “I see a tunnel to a great castle.” She paused and moved the stones. “Now a boat by a beach, but this one is not used very often.” Now she frowned. “This one…this one very much more so.”
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