She had scarcely revealed her pregnancy to Judson when he announced his intent to liberate the oppressed Lacus people. Bernice pleaded with him to stay, but the man apparently preferred the threat of death to being with his wife in her time of need. He promised she would want for nothing in his absence and hired the best doctor and midwife to attend her, yet Bernice found herself furious at his absence. But now that the birth had come and gone, she found herself considering that perhaps it would be best if he never returned.
Judson’s mother stopped by each morning, and Bernice dreaded the woman’s next appearance. Like the midwife, Bernice felt judgment suffused in her every look when the child fumbled at his mother’s breast. The newborn cried even more in his grandmother’s arms, and Bernice knew this to be a point against her in her in-law’s eyes. The only comfort she took came in that at least the child hated someone else more than her. She savored that pleasure, it being her only relief for the last few months. The current rare moment of silence did not hurt either, and Bernice hoped he might sleep the night through. In her heart, she recognized that this was patently impossible, but she still took full advantage of his momentary silence.
“Ella,” she called out as quietly as she dared. “Some fresh water.”
Bernice waited for her maid, but the woman remained absent. She considered calling out again when the ocher-skinned man entered her bedchamber cradling her boy. Although he wore the plaid work shirt of a Newfield citizen, his skin was far too dark to be anything but Ingios. Bernice met more than her share of boors during her childhood and always found their ugliness galling. This strange man’s inherent hideousness was made even more pronounced by the scar crawling from chin to his right ear and compounded yet again by his audacity.
“Return my son to the servant this instance!”
“Your maid has departed,” the man answered smoothly. “But I heard your cries and thought I might offer assistance.”
“I assure you I was not crying. Nor do I need your assistance,” Bernice spat. It hurt to sit upright, but she pushed through the pain. To her utter astonishment, her son seemed quite content in the strange man’s arms, the boy wide-eyed and cooing. If the boor’s touch proved this soothing, Bernice swore she would offer him employment on the spot despite his low birth.
Then she noticed the small smear of blood on the man’s right sleeve cuff.
Fear tickling her, Bernice looked him over again, his scar making him seem to sneer slightly. His Acwealt diction was perfect, but his accent sounded nothing like the Ingios she encountered before. She feared she knew the answer already.
“What tribe are you?”
Her inquiry coaxed a laugh from deep in the man’s chest, his eyes twinkling when answering in her mother tongue of Mahnen. “I come from Tlaplain, but you already knew that.”
The man was Mynian, one of the monsters her husband was off warring with, making him the epitome of the enemy. More than that, it marked him as a savage, worse than even the Ingios.
But when Bernice gazed at the strange man, she did not see the savage, rather a possessed gentleman who held himself with poise. He bore an easy allure of command, and Bernice felt the distinct sensation that his eyes pierced directly through her, down into her very Soul. Such a visceral reaction was impossible, or at least it should be.
For a mortal man.
The Tlaplain man laughed again, as if amused by her very thought, and though Bernice knew it should revolt her when he took her hand, she instead felt a deep and overriding curiosity. The man fairly brimmed with power, not the vainglorious and easily provoked strength her husband frequently attempted, but a force that furiously throbbed through his veins. He burned so hot her hand tingled as if touching the filaments of a charged spark box.
Propriety insisted she extricate herself, but Bernice let her fingers linger. “I thank you for looking in on me, but I assure you, my son is no longer in need.”
“It was not your boy’s need that drew me,” he answered, eyes never leaving hers, “rather yours I heard calling from miles away. You are a singular woman, Bernice Mauch, a woman unlike the rest of the scared sheep surrounding you, a woman unafraid to take the hand of a glassman.”
She had heard tales of terror about the glassmen since she could stand upright on her own, each one taking great delight in extolling the horrors these monsters inflicted on their victims. But upon beholding a glassman with her own eyes, Bernice realized those stories were fashioned by weaklings jealous of a glassman’s true grandeur.
“You’re right, Bernice. You do deserve better than your lot in life.”
Bernice knew she should be terrified upon hearing her thoughts uttered by a glassman. Instead, she fairly crackled with intrigue.
“Open your Mind to me.”
She obeyed, and a calm came pulsing through his hands to overflow her senses and push the recent pain away. With the ensuing relief, Bernice closed her eyes to find outlandish images suddenly flitting through her Mind. Through them she saw the grand city-state of Tlaplain, a truly imposing metropolis housing thousands and dwarfing anything she had ever encountered. There, unlike Newfield, every citizen knew his or her place, their roles ordained by the glassmen ruling as god-king and queen. Those thousands untouched by their precious gift were no more than bugs, insects whose only purpose came from obedience to their betters, either by serving in the constant wars between the city-states, dying by the hundreds in brutal battles for sport in the grand plaza, or directly sacrificed by their masters’ bare hands. Sometimes it was for sustenance, other times ordained by the stars, but always for pleasure. This epitomized a true civilization, one based on human savagery and finery in equal measure that surpassed anything imagined in Newfield; the pinnacle of their strange civilization being the greatest gift of all: the everlasting life of a glassman.
“How?” Bernice breathed. “How do I become like you?”
“It’s quite simple, but it requires a sacrifice most dear.”
The man removed his hand and she ached for its return. Instead, he gently placed her newborn son in her empty arms. Compared to the bonfire burn coursing through the glassman’s veins, her child’s pulse seemed no more than a sputtering candle flame. It was too weak to survive, a flicker that would never last long enough to fan into a fire, especially as Bernice’s hands wrapped around his spindly neck and squeezed.
To the boy’s credit, he tried to cry. Bernice tightened her grip to cut off his unformed scream and blanket her in blessed silence.
“Just breathe in and become,” the man whispered as Judson Wilkinney the III’s pulse gutted out not two days since being lit.
Understanding eluded Bernice at first, panic sweeping in at the idea that she might have missed her opportunity. But then the three Breaths recently inhabiting her son’s body rose into the air, and Bernice did as he said. Though Breath outside a living body obeyed no one but a Weaver, Bernice felt no shock when the three Breaths were caught on her inhale and sucked down her throat to adhere against the Breath in her Body. As soon as they became a part of her, the power she had only brushed up against before flooded her. It was as if she had dropped a match into a barrel of kerosene as she suddenly burned with a profane power all her own. All the pain that had so recently inhabited her flesh fled, and she felt well for the first time in months.
No, she realized, she felt more than well. She felt better than human. More than human.
Turning her eyes to the strange man, his dark skin appeared almost translucent, the dozens of Breaths contained within glowing like a living nodus. She knew she should feel horror at what she had just done, at what she had become.
Instead, all Bernice felt was gnawing hunger.
“I am Mahu, your master now,” he said as she dropped the body of her boy. “Take only the clothes you choose to wear. There will be no need to carry any more of your old life with you. Tonight we start your new life. Tonight we begin your ceaseless hunt.”
Chapter 1
Blotmon
ad 2, 567
Marta both hoped and dreaded that their ceaseless hunter would appear around the bend. Crouched behind the boulder, her face pressed against the chilly rock, Marta chanced a glance from the path to Luca beside her. Somehow the man still seemed unworried.
Her execution of the former general Underhill back in Point Place, followed by the immediate theft of an entire train, certainly caused quite a stir. The Newfield army was already on their tail, hence Underhill catching them in the first place, but after his death, the army stepped up its search. She did not fear the regular soldiers, but some were surely rangers familiar with the terrain. Worse was Graff, and Marta feared even imagining the Render would somehow summon, if not the monster himself, at least his amethyst Breath. She spotted it originally only a few hours away from the chilly waters of the eastern end of the Old Channel Lake, the Breath silently hovering after them like an inquisitive insect. They spotted it again a day later then three days following that, and Marta barely dared to entertain the idea that the longer gaps between appearances meant that Graff was falling farther behind. Despite this hope, Marta kept a lookout for the Render at all times. True, Graff was dangerous, his glass dagger fatal when coupled with his Blessed drawing ability, but Marta had no time to worry over future contingencies as she considered how to deal with their current pursuer.
The problem was that she could not ascertain who it was. The sensation of being watched was nothing new, Graff’s Breath silently announcing itself with an eerie tingle up her spine. This new sensation, however, Marta could not nail down. It hit her first three days back, Marta spotting motion from the corner of her eye. It darted like a fly, and she was sure it was an attacker’s shadow as she whirled.
Nothing awaited her, and she suspected the weeks on the trail were taking their toll when she spied it again, again readying for an assault and receiving none. But she could not shake the sense of being stalked by someone unseen. After another day, she feared she had finally succumbed to paranoia when Isabelle called a halt and wordlessly conferred with Luca. Using his Listener talents, the Dobra translated her thoughts:
“She’s going back to check on something.”
“Someone following us?”
“Isabelle’s… unsure.”
“I’ve seen it too,” Marta insisted.
“Seen what?”
On that subject, she could say no more than their mute companion. Sending them on east, Isabelle disappeared for several hours before catching them again late that night. Having foregone a fire, Marta marveled at how the woman found them in the dark, but hid her approval.
“Nothing,” Luca announced.
“Then why do you look like someone just spit in your mouth?”
“Because there’s only one set of rangers who can possibly hide from her.”
No one said it out loud, but even the hint of Reed’s Wood Walkers cast a pall over their dark camp. The rangers were said to be able to track a legless gast across a lake, and Marta chewed her pipe’s lip all the harder. If the distant mountains revealed themselves to be the Ichuguk range as Marta suspected, they were at the edge of the Sawmill Foothills. That meant they were near the western border of the state of Nahuat, perhaps where it abutted Karlwych, though where exactly Marta was unsure. As they approached the mountains, the hills grew steeper and rockier, and Marta entertained the notion that perhaps the rocks would hide their trail. But Isabelle just shook her head as she barked her laugh, Luca explaining, “It’ll snow long before we reach those mountains on foot, and then Sol himself won’t even be able to hide us.”
Isabelle hastened their pace the next morning, often doubling back, traveling through the streambeds that fed the Old Channel Lake, and other esoteric means of woodcraft Marta was less familiar with. Still, the oppressive sense of being run down rode alongside her, Marta leaping at shadows she swore were not there moments before. She knew she should be heartened that her sanity was still intact since her other companions felt the formless fear as well, but that only made it worse. After another night sharing guard duty with no one but Caddie sleeping, they decided on dry-gulching their pursuer, whoever it turned out to be.
They divided into two groups the next morning, Isabelle leading Caddie away as Marta and Luca continued on their path up the hillside until they found their ambush spot and lay in wait behind the boulder. The odd Armor that appeared around her to defeat both Underhill and Graff would make short work of any enemies, but Marta was uncertain she could summon it now. Bringing the Armor forth was such a simple thing when faced with the imminent threat of those two men, the plans bright and glowing in her mind as if etched in fire from above. But they quickly faded after that last battle with Graff, the plans now impossible to find. In her heart, Marta knew they were still there, or at least she dared to hope they were. But the Grand War taught Marta to set hope aside and instead deal directly with whatever matter at hand.
If overwhelmed by their pursuer, Marta could depend upon her rabbit legs, the Shaper appendages easily providing her enough speed to overcome even horses at a full gallop. But to do so would mean abandoning Luca. Not two weeks past, Marta would have willingly sacrificed the man, but he had since proven himself by rescuing her in Point Place when her mind was addled by ekesh. Now the only chance she saw of leaving him behind was if she had to choose between his life and Caddie’s. Caring for another, let alone three if she included Isabelle, ran antithetical to Marta’s nature, but since the girl had called her mother, it felt more and more natural by the day.
Marta wondered if this shift in her predilections was apparent to her companions as she glanced to Luca, the man giving her a wink.
“I know I’m not hard on the eyes,” he teased, “but you should really keep yours on the task at hand. At least until we’re finished. Then feel free to wander with abandon.”
Luca possessed the audacity to flirt with her when they met despite Marta’s gauntlets wrapped around his throat, the man apparently incapable of fear in any form. His brazenness surprised her then, but over the last week, his amorous advances had grown even more overt, and Marta could only guess at Isabelle’s opinion as to his overtures. To Marta they seemed somehow perfunctory, and she wondered if he only let his guard down when alone with Isabelle, or if that too was an act.
Luca’s easy grin disappeared as he gripped his imbued lockblade, a charmed weapon he swore would cinch his victory so long as he held it open in his hand. Marta found his claim spurious in that he would never be truly sure he was correct until it actually failed him. But there were more urgent matters to attend to, Marta readying for a ranger to round the bend.
The ranger did not appear, but the tension refused to retreat. It was an infection, Luca the first exhibiting symptoms before spreading them to Marta. And though she could find no immediate cause for their shared concern, she did not believe it needless. Something felt wrong down deep in her bones.
“Do you—“
“Shh.” His face grew serious. His eyes unfocused. She suspected he was Listening, using the fourth Blessed Breath adhered to his Mind to search for stray thoughts, and if this were the case, Marta had no desire to disturb him.
Luca turned his head a half-second before the brush across the nearby draw parted to reveal a thin man with sharp eyes watching them over sunken cheeks. His rawhide coat looked to be hand-made, as did the bow slung over his shoulder. That it was not at the ready with an arrow nocked should have pleased her, but Marta’s concern remained.
“What you running from?” He barely opened his mouth to speak, his words running together in an accent so thick Marta had trouble understanding it.
Luca’s smile bloomed. “Just some overwrought bugs who believe I owe them some money. Mistakenly, I might add.”
“Must have been a mighty amount to push you this high up,” the man replied, his eyes never leaving Marta’s blue greatcoat. His interest in it was not unfounded, it being the same style coat issued to all Newfield soldiers who fought for the West in the
Grand War.
“You take part in the troubles?” Luca asked, his foot tracing a half-circle in the dirt. To the uninitiated, his action appeared a careless gesture, but to the right eyes, it might buy them sanctuary. The man stared back without a flicker of recognition.
“Saw no reason in it. Renders fighting Weavers fighting for festations or against them, it makes no matter. Not a one was fighting for me, so why fight for them?”
All Luca’s white teeth went on full display. “Then you understand the predicament we find ourselves in. No sense helping them lads by saying you saw us.”
“No reason not to either.”
“I have hard cash says otherwise,” Marta offered.
The man shrugged. “Nearest town’s a day’s walk, and I need for nothing they got.”
“That a fact?” Marta dug into the depths of her haversack to remove the whiskey bottle Carmichael gifted her with at the start of her mission. She, Luca, and Isabelle had already assailed it, but more than half still remained. And if the twitch to the man’s eyebrow was any indication, the whiskey was worth more than the printed paper in her pocket.
The man’s interest evaporated as quickly as it appeared, though Marta noted his eyes never departed her greatcoat for long.
“If them that’s behind us thank you at all, it will just be with money,” she said. “Me, I’ll throw in a warm coat.”
“Same coat they’ll throw in as well, I play my cards right.”
He seemed quite willing to parry any offers until the sun retired, and Marta was through with pleasantries, but Luca’s hand caught her sleeve before she could act. Eyes flicking to him, Marta saw his gaze focused on the sallow man, staring as if trying to untangle a tight knot from afar. He took long enough that she considered just pushing past when Luca’s infectious smile returned.
“Those are Reed’s Wood Walkers there behind us. Rangers. You heard of them?” The man did not respond, but his eyes narrowed as Luca continued. “Greatest woodsmen the world over. In fact, folks say they don’t even leave tracks, weightless as an emet. No one can track them in turn.”
The Imbued Lockblade (Sol's Harvest Book 2) Page 2
