Geist to-1

by Philippa Ballantine

  When the Arch Abbot spoke again, he didn’t add to her understanding. “I am sending you to the focus of the attacks to investigate: a little town called Ulrich. His Imperial Majesty and I both agree that this is the best course of action.”

  Sorcha blinked. Deacons received their missions from the Presbyter Secondo; to take direction from the Arch Abbot directly was highly unusual. An honor to be sure—but not one that Sorcha felt she should welcome.

  She now wished that she had asked for something a little stronger than sweet tea. “But Kolya could take weeks, maybe even months to be fit for duty,” was the best she could manage through a suddenly dry throat.

  “That’s why I am assigning you a new partner before you go.”

  Sorcha slumped back, nearly embarrassing herself before recovering her balance on the embroidered stool. “A new partner? But no one ever gets a new partner unless their Bond is broken, or . . .” Or if their partner was dead.

  “There is precedent for this, too.” The Arch Abbot was acting as calm as ever, which was more distressing to her than anything. “And the situation will only be for this assignment. By then Kolya should be recovered.”

  Arguing with the Head of her Order would be a foolish move, yet Sorcha could feel a tightness inside her stomach and a taste of bile bubbling inside her throat. Her bandaged hands began to ache. Forget that sending an untested team into a hot zone verged on the insane. Never mind that partners trained for months to get perfectly in tune with each other. The Arch Abbot was dropping her into a situation he seemed unwilling to explain.

  Hastler was an evenhanded man, one who inspired trust among his Deacons. He was respected by them and by the Emperor. As one of the top-ranked partnerships in the Order, Kolya and Sorcha had always felt in the Arch Abbot’s confidence. Yet as she sat across from him, she could see he was physically tight-lipped. What this could mean, she didn’t know. She ached for a cigar at this point but decided not to argue. Her husband would have been very surprised.

  Still she kept her voice calm as she went on, trying to make the best of a bad situation. “Perhaps if we were allowed to take one of the Imperial Fleet dirigibles, we could accomplish this so much—”

  “The Order’s ability to demand that one of the Emperor’s valuable new contraptions change its route is limited.” Hastler’s eyes flicked from friendly to flinty in a heartbeat, reminding Sorcha that while he might look like a kindly grandfather, he was far from it. “Only in extreme circumstances would I suggest such a thing.”

  Sorcha cleared her throat, and glanced longingly down at the empty cup next to her. Her mouth had gone suddenly bone-dry. “I would like to be able to wait until Kolya is conscious at least, if that is allowed, Reverend Father?”

  Hastler nodded and tidied the bowls and pot on the tray. At this point, Sorcha didn’t have the strength to ponder what exactly could be causing his unusual behavior.

  “Go, sit with your husband.” The Arch Abbot kept his back turned, staring out the window at the last few stubborn leaves of late autumn as they fell. “Read the report, as well. I’ll arrange a meeting with your new partner for first thing tomorrow.”

  “And the Episcopal inquiry?” she asked.

  “There will be none. The matter is being dealt with in a more private manner. Another thing, Deacon Faris.” His tone grew distant. “I would prefer it if you and your husband did not speak of the . . . unusual nature of your encounter.”

  Compared to the strange things she had heard in this room, that was the very least. The calm of the previous day seemed a very long way off. Her only problems then had been an argument with her husband and the overeager Gent.

  At the door she paused and turned back for a moment. “Am I permitted to perhaps know the name of my new partner?”

  The Abbot’s voice contained something she might have interpreted as sadness. “Deacon Merrick Chambers. A bright young man and a highly ranked Sensitive.”

  She didn’t know the name, but if he had been recently elevated from novitiate, then she wouldn’t. Sorcha itched for something to smoke or drink, but duty as always took higher priority.

  As she left, she passed three other Deacons seated in the antechamber ready to see the Arch Abbot—so many audiences so early was enough to pique her interest. Sorcha recognized Durnis Huntro and gave him a quick smile. The somber man looked even less likely to smile back today, and she wondered what his business was with the head of the Order. However, her own issues were more pressing, and she did not stop to ask.

  Stepping out into the corridor, she discovered she still had one more audience to pass. Presbyter Rictun, wrapped in his blue cloak, was lurking in the shadows, waiting for her. If Hastler was the kindly center of the Order, then his second in command was the enforcer. It was he who usually gave out the assignments to those Deacons on duty, and his glance down at the dispatch box in her hand was sharp enough for even an Active to interpret. He didn’t like it—not one little bit. He was a young man for the role; there were only five Deacons of Presbyter rank in the Order, and yet he was not much older than Sorcha herself. How he had managed to attain such giddy height was a mystery to her.

  It could have been his golden hair and good looks; it was most certainly not his charm. “Off on assignment so soon, Faris? You really know how to go through those partners of yours. I would have thought you might be a little kinder to this one, since you married him.”

  Four partners was indeed above average, but one retirement, one death and one gone mad could not be all put on her doorstep. Sorcha smiled thinly, the lack of sleep and the shock of the Arch Abbot’s audience leaving her with very little endurance for the Presbyter’s mocking ways. “Kolya will be all right in time.”

  Rictun raised one eyebrow. “Terrible to get caught in a riot like that.”

  His fishing was always pretty blatant but this time it was just a little too far for Sorcha. Holding up her orders, she glared at the Presbyter. “Would you like to have a look, is that it?”

  His eyes locked with hers, and she remembered all the other times they had argued. Rictun rubbed her the wrong way at the best of times. Perhaps he saw the impatience in her, as his gray eyes flicked away over her shoulder toward Hastler’s rooms. “No, you’d better obey the Arch Abbot. But when you get back . . .”

  “I’ll report straight in,” Sorcha snapped, turned on her heel, and indulged in a little tooth grinding as she strode away down the corridor.

  This Chambers, whoever he was, had better have a thick skin, because right now she needed someone to take it out on.

  THREE

  The Giving of Affusion

  Sorcha left the Abbot’s chambers and strode through the Devotional with a lot more certainty than she actually felt. It was cool in the stone corridors of the building, high-vaulted ceilings perhaps not the best design choice for Vermillion’s winter climate, but the building had been inherited much as the Emperor had received his palace.

  She passed underneath carvings of the native Abbots who had once ruled here, their symbol of a circle of five stars pinned to their chests. Many of their stone faces had been hacked off. The wars of this continent had not discriminated against those who wanted to protect it.

  In the north wing, there were still lay Brothers clambering up scaffolding to install a new slate roof to replace the one destroyed in the fire that had wiped out the remainder of the native Deacons nearly seventy years before. The Mother Abbey’s Devotional building had lain in ruin, open to the tender mercies of nature, until Arch Abbot Hastler had brought the new Order to the continent. Now three years of repairs were drawing to a close. Once the roof was in place, only the scars would be visible, not the destruction.

  Sorcha paused for a moment to watch the artisans working on the northern rose window—replacing the glass they’d recovered and installing new portions where that was impossible.

  “Sorcha!” The familiar voice snapped her out of a melancholy turn of thought.

  A tall figure eme
rged out of the shadows, his hands covered in white dust, his step halting.

  “Garil.” She smiled in genuine happiness. “What are you doing here?”

  Sorcha knew as his gray eyes looked her over that nothing could be hidden from him; the slight slump in her shoulders and the fractional frown on her brow. Yet unlike most Sensitives, she didn’t mind him observing her. Garil had been her first partner, but despite that and everything that happened, he still held her in high regard. It always rather shocked her.

  “Little Red.” He hobbled over to catch her in a rough embrace. “They poked me out of my tiny Priory with some rubbish about needing my skills for this project.”

  No one since Pareth, the Presbyter of the Young during Sorcha’s childhood, had dared give her a nickname, but from Garil it was somehow acceptable. Sorcha threw her arms around him with a laugh until she realized how thin he was beneath the charcoal robes. She could feel every bone. Garil was one of the few Sensitives forced into retirement by severe injury. The perpetrators had not been the unliving, but if she ever found them, they soon would be.

  “So how are you, Garil?” She gently squeezed him back, afraid that she might hurt him.

  “Ah, you know.” He shrugged, an awkward movement. Despite how hard the physicians had tried, his broken pelvis and back had never healed straight. “It still feels strange to wear the gray after so long in the emerald.”

  He should have stayed in Delmaire but had insisted on joining the Emperor’s expedition. He’d been old then, but still one of the great Sensitives of his age. The Bond they had shared as partners had been very strong.

  Sorcha cleared her throat, feeling his sadness like it was her own. Being rated unfit for duty and having to wear the charcoal robes of the retired Deacon was something that few ever got to enjoy, yet it was obvious that Garil took no pleasure from it. She could hardly blame him; the heady rush of geist battle was addictive.

  “I was in the infirmary when they brought Kolya in.” The elderly Deacon shook his head. “Most unfortunate to be caught in a riot like that.” His eyes grew distant as he undoubtedly thought of his own dark night in the alley. Why anyone would beat such a kind man within an inch of death was still a mystery.

  It was becoming clear that no one was going to mention the geist that obeyed no rules or her opening of Teisyat. It seemed the paper shufflers in the Abbey would be saved any disturbance.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “Very unfortunate.” Glancing up at the beautiful rose window, she attempted to change the subject. “How is the restoration going?”

  Garil laughed, a short little sound that contained more than a hint of bitterness. “They really don’t know what to do with an old Deacon here.” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “I think the Arch Abbot believed I was going a little crazy out there in the wilds, worried I might say too many things.”

  Sorcha shrugged. “Well, you have a lot of experience, something that we lack this far from Delmaire. You know how to get people to do things.”

  Garil sighed. “Even our beloved Emperor has spent years restoring the palace—so I should not grumble.”

  “Then you are following an excellent lead.”

  Her old partner nodded slowly, but she sensed something else; the elderly Deacon was holding back. At any other time she would have pressed him, but she had enough on her plate not to go looking for trouble. Not today anyway.

  In the name of distraction Sorcha tried him on his favorite subject. “Do you think the native Order would appreciate what we are doing to their Abbey?” She said it in jest, trying to get his grim mood to lift, but the old Deacon shrugged.

  “They left so few records it is impossible to tell. I do know that when they were cut off here for so long, their ways were rumored to have grown a little strange.”

  During her training, history had been the bane of Sorcha’s life, but now her interest was a little piqued; the looming statues of those who had come before seemed somewhat more than mere rock today. She knew that in the dark ages Saint Cristin had landed in a tiny boat on the new continent and founded the native Order, but that was as far as her knowledge went. Garil had studied everything he could about the founding Deacons, yet even he didn’t have all the answers.

  The conversation had strayed into uncomfortable territory. “Perhaps if our Order stays here for six hundred years, we too will be considered strange,” she offered.

  Garil’s great bushy eyebrows drew together, and he looked away. “Maybe we already are.” His voice was a low rumble, and Sorcha restrained an inappropriate smile. Her old partner was not taking retirement at all well.

  “You at least have earned some rest, Garil.”

  “Maybe so,” muttered her old partner as he glanced up at his workers. “But back in Delmaire . . . Well, there are more gray cloaks. Here . . .” The rest remained unsaid. Here there were very few old members of the Order.

  Garil shifted uncomfortably, and she realized he had more than his share of aches in badly healed bones. The wintry air she found pleasantly bracing would not be so kind to him. Her ire rose toward whichever clerk had thought this a good project for an old man.

  “Surely they don’t need you to watch glass getting slotted into place.” She tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow. “Keep me company to the infirmary?”

  He shot a look up at the artisans and then laughed. “These young people know what they are about, and I could do with some more tincture for my old skin. It gets so thin, you know.”

  It would in fact be for the pain, but his pride wouldn’t let him admit that. Sorcha knew full well what Garil was like. Together they strolled out of the Devotional toward the low stone building that housed the infirmary. A low lavender hedge contained a physic garden at the front, where lay workers were rushing to gather the final autumn plants. To the right were the drying rooms, and the apothecary where potions, tinctures and rubs were prepared. The scent that wafted out of the open doors was so soothing Sorcha almost forgot why she was going there.

  Garil patted her arm. “I’ll let you go and find your husband. Give him my best.”

  He was about to wander away, but she held on to him a moment, a twinge of concern tickling her conscience. “Is everything all right with you, Garil?”

  Was it her imagination, or did a tiny muscle near his eye twitch? “As well as can be expected . . . you know, in this weather.” He rubbed his leg and glanced up as if he was expecting rain. “Well, must get in.” Garil turned and hobbled away from her.

  Sorcha stood staring after him for a minute, knowing that something was bothering the older man. Still, if he had wanted to talk about it, he would have; they were good enough friends for that. Once this foolish mission for the Arch Abbot was over, she’d catch up with Garil and see what was chewing on him.

  Inside the infirmary it was thankfully warmer, though it smelled of sage smoke and soap; smells that irritated her senses. The building might be a place of healing, but it always made her uncomfortable—and it was not just the smell. Lay Brothers ruled here, gliding about with silent efficiency in their brown robes. Deacons might know little of healing, but thanks to the library and careful use of sanctioned weirstones, the Abbey’s infirmary was the best in the nation.

  So good, in fact, that even royalty came here. Sorcha flinched, but the Grand Duchess Zofiya had surely heard her footsteps. The martial sister of the Emperor, used to commanding troops, missed very little that went on around her. A young male soldier of the Imperial Guard was standing stiffly at attention, holding the royal bags and glowing with pride. The Grand Duchess was looking at her gold fob watch, standing by a neatly made bed she had only recently occupied. On her dark brow was a slight but significant frown. It was a face that might have been called sweetly beautiful, if it had not been for a pair of determined, dark eyes. Sorcha knew in public the Duchess had a smile that could melt hearts, but in private she was rather stern. Snapping shut the watch and tucking it into her dress uniform, she turned.


  When Zofiya’s lips hardened into a firm white line, Sorcha knew that the truth of yesterday’s events had reached her—not the tissue of denial the Arch Abbot was selling to the public. The Deacon’s stomach clenched.

  The royals might have no direct control over the Order, but they still had plenty of influence. Sorcha was sure that she was about to feel some of it.

  “Deacon Faris.” The Grand Duchess’ voice was still deeply marked by the accent of Delmaire. Unlike her brother, she had not taken pains to remove it. Even with her arm in a sling, Zofiya stood ramrod straight as her gaze ran up the length of Sorcha.

  The Deacon bristled at being treated like one of the damn Imperial Guard, but she held herself in check. “Your Imperial Highness.” She dipped her head to the appropriate level. “I am glad to see you are fully recovered.”

  Zofiya shrugged, the brass of her military jacket gleaming in the wan sunlight. “Viscount Jurlise was lucky.”

  Before Sorcha could catch herself, she let out a snort. “Not that lucky—I hear you shot him between the eyes like he was a prize stag!”

  Dueling wasn’t common in the Empire, but the Grand Duchess was not one to turn away when her brother was insulted. When the two of them were new to their positions, many had disagreed with their appointment. Back then the Grand Duchess Zofiya had spent a great deal of time shooting at the aristocracy. These days there were few who were stupid enough to slight the Emperor within her hearing. The rumor was that her father had been more than happy to send his difficult youngest daughter off with her brother—before his own dukes and earls were decimated.