Bless them, though; none grumbled about the distance to get there, or the isolation of the place. Raed was just about to express his gratitude in some joke or other, when a call came from above. High in the crow’s nest, Aleck called out the one word none of them wanted to hear. “Warship!”
Everyone scattered to their stations. Aachon slapped a spyglass in Raed’s hands and he trained it in the direction Aleck was pointing. To the north was indeed an Imperial warship: Corsair. They’d had repeated run-ins with that very same vessel for the past three months. It was patrolling the northeast shore with a disturbing new show of interest in the area. They’d made a successful run for it each time that Corsair had shown up before. However, they were in a sheltered harbor with light winds, and their anchor was down. Raed didn’t like the odds.
Bringing the warship into focus, he tried to make out whether her gunports were open. They weren’t, but as he looked he noticed two very odd things: there was no one visible on the deck and, more important, no hand was at the wheel.
“By the Blood,” he whispered to himself and swung the spyglass backward and forward over the ship’s length before raising the glass toward the rigging. This too was bare of any sign of life, and the sails themselves were tied in as if for running before a high wind, rather than for today’s light conditions. Captain Moresh ran a tight ship, from what Raed had heard. A knot of tension began to form in the Pretender’s neck.
“She’s coming in slow.” Aachon, without the benefit of the spyglass, had a hand raised over his eyes as he squinted at Corsair.
“Prepare to board,” Raed said evenly.
“But, Captain . . .” Aachon protested, until he was handed the spyglass. His argument died on his lips. When he lowered the glass, sweat beaded on his forehead. He wiped it off with the back of one hand and wrapped his other around the hilt of his cutlass. “Mistress Laython, prepare your party to board and offer assistance.”
On the lower deck, the battle-scarred quartermaster grinned. They had seen little action lately, and her skills had not been in much demand. She began shouting at the crew in a voice like a foghorn.
“Seems as if you put that weirstone away too early, old friend,” Raed said to Aachon under his breath.
Despite the ship’s sad condition, Dominion’s crew knew her intimately and were quickly under way. With expert ease, Aachon set them to their work getting her out into open waters. Within half an hour, they had turned about and were matching speed with the warship. As they neared, it became apparent to all that she was, in fact, in worse state than their own vessel. Coming up on the port side, they could see that sails were ripped as if from a terrible storm. The hull damage only a little above the waterline looked nothing like the impact of cannon; instead it looked as if something had blown out from inside, though it was nowhere near where the powder room was located. The Pretender’s hand clenched on his cutlass.
Even though Corsair had pursued her for so long, Raed felt real pity for the once-magnificent warship. She was a sad remnant of the pride of the Imperial Navy.
Their own party was ready; he and Aachon were in the lead with weapons drawn. Laython and her grinning party were at their backs. Yet as they drew up alongside and the boarding hooks were thrown across, Raed knew that there would be no fight.
The deck was covered in bodies, all wearing the dark green of the Imperial Marines or the sky blue of the Navy, though both shades were much darker than they should have been. The sharp smell of blood wafted from Corsair in a palpable cloud.
With a glance over his shoulder, Raed saw that most of his crew had turned very pale. They were sailors in the main, not used to battle and blood.
“Aachon, is the weirstone showing anything?” he asked quietly over his shoulder.
His first mate should have protested, perhaps reminding his captain that they were in open water, but with one look at the carnage on board Corsair, he mutely removed the heavy orb from his pocket.
Aachon’s eyes changed when he looked into the orb, going to a clear milky white as if he were blind. He kept his back to the crew whenever using his Sight; he knew it disturbed them. When he’d been cast from the Order, Aachon’s pride had taken a deep beating. Now he cosseted what little talent remained.
After a moment, his eyes cleared. “I see nothing aboard but death and the memory of it.”
“Very well.” Raed clapped him on the shoulder. “The rest of you, wait here.” For once they followed his orders mutely. He and Aachon leapt across to Corsair’s deck.
The first step and Raed nearly slipped. Ships were cruel like that: they held on to blood once the scuppers were blocked. And this was very, very fresh blood, and the drainage holes were indeed blocked by masses of bodies.
It was hardly the first time that either he or Aachon had faced such a sight; there had been plenty of battles with princes when he was younger. Many had come to the Unsung’s place of exile to kill him, and Raed had fought on his father’s behalf. However, this was different.
His senses were only mortal, so he could hardly bear to imagine what his first mate was going through. The stenches of spilled guts, blood and fear were thick over the deck. They both took a moment to steady themselves physically and mentally.
It looked, at first sight, as if every soldier and sailor had died on deck. As Raed and Aachon began to pick their way down toward the quarterdeck where Captain Moresh had presumably once stood, they rolled the occasional body over to see what had caused their death.
Raed quickly realized that they really needed to perform only one such examination. It had been nothing human. No bullet had pierced the sailor he examined, nor had he been stabbed or slashed with any saber or cutlass. The Pretender had hunted wild boar on his father’s island and had seen men gored before him. These wounds resembled this more than anything, angry gouges from some great beast with tusks ten times larger than that of any animal he knew.
His fingertips tingled where they grasped the poor dead man’s arm. With a gasp Raed jerked upright, shaking his hand and feeling his skin begin to crawl.
“My prince?” Aachon was at his side, weirstone in one fist, cutlass in the other. The orb only reflected blue.
“No, it’s all right. It’s all right,” Raed repeated with a final shake of his hand. The assertion, he knew, was more for his own benefit than for his friend’s. The tingling mercifully subsided, but the shock of it had been enough to pull him out of his fear of the dead.
Ignoring the massacre, Raed picked his way through the bodies to the quarterdeck. Here it appeared that some sort of last stand had taken place. Sailors had shoved barrels and coils of ropes down the short steps to the main deck in an effort to block whatever had wreaked havoc there.
Together Raed and Aachon clambered over this makeshift barricade. Whatever had killed Corsair’s crew had obviously become enraged at the last few survivors. The remains clustered around the wheel were barely recognizable as human. Both men turned away for a second, sucking in the slightly cleaner air near the gunwales.
Carefully, Raed turned around and tried his best to dispassionately survey the scene for any further clues. He found himself stating the obvious just to get it out of his head. “This was no attack by a man. All the bodies are Imperial, well-trained men. They would have brought down one or two . . . unless the enemy took their dead when they departed . . .”
Aachon raised the orb; through it and milky eyes he surveyed the scene. “There is only their blood.” He paused and his breath hissed over his teeth. “My prince, there is no trace of their souls onboard. Such carnage . . . and no souls.” His eyes cleared as he lowered the stone, and expressed foreboding. They both knew what that meant.
“A geist of some sort?” Raed whispered, taking in the bloodbath all around them. “But, open water . . . Open water, Aachon . . .” He could feel his precious safety melting away, leaving a chill pit of fear behind. This couldn’t be happening.
His friend looked gray at the prospect as well. It
was a fact that the Deacons knew—it was a fact that every man, woman and child that breathed knew—geists could not cross a stream, river or ocean. Some of the lesser sorts could even be bested by a full chamber pot.
Raed wondered if this rock-solid, immovable fact had been the last thought on Captain Moresh’s mind as he was shredded like a joint of meat. He imagined so. He could see them all screaming it over and over again as they died in agony. And then their souls were gone.
Geists hungered for souls. Most didn’t have the strength to take them, though, and were forced to rely on scaring mortals as best they could. Whatever variety of unliving had done all this had more power than any Raed had ever heard of.
He cleared his throat. “You’re Deacon-trained, Aachon . . . Did they teach you what kind of geist could wreak this much death?”
His friend shook his head, and Raed noticed that Aachon’s grip on the weirstone had become decidedly shaky. “There is nothing—you understand, nothing—that I know of, that can do this. A geist that kills like this . . . Even your—” He stopped suddenly. He’d almost said it; almost crossed the line they had both silently agreed upon. The absolute shock on Aachon’s face had nothing to do with the horror around them. “I am sorry, my prince. I . . . I . . .”
“This has got us both knocked back, old friend.” He squeezed the other’s arm. “Luckily we both know that I wasn’t on Corsair.” His attempt at humor fell flat in very unfertile ground.
“Of course!” Aachon whirled about and began clambering past the ineffectual barricade, back to the main deck.
“What is it?” Raed yelled after him, rushing to follow.
“The ship’s weirstone.” His friend stood in front of the doors to the cabins, like a man gearing himself up to dive. “Every Imperial warship has a weirstone of the top rank, keyed by the Deacons to warn of geist storms. Stones also remember, just in case humans don’t survive to tell.”
Raed nodded. Geists might not be known to cross water, but sometimes particularly vindictive ones were known to whip up foul weather near the coastline just for amusement. The Deacons had begun to make life easier for everyone. His grandfather’s foolishness in dismissing their native Deacons had been merely the first in the list of bloody stupid mistakes; mistakes they were still paying for.
“Right, then. We find the weirstone.” It felt good to have something to do, yet both of them stood at the doors for a second. What horrors lurked back there?
When Raed finally rushed the door, it felt much more appropriate to kick it open rather than merely push it. The sudden bang in the quietness of the carnage echoed like a thunderclap. Both men charged in. Despite their weirstone’s inactivity, the Pretender considered the possibility that there might still be a geist in there. After all, if this thing could cross water, what else could it do?
Inside was as deathly calm as on deck, but the scene was different. They’d been wrong; the captain had not met his death upstairs. He was in his cabin, and not gored and ripped apart as his crew had been. Poor Captain Moresh of the Imperial Navy looked as though he’d been broiled in the desert for months. His frock coat and hat were still immaculate, but his desiccated body lay half-slumped across the table on which his valuable charts and maps were spread. One of his hands was outstretched to the other object on the table: the ship’s weirstone.
“Not possible,” Aachon murmured to Raed’s right. He raised his own orb, perhaps to check that it was still intact. It gleamed back as cobalt blue as ever. “That is simply impossible,” he repeated, as if calling it so would make a difference.
Raed strode up and picked up the ship’s orb without any consequences. He shouldn’t have been able to touch the thing, but the weirstone was pitch-black. It was as dead as the men outside, and their captain.
They stared at each other for a long moment, surrounded by the stench of death. Somehow, this seemed the worst sign of all. The talisman crafted by the Deacons, the most powerful force in the world, was now as broken as a child’s toy. The kind of geist that could do that didn’t bear thinking about. As every rule they’d ever known crumbled, Raed could feel his own security vanish with them.
FIVE
In Dark Water
Deacon Chambers was, thankfully, silent. Sorcha rode ahead of him and fought the urge to kick Shedryi into a gallop. Sensitives were tricky creatures to get away from. She wanted a smoke badly, but there were only so many cigars in her pocket and she had a feeling if she got trapped in Ulrich, she might need every one of them.
They would have to follow the road north to the calmer port of Irisil, where kinder and warmer currents flowed into the harbor. Sorcha wasn’t looking forward to getting on a small ship with her new partner.
Sparing a glance over her shoulder, she was amused to realize that Merrick was actually reading the report. His curly dark head bent while he rode with practiced ease. Maybe he hadn’t been joking about winning those events.
She’d realized he would be young; she’d been unprepared for just how young. After reading his file in the records office, she’d noticed that he’d declared a touch of Ancient blood in his line. Though those first peoples had long since been swallowed up by the Otherside, their blood could still be traced in some of the continents’ older families. It explained his incredibly high testing in both Active and Sensitive. It wasn’t up there with the Abbot’s skill, but if he burned out his Sensitivity, he would have been accepted without question into the ranks of the Actives.
She would have to watch this one for sure. Deacons of near-equal rank in both disciplines could sometimes be tempted to activate when first confronted with a geist. That sort of deadly mistake could leave her looking for yet another partner.
As Sorcha had been thinking about this, Merrick had urged his mare up next to her and offered back the report. “Not many solid details, really.” At least he had the good sense to sound concerned about that.
“There seldom are,” Sorcha said with a little laugh. “Geists are like that . . . mysterious.”
“You know I studied all this, don’t you?” he snapped back. “Just like you, I did my training. Difference is I got stuck with the partner no one in the Order wants.”
That stung, though Sorcha managed not to let it show. Once upon a time she’d been highly sought—now she wondered what exactly she had done for that to change. Oh, yes . . . all those supposedly private arguments with Kolya.
She glanced at him out of the corner of one eye and measured up exactly how she should play this. They were partners, Bonded and shackled together. They would have to rely on each other in tough situations. The whole setup of this assignment worried Sorcha, and she would need a Sensitive who was not only good, but who cared enough to pull her out of the fire if necessary; so ramming those words back down his throat as she was tempted to do would serve no purpose.
“Sorry you feel that way”—her fingers itched to be holding a cigar right now—“but we’ve got to make this work for the sake of the assignment.”
They traveled in silence for the next few hours. The Bond between them was still fresh and raw, and that was surely why she could feel a tinge of his frustration. It flickered across her awareness and disturbed what might otherwise have been an enjoyable ride.
The countryside on the east coast was beautiful even this late into autumn, and Sorcha looked about with a feeling of real pride. When the Emperor had arrived, this area had been a rabbit warren of unfettered geists and mistwitches. It had been one of her and Kolya’s assignments to oversee the clearing of the area from Vermillion to the Turijk Mountains. As they passed through the low-lying areas of marshes and dark water, she was able to look back on those times as simple and rather pleasant. It had been hard work, but satisfying.
Recollection softened the hard knot of displeasure in her stomach. She pointed to a collection of abandoned stone buildings not far from the road they now traveled. “That is the place where my husband and I banished our first geist for the Emperor in his new realm.”
It was only three years past, but felt a lifetime ago.
Merrick pulled his cloak around him as if he wasn’t interested, but she could tell he was. The prickle of frustration subsided a little. “Are the geists of Delmaire the same as the ones here?”
For a second she didn’t reply, stunned. If he was asking her that, then he must have been among the new recruits from Arkaym, and if that was true, then he had gotten through the novices faster than anyone since Abbot Hastler. She would definitely have to take care around this one. Sorcha was abruptly conscious of the Bond between them. She’d crafted it so casually, but if she’d joined herself to such a powerful Sensitive, maybe she should have been more cautious.
She cleared her throat. “No, the Delmaire geists have been tamed for centuries. The last attack recorded there was more than fifty years past—that was why so many Deacons jumped at the chance to sign up to this new Abbey: boredom.”
“That’s one thing we never have to worry about. Sometimes I wonder . . .” The young man’s voice trailed off. Flicking his head over his shoulder, he pulled his mare up suddenly.
“What is it?” Sorcha tugged Shedryi to the right, circling her new partner. No matter how useless it was, she too scanned their surroundings. They were in the middle of a narrow stretch of dry ground, with low marshes on each side. Sedge and rushes whispered in the breeze, but she could make out no trace of geist. Certainly there was no scent but the brackish water and the damp earth.
She brought her stallion up tight against Merrick’s mare; she wasn’t about to let another Sensitive get away on her. Even when she cocked her head and strained her Sensitivity, she could still make out nothing more dangerous than sucking mud. “I don’t smell any—”
“Quiet!” The young upstart actually raised his hand as if she were a novice at the back of the class. The tone of his voice, though, and her knowledge of his ranking caused Sorcha to slide her Gauntlets from under her belt and onto her lap.
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