Geist

by Philippa Ballantine

  No need for stealth in this corridor. The Rossin snarled again and leapt at her. Claws skittered and found marginal purchase on the steel and leather of her armor, but the weight of the Rossin bore her backward. Tumbling onto the ground, the Beast tightened its grip on Sorcha and lunged toward her throat.

  The Deacon was strong. She managed to hold the Rossin off with one hand, though her angry cursing belied the ease of it. The beast pressed harder, snarling and snapping, eager to taste her blood.

  Sorcha brought up her other Gauntlet, still streaming eerie green light that almost burned the Rossin’s eyes. The great cat flinched, caught in midsnarl, and the Deacon thrust her hand, Gauntleted power and all, into its throat. Raed heard the Deacon grunt, “Enjoy the taste of Shayst, kitty cat.”

  The pain was immediate and exquisite. Green fire bloomed in the snapping jaws of the Rossin. Sorcha was screaming, and her cries mingled with the howls of the Beast. Raed felt what the great cat did; a pulling sensation as if his soul were being sucked away from him. Surely his body couldn’t take that much pain.

  Something snapped and broke—something had to. The Rossin struggled, but the power it lived on was being yanked away from it into the Void that the Deacon controlled. As swiftly as it had come, the Beast disappeared.

  The abruptness of it left Raed gasping, awash in the emotions of the Rossin: rage and anger. It had to have an outlet, and with Sorcha still pinned to the ground beneath him, he shook her hard and screamed in frustration.

  “Holy Bones,” she swore and slapped him hard. “Get a grip on yourself!”

  His head rang with pain and his blood still raced with the power of the Rossin. Beneath him, Sorcha was gasping in shock as well, her armor clawed and marked.

  She jerked upward just as Raed bent. Their kiss was rough and hungry, more a struggle than a display of affection. Brutal desires still swirled in the Pretender, mixing with his own barely contained lusts. Raed heard Sorcha moan, just as the tingle in his body subsided from anger to something else just as primitive.

  They struggled on the floor of the tunnel, a tussle rather than an embrace. Her lips were soft and hot on his—it had been a long time since he had kissed anyone like that. Yet it was Raed who pulled back. The Rossin had always ruled him, and he wouldn’t let it take him down a path that he hadn’t chosen for himself, as enjoyable as it might be.

  With a shuddering breath, he scrambled backward, suddenly aware that he was completely naked. In the flickering light Sorcha’s eyes were wide and feral, just as he imagined his own were. She licked her lips and he could see her heartbeat racing in the corner of her neck. His eyes couldn’t seem to stop watching that.

  The Deacon cleared her throat, then unhooked her dripping cloak to hand it to him. “Put—put this on.”

  It was very cold down here—Raed remembered that—yet his body was burning from the flood of the Change and from something else closely linked: desire. The cloak, wet as it was, would help cool him. He put it on, unable to look directly at her. She wasn’t going to mention what had just happened—she was just going to ignore it. That was what he would do, as well.

  “I see Merrick was wrong,” he muttered, trying to reclaim his dignity. “You didn’t spot that geist at all.”

  A frown darkened her brow. “I am not sure that was even a geist . . .”

  That made him snap. He held up hands that had only just reverted back from claws. “Not sure! Not sure . . . Well, I can tell you that I am!”

  Sorcha shook her head, looking more confused than he’d ever known a Deacon to be. “I need to talk with Merrick.”

  “We’re not going back,” he growled, turning and stalking away down the tunnel. Stooping, he picked up the remains of his clothes. Everything was destroyed. “By the Blood, this was my favorite shirt.”

  “The boots are still usable,” Sorcha pointed out. “I have some spare lacings. Put them on so at least you won’t be hobbling.”

  He frowned. The Deacon’s tone was almost gentle. He wondered if it was guilt or desire that moderated it. Nevertheless, he was surprised when she dropped to one knee and laced up his boots for him. Surely that was to save his modesty—the cloak was not offering that much to protect it—but he felt another rush of warmth travel his spine.

  As she worked on getting his boots secure, Raed cleared his throat. “No one has ever managed to dismiss the Rossin. How did you do it, exactly?”

  Sorcha glanced up. “It was Shayst, the rune of drawing, usually used against geists to take away their power.”

  “There was a Deacon who tried that rune before.” Raed clenched his teeth shut, lest he tell her how that had ended.

  It would have been in the textbooks, however. From the way Sorcha nodded, but did not look up at him, she probably knew. “I would hazard he wasn’t quite close enough.”

  Raed let out a muffled laugh, but the image that flashed into his head of exactly how close they had just been made him deeply aware of her nearness now.

  “There you are.” Sorcha patted his foot, and it must have been his imagination that her hand lingered there a moment. He would much rather have had her slide her hand up his leg . . .

  Those thoughts were dangerous and foolish. The Pretender cleared his throat. “Thank you. It will make the going that much easier.”

  Rising to her feet, Sorcha wrung out her damp hair and examined the deep scores in her armor. “It was certainly interesting to see the Rossin close up; I studied the Beast as a novice. Quite something to tell them about in the Abbey.”

  “But can you explain what just happened?” Raed clenched the damp cloak around him. “Aulis is, after all, the only one who knows we are down here . . .”

  Her face clouded over, those blue eyes seeming almost capable of shooting him dead where he stood. “I don’t like your implication, Pretender. The Order is under attack; that much is obvious. Now, do you want to save your crew, or shall we continue arguing?”

  Standing in a wet cloak, with nothing but a pair of boots on, he was hardly in a position to break into an argument with the Deacon, especially with the frisson of desire still tugging away on him. He gave a small bow. “By all means, let’s get on.”

  The rest of their progress through the tunnel was thankfully both uneventful and silent. The initial warmth from the Change wore off very quickly, and Raed was soon shivering underneath the cloak. When they emerged in the hills just to the south of the town, his teeth were actually chattering. A strong wind was gusting from the sea.

  Sorcha glanced across at him, and while her expression was hard to read in the moonlight, he guessed she was smiling. “Not enough clothing for you, Pretender? Would you like some more of mine?”

  One comment was enough to send a jolt of physical reaction through him. Raed drew the cloak closer around him. It was one thing to have the Deacon at a disadvantage, as he’d had when she’d been plucked from the sea. It was another altogether to be on the receiving end of it. “I’ll be fine,” he replied stiffly.

  “Don’t be an idiot.” She jerked her head toward the faint lights of the town. “We still have a long walk to go. You’ll be frozen solid before we get there.”

  “What do you suggest?” Now his limbs were trembling with the cold.

  Before he knew it, she’d found a little cave a few yards away. Settling him there, she strode off, and returned a few minutes later with arms full of both dry wood and fresh fernery. While he sat silently, feeling utterly miserable, she built a fire. He found that most interesting, since they had no tinder. He’d always imagined the Deacons using their runes only for things of great importance, but she used her Gauntlets without any fanfare. “Pyet,” she whispered. A fingerling of flame leapt out to catch the dried wood. To extinguish the flame she simply clenched her fists around the Gauntlets before taking them off.

  Then she built a bed of the fresh greenery, and held out her hand. “Give me the cloak and I’ll dry it.”

  Her tone was anything but erotic, yet Raed felt
curiously reluctant to give it back to her. She rolled her eyes. “Your virtue is safe with me, pirate Prince, but a night in that wet clothing and your ship will need a new captain.”

  The smirk on her face said she knew she was right, and the worst thing was that he knew it as well. With as much dignity as he could muster, Raed handed her the cloak, and hoped his body wouldn’t betray him. He quickly did as she bid, and lay down close to the fire. Carefully, she covered him with more of the ferns.

  Then he gulped, because she was taking her own advice. A better man would have looked away, but Raed was unable to. Sorcha used a framework of sticks to hang her cloak close to the fire, and then she too stripped off her clothes. Raed swallowed hard as she unbuckled her armor. Then Sorcha peeled off her sodden underclothes, and draped them over the sticks to dry along with the cloak.

  He was going to say something about being suddenly grateful to the Rossin, but as she shook out her hair and revealed her nakedness, all without the slightest sign of embarrassment, his mouth went dry. Her body would not have been proper in the court of Felstaad or probably the Empire, with scars and muscles that spoke of a hard life, but it was certainly beautiful. He was entranced by the flicker of the firelight over the soft curves and harder planes of her form.

  Padding over to where Raed lay curled in the greenery, Sorcha dropped her Gauntlets to the ground nearby and slipped in behind him under the ferns. Raed felt his body spring to life at the press of her against him. The sharp line of her hip and the soft swell of her breast made him draw a ragged breath.

  “By the Ancients,” he whispered, completely unsure what to do or what the protocol of having a nude member of the Order right next to him was. What was the Deacon thinking? Should he turn around and kiss her or would she blast him into charcoal? All these thoughts raced through his mind as his body screamed in favor of action. Against his back, he could feel that she was tense too.

  “It won’t take long for our clothes to dry,” she whispered, her tone uncomfortable. “As soon as they are, we can get going.” The way her breath tickled the back of his neck was incredible torture. If it had been any other woman, he would have rolled over and let those chips fall where they might. But this was a Deacon, a married Deacon, and one that he was relying on to keep the Rossin from taking hold. It was taking every ounce of his willpower not to turn around. The world narrowed down to simple and torturous sensations: the smell of her skin and the feeling of her breasts pressed into the small of his back. Raed let out a long breath as every muscle in his body clenched. He tried to keep the memory of the Rossin and the Change in his head, tried to drive away the surging blood he could feel everywhere.

  It seemed, however, that the same could not be said of Sorcha. After a minute, he was able to tell by her breathing that she’d actually fallen asleep. His male ego was more than a little pricked by that. It had been a long while since he’d had a naked woman anywhere near him. Raed was sure that she had kissed him back in their tussle in the tunnel.

  With a groan, Raed curled tighter. He really shouldn’t have recalled that memory. The next hour or so was spent miserably as he suffered the tides of desire. Just when he thought he had conquered his body and mind, Sorcha would murmur in her sleep and brush differently against him.

  Finally, some sort of internal clock must have gone off, because she got up and stretched. When she dressed, she was thankfully quick. “Nice and dry,” Sorcha said, tossing her cloak to Raed. “Now, let’s get down this hill and find that reprobate crew of yours.”

  Every supposition that the Pretender had about Deacons had been blown out of the water. He’d had only one miserable experience with one to go on, of course; yet he’d always imagined they lived staid, boring lives; ascetics who only studied and never actually experienced life. When Sorcha had told him that there was nothing they couldn’t do, apparently she hadn’t been joking.

  ELEVEN

  The Martyr, the Pretender

  Sorcha couldn’t stop smiling to herself as she led the silent Pretender down the hill. He was shocked by her behavior, and truthfully, so was she. On one hand, it had been only practical to dry their clothes after getting them soaked, and they had needed to keep warm while waiting for the garments to dry. On the other hand, she still wasn’t sure why she had deliberately tormented Raed.

  Pretending to sleep was the first thing novices learned in the Abbey; when the Presbyter came to check on the students after lights out, it paid to be good at it. She could have lain still, but part of her—a part of her that she had thought long dead—had deliberately moved against the Pretender’s back. What exactly she would have done if he had succumbed to her goading, Sorcha didn’t know.

  It had been nearly two years since Sorcha had made love with Kolya. Their partnership might still exist, but their marriage had been dead for a long time. Whatever safe harbor she had thought he might offer, she had made the wrong choice. It didn’t make her feel good about herself, but there it was . . . the truth.

  With a little flush, she acknowledged that she’d enjoyed seeing the naked man more than she expected to. And that kiss . . .

  Sorcha stumbled a little on the rocky slope, catching herself only at the last minute. It could have been a nasty and embarrassing tumble. In truth, the kiss had felt like an awakening. How long had it been since she’d been kissed like that?

  With a curse, she shook her head. She was far too old for this idiocy—it had been only a kiss, and it was behind her now. There were enough complications to her life already. “Catch up,” she found herself snapping in Raed’s direction. He made no comment, and for the next two hours they scrambled silently through the broken landscape toward Ulrich proper.

  She looked through her Center before they got down to street level, but found no evidence of the unliving. After the last few encounters, however, that was no longer a reassurance. Hearing Raed come up behind her, she let out a sigh. “Looks nice and quiet.”

  “So did that tunnel,” he growled.

  His bluntness brought a bitter smile to Sorcha’s lips. “Fair enough. So let’s not just walk straight up to that ship of yours.”

  He nodded in agreement. Keeping to the shadows of the houses, they reached the ship in short order. The quay was more open, with only small stacks of cargo offering any cover. Sorcha could feel her skin prickle with a heat that was at odds with the season.

  “Plenty of lights on,” Raed whispered over her shoulder, “and it looks like Aachon has posted guards.”

  Two crewmen were indeed sitting huddled around a lantern on the deck, though their usefulness as lookouts was limited by the playing cards in their hands. She raised an eyebrow in the Pretender’s direction. “And these are the people you trust your life to?”

  “Most of the trouble they run into is due to their captain’s presence; with me on dry land, they don’t need to be vigilant.”

  Sorcha snorted. This was why everyone always thought the Deacons so efficient—the rest of the world was just terminally incompetent. She was tempted to slide on her Gauntlets and deal a hand of her own. Raed had, however, slipped away from her and was striding toward his ship, obviously not too happy about her assessment of his crew.

  She heard the cardplayers greet their captain, and their greeting turned to laughter just as she walked up. The men had just realized their captain was stark naked under his borrowed cloak. When she climbed aboard, the laughter stopped abruptly. Many things weren’t so funny when face-to-face with a Deacon.

  Dominion’s first mate appeared, and he did not share in the crew’s amusement. He took in the Pretender’s state of dress and made the logical leap.

  “My lord—the Rossin?” At Raed’s curt nod, he sent the sobered crew to fetch spare clothing from the cabin.

  The Pretender gave a spare gesture toward Sorcha. “Were it not for the assistance of the Deacon, who knows what would have happened.”

  “Well, since I would have been his first victim, I can’t say it was a totally selfless
act.” Sorcha’s lips twisted wryly.

  Aachon’s stern face reminded her of Presbyter Rictun. “But you were with the Deacons at the Priory—how could this have happened?”

  This truth stung more than the other she’d discovered. “Truthfully, I don’t know. The unliving have conformed to the same set of behaviors for hundreds of years; but these past few days their actions have defied the historical record.”

  Raed recovered some of his old confidence as he slipped on his pants. “We had ample demonstration of how the people of Ulrich feel about the Deacons. Have any made a move against Dominion?”

  Aachon shook his head. “We haven’t seen many of them apart from the harbormaster, and he seemed friendly enough.”

  “Maybe we should cast off and make for another anchorage.” The Pretender’s voice was awash with exhaustion; the Change had sucked a lot of energy from his mortal form. Sorcha knew he would need sleep, and soon.

  “I’m afraid we don’t have that choice, my prince.” Aachon led them over to the stern and pointed out to the entrance of the harbor. The faint moonlight glinted strangely off the water, and it took a moment for Sorcha to process what she was seeing: sea ice sealed the headlands as completely as any stone wall.

  “By the blessed Ancients!” Raed thumped the gunwales in frustration. “How on earth did that happen? Ulrich’s deep-sea currents keep it open for months—that’s one of the reasons we came here.”

  Sorcha knew the explanation. She considered not voicing it. If they were to be stuck in this cursed town together, though, then they really had only each other to rely on.

  “Geist storms have been known to drag in sea ice before.” She took a deep breath. “In the siege of Eygene, in fact, we used it to crush the Prince’s fleet . . .”