by Kat Ross
He paused as a bright flash of violet light traced the design. Metal groaned somewhere above. Kasia looked up, her eyes widening. She dragged Natalya out of the way just as the rusted fire escape tore loose from the side of the building and tumbled down in a cloud of plaster dust and bricks. The men scrambled back. She heard a hoarse scream but didn’t pause to see what had happened.
“Run!” she urged.
Natalya limped at high speed to the end of the alley, Kasia half supporting her. As they reached the street, a black car screeched to a stop, blocking the way out. Kasia glanced behind. Three of the men were climbing over the downed fire escape. The first one across sprinted towards her, moving with a swift, loping stride that was more apelike than human. Within seconds, he’d halved the distance. She had another card ready in her hand when the car window rolled down.
“Get in!” Tessaria barked.
The women dove into the backseat. The engine roared and the car rocketed forward down the empty street. Through the window Kasia watched a cloaked man burst out of the alley, his chest heaving. That eerie blank mask stared after them until the car screeched around a corner.
“Saints, who were they?” Tessaria asked, glancing at Kasia in the rearview mirror.
“No . . . clue,” Natalya replied breathlessly.
Tessaria looked troubled. “Saviors’ Eve gets worse every year. It ought to be banned.”
“Those men were no—” Kasia began, but Tessaria cut her off.
“We have bigger problems than a few hoodlums,” she snapped. “If you’d told me the truth about what happened on Monday night, I would have dealt with the problem before it became unmanageable.” Brakes squealed as she sped around a traffic circle. “One of Feizah’s knights regained consciousness an hour ago. She had a very interesting story to tell.”
Kasia watched her in the mirror. Loose ends. One hard tug and they could unravel a whole story. “I thought the guards were dead.”
“All but one. She was badly injured, but she pulled through. She said they tried to detain a young woman who was discovered roaming the palace shortly before Feizah died. It didn’t take long to connect that same young woman with the three guests who’d been staying at the Castel Saint Agathe.”
Kasia licked her lips. “What else did she say?”
“She wasn’t very clear on how you got away, but they’ll get it out of her eventually. The truly unfortunate part is that she told all this to Bishop Maria Karolo rather than the OGD. Karolo and Feizah were thick as thieves. This guard is sympathetic to the Conservatives and made sure Karolo got the information first. Have you any idea of the damage this will do to Dmitry’s office?”
Kasia shared a look with Natalya. “They’re lying about the Reverend Mother being murdered so I don’t see how the bishop can make it public anyway.”
“Oh, you callow child,” Tessaria exclaimed. “I’m talking about damage to his allies within the Curia, which is what counts! Then there’s the matter of a certain card you dropped outside the Pontifex’s bedchamber. I might have explained it away, but combined with the guard’s testimony . . . we’re in deep!”
“So Bishop Karolo sent those men?” Natalya asked with a frown. “Why not her own priests? Or the Oprichniki? Everyone knows the Conservatives hate Saviors’ Eve. They think it’s decadent. Why would she—”
“Saints, stop yammering, I have no idea who those men were.” Tessaria steered the car down a lumpy, potholed street that reeked of fish. “You two seem to have a knack for acquiring enemies.”
“We’ve laid low for the last two days,” Kasia protested.
“Well, good for you. It’s still too little, too late.”
A pair of gulls swooped over the car, clever eyes scanning the ground for scraps. Kasia stared up at a huge blue and green sign declaring, “Welcome to Novoport!”
“Where are you taking me, Auntie?” she asked with a sinking feeling.
“Far away, that’s where.”
The waterfront was a mix of warehouses and a few dockside restaurants serving raw oysters and half-priced happy hour drinks. Two dozen steamers and double-masted barques rested at anchor alongside stone piers. Cranes and colorful shipping containers lined the wharf, ready to be loaded onto tramways leading to the central market where one could buy everything from carpets to cherry peppers.
Ninety percent of trade in the Via Sancta was conducted by sea. The land routes were shorter but vulnerable to attack and sabotage. Normally, the docks would be teeming with activity. On this dreary Saturday afternoon, sandwiched between the inauguration of a new Pontifex and a major holiday, the place was deserted.
“You can’t just kidnap her,” Nashka said indignantly. “Don’t I get a say?”
“You’re going, too.” Tessaria gave her a grim smile.
“What?”
“Guilt by association. You know far too much, Natalya Anderle. The new Pontifex agrees with me. He wants you both spirited away until he’s dealt with this mess. Honestly, you’re lucky he isn’t throwing you both to the devilfish!”
“He can’t though, can he?” Kasia said. “Or he’d be thrown to the devilfish right along with us.”
Tessaria didn’t reply.
“What about all my stuff?” Natalya demanded.
“I’ll buy you new charcoals and . . . ” Tess made a fluttery gesture. “Underthings. Whatever you want. But it’s not worth your lives to go home and pack, is it?”
“Shit,” Nashka whispered under her breath.
Tessaria must have read her lips in the rearview mirror because she scowled mightily. “Be grateful I found you.”
“How did you?” Kasia wondered.
“I used the ley and my need was great.” Her tone softened. “I love you both, despite your foolishness, and will not allow a single mistake to ruin both your lives. Trust me, this is the best way.”
Natalya stared disconsolately out the window. She had the most to lose—friends, family, a budding career as an artist. Kasia had only casual acquaintances. She felt no great sorrow at leaving Novostopol. The abruptness was inconvenient, but all she cared about now was determining the limits of her newfound power and mastering it better. If she knew how the make the cards work every time, she would never be running for her life again.
Those men would have been the ones to run.
“At least tell us where,” Kasia said. “We have a right to know where we’re being dragged off to.”
“Nantwich. That ought to be far enough. The Reverend Mother Clavis is a longtime friend. She’ll help.” Tessaria parked next to a small pleasure boat with a striped awning. She took out a pair of binoculars and swept the lenses slowly across the piers. “Ah, there she is.”
The ship was a merchant freighter called the Moonbeam. It was scheduled to sail at dawn, but Tessaria had a hastily penned writ with the Pontifex’s seal giving them safe passage from the city and commanding any subject of the Via Sancta to obey the bearer without question. Tessaria drove to the end of the pier and shut off the engine. She tucked the keys in a pocket.
“Don’t move,” she said. “I’ll roust the captain.”
“Planning to stuff us into the cargo hold?” Natalya said sourly.
“Keep complaining and I just might.” She applied dark purple lipstick in the rearview and blotted it with a tissue.
“What about our clients?”
“Your clients will be told you’re working on a very important commission for the Church. And I already paid the rent on your flat for the next six months.” Tess caught her long dreadlocks in a silver clasp at the nape, exposing the Raven Mark on her neck. “There will be an inquiry to satisfy the Conservatives, but by then we’ll have several witnesses who saw you in the Castel Saint Agathe at the same time the guard claims you were in the Pontifex’s Palace. With luck, you won’t be charged.”
“Won’t it make me look guiltier to run away?” Kasia asked.
Tessaria opened the car door. She wore stylish low-heeled black boots
beneath the cassock. “You didn’t run away.” A small smile touched her lips. “As I just explained, the Reverend Mother Clavis heard of your talent and summoned you both to Nantwich. Now sit tight, darlings, I’ll be back in a jiffy.”
The Moonbeam was an iron-strapped steamer with twin funnels and four masts to hoist auxiliary sails. Kasia watched Tess march up the railed gangway. She spoke to a crewman on watch and he hurried to a hatch and down a ladder.
“I’m sorry,” she said to Natalya. “It was so stupid of me to lose that card.”
“What about the knights?” She slid down in the seat, bleached curls floating in a cloud around her head. “What did you do to them?”
“Just made them sleep. I didn’t even mean to. They grabbed me and a card fell out of the deck.”
“Which one?”
“The Knight of Wards.”
“Ah, the Dreamer.” Nashka sat up straighter. Kasia could see she was intrigued despite everything.
“So it fell out and lit with ley and the knights just dropped.” She snapped her fingers. “Like that. I checked to make sure they were still alive and then I ran away.”
“The mage killed them all except for one?”
“It seems so, yes. But when I tried the card again later, it didn’t work.”
“Each card must do something different. Perhaps more than one thing, depending on the circumstances, since there are layers of meaning.”
“Yes, that’s what I was thinking, too,” Kasia said in excitement. “It only seems to work when they’re drawn randomly, but maybe there’s a way to choose. I think it must use the liminal ley since that twists chance.” She took Nashka’s hand. “Maybe we can design a new deck together. Think of the possibilities!”
Natalya’s eyes shone. “Nantwich won’t be so bad. We were talking about visiting there anyhow. And it’s not forever, is it? We can come back someday?”
“Of course. This will all blow over.” She peered out the window. “What’s taking so long?”
Natalya opened the door and got out, testing her skinned knee.
“How is it?” Kasia asked.
“Just a bit stiff. I’ve done worse tripping on the dance floor.” Natalya gave her neck a loud crack in each direction. She’d lost her shoes in the alley and stood on the worn planks of the dock in stocking feet. “Looks like the general’s invasion has met with resistance.”
Kasia joined her, leaning on the still-warm hood. Tessaria was arguing with a white-haired man in a captain’s uniform. Or not arguing, exactly. Tess was going on at length while he stood there quietly shaking his head. Then the purr of an engine whipped the vestal’s head around. She stalked down the gangway just as two Curia cars sped up to the dock.
“This can’t be good,” Natalya murmured.
Tess gestured sharply and they hurried to join her at the foot of the gangway. The cars stopped a short distance away. Nashka gave a soft groan as Bishop Maria Karolo and five priests from the Order of Saint Marcius got out. They had the look of former knights, with broad shoulders, closely shaved heads, and flinty eyes. They wore cassocks with a sheaf of wheat embroidered on the breast. Kasia wondered if any of them had been wearing cloaks and masks half an hour ago.
“You have no authority here,” Tessaria said, lifting her chin.
“I have all the authority I need.” Bishop Karolo’s voice was thin and arrogant, much like the woman herself. She held up a piece of paper. “This is an arrest warrant—”
Tess’s arm moved in a blur. The paper tore from the bishop’s hand and plastered itself to a wooden piling, stuck there by a small bone-handled dagger. Kasia and Natalya looked at their benefactor with stunned awe.
“Get back in your car, Maria, and be on your way,” Tessaria said calmly.
The bishop stared. Her face was bloodless except for two crimson splotches on her cheeks. “Do you really believe your association with Falke will protect you when the truth comes out? Come quietly and there’s a chance you’ll only be charged as an accessory. But if you interfere with me, I’ll make sure you’re destroyed, Tessaria. The Foy name will be reviled throughout the Curia.” She eyed Kasia and Natalya with loathing. “And your two little pets will go to prison for the rest of their lives.”
“We’re ready to depart immediately,” Tessaria called to the captain, who was watching from the rail with his first mate and half a dozen crew. He opened his mouth, then closed it again.
“Take them,” Karolo snapped at her priests.
One strode towards Kasia, another beelined for Natalya, and three headed for Tessaria Foy, who was clearly deemed the most dangerous of the bunch.
“Get up the gangway!” Tess shouted.
Kasia made it four steps before a hand yanked her back by the hair. She struggled wildly, but the muscled body behind her was solid as an ironbound door. Bishop Karolo approached with a satisfied expression.
“I only allowed you to leave the Arx so I could take you without injuring innocent people,” she said with quiet venom. “I know what you are.” Her lip curled. “A Nightmarked sorceress. You were part of the plot to murder the Reverend Mother! Falke knew about it. I’ll see him ruined for this, but not before you confess your guilt to the tribunal.” Spittle flew from her thin lips. “I don’t know how you passed the Wards, but interrogation will loosen your tongue, witch.”
Blue light leaked from her sleeves as her Marks soothed the bishop’s rage. Karolo’s face went eerily blank. “Throw her in the trunk,” she said.
A roughspun hood came down over Kasia’s head, cutting off light and air. Her arms were twisted behind her back. She struggled to breathe, gasping through the scratchy material. Strong arms lifted her off her feet and dragged her down the pier. She kicked and screamed, to no avail. Then she heard an oof, followed by a thud. The hood was yanked off. Kasia stared at the hulking man before her, disoriented and disbelieving.
“Fra Spassov?” she gasped.
One of the priests swung a length of rebar at his head. He ducked and hammered the man with a giant fist. The priest dropped like an anchor and didn’t get up. Bishop Karolo stepped forward, Marks flaring. The sharp points of her bob framed a mouth set in lines of livid fury. “What do you think you—”
Spassov grabbed her like a sack of rice and threw her over the edge of the pier into the water.
“Hurry!” he urged Kasia. “Go aboard!”
Before she could reply, he stomped over to Tessaria Foy, who was fending off three priests with a pair of daggers and acrobatic moves that Kasia never suspected she possessed. Within a minute, one of the priests had joined Bishop Karolo in the water and a second lay unconscious on the planks. The third launched himself at Spassov’s broad back, then screamed as Tessaria’s knife flew into the back of his thigh.
Natalya stood over another priest of Saint Marcius. He writhed on the deck, croaking soundlessly and clutching his crotch. Kasia dragged her up the gangway. Tessaria and Spassov hurried behind. A line of blood ran from Spassov’s nose and he looked ready to pound any comers into the ground like tent pegs. The captain watched them approach with alarm.
“I can’t have any part of this,” he stammered. “I’m an honest trader. I don’t take passengers, especially ones in trouble with the Curia.”
“Are you blind?” Tessaria demanded, waving the paper in his face. “This is from the Pontifex himself! He rewards those who heed his writ just as he punishes those who don’t. Which category do you prefer to be in, Captain?”
The man eyed her uneasily. “With all due respect, Domina, I think I’d better call the gendarmes and let them sort it out—”
“Start the boiler or I’ll summon the hounds,” Spassov snarled, boots thumping on the deck. “They’re hungry and ill-tempered and they hate hearing the word no.”
The captain blanched at the inverted trident on Spassov’s cassock. He started shouting orders at the bewildered crew. Within minutes, the lower furnaces were lit and the anchor weighed. Smoke trailed from the twin funn
els. “Call the harbor master,” the captain said to his first mate. “Get us a pilot boat.” A quick glance at Tessaria. “Tell him it’s the Pontifex’s orders.”
Sailors leapt to the pier to untie the heavy mooring lines from the iron bollards. Tessaria grabbed Spassov’s meaty arm and dragged him aside.“What do you think you’re doing?”
As usual, Patryk Spassov looked the worse for wear—and not just from brawling. He needed a shave, his eyes were bloodshot, and there was a bit of dried egg yolk on his sleeve. “Helping you, Sor Foy,” he replied.
“Who sent you?”
“No one.” He sounded indignant. “I came on my own.”
“Why on earth would you do that?”
“Domina Novak tried to help Fra Bryce, so now I return the favor.”
“Well, that’s lovely, but you can go now.”
He hunched his shoulders. “I resigned my post today. I thought I’d leave the city anyway—”
She chuckled. “Oh no, you don’t. I appreciate your aid, but you can go retire elsewhere, Fra Spassov.”
“What if more people come after you?”
“I’ll handle them myself.”
“And if you can’t?” he asked mildly.
Her lips thinned. “I already told you, we don’t need your help—”
“Yes,” Kasia said firmly, walking up. “We do.”
Tessaria’s eyes narrowed.
“He comes or I swear by all the Saints and Martyrs I’ll run at the first chance. You know I always keep my word.”
The older woman looked ready to argue, but two of the priests on the pier were stirring. She tossed her head and gave an angry nod. “Only to the next port. And you’ll do as I say, Fra Spassov, or you’ll be swimming next to that foolish bishop.”
His lips twitched, but he kept a straight face. Patryk touched the Raven on his neck. “I’m yours to command, Sor Foy.”
Maria Karolo and her minion had been forced to dog-paddle all the way to the end of the pier to find a ladder leading up. They stood dripping on the dock as the Moonbeam drifted free and the great screw thrummed to life. A long blast claimed right of way in the harbor.
