Sin Eater (Iconoclasts Book 2)

by Mike Shel

  Barely able to read, she thought, wondering at herself now, sitting in a library packed with books, scrolls, and codices. Yes, Mama could manage a balance sheet, but most of the knowledge gathered here would have been beyond her, given the limit of her opportunities. The woman in whose library they sat was her father’s lover, the baroness of this district, and youngest daughter of the Count of Aulkirk. Life is strange.

  “Beyond arguing for vigilance, there’s little more that can be done about this for now,” said her father, making an arc in the air with his good arm, as though dismissing questions hovering there. “There’s no doubt that some powerful person or persons wish me ill. Poor Pala and Margaret paid the price.”

  Agnes looked at her father with disbelief. How could he so easily set such ominous events aside?

  “I will summon a diviner from the capital to get to the bottom of this,” Lady Hannah responded, sitting up even straighter in her seat. “Murderous actions should not go unpunished, whatever the source! A truth-speaker could investigate—”

  “That is a great expenditure, love,” Auric replied, interrupting her with a hand on hers. Agnes decided it was condescending and she did not like it. “There’s no reason to expect anyone in Daurhim is involved in this. I’m liked well enough by the townsfolk. My guess is that whatever sorcerer was behind this act is long gone and in the employ of someone even further away. Engaging a diviner or a priest of Tolwe from Boudun runs the risk of drawing royal eyes to Daurhim, something best avoided in our uncertain times.”

  Lady Hannah’s mouth was a straight line, her nostrils flared as she drew in a deep breath. Agnes saw the wisdom there. The court was a hive of angry, capricious wasps, ready to swarm and sting any target that presented itself, with or without valid reason. The baroness responded with a curt nod.

  “But you came here with a purpose, Agnes,” said Auric, turning to her.

  “A letter, from Pallas Rae. She wants us to fetch you to the Citadel again.”

  Auric’s face darkened and his hand went absently to the hilt of his sword. “Does she?” he said in a quiet, steady voice.

  “Aye, Father,” Agnes replied. “The Citadel is alive with activity. Something extraordinary is happening, though I confess we haven’t been fully apprised.”

  Kennah nodded. “An influx of League scholars, linguists, and the most veteran field agents who survived the plague. Lots of closed doors, secretive chatter in alcoves—the kind that stops the moment you’re noticed passing by.”

  Lady Hannah stood, smoothing the fabric of her fine clothes with abrupt strokes, then turned to face an oak bookcase. Auric looked down for a moment, then back to Agnes, a weak smile on his weary features. Kennah stood seconds after the baroness, unsure of protocol, looking from Agnes to Auric, who remained in their seats. The swordsman sat back down, fiddling with the hilt of his sheathed weapon.

  “Lictor Rae wrote a letter for you,” said Agnes after the silence in the library became too awkward. She reached into the gap between shoulder and pectoral of her leather cuirass and removed a sealed parchment. Agnes held it out to her father, who looked at it as though he was being offered a hot coal to handle. At last, he took the communique.

  “Do you know the contents?” he asked, looking at the mustard-colored seal on the parchment, the Syraeic League’s nine-pointed star at its center.

  “No, sir,” said Kennah. “We were told to deliver the letter to you, and you to the Citadel if you would consent. No more. You’ll note the seal is unbroken.”

  Auric looked at the young swordsman, smiling. Kennah’s earnestness amuses him, thought Agnes, annoyed again. Her father let out a long breath and broke the seal, bits of dried wax falling to the carpeted floor of the library. The four of them sat in their cushioned seats without speaking, Agnes staring at her father, her father staring at the parchment in his hand. At last, he unfolded the paper and began reading aloud.

  “Sir Auric, greetings,” he began, squinting his eyes to make out the lictor’s writing. “I’ll waste no time with pleasantries or inquiring as to your health. Rather, I’ll lay out my request: that you come again to our Citadel in Boudun, accompanied by your daughter and her Syraeic brother. Events too sensitive for a letter are in motion, quite possibly among the most momentous in the League’s storied history. There is no question in my mind that you’ll be keen to bear witness to them.”

  “Wait,” interrupted Agnes. “The letter says ‘Syraeic brother,’ singular? Lictor Rae specifically requested both Ruben and Kennah accompany me. How could she know that—” She stopped herself. Her father was nodding, still looking at the letter, continuing to read it to himself. His brow furrowed, his eyes widened, and his mouth dropped open, free hand rising to it slowly.

  “It continues,” he said, and returned to its text, again reading aloud. “I know that you may be reluctant to leave your retirement for us yet again, but the unfolding discoveries are too extraordinary to miss, especially when you understand they are due in no small part to your expeditions into the Barrowlands. I’ll say only three more things to entice you, hoping you can forgive my cryptic tenor. First, it seems that the tumultu produced by the Counting House diviners who read your Djao blade in Serekirk last year is, in fact, a priceless key. Second, I am informed that when you read this, some not insignificant calamity will have befallen you, though whatever injury you sustained won’t prevent your traveling. And third, I am also informed that when your daughter arrives to deliver this letter, she will be accompanied by one rather than two of the companions with whom she left Boudun; our brother Kennah or Ruben is dead.”

  Auric paused for an awkward moment before continuing, glancing over the top of the page at Agnes, then Kennah. “I hope to see you and Agnes in my study soon, where I am ready to answer whatever questions I can. Kennah or Ruben, whichever lad survives, may attend as well. Your most respectful colleague and sister, Pallas Rae.”

  5

  Promises

  Auric winced putting on the fresh shirt Arlan brought to the library. The analgesic given him by Henga, the town apothecary, had started to wear off before reading the ominously prophetic letter. Shock at its content left the quartet speechless for a time. Agnes finally asked Auric if he would answer the summons. He replied that he wasn’t sure, sparing a stealthy glance at Hannah, who still stood apart from them by one of the library’s great oak bookcases, arms folded over her bosom, an emotional barricade. After another lengthy silence, his friend and lover asked the question all of them were thinking.

  “How could this lictor of yours have known about the fire, or that this Ruben would be slain on the road to Daurhim?” Before anyone could hazard a guess, she asked another. “Was the League behind these events?”

  The expressions on Agnes and Kennah’s faces were identical to Auric’s own: eyes wide, eyebrows arched down, as though spat upon. Kennah stood up like a shot. “With all due respect, Lady Hannah, the League does not act against its own! Why, in over seven centuries—”

  Auric held up a hand, stopping the man’s indignant retort before he worked up a lather. “Hannah, dear, the Syraeic League doesn’t suffer from the internal intrigues that infect the court and the empire’s aristocracy. We have a mission, with intrigues aplenty outside our walls. But it’s a brotherhood. We’re ready to lay down our lives for one another if need be. We contend with the vipers outside our number like a family united.”

  “We?” she responded, tilting her head back so that she looked down on the lot of them. “I thought your commission with the League resigned. Now it’s ‘we’ again?”

  Auric stood and walked over to the baroness, steadying himself on the seatbacks along the way, flinching at the needles of pain from his bandaged arm and shoulder. He put a hand on her arm and felt her muscles already tensed, though she didn’t recoil from his touch. Looking down at her manicured fingernails, he asked Agnes and Kennah if they would seek out Arlan to
find them rooms for the night. The two retreated from the library, Agnes looking pensive, Kennah sour.

  “I know it’s difficult to understand,” said Auric when they had left, “but something incredible is occurring. The fact that it’s related to the expedition of last year—”

  “Expeditions,” Hannah said, cutting him off. “She said your expeditions to the Barrowlands. This concerns more than last year.” Auric looked back at the letter still in his hand.

  I know that you may be reluctant to leave your retirement for us yet again, but the unfolding discoveries are too extraordinary to miss, especially when you understand they are due in no small part to your expeditions into the Barrowlands.

  Auric nodded as he scanned the words of Lictor Rae again. Memories flashed in his mind, not only of last year’s fateful foray to Saint Besh, but the one before it—the one that had cost his closest Syraeic brethren their lives and almost claimed his sanity. The image of Lenda’s severed head placed in a satchel by his rescuer forced him to sit again. He felt unimaginably weary.

  Hannah sat next to him. She put a warm hand on his good shoulder. “This all stinks of Syraeic intrigue, Auric my love. Whether they intend it or not, you are just another of their tools, expendable in whatever quest their avarice is set upon.”

  “It is not avarice!” he shouted, immediately regretting his outburst. He closed his eyes for a moment and opened them again, continuing more calmly. “It’s curiosity. Our quest is a quest for knowledge…” He trailed off as his eyes met hers. They were filled with tears.

  “Auric, darling…the League has already taken from me. I can’t bear the thought of it taking any more.”

  Auric recalled the scene when he and Agnes arrived in Daurhim late last summer, transporting Belech’s corpse with them. Hannah had done her best to maintain her composure in front of servants and retainers who were there to greet them at the keep. Simultaneously relieved to find Auric alive and gutted that her devoted man Belech was dead, she stood there stiff, formal as he introduced her to Agnes, at a loss for what else to say. As cracks appeared in that noble façade, he had simply embraced her, pressing her body into his, whispering sorry, sorry, I’m so sorry. She wept there on the doorstep, sobs racking her body; her grief was a wild thing, so unlike the confident, composed woman he had known. She wept there, in public, in front of the servants and townspeople who had witnessed Auric’s arrival.

  They laid Belech to rest in the family crypts beneath the manor home, in the same alcove occupied by Hannah’s husband. Auric told her stories of the man’s courage, his wise counsel along the way. She hadn’t blamed him for his death. In fact, she recognized that Belech had only discharged her directive to see Auric safely returned to Daurhim. Auric omitted the most gruesome details; they wouldn’t help her grieve, only magnify the pain of the loss. Belech had died a hero, sacrificing himself not only for Auric, but for his other Syraeic companions. When Auric mentioned the honors paid him by the Syraeic League before they left Boudun, Hannah had exploded.

  “That nest of vipers. I care not what empty accolades they paid his shade!” The venom in her words was a frightening thing.

  Lady Hannah was a strong and proud woman. She did not weep easily. She had wept upon his return with Belech’s corpse, at the old soldier’s internment, and once when speaking of missing her two sons, both stationed as junior officers with the legions in the east. And now. Often her tears were followed by anger. Today her anger was followed by tears. It was somehow more unsettling for Auric. It wasn’t sadness those tears bespoke. It was fear. Fear he would leave and never return. She had no one to send with him this time, to protect him and see to it he came back to Daurhim safely.

  But again the anger erupted, and Hannah attempted one last assault. “They will embroil you in some dangerous scheme, just as they did last year!”

  He took her hands in his, gazing into her blue eyes. “Lictor Rae said nothing of any schemes. Only that the tumultu was a key of some sort. It seems to be providing oracular information. The lad Kennah says scholars and linguists are flocking to the Citadel. This all seems more academic than anything else.”

  “Academic?” she scoffed, pulling her hands away.

  “The League seeks knowledge more than treasure, love. It always has.”

  She drew her arms across her chest, as though barring a castle’s gates against siege. Resting a hand on her forearm, he continued. “My own youthful attraction was driven by dreams of riches, true, as are most novices. But when one has been in those old ruins—those of the Buskers, in the Barrowlands—a hunger for understanding grows, to know the past. What is this library you have, if not the product of such hunger?”

  “You’re going, then.” Her voice was soft, almost brittle.

  Auric didn’t answer, even as the irresistible pull to discover what mysteries lay behind Rae’s enigmatic words tugged at him. They were crafted for that purpose, to draw him in. But he didn’t resent the manipulation, if that’s what it was. No, it was more like the summons of one seeker to another: Come, see what wonders we’ve found.

  Auric held Hannah in his arms, despite the howling pain from his wounds. She leaned into him, melting. The aroma of her hair, sweet, floral, filled his nostrils as he breathed her in deeply. She pulled away, seeing the strain in his face, and apologized. But he held her with his left hand and drew her back to him, kissing her full on her lips, imbued with an urgent passion. Hannah returned his urgency, pushing against him so that her soft breasts pressed into his chest.

  Then the moment was gone, and again Lady Hannah stood before him, smoothing her clothing, returning errant strands of hair to the silver loops she wore. “We have guests,” she said, wiping a fleck of saliva from the corner of her lips. “I’ll see to it Arlan has them in comfortable quarters and inform the kitchen staff as well. Let yourself rest here, Auric.” And she was out the library door.

  He had not answered her question.

  Auric convalesced the rest of the day. In the afternoon, a cobbler from town who had once been a medicus with the legions, a man named Logen, stopped by to change the dressings for his burns. The man had an odd, mumbling demeanor, asking himself questions to which there were no answers and second-guessing aloud the ministrations he delivered. But his movements and attentions were so fluid and efficient, Auric was certain he could expect no better care anywhere.

  Dinner was a trial. Kennah thought his inquiries subtle, but the young swordsman’s prying for tales of Auric’s career—most pointedly those from beneath Saint Besh last year—was about as subtle as a knee to the groin. Agnes—lovely Agnes, with those freckles more prominent from her time in the summer sun, the arch of her eyebrows like Marta’s, big brown eyes that absorbed everything they lit upon—worked to strike up conversation with the baroness about her early life in Aulkirk. Unfortunately, the topic only made Hannah melancholy, as she had received news a few days prior that her father the count was quickly fading into his second childhood. He was eighty-two. Her oldest brother Hanfred would soon claim the title, a sibling for whom Hannah held absolutely no affection, though she had never told Auric why. She did her best to deflect Agnes’s questions, while Agnes did her best to deflect Auric’s fatherly inquiries about her own Syraeic exploits. It was as though the four of them were blindly fencing rather than dining with one another, all stumbling about and accidentally drawing blood.

  Things came to a head when Kennah at last broached the question. Would Auric come with them to Boudun and the Citadel? Auric demurred again at first, saying that Pala had to be laid to rest, that he needed to give Margaret a respectful burial as well. Hannah noted that he had lost his armor in the fire, along with nearly all his possessions. She added she could see his burns caused him discomfort, and a journey would complicate their healing.

  “What’s more, the fact that those injuries resist Belu’s bounty tells me that the goddess does not want you to leave Daurh
im.”

  Auric saw Agnes wanted to speak, but held her tongue. Kennah had sense enough at that point to follow her lead. Auric told them he would think on it. But the truth was, of course he would accompany them. He knew it as well as Hannah. In a few days, after Pala and Margaret were seen to, he would ride with Agnes and Kennah for Boudun and whatever revelations lay waiting at the Citadel.

  That night, in Hannah’s bed, they made love. It was intense and urgent, Hannah astride him, him deep inside her, both rocking with a kind of rhythmic desperation. When she at last reached climax, she broke into tears again, collapsing into him. The burns on his arm and shoulder sang with pain, their passionate movement causing the wounds to weep through the bandages. But he ignored the pain, caressing Hannah’s unbound hair, the soft flesh of her back, and he whispered in her ear, I’m here now, I’m here now. I’ll be back, my love. Within a month’s time, I promise.

  He did not know for certain if it was a promise he could keep.

  Three days after the fire, Pala was buried in the town’s cemetery, with a fine stone marker carved at Auric’s expense. Poor Hanouer was inconsolable, all his cheek and sarcasm vanished, as though the flames had burned them away just as their smoke had taken his wife’s life. Auric stood nearby, letting Agnes comfort the old man. Hanouer and Pala had taken to her like doting grandparents when she visited last year, and in that moment the role of consoler seemed more a granddaughterly duty to Auric. Auric had dug the hole for brave, faithful Margaret himself the day before, next to his small barn in what had been his back pasture, behind the charred husk of his manse. He took a double dose of the apothecary’s analgesic and refused Hannah’s offer of a workman for the task. His wounds opened again with the effort, but he ignored them seeping through the cloth of his shirt. He let the tears come finally for the dutiful hound as he stood by her little dirt-covered grave. She had been with him his entire sojourn in Daurhim.