by Carol A Park
But no sooner had he thought it, than she kicked the door closed behind her. She looked around. He hesitated and then reappeared.
She nodded. “The area you’re looking for is farther down the hall, through another door, and to your right. Keep going. You’ll find it.”
“What if there are more locked doors and guards?” he asked.
She raised an eyebrow. “I do believe you said, ‘Get me in and out, and I’ll take care of the rest.’”
He had said that, hadn’t he?
“Don’t forget. Two hours.” She pulled open the door, wormed through with her pile of linens, and left the room. He slid through as the door closed and stood in the hall, looking both ways, feeling bewildered.
All right, he thought. I’ll just wing it.
He headed in the direction she had indicated.
Vaughn met no resistance as he traveled down the halls. He passed a few doors, but none were locked, and no one was around to see them open of their own accord. Until he reached the end. There, once again, was another heavy metal door, and more guards.
Damn. Okay, think, Vaughn.
A distraction? “Help!” he yelled.
All but one of the guards came running, and he slipped past them in the opposite direction. The final guard was attentive, watching the corridor they disappeared down, but still on guard. Vaughn sidled up to him as close as he dared. He had a ring with a few keys at his waist, and Vaughn wished Ivana were the one doing this. She could no doubt pick the lock with the guard standing there, none the wiser.
He spied a pitcher on the table, and when the guard wasn’t looking, he knocked it over. The guard started, surprised, and while he was distracted, trying to clean the mess up, Vaughn plucked the key ring from his belt, praying he wouldn’t notice.
He had keys. Now what? The guard would surely notice the door opening.
He tried to think. Water. Water, in the body. How could he use that knowledge to get rid of the guard without hurting him?
Tentatively, he reached out toward the guard, concentrating on his bladder. It was harder than he thought. He couldn’t see the bladder, didn’t know how much water was there. He pulled a little on the water he sensed there.
The guard stood up abruptly.
Vaughn tugged on it again.
The guard put his hand on his crotch and crossed his legs. “Burning skies,” he muttered. “What did I drink?”
Vaughn tugged again, a little harder. He could feel the aether burning in his blood, more than he normally burned at once.
“Oof,” the guard said, and fled down the hallway, leaving Vaughn alone in the guardroom with the keys. He shrugged, unlocked the door, and entered the hall beyond without resistance. He kept the keys. Never knew when they might come in handy. Maybe the guard would think he’d lost them in the privy.
Vaughn passed a few priests in the halls, but they were wide enough that he could easily evade them. The floors had rugs, so he didn’t have to worry about footsteps being heard.
The compound was a maze, so he decided to follow one of the priests and hope he was going somewhere interesting.
It turned out to be a good plan. He didn’t have to wait long.
The priest led him to a large room, and when Vaughn slipped in after him, his breath caught in his throat.
The room was long, and the walls were lined with beds, most of which were occupied by sleeping people. Subjects?
A second priest was already in the room, moving from bed to bed, checking each patient, making notes, and Vaughn stood to the side, watching. He just needed some sign that their hypothesis was true.
The priest he had followed moved over to the priest in the room, who was younger, and looked over his shoulder at his notes.
“Heard they’re choosing a Fereharian this year for Harvest Hunter,” the older priest said to the other.
Vaughn felt his jaw lock. Harvest Hunter. Sounded so benign, like someone out to hunt deer for the table.
But the harvest festival was more than a celebratory conclusion to the year’s harvests. It was also a religious feast, honoring the Conclave’s gods as well as beseeching them to protect the people from further infringements by the heretic gods.
Vaughn returned to listening to their conversation.
“…two dozen Banebringers this year, alone.”
The other priest whistled. “I guess he deserves the honor then.”
They must still be talking about the Harvest Hunter. The Hunter who was honored for being the most dedicated Hunter that year. Usually someone was chosen because of their record—how many Banebringers they had brought in, but politics definitely played a part in the “honor.”
He grew irritated as they continued discussing the merits of the Hunter in question. This was all very fascinating, but it didn’t help his mission, and time didn’t stop for small talk among priests.
“They say he lost two sons to a bloodbane, years back, and that’s why he’s so dedicated now.”
“I’m sure currying favor with the Conclave has nothing to do with it,” the other priest said.
They laughed.
Vaughn’s ears pricked up. Lost two sons to a bloodbane? And from Ferehar?
He felt sick.
“Well, what’s the status?” the younger priest said. They both turned to look at the bed nearest to them, and Vaughn looked as well. A young man lay there, asleep or unconscious.
The older priest shook his head. He gestured to a table nearby, which held some tubes of blood. They also had a…what was it Ivana had called it? A microscope. The man drew a bit of the blood out of the vial and smeared it on a slide, and then gestured for the younger priest to take a look.
“No change.”
The two priests huddled over the blood sample, and Vaughn moved closer, trying to figure out what they were studying.
The older priest picked up a two-sided glass slide—it looked a little like a miniature version of a qixli—and slid it into an empty slot on the microscope. “Even with more magnification.”
Vaughn frowned, even though he felt satisfied. If they were using aether to make more powerful microscopes like the Ichtaca, then that meant one of two things: they had a Banebringer who was working with them, or they were using the formula he and Ivana had discovered by mixing their own blood with the aether of a lightblood they kept un-Sedated but imprisoned—or Sedated, if that worked. Either way, it was exactly the sort of activity they were hoping to prove.
The priests murmured over several vials of blood and samples, shaking their heads, obviously frustrated by whatever experiments they were running…
Vaughn did a double-take. Blood? Blood in vials? Blood on the slide—yes, still blood. They had set aside the old one, and it showed no signs of turning to aether.
He looked back at the man on the bed, and then the realization hit him. These weren’t Banebringers. He had assumed these were some of the Sedated Banebringers, kept in this lab for experiments or harvesting. But if this blood had come from that man…
He moved over to the bed and peered down at the man again. What were they doing with non-Banebringers?
He glanced around the lab, looking for some obvious explanation. The priests had started arguing, in even lower voices.
“…know it’s possible.”
“…not without…”
Vaughn couldn’t get any closer without chancing bumping into one of them, so he used their moment of inattention to move down to the other end of the lab, where a door was partially opened. With one last nervous glance at the preoccupied priests, he pushed the door open a crack so he could slip through. It creaked, and he cringed and looked back.
They hadn’t noticed, and he let out a breath. He slipped into the room.
He froze, and panic swelled in his chest. The overwhelming urge to flee swept over him, but he caught it before he could do anything rash.
The creature in front of him wasn’t moving. Its eyes weren’t open. It didn’t even look…full
y formed.
It was the corpse-thing he had encountered at the attack on the Ichtaca. Or, at least, it was one of the same class of bloodbane.
Though the thing obviously wasn’t alive, his heart beat faster as he moved closer to inspect it. It was hung on the wall by a hook stuck into its back, like someone’s discarded jacket.
Voices came closer, and he glanced around, looking for a place to duck out of the way. He scurried into a corner as the two priests entered the room and appraised the creature hanging on the wall.
“I disagree,” the older priest was saying. “We lost control of the last one after she escaped.”
Vaughn blinked. She? Surely they weren’t talking about…
The younger priest grunted. “We have to keep trying; eventually we’ll figure it out, even without her.”
The other priest shook his head. “We’ve got a hundred vials of blood from mortal and monster alike that say differently. Until he sends us another tool, we’re wasting our time.”
Vaughn blinked. Monster?
The younger priest glanced back through the now fully-open door, as though expecting someone out there to be listening. “Good riddance, I say. If we can work without Danathalt, all the better. I don’t trust him.”
Vaughn felt like he had been struck. Danathalt? Danathalt?
“Hush,” the older priest said. “Don’t speak his true name, even here. Our purposes align; that’s all that matters.”
The younger priest rolled his eyes, but inclined his head, their argument apparently finished.
Vaughn took a step backward, head spinning with the deluge of information. They knew about Danathalt? They had been working with Danathalt? What did that mean? The crazy woman? Burning skies, had he been right? Had she actually been possessed by the god himself?
What was the Conclave doing?
The priests had left the room, and the older one—the same he had initially followed—was headed toward the main door.
Vaughn jogged back through the lab, wanting to slip through on his heels. He barely made it, catching the door on his hip on his way out. The priest looked back quizzically, and Vaughn cringed. The door shut with a click, and the priest shrugged and kept walking.
Vaughn hesitated. He probably had an hour left. He should go. He still had to figure out how to get out of here. But a simple mission to obtain evidence that the priests were using aether contrary to their own holy laws had turned into something more, and he had to use the opportunity to find out all he could. He hurried after the disappearing figure of the priest.
The priest popped his head into another room where the door had been propped open. “Everything going okay, Sanlin?” He must have received an affirmative, because he kept walking.
Vaughn paused to look in himself. There—there was what he was expecting to see. A few beds, a priest drawing his own blood, and a tray of aether flakes in front of him, a label on the front.
He wanted to see what it said, but he also wanted to continue following the priest. He chose to keep following. The priest stopped to speak in a few more rooms, which held more of the same. Different types of Banebringers, perhaps? Different labs to create different aether? But if they were drawing blood from these Banebringers to use in experiments, that meant they couldn’t actually be Sedated, could it? Wouldn’t their blood be useless, otherwise?
Or was there something they were missing?
The Ichtacan researchers needed to get on this.
Finally, the priest entered another door at the end of the corridor, and, distracted by the latest room they passed, Vaughn didn’t make it behind him. He was left alone in the corridor. A corridor connecting rooms full of vegetable people and priests harvesting their blood.
He shivered. He was running out of time. But he stopped to investigate the last interesting room, first. It looked like a storage room. A deep cabinet with hundreds of square drawers took up both walls. Each drawer was labeled with a name.
He pulled one open. It held aether—hundreds and hundreds of slivers of aether. Each was in a little compartment of its own, meticulously labeled with words like fire and wind.
The personal stashes of aether for the priests who used them, to replenish their stock, he guessed.
Vaughn retraced his steps. There was no doubt, now that the priests were blatantly flaunting their own rules. But what else were they doing? Something with creating monsters, something with normal people, something with Danathalt? Unfortunately, he didn’t have time to investigate further.
The door he had come through had only been locked on one side. He pushed it open, and in a moment of brilliancy, he burned some aether he had from a lightblood and disguised himself as a priest. It wouldn’t last long—he had no practice with using aether that way—and it might be imperfect, given the it wasn’t aether of his own profile.
But it worked long enough for the guards to glance up, dismiss him, and go back to their games. After all, why would an intruder be…extruding?
He arrived at the final door just as Aleena did. She pushed the door open and held it there for a moment, smiling at the guards. “All right,” she said as he edged by her. “I’ve managed to get away.” She let the door slam shut.
The guards whooped and patted one of their number on the back, who sheepishly got up. Without another glance, Aleena joined him and the two scampered down the hall together.
In a few minutes, Vaughn was back outside, hurrying away from the complex. He would have to meet back up with Aleena later to give her his report, but he wouldn’t feel safe until he was on his way back to the Ichtaca.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Harvest Ball
Ivana was with Vaughn in Yaotel’s office, waiting while the man digested what Vaughn had just told him.
She had already heard it, of course. Vaughn had come to her first, as she had asked.
Yaotel was sitting still in his chair, fingers pressed to his temples, eyes closed. She would have thought he was praying, but she doubted he prayed.
Vaughn had forgone a chair and was leaning back against the wall, arms crossed, while Ivana took up her place in the chair, feet propped up on Yaotel’s desk.
“Do you realize,” Yaotel said at last, opening his eyes, “how incredibly risky this would be?”
“Riskier than declaring war on the world?” Vaughn asked. He pushed himself away from the wall. “It just makes sense, Yaotel. This is a way of pushing our cause, exposing the Conclave, with no, or at least limited, bloodshed.”
“But if we fail—”
“I’ll admit, failure is a problem.”
“—instead of helping our cause, we may well be hurting it.”
“We’re not helping anything by sitting here doing nothing.”
Still, Yaotel hesitated. Ivana could understand why. He was no doubt weighing the risks and benefits of various courses of action. It was a calculation she was used to herself.
Vaughn moved forward and put his hands on Yaotel’s desk. “Yaotel, we have never had an advantage like this. We have information, and they don’t know we have it. We can use that against them.” He pushed himself back, meeting Yaotel’s eyes. “Or would you rather Perth use the information against them in his own way? You can’t keep this secret forever.”
A wise move, on Vaughn’s part. As she understood it, after years of existing in secret, Yaotel’s little clan of Banebringers was growing restless. He was caught between a faction pushing for blood, and a smaller faction urging him to continue the long game of politics. He had to do something. Now something was staring him in the face. How could he refuse?
Again, Yaotel was silent for a moment. “Are you sure we can trust this woman—Aleena?”
Vaughn looked at Ivana.
“Yes,” she said. She knew that now, without a doubt.
Yaotel snorted. “I don’t even know if I trust you, and you’re asking me to take your word that we can trust someone else I’ve never met?”
“She helped me, didn’t
she?” Vaughn put in.
“For what reason, though?”
“Does it matter?” Ivana said. “All that matters is that she’s eager to help. Her motivations are her own.” Ivana, of course, knew why Aleena had so readily agreed to helping Vaughn obtain his evidence, but that wasn’t hers to share.
“As long as she doesn’t get in the way.”
“She won’t.”
Yaotel looked resigned. “I suppose I’ll have to let you go.”
“If you want me to coordinate any plan with her? Obviously.”
His jaw twitched. “All right,” he said at last. “Make your preparations, and let me know what you need from me.”
Three weeks later, Ivana was staring at herself in a mirror, feeling ridiculous. Her hair swept up on top of her head in a pillar, with gels and clips to hold it in place. An evening gown to rival the wealthiest lady’s. Jewelry. Makeup.
She had never tried to impersonate a person of real privilege. Her appearance—skin color, hair, features—marked her too easily as a native Fereharian, and no pure-blooded Fereharian was also of noble blood.
Vaughn’s family had a mixed heritage, and so he wasn’t as obviously Fereharian as she was. His skin wasn’t as dark, his hair too light of a brown to not have some Weylyn or Arlanan blood mixed in.
That was why she wasn’t going to play the part of a noble. No one would accept that. Instead, she was the daughter of a prosperous merchant from Ferehar. More believable—anyone could become wealthy through trade.
Still, without Vaughn vouching for her, even that was a stretch from the backwater region of Ferehar.
She turned away from the mirror, eyes sweeping her room once more for threats, out of instinct more than anything else.
Their party had spent the previous night at an inn in the wealthiest part of Weylyn City, awaiting the eve of the Harvest Ball—which happened at the culmination of the week-long harvest festival activities.
A knock sounded at her door.
And the evening was about to begin.
Ivana opened the door to Vaughn. His eyes swept over her unashamedly, and he took her hand and planted a smooth kiss on the back of it. “My dear, you look stunning,” he said, and stepped into her room.