Mourningbird (Empire of Masks Book 3)

by Brock Deskins

  “Either. Both,” Bertram replied with a chuckle.

  ***

  “Arnaud, thank goodness you’re back,” Joselyn said as Dorian hung up his cloak near the front door.

  “Yes, I know I’m a bit late, but there was much to do at the mill today. Why all the fuss?”

  Joselyn wrung her hands in the folds of her dress. “Beverly never returned today, and I feared something had happened to you both.”

  “Well, as you can see, I’m fine, and I’m certain she is as well. Nothing terrible ever happens in Liberty. We pay far too much in taxes to ensure it doesn’t.”

  “But where could she be?”

  “Perhaps she came down with your cold and did not wish to infect the rest of the household.”

  “Without telling anyone?”

  Dorian shrugged. “She’s lowborn, darling. Who knows what goes through their minds. You have Innes to look after you. If she doesn’t return by morning, I will alert the gendarme.”

  “Then you do think something happened to her?”

  Dorian scowled. “No, but I am confident they are better equipped to find her than I am.”

  “What should I do?”

  “You should go back to bed and have Innes bring you some tea with a drop of sleeping tincture.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Joselyn said in an attempt to convince herself of her husband’s assessment.

  “I am. Goodnight. I’ll be up in a while.”

  The elderly woman nodded and returned upstairs. Dorian waited until Innes was involved with getting his wife settled for the evening before delving into the cellar. He pulled the two corpses from the coal bin and laid them face down on the floor.

  The Necrophage implanted a soul stone at the base of each of their necks just as he had the man at the mill. Trickling a small bit of his essence, as well as a touch of who they once were, into the gems, he animated the bodies so that they could dispose of themselves. It was much easier and less risky than tossing them in a wagon and dumping them in a gutter somewhere far from his home himself. Or at least it would be if the real Arnaud Newell was not walking about without his skin.

  Dorian covered the flayed body with a hooded cloak and concealed his face with a cloth wrap. He could have used one of his porcelain masks, but he did not want anything on Arnaud that could be traced back to him. The last thing he needed was any attention being drawn to him before he was prepared to strike.

  His two flesh and bone automatons followed him up the stairs and out of the house through the kitchen entrance. Dorian flicked a hand at the guards he passed as he escorted his abominations off the property. With a small mental urging, the undead creatures shuffled down the street.

  Dorian returned to the house, sank into one of the plush chairs, and closed his eyes. A wobbling image of the street appeared in his mind as he took control of the real Arnaud Newell—or at least what was left of him. Maintaining a connection with his puppet was going to be a challenge given the distance that would soon separate them, but Dorian was confident he could manage it.

  Beverly followed much like a dog on the heel of its master, but the real challenge would come when he had to split his consciousness between the two and take control of them both at the same time. It was a feat few outside of his family could manage, but his bloodline was exceptional, and tonight this city would learn just how dangerous he was.

  The minutes ticked by, the passage of time marked by the large clock standing sentry against one wall. He was beginning to feel the strain on his connection with his puppets as they neared the military mooring yard located half a mile from his home. Most Necrophages would have lost their control at such a range, but Dorian was certain he could hold it long enough to complete his task, assuming he got the chance.

  He guided his puppets toward the largest airship, which fortunately was one of the closest as well, sticking to the shadows, and creating his own concealing darkness to keep them hidden from the soldiers standing guard. The sentries were lackadaisical in their duties, likely because no one thought to attack the heart of Eidolan’s naval airship fleet. Such an act would do nothing but stir up a great deal of trouble for any criminal organization who might consider it, and there would be little to no gain doing so.

  Dorian’s creatures managed to make it nearly to the top of the debarkation platform before one of the more vigilant guards spotted them. “Hold!”

  Dorian hid Beverly in the shadows while he urged Arnaud to continue walking with his hands held up near his shoulders.

  “I said hold!” the soldier ordered, bringing his musket to bear. His shouts roused other men who began to ready their weapons as well.

  “I am unarmed. I need to speak to your captain,” Dorian said through his automaton.

  “Commander Thibault has retired for the evening. You will have to come back tomorrow.”

  Dorian continued to approach until he had crossed the gangway and stood at the point of the young man’s bayonet. “I have an order from Duke Rastus.”

  “Who are you? Show me your face.”

  Dorian ignored the man’s command and reached inside of his cloak. “It’s right here. Perhaps you can deliver it.”

  His hand snaked out, grasped the bayonet, and stripped the weapon from the surprised soldier’s hands. The man stumbled out onto the gangway as he grabbed for the musket. Dorian swept the butt around and knocked him from the ramp. The soldier cried out until he met the ground thirty feet below.

  Not knowing how to operate the musket, Dorian wielded it like his void lance, charging toward the nearest men. Muskets fired, and he could feel the shots strike his flesh as if he were in a dream. While aware of them, they caused him no real pain. He knocked aside one musket and ran the soldier through with his bayonet, spun, and waded into another knot of men as they rushed toward him with swords and pistols.

  Dorian fought to clear a path for Beverly and to keep the soldiers’ attention focused entirely upon him. Despite suffering dozens of wounds from both blade and shot that would have long since killed a mortal creature, the undead monster continued to fight on.

  Now came the hardest part, splitting his focus between the two puppets. He hoped to get the maid down into one of the gun decks, preferably near the powder magazine, so he needed only enough control to move her and see where he was going. His vision wavered a moment as two different views hove into his mind. It was enough of a distraction to earn his combative puppet several more strikes, but he recovered and now fought only to stay “alive.”

  Dorian moved Beverly down into the lower decks while all eyes were firmly locked onto the flayed man. He walked her toward the stern, descending every ladder and set of stairs he found. As he neared the magazine, several young men, little more than boys, sought to block his path.

  “Miss, you can’t be down here,” one of them said as he held a pistol across his chest.

  No longer needing Arnaud, Dorian sent power into the soul stone lodged in his neck, heating it until the animated corpse spontaneously combusted. The flames consumed his clothes in an instant, revealing his grotesque form and setting fire to any flammables around him. He now focused the entirety of his attention on Beverly.

  Dorian’s voice issued from the woman’s mouth. “Run along, boys. If you hurry, you might just get out alive.”

  Visibly startled, the powder boy leveled his pistol in a shaking hand. “You need to leave, miss, or whatever you are, or I will shoot you.”

  Three other boys gripped belaying pins in their hands and stood behind their fellow. Dorian took a step forward. The pistol spat smoke and fire, the shot taking him square in the chest. He glanced down at what should have been a fatal wound and smiled. The boys stood, wide-eyed with terror as the woman lunged, grabbed the pistol-wielder by the wrist, and pulled him in.

  Dorian’s hands came up, clamped onto the boy’s head, and twisted it around with a horrible snap of bone. He dropped the body at his feet as the other boys rushed forward, seeking to pummel him
. Dorian was becoming fatigued. The stress of having manipulated two bodies from such a distance had taken an enormous toll, but with his goal so close at hand, he held nothing back.

  Summoning a shadow blade to his hand, Dorian cut the boys down without hesitation. His way clear, he dropped down through the hatch leading into the powder magazine and reclined against the stacked barrels of gunpowder. He could hear shouts and pounding feet on the deck above. A man dropped through the hatch just as Beverly’s clothes caught fire. His eyes flashed with terror, but even as he reached up to flee, the magazine exploded, destroying the entire ship, crew, and docking cradle in a massive explosion.

  Dorian slumped in his chair, exhausted to the point where maintaining consciousness was a monumental effort. After several minutes, he managed to get his feet beneath him, trudged upstairs, and collapsed into his bed.

  “Did you hear that, Arnaud?” Joselyn asked next to him.

  Dorian grunted. “Thunder most likely.”

  “I wonder if there is a storm coming?”

  He smiled at the ceiling. “Of that I am most certain.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Kiera stood next to Surri in the exercise room and mirrored the Thuum woman’s slow, fluid movements. Their arms swept through the air as if they were walking through strands of spiderwebs stretching across a path with a laconic speed that made them look like they performed their motions underwater. Not that either of them had ever been underwater in their lives short of dunking themselves in a bathtub. For Kiera, that was a new sensation first experienced only the night before.

  Her patience having reached its limit, Kiera spouted, “What in the Tormented Plane are we doing? I thought you were supposed to teach me to fight, not dance.”

  Surri kept her eyes focused firmly ahead as her right foot made a slow, sweeping arc across the floor in front of her. “I am teaching you how to fight, but it is also a dance. It is called wind dancing but without the wind since you are not a wind caller.”

  “How do you know I’m not a wind caller if you don’t teach me?”

  “Because you are not Thuum, and there is far too much for me to teach you to waste my time trying.”

  “Right, because slowly slapping at make-believe bugs is such a valuable skill.”

  Surri stopped her wind dancing and faced her student. “Try and strike me.”

  Kiera smirked. “You didn’t get enough of a beating yesterday?”

  “I was taking it easy on you and underestimated your raw skill.”

  “That’s what all the losers say.”

  “I seem to recall that I was the one able to walk away at the end.”

  “I didn’t know we were kicking, and I wasn’t expecting your little magic tricks,” Kiera replied with a scowl, her face reddening.

  Surri quirked a wry grin. “That’s what all the losers say. Try to hit me, and pay attention to how I move my hands.”

  Kiera squared off with the woman. “Fine, but if you kick me while I’m watching your hands, we’re going to be fighting for real.”

  “I’m not going to kick you. Strike me.”

  Kiera focused and lashed out with a swift jab that would have impacted with Surri’s jaw had the Thuumian’s left hand not come swooping around to deflect it downward. She then stepped forward, her right arm coming over the top, and ended with a backhand fist lightly touching Kiera’s right cheek.

  “Note how the downward deflection left your entire right side open for my counterstrike. I have also placed my right leg against yours, limiting your ability to launch a kick. It also allows me to use it to push you over—” Surri’s hand clamped over Kiera’s face, she tripped her backward to the floor, and ended the move with a mock punch “—and strike.”

  Kiera shoved Surri’s offered hand aside and stood back up. She set her feet and snapped off a series of swift jabs and swings, none of which managed to defeat the Thuum’s defenses. She tried to launch a kick to her side, but Surri took a half-step forward, lifted her leg just a few inches off the ground, and blocked it with the bottom of her foot.

  Both women took a step back from each other. “Now you try to defend,” Surri said.

  Kiera narrowed her eyes and mentally prepared herself to get hit. The woman was just so fast and fluid in her motions. No matter how large an opening she thought she saw, Surri was always able to intercept the attack. She doubted her defense would be any more effective, and her constant defeat was quickly beginning to gall her.

  Kiera took a deep breath, held it, and prepared herself. Surri snapped off a swift combo. Kiera blocked her right hand, but the left snaked through and tapped her on the side of the head. The nightbird stepped away and lifted her hands before her once more with a growl.

  Surri’s hands flashed out in a rapid series of high and low strikes. Kiera reacted with all the speed and focus she could muster, but by the fifth attack, she was getting hit more than she was blocking.

  “You’re too fast!” Kiera complained bitterly.

  “No, you are too slow. You are thinking with your head and depending upon your eyes.”

  “As opposed to what, using my ass?”

  Surri shook her head. “Don’t think, act. That is the purpose of the dance, to train your muscles, to teach them to react instantly to the slightest hint of movement. If you wait for your eyes to see and your brain to understand, it is too late. You will always lose against a skilled opponent. With repetition, your muscles will know what to do before your brain does. It will become as natural as breathing. You don’t have to think to breathe, right?”

  Kiera flicked her head to the negative.

  “That is how you must learn to fight—how you will learn to fight. Will you pay attention to my dance lessons now, or will you let your ego hold you back?”

  “I don’t have an ego!”

  Surri grinned. “The chip on your shoulder is so big that you would fall over if your enormous ego did not balance it out.”

  Kiera opened her mouth to complain but snapped it shut, knowing that there was more than a little truth to the statement.

  “Enough sparring,” Surri said. “We will practice the wind dance forms in the morning and evening. Now let us work on your balance. Balance is everything—balance of body, mind, and spirit. We will work on body first.”

  “OK. What do you want me to do, stand on my head and clap my hands?”

  “Maybe later. For now—” she pointed to the wooden pillars set into the floor “—you will ascend those to the top and come back down.”

  Kiera looked at the posts, doubt flashing across her face. The lowest, and nearest, of them was only three feet tall, but those at the farthest end reached some twenty feet above the padded floor. Even with the mats beneath them, a fall would cause a great deal of pain and likely serious injury. The pillars were set at irregular intervals and varying heights, but they inevitably continued to rise.

  With a glance back at her instructor, Kiera crossed the room and hopped onto the first pole. She stood atop it with little trouble as she picked a path to the top. With a route fixed in her mind, she leapt to the next perch. It was perhaps two feet higher and just big enough around to accommodate both feet even though her toes poked out over the edge an inch or so.

  As Kiera reached the midway point, her arms outstretched to her sides and wobbling a bit for balance, her confidence increased. With a smile of determination, she ascended another six posts in a series of leaps that put her near the top. Three more bounds and she perched upon the highest pillar, carefully turned back around, and smiled down at Surri.

  “Ha, I did it! That wasn’t so tough.”

  Surri nodded her approval. “Now come back down.”

  Kiera’s confidence flagged as she stared down at the nearest post. It was only a few feet down and away, but to her eyes it looked like she was trying to leap across a street between two rooftops, and she had no way of building up speed.

  She steeled her resolve and jumped. Her feet landed on the pole, but h
er forward momentum carried her teetering over the distant end. With no other option except taking a long fall to the floor, Kiera kicked off of the pillar and launched herself to the next one below her. She had already toppled too far over to get much muscle in her jump, and she landed well short.

  Her arms and legs wrapped around the pole as her chest crashed into it, knocking some of the air out of her. She clung to the pillar like a skitter lizard for several seconds before slapping one hand then the other onto the top of it and pulling herself up. She wobbled precariously as she struggled to get her feet onto the pole and stand, but she managed.

  She took several deep breaths and regained a small measure of confidence now that the floor was not quite so far down. It was still far enough to hurt, but as long as she did not land wrong, Kiera figured she could limp away without any broken bones.

  Kiera plotted her next few leaps and hurled herself at her target. She did not bother to try to stop but instead sprang from one pole to another without pause. She smiled as she neared the bottom, but each leap increased her speed, and by the time she was near the end, she was in a barely controlled fall, like a boulder crashing down a mountainside.

  She tumbled off the last post and rolled across the floor before springing to her feet with a cry of, “Ta-da!”

  Surri stared at her, stone-faced. “Again.”

  Kiera groaned and looked at the lowest pillars a moment before mounting and hopping her way toward the top. She cut the time of her previous attempt in half and showed off by standing on the top of the tallest post with one foot down and the other tucked against her inner thigh like the figure 4.

  “Ha! I am awesome!” Kiera glared down. “What are you doing?”

  Surri had several leather balls packed tight with cotton near her feet. One of them was suspended in midair by twin vortices between her hands. “This is just a child’s game if not contested.”

  “If you throw that at me—”

  The ball streaked from Surri’s hands in a brown blur. Kiera knelt down with a surprised squeak and felt the wind of the ball’s passage blow through her hair.