Spectyr

by Philippa Ballantine

  The rattle of irritated spectyrs grew louder, as the spinning knot of them flew apart to darken the ceiling and every corner of the attic. Sorcha knew that she had received far more than she wanted.

  “Stay still,” she bellowed at Merrick, as she ducked away from the swooping shards of darkness that were beginning to shape themselves into skeletal forms.

  A nest of spectyrs was particularly dangerous, a fact that Sorcha became aware of as the contents of the attic began flying at her head. Ducking and diving was making it rather hard to concentrate. What appeared to be a lighthouse lens tipped over, knocking her off her feet and exploding glass all across the floor.

  With one hand Sorcha called on Shayst, the Sixth Rune of Dominion, and the attic flared green. Shayst sucked away the spectyrs’ power, at least those she was lucky enough to hit with the rune. That power became hers, enough that she could lever the lens mechanism off her and crawl out.

  Out of the corner of one eye she saw Merrick step toward her, his hands reaching for his Strop, the talisman of the Sensitives.

  Sorcha could taste his fear. “Don’t you dare go Active!”

  Though every Deacon had both talents in them, a Sensitive using their Active power was ridiculously dangerous and ultimately pointless. He made a face at her. “I think I have something better.” He called on Masa, the Third Rune of Sight, and their shared Center blurred, deepened, and now Sorcha saw double. As the contents of the attic tumbled, as the spectyrs wheeled, hissed, and threw them at her—she was able to see everything before it happened.

  The Active ducked and rolled as a tall machine with long lines of cogs and wheels toppled from the wall. It was hard to imagine what the widow Vashill was thinking outside. It couldn’t be good.

  A twisting cluster of spectyrs dived at her, their skulls screaming for vengeance, ready to burrow into her body and take it for their own. Sorcha dropped onto her back, raised her Gauntlets; one lit with the blue fire of Aydien, holding off the larger mass of spectyrs, while she concentrated Shayst on the immediate attackers.

  A line of sweat broke out on her lip as she drained them of their strength, and in the back of her mind was the joyous hum of delight.

  Take it. Take it all. Take everything. The insidious, tempting call yammered in her head, because it felt so very, very good.

  Sorcha was so busy draining the spectyrs swarming on the ceiling, she almost missed the stragglers that were darting and blundering through the crates in the attic.

  Sorcha! Merrick, still standing motionless in the corner, howled, but she had only two hands and two Gauntlets. Though she dropped Shayst and reached for Chityre, she wasn’t quite fast enough. The spectyr came barreling out of the shadows, its jaws wide and snapping.

  She heard Merrick yell—this time physically, but she saw nothing else, because they were on her then. The nest turned everything black, and her throat became abruptly unable to utter anything at all. Sorcha scrabbled at her neck, choking. Despite everything she had learned, primitive physical reactions were impossible to deny.

  As she rolled across the floor, unable to use her Gauntlets to get more air into her lungs or summon a rune, the screaming of the damned wailed in her ears. It was the sound of the unliving calling her to them, and she was aching to go.

  Then dimly, on the edge of consciousness, she felt Merrick. He slid across the floor to her, throwing himself into the middle of the snarling, vengeful geists. A Sensitive was supposed to stay out of the melee, out of harm’s way. But her partner broke through the swarm and put his hands on her.

  The Bond flared, suddenly stronger and more important than anything hidden in shadow. Merrick was in her head, she was in his, in ways that no Deacon Bond should allow.

  Yet Sorcha didn’t care about that,ecause up against their surge of power the nest backed away. She could breathe. Gasping, with Merrick wrapped around her, she released the rune Pyet.

  The attic was full of flame, blessed cleansing fire that flickered and danced in the polished brass of the Tinker’s craft. The spectyrs wailed loud enough to rupture normal human eardrums, shriveling as the geist power that held them captive was burned away.

  Together, she and Merrick got all of them—all bar one.

  “Wait!” Her partner called, but she was already up and chasing the fleeing geist. This one was not going to hang about and be sent back to the black embrace of the Otherside. It flashed away from her, phasing out and passing through the crates, before heading for the far brick wall.

  “Sorcha!” Her partner’s voice chased after her, but she refused to acknowledge him as she dashed after the spectyr. Damn it, after weeks of inactivity, she wasn’t about to let any of the undead get away from her.

  Sorcha raised her right hand, spread her Gauntleted fingers, and called Voishem. The air bent around her, twisting, breaking into the space between things. Brick, stone or wood could not stop her now.

  On the heels of the geist, Sorcha slipped through the wall and into the adjoining attic. The Bond, though, held tight, and she still shared Merrick’s sight. In fact, once through the wall, the influence of those cursed weirstones was mercifully dampened.

  This second attic was completely empty except for two crates by the far window. It was full of enough dust that Sorcha was surrounded by dancing motes, and for an instant she was confused by the flicker of light. The spectyr she half expected to have moved on was in fact huddled at the far end of the new room, crouching in shadow. All of her training as a Deacon told her this was very strange behavior for this kind of geist.

  Though her heart was pounding, this was the one remaining problem from the whole vicious nest. She wasn’t afraid of it. Still, she kept her Gauntlets raised as she approached the cloaked form. Stopping two feet from the spectyr, Sorcha waited. It had been a long time since she had tried to communicate with a geist—usually the mistake of a newly minted Deacon—but she opened her mouth and said the first thing that came to mind. “Why are you here?”

  Slowly the spectyr pivoted toward her, like a circus ringmaster revealing the final act in his show. Despite all her power, all her training, Sorcha swallowed hard.

  In the dim light of the attic the transparent skull in a gray shroud flickered, a reminder of every humans’ fate. Suddenly Sorcha was no longer thinking of it as a simple, single geist. It was a part of the great void that waited for them all: the Otherside. She had danced there for a while the previous season—but her memory of that time had faded. Now, as the geist faced her, flashes of it returned. Sorcha wanted desperately to smoke a cigar in that moment—remind herself that she was still among the living.

  She cocked her head, Gauntlets half raised, waiting to ignite a rune and send the apparition tumbling back to the Otherside. The spectyr mimicked the gesture, and then its bone white jaw creaked open.

  “Sorcha!” The voice was like the wheezing cry of a dying man, stretched out and desperate in the silent warehouse attic. The Deacon could not have been more surprised than if the geist had started a song and dance routine.

  “Sorcha?” Merrick’s voice came from below and was an eerie echo. She heard her partner’s boots on the stairs and was reassured that soon he would be here.

  “Sorcha,” the geist repeated, raising a shimmering hand and reaching out to her. “You must save him, Sorcha.”

  In many of the religions it was said three repetitions of a name were required for a binding. As a Deacon she didn’t believe in such foolish nonsense—but, oddly, a chill still ran up her spine. She smothered the rune that she had been meaning to cast—because she guessed who the apparition meant—and now she had to know.

  Sorcha remained stock-still as the spectyr’s hand touched her face. She let it—something that went against every ounce of her training. Beyond reality and time, the Otherside held knowledge that no human could ever possess, so the greatest Deacons of the Order had often taken chances to snatch what they could from the void. This was her moment.

  Slowly her eyes drooped, heavy
with the cold of the undead. As Sorcha trembled on the edge of death itself, she accepted its vision.

  Raed Syndar Rossin, Young Pretender to the throne, fugitive, and the man she had not stopped thinking of since she met him. Sorcha could see him, like looking through water: as if she was below, and he was above.

  A girl who she couldn’t quite make out was screaming while men carried her away—then her face changed to a terrifying smirk. Raed was there trying to save her, yet dark hands reached out and took him. Lured into a trap under a circle of spinning stars, he and the Beast within were devoured by a creature of snapping, snarling gold and scarlet. It was awful, terrible, and as she watched, Sorcha was sure it had not yet happened. However, it would—this was Raed’s fate.

  A sense of peace stole over her, and for an instant the voice of the spectyr was familiar: light, womanly, one that had given her life for them all. Nynnia, the creature from the Otherside, was whispering into the mind of the Deacon. The words were far off, but Sorcha caught “angel,” “son,” “trap” and “stars.”

  The Deacon strained to hear the rest, but then Merrick was screaming her name more forcibly: standing on the top stair and shouting to her. Her concentration was broken, and Nynnia’s voice melted away into the still air.

  Merrick’s yells were not without reason. Sorcha shook her head and looked up. The shrouded skull now loomed forward, and its eyes caught fire. A cloud of freezing air blasted into her face and knocked Sorcha back a step.

  The burning skull under the hooded cloak snarled, its teeth snapping as its hand of bone reached for her. Sorcha spun away and summoned Yevah from her Gauntlet. The shield of fire leapt between them, giving her a moment to breathe.

  Raising her Gauntlets, she next called the rune Tryrei. Opening up a tiny pinhole to the Otherside would draw away the power of the geist and send it back where it belonged.

  Opening even a tiny crack to that place hurt. The sound of the hungry void was like a thousand screaming voices, calling for love, friends, life. It was a noise that would have driven a normal human insane, but a Deacon was trained and honed to not bend in the face of the undead. Sorcha stood before it, hands spread, directing the anger of the Otherside toward the spectyr.

  Yet, it did not succumb but rather elongated. It came at her still, stretched and spinning, the white bones of its fingers reaching for her. However, the Otherside continued to exert its pull, and the vengeful geist had nothing to hold it eade human world. It scrambled, it fought, but then the terrible void took it.

  Sorcha closed her fist on Tryrei, and the crack was sealed. Just as suddenly as it had come, the terrible noise and fury was gone. The two Deacons stood in the silent warehouse and stared at each other, not even panting.

  “Nynnia was here.” Sorcha took a deep breath. “She used that last spectyr to send us a message.”

  Her partner’s deep brown eyes studied her for a minute. The Bond between them was stronger than any normal Deacon pairing—she had no doubt Merrick had seen a portion of what she had.

  Carefully Sorcha removed her Gauntlets, folded them up, and took out the remains of her cigar. The sole window in the warehouse attic looked over the mercantile quarter and toward the Imperial Palace.

  Merrick stood beside her, by now used to her smoking and her silences. For a young man he was very good at being still. He was well aware of his partner’s feelings for the Young Pretender but also of the bind they were in. Even in the best of times no Deacon was a free agent. And these were not the best of times, for Arch Abbot Rictun had them under close observation. He would never let them leave Vermillion.

  Sorcha inhaled the smoke, letting it sit heavy in her mouth for a moment before exhaling it toward the window. She was trying to logically assess the situation, but each time she did, she saw Raed’s dying gasp. “He’s not dead yet,” she said calmly, “or we would have felt it.” An attempt to control the Beast inside the Young Pretender had also ended up binding the two Deacons to the fugitive—a triple Bond.

  “It could be a trap,” Merrick replied softly, pulling his cloak around him.

  “Yes.” She blew a smoke ring. “It very well could be. Yet—”

  “—apparently we have allies on the Otherside.” Her partner glanced up and then away. Nynnia had undoubtedly been more than human, but neither of them had expected to hear from her after death.

  Sorcha examined the glowing tip of her cigar. “But we don’t know what her nature really is. Quite a bit to hang our future on, don’t you think?”

  “Raed is our friend . . . more than that.” Merrick’s mind reached out, tugging on the Bond like a boy might pull on a fence wire to test its strength. The part between them sang, and there was a distant whisper of the one between them and the Young Pretender.

  Sorcha had made the Bond in haste, but none of them had been able to cut it. Wordlessly, both Deacons reached out for the Young Pretender, searching for the connection they had spent the last three months denying. He was out there somewhere—they could tell that—but too far for them to sense very much else.

  “I saw them kill him, Merrick.” Sorcha turned to her partner, her blue eyes gleaming in the half-light. “We can’t let that happen—even if it is a trap.”

  He sighed, looked up at the ceiling as if searching for answers from some uncaring little god. But when he looked back, on his lips was a wry smile. “No—you’re right—we can’t. The trick of it though will be getting the Arch Abbot to agree to us leaving.”

  Sorcha’s expression was amused as she knocked the end off her cigar to save for another occasion. “We’ve spent long enough playing by Rictun’s rules. There’s no fun in it anymore.”

  Her partner’s reaction was a slightly nervous laugh—but he didn’t for one second try to stop her. Sorcha knew it was another reason she liked the boy.

  THREE

  The Bonds of Duty

  The instant a drunk sailor grabbed the quartermaster’s behind and then pulled her into his lap, Raed knew there would be trouble. Laython was a kindly sort of woman, but she only liked to be manhandled by those she knew.

  Her scarred hand grabbed up the nearest object, in this case a full mug of ale, and smashed it against the offending sailor’s head. The crew of the Dominion leapt from their chairs and rushed to the aid of their companion.

  Raed, who had long been without a decent brawl, joined them. He might be the Young Pretender to the throne, with a royal lineage going back to before the Break, but he was not the sort to put himself above his crew.

  The wharf-side bar was packed with more than three ships’ complements, and since night had fallen they’d all been waiting for a moment to get some trouble started. Before he knew it, Raed was in among the swinging, swearing mass of sailors, giving just as much he got. He was splashed with a goodly amount of ale but found he was grinning.

  Looking almost haughty, his very tall first mate pulled a red-faced man off Raed. It had crossed the Young Pretender’s mind more than once that Aachon should have been born the Prince—not he.

  “Is this not, perhaps, an inappropriate pastime for you, my—” The first mate paused and managed to stop himself before his said “Prince.” “My captain?”

  Raed took the offered hand and let himself be pulled to his feet. “We’re in a rough, isolated little port town—what else is there to do?”

  He caught a glimpse of Aachon’s dark eyebrows drawing together into a dire expression but then found himself whirled away by another opponent. Raed grappled with him, getting in a few good punches, before the larger man tossed him through the pub’s window.

  Luckily, this particular establishment was not exclusive enough to afford glass, and Raed sailed through where it would have been, only catching his shoulder against the shutters. He landed on the ground, had the breath knocked out of him, and lay there for a second. Slightly dazed, he contemplated when he’d last felt this unfettered.

  Before he had met the Deacons Sorcha Faris and Merrick Chambers, he had spe
nt very little time on dry land. The Beast inside him was triggered by the nearness of other geists, and so he had spent his life on the open sea. Until that safety too was denied him. So, indeed, it had been a very long time.

  When Aachon flew through the window and nearly landed atop him, Raed couldn’t help bursting into real laughter. It must have taken at least three men to sling the first mate in such a way. As Raed pushed him off his chest, he was reminded of his friend’s considerable weight.

  He was just about to commiserate with Aachon, when he realized that a pair of fine boots were standing only a few inches from their heads. Cautiously he rolled onto his side and looked up at their owner.

  And there she was. Captain Tangyre Greene looked down at him with an odd sort of smile tugging the corner of her lips. She was older than the last time they had talked, though her hair had always been gray, and the long scar on the right side er face earned in the service of the Unsung was as deep as ever.

  “Tang!” Raed bounded to his feet. “You remember my first mate, Aachon?”

  The brawl inside was reaching some kind of crescendo, and another body was tossed through the window. Laython landed nearby, cursing through her split lip.

  “Oh, and my quartermaster.”

  “Still the same old Raed.” Tangyre dusted off Raed’s shoulders. “But I am surprised with you, Aachon—how can you let your captain get into such antics?”

  “Even I cannot perform miracles, Captain Greene.” The first mate rolled to his feet. Behind them the noise in the pub had died down, and all that could be heard were the cheers of the Dominion crew. Now they would be spending their hardearned coin on buying drinks for their opponents. Laython shot a glance between her captain and this newcomer and then strode back into the pub. A fresh chorus from the sailors revealed they fully expected her to buy them all a round.