The Etsey Series 1: The Seventh Veil

by Heidi Cullinan

  The darkness within Jonathan’s wound began to move, and he smiled a humorless smile. “I’ve already told you why. You just don’t want to believe me.”

  Timothy snorted derisively. “Magic is a very stupid explanation. And demons are an even more ridiculous one.”

  Jonathan winced and shifted his leg again. “This is old magic. Older than anything most people can understand or bring themselves to believe in. And the demon is real. Goddess bless, Timothy, even you must see that by now.”

  “I see that you have an injury,” Timothy shot back. “I refuse to believe you have a demon living in your leg. K’hertha, Jonathan, you are not a superstitious fool! This is nonsense! Magic! I’ve seen your country’s magic. It’s little more than science unexplained.” But even as he said this, Timothy looked at Jonathan’s neck and his festering thigh, and he frowned.

  “I have not told you much about my family,” Jonathan began. “In some ways, we are no different than any other aristocratic clan: We’re elitist, arrogant bastards obsessed with money, status, and land, ready to stab each other and anyone else in the way of maintaining and advancing our positions. But there is more to my ancestry than that. We are a House, which means our lineage is more about our blood than our estates and our gestures at Parliament. Our House is very old, born in a time that has passed into legend, under circumstances so strange and unreal even most Etsians count our story as fantasy. Every old family has dark shades, ugly secrets it would rather were not known. Every family has a monster in the closet, a secret demon for which they will lie and cheat and kill to make sure word does not get out of its existence.” Jonathan pressed his hand on his thigh, his fingers curling against the edge of the bandage. “My family’s demon is literal. You may not wish to believe it, but it’s true. I have a curse on my head, and despite my insistence I would never become embroiled in my family’s darkness, ten years ago I managed to land myself in the center of it. I swore I would never come back to these shores, because I knew if I did, I would bring the darkness with me. I carry things that should not be allowed to return. I staved off some of its power by leaving, but now that I’m here, it’s all beginning again. Things are changing inside me, things that I do not know how much longer I can control. People might die, now that I am here.” He closed his hand over his chest, over the medallion lying beneath his shirt. People I care about.

  “I have no wish to stay here either,” Timothy said, “whether or not you are cursed. But none of this changes the fact that you are too ill to travel again. And don’t give me that nonsense about not being able to die. By your own warped logic, if you are compromised further, what is to keep this alleged demon from taking over, killing me, and ordering the ship back to Boone?”

  Timothy spoke with thick sarcasm, but the possibilities he painted made Jonathan chill to the bone. “Then I must go alone,” he said. “Or take me out to the ship and tie me down.”

  But would it be enough? Would it be enough to stop the darkness? Jonathan swore under his breath and wiped his hand over his face.

  “There must be a physician here who can help you,” Timothy insisted. “If you are bent on leaving, at least allow one of them to bolster you first. Perhaps your ‘magical’ injury can be cured by an Etsian physic.”

  “There isn’t—” Jonathan cut himself off, arrested by a new thought. Etsian physic. His hand closed over his chest, and he toyed with his medallion absently through his shirt. “There is no such thing as a physic in Etsey. But we do have alchemists. And witches.”

  Timothy looked dubious. “Would they have any effect on your ailments?”

  “I don’t dare go near an alchemist,” Jonathan said. “Not as a Perry as a general rule, but especially not with what I carry. But a witch—if I could get to the right one, she might be of use.”

  “She would have a cure?”

  Jonathan stared down at the bedclothes. “The only trouble is that most witches won’t be any good to me,” he said. “When they find out what is wrong with me, they will refuse to…give me what I need. There are a few who might help, though. One in particular would be very glad to assist me in what I have in mind.”

  Timothy nodded tersely. “We’ll go straightaway.”

  “There are dangers,” Jonathan said. He fiddled with the medallion again. “There are people I must avoid at all costs. We must be in and out with absolute secrecy. She will not come to us; we must go to her. And yet the place where I must go to see her is full of dangers for me, and it is the place where I am most likely to be a danger to others.”

  Timothy put his hand on Jonathan’s shoulder. “I will go with you. I will do everything I can to assist you. You know this. I want to see you cured, Jonathan.”

  Jonathan nodded, keeping his head down so as not to reveal his guilt. Cured. The right witch could cure him, yes—but it would not be the cure Timothy wanted.

  Finish it. Yes. It’s time to finish it, indeed. Except Jonathan had no intention of letting the demon be the one to decide what was being finished.

  “To where shall I arrange transportation?” Timothy asked.

  “North.” Jonathan felt his leg twitch, and he placed his hand over the wound, trying to gentle the beast within. “We will be traveling to the village of Rothborne.”

  * * *

  Timothy Fielding hated Etsey.

  He hated the climate. For years he’d listened to Jonathan effuse over the lush, green forests of his homeland, heard him espouse the poetic beauty of a mist-covered moor, listened to him sing the praises of the splendor of the white cliffs jutting out over an angry sea. But now that he had arrived to bear his own witness, Timothy couldn’t see it. He had traveled over almost the entire length of the island country, and now he was in the northern moorlands, at an inn outside of the “quaint, rustic village” where Jonathan had spent much of his youth. Timothy did not find it quaint, and the term rustic seemed generous. This was not a village; it was a hole that people lived in, and from the smell of things, they pissed in it too. Oh, there were elegant manors for the upper class scattered everywhere, and there were the poor middle classes who dressed like their betters but scraped along with everyone else, but even they were not the norm. Most of Etsey was dirt hovels and rickety shacks. And even the best of the houses were trapped in the same wet and cold and fog of the hovels—and this was summer. Timothy had no desire to see snow, no matter how much it looked like “a soft blanket of white over the world.” He suspected it was only wetter and colder.

  Timothy hated the people of Etsey as well. He’d known Etsian soldiers for years, and he’d acclimated himself to their idiosyncrasies and contradictions, and he’d even managed to find most of them to be charming in their own simple way. The charm must have come from being abroad, Timothy decided, because the natives themselves were less developed than apes.

  “They distrust foreigners,” Jonathan had warned him as they’d traveled north. Sitting at the bar in the pub room at the inn outside of Rothborne with two dozen pairs of eyes glued to his every move, Timothy let the understatement echo in his mind as he snorted into his ale. Distrust foreigners. They didn’t distrust him. They wanted to string him up or put him in one of their quaint, rustic pillories for no other reason than he had a permanent tan and wore “funny clothes.” As Jonathan would say, Goddess save him if they discovered how creatively and frequently he had violated their mathdu Indecency Act.

  And that was another thing to hate, Timothy thought darkly, taking in more ale. The Goddess. He’d thought her modest enough when the soldiers appealed to her in battle, and he still wasn’t against the idea of a metaphorical mother for these backward, superstitious morons, but their Goddess was little more than a greedy whore from what he had seen. The soldiers had appealed to a great spiritual force that would, they hoped, give them strength and courage when theirs was spent. In Etsey itself, however, the deity seemed to be as much a slave driver as the Continental God and ten times as arrogant. They didn’t just call their country Etsey
. The whole world was called Etsey, according to the Goddess, implying that they were, by extension, the chosen country, the only one that really mattered.

  Timothy granted the Goddess points for being interesting enough to be two halves in her human form, one male, one female. He’d never understood the Lord and Lady lore exactly: something about the divine being both masculine and feminine, and should they choose to incarnate, they would be one and the other. Timothy also liked their bawdy little rhyme they’d trotted out when drunk; it was crude, yes, but it was true. It made sense, and it was catchier than “You make your own destiny.” He sensed, however, that suggesting to the grubby, angry men and women glaring at him that they should invite their domineering, judgmental Mother to go down on them would not win him many points of favor.

  Timothy drained the last of his ale and set the empty tankard down on the bar in front of him. He kept his fingers on the side of the mug, tapping them idly as he tried to decide if he wanted another or if he should head back upstairs to check on Jonathan. What he wanted, he admitted in black humor, was to be fucked. To be absolutely honest, he wanted to fuck, then be overpowered and fucked back. He didn’t want any preamble or niceness, and a dearth of conversation would be considered a bonus. He had months of anger and fear pent up inside him, and now he had judgment and hate as well. He wanted it purged, and he didn’t feel like setting up a circle of candles and meditating. He wanted to feel alive, not connected to a greater whole. He wanted someone to remind him that he had a body, that he was vulnerable and soft inside, and he wanted someone to use those insides roughly. In the old days, this would have been an easy request to fulfill—though not in a single one of the old days had he ever felt this black or frightened or unsteady. Of course, it didn’t matter, because the old days weren’t just gone, they were decimated, their bones ground beneath the unforgiving heel of the Cloister Army’s boots.

  What Timothy had now was his mira, the brother of his heart, dying in this rat-stinking inn while they waited for some folk-magic witch to cure him, and in the meantime, provincial matdhu ghorae were hoping he’d give them an excuse to gut him. Oh, and he had their Indecency Act, which made the prospect of being fucked impossible without having himself flayed and raped with broken bottles if he was caught. He didn’t even let himself travel down the maddening mental road that began with the idea that it was, however, perfectly fine for the old ghora next to him to repeatedly stick his hand beneath the barmaid’s skirts in front of the entire pub room.

  It’s probably some sick sort of homage to the Goddess, he thought, then swore in Catalian and rose from his stool, ready to concede defeat and head back upstairs.

  “Your pardon,” he murmured automatically when he moved too quickly and ran into someone. He tensed, certain the way his luck had been running it would be some big, brutish beast of a man who would use Timothy’s blunder as an excuse to pick a fight; he didn’t have the leisure for a brawl just now.

  But the man he’d stumbled into wasn’t brutish or beastly, and as Timothy took a better look at him, he decided he was probably the least likely man in the room to throw a punch. He wasn’t gaunt, not physically, but there was a hollowness about him that made Timothy pause. And when the dull, blue eyes met his, Timothy couldn’t help himself.

  “Are you well, sir?” he asked.

  The man smiled, but it was a macabre sort of half gesture. It died quickly, and he lowered his eyes without answering.

  Timothy knew he should let it go, but something about the stranger tugged at him. The man looked like one of the victims in the Cloister camps, except he didn’t have whip marks visible on his flesh.

  “Sit,” Timothy said, motioning to the chair beside the one he had just vacated. “Please. Let me get you something to drink.”

  The man turned his face to the wall, staring at it as if he expected it to speak back. Timothy held still, waiting to see what the man would do. The stranger was well dressed, better even than the “gentleman’s armor” of fashion Jonathan had insisted on wearing for their travels; where Jonathan settled for gabardine, this man wore a softer, tighter weave, and his vest and coat were of a quality of silk Timothy hadn’t seen since Catal. His boots shone in the hearth light, and he was wearing some sort of scent—a very pleasant scent, though Timothy couldn’t quite place it. His blond hair was neat too and was swept up in a style popular in Boone. The eyes, though. The eyes and mouth gave it all away. This man, dapper as he might be, was a mental wreck.

  The man turned back to Timothy, looking more haunted than ever. “You need to stay away from me.”

  Timothy leaned forward so no one else would hear his words. “If you are in trouble, I can help you.”

  The man laughed. It was the most defeated laugh Timothy had ever heard. “No.”

  “I know I’m slight, but I’m not untrained.” Timothy leaned in even closer. “I am formerly of your country’s Special Services. At this particular second, I have no less than fifteen weapons on me, and that doesn’t count my hands or my mind.” He looked into the stranger’s eyes, not bothering to hide his empathy. “You look ruined. Let me help you. I have an ill friend upstairs I cannot abandon, but I can help you get away, at the very least.”

  He reached out to touch the stranger’s arm.

  But the man was stepping back, his already pale face gone completely white, his dull eyes dancing with dawning horror. “You’re the foreigner.” He held up a thin, trembling hand as if to ward off evil. “He was right,” he whispered. “Goddess save us, you’re here with my brother, aren’t you? You’re here with Jonathan Perry.”

  Apprehension doused Timothy’s empathy like a bucket of icy water. “How did you know that?”

  The pale man stumbled back, shaking his head. “Go,” he croaked. “Go now. It’s probably too late, but go—” The man convulsed, clutching his right forearm, then jerked his head to the door. “Get out!”

  Timothy nodded and turned to leave, not knowing what else to do. But when he tried again to head for the stairs, another man was standing in the middle of the room, looking at Timothy with a smile that could only be described as feral.

  “Well done, pet,” the man said, his smile widening. “I believe you have found what we are looking for.”

  Matdhu. Timothy didn’t reach for one of his knives, but he widened his stance. The entire pub had gone quiet, settling in to watch what clearly promised to be a show. The new stranger was dressed in a similar style to the pale man who had warned him to go, though this one wore darker, subtler tones, and there was a coldness about his eyes Timothy instantly disliked. Timothy did a quick survey of the rest of the room, but the patrons looked only curious, not alert and ready. Timothy relaxed a little. Just two opponents, then, one of whom might possibly be an ally. He could take them out, run a knife across whatever locals decided this would be a good opening, and head up to rouse Jonathan. Even half-wasted, he was deadly in a fight.

  The new stranger held out his palms. “Easy, Mr. Fielding. You have no need to draw your knife.”

  The words were quiet and unremarkable, but Timothy seemed to feel them pelt at the back of his brain; he blinked and swayed on his feet. He shook his head to clear it, but when he stole a glance at the sickly man, he caught him staring down at the floor, looking guilty and despondent. And terrified.

  The other man took a step closer to him; Timothy had his hand on his waist knife and was on the point of drawing it when the man spoke again.

  “Be still.”

  And just like that, Timothy could not move.

  The man smiled and reached out to wrap long, wicked-looking fingers around Timothy’s arm. He felt his skin beneath the stranger’s grip go hot and then suddenly cold. Timothy’s mind became soft and quiet.

  “You will go upstairs and bring your master,” the stranger said. “You will bring him to the inn yard, and you will not alarm him in any way or alert him to my presence.” The grip on Timothy’s arm tightened. “You will do this now.”


  The man let him go. Timothy blinked, then nodded, his head feeling like it was both heavier than lead and lighter than air at once. He stepped around the man and headed for the stairs.

  Something is wrong with me. The thought bounced anxiously around his brain. Timothy felt as if he were split in two, as if part of him were awake and part of him were sleeping. Unfortunately the conscious part seemed unable to control any part of his body. How had that happened? What had the man done? He’d bested Timothy before he’d even touched him!

  Stop! Don’t listen! You don’t have to listen to him! he shouted at himself, but his body did not heed him, only continued in its trancelike ascendance of the stairs.

  He was sweating when he entered Jonathan’s room; inside the prison of his own mind, Timothy was slamming himself against walls, trying to regain control of himself by sheer will, but it wasn’t working.

  “You must come with me,” he heard himself say to Jonathan as he blinked up from the bed. “You must come downstairs with me to the inn yard.”

  Don’t! Don’t do it! It’s a trap! But Timothy could not make his mouth move. His own body would not obey him.

  Jonathan sat up groggily, frowning as he rubbed the side of his face. “Has something happened? What—” He stopped, taking a closer look at Timothy’s face. His eyes narrowed, then darkened. “You’re enchanted.”

  Yes! Yes—No, that’s impossible, but there is something strange happening! Some drug or something—I don’t know! Just don’t listen to me! “You must come with me now.”

  But his words were leaden. He didn’t even sound like himself, and the aberration did not escape his friend. Jonathan reached for his walking stick and leaned on it as he ran his gaze up and down Timothy’s body. “You would never have let someone near enough to get anything into your pockets. It must be something else. They must have brushed you, or—” He zeroed in on Timothy’s sleeve, then touched it. Timothy cried out as his arm began to burn.