Vashill was apparently satisfied with the inner workings of his machine, because he closed it up. “All is well.”
Del Rue shot him a withering look that he completely ignored. Yes, Zofiya thought, completely mad.
“You brother is easily swayed. Too soft, really, for an Emperor.” Her captor brushed hair out of her eyes. “You are quite another story: strong, determined and far more charismatic than Kaleva.”
The Grand Duchess did not like where this was going in the least.
“If you can be taught, you would make an excellent Empress.”
“Why don’t you just sit on the throne yourself?” she spat.
He laughed at that. “Perhaps…perhaps I will. However for the moment I will be occupied in other ways, and besides, first we must tear down the Empire, and then rebuild it. If need be, your brother will go with it. Then when the Circle arises out of the ashes with a new Empress to offer to the people, we will be fully accepted.”
“A puppet? For you?” Zofiya felt the kernel of worry begin to grow, but she would not let it show to this man. “You are as delusional as he is.” She jerked her head.
Del Rue’s hand rested on her forehead in an almost paternal gesture—not that her own father had done any such thing. “It really is a shame you are so strong, but never fear…we shall get there in the end.” He nodded to Vashill, who from behind his back produced two long thin needles.
Zofiya closed her eyes and turned her head away; she would give them no screams or tears.
ELEVEN
Bargaining with a Coyote
Sorcha existed in her bubble of silence and stasis, cut off from the world and mortal cares. It was awful. The crew of the Dominion, even Aachon now that he had his compass, ignored her. These were people that knew her—at least a little from their time in Ulrich—and yet soon enough they regarded her as they did a piece of furniture.
Thanks to the Prince of Chioma she didn’t even have the mortal discomforts of the privy to worry about. She was as perfectly preserved as a bug in amber. So on the morning of the second day, when someone new entered the cabin and sat at her side, Sorcha was hungry for company and distraction.
Straining her eyes to the right, she was able to make out the shape of a man at her side. Her brain, as always teetering on the edge of utter madness, believed for a moment that it was Merrick or Raed; her beloved and dear, come to free her from this invisible prison and punish his crew.
However when she discerned it was not, she was able after a moment to identify him as Serigala, the man who had helped carry her aboard. He was young, with blunt features that matched his rather large frame. At least, that was his physical appearance.
Cut off from her powers as she was, there were still some that remained unaffected—namely her latent Sensitive Sight, and something about this man sitting beside her set it all aflutter.
Her gaze drifted to the wound he had talked about, a dog bite he had said.
“Ah yes,” Serigala rubbed at the spot on his unmarked flesh where it had been. “Quite amazing how a little salve cured that.” The grin he shot her was wide, full of teeth, and not at all comforting. “I am joking of course, but let’s not waste time on words—especially if they happen to get overheard.”
He grabbed hold of her arm, hard, and despite her condition she felt it clamp down on her flesh like ice. She wished she had a scream to let loose, but before she could mourn that, the real world flared white and disappeared.
Sorcha blinked. She was standing on a shifting stretch of sand, and she knew this place. The kingdom of Chioma—where she had battled a geistlord masquerading as a goddess. The place she had stretched her powers too far without her Sensitive and been lost.
Slowly she raised her arm and stared at it as if it were a great prize. Movement—after so long. She squeezed her eyes shut and drew in a ragged breath, trying to calm herself.
“I wouldn’t become too excited if I was you.” The voice made her start and spin around. A coyote the size of a large pony stood eyeing her with sharp intelligence. It had long shaggy beige fur, the brightest green eyes she’d ever seen, a sharp muzzle and frighteningly long bone-white teeth.
Her abrupt joy at this returned freedom froze in an instant. “Where am I, Fensena?”
Yes, Sorcha knew immediately that this was no place on the mortal plane, and she even recognized the geistlord. Certainly there were precious few of them to know, and their names were drilled into the initiates of the Order. His name stood out: the Fensena, also called the Oath Bender, the Widow Maker, the Broken Mirror. No one had seen him for a hundred years, and yet here he was standing before her.
“So generous of you to remember me.” The coyote’s head tilted in a frighteningly human way. “I would have thought by now mere mortal memory would have forgotten my name.”
Cautiously she circled around him. She was wearing her clothes, but was stripped of weapons. “Believe me, it was written down and every initiate memorizes it faithfully.”
“Very kind, I am sure.” The geistlord sank down onto his haunches and watched her intently. “As to where we are…why, inside your mind; the plain of your inner self, if you will. Not the most elegant of settings, but it will do for my purposes.”
Purposes. The way the geistlord just threw out that word made Sorcha break out into a cold sweat. It might only be an imagined one, but it felt very real. She had experienced the might of the Rossin, been humbled by his strength, and now here she was with a geistlord inside her very own mind. Her immediate reaction would have been rage, but several things held her back from that; she was still cut off from her power, and she was without Merrick.
“Yes, quite a shame he has abandoned you.” The coyote’s huge tongue lolled out of one corner of its mouth. “I thought you were supposed to be Bonded and all that.”
He wasn’t just a projection inside her mind—he was reading it too! Across the vast plain, walls suddenly erupted, shoving their way out of the sand with a staccato hiss narrowly avoiding the geistlord. The coyote leapt nimbly back, landing only feet from Sorcha. She might be immobile, but she still had her training.
The Fensena’s eyes flared abruptly red, but his voice continued on calmly enough. “Why would I want to read your mind, little pup? Everything that I need know about you I can see already.” The coyote paced around her in a tight little circle.
Sorcha held her ground. She was damned well not going to run away from the creature in her own mind. Besides—where could she go? This moment in her head was the most she’d moved in long weeks. “What exactly do you think you can see?” she said, slowly and softly. It was hard not to approach this creature as she would a rabid dog.
The coyote’s head tilted. “A foundling child with a broken past and a terrible future. A frightened little girl trapped in her body by something she doesn’t understand. And to top it all off, you were born in for a reason that you cannot yet see.”
“I do understand,” she shot back. “I went too far with my runes and without my Sensitive. That is all.”
The Fensena’s tongue lolled out of his mouth as he considered her. “You really know nothing? How intriguing—but never mind, where you are going there are plenty of answers. I wish I could be there to see your face though.”
Sorcha could feel her anger begin to boil up, and she knew that was a foolish emotion to have around a geistlord—even one that looked like a coyote. She’d always rather liked dogs of all shapes and kinds, but she was rapidly changing her mind. “You don’t need to make fun of me! I am not the first Active to damage themselves without their Sensitive.”
Now the coyote let out a sigh and flopped down on his haunches by her feet, his huge fluffy tail covering his paws. “That was part of it, but by now you should have recovered. That cloak that the Prince of Chioma gave you is rather getting in the way, don’t you think?”
She thought of the moment that she had taken his gift—one that he said would be only temporary. Then she thought of Gari
l stabbing her and the result. “Are you saying without this gift I would recover? It worked fine for the Prince. He moved around perfectly well.”
“There are differences. Important differences,” the coyote replied enigmatically.
“Do you want it for yourself?” she blurted out as the possibility suddenly dawned on her. The image of an invulnerable geistlord was not one she wished to contemplate.
The Fensena licked his lips. “It does not work for my kind. If it had, do you not think Hatipai would have used it herself? You really are an extremely foolish Deacon!”
She may have been lying on her back for weeks on end, but her brain was still fully functional, and if there was one thing Deacons were taught it was that geists—and particularly geistlords—could not be trusted. Among all those powerful unliving creatures, the Fensena was known for being the most slippery and cunning. Now he was sitting before her offering her salvation.
It was enough to give anyone pause—even someone who had been slowly going mad inside her own brain. Yet, as much as Sorcha wanted to give him an emphatic no, another part of her craved conversation and company. “Why would you help me, a Deacon?”
The great coyote yawned, showing a huge line of fangs, and then stared at her with his once again green, implacable eyes. “There are some among my kind, that have lived peacefully in the human realm. You are most likely not taught about us in your tedious lessons, but not all geistlords live on chaos and pain.”
Sorcha frowned, but did not quite believe his words. Tricks upon tricks.
A low rumble ran through the ground, a sound of the Fensena’s anger transmitted even in this landscape of her mind. “Tricks I may have, but even you must see the truth of it. How else would I have survived so long without drawing the notice of your, or another, Order?”
In the last year, Sorcha’s faith in the Order of the Eye and the Fist had been strained. She had seen corruption at the highest level, and so a crack of belief opened inside her. “But you take a host like the Rossin does…”
“Do not speak to me of the Beast!” the coyote leapt to his feet. “I too live in the blood, but I no longer do my host harm. The most they suffer is a dog bite. I have learned to move on before the body becomes strained.” The geistlord stood and circled her, his long, broad snout pressing against her waist, inhaling. “You I would not touch—but I will do you this service. And you should not think it is for my own gain.”
A geistlord overcome with empathy and good-heartedness? Sorcha was not yet so far lost to madness that she would believe that. “Who is to gain then?” she asked tartly.
“There are those that would use the geists and the geistlords.” As he sat before her, the great coyote’s voice dripped with menace and anger that would be hard to feign. “They would take our power for their own, and break the world to make it how they want it.”
A chill knot began to develop in the Deacon’s stomach, though she knew that was impossible. Her stomach was somewhere completely different. “You speak of the Order of the Circle of Stars, the old Native Order.”
“They have many names, but that is the one they currently wear.” The Fensena got up and turned toward the distant horizon. Against the ink blue sky, Sorcha saw a line of stars pull themselves free from their fellows and form into a circle that glowed brighter and brighter. The light hurt her eyes and made the great coyote flinch away.
“It is true,” he went on, “that every Order of Deacons in this world draws its power from the geists they fight. All of your runes come from our powers. What you call the Native Order would seek to take that one step further. They would harness the geists themselves. That, geistlords like myself could not allow.”
Sorcha blinked. “You want me to stop them?”
The Fensena growled, low and deep and deadly. “This is my world now. The Otherside is a place of great hardship to many of my kind. I have made a place—a peaceful place—for myself here. I do not wish to see the Circle of Stars destroy it.”
It was fine talk, but Sorcha was not totally taken in. She’d had more experience than most with the geistlords, yet this one did seem more capable of talking rather than destroying. “Why me?” she asked cautiously.
The canine grin flashed again, an uncomfortable lolling of tongue over razor-sharp teeth. “So many questions, but these are ones I cannot answer. Some things are forbidden to me. The real question is, do you want to live again, or remain in half death?”
Sorcha thought of the possibility matrix she, Merrick and Raed had found beneath the Mother Abbey. She could have done with one of those now. Instead, her poor scattered mind had to decide. Certainly none in the Order had been able to help her, and her oldest and dearest friend had given instruction to have her done away with. Then she had to consider that without it she was cut off from Merrick and Raed. Both would need her. Maybe it was hubris to imagine that she was that important, but she was also the most powerful Active the Order had.
The Fensena regarded her, seemingly unmoved about her decision, but she was not fooled; deep in the coyote’s eyes, bright fire burned.
“You will take this mantle of impermeability from me as a favor?”
“Well, not completely—you will of course owe me one in return. Something at my own time and at my own choosing.” The beast now got to its feet and stood muzzle to nose with her. She could feel his hot breath on her imaginary face. “After all, without my help you shall never be able to reach your partner, your lover or your runes in time.”
“In time?” she hissed. “In time for what exactly?”
The only reply was a widening of his jaws. This then was how it would be. Once again, she had to roll the dice and trust in her own instincts. Sorcha could only hope that someday soon she would not regret this, or end up having Merrick chide her to death.
“Do it then.” She stood straight and tall, but kept her eyes open just in case. He needed no further urging. The coyote lunged forward, mouth open, teeth gleaming. And then—and then she felt his tongue on her. It was smooth and gentle at first, but then after a while he began to nip at her with the front of his teeth. That did not hurt as much as the Prince’s gift turned around and did.
Sorcha was no stranger to pain, but this felt as though hooks were buried in her flesh and were being tugged reluctantly free. She clenched her jaw shut on the pain for as long as she could, but soon enough she was howling and screaming into her own mind. It had to stop, or something had to break. She hung there, suspended between life and death, broken and remade for what felt like a tormented eternity.
She went to the darkness willingly because of that.
When it finally let go of her, Sorcha’s eyes flicked open and she found herself staring at the roof of the cabin aboard the Autumn Eagle. All she could hear was the sound of her own breathing, shaky and shallow in her ears.
She hardly dared to try to move. The possibility of disappointment was huge, and she feared it more than anything else. Then, taking hold of her tumbled thoughts and pressing them into a cohesive mass, she found her bravery once again. Sorcha turned her head and looked at the man with the coyote eyes sitting next to her. She did not need to ask him if it was gone.
In a rush of excitement she jerked herself upright in the bed. The resulting wash of sensation in her head and muscles was overwhelming, and she barely kept herself upright. Yet, she would not lie down again. Her hands, far more sinewy than she remembered, clenched onto the edges of the cot.
The Fensena smiled, still managing to be very coyote-like despite now wearing a human face. “Yes, I would take it easy for a bit. You have been protected from the worst atrophy by the Prince’s gift, but you will still need to eat a great deal to regain your strength.”
“The favor I owe you…” Sorcha croaked out, already concerned about what the geistlord would ask of her.
The coyote in man’s clothing waved his hand. “Let’s not be mercenary about it. The time will come when I will ask for your help.” He looked her up and dow
n with hardly concealed dismay. “However that time is definitely not right now. You have some way to go before you are of any use to anyone.”
He stood. “And a little piece of advice,” he said leaning in, so that once again she could feel the heat of his coyote breath on her face, “I wouldn’t try any of your Deacon tricks on me…you are far too weak to take on a poltern let alone a geistlord.”
Sorcha blinked at him, feeling her anger rise to the occasion, but also realizing that he was completely right. Banishing the Fensena would just have to wait for another time, when she had her Sensitive with her and was feeling stronger. She smiled slightly. Perhaps that would even be the favor she did him.
Taking her smile for completely the wrong thing, the man stepped back. “Good then, we get off this airship and go our own ways. You go to save the world from your own nefarious kind—and I will set off to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh.” He made for the door and then, pausing, turned back. “I do hope my confidence in you is not misplaced, Mistress Deacon.”
Then with that he was gone. Sorcha slumped back on her cot. Unused arms and sheer determination had only just held out long enough not to make a fool of her in front of a very dangerous beast. Now she could concentrate on doing what needed to be done: find Raed, stop the Order of the Circle of Stars, and then get back to the Mother Abbey.
After working her jaw a little, she began to gather the strength to summon Aachon to her side. She couldn’t wait to see the expression on his face.
TWELVE
For Services Rendered
Merrick’s dreams were a confused tumble. He held Nynnia in his arms, but she crumbled to dust, and he could not hold her together. She sifted through his fingers and was lost.
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