The Pattern was a phrase he had never heard before, though he suspected he’d soon have ample time to mull it over.
Then he found himself whirled around. Vermon had lit a lantern and led the way down the spiral stairs down into the earth. Ofrior kept her hand on Merrick’s shoulder, which was just as well; with the brank still clamped around his face it was impossible for him to tilt his head down to see the steps. He would have stumbled and fallen several times without her assistance.
When they reached the bottom there were the rows of cells; four in all and every one empty. For the moment. They looked similar to any cell that might be found at the palace or in the office of the sheriff, except for one thing, the lining of the walls. Tiny slivers of weirstones were embedded in the stone of the walls, gleaming blue and beautiful. It was an expensive thing to do to control a Deacon—however the cell would be far more pleasant than the Emperor’s barbaric methods.
As carefully as they could Ofrior and Vermon took the brank off him. Merrick’s tongue was swollen and bleeding, and the corners of his mouth were not much better. Aside from the physical pain, he was still reeling from shock. He had no Strop. He was for all intents and purposes a normal citizen of the Empire—at least for his time down here.
“It won’t be long,” Ofrior said, as she guided him forward into the cell. That was the best she could offer as she first slid the bars shut and then pressed her hands against the weirstones.
That was when Merrick howled. He’d thought the brank was terrible, but in fact the room was worse. Instead of containing his powers, it flowed over them and ripped them from him. It was as if every nerve ending was set aflame, burning and cutting him to the bone. He lay on the floor, twitching and wide-eyed for a long time. Long after the other Deacons had left the room.
It took many hours for him to become used to the sensation of quiet that was buried in him. Eventually, he levered himself off the floor and made it to the hard bed of stone, covered with a thin blanket. Merrick sat there shivering, and tried to hold on to his sanity. The Bond was gone, the ever-present drone of life around him was gone, and most of all his awareness of self was badly bruised.
However, with all that extra noise gone, Merrick became aware of something else. A whisper in the corner of his mind, one that he’d been too busy to ever really notice.
And as he became slowly aware of it, the Deacon came to the horrifying conclusion that del Rue had been right. Beneath the Priory in Ulrich, on his first mission with Sorcha, he had taken a darkling into his soul. It had been a decision made in a desperate moment, and it had been instrumental in uncovering the rot in the town, but it had also exposed him to a little sliver of the undead.
Now, all alone in the Silence Room, she could be heard. A thin whisper of a life lost to conspiracy and treachery. One who had been taken by the machinations of the Order of the Circle of Stars.
He longed for his other partner. His living one.
“Sorcha,” he whispered into the silence, “I need you.”
THIRTEEN
Dropping from the Clouds
Sorcha wished she could have recorded in some way the expression on Aachon’s face when he entered the cabin to find her sitting up—albeit shakily—on her bed. He could not have looked more surprised if he had walked in to find Raed there.
Calling his name had quite taken all Sorcha’s strength, and she had to make several urgent gestures for water, before the first mate came back to himself enough to understand. He had plenty of questions, but she decided that despite his loyalty to her lover, he had also participated in kidnapping her from the Mother Abbey, and that meant he needn’t be privy to everything that had happened. So she kept quiet about the geistlord who had removed the cloak. Instead she made up a tale about how getting away from the Mother Abbey had revived her. Aachon was no great lover of the Order and swallowed the lie easily. It was a performance worthy of a Sensitive, and one she did not think the Fensena would interfere with.
In fact, the next morning after her revival, it was found that Serigala had disappeared. Even though the Autumn Eagle was searched thoroughly, he could not be located. The other crew whispered that he must have come down with a fever from the dog bite, and fallen overboard. However it was Lepzig who pointed out that one of the landing ropes was unwound, though how anyone could survive a fall into tall jungle was impossible to imagine. Sorcha remained silent on Serigala, but then why would they suspect a Deacon who had just climbed out of a coma would know anything?
The next few days were spent trying to get used to walking again. In a normal patient, such as she had seen many times in the infirmary, this process would have meant months of gradually easing herself back to normality. However, her limbs had not atrophied at all, though she had lost some weight and had to double her belt around her waist to keep her pants up.
Captain Quent Lepzig took time from his duties where he could, and helped Sorcha circumnavigate the airship holding on to his arm. Aachon, despite using the Deacon’s abilities to direct their course, seemed unwilling to spend time with her. Sorcha suspected something within him was warning of the unnatural nature of her recovery. He was not, however, a fully trained member of the Order and so his concerns remained unconfirmed.
Sorcha would work to keep it that way.
So instead she started off dragging her arm over the shoulder of the surprisingly strong captain, and took her exercise like a good little recovering invalid. In another day, she had moved to just holding on to the crook of his arm. While they walked, the two of them talked, and despite their age difference and their different professions, it was a pleasant way to spend the time. Captain Lepzig, it turned out, was quite the wit, and several times had Sorcha in hysterics with his dry humor. One would never have suspected it from a member of the Imperial Fleet.
Three days after her recovery, Sorcha was making another tour of the Autumn Eagle, first thing in the morning. It was almost becoming a habit.
Sorcha no longer needed Lepzig to hold her up. He merely hovered nearby just in case she should fall. The Deacon would not normally have liked such mothering, but the captain was a kind man, and it would have been humiliating to fall on her face.
However as she felt strength returning to her legs, she was also feeling her concerns mount. Having successfully managed to shove aside the fact she owed a favor to a geistlord, she began to think of finding Raed and bringing him home. Wherever that might be.
She missed him. Standing upright, she could face that. She had missed Raed Syndar Rossin in all those months, and now she wanted nothing more than to see him again. Her memory kept reminding her how good his skin on hers had felt, how his smile made her feel. When she found him, she would not let him out of her sight again—no matter what the Rossin or the Order did.
Sorcha leaned on the gunwales and smiled. The land below was hidden by a mass of thick white clouds, and for some reason this made her unreasonably optimistic. In this stillness, she heard voices talking beyond the stack of barrels on the deck. It irritated her for a moment, until she recognized the voice of Captain Lepzig and his first mate.
Haltingly, she walked toward the voice, ready to reveal herself and share how much she was enjoying the day sailing above the skies, until she heard the tone in his voice and the word he whispered. “War.”
The Deacon stopped, the moment of joy draining away. Instead of revealing herself, she hitched herself into the shadows, folding her cloak about her.
“Surely not, Captain…” Sorcha could see the first mate of the Autumn Eagle’s head flicking around, but she was good at hiding when she had to be.
From her position she observed Lepzig’s magnificent mustache ruffled by the breeze. “Think about it, Melso. You can almost feel it in the air.”
The first mate was silent a moment and then muttered, “I did find it mighty strange when we hailed the Sunrise Dove last week, and she didn’t reply to our signal. We were at the same altitude even.”
Sorcha glanced
forward to where great lanterns with shutters were hung. Next to them, two large scarlet flags would take care of communication during the day. An Imperial Airship not communicating with another—strange but not a reason to think of war. She wondered if all this lonely toing and froing around the continent was getting to Captain Lepzig and his crew.
Lepzig however nodded. “And think of what we’ve been ordered to do of late. Shoring up the garrisons, bringing in troops—and all the time not to speak of it to anyone.”
Now he really had Sorcha’s attention. Troop movements could only mean that the Emperor was feeling vulnerable. The Princes in the most isolated kingdoms were always prone to delusions of grandeur. They grew complacent far from Vermillion, and forgot the benefits of the Empire in their desire to keep all the wealth of their area. Also, it helped that the Deacons had brought more stability to Arkaym. They were also quick to forget how it had been before the Order came with the Emperor. They might even labor under the assumption that the geists would never come back.
The Empire could not afford a civil war. It was something that the geists would take full advantage of—not to mention, the spilling of blood could bring on a new wave of undead activity.
While she pondered that, Lepzig tugged his first mate closer. “The soldiers weren’t nearly as tight lipped though…were they?”
Melso shook his head slowly. “No, they were all far too young to keep secrets; all too eager to tell anyone that would listen how important they were. Still, I confess, I thought it was all just talk.”
Sorcha thought of the eager young men in the Imperial Guard she’d been in charge of briefly in Vermillion. Where were they now? She’d seen no war herself, but she’d studied the past ones enough. The outcomes had been terrible—not just in terms of lives lost, but also in numbers of geists created.
She pressed a hand over her forehead. As if they needed more troubles. If what Merrick had talked about all those long nights in the infirmary were right, then the Order of the Circle of Stars could have something to do with it. They certainly would want revenge, and bringing down the Empire would give them ample opportunity.
“Then think of this Deacon business,” Lepzig continued. “What are they doing heading west in the dead of night?”
“Sorcha?” Aachon’s voice boomed somewhere farther aft, and she just about leapt out of her hiding place. He wasn’t actually visible, just shouting for her, but immediately the captain and first mate ended their discussion and went back into the belly of the ship.
With a sigh, Sorcha moved out of the shadows, and caught hold of some nearby rigging. Her legs felt like string, and her head was pounding with effort.
At last Aachon appeared. When his gaze fell on her, she knew immediately that he wanted something from her. The usual something.
Raising her hands in surrender, she gestured him over. “Your compass awaits,” she said sweetly.
The large man’s eyebrow shot up, but he withdrew the small weirstone from his pocket. As he swung it on the chain over her, she dared a further comment. “You know you can just ask me now which direction to go.”
He glared at her.
“Do you think I would steer you wrong then?”
Having ascertained the westward pull of the stone, Aachon tucked it away and fixed her with a dark look. “I lost a crew member in mysterious circumstances around you, Deacon Faris, so I am double-checking everything.”
“You have my word I had nothing to do with that.” It wasn’t a lie, though she would have lied if needed. She tilted her head and regarded him. “You don’t much like me do you, Aachon?”
“I don’t know you well enough to say,” came his gruff reply. “I only know that things seem to happen when you are about. Sea monsters rise, deadly geistlords appear and my prince is constantly in danger.”
Sorcha appreciated his loyalty to Raed, but she was feeling more than a little on edge. Shoving back her cloak, so that he could see her Gauntlets tucked into her belt, she leaned forward. “It is a dangerous world—you know that as well as I. I’ve been trapped in my own body for months, and your Prince has been lost for that long. That isn’t my doing either.”
“Danger follows you—”
Sorcha didn’t let him get any further. She surged forward and grabbed Aachon by his collar. Where the strength to thrust him back against the gunwales came from was an utter mystery, but she did it. Holding him, back arched over the void, she put her face only an inch from his. “Danger follows Raed too. None of us are saints in this, but I want you to know something…” She released him enough so that he would be able to tell she wasn’t about to shove him to his death. “I love him.”
For a moment they stood toe-to-toe. Aachon’s dark eyes searched her face, no doubt trying to find a lie etched there. Finally, he shook his head like a wounded bear, and slid away from her, raising his hands.
Now Sorcha recalled Garil’s words to him. Perhaps nearly dangling the first mate of the Dominion over the edge of the ship had not been a good choice to convince him of her intentions.
Still, she was surprised when Aachon began to laugh. It was a low deep sound that he appeared reluctant to let loose. “I do believe I have never heard of a Deacon in love,” he gasped.
It was a ridiculous comment for anyone to make, but Sorcha shook her head. “You nearly went into the Order, you know it is possible.” She fixed him with a sharp look of her own, “You loved Garil.”
The big man’s laughter stopped. “Yes, yes I did.”
What Sorcha didn’t share was the fact that she didn’t even know if she would still technically be called a Deacon. She’d left her partner behind, and was most likely considered dead. She still had her cloak and her Gauntlets, but that was about it.
She could feel the Bond with Merrick, a faint tugging on her conscience from the east, but he and the Mother Abbey seemed a long way off. She missed him and his sensible ways. Still, he was safer behind her than ahead where she was going. Ahead was a stronger tug on her. The Bond with Raed, leading her on like a lodestone.
As if in echo to her thoughts Aachon muttered, “Love seems a long way off in this world.” He was very melancholy for one with such a tough appearance, and Sorcha wondered if that was because of what he had seen in his travels.
The two of them slid down the gunwales, and sat on the deck in silence for a while, watching the sun flicker above them. It was beautiful and serene—at least for a moment.
“He’s not dead,” Sorcha eventually offered. “Whatever mess Raed has got himself into, I know he is not dead.”
“But war is stirring.” Aachon’s words on the heels of Lepzig’s made her shudder, but she did not offer comment. Even when he got to his feet and looked down at her. “Come what may, we will find the Prince and the rest will fall where it must.” With that he turned and left her.
It was another two days later that they finally saw Phia off the starboard side of the Autumn Eagle. They arrived just as evening was taking over from day and a full moon was beginning to rise. Even in the evening, it was a beautiful-looking town with tiled roofs, and the buildings stacked down toward a deep blue black lake. Aachon and the rest of Raed’s crew came up behind Sorcha. The first mate moved forward and joined her, looking toward the city.
“What do you know of Phia?” he asked, his hand clenching on the rigging.
Sorcha shrugged. “Not a thing. Merrick would have been the one to ask, and he would give you an encyclopedia’s worth of an answer.” She tried to sound offhand about it, but even saying his name gave her a pang. It hadn’t even been a year, but she had come to rely on him, and being separated from her partner felt unnatural. She’d lost him for a time in Orinthal, and she hated this even more.
Sorcha turned her face east, and even though she knew he couldn’t possibly hear her at this distance she tried. I’ll be back soon. Look after yourself.
Then she faced Aachon. “Now we find Raed, and for that I will need your help.” At the far end of the
lake was a huge, strangely windowless fortress. She’d seen enough palaces of Princes that she could spot one immediately, however this one gave her a chill. It was typical of Raed that he would bring her to this sort of place. He really was the most awkward, dangerous man. Unfortunately he was also charming and good-hearted. Still, when she saw him again, she was going to certainly have words with him—among other things.
She cleared her throat, and focused her thoughts on what needed to be done. “I can tell he is in that direction, but I will need you to act as my Sensitive.” The words were almost choked out, because just one year earlier she would have never imagined saying such a thing. Her loathing for weirstones was legendary among the other Deacons, and she’d often complained to Merrick about the weak minds and foolishness of those that wielded them. How he would have laughed if he’d been standing on the deck of the Autumn Eagle right now.
The tall first mate inclined his head, gestured for the crew to stay back, and withdrew his weirstone from the bag hanging from his belt. Now that she understood Aachon’s training within the Order, Sorcha felt a little better about him handling it—but she was not going to tell him that.
Captain Lepzig strode up behind them. “What are your orders, Deacon?”
Sorcha took a breath. Now was the moment she wished she knew something of Phia, because there could be repercussions. “Take us in close to the fortress. I want to have a look at it.”
Lepzig didn’t question, he snapped a salute and returned to the bridge. As the Autumn Eagle turned into the wind and the engines began to spin the propellers, Sorcha opened her Center. She’d formed a Bond with Merrick and even Raed with ease, but she was not willing to do that with Aachon. Instead, she would use the weirstone to enhance her own nascent Sensitivity. It was dangerous and tricky, but there was nothing left but to do it.
With eyes half-lidded she whispered, “Open the stone.”
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