Mowery sputtered as he sought a response, and Marta bit down harder on his hands with her thumbs. It would have been easier to summon her gauntlet, but she did not want Mowery to know the full extent of her real strength.
“Shall I ask again?”
“Apologies,” he forced between clenched teeth. “I beg your forgiveness.”
He seemed sincere, but Marta held on until he finally looked away. Mitchell still stared on, horrified. Mowery too did not meet her imperious gaze, and for that, Marta begrudgingly decided he was wise, if not exactly intelligent.
Rubbing his hands, Mowery finally found his voice again. “I have overstepped myself, and for that, I will seek out Sol’s succor. Since I have already received your mercy, might I also receive your forgiveness for this slight?”
“Seek succor wherever you can find it. Forgiveness too. But you will find neither from me.”
Mowery reclaimed his holy book before slinking from his tent like a refugee. The look of reproach Mitchell delivered almost broke her heart, but Marta willfully steeled it as she stared defiantly back.
“His methods might have been flawed, but his intentions are true. Think of it, Marta, what we could accomplish if we could bring real reconciliation to the sides of the Grand War. We could heal a nation that deserves to be whole again. Yes, you would be asked to give some part of yourself, but think of the good you would do. Is that not worth giving up just a little bit of you to accomplish?”
“He Whispered at me,” she spat. “Tried to make me dance to his song. Tell me, would you so willingly give up your will for others? Would you willingly be a trumped-up Whisperer’s pawn?”
She expected Mitchell to wilt, but the man stood taller. “You think I do not know your mother, and later your brother’s, constant influence over me, always at your father’s behest. Call me a simple tool if you will, but this hammer saw what your father demanded of me with open eyes and drove those nails willingly. Hate me if you wish, Marta, but you are driven true in no small part for how I taught you. And for that I ask nothing. That was my duty and I did it gladly. But now that I am wielded by a new craftsman, and I only ask that you do not dismiss my acceptance of his intent. For all his faults, Herald Mowery is a good man with a true intention for the nation of Newfield. Do you not, in your heart of hearts, agree with his message?”
Marta met his pleading gaze, and some soft spot inside her recoiled at the hurt she saw in his eyes. “We will depart tomorrow. Thank you for your kindness, but we require it no more.”
Mitchell reached out then pulled back when he realized she would not return his gesture. “I’m sorry, Marta, but I promise we both meant well. What we seek to build matters so much more than what we lost.”
She knew this would be her and her tutor’s final goodbye, but Marta could find no fitting words as she turned to the exit. Mitchell’s voice caught her before she could secure her retreat. “He will be seeking to atone for his misdeeds, and I hope you can find it in your heart to give him the forgiveness he truly deserves before you go.”
Outside Mowery’s tent, the sounds of celebration dinned around her. Dusk deepened to twilight, and soon the hymns would begin to signal the sermon. Her feet plodded her on through the throng towards the edge of the camp to recollect her thoughts.
She found Mowery on the outskirts of camp, his forehead pressed against the largest nearby tree. Such a gesture was a means of Weaver atonement, the act sure to keep their Soul from being stained and carrying the sin into their next iteration on Sol’s flow. A few simple words from Marta and Mowery would be spared the ordeal. The words alone would mean nothing to her, yet the world to him, but Marta turned away as the sun finally sunk past the horizon to signal the onset of night.
***
Bernice watched from afar. Hidden among a clearing in the trees, she spied Marta gaze after the man who dared depart the safety of the camp. The man meant something to the loathsome woman, and so Bernice decided he would die right before she drove Marta’s eyes in with her thumbs and plucked out her tongue. The latter half of the torture was Mahu’s personal favorite, and so she would enact it in his honor before stealing the strange girl that called to her from across the continent. No matter how much distance separated them, the girl’s scent called with a voice that could not be ignored.
Glutted with ill-gotten Breath, Bernice also sported a new dress, the only bulge that marred its fit being where she stowed the hatchet she planned to bury in the boor girl’s skull. In all her glory, it would be easy to wade through them on her way to victory, but Bernice held back.
Something about the scene disturbed the disquieting creature. The scent was so overwhelmingly wrong Bernice almost missed it, but finally recognized it as the same sick stink she encountered in the Render she watched slaughter the engel that wounded her. There was something inherently unclean to it, something she instinctually knew to avoid. She was a spiritual carnivore, but this mental meat was more akin to carrion.
At first, Bernice believed it to be residue left over from Marta’s presence, but it increased around the odd man and the tree he pressed his forehead against until Bernice could not stand it a second longer. Yet she remained long enough to see the man finally sense it, pushing away from the trunk and screaming as if covered in ants.
“Away from me! You hold no power here among the devout! As the good book—”
Bernice did not linger long enough to see what cut off the man’s voice. She only hoped that when it was through with the revival, the girl would survive long enough to serve Mahu’s purpose.
***
Habit made Marta catch Caddie’s hand to lead her and the bird back to the main tent for Mowery’s latest sermon on forgiveness. In the far corner, she found Luca waiting. He gave her a wink she chose to ignore.
The wait wore on longer than expected, Mowery finally emerging to sermonize. He did not bother to carry the Biba Sacara, but Marta did not hold that against him considering his last hour. Creature cawed as he took the stage, and Marta secretly smirked at the bird’s disapproval of the flawed man his congregation applauded.
Their adulation died down finally, although Creature continued to caw, but Mowery’s voice drowned the bird out with is first utterance.
“Repent! All must repent! Our sins assail us, and who can resist Waer’s unending pull? All succumb, but only some escape her unholy influence to stand tall!”
This was a new refrain to Marta, and so she strained closer.
“Waer, she walks among us. Make no mistake, the temptress is as true as the nose on your face! And our purpose, as the faithful, is to eternally resist her will!”
Mowery drew fervent cries of “root to fruit,” Marta somewhat surprised when she found her own lips forming the words.
“And Waer, she’s learned. She does not come as the many-headed serpent anymore. No, she comes as the beguiler to this wicked realm of man! She knows she just need make us blunder. No, it is not the great, grand deal she makes us anymore. No, it is the subtle slip, the slight misstep she plies us with!”
From the corner of her eye, Marta found Luca nodding along with the herald’s flock. Only the dye-stained girl did not fall into the motion of the crowd, and for that, Marta pressed the girl’s head to make her join the collective gesture, even as her bird cawed its dissent.
“And Waer,” the herald’s voice creshendoed, “she walks among us still! The monster has already failed her, and the beguiler deserts her still. So she seeks a more subtle form—that of the child! Incapable of innocence, Waer dares to wear the skin of a child among us tonight!”
Dozens of children intermingled among the crowd, but Mowery’s eyes directed them to the culprit. Pulled along by the pastor’s gaze, Marta found herself staring at the child beside her. In her heart, Marta felt real hate for Waer’s housing until the girl turned both blue eyes to hers, and Marta was reminded of her purpose. Inhabited by the blue orbs, Marta divorced herself from the mob as they turned on her.
“Waer seeks infernal ends with her chosen vessels, and so it is the duty of any Sol-fearing man to frustrate her designs! We must turn aside our baser desires to do the will of Sol, even if it means succumbing to our basic needs to do away with her vessel! Yes, it might inhabit the body of the innocent, but its true purpose is still impure, and so our duty is clear!”
The crowd closed in, Marta pulling Caddie behind her. Her rage flared, and with it came the clarity to find the impossible Armor. It enveloped her in its aberrant form, the latticework of interwoven Breath odd enough a sight to halt their mindless advance. Even Mowery seemed shocked on his stage, and Marta used the stolen moment to wonder how he had so successfully turned the mob against them. His Whisperer gifts could not account for it, though Marta had been swept along with the rest of them. Caddie saved her from joining their ranks, and Marta hoped beholding her uncanny Armor would shake the others loose from Mowery’s thrall.
“See the horror Waer has wrought through her servant!”
A man lunged at Caddie from her flank, and Marta sent him flying with a swat of her fist. Through her extended Breath she felt his ribs give way, and the sensation pleased her. The second lunging man she met with a downward swing, his skull caving. Two more feinted from opposite sides, the first drawing Marta off only long enough to wet her extending claws before dealing the second the same fate.
The blood halted the mob again, but Marta did not for a moment believe she had ended the assault. The press of bodies surrounding them grew denser by the second, and she knew if she did not escape the tent, they would overwhelm her with their sheer numbers. Creature’s incessant cawing behind her let her know the girl’s location, Marta ready to scoop her up in a massive paw before tearing through the canvass of the tent.
The click of the extended lockblade was her only warning, Marta wheeling away before Luca’s imbued weapon bit her Breath. Any other weapon and she would have let her odd Armor absorb it, but she had seen what his blade could do to Breath among the ghuls in the tolmen and sidestepped his second strike.
He halted then, eyes darting from Marta to Caddie. His attack had shifted Marta away from her charge, the three now forming a triangle and forcing Luca to choose between his two targets.
“Luca!”
He looked at her upon the mention of his name, but Marta saw no recognition there. She saw the twitch of his nostrils, a sure precursor to his lunge, but Isabelle’s attack intercepted him. Winging her sling like a chain, the pouch collided with his skull with a wet thunk, and the half-Ingios woman stepped between the flaps with her dangling sling to face down the mob.
The way Luca immediately crumpled meant she kept a steel barring in the pouch. The sight of the woman suddenly appearing to drop their champion in one blow made the throng step back, and Isabelle sneered at them as her sling began to swing again beside her.
“Kill the damn boor and Waer’s daemon!” Mowery screamed from the pulpit, and Marta saw the mob flinch as if whipped. They surged forward, but Marta was faster.
It was her clarity of rage that provided her target, her odd Armor the means to reach Mowery before the mob closed in on Isabelle and Caddie. Legs enveloped by forms stronger than her rabbit legs, Marta barreled through the crowd so quickly that Mowery did not have the time to register anything more than surprise before her bladed gauntlets closed around his throat. The flesh gave way instantly, her fist clenching shut inside his neck, but his death was not enough to sate her rage. Marta yanked back with her fist, taking his throat with it. Blood and gore streamed down her Armored hand, Marta feeling it trickling between the latticework fingers as if they were her own flesh, but she did not take her eyes away from Mowery’s. The look of astonishment never left them, even as they went glassy and Marta knew he was dead.
But his death was not enough to allay her suspicions, so she shook his corpse with one arm until she rattled his dead Breath from his body. The cries from the crowd began behind her the second she killed their herald, but Marta paid them no mind as she shook all the harder to finally disgorge the black Breath.
It exited the gaping cavity in his neck, Marta far too familiar with the waves of dread rolling with it. She also heard the reaction among the crowd, their cries of despair turning to terror as the black Breath shot up through the tent and out into the night. Dropping the dead body, Marta wheeled upon them, keeping hold of her inhuman Armor. Another body lay at Isabelle’s feet as Luca rose shakily to his own, but she was more concerned if Mowery’s unnatural ability to command the crowd remained after the hateful black Breath departed. What Marta saw was no longer the mob or even a crowd, but rather individuals fearing for their lives.
“Run!”
The first wave obeyed her bellow, but the remainder jostled back and forth while searching for loved ones. Only one among the dispersing Weaver flock met her gaze, Mitchell staring back with a mix of awe and regret. She recognized the look as the same he gave those years ago when she broke Carmichael’s nose.
Chapter 14
Maia 7, 560 (Seven Years Ago)
Simza’s missions started off easy enough. Many times, they simply involved picking up a package from town, something either Marko or Petro could manage, yet Simza always sent him. Luca briefly remembered how he goggled at these tiny burgs when he first left the wolari. Now they seemed the dictionary definition of small and forgettable.
Expecting another parcel, Luca smoothed his beard while waiting beside his two horses. The train station’s luggage clerk proved less than useless, finding nothing in either Luca or Simza’s name, and Luca was gearing up to berate the man just to break his boredom.
“So you’re the Dobra boy.”
It a woman’s voice, his grin appeared upon his turn towards it, only to vanish. She was not so much attractive as striking, her shape average and brown hair dark enough it bordered on black. But her eyes took him aback—blue and piercing as a winter wind. She smiled without warmth, and remembering himself, Luca bowed in greeting. The woman did not reflect his gesture, instead content to wait him out.
“This way,” he finally stuttered.
Without any luggage he could spy, she followed him to the packhorse, and looking at it, Luca realized it would never do for a woman possessing such poise. Climbing astride the bow-backed beast, he offered her his own.
“Luca Dolphus humbly at your service.”
He expected her name in turn, but received only another semblance of a smile. As they rode in silence back to camp, Luca realized he cared little for silent women who did not even possess the decency to carry on a conversation.
Upon reaching the wolari, the strange woman hopped off his horse and headed straight to Simza’s wagon as surely as if she had grown up in the constantly shifting camp. Leading the horses to the corral, Luca found Bo beside him.
“You know who she is?” Bo whispered.
While he remembered she had striking eyes, Luca was surprised to find his memory of her fading, all her traits already blurring around the edges. “A woman with less conversational skills than Sol gave a gnat?”
“Dorothy Kohl.” Bo pronounced the name as if it meant something, but Luca drew a blank. His ignorance earned Luca a smile before Bo’s face again turned serious. “She’s the head Weaver at Ceilminster College, most powerful of her order. Converses with emets, her. Greybone’s right hand.”
“If she’s such a big bug, then what’s she doing here?”
“Only Simza knows, but this is her third trip. And get a good nod this afternoon. Simza wants you with us tonight.”
***
At dusk, Bo and Luca climbed atop Simza’s largest vurd, their matriarch and the odd woman inside, and trundled off into the woods. Bo’s lips remained sealed, but Luca soon ascertained their destination as the nearby nodus’ glow grew brighter. It was smaller than the one he encountered at the train station that morning, a local line probably no more than a few miles long intersecting the Akoka ley the train had run along.
When they reached
their destination, Bo entered the darkened wagon and emerged a moment later with the crate Simza received from Ostelinda. Again, Luca felt unclean as he assisted in lugging it to the heart of the nodus. There, they deposited it, Simza and Kohl overseeing from a distance. Luca was tempted to ask what to do next, but Bo silenced him with a look. Together they stalked off, out of sight of the nodus, but still within earshot.
There, they waited, Luca’s ley headache creeping up his skull as the second hour drained away. His fingers fumbled with the block of wood he mindlessly whittled, the endeavor soon ruined and tossed aside. Bo kept his thoughts well-guarded, but Luca could sense the man’s nervousness as he checked his watch every quarter-hour. Finally, the silence of near the nodus became too much.
“What are they playing at?”
Bo’s glance at first showed anger, but then bled away to worry. “Waer only knows, but we have a long while yet to wait.”
Then, to Luca’s surprise, Bo produced a pouch of tobacco and papers. Luca had never seen Bo smoke before, but he gratefully accepted the cigarette when his bieta offered it. The fumes seared his throat and lungs, but Luca welcomed it, if for nothing else, than something else to concentrate on. He felt nauseous by the time the two men finished the single cigarette, and swore he would never partake again, but they shared six more by the time Simza summoned them to carry the crate back to her vurd.
It fell to Luca to again escort the Kohl woman back to town, and though tired from the long night, Luca was glad to do it and be rid of the woman. She seemed untouched by the ordeal, still as fresh and dismissive as when she appeared. When they arrived at the station, Luca expected her to dismount on her own, but she held her hand out. It took him a moment to realize what she expected, and Luca hopped off his horse to take her hand.
He felt like he touched the filament of a spark box upon brushing her skin. He wished to pull away, but the mounted woman paralyzed him with her arresting eyes.
The Imbued Lockblade (Sol's Harvest Book 2) Page 15