Geist to-1

by Philippa Ballantine

  Yet we’re both alive. She drew another warm, thick mouthful of smoke. And we both know it isn’t enough anymore.

  This early in the morning, she knew she was prone to maudlin thoughts. She usually enjoyed traveling by water, since the geist danger was limited to only the occasional storm if they passed close to the land. Not today, however. Sorcha found she was as tense as a coiled spring and her hands were actually white-knuckled on the railing. Apparently not even a cigar could relax her.

  “Bloody Bones,” she muttered to herself. A Deacon’s life was short enough, and now she couldn’t even enjoy her one vice. The silver hip flask in her cloak pocket downstairs was really only for emergencies.

  A startled caw from above made her glance upward. Her brow furrowed. A collection of seabirds, gulls and cormorants circled above the ship. She had traveled the ocean many times, but could not recall having seen so many birds behaving in such a way. A shiver of apprehension ran up her spine. Sometimes the natural world had a strange reaction to the Otherside; animals of all kinds were very aware of fluctuations in the ether. Her jaw clenched as she let her Center flit out, but again there was nothing. In the good old days, she would have been confident that she would have at least been able to sense anything dangerous. These, however, were no longer the good old days.

  She was just about to go below and rouse her sleeping partner when something on the horizon caught her eye. Captain Tarce was giving another of his crew an ear bashing and was clearly too busy to notice. She strode over to him and requisitioned his spyglass from his belt while he was distracted. Before he could argue, she was back at the starboard side peering into the swirling mass of red dawn that concealed what she couldn’t see with the naked eye. One glance through the scope, and she was yelling at the Captain. “Get my partner up here—now!”

  Luckily, familiarity with Deacons had not bred contempt. Merrick was at her shoulder in mercifully quick time. Across the Bond, she could feel his sleepiness evaporating. She handed him the spyglass wordlessly. Once it was to his eye, she remarked, “There are, indeed, no damn rules anymore.”

  With the naked eye, Sorcha could see the oncoming storm well enough, but with the spyglass Merrick would be able to see what she’d observed: a ship running before it like a fox pursued by hounds.

  Now the Captain was in on the game. Pressing his swelling stomach against the rail, he managed to get his spyglass back. When he looked away from it, his face was pale.

  “Now, I’m no sailor,” Sorcha said to him, “but that looks as if the storm is bearing down on it. Do you recognize the ship?”

  “The flag is wrapped around the pole but . . . but . . .” Tarce spluttered. “A geist storm, so far from land? It’s . . . it’s . . .”

  “Impossible?” she snapped. “We know. May I suggest we take the other ship’s example and make a run for safe harbor if we can?”

  “All hands!” Tarce flew into action that belied his size. Soon crew were scrambling about the rigging, tying it down and preparing to flee before the wind. Cargo ships ran with the bare minimum of crew to increase profits—it was going to be a close call.

  In the midst of it, the two Deacons stood and watched the storm. It was no normal phenomenon of weather. The clouds were purple gray, curled on one another like a group of angry fists. In comparison, the ship racing before the storm looked like a paper boat.

  Merrick let out a shuddering breath. “A geist storm and no land in sight—is no rule sacred?”

  Sorcha had to agree with him. Whoever had cut loose the rules of the unliving seemed to be following the pair of Deacons. If the Tinkers’ camp had been an attempt at an ambush, as she suspected, then this might be a frontal assault.

  Merrick was silent at her side, peering forward. Sorcha felt his Center snap away and, turning, shared his Sight. The clouds were not geist-drawn, but something of the Otherside was in them.

  “A witch,” Sorcha spat. “The idiot on that ship has drawn power to give them wind for their sails.”

  “It seems to be working rather well.”

  She turned on him. “You’re not one of those Deacons, are you, Chambers? The ‘let’s let everyone have a taste of the Otherside’ fools?”

  The young man shrugged, and it was confirmed. As far as Sorcha was concerned, witches and warlocks, as those untrained or untrainable by the Abbey called themselves, should still be burned as they had been in the old days. This was supposedly a more enlightened age, but those who meddled with the Otherside still deserved to be punished. Nothing but trouble followed in their wake. Among the younger Deacons and novices, there was a growing movement that felt these untrained were as entitled as Deacons to reach for the power; a belief that they were as worthy of it as any from the Order.

  Such foolish ideas. As Sorcha watched the distant ship on the horizon, pushed along by winds of its own making, she felt an angry knot develop in the pit of her stomach. People using Otherside powers made her skin crawl, but to tap into it merely to get your ship ticking along faster was madness.

  She was just about to turn around and let the Captain know that they were in no danger from the storm, when Merrick’s Sight once more leapt up around her. The world plunged into red, violent patterns.

  Merrick cried out, but she didn’t quite hear him over the roaring in her ears. The patterns of geist that had erupted from the water were the least of their problems.

  The aberrant geist had woken something in the sea below; something massive. The stench of salt and rotting seaweed hit them all like a club in the face, but it was the noise that caused the crew to howl in terror. A high-pitched keen like a thousand rusted gates swinging open made conscious thought, for a moment, impossible.

  Sorcha craned her neck up, watching, stunned, as two giant coiled loops, twice the height of the main mast, snapped out of the water. For a moment, her brain struggled with one thought: A possession—it’s possessed a creature of the deep. A great head, scaled and reptilian, punched out of the water only twenty feet to starboard. The eyes, as big as shields, gleamed pitch-black. The distant storm was, indeed, the least of their worries now.

  Flicking her head around, she saw Merrick grabbing up that foolish girl he had been making cow eyes at. Nynnia was only just emerging from belowdecks, but she seemed to be an oasis of ridiculous calm in a tempest of terror. Everywhere, the ship was in chaos; sailors were screaming, the Captain was bellowing, and sails and rigging were snapping.

  It was impossible to call to Merrick over the monster’s high-pitched keen, the yelling of the sailors and the almighty cracks coming from the dying ship. Instead, she pushed across the Bond. This was no leak; it was a scream.

  Follow me. Give me Sight.

  Her call must have gotten through, because the air suddenly bloomed. The howl of a falling mast grated at her ears, but now she had the pinpoint accuracy of Sight. The mast seemed to move in slow motion, predictable and easily avoided. She stepped aside nimbly as it crashed to the deck only feet away. Sea spray was flying everywhere, almost blinding her. A huge wave of water, kicked up by the thrashing monster, crashed into her. The taste of salt flooded her senses, enhanced by her shared Sensitivity. At least she had wrapped her cigars up in oilskin. Everything else was soaked. Yet however concerned she might be about her cigars, something else was even more precious.

  Over all the noise, Sorcha could hear the neighs of Shedryi and his mare. They were all going to die—that much was obvious as the writhing coils started their downward strike onto the doomed ship—but she was damned if the Breed were going to die in the dimness of a ship’s hold.

  Gasping and pushing her sodden hair out of her eyes, Sorcha leapt out of the way of sliding ropes and barrels as the ship lurched to starboard. Briefly, her racing mind considered using Voishem, but the rune of phase was one of the most draining; though it would confer on her the ability to walk through walls, it would not help the horses escape this sudden madness.

  Again Sorcha could hear her stallion’s neighs, so
unding more demanding than terrified. Merrick had called Shedryi long in the tooth, and had assumed that he was merely a horse to her. Such attachment to a creature could be considered a weakness. Well, he’d know she cared, once she did this.

  Opening herself to the Otherside, Sorcha activated Chityre in her Gauntlets. Bracing herself against the bucking and dying vessel, she raised both hands in the direction of the hold where the horses were trapped. The ship was already being ripped apart; one more hole was not going to make any difference. Her Gauntlets lit up like sparkling fireworks as the explosion ripped from her spread fingers. The rune opened a tiny and split-second gap into the Otherside, a blink-of-an-eye moment that would have been an impressive display at any other time, but at this moment was barely noticeable amid the absolute chaos around her. Chityre blew apart the wood of the hatch and the side of the swaying vessel. Nails and debris flew through the air like blades of grass and disappeared through the momentary rift into the Otherside.

  Clenching her fist closed about the rune, Sorcha glanced back. Merrick and the girl were following, drenched and pale but somehow still on their feet despite the thrashing monster and the dying ship.

  “Yrikhodit,” Sorcha screamed at the Breed. Both of the horses’ heads snapped up at the command, and the proud, noble creatures did indeed come. With a surge, both stallion and mare leapt over the remains of the hatch, skidding and sliding on their hooves on the pitching deck. Sorcha scrambled onto the stallion while Merrick pulled Nynnia up behind him on the mare.

  “Horace!” the young Deacon howled, but the pack mule was lost in the maelstrom of the sinking ship. The great, seaweed-encrusted head of the monster was dropping down toward them. Its mouth, as large as two rowboats, ripped into the remaining mast.

  This was death, then. Sorcha threw her arms around Shedryi. Long in the tooth. Perhaps that was true, but both of them deserved to die in a better place. With her breath coming in broken gasps, the Deacon leaned down to the stallion.

  “Kysotu, my love,” she whispered into his dark ear.

  The ship shifted under them, finally succumbing to the crushing pressure of the monster. Only moments remained. Only heartbeats. The stallion, true to his training, remained steadfast. With a shake of his arched neck, he leapt bravely forward into the waves, his mare following after.

  The water was freezing cold, and yet it boiled like a cauldron. She couldn’t see Merrick on Melochi. The ocean was full of wreckage and howling sailors. Underneath her, Shedryi was swimming as hard as he could, almost an underwater gallop. His head stretched forward, nostrils flaring. He had no saddle on, only a bridle. Sorcha felt herself sliding off his slick back, and wrapped her arm around his neck.

  The waves surged and she let out a scream into the storm as everything tilted. She caught a glimpse of a tangled mass of rigging and mast swinging toward them. There was nothing she could do. Everything crumpled away into darkness and waves.

  SEVEN

  The Sweet Taste of Intercession

  The discovery of Corsair had destroyed morale, making every crew member shiver. After Aachon and Raed returned, they cast off from the crippled warship and never said a word about what they had seen there. Silence descended on Dominion. Snook, the thin little strip of a woman who was their navigator, had tried to keep the others back from the railing, but the smell of death and the pool of scarlet on the deck had been witnessed by everyone. They were not fools; they too would know that nothing human had wreaked that vengeance on the Imperial Navy. Raed was not the only one to realize the implications of what had happened.

  Aachon kept hold of his weirstone, not putting it away as he usually did, as if to reassure himself and the rest of the crew that it was still alive.

  “She’s a hazard,” the Young Pretender whispered to him, jerking his head sideways at the limping warship.

  The first mate nodded, understanding immediately. He turned to the gun crew. “Two shots into her, below the water line, if you please, Mr. Eastan.”

  The report of the cannons made Raed flinch. He didn’t turn around to watch the battered ship sink under the waves, though he heard many of his crew rush to the railing to do so. He couldn’t blame them for muttering among themselves. It wasn’t every day that a blood-soaked Imperial warship went down to the bottom.

  He heard Aachon talking to Byrd. “We will send word to the Imperial Navy when we get to Ulrich. Their families should know.” It was a small danger, yet the right thing to do.

  Raed swallowed hard. Those relatives would be better off without the knowledge of what had happened to their loved ones. The image of the desiccated Captain, reaching for his dead weirstone, was burned on the Pretender’s brain. He glanced up where the Rossin flag fluttered over Dominion. The mer-lion was hanging over him, just like in the ancient Curse.

  Every assumption of his life had been blown out of the water, as conclusively as Corsair had been, and Raed needed time to pull himself together. He started toward his cabin.

  “My prince”—Aachon intercepted him before he could reach the safety of his quarters—“I was thinking . . .” He paused to glance down at the swirling weirstone that he’d still not put away. He cleared his throat. “We need to be away from this area immediately and without delay.”

  Dominion had been fast once—the fastest in the Northern Sea. Now, with so many barnacles on her hull and with all their running repairs, she wallowed in her native environment. Once a swift runner, she now could barely walk the course. Raed was about to open his mouth to make some quip, yet when he saw the serious look in his first mate’s eye, he knew what he was suggesting.

  The Pretender glanced down at the weirstone for a moment; then he nodded. “When all the cards turn against you, it is time to stack the deck.”

  Aachon grinned bleakly and spun about on the deck. “Prepare to run before the wind.”

  Most of the crew scrambled up into the rigging, but Byrd, as always, was the one to speak his mind. He turned his sun-browned face into the slight breeze. “But sir, we’re nearly becalmed.”

  “My wind, Byrd,” Aachon growled and raised the weirstone to his eye line. “Trim the sheets and batten down those hatches!”

  As with every Sensitive, there was a touch of Active within the stern first mate. He seldom used it, but they had witnessed exceptional circumstances this day. Raed would normally have been cautious of any use of the Otherside near him, but he was filled with the desire to be away from this part of the sea. Besides, if a geist could cross the ocean, then maybe he needed to reconsider his options.

  As Raed threw his oilskin over his frock coat, he turned and looked to stern. The air was coming alive. He preferred to watch the storm, rather than watch his friend create it. Aachon’s slack, white-eyed look was more than disconcerting; it was positively unnerving. To the south, the clouds were already pulling together and darkening. The sunny day slipped into grayness, and the tang in his nostrils filled Raed with heady delight. Despite the nature of the coming storm, he couldn’t help but revel in its power.

  It had been an unholy day, so it seemed fitting to end it with an almighty thunderstorm. Lightning cracked within the clouds and the crew cheered. It seemed a strange reaction, but Raed understood. After having felt so rudderless for the last few months, it was invigorating to be in control of something.

  Naturally, it was a different story once the storm was summoned. The winds began to howl and the reduced sails of Dominion whipped in response. Raed turned around to catch Aachon. The tall first mate staggered a step back, his dark complexion pale. There was a decided tremble in his hands as he replaced the weirstone into his pocket. They both looked to stern, into the wind and the clouds that were now coiling on themselves.

  “Let’s see that thing catch us now,” Raed yelled in Aachon’s ear. The storm would follow the weirstone that had cast it.

  Despite her barnacle-cased hull, Dominion leapt away as if she had only been waiting for the signal. Even with her reduced sail, the storm filled h
er, sending her flying like an ungainly dancer through the waves. It was not quite as dangerous as a natural storm, but still there was hazard in it. Crew scrambled to clear the decks, until only a few held the essential posts.

  Raed, however, would not go below. He wanted to experience the storm and to keep an eye on his ship. Aachon, naturally, was at his side, perhaps not quite as excited by what he had wrought; his Deacon training ran very deep indeed.

  In the steel gray light, they ran before the clouds for many hours through the night, with only the occasional glimpse of stars and moon to guide them. Wind and water lashed him, but Raed smiled back into it. For this moment, they had control, and it seemed his ship was reveling in it as much as he was. Surely not even a curse could catch them at such a speed. For those blissful hours, storm-tossed and hectic, the Young Pretender was happy again.

  The feeling was, however, broken the next day. Aleck, still up the crow’s nest, began yelling something, waving his hands before pointing to port. Raed strained his ears to catch the look-out’s screams above the roar of the storm. He pulled his spyglass out from underneath his oilskin, and after a moment’s difficulty he managed to train it in the direction Aleck was pointing.

  It was another ship, some sort of trading vessel by the look of her; not as fast as Dominion, even in her current condition, and she was in the clear air, so they were pulling away from her. Whatever she was, she was not an Imperial Man-o’-War. A large collection of seabirds seemed to be circling the vessel. It was certainly curious, but not dangerous. He was losing interest, unsure what Aleck was so concerned about, and Raed was about to look away when he saw something else odd—something he’d seen only once before in his time on the sea. The water all around the other vessel began to churn as if it were boiling. He could see huge clumps of seaweed bubble to the surface, and white foam and bubbles gathered around the other ship’s hull.