Geist

by Philippa Ballantine

  Merrick wasn’t fooled. His partner had risked her life to save Shedryi and Melochi, and the tautness of her back said this request cost her more than she would admit.

  “Certainly.” Revele snapped a salute, which might not have been necessary at this point. They circled lower in stiff silence.

  When they were only a few minutes from the ground, Captain Revele pointed to a locker in the rear of the cabin.

  “There are uniform coat jackets in there. If you get your people into them, you should blend in with my crew. They are usually quick to head for the attractions of Vermillion after I have dismissed them. After that, you are on your own.”

  Raed grinned at her. “That’s just the way we like it.”

  NINETEEN

  The Price of Redemption

  It was one thing to return home covertly—it was another altogether to find yourself already a fugitive.

  Merrick held the poster up so that she couldn’t avoid it seeing it. His eyes were wide in utter disbelief. “Rogue? Sorcha, what in the Bones have we done?”

  Understandable. Certainly, it had to be a shock to be declared a rogue Deacon only two weeks out of the novitiate. He had a right to be upset. She wasn’t feeling that good about it either.

  Taking the poster in her hand, she stared at her own features on it with a deep sense of unreality. Both her face and that of her partner were on it, and the headline above screamed, WANTED. Beneath was an account of their “crimes” in Ulrich, which included the slaughter of a peaceful Priory and the summoning of geists to torment the population.

  She hastily screwed up the poster and threw it into the shadows. “Obviously we missed one traitor back there, and one weirstone. Once we explain to the Arch Abbot, it will be fine.”

  “We better move quickly.” Raed touched her shoulder, making Sorcha jump. “We can’t rely on Captain Revele not to report us once she sees that.”

  Merrick’s distress was flooding across the Bond. “The posters are everywhere,” he muttered. “Come daybreak, we’ll be in real trouble.”

  “Come, now.” Raed glanced at Aachon, while trying to ignore his dark look. “We’ve all been fugitives for years and managed just fine.”

  If only there were time to stop for a cigar in a corner, time to stop and consider how this was all going to fall. Instead, Sorcha had only moments. “You think the Empire has really been trying hard to find you?” She smiled slightly.

  “I’m the Young Pretender,” he replied, tucking his thumbs into his belt. “I have a sizable sum on my head.”

  “If they really wanted you dead, you would be dead.” The slight droop of his expression might have been amusing in a less dangerous situation. “But a rogue Deacon—let alone two? Now, those get people’s attention.”

  Aachon made an unconscious growl in his chest. He knew well enough that was true.

  “They will send out a Conclave to hunt us,” Merrick whispered, as if he couldn’t quite bring himself to voice it fully.

  The Young Pretender could not have any idea what that meant. Even for him, there had never been a Conclave formed—it was something only Deacons gone mad warranted.

  “I say we go straight to the top while we can.” Sorcha felt strength flood into her, despite the situation. This was what a partnership was supposed to be. She remembered it from before Kolya. Trust, belief and a well of power. She’d missed that. “Once we have explained ourselves, finding the Grand Duchess will be much easier.”

  “My prince!” Aachon shouldered himself between the Pretender and Sorcha, as if by physicality he could sever the power he thought she had over him. “I gave my word to your father that I would protect you; going to the Mother Abbey is neither sane nor safe. I cannot allow it.”

  Raed’s hazel eyes never left Sorcha’s face. “We are in Vermillion, my friend—nothing is safe. The time for caution is past—we must needs be daring.”

  Aachon folded his arms and glared at the Pretender without a word. Sorcha wondered how difficult it would be to tie the big man up and leave him in a corner somewhere. Tough, was the conclusion she came to.

  “What has running got me, old friend?” Raed said, gesturing around him. “This is my first time in Vermillion—the city that should have been mine. I have been running for years. It is time for something new.”

  Sorcha guessed his protective first mate would blame her. Two days locked in their cabin; everyone knew about it. They would think she was some witch who had thrown a spell around their captain. If only they knew that the opposite was much closer to the truth.

  That was the Young Pretender’s gift; she’d seen it before but never really appreciated it until this moment. Many tried to manipulate others with lies or pretty stories—Raed, however, offered up the truth so completely that it took people by surprise. An honest man in a dishonest world could be a very powerful thing.

  While Raed presented his argument to Aachon, Sorcha contemplated the real problem: how to get inside the Mother Abbey. Phasing and using Voishem would have been her first choice if it had been any other building—but like all Order structures it was well protected against such powers. It would not be easy to use other methods either. Even in winter, with many Deacons settled into outlying Abbeys, there would still be more than a hundred staying within the confines of the complex. Not all of them were of Merrick’s rank, of course, but they would still be Sensitive enough to spot two rogue Deacons clambering over the wall.

  Sorcha was slightly distracted by Nynnia whispering to her father. Kyrix had made a miraculous recovery. A prickle in the back of the Deacon’s mind was disturbed by that, but if the two of them were using weirstones or some other proscribed magic, Sorcha did not have the time to investigate it.

  Nynnia moved over to Sorcha’s side. “My father and I will wait here while you attempt this madness.”

  The Deacon felt a heat kindle in her stomach. “Just what I was about to say. We wouldn’t want you to get in the way.” She arched her eyebrow as a warning that she was prepared to say so much more.

  The young woman glared back. “Indeed. If you do not return, we will need to take on the Murashev instead.”

  Merrick reached across and squeezed her hand. “We will be fine. It won’t come to that.”

  It was quite impressive, really, how completely Nynnia had enamored the young man. That was the problem with the novitiate; too many young people coming out of it with no real world experience.

  She glanced at Raed for a second. Whatever they had was different. The level of physical passion was unexpected but not dangerous—what gave her pause were the gentler feelings that she dared not examine right now. The Pretender whispered to Aachon, instructing him to stay with Nynnia. The first mate, whose dark eyes bored into Sorcha’s, nodded as if completely compliant, but she wasn’t fooled. Like Kolya, he was the type to give way and then flow back like water.

  The Pretender came over to their little huddle. “Aachon has agreed to take the crew—and you and your father, Nynnia—to a bolt-hole he knows here in Vermillion. A little pub in Dyer’s Lane called the Red Flag. But if we’re not back by morning, I can’t guarantee what he will do.”

  “It won’t matter.” Merrick took a deep breath and turned in that subconscious way that all Deacons had, in the direction of the Mother Abbey. “Trying to enter the Abbey as outlaws—if we’re not back by morning, we’re dead anyway.”

  Sorcha let out a little laugh. “Entering the Abbey as rogues, indeed. Dead might be the best we can hope for.”

  Across the Bond she felt Merrick’s surge of interest. He was fingering his Strop and looking at her with something better than fear and excitement. The boy had an idea, and by the look of it . . . it wasn’t going to be the type she’d enjoy. He hugged Nynnia tight, even dropping a kiss on her lips.

  Sorcha grimaced, but said nothing. It was strange for her to feel such dislike and have it tinged with the overflow of his emotions. It was enough to give a person a stomach complaint.

  S
till, once the little band had left them on the street corner, she was impressed with her partner’s ability to snap back to the matter at hand. When it was just the three of them, she was much more comfortable.

  “So, you have an idea, Merrick,” Sorcha whispered. “Some brilliant plan to break into our own damn Abbey—full of Sensitives who will pick us up the moment we set foot in it?”

  “You’re really not going to like it at all. I thought of it, and I don’t like it.”

  Once he had explained it, she knew that he was, in fact, underestimating how little she would like it. Even Raed turned pale at what Merrick suggested. “I . . . I can’t do that, Sorcha.”

  Her partner coughed a little and withdrew around the corner. She touched the Pretender’s face, running her thumb along his lip line. He kissed her fingertips, and the sensation ran down deep inside her. Beautiful man, even in this dire moment, she couldn’t help reacting to him. “You gave your life into my hands, Raed—now I am giving you mine. I trust you too, you know.”

  The Pretender pulled her in close and kissed her. “I won’t let you down,” he whispered against her lips.

  It was he who found them the donkey and the cart in a quiet knackers’ yard, and liberated the poor creature. The Abbey was in the final deepest curl of the city; only a mile from the gates to the castle, yet a small town to itself. It had no defenses like the Emperor’s residence. It needed none. However, there was still a lay clergy guard. Raed pulled up his hood, smeared mud on his face and hid his saber in the hay on the back of the small cart.

  Sorcha and Merrick, meanwhile, prepared themselves. Taking her Gauntlets from her belt, she shoved them inside her shirt and buckled the belt tight around them. Her partner, however, held his Strop in one hand. Light was already flickering in the deeply etched runes.

  She knew what he was thinking; not just because her thoughts ran across a similar vein, but because his were actually echoing in her own. I’m afraid. By the Bones.

  Her own throat was tight. The white walls that surrounded the Abbey had once been protective, but now they seemed so very similar to those that she had been forced to breach at the Priory. Everyone within had to be considered an enemy, at least until she and Merrick could explain themselves to Hastler.

  “Do we really need to do this, Sorcha?” Raed whispered. She understood what remained unsaid. Do you really need me to do this to you?

  A knot of tension cramped her neck while her stomach clenched like it had been punched. “Yes . . . When the Conclave begins hunting us, there will be no other choice. We need to see the Arch Abbot—he is the only one with enough influence to sort this mess out.” She looked up into his hazel eyes and let her admission out. “And I need you to help me.” The word “need” was not one she was familiar with.

  Raed nodded but his voice was rough. “By the Blood, this feels very, very wrong.”

  “This whole thing has been wrong.” She kissed the palm of his hand. “Except for you.”

  Merrick coughed. “We better get this done, before I lose my nerve altogether.”

  “Of course.” Sorcha nodded and scrambled up into the back of the cart among the straw. Merrick took his place next to her, looking young, vulnerable and frightened—yet he was more than that.

  Sorcha looked him full in the face, not letting a single ounce of fear or doubt reflect in hers. “I’m not just trusting Raed, you know.”

  “But I have only read about this,” he said quietly, looking at the Strop resting in his hands. “I can’t be sure—”

  “Yes, you can be.”

  The Bond sang, determination ringing along it from each of them, amplifying and building like an infinity knot. This was the pinnacle of partnership, the type of strength that she had never felt with Kolya. Merrick trusted in her more completely in two weeks than her husband had done in all their years. With a little smile, Sorcha lay back in the straw.

  Merrick put on the Strop, tying it around his eyes quickly and summoning up the Rune of Sight. Through the Bond, the world grew more beautiful than she could have ever imagined; the circling wheel of stars directly over Sorcha’s head flared like a thousand multicolored fireworks. The silent street filled with a siren sound of distant bells that at this hour certainly couldn’t be real. The scent, honeysuckle and jasmine, flooded every portion of her brain. It was also the last thing she was aware of.

  Merrick claimed his power, and pulled them into the Otherside.

  Raed felt the racing of his own heart as the Deacons’ stopped. Merrick had dropped inelegantly, but Sorcha—as she did with everything—had taken control; choosing how she lay, hands resting lightly against her thighs with her head tilted slightly upward toward the sky. Her face was soft and had a gentle smile on it as if she’d fallen asleep in his arms. The Strop over her partner’s eyes had gone dark. Raed took it off gingerly and tucked it into his own pouch, pushing the young man’s eyelids shut. Merrick looked even younger than he had a right to be—almost a child. Raed draped Sorcha’s cloak over the two of them. It was easier to pretend there was something else in the cart that way.

  He let a ragged breath escape him. “How very odd—now I get to collect someone else’s bounty.”

  As he led the donkey toward the gates of the Mother Abbey, he felt like he was in some weird nightmare; striding toward the institution that not only supported his enemy but housed the husband of his lover. These were two things that should have had him racing in the opposite direction. However, considering he was the living one right now, it would have been worse than rude to walk away.

  The guardsman shook himself awake at the sound of hooves approaching. “Who goes there?” The man might be a lay Brother, but he was large enough to have been a bare-fisted boxer and he carried a polearm long enough to skewer twenty Pretenders. The Mother Abbey, despite all her otherworldly protection, still maintained a front of physical dominance as well. A quick glance upward showed that there were plenty more where this one came from. He glimpsed another group of guards patrolling the walls. With the number of Sensitives living within the walls of the complex, it seemed like overkill. Except—the Pretender felt his throat constrict—the guard striding toward him was wearing a green cloak. He was a Sensitive.

  The Rossin was buried very deep now; so deep that even Raed could not feel him. As long as the Young Pretender did nothing foolish to arouse the guard’s suspicion and inspire him to look a little closer with a Rune of Sight—this might actually work.

  Raed took a breath, summoned up his very best Southern accent and held aloft another of those dreaded posters. “You the one with the reward?”

  The guardsman’s brow furrowed. “Not personally, but yes, the Mother Abbey is looking for the two rogue—”

  “Then look no damn further.” Raed flung back the dark blue cloak to reveal the still shapes beneath.

  When the guardsman swore, the Pretender was reminded of Sorcha’s comments about the Order’s lack of real decorum. It was a good thing that the situation was so serious or he might have laughed; watching the hefty soldier look down at the two cooling forms, he felt anything but jovial.

  “Both of them!” The guard’s mouth twisted in an impressed knot. “How’d you manage that?”

  “The old favorite.” He shrugged. “Poison. I have an inn on the road south and when I saw the reward”—he sniffed loudly—“I saw a chance to get in before anyone else.”

  The guardsman laughed. “Good idea—the reward was posted only this morning, and there’s already been plenty rushing to offer ‘information.’ Still, this could be the quickest bounty in the Order’s history.” He moved to take hold of the donkey’s bridle. “I’ll just get this to the Presbyter of—”

  Raed’s chest tightened and he lurched forward. “Now, hold on, there! I ain’t letting those two out of my sight . . . at least not until I have my palm crossed with some honest gold.”

  The guardsman glared at him. “Are you saying you can’t trust me, friend?” His voice was laced with
nothing like friendliness.

  There were times to be affable and there were times to hold firm; this was one of those latter times. Raed had a decent grasp of the character he was meant to be playing—and this man would not let another take his bounty from him . . . not for that amount of coin particularly. “Trust is one thing, ‘friend,’ but when gold is involved I wouldn’t even trust my own brother.”

  He held the sharp gaze of the guardsman, as if they were two dogs sizing up just how full of teeth the other was. Finally, it was the guardsman who gave way. With a snort he threw the cloak back on the dead bodies. “Very well.” He waved into the Abbey. “Follow the path until you see the three-story white building with a red roof, on the right. That’s the Presbyter of the Actives’ building; there’ll be a guard outside who’ll get the right person to hand out the reward.”

  Raed led the donkey away, feeling his heart thundering in his head like a rapid drumbeat, and walked deeper into enemy territory. He followed the path as directed until he was out of sight of the guard tower. He had only a little time; there was every chance some insomniac Deacon would blunder into him, and then—well, then he guessed he would end up on the cart right next to the other two.

  Carefully, praying that the donkey wouldn’t remember its natural heritage and bray or kick up a fuss, Raed turned left to a smaller building than the one he’d been instructed to. In the half-light it was impossible to tell if it was the right building on the left, but Sorcha had given him instructions and there had to be a way in. He just hoped that she’d been right about the Sensitives at the gate being the lower-ranked ones, directing their lesser powers only at those entering the complex.

  He also hoped she was right about this small building being occupied by only one other. Leaving the cart, he opened the door cautiously; but he needn’t have. The old man sitting by the fireplace was looking right at him, with not the faintest hint of surprise. He unfolded his tall form awkwardly from the chair and smiled. “Ah, the Young Pretender. You’re late—now, where did you leave Little Red?”