by A. C. Cobble
“I do,” said Sam, grinning, “and we’ve got something in mind for that, though it’s risky.”
The duke frowned.
“Sorcerers conjure spirits so they don’t have to do the dirty work themselves. Our guess is that they’ll send those spirits after us,” explained Sam. “Like you said, a shadow-monster or something else. We’ll lure the creatures in here where we’ve laid runes. Those will serve several purposes. First, they’ll sever the binding between sorcerer and spirit. Second, they’ll trap the spirits here in this room. Finally, they’ll banish the spirits and send them back to where they came from.”
“Smart.” The duke nodded. “Remove the teeth, and the sorcerers will be like any other man or woman.”
“Right,” said Sam, “but, ah, here’s the risky part. We have to know who they are. Who is conjuring the spirits and sending them after us? We need to bring the people here as well.”
“How will we do that?” wondered the duke.
“Me,” said Thotham. “The sorcerers came after me in Middlebury, and now, they must know they failed. When they come after me here, they’ll need to make sure they are successful.”
The duke scratched his chin, looking between the two priests.
“We’ll convince them I’m dead, again,” said Thotham, hobbling into the center of the room to join the two young people. “They can’t be sure, though, and they will have lost contact with their conjured spirits. They’ll be forced to come check themselves. That’s when we’ll take them. We hope they will have used everything at their disposal to send after us, and we hope that with surprise on our side, we’ll be sufficient.”
“That sounds… That sounds like it may not work,” admitted the duke. “I am no expert, but even I can imagine how things could turn on us. They’ll know when they lose their connections to the spirits that something went wrong, won’t they? I can’t think they’ll walk in here suspecting nothing.”
Thotham grinned. “The Church has been hunting sorcerers for centuries. Trust me when I say it will work.”
The nobleman shrugged uncomfortably and glanced at Sam.
“Thotham is my master, and I’m merely the apprentice. He knows far more about this than I. I don’t even know half of the runes he’s drawn on the floors and walls of this room,” she said. “If he says they’re sufficient, we have to trust him. There is no one who knows more about sorcery than he does. Besides, he did kill that last sorcerer, didn’t he? I won’t lie and say there is no risk, but it’s the best plan we have.”
The duke looked around the room, his ballroom, and he took in the symbols that had been scrawled across the floor, the walls, and even the ceiling. He looked back at the priests, an eyebrow raised.
“Winchester found us a ladder,” explained Sam.
“Very well,” said the duke. “I know nothing about this, but if you two believe this is our best option, I will go along with it because I don’t have any other ideas. When do we act?”
“The sorcerers won’t move until darkness, so we have until then. I recommend during the day you get some sleep, m’lord. We need you alert and ready tonight.”
“How do we spread the word that you’re here?” inquired the duke.
“Sam will go to the palace, make herself known, and let everyone know she’s staying with you. She’ll drop hints that I am as well,” answered Thotham. “One thing we know about sorcerers, they seek power. Whoever they are, they will have eyes and ears near the beating heart of the power in Westundon — your brother’s palace. If she drops her clues there, they will follow them.”
“Fair enough,” said the nobleman. Then, he covered a yawn with a fist. “My brother’s secretary has a packet for me. Perhaps you could collect that, Sam? It would give you ample reason to be there and an opportunity to drop your hints.”
“That could work,” agreed Sam, nodding and looking to Thotham for approval.
The old priest nodded, trying to corral his swirling thoughts. It sounded right, he thought.
“Then,” said the nobleman, “as you suggest, I’ll get some rest. Is there anything…”
“Be ready tonight,” assured Sam. “We’ll handle the rest.”
“Go now,” Thotham instructed her. “Plant the seeds.”
His apprentice and the nobleman left, leaving the old priest in the ballroom alone. He stood tall, his muscles protesting, his bones creaking. Walking slowly around the room, he looked over the runes and symbols he and his apprentice had inscribed. They had worked at it the entire night, and he was exhausted mentally and emotionally. It would all be over soon, though. His last trick, the reason he was so certain they could win.
He stopped, looking at a smudged chalk drawing. A rune, he’d told his apprentice, but it was nothing more than fantasy. She thought he’d gone deeper than her along the dark path, but he had not. He’d taught her everything he knew — except this last deception. The symbols she did not recognize were fake, tricks to convince her he had a plan different than the one he did.
They would sever the bonds, draw in the sorcerers, just like they’d explained to the nobleman, but after that, there was only one way to defeat the sorcerers and their shades that would be certain. There was one card he had left to play that was powerful enough to ensure each and every one of them would go to the underworld.
His death.
Tonight, he would die. The power from his end would be enough to drag his enemies with him. It had to be enough.
The Priestess XIII
“How was your night last night?” asked Sam.
Isisandra Dalyrimple stared at her, a coy smile curling her lip. The girl, clad in a simple, blue silk dressing gown, questioned, “Why did you come here?”
“You know why I came here,” snapped Sam.
“Because of what happened the other day?” sneered Isisandra. “You think because of what happened we have some connection?”
“Do we not?” asked Sam, leaning closer to the younger girl.
“No more connection than I’ve had with dozens of others,” responded Isisandra, sitting back and crossing her arms. “As have you, I’m sure. You want to believe you were my first? You were not. You think you taught me something? You did not. It wasn’t special. It was sex. A momentary pleasure, nothing more.”
Sam scowled at the girl.
“If that is all, I have things to do today,” declared Isisandra. “Last night was the palace’s Winter Gala, and I… Ah, now I see.”
“What?” snapped Sam.
“You are not upset I did not send you a note afterward. That’s not why you’re scorned. You are jealous about what happened with Oliver,” guessed Isisandra. She paused, her pretty lips turning down in a frown. “Why do you know about that? You weren’t at the ball. I’m certain I would have noticed you, and we didn’t return to his— He’s not staying here, in the palace. He said he was going to his home in the city.”
Sam crossed her arms over her chest.
“You are staying at Duke Wellesley’s home?” questioned Isisandra. “I thought you were simply assigned by the Church to assist him. It is not that simple, is it?”
“We are not lovers if that’s what you’re implying,” said Sam. “I was helping him with his investigation into the matter of your parents’ death. I still am.”
“Still?” questioned Isisandra. “He told me last night that there were no leads, nothing to show for your work. He left me no hope that the culprit would be found. Is that not true?”
Sam shifted, suddenly regretting coming to confront the girl.
“Those were my parents who were killed,” demanded Isisandra. “If you know something, tell me.”
“I don’t know anything,” murmured Sam, glancing down at her feet, feeling foolish.
“What are you investigating, then?” cried Isisandra, standing abruptly. “I have to know. Is there a chance my parents will have justice?”
“There’s a chance,” admitted Sam. “Look, this is… If it wasn’t your pa
rents, I wouldn’t say anything, but you deserve to know. We’re trying something, and I hope it works. I warn you, Isisandra. If we find out who did this, it will not cover the hole in your heart. It-it might even make things worse. Your parents… They were involved in things they should not have been, things that may have gotten them killed. I am sorry to tell you that, but it is the truth. You should know before it spills out.”
“I… suspected something was amiss,” murmured Isisandra, her head falling forward, a lock of jet-black hair cascading over her eyes. “My parents grew distant in the last few years. They didn’t spend time with me. They met with strange people. They would disappear with no explanation. I-I didn’t know what to do, though, who to talk to.”
Sam studied Isisandra, so fragile, so vulnerable, and suddenly, she felt horrible about harassing the girl. There had been something there when they were together, she was certain of it, but she also understood why a young girl in Isisandra’s position would be attracted to the security that Duke could offer. He was handsome, wealthy, and not as terrible of a person as one might expect. For a young girl in society, he was as perfect of a man as a debutante could hope to find. She knew Duke wasn’t what the girl wanted, but Sam understood why Isisandra might think he was what she needed.
“I am sorry I snapped at you earlier,” said Isisandra, her eyes downcast. “Can you forgive me?”
“I can,” replied Sam. She lifted a hand then dropped it. “There is something I must do today, but can we talk? About your parents and the people they associated with?”
“I thought there was something else you wanted to… discuss,” replied Isisandra, looking up through her a shroud of silky hair, fluttering her eyelashes at Sam.
Sam grunted. “That too, but we need to know who was involved in the same things you parents were. They could be dangerous people.”
“We?”
Grimacing, Sam admitted, “Duke Wellesley, myself, and my mentor in the Church.”
“You think you will catch my parents’ killer?” asked Isisandra. “When?”
“Soon, Isisandra, but really, I cannot speak of it. It is too dangerous.”
Isisandra looked up and met her eyes. “You’ll move against the killer, these bad people you speak of, tonight?”
Sam winced.
“It is tonight, isn’t it?” questioned Isisandra.
“We will talk soon,” muttered Sam.
Then, she turned to go. She felt the younger girl’s eyes on her as she exited the room. She forced herself to move slow and not break into a run getting through the doorway.
She walked into Duke’s office and hefted the heavy packet onto his desk.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Whatever your brother’s secretary had for you,” she responded. “Remember, it was my pretense for being in the palace, dropping hints that we are hiding out here?”
Duke frowned and ripped open the package. Peering inside, he murmured, “Ah, the ship manifests from the Company, the ones we’d requested while we were investigating in Harwick. To be honest, I’d forgotten about them.”
She walked to the side of the office where a decanter of liquor sat surrounded by crystal glasses. She unstoppered the container, hesitated, and put the top back in. “I suppose we should stay alert tonight.”
“We should,” agreed Duke, shaking the papers out of the packet onto his desk.
“So, what can we do with all of that?” asked Sam, moving to the other side of his desk and sitting down, propping her boots on the corner of the expansive, mahogany surface.
“The Company records everything. Each transaction, each bundle of inventory, each member of the crew, every passenger,” answered Duke. “If Countess Dalyrimple rode a Company airship from Archtan Atoll to Enhover, it should be noted somewhere within these documents.”
Sam eyed the stack of papers the nobleman was piling on his desk. There were hundreds of sheets of paper, all covered in small, cramped script. “You’ll never get through all of that.”
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” replied Duke. “See, each one of these is a manifest. The heading lists the captain and the ship then on the lines after that, the first mate, the number of crew members, and any passengers. We don’t have to read the entire thing, just the names and descriptions of the passengers.”
“There are hundreds of them,” mentioned Sam.
“There are,” agreed Duke, “but I have a thought. We know Hathia Dalyrimple was involved in sorcery, and we suspect Hathia Dalyrimple knew her killer. Who else was involved in the conspiracy that we know of?”
“Her husband, and…” Sam’s eyes brightened and she slid her feet off the desk. “Captain Haines.”
“Right,” said Duke, a grin on his face. “Maybe the countess rode with Haines. Maybe she didn’t, but I’m going to start there first. We know he was rotten, so it stands to reason he’s our most likely culprit.”
“Assuming he didn’t bother to lie on his manifest,” remarked Sam.
Duke shrugged. “If he did, he would have had to slip it by the Company’s loadmasters on both ends of the voyage. You take half the pile. I’ll take the other, and let’s pull out all of Captain Haines’ manifests. It is possible he could have fabricated documents, but you don’t have anything else to do until dark, do you?”
Sighing dramatically, Sam scooped up a pile of papers and started thumbing through them, looking at the top lines where the ship name and captain were prominently displayed. Every week, several of the Company’s ships departed to and returned from the colonies. Some industrious clerk had copied every one of those manifests and sent them to Duke.
“I cannot believe someone went to all of the effort to—”
“Here’s one,” declared the nobleman, pulling it out and putting it on the desk. “It’s… Oh, this is the one we left for Archtan Atoll on. See? Two passengers, a male and female.”
“That’s it, no names?” asked Sam.
“No, that’s not required for the loadmaster,” explained Duke. “Names are usually noted for completeness in the Company’s records, but in the case of important persons like myself, a simple description is all. The more important, the less description. If a craftsman or someone who paid their fare was a passenger, their name would surely be noted. In Countess Dalyrimple’s case, it may or may not be, depending on her relationship with Haines.”
“I see I received just as little detail as you did,” remarked Sam, glancing at the paper in front of him.
Duke frowned then went back to leafing through his stack. They quickly found Captain Haines had been a busy man, and they had nearly a dozen manifests pulled out with his name on them before Sam found another and paused.
“One young woman, Southundon to Archtan Atoll,” she said. “No other description. Who might that be?”
“One woman…” muttered Duke. “None of the female company directors ever travel to the colonies. Well, to be fair, few of the men do either. It is unlikely a lady would travel alone like that. Let me see it… This is just two days before Countess Dalyrimple was murdered.”
“Two days,” responded Sam, frowning. “Well, we know it wasn’t her on that return trip.”
They fell silent, scrambling through the sheafs of paper, trying to find…
Duke stopped, pulling out another document. “Four days before the murder, two female passengers from Archtan Atoll arrived in Southundon, one middle-aged, one young. So he arrives with two women, and two days later returns to the colonies with one.”
“Two important, nameless women, and just one returned,” replied Sam. “The middle-aged one who remained in Enhover was very likely Countess Dalyrimple, but who would the young… Oh!”
“Surely not,” muttered Duke, putting the two manifests side by side.
“A single young woman left for Archtan Atoll days before the murder, and I’d bet you all my shillings we won’t find evidence she returned to Enhover — until we did.”
Duke ran his hand ov
er his hair, checking the knot in the back, staring at the papers.
“Duke, what other women were in that colony who wouldn’t be named on the manifest? There are no other noblewomen, none senior in the Company…”
“It could be— it could be some lover of one of the factors or military officers. It could be…” He trailed off.
Given time, they could invent all sorts of young women who might have traveled in such circumstances, but there was one who made sense above all others. One that was already neck deep in the conspiracy, and had been lying to them both.
“I saw her today in the palace,” admitted Sam.
Duke looked up, meeting her eyes. “Did she seem suspicious?”
“No, not at all, but… she knows I am staying here.”
Duke groaned.
“We need to find Thotham,” said Sam.
The old man sat on the edge of his bed, rubbing his face with his hands.
“We don’t know for certain she is involved,” said Sam, shooting a look at Duke.
“Why were you even speaking with her today?” questioned her mentor.
“I, ah, I had something to discuss with her. It…”
“What was it?” demanded Thotham.
“It—it is possible that both Duke and I, we, ah…”
The old man dropped his hands and looked in disbelief between the two of them. “Possible? Tell me you didn’t.”
Duke ran his hands over his hair, checking the knot in the back then looking out the window.
“You did,” groaned her mentor.
“It was a mistake on both our parts,” admitted Sam.
“Mostly your part,” grumbled Duke.
“You did it first,” argued Sam.
“And that makes it better that you did it second after knowing I did?”
“If she’s what you suspect, then you know what this means, right?” asked Thotham, his quiet voice silencing them.
“No…” responded Duke.
“It means she could have harvested material from us,” explained Sam. “Hair, fluids, any of it could be used in certain rituals to bind spirits to us, or worse.”