A Shaper's Promise

by Karen MacRae

  “Right, right, left, up, right, left, left, third door. Kill. Right, right, left, up, right, left, left, third door. Kill.”

  “Anna, did you see any spark when we opened the doors?”

  “No milady. Perhaps it’s already embedded?”

  “Specific to the task, not the victim.” Vixen shuddered. “How many of these death duos are out there?”

  The couple gave each other a horrified look. “The children,” they whispered.

  They set off with Seleste and Anna hard at their heels. Images of Aibreann and Davy flew through their minds as they raced down the corridors to the nearest set of stairs. Gone was any attempt at care. A primeval fear had taken hold of their souls. Their footsteps slowed to a stop as they turned the last corner. Ahead lay open doors, one on the left, one on the right. Two auraless bodies lay between them, their uniforms soaked in blood. The four moved forward with their hearts in their mouths. They heard sobbing.

  “Davy,” whispered his mother. She ran to the room the noise echoed from then stopped dead in the doorway, sagging to her knees. “Oh, sweet light. Aibreann,” she sobbed.

  As beautiful in death as life, but oh so still. The laughter, the chatter, the joy gone. Aibreann lay on the floor, a knife in her chest, her head in her brother’s lap.

  CHAPTER 37

  T he bells rang out in a continuous loop that woke the whole town. Two deep and sonorous, four high and urgent: the level four alarm. Across the castle, guards raced to collect their charges and bring them to the Great Hall. A contingent of ten arrived outside the beautiful Aibreann Braxton’s room to find it awash with grief. Seleste took charge.

  “Out!” she ordered. Gently, she took Lady Braxton’s hand and pulled her to her feet. “He will suffer a thousand deaths, milady, I swear, but first we must do our duty.” She moved to the General’s side. “Milord, your wife and son need you. Your guards need you. Grief must wait.”

  The General picked up his son. The boy wrapped his arms around his father’s neck and buried his head in his chest. “I hid, papa. I might have stopped them, but I hid.” His father shushed him, telling him it wasn’t his fault, that he’d done just the right thing.

  Seleste gestured for the nearest guard to help her move Aibreann to the bed. She pulled the covers up and closed the girl’s eyes. It looked for all the world as if she were sleeping.

  Seleste was less subtle with the crying Shaper than the Braxtons. Anna, she slapped. “You are the King’s Shaper. Only you can stop this monster.”

  Anna rubbed her cheek in shock. Seleste, the girl supposedly without empathy, had chosen exactly the right words to mobilise her team. Anna was indeed the King’s Shaper. She would not let him down. The monster would be stopped and, by the light, he would pay for his sins.

  Seleste locked the door behind them and pocketed the key. Blades drawn, Davy curled up in his father’s arms, they jogged to the Great Hall. There, they found a scene of chaos. Lady Braxton drew a deep breath and yelled for silence. Vixen would mourn later.

  Of the thirty supposed to have been escorted to the hall, only nineteen had so far arrived, four of whom had been badly wounded. Two Healers had done their best to stem the flow of blood. The corridors outside the hall milled with guards. General Braxton handed Davy over to his mother and took charge outside. He returned with a grim face. “Lord Edevan has been killed as well as three senior assistants in Lord Cassidy and Lord Edevan’s offices. The Mansons are unaccounted for. The contingent assigned to the fifth floor has also not returned. There’s no report of Chiara, Luciado, Spider or Sy.”

  Anna watched Seleste force herself to remain calm. “Spider knows the passageways,” she said. “They’ll be here soon. I’m sure of it.” Her grey aura twitched with blue. She could pretend calm all she liked, but she feared the worst.

  A guard rushed over to General Braxton and whispered in his ear. The General’s face paled. “There are reports of guards throwing themselves off the battlements.”

  “The Compeller takes no chances. The Compulsion concludes with suicide.” Lady Braxton shook her head. “We underestimated the man. How did he manage to avoid our search?” she asked angrily.

  Two floors above, Spider led a group of six guards, a Healer and a blind boy through the passageways. Sy took up the rear.

  “Stop,” he called quietly. He sniffed, sure he’d picked up the Compeller’s strange scent. He lifted his lantern and slowly swung it around, hunting for the source.

  Spider walked back to his friend. “What is it?” he asked.

  Sy pointed to a brown smear on the wall. It was just where a hand might have touched the wall as someone turned the corner. He put his nose to the mark. His face wrinkled in disgust. It was him. The bandaged hand still bled. “He’s been here,” he said to Spider. He touched the stain. It was damp. “Not long ago. He went that way,” he pointed. The trace led down the side passage, away from the Great Hall.

  “Take the Morettis to the Great Hall. Second right, left, right, left, left. You got that?” Spider ordered the guards.

  Luciado repeated Spider’s instructions before the guards’ brains had sorted their thoughts. Spider nodded. “Follow the boy’s words if you’re unsure. He’ll get you there.” Luciado’s small face was beaming with pride as he and his mother hurried off with the guards.

  Spider and Sy took the left fork. Ahead lay a long slope without side passages. Regular bloody handprints decorated the wall. Spider counted twenty steps between each. A slam of a bloody hand marked the enemy’s pace. The man had no idea he left a trail. “Where does this lead? Can he get out?” whispered Sy.

  Spider shook his head. “General Braxton blocked all the exits years ago. There are only two places I can think of he might be aiming for: the spy holes over the Great Hall or the mess. My money’s on the spy holes. If he’s got a crossbow…”

  The partners picked up their pace, trusting to Spider’s gift to detect an ambush.

  Bojek had reached the spy holes. He watched the frightened civilians’ distress with glee. The Shaper had been gone when they’d reached her room, but there she was, helping with the wounded exactly as he’d planned. He banged his bandaged hand against the wall, enjoying the short burst of pain that rushed to his brain. He smiled. It wouldn’t be long until he could properly reward himself. He’d have that delectable morsel of a boy at the agent’s house while he waited for his meeting with Sesi. He almost groaned aloud as he imagined the pleasure his master would grant him at the news of the Shaper’s death. The map of these dank passageways and tunnels would earn him a reward too. Bojek was a good servant. His God would be pleased.

  Below, he saw the Healer and Elona’s pet arrive. The Mansons were right behind them. The butler wept beside the body of his wife, carried into the room by two guards. She bled profusely from a wound to her belly. Bojek shivered in pleasure at the sight, his good hand pressing brutally against the wounds under his bandage. His mouth widened into a grin as he saw the Shaper run to the woman’s side. The guards lowered the housekeeper to a day bed and the Shaper knelt by her side. Bojek could hear the meaningless words of reassurance as the White bitch began to Heal the housekeeper.

  He had to admit she was good. Even from this distance, his old eyes could see the colour return to the woman’s face. Her stupid husband was kneeling by the Shaper, praying to the light to save his wife. The girl turned to him and smiled. “She’ll be all right,” he made out. His scream of laughter rang out over the hall as Mistress Manson raised a crested dagger and plunged it deep into the girl’s back.

  Spider and Sy heard the laughter and sprinted towards it. Bojek heard the running steps, took a final greedy look at the delicious scene of panic below him and ran.

  The holes were unattended when the King’s men arrived. They didn’t stop.

  In the Great Hall, the housekeeper was feigning sleep while three guards pointed blades at her heart. Her face was still, but she laughed inside as she heard a Healer say there was nothing she could
do. The Peyton girl angrily told the Shaper to Heal herself, but there was no response.

  “She can’t get enough energy. Her aura can’t burn it off,” Lady Braxton cried.

  “Outside,” Seleste whispered. “She needs to be outside,” she shouted.

  “Laracy!” bellowed the General. “Get Anna outside. Now!”

  Captain Laracy lifted the Shaper and ran. Seleste’s feet pounded behind in the trail of Anna’s blood. Men and women of the guard fell in behind them. They flew down the corridor and down the stairs.

  Captain Laracy gently lowered the semi-conscious Shaper face down onto the ground, the blade’s crested handle protruding from her back.

  “Anna! You have to Heal yourself!” Seleste shouted. “Now, Anna!”

  Anna heard Seleste’s frantic order and struggled to stay awake. She could feel the blackness oozing through her body. She reached for crystal and felt it respond to her gift, energy speeding through the ground to burn in her aura. She felt the blackness stop its advance, but it stayed strong, oozing evil from the blade still in her. “Take it out,” she whispered, her voice weak.

  Seleste grabbed the handle and pulled, wrenching the blade from between Anna’s backbones, ignoring the girl’s cries of pain. Blood seeped sluggishly from the gash. The Shaper was dying.

  Anna knew the crested blade had been in her body too long, but she had to at least try to use the peristones. She lifted her arm, trying to point her hand at her back. It was impossible.

  Seleste stood by, helpless, fury racing through her veins. She’d failed her King. She’d failed the Shaper. Worse still, she’d failed her friend.

  “What’s she doing?” asked the Captain.

  “I don’t know… The peristones!” Seleste cried. She bent her mouth to Anna’s ear. “Do you need the stones? Should I hold them for you? Can you use me?”

  Anna was nearly unconscious. Her words slurred. Seleste couldn’t make them out. There was no time. She took a knife from her belt and sliced the bracelets from the Shaper’s wrist. She laid the straps in order along Anna’s back, the lilac stone nearest the wound, then held them in place with her hands.

  “Now, Anna. Now!”

  The sudden surge of energy knocked her backwards and she scrambled to get back in place. The Captain ran around the women and put his body weight behind her. Others followed his lead. Seleste put her hands back on the peristones. Again energy surged. This time, the assassin held firm.

  “Keep going, Anna. I can see it shrinking. Keep going!” the assassin yelled. The energy pulsed again and again, the Shaper fighting with the last of her strength to defeat the King’s enemy. He could not win. He would not win.

  Seleste accepted the agony burning through her with every pulse. She stilled her mind, her training helping her to hang on. The twenty-second pulse made her slump across the Shaper, unconscious. The Captain covered her hands with his and felt the full force of the Shaper’s power. When the Captain lost consciousness, the two men behind him held his and the assassin’s hands in place.

  Lady Braxton arrived to see a mass of conjoined auras burning white. At their centre, a rainbow sent a blade of heat into a core of blackest black. At last, it exploded. The men and women fanned around the Shaper fell back, senseless.

  A tiny, pale woman-child stood up in the centre. Her aura pulsated with all eight colours of the rainbow, twisting and melding into the white. At its core, her birthmark channelled energy from the crystal-rich earth and sent it thirty feet around her. The girl lifted her arms in joy, sending wave after wave of clean energy over the unconscious guards.

  Eyes full of awe and wonder looked on the girl in their midst. How could such a tiny thing withstand the power they’d struggled to share between them?

  Anna left Seleste until last. She knelt at her friend’s feet and took her hands in her own. The white she sent scouring into Seleste’s black-streaked grey was filled with love and gratitude.

  The assassin woke to see an angel of light standing over her.

  “We have a monster to catch,” the King’s Shaper said, holding out a hand.

  Seleste held her friend’s eyes as she took the offered hand. “We do indeed,” she said.

  “Captain Laracy, we need it known in every corner of the castle that the Shaper lives,” Lady Braxton instructed calmly. “I want it spreading like wildfire that Nystrieth failed. Loudly. We also need reinforcements at the gate and a full company manning the battlements. No one outside their regiment is to be admitted. The bowmen are to kill on sight any man or woman who attempts to leave the castle.”

  The Captain saluted and started issuing orders for groups of three to cover every inch of the castle. A group of twenty were sent to the gate and Captain Laracy himself ran off with two men to order the Third Regiment to take control of the battlements.

  Bojek first heard the shouts as he passed an arrow slit in the outer wall. He slowed to listen, expecting to hear confirmation of the Shaper’s death. Instead, he made out the lie that she lived. No one could Heal a crested dagger wound: one shallow cut was enough to kill. The memory of the housekeeper’s face clearing of pain in bare moments crossed his mind. It was swiftly followed by the image of a company of new recruits saluting the girl after she Healed their injuries. Surely she couldn’t Heal herself? His anguished scream echoed along the corridor. Damn the bitch. She could not defeat him. He bashed his hand angrily against the wall.

  He heard running footsteps and scurried off. He took the next set of stairs just as Spider and Sy slid to a stop by the latest handprint. There was no clue from its direction. Had he taken the stairs? They looked left and right, listening for footsteps. Shouts came from outside, but all was silent in the corridor. They’d lost him.

  “We need to split up,” Spider whispered angrily.

  “You know we can’t. Anna won’t expect one of us to go for her. We can’t risk it.”

  A portly, middle-aged man came running towards them. “Did you hear?” he shouted. “The Shaper lives. Nystrieth failed.” As he drew close, his face turned from a smile to vacant stare. He drew a knife and went for the pair. Spider sidestepped and clouted him on the head with his sword pommel.

  “That way,” he grinned at Sy, pointing the way the man had come. They stepped over the comatose body and ran. They caught up with Bojek at the next set of stairs. The man stood his ground, knives in both hands.

  “You are going to let me go or I am going to kill you both,” he growled.

  “You are going to try, old man, but you are going to lose.”

  “Wrong,” the spy giggled, clicking his fingers. Three armed men appeared from either side of the stairwell. They arrayed themselves in front of the Compeller, their weapons raised. “Unless you want to kill your own men.”

  Spider’s knife flew from his hand quicker than Sy could think. The old man moved like a snake, his dagger knocking the attack aside as if an irritating fly. “Too slow,” he laughed. He turned tail and ran, a flurry of Seaskian swear words following him.

  CHAPTER 38

  M istress Manson heard the return of Lady Braxton and the Peyton girl over the irritating praying of her husband. She’d expected anguish and anger from the two women, but all she could hear now were footsteps getting closer. She risked a peek through half-closed eyelids.

  “You may as well open them fully. We can see you’re awake.” Lady Braxton’s voice was cold.

  “What happened?” the housekeeper asked. “I can’t… I can’t remember anything.”

  “Anna? Confirmation, please.”

  Dismay and fright were the only things to rush through the woman’s aura when Anna stepped before her. There was no red spark despite the woman’s failed assassination attempt. There had been no Compulsion.

  “She acted of her own free will, milady,” Anna said sadly.

  “Agreed,” Lady Braxton said, her voice like ice.

  “What do you mean?” spluttered Master Mason, his yellow aura twisting in outrage at the suggestio
n his wife had stabbed Anna deliberately.

  “I don’t understand. What’s going on?” Mistress Manson pretended.

  “Master Manson, you will remain silent, please. Guards, stand down. She is not to die… Yet. Mistress Manson, is this your husband?”

  “Well, yes, of course it is. Why do you ask?”

  “Did you marry him five years ago?”

  “You know I did. Please tell me what’s going on.”

  “Did you want to kill Anna?”

  “No, milady!” the housekeeper exclaimed.

  “Got it,” said Anna with satisfaction, taking hold on the traitor’s aura. She felt the woman tried to repel her but pushed through her weak defences, weaving an impossible tangle of energy around the small control centre for lying. She squeezed it so tightly it would never be undone. Next she fed truth until it expanded to ten times its original size: Mistress Manson would never tell a lie again.

  Lady Braxton nodded her approval. “Who wounded you, Mistress Manson?”

  “I did it myself.” The housekeeper clammed her mouth shut, aghast at her honesty.

  Lady Braxton raised a finger at the butler to remind him to keep quiet. “Why?” she asked.

  The woman tried to stop the words leaving her mouth, but she was unable to override her need to speak. “So the Shaper would be near enough for me to kill her.”

  “Sweet light. Why, my love?” the butler exclaimed, unable to stay silent.

  “My master ordered her death, you bumbling fool,” the housekeeper snarled at her husband. “It was the only way. Bojek can’t get close enough and his minions have failed repeatedly. We knew she wouldn’t expect it from me.”

  Master Manson slumped back on his heels, his aura a mass of dismay, confusion and shame. He knew he’d been played for a fool.

  “Where is this Bojek?” asked Lady Braxton.

  “I don’t know. I heard him laugh when I stabbed the Shaper, but he could be anywhere by now.”