short time with the Order—but a machine that burrowed underground like a mole was quite the concept. However, something else had caught his notice. “Her?” he asked, wondering why his throat was feeling dry and his heart was racing.
The Prince of Chioma’s hand tightened, the sound of fingernails on the weirstone as pleasant as it would have been on a blackboard. “Yes, my mother.”
The Deacon did not need to open his Center or call on any of his runes to know that he wasn’t going to like the answer to his next question—but he drove on regardless. “And who, by the Bones, is your mother?”
A long pause followed, where in the eerie silence of the weirstone magazine, he could hear the Prince muttering something under his breath. It sounded almost like a prayer. When he spoke to the Deacon, his voice was resigned, heavy with regret.
“She gave me these eyes but denied me everything I have ever wanted.” He swept back the curtain of bright weirstones, so that once again Merrick dropped to his knees. Even so, he heard what the great and magnificent Onika said next. “My mother is the goddess Hatipai.”
Suddenly everything made sense. Merrick fell to the floor and wept with the joy of a believer who has found revelation in the unlikeliest of places.
NINETEEN
Looking Deep
Sorcha opened her Center. Merrick had said something curious about the Young Pretender the first time they had met:
And he did. The whispers across the Bond, the ones he could not hear, gave her strength—helped her reorient in a world that felt like it was spiraling out of control.
As the door to the audience chamber swung shut behind them, the bang nearly made her jump. Raed was already moving, however. His companions Tangyre and Isseriah came to meet them.
“Take this.” Raed thrust the Prince’s seal to the older woman. “I want you to go into the Prince’s harem and find if my sister is there. I suspect not, but I must be certain.”
“We need that!” Sorcha blurted.
m'>
Holding her Center for so long was draining her, and she found she didn’t have the strength to argue.
“I suppose so.”
“Now, Isseriah.” Raed took the young man by the elbow. “We discovered some tunnels last night. I want you to follow them and see where they lead. Take my crew with you, but be careful.”
Sorcha listened while the Young Pretender gave instructions on how to find the tunnels where they had lost Merrick. She knew they would find no sign of her partner, but Raed was right; the attacker had used them last night, and they needed to know where they led.
When he was done, his two companions barely stopped themselves from saluting. For a brief second the Deacon wondered what sort of Emperor Raed would have made—then she yanked her thoughts away. Such musings were not only foolish but also treasonous.
“Let’s find this Chancellor’s chambers.” Raed turned them in the direction of the western wing of the palace.
They hurried toward the part of the palace where all the bureaucrats labored. Raed’s nearness was distracting her, making her Center even harder to hold. Sorcha knew she was avoiding labeling her feelings for the man deliberately, but she couldn’t so easily ignore the strength of them. And it was quite typical of her life. Nothing was ever simple.
When they reached the stairs leading up to the rooms of the most important councilors and bureaucrats in Chioma, Raed leaned into her side. “Brace yourself; we are about to enter a world where there is very little air— except of the hot kind.”
Managing to keep a straight face, Sorcha flashed the gold of her Order badge at the guards at the bottom of the stairs. The Young Pretender was right—it was enough—they were let through with a wave.
It was an effort of will not to race up the smooth, curving stairs to the Chancellor’s room on the top floor. It had his name on it and a guard posted outside. This time Sorcha didn’t even have to show her badge; the man outside unlocked the door and let them through with a bow.
“Don’t say a thing!” she whispered to Raed in a mock growl.
Behind the cedar door Sorcha’s enhanced senses picked up the tang that could only be the scent of not-so-old blood. She heard Raed’s indrawn breath rasp over his teeth, and she reached back to place a hand in his.
The Rossin. She had not thought of the geistlord once since seeing the Young Pretender who was his earthly focus. Yet, as a Deacon, she could never forget that he was still there.
“Let’s look around,” Sorcha said more confidently than she felt and began examining the desk, piled with papers, pens and ledgers. “I may need your help identifying which of these is important.”
Raed’s lips twisted. “This is one aspect of rule that I am glad to have avoided.” He took a place next to her and then looked down. “And I daresay this is where the poor old man was killed.”
The carpet was soaked with dried blood, but it had also splattered the bookcase behind the desk, the wall and a globe of the world that stood next to the window.
“Quite the mess.” Sorcha stared down at the evidence of sughter.
“I would have thought the staff would have cleaned up in here.” Raed pulled the chair gingerly over the stains and sat down to examine the papers.
“Often people are too afraid of the geists to clean up.” Sorcha began to circle the room, her eyes half-lidded, her Center as open as any Active could manage.
Even without the smell of blood in her nostrils, she would still have been able to tell that murder had been done here. The ether was stained and rent; an ugly color burned her senses, and there was a tang in the air, like before a thunderstorm.
The Chancellor’s death had not been quick nor easy. Strange, considering that with one cry he could have summoned guards—yet here he had fallen at the foot of his own desk and choked on his own blood. The sound of his last agonized breath lingered in the ether.
“I’ve found his journal with a list of appointments.” Raed’s voice snapped Sorcha back to this reality and this time. She joined him at the desk as they flicked to the date that the unfortunate Chancellor was killed.
“Such a busy man,” she muttered, running a finger down the dates. “An appointment with the Prince’s Chamberlain and another with the food taster. I hardly think they would have killed him . . . ”
“You never know.” Raed nudged her. “The royal bed linens and food are weighty subjects.”
“And yet it could well be something as common as that.” Sorcha stared down at the ruined floor. “It could be hidden in the mundane. Most killings are by someone the victim knows rather than some random violence— comforting as most people find the lie.”
“The Chancellor was a eunuch—without wife or family—his entire life devoted to the Prince of Chioma. His work was all he had.”
“Perhaps,” she conceded.
Together they began to yank open the drawers in the desk and paw through them—giving up on any pretense of tidiness.
Raed pulled one drawer out and examined it particularly closely. “Seems a little short.” When he shoved his arm into the space it had previously occupied, he grinned. “Never known a piece of bureaucratic furniture that didn’t contain a hidey-hole or two.” The rap he made on the back rang beautifully hollow.
He made a face, flexing his arm in the void, and then came a snap of something metal. Sorcha felt her heart begin to race a bit faster. Raed’s hand withdrew, and he was holding a fold of vellum.
They exchanged a glance. Vellum was unusual and reserved for important documents—state documents. Raed spread it on the desk.
“This is a blood oath.” Raed’s jaw was tight. “A blood oath to Hatipai—probably half of Chioma has one
