Geist

“I have some in my cabin,” he offered, walking over to stand at her back. “I acquired them off a pirate captain.”

Sorcha glanced up at him. “No honor among thieves, then?”

Raed laughed despite himself. This Deacon was as prickly as a desert cactus. Leaning on the gunwales, he stared over the ice. It was beautiful in a threatening kind of way, like shattered gleaming glass as far as the eye could see.

“I don’t suppose you are going to be able to careen your ship now.” Sorcha pulled her legs up close to her on the bench in a curiously childlike gesture.

“Now, that would be rather foolish under the circumstances.”

She shrugged. “You could. After all, it doesn’t look like anyone is going anywhere for a while.”

“Which leaves us with another problem. What do we do about these annoyed townsfolk? They outnumber us by quite a bit, and not all of my crew are fighters.”

They were both silent a moment. The sun was finally free of the ice, but Deacon Sorcha Faris was not looking at it. She was looking at him with an expression he interpreted as trust. Something had definitely changed between them back in the tunnel.

Both of them glanced up at the sudden creak of a step. Aachon, his weirstone clenched in one hand, had managed to walk up on them unnoticed. The Pretender knew by his expression that he did not like the look of the situation he thought he’d stumbled into. His first mate knew him better than even his own father, and he felt incredibly uncomfortable under that dark gaze.

Still, on the surface Raed managed not to reveal that, keeping his voice level when he spoke. “What is it, Aachon?”

“I thought you’d like to see this,” the older man replied and gestured toward the quay. Quickly, Raed and Sorcha scrambled down to where a group of the crew was leaning over the side.

Jocryn, with his shock of balding red hair, was yelling something down to someone on the dock. For a second Raed thought that a battle was about to break out. That was, until he heard, “No, I need more fresh kale, my friend. These mouths need feeding, you know, and sharpish.” As Dominion’s cook, Jocryn was in a constant battle to keep the vessel provisioned, ideally with supplies that wouldn’t be—literally— thrown back in his face.

Sorcha yanked at Raed’s sleeve. “Townsfolk.” Her look was still feral, and he remembered her display on the walls of the Priory with sudden vividness. Quickly, he looked her over. The tell-tale blue cloak was in his cabin, and nothing about her screamed Deacon . . . except for one thing. When he reached out and took her badge of office from her shoulder, he thought he was about to get another slap. Perhaps even a punch.

“Wait.” He held up one hand. “You’ve just discovered the Priory is not what it seems. Maybe the townspeople aren’t, either.”

“Your point—and quickly?”

“The Deacons are not exactly popular here.” Raed pressed the badge into her hand. “So perhaps a little discretion would be sensible right now.”

Sorcha’s fingers tightened on her badge but she gave a little nod. “Very well, then, but I think these might also be a bit of a giveaway.” The Gauntlets.

Raed snorted. “I was not about to try and take those off you.”

“Sensible.” A ghost of a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth as she loosened her shirt and tucked them underneath, against her skin; his eyes followed the Gauntlets’ progress. Ancients, he had been naked next to her only hours ago.

The crew were now yelling at Jocryn, while he continued to negotiate with the unseen person down on the dock. Food was the only thing that crew ever argued about. A long time at sea had only sharpened their desire for decent rations, and their confinement on Dominion had made them somewhat cranky.

Sorcha and Raed managed to get through to the crowd to see what was going on below. The person standing on the dock was a young man, his face just bursting with its first hair. Around him were several baskets stuffed with fresh food, making the crew go almost insane with delight. Aachon had ordered the gangway pulled up and no one allowed on board, so how exactly this youngster was going to deliver his produce to Jocryn was an interesting question.

“Lad,” Raed called down, “are you the only grocer in Ulrich?”

The boy looked down at his baskets, realizing that their small contents were not going be to able to feed the entire crew. “No, sir,” he replied after a minute. “These are a sample. My father will bring more this afternoon.”

“Why not this morning?” Sorcha leaned down over the side, her unbound bronze hair falling off one shoulder. Without her cloak, badge or Gauntlets, she was simply a beautiful woman, and the way the grocer’s lad was blushing, he’d not been questioned by many of those in his life. “Is he up at the Priory with the others?”

Even from this distance the boy looked shocked. “No, ma’am . . . He . . . he is with my sister.” This last part was muttered.

Sorcha stiffened. “The lad has a strange aura,” she said to Raed softly. “Touched by a geist.”

Before he could stop her, the Deacon had swung her legs over the side and dropped down next to the boy. Being on the high tide, it was quite a distance and an impressive physical feat. The lad leapt back in shock and knocked over several of his baskets. Leaning over the side, Raed watched cautiously. He doubted that one grocer was going to be much danger to the Deacon, but if he broke and ran for his kin, there could be a mob surrounding Dominion in very short order.

From this distance he couldn’t hear what Sorcha was saying. At their captain’s gesture, the crew scrambled to thrust out the gangway. She was talking to the lad earnestly with one hand resting lightly on his shoulder. At first he looked very tense, ready to make a dash for it, but as Sorcha continued he began to nod and relax. By the time Raed and Aachon had lowered the gangway and jogged down to where they were, the lad was positively calm. The Pretender was surprised. He’d never seen any sign of diplomacy from the Deacon before, but perhaps the danger her partner was in had tempered her mood.

Sorcha turned to them. “I’ve told Wailace here that my partner and I are not from the Priory. You can vouch for that, Captain Rossin?”

The lad’s wide eyes focused intently on him. “Indeed. We brought Deacon Sorcha from the South, direct from the Arch Abbey itself.”

The grocer’s lad let out a sigh and then abruptly grabbed hold of Sorcha. “You must come back to our house, then. My sister . . .”

“No need to explain.” Sorcha shoved her hand once more into her shirt and pulled out her Gauntlets. The appearance of these talismans made the lad’s eyes light up, or maybe it had been the glimpse of the top of her pale breast.

The Deacon and the stunned lad turned and trotted back up the street. He’d not been invited, but Raed was certainly not about to let Sorcha go anywhere without him. He told himself it was because of her ability to dismiss the Rossin.

“Look after the crew.” He squeezed Aachon’s upper arm. “Keep them on the ship a bit longer, just in case.”

His first mate fingered his weirstone’s bag and nodded somberly. They both knew that nowhere was safe. “Be careful, my prince,” was all he said.

Raed, as he turned and raced after Sorcha, only wished that he could promise such a thing.

After the strangeness of the last day, Sorcha had been reassured to see something familiar in Wailace’s eyes—at last, something normal. Relief. After she’d told him the story, he had willingly grasped it. Whatever the Priory had done, they had not quite eroded the built-in faith in the Order.

This time, as she followed him into the town, there were even fewer signs of life.

“Tell me when the first attacks came.” She actually had to tug the young man back to slow him down. “I need to have information if I am to help your sister.”

He gulped a minute, clearing his throat and shaking his head. “They—they began slowly at first, a month ago. We thought our Deacons would protect us.”