Geist

Her words stopped the conversation dead.

“Damned and Holy Bones.” Sorcha turned her back on them and looked up to the newly revealed night sky.

Royal blood is good for many things. Those words. Raed had heard them before, years ago. The wreck of a deposed Abbot had whispered them to him in that room he’d wanted so desperately to get out of. The smell of stale old man and musty clothes flooded his nostrils, mixed with the scent of his young boy’s fear.

Raed shook his head to clear the memory and realized that Merrick was looking at him. The muttering in his head was still there. That was it; he’d been injured and many things had been shaken loose.

“There is one thing more.” Kyrix pulled out another piece of paper. This one was a mere scrap, the fire had consumed nearly all of it, but just legible was one word: “Murashev.”

It was the younger Deacon who let out a gasp. “A geistlord . . . Sorcha, they are planning to release a geistlord.”

Sorcha’s fists clenched at her sides before she turned back to them. “No—not a geistlord, Merrick. The Geistlord.”

All of them stared at one another, and even Raed knew what they meant. The Murashev was the boogeyman under every child’s bed: the mythical creature that lived in the depths of the Otherside, feeding on not just the souls of the living but on other geists as well.

“They wrote ‘first.’ ” Merrick was the first to speak. “But there are other meanings to it—it can also mean ‘family.’ They wrote it in Ancient above me, soaked it into me. The Murashev cannot just come into our world; he needs other geistlords to bring him.”

“Well, you stopped one here.” Raed let out a breath he’d been unconsciously holding in. “So we don’t need to . . .”

Kyrix let out a sound that was more a wheeze than a real breath. “They did not need all seven geistlords.”

Nynnia squeezed his shoulder when he faltered. “If they had all seven, it would have been easier for them to bring through the Murashev, but there are other ways.”

Merrick and Sorcha exchanged another glance. One look at their pale faces told Raed all he needed to know, but he asked anyway. “What ‘other ways’?”

The younger Deacon licked his lips nervously before replying. “Many, many deaths.”

“I overheard her.” Kyrix swayed where he stood, near the end of his waning endurance. “She spoke of a grand event in three days—in Vermillion itself.”

“We can’t get back to the city in three days, and the Priory weirstones are burnt out, so we can’t alert anyone.” Merrick was looking at Sorcha with all the intensity of a young boy looking to his older sister for guidance.

“Even if the ice broke with sunrise, I couldn’t get Dominion near Vermillion in so short a time.” Somewhere along the way, Raed discovered he had given up caring about his Curse and the geists that might bring it on. If the Murashev became real, those things would matter very little. The last words of the decrepit deposed Abbot still echoed in his head—his last ones before he tried to best the Rossin inside him: You’re their tool, foolish boy. The geists will use you like a lever to open the way. He hadn’t known what those words had meant back then, though they had frightened him a great deal all his life. But now he realized that the Prior had wanted him for more than his connections to royalty.

“There is another way,” Sorcha was looking at him, the bleak expression fading from her like a sea mist. The Pretender did not know if he liked it at all, and when she spoke, it was confirmed. He didn’t.

“The Imperial Dirigible depot is four miles from here.” The Deacon beamed. “We fly back to Vermillion.”

“You can’t be serious?” Raed couldn’t help a little laugh escape him. “You want me to load not only my crew, but myself, onto an Imperial dirigible and fly with you to Vermillion?”

“No.” She raised one eyebrow. “Not all your crew. Bring Aachon and five people you can trust.”

Raed glanced at Merrick, but the younger man was going to offer no support. He was talking in a low voice to Nynnia, effectively leaving his partner and the Pretender to sort it out for themselves.

“In case you hadn’t forgotten,” Raed said, shooting a raised eyebrow right back at her, “I am a wanted man—and not just by the ladies of the Imperial Court.”

She gave a short laugh, but her expression remained set. “This cult—or whatever they are—want you for some reason.” She smiled slowly. “To keep you safe, we need to keep an eye on you.”

“You’ll be able to do that admirably as they take me up to the gallows,” Raed muttered. He stroked his narrow beard for a second and glanced at her speculatively. “Are you sure this isn’t just an attempt to take the bounty yourself?”

“At times like this, I wonder about your education.” She sighed. “Whatever are they teaching at Pretender school these days? Have you not heard of the concept of sanctuary?”

A tremor of fear ran through his belly. “You plan on holing me up inside the Abbey?”

He watched as she slipped on one Gauntlet. She whispered, presumably for his benefit, “Seym.” When he took a step backward, she held it up. The rune was colorless but the air around her fingers moved as if with heat. “The rune of flesh, and I promise this won’t hurt.”

He’d already trusted her with everything he had, so when she placed her index finger against his forehead, Raed managed not to flinch. It was, in fact, cool on his skin, like a touch of an ocean breeze. A clean, sharp scent filled his nostrils. The rune of flesh. It made him think about what that word meant. A memory of all he’d seen last night up on the hilltop made him twitch, abruptly aware of how close the Deacon was to him.

“There.” She stripped off her Gauntlet, and he wasn’t sure if he imagined it, but her look was somewhat proprietary. “You are now officially held under the Sanctuary of the Order—not even the Emperor can break the seal without risk of losing the Arch Abbey’s support.”

Raed frowned at her particular choice of words. “So I am effectively your property?”

Sorcha looked smug, like a cat that had finally caught a pesky mouse. “Basically . . . yes.”

It was most definitely the wrong thing to say, and she had to have known it; when his jaw tightened enough to nearly break a tooth, she responded with a grin. For a moment the Pretender considered doing something foolish just to see that look wiped from her face. He was surprised when he felt her hand take his. Its warmth and strength was a shock, even more so when she gave his fingers a light squeeze. He wondered if she was resorting to using her feminine wiles on him, until he looked into the utter honesty of her blue eyes. “Until we find out why they want you, Raed, it is imperative we stick together. The sea is no longer safe for you.”

He looked down at her hand in his, and for a moment neither of them pulled back. His heart was beating fast, and this time it had nothing to do with the Rossin or the swordplay. Out of the corner of one eye, Raed glimpsed Merrick striding over to them, a sudden cold bucket of reality on their quiet moment. Their hands fell away from each other.

Raed could wait for the geist-driven ice to melt away, take Dominion out of Ulrich harbor and sail away, but really, there was nowhere to hide. All of his life had been spent facing up to uncomfortable realities; and besides, this realm was still his by right. He wanted to protect and serve it, even if his father did not. “I’ve been running all my life, Sorcha—I shouldn’t trust anyone, and yet I have already given my life into your hands twice this week.”

Sorcha’s lips twitched upward in a beautiful and cruel smile. “I’m just that sort of woman, my lord Pretender.”

SEVENTEEN Creature of the Air

The Imperial Dirigible outpost was unimpressive next to the large transports themselves. Two long cigar shapes twice the length of the building, with large boat-shaped quarters hanging beneath them, were tethered by