The Price of Redemption
It was one thing to return home covertly—it was another altogether to find yourself already a fugitive.
Merrick held the poster up so that she couldn’t avoid it seeing it. His eyes were wide in utter disbelief. “Rogue? Sorcha, what in the Bones have we done?”
Understandable. Certainly, it had to be a shock to be declared a rogue Deacon only two weeks out of the novitiate. He had a right to be upset. She wasn’t feeling that good about it either.
Taking the poster in her hand, she stared at her own features on it with a deep sense of unreality. Both her face and that of her partner were on it, and the headline above screamed, WANTED. Beneath was an account of their “crimes” in Ulrich, which included the slaughter of a peaceful Priory and the summoning of geists to torment the population.
She hastily screwed up the poster and threw it into the shadows. “Obviously we missed one traitor back there, and one weirstone. Once we explain to the Arch Abbot, it will be fine.”
“We better move quickly.” Raed touched her shoulder, making Sorcha jump. “We can’t rely on Captain Revele not to report us once she sees that.”
Merrick’s distress was flooding across the Bond. “The posters are everywhere,” he muttered. “Come daybreak, we’ll be in real trouble.”
“Come, now.” Raed glanced at Aachon, while trying to ignore his dark look. “We’ve all been fugitives for years and managed just fine.”
If only there were time to stop for a cigar in a corner, time to stop and consider how this was all going to fall. Instead, Sorcha had only moments. “You think the Empire has really been trying hard to find you?” She smiled slightly.
“I’m the Young Pretender,” he replied, tucking his thumbs into his belt. “I have a sizable sum on my head.”
“If they really wanted you dead, you would be dead.” The slight droop of his expression might have been amusing in a less dangerous situation. “But a rogue Deacon—let alone two? Now, those get people’s attention.”
Aachon made an unconscious growl in his chest. He knew well enough that was true.
“They will send out a Conclave to hunt us,” Merrick whispered, as if he couldn’t quite bring himself to voice it fully.
The Young Pretender could not have any idea what that meant. Even for him, there had never been a Conclave formed—it was something only Deacons gone mad warranted.
“I say we go straight to the top while we can.” Sorcha felt strength flood into her, despite the situation. This was what a partnership was supposed to be. She remembered it from before Kolya. Trust, belief and a well of power. She’d missed that. “Once we have explained ourselves, finding the Grand Duchess will be much easier.”
“My prince!” Aachon shouldered himself between the Pretender and Sorcha, as if by physicality he could sever the power he thought she had over him. “I gave my word to your father that I would protect you; going to the Mother Abbey is neither sane nor safe. I cannot allow it.”
Raed’s hazel eyes never left Sorcha’s face. “We are in Vermillion, my friend—nothing is safe. The time for caution is past—we must needs be daring.”
Aachon folded his arms and glared at the Pretender without a word. Sorcha wondered how difficult it would be to tie the big man up and leave him in a corner somewhere. Tough, was the conclusion she came to.
“What has running got me, old friend?” Raed said, gesturing around him. “This is my first time in Vermillion—the city that should have been mine. I have been running for years. It is time for something new.”
Sorcha guessed his protective first mate would blame her. Two days locked in their cabin; everyone knew about it. They would think she was some witch who had thrown a spell around their captain. If only they knew that the opposite was much closer to the truth.
That was the Young Pretender’s gift; she’d seen it before but never really appreciated it until this moment. Many tried to manipulate others with lies or pretty stories—Raed, however, offered up the truth so completely that it took people by surprise. An honest man in a dishonest world could be a very powerful thing.
While Raed presented his argument to Aachon, Sorcha contemplated the real problem: how to get inside the Mother Abbey. Phasing and using Voishem would have been her first choice if it had been any other building —but like all Order structures it was well protected against such powers. It would not be easy to use other methods either. Even in winter, with many Deacons settled into outlying Abbeys, there would still be more than a hundred staying within the confines of the complex. Not all of them were of Merrick’s rank, of course, but they would still be Sensitive enough to spot two rogue Deacons clambering over the wall.
Sorcha was slightly distracted by Nynnia whispering to her father. Kyrix had made a miraculous recovery. A prickle in the back of the Deacon’s mind was disturbed by that, but if the two of them were using weirstones or some other proscribed magic, Sorcha did not have the time to investigate it.
Nynnia moved over to Sorcha’s side. “My father and I will wait here while you attempt this madness.”
The Deacon felt a heat kindle in her stomach. “Just what I was about to say. We wouldn’t want you to get in the way.” She arched her eyebrow as a warning that she was prepared to say so much more.
The young woman glared back. “Indeed. If you do not return, we will need to take on the Murashev instead.”
Merrick reached across and squeezed her hand. “We will be fine. It won’t come to that.”
It was quite impressive, really, how completely Nynnia had enamored the young man. That was the problem with the novitiate; too many young people coming out of it with no real world experience.
She glanced at Raed for a second. Whatever they had was different. The level of physical passion was unexpected but not dangerous—what gave her pause were the gentler feelings that she dared not examine right now. The Pretender whispered to Aachon, instructing him to stay with Nynnia. The first mate, whose dark eyes bored into Sorcha’s, nodded as if completely compliant, but she wasn’t fooled. Like Kolya, he was the type to give way and then flow back like water.
The Pretender came over to their little huddle. “Aachon has agreed to take the crew—and you and your father, Nynnia—to a bolt-hole he knows here in Vermillion. A little pub in Dyer’s Lane called the Red Flag. But if we’re not back by morning, I can’t guarantee what he will do.”
“It won’t matter.” Merrick took a deep breath and turned in that subconscious way that all Deacons had, in the direction of the Mother Abbey. “Trying to enter the Abbey as outlaws—if we’re not back by morning, we’re dead anyway.”
Sorcha let out a little laugh. “Entering the Abbey as rogues, indeed. Dead might be the best we can hope for.”
Across the Bond she felt Merrick’s surge of interest. He was fingering his Strop and looking at her with something better than fear and excitement. The boy had an idea, and by the look of it . . . it wasn’t going to be the type she’d enjoy. He hugged Nynnia tight, even dropping a kiss on her lips.
Sorcha grimaced, but said nothing. It was strange for her to feel such dislike and have it tinged with the overflow of his emotions. It was enough to give a person a stomach complaint.
Still, once the little band had left them on the street corner, she was impressed with her partner’s ability to snap back to the matter at hand. When it was just the three of them, she was much more comfortable.
“So, you have an idea, Merrick,” Sorcha whispered. “Some brilliant plan to break into our own damn Abbey—full of Sensitives who will pick us up the moment we set foot in it?”
“You’re really not going to like it at all. I thought of it, and
Once he had explained it, she knew that he was, in fact, underestimating how little she would like it. Even Raed turned pale at what Merrick suggested. “I . . . I can’t do that, Sorcha.”
Her partner coughed a little and withdrew around the corner. She touched the Pretender’s face, running her thumb along his lip line. He kissed her fingertips, and the sensation ran down deep inside her. Beautiful man, even in this dire moment, she couldn’t help reacting to him. “You gave your life into my hands, Raed—now I am giving you mine. I trust you too, you know.”
The Pretender pulled her in close and kissed her. “I won’t let you down,” he whispered against her lips.
It was he who found them the donkey and the cart in a quiet knackers’ yard, and liberated the poor
