SEVENTEEN
Silent Lesson
It was not a day they left him alone; it was much closer to a week. Twice a day a mechanized door would open at the rear of the Silence Room, and a plate of food would be behind it. Merrick would eat the bland repast, huddled in the corner of the room, and wonder why exactly he bothered.
Sorcha was long gone, far away, and who knew if she was well or not. Zofiya too was gone. All he had was the company of the darkling. Hearing it whisper into his brain was not comforting, and the longer he was here the more her words of vengeance and distraction were starting to make sense. Merrick was terrified that he would give in to the shadows, and become like her.
He missed the life he’d had before Sorcha disappeared: the cautious smile of the Grand Duchess, the smell of the liniment they used in the infirmary and the wonderful sense of communion in the Devotional first thing in the morning. He held on to those memories and fell into their embrace as a way of escaping the stillness.
So when Kolya Petav opened the door to the Silence Room and whispered, “Deacon Chambers,” it took Merrick a long moment to realize that he was not hallucinating. Kolya had been nothing but a distraction and an irritation to him in the last few months, driving Sorcha into apoplexy with his stubbornness about giving her up as a partner. Now that he was standing there, holding the door open, he looked nothing like Merrick remembered.
His blond hair was askew, and his calm expression quite evaporated; the man who was technically still married to Sorcha had a clenched jaw and wide eyes. Even Sorcha’s rough temper all those months ago had never made him look like this. “Come with me,” he said, his quiet voice the equivalent of a shot in this particular space. He glanced around the room even though it was patently empty. “Quickly, we’ve got to get out of here.”
Merrick climbed slowly to his feet. Perhaps this was some cruel kind of test by the Arch Abbot, or maybe Deacon Petav was working with the Emperor. “Get out of here?” he asked cautiously, craning his head to see if there was anyone behind Sorcha’s former husband.
“Yes.” The other Deacon actually stepped in and tugged on his arm, an entirely too familiar gesture— especially within the Order. “Now!”
“I take it I am not being released by the Council.” Merrick didn’t need his Sensitivity to discern the nervous flicks of Kolya’s eyes, or the way his hand was clenched tight on the doorframe.
“Indeed not.” His fellow Deacon gestured him into the narrow stairway. “Follow me quickly.”
Two Sensitives escaping from within the Mother Abbey itself was an impossibility, so ridiculous as to be laughable. Merrick stopped, folded his arms and shook his head. “I’m not quite sure what has come over you, Deacon Petav. I appreciate the sentiment and your effort, but this is a foolish course. We can’t just walk out of here, and I wouldn’t want you to—”
“I believe right now we can,” Kolya said somberly, and held up his Strop—at least it should have been his Strop. It was the same thick piece of leather, but the runes carved in it were completely destroyed. Merrick stared at it blankly, not quite understanding for a long time what he was seeing. The sharp edges where Kolya had once marked the symbols were wrenched apart as if subject to a tiny gunpowder explosion.
The shapes were broken and rent, and the personal sigil that would have sat between the Deacon’s brows was blasted clean on the rock that should have held it. Merrick’s stomach twisted and he found his throat trapped shut. He couldn’t breathe. By the Blood, this had better be a hallucination.
“How…what…” was the best he could manage through his abruptly dry throat.
Kolya too was blinking and now Merrick saw that he was holding on to the doorway for real support. The older Deacon was shaking. “We don’t know. No one knows, Merrick. However now is a very fine time for one insignificant Sensitive to make himself scarce in the confusion.”
That in the midst of this crisis Sorcha’s former husband would think of helping her new partner was hard for Merrick to believe. “Shouldn’t you be helping the others of our Order instead of getting me—”
“She asked me to help.” Kolya went on, now pulling Merrick physically with him.
“Sorcha?”
Choking back a laugh, the other Deacon shook his head. “No, not Deacon Faris. Someone else, someone with dark hair and eyes in my dreams. I ignored her for the last week, but then last night she came and insisted that tomorrow something terrible would happen to you. That this would be the only chance to get you out and safe.”
Merrick pressed his eyes shut, but he could still see her. Nynnia. The woman he had fallen in love with, lost, found again, only to lose her for good. On the Otherside, she apparently had not forgotten him either. One of the Ancients, the Ehtia, she still had access to more information than anyone in the mortal realm.
“I cannot let anything happen to you.” Kolya’s lips pressed together in a white line. “And I take my oath to my fellow Deacons very seriously. More seriously it seems than the Arch Abbot.”
Deacon Kolya Petav could have no way of knowing about Nynnia. “But why should you trust some woman in your dream?” Merrick probed.
The other Deacon’s eyes drifted away. “Because I ignored her advice once and lost something very precious to me.”
Merrick nodded, understanding all too well about lost chances. He would not embarrass his rescuer further, and so followed him quietly out into the stairwell.
“Do you have a plan?” Merrick whispered, tugging up the hood of his cloak.
“Not really,” Kolya said, flashing a wry smile over his shoulder, “but then Sorcha always accused me of not being spontaneous enough, so this is a good time to work on it.”
It was his idea of humor—Merrick understood that—but considering the seriousness of what he was saying it was poorly timed. Still, he was not about to turn his back on his rescuer.
Reaching the top of the stairs, they entered the Devotional. Deacons of all kinds were there: some were slumped in the pews sobbing, others clustered in groups yelling at each other, while more still ran here and there. No one was taking any notice of anyone else—including two Sensitives trying their best to remain invisible. Merrick tentatively reached for the Bond and his Center, but he already could feel what awaited him.
He had thought the Silence Room was terrible, but at least he had known that if he went outside beyond its weirstoned walls, everything would be normal and as he had left it. Only Kolya’s hand against his back kept him moving in this new, far more terrible silence.
His eyes however were taking it all in. They passed a young Active, wrapped in her blue cloak, who was cradling her Gauntlet like a wounded baby. The runes were destroyed just as Kolya’s had been. Tears streamed from her eyes and she was rocking back and forth.
“I feel lucky,” Kolya whispered, “that thanks to Sorcha’s stubbornness I do not have a Bond to lose. Not a new one at least.”
It was a strange thing to say, but everyone appeared to be looking for comfort where they could find it.
“Where are the Presbyters?” he asked as they hurried, as discreetly as they could, down the length of the vast stone building.
“In Council. Mournling has gone into deep meditation and no one knows where Arch Abbot Rictun is. Everyone is in disarray.” They had reached the end of the Devotional and passed out into the courtyard.
When Merrick made for the gate, Kolya caught his elbow. “Not just yet. Your little dream friend told me of something else we must get in the library.”
Merrick was so dazed that he allowed himself to be bundled toward the library. The light here was bright and clear, but everything else was foggy. “How are the runes gone? How can that be?” he muttered under his breath, but none around him seemed to have answers.
Kolya pulled open the doors and they hurried into the dim recesses of the library. Merrick had spent many happy days here as a novitiate, and later had come here to have questions answered, or just to have a little silence and peace away from Sorcha. The librarian, Stoly, was young but dedicated to her charges. She was also a lay Sister, wearing the gray, and so would not be affected by the loss of Gauntlets or Strop.
Still when the two men burst in, they found her seated at her desk, hands before her, staring into nothingness. Kolya pointed off toward the back of the hall. “The book I want is back there. Stoly, may I?”
She waved one hand distractedly at him without making eye contact. “Whatever you need, Deacon Petav,” she said softly.
While Kolya strode off, Merrick decided to wait for a moment. He had never seen the librarian like this, but
