then this was a day of confusion. Pulling up a chair, he sat down next to her and touched the back of her hand.
She glanced up as if he had shot her. Her green eyes were brimming with unshed tears, and she brushed at them distractedly. “Deacon Chambers? Oh, by the Bones, Merrick!” Now her hand clenched around his.
It was so strange to have the librarian touching him when Stoly had always been so self-contained and almost aloof. Yet, she was also a woman of knowledge, and he knew at this moment that they needed knowledge, so he did not disentangle his fingers from hers. They were all looking for reassurance wherever they could find it after all.
So he clenched her fingertips tightly. “What has happened Stoly? The runes destroyed? How is that possible?” He would have thought maybe a few of his colleagues might have come here for answers. His time in the Silence Room had perhaps prepared him better for all this.
In the thick but somehow comforting quiet of the library, he could hear Kolya moving around, walking among the tall stacks of books, parchments and tablets. But what did any of that history matter if the Order was broken? Merrick swallowed hard on his own despair.
“The Pattern,” Stoly murmured. “It has to be the Pattern.”
The younger Deacon’s head flicked up, and he stared at the librarian. “The Pattern? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
Stoly leaned back and closed her eyes. “You would not have. It is a secret for the Council, and of course, for your humble librarian.”
“When the first Deacon made the first Gauntlets and Strops, there was a Pattern he followed; a recipe you might say, for how to use the runes to wield the power of the geists. Every Order of Deacons since then has made their own Pattern after each new schism. When the Order came to Arkaym they swore fealty to the Emperor, and as part of that oath they handed over the Pattern.” She looked up at Merrick and shook her head. “No one thought it was anything more than a ritual. A sign of trust—because why would the Emperor destroy the Order?”
Merrick leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes, but no matter what he did he saw del Rue’s satisfied smile. How long had Zofiya said that poisonous man had been working on the Emperor? How many hours had he devoted to twisting Kaleva’s opinion of the Order of the Eye and the Fist? And how hard had he laughed when Merrick fell into bed with the Grand Duchess?
He loved the Order. It had given him control and strength in a world where he thought he would never have those things. Now, the grim truth was, it seemed that he had assisted in its destruction.
“We have to hurry.” Kolya appeared out of the stacks, a leather-bound and rather dusty book under one arm. Merrick and Stoly jumped at his sudden arrival.
She might be traumatized by the day’s events, but she was still a librarian. “Where did you get that?” she snapped.
Kolya actually glared at her—the first time Merrick had seen any sign of anger from the mild Sensitive. “Do you think now is the time to argue about such things? Need I remind you what is happening?”
Stoly glanced between the two men before slumping back in her chair. “Take what you want, Deacon. I hope it helps—as if anything can now.”
Apparently this latest crisis had roused something in even Sorcha’s former husband and partner. Merrick wondered what she would think of that. In fact, he wondered what she would be thinking right at this moment when her Gauntlets were gone. She was older than he, and couldn’t even remember life before the Order.
He barely had time to thank Stoly before Kolya pulled him out of the library. “They will be coming to get you from the Silence Room soon enough. Who do you think they will throw to the wolves for this?”
Together, heads down, hoods firmly in place, they walked as quickly as they dared toward the gate. Merrick didn’t hazard a look up, but by straining his ears, he was sure he could make out more organized sounds coming from behind them in the direction of the Devotional. Despite himself, he picked up the pace.
They reached the postern gate. Two lay Brothers were still there, but they were talking to each other and not taking much notice of anything else. They wouldn’t stop two Sensitives leaving when the whole Mother Abbey was in turmoil.
They wouldn’t, until a voice called out. “Close the gate!”
Merrick and Kolya winced, and spun around. It was indeed Arch Abbot Rictun, with the rest of the Presbyterial Council trotting to catch up to him. All of them were making quick time toward the two Sensitives.
Merrick spun around, and contemplated running for it, but the lay Brothers had heard their leader and shoved the lever to bring down the portcullis. Hearing their councilors, all of the confused and frightened Deacons in the area began to gather around Merrick and Kolya. It was incredible. These were his friends, his colleagues, his classmates but now their expressions were dark. Everything they had known and relied on had been taken away, and they were looking for answers—and scapegoats.
Rictun, the handsome, tall Arch Abbot, now looked haggard and angry. “Come back to the Silence Room, Deacon Chambers.”
Merrick swallowed hard. “There hardly seems to be any reason for that. I think I would like to pursue my own investigation since I am the one accused of stealing away the Grand Duchess Zofiya.”
“We cannot allow that.” The Presbyter Secondo Zathra Trelaine tottered forward. He was a tiny bundle of scars and wrinkles, and his voice was soft, yet when he spoke every Deacon, Active, Sensitive and lay Brother listened. “We must surrender you to the Emperor if we hope to rebuild the Gauntlet and the Strop.” He pointed straight at Merrick, and the young Deacon flinched.
Once, the gaze of the former Presbyter of the Actives would have been terrifying. The man had stood in the center of monumental powers and commanded them all. He’d banished and destroyed more geists than Merrick could imagine—yet even he was willing to throw the young Deacon to the Imperial wolf to get his powers back. If that was even possible.
He ran his eye over the throng of his fellows. Some met his gaze with grim determination, but many of them glanced away, staring at their toes or at the dark clouds gathering above them. He couldn’t feel a Bond with any of them, except—oddly enough—with the one at his back. Kolya was the only one to remain at his side.
The Deacons were still as dedicated and disciplined as he knew them to be, but the loyalty he’d felt a part of was gone. He really was alone.
However, he still had to find Zofiya, and he couldn’t do that from a prison cell.
“I didn’t think weapons would be necessary,” Kolya whispered to him, “but now I wonder if I should have —”
“No,” Merrick replied sharply, “I will not strike down any of our own.”
The crowd now advancing on them, however, did not look like they shared his misgivings about violence. Among them, Merrick spotted another face. This one did not look angry or distressed. Deacon Garil Reeceson instead looked broken. Merrick wondered if the old Deacon had foreseen all of this coming to pass.
They were all operating without the usual information they got from their Centers and their Sensitivity, and they were all frightened by what had happened. Some of the Deacons facing him had been raised as children within the safety of the Order.
Merrick knew he couldn’t allow himself to be taken. Del Rue would win—and with very little effort.
“I’m sorry,” Merrick whispered, “I am so sorry.”
And then deep within him, beyond the training of the Order, the spark ignited. Somehow, without the strictures and constraints learned in the Mother Abbey, Merrick’s wild talent found him. It was a smoldering ember that had been waiting to be blown upon. With a cry, Merrick let it out. All of his discipline and control was swept away; he had no way of directing or holding it back.
The wildness fanned out among all of the Order gathered in the courtyard, and then spread from there to wrap itself around the Mother Abbey itself. It pierced all of them through, whispered that everything they held dear and believed in was wasted. Then it howled into their deepest souls that these most important things were lost, and they were utterly alone. Nothing remained.
Merrick was the calm center in a storm of broken dreams, but he was as lost as they were. When he opened his eyes, swaying slightly on his feet, he was the only one still standing. Everyone, from high-and-mighty Presbyter, to lowly lay Deacon from the infirmary, was curled up on the pavement, their arms clutching their knees and their eyes wide and staring.
