hem of his cloak singed, with one arm still around the pale and staring Zofiya.
He glanced once to his right, and smiled bleakly seeing the Imperial Guard fleeing before the Rossin, taking the Emperor with them.
“Kaleva was always the weakest of the siblings, but luckily I don’t need him anyway”—Derodak shrugged—“I have his sister.” With that, he grabbed Zofiya by the arm and pulled her in the opposite direction her brother had run. Merrick realized none of them could use Voishem, because of the protective cantrips worked into the walls of all the Abbey buildings to prevent geist infiltration.
What exactly his plan was, Merrick couldn’t fathom, but Sorcha spun on her heel, her eyes wild with rage. “We can’t let him get away or we might never find him. By the Bones, come on!” And then not waiting for his reply, she vaulted over the tumbled rock and chased after him.
Lujia and Sibuse were bleeding, injured, still capable of movement but not much else. The Conclave was broken. Merrick fixed them with a sad gaze, realizing they could well be the only members of the Order still capable of using their runes. He wasn’t sure how much that mattered now, but there was the faint chance it did. “Get out of here, and go back to Widow Vashill’s. You’ve done all you can here.” Then he turned his back on them and followed his partner into the dust and confusion of the end of the Order.
TWENTY-SIX
Alliance and Victory
The Rossin ran, following the guards out of the building and out onto the cool grass. It didn’t matter where they were; he tore them apart with great relish. Human blood was so much more satisfying than anything the Wrayth could give him; primal and run through with fear.
Behind him the Devotional of the Order began to crumble in on itself, a great rumble of stone and masonry falling to ruin. That it was the Deacons tearing it apart was a delicious irony. He leapt clear of the dust cloud and with a bunch of his hind legs ran a literal circle around the guards. They saw at once that they could not outdistance him here. Instead they huddled around their Emperor, who had drawn his sword and waited, all foolish confidence, for the beast to approach. Many had made the mistake of thinking him some overgrown lion or tiger that they could battle easily enough. He was more than that.
The Rossin knew the time had come to reveal himself to this latest in a long line of foolish Emperors.
The guards took potshots at him, but the bullets had about the same effect as beestings would have. He kept relentlessly stalking toward them, his golden-flecked eyes locked on Kaleva, Emperor of Arkaym.
Yet he did not spring upon them, as he could have easily done. Instead the great cat sat down at the outer edge of their circle and waited. Eventually they ran out of ammunition. He could smell the salty tang of their fear on the breeze. The Emperor’s was no different than any of the other men’s.
That was when the Rossin chose to speak. “Do you know me?”
The surprise on the humans’ faces was almost comical. It had been an age since the great cat had spoken into the world. All thought him a dumb Beast, but like all geistlords he was more than capable of it. Before he had nothing to say. After all, why would a wolf talk to sheep.
Kaleva, perhaps not the total fool the Rossin had taken him for, straightened. “Yes,” his voice wavered more than a fraction. Good, a little fear was an appropriate response.
“Then are you prepared to beg for your life now?” The great cat could feel Raed trying desperately to understand what was going on, but the geistlord stuffed him down deeper, where he would be able to see nothing. This was secret business he would not yet have the Young Pretender aware of.
The Emperor’s eyes were wide and frightened—just like all prey. “Perhaps,” he said, taking a stumbling step back. “If there is anything you want from the Empire, maybe a—”
“I can take most everything I need,” the Rossin snarled, showing his vast expanse of teeth, “but I want something from you.”
The Emperor froze, perhaps sensing the scent of a deal in the air. His eyes darted to the crumbling Devotional, and the Rossin knew what his tiny thoughts were; there was now no Order to protect him from the geists. “What…” He stopped and coughed up some of the dust that was in the air. “What can I do for you?”
He was so weak, and this moment so easy, that the Rossin would have laughed, had he been in the mood. However seeing his old Tormentor had not put him in a good mood. That ancient foe was moving pawns on the table, so now it was time for the geistlord to do the same.
“It is what I can do for you,” he growled. “I will be willing to serve your new line of Emperors as I did the old one. I gave them power and prestige that was not questioned for nearly a thousand years. I will lay the family that bears my name low for you…for a price.”
The Emperor’s eyes gleamed. “What would that be?”
“There is an object, a trinket I gave the first of my line, that lies at the heart of the palace. It is the one place in this realm I cannot go. When the time is right you will fetch it for me.”
“Is that time now?” Kaleva swallowed hard.
The Rossin tilted his head up and examined the stars closely. “No, not just yet…but very, very soon.” He fixed his gaze on the human before him. “Do you agree? Have we a pact?”
The mortal did not even hesitate. The words were barely out of the Rossin’s fanged mouth before Kaleva, Emperor of Arkaym said, “I do.”
The essence of one was now bound to the other. It was not yet as strong as a Bond of the Order, but it would grow with time. They still had a little of that. The Rossin would have purred, if he could.
“However, if anyone finds out I made a deal with a geistlord—” Kaleva paused and stared pointedly at his half dozen men who were beginning to look at him with genuine horror. It was an easily fixed problem.
The Rossin unleashed himself upon the remaining guards and cut them down in bloody swathes where they stood. He was as swift as a desert wind, and just as unforgiving. When he turned back to Kaleva, his muzzle was covered in scarlet and gore.
“Do you see how things are with me in your service?” The Beast was, after so long in the human realm, a consummate liar.
The Emperor nodded, the look of befuddlement never leaving his face. He could not understand why this was happening or quite what it meant. Perhaps the Tormentor had done the Rossin a grand favor; messing with the Emperor’s mind and soul made him very easy to manipulate now.
“Then go,” he snarled, “and await my call.”
Kaleva, the Emperor of Arkaym, turned and ran like a child dismissed from school. The Rossin watched him, while licking the remains of the Imperial Guard from his mouth. The pieces were nearly all assembled, but for now he would feast.
The great cat dropped his head, and began to devour the soldiers who had given their life for a worthless leader.
The Mother Abbey was being reduced to rubble. The runes that had been unleashed were pulling it apart— everything that the Order of the Eye and the Fist had stood for was falling down around her.
The horror of that remained distant to Sorcha—put away for examination at another time. All she knew was that it was no longer the place she had loved and grown accustomed to; now it was merely an obstacle. She could feel the ends of her hair burning, and hear the scream of stone tumbling behind her as she ran up the nave in pursuit of del Rue—now revealed as Derodak. The structure, once punctured, could not hold itself upright, and the loss of the columns sealed the Devotional’s fate. The night sky was visible through the once soaring roof, and it was framed in green flames. In the screaming recesses of her mind, Sorcha knew the Order of the Eye and the Fist would never come here again, and for that she would make her enemy pay. She ran harder, pumping her arms, and leaping as best she could over broken pews and piles of still-sliding stone.
Dimly, Sorcha realized Merrick was trying to keep up with her, but she summoned Seym, and drew strength from the Rune of Flesh to power her pursuit ahead of him. Her partner would only try and stop her, and she would not let that happen. She scrambled after Derodak with the intensity of a lion on the chase, but this was no gazelle she was chasing.
