“Yes,” she replied, leaning her slight weight against the crook of his arm, and hitching up her skirt to edge past a stack of barrels. “My father is a physician and works for the Deacons as a lay healer. I was raised in Ulrich, and now I live there assisting him.”
“Then I was not really lying.” He chuckled. “You are almost part of the Order.”
Merrick felt her stiffen a little against his side. This close, that sweet scent was very distracting, but he still caught a glance she shot him; it was frightened, or possibly angry. Either he wasn’t very good at this chitchat or something else was bothering her. Even after years of study, he couldn’t be that clumsy.
Clearing his throat, he stumbled on. “Did you come from the south?”
She nodded, pulling her dress slightly up at the hem. “Yes, from Vermillion. I was visiting a sick relative there. We lived in the city when I was a child, before—” She paused. “Before my father lost his position there.” He didn’t need to be a Sensitive to know that was a subject she was entirely unhappy with, but it explained the worn appearance of a once-beautiful dress.
Yet her revelation had finally given him something to say. “It was lucky you were ahead of us. My partner and I were attacked on the road. A rather nasty geist.”
The look she gave him made him realize the error of it immediately. “You . . . you were attacked?”
“Yes, most likely an ambush.” He tried to swallow his words but they kept tumbling out.
Her eyes dipped away from him. “It was indeed lucky that I was ahead of you, not behind. Anything could have happened.”
Merrick felt his face heating up. “Then we would not have been able to assist you with passage. Fate is sometimes kind.”
They reached the ship and paused. The Breed horses and Horace the pack mule were being led up the rear gangway and into the hold. Well accustomed to travel, they were providing no problems, and the crew loading them appeared to know what they were doing.
“The Abbey only has two ships stationed at Vermillion”—Merrick decided to try another subject with the silent woman—“and both are to the south with the Imperial Navy. No one thought that they would be needed at this time of year.”
She turned and faced him, looking directly up at him, a slight smile curving her bow-shaped lips. “And why exactly is it that you are going to Ulrich this late in the season, Reverend Deacon?”
Merrick was caught by surprise. Most people would not question the movements of any from the Order, but it was perhaps an understandable query considering that they had nearly caused her to be stuck in the South. Still, he couldn’t just divulge what he’d read in the report. “The Deacons there are in need of assistance before winter sets in.” He hoped she would assume it was a leaky roof, or maybe illness.
“The outpost is small.” Nynnia lifted the edge of her skirt and walked up the gangplank unassisted. “I hope you will not be disappointed by what you find there.”
Up on deck, his partner was watching the stowing of the mounts with an eagle eye, but she did look up in Merrick’s direction when they approached. Luckily, the smirk had gone. “So, who is our newest recruit, Deacon?”
“Miss Nynnia Macthcoll, may I present my partner, Deacon Sorcha Faris.” He waited for the fireworks to begin.
“Deacon Faris.” The younger woman inclined her head. “You would be the Deacon who expelled the ghast from Baron Leit last summer.”
Sorcha’s eyebrows shot up, but the corners of her mouth twitched. While the Order did not like its members to be prideful, Merrick could understand a little of the feeling he was sensing across the Bond. Seldom was the work of the Deacons actually discussed in polite society. “My husband and I were involved with that case. I didn’t realize that word of it had got out.”
“Miss Macthcoll is the daughter of the physician stationed at the outpost in Ulrich.”
Across the Bond he felt Sorcha’s interest wane.
I’ll leave you to deal with the pretty face.
“Well, let us hope we have smooth sailing all the way there.” Sorcha gestured to the front of the ship, where a tall man dressed in oilskins and sporting a massive red beard was supervising the securing of the hatch. “The captain seems to think that we may be lucky with the weather.”
Without so much as a farewell, she turned and went below, no doubt to see if their accommodation was as good as their horses’. Merrick bit back the urge to apologize for his partner’s rudeness. At all times, bonded Deacons were supposed to show solidarity. If Nynnia knew anything about the Order, she would be surprised if he showed any disloyalty.
“Seven days,” the young lady said, turning to look where the crew were casting off. “Even one day can be a long time in these oceans. I doubt if the captain is being anything other than reassuring to your partner. No one can tell what the weather will do in these currents.”
Then she excused herself most sweetly and went below to find her cabin.
Indeed, this was going to be a long trip. Merrick sighed and idly fingered his belt pocket where the Strop lay curled. He’d feared having to keep his thoughts reined in and away from Sorcha, but now with this new heady distraction he doubted if he would be able to. He imagined that this journey would be full of jabs and jokes of all kinds. Even though he expected Ulrich to be rather bleak, Merrick found he was looking forward to seeing it.
After two days of travel, Sorcha was ready to throw herself over the side and swim for it. Merrick and his cow eyes were only physical symptoms of what leaked across the Bond. It was deeply disturbing to feel his attraction to this girl as intimately as Sorcha felt it.
It would have been bad enough if she’d known him for years, but they had been partnered for only a week. She was standing on the deck on the third morning, smoking a cigar that she had hoped to keep at least until Ulrich. She had needed an excuse to get away from the general foolishness belowdecks. Merrick was too damn Sensitive.
Blowing out a plume of smoke, she watched the umber sun wallow out of the sea. The thought crossed her mind that she was either old and bitter, or old and jealous. Kolya’s courting of her had been a lot more measured and a lot less romantic. Partners for a year—it had seemed the logical thing—there had been little in the way of romance.
Certainly there was no injunction against marrying one’s partner, nor anyone else, but within the Order, marriages were not common. Life was often short and brutal for Deacons, and Sorcha was honestly surprised every day that neither she nor Kolya had been killed thus far. He had been a good friend and partner—but perhaps she’d been expecting their marriage to end more dramatically than it was—most likely in her own death.
Yet we’re both alive.
She drew another warm, thick mouthful of smoke.
And we both know it isn’t enough anymore.
This early in the morning, she knew she was prone to maudlin thoughts. She usually enjoyed traveling by water, since the geist danger was limited to only the occasional storm if they passed close to the land. Not today, however. Sorcha found she was as tense as a coiled spring and her hands were actually white-knuckled on the railing. Apparently not even a cigar could relax her.
“Bloody Bones,” she muttered to herself. A Deacon’s life was short enough, and now she couldn’t even enjoy her one vice. The silver hip flask in her cloak pocket downstairs was really only for emergencies.
A startled caw from above made her glance upward. Her brow furrowed. A collection of seabirds, gulls and cormorants circled above the ship. She had traveled the ocean many times, but could not recall having seen so many birds behaving in such a way. A shiver of apprehension ran up her spine. Sometimes the natural world had a strange reaction to the Otherside; animals of all kinds were very aware of fluctuations in the ether. Her jaw clenched as she let her Center flit out, but again there was nothing. In the good old days, she would have been confident that she would have at least been able to sense anything dangerous. These, however, were no longer the good old days.
She was just about to go below and rouse her sleeping partner when something on the horizon caught her eye. Captain Tarce was giving another of his crew an ear bashing and was clearly too busy to notice. She strode over to him and requisitioned his spyglass from his belt while he was distracted. Before he could argue, she was back at the starboard side peering into the swirling mass of red dawn that concealed what she couldn’t see with the naked eye. One glance through the scope, and she was yelling at the Captain. “Get my partner up here—now!”
Luckily, familiarity with Deacons had not bred contempt. Merrick was at her shoulder in mercifully quick time. Across the Bond, she could feel his sleepiness evaporating. She handed him the spyglass wordlessly. Once it was to his eye, she remarked, “There are, indeed, no damn rules anymore.”
With the naked eye, Sorcha could see the oncoming storm well enough, but with the spyglass Merrick would be able to see what she’d observed: a ship running before it like a fox pursued by hounds.
Now the Captain was in on the game. Pressing his swelling stomach against the rail, he managed to get his spyglass back. When he looked away from it, his face was pale.
“Now, I’m no sailor,” Sorcha said to him, “but that looks as if the storm is bearing down on it. Do you recognize the ship?”
“The flag is wrapped around the pole but . . . but . . .” Tarce spluttered. “A geist storm, so far from land? It’s . . . it’s . . .”
“Impossible?” she snapped. “We know. May I suggest we take the other ship’s example and make a run for safe harbor if we can?”
“All hands!” Tarce flew into action that belied his size. Soon crew were scrambling about the rigging, tying it down and preparing to flee before the wind. Cargo ships ran with the bare minimum of crew to increase profits—it was going to be a close call.
In the midst of it, the two Deacons stood and watched the storm. It was no normal phenomenon of weather. The clouds were purple gray, curled on one another like a group of angry fists. In comparison, the ship racing before the storm looked like a paper boat.
Merrick let out a shuddering breath. “A geist storm and no land in sight—is no rule sacred?”
Sorcha had to agree with him. Whoever had cut loose the rules of the unliving seemed to be following the pair of Deacons. If the Tinkers’ camp had been an attempt at an ambush, as she suspected, then this might be a frontal assault.
Merrick was silent at her side, peering forward. Sorcha felt his Center snap away and, turning, shared his Sight. The clouds were not geist-drawn, but something of the Otherside was in them.
“A witch,” Sorcha spat. “The idiot on that ship has drawn power to give them wind for their sails.”
“It seems to be working rather well.”
She turned on him. “You’re not one of those Deacons, are you, Chambers? The ‘let’s let everyone have a taste of the Otherside’ fools?”
The young man shrugged, and it was confirmed. As far as Sorcha was concerned, witches and warlocks, as those untrained or untrainable by the Abbey called themselves, should still be burned as they had been in the old days. This was supposedly a more enlightened age, but those who meddled with the Otherside still deserved to be punished. Nothing but trouble followed in their wake. Among the younger Deacons and novices, there was a growing movement that felt these untrained were as entitled as Deacons to reach for the power; a belief that they were as worthy of it as any from the Order.
Such foolish ideas. As Sorcha watched the distant ship on the horizon, pushed along by winds of its own making, she felt an angry knot develop in the pit of her stomach. People using Otherside powers made her skin crawl, but to tap into it merely to get your ship ticking along faster was madness.
She was just about to turn around and let the Captain know that they were in no danger from the storm, when Merrick’s Sight once more leapt up around her. The world plunged into red, violent patterns.
Merrick cried out, but she didn’t quite hear him over the roaring in her ears. The patterns of geist that had erupted from the water were the least of their problems.
The aberrant geist had woken something in the sea below; something massive. The stench of salt and rotting seaweed hit them all like a club in the face, but it was the noise that caused the crew to howl in terror. A high-pitched keen like a thousand rusted gates swinging open made conscious thought, for a moment, impossible.
Sorcha craned her neck up, watching, stunned, as two giant coiled loops, twice the height of the main mast, snapped out of the water. For a moment, her brain struggled with one thought:
A possession—it’s possessed a creature of the deep.
A great head, scaled and reptilian, punched out of the water only twenty feet to starboard. The eyes, as big as shields, gleamed pitch-black. The distant storm was, indeed, the least of their worries now.
Flicking her head around, she saw Merrick grabbing up that foolish girl he had been making cow eyes at. Nynnia was only just emerging from belowdecks, but she seemed to be an oasis of ridiculous calm in a tempest of terror. Everywhere, the ship was in chaos; sailors were screaming, the Captain was bellowing, and sails and rigging were snapping.
It was impossible to call to Merrick over the monster’s high-pitched keen, the yelling of the sailors and the almighty cracks coming from the dying ship. Instead, she pushed across the Bond. This was no leak; it was a scream.
Follow me. Give me Sight.
Her call must have gotten through, because the air suddenly bloomed. The howl of a falling mast grated at her ears, but now she had the pinpoint accuracy of Sight. The mast seemed to move in slow motion, predictable and easily avoided. She stepped aside nimbly as it crashed to the deck only feet away. Sea spray was flying everywhere, almost blinding her. A huge wave of water, kicked up by the thrashing monster, crashed into her. The taste of salt flooded her senses, enhanced by her shared Sensitivity. At least she had wrapped her cigars up in oilskin. Everything else was soaked. Yet however concerned she might be about her cigars, something else was even more precious.