“The natural color is white”—he rubbed it between his fingers—“but the glow is from another kind of lichen. Can you guess what it does?”
Raed opened his mouth for a rather snappy reply, but Sorcha tugged on his hand. “Haven’t a clue. Why don’t you tell us?” Surprisingly, there was not a trace of irony in her voice.
“It’s a barrier; a barrier against geist power.” He waved his hand excitedly. “It shields this place from detection. After all, we are sitting on the largest repository of Sensitives on the continent. Even if they were all part of a conspiracy to keep the matrix a secret . . .” Merrick paused to consider that dread statement. “Even if they are, I should have been able to sense something.”
“I’m feeling something myself now.” Raed was sure the shadows were deeper now. The spot between his shoulder blades was twitching.
Sorcha took a sample of the rock dust from her partner’s fingertips, ignoring the Pretender’s grumbles. “Well, that explains it . . . but that is an awful lot of trouble for just this matrix.” She dropped to her haunches and looked more closely at the pools.
Raed wanted nothing at all to do with them, but they had come this far. Sorcha was leaning so close to them that strands of her copper hair, which had come loose, almost threatened to break the tensioned surface.
“Careful!” Merrick crouched down next to her. “The power here is very finely balanced, and Horris never defined what would happen if it were broken.”
With a slight clearing of her throat, Sorcha straightened up.
“So, who built this thing?” Raed asked, averting his eyes from the disturbing images.
Merrick was so intent that he didn’t answer, instead muttering under his breath, “The answer is here somewhere.” Sorcha and he spread out, staring down into the fractured possibilities with an interest that quite unnerved the Pretender. This wasn’t finding the Arch Abbot, he felt like reminding them.
It was Sorcha who let out the first gasp.
Merrick darted to her side. “Have you found—by the Bones!”
Sorcha spun on Raed. “You need to see this.”
The look on her face brooked no argument. At her side, looking down, he understood.
He had no love of the Emperor or his kin, but the shimmering pool that reflected the Grand Duchess’ assassination showed not just her death; the City of Vermillion was in flames behind her. The scenes around that one showed her being gunned down: all showed the city burning, though the method of her murder varied. All these possibilities seemed to show death and disaster for the citizens of the city—the city that Raed had been brought up to believe was his.
“Whatever they are planning,” Merrick said, “it must need a great deal of death and the blood of the Grand Duchess Zofiya.”
“That is one hell of a summoning,” Sorcha chimed in grimly. “It will make the Ulrich Priory look like a summer picnic.”
“Is there no other possibility?” Raed said, feeling his pulse race. If they were not trying to bring on the end times, it—it was damn close.
They scrambled about, desperately looking for any other sort of outcome. And then by sheer chance he found it. A small pool reflected something he would never have guessed in dream or nightmare. He was standing in place of the Grand Duchess, pulling her out of harm’s way; the bullet missing its target and burying itself into his own chest.
Raed cleared his throat while the others looked on in silence. “Just how accurate are these things?”
“Truthfully, I don’t know.” Merrick didn’t sugarcoat his answer. “Too many variables . . .”
“But in this one, the city isn’t burning.” Raed took a deep breath, like before plunging into an icy ocean. “In this one, Vermillion survives. Do you know where it is?”
Sorcha was grinding her teeth a little, and he hoped it was concern warring with common sense.
She meant well. She had always meant well, despite everything. He didn’t care that Merrick was only feet away and watching with steady brown eyes. Raed cupped her head in his hands. She tried to pull loose, but he wouldn’t let her go. “Tell me where this is, Sorcha!”
Her blue eyes, like chips of ice in the red light of the cavern, finally were able to meet his. He felt her swallow hard. “Brick-maker’s Lane.” The words came out as if choked.
“Then we know where we have to go.”
TWENTY-TWO
The Danger of Vespers
They followed the water out of the caverns. Merrick came up with that idea, and Sorcha was only too grateful to let her younger partner take the lead. She trailed at the rear as Raed followed Merrick. The cave grew narrower and the red light dimmed as they got out from under the baleful presence of the Possibility Matrix.
Raed caught her arm just as Merrick disappeared from view around a corner. The Pretender’s lips against her ear were for a moment warm and distracting, until he whispered into it, “Did you notice the one person who was not shown in that contraption?”
He pulled back, and in the light of the lantern his eyes were stern. Comprehension flooded across her mind: Nynnia. The slip of a girl should have been in many of those scenes, but she had not been; what exactly that meant, Sorcha couldn’t grasp.
Raed tilted his head and shrugged, indicating he too was at a loss. Neither of them asked Merrick, though; he was too busy trying to get them out without going back up through the Mother Abbey.
They went on, wrapped in silence and contemplation. Sorcha couldn’t get the images she had seen in the Possibility Matrix out of her mind. Fire was one of the true elements of the geistlords, and were Vermillion to burn, it could mean only one thing: someone wanted to release a hell of a lot of them.
History was littered with plenty of crazed people’s attempts to reach the deepest parts of the Otherside. All had ended in disaster for the summoner and usually a fair proportion of the innocents around them.
Sorcha was so concentrated on these dire thoughts that she nearly crawled into Raed. “Not right now,” he quipped as she brushed against his breeches. “Merrick says there is a large pool of water ahead. Shall we risk swimming under it?”
“Not much choice, unless we want to go back through the Abbey,” she said, suddenly feeling the walls closing in on her.
They swam, diving down beneath the rock and into the frigid water of the lagoon. Sorcha ducked under, feeling her chest constrict as if a person were sitting on it. Her muscles tensed as she concentrated on not taking a disastrous gulp of water. For a moment it felt as though her arms and legs were made of lead and she might just sink to the bottom of the lagoon. Then the Bond clicked over in her head, guiding her like a compass, swinging reliably north, if north were the two men. Though her skin was stinging uncomfortably, she was able to kick out and swim alongside Raed and Merrick as they popped up in the predawn grayness of the city.
Together they swam to an empty pier. It looked like they were only a few streets away from the Abbey at the Prince’s Canal. The boats bobbing nearby were painted the bright orange that said they were available for hire, but there was no sign of any ferrymen just yet. This deep into Vermillion, trade was nonexistent until the daylight hours. Activities that required darkness were carried out farther away on the fringes—places that these city-sanctioned ferries would not go.
As they hauled themselves onto the pier, Merrick gasped through chattering teeth, “We—we are lucky the lagoon isn’t—isn’t frozen.”
“Yes,” Raed choked, wringing out his cloak in a vain attempt to get dry. “Very damn lucky.”
Sorcha did the same to her hair before tying it back up against the nape of her neck. The important thing here was to think only one step ahead at a time. If she tried to take in the big picture, she might just seize up. If they were to change the possibilities they had seen in the matrix, then they would need to work at the top of their efficiency—they couldn’t afford to begin doubting. “Now we need to find the others at this tavern and get to Brickmaker’s Lane. No way of telling when those events may happen.”
Raed nodded, and then smiled wickedly. “If I know the habits of aristocrats at all, it won’t be early. Not much of a reputation for early risers.” He craned his head over the tops of the boats and voiced the one issue that was now bothering Sorcha. “The question is—how do we get to the tavern? Normal observers I can handle, but this Sight thing—”
“I have an idea,” Merrick chimed in, and raised a leather pouch with the shape of a tin inside. It was a very familiar shape.
Sorcha’s hand flew to her pockets. It was indeed the very same container she kept her cigars in. “How did you—”
“Now, now.” The young man’s eyes gleamed with delight at his having managed to fool her. “Some of us weren’t brought up by the Abbey—some of us learned a thing or two beforehand.”
He pulled the tin out of the pouch and opened it. Inside were not the two remaining cigars Sorcha had gratefully accepted as gifts from the citizens of Ulrich, but a mound of the white rock dust from the cavern.
Despite their dire situation, she felt rage fill her. “Where are my cigars, Merrick?”
“I needed to keep this dry, and believe me, this could save—”
She snatched the tin off him and stared hopelessly at the pile of dust. “Where—where are the cigars?” she choked out. She’d been planning to grab a moment, even just a short one, before heading to Brickmaker’s Lane. Facing imminent death, it was the least she deserved.
When Merrick pulled the sad, wet remnants out of his pocket she almost sobbed. It was too bitter an end for such a fine smoke as a Nythrumi gold. A crime. Among all the danger, this was the last straw.
“You better have an explanation, Chambers!”
At her back, she could hear Raed break into laughter. She understood it was faintly ridiculous to be worrying about her cigars at this point, but damn it, they were the only part of her old life that she had left.
The young Deacon smiled at her, a reaction that only a few weeks before would have provoked a damn slap in the face. “The rock blocks magic . . . My thinking was, if it could do that, what might it do if used in a cantrip?”
Through her dismay, Sorcha’s brain clicked over on that concept. The design
ylvavita
could hide people in plain sight well enough for the ungifted, but wasn’t even worth the bother against Deacons. However, if Merrick was right, then maybe it was. Her cigars would have at least been sacrificed for a worthy cause.
“I’ll buy you two fine new cigars,” Raed whispered to her in a voice that made her heart pick up its pace. She turned and smiled at him, glad that he’d been able to forgive her the Bond—or at least put it out of his head enough to go on.
In the end Raed very skillfully jimmied open the ferrymen’s silent building, and they were able to find some clothes there. It felt wrong to stuff their cloaks, Order emblems and talismans into rough sacking bags. Stripped of clothing she’d been wearing since a child, Sorcha felt weakened somehow.
It was silly, but there it was. Raed was also the expert in disguise, and before she knew it he had them cloaked and looking nothing like two powerful Deacons. Merrick’s hair was twisted at odd angles, his face smeared with dirt, and, at the Pretender’s direction, he even dragged his foot a little.
He concealed Sorcha’s femininity with extra clothes, and tied the bundle of sacks on her back. It wasn’t heavy, but it was still slightly galling. It was with some grim humor that she cleaned the first cantrip off Raed’s forehead. “All right, let’s see if this works.” Dipping her finger in the dust, she drew the new design, all curls and flourishes on his warm skin, and then turned to Merrick.
The younger Deacon let his Center fall away; she could feel it like it was her own. He cast his head from side to side. “I think it works. If I’m not looking specifically for you, my Sight slides off you.”
“As long as he doesn’t do anything to draw attention,” Sorcha commented wryly, to which Raed let out a little chuckle. “If I can sacrifice my cigars, then you can sacrifice your pirate swagger. Now, Merrick, try the cantrip on me.”
He did so and then stood back to examine the effect. “Not quite as effective, but in a crowd of people I think it would hold.”
It wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement, but it was all they had. Readjusting their disguises, they went out into the street. Luckily away from the Prince’s Canal, trade was beginning to pick up; three more disheveled porters made not one jot of difference. They worked their way, dodging carts and streams of pedestrians, to Dyer’s Lane and the little tavern called the Red Flag. The street reeked of the trade it was named for, but at least it was a stench of this world.
Raed had a quiet word with the craggy-faced proprietor and they were led out to a back room where Aachon and the crew, as well as Nynnia and her father, were waiting. Their faces showed the feral looks of the hunted. Sorcha guessed the same expression was on her face.
“What did you find out, my prince?” Aachon cut straight to the point, his dark eyes lingering only momentarily on their garb.
“The Arch Abbot has been taken and the Grand Duchess will be sacrificed, most likely by day’s end.” Raed took a seat next to his first mate and poured himself a tankard of ale. No one said a word until he had drunk his fill. He let out a satisfied gasp and dropped the tumbler back to the table. “And what’s more, forces unknown have something called a Possibility Matrix, in which they can see the future.”
The crew members’ eyes widened at that. Frith swore, “By the Ancients, Captain—if they can do that, how can we beat them?”
Nynnia sat staring into her cup of ale. Almost too quietly to be heard, she said, “The future is a very fragile thing. The possibilities are always changing. If we move quickly enough and act unpredictably enough, it is not impossible to beat.”
Sorcha gave her a startled look as the feeling in the back of her head changed from a niggle of little importance into something far more concerning. “What can you possibly know of such things?” she barked.