“I know much, Deacon Faris.” She raised her eyes until they met Sorcha’s. Suddenly the world contracted around the slim young woman’s form. None but the Deacons in the room could feel it, but whatever cunning mask she had fashioned for herself had now slipped.
Sorcha pushed back from the table and leapt to her feet. “What are you?” she demanded.
Merrick’s Center flared as he too surged upright. “Nynnia?” His voice cracked even as he stood at Sorcha’s side.
Nynnia remained seated, calm, but her father leapt up. “Foolish Deacons! You only ever see what you want to.” The old man’s eyes bulged and his fists clenched at his side. If his relationship with Nynnia was an act, it was a damn good one.
She is not a geist.
Merrick’s voice in Sorcha’s head was steady, despite what was being revealed.
I cannot tell what she is, but she is not one of their kind.
Dazzled as he was by Nynnia, Sorcha still did not doubt his skill.
Nynnia spoke but did not look directly at Merrick. “You know something of the Murashev.” No expression touched her young features, but her eyes were swimming with power. “Therefore you cannot be ignorant of what it could do in this world. We have very little time. Do you want to stay and argue or save this world?”
For a moment they stood there, frozen in a tableau: the Deacons poised, Kyrix glaring, the crew looking about in confusion and Nynnia the calm center of it all.
Sorcha could hear her heart beating in her chest, yet much as she hated to trust Nynnia—they had no other choice. And she had saved Merrick’s life. Slowly both Deacons took their seats.
Nynnia turned her head and looked out the grubby window. “What else did you see in the waters?” she asked, her tone as distant as if she were asking about the weather or the price of embroidery thread.
“We saw Vermillion burning,” Merrick muttered.
“Sorry to hear about Vermillion,” Aachon said coldly, “but why should we care about the usurper’s sister?”
Sorcha was about to open her mouth and reply when Nynnia suddenly flung herself across the table. The tumble was so unexpected that the others seated around her had only time to gape as she spun past them and collided with a man who had come up behind them.
For a second Sorcha thought the creature had gone quite mad, and she was ready to come to the aid of the other patron when she saw the gleam of metal in his hand. Then everything got more confused. Shouts rang out as Raed spun around to face the dozen or so intruders. The crew leapt to his defense, while Merrick and Sorcha scrambled to get out of the way as the giant Aachon picked up the table and threw it at those threatening his captain. A bar fight was obviously not an unknown situation for these men, but Sorcha also managed to get in a few punches while chaos reigned.
Yet it was Nynnia who was the center of the storm. Her lithe body, which had seemed beautiful but useless, now revealed itself to have the elegance of a deadly dancer. She spun and whirled, knocking men aside with graceful kicks that should have been set to music. While the crew of the Dominion fought with deft brutality, it was Nynnia whom Sorcha could not stop watching.
The fight was over quickly; the thugs who were not sent streaming from the tavern were lying unconscious on the floor. “Nynnia!” Merrick’s horrified yell stopped the others in mid-congratulations. The slim woman was staring down numbly at the handle of the knife buried just below her ribs; blood was staining her petal-colored dress. It was a deadly wound, tilted upward into vital organs.
But before Merrick could reach her, Nynnia’s father, who had stayed beyond the battle, moved to her. With a little grunt, Kyrix pulled the knife loose. After exchanging a glance with his daughter, he threw the dagger away without even looking at it. It clanged into the corner.
“Nynnia?” Merrick took her arm as if he expected her to fall over. She didn’t stop him as his fingers gingerly explored the gash in her robe. Beneath, there was nothing but smooth flesh. “Nynnia . . . you should . . . What—” He paused to catch his breath.
“We have no time for explanations.” She pressed the tips of her long fingers against the line of his jaw. “I am more than you think, that is true, but I also have the same aims as you—to stop the Murashev and save Vermillion.” She looked around at the others. “Do you trust me?”
They looked at her hard, then around at one another. Sorcha didn’t want to influence them, so she stayed silent. She’d made up her own mind. Whatever Nynnia was, she was powerful, and they needed all the friends they could get at this point. Still, if Raed and his crew rejected her, Sorcha would stand with them.
“She could have let the Captain get a knife in the ribs,” Frith said in a low voice, and the others nodded in agreement.
Aachon’s dark eyes didn’t look as convinced, but he glanced at Raed. “It is up to you, my prince.”
The Pretender shrugged, and pronounced his verdict with a broad grin. “Beautiful, powerful women don’t fall into your lap every day—just what this venture needs, I say.”
Sorcha heard Nynnia murmur a question to Merrick, but couldn’t quite make it out. If they were going to face the Murashev, she found herself wanting him to have a little happiness.
“She saved your life once,” Sorcha said reluctantly to Merrick. “Now she’s saved Raed—what more does a girl have to do to get your attention?”
The young Deacon pulled Nynnia in and kissed her hard. Sorcha looked away; there was a limit. For once, the woman—if that was what she was—looked flustered, her cheeks rosy with a becoming blush. “We must move quickly. These thugs will be just the beginning.”
Raed quickly strode toward the back door, but as the rest followed, Sorcha turned in the other direction. She grabbed hold of the publican who was carefully avoiding looking straight at them. He looked too guilty for her liking. With the careful application of force as taught to all novices, Sorcha had him facedown on his own bar in seconds. He winced slightly as his earthenware cups went tumbling to the floor; two smashed loudly. Sorcha knew in his tiny brain he was trying to work out how a woman two heads shorter than him had him pinned down. Before he could decide to put up a fight, she hissed into his ear. “What is happening at Brickmaker’s Lane today?”
Obviously the question was as simple as he was, because a grin spread over his face and he gabbled an answer. “The Emperor and the Grand Duchess are opening the public fountain destroyed by geist attack last month.” She patted the publican on the cheek, released him and followed the others out the back.
Brickmaker’s was only three streets over. Catching up with them, she reported her findings. “Zofiya will indeed be nearby and probably in the next hour or so. She’ll be officiating the reopening instead of her brother, since the little goddess Myr has jurisdiction over water.”
“The fountain.” Merrick was a smart lad; even with stars in his eyes for Nynnia, he recalled the case.
“What is the significance of the fountain?” Raed was checking the exit from the alleyway, but his mind was more than capable of juggling several tasks.
“It was destroyed by a swarm of rei.” Sorcha was pressing her memory hard; it had seemed such a trivial event, the last dying breath of a cluster of crisis near the fringe of the city. Rei were generally thought to be the souls of the drowned, drawn to the energy of water and delighting in making mischief by disrupting it. Vermillion—like every port city—drew them, with its combination of water and people. Still, as annoying as they were, they could also cause real damage—destroying pipes was their particular specialty. No one liked their sewage being interfered with, but it was even worse when public fountains bore the brunt of their mischief. Everyone was affected then, as no one could drink safely from the lagoon.
“The rei swarm didn’t just destroy the pipes.” Merrick snapped his fingers finally, recalling the rest of the memory. “They wrecked the fountain and the pipe feeding it, right to the mains. They had to spend weeks digging back to fix it—back to the old ossuary, I think.”
Sorcha’s chest contracted as if she’d been punched, so much so that she had to lean back against the wall of the building for a second. The Bond vibrated so loudly with her new fears that Merrick—and even Raed—gasped.
Her partner suddenly realized what he had said. “The ossuary! By the Bones!”
“Literally,” Sorcha snapped, feeling the circle joining itself back up.
“Again”—Raed crossed his arms—“with the lack of information.”
Sorcha stamped her foot to illustrate her point. “Beneath us right now is the First Ossuary. Vermillion is a very, very old city, and two hundred years ago there were simply too many bodies filling up all the graves—nowhere to put new ones. So they had to fill the caves on the fringe with the bones.”
Nynnia made a face. “Digging up the dead, in a city infected with geists?”
“No, it wasn’t pretty.” Merrick squeezed her hand. “But from the records of the native Order, they were eventually able to get the city under control. Burning the bones would have been even worse.”
“That has got to be where the Murashev is being created.” Sorcha blinked, thinking of the last time she had been down there; the endless rows of skulls and bones stacked upon one another. The recollection made her shiver. Even though she’d been a member of a Deacon Conclave, the looming menace had still been palpable. The White Palace, the locals called it, as if it was a mirror image of the Imperial Palace above.
“If the Grand Duchess were to be taken there and sacrificed . . .” Even Nynnia couldn’t finish that sentence. It didn’t take too much imagination to consider the consequences.
Apparently, however, Frith had no imagination. “What’s so cursed different about her blood compared to ours? She bleeds red just like every other person!”
“Certainly she does,” Merrick replied, “but her line is rife with old blood. Ancient blood.”
“They need it,” Nynnia said, with a sidelong glance at her father.
Sorcha was beginning to suspect there was something more to that relationship. Feathers of eldritch blue light twined between the two. The flow of power from man to woman was like blood flowing through shared veins. Life force. He might call himself her father, and that could still be true, but he was also her foci, just like Raed and the Beast, or the children of Ulrich and the poltern. Whatever kind of creature she was, she needed her foci just like the rest. It was both a strength and a weakness; a foci meant she couldn’t be easily dismissed back to the Otherside, but also bound them together so that her strength depended on his fate. No wonder she had wanted to reach Ulrich so desperately when they had first met.
Nynnia’s eyes locked with Sorcha’s, acknowledging the Deacon’s observation and recognition. Sorcha’s gaze did not flinch. “Don’t you think it is a good idea for your father to be safely away from this?” she asked pointedly, while the men around them murmured among themselves blindly.
The slim woman nodded slowly. “Yes, you are right.”
“Better make it quick,” Raed commented. “There is a crowd gathering.”
Sorcha stood at his shoulder and glanced out into the street. He was right: people were streaming in the direction of Brickmaker’s Lane; they were suddenly surrounded by eager apprentices, mothers with wailing babies, gritty laborers and dyers with their hands stained the colors of the rainbow. The Emperor and his sister were coming out from the palace—not an everyday event.
The opening of a public fountain was not something that would have warranted the sovereign’s attention, but having been so publicly attacked by geists, he was probably trying to reassure the citizens by appearing with the Grand Duchess.
“By the Bones, I need a smoke,” she groaned, thinking miserably of the ones lost to Merrick’s enthusiastic plan.
Wordlessly, Raed reached under his disguise and pulled two smooth brown Ilyrick reserves out of his pocket. Sorcha’s smile was broad and thoroughly inappropriate for the situation. She took them, knowing her hands were trembling slightly. She tucked one into her pocket and tore off the end of the other. It was a cigar that deserved better treatment, but she simply didn’t have the time. Raed lit it for her, and she leaned back for just a minute and drew the smoke sensuously into her mouth. There was no time to enjoy this cigar as it should have been enjoyed: slowly, on a balcony, watching the stars and in his company. There would probably never be such a moment for them.
Sorcha would take what she could get.
She pushed away from the wall, still sucking on the cigar, and looked at Raed: her beautiful surprise. “Nynnia, get your father out of here.” Sorcha fell back on old habits of command. Pulling up the hood on her disguise, she gestured. “The rest of us have an audience to attend.”
The crew, for once, did not look to Raed. Even Aachon fell into step behind her as they blended in with the crowd. Nynnia was talking with Kyrix, and they both looked distressed. As the others flowed ahead of her a little, Sorcha hung behind, waiting for Nynnia. She didn’t want to lose the creature in the press of the crowd.
All it took was one glance away; when she looked back toward the pair, Nynnia was hugging her father one last time. She did not notice as a towering man, who had looked like just another member of the crowd moments before, suddenly lunged forward. Sorcha darted toward them, but she couldn’t reach them in time. The man thrust a long knife under the old man’s rib cage and gave a vicious twist. Without a noise, Kyrix crumpled to the ground.
Nynnia cried out, but the Deacon grabbed hold of her arm and tugged her into the crowd. The foci was already dead—the attacker had known what he was doing. Their enemy, whoever they were, must have realized something about the nature of the woman missing from the Possibility Matrix.
Tugging the stunned Nynnia behind her, Sorcha zigzagged through the crowd, trying to lose the attackers in the tumult. Her heart was racing and her brain tumbling. How on earth were they going to save the Grand Duchess from someone who could see one step in front of them? Even Garil’s gift was not this accurate. Her mind still lingered on the sigil of the Emperor on that dispatch box that had started everything.