Seeker (36 page)

“Who decides, then?” Quin asked quietly. “Who decides if the laws have been broken?”

“When my master is resting, as he has been for so long, the
Middle Dread decides,” the Young continued. “The Middle Dread decides with judgment that is unreliable. He chooses not who is right or wrong but whom he favors, whom he wishes to have power. Lately he has favored your father. And before that, others like him.”

“Then … your laws are worthless,” Quin said.

“In my master’s hands, the laws had great worth. He can look at a Seeker and see within the man. I have watched him do this. But the laws are worthless in the hands of the Middle Dread. That is true. And by his judgment, we destroy Seekers, and the families of Seekers, or keep them alive. It is why we are known as Dreads.”

There was another silence, but eventually the girl continued. “You ask me, was it always lies? I have seen it both ways. There have been true Seekers. Honorable men and women. For centuries they fought unjust and cruel men and they helped those who were good. The stories you heard as a child are true.”

Quin felt a flicker of happiness, but she knew the Young Dread was not finished.

“But there have been others,” the Dread went on, “who used their athames to seek nothing but wealth or power. They have done shameful things. Simply because they saw some personal benefit in it.”

“Like Briac,” Quin whispered.

“And like many before him. But Briac may be the worst.”

They were both quiet for a long while then, until the Young Dread wiped her hands on a rag and looked up, fixing Quin with a thousand-year stare. When she spoke again, she seemed uneasy about the topic.

“You have loved the other apprentice.”

Quin was embarrassed. Only a short time ago, she’d let John carry her up to her room on the Bridge. She’d put her arms around him and pulled him close.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Do you still love him?” the Dread asked her.

She wanted very much to say no. After all, John had lain in bed next to her, had kissed her, and then he’d stood there as those men had beat her. And yet, some part of her understood his desperation. Eventually she shook her head and said, “I don’t know what I feel.”

The Dread turned her eyes away, and Quin thought she could see confusion in the girl’s face. It was an emotion that did not fit well on one so self-possessed.

“Why do you ask about him?” Quin asked her. “Do you know him—more than just seeing him when we trained on the estate?”

“I do not know him,” the Young Dread said firmly. “But we have spoken. And I wonder—I wonder what kind of person he is.”

Quin tossed a twig into the fire, trying to figure out how to answer that question. “When I’m with him,” she said after a while, “I can feel that he loves me. I see it in his eyes.” She paused, watching the twig burn up in the flames. “But now I know he wants an athame more than he wants me, more than he wants anything else.” She paused again, then added, her voice low and serious, “He came after us that night, here on the estate, for revenge. What would he do if he got an athame? It wouldn’t be good. How could it be good?”

The Dread was looking into the fire once more. It was impossible to read the girl, but Quin sensed she was troubled.

Then slowly the Dread said, “I have seen him.”

Something in the way she said it did not fit.

“Do you mean
recently
?”

The girl nodded.

Quin’s stomach experienced a falling sensation, like she’d unwittingly stepped into an airlift that had dropped her down two stories.

“Where?” Quin asked. “Here?”

The Dread did not answer.

Quin was on her feet. She found herself backing away from the
girl. Was she helping John? When had they spoken? Did this mean he would be after Quin again?

The Young Dread remained seated by the fire, her eyes on her hands. Looking around the room, Quin felt her attention caught by something that didn’t belong. She allowed her eyes to travel slowly across all the walls, searching. There was something on the shelf along the back wall. There. An electric cord.

It was surprising that there was electricity on the estate at all—though the workshop was almost untouched, so perhaps that made sense. It was more surprising for the Young Dread to be in possession of anything requiring electricity. Why would the girl have such a thing?

Quin walked toward that cord, noting that the Dread turned her head to watch but didn’t rise from her seat by the fire. Quin followed the cord along the shelf to a pile of rags. She slid her hands under the rags and pulled out …

A mobile phone.

Its screen was awake, and there were words printed across it:
Message Sent
. The time stamp was from an hour ago, when Quin had first walked into the workshop. And further, Quin was now looking at the date. She’d lost nearly two days when she went
There
.

The Dread was observing her from across the room. The girl’s face was motionless, but Quin thought she now detected shame in the Dread’s features.

“John gave you this phone? You’ve told him I’m here?” It was not so much a question as a statement. “You were stalling me.”

The girl nodded slowly, like a judge confirming a death sentence.

“Why—why would you do that? He hasn’t even taken his oath.” She was trying to calculate where in the world John had been an hour ago and how long it would take him, from that hypothetical location, to reach the estate.

“There was an injustice,” the Young Dread said, as though this would explain her actions.

“Isn’t
this
unjust?” Quin asked. “I am a sworn Seeker. I only wanted time to remember, to decide what to do.”

“I … I wanted …” the Dread began again. “I wanted to make up for things that were done. My master would know how to set things to rights. My master would have stopped Briac. But I … I am torn.”

“Briac,” Quin said, remembering that her father was lying in a clearing in the forest. “Right. I’ll take care of that now. Before I have yet another person after me.”

She turned to leave the workshop but had gone only a few steps when she made a new mental connection. She was angry, but she was finding it difficult to direct her anger at the Young Dread. Quin too had been torn about helping John. “Your master,” she said, turning back. “Describe him.”

The Young Dread began to do so, but before she had put two sentences together, Quin was running out of the workshop, calling back over her shoulder, “Come with me!”

The sun was fully up in the sky as the three men came into view. They still lay in the clearing near the standing stone, their arms and legs at odd angles. But Quin could tell immediately that something had changed. Her father’s limbs appeared to have settled, as though his muscles were gradually growing softer.

And the men were breathing. Their chests were expanding and contracting so gradually, it was almost impossible to spot the movement, yet it was there, changing their appearance from statues to living creatures. Something besides their chests was moving as well: blood was trickling from their wounds.

The Young Dread let out a gasp when she caught sight of the old man with the beard. This man was moving the least—perhaps he had been
There
the longest. In a moment, the Young was kneeling at his
side, holding his head very carefully in her hands. The girl put an ear to his mouth, listening for breath. She spoke softly to him in a language that sounded something like English. Then she shook his chest and spoke to him again, more firmly.

Quin drew her whipsword, knelt over Briac, lifted her arm. It was time to make good on her promise. If Briac woke up, he would remind her of things she did not wish to remember, would force her to do things she did not wish to do, and Quin didn’t think she could stand up to him. She’d never been able to stand up to him. She must make an end of it now.

Briac blinked.

It was a slow motion. His eyelids traveled downward a tiny bit at a time, until his eyes were closed, and then they performed the same motion in reverse. His gaze turned very, very slowly, until he was looking up at her.

Now!
Quin told herself.
Now, or you’ll never do it!

She struck down with her blade. Briac’s half-frozen arms came to life on reflex. His right hand hit her whipsword away; his left grabbed her neck. Then he was perfectly still again, his hands frozen in their new positions. Danger had jolted him back into Quin’s time stream, but only for a moment. She pushed his arms away from her and lifted the whipsword again.

“Quin!”

Her head snapped up at her name. John stood at the edge of the clearing, two other men spread out nearby. She recognized one of them from the Bridge. All three had guns pointed directly at her.

“Please, Quin,” John said. “Please put your sword down.”

“You brought guns this time,” Quin noted as John approached. “You must be really scared of me.”

“Well, you ignored the knives on the Bridge,” he pointed out, trying to make light of the situation. He did not like pointing guns at her.

She had gotten to her feet and was standing perfectly still, her arms raised, whipsword on the ground by her feet. He watched her eyes move from him to each of the two men he’d brought with him. She looked much more alert than she had a few days ago on the Bridge. And more dangerous.

John’s entire left arm was aching from the blowtorch burn, which was heavily bandaged beneath his shirt. It was a reminder that he had better succeed this time. His grandfather had lost his grip on sanity and would likely lose control of his empire as well. He wouldn’t be able to help John much longer.

“You can’t seem to stay away from me,” Quin whispered when he’d come up beside her. Her words were meant to be cutting, but
they still sounded intimate, and John could not stop himself from hoping that she would help him. Just once.

“I don’t want to stay away,” he whispered back. “I want to be together.”

On the ground nearby, the Young Dread was crouched over an old man who lay awkwardly on the forest floor. There were two other men on the ground as well, who looked as though they’d frozen in the middle of a strenuous activity. Both men wore hoods obscuring their faces, but they were breathing, very, very slowly. The old man, however, was as still as stone. The Young Dread was speaking to him in a language that might have been English, but if so, it was an English so old John could not follow the meaning.

Quin was wearing ill-fitting jeans held up with a large belt, and after shoving his gun back into his pocket, John was easily able to slip his hand in along her waistband, searching for the athame. It was difficult not to think about his hand on her skin, but he pushed such thoughts away—he must focus. When his fingers came in contact with something hard, something made of stone and nestled up against her right hip, his heart sped up. Quin turned toward him, and John’s men lifted their guns in warning.

“Don’t take it, John,” she said, her eyes pleading. “Don’t take it.” She put her hand on top of his, tried to push him away from the object beneath her jeans.

“You could make this so easy. Change your mind. Decide to help me.”

“I promise I am helping you,” she told him. “Things will get worse after you have the athame. Believe me.”

“No, Quin. They’ll get better. Finally.”

Why couldn’t she understand? Her hand was on his, and he imagined raising it to his lips. If she would only help him, he would be free to kiss her … Instead he slid the object up, out of her trousers.

It was the gray stone of the athame, slightly warm from lying against her skin. In his excitement at holding the dagger in his hands, he shifted his balance away from her to study it. With two quick steps, she was behind him, placing John between her and the men with guns. In the moment it took him to turn to her, Quin had grabbed up her whipsword and was running for the trees.

“Dammit, Quin! Don’t do this again!”

He scrubbed at his face with his hands, torn. Then he gestured for his men to go after her. In an instant they were away. He wanted to go himself, but he doubted he could keep a clear head. Before arriving at the estate, he’d ordered his men to prevent Quin from escaping, even if it meant shooting her in a leg—and John would never be able to do that personally.

His eyes dropped to the object in his hand then, and he realized his mistake. He wasn’t holding the athame. This was something else. It had the shape of a short sword, with a handgrip and a flat, curving blade that was duller than a butter knife. It was like the athame, certainly, but not the same. A decoy? But if so, why not make something more exactly like the real thing? And this object was of the same stone as the athame, he was sure of that. So what was this item he was holding in his hands?

“Master, Master,” the Young Dread was murmuring nearby, still speaking to the old man in a low and steady voice, like a chant.

John stepped closer to the two other frozen men to get a better look. One, he now saw, was a Dread, the man they had called the Big Dread in his training days. The third man’s face was still hidden behind a hood, but when John stood directly over him, he found himself staring down at Briac Kincaid.