Wrayth (41 page)

Sorcha felt herself the center of his attention, and in the state she now occupied she liked it.

When he opened his palm, she saw three gleaming weirstones rested in his fingers. He held out his hand again. “Come with me. I am the only one who can understand what it is to be you, and I can teach you many things.”

He threw the stones down on the ground and immediately the triangle they described began to shimmer. It was as if the earth herself grew soft at his touch. With awe, Sorcha realized he was making a tunnel before her very eyes. Not just redirecting the stones as she had done, but bending the Otherside to his will.

Sorcha moved toward him. His words made sense. She
did not belong with human or Deacon. She was something else, and Derodak would show her what that was.

As she did so though, she felt the Bond with Merrick suddenly burn bright. She would have turned to tell him to let her go, but the young Deacon was faster than she would have thought possible.

He too was more than he seemed, and Derodak had failed to fully grasp that. As Merrick threw himself at Sorcha, he gathered up all the emotions around him. Every feeling of loss, despair and fear that hundreds of Deacons had felt that night. An accumulation of lost dreams, battered determination and the best of intentions, all brought to nothing. It was a terrible night, like few others in history, and Merrick was there to use those feelings for Sorcha’s benefit.

His wild talent channeled all of them, and directed them at Derodak. The man had many shields. Sorcha glimpsed how many years he had worked to protect himself against runes of all kinds, but this talent was not a rune, not hard-won from the geists. It was a totally human power, and consequently one Derodak was not fully prepared to repel.

Derodak howled, as those emotions poured over him like a tidal wave, battering at him in an almost physical fashion. He twisted back and forth, trying to escape them, but they were not runes and he had no defense. Sorcha knew he had grown chill living so long, insulated from his own mortality. These feelings cut to his core like the sharpest of knives. His own talents crumpled under their weight as he clawed at his own face.

At last, desperate to escape, he activated the weirstones and, stepping into the triangle, disappeared into the earth. It was the last thing Deacon Sorcha Faris saw for a little time.

When she finally came back to consciousness, it was to find herself cradled in Merrick’s arms. He was weeping, while Zofiya, completely unconscious, lay a few feet away.

Sorcha touched his face. “I certainly hope those tears are because of what you just did, and not for me.”

He brushed them away, and smiled crookedly at her. “Yes…that’s what it is…”

Together they clambered to their feet. Sorcha surveyed the devastation while Merrick went to tend the Grand Duchess. Fire had spread to the other buildings, and she knew that come morning the Mother Abbey would be but a smoldering memory.

Merrick returned, half carrying Zofiya. She looked pale but was coming around. When she found out what had happened here, Sorcha was sure there would be hell to pay.

“What now?” Merrick asked, though he could now see the seed of a plan she’d been mulling over since they found the Patternmaker.

“First we regroup at Vashill’s…then we go our own way.” Sorcha sighed and put her shoulder under Zofiya’s arm. She could already feel Raed in the city, back to himself and heading in that direction. They had much to do.

“We have work to do,” Merrick muttered. He probably didn’t even realize he had done it, but once again her young partner was stealing her thoughts from her head. Strangely now, it was a comfort.

The Bond held her together for now. Later would come soon enough.

TWENTY-SEVEN

The widow Vashill’s house had not been a good place to stay, and Sorcha had moved the remains of the Order on as soon as they had all that could be gathered. Vermillion was a shaken city, full of panic and disorder, and fallen into utter chaos. With no force of Deacons to fight geists, they were coming back.
Vermin can always tell when the cat of the house dies.
Sorcha recalled her beloved Pareth telling her that—but she had never thought it was a warning for Deacons.

Then there was the Emperor to deal with. He had survived somehow the destruction of the Mother Abbey, but lost none of his blind and foolish hatred of the Order. The Deacons had no doubt that he would come looking for them as soon as he regained control. After only two days, they got word he was hunting former members of the Order down.

So the Deacons and their companions filed out of the city in small, unremarkable groups, and formed up, once on the road, beyond sight of Vermillion. They marched for many days, covering their tracks and checking the ether as
they went. Half of them had managed to take Breed mounts, and they carried what few provisions that they’d scavenged. The sooner they got into the hill country the better.

By the fourth day, everyone, man and horse, was exhausted, dirty and at the end of their tether. Sorcha gave the order to make camp off the road at the foot of a thickly wooded hill, and it was there finally that they were able to take stock of what had survived the mad escape from the city. They could also eat.

The Arch Abbot was not among them; dead or captured, it was impossible to know. Three of the Presbyters had however managed to escape: Thorine Belzark, a battered Melisande Troupe and most surprisingly the elderly Yvril Mournling. They were the most shocked of all of them, and barely spoke to each other let alone anyone else. Merrick commented that they only needed some time.

None of them could be sure how much of that they had. Sorcha sat in the grass and finally forced herself to count who was not with them. Garil was not among the ragtag group of leftover Deacons, but the stark raving Patternmaker was. Kolya had quietly taken up a place within the group, but kept to himself. Lujia and Sibuse, battered and bleeding, proudly took up guarding the rear of the caravan, since they still had some faltering runes at their disposal. The Patternmaker’s marks were, however, fading. A dozen of the crew of the far-off
Dominion
were still with them, along with a silent and brooding Aachon.

In total, sixty people, some once Deacons, some not, surrounded her on this grassy spot in the late autumn sun. It was not large enough a number to be an army, but not small enough to pass easily unnoticed.

“So then,” Raed said, dropping down to sit with her, “are we all to become outlaws and live in the forest?”

He laid the back of his hand tentatively on her knee. Along the Bond, his pain sang, but it was tinged with just the slightest hint of hope. She put her palm against his. “Perhaps, or perhaps something altogether different. I have
been thinking on a new Order, one with all the strengths of the old one, but with none of the weaknesses.”

She took out the thin piece of wood that the Patternmaker had created in the cellar. The lines were disappearing from it as mud and blood lost its power. Soon enough, it would be useless.

Tracing her fingertip over the fading script, she whispered to him, “Do you realize this is the longest we have spent together without being chased since our time together on the airship?”

His laugh was low. “Here’s to a little more time then. I don’t think we are the only ones who would appreciate it.” He jerked his head to where Merrick and Zofiya were tucked under a tree, talking in low voices. For a moment Sorcha considered them. The Grand Duchess did not look so grand as she once had, but she was smiling, despite the situation. She was the kind of woman who could bounce back from even Derodak’s treatment.

“I hope they can find some happiness,” she said softly, “but unfortunately we cannot give that to them. And there is more…”

This was going to be the hard bit. She looked off into the distance and shared with him what she had heard from one of the scouts the previous day.

“The Wrayth have bred themselves another girl—one that looks something like your sister, and they have raised her in the west. Ten Princes have already defected to her banner.”

She knew that he had worked so hard to stop war washing over Arkaym—sacrificing much to the cause—and yet there it was. Sometimes no matter how hard a person strove, it was not enough.

He looked down at their intertwined hands. “You know, when my mother died under the Rossin’s claws, I thought that was the worst thing that could ever happen to me. Now I am not so sure. Fraine never really had a chance to be a normal person…a good person.”

Sorcha reached up and pulled his head down to rest against her shoulder. She wanted to give him some comfort. She wanted to have some time to cherish what little they’d been able to salvage from the destruction. That mattered more than food or rest.

She’d hunted in these woods, and she knew them very well. Standing up she held out her hand to Raed. “I’ve got something to show you.”

A frown creased his brow, but he got to his feet and allowed himself to be led away from the others. His faltering steps told her that he too was tired.

When they had gone a few minutes from the crowd, into the dappled shade of the forest, he smiled. It was a small hunter’s hut. Not much but woven walls, and a timber and fern roof. It was the kind of place where a lone traveler might find solace for a spell while tracking game.

Sorcha led him to it, unlatched the simple door, and when he was in, closed it behind him. Raed let out a long sigh, and cradled her head in his hands as they leaned against each other, forehead to forehead.

She traced the line of his cheek, and kissed his lips softly. Part of her was afraid that this spell would break and they would be flung apart again. Another part was fearful that they might find their feelings not what they thought.

“You are a good man, Raed,” she said to him, while her fingers unlaced his shirt, “and we all make our own choices in this world.”

He kissed her palm, and then ran his tongue up the inside of her wrist and around her arm, following the curve of the fading runes. He had probably already guessed what she meant to do, and she loved that he had said nothing of it.

They dropped back to the bed, which was merely a pile of heather covered in a blanket, but it felt as good as an Imperial piece of furniture.

“We don’t have long,” he breathed against her skin.

Sorcha nodded, knowing that they must move their
ragtag group on soon, but she did not stop undressing him. “But we have enough time,” she replied, somewhat shakily, as his lips descended on her.

It could not be the passionate romp that they’d shared on the
Summer Hawk
, or even the fumbling delight of their time in Chioma, because they were simply exhausted. However it was its own special moment.

When at last they had sated themselves, kissed, and murmured and reacquainted themselves with each other’s flesh, they left the little hunter’s hut and returned to their companions.

Soon enough they were moving again, heading west once more, toward a series of caves Merrick knew of. Here at least they could make fires, have a little hot food, and everyone could get some sleep.

It was in these caves that Sorcha decided to finally reveal her plan to Merrick and Raed—though both of them, connected so strongly to her through the Bond, already guessed at it. However, she wanted to say the words and tell them because they were her closest companions. They deserved that, and so much more.

It was a long, hard road she was setting them on, but one guided by the past.

Her partner, young and battered though he was, still managed to raise an objection to her plan.

He shook his head. “Sorcha, you can’t know if this worked for your mother or not. She most likely died, and that was why you ended up in the Order. It could have been this process that killed her…”

He was right—she knew that. She’d only seen one vision of Caoirse in the nest of the Wrayth, and she knew deep down that she had died somewhere and somehow shortly after. Still she would not be put off. “It was far more likely to have been childbirth in that dreadful place that did it, and we have to try to get back some of what we’ve lost. The Empire needs the Order. We all know that.”