Philippa Ballantine - Wrayth

“Would you care to pop back to the Mother Abbey and ask the Presbyter himself?” Aachon rumbled sternly. “I am sure he would not mind being woken up at this hour.”

The captain swallowed and glanced up and down the length of his deck, perhaps checking that none of his crew were near enough to hear. No man in command liked to be dressed down, especially on his own vessel, but Aachon could not afford to let this captain think he had the upper hand. “I understand the needs of the Order come above anything but the Emperor himself.” He straightened as he spoke, but it was a pointless exercise against Aachon’s height.

As they stood awkwardly to one side of the gangplank of the Autumn Eagle , the half dozen crew of the Dominion he had brought with him appeared from the darkness. Most were only lightly encumbered, their covert methods of traveling to reach Vermillion had seen to that. However, Serigala and Arriann were not so lucky; they carried Sorcha between them wrapped in a blanket. They were both strong lads from the isles and hefted her as easily as if she were a bundle of laundry.

Captain Lepzig flicked aside the covering and stared at the comatose Deacon for a moment.

“This looks like Deacon Faris,” he said with a raised eyebrow. “I had heard she was struck down, but what use is she to you now?”

Aachon folded his arms in front of his barrel chest. “What use she is to us is quite frankly no business of yours, Captain. Now where shall we put her?”

Lepzig’s mustache fairly bristled. “The aft cabin is available. May I be permitted to ask what direction we should head, since we have no destination?”

“Cast off and set course for west for the moment, but I will give you course corrections as they need to be made.” Aachon stared down at Lepzig and realized that they could be stuck together for quite some time. Taking that into consideration he decided to soften his approach. “I apologize that I cannot tell you our eventual heading.” He jerked his head in the direction the lads were carrying Sorcha. “She will tell us that as we go.”

Lepzig’s brow furrowed at that, but he was part of the Imperial Fleet and used to obeying orders. Aachon knew how lucky they were to have the right papers as this man did look the sort for protocol.

“The Autumn Eagle is at your command,” he muttered, and then strode away to hurry his crew to their tasks.

Aachon set off after Sorcha and her bearers. Serigala grunted and called out to Arriann, “Hold on a moment!”

The two lowered the Deacon to the deck. Serigala bent over and rubbed at his arm with his face contorted in pain.

Aachon caught up with them. “What’s the matter, lad?”

“It’s nothing,” the young man grunted, but held out his arm revealing a nasty and quite deep bite. “Some damn Vermillion dog took a disliking to me.” He twisted the wound back and forth in the air, but was careful not to touch it. “Hurts like the bloody blazes.”

That was all they needed right now. The crew were few in number as it was, and all were committed to finding their captain; Aachon knew he would require every one of them.

Taking Serigala’s arm in a not quite gentle grasp, he held the weirstone over the wound, and peered at it. “A dog you say?”

“Yes, a huge brute of a thing, rushed right at me while we waited for you outside the Mother Abbey.” The crew member winced as the first mate poked at the edges of the bite. “The others pulled it off me, but it got away.”

“Frothing at the mouth at all?”

“Thank the little gods, no.”

Under weirstone light, Aachon could detect no inflammation that looked out of the ordinary. It would probably take a while to heal, and be painful, but with the right treatment Serigala would survive. “Get some of Aleck’s healing salve and keep it clean,” Aachon growled.

Serigala nodded and took up his burden with Arriann once more. Two men was more than enough to carry the Deacon. She was a deadweight but not a great deal of one. Her long time in bed, unable to move had whittled her curves down to sharp lines. Aachon had thought her beautiful once—now she was a shadow of that glory. Once they got her into the cabin, he dismissed the crew members and took care of her himself. As Aachon tucked her into the bed, he couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for the Deacon. To be sure she had caused a great deal of trouble for his Prince, and had dragged Raed Rossin into more scrapes than were necessary—but she had also risked much to save him.

Garil had given him the details of her flight to save the Young Pretender in the soaking heat of Chioma. Her partner Merrick had relayed them to the lay Deacon, and it was quite a tale. The desert principality was not a place Aachon would have cared to go—but like Sorcha he would have for duty.

He looked down into her face, and all belief that the Deacon was merely a sack of meat was lost. Those open blue eyes had lost none of their power, and even though her face did not move, her eyes flicked back and forth—focusing on him with the kind of baleful intent he had only ever seen on the face of a geist-possessed person. It must be terrifying and frustrating to be trapped in your own body, and then whisked away in the dead of night.

Aachon did not consider himself a cruel man. With a sigh, he squeezed himself into one of the chairs by the bed. The tight confines of an Imperial Airship had not been made for a man of his size. The engines of the Autumn Eagle began to thrum, and outside he could hear the shouts of her crew making ready to cast off.

Dipping into his coat pocket he withdrew a swirling orb. The weirstones were illegal, dangerous the Order said. No one should deal with them but their Deacons.

Aachon had never made secret his dislike of the Order of the Eye and the Fist. While most sane citizens were cautious of them and the power they wielded, they were mostly just grateful to them for ridding Arkaym of the geists.

The first mate of the Dominion had another opinion entirely. He had wanted to be one.

“I will tell you a little tale, Deacon Faris,” he began resting his arms on his knees, and staring into the orb swirling in his hands. “And you will have to do me the service of keeping quiet.”

It was a foolish joke to break the tension, but he could see by Sorcha’s eyes it was not one well taken. Aachon cleared his throat. “When I was a lad, my father sent me across the ocean to Delmaire to train with your Order.”

It felt so long ago that it was like telling the story of someone else entirely. “I was lucky to have a tutor by the name of Garil Reeceson.” Aachon tilted his head back, and closed his eyes, smelling some of the musk of cigar smoke that had even then lingered around the Deacon. “Back then he was rather handsome, and I was smitten with him immediately, but it wasn’t until I was just about to take the final tests that we became lovers.”

The flames died in Sorcha’s eyes as realization spread there instead. Aachon looked down at the weirstone again, feeling old regrets beginning to bubble up. “Perhaps we would have become Bonded partners.” He let out a short laugh. “Then you and Garil would have just been colleagues. What might have been is now lost however. Instead, my research on weirstones offended some people, and then when I tried to defend myself…well let’s just say I had to quickly return to Arkaym.”

He glanced across at the still Sorcha before continuing. “When you brought us here to Vermillion chasing the Murashev, we met again,” the first mate of the Dominion went on, his fingers tracing patterns on the surface of the weirstone. The swirls of water in the deep blue orb mimicked his motions. “He told me of his wild talent—told me of a dark shadow that lay ahead for you and my prince.