Philippa Ballantine - Wrayth

“Then when I lost Raed in the heart of Chioma, where he went looking for his sister, I came here to get Garil’s help locating him. But my prince’s path had fallen into such chaos that even he couldn’t discern it.”

Aachon leaned across and touched her hand. “We both knew that because of your Bond with my prince you could be the only one to track him—Garil has had a vision of you well again and with my prince. I know not, however, how this will come to pass.”

He sighed. “You must know that the ability the Prince of Chioma placed over you should have been temporary and faded at the next sunrise. No mortal creature can hold on to a truly geist power as you have done. Not without some kind of foci.” With one hand on Sorcha and the other cupping the weirstone, Aachon looked down. He did as Garil had tried, to see into the flame-haired Deacon’s past. His was a much more blunt instrument than the Order’s Rune of Sight Aiemm—but he should have been able to see more than he did—only her time within the confines of the Abbey. The moment of her first hesitant kiss with another initiate under the bowers of a flowering jasmine. The time she passed the test and carved her first rune into her Gauntlets—the pride swelling in her chest. He caught glimpses of her running as a child through the infirmary garden, smelled the lavender in her nostrils, and heard the squeal of excitement in her mouth.

Yet, if he tried to push back further there was nothing but a void. Aachon closed his fist about the weirstone. When he looked up, a tear had trickled free of Sorcha’s eye, so he carefully wiped it away with the edge of his sleeve. “How anyone let you into the Order with such a nothing for a history even Garil doesn’t know. Any Sensitive could look back and see this hole in your past if they cared to.”

The Autumn Eagle began to lift beneath them, and the thrum of the weirstone engines could be felt running through the ship. So many wonderful uses for them—and yet every one exposed the population to danger. Aachon looked deep into his own stone. Without access to the runes that the Deacons used, it was his only way back to power, but he’d accepted that danger long ago.

With a sigh, he put his own weirstone away, and exchanged it for the one Garil had given him. He moved it closer to Sorcha. Her eyes blinked rapidly, as if she were trying to tell him something. It was a nightmare he would have spared anyone the living of, but there was nothing he could do about it.

Best to think of her as a compass—a compass that he needed to keep a cautious eye on. “My prince,” he muttered, and narrowed his eyes, looking at Sorcha through the weirstone. Through her, and to his friend and charge.

The Bond was so powerful that it was confusing, deep and wide, so as to almost swallow up the rest of her. Aachon felt the strength of it, like a magnet stone drawing him. In that moment, a stab of jealousy hit. Something like this could have been his if the past had run differently.

He had to get past that. Focusing his etheric vision on the Bond, he traced where it ran back to Merrick; disappearing behind them in Vermillion.

Sorcha! Sorcha, where are you? The lad’s voice was so strong, that for an instant Aachon was sure that somehow the young Deacon had found a way to smuggle himself aboard the Autumn Eagle .

The first mate took a deep breath and tried again. While Merrick was a powerful Sensitive—stronger than the last time he’d seen him—he was not the target. Besides, a powerful Deacon like that would find another Bond soon enough.

His captain was in far more deadly danger. Pouring all of his concentration into the weirstone, strengthening it with a lifetime of care and friendship, Aachon saw beyond the looming part of the Bond between the two Deacons.

Far away and to the north his Prince was in danger. Alone, angry, guilty and with the Rossin riding very close to him. Aachon caught a glimpse of the great leonine head turning to him. A snarl of rage and victory echoed in his ears and the connection was abruptly severed.

The first mate sank back on his heels and stared blankly at Sorcha. She was staring right back at him. Both of them had seen where Raed Syndar Rossin was, and how he was surviving.

The Autumn Eagle could not go fast enough for Aachon, and had he the power and the right paperwork he would have insisted Captain Lepzig burn all the weirstones he had to reach his own captain. However, at least now he had a direction. “North,” he whispered, “and then west to the land of Ensomn.”

He levered himself up, and glanced down at Sorcha. “I give you my promise I’ll find him and bring him back.”

She couldn’t utter a word in reply, but instead she closed her eyes: a mute acceptance of his terms. It was, after all, the only thing she had to offer.

There were no two ways about it; Merrick knew that he was going to stick out like a donkey in a horse sale at this ball—no matter what. The Order’s plain clothes and cloak harkened back to the style of at least a hundred years ago, and so it was not as if he were going to make some incredible statement that would set the Court aflame with his fashion sense.

And yet…

Merrick swallowed. He had made up his mind, but the prospect was still daunting. He was about to turn his back on the world of the Order—the place he had journeyed across countless miles and a wide ocean to find. It would give anyone pause, but still he knew in that uncomfortable place where his conscience resided that it was the right thing to do.

“It will have to be this then.” He seized up his best-kept cloak, shirt and trousers.

Charming the Grand Duchess was uncertain territory that no Order teacher had ever instructed him on. A young man his age should have many conquests under his belt, a few notches on his bedpost—but while the Order did not demand celibacy of its members, it did not exactly provide normal social relations either. Deacon Merrick Chambers had only ever had one lover, and through a strange set of circumstances she had been taken from him. She now lived on the Otherside, surrounded by geists and quite without a body.

This thought propelled him from his room out into the hall. The tall mirror that stood at its end was etched with the mantra of the Sensitives; SEE DEEP, FEAR NOTHING.

He stared at himself in the mirror. He knew the Duchess liked him—he was not that much of a fool as to not be able to spot her eye lingering on him. He wouldn’t be much of a Sensitive had he failed to observe that.

He knew he was not an ugly man, but he also realized of late he’d been more likely to frown than to smile. His curly brown hair was unruly, but at least the diet at the Mother Abbey and their vigorous training regime had kept him trim.

Staring into his own brown eyes, he tried one final time to think of another way to get to Sorcha. Another way that did not involve Zofiya. It was not the path of an honest man, and he liked the Grand Duchess too much to feel good about this. Yet he had been unable to find one all day, and no other struck him now. Before he could change his mind, Merrick turned and raced down the steps.

His walk to the palace was brisk, but with each step he took he thought about how much farther Sorcha was getting away from him. He barely took in the finery of the Imperial Island anymore—the bustle of important people to and fro simply did not register—yet as he approached the palace, Merrick did glance up.

The palace and the Mother Abbey were the oldest buildings in Vermillion, and bore the scars of many years and many owners. However there was a grace to the low, rambling structure that covered the highest points of the island. Carved representations of geists and geistlords served as water conduits on the parapets. However no real geists could cross the water to this spot, and the Deacons made sure every soul that died here was sent to the Otherside before it could make trouble.