Philippa Ballantine - Spectyr

“I wonder how many people have wanted to drop a Deacon like this,” she muttered before waving to the grinder on the end of the winch. “Ready to go.”

And then there they were, descending into the darkness. Her hair was blasted free of its ties, so she was almost blinded by it. The rain picked up, each droplet sharp on her skin, while the rumble of thunder deafened her. It didn’t seem that the storm was abating—in fact, it was intensifying. She wondered if this was how a worm on a fishhook felt.

The swing was certainly living up to its name, but unlike a childhood pleasure, this jarred her stomach and robbed the breath from her body. Sorcha couldn’t even see Onika, though he was surely only six feet from her.

Pushing her hair out of her face, Sorcha looked up with her Center. She immediately wished she hadn’t. The clouds above danced with lightning, but this only served to illuminate the darkness that was deeper in the throbbing mass. It looked exactly like a clawed hand reaching down. Sorcha tried to work out what sort of geist could do that, but it was hard to think clearly when those talons were obviously wrapping about the Winter Falcon .

The swing jerked, spun her around, and began tipping backwards. A scream escaped Sorcha and was swallowed by the storm. Falling had always been her greatest fear, and hours of Deacon training had only blunted its edge. A terrified glance down told her nothing at all, because the storm wrapped around everything. They could be five feet from safety or a hundred.

Lightning flashed and thunder boomed immediately after. Sorcha’s head rang, and she was blinded for a second. Some primal survival instinct made her look up again, and there it was; the hand clenched around the dirigible flashed with lightning. If no one was allowed to smoke on the Imperial ships, they were certainly not allowed to throw lightning into them either.

“Onika!” Sorcha screamed, uncertain where he was. The envelope of the Winter Falcon caught fire with an ear-ringing roar. The heat was so intense that the Deacon threw her arms around her head, fearing her hair would catch alight. The dirigible burned bright blue, and flames licked up the skin as if caressing it. It would have been beautiful if it wasn’t also everyone’s death.

The Deacon knew there was nothing to be done now. The Falcon was bending in half, falling toward them, and they only had one chance. Everything slowed.

To her right she could at least now see Onika. “Cut the harness! Cut the harness now!” Sorcha screamed to him, unsure if in the panic he would hear her. Then she pulled her knife from her belt and did as she hoped he would.

Free of the swing, she didn’t want to let go for a split second. Her mind screamed denials, but the device was a false safety—they would be tangled with the doomed Falcon and burn with it.

Sorcha took a deep breath, wiggled free and then with a cry dropped into the darkness. All she could hope for was sand or a quick death.

They dragged Raed into the Temple and locked him a room about the size of a cupboard, but his surroundings mattered ttle. The Young Pretender lay there waiting for the hurt to stop. It didn’t. Eventually blessed unconsciousness wrapped itself around him.

The next morning his eyelids flicked open, revealing the world and its ugly realities. His hands were numb and still bound with the weirstones. Raed licked his lips, trying to focus his eyes. The only light in here was from the narrow crack under the door. The cupboard was tiny, like a hot box found in a prison.

As a thin line of sweat ran down Raed’s forehead, he tried to come to terms with the fact that last night had been real. He had found his sister—and she hated him. His crew had died for him. All these things were true.

These were merely another long line of bitter facts that he’d been facing all his life. Raed would not give up. Fraine, poor damaged Fraine, had gone. However, if he could get away from this mad situation, he still could catch up to her, make her see the error of what she was doing. As painful as it was to think about, it had to have been Tangyre that had twisted Fraine’s mind. Raed had thought Captain Greene was his friend, but he was now positive he didn’t know half the things that had gone on in his absence. She must have been feeding Fraine venom for years, venom that now threatened to engulf them all.

So Raed struggled to his knees and assessed what his chances were. His body ached with the various kicks and punches he had taken last night, the kind of deep bruising that would take a while to heal. Still, he had taken notice of what the charming women had said last night and wondered if he would even get a chance to heal. He just had to go on as though he would.

Somewhere out there was a wild card, one that Zofiya, Tang or his sister didn’t count on—Deacon Sorcha Faris. He’d put his trust in her before, and she hadn’t failed him. Getting to his feet, Raed pressed his ear to the door of the cupboard. An ominous chanting, soft and low and from many throats, was all he heard. It didn’t matter if it was for gods or geists, chanting was never a good sign. Yet there was no handle for him to try, nothing else in the cupboard he could use as a weapon and the walls were of sturdy stone.

Just as he was contemplating trying his shoulder against the door, two Chiomese guards yanked it open and pulled him out into the light. Now Raed was able to take in the beauty and terror of the Temple of Hatipai. It did nothing to cheer him.

She, according to the nature of her kind, dominated it. No other decoration detracted from the huge carving of her that slithered its way around the walls of the Temple. Her stretched body resembled nothing so much as a snake eating its own tail. Her undulating neck carried the depiction of her head up the stairs so that its distorted face rested at the top. Her open mouth was like a void, and a freezing breeze poured from it. Raed was no expert, but he had always imagined that in a Temple the object of adoration should be lovely, offering comfort or inspiring awe. This looked like something out of a mad dream.

The citizens of Orinthal didn’t appear to feel the same. They were crowded into the building with barely an inch between them. Parents had their children on their shoulders so they could see the scene. Raed wasn’t so lucky. All he experienced was the shoves and jeers of the mob. A few managed to get punches in, so that by the time he was dragged to the foot of the stairs he had all new aches and pains.

One of the cuts on his head had been reopened, so when he looked up it was through a veil of blood. Zofiya and an old man waited for him at the top of the stairs, and behind them was a device that gleamed in the torchlight. In his childhood Raed had found one of his playmates cutting a rabbit to pieces in the orchard. The boy had nailed each of the poor creature’s feet into the ground and was slicing into it with the care of a surgeon. Yet the creature was still conscious.

Now, looking up at the metallic X-shaped device studded with weirstones, Raed recalled vividly the white, panicked eyes of the rabbit and heard again that strange scream it had made. He wondered if he would make the same sound when they got him up there and began their vivisection. Zofiya had promised Fraine it would hurt. It looked like she would keep her word.

Death didn’t find him. Merrick stood panting in the dark and tried to gather his calm about him.

The guardsmen were dead at his feet, but he still had his mission to find his mother. Taking a few deep, slow breaths, Merrick bent and felt around under his fingers, feeling for a guard’s abandoned rifle. Standing upright, armed with gun and blade, he slowly opened his Center. He could still feel nothing of the attacker in the dark. It could not be geist or human, as he would have detected it—so then what could it be? His mind whirred.