Philippa Ballantine - Geist

Inside was as deathly calm as on deck, but the scene was different. They’d been wrong; the captain had not met his death upstairs. He was in his cabin, and not gored and ripped apart as his crew had been. Poor Captain Moresh of the Imperial Navy looked as though he’d been broiled in the desert for months. His frock coat and hat were still immaculate, but his desiccated body lay half-slumped across the table on which his valuable charts and maps were spread. One of his hands was outstretched to the other object on the table: the ship’s weirstone.

“Not possible,” Aachon murmured to Raed’s right. He raised his own orb, perhaps to check that it was still intact. It gleamed back as cobalt blue as ever. “That is simply impossible,” he repeated, as if calling it so would make a difference.

Raed strode up and picked up the ship’s orb without any consequences. He shouldn’t have been able to touch the thing, but the weirstone was pitch-black. It was as dead as the men outside, and their captain.

They stared at each other for a long moment, surrounded by the stench of death. Somehow, this seemed the worst sign of all. The talisman crafted by the Deacons, the most powerful force in the world, was now as broken as a child’s toy. The kind of geist that could do that didn’t bear thinking about. As every rule they’d ever known crumbled, Raed could feel his own security vanish with them.

Deacon Chambers was, thankfully, silent. Sorcha rode ahead of him and fought the urge to kick Shedryi into a gallop. Sensitives were tricky creatures to get away from. She wanted a smoke badly, but there were only so many cigars in her pocket and she had a feeling if she got trapped in Ulrich, she might need every one of them.

They would have to follow the road north to the calmer port of Irisil, where kinder and warmer currents flowed into the harbor. Sorcha wasn’t looking forward to getting on a small ship with her new partner.

Sparing a glance over her shoulder, she was amused to realize that Merrick was actually reading the report. His curly dark head bent while he rode with practiced ease. Maybe he hadn’t been joking about winning those events.

She’d realized he would be young; she’d been unprepared for just how young. After reading his file in the records office, she’d noticed that he’d declared a touch of Ancient blood in his line. Though those first peoples had long since been swallowed up by the Otherside, their blood could still be traced in some of the continents’ older families. It explained his incredibly high testing in both Active and Sensitive. It wasn’t up there with the Abbot’s skill, but if he burned out his Sensitivity, he would have been accepted without question into the ranks of the Actives.

She would have to watch this one for sure. Deacons of near-equal rank in both disciplines could sometimes be tempted to activate when first confronted with a geist. That sort of deadly mistake could leave her looking for yet another partner.

As Sorcha had been thinking about this, Merrick had urged his mare up next to her and offered back the report. “Not many solid details, really.” At least he had the good sense to sound concerned about that.

“There seldom are,” Sorcha said with a little laugh. “Geists are like that . . . mysterious.”

“You know I studied all this, don’t you?” he snapped back. “Just like you, I did my training. Difference is I got stuck with the partner no one in the Order wants.”

That stung, though Sorcha managed not to let it show. Once upon a time she’d been highly sought—now she wondered what exactly she had done for that to change. Oh, yes . . . all those supposedly private arguments with Kolya.

She glanced at him out of the corner of one eye and measured up exactly how she should play this. They were partners, Bonded and shackled together. They would have to rely on each other in tough situations. The whole setup of this assignment worried Sorcha, and she would need a Sensitive who was not only good, but who cared enough to pull her out of the fire if necessary; so ramming those words back down his throat as she was tempted to do would serve no purpose.

“Sorry you feel that way”—her fingers itched to be holding a cigar right now—“but we’ve got to make this work for the sake of the assignment.”

They traveled in silence for the next few hours. The Bond between them was still fresh and raw, and that was surely why she could feel a tinge of his frustration. It flickered across her awareness and disturbed what might otherwise have been an enjoyable ride.

The countryside on the east coast was beautiful even this late into autumn, and Sorcha looked about with a feeling of real pride. When the Emperor had arrived, this area had been a rabbit warren of unfettered geists and mistwitches. It had been one of her and Kolya’s assignments to oversee the clearing of the area from Vermillion to the Turijk Mountains. As they passed through the low-lying areas of marshes and dark water, she was able to look back on those times as simple and rather pleasant. It had been hard work, but satisfying.

Recollection softened the hard knot of displeasure in her stomach. She pointed to a collection of abandoned stone buildings not far from the road they now traveled. “That is the place where my husband and I banished our first geist for the Emperor in his new realm.” It was only three years past, but felt a lifetime ago.

Merrick pulled his cloak around him as if he wasn’t interested, but she could tell he was. The prickle of frustration subsided a little. “Are the geists of Delmaire the same as the ones here?”

For a second she didn’t reply, stunned. If he was asking her that, then he must have been among the new recruits from Arkaym, and if that was true, then he had gotten through the novices faster than anyone since Abbot Hastler. She would definitely have to take care around this one. Sorcha was abruptly conscious of the Bond between them. She’d crafted it so casually, but if she’d joined herself to such a powerful Sensitive, maybe she should have been more cautious.

She cleared her throat. “No, the Delmaire geists have been tamed for centuries. The last attack recorded there was more than fifty years past—that was why so many Deacons jumped at the chance to sign up to this new Abbey: boredom.”

“That’s one thing we never have to worry about. Sometimes I wonder . . .” The young man’s voice trailed off. Flicking his head over his shoulder, he pulled his mare up suddenly.

“What is it?” Sorcha tugged Shedryi to the right, circling her new partner. No matter how useless it was, she too scanned their surroundings. They were in the middle of a narrow stretch of dry ground, with low marshes on each side. Sedge and rushes whispered in the breeze, but she could make out no trace of geist. Certainly there was no scent but the brackish water and the damp earth.

She brought her stallion up tight against Merrick’s mare; she wasn’t about to let another Sensitive get away on her. Even when she cocked her head and strained her Sensitivity, she could still make out nothing more dangerous than sucking mud. “I don’t smell any—”

“Quiet!” The young upstart actually raised his hand as if she were a novice at the back of the class. The tone of his voice, though, and her knowledge of his ranking caused Sorcha to slide her Gauntlets from under her belt and onto her lap.

The marsh to the right, a thinly spread oval of dark water, was completely quiet. No wading birds disturbed the surface. No frogs chirped from its fringes. Even the expectant resilient midges seemed to have abandoned this patch.

The Deacon Breed horses, male and female, tossed their heads, but unlike lesser mounts did not dance sideways. Trained to stand in the face of supernatural attack, they dropped their heads, blew through their noses, and did not move.