Wrayth (24 page)

Testing the door, Zofiya found with some surprise that there was no lock. After taking a breath, she pushed it open a fraction and glanced in. This next room was as dimly lit as her own, and so, crouched over, she crept in. The smell was the first thing that hit her, actually stopping her in her tracks. It was the odor of urine and excrement, and not just a fraction, but a considerable buildup. She’d been on campaign with her father as a young woman, and despite the
joys of traveling with the King, she’d still been exposed to the more visceral side of life in a camp. However in a closed space, on top of her already fragile condition, the smell was so overpowering that for a second she had to choke back her own bile. She held her shirt over her nose and went on.

A single lantern hanging from the wall lit this room’s prisoner. He was restrained, but not as she was. This old man sitting cross-legged on the floor was collared around the neck with a chain running from a fixture on the wall. The opposite side of the room was where this poor creature had been forced to defecate. It was a state that Zofiya would have been outraged to have any of her dogs in—let alone a man. After she conquered her disgust, she took another step into the room.

Zofiya glanced around, making absolutely sure that they were alone.

“Are you all right?” she whispered, bending down toward him, though the smell lower down was no fresher. The man did not acknowledge her presence, merely continued what he was doing.

The floor they stood on was dusty and strewn with straw, as a house in the countryside would have been. This debris of dust and wheat was what fascinated her fellow prisoner. He had sorted out the larger pieces of stalks to one side, and piled them behind him, so that what lay before him was a clear surface. He was drawing.

Zofiya tilted her head and stared as he worked. They were not words, but symbols. Despite the peril of the moment, the Grand Duchess circled around him to get a better look. She had never seen anything like it. These were curved interlacing strokes, elaborately curled and curiously beautiful. As she stared, she thought she could make out a couple of shapes she recognized; two runes she’d last observed on the Gauntlet of Deacon Sorcha Faris.

Crouching down, she addressed her fellow prisoner once more, “Old man, what are you doing?”

He continued on as if she were less than a shade in his perception.

Not used to being ignored in any shape or form, Zofiya grabbed him by the shoulder, and gave him a little shake. “Do you want to get out of here or not?”

His eyes now darted up to meet hers. They were perfectly clear pale blue, like looking into a sparkling mountain stream, but they were not focused on her. She noted how his hands still traced the symbols in the dust. “You are here.” His voice was sweet and light for such a wizened-looking man.

She glanced down to where he was tapping. She couldn’t see her name, her personal sigil or anything else, but a shiver ran up her spine. It was completely illogical, but she felt that he was right. Somewhere in the twists and turns he had mapped out, the little Princess of Delmaire and the determined sister of Kaleva was sketched.

Zofiya shook her head; maybe it was the blood loss and whatever del Rue had pumped her full of. A thought followed soon after. If her captor had seen fit to capture this old man as well, then he had to have some real value. It would undoubtedly be bad for the Empire and her brother.

Rising, she hastily examined the man’s restraints and immediately saw that he’d been here a lot longer than she had been, and was far better secured. The bolt that fastened his chain to the wall was sturdy and screwed into the beam of whatever house they were in. Turning her attention to the other end, she accidentally stepped through the old man’s creation.

He immediately stopped, like a puppet whose strings had been cut, staring at the floor without saying a word.

“No time for this,” Zofiya muttered to herself, while tilting his head forward. “This has been on a long while hasn’t it, old sir.” The flesh on each side of the steel collar was covered in scars where his neck had rubbed against it and then healed.

Nothing in this room was going to break this piece of
the blacksmith’s art, nor were her bare hands. For some reason, tears sprang to her eyes at the thought. Ridiculous that a man of such short acquaintance could bring such emotion out in her, but Zofiya wanted to protect him. He reminded her of the quiet nuns of Hatipai in the temple in Delmaire—the ones that had never realized they served a geistlord. She pressed her hands around his, for a moment stilling his reconstruction of the design on the floor.

“What is your name?”

He looked up at her with those incredible eyes. “Ratimana,” was all he said, before returning to what he was doing. As if that was enough explanation of everything.

She had to go. Del Rue or one of his cronies could return to check on her at any minute. “I will send someone back for you, Ratimana. As soon as I am back with my brother. I promise.”

He did not glance up, not even when she reluctantly walked toward the far door. Zofiya glanced back once, but he still drew on. Many times in her life the Grand Duchess had wished for some of the talents of a Sensitive Deacon, but never more so than now. Something about that old man suggested he was more than he seemed. She would send her best Imperial Guards back to retrieve him, and a brace of Deacons just to be sure.

The next door was also unlocked, the final chamber in what she guessed had to be a root cellar of some house somewhere on the Edge of Vermillion. This one was unoccupied and much larger. The first thing she saw that raised her hopes immediately was a set of crooked stairs leading up. Scrambling up them proved to be dangerous as they lurched most alarmingly, but Zofiya reached the top, and felt a grin spread on her face. A pair of cellar doors.

She pushed on them. Then when that did not work, she applied her shoulder. Nothing budged. Taking a calming breath, she examined them more closely. With her fingertips she traced the outline of the doors. They seemed sturdy, and the gaps were packed with dirt and rocks.

As she sat back on her heels, Zofiya realized that the cellar door had been most effectively sealed shut on the other side by a thick application of rocks and dirt. How were del Rue and his minions coming and going through?

Carefully Zofiya climbed back down the stairs and set about searching the rest of the room. It was larger than the other two, but not big enough that another entrance could be effectively hidden. She’d given up on stealth now. Desperation and frustration were growing. In her nightmares she had dreamed of her brother caught in a situation like this—but never herself. All those years of putting his safety first, and the worst thing she’d imagined was getting killed. Being turned into a pawn in someone’s grand game had never figured. Perhaps she needed a larger imagination in the future. Depending on what that was.

She reached the far side of the cellar, and found only a narrow tunnel. This looked freshly constructed, because the brick walls on each side were ripped apart. Holding her broken bit of bed frame before her, Zofiya followed it.

The air in the tunnel suddenly became very close, and her skin began to itch frightfully. One summer in Delmaire she’d spent an uncomfortable hour by the lake while her father examined the latest addition to his river fleet. For three days after she’d itched to the point she’d wanted to rip her own skin off. This moment reminded her uncomfortably of that one. Every part of her body wanted her to stop moving forward and just go back. Maybe that cellar door wasn’t as blocked as she thought. Maybe she hadn’t checked all the corners of the last room thoroughly enough?

These thoughts made no sense, but felt so compelling. She’d been exposed to magic before, she knew the signs, so Zofiya kept plowing forward, one foot in front of the other.

The end of the short excavation ended in strangeness. An oval was described in the dirt, as tall as Zofiya was. It was outlined with the gleaming opalescence of tiny weirstones. That could not be good. Still she had a feeling this
had to be the way del Rue was traveling. When she was within a few feet of it, she extended her hand cautiously.

The surface was icy cold like she’d plunged her hand into a lake, but after only an inch, it did not yield any further—no matter how hard she pressed. She had to get to Kaleva. He must be turning Vermillion upside down to find her. What was he imagining happened to her?

However as Zofiya stood there thinking those things, hand still clamped to the surface, the darkness began to resolve itself. The Grand Duchess frowned and peered closer. Was she imagining it, or could she actually see Kaleva? His face was coming into focus in the darkness.

His expression was one however that she had never seen on her brother before. He looked angry; not just slightly annoyed, but truly and deeply angry. It reminded her of some of the expressions she had seen on the faces of men about to go into battle. Her father had some island folk that went into a maddened state before heading into a fight. The bulging eyes and clenched teeth had frightened her as a child, and seeing a similar look on her brother’s face was worse.

“Kal!” she shouted, keeping her hand on the surface, lest she break whatever magic was allowing this to happen. “Kal, I am here!”

He didn’t move at all, so not even a whisper of her scream was getting through. Then the scene around the Emperor began to make itself known, and she saw him. Standing at her brother’s side was del Rue. Zofiya howled again, trying to pound her way through the barrier with her other hand. She even kicked at it, but nothing broke.

Taking a long breath she bottled her frustration back inside her, and concentrated instead on what was happening on the other side. It looked like the interior of one of the aristocratic chambers in the palace, and she surmised that this was the room del Rue had been given. It was luxurious, more like something a visiting Prince could command rather than a minor noble.

Kaleva was speaking to del Rue, waving his finger and pointing in a totally uncharacteristic manner. Zofiya’s stomach clenched. She hated seeing her brother like this, and most especially knowing that she was the cause of it. Abruptly she had an idea.

Cautiously she pressed the side of her head against the surface. One side of her face grew numb, and her ear felt like it might break and fall off, but she was able to make out faint noise from the other side.

“…and the Arch Abbot says he will not hand over that cursed Deacon for questioning.” Kaleva’s voice cracked with rage. “I never should have let them take him in the first place.”

“You were in shock, Your Imperial Majesty. You cannot blame yourself for what happened then. What is important is what happens now.” He gestured Kaleva to sit, and after a moment the Emperor did. “Have you given any further thought to what we discussed yesterday?”

“The Pattern?” Her brother looked distracted.

“I have been warning you, Imperial Majesty, for months, about the perils of this Order you brought with you.” Del Rue pressed. “Now the man responsible for your sister’s disappearance is safe behind the skirts of the Mother Abbey.”

“It wasn’t him!” Zofiya then screamed her brother’s name again, but he made no gesture to suggest he had noticed it. Her hands clenched on the surface, but she could not look away.

“But they have rid Arkaym of the geists, and been very useful to—”

“Darling.” A voice from outside of the range of the tunnel made itself known by cutting off the Emperor, and Zofiya immediately recognized it. The Empress was apparently also present. “You yourself said it was the Arch Abbot of the Order who was the one that conspired to destroy Vermillion last year. We cannot forget either that the Deacons who you sent to Chioma, only a season ago,
returned with my home in flames and my father slain. Now, to top it all off, they have taken your sister.”

Kaleva shook his head, glancing down at the floor. Zofiya knew that gesture from times past. He was coming to a hard decision. He was making his mind up with the poison of del Rue dripping in his ear. She pounded on the surface that stood between them.

“Much like the old Native Order, this one has fallen prey to avarice and power.” Del Rue leaned in closer to the Emperor. “You can always summon more Deacons from your father’s domain if you like. The Order of the Eye and the Fist is not the only one in the world.”

“You must think of your people!” Ezefia came into view, stunning as ever in an Imperial scarlet dress, and sat next to him, resting one hand on his knee. “It is about their safety as well as your own.” She made a sharp gesture, and one of her ladies appeared, carrying something on a cushion. With the care the lady-in-waiting displayed it could have been made of glass. Whatever it was however was a mystery, since it was covered with a blue piece of velvet.

“You got the Pattern from the vaults, my love,” the Empress cooed. “You must know what needs to be done.”

Zofiya sunk to her knees, keeping her face and hand pressed to the surface. “Kaleva, no! Whatever they are doing, turn away. Please!” She yelled it toward him, as if he could hear her by some kind of Deacon Sensitivity. If only they’d been twins, or born with the power. Too late now to hope for that.

Kaleva took the cushion from Ezefia’s lady, set it on his knee and then drew back the covering. The Grand Duchess ceased her wailing and looked. It was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen—and it was not the first time she’d seen it. Two pale blue marble tablets, about as long as her forearm, rested before her brother. A filigree of writing was carved into them, and soft blue light ran from the lines. From her angle she could not see what the words were, but she could remember from memory. The ten Runes
of Dominion and the seven Runes of Sight. She’d last seen the Pattern, though she’d never heard it called that, on the wharf in Delmaire, just before they sailed for Arkaym. She recalled the Arch Abbot handing them to Kaleva reverently, and offering them up as a symbol of trust between the Order and their Emperor.

Back then she’d been too busy organizing her troops for the largest sea journey of any army in history to take much notice of what the Order did. As far as she knew he’d placed it in a box and sent it to the vault with all his other treasures.