Damien was silent. He could feel his own hands trembling—with the force of frustration, of rage. Of betrayal. The dream had seemed so perfect.... What had fouled it? Or who?
“Listen to me,” the Hunter said sharply. “I don’t know how all these facts connect, but they do. There’s no question of that. And whoever or whatever caused it isn’t going to be out in the open, that’s certain.”
He forced his eyes to look at the map. “South, you think?”
Tarrant looked at Hesseth, who nodded. “Best bet.”
He drew in a deep breath, tried to still the shaking of his hands. A young girl chained to a rock, bait for demons.... “We need more information. First.”
“Listen to me.” Tarrant’s words were reinforced with earth-fae, and they adhered themselves to Damien’s brain like fire. “Don’t talk to anyone. Anyone! Do you understand? Our enemy is subtle, and his strategy spans centuries. Even men and women who mean well may serve his purpose without knowing it. Isn’t that what we’re seeing here? Good intentions twisted to an evil purpose?” He stood; dark silk rippled about his calves. “I let my guard down once in the rakhlands—for less than a second—and endured eight days of burning hell as a result. Our enemy is subtle, Vryce, and that’s what makes him so dangerous. If he weren’t, don’t you think these people would have fought him? Or at least acknowledged his influence?”
“He must know we’re here,” the priest muttered. The vision of the chained child was still before his eyes. “If his influence is as far-reaching as you say—”
“All the more reason to move quickly,” he agreed. “Since we don’t know how far his power extends, or how many people are under his control. Best to move now.”
He walked to the door, carefully avoiding the maps that surrounded it. Before he left, he turned to look at Damien—and something in the priest’s expression must have displeased him, because the pale eyes narrowed.
“I killed eight times in the cities,” he said. Nostrils flaring as he spoke, as if he were recalling the scents of the kill. “Eight women. And each time the wards let me pass by with not even a murmur. You remember that, if you start to have doubts. If Mercia starts to look good again. You ask yourself what kind of power would welcome the Hunter into its stockyards.”
And then he was gone, quickly and silently. Not pausing to work an Obscuring to hide himself, but wrapping the fae about him for that purpose even as the door closed behind him. Damien felt the sudden urge to throw something after him, but the only things at hand were fixtures of the apartment: not his, and far too valuable. At last he saw a shoe peeking out from underneath a couch, that he had kicked off the day before. He grabbed it up and launched it at the door. Hard. It hit with a resounding thwack and slid to the floor, dispelling a small part of his rage. Only a small part.
“Was that because he killed the women?” Hesseth asked. “Or because he told you about it?”
“Neither.”
He sat on the edge of a couch and rubbed his temples; beneath his fingertips he could feel his blood pounding. “Because he’s right,” he whispered hoarsely. “God damn him. He’s right about all of it.”
Eleven
It was midnight. True midnight, when the forces of dawn and dusk were perfectly balanced.
There was a cold front moving out and a warm front moving in; the turbulent line between the two was just crossing the Five Cities district.
Domina was overhead, Casca low in the east, Prima below the western horizon. In accordance with the complex mathematical dynamics of their positioning—which took into account their mass, gravity, and position relative to the planet—they were just coming into perfect geometric alignment.
The upper current in the Straits of Preservation had been flowing east all night. Now it was still, preparing to flow to the west.
Water condensed in the clouds overhead, transforming from vapor to liquid.
Unseen, unfelt, the Diangelo Fault moved slightly.
The wind began to shift.
—And power shot out across the land, a power born not of moonlight or earthquakes or the motion of the sea, but of the combination of all those things and a thousand, a million more. A power which was as much a part of Erna as her tides, her seasons, her rhythms of day and night. A power which lanced out in gleaming strands across the length and breadth of the continent, shimmering rainbow threads connecting city with city—cathedral with cathedral—
Matria with Matria.
In the far north, where the Teachers waited, one mind reached out to touch the fragile strands. The rainbow web shivered as its message was read, analyzed, considered.
Tides shifted. Power surged across the continent in waves, like bands of spectral light.
The mind reached out again. Its message, a consensus, was placed in the flickering web.
And then the moment passed. The moons moved out of alignment. The wind held steady. Dawn gained in dominance over dusk, and rain began to fall. The upper current in the Straits of Preservation flowed west, as it would until morning.
The power dispersed as quickly as it had appeared, so that no sign of it remained. Whatever message it had carried was likewise dispersed into the night, swallowed by the shadows of oblivion. But not before it had reached its destination. Not before its meaning had been deciphered.
“I understand,” Mercia’s Matria whispered. “Yes. I understand exactly.”
And she promised, “First thing in the morning, I’ll take care of them.”
Twelve
He couldn’t bring himself to tell Captain Rozca the truth. Couldn’t bring himself to take that newborn faith, so very precious, so utterly fragile, and make it bear the weight of his foreboding. And why should he? The captain had made his covenant with an ideal, with a God, not with any one city or socio-political schema. Let him dream on a little longer in his innocence, Damien decided. Let him taste as much of the sweetness as he could, before the bitter undercurrents of this paradoxical land rose to the surface and fouled his perspective.
He did tell him other things. All of it. He couldn’t expect the man to take a risk for him without knowing what the stakes were; he couldn’t expect him to be convincing in his assigned role without being thoroughly grounded in the details of Damien’s quest. Rozca took it all calmly enough, asking questions only when a turn of phrase was unclear to him; otherwise he absorbed the tale of rakh and demons, torture and vengeance, much as he might any seafaring story told over tankards of ale in a cliffside tavern. He’d heard crazier tales before, he told Damien, though never before had he been thrust into the middle of one. He seemed to handle it well enough. Maybe a man who had devoted his life to dodging smashers and cruising volcanic rifts had partaken enough of life’s risks to put this one, however deadly, in its context.
It was all very reassuring for Damien. And when he asked the captain what he had come to ask—the reason he had been up at the break of dawn to make his way down to the harbor, and out to the Glory— the captain simply nodded and said it would be no problem. Or it would be a problem, sure enough, but he figured he could handle it. And he grinned, in a manner that left no doubt that Lio Rozca was up to any challenge this foreign shore could throw at him.
I hope so, Damien thought grimly. Praying that the man’s courage wouldn’t have to be tested too soon
A tug had brought the priest out to the ship; a rowboat of the Glory, manned by a yawning crewman, took him back. At this hour there was business aplenty in the harbor—the minor tide would be turning in an hour, with Domina’s tide soon to follow—but the crowd of tourists and newsmongers who so often clogged the port was blissfully absent. Everyone working in dawn’s early light had his or her own business to take care of, which meant that as Damien wended his way through the crowds along the shore he could be fairly certain of remaining unobserved. Which was good. Reassuring. And he needed all the reassurance he could get right now.
The scene with Tarrant the night before had shaken him badly. He had h
ardly slept at all, and what little sleep he had managed to snatch in bits and pieces was riddled with fragments of nightmares, all too familiar in their tenor. It wasn’t what Tarrant had said, or even the way he had said it. It was Damien’s sudden acknowledgment of how careless he had been. How trusting. It was the sudden revelation of how greatly he had put them all at risk by focusing on his religious rapture rather than on the mission at hand. Not that he would have traded those precious moments for anything in the world, he thought. They were part of who he was now, a core of faith for him to draw on. But he should have kept his eyes open. He should have been asking questions. He should have done ... oh, so many things.
No regretting it now. He could only hope that it wasn’t too late. Five days had passed since their quarantine had been lifted, which was a very short time in the scheme of things. Or long enough to mobilize an army, if soldiers had been ready and waiting....
He had done the best he could, given his sleepless state. When the first light of dawn showed over the mountains, he had gone down to the harbor to find Rozca. Now that part of his plan was taken care of, and he felt marginally safer. Later he would talk to Mels and Tyria Lester and see if they would agree to help him—a far less risky role than the one the captain would be playing, but equally important—and then, if all went well, Damien and his companions would be covered. They could leave Mercia on a moment’s notice without anyone being the wiser, and any pursuit which sought them out would inevitably be delayed.
Paranoia in action, he thought. The only reasonable course.
Tarrant would have been proud of him.
It was still early morning when he made his way back to the Regent’s Manor. He eschewed the more obvious route for one that circled around to the west, through the farmer’s market. Wagons full of fish and game and freshly plucked poultry had been there since first light, and already the restauranteurs and specialty buyers of Mercia’s better districts were picking their way through the heaps of slaughtered flesh, squeezing and sniffing and doing God knows what else to ascertain the value of their wares. The air was thick with the smell of brine and a sweet undercurrent of blood, and for a moment Damien found himself back in the rakhene mountains, a cup of Ciani’s blood in his hand. Knee-deep in ice and snow, feeding blood to the Hunter. He shook his head, banishing the memory with effort. He would have been dead if not for Tarrant, several times over. And vice versa. It was a good thing to remember as they prepared to plunge into this unknown land, with nothing but faith and a tenuous alliance to sustain them.
The market road took him around the back way, so that he approached the Manor from behind. Perhaps if he had come around the front he would simply have entered the great hall, so lost in his musings that he would fail to notice subtle differences around him. Perhaps. But something about the rear walk prodded his attention toward the building and its guards, and what he saw made him stop for a moment, uncertain.
Something was different.
He stepped into the shadow of a tree, wondering why he couldn’t put a finger on what it was that bothered him. Paranoia in action he chided himself, but the feeling of wrongness refused to go away. It’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you. He studied the grounds, the building itself, the guards who were stationed by the gate—
The guards.
He felt his heart skip a beat. The guards, their uniforms ... he tried to remember what they had been wearing when he left the Manor. Red fitted tunic, sword just so, insignia of rank....
Insignia of rank.
He couldn’t remember exactly what it was before. He had never looked that closely. But this was surely different: more ornate, more elaborate. As if the guards who now watched the Manor’s gate were from the same source as the others, but of a considerably higher rank.
The others had been the Regent’s private guard. There was only one rank any higher than that. And only one reason he could think of, short of revolution, why the Matria’s elite soldiers would now be guarding this building.
Shit.
He stepped back onto the pathway, careful not to move too quickly. Careful to let his own pace match that of the people around him, brisk but unhurried. He let the currents of humanity carry him away from the building, until the gleaming white walls were out of sight. Only then did he dare to stop. Only then did he try to think.
Everything he had seen and heard in this place indicated that Toshida and his Matria were in perfect accord, personally and politically. Whatever private bitterness the man might harbor about the limits of his rank, Damien gathered it had never been expressed openly. Indeed, the man had all but sworn him to silence on the matter. So why would the Matria send in her own guards to take the place of his? What service would she require that the Regent could not—or would not—fulfill?
The more he thought about that the less he liked his conclusions. He remembered Tarrant’s accusations, some of them aimed at this Matriarchy. Was it possible that Mercia’s leader was somehow allied with their enemy? Certainly Tarrant had believed that to be possible. If so, and if her guards had come at the break of dawn to surround the Regent’s Manor....
Where was Hesseth? he wondered suddenly. Panic flaring suddenly in his gut, at the thought that she might have been taken prisoner. Damn it, how could he find out?
He took a deep breath, and tried to think clearly. Weighing his options. At last he turned about and began to walk again, this time toward the east.
There was no true wilderness available to him, not within the city walls. And there was no other privacy he could have, unless he dared to rent a room in some hotel or hostel. But that meant having to show his identification, which entailed its own special risk. He decided against it. There were several parks in the city, replete with trees and myriad garden paths, and if he headed toward the largest one he stood a good chance of finding some green little nook that would shield him from prying eyes.
He was in luck. The park was nearly deserted, with but a few hardy joggers and one nursemaid with a gaggle of children to avoid. He chose a lesser path whose loose, rocky surface would be inhospitable to sportsmen and followed it until all other roads were lost from sight, whereupon he was fairly certain that no one would disturb him.
Carefully he lowered himself to his knees, and tried to make himself relax. A short prayer served to focus his consciousness, and a simple Working to summon his Sight. Now he could see the earth-fae as it flowed about him, a power as of yet untamed by any human will. It was flowing west, which was hardly ideal; he would have to work against the current to get any information from the Manor. But he had done that kind of thing before, under far worse conditions than this. He let the words of a Knowing shape themselves upon his lips, traced its unlocking patterns with his mind’s inner eye, and saw the fae begin to gather in response. Forming a picture that only he could see, sounds and sights and meanings placed within his mind by the rich power of the earth.
Hesseth, he prompted it. Where?
He saw her awakened at dawn by the sound of movement within the Manor. Saw the almost animal alertness with which she moved, clawed hands grabbing up a few valuable items and wrapping them in a blanket, which she then belted to her person. There were voices in the corridor now, very close, very wrong. He could feel her tension building, could smell her fear as she grabbed up a pile of folded maps and tucked those into her belt as well. Balancing need against risk as the voices drew ever closer. Mere whispers, really. Damien wondered if a human ear could have heard them. Perhaps they considered themselves safe from discovery, not knowing of his sorcery or her rakhene senses. Too late now. She pushed upon the piercedwork window and with feline agility leapt up to the sill; even as her door was thrust open, she dropped down beneath the window, strong claws digging deep into the thick wood frame.
Voices in her room, speaking in foreign accents. He heard her breathing softly, was aware of her scanning the side of the building for danger. Nothing yet. With care she lowered herself, sharp claws biting into
whatever wooden fixtures were within reach. Once she had to tuck herself behind a column as a guard passed by beneath, but no one thought to look up at the building itself. Damien watched as she gained the ground, scaled a broad tree by the gate, navigated branches that no human could have traversed to make her way across the iron fence, and from there, via trees, gained the ground once more....
He felt something unknot inside him, to know that she had gotten away from them safely. If the forces of the Matria were indeed being mobilized against them, then they were in serious trouble. Thank God Tarrant had upset him the night before, so that he’d been unable to sleep. Thank God he’d been gone before first light, so that the soldiers had missed him.
He took a minute to breathe deeply, willing his panic to subside. It was all right now. The Matria didn’t know about his sorcery or Hesseth’s skills, which gave them an initial advantage. By the time she learned to compensate, Rozca would make his move, and that should distract them for just long enough ... he felt the pieces of his plan coming together like fragments of a jigsaw puzzle, forced their shapes into alignment. First he had to find Hesseth. Then he had to finish what he had started. Then, when all his preparations were complete, when he had compensated at least in part for his carelessness in the five days preceding....
It was time to get the hell out of here.
Toshida didn’t like being roused at daybreak by the Matria’s guard. He didn’t like finding out that his own men had been dismissed, to make way for hers. Even less did he like being summoned to her presence within minutes of awakening, so that the time he might have spent composing himself and preparing for an audience was instead spent trekking to her chambers in the presence of four of her guards.