The Rossin swung his head around, those golden-flecked eyes fixed on her with an intensity that held her still. She knew what a mouse felt like when pinned to the spot by a house cat.
This means nothing. You are still nothing.
Then the muscles under her hand began to shift and move with the powerful magic of the geistlord. Within a heartbeat she was standing with her palm against Raed’s chest. He was breathing rapidly, staring at her, completely naked. More for her own sensibilities than his, Sorcha took off her cloak and, for the second time that day, draped it around him. Neither of them could speak for a while.
“Welcome back my prince,” Aachon said, giving voice to the horrified faces of the crew, but Sorcha saw that his hands were trembling where they were clenched on his jacket.
Raed glanced back at the tunnel, worked his mouth once, before managing to get out, “Where are we?”
“Vermillion,” Sorcha breathed. “Back to the capital.”
“I couldn’t even move them,” Aachon whispered in a tone that approached awe as he indicated the weirstones in the tunnel. “How did you do that?”
Her mother. The Wrayth. All the answers clamored in her head, but she let none of them out. Instead she shrugged and tried to divert his attention. “Lucky I guess. Let’s get to the Mother Abbey as soon as we can. I can protect Raed from—”
And then the world was ripped away from under her feet. Every nerve ending sprang alive, and she cried out. Sorcha didn’t feel the ground come up and hit her, but she found herself lying on the floor, staring at the feet of everyone else. Her mind felt scrambled and madness seemed to be the best course. Her breath struggled in her throat, and she felt the Bonds, all her Bonds to the Order spin away from her.
“Sorcha!” Raed was on his knees, helping her up. His grip on her felt like it was happening to another person. “What’s happening? Are you all right?”
She didn’t answer him, but brushed him aside so that she could get to her Gauntlets. Pulling them onto her lap, she stared at them, unbelieving, uncomprehending. Yet, there it was.
No power flowed through the leathers, and the runes were broken and blasted. Devastated. The Gauntlets that she had worked with so much care and precision were ruined. She could vividly remember sitting in the sun in the courtyard of the Mother Abbey of Delmaire, etching the first rune, Aydien, into the leather with great care. It had been her proudest moment—and now it was gone.
She looked about, searching for answers in the walls, in the air, in the fabric of reality. Finally, she turned to Aachon. “What can it mean?”
The first mate stared at the Gauntlets, and shook his head. “I really don’t know.”
On the floor, Fraine began to laugh. Soon she was gasping for breath. Apparently she was enjoying Sorcha’s horror just a little too much. “The Deacons of your Order are done for.”
Before Raed could stop her, Sorcha threw herself atop his sister and shook her by the shoulders. “What do you know? Tell me, or by the Bones I’ll smash it out of you.”
It took Raed and two crew members to pull her off Fraine. “Sorcha!” Raed grabbed her hands. “Sorcha! She’s just goading you. Shouldn’t we go to the Mother Abbey and get help from there? Surely they know what’s happening.”
Sorcha swallowed hard, and then closed her eyes. It was hard to focus, impossible to find her Center. Garil was back at the Mother Abbey; he had sent her away because he had known that she would heal if the Fensena could find her. Had he seen this too?
She nodded. “I’m sorry. Yes, you’re right, Raed.”
He put her arm around him and led her along the tunnel. The others followed in their wake, carrying the still-giggling Fraine along with them. Despite her mirth, it was a somber procession.
TWENTY
Shadows of Bones
As they moved along the corridor, Raed felt Sorcha shiver like a horse about to give up after a long run. She was hanging on by the thinnest of threads, and he kept his arm around her as if that could hold her together. He even found himself murmuring, “It’s all right, it’s all right…” but she didn’t say anything at all in response.
Fraine had finally and thankfully ceased her giggling and was silent between the two crew members. Now and then she lapsed into choked sobs. Tangyre Greene had been undoubtedly the most unwavering point in her life. Their father was no one to pin childish hopes and aspirations on. He was a cruel coward of a man who blamed his mistakes on everyone around him. Then the Rossin had killed their mother, and Raed himself had been sent to sea at a young age.
However his sister’s tears did tear at him. Tangyre had been his friend too, until the moment he’d realized her deception. Though Captain Greene had been a clever woman, he doubted that she had constructed these alliances with the geistlords Hatipai and the Wrayth by herself. Someone else was moving the game pieces. Someone he’d very much like to meet face-to-face.
They had walked for maybe half an hour, before the brick tunnels of what had to be the sewage system of Vermillion broke through into another area he recognized.
Sorcha did too, for her head jerked upright and she stammered, “The White Palace.”
The boneyard of the city was buried beneath everyday citizens’ feet. It was naturally an eerie place, with all the bones arranged in patterns and stacks around them, but even more so when seen through the veil of memory. It was here, two seasons past, that he had been part of the being made up of himself, Sorcha, Merrick and the Rossin. They had battled the Murashev for the city and all the citizens in it. Raed reminded himself of one vital fact. They had won.
Raed had only spotty memories of that time, but when he looked into Sorcha’s eyes he caught flashes of it. The power and the rage that they both had experienced while melded with the Rossin. It still called to them both.
“Strange isn’t it,” she said with a twist of her lips, “that the last time we were here we were all-powerful…now look at us.”
He glanced back, and saw what she meant. Only a few of his crew members remained. Aachon’s weirstone had been destroyed, as had Sorcha’s Gauntlets. The only thing he had to show for the pursuit of his missing sister was the fact that Fraine was with them. However, even that was not the joyful reunion he had once imagined.
Sorcha touched his face, a stroke along his chin. “I have to find Merrick, but…” She stopped and caught her breath before going on. “But how am I to find him?”
Raed had never seen her like this, and while he loved that she was ready to show him her vulnerable side, the larger part of him was distressed by it. Brushing a lock of her red hair back behind her ear, he said as soothingly as possible, “He’ll be at the Mother Abbey of course. Let’s go.”
Aachon checked the tightness of Fraine’s binds, and Raed overheard what he said to her. “My princess, we are going aboveground, and it would be best if you do not cry out. You, like your brother, have a bounty on your head.”
She clamped her lips shut, but her eyes gleamed angrily. Raed knew his sister was lost to him—there were just some places a soul could not come back from—but he knew that he would still try to reach her. Maybe the clever, all-seeing Merrick would have some ideas.
They climbed up through the mausoleum doors that Sorcha directed them to and out onto the streets of Vermillion. Raed pulled up his hood and Fraine’s—though she glared at him for this consideration. However as soon as they were out in the fresh early evening air, he felt something else apart from the chill. It was the Rossin, close to the surface, and he was relishing in something he tasted on the breeze.