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Chapter Forty-Five

Caeris stood in silence. Her mouth worked, but no words came out. Even the angel, limned in heavenly light, shimmering just beneath the surface of her skin, looked troubled.

“As I said—” Rae started, but then he and the wraith cringed around a sharp pain in their side. The spirit roiled around his shoulders, any semblance to a living soul eradicated in its misery. La rushed to his side.

“You’re hurt!” She felt his ribs, pried his eyes open to peer inside, even poked at his teeth. Rae pulled away.

“They were waiting,” Rae said. “Those spirits, the masters you said were bound here for all eternity? They were waiting for me!”

“Shouldn’t matter,” Caeris answered. “After all this time, they’d be in no shape to do you any harm.”

“Does this look like nothing?” Rae pulled his cuff back, revealing the ugly black scar across his wrist and the palm. Caeris’s eyes narrowed. She glanced over his shoulder at the empty vault of the tower. “Pretty sure this came from the former wraithbinder.”

“We have company,” Predi said, reappearing from the brambles. “And there’s no sign of Estev. It looks like he took that crystal sword with him.”

“What? Damn it, that’s the blade that killed Yveth! It must have something to do with—”

A shot rang off the stone at Rae’s feet, followed closely by a shout. They all spun in that direction. A loose skirmish line of guardsmen approached through the cover of the manor house’s outbuildings. They wore the crimson and cream of the Iron College’s house troop, the mundane military branch of the justicars, and carried the long partizans traditional to their station, but each of them also had a brace of flintlocks across their chest. The officer, a woman with a bundle of tight braids sticking out of her tricorn, had drawn and fired. A cloud of smoke wreathed her head.

“As I said,” Predi muttered. “Company.”

“We’ll have to figure this out later,” Rae snapped. He remembered what the remnant had said. They’re waiting outside. “Rassek’s on his way here. I think he has some connection to the wraith.” He grabbed La and pushed her toward the forest. “Run!”

Predi straightened up and reached for his pistol. Caeris grabbed his arm with a hiss.

“What are you doing? Those are houseguard!” she said. “They’re from the Iron College!”

“They shot at a pair of justicars,” he said, shrugging her off. He returned fire, sighting quickly and dropping the hammer before Caeris could stop him. His shot whistled through the air. Rae could feel the bullet plucking at his soul as its bound spirit spun into the material plane. The stoneshot struck with the weight of a ton of bricks, shattering the vine-covered wall of a tumbledown granary before digging a rut into the forest floor. Guardsmen dove for cover in good order. So not just brigands wearing houseguard uniforms, Rae thought. What are we getting into here?

“You trying to kill them all in one shot?” Caeris asked angrily.

“I’m trying to give us a chance to get away,” Predi answered. “Just a warning. If I wanted to kill houseguard, I’d be working with Rassek, not hunting him.”

“Stoneshot? You use stoneshot to send a warning?” Rae yelled as he dropped to the ground.

“Why are houseguard shooting at us?” La asked.

“Maybe we can ask them later on,” Predi said. He was reloading quickly, shoving a rune-etched ball down the barrel. “Caeris, do you want to provide us with some cover?”

She muttered to herself, but rose from behind the stone wall and lifted her hands. Divine light formed in her palms, growing quickly in size and brightness. Rae threw an arm over La and turned away. The flash of light that followed burned through his eyelids.

“A little warning next time,” Predi grumbled. He was blinking rapidly. Caeris gathered a stunned Mahk by the shoulder and pulled him away from the tower, drawing a pistol and firing it over the heads of the houseguard.

The guards recovered quickly, popping up from behind cover to sight flintlocks. A crackle of return fire punched through the air. Lead zipped past Rae’s head, plucking at the walls of the tower. La let out a tiny scream and fell to the ground.

“La!” Rae shouted, standing up and rushing to her. A thin red line slashed its way across the white cloth of her shoulder. The wraith twisted through him, cold anger mixed with fear. “La, are you alright?”

She pushed him back as he tried to help her up.

“Just a sting,” she said, but the blood was spreading across her chest. Mahk thumped up, his face pale. “Stop staring at me like I’m a corpse, the both of you. I’m fine! Concern yourself with the fact that we’re being shot at.”

“Scatter!” Caeris yelled as she holstered her first ’lock and drew another. “Predi and I will take care of this!”

Rae threw an arm over La’s shoulder. She stumbled against him, wincing as she thumped into his chest. Rae sucked at his teeth.

“We’re going to have to move pretty fast here, sis. You feel up to it?” he asked.

“We don’t have time for this,” Mahk said. He scooped La up with one arm like a child. He had a club in his other arm, clutching it like a lifeline. He skirted the edge of the tower and dove into the forest.

“Circle back to the manor house!” Rae yelled after Mahk. “Those stairs, where we first came in. We’ll find you there.” Mahk shouted something back. He hoped the big man had understood.

Predi still held the discharged pistol, but Caeris had not drawn her sword or her angel. They walked toward the skirmish line of houseguards, arms extended at their waist. Justicars and houseguard fighting. Something’s not right here.

“I demand to speak to your commanding officer!” Caeris shouted. “You have opened fire on lawful representatives of the Iron College, in pursuit—”

The skirmish line was already reforming, partizans at the ready, pistols drawn. While Caeris was still speaking, the same officer who had fired earlier turned and gave an order to the skirmish line. Her soldiers trotted forward, lowering partizans as they sped up. Caeris froze in place. She looked at Predi uncertainly. The older justicar said something, then raised his pistol.

At a shouted order from their officer, the houseguard fired in unison, then dropped flintlocks and advanced at a run. Lead shot peppered the ground, a few whizzing off the suddenly summoned barrier that sizzled around Caeris’s hand. The broad-headed partizans bobbed smoothly over the rough terrain, blackwood shafts gripped in white knuckles. Caeris’s angel roared to burning life, wings arcing over her shoulders, sword flashing as she drew it. The houseguard didn’t slow. Predi shot his sleeves, the golem boiling over his flesh as he summoned it.

“Guess that sorts out who’s fighting whom,” Rae muttered. He gestured with his hand, the wraithblade dripping out of his skin to condense into silver steel and glittering fog. The wraith wove through his soul, cutting a line of light across his eye, turning his bones to ice and his blood to razors. “We’ll figure out the why of it later.”

Rae joined the fight with a scream. He struck the far left flank of the line, zipping like a storm cloud over Predi’s head to fly past the soldier bringing up that side of the skirmish. The man waved his partizan in Rae’s direction, but Rae blocked it with the silvered hilt of the wraithblade, then kicked the man in the knee and slashed across his throat. The soldier went down in a tumble of limbs. Rae stood over him, breathing heavily, staring at the blood that lay splattered across the ground.

I’ve killed him. He’s dead. He’s—

“Don’t just stand there!” Caeris shouted. Predi had reloaded and the pair of them were fighting a retreat, firing and falling back. Half of the soldiers had peeled off from the main advance and were curling around Rae, cutting him off from the justicars. At least La will be safe. The braided officer led the detachment bent on containing Rae. The woman’s narrow eyes glittered as she closed in on Rae.

Two of the houseguard reached him, stepping smoothly over their fallen comrade’s body, partizans locked on Rae’s chest. Rae danced back, drawing on the wraith to turn each step into a bounding leap, dipping into the shadowlands to pass through the underbrush. Each time he skimmed through the shadowlands, Rae could feel a presence looming to the north.

—it is the binder. he is coming for you. for us.

“One thing at a time, friend,” Rae said.

More and more of the soldiers peeled away from the main line to chase Rae through the forests. He lost sight of the tower, of Caeris and Predi, until he was stumbling blindly through the overgrown gardens of Hadroy House.

“Raelle Kelthannis, we have orders to bring you before the Council of Justicars!” The braided officer. A flourish of golden knots traveled along her collar, and she spoke with the kind of accent noblemen are taught in finishing school. “We promise that no harm will come to you. As for your companions . . . arrangements can be made!”

“Kinda like the no harm that comes to someone when you shoot at them first!” Rae shouted. “I get the feeling I won’t like your arrangements.”

“You are in over your head, Kelthannis. Your father asked more of you than he had any right to ask.” The officer signaled to her detachment, halting them, but she kept coming. “Too many people have died, for no reason. We can put an end to that.”

Rae hesitated at the edge of a perfectly circular pond. The water was murky, and swirled with hidden currents in its depths, but Rae thought he could almost remember it from his youth. He looked back at the officer.

“We’re already in the hands of the justicars,” Rae said.

“In the hands of the justicars? Or in their chains?” the officer asked. “I’m here to change all of that. To give you a chance to escape.”

“How did you know we would be here?” Rae asked.

“We were pursuing the Pearlescent.” She was close now, almost close enough to stab. She glanced at the shimmering blade in Rae’s hand, then carefully holstered her flintlock and peeled off her thin leather gloves. “We have an entire rescue operation in place. Looking for you, Rae. And your sister, of course.”

“But how . . . how did you know?” Rae took a step back, and his heel scraped on the artificial shore of the pond. The officer took two quick steps forward, as though to catch him should he fall. Rae waved the wraithblade in her direction and scowled. “How do you even know who I am? What’s going on here?”

“Rae, trust me, it’s very complicated. But if you’ll just listen . . .”

—the spears. look at the spears.

“The spears?” Rae said out loud. The officer flinched back, not following the conversation in Rae’s head. Rae looked over her shoulder at the line of houseguard waiting patiently behind her. The broad blades of the partizans were made of dark metal, each one engraved with some kind of runic emblem in the fuller. The officer grimaced, then took another step forward, her hand outstretched.

“Rae, come with us. Everything’s going to be fine. We can protect you and your sister.”

“Protect us from what?” Rae asked. Then he opened himself up to the wraith.

The air turned chill, and the forest dark. The officer in front of him was already going for her pistol, even as Rae’s wraithbound gaze swept across the black spears behind her. He hadn’t noticed before, hadn’t known what he was looking at. The partizans were lifelocked, each one bound to a mote of Oblivion. Even a scratch from one of those fell blades would be enough to kill him, no matter how deep in the shadowlands he was hiding.

Protect us from what?” Rae roared, letting his voice reverberate with the fury of the grave. Lashing out with the wraith, Rae reached ghostly fingers into the officer’s chest, passing through flesh and bone to wrap his fingers around her heart. Eyes wide, mouth open, she tried to scream as the air froze in her lungs. A cloud of mist erupted from her mouth. Rae released her, and she dropped to the ground, numb hands falling away from her pistol. At the sight of their officer hitting the ground, the soldiers lowered their spears and charged forward with a roar.


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Framed