Chapter Forty-Six
Rae flew through the forests like an arrow. He zipped past trees and through the brambled underbrush, keeping a portion of his soul in the shadowlands, the rest of him flitting across the material plane like fog over a pond. The houseguard crashed along behind him, their heavy boots crushing brush, lifelocked partizans tangling in low hanging vines.
They knew. They were waiting. The thought kept going through Rae’s mind over and over again. The houseguard is working with Rassek Brant. The remnants of the dead masters were waiting for us. How deep does this go? His mind went back to Yveth’s memory of the day he died at Rassek’s hand. Rassek said he had one of the baron’s stormbinders scry Yveth’s soul. That explains the schematic I saw in the house. Oh, hell, Dad, what were you involved in?
A sharp scream tore through the air overhead. The blackened hull of a windship roared down from the north, its sails cut for fast maneuver and a single nacelle slung close to its body. More like a personal schooner than the war hulks and merchants Rae was familiar with, it moved through the air like a flock of birds, darting back and forth, its sails billowing and collapsing with each twist. It did a quick circle of the manor house, then turned back north and descended.
“Nowhere to land, is there?” Rae muttered. “You’ll have to come down in the scar of the Pearlescent. Got a bit of walking ahead of you, whoever you are.”
—you know who it is.
“Rassek Brant,” Rae whispered.
A bullet whistled overhead, way over Rae’s head. He ducked to the ground and looked back. A member of the houseguard stood in a small clearing, waving to the windship with his partizan. When the ’ship disappeared beneath the trees, he turned to a pair of soldiers, sending them running north. While they were distracted, Rae crawled through the underbrush, cutting across his own path and tumbling into a low ditch that was choked with feral rhododendrons. He wormed his way under the canopy of glossy leaves and waited. The wraith keened to him from the shadowlands, but Rae wanted to stay as corporeal as possible. Who knows how deep Rassek’s connection to the wraith might go?
The houseguard marched by a few moments later. They passed to either side of the ditch, thrusting partizans into the brush. The broad-headed spears sliced cleanly through the thickly woven branches over Rae’s head, but none of them found his skin.
“Keep moving,” one of them, apparently the second-in-command, ordered. “That boy was more hare than human. At this pace he’ll be to Fulcrum before Lord Rassek gets here.”
The houseguard passed quickly by, their search perfunctory, their attention to the north. Rae waited until their footsteps faded, the crunching of boots through the carpet of fallen leaves disappeared, and the officer’s terse orders became a murmur. Then he cloaked himself in the wraith and rose slowly through the brush. The severed tips of the branches snagged at him like thorns, the cuts still infected by the lifelocked blades that made them. He hovered over the ditch, watching the distant line of houseguard tromp through the overgrown garden. From this height he could see the tumbledown walls of the manor house to his right, and the narrow spire of the huntsman’s tower, rising like a spear from the forest.
“Lord Rassek, eh?” Rae had read about the Heresy when he was a child, mostly out of morbid curiosity, but the only nobility involved had always been Baron Hadroy. Rassek Brant was just a hedge mage, some said exiled from the Iron College, some said trained by demons in the wastes. But never a lord.
Hell has its own hierarchy.
The wraith said nothing. It curled between Rae’s ribs like a sickness, gripping his blood and setting his head spinning. Rae ignored it.
Turning toward the manor house, Rae ghosted his way through the forest, staying low to the ground, flinching every time he heard a gunshot, waiting for the bullet that followed to tear through his flesh, or for La’s scream, or Mahk’s. And he always kept his eyes open for the traitor Estev Cohn. He had no idea what game the pudgy lifebinder was playing at, but if Rae found him, he was going to tear the man’s soul from his flesh.
The manor house was quiet. It had been quiet before, when Rae thought the grounds were empty and he and his friends were alone. Somehow knowing that a detachment of houseguard were even now sweeping the surrounding gardens looking for him, along with Rassek Brant and whatever new horrors he brought on that ’ship, made the house’s silence disturbing. It was as though the abandoned walls of Hadroy House lay in ambush, the mud-stained floors a trap, the broken windows waiting to snap shut around Rae’s foot.
Drawing deeply on the wraith, Rae descended into the shadowlands to drift through one of the walls. The house changed around him as he entered the memories of the dead. Vines fell away, the gardens receded, the broken windows and shattered plaster reformed. Delicate chamber music floated from the depths of the house, and a child’s laughter echoed down the halls. Had there been other children at Hadroy House? A daughter, perhaps? Rae couldn’t remember.
In the main foyer, the twin staircases framed a chandelier dripping with crystal. Fire motes swarmed the chandelier, sending fractured light across the room, splashing rainbows and gold against the marble steps. The memory of lush carpets stretched from wide double doors through the middle of the foyer, traveling deeper into the house. The music was sharper here . . . not louder, but somehow more real.
“Hadroy House was never like this.” The few times Rae had been allowed in the main house, the lights had been dim and the hallways dusty. Looking back, he should have been able to tell that Hadroy’s days were numbered. Ghosts of former inhabitants flitted past the windows, laughing and singing and carrying on. This was an older form of the estate, an echo from history much deeper than the baron Rae had known, possibly by generations.
—the dead cling to the world. especially the empty places. there are no new memories to wipe these away.
“It’s a happier place. I wonder what happened.”
—order and chaos, and everything in between.
Rae snorted, then remembered that he was here to meet La and the others. There was no sign of anyone living in the foyer, but he might be too deep in the shadowlands to sense them, especially in a place as strange and broken as the baron’s ruined estate. Not wanting to be seen, in case the houseguard were watching the manor, Rae floated behind one of the stairwells and landed. He reeled the wraith back into his soul. The lights snapped off, the music died, and the echo of ancient memories with it. Rae entered the material plane with a crackle of frost.
Someone screamed. Rae whirled in their direction, forming the wraithblade as he spun, bringing the shining blade up, ready to strike. Mahk’s fist met his face before Rae was all the way around.
Next thing he knew, Rae was lying on his back in the middle of the foyer. His head throbbed with the beating of his heart. Mahk stood over him, his face twisted between concern and rage.
“Damn fool thing to do, Kelthannis. Lucky I didn’t have something heavy in my hands,” Mahk said. La huddled in the lee of the staircase, hands over her mouth, wide eyes staring at Rae. Rae tried to smile, but his face didn’t seem to want to follow any of his instructions. A line of drool blubbed out of his broken lips, mixed with blood.
“Your hands are heavy enough, Mahk,” Rae said. It came out in a rolling mumble. Mahk winced and reached down to jerk Rae upright. On his feet, Rae stumbled back and forth, finally weaving against the stairs. “I’m fine, I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”
“Rae, you’re incoherent.” La stood and pressed her hands against Rae’s temples. It felt like his head was caught in a vise. He tried to pull away, but instead he leaned against her, resting his head against her shoulder. “Mahk, I think you actually hurt him.”
“Oh, he hurt me, alright,” Rae answered.
“Serves him right. Popping out of thin air like that,” Mahk said, blushing. “Scared your sister near to death. Should know better.”
“You both should know better,” La scolded. “Punching something just because you don’t know what it is. What would you have done if this were Rassek?”
“Punched him a second time,” Mahk answered. “Punched him until he was dead.”
“I like your way of thinking, but Rassek will require more than punching,” Rae said. At least three of the sounds he was trying to make came out correctly. “We really have to do something about this room. And the spinning. The spinning is too much.”
—fool child, depending on the flesh. be quiet for a minute.
“You be quiet for a minute,” Rae snapped. La startled back, not privy to the other half of the conversation, worried that her brother was finally raving. “Wraith. Wraith is talking.”
—you don’t have to apologize for me. here, let me help.
Rae hesitated, but he couldn’t stand on his own, and Rassek was closer with every dizzy heartbeat, while Estev stalked the grounds somewhere, his plans an enigma, and the icebound spiritblade in his hands. Rae opened the tap in his soul, letting the wraith drip through his blood. The hammering in his head became a distant ringing, like a warning bell at the other end of a village. Even the pain faded. For a second it felt like a taller man was trying to wear his skin, stooped beneath the low ceiling of Rae’s skull. Rae wrenched his shoulders back, trying to make room for the wraith, before remembering that it was his body, his blood. The room brightened a little bit, and the house shifted on its foundations, like a proud man standing to attention. Lalette shivered and stepped back.
“What happened to you?” she whispered. “Rae?”
“I’m fine,” he answered. “A little stunned is all.” He looked over at Mahk. The big man’s face was clouded, his hands curled into fists. Other than the three of them, the room was empty. “Have you seen the justicars? Or Estev?”
“No sign of Estev,” Mahk said. “Probably trying to save his own skin.”
“He’s doing more than that. He’s mixed up in this somehow. I should have known, ever since he just ‘happened’ to get picked up in the wastelands same time as us, then went out of his way to help three orphans,” Rae said. “Never struck me as the generous type. Should never have trusted him.”
“How were we to know?” La said. “Maybe . . . maybe there’s some explanation.”
“It better be damned good,” Mahk said, “or I’m going to take his tongue out.”
“That’s not nice,” La said. She was avoiding looking Rae in the eye, or even in his direction. “Point is, we haven’t seen either him or the justicars. Do you know if they got away?”
“How would I know?”
“Last we saw, the three of you were facing off against a squad of houseguard,” La said. “We keep hearing gunshots in the distance, and a windship.” She fiddled with the cuff of her dress, still not meeting Rae’s eyes. “I was so worried.”
“We got separated. That officer told some interesting lies about being sent to help us, then tried to kill me. I ditched the houseguard in the gardens, when that windship arrived. It landed to our north. I think Rassek was onboard.” Rae didn’t try to explain how he knew that, and La didn’t ask. “Caeris and Predi were still at the tower. They tried talking, but”—he shrugged—“the guard didn’t feel like listening, I guess. I don’t know where they are.” He hesitated for a minute, then took La by the shoulders. “La, I know what Dad did. Why Rassek came for him, and that sword.”
“Do I want to know?” she asked.
“Probably not. But you need to know the truth of it.” Rae braced himself, then continued. “That spiritblade Dad stole . . . Rassek used it to bind Yveth’s wraith and replace his soul with a demon. Yveth the man is dead, obviously, but his body is still walking around, fully consumed by a spirit of Chaos. They’ve only gotten away with it because his wraith was bound to Rassek, and that spiritblade that Estev just ran off with.”
“That’s madness,” Mahk said. “Caeris said that this Yveth fellow was now High Justicar. A demon, in charge of the Iron College?”
“But what does that have to do with Dad? And how did he know to steal the sword in the first place?” La asked.
“Rassek tricked him into scrying Yveth’s soul from a distance. Probably because Dad was already bound to the plane of Air, and also because Yveth wouldn’t be on guard from someone outside Rassek’s cabal. That memory I saw in the shadowlands, of the scrying in Dad’s office . . . that must have been what Rassek used to make the spiritblade.” Rae waited for a second while confusion and shock rolled across his sister’s face. “On the day it all happened, I was with Father. I remembered hearing a scream among the stables. Now I’ve seen the memory of that scream from the other side of the sword. That was Rassek binding Yveth’s soul. Dad must have gone to investigate, found the remnants of the ritual and the blade itself, realized that he’d been tricked, and taken the sword.”
“Order above,” Mahk mumbled. “Your dad really stuck his foot in it.”
“That’s an understatement. Maybe he tried to reach out to the justicars at some point, only to find out that Yveth was still alive and walking around. He had the spiritblade, could see that Yveth was half demon.” Rae shrugged. “He wouldn’t have known who at the Iron College he could have trusted, and who might be working for Hell.”
“All this, because Dad let his curiosity get the better of him,” La mumbled. “Better that he had just run, rather than going to investigate.”
“Maybe. But that’s all in the past. It’s left up to us to make sure he and Mom didn’t die for nothing,” Rae said, releasing La.
“So what do we do now?” La asked. “All three spiritbinders are missing, and those guards are going to look in here eventually. Maybe we go back to the tower—”
“No, not the tower,” Rae snapped. “They’re waiting. They knew we were coming. Those guards have lifelocked blades.” He shivered and stepped back. “They’re working for Rassek. Dad was right, we can’t trust anyone wearing the College’s colors. Not so long as Yveth is in charge.”
“Then we run. South, away from Rassek,” Mahk said. “Or north, because they won’t expect it.”
“Or east, or west, or we dig a hole and bury ourselves in place,” La said.
“Listen, just because—” Rae started, but the scrape of a foot behind him silenced him. Mahk pushed him aside, bringing his club to bear.
“Burial is the only one that would work,” Predi said, stepping out of the stone wall as though the rock were nothing more than a curtain. Caeris was close on his heels, a flintlock in either hand. “They’ve set up a perimeter. There’s no running.”
Mahk growled but didn’t move. Rae glanced at him, then cocked his head in Predi’s direction.
“What, you don’t punch him?” Rae asked. “That was at least as frightening as my arrival.”
“La didn’t scream,” Mahk said.
“You could have screamed, sister. I’m starting to take this personally.”
“You’re more of a fright, brother,” La said, patting Rae on the shoulder, then shaking the cold off her fingers. A thin mist wafted off him. He pushed himself closer to the material plane, but his head immediately took up its drumbeat, sending him fleeing into the shadowlands. La was still talking to the justicars. “Did you see Estev while you were running?”
“Neither hide nor hair. If he’s working with those guards, then he could be anywhere on the grounds, or already fled the Eye entirely. And if he’s not, then he’s trapped in here with us. They’re throwing spiritbound shot around like it was confetti, and wielding lifelocked blades. They knew we were coming, and they’ve got the men and material to keep us penned in for a good little while. In fact, given their equipment and training, you have to believe they were expecting a wraithbinder.” Caeris paused and looked at Rae. “They knew you were coming.”
“Yeah, I know,” Rae said. “I think I’m beginning to understand what’s going on.”
“Really?” Caeris asked, cocking her head. “Care to enlighten us?”