Sorcha was crouched down in front of Ratimana, holding her arm out before him. “Can you work runes here, on my flesh?”
Just where she had got that idea Raed did not know for sure, but it chilled him to the bone. He wanted to stop her, wanted to say something, but what could he say to her to change her mind? He was still getting to know Sorcha, but there was one feature of her personality that had stood out about her from the first moment they met. She was the most stubborn, determined person he had ever come across.
Either he went along with her, or she’d do it anyway and he’d be left alone to wonder about the outcome. Better that he, and the Rossin, were there to assist. As hard as it was to do, he managed to keep his silence.
Two of the Deacons helped the old man to his feet as he nodded. It looked like the gesture alone might knock him down. His eyes raked over them. “Yes, I can do that, but there will be consequences.”
“And, what would those be?” Merrick was at least a small voice of sanity in all this.
Ratimana ran his tongue over his lips in what Raed interpreted as a calculating gesture, as his hands clenched on the piece of broken board, which still gleamed in the darkness. Finally he admitted, “Not sure. Could be many things.”
The Deacons drew closer, but there was no fear on their faces—it was expectation. They were trained to die to defend normal folk from geists, and Raed knew very well that there were few old Deacons. They were used to taking risks.
Sorcha glanced at her colleagues and then held out her arm. “Do your best and we will do ours.”
Slowly but surely, the rest of them rolled up their sleeves in an echo of her gesture.
Sorcha looked at Raed. “You best come up with a plan and soon, because you will soon have your weapons.” Such conviction should have reassured him, but a feeling of dread consumed him as thoroughly as the Rossin did.
TWENTY-FOUR
Coming Home
Sorcha was glad to be the first to go under the Patternmaker’s hand—one that she noticed shook just a fraction. She wanted to make sure that this would work, or at least not kill her before any of the other Deacons tried it. The perils of coming up with the idea herself—or at least stealing it from her own mother. The image of her carving the runes into her flesh was now about to become very real.
The Patternmaker had no ink, no time to get any, and so he had used what was to hand. It seemed appropriate that the scrolls and turns of the runes were painted on her in dirt and her own blood. As Ratimana worked on her, Sorcha thought of her mother. Had it been childbirth in that dire place that had killed her, or had it been the runes themselves? Perhaps her daughter was about to find out firsthand.
Raed, Aachon and the remains of the Dominion’s crew stood to one side and watched. The Young Pretender had his hand covering his mouth, and in the dimness of the cellar his hazel eyes were dark, with only a fleck of gold gleaming in them. Sorcha did not speak to him however. As the Patternmaker carved into her arm, the pain swelled, so she concentrated on the Young Pretender. The ease with which he flickered between Raed and Rossin was alarming, and she knew he was hiding something from her. Something had changed.
By the Bones, if they survived this, there would be a conversation between them that would not be gentle. If they survived.
As the Patternmaker finished her right arm, and moved on to her left, she looked across at Merrick.
The Sensitives would also have to bear their runes on their arms, but in addition Ratimana would have to sketch the third eye and their sigil between their eyebrows. It would be a disturbing effect.
Ratimana’s breathing came harder as he worked the final marks on her forearm: the design of Deiyant the half moon, bisected by two horizontal lines. It took something from the old man, and his strength, to do this, she now realized. Yet all concern for him was washed away as he drew the final Rune of Dominion on her arm, Teisyat. Abruptly she was suddenly aware of the Bond again.
Sorcha gasped, squeezing her eyes shut before tears could escape her and she was embarrassed. Merrick was there, in her head, a warm, calm influence that felt like a lodestone in a world of turmoil. Even if he couldn’t feel it yet.
Then she perceived Raed. He had never been able to feel their Bond as the Deacons experienced it, but his head came up now with dawning comprehension.
He had indeed been hiding something. Fire burned in him. Before, when she had looked at Raed through her Center the Young Pretender had blazed sliver bright in the ether. Now however, he was red-hot, like a bubbling cyst of lava that should not be in this world. His ease with the Rossin had been bought at a great price.
Sorcha swallowed back her outrage and her despair. This man had somehow claimed a slice of her soul, and yet he had done something that endangered his own. All the other Deacons’ eyes were on her. Soon enough they would see what she saw, though they wouldn’t be able to understand it as she did—or quite so intimately.
The fact was they needed the Rossin and couldn’t afford to question his, or his host’s, motives. Sorcha sighed. The fact was, they might all be dead soon anyway.
“Quickly,” she gestured to the Patternmaker. “We all need this.”
The Deacons lined up, excitement and trepidation etched on their faces. Sorcha stood by and watched grim-faced as he worked. Despite the shaking of his hand, he knew what he was doing and was efficient at it.
When he was done with the Actives, he moved swiftly on to their partners. The runes carved on their faces gave the Sensitives an appearance of rage that she’d never seen on their usually calm countenances. On Merrick it made him appear wrathful and older than his years.
Now, finally he was able to feel what she had. The Bond flared fully alive between them. They didn’t touch, but they grasped each other’s minds across the distance.
“These will fade.” The Patternmaker slumped back on his heels and glared up at them. “Proper ink will make proper patterns. Dirt is not enough.”
“If we ever have time,” Sorcha assured him, “we will get you proper tools. For now this will have to do.” She stared at him a moment, realizing what he had given back to them all. “Thank you,” she added finally.
She’d made up her mind about one thing however: the Order would not die in this stinking cellar. Walking over to the weirstone portal, she laid her hand on what she’d come to think of as the keystone at the top of the circle. It flared to life, and there they were looking at del Rue’s bed in the palace.
“Aachon,” she said, folding her newly dyed hands before her so as not to smear the designs, “I want you to take the Patternmaker to safety. Get out of the palace and go to Widow Vashill’s house. If we do not return, the future of the Order—if there is any—is in your hands.” To the old man she said, “Carve their skin too, properly. Make of them the semblance of an Order again.”
Aachon’s brow furrowed as he shot a glance at the still crouching, still foul-smelling old man. “Where my prince goes I go. I cannot—”
“Dear friend,” Raed broke in, his mouth twisting into a bittersweet smile, “there is nothing more you can do for me, but you can do so much for the Order. They protect the people of Arkaym so much better than I do, and all my family has ever been in recent times is trouble.”
The first mate shifted from foot to foot, trapped by old loyalties and realities. “If you died, my prince, I would have failed.”
Raed’s laugh was short and pained. “If I die in service of the Empire and its people, then that is my fate. I would rather that than live this life of running and losing. You know how ill it has suited me of late.”
Aachon’s hand clenched a few times, as if he would be glad of a weirstone and a reason to wield one at the side of his Prince—but eventually he nodded.