Which was why he had turned to the Rossin. Somewhere in the humid jungles of the west, he had lost all hope—and fallen back on the one resource he still had. Inviting the geistlord to occupy the upper portions of his conscience was a risk, but it was what the Rossin was willing to accept in return for his help. As much as it pained the Young Pretender to the throne, he knew that he would have died on the street yesterday without the fell creature’s warning. Only months before, the idea that he would be bargaining with the creature he had despised for decades would have been laughable. Now it was a grim reality.
The town was quiet at his back. The death of the bounty hunter had been swift, but plenty of citizens had seen the huge, agile shape of the Rossin on the rooftops. If Fraine didn’t know already, she would soon hear that her brother was nearby. What she would do with that information was a mystery. The uncomfortable fact was he didn’t know his sister very well. Evidenced by the fact he’d never suspected she harbored such hatred for him, and that she was capable of slaying members of his crew in cold blood.
Snook’s face as her throat had been slit and her blood had poured down to the sands of Chioma still haunted his dreams.
Fool. Don’t think of the past. Think of what you must do.
The Rossin’s voice was seductive again; a velvet wash across his senses, reminding him how good it was to be strong and mighty. It was an effort of will every day to not just give up to the geistlord. He couldn’t yet—not when Fraine was in danger of bringing the Empire to its knees.
If Fraine succeeded in launching a revolution, countless thousands of citizens would be swept up in civil and regional wars, as old feuds and rivalries were released with the death of Imperial control. It would be generations before the continent would know peace again—they would all be plunged into another time of darkness—as when the Otherside broke through into the world. While few written records had survived from that period, stories and dark legends had been passed from parent to child. The light had very nearly been extinguished in Arkaym. His family had rekindled that flame. Raed would not let them be the ones to now blow it out.
First, he had to reach Fraine within the fortress. The ruling family of Ensomn, the Shin, were renowned for their paranoia, cunning and ambition. It was said their shadow guards were trained in four hundred and thirty ways of killing in silence, and that their homes were mazes fraught with deadly traps. All of these things had helped keep the Shin monarchs of this principality for hundreds of years.
They were also well-known for their hatred of the Emperor—who lived on the east coast of the continent and taxed them, in their opinion, far too heavily. No one ever liked taxes, though they kept the roads safe, and petty wars from breaking out. Provinces far from the bright heart of the Empire rarely saw Imperial Dirigibles or the Imperial Guard, and so tended to forget they existed.
“Nothing to offer then?” Raed whispered, as he slipped closer to the river. “No great geistlord insight about the Shin?”
The wash of malice made his jaw tighten painfully. Trapped in your bloodline for generations, I know little of the petty doings of humans. All I know is the taste of their blood.
So all he had to rely on was his own teaching about the Shin—and that had not included knowledge about the internal layout of the fortress. Luckily there were still some people here who remained loyal to the Rossin family. Not everyone had been delighted with the Conclave of Princes’ choice to bring a foreign Prince in to take over as Emperor; some still remembered or held tight to “the good old days” when Raed’s grandfather had ruled. That was how he had managed to find someone in town willing to give him basic information about what he might find in the fortress.
It was for these same reasons that his sister had found her way here. In their grandfather’s time, the Shin had been allowed far more latitude to rule their own kingdom. She was undoubtedly reminding them of that. Every minute that she was left to negotiate with them was another step closer to civil war. Unless he could prevent it.
The Emperor sitting back on his warm throne in Vermillion would never know he owed his rival such a debt. Perhaps though, Sorcha would hear of it.
Raed inhaled sharply, recalling the last time he had seen the Deacon, hanging limply in Merrick’s arms, like a discarded puppet. The Young Pretender wondered every day if the Sensitive had held to his promise to save Sorcha. If only there were gods to honestly pray to for that.
Weak mortal. The Rossin growled. You think of her at a moment like this?
For once the creature was right. He had to focus on the here and now, not on the what could never be.
The sky above was clear and warm, and the stars bright and sharp with no clouds to hide their beauty. Before he could lose his nerve, Raed quickly stripped his clothes and boots off, and shoved them into an oilskin bag. Already the bag contained the maps he had secured the previous night, his sword and his pistols. The satchel was the kind sailors used to keep their belongings dry while on deck. He had one too many times found himself naked in the wilderness, and he didn’t want to be that vulnerable in the fortress.
“I’m ready,” he whispered more to himself than to the Rossin. Nude, he crouched by the water’s edge for a moment, running out the waxed cord that secured the bag’s mouth. “You remember the deal?” he asked the geistlord as confidently as he could. Raed knew it was useless to try to hide his real emotions from the beast, but it made him feel better.
I fly. You break in. I feed.
“We find my sister first—then you feed.”
Unless we are discovered.
It should have been impossible for another consciousness in his head to sound so cunning—but the Rossin did. Raed was becoming aware that his lifelong assessment of the geistlord as merely a beast running on bloodlust was quite incorrect. It was convenient to think of the geistlord as an animal, but they were more tightly connected than ever now, and Raed was catching glimpses of something else; an immense patience, and a fearful delight that all was coming to fruition. Just what that might mean however was still wrapped in shadow. Not for the first time Raed wondered what the beast had gained by allying himself with the bloodline of Raed’s ancestor, the first Emperor-Deacon.
“Only if we are discovered,” Raed said as he stood tall by the lake edge. “Then you may have at it, and see how the dice roll—but if you break our agreement, back into the depths you go, and I will never call you out again. It is as we agreed.”
Something about the pact they had made bound this creature of death and mayhem. Raed was not going to question how it worked—but perhaps a Deacon would know more of it than he did.
Previously, whenever the geistlord had taken control, the Young Pretender was always subsumed. He awoke from the Rossin’s rampages with only a scattering of memory, the taste of blood in his mouth and terrible guilt. However, since he had drawn the beast into his own consciousness—they shared an awareness. This was, Raed reasoned, a fair cost for the Rossin’s help. Just how much control he had over his passenger in this state, he had never tested. Sooner or later he knew he would have to.
Pain. That was another change. He felt a deeper pain as the Rossin bent and twisted his flesh to make its own shape. Bones snapped and were remade. Every nerve and sinew was severed and spun by the geistlord’s will. He wanted to scream to release some of the agony, but even his throat would no longer obey. He had nowhere to hide from the agony.