Soulkeeper Read online

  “That should keep you still,” she said. Right now she wasn’t interested in Malin but the cargo manifest atop his small desk. She slid into his chair and flipped it open. To anyone else it’d appear to be a full account of the vegetables brought in from the Petyrn estate. To Jacaranda, who’d been trained to handle much of the illegal trade, it was a simple translation of extra words, symbols, and seemingly random numbers that dotted the page. By her reading Gerag had gotten greedy, no doubt spurred on by the long delay in shipments from the east.

  “So why does Gerag want me dead?” Malin asked as she read. “He even tell you? Six years of loyal deliveries and this is the shitty thanks I get?”

  He still believed she was a loyal soulless in service of her master. A desire, no, a need to disabuse him of this notion overcame her.

  “I’m not doing this for that asshole,” she said. “I’m doing this for me.”

  Malin had nothing in response to that. Her reaction simply did not make sense. At best, he’d assume her to be putting on a show Gerag had instructed her to perform. That was fine. He’d soon understand how far off he was. She slammed the manifest shut and stood from the chair.

  “If I hear you scream I’m coming back to kill you,” she said.

  “Fuck you,” he said without much conviction.

  Jacaranda stepped around his prone body, avoiding the pool of blood as best she could. Malin’s dagger lay a few feet outside his grasp. She kicked it into a corner. If he felt like crawling for it during her absence, then good on him. She hesitated a moment after shutting the cabin door, curious if he’d be brave enough to holler for help. He was not. Jacaranda opened the hatch and dropped into the Hawkins’s cargo hold. It wasn’t very expansive, and she had to duck as she walked to one corner. Multiple crates were stacked up there, two of them clearly broken. She pushed those aside and drew her dagger as she leaned over a third.

  You can handle this, she told herself.

  It took two minutes but at last she wedged the crate open with her dagger. The top creaked as she shoved it aside. Prepared as she was, seeing inside still jolted her spine. Three soulless sat curled up in the crate, barely visible in the starlight coming through the open hatch. Two were young women, the third a short-haired boy. Not a one was older than sixteen. They looked up at her with blank stares. Awaiting orders.

  “Get out,” she said.

  They obliged. Jacaranda saw their muscles twitch and strain from the movements. They wouldn’t have been sealed in there for the entire trip, only before arriving in port, but that still put them stacked in like bricks for twelve hours at the minimum. The three stood side by side with their heads bowed toward their chests to avoiding hitting the top of the hold. Jacaranda’s nerves burned with growing anxiety. She had to remain focused. Had to keep herself poised.

  “Wait here,” she said. Even ordering them around tweaked with her mind.

  Jacaranda climbed out of the hold. Something was wrong. Someone was missing.

  “You haven’t bled out, have you?” Jacaranda asked upon opening his cabin door.

  “Still breathing, no thanks to you, cunt,” Malin said. He’d balled up a sheet from his bed and wrapped them about his heels. The dagger remained in the corner. Stupid man. He still thought he had a chance to survive this.

  “Where is the fourth?” she asked.

  “The what?”

  Jacaranda grabbed the manifest off the desk and tossed the heavy book onto his stomach.

  “The manifest says four but I only count three. The notes don’t say she’s dead, so where is she?”

  The idea that this was some perverse game of Gerag’s finally abandoned Malin. He stared at her with a fresh wave of bewilderment.

  “What the fuck is going on? Why does a goddess-damned soulless care about my cargo?”

  Jacaranda kicked him as hard as she could in the testicles. He howled as his entire body convulsed. She gave him a handful of seconds to recover and then knelt atop him, each knee pinning a shoulder. With one hand she held his head back by his hair. The other pressed the blade of a dagger against his throat.

  “Don’t you ever call them cargo again, you understand?” He wearily nodded his head. “Good. Now answer the damn question.”

  “One of the, uh, women started acting strange,” Malin said. “It was like nothing we’d seen before. Had to keep her tied up and drugged for the last two days of sailing, otherwise she’d have flung herself into the river. I told Gerag I wanted her off my boat immediately, and if he didn’t come get her I’d…” He seemed to think better of his intended language. “I’d solve the problem myself.”

  Jacaranda’s vision darkened all along the edges. What colors she saw in the candlelight shifted solely to red.

  “A soulless acting strangely,” she said quietly. “Crazy, even. Did she fight, Captain? Did she curse and yell and try to take her own life?”

  “Now-now-now, she wasn’t no real girl,” the captain said. His eyes widened with realization. “This ain’t a slave ship. You of all people should know that. She was just like any other soulless when we loaded her. Something went wrong in her head on the way over, that’s all.”

  Something went wrong in her head.

  “Where is she?” Jacaranda asked. It took all her concentration to keep her physical body still. Her mind was burning with rage like an uncontrolled wildfire.

  “I told you. Gerag came and got her. Seemed quite happy about it, really, once he had a chance to chat with her a bit. Said she’d be going to auction immediately.”

  “Happy.” Angry tears stung her eyes. “Of course he’d be happy.”

  She cut his throat before he even knew she’d decided to kill him. A fresh wave of blood spilled across the cabin floor. Jacaranda stared at the flow and tried to find pleasure in the kill. How many young men and women had he ferried down the Septen to become Gerag’s little playthings? Her own implicitness ruined it. Her choices or not, she’d been the one who came under cover of darkness to lead the soulless to their destinations. Damn her memories. Part of her wished she’d remembered nothing of what happened prior to her awakening.

  Jacaranda returned to the dark cargo hold. The three soulless stood in the exact same spots. There was something strange in the way they watched her… or perhaps that was just projection. No. There was nothing behind those eyes. No curiosity. No desire for freedom. For once Jacaranda understood why so many remarked upon the unsettling presence of a soulless.

  “Who are you waiting for?” she asked them.

  The older girl, a pale-skinned redhead, answered for them.

  “We are not to say.”

  As expected. The soulless were trained at the Petyrn estate before being shipped west, and part of that involved insulating both Gerag and the Petyrn family from potential blame if the soulless were caught and interrogated. They’d only follow the most basic commands unless you knew the code words. Since this was the first ship to arrive since the black water came, there was thankfully no chance that Gerag could have changed them.

  “Your blood, my soil,” she recited. “Your flesh, my garden. Your life, my rose blooms.”

  The words squirmed like worms on her tongue. Ownership, everything implied ownership, control, master over slave. How could she let this continue? She wanted to help them. She wanted to spare them the indignity and suffering of being sold into Gerag’s underground market. But what orders could she give? Be free? They wouldn’t understand that. She was still grappling with that concept herself. Perhaps she could give a series of instructions detailing feeding and clothing oneself, but no matter where she sent them the chains on their necks would identify them. People would ask questions. Someone would claim them eventually.

  The helplessness of it tore at Jacaranda’s insides. Gerag’s entourage would be here soon to claim them. Enslave them. Sell them to sick men and women with plentiful coin and unconventional desires. Jacaranda wrapped her arms around the young boy and cried, letting her tears fall upon his hea
d. The boy did not hug back. It had not been commanded of him.

  “I’m sorry,” Jacaranda whispered. “This is the best I know to do.”

  A dark part deep inside her insisted she slay all three. Her hand touched the hilt of a dagger. Better death than mindless enslavement. Better that the shell of a body return to the soil. But was that what she’d have preferred? Jacaranda had come over on one such boat. Gerag had been especially taken by her, and her eyes. Would she have preferred that a stranger slice open her throat all those years ago, denying her the chance to awaken now? Extinguish the possibility that she might find joy and happiness and peace?

  Jacaranda let go of her dagger. Among all these imperfect solutions, she would go with the best she knew of.

  “Do you know what a member of the city guard looks like?” she asked them.

  “We do,” they answered in unison.

  “Leave this boat. Walk the roads of the city. Do not repeat the same path if you can help it. Once you find a guard, tell him or her you three are lost and need to be brought to the Cathedral of the Sacred Mother. If the guard does not do so, keep searching for another who will. Am I understood?”

  “Understood.” Again in unison.

  “Then go.”

  Jacaranda lingered in the cargo hold as the three climbed up and out. If they arrived at the cathedral they’d be brought in and questioned, but of course they’d reveal nothing. Gerag would not dare try to claim them. It’d bring far too much attention his way, and require explanations he would not have. Most likely the three would be kept as servants for the church. They’d spend a life sewing, cleaning, and cooking, but far better that than being some bloated bastard’s fuck toy.

  … started acting strange…

  An awakened soulless held prisoner, tortured, and sold. She wouldn’t need to be trained like the others. Her reactions of fear, of pain and disgust, would be real. It’d be everything Gerag’s buyers wanted.

  Jacaranda’s hands clutched the hilts of her daggers as she fought off wave after wave of horror and revulsion.

  “Never,” she hissed. “Not while I breathe, Gerag. You couldn’t keep me, and no matter how many I have to kill, you won’t keep her.”

  CHAPTER 35

  Whenever night fell over Londheim a change swept through the cramped stone buildings. Shadows sank deeper. The wind sang louder. Tents and lean-tos dotted the slightest openings, dark and covered as if they were recently erected tombs. Worsening matters was a heavy fog that rolled off the Septen River, gradually thickening as the night wore on until neither Devin nor Tommy could see beyond a few dozen feet ahead of them. The hanging lanterns illuminated slender circles beneath them and little else.

  “I’m starting to rethink my involvement in this,” Tommy muttered.

  “Remember, this was your idea, not mine,” Devin said. After their trip to the market, and an admittedly immature grumbling about his frustration with his nightly patrols, Tommy had offered to accompany him.

  “I might get to use my magic again,” he’d said excitedly. “I mean, actually on something, and not a basement wall.”

  “Always focusing on the positive,” Devin had laughed, but it didn’t seem so funny now. If anything happened to his brother-in-law, he’d never forgive himself. Perhaps he should have been sterner and refused.

  “I swear, it feels like I don’t recognize this city anymore,” he said as a particularly thick wave of fog rolled over the street.

  “I have a theory on that,” Tommy said.

  “Do you now?”

  “I do! It seems, based on my talks with Puffy and Tesmarie, that we once coexisted alongside these magical creatures until they were… put to sleep? Banished? Removed from the face of the Cradle? Something like that. My thinking is Londheim was changed with it to erase all evidence of their existence, or maybe we were just made blind to those things. Now that everything’s woken back up, so to speak, I think Londheim changed back to how it was.”

  “Meaning what?”

  Tommy shrugged.

  “Meaning that maybe we’re seeing where some of these weirder creatures used to live, and not humans?”

  “A nice theory,” Devin said, and he pointed ahead. “Does it explain that?”

  A strange object blocked the middle of the street. It was shaped like an ovoid, as tall as his chin, and it awaited like an offered gift. The outer surface appeared made of some sort of mudlike substance. Countless thin strands of… something… ran through it, like straw or twigs, only its texture was undetectable given the dark brown coating. It almost looked like the earth had shoved up an egg from below its surface. No smell emanated from the outside, but he wondered if that’d be the case if he cracked it open.

  “I have no idea what that is,” Tommy said.

  “Try a guess. That’s what you’re here for.”

  “I mean, it seems a little bit like an egg, and it’s got a crack here, and here. I think we should discover what’s inside.”

  Devin grimaced at the thought.

  “I’m not sure I want to know what’s inside.”

  “I’m not too curious, either, Devin, but if something hatches out of it and starts eating people I’m going to feel a tiny bit responsible.”

  Impeccable logic. This only soured Devin’s mood further.

  “Fine,” he said, slowly approaching the ovoid with his sword drawn. “But you better be ready to roast whatever comes out with your magic. If I’m some newborn monster’s first meal, my soul will haunt you for eternity.”

  “There’s an interesting thought. Can a Soulkeeper build you a funeral pyre if you’re nothing but bones and stomach acid? Where do you think the soul will emerge from? Your skull? Or from the blob that was your brain matter?”

  Devin grinded his teeth together.

  “Not. Helping.”

  He shoved his sword a few inches into its side. It was softer than he expected, and it easily parted for his sharpened blade. Devin pulled it free, his mind racing. The giant thing before him seemed vaguely familiar, which made no sense at all. Was it the texture? The shape? He used his teeth to remove the glove from his free hand and then pressed his fingers to the side. Cool to the touch, and surprisingly dry. With his sword as a wedge, he pulled at a chunk. The tearing sound triggered another memory, and with sudden, horrible clarity he knew exactly what this ovoid was.

  “Of course,” Devin said. His stomach churned. “Of course it is.”

  He sheathed his sword, donned his glove, and used both arms to rip and tear at the crack. One last violent shove opened it completely. A few loose bones spilled to the street. Dozens more remained embedded in jumbled facsimiles of a human skeleton. He saw a piece of a metal from a breastplate, a large brown flap of trousers, and a perfectly preserved straw hat. His stomach doing knots, he stepped aside so Tommy could see.

  An owl pellet. The largest owl pellet in the whole fucking world.

  “It’s a…” Tommy started, and then he also made the connection. His face paled significantly. Devin wondered if he’d vomit. He felt like doing the same.

  “Humans playing in waste,” a booming voice spoke from above. “How appropriate.”

  Shock and horror wanted to lock Devin’s limbs in place, but that reaction meant death. He slid to one knee and spun, drawing his pistol faster than he might blink and aiming it at the enormous owl lurking from the rooftop. Tommy lacked any such honed reactions, and he stood slack-jawed where he stood, his hands hanging limply at his sides.

  “Is something the matter?” the owl asked. It turned its enormous white head. Its yellow eyes hovered in the fog. “Are you frightened?”

  Not a hint of worry or fear in that deep, pleased voice.

  “Yeah,” Tommy said, answering for the both of them. “I think I’m scared shitless.”

  Devin couldn’t wrap his mind around the creature’s size. Its beak was as big as his chest. Its claws punctured the stone architecture like it was paper. Adria had described her encounter with the ow
l to him, and this creature easily dwarfed the other.

  “We don’t want to fight,” Devin said, praying that maybe he could defuse the situation. “We’re only protecting our people. That’s all.”

  “I wish no battle, either,” the owl said. Its head bobbed lower. “We hunt. We eat. Does not everything?”

  “This isn’t the same,” Devin said, though he painfully wished he had a better argument than that. “You’re murdering innocent people.”

  The owl rotated its head in a half circle and stared sideways at him.

  “How many creatures do you hunt, human? Are they innocent? Life or death. Predator and prey. All the same.”

  “I beg to disagree,” Tommy said. He immediately wilted beneath the owl’s gaze. “I mean, if that’s all right with you. We’re not rabbits, though. We’re people. You can’t just hunt us!”

  Stone cracked underneath the owl’s clenching claws.

  “Why not?” it asked. Its head twirled back to its proper position. “I am bigger. I am faster. I am stronger.”

  “We are blessed with souls by the Three Sisters,” Devin said. He inched his hand closer to his sword hilt. “Through them we are granted dominion over the soulless of the wilds, from the smallest insect to the largest bear. We are to care for life, just as that life is granted to us for our survival. What say you, nameless owl? Have you a soul within that proud chest?”

  The owl spread its wings to the fullest of its span and let out a shriek capable of shattering glass. Devin braced himself as if enduring a mighty wind. Whether courage or cowardice kept his pistol silent, he did not know.

  “Nameless, you call me,” it said, “for you know not my name. Soulless, you claim, though you know not the magic in which we dwell. You call me proud, yet why should I not be? I am Arondel the Beautiful, Queen of the Winged and cherished knight of the Dragons. You humans have not changed. Foolish. Dull. You will find greater purpose in my stomach than in serving your precious Sisters.”

  “Devin,” Tommy whispered, sounding an inch away from panic. The owl’s feet clutched the rooftop edge so hard that chunks of stone were cracking free and falling. Devin shook his head, trying to convince his friend not to do anything rash.