The Etsey Series 1: The Seventh Veil Read online

  “Now!”

  Now, what? Timothy wondered. But Jonathan was already swinging them both around. He brought up the blade of his sword stick in time to block his brother’s blow, but at the same time he was raising Timothy’s wrist, lunging hard at the alchemist’s midsection. Jonathan’s leg gave out; he leaned hard on Timothy. Timothy was weak and could not bear him.

  The gold-glowing woman caught them both. Then she reached over and plucked the pin from Timothy’s sleeve.

  “Now, Raturjula! Now is the time to fight!”

  Timothy felt his head clear, the enchantment not gone but pushed back by a great gold ring that expanded out beyond his consciousness. He could see only the alchemist, and with this sudden clarity and narrow focus, he truly saw the alchemist. He had one hand on Charles, gripping his hair tightly as he murmured strange words, but his other hand was in his pocket, and his fingers were moving.

  Pin and anchor. The pin was in my sleeve. The anchor is in his pocket.

  Jonathan was trying to lift Timothy’s hand again, and Timothy realized it was this he was aiming for: the alchemist’s pocket. Timothy didn’t fight Jonathan’s direction, only helped it along, standing upright at last and supporting his friend as he drove the small, wicked finger knife straight down across the seam of the alchemist’s coat. Timothy gave it an extra push at the last second so that the knife went into the bastard’s tender skin. The alchemist screamed, and Timothy felt the last of the enchantment break as seven silver stones tumbled out, then shattered against the ground. Charles Perry stumbled, then fell to the ground as well, shaking his head as he woke from his trance. Jonathan was struggling to right himself, but he was staggering hard now. The alchemist was clutching his leg, but he looked up with dark, furious eyes at Jonathan and started to murmur angrily beneath his breath.

  Timothy stepped away from Jonathan and let him go down as he bent and picked up the casing of the sword stick. He stood and swung it around in the same motion, smacking it hard against the side of Smith’s head. The alchemist crashed to the ground, and he did not move again.

  The gold woman drifted in front of Timothy and gave him a sad smile. Then she vanished.

  Timothy didn’t know whether he was disappointed or relieved. He lowered the sword stick casing and turned around.

  “He’s down,” Timothy said in relief. But when he saw Jonathan, his heart seized, and he fell to his knees beside his friend. “Mira.”

  Jonathan was shaking, fighting what appeared to be some sort of a seizure. His groin and left thigh were wet with blood, and more was burbling from his lips.

  “Out of here,” he croaked, spraying blood over his shirt as more dribbled down his chin. “Away.” He reached up and clutched weakly at Timothy’s shirtfront. “Away.”

  “Ah’s meir qu’atak! You cannot travel now!” Timothy shouted at him. “You will die!”

  Jonathan dragged him in closer, so close that their noses were practically touching, so that Timothy had no choice but to look into the black pools of terror that were Jonathan’s eyes.

  “Demon,” he whispered. “It is taking over.” He coughed, bringing up more blood. “Madeline,” he whispered, the name tearing from him. “Madeline!” He coughed again violently, and he cried out in despair. Then his eyes rolled back in his head, and he fell, unconscious, to the ground.

  “No!” Timothy cried, clutching his mira.

  Charles Perry crouched several feet back on Jonathan’s other side, reaching out to brace himself against the ground. He still looked unsteady, but he was a little less dull now. His eyes had returned to normal.

  “You need to go before Smith comes around.” Charles stared at his sibling with a sad expression. “Get him well out of sight. And don’t tell me where you’re headed. That will be the first thing Smith does. He’ll draw the information out of me.”

  “Your brother needs a doctor.” Timothy pressed his hand against Jonathan’s thigh, despairing at how much blood had soaked his clothes.

  Charles was quiet for a long moment as if he were considering something carefully. “There is no doctor here,” he said at last. “But I can send you somewhere better.” He reached up and undid the knot in his cravat, stopping twice to steady himself against the ground. When he had it undone, he pulled the long, wide strip of cloth away and handed it to Timothy. “Use this to bind him. Are your things upstairs in your room?”

  Timothy unhooked the knife from his hand, then took the cloth and set to work wrapping Jonathan’s thigh, doing his best to catch the tear that went to his groin as well. “Yes. One trunk. I haven’t unpacked us yet. We only just arrived.”

  Charles patted his coat. “Smith doesn’t let me keep money. Do you have any coin? I’ll send a boy up to fetch it, and then I’ll find you a coach.”

  Timothy pulled his purse from the inside of his vest and tossed it over to the other man without hesitation, though he did feel a tug of unease after. Charles must have caught the look, because he gave him a rueful smile. “I’ll be right back,” he said, then rose and headed to the inn.

  Timothy watched him go, still wondering what madness had possessed him to hand over half their traveling money to not just a stranger, but a stranger also aligned with the alchemist. Not aligned; enslaved, he corrected himself, then swore under his breath and turned his attention back to Jonathan. The bandage seemed to have staved off the worst of the bleeding. It was stained red, but the stain was not spreading any farther. He felt for Jonathan’s pulse, and to his immense relief, he found one.

  He realized a little belatedly that the crowd that had previously been merely observing the inn yard theater was now closing in around him. They didn’t look happy. Timothy kept one hand on Jonathan’s chest, but he fumbled for the sword stick with the other, ready to spring the casing and start fighting if it came to that. How he would protect Jonathan and fight off twenty men, he did not know, but he’d find a way.

  Then he remembered what Jonathan had told him, and he set down the sword stick and fished once more in his vest pockets. When he found the thick, leathery piece of paper with the great red seal, he thrust it out in front of him.

  “I am Timothy Fielding, equerry to Jonathan Perry, the heir to Augustus Octavian Perry, Lord Whitby.”

  The men paused. “No fore’ner can be equerry,” one of them said in challenge, but there was uncertainty in his tone.

  Timothy seized on it. He reached into his pockets again and produced another, smaller seal. “I was made his equerry while serving with Mr. Perry in the Catalian War. I am an agent with the Special Forces of the Etsian Army.”

  The men were murmuring now, and a grizzled old man using a crude, knotted cane to walk hobbled forward to squint at Timothy’s seal. His eyes went wide as he read the document.

  “Death Unit.” The old man stared in disbelief at Timothy. “No one comes out of that alive!”

  “I did.” Timothy tucked both papers away again. He took the sword stick in hand. “Now stay back, all of you.”

  The old man nodded, taking several steps away, but he cast a worried look at Jonathan. “Perrys only bring misfortune to this parish,” he murmured.

  “Not compared to the misery I’ll give you if you all don’t clear away,” Timothy said, and to his immense relief, they all fell back this time. His heart was still pounding as he lowered the sword stick. So there were advantages to paranoid, ignorant parishioners: if you managed to get them to respect or fear you, they did so completely.

  Charles Perry reappeared with a gangly youth in tow bearing Jonathan’s trunk. A coach and four were pulling up behind him in the yard. “I’m sending you to the abbey,” he said as the coachman took the trunk and loaded it on the roof. “It’s vacant, but it’s Jonathan’s, actually, so there’s no trouble—and given what just happened, it’s probably the most appropriate place for him. I couldn’t get anyone to stay with you, but you may be glad for that. I’ll send better help as soon as I am able to track Madeline down.”

  “You s
aid not to tell you where we were going,” Timothy said, hefting Jonathan carefully to his feet before dragging his unconscious body to the coach.

  “If Smith can’t find me, he can’t ask me.” Charles smiled wanly. “Anyway, she might be able to help me too. I’ll face the moor, even at night, for that.”

  Timothy had been draping Jonathan over his shoulder; when he had him in place, he glanced up and looked at Charles. “She?”

  “The moor witch. Or, apparently, her Apprentice.” His face softened a little. “She’s an old friend of mine too.”

  “Jonathan seemed uneasy when Smith mentioned her,” Timothy said.

  Charles grimaced. “Yes. But there’s no one else. Anyway, if she finds out about this, she’ll be coming for him. She might have taken the witch vows, but she’s still Madeline. She’s going to come for him.”

  Charles held open the door to the coach but did not help as Timothy wrestled Jonathan inside; he seemed reluctant to touch his brother. Timothy wondered again why he was trusting Charles. When Timothy had Jonathan secured inside, he stepped half-out of the carriage again, hanging out the door with his hand anchored on the frame as he stared down into Charles Perry’s face.

  The blond man stuffed his hands in his pockets, still looking wan and worn too thin, but now he looked charmingly abashed as well. “I know you’re suspicious of my aiding you. But I truly am trying to help. Not for Jonathan. For you.”

  Timothy felt the word catch in the center of his chest. “Why?”

  “Because you tried to help me,” Charles Perry replied. “You didn’t know me. You just looked at me, saw I was in trouble, and you tried to help. Thank you.”

  A stable hand appeared behind Charles with a large white horse; Charles turned to him, pressed some coin into his hand, and tossed the purse back to Timothy. Timothy caught it, but he didn’t move back into the coach, and he didn’t say anything, just kept staring at Charles Perry. He didn’t know why. He just couldn’t seem to stop.

  He watched the gold woman form slowly, a ghostly, glowing figure between Charles and the horse. She smiled at Timothy and placed her hands on Charles’s shoulders.

  “I will guard the beloved,” she said in Catalian. “It is time for you to go.”

  No one else reacted, not even Charles; no one could see her. Timothy swore and glared at her. “I hate this country.”

  Charles laughed; the sound felt like a song in Timothy’s ears, and when he saw how it transformed the pale man’s face, he wanted to jump down and drag him into his arms.

  What is wrong with me? He glowered and ducked into the carriage without another word, slamming the door behind him. He looked down at Jonathan, who was sprawled awkwardly across the seat. He looked so ill, so much worse than he had ever been.

  I should never have let him drag us here. I should never have let him leave Boone. I didn’t want to let him go, but I did, and look what has happened.

  Timothy swore again, rapped hard on the roof, and the driver set off, taking them into the night.

  Chapter Three

  ellyuit

  water

  Water is the third element of creation.

  Water cannot exist outside of a container and must take the shape of what holds it.

  Water is emotional and unpredictable.

  When water moves, it takes things with it.

  Charles rested his hands on the side of his mount’s saddle for a moment, watching the carriage drive off. Then he swung himself atop the horse, clicked his tongue, and rode in the opposite direction of the carriage.

  Of course, technically they were headed to the same place: the Moor Forest. They would be aiming for entirely separate ends of it, but the distance between their individual destinations was less than a mile. It would be far more pleasant—and safer—to ride the long road around the moor instead of over it, but only until Smith came back into consciousness.

  The thought of Smith made Charles urge the horse to travel faster.

  He hadn’t ridden a horse in years, which worked out well in a way, because he had no leisure to think about anything but staying in the saddle, especially since he had never in his memory ridden this fast. But at the lip of the moor itself, he pulled back the reins and slowed, and as he caught his breath, his apprehension over his errand had a chance to return. His hands shook as he slid off the horse and undid its bit and bridle, tucking them into the saddlebag before slapping the beast on the rump and sending it back to the village. He couldn’t ride the horse out onto the rocky ridges without risking it breaking a leg, and that just wasn’t something Charles could do, no matter how much he feared being caught by Smith. His grandfather would have, because he wouldn’t give a damn about an animal. He suspected Jonathan might have as well, but he would have justified it by saying it was an extreme situation and life was about difficult decisions.

  Jonathan. Charles started out into the lonely darkness, rubbing his hands over his arms to ward off the chill. Jonathan was back. He looked like six shades of hell, but he was back.

  And he had the demon inside of him.

  Charles hugged himself tighter as he crested the first ridge and headed down the hill. Demon. Not daemon; demon. Jonathan wouldn’t mix the two, and if Jonathan said he had a demon, he had one. And since it was Jonathan, Charles could guess which one it was. The thought made him feel sick. What in the name of the Goddess was he thinking, sending Madeline to a demon-possessed Jonathan?

  He’d been trying to impress the Catalian. That’s what he was thinking. And sweet Goddess, he was a Perry after all then, willing to set someone up for a fall for his own potential pleasure. And yet what he’d said at the inn was true. Madeline would find out with the first round of morning gossip, and she’d hunt Jonathan down anyway. If in ten years’ time she had managed to come to her senses and was ready to disavow her old lover at last, well, then so much the better.

  Maybe she could help him figure out how to get free of Smith.

  Charles rubbed his arms more vigorously and looked out over the endless span of hills and valleys. The fog was rising, which made him nervous. Smith forced the wraith dream on him daily now, so much that he felt sometimes that he never left it. And he realized, actually, that the mist wraiths looked a great deal like this spooky stuff. But there was a distinct difference between the ghosts in his head and the ghosts on the moor.

  The ones on the moor knew how to bite.

  Charles listened for the clicks and whines that heralded the awakening of Rothborne Moor’s more macabre residents, but there was, blissfully, only the faint cry of night birds and insects rising up from the distant forest. Charles aimed for the westerly ridge, wanting to be sure he kept well away from the lake.

  He let his mind drift back to the Catalian as he walked, because thinking of him made Charles feel a little brighter, and he could use some brightness just now. Goddess save him, but the man was beautiful. He’d never had a proper gander at a Catalian before, so the novelty was undoubtedly part of it. Etsians liked to call Catalian’s “dark” or “black,” but he wasn’t, was he? No, that was Tansia. The Catalian was…brown. Ish. A sort of golden brown, with just a hint of olive. The Catalian looked as if the sun had lifted him up and kissed him, searing his skin. And it was so smoothly brown.

  And those eyes. They were so dark, so intense. They cut right through you. They demanded. And that mouth. That mouth. Charles felt a pull low in his groin, and he let out an anticipatory sigh. He’d been fantasizing about women since Smith had shown him the Goddess at the end of his dream, but the Catalian had all his attention now. Jonathan’s equerry rather deliciously rode the line of masculine and feminine, though he was unquestionably male. Oh, if only he were a molly. Pleasure slave, Smith had called him. Charles stumbled over the erotic images the name painted, though he had a hard time imagining the Catalian as anyone’s slave.

  He’d tried to help Charles. That still touched him.

  Charles stopped on the top of the ridge and stared out into th
e darkness, letting the thought roll around in his head. He should keep going, he knew, but the urgency to move had left him, and whether or not it was true, he felt safe from Smith here on the moor. And the longer Charles thought about the Catalian, the stronger and surer he felt. It had been a month of hell with Smith, of living in pain and fog, of having parts of himself he didn’t know he had torn like strips from his soul, but ever since the Catalian had knocked Smith cold, he’d felt strong. He replayed that image in his mind, even though he’d watched it through a fog; he saw Smith crumble into the dirt, and he smiled blackly. Oh yes. How he had been aching for that. Better still would have been if they’d been able to kill him, but there had been too many witnesses, and Charles feared the alchemist had some sort of self-protection against murder.

  Charles set off again, but the fog was getting thicker, making it harder to keep his bearings. He started to head down into the next valley because there was one place down there where the mist did not reach, but when Charles saw the great lumps of gray, he retreated again. That was the Stone Circle, and he would not go there. Madeline had told him once what it was like inside; she said the shadows inside that place were the witch guides and that they ran up and down your spine like cold fingers. And you had to be naked there. Smith had taught Charles well that “magic” and “naked” together wasn’t any fun at all.

  Madeline might be at the circle now, he realized. He took another step backward. Well, if she was, he would be waiting at the cottage for her when she finished.

  But by the time Charles came back to the top of the ridge again, the fog had completely engulfed the valleys. The cottage should only be two more hills over, but to get there he had to descend into the thickest soup of all: the fog surrounding the lake. Charles would lay naked and flat on the stone slab in the Circle before he went anywhere near that damned lake.