Winterveil Read online

  Once their minds had caught up with the evidence of their own eyes, people burst into action, even more desperate to leave that place behind. Dalliah bullied the two horses along, not caring whom she might trample beneath their hooves as the crowd parted to let her pass, but one man was too busy staring at something behind them to move. When Dalliah’s horse knocked into his shoulder, he barely noticed. Kate turned to see what he was looking at and spotted the shade of a black-robed warden standing right in the middle of the road. She knew that face. His teeth were black and twisted, his skin was stained with pale mud.

  “I remember you, girlie.” The warden’s robes were worn and tattered, and a slit over his heart oozed with dark blood. “I’m not finished with you yet.”

  “Kalen?”

  Kate’s horse worried and fought against its reins as the man walked toward them. He shuffled forward on rag-wrapped feet, leaving footprints of ghostly blood on the ground behind him.

  “Ya’ll regret what ya did to me. I’ll make ya scream before the end, just like yer daddy did.”

  Kate could hear his rasping breathing, even though he was long dead. Dalliah stopped the horses and turned to see Kalen for herself.

  “Ya know what’s comin’,” said Kalen. “Ya can feel it.”

  “Leave us,” Dalliah said, treating Kalen like some kind of stray animal. “Go.” Kalen looked up at Dalliah as if he had not noticed she was there and stopped walking at once. “Our history can always find us in the veil,” she said to Kate. “Now is not the time for unfinished business.”

  “Why can we see him?” asked Kate.

  “Souls have long memories,” said Dalliah. “Hate can feed their anger for a very long time.”

  “He has no reason to hate me.”

  “His hate is not drawing him here. Your hate is doing that,” said Dalliah. “This is what drives many of the Skilled into madness when the veil is weakened. Ordinary people see random souls, but the Skilled attract those whose deaths they have touched. At least you remember him.” Dalliah looked away and snapped the horse’s reins. “That is a good sign.”

  Kate noticed the sharpness in Dalliah’s voice. Kate had said too much, and she knew it.

  Kalen’s spirit voice echoed around the street. “Ya won’t chase me off!”

  Dalliah and Kate rode on, but Kalen kept moving. Kate saw his essence disappear from the living world and thought he was gone, until cold hands gripped her ankle and Kalen’s soul tried to sink beneath her skin.

  Kate screamed and kicked out. Her boot connected where Kalen’s face should have been, and he twisted away, lost in a burst of writhing mist.

  “Unwanted souls can be difficult to deal with,” said Dalliah, stirring the horses to a faster trot. “It takes a strong will to see them off. I am impressed.”

  Small clusters of people were crying, staring, holding on to their children, and trying to reassure each other that what they had seen could not possibly have been real. Just a few months ago Kate would have doubted her own eyes as well, but she saw the look of triumph on Dalliah’s face as they passed by. Somehow, this was all part of her plan. She wanted chaos. She wanted the people of Albion to be afraid.

  The streets surrounding the lake were in a part of Fume that was ill kempt and run down. The small district was a warren of alehouses and shops. The smell of straw and stale alcohol overwhelmed everything, and the people there had locked themselves in their homes and the alehouses to escape the commotion outside. These were the servants’ streets. Litter blew through the gutters, and tattered banners hung down from every gable, each cloth roughly painted with a blue eye. The horses shied as the banners snapped in the wind, and Dalliah told Kate to dismount. It would be easier to lead the beasts from now on.

  “I see people have not yet let go of their superstitions,” she said. “The dead are not interested in pointless pieces of cloth.”

  “It’s a tradition,” said Kate, who had often hung banners in memory of her parents during the Night of Souls.

  “It is a way for the living to calm their fears and believe they are still in control. The dead are not listening. Either they have moved on to the next life, or they are tormented by their own doubts, fears, and grief. They do not care how many candles are lit in their memory or how many whispers are shared in their name. The dead are lost. They cannot aid us any more than we can help them. It is foolish to believe otherwise.”

  The book hidden in Kate’s coat felt heavier the farther they walked. The pages trembled gently, as if an insect were thrumming its wings together beneath the fabric. She pressed her hand against it to make it stop and spotted movement in a window as she and Dalliah passed. She saw a figure in the glass, there and gone again in an instant, but there was something very familiar about it.

  “Keep moving,” said Dalliah.

  They left the horses and walked down a flight of shallow steps squeezed in between two leaning buildings whose rooftops almost touched above their heads. The effects of the veil were much weaker there. Kate could not see anything out of the ordinary, until the steps led down through a low stone arch and opened out onto the edge of one of Fume’s most spectacular sights.

  The Sunken Lake was a huge expanse of deep, clear water. The dying light gave the appearance of gentle waves shifting upon its surface, and small boats bobbed and scraped against one another around a little dock that was crossed with old chains. The banks were gently curved and lined with gray stone, but the water level was far lower than the land around it, exposing ruined pieces of Fume’s history jutting from the mud along the water’s edge. The stony arms of broken statues reached out of the earth, and what could have been pieces of railway track glinted in long layers where rain had washed the mud away.

  “People are rarely interested in what lies under their feet,” said Dalliah. “In my time, the spirit in the next wheel was so powerful that people suffered nightmares from being too close to it. Its anger leached into sleepers’ unconscious minds and tormented them. The wheel was lost centuries ago, but my people found it beneath the waters of the lake and raised it. I have not been able to study it myself. Two men died dragging it out of the water, and three more survived only a day after moving it. The spirit inside is damaged but strong. You will need to be careful. Do not touch the stones until I instruct you to do so.”

  “Where is the wheel now?”

  “The first two men collapsed dead on the bank as soon as it touched dry land. The others fell sick almost immediately, but they managed to move it. There.” Dalliah pointed to a small square building that seemed to cower in the shadow of the larger buildings nearby. While the others looked occupied, this one had long been left alone. Its small door was stripped bare, and its oval windows were glazed in blue. If Dalliah had not drawn her attention to it, Kate would not have given it a second look.

  “Why did they put it there?” she asked.

  “That is the records house,” said Dalliah, “where the bonemen recorded the names and details of every dead body and every soul that entered this city. There were trees here once. The records house stood alone upon the bank, and it was a beautiful, peaceful place. Now it is surrounded by people and stone.” She stood quietly, letting her thoughts carry her briefly into memories of a different time. “The spirit wheel used to be inside, until a new owner decided to remove it and throw it into the lake. That was during the early days of the High Council’s occupation. But the wheels are not meant to be moved. Each one was placed in a particular location for a reason. My men retrieved it eighty years ago. The wheel is back where it belongs.”

  “And now you are going to kill the spirit in it,” said Kate, trying hard to keep the bitterness from her voice.

  “I sealed it in there,” said Dalliah. “It is mine to do with as I wish.”

  Despite Dalliah’s warnings, all Kate felt while walking up to that house was sadness. Movement flickered in windows as she passed, and where there was no glass a shadow that was too large to be her own crossed the e
mpty frames. She could sense eyes watching her as she walked up to the records house, and when she passed in front of one of the blue panes, she saw the presence clearly: a man with silver eyes, too solid to be a shade, too ghostly to be a piece of Fume’s history revealing itself to living eyes. The book in her pocket trembled again. She had seen this man before. He was one of her ancestors and one of Wintercraft’s first book bearers. Whenever Kate walked a path that he had once taken with the book, she sometimes saw him as a memory locked within the pages. Now he was much clearer than she had seen him before.

  The lake behind him in the pale reflection was filled right to the edges, and the trees Dalliah had spoken of were planted in copses around the water. Few of the buildings were visible, leaving gravestones and towers stretching as far as she could see. The man glanced slowly at Dalliah, then stepped back, fading out of sight.

  Dalliah did not have a key to the records house. She did not need one. The wood swung back freely, and the space beyond looked exactly as it must have looked to the men who had moved the wheel. There were shelves everywhere. Some held long boxes meant for holding maps and scrolls, while others were filled with small cabinets whose keys had been left rusting in the locks. Two thick tables stood against one wall, on either side of a blocked fireplace, and at the very back of the room a circular space had been cut out of the wall and filled with more shelves, which were stacked with the moldering remains of old ledgers so fragile that just attempting to open one would make it crumble at once.

  A few feet from the door, a spirit wheel had been laid unceremoniously on the floor. The stone was at least three feet thick, and the circle was almost exactly as wide—much larger than the wheel in Ravik’s tower. This wheel had been retrieved from the lake and then abandoned before it could be returned to its proper place within the wall. Kate stood over it. Nothing moved. Not even a flicker of light stirred in the spaces between the tiles.

  “This one has been waiting for us,” said Dalliah. “The only people alive who can free it from that stone are here in this room. It will try to tempt you. It will try to trick you. Do not listen to it.”

  “Murder.” The word filled the room, trembled from the walls, and a rush of air ruffled through the pages of the books on the shelves, scattering them into fibers that choked the air.

  The wheel remained still, and for the first time Kate saw Dalliah look slightly surprised.

  “I am sure the locals have found your theatrics very entertaining over the years,” said Dalliah, already unpacking her bag and laying two books open on the larger table. “I, however, will not be taken in by your display. You cannot escape the wheel. You are manipulating our senses to make it appear so, that is all.”

  “The dead are listening, Dalliah Grey.”

  “Yes, yes. I’m sure they are.”

  “They are waiting for you.”

  Dalliah stopped unpacking and rested her hands upon the tabletop. “They will have to wait a very long time,” she said.

  “This girl is not like the others. She has protected herself. You . . . will fail.”

  Those words grabbed Dalliah’s attention. “How has she protected herself?” she demanded. “I have eliminated the boy. There is nothing left.”

  “She is bound to another. We can see him.”

  “No,” said Dalliah. “I will not listen to you.”

  “You doubt the truth.”

  “I doubt you. Kate is under my control, and you will soon be gone. I will not listen to you.”

  “That is a mistake.”

  The door to the records house closed by itself, and Kate heard the snick of a lock.

  “Did you think we would not defend ourselves? Did you think we would not be prepared?”

  Dalliah returned to her books, refusing to acknowledge the presence of the spirit she was about to destroy.

  “The wheels were not yours to take, Dalliah. You ruined us.”

  Dark liquid seeped out of the cracks between the tiles within the wheel and surged out over the symbols, staining each tile with a wash of old lake water. Trickles of it spilled down the side of the wheel and ran toward Kate’s boots.

  “Ignore it,” said Dalliah, without turning around. “It is only trying to get your attention.”

  The water trailed around Kate, leaving a small patch of dry floor where she was standing.

  “Dalliah spilled our blood. She stole everything from us.”

  “Each individual spirit is a vast repository of energy,” said Dalliah, her voice light, talking to Kate as if she were instructing an ordinary student in an ordinary room. “But every one of them is driven by something.” She tore a page out of one of her books, lit a match from her bag, and held them both over the wheel. “Greed, love, ambition, empathy. Whatever they think is important, that is their weakness. You find it and use it against them, living or dead. After that, they are yours to control.”

  The spirit fell silent. The water receded a little, and the flame licked gently at the very tip of the torn page.

  “This page contains the final prediction of a very particular seer. Someone who is connected to both this spirit and to you, Kate,” said Dalliah. “It was written in the woman’s blood just before her execution at the hands of the wardens fifty years ago. Her spirit is still here in the city somewhere, bound to this . . . the last of her physical remains. Burning her blood will break her last connection to the physical world and send her soul into the black. The spirit in this wheel will not allow that to happen.”

  Kate could not see what was written upon the paper, but the effect upon the spirit was immediate. The water dissipated, the room darkened, and the wheel on the floor began to turn. The tiles in the outer ring flipped and grated smoothly around their channeled grooves.

  “That’s better,” said Dalliah, allowing the match to fizzle out. “You wouldn’t want anything to happen to this.”

  “What does it say?” asked Kate.

  “Your mother’s family have always done things a little differently,” said Dalliah. “They knew enough to see beyond their own existence and protect the future long after their own deaths. Your great-grandmother foresaw the falling of the veil when she was ten years old and went on to become one of the greatest seers Fume ever knew. These were her final words. She used her blood to allow her to connect with the living world even after death. This spirit will not risk harming her, even to protect its own existence.”

  “If this spirit is a member of my mother’s family, I can’t let you kill it,” said Kate.

  “Why should that matter?” said Dalliah. “Every soul belongs to somebody’s family. Why should yours be spared? And why would you care? I thought you were an intelligent girl, but you were foolish enough to try to hide the truth from me. You have let your mask slip. You know too much for a girl whose memory has truly been lost. You knew the banners in the servants’ quarter were a tradition. You recognized the spirit that was drawn to you in the street. You have remembered. Do not think I have not noticed. You may not be my student, Kate, but you will follow my orders. The veil has already shown me what is to come. No seers or spirit tricks of the mind can stop what we must do. This spirit will be cast into the black, where it belongs. It is a relic of the past.”

  “Just like you,” Kate said defiantly. Anger welled up inside her, and it was a relief not to have to pretend anymore. “You are used to getting everything you want. You buy people’s loyalty or frighten them into doing things for you. The men who pulled the wheel from that lake never would have risked their lives unless you forced them to. You killed Ravik because he wouldn’t follow your orders. You left Silas and Edgar to die on the Continent, and now you think you can force me to do what you want. You’re wrong. I don’t care who you are. I won’t let you do this. I won’t help you.”

  The two women stood on either side of the spirit wheel, but neither noticed the shifting movements of shades pressing in around the walls. They did not see the wheel illuminate two bright symbols—the snowflake an
d the mask—or notice the pungent smell of deep water as the lake outside slowly began to rise.

  “The Winters family has always been stubborn, reckless, and misguided,” said Dalliah. “I expected more from you.”

  “No, you expected less,” said Kate. “You wanted someone you could control. That person is not me.”

  8

  BLOODIED BLADE

  At the same moment, half a city away, Silas was at the reins of a carriage speeding through the dark streets with Edgar at his side when they felt the ground tremble. Ahead of them, a flock of bats exploded from the roof of a tower before its spire slipped and smashed down into the street below.

  Silas forced the horses to the right, slowing down to dodge debris as it rained down upon the buildings and the people hiding within.

  “What was that?” shouted Edgar.

  “That was Kate resisting Dalliah.”

  “But the ground . . . it was like . . .”

  “Thousands of souls literally turning in their graves,” said Silas. “Walkers cannot breathe in this city without attracting attention.”

  “That felt like a lot of attention.”

  “This has already gone too far,” said Silas, steering the carriage around a tight corner and snapping the reins to gain speed. “Dalliah wants Kate to leave her spirit vulnerable. She is testing her. She wants Kate to lose control.”

  Edgar hooked the hatch open and leaned out as they sped onward. “Are we going in the right direction?” he asked. “I thought Kate was back that way.”

  “Dalliah has already moved her,” said Silas, pulling the horses to a stop as they encountered a jam of people snailing through the streets. “I sent the crow to watch her. We cannot stop them like this.”

  “Can’t you . . . sense where they are?”

  “The veil is letting the half-life seep in all around the city,” said Silas. “As it falls, it becomes harder to see clearly.”