Needle Rain (31 page)

Six months later.

Thom sniffled and patted the mound of earth one last time. The paperbark eucalypt shading the gravesite shivered its leaves in a passing breeze.

“She was the best,” he said.

The man was ridiculous but sweet and Heloise waited for him to finish his musing on death.

Omi nodded. “I know, but no one and nothing lives forever.” He shifted his walking stick. “At least you got here in time to see her buried. Let’s get back for supper. I’m hungry.”

“You’re always hungry, Omi,” said Heloise from her awkward, side-saddle perch on her quagga. “And Thom, seriously, it was only a goat. We should be eating her.” She checked the hilt of the great sword that was slung across her back, clicked her tongue at the quagga, then swung her leg across to the correct side for riding.

Both Omi and Thom looked shocked which only made Heloise grin. Shocking Thom was one of her favorite things.

“Is she always like this?” Omi asked in a hushed tone as he hobbled alongside Thom.

“No.” He rolled his eyes. “Only since the last ghost. A Grakk warrior with a liking for big swords and smart comments.”

“Ah-h. I see.”

By then Heloise was trotting beside them. She felt a little silly riding while Omi walked, but that had been his choice and Thom had wanted to carry Esme’s body to the grave by himself. “How’s everything been since we left, Omi? Apart from the goat dying that is? Is Grunt behaving himself?”

He bowed his head a moment. “Thank you for asking. I am older, again, thanks to you. My body acquires its natural state and I am so looking forward to the quietus of death. Your cat is enjoying his life here though the lizards are a little warier.”

“Uh-huh.” Her one regret was having to leave Grunt behind. After that momentous horse ride when Bull chased her across miles of countryside in one night, Grunt had been terrified of cages.

“Wilyam is coming along nicely, and I expect he will make a good manager of the orphanage, though he still scratches more than a polite person should.”

“And Mara?” Thom asked.

“She has grown taller, and it appears she has an aptitude for helping others. I’m thinking she may apprentice to a herbologist in the town. Now, I have my own question. Thom, do you have some inkling, some hint, that you will regain your ability?”

Silence for several steps. The quagga clopped along agreeably.

“No. Nothing.” He glanced up at Heloise and she couldn’t stop herself grimacing.

Omi grunted, his shoulders slumping a little. “I see.”

“Omi.” She licked her lips and decided to tell him everything. It couldn’t hurt and it would ease his guilt. “I’ve come to terms with this possession thing. With you, there was no control, but I can pick who I allow to possess me each night. Sometimes I can refuse completely, and when I do accept, I do so on my own terms.

“Is it something I would volunteer for if I had a choice? No. But...there are ghosts out there who need me. Ones who have been centuries waiting for release. In a way, it makes me happy.”

“The only drawback,” Thom added, wryly. “Is how some ghosts filter through and change you.”

“That’s not what you said about the courtesan. I seem to recall you requesting another.”

Omi hooted. “Heh-heh. You two make sure you visit more often. It is most educational.”

“It’s not what you think,” Thom added, with a slight eye-roll that conveyed amused exasperation.

“No?” Heloise giggle-snorted. “He lies but I do like teasing him.”

The attraction she’d felt toward Thom had matured. Some days it seemed as if they had been together forever and she prayed that would be so. She never wanted to leave him, even imagining it made her sad, and Thom felt the same about her.

Amora had chosen them well, if they had indeed been a part of her plans.

“More?” Omi asked, hopefully.

“More details?” Thom guffawed and shook his head. “No.”

“Hmm. I’m disappointed in you both. I was hoping for some scandalous gossip.” He harrumphed. “In any case, now that the Imperator has more problems to attend to, I doubt he’ll try chasing down Thom anymore.”

“Problems?” Heloise raised an eyebrow. “Like what? Last letter we had, Samos had a baby girl delivered. That was it. The Imperium is at peace. We’ve been mostly in the Clandom forests.”

“Yes. Yes. The baby they named Teresa. I hope Samos will also visit one day before I die. But, hmmm, the Imperator.” He lifted his stick and poked it toward Heloise. “He’s got an ex-Imperial Investigator on the loose.”

Thom jerked to a stop. “Tatiana?”

“Yes. They gave her a prison with only women, and she coerced half of them and escaped.”

“Oh.” Heloise smirked. “I could have told them that wouldn’t work. Her ability works on women too.”

“How did you know that?” Thom looked at her suspiciously.

She smiled. “A little courtesan told me.” And she spurred the quagga and rode ahead, down the tree-lined road.

ENDS

Cartography done rather badly by a drunken, one-eyed sailor sitting on the deck of a rolling ship.

Glossary for Needle Rain

Amora
– the goddess of hate and love.

The sighting of gods and goddesses by humans is rare but not inconceivable.

Animus
– the essence or spirit of an animal or plant,

often used by a trinketologist in the creation of trinkettons.

Bio-energeer
– healer who uses magience to gather data from people and animals.

Some can tell how a person or animal died.

Gheist trapper
– a person who traps ghosts. This ectoplasm is valued most as ammunition in gheist weapons.

Gheist Weapon
– a trinketton weapon that uses ghost energy, ectoplasm, to kill – the ammunition is the compressed ectoplasm of trapped ghosts.

Normal guns cannot handle ectoplasm.

Grint and fennig
– units of money in the Burgla’le Empire.

Herbologist
– a magience practitioner who studies herbs

and masters their use in magience.

Imperator
– the ruler of the Burgla’le empire.

Imperial Investigator
– a person appointed by the Imperator to investigate matters that might threaten the empire.

Magience
– magic fused with science.

Needles
– every needle placed by a needle master costs the recipient some of their lifespan.

Needle Master
- an acupuncturist who can use magience.

Quagga
– a type of riding or pack animal similar to a zebra in markings.

Trinketton
- a magical device made by a trinketologist. These are powered by the animus (essence) of an animal or, rarely, a plant. The death of the creator means the death of the trinketton.

Trinketologist
– a magience practitioner who makes magical objects

from wood, metal, or plant.

*****

Magience
is a book set in this same fantasy world.

Needle Rain
is not connected to
Magience
in any way, except for the setting.

Because
Magience
is YA in genre and not erotic, it was published under the pen name of Cari Silver.

If you’d like to read
Magience
, it can be found at the below link on Amazon or you can read the following sample of Chapter One.

MAGIENCE

The Watcher

It was a dirty war when ghosts were used as ammunition. For reassurance, Ellinca touched the black satin pouch at her waist sash – her secret. Inside was a perfume bottle – emerald-cut glass and filigree lid, full of memories and the twirling, dancing ghost of her mother.

“So, you were on the Grakk bank of the river,” she muttered to the boy. “Dangerous.”

His cormorant lay asleep on her lap. A working bird, it still had the leather snare about its neck to stop it from swallowing any of the larger fish it caught. Ellinca shifted to better catch the light from the nearby pole-slung lantern.

“Nothing here.” She raised her voice so as to be heard over the catcalls and clapping from the audience gathered at the nearby stage. “No fish hook.”

“’Twas there earlier,” said the boy, fidgeting from one foot to the other. “We let her dive for a fish but she came up with a hook in her.”

Ellinca frowned. “I don’t doubt you. The hook’s gone.” On her thumb was a gritty paste of dark red rust. Hooks didn’t just fall out. The skin of one leg was split as if fishing line had once been wrapped around it. “This’ll need three stitches.”

“My brother only gave me eight numen. That do?” He didn’t wait for her reply and placed the copper coins on the blanket next to her. “I heard the Grakks have got somethin’ that eats metal.”

Some scary things were being used in the war, by both sides – and if gheist weapons, why not metal-eaters?

No one would be selling her mother’s ghost, ever.

“Metal-eating, hey? Your buttons haven’t fallen off or anything?”

He grinned. “Nah, besides, they’re bone, not metal. My earring’s okay, though.” He tapped the little hoop with his finger.

Eight numen. She needed eighty for a bottle of the soporific potion. With a sigh, she took up her pliers and the needle, threaded with the silk Pascolli had pilfered from a forgotten item of stage finery.

She and Pascolli, as well as a few traveling traders, had tagged along on the same route as the theater troupe for a month now, tag traders, as they were called. Pascolli was a mute, and near to her own age of eighteen years. They had met one moon-washed evening in the middle of an orchard, both of them clutching stolen apples. Their partnership had begun that night.

“My brother, Jon,” piped up the young cormorant owner, “he’s going to enlist.”

“Oh?” She refrained from telling him what she thought of anyone who volunteered for war. People paid you less when you insulted them.

Ellinca started sewing with tip of tongue stuck out the side of her mouth. Three sutures closed the wound. She smoothed down askew feathers on the bird’s stomach. Within two weeks this wound would be gone, as if time had turned backward.

Her vision blurred and she blinked to clear it. Something stirred, shivered, beneath her fingers. She flinched and pulled them away.

Dreading what might be underneath, she dabbed away seeping fluid with a cloth. Feathers shifted loose. There, on its stomach, a raw-edged sore glistening with a slurry of pus and blood. Her pulse pounded in her temples.

“There’s a sore here ’neath the feathers.” Her voice squeaked. “Too infected to stitch. Bathing it daily should fix it.”

“Oh?” The boy held out a box lined with cloth. He cooed soft words. “Let’s see this, Blackie. This? We thought this healed a week ago.”

“Well, it’s not. Keep him warm until he wakes. The potion’ll wear off soon.” Very soon. It had been the last drop. She kept up the patter, talking more than she meant to, unable to stop. “No letting him fly or dive for a week and a half. Say, your family...just your brother and you?”

He shrugged. “What’s it to you?”

What was it to her? She glared. “Tell your brother wars are a waste of time. My father volunteered. He died.” Curse him. “Left me and my mother alone. Don’t let your brother make the same mistake!”

Wide-eyed, he nodded and backed away.

Ellinca cleaned her trembling hands on a cloth soaked in uclypt oil, scrubbed them rougher than she needed to. As if she could scrub away the memories. She shook her hands then pressed them dry against the sides of her black leggings.

What had happened? Could it have been magience that seemed to reopen that wound? Wild magience? Please, no. She rattled off a small prayer.

There’d been no warning signs. The world seemed as it always was. She wasn’t going mad. Maybe it was something to do with the potion and not her doing at all? Just an unpleasant, rare, side effect? If a certified herbologist caused it then it was legal. That must be it.

A shout rang out. She looked up.

A third of the audience was out of their chairs and cheering or calling insults, rowdy, but better than average. A ghost had shown up earlier and stirred them up. To her sorrow, the townsfolk had made plans to trap him another night.

Her instruments put away, she sat cross-legged to watch the play though she’d seen it fifty times. She undid her hair tie and began to maneuver a comb though her curls. It calmed her. She had inch-worm hair – all little wriggles, comb-snagging hair.

Long, coppery-red strands of it gathered on her leather jerkin and she stopped to brush them off. The blouse beneath the jerkin was stained a mottled green from blood and uclypt oil and numerous unidentified substances. Her mother would have been horrified.

Grinning widely, dusting off the back of his tattered doublet and pants, Pascolli emerged from a group playing cards around a low table. He sauntered over.

“
Lucky night
,” he signed and tossed a few numen onto the blanket. A lock of his wavy black hair swayed across one eye. The last few months had made her proficient in reading his fingertalk.

“Great!” She smiled and wondered how to tell him of what had happened – later, though, when all the drunks had gone home to bed.

The lanterns dotting the far perimeter of the clearing backlit the audience. A woman with arms that were round as cow legs and almost as hairy stood and hurled her bonnet onto the stage. She stumbled, tripped over one of the troupe’s dodos, and landed in a man’s lap. Laughter and hooting erupted. The bird serenely waddled away to look for more tidbits.

Yes. She would tell him when it was quieter.

* * * *

A week later they were outside the town of Strickly, another night-time performance since the farmers needed daylight to work their fields. Still Ellinca had not told Pascolli. She had tended a dozen or more animals and nothing had happened, nothing strange, anyway.

Mid-evening.

Pascolli arrived carrying a plate of sausages and fried potatoes. “
Here
.” He placed it on the blanket and signed to Ellinca. “
From Beth. There’s a fellow asking after you. Wants you to take a look at his tuskdog.
”

“A tuskdog?” Rare creatures, tuskdogs were said to be nasty-tempered if you got on their wrong side. “They’re supposed to be tough as nails.”

“
It should be a big fee. But if you take this on, be careful.”

She slid her knife from its belt sheath and speared a sausage. “I will. We going halves?” Saliva filled her mouth. One thing about going hungry, the food smelled better.

“
No. I ate already
.”

“That the truth?” No. Ellinca pushed the plate to him. She’d make him eat half.

With the speared sausage stopped halfway to her mouth, she realized why she hadn’t told him about the cormorant. She didn’t want to lose the friendship of someone who would offer his food when he was hungry. She didn’t want to see fear and revulsion in his eyes.

“
Also...I lost my temper. Again. I hit someone. Sorry. He was spreading dirty lies. Said he’d seen you use magience
.”

The world shrank. She closed her eyes a moment. “There’s something...something I must tell you. I...” Past the audience, in the shadows of the forest, a man leaned against the trunk of a ghost gum. Too alert to be a drunk, too far away to see the play, he watched something else.

From among the clotted darkness came the crunching and crackling of branches and twigs snapping, the thud of hooves and the jingle of metal harness.

Fifteen or twenty horsemen emerged into the light from the periphery of the clearing. Their black-enameled breastplates were embossed with the royal Burgla’le liger – half golden tiger, half lion. Soldiers of the Imperator – their hands rested on or near the pommels of their sabers and daggers or carried crossbows casually pointed earthward.

A horse was led to the watcher and he swung into the saddle. “Please do not be alarmed, citizens, or should that be ladies and gentlemen?” He rode slowly forward.

Ellinca climbed to her feet. Both guilt and relief pulled at her, and a tinge of fear – there was something unnerving about this man. Why was he here? Why now?

Words rolled languidly off the watcher’s tongue as if he tasted them. “I am the Finder, Hilas Frope, appointed by the Imperator. You have nothing to fear from me.” He smiled thinly. “Unless of course, you are guilty of something.”

Cold washed through her.

His jittery black stallion tossed its head and jigged sideways a step or two. He stroked the horse’s neck until it settled; then, with a tap of his heels, he spurred forward, going around to the left-hand steps of the stage and dismounting. He flung the reins aside for a soldier to hold. In two strides the Finder was on the stage beside Jerome, an actor in a red demon outfit.

“Join your friends on the ground.” Frope flicked a gloved hand at Jerome.” I require the stage.”

Hilas Frope was built like a praying mantis: long spindly limbs and round spectacles. A porcelain scale mail shirt and armored legs completed the insectile picture. Blue light flickered across the glass lenses. From his scalp, spikes of short blond hair spread out like the nimbus of a sun.

He looked formidable, except that every now and then Ellinca thought she saw a tiny spasm shake his body.

It was easy to see why he’d shooed them off the stage. Up there you were god-like; down here, on the ground, you were only the audience. Hilas Frope fumbled at the catch of a leather canister hanging from his belt. On the other side, slung in a holster, was a long-barreled gheist pistol.

Ellinca couldn’t help herself – she tugged her jerkin lower, hoping no one had noticed the satin pouch. It was dark, but still...

These pistols were why people sold ghosts, why they were worth smallish fortunes, because a gheist pistol made by a good trinketologist was one of the most powerful hand weapons available. Compressed ectoplasm stored a deadly force. If the weapons were easier to make and the ammunition less rare she had no doubt the army would have already won their war against the Grakkurds.

Hilas Frope took a small bronze-and-green lizard from the canister. It half-hopped, half-flew onto his shoulder and sat preening itself, licking its tiny feet and whippy tail before it started tugging at the membrane of one wing with its teeth. Once finished with the task it blinked its ruby eyes and stared intently at Ellinca.

She stared back.

The Finder’s voice tuned back in, “...tracked this exceedingly dangerous creature to this area...but have not yet found him. You may suspect him by his odd walk and other behaviors. Do not approach closely if you believe you have seen him. He cannot be killed easily. Send a message to your nearest military post at Hull. Or to me.”

The sounds of fidgeting, the shuffling of feet and quiet muttering subsided.

A man sang out, “Where’s he come from this, this undead thing? This bludvoik? Carstelan? We’ve heard rumors there’s a plague of them, sir.”

Hilas Frope showed his teeth. “Perhaps. An illegal mage created him. Our sovereign, Imperator Uster the Fourth, has decreed that, when found, this mage will be hung, drawn and quartered until...” He smiled. “...he is very dead.”

Finder Frope held up the lizard in one hand. “Now, I can see that none of you are undead.” Some of the troopers chuckled. “So, on to the other half of my employment, finding wild mages. Are there any youths here who have been found capable of legal magience but are not yet apprenticed? None? Good.”

Legal magience, the safe and very profitable side of magience. If only. She had been tested. The nurse had held a little snake trinketton to her arm: a slither of metalized wood, a quick ker-chunk of its fangs as it tasted her blood and then, to her disgust – nothing, a negative. The snake had stayed a boring beige color.

This flying lizard couldn’t be a trinketton. She eyed it warily. It looked truly alive.

“Do not move and you are safe! Sergeant, shoot anyone who runs. Seek!”

Hilas Frope threw the lizard into the air and it began to circle above the crowd.

He couldn’t be testing blood for wild magience, could he? There were too many variations, thousands. Yet, if she could have hidden under something, she would have. She wasn’t one of them, but fear still caught at her.

Behind his back, where only she could possibly see, Pascolli began to fingertalk. “
That man. He’s gone. I sent him packing.
” He looked over his shoulder at her. “
Was there any truth in what he said?
”