Nethereal (Soul Cycle Book 1) Read online

  Malachi savored being unlike those men. He met the sulphurous waste with an eager smile and stepped briskly from the airlock as the gangway extended. Where others had lamented their losses, he looked forward to accomplishing great deeds.

  Descending the ramp, Malachi took note of his windblown brethren standing in ankle-deep dust beside the landing pad. Three were guards clad in tiered caps and long leather coats. Worked Enforcers were so common in the Cardinal Spheres that the all-human honor guard seemed quaint.

  The last figure deserved more thorough scrutiny. Malachi saw at once that Narr had not prospered on Tharis. The departing minister appeared to have shriveled under the planet's binary suns. Cracks lined his face, and his posture was bent. Sorriest of all was his badge of rank. The fine Master's robes—priceless beyond rubies for nobler reasons than their Worked silk—had not been well kept. In fact, the garment appeared to have been snatched from a peg in some cluttered closet and hastily donned for the day's proceedings.

  Malachi faced his peer upon the dry plains of Tharis and fancied that he saw his own aged reflection. If so, Narr’s wiry, thinning mane augured poorly for his own black widow’s peak. In the afternoon heat of Zadok and Thera he remembered the suns’ namesakes in Nesshin myth: father and daughter eternally annihilating and turning into each other.

  “Brother Malachi,” Narr began in a voice like a rusty blade scraped over worn leather, “the Steersmen of Tharis welcome their new minister.”

  Malachi remained silent for a long moment. He then knelt, clasped his elder's hands and kissed them. Narr gaped at the ancient display of respect. His lips moved, but no sound emerged.

  Malachi stepped in to fill the void. “Well met, Brother,” he said as he rose. “Now let us tend to business.”

  Tharis’ de facto capital of Shabreth lay hard by the spaceport, and a short drifter ride saw the guildsmen to an ancient pile of dun-colored stone that served as its Guild hall. Narr received Malachi in a stark chamber he called the Tea Room—its lingering odor of stronger drink notwithstanding. He showed his guest to a wooden chair at a circular table of baked clay where service for two had already been set. Malachi’s seat faced the room’s only window: a rounded oblong cutout with a sweeping view of the charred mountains beyond the dust plain.

  Narr eased himself into a chair across from Malachi. “Your voyage went well?” he asked.

  “It did,” Malachi said. He sampled the bitter, weak tea. “I had ample time to examine your ministry's records, from the first report filed sixty years ago, to this morning’s entry.”

  A dry cough escaped Narr’s throat. “An odd choice of reading material,” he said with a forced grin. “Wouldn’t you have preferred something more entertaining?”

  “Quite the contrary,” Malachi said. “I consider myself most entertained.”

  Narr’s teacup rattled as he raised it from its saucer. “You found something amiss in the accounts…some fiscal discrepancy?”

  “I did not.”

  “Pardon my bluntness,” said Narr, “but what interest could a newly vested Master Steersman—among the youngest in memory—have in my humdrum affairs?”

  “You're wondering why I'm here,” Malachi said.

  “Your appointment was unusual.”

  “In the sense that I wasn’t discharged from a lucrative accountancy at the Salorien chapter house?”

  Narr gulped his tea and said nothing.

  “I came of my own free will,” Malachi said. “It was a resolution I made long before I attained the Mastery.”

  “But why? Your abilities are wasted on Tharis.”

  Malachi sighed. Then he produced a bundle of three folders from his robe and spread them out on the table. Pointing to the first document he said, “Two years ago a known smuggling ship was sighted in low orbit.” He continued, indicating the second report. “Last month, a shopkeeper in Sojourner's Cut was reported for dealing in stolen goods.” Malachi paused, allowing the weight of his words to sink in. Narr’s face fell.

  “Just yesterday, your office received complaints of a shooting and an alleged suicide in the same vicinity.” Malachi leaned back with his arms crossed.

  Narr frowned. “This sphere is fit for only the most desperate men,” he said, “and even those it can kill or break. How is that our Brotherhood’s concern?”

  Malachi opened the third file and began reading in a firm, measured voice. “The owner of a public house near the township limits reported a shooting on his front doorstep. Enforcers found neither suspect nor victim. The few witnesses insisted that no murder had been done but claimed selective amnesia regarding the injured party’s whereabouts.”

  “Similar items cross my desk daily,” said Narr. “You’ll ignore them if you’re wise.”

  “Where police work failed,” Malachi said, “chance provided a suspect. Redrin Culvert, the son of a disgraced Inspector from Keth, had been lodging in an elderly couple’s back room. His failure to appear for breakfast this morning aroused their concern. His door was tried and found to be locked from within. The key proved useless.”

  Narr removed his thin-rimmed glasses and scratched his hawkish nose.

  Malachi continued reading. “Neighbors were summoned to remove the door from its hinges. What they found inside prompted them to alert the Enforcers, who arrived to find locals swarming about the house yet shunning Culvert’s room.”

  “I suppose they found it a bloody shambles,” said Narr. “Or perhaps there was only a corpse dangling above a toppled chair.”

  “Neither,” said Malachi. “Nor was there any sign of a struggle or a robbery. What repelled the good townsfolk was something that hadn’t been there before; something beyond their experience.”

  Narr raised one bushy eyebrow. “And that was?”

  “Cold—a bitter chill unknown on Tharis.”

  “The desert grows quite cold at night,” said Narr.

  “One Enforcer from Crote made unfavorable comparisons to the Cocytus Glacier,” Malachi said. “The cold confined itself to the room and persisted all morning despite the absence of a door. Inside were found Redrin Culvert's personal effects, including his identification and a zephyr pistol. There was no trace of the suspect.”

  “There you have it,” said Narr. “He committed the shooting and fled justice.”

  “The room was windowless, and the lock was melted from the inside by some unknown corrosive agent. There was no escape. Someone made quite sure of that.” Malachi clapped the folder shut with a swift motion of his thumb and forefinger, giving Narr a start.

  Several silent moments passed before Narr leaned across the table. “Help my ignorance,” he said. “What do you make of these reports?”

  “What I make of them is insufficient evidence to prove your complicity,” Malachi said, “which is the only reason we’re not having this discussion in a holding cell.”

  Narr puffed himself up like an aged black owl. “You accuse me of corruption? I was asked to police a sphere with half a city’s worth of support! Did you expect me to chase every rumor of petty larceny and dueling?”

  “Your Brothers expected you to maintain our financial, legal, and technical interests in ether-running,” said Malachi. “Now you rationalize your neglect with this ministry’s remoteness, the banality of its crimes, and your own weakness. The crimes of Tharis are petty? Such evils put every vice of the Cardinal Spheres to shame!”

  “No Master of the Guild, however lowly his charge, need abide such accusations,” said Narr, slamming his palm down on the table. “You confessed your lack of evidence. Retract your allegation, or I will hold you liable for slander.”

  Malachi leaned back, steepled his fingers, and said, “Jont Shan of Temil is dead.”

  Narr’s whole body seemed to deflate as he sank back into his chair. “Oh my,” he said before he straightened his back and hardened his face in an effort to feign apathy. “I mean, that’s tragic, but no more so than any Brother’s death.”

  Malachi sup
pressed a smile. He admired his predecessor’s determination, but efficiency demanded an end to the charade. “Shan’s case is somewhat more tragic, since his death resulted from dabbling in black market antiquities.”

  The shocked look on Narr’s face was probably genuine. “I didn’t know,” he said.

  “You knew quite well,” said Malachi. “Because I told you—anonymously, of course.”

  Narr’s lips moved wordlessly under his beard.

  “I uncovered our late Brother’s illicit enterprise in the course of another investigation,” Malachi said. “That he’d discovered a weapons cache dating from the Purges was a secret I shared only with you, and which you shared with Shan’s murderer. Do you deny it?”

  Narr stared at his own trembling hands. “Did you know he would be killed?” he asked.

  “I didn’t discount the possibility,” Malachi said, “considering my suspicions.”

  “What suspicions?” Narr asked in a wary monotone.

  Malachi freshened his tea. “That Tharis plays host to a pirate crew guilty of crimes beyond count,” he said, “which crimes you have aided and abetted since your arrival.”

  Narr’s face puckered as though he’d bitten a lemon. “What evidence do you have?”

  “I’d long surmised that the outlaws laired here,” Malachi said following a sip from his piping cup. “Culvert was the final proof. Some years ago his father was slain by Teg Cross, then only fifteen; now swordarm to Jaren Peregrine, the brigands’ captain. As for your collusion with them, Shan’s murder leaves little doubt.”

  A long sigh escaped Narr’s chest. “What will you do now?” he asked.

  “Since reporting you without implicating myself in Shan’s death could prove difficult, I’m inclined to let the matter rest—on one condition.”

  “And that condition is?”

  “You will help me break the pirate ring.”

  At length, Narr summoned the gall to ask, “Why have these pirates earned your ire more than others?”

  “Because,” Malachi said as though stating the plainest of facts, “their captain is a Gen. Perhaps the last. He attracts uncouth relicts like a magnet draws iron. I suspect that he’s gathering them deliberately, and to no good purpose. We will bring him to justice before his designs take root, and so close a chapter of history rife with chaos and superstition.”

  Narr managed a tepid grin. “You’ve left me little choice,” he said.

  The outcome was decided before I set foot on this world, Malachi thought as he drained his cup, which Peregrine will soon learn.

  4

  Nakvin’s flight from the scene of Shan’s death awakened memories of her escape from Mithgar more than a century before. Fleeing Guild justice had become much harder since then. For one thing, she hadn’t been forced to bribe a series of freighter captains the first time, though her skill with glamers ensured that she never appeared on a ship’s manifest.

  Nakvin recalled that first life-changing voyage with more than a touch of nostalgia. She’d hardly been out of adolescence when she’d stolen the swift ether-runner whose chief Steersman she remained, and whose captain had been little more than a child, his grief and anger still raw.

  Jaren’s changed, too, Nakvin thought. Now he’s just angry.

  Nakvin understood Jaren’s anger. For the first two decades of her life, she’d known nothing of herself and nothing of the world beyond the Guild. She might still be a virtual prisoner in Ostrith—or worse, have become an actual prisoner of the Mill—if not for Master Kelgrun’s pity. But if Mithgar Customs hadn’t arrested Falko Peregrine and impounded his ship; if Nakvin hadn’t extended her Master’s pity to Falko’s son, she never would have liberated the Shibboleth, Jaren, or herself. Her sympathy for the orphaned Gen had become sisterly affection, which had grown into something more as she’d guided him into manhood. She’d learned to temper her feelings when his race’s notorious single-mindedness had rendered Jaren apathetic toward anything but punishing the Guild.

  Memories of her first escape sustained Nakvin all the way to Tharis. Convincing a shuttle pilot to deposit her in the foothills of a remote mountain range proved exhausting, but her desire to see Jaren overcame her fatigue.

  An hour’s hike over coarse rock scoured by water and dust brought Nakvin to the stygian tunnels beneath Melanoros, the black plateau that had sheltered two generations of Jaren’s family and served as Nakvin’s ersatz home. Unlike everywhere else on Tharis, the air felt dank and cold. Each breath brought the sooty taste of a quenched furnace, and the silence could’ve smothered the roar of a dreadnaught’s launch. Veteran mountaineers warned thrill seekers against exploring the Black Step. Nakvin wished that Jaren's father and his human steersman had heeded their advice. Even a century of familiarity hadn’t enamored her of the barren river channels that wound maze-like through the black volcanic rock.

  At last Nakvin reached the pirates’ den: an oasis in an underground desert where the lightning scent of ether replaced that of cold ashes. She swept into the central gallery; robes fluttering like gold-trimmed ravens' wings.

  Mikelburg, the solid lump of man-shaped clay who served as chief engineer, set down the ether torch he’d been using to mend a Kirth bracket and greeted Nakvin with a nod of his bald head. “Lady Steersman,” he said, the honorific rumbling from his broad chest.

  “Where’s Jaren?” Nakvin asked without slowing her approach.

  “The captain’s in his quarters,” Mikelburg said. “You want I should send up to him?”

  Nakvin breezed by the engineer without answering and headed up the passage leading to Jaren’s rooms. Propriety be damned. She was back, and he would see her.

  Finding Jaren’s door unlocked, Nakvin entered unannounced. The captain sat on his bed, showing her the cascade of scarlet hair that spilled waist-long down his back as he untied his boots. Jaren was arrayed in what he called his “business attire”. A pocket-riddled tan coat hung from his slender frame with its train fanning out behind him, and heavy twill trousers sheathed his crossed legs.

  He just got back himself, Nakvin thought. She knew he’d been about serious business when she saw the gun and sword at his sides. Commonly called a splintersword, the blade was Worked to vibrate at incredibly high speeds. Nakvin judged that it could have sliced through Magus Shan’s safe and silk curtains with equal ease.

  But no splintersword could match the raw destructive power of the gun. In truth, Nakvin only called it a gun by way of analogy. The weapon's holster lay heavy at Jaren's left hip; its bulk rivaling that of two fifty caliber zephyrs. Unlike those more common weapons, she knew that the rodcaster had no intrinsic Working. Rather, the rounds that fed it were themselves Worked objects. The Gen resistance had carried rodcasters during the last war: one that Nakvin knew had ended in heartbreak, though the long defeat had concluded before her birth.

  “Planning to storm an Enforcer garrison?” she asked, hiding her concern with sarcasm.

  Jaren turned to acknowledge his senior Steersman. Eyes like emeralds studied her shrewdly. “That depends. Did you get the location of Shan’s cache?”

  Nakvin nodded, startled by Jaren’s sudden intensity. Sometimes she had difficulty believing that her captain was half human. The striking figure bearing statuesque features and antiquated arms seemed to have stepped out of a folk tale. “I have coordinates,” she said, “but not an inventory. There’s no guarantee that Shan didn’t clean out the arsenal himself.”

  Having removed both boots, Jaren stood and paced toward Nakvin. “Then we go and see for ourselves,” he said. “Building an army is pointless if we can’t arm it.”

  “Will it really matter if we can?” Nakvin asked. “I doubt a fleet of tramps with expired licenses will cow the Guild into giving up Tharis.”

  “The Guild doesn’t own Tharis,” Jaren said. “My people were here before the Guild existed—just like every sphere they massacred us on. It’s about time we remind them.”

  Nakvin shook her head. “
If anyone can make the Guild take ‘no’ for an answer, it’s you.”

  “You need to see Teg,” Jaren said.

  Despite their long association, the Gen's blind pragmatism still managed to raise Nakvin's hackles. “You know I just got here, right? We need to talk about this job.”

  Jaren's glare conveyed his urgency. “We'll talk later. The surgeon's mates you trained removed the bullet, but you're the only one qualified to handle the rest.”

  Nakvin’s planned rebuke dwindled to a single word. “Bullet?”

  “We got a sending from Teg early this morning,” Jaren told Nakvin as their hurried steps echoed through worklight-strewn passages. “He was shot in town, but we found him twenty miles out in the dust.”

  Nakvin had appeared in Jaren’s doorway looking weary and more than a little irritated. Now her jaw was set; her eyes focused ahead. He ascribed her change in demeanor to the mental shift from senior Steersman to chief medic. Jaren knew that holding both posts tried Nakvin’s endurance, and he knew the risks of forcing so valuable an asset to labor under such a burden. He’d long sought a new ship’s surgeon, but qualified medics willing to embrace lives of piracy proved hard to come by.

  “Who were the first responders?” Nakvin asked.

  “You were gone, so Deim flew me. He's still spent from his turn at the Wheel.”

  “You took the Shibboleth?”

  “I had to,” Jaren said more defensively than he liked. “Teg left the drifter in the Cut.”

  “If this job pans out,” Nakvin said, “we're getting a second car.”

  When Jaren reached the infirmary, which was really just a cave stocked with medical supplies, he found Teg sitting up in his cot. The mercenary was stripped to the waist. His scarred torso resembled a topographical map. “Hi,” he said. “Did you bring me anything?”