Nethereal (Soul Cycle Book 1) Read online

  “Won't they come back?”

  “We are allotted one life as ourselves,” Sulaiman said. “The damned are given mock vessels for their souls. If those are lost, their spirits go I know not where.”

  “Do you think this was an accident?”

  “It was Gibeah's doing, but such a wanton act could only have been his final curse.”

  Jaren cocked his head. “I don't follow you.”

  “Gibeah has long been at war with Tyrmagan, the baal of the Third,” Sulaiman said. “Only in his death throes would he have slain so many vassals.”

  “But we didn't kill him.”

  Sulaiman’s expression darkened. “A just verdict.”

  Jaren gazed up at the Ogre Fang's west shoulder. The Exodus hung in the cold red sky like a black cloud. “How do we get out of here?” he asked.

  “Many are the roads to damnation,” Sulaiman said. “Most grant only ingress.”

  “You've been here for centuries. You must know some way back.”

  The priest's voice was low and hesitant. “It has been long since I descended to the pit, and I know not how many living years have passed. A fiend stalked the living world, and I harried him back to his hellish den.”

  Sulaiman paused as if wrestling with whether or not to continue his tale. Finally, his inhibitions gave way. “My climb from the Eighth Circle is lost in red mist and flame. At last I came to the desolation of the Fourth Circle, and here I resigned myself to remain—until your damned crew came in their accursed ship.”

  “We got here by accident,” Jaren said. “All we want is help getting home.”

  Sulaiman rubbed his steel arm. “You’ve won back your ship,” he said. “My place on her manifest was dearly bought.”

  “Gibeah might be dead,” said Jaren, “but I doubt he was the only one with his eye on the Exodus. There are five more Circles. We need someone who can arrange safe passage.”

  A brooding silence fell upon Sulaiman. “There is Baal Despenser of the Fifth Circle,” he said at length. “The lords of hell never quit their intrigues. Their loyalties stand now divided between Mephistophilis and Achlys. Despenser's domain lies between theirs, granting him a degree of license. He belongs to neither faction yet courts both.”

  “I never trust double-dealers unless I have leverage,” said Jaren. “So far, two baals have attacked us for what’s aboard the Exodus. How much is it worth to Despenser?”

  “Enough perhaps,” Sulaiman said, “but bargaining with devils is dangersome sport.”

  “How do I set up a meeting?”

  “Despenser's castle stands at the heart of the Fifth Circle,” Sulaiman said. “He will know of all that has passed here. The baal will wish to appraise your cargo before treating with you.”

  Jaren shook his head. “He’s liable to take it, and I'm done fighting demons for what's mine. The Exodus should be safe here since Gibeah's gone and Nakvin can keep the others out.”

  “Perhaps.”

  Jaren locked his eyes on Sulaiman. “You came here alone from the Fifth Circle. How?”

  The wind gusted, driving flecks of ice that stung like ground glass. Sulaiman swept his arm to the left. “The Fourth Circle is bounded on the east by a wide river,” he said. “Crossing is the only way to delve deeper without the ship.”

  “Is there a bridge?”

  “A ferry.”

  “I assume it’s not free,” Jaren said.

  Sulaiman turned and started down the slope, drawing his cloak around his metal arm. “All who cross must part with a cherished possession,” he said. “Such is the price of passage.”

  The warning didn’t deter Jaren. After crossing a desert, scaling a mountain, and fighting a demon, he thought, a little bribery sounds pretty straightforward.

  Elena lay on an exam table clothed in a dead Mithgarder’s dress. Nakvin had chosen the plain white gown for its low-cut back, which just cleared the thick cables running into its wearer.

  The young woman had said nothing since her discovery the night before, though she silently acquiesced to every command. She came to the infirmary without complaint, lay down on her stomach when asked, gathered her ginger-brown hair to one side, and showed remarkable patience for Nakvin's scrutiny.

  Never in her decades of medical experience had Nakvin encountered anything like what had been done to Elena. She'd seen all manner of prosthetics; but the cables, each as wide as her wrist, served no clear purpose. She'd considered asking Mikelburg, but the critically injured engineer was in no condition to answer technical questions.

  At a loss for alternatives, Nakvin tried the direct approach. “Can you talk?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know what these cables are for?” Nakvin asked.

  The girl didn’t answer.

  Nakvin decided to try another line of questioning. She pressed gently around a conduit’s circumference where it met Elena's back. The girl’s skin was warm and firm. “Does this hurt?” she asked.

  “No.”

  Nakvin’s fingers felt something hard sand smooth, and she stopped probing. Looking closer, she saw a thin circle of white metal set into the young woman's skin at the cable’s entry point. It looked like some sort of socket.

  “Let me know if you feel any discomfort,” Nakvin said. The cable was fitted snugly, but it let go after a few seconds of steady effort. There was a faint electrical fire scent.

  The lights flickered.

  Nakvin hastened to reconnect the conduit and finally plugged it back in after a couple of false starts. The room’s lighting stabilized.

  Elena’s head still rested on her crossed arms. “No discomfort.”

  “Good,” Nakvin said with a sharp exhale. “Did you know that was going to happen?”

  Elena didn't answer. Presently, she raised her head to look at the doorway.

  A grey figure skulked in the entrance.

  “Vaun,” Nakvin said. “This is a private exam!”

  “I thought you may need assistance,” he said.

  Nakvin looked at Mikelburg, who lay unconscious in the next room. “Too little, too late.”

  Vaun pointed an ashen finger at Elena’s back. “An interesting configuration,” he said.

  Nakvin glanced at the sockets, noting their arrangement. Three followed the girl’s spine in an evenly spaced row starting just below her shoulders. Two more flanked the middle plug: one on its upper left and one on its lower right.

  “Have you seen this pattern before?” Nakvin asked.

  “Not this particular instance,” Vaun said as he entered the room. “But there are many like it. A similar Nesshin diagram claimed to locate the aspects of the soul. The Atavists regarded those points as the body’s prana nodes. The pattern also matches a constellation once visible from Keth to which the ancients attached Thera’s name.”

  Nakvin was contemplating how Vaun’s information might apply to Elena’s case when he drew a dark grey scimitar from under his cloak and stalked toward the girl.

  “Vaun, Stop!” Nakvin said. Neither her words nor the glamer she wove into them slowed the masked man’s advance. He stood beside the table and raised his sword.

  A fierce protective impulse moved Nakvin to do by reflex what she’d only accomplished with conscious effort before. The Circle’s fabric hammered against Vaun, but unlike Arrovet, the bend in space only drove him back a few feet.

  Nakvin’s pulse raced. “Are you insane?” she asked.

  Vaun studied his blade as if unaware he’d drawn it. He returned the sword to its sheath and said, “I wish the girl no harm. On the contrary, I hold her quite dear.”

  “Leave,” Nakvin said, pointing at the door. “Now.”

  Vaun turned the eyes of his expressionless mask to Elena. “Do you wish me to leave?”

  Elena stared at him silently.

  “Get out!” Nakvin yelled.

  “As you will,” Vaun said with a slight bow.

  “I'm sorry,” Nakvin said when she and Elena were alone
. “I hope he didn't scare you.”

  “I've seen worse.”

  Nakvin frowned. To her knowledge, Elena had lived on Caelia until she’d come aboard the Exodus, and until yesterday she’d spent the whole voyage locked away in a secret room. The demons were certainly terrifying, but they hadn't found her.

  “Where?” Nakvin asked.

  “In my dreams. But he woke me.”

  Nakvin dropped the subject and moved on to a general physical exam. The young woman seemed healthy but for one conspicuous issue.

  “Elena?” Nakvin said, trying to broach the subject professionally. “I don't hear any respiration. Are you breathing?”

  “I can. I just don't have to.”

  “How long has that been going on?” Nakvin asked, trying to conceal her shock.

  “As long as I can remember.”

  Nakvin abandoned all clinical detachment. “What happened to you, sweetheart?”

  “There was a room on Caelia. Later, I was allowed to leave it for a little while at a time. Then I was here.”

  “Did your father ever discuss this with you?” Nakvin asked.

  “I don't talk to him.”

  Guilt inundated Nakvin. Her study of the poor girl echoed the degradation she’d suffered from her own guardians. She suddenly realized that she'd placed a hand on Elena's head. Though highly unprofessional, the tender expression felt somehow right. Still, Nakvin moved her hand to the girl's shoulder and squeezed it reassuringly. “Well, you’ve got your freedom. What do you want to do with it?”

  The girl’s face remained impassive. “I don't know.”

  Nakvin sighed. Based on Elena's own description of her childhood, she probably hadn’t cultivated many interests. “How do you pass the time?”

  “I dream.”

  “And you see horrible things in your dreams?” Nakvin asked.

  “Yes.”

  Nakvin fell silent. At last she said, “Get up, and you can meet the rest of the crew.”

  Elena sat up and lowered her bare feet to deck. The metal tiles must have been cold, but she seemed content to stand there indefinitely.

  Nakvin motioned for the girl to follow her into the hall. They left the infirmary and entered the ship’s dim corridors, a tangle of cords rustling behind them.

  36

  From his rightful seat in the captain’s mess, Jaren looked down the ebony table to the enigma seated at its foot. Having a new face at each meeting is an Exodus tradition, he thought. Vaun had claimed the fifth place at their last session. This time it was Elena.

  Braun’s daughter was perched on a bar stool salvaged from the lounge. The cables sprouting from her back made seating her in a chair impractical and prevented a closed-door meeting. Though the lack of privacy galled him, Jaren deemed it a necessary evil. That girl’s a riddle more fiendish than any made in hell, he brooded, though he suspected that she was part of a larger cypher—one that included a secret vault and a thousand stone blocks.

  “We found the room behind the window,” Jaren told her, hoping to provoke a reaction.

  Talking to Elena felt like conversing with someone in a dream, as though she were only half real. Yet her posture was straight and her eyes attentive. Their rose-colored irises held Jaren’s gaze.

  “If you know something we don’t, speak up,” he said. “It might help us get home.”

  “Not if there’s nowhere to go back to.”

  Unsure how to take Elena’s answer, Jaren glanced at Deim, who stared at the girl with a mixture of longing and servility. He remembered Deim’s changing tattoo; the strange recognition evoked by its eyes. The same eyes peered from Elena’s face, judging everything they saw. Unlike Sulaiman, the soul behind them seemed to find nothing of worth.

  Teg swept in from the galley balancing a steaming cup on a saucer, which he set before Elena. The warm, minty aroma wafted across the table. “I made you some tea,” he said. “Sorry about the texture. Gibeah dumped the water tanks. Utility gel's all that's left.”

  “Let's get to business,” Jaren said after Teg took his seat across from Nakvin and Deim.

  Elena scrutinized her teacup as he spoke.

  “Getting home is now our top priority,” Jaren said.

  Elena selected a spoon from her place setting and slowly lowered it into her cup.

  “That means facing the Guild,” Jaren went on, “but the Exodus gives us a fighting chance.”

  Elena released the spoon, which remained standing, held perfectly vertical by the cup’s contents. She pushed the fine Temilian service away and folded her arms on the table, burying her face in the crook of one elbow and glaring resentfully at the upright spoon.

  “According to Sulaiman,” Jaren said, “there might be a shortcut out of here.”

  “You don't sound convinced,” said Teg.

  Jaren was loath to appear uncertain, but he needed time to choose his next words carefully. “We're less than halfway through the Nine Circles,” he said at last. “We've already tangled with the locals. According to Sulaiman, the deeper we go, the stronger the baals get. If there's a way to avoid further conflict, I'm for it.”

  “I don't know,” said Teg. “Gibeah wasn’t too much trouble.”

  Jaren sighed. He would've preferred to keep the information secret, but his swordarm left him no choice. “We got lucky with Gibeah.”

  Teg raised an eyebrow. “How so?”

  “We didn't kill him.”

  “What did,” Nakvin asked, “another baal?”

  Jaren shook his head. “I don't know. To hear Sulaiman tell it, there were older and more dangerous things down here than demons. Vaun says they left, but who knows?”

  A hush descended on the room. Nakvin glanced over her shoulder.

  Teg leaned forward. His dark eyes gleamed. “Alright, what's your pitch?”

  “The lords of the Nine Circles are caught up in a power struggle,” said Jaren. “I don't know all the details, but there are two main factions.”

  “That explains the battle we ran into,” Nakvin said.

  Jaren nodded. “Gibeah and the Lord of the Third were rivals. The baal on the next Circle is a power broker called Despenser. He keeps free of commitments to either side.”

  “Makes sense,” said Teg. “I always thought double-dealers ended up down here.”

  Speaking of which, Jaren thought. He turned to Elena and said, “Please excuse us.”

  The young woman rose and left without a word. Deim hurried after her. Jaren considered stopping him but let him pass unchallenged.

  Nakvin’s face went almost as rigid as Vaun’s mask. “You want to make a deal with him.”

  “If you can't get us out, I think it's our only chance,” Jaren said.

  “I’ll try again,” said Nakvin.

  Jaren held up three fingers. “There are three baals between us and the ether,” he said.

  “The ether might touch this level,” Nakvin said. “I can’t know for sure if I don’t try.”

  “And the baals might overwhelm us while you’re trying,” said Jaren. “Dealing with one of them is better than fighting three—or more.”

  “What will you offer in return?” Nakvin asked.

  “Whatever it was that Gibeah wanted,” Jaren said.

  Silver fire burned in Nakvin’s eyes. “You think it’s her.”

  Jaren wasn’t above lying for the sake of a job, but maintaining trust was vital to success. “It's possible,” he said, “but I think those stones are our main bargaining chips.”

  Nakvin's gaze didn't waver. “And Elena’s a bonus?”

  “If it came down to trading a girl you met yesterday or staying here with her, which would you honestly choose?”

  “I don't think I'll have to,” Nakvin said. “We never knew how a ship this big could fly. I think she’s the answer.”

  Jaren’s jaw dropped. “You think she's pulling the tonnage that the engines can't?”

  “I think she's pulling all of it.”

  Jaren s
hook his head. “That answer takes more explaining than the problem. Why are you so attached to her, anyway?”

  Nakvin's expression softened. “When I was examining her earlier, I sensed a…connection between us—a feeling I've never had before.”

  “You might have to fight Deim for her,” Teg interrupted.

  The glare that Nakvin shot at Teg was fire and ice at once.

  Jaren quickly intervened. “Are the rest of the boys aboard?” he asked Nakvin.

  Nakvin’s scowl vanished. “Bringing them up was easy with Gibeah gone.”

  “And the sailors?” asked Teg.

  “Still on the mountain,” Jaren said. “You can see their camp from the hangar.”

  “What about Sulaiman?” Nakvin asked. “He did side with Stochman.”

  “Who cares?” asked Teg. “If he doesn't like it, he can stay here.”

  “No,” said Jaren, “we need his experience with the baal. It's best if I just tell him how things are.”

  Jaren found the priest keeping vigil over the valley where his men lay buried. The cold air smelled of death. “I've informed my senior crew about the Lord of the Fifth,” he said without waiting to be acknowledged. “They've agreed that bargaining is our best way out of here.”

  Keeping his back turned, Sulaiman brooded over the ice-clogged pass below.

  “My offer still stands,” Jaren assured him. “You’ve earned your passage.”

  Sulaiman broke his silence. “What of the Mithgarders?”

  “I already found a place for them.”

  The priest rose from his seat on the snow and turned. His sapphire eyes blazed not two inches from Jaren’s face. “You think yourself a cunning liar,” he hissed. “But your deeds betray your deceit!”

  Jaren dismissed the thought of lying outright. Instead, he held his ground. “Your law doesn’t apply out here. We need each other to make it out alive, and I will not let Stochman get in the way.”

  “Lies are your meat, and betrayal your drink,” Sulaiman said. “You cannot but deal falsely, even with those you call friends. You will destroy them as surely as you did mine.”

  Jaren clenched his jaw. “Lay the guilt on Gibeah if you can't carry it yourself,” he said.