Thirty Two: Lightning Tricks

The rain had taken a heavy turn. It had started in the night, and now the sky was bruised blue with clouds. The main body of the storm had drifted closer on the horizon.

Dela hoped their job was over by the time it hit.

She hefted another armful of damp planking and rubble into the open cart behind her. An old warehouse had succumbed to damp and damage and collapsed into the road in the leisure quarter, bringing down several poorly constructed slum homes with it. There were streets like these on the borders of every quarter, usually erected hastily and without care by the residents themselves or handymen who fancied themselves master builders, at a fraction of the price of workers who knew what they were doing. They held up for a few years, normally, but some seasons proved too much, and for others shadelings brought them to early ruin. Dela was only glad no one had died in this particular collapse.

She supposed the temple saw this as a character-building exercise, but she wished that they could have found something within the temple walls to occupy the acolytes – or at least have sent them on shelter rounds. Her practical shirt and trousers were warmer than her acolyte robe would have been, but still didn't hold up particularly well to the endless rain, and it was hard to get warm in anything that was soaked through.

She stood for a moment, feeling the cold drops on her bare scalp and the prickles running across her skin, and massaged her lower spine as pretence to look around her. The collapse had ruined the rune path on the pavement below and damaged the nets of the buildings on either side, so there were Unspoken here, too.

"You have an awfully bad back for a thirteen year old," Lin commented drily, piling rubble into the cart and wiping dust from her forehead. "Not slacking, are we?"

"Of course not," Dela replied. She tore her eyes from the strange shapes one of the Unspoken were making with their hands. "Taking a breath."

Lin followed the direction she was looking and frowned. "How come you're so interested in Unspoken all of a sudden?"

Dela didn't answer, because she didn't know. At first she had just put it down to curiosity, but it was somehow more than that. She had so far seen none of the stories she'd heard about them proved true. "I don't know. I guess they're just interesting."

"And it's nothing to do with the fact that you're enjoying Kerrin's investigations?"

Dela frowned at her friend. "That's not it. I only met them once."

"But you found some important clue, didn't you?" Lin didn't look up from the plank she was trying to tug free. Dela didn't bend down to help; she didn't like something in Lin's tone.

"Are you upset with me?"

"No," Lin said. "Though I would have thought you might find a bit of time for a friend between your important errands."

Dela blinked, unsure how to handle this sudden change in attitude – or had it been sudden? Had Lin been sitting on this for weeks and just not said anything? In her tribe, favour shed upon an individual by the leader made one more popular, not less, and for the first time in a while she found herself up against a culture barrier she thought she'd managed to evade.

"I'm sorry," she said, though she didn't know what she was apologising for.

Lin wrenched the plank free and stumbled a little down the rubble pile. She hefted it, caught Dela's eye, and sighed. "No, I'm sorry. I'm just... It seems so effortless for you. The priestesses all like you, and now even Kerrin has taken you on as a favourite. You don't even get into that much trouble for stuff the rest of us would spend a week in Contemplation for. And then you're the first in our class to get a vigil assignment."

Dela shuddered involuntarily. "That's not as good as it sounds."

She hadn't been able to shake the memory of the vigil since she'd left the widow's house. If she managed to push it aside with her work, it returned at night instead. At least this time, though, the discomfiting feelings were not associated with the temple itself. She still hadn't been anywhere near the catacombs with any fewer people than her entire class.

"And besides," she added, rallying a little, "Maniel doesn't like me."

"Yes she does," Lin replied. "If anyone else had run off into the catacombs like that, she would have belted them in front of everyone."

Dela bristled. She took great care, normally, to avoid doing anything that would warrant corporal punishment. It wasn't a hard task – flogging was a last resort effort, usually reserved for the acolytes given over to the temple for troubling behaviour elsewhere, and a method that Kerrin didn't much approve of even then. She didn't think anyone would have been flogged for what she did, considering how it had ended. She had assumed that the priestesses thought she'd been punished enough by the fright she'd had.

"No, she wouldn't," she muttered, and turned her shoulder to Lin. She dug through the rubble pile and unearthed some sodden clothes. She sorted through them, throwing any unsalvageable items in the cart, and the others in a pile to one side, to be returned to their owners. They were not rich clothes to begin with; they must have belonged to the families occupying the ramshackle houses.

Horse hooves drew attention from all over the pile Dela's class was picking through like brightly-coloured thralls. She stifled a gasp as a magnificent black horse trotted into view, gold harness jingling. The Lord Harkenn sat astride it, head covered with the hood of a thick cloak dyed the deep mauve of his household. His eyes were visible like pinpricks of fire in his pale face. Dela had seen that face up close once, with its sharp angles and deep shadows, and she wasn't keen to repeat the experience.

Behind the lord was a contingent of his staff, all dressed practically for the weather. Behind him rode his slave Anarabelle, her feet bare despite the freezing air. She had been permitted a cloak, but even from a distance Dela could see she was blue with cold and shivering, though her face was as impassive as ever.

"She scares me," Lin confided. A peace offering, though Dela was reluctant to leave the issue unresolved in case it kept brewing under the surface.

"Why?"

"She looks like an Angel."

Dela blinked, wondering if the nuances of Common were escaping her for once. "She is an Angel, Lin."

"No, I mean..." Lin struggled for a minute. "You know, how they're described in the war stories. They don't look that different from us, especially without the wings, but you can tell."

Dela examined Anarabelle again. She had spoken to her once, as well, and the woman had seemed distant and sad – incredibly sad. That was not something she'd heard in the war stories. She certainly didn't look like one of the bloodthirsty battlemages she'd heard about.

"She's got all sorts of rumours flying around about her," Lin continued, seeming oblivious to Dela's continued confusion. "I heard she killed half a guard unit with her bare hands before they dragged her back here. And that was after she'd killed some of her own kind."

The Angel on the back of the horse had suffered many years of slavery, she knew, but Dela still didn't think the woman capable of anything that grand. Even if she wasn't skinny and wasted now, she wasn't overly tall, was still young, and didn't look like she'd ever been big. The distance in her eyes, though, the blankness that occupied her face most of the time – Dela supposed she could believe that she had killed someone, at some time. But not a whole guard unit.

The staff Harkenn had brought with him had dispersed over the pile and were helping to clear up. Harkenn's voice was hard to hear through the rain and a roll of distant thunder, but Dela caught part of it: "...sort this quickly, before...floods..." and then the ending was drowned out in the howling wind. She braced herself against the cart as it whipped through the gap created by the fallen buildings, the cold rain stinging her face and plastering her shirt to her body. She fought her way back to the pile, occasionally forced to use her hands to steady herself, and dragged out a large section of thin dividing wall. Another bitter gust caught it front-on and blew her backwards. She heard Lin cry out as she lost her balance, but then strong hands caught her from behind.

"Turn it sideways," someone called through the din, a voice that sounded vaguely familiar. They helped her turn the board on its edge so the wind didn't catch her so fiercely. As she hefted it into the cart, she looked up and saw the friendly, albeit scrunched-up face of the otherworld girl who had helped Dela tend the wounded in the castle foyer before. Her blonde hair was plastered to her head and stained dark with rainwater. "Be careful, you could break something falling over out here."

"Thanks," Dela stammered, as Lin clambered over to them. All three crouched near the cart as a stronger gust blew through. Dela was suddenly grateful her head was shaved as the otherworld girl pulled strands of wet hair free of her eyes and cheeks.

"How come you're here?" Lin said loudly. Her tone wasn't entirely welcoming, and Dela was conscious again of the conversation they'd just had. Her heart sank. She didn't want Lin upset at her.

"His Lordship thinks there's a flood risk when the storms hit," the girl said – Grace was her name, she dimly remembered. "He wants all the roads clear as soon as possible."

Looking at her friend's face, she didn't think Lin was referring just to Grace's presence on the rubble pile, but quickly stepped in before things could get awkward. She pointed at a large pile of heavy stones that had presumably supported the lower floors of the buildings. She and Lin had been nudging and rolling them to one side all afternoon, since neither was strong enough to lift them. "We're having trouble moving these bricks."

Grace looked at them dubiously. "They might be beyond me as well. Let's give it a go, though. Maybe one of you could heft with me? Put your hands under mine."

Dela and Lin took turns helping Grace heave the bricks into the wagon, which groaned in protest under the weight of them. They were soon sweaty despite the cold. Dela staggered back from the cart, shaking out her arms and rolling her shoulders, and then paused as she looked around. Just for a moment, through the sheeting rain, she had thought she saw someone watching them. It could have been anyone, and it might even have been a trick of the dark for all she knew, because when she squinted, the side-alley was empty.

"Dela, your turn!" Lin called. Wincing at her aching shoulders, Dela dismissed her misgivings as imagination and trudged back to help Grace lift another stone. She hadn't reached her before a horn blew from the edge of the wreckage; the signal to get on a rune path.

Lin immediately scrambled to safety, leaving Grace blinking after her in confusion. Dela tugged on her sleeve. "Demon warning," she said loudly over the wind. "Come on."

Grace was not nearly as nimble as Lin was in picking through the wreck, but they stepped onto the path just as a Listener stumbled from a side-street. Dela swallowed; she hadn't thought the figure she'd seen was demon-shaped, but she hoped she hadn't squandered a chance to raise an earlier alarm. They watched through sheeting rain as two Unspoken moved to intercept the demon, and a flash of lightning blinded her. As the resulting thunder cracked through the sky and echoed in Dela's ears, the bright colours that had stained her vision after the flash dispersed just in time to see one of the demon hunters bring it down with a hail of green shards. The demon collapsed with a groan and the crackle of dislodged mortar as it hit the ruins.

A moment later the signal sounded again for the all-clear. Dela and Lin immediately stepped back out into the downpour towards the section they'd been working on, but when Grace didn't join them, Dela glanced back. The otherworld girl's face had gone white, and she was watching the Unspoken drag the demon corpse away with horror.

"First time seeing a demon attack?" Dela asked, but Grace only shook herself out. It didn't seem as if she'd heard, and the smile she turned on Dela was so forced as to be painful to look at.

The girl appeared deep in thought for the next hour or so. She made light conversation, but her voice was distant, and occasionally Lin glanced at her and then at Dela and made strange faces that Dela didn't return. She didn't think Grace was harmful, and Dela imagined that she would be very upset to end up in a new world, if she had been in that position. She wanted to ask questions, but didn't feel she knew the girl well enough – besides, after what Lin had said, she was cautious of looking like she was being too friendly to anyone else.

Every now and then she glanced at the side-alley, but never saw anyone there again. She couldn't shake the prickle between her shoulder blades, like someone was watching from a hidden place. It wasn't until Harkenn's staff had to leave for the day and the carts were being rolled out of the road in preparation for the next day's work that Dela was certain she saw someone, this time on a roof near the alley. The figure was barely visible against the dark sky, only showing up clearly when lightning flashed overhead. Dela's heart jumped into her throat when she saw the figure was cloaked.

"Lin, look," she hissed, grabbing her friend's arm and pointing. But by the time Lin had understood what she wanted her to do over the noise, the figure had slipped away again. "There was someone there!"

"On the roof?" Lin asked dubiously. "In this rain?"

"They were cloaked!" Dela looked up at the roof again, but the figure remained stubbornly out of sight. Now she just looked cracked. "I swear I saw someone."

"Maybe it was a lightning trick," Lin said, clearly not believing her, and Dela was forced to drop the subject.

It bothered her all the way back to the temple. She was aching and sore already, and tomorrow promised to be even worse. Her hands were raw with cold and heavy use despite the gloves they'd been wearing, and she couldn't feel her feet at all. Cleric Maniel met their class as they stumped disconsolately into the cloister corridor. She surveyed them all, soggy and miserable from head to toe, and said, "Hot baths today, I think."

She and Lin exchanged an excited glance, and since they'd been trailing at the back, they were the first into the baths when Maniel dismissed them. The hot baths were usually reserved for the clergy to use – acolytes made do with the basins in their dormitories – but on very special occasions, or on particularly difficult days, Kerrin would allow a class use of them for an hour or two. Dela didn't care that she hadn't run back for a change of clothes. All her thoughts about the figure she'd seen vanished as she sank into the warm water. It was whispered that the waters of the Kelian temple baths ran up from the centre of the world.

She couldn't contain a groan as the heat began to work on her sore muscles, massaging them with gentle ripples as the other girls climbed in. They had all rinsed off the worst of the grit and dirt at the pump before they entered, but the water was still turning faintly grey.

She didn't try and join in with Lin and Taria and the other girls' excitable chatter, and Lin seemed to sense she wasn't much in the mood to socialise. Dela was quietly grateful, settling against the cool stone sides of the pool and sinking into the warm water up to her neck. When she next opened her eyes, she knew she'd drifted off, since most of the girls had got out and gone to the dorms. Sighing, thanking Kiel for the easing of her pains, she hauled herself out as well, shivering in the relative cold above the water. She hurried to the changing rooms to find a drying rag to wrap herself in - she may not have minded, but others generally did – and entered a quiet gloom that smelled of lye soap and clean clothes. She went to the rack and pulled down the thickest rag she could find, wrapping it snugly around herself after quickly scrubbing her scalp dry.

She didn't notice the man in the corner until he moved.

She opened her mouth to scream, but a large hand clapped over it before any noise came out, and she found herself lifted bodily into a laundry closet and closed inside with the stranger. He smelled of smoke and damp clothing, and all she could see in the dark was the gleam of his eyes. Her fingers curled into the pile of clean garments behind her, though she wasn't sure what she'd do with them. Throw them over his head? That would still leave him between her and the door. She wished she'd stuck with Lin.

"If you scream, I'll cut something off," the figure hissed. The cold pressure of a blade pressed against her bare arm, drawing her breath from her in gasps. The man's palm smelled sweaty. When he seemed to accept that she wasn't going to scream, he loosened his grip on her mouth. "I just want to talk, alright? As adults, you and me. Yeah?"

Dela was too scared to speak, so she only managed a jerky nod. Her throat hurt with suppressed fright. She had heard stories; she had heard of men who 'just wanted to talk'. She sent a silent prayer to Kiel.

"I saw you talking to that otherworld girl," the man continued. Through the dim light coming in through the laundry cupboard slats, she couldn't make out any more of him than the edge of his jaw and the glint of one eye. He put her in mind of the strange man – Arlen – who she'd met at the vigil. This wasn't him, but she had a horrible feeling that they were linked, that perhaps he'd been watching her even closer than she'd thought. What he would want with an acolyte of the Long Path she had no idea, only that she didn't want any part in it.

He had paused, as if expecting a response, but she said nothing. She wasn't sure what to say anyway.

"I want you to give her a message from one of my friends. He knows her brother, and wants to warn her about something. Can you pass the message on?"

Dela had not been expecting that. She knew about Grace's brother, of course – everyone in the temple did. The acolytes who had attended the assembly when the two arrived had soon spread news of their arrival all through the younger ones as well. A few months ago, Grace's brother had appeared to vanish, never to be spotted again. There were rumours – chief among them, and most convincing, that he had joined the Unspoken – but no one had any proof of his whereabouts.

"Who are you?" she whispered. The blade hadn't left her arm yet.

"Like I said. Friend of a friend."

"You don't have a name?"

The man paused, as if surprised that she'd talked back.

"Not one that's any concern to you," he replied, a little stiffly. There was another smell about him, not obvious but still noticeable, that made Dela's skin crawl. It reminded her of the burial chambers and crypts she had visited. She wasn't bothered by that cold-stone smell on its own, but when a living being smelled of it, it gave her the shivers. She quickly decided to drop the matter of what his name was.

"I can't pass it on," she said instead. "I've only met her twice, and I wasn't expecting it either time. We aren't friends or anything." She eyed the gap of light under the closet door, hoping to see a shadow move outside – a priestess looking for her, or a temple guard would be even better.

"That's where you're wrong," the stranger said, grinning. Dela didn't see what there was to grin about. "Because I happen to know that Lady Kerrin is visiting Lord Harkenn next week to make a report. All you need to do is get into her entourage."

"I can't just..."

"You will just." The man pressed a slip of paper into her hands. "Or I might just have to pay a return visit."