Spectyr: A Book of the Order - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Philippa (Pip) Ballantine is the author of the Book of the Order series, the Shifted World series, the Chronicles of Art series, and—with Tee Morris—the coauthor of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences series. Her podcast of Chasing the Bard won the Sir Julius Vogel Award in 2009, and two of her novels have been short-listed for it. Originally from New Zealand, she now resides in Virginia with her husband, her daughter, and a mighty clowder of cats.

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Whispered Messages

"When you've buried your husband three months past, you don't expect to come home and find him rattling around in your attic!"

The old woman stood there, an ancient blunderbuss cradled in her arms, looking ready to go upstairs and blast her undead spouse for his temerity. However, her real ire was directed at Deacons Sorcha Faris and Merrick Chambers—as if the Order of the Eye and the Fist was solely responsible for this awkward situation.

Sorcha, who had managed to perch herself on the low wall outside the lady Tinker's shop, watched with amusement as her partner tried to negotiate his way in. Perhaps she was enjoying the situation a little too much, but these days she savored any excuse to leave the grounds of the Mother Abbey. Her cigar was already half-smoked, evidence of just how much the owner did not want them to go inside the shop.

Merrick, who had always been the more diplomatic of their partnership, posed the same question he had when they'd first arrived: "What is the deceased's name?" He had to raise his voice because Widow Vashill was impossibly deaf—which only served to increase Sorcha's enjoyment of the situation.

The old woman's eyes narrowed as if she suspected it was some sort of trick. "Joshem Vashill—and I was never more happy to see a person in the ground."

"Doesn't sound like he had much reason to come back," Merrick muttered softly over his shoulder to Sorcha. This was why she liked working with the younger man; when she'd been partnered with her husband Kolya, he had not been nearly as amusing.

"You are sure it is Joshem?" Sorcha shouted, then blew out a smoke ring and tried to keep her hopes in check. The Order had been plagued with a spate of false alarms recently, and though she appreciated getting out of the Mother Abbey, she wasn't about to crawl around in a dusty attic chasing a figment of this Master Tinker's imagination.

"I know my own husband!" Widow Vashill snapped. "Now you just yank him down out of there, and I can go about my business."

"'Yank'?" Sorcha managed not to roll her eyes. People so quickly forgot the nature of things. Her Order had only been here in Arkaym a scant few years, and yet the population seemed incapable of remembering the plague of geists they had suffered from before the Order's arrival. "We have to go up there and deal with him," she replied in what she thought was a perfectly reasonable tone, "because we don't just 'yank' geists. It's more like wrestling."

"What?" The Widow Vashill bellowed.

Sorcha gestured up to the top story. "We're going to have to go up there!"

The woman's face went abruptly pale. "Oh no—I must have been mistaken. I'm just a silly old woman seeing things in the shadows. No need to—"

"Madam"—Merrick pushed his dark curls out of his eyes with something that looked awfully like exasperation—"if you will just let us up into the attic, we can assess the situation and take care of things for you." His earnest youth usually moved even the most elderly of women to compliance—this one, though, hesitated.

Tinkers' Row had grown under the patronage of the forward-thinking Emperor Kaleva: ramshackle houses had been transformed into impressive new brick buildings, the open drains decently covered, and sweeps employed to keep the street clear of filth. Carriages and pedestrians bustled up and down the Row, which had become one of the busiest in Vermillion. The sign above this particular door said VASHILL—MASTER TINKER TO THE PALACE, but then most of them on this street did. The Emperor had become the patron to nearly all the Tinkers in Vermillion.

Sorcha sighed, knocked the top off her cigar and pulled her Gauntlets out from her belt. Usually these symbols of her rune powers tended to grab people's attention. She was sharply aware of this as she fixed the old woman with a cold blue stare. "So, what's really up there, apart from your dead husband?"

Widow Vashill's lips pressed together in a pale line, and she leaned forward. "Things. Secret things."

Every guild had their mysteries, but the Tinkers, thanks to their close working kin, the airshipwrights, were especially paranoid since the Emperor wanted full control of the new technology. Merrick stood to his full height. "Madam, as long as the devices you are working on are regulation, then you have our assurance that we will never reveal anything to another soul."

If Sorcha had tried to sound so officious, people would have taken fright, but out of that earnest young mouth it was so much more reassuring. The old woman smiled, revealing a broken expanse of teeth. "Never doubted it, lad; it's just that many of the devices in the attic contain weirstones."

Sorcha clenched her teeth on an explicative. The Order had long ago limited the ownership of those things to Deacons and members of the Imperial armed forces—but the Emperor had extended that in recent years to include Master Tinkers.

At her side, Merrick shifted—well aware of her particular bugbear with the stones. Along the Bond they shared he tried sending out waves of calm, but it didn't make any difference. She didn't want to be calm. She'd had far too much of being calm lately. Time to let some of that frustration out.

"Then we will just have to manage," she growled. "Now let us get about our business." Sorcha stepped around the Tinker and strode into the shop, leaving protestations and excuses in her wake.

The inside of the building was dim simply because of the very few windows. A single lamp burned on the back wall, illuminating the devices of brass that the Tinkers had lately become specialists in. The constant rattle of clocks, all slightly at a different tempo, put Sorcha's nerves on edge. Perhaps the Widow Vashill's deafness was an advantage.

Merrick, standing in the doorway, had the look of a child on the threshold of a candy merchant. Sorcha knew her partner fancied himself an amateur Tinker, but she held hope that he would snap out of it soon. Undoubtedly the smells of linseed oil and the whiff of sulphur were exciting her partner a little too much to be healthy.

While Merrick crept in, casting covetous eyes over the goods displayed in the shop, Sorcha stalked over to the lifting pallet at the back of the room, stepped aboard it, and kicked the crank handle with one foot. The machinery whirred and clanked, its staccato rattle occupying her mind, while the mechanism carried her up three stories into the storage attic. Her partner would just have to take the stairs.

Whatever else was true of Widow Vashill, she looked to be in demand as a Tinker. The storage area was stacked with many crates and other more mysterious sheet-covered items. The Deacon examined them curiously. From the labels she could see many were waiting to be shipped all over the Empire.

"Sorcha, wait!" Merrick, in the way of the young, did not sound at all puffed after three quick flights in pursuit. Her partner caught up and looked at her from under his curly hair with something close to reproach. "You shouldn't get upset over people's disrespect for the Order"—he adjusted his emerald cloak and tilted his head—"especially after what happened at the ossuary this winter."

Sorcha's stomach tightened, and she felt herself flush. "Actually"—she pursed her lips—"after what happened at the White Palace, the people of this city should trust us more not less. They treat us more like ratcatchers than protectors."

"We'll earn back their respect and trust," he replied with a certainty she did not possess. "Anyway"—Merrick touched her arm—"she is probably just jumping at shadows—most people are these days."

Sorcha smiled bitterly. "You're right—it's not like Rictun would ever knowingly send us anywhere that...