White Heart of Justice (17 page)

When I saw the crossroads outside of Corterra's bailey gaol, I told Rafe I wanted to stop. Partly, it was because the winds were increasing, the temperature was dropping, and the sky was darkening with the threat of an oncoming storm. I figured, if a massive blizzard was headed our way, it would be better to take shelter in a building made of stone than a tent made of leather. But the other reason was that I'd seen this crossroads before. In the same place that I'd seen the larger version of the little white starred whelp—Demeter's perennial magic spring. Seeing the Old Trail fork in three different directions gave me goose bumps, but only because it felt so odd to recognize a place I'd never been to. I knew that the forks led to three of the other abandoned outposts: East Blast, West Blast, and Tartarus. But knowing this was just an ordinary crossroads didn't make seeing it any less eerie. It seemed to hum with dormant energy.

Was Corterra infused with perennial magic? And, if so, had it occurred here naturally or had Metatron artificially brought it here?

I yelled “Whoa!” to the barghests before we reached the crossroads but they weren't used to stopping when the sun was so high. It took more yelling, a few sharp pulls on the reins, and a warning fireball thrown into the snow in front of them to finally get them to listen. Telesto promptly plopped down in the snow, harness and all, while Brisaya tried to chew her way free. I jumped off the sledge to unbuckle her while Rafe rescued some of the gear that had come loose during our disorderly stop.

After unhitching both Brisaya and Telesto, I whistled to let them know I wanted them to follow me. We'd likely sense any
rogare
demons before they attacked, but yetis had no signature and Corterra's bailey gaol would probably be the perfect place for one to hide. Rafe cast a few spells over me and I shaped my magic into a throwing ax. With “abundant caution,” as my father had advised, we approached the door. Above it, in letters faded with time, was the name of the abandoned outpost:

Corterra

Chapter 15

I
nside, it was dark and there was a faint sound of something dripping in one of the back rooms. I hoped it was just melting ice. Telesto and Brisaya positioned themselves just outside the door. They were so large, I couldn't decide if their bulk would be a help or a hindrance if we were attacked in here. Rafe cast Angel light and I couldn't help feeling that, as we stepped forward, we stepped back in time.

The room had a raised platform in the middle with a desk and a high-backed bench on it. The walls were covered with shelves, cubbies, and drawers in all different sizes and shapes. Rotting books, shredding paper, and piles of dust filled every opening. I wondered what was in the drawers. Luck trinkets? Angel charms? Curse tablets? Or something more grisly like ears, fingers, or knuckle dice? I repressed a shudder. On the far wall was a fieldstone fireplace and a set of iron keys, which were hanging next to an open doorway. After hearing nothing but the sound of our breathing for the span of several minutes, I moved over toward the door.

It was a stairwell.

I glanced behind me and caught Rafe's gaze. I motioned to the stairs and he nodded. I increased the light output from my ax and we slowly descended. At the bottom was a short hallway and two iron doors.

Still unable to sense the presence of a demon—or even any magic beyond that faint hum I'd first felt—I gripped my fiery ax with one hand and reached for one of the door latches with my other. But Rafe beat me to it, as he did nearly every time there was a door to open. It was an Angel trait I was still getting used to. (Peter had certainly never acted that way when we were kids. But then again, there'd never been anything waiting on the other side of doors in Etincelle to kill me either.)

Behind the iron door was a circular set of stone steps that led down into darkness. Based on the magic I now strongly felt from below, I was betting there was a perennial magic spring at the bottom, similar to the one in Maize. I felt its odd magic swirling at the edges of mine, plucking at my signature, as if it were seeking a thread by which to unravel it. I waved my hand dismissively toward the stairs, shut the door, and then pointed at the next one. Rafe opened it as well. My flickering ax and Rafe's steady Angel light illuminated another hallway and two cramped enclosures with iron bars instead of a door.

Ah,
I thought,
Corterra's dungeon, the
gaol
part of the bailey gaol.

Unfortunately, there had still been prisoners here whenever Corterra had been attacked or abandoned. Both of the cells had skeletons in them. I swallowed tightly. Starving to death in a space you could barely turn around in would be a horrible way to die.

Had they known one another?

With how small the outposts had been, they'd had to have. Which then led me to wonder whether they'd been enemies. Maybe they'd been locked up for fighting. Or maybe they'd been friends. Locked up for drinking too much. Or maybe they'd been lovers. Forbidden for whatever reason to be together in life, yet bound together in death.

“Noon,” Rafe's soft voice broke my macabre reverie. He reached out and gently rested his hand on my shoulder. “We should unload the sledge before the storm breaks.”

I turned to him, my eyes meeting his. In the semi-darkness, his light-colored eyes reflected our light, giving him a preternatural look.

“Without their names, we can't give them a proper burial,” I said. “But I can't leave them like this.”

Especially if we were going to spend the night here,
I thought.
How could anyone rest in peace upstairs knowing these two had died downstairs without it?

After a moment, Rafe nodded. I walked over to the first cell.

“Breath to ember, ember to flame,” I murmured softly. Rafe's voice joined mine. “Flame to fire . . .” In a tightly controlled burn I cremated the remains of the sinner or poor unfortunate person who had died here. “Fire to ember, ember to ashes.” The skeleton turned first fiery red and then chalky white, finally disintegrating into ashes.

“Requiescat in pace,”
I whispered into the now dark and empty cell.

We did the same for the second skeleton and then I reached for Rafe's hand and dragged him upstairs, more determined than ever that we avoid a similar fate.

*   *   *

I
t took us the better part of an hour to get everything inside that we wanted in when the storm hit. But in that hour I became more and more convinced that, even if we lost some time by unloading and making camp in Corterra's old bailey gaol, I'd made the right decision. By the time we lit a fire and got the barghests settled into a makeshift pen between one wall of the bailey gaol and the sledge, I could barely see the horizon. Tiny pellets of ice stung my cheeks and I had to squint to see anything at all (my dark spectacles were of no use in this weather; they made me completely blind). I slammed the wood-turned-to-stone door shut and leaned against it, marveling at how quiet it seemed inside compared to the roar of the wind outside.

Rafe was standing on the platform in the middle of the room examining something on the desk. I walked over to him and, with a sinking feeling in my stomach, saw that it was a set of Sanguine Scales.

“Whatever you do, don't weigh our chances with that,” I warned, stepping up beside him. I was only half joking. We both knew that, though the bailey gaol gave us greater shelter against the storm, it also made us easy targets. We were, for all intents and purposes, trapped. Should any
rogare
demons find us, this building would first become a fortress from which to fight from and then, perhaps, our tomb. And there'd be no one to say the Final Blessing for us or grant us peace in our passing.

“I'm trying to figure out what the feathers are for,” Rafe said, pointing toward the scales.

I peered at the scales more closely, amazed despite myself. Made entirely of copper, the apparatus was old, worn, and dented. It had two bowls, one much bigger than the other, and a set of weights in various sizes in a tray at the bottom. Alongside the weights were two wells. One well held a small knife and the other held one white feather and one black.

Rafe picked up the white feather and examined its end. “No ink,” he said, frowning. He shook his head, clearly puzzled, and put the feather back in the empty well.

“It's not a writing quill,” I said. “And these are no ordinary scales. I think, based on the description I read in Bialas' journal, that this is an old set of Sanguine Scales. The Corterra settlers—brave and hardy people, no doubt—used them to measure everyday things like salt, shot, and silver.”

I placed the tiniest weight in the smaller bowl and turned toward him. I was only going to demonstrate how the weights worked—
not
the feathers.

“May I?” I asked, pointing to the silver bracelet Rafe always wore. On the outside, it looked like a smooth band of solid silver, but I knew that Bhereg's name and the date he'd died were etched on the inside. Rafe slipped it off and handed it to me. I placed it in the bigger bowl. It dipped lower than the small bowl. I rearranged the weights until I found one that very nearly matched the weight of the bracelet.

“Four hundred and eighty grains,” I said, giving the bracelet back to Rafe.

“Lemme guess,” he said in a dry voice. “The feathers are ‘featherweights.'”

“Something like that,” I said, considering the two feathers closely, wondering which I would choose if I were a medieval settler facing trial. “The black feather is a hawk's feather and the white feather is a dove's feather. In addition to everyday items, a set of Sanguine Scales was also used to measure the amount of honor in a man's heart—”

“Or a woman's,” Rafe murmured. His gaze caught mine and I could see that his attention was split between the scales . . . and me.

“Of course,” I said, my voice slightly higher than it needed to be. I cleared my throat, annoyed with myself. I didn't want there to be any awkwardness between Rafe and me. I'd grown far too fond of him for that. “Anyway, the accused used the knife to prick the tip of their ring finger—”

“Because the
vena amoris
runs from the tip of that finger directly to the heart.”

“I thought you didn't know how the scales worked,” I said, frowning at him.

He grinned. “Maybe I just like saying
vena amoris
.”

I decided to try to ignore Rafe's comment about the vein of love and doggedly continued my explanation of how a set of Sanguine Scales worked.

“The drops of blood go in one bowl and then the confessor, or the accused, chooses whether they will be judged as a hawk or a dove by placing one of the feathers in the opposite bowl. If the bowl with the feather sinks lower than the bowl with the blood . . .”

“It's fire to ember, ember to ashes for them,” Rafe said somberly, all traces of former humor gone.

I nodded slowly. With his long, thick, wavy, windblown hair and his full-grown beard, Rafe looked like one of the wild Hyrke hermits who shun city life, preferring instead to live a shortened life of solitude in Halja's hinterlands.

“And what about you, Nouiomo?” Rafe said, picking up the white feather again. “If you were being judged, which feather would you choose?” He reached for my hand and lightly traced my
vena amoris
with the tip of the feather.

“I told you not to call me that,” I whispered. But this time, my voice lacked conviction. Rafe's ginger-colored gaze was soft and hazy, slightly smoldering. As if he were a banked fire that could easily be set alight with one poke or prod.

“Would
you
ever use one of these scales to determine someone's fate?” he asked.

“Of course not,” I said, moving back. “Joy Carmine believes these scales were the cause of the epidemic
mortem animae
curse in southern Halja.”

I plucked the black feather out of the well and looked up at him. Maybe it was seeing the two skeletons earlier that made me do it—the reminder that life is so fleeting. Or maybe it was the fact that we were once again discussing the
mortem animae
curse, which always made me grateful that I still had my memories of those I loved and cared about.

Or maybe it was just that I sensed it was finally time to apply my new motto
carpe viam!
to more than just the Old Trail.

I motioned to Rafe to hand over the white feather. He did and I placed it, along with the black feather I'd been holding, back in the well, so they stood side by side.

I swallowed.

“If the Sanguine Scales granted wishes instead of measuring silver and honor,” I said, my voice hoarse with emotion, “would you still wish for what you wished for outside Kalisto's Crystal Palace?”

I hoped I wasn't making a mistake. That Rafe hadn't changed his mind. Then things really would be awkward between us.
He
might be incapable of feeling discomfort over bungled social situations, but I wasn't. Luckily, the look on his face told me his wish hadn't changed. If anything, it had only been wished for more fervently in the time since he'd first made it.

Still, old habits are hard to break because Rafe tried to act like the fact that I'd just agreed to let him kiss me was
no big deal
. I watched as his face transformed from
beaming
to
blasé
. If I didn't know him as well as I did, I might have been insulted. Instead I just smiled and upped the ante of this poker game he'd decided to play.

I stepped toward him and put my hands on his hips. Even under his beard, I could see his jaw harden.
Just how repressed
were
his feelings toward me?
I moved one of my hands from his hip to his cheek. Beneath my fingers and palm, his beard felt rough and prickly. I'd never kissed anyone with a full beard before. In fact, I hadn't kissed many men before at all. But now wasn't the time for doubts. Rafe could pretend nonchalance, but I wanted nothing more than to show him how serious I was.

Gently but firmly, I pulled him toward me.

The moment our lips touched, a feeling of exhilaration flared within me. It was somewhat similar to the feeling I'd had when Telesto and Brisaya had led the sledge out of Maize for the first time. There was a sense of anticipation, a snap of action, and then miles of feeling like we were flying. Rafe couldn't sense my signature, but it flared around me like a great, big fiery wind.

His beard and mustache tickled, but Rafe's lips were soft and full as they pressed against mine. It didn't take long for me to open more completely to him. I felt a rumbling in his chest as he ran his tongue across my teeth.

He broke off the kiss abruptly. I met his gaze. At least the kiss had blasted his blasé look into oblivion.

“Onyx, remind me to
never
make a wish at Kalisto's Crystal Palace again.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “They take
far
too long to be granted.” And then he slid his arms around me and settled his mouth on mine for a deeper kiss.