Trade Secret
Berend retreats to a stiff wooden chair, the upholstered seat little more than a suggestion of padding, placed in the hallway. Isabel slumps heavily into its companion a few feet away and on the opposite wall and stares, her expression blank and her eyes hollow, at nothing. He’s going to have to find a place for her to sleep, and soon, before she falls off the chair and knocks her head against either the wall or the floor.
For himself, he figures he has about two hours before the coffee he borrowed from Emryn Marner wears off. The young man was too soundly asleep to be asked, so it might be more accurate to say that Berend stole the coffee, but either way, it was a justifiable acquisition. He should have stolen some for Isabel.
As it turns out, Lucian Warder is alive. Berend had worried that wouldn’t be the case by the time they got here, though he didn’t breathe a word of his fears to Isabel. Warder’s alive, and that means that his entire plan hasn’t gone to hell. Yet.
He pulls out the recovered stack of Warder’s notes, water-stained and creased into uneven quarters. They’re no less incomprehensible than they were before, but he has them. In his other pocket is his pistol and three extra rounds, all that he had on him when he got to Marner’s place. He feels unbalanced without his sword, but it would have caught the attention of the city watch–or, at best, been taken from him upon his entry into the hospital.
“What’s that?” Isabel asks. The hallway has a slight echo, and she sounds like she’s underground.
Berend waves the sheaf of crinkled paper. “Warder’s notes, from the demonstration at Lady Breckenridge’s place. I’m hoping he can decipher them.”
A confused frown crosses Isabel’s face. “Why do you still have them?”
“For some light reading while we wait,” he says. “I can’t make heads or tails of them, but Warder can. I thought it might help.”
“Maybe,” is all Isabel says in response. She’s not all here. Maybe Berend should just let her sleep until Warder wakes up.
She closes her eyes and rests her head against the wall. It doesn’t look comfortable, but she doesn’t move as the sun climbs higher and the sterile light from the high windows grows brighter.
Berend is about to get up and try to find something to eat when a nurse–a new nurse, carrying a fresh roll of gauze and a basin of steaming water–opens Warder’s door. She shuts it behind her, and the turning of the lock echoes down the hall.
Berend gets to his feet. It feels like hours have passed–certainly he can feel his exhaustion catching up with him–but it might have only been several minutes. He’ll split the difference and assume it has been one hour.
He shakes Isabel by the shoulder, and her eyes open, slowly coming into focus. “I wasn’t asleep,” she mumbles unconvincingly.
“Of course not,” Berend says. “Come on. Warder will be up soon.” He holds out a hand, and she takes it, wrapping freezing fingers around his palm. He pulls her up.
The nurse greets them at Warder’s door. Her clean bandages have been replaced with dirty ones, sticky with old blood. Her basin of water is stained a dull pink.
“We’re friends of Mr. Warder,” Berend says, offering his most charming smile. “We just wanted to see how he’s doing after everything that’s happened.”
The nurse is a short, heavyset woman in her early thirties, with the muscular arms of someone accustomed to farm labor. She balances the basin and the tray of bandages in one hand to place the other on her hip as she looks Berend up and down. “He’s still recovering,” she says.
“Of course. I promise we won’t disturb him. I just feel so terrible that we haven’t been able to visit him yet, and with him in such an awful state.”
She raises one brow and twists her full lips in an expression of doubt. “What’s your name?”
“Emryn Warder,” Berend says. It’s the best he can come up with at short notice. “This is my wife, Lizbet.”
Isabel’s smile is forced and not at all convincing.
“I’m Lucian’s second cousin,” Berend continues, “once removed on my father’s side. We happened to be in the city before the harvest, and heard that our cousin was in the hospital–“
The nurse holds up her free hand. “All right. I’ll ask him if he feels well enough.”
She opens the door again, propping it open with her foot. The room beyond is dim, the curtains pulled closed and the lamp by the bed unlit. Warder sits propped up by three pillows, the blanket pulled up to his chest. His neck is wrapped in bandages. He’s still unnaturally pale, his face a grayish white, but his eyes are open. A look of surprise, or maybe fear, crosses his face as he catches sight of Berend.
“Do you recognize these people, dear?” the nurse asks him.
Berend smiles, hoping that Warder remembers that he tried to rescue him, and doesn’t blame him too much for not succeeding. If Berend had been just a little faster, if he had shot Geray as soon as he had a clear line of sight instead of waiting, maybe none of them would be in this mess.
Warder takes a breath, the blanket rising and falling, and he nods stiffly against the bandages.
The nurse looks surprised as she turns back to Berend. “All right, you can go in,” she says. “But not for too long, and keep it quiet.”
“You have my word,” Berend says with a bow. He doubts she believed a single word he’s said, but hopefully she’ll trust him on this. He has no intention of disturbing Warder any more than is necessary.
She leaves the door open when she goes, and she gives Berend another sidelong glance before she disappears around the corner.
Warder, too, is wary, his eyes following Berend like an illusory portrait, his grayish face perfectly still. He raises a thin, shaky hand from the bed and points to his bedside table.
Besides the lamp, there’s a glass of water collecting dust, a brass bell with a wooden handle for calling the nurse, and a leather-bound notebook the size of Berend’s hand. He holds up these objects in order. The notebook earns him an almost imperceptible nod from Warder.
Of course. Warder’s throat was cut; he cannot speak, at least for now. He might not ever speak again, which would present a problem for his career as a university lecturer. Berend will let the doctors worry about that.
Tucked under the front cover of the notebook is a thin charcoal pencil. Warder grips it with bloodless fingers and scratches a clumsy message onto the first blank page.
What do you want?
It’s certainly straightforward. Berend was expecting a brief thanks for saving the man’s life, at least.
“Look, I’m sorry to disturb you,” he says. “We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t urgent. We need to know how your device works.”
A troubled frown crosses Warder’s face, and then it’s gone, as though that small effort was too much to sustain. He turns the book around and writes another message.
Trade secret. Why?
Out of respect for Warder’s delicate condition, Berend does not raise his voice, as much as he’d like to. “Because,” he says, measuring each word before he says it, “it doesn’t do what you say it does. It damages people’s souls.”
That’s impossible.
“See, you say that, but I’ve seen the evidence myself.” He pulls up the nurse’s chair, a spindly contraption of reed cane and wood, and sits in it backward, his arms over the back. “Miss Rainier here is a Sentinel of the church of Ondir. She’s summoned a couple of the ghosts you tried to get rid of. They’re still here, and they’re not whole.”
Warder’s eyes flick between Berend and Isabel. His hands shake, smearing the charcoal as he writes.
That’s not a side effect I’ve come across. Would have to do more research.
“We don’t have time for research,” Berend says. He takes the packet of notes from his pocket, unfolds it, and places it beside the book. “A lot has happened since we last saw each other.”
Warder’s hand spreads the papers out on the bed before reaching for the pencil again.
The device sends spirits away, he writes, to the world beyond. Nothing more. Just like a Sentinel.
“No,” Isabel says. “I could still summon them, at least until the gate disappeared. Something else is happening.”
The gate disappeared?
She sits down on the edge of the bed with a sigh. Her extra hour of sleep didn’t lessen the dark circles under her eyes. “Yes. It appears that Ondir is gone, and the realm of the dead is no longer accepting the departed. Even if your device did work, it won’t do anything now.”
Warder frowns at that last statement. Then what do you want from me?
“Right now, the Belisias are seeking to have me discredited and killed, seeing as I know that their younger son is a murderer,” says Berend. “With the girl’s ghost being unable to speak, I can’t bring her forward as a witness. There’s also the small matter of a man you and Arden Geray killed, a few weeks back. Mikhail Ranseberg. His ghost was all torn to pieces, too, and I want you to fix him.”
At the top of the next page, Warder writes, I can’t help you.
Berend’s teeth clench. “Of course you can. You did this; you can undo it. I have every faith in your ability.”
Warder closes his eyes and shakes his head just slightly. The bandages keep his neck immobile. My device didn’t do this. He underlines it twice, and then writes: It only moves the spirit. With the earliest prototypes, they would always come back. I’ve only moved them farther.
Isabel puts her hand on the notebook to hold it open. “How far?” she asks, handing it back.
To Ondir’s realm, Warder writes on the next page. Or so I thought.
“We can’t get to Ondir’s realm right now,” says Berend. “It’s something of a recent development. I have to assume that you tearing people’s souls apart has something to do with it.”
So which is it? Warder scratches into the notebook. Does my device not work, or has it slain the god of the dead?
Berend crosses his arms over the back of the chair. “The Sentinel and I aren’t in agreement on that. That’s why we’re here–to get the answer from the source.”
With a clumsy hand, Warder piles up the loose papers and pushes them toward Berend. You have my notes, he writes. No dark magic. No mention of the gods. Only research and experimentation.
“Your experiments killed people,” Berend says, getting to his feet. “Do you think you’re blameless? That it was only your research partner who was at fault? I should fetch the city watch to chain you to this bed.”
Warder’s eyes go wide, and his face turns from gray to paper-white. “You wouldn’t,” he mouths soundlessly, not bothering with the pencil.
Isabel places a hand on Berend’s arm. “We can talk about your crimes later. And Geray’s. Right now we need to know exactly what–if anything–your device has done to these people. Once we know that, we’ll leave you alone.”
“For now,” Berend adds, slumping back into his chair.
Warder picks up his pencil again and turns the page in his notebook. What we call a “soul” is a person’s life energy, he writes. It can’t be destroyed. The church fathers were correct about that. But it can burn out, it can be changed, like when fuel burns to turn water to steam to turn a turbine. The device moves them from one place to another.
Maybe something used them up in the place they went to?
Thanks for reading! There are lots of things trying to get in front of your eyeballs, so I appreciate you taking the time to look at my writing.
Space Whales Press 
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