Mortal Rites

  Mortal Rites

  Company of Strangers, Book 3

  Melissa McShane

  Copyright © 2019 by Melissa McShane

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  To Jay—

  I’m sorry the Princess got killed all those times and nearly derailed the campaign.

  In my defense, stirges are wicked nasty when they all attack at once.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Sienne’s Spellbook

  About the Author

  Sneak Peek: Shifting Loyalties (Company of Strangers, Book Four)

  1

  Sienne stood at the villa’s window and looked out over the Jalenus Sea to where the ocean met the sky, two shades of blue blending into one another. Waves crashed against the rocky cliff, far below, their ebb and flow a soothing rush of noise that harmonized with the higher notes of the constantly blowing wind. One pane of thick, bubbly glass remained in the window; the rest were long gone. The glass transformed the vista into a dreamscape in which bulbous waves humped and bulged their way inland, tinted rosy pink. Sienne preferred the unaltered landscape. It wasn’t as pretty, but at least you knew where you were.

  She inhaled deeply, closing her eyes to enjoy the scents of sun-warmed air and salt breezes. The air was tinged with the sweet smell of the tiny pink flowers that covered the short stretch of ground from the house to the cliff’s edge. They were strongly scented for something so small, and she wished she knew their name. Her father the Duke might know, dedicated gardener that he was in his spare time, but if he were standing beside her, he’d be more interested in criticizing her choices than in delivering a horticulture lecture. She scowled and turned away. And it had been such a pleasant day, too, until her past intruded on it.

  “I take it you have had as little luck as I,” Perrin said from across the room. The small library had less than a thousand books, but when each had to be examined closely, that was an even more daunting number. Perrin had made three neat stacks of books on the floor beside him and was in the process of beginning a fourth.

  “The owner loved plays,” Sienne said, returning to the bookcase she’d cleared of most of its books. “They’re easy to eliminate, but I admit to becoming bored. I didn’t know there were so many ways to retell the story of the Seven Pilgrims.”

  “I have found histories. Very dull ones.” Perrin flipped open another book, skimmed its pages, and set it on the new pile. “But this collection is so disorganized it is impossible to simply ignore a shelf on the basis that one has found five histories there, and therefore the other books must be the same.”

  Sienne reached the end of the final shelf. The last book was slimmer than the rest, bound in magenta-dyed leather that time and the sea air had worn to pink along the spine. She flipped through the pages. “Poetry,” she said. “Sappy poetry.”

  “I take it you are not a lover of verse.”

  “Not modern verse. I like old long-form epics about the before times.” She set the poetry book back and stooped to gather up her piles to restore them to the bookcase. It probably wasn’t necessary, since nobody was likely to come along insisting they clean up their mess, but she’d been too well trained at school in the dukedom of Stravanus to be able to leave books on the floor.

  She heard footsteps overhead, making the ceiling creak. Alaric, probably, searching the upper floor for more books. The previous owners had let their collection spill over into every room in the house upstairs and down. On the ground floor they’d found, in addition to the actual library, decorative shelves in both formal sitting rooms and a pile of cookbooks in the kitchen, and there were a couple of loose volumes of the epic What Dreams Remain in the outhouse. Missing pages from the latter indicated it hadn’t been used for reading material, or at least not ultimately so.

  Sienne began on the next bookcase. There were eight in total, all of them packed full. Exposure to the damp, salty air had caused most of the books to swell, compacting them further. She wormed her fingertips between the first and second volumes, stretching high to reach the top shelf, and pulled out a book. “Desert Plants of Omeira. That bores me just thinking about it. Honestly, I don’t know why we’re bothering. It’s unlikely Penthea Lepporo left any necromantic treatises lying around where anyone might find them.”

  “How better to hide something dangerous than in plain sight?” Perrin swept his long, dark hair out of his face and began shifting his piles back onto the bookcase. “And the manner in which she left the house suggests she did not have time to hide any books that might draw the attention of the guards.”

  “I think it’s sad that her family never came back after she died. It’s not as if she died here, and it’s a beautiful house. Or was, thirty years ago.” Sienne closed her book with a snap and stared out the other window, the one that overlooked the overgrown patio and concrete urns that once held tiny fruit trees. The trees had all died from neglect, but creeping vines had taken over their corpses, their white star-like flowers giving the dead trees a false impression of life. Since they were at the Lepporo estate looking for evidence of necromancy, it seemed an appropriate image.

  Their quest to find a ritual that would free Alaric’s people, the shape-changing race called Sassaven, had taken an unexpected turn four weeks earlier. Having acquired two ritual objects, they’d begun searching for the recipe for a potion containing the sedative herb varnwort, in hopes it might lead them to evidence of the ritual itself. Almost immediately, they’d discovered that varnwort was used in many, many rituals. All of them were necromantic.

  Sienne had pointed out that so far as anyone knew, the only rituals that had survived from the wars that had all but destroyed civilization four hundred years ago were necromantic, so that was no real surprise, but it had still been disturbing. They were looking for a ritual that would invert the one binding the Sassaven to their evil creator, not one that would raise the dead. But it was their only lead.

  So for the past four weeks, they’d turned their search toward finding a necromantic ritual that both used varnwort and had something to do with binding. It was delicate work; studying necromancy wasn’t illegal, only the practice of it, but the law didn’t always discriminate between the two, and people who studied necromancy didn’t advertise the fact.

  They’d found Penthea Lepporo’s name in the correspondence of a known necromancer who’d died forty years ago, and Alaric had gotten permission from Penthea’s son to examine the Lepporo library at the abandoned estate. Which was why Sienne was digging through old, damaged, boring books wh
en she could be back in Fioretti reading something exciting.

  She set the book down and reached for the next. It was taller than the others on its shelf and wedged tightly in place. Cursing softly, Sienne stepped back and tried using her small magic called invisible fingers on it, tugging at it without touching it. It stayed stuck as solidly as if the shelf had been built around it.

  She cast about the room for a solution. Two armchairs positioned near the window looked as if they’d break if she put even her slight weight on them, but the table between them, low and square, looked hewn from granite rather than built of solid oak. With some effort, she dragged it over to the bookcase and hopped up. This put her at eye level with the shelf and the row of books. Grabbing hold of the offending tome, she wiggled it back and forth, trying to loosen it.

  Something snapped, and the book came free so rapidly she nearly lost her balance. “By Averran,” Perrin exclaimed, “what did you do?”

  “This book was stuck, that’s all.”

  She glanced down at Perrin, who had his hand on a bookcase neither of them had examined yet. “That is not all,” he said. He took hold of the bookcase’s side and pulled, making it swing gently toward him. A gaping square hole in the base of the wall lay beyond it, dark and smelling of dust.

  Sienne and Perrin stared at each other. “This is far more interesting than poetry, epic or not,” Perrin said. “Shall we investigate?”

  “Are you kidding? It would be the midge hive all over again.” Sienne drew in a breath and shouted, “Alaric! Dianthe! Kalanath! We found something!”

  Hurried footsteps sounded on the stairs, and Dianthe appeared in the doorway. “Found—oh, by Kitane’s left arm,” she said, staring at the hole. “What is it?”

  “There was a secret switch Sienne cleverly found,” Perrin said.

  “Just so you didn’t go in there on your own. Remember the midges?”

  “Is no one going to let me forget about them?” Sienne demanded.

  More footsteps announced Kalanath’s arrival, followed immediately by Alaric, who had cobwebs in his short blond hair. “Attic,” he said. “But this is far more promising. Sienne, you didn’t go down there alone, did you?”

  Sienne rolled her eyes. “I am teachable, you know. What should we do?”

  Dianthe crouched next to the hole. “There’s a ladder going down, and it smells like a large room. Sienne, why don’t you make some lights, and I’ll see what I can see.”

  Sienne concentrated, and half a dozen white lights the size of small apples popped into existence, floating around her head. She directed them into the hole. Dianthe leaned farther forward. “It’s definitely big, and the ceiling is remarkably high. Wait here.” She turned and descended the ladder, disappearing out of sight. The others gathered around the hole and peered after her. Sienne couldn’t see anything but the ladder and, far below, a black wooden floor that shone in the magic lights as if highly varnished. Dianthe’s boots made sharp tapping noises that quickly receded to nothing.

  “What do you see?” Alaric called out.

  “We have our proof that Penthea Lepporo, or someone who lived in her house, practiced necromancy,” Dianthe said. “Come on down. Whoever it was didn’t leave any nasty surprises.”

  “Probably didn’t have time,” Alaric said, moving back to allow Kalanath access to the ladder. “Penthea’s illness came on suddenly, her son said, and they all left for Fioretti with her.”

  “Yes, and don’t you think that’s strange?” Sienne said. “That they never came back to retrieve all their things? I realize the Lepporos are wealthy, but even wealthy people aren’t generally that wasteful.”

  Alaric shrugged and offered Sienne a hand. “Their town house is far more opulent than this, remember?”

  “I remember.” It had been opulent enough to make Sienne uncomfortable, despite her upbringing as a duke’s daughter. She’d feared knocking over some priceless vase or smearing mud on an antique rug. “Even so.”

  “Who knows why the rich and powerful do what they do?” Alaric held her hand a few moments longer than necessary to help her onto the ladder, and she smiled at him and received a smile he reserved only for her. It still made her giddy when he looked at her that way, weeks after they’d acknowledged their mutual attraction. Giddy, and something deeper and warmer she hugged close to her heart. Falling in love with Alaric had been unexpected, and wonderful. But he never gave any indication that he cared more for her than casual affection, and she wished she knew if he was concealing some more profound feeling. She was the last person in the world who’d know love when she saw it. Her ex-lover Rance was proof of that.

  She hurried down the ladder into a space several degrees cooler than the house above, which was warmed by the afternoon sun of late first summer. Dianthe was right, the ceiling was surprisingly high, at least ten feet—much higher than Sienne would have expected from a basement. The walls were painted the same black as the floorboards, providing a stark contrast to the white lines of script covering them. A wooden butcher block table stained with dark residue occupied the center of the room. Dianthe stood at the room’s far side, next to a couple of flat-topped chests fastened with leather straps. Sienne crossed toward her as she unbuckled the first one and opened the chest.

  “Ugh!” Dianthe exclaimed, stepping back and pinching her nose shut. A foul stink like rotten meat wafted to Sienne’s nostrils, and she imitated Dianthe’s gesture. “That’s far too ripe for something that’s been locked away for thirty years.”

  “What is it?” Kalanath asked, prodding the chest with the tip of his steel-shod staff.

  Dianthe leaned over, her nose still plugged, and shook her head. “I can’t tell. I think it might have been a trap. But it doesn’t look like the contents of the trunk are damaged, so I’m not sure what the point was. Take a look. I’ll be more careful opening the other one.”

  Sienne walked over to the wall and examined the lines of script. They’d been painted on rather than written in chalk or ink, and in places the letters were too blurry to make out. Alaric came to stand beside her. “What does it say?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” Sienne said. “It’s gibberish. Maybe it’s a code? Or it could be a necromantic ritual, except all the ones I know about use actual Fellic words.”

  “This appears to be a list,” Perrin said. He stood a short distance away, looking at another patch of writing. Sienne and Alaric went to join him. “A list of ingredients. Varnwort is not on it, before you ask.”

  Alaric let out a sigh. “I didn’t expect this to be easy, but I still hoped—”

  “Me too,” Sienne said.

  “Come and look at the books,” Kalanath said.

  The trunk was, in fact, full of books, jumbled together in no particular order. Kalanath handed them out to the others while Dianthe circled the second trunk, muttering to herself. Alaric whistled. “Necromancy books.”

  “And a journal,” Perrin said, flipping the pages of one of the smaller books. “Whoever it was kept detailed notes.”

  Sienne shivered. “It’s really cold in here. Let’s take everything up to the library. There’s better light there.”

  Alaric began stacking books in the crook of his arm. “Dianthe, what’s in the other trunk?”

  “I don’t know. I’m afraid to open it. There’s something off about the latch that I think is another trap—a nastier one.” She shivered. “Sienne, can you give me a little more light over here?”

  Something slammed nearby, making Sienne jump. A patter of sharp thumps followed. The room grew marginally darker. “What was that?”

  Kalanath crossed to the ladder. “The hole is covered. A bookcase fell over it.”

  Alaric set down his armful of books. “I’ll get it open.”

  The short stack of books shifted, then tumbled over, spilling across the floor. As Alaric crouched to pick them up, they rose into the air, circling him like a pack of wary dogs. “Sienne, stop that!”

  “I’m not doing
it!” Sienne exclaimed.

  One of the books flew at Alaric’s face. He batted it away as two more dove in after it. Sienne’s armload of books darted away to join their mates, and the air was suddenly full of flying books, wildly careening in all directions. Sienne covered her head with her arms and cried out as a large book cracked her on the back of the skull, making her vision go blurry briefly. She ducked away from another assault and ran for the ladder. As Kalanath had said, a bookcase had fallen diagonally across the hole, blocking it so only slivers of light shone through.

  She turned to tell Alaric to get the bookcase out of the way, and froze. Behind Alaric, emerging through the lid of the second trunk, was a wispy, nearly invisible figure of a child about seven years old. It wore an old-fashioned night shirt that floated around it as if blown by an intangible breeze. The contours of its body shimmered, here one moment, gone the next, giving it the appearance of a sketch by an artist who couldn’t make up her mind what to draw next. Its small face was drawn up in a silent wail, and its hands scrubbed invisible tears out of its eyes.

  “Alaric, look out!” Sienne screamed. Alaric looked up, then turned. The child grasped his shoulders and wailed. This time it was audible. The shriek filled the chamber, sending the flying books to the floor and making Sienne clutch her hands over her ears in a futile attempt to block it out. She could barely hear, over the sound of the wail, the exclamations of her friends. Alaric flailed at the thing, unable to get a grip on it even though it held him solidly in both small hands.