The Tattooed Duchess (A Fire Beneath the Skin Book 2) Read online

  THE TATTOOED DUCHESS

  OTHER NOVELS BY

  Victor Gischler

  Suicide Squeeze

  Gun Monkeys

  The Pistol Poets

  Shotgun Opera

  Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse

  Vampire a Go-Go

  The Deputy

  Three on a Light

  THE TATTOOED DUCHESS

  A Fire Beneath the Skin: Book 2

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2015 Victor Gischler

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by 47North, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and 47North are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503948228

  ISBN-10: 1503948226

  Cover design by Megan Haggerty

  Illustrated by Chase Stone

  Map Design by: Tazio Bettin

  CONTENTS

  START READING

  PROLOGUE

  EPISODE ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  EPISODE TWO

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  EPISODE THREE

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  EPISODE FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  EPISODE FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  EPISODE SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  EPISODE SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  EPISODE EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  EPILOGUE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PROLOGUE

  Two lesser priests of the Order of Mordis leaned into the bitter wind, sleet lashing their wrapped faces as they sluggishly climbed the narrow stone steps of the Skyway of Eternity, the treacherous path that twisted up and up, past the tree line, to the glacial heights where the air thinned to almost nothing.

  Skull shrines dotted the trail as they ascended, and the lesser priests stopped at each one to make their obeisance, kneeling and reciting a prayer to the dead. The further up they climbed, the less their enthusiasm was for each prayer. The Skyway wore down even the most devout.

  They hunched in their white bearskins, thick wool robes beneath, the bones of their ancestors sewn into the fabric like insignia of rank. Hoods up. Faces wrapped with thick cloth, only a small slit for the eyes.

  Priests and greater priests were exempted from this duty, having already hiked the Skyway many times in their younger days. The Skyway provided good motivation for the lesser priests to seek promotion. Often, lesser priests newly promoted from the masses of initiates eagerly looked forward to hiking the Skyway as some kind of rite of passage. One trip was usually enough to dispel any youthful notions they had of glamorous piety.

  The trail took them into a narrow crevasse, cold stone rising high on either side. They trudged in a slow curve, close now, almost to the end. The stone walls fell away quickly, the wind picking up again as they emerged into an open space. This was the summit.

  They trudged past the empty outbuildings, stone structures that once housed monks who trained and studied and meditated year-round. The buildings had been abandoned more than a century earlier, when recruitment into the order had dwindled to a trickle.

  The Temple of Mordis, perched at the highest point on the summit, was a wide, low pyramid of rough black stone, cracked and pitted. It had weathered the eternal wind, the blizzards, the sleet and freezing cold, for more than twenty-six hundred years. There were other temples, naturally, wilderness outposts and other more convenient places of worship in more hospitable climes. Even a few village chapels remained from the order’s more popular days. The ornate consulate temple in Tul-Agnon endured the derision of the citizenry, but the temple at the Summit of the End of the World in the Glacial Wastes was the temple, the origin of the entire order, and the burial tomb of Mordis himself.

  Into this most holy of places limped the lesser priests, who shoved open the mighty stone doors, stumbled into the sudden warmth of the eternal flame within, and collapsed, panting and groaning.

  The fat one, Glex—who had against all logic remained fat despite months of hard labor and a limited diet of lentils and turnip greens—drew a ragged breath and said, “This is bullshit.”

  Glex’s sullen companion, Bremmer, made no comment.

  Glex turned over, sat up, started rubbing his ankles. “I am so numb. You just know in a minute the feeling will come back and my feet are going to hurt. Damn, I hate it. As soon as I’m promoted to priest I’m going to ask for missionary duty in the south, at one of those seaside places with sun and those trees. What do they call those trees?”

  “Palms,” Bremmer said.

  “Yeah, palm trees and sun.”

  “It’s a thousand miles away.”

  “Everything’s a thousand miles away from somewhere,” Glex said. “Sure, it would be a long trip, but it would be all rum and suntans after that.”

  “Is that why you joined the order?” asked Bremmer. “Rum and suntans?”

  “Hey, hey, don’t go getting all holy on me.” Glex stood and stretched. “I’m devout. I recite the tenets and all that, but I still have some ideas about how to get out of the Wastes. I’m not built for cold weather.”

  “What are you built for?”

  “Is that a fat joke?”

  “No, this is a fat joke,” answered a new voice from the shadows. “What’s a big tub of goo and never shuts up? Answer: Glex.”

  Glex squinted into the shadows as two lesser priests stepped into the light of the eternal flame. “That you, Horst?”

  “Who else?” Horst said. The lesser priest was lanky and pale, with a hooked nose and alert blue eyes. “Thought you guys would never get here.”

  “Hey, we’re on time,” Glex said. “You get a week just like everyone else.”

  “A week lasts a l
ot longer up here,” said Morrisan, the lesser priest with Horst. Morrisan was as lanky as his friend but had the dark, olive skin of the Fyrian folk. “Not a lot to do up here. Tend the eternal flame, sleep, and pray. That’s about it.”

  “Tending the eternal flame is the only reason they even need us up here,” Horst said. “I keep telling the prefect they should just get a mage to cast a self-fueling fire and save us all a shitload of trouble.”

  “It’s not the only reason.” Bremmer had propped himself up on one elbow.

  Horst’s gaze shifted to the man on the floor. “What?”

  “It’s not the only reason,” repeated Bremmer.

  Horst blinked, slowly turned his head back to Glex. “Who’s this guy?”

  “He’s new. Bremmer. First trip up.” Glex rolled his eyes as if that explained it.

  Bremmer stood, dusted himself off. “The Great Reconstitution. You’ve forgotten?”

  Horst shuffled his feet and nodded. “No, no, of course. Yeah, I mean . . . sure.”

  “It’s sort of hard to think about a once-in-a-lifetime event like that. I mean, when most of your routine is keeping warm and tending fire,” Morrisan said. “I mean, of course the Great Reconstitution. I mean, there’s no other point, right?”

  “If no one is here to perform the Reconstitution ritual, then hundreds of years of devotion are for naught,” Bremmer said gravely. “It is the ultimate, ongoing act of faith.”

  “Hey, hey, no problem,” Glex said. “The guys weren’t thinking of the ritual when they said there was nothing to do up here. Horst, if you needed to do it, you’d be right there ready to go with the ritual, right?”

  “Damn right.”

  “And me,” Glex said. “If I’m on duty when the Reconstitution thingy goes down, I’m all over the ritual. Don’t even think about it. So it’s all good, okay? We’re all faithful here.”

  “I suppose.” Bremmer turned away from the others and began to pull items out of his pack, preparing to settle in for the week.

  “I’m going to pull out a jug,” Morrisan said. “We can all have a friendly drink and tend the fire. Horst and I pull out in the morning.”

  “That’s the most civilized suggestion I’ve heard today,” Glex said.

  Horst and Morrisan brought wood for the fire while Bremmer and Glex found spots for the night and spread their bedrolls. Morrisan’s jug came out and they enjoyed the warm glow of liquor in their bellies and lively conversation.

  Except for Bremmer.

  The wide-eyed lesser priest explored every inch of the temple, the anteroom, and prayer chambers. He inspected each shrine and idol with grim reverence. He lingered especially over the altar and the tomb. At last he joined the others around the fire and deigned to take a single sip from Morrisan’s jug, contributing minimally to the conversation. He was first to sleep when the party finally broke up in the wee hours.

  They awoke early the next morning. Horst and Morrisan grabbed their gear, donned their furs, wished Glex and Bremmer good luck, and headed down the mountain.

  Glex sighed. “One week. Man, it’s going to creep by, I tell you. Might as well get comfortable.”

  “Shouldn’t one of us go down to the tree line for more wood?” Bremmer asked.

  Glex glanced at the pile of wood along the far wall, enough for several days. They wouldn’t run out any time soon. However, there wasn’t much else to do. “Couldn’t hurt. You want to go first or me?”

  “I’ll go.” Bremmer pulled on his furs and left with the wood axe on his shoulder.

  Glex tossed a few small logs into the fire pit just to have something to do. He prodded and arranged the fire for a minute with the long poker before he sat on a step between the altar and the fire pit, pulled out a bundle of prayer scrolls, and began reading carefully. He’d need to demonstrate that he’d memorized the prayers to pass the tests that would allow him to be promoted to priest. Within the scrolls were common prayers he would use often when leading his future flock in weekly services.

  He read for maybe half an hour, stood, yawned.

  It was going to be a long week.

  The long, thin windows of the temple began to dim. Glex blinked. He thought thick clouds were momentarily passing overhead, but the light continued to drain from the windows until it was as dark as night.

  “Uh . . . Okay.”

  Glex went to the temple entrance, cracked open the big doors, and looked outside. An eerie darkness had settled over the snowscape. Glex knew it was midmorning at the latest. He could not possibly have lost track of the time so badly that it was dusk already.

  He cautiously crept outside, down the front steps off the temple. He turned.

  He looked up.

  “What. The. Fuck?”

  Instead of the sun, a great black orb hung in the sky. It was ringed entirely with blazing white light that stung his eyes.

  Glex’s heart beat against his chest. He had never seen this before. Was it harmless? Was it the end of the world, some attack on the temple? Worse yet was Glex’s nagging feeling that he should have known what was happening. As strange, disturbing, and outrageous as the spectacle was, Glex could not escape that feeling that it was somehow . . . familiar.

  And ye shall know his coming . . . something, something and the day shall be as night . . . something, something.

  The half-remembered scripture popped into Glex’s brain.

  The Great Reconstitution!

  “Oh, shit!” Glex yelled. “It’s happening!” He ran for the steps. “It’s happening right now!”

  Panic gripped him.

  The ritual!

  He slipped on a patch of ice on the last step, cracked his knee on the stone, pushed himself up again, and hobbled inside. Heat washed over him. He stood, eyes wide, mouth agape.

  Impossible! It was happening, actually happening, after all these centuries.

  The fire from the eternal flame had grown, expanded, the flames twisting and spiraling into a long tentacle of fire toward Mordis’s tomb. The flames surrounded the tomb, the fire splintering apart, the tentacle becoming two hands with long fingers, gripping the tomb like some animal trying to rip into a piece of fruit.

  The temple rumbled. The floor shook beneath Glex’s feet. He was thrown down again, palms scraping the rough stone. He got to his hands and knees, eyes wide with terror. The flame hands tore into the stone tomb with an earsplitting crack, the fire pouring inside, filling the small structure with white-hot flame.

  The temple shook as if it might cave in any minute.

  The fire within the tomb expanded until it shattered, shards of stone and dust flying in every direction. Glex went flat, covered his head with his arms, flying bits of stone stinging his back and legs.

  When Glex lifted his head again to look, his fear was such that it threatened to catch in his throat and choke him.

  The flame swirled over the broken tomb. Mordis’s remains, bones and dust, mixed and turned in the fire like some hellish tornado. The ash and fire came together in a mass. A torso formed, then limbs expanded from it. A black figure emerged with skin cracked all over from the flames lighting it from within, hands with long, curved fingers, and a head with a gaping maw that roared fire. The flames held the figure like some kind of prison, both bringing it to life and keeping it trapped. The roar of the flame and the bellow of the creature blended into a deafening cacophony.

  Mordis, Glex realized. His god had returned.

  Panic and fear and disbelief spun Glex’s head. He fought the urge to throw up.

  The ritual! Holy shit, Glex could suddenly not remember the words to the ritual. What was the opening line? How did he segue into the refrain? This was unbelievable. Every time he tried to concentrate, the sight of the howling deity before him sent fresh shock waves of terror down his spine.

  A flash of memory, something significant enough to momentarily distract him from Mordis and the temple shaking to pieces around him. The blood offering. It was why lesser priests were sent
two at a time to the remote temple. One priest recited the ritual while the other’s blood was offered to Mordis to finalize his passage back into the realm of the living.

  Bremmer! He had to find that little turd and put a dagger in him fast, or—

  Glex turned just in time for the blade of the wood axe to lodge itself with a meaty crack in his forehead—right between the eyes.

  Glex fell backward, landed flat on his back, arms spread, the axe sticking out of him. His legs twitched, his mouth opening and closing with awkward, choked pleas. A look of wide-eyed shock froze on his face.

  Bremmer stepped on Glex’s throat to hold him still, yanked on the axe handle until he’d tugged it free. He’d started chanting the ritual the second he’d seen the sky darken, knowing immediately what was happening. A ferocious joy had seized him as he’d sprinted through the snow and up the mountain. He’d left the firewood but had clung to the axe.

  When Bremmer got to the ritual’s finale of blood offering, he lopped off Glex’s head with the wood axe. The blood gushed unnaturally from his neck, like it couldn’t wait to escape Glex’s body. It ran bright red down the steps of the altar.

  Bremmer backed away from the blood, down to the bottom of the steps, went to his knees, supplicated himself.

  Mordis raised his hands above his head, stretched, the flames licking his body. The blood on the steps began to boil. Red droplets lifted into the air, spun around Mordis faster and faster, soaking into him, filling in the fiery cracks of his skin.