“Replace the lids,” Sister Eva said, “and I’ll explain when we’re somewhere safe. You had to see with your own eyes.”
That much, Hen was sure of. Not only would he never have wanted to believe the horror before him, but he wasn’t sure he was even capable of believing it now. He knew he was looking at Kass’s face, his eyes, his mouth, his nose, his body. Kass used to be there; this was the thing that had been Kass and now was so much rotting meat.
“Where is he?” Hen asked. “If he didn’t go to heaven, where is he?”
“Where we all go, when we die,” Sister Eva said, laying a hand on Hen’s shoulder. “Come now, close it up and leave him in peace.”
He swatted her hand away. “I won’t leave him. If I hadn’t left him…”
“You couldn’t have stopped this, or that would’ve been my goal.” Sister Eva’s voice grew louder with urgency. “We must replace the lids and leave before they return to take them to the pyre.”
Hen shook his head. He heard Piret and Sister Eva sliding the lids back on the other two boxes, but he stayed on his knees, staring at the thing that used to be Kass, uncomprehending. Eventually, the two women took him by the arms and tried to haul him up to standing. At first, Hen allowed himself to be pulled beyond the metal door once more. Piret ran back in to cover Kass’s box, and Hen cried out, suddenly sobbing.
“We can avenge them,” Sister Eva told him. “If you come with me.”
Hen jerked out of her arms and slid to the floor again. He was riding the night mare. It was the only explanation that made any sense; none of this was real.
Piret closed the metal door behind her, and Sister Eva locked it once more. Piret came to him and said, “We have to go. We have to help her expose this.”
“I won’t leave him,” was all Hen could say.
A distant sound of cart wheels. A screeching of the other metal door.
“Shh,” Sister Eva hissed. “Come.”
“He’s disordered,” Piret whispered. “He can’t.”
He wasn’t disordered. He was just dreaming.
“They’re taking them through the catacombs. We can wait here,” Sister Eva said finally.
Hen sat and stared as the little stub of the candle burned out, leaving Sister Eva holding the only one left. The scraping sounds from the other room, the wooden boxes with the carcasses of their charges being moved back onto a cart, maybe a larger one, and then rolled down into the depths of the catacombs. After it was quiet again for a few moments, Piret turned to Hen and asked, “Can you move now?”
Her face had gone as pale as Elvi’s. But her eyes blazed with something that could only have been rage.
Hen nodded.
They all stood, and Sister Eva started back into the thin, dark hall. Piret followed. Hen said, “Sister Eva.”
“Shh,” she whispered over her shoulder.
“Give me your key,” he said.
She frowned. “My key?”
“I need to go back in there,” Hen said.
Sister Eva eyed him up and down. “You’re right, Piret. He’s disordered.”
“Come on, Hen—” Piret tried to take his arm.
Hen jerked away. “You can’t beat me, Piret. I’m faster and stronger.”
She shook her head, “This is disordered as fuck, Hendrik. We need to go, or we won’t be able to help anyone.”
“Just give me the key, then I’ll come. I just need to see that he’s gone.” Hen held out his hand.
Piret sighed but said, “He is faster and stronger. Kicked my ass plenty of times in drills and duels.”
Sister Eva looked as if she’d protest, but after a few more calculating looks, she capitulated. “Hurry. Please.”
Hen took the key and went directly to the door. The chamber was dark and quiet when he swung it open, empty except for some disturbed stones.
Hendrik dropped the key and started running.
Chapter 8: Catacombs, Stone City
He bounced off a few walls and tripped on a few stones, banging himself up good, but eventually Hendrik caught up with the wagon. Following the sound of it and the faint glow of their distant torches without being caught was easy. Whether Piret and the priest had followed him, he didn’t know or care.
They weren’t taking Kass anywhere. Hen wasn’t sure what he was going to do when he found Kass’s box again, but he sure as all the burning hells wasn’t going to let any priests have it. Priests who’d marched him out of that disarmingly comfortable, elaborately decorated little room and straight to a bloody death.
Hendrik had no idea how much time passed or how far he’d gone by the time he smelled and then heard the ocean. They caught a breeze off it every so often in the High City, but visiting the northern wall gave the saltiest, most satisfying breath of the sea. Kass liked watching it, and sometimes in the summer, when there was less risk of sickness from exposure, they’d take a loaf of bread and a canteen of ale and sit there all day, watching the gulls circle and listening to the waves crash. The ocean was dangerous, unforgiving, terrifying. But in that, there was beauty, and that was something he and Kass always agreed on.
The crashing and hiss of surf slithered into the catacombs just after the salt air hit Hen’s face for the first time. It suddenly seemed right, that Kass should come here now. Just—not with them. Not like this.
There was no door, just an opening like a small cave, barely large enough for the wagon to get through, dotted with small leftover pools and slippery sea-plants. Once the donkeys pulled the cart out onto the sand, the priests set their torches in the soft hillside and got to work. Hen stayed in the shadow of the cave mouth, listening with one ear for potential pursuers behind him, both eyes fixed on the priests. He couldn’t see the ocean from his vantage point, but he thought the priests could. The sound of it could be helpful.
They unloaded the boxes from the wagon quickly, setting them in a neat pile, and then poured jugs of fragrant oil over them. It happened so efficiently that Hen still had no plan in mind as one of the priests returned to grab a torch.
