27. Chapter 27
28. Chapter 28
29. Chapter 29
30. Chapter 30
31. Chapter 31
32. Chapter 32
33. Chapter 33
34. Chapter 34
35. Chapter 35
36. Chapter 36
37. Chapter 37
38. Chapter 38
39. Chapter 39
40. Chapter 40
Acknowledgements
Also By Cate Baumer
1
Csilla
There was an art to mercy. It was science, in the measured drops of poppy milk to ease pain, the days a child needed in the womb. It was faith, too. Everything was.
Csilla was as competent at tending the ill as anyone raised as a kindly hand of the Church, but faith was where she excelled. Faith that her service made a difference, despite its ceaseless demands.
Despite the fact that no matter how well she did for it, the Church would never care. Every time she touched a consecrated object and left it dull, she revealed the truth of herself: soulless, and darkly singular for it.
“How are you feeling?” Csilla asked, waving Elmere to the unsteady firelight of his hearth, hoping as always that her treatments had finally taken root and there would be no work here save a prayer of thanks. But dark-edged lesions still bloomed on his face and neck, and the wool over his elbows and knees had rubbed thin against his swollen joints. Bitter winter was hard on everyone in Silgard, but the old, sick, and poor always suffered most.
Every day new smoke carried the ashes of the dead through the air of the brilliant city, from those delivered to their maker by illness, or hunger, or battlefront injuries that refused to heal as soldiers died cursing an absent god.
Then there were the other bodies dragged out of the city gates before dawn, bloodless corpses swaddled and bound with ink-smeared strips of knotted scripture.
It’s not for you to worry about, dearest, Elder Ágnes had said when Csilla asked why they weren’t being blessed, and washed, and burned.
But worry was the only thing that came as easily to her as care.
The lines on Elmere’s face deepened with a grimace. His teeth were loose against his thin lips. “Better than I was.”
Csilla poured blessed water onto fresh linen and dabbed at the open wounds. They did look cleaner, free of pus or crusting edges.
“Surprised you’re working alone,” Elmere continued, tilting his chin so she could continue her ministrations. “Do I owe you more deference now?”
But they could both see her overdress was a grim stained color that could charitably be called off-white, not the gray worn for mercy work.
Csilla held up her palm, pale and unscarred by the Prelate’s holy knife, and offered a smile she hoped looked less pained than it felt. “Not yet. The fevers have everyone busy. Ágnes is just next door.”
“A treat for me then,” Elmere laughed, and Csilla’s smile turned more genuine, her cheeks flushing with the simple pleasure of being seen. Her patients never minded who their care came from as long as it came with gentleness. Or if they did, they were polite enough not to mention it in her presence.
She pulled a bottle of distilled herbs mixed with just enough of their strongest syrup to blunt any pains from her leather sack, the final piece of today’s mercy. The glass picked up the fire’s glow, becoming almost a lantern as it bent light into the corners of the dim and dusty room.
“Don’t drink it all at once,” she cautioned as he eyed the bottle and its liquid hope. The poppy syrup in the church was almost gone. There were too many suffering, too little in the stores, and no way to get more of the precious pods to milk until warmer months. She’d exhausted every text they had, cut recipes down to the bone and shaved off further shards in hope of extending them, studied miracles and history and come up with nothing better than that people would die.
But fewer of them than otherwise, if she kept to her work.
“I won’t,” he promised, hands not stirring from his lap. Odd. Usually he poured a cup and they chatted while she boiled water for hot compresses and fixed up what she could to spare him trouble, sweeping rushes or mending oil-paper windows, and wishing she could give him better. It wasn’t like the Church was lacking.
“You’re feeling that well?” She grabbed the rough handle of his iron pot with both hands and heaved it up to the hook over the fire, breath short with the exertion. Being used to the work didn’t make the pots any less heavy.
When she glanced back, Elmere’s face was alight with a strange sincerity, rheumy eyes solemn and lips curved up. “What?” Csilla asked, unable to keep the fondness from her voice. Elmere had been her patient since she was twelve, tolerant of gaping bandages and clumsy adolescent fingers as she learned the art of care. Eight years on, and he still sometimes slipped her pieces of rosewater candy on her way out, when he could afford them. “You look like you have a secret.”
He touched his lips in acknowledgement, and her skin prickled.
