His grotesque collection wasn’t limited to warm-blooded creatures. There was a blacksnake, a dried-out toad, and even a handful of small river fish with brown and flaking scales. Perhaps the flies lying around were part of the design and not eager opportunists drawn by the gore.
“You…“ She had to pause for a breath. “You killed all these?”
A small voice in the back of her mind began to murmur. What would his followers say if they knew the man offering them so much hope of life spent his time like this?
Her feet tensed in her boots, ready to run.
Mihály stared at the bleak menagerie, his expression unreadable. “I find those that are already sick or hurt. I don’t go around killing things for death’s own sake. In most cases, it’s a mercy.”
Csilla grimaced. “What do you do with them?" She forced herself to walk over. The creatures were beyond help, but they deserved the respect of being seen.
Oh, there were kittens. Tiny, with brown and white patches, looking so much like her Erzsébet it cracked the center of her heart and sent the pieces to her lurching stomach. She longed to be back in bed with her cat snuggled close, timing her breath to the rhythmic purrs. Enjoying what life she had, not staring at this panoply of death. She missed the church with a seizing homesickness, and she grabbed her mark. When she’d had a question, she only had to ask Ágnes and be given the correct answer. She didn’t have to confront so much awfulness on her own.
“I study them,” Mihály said. “I study the bodies. And I study their souls.”
“Study their...how?” She reached out and stroked the head of one of the kittens with a fingertip, the fur now dry and patchy. They couldn’t have lived long. She had to believe they hadn’t lived long, that they hadn’t suffered.
Mihály’s cheek twitched, and for a moment it looked like he wanted to stop the words. “I can see souls when they leave the body. Hear them, if they stay around. Call them, direct them, if they want to come back.”
Direct them? Did his heresy have some truth to it? She tried to quiet her thoughts with recitations of faith. People were born with their split souls, theirs to do with what they liked. If they obeyed the tenets of the Church and remembered the brilliance within them, they would rejoin Asten’s peace after their mortal trial ended. And if they followed the corruption of the Shadow accidentally birthed at the same time as humanity's creation, their soul would fade in the severed realm of Hell.
There were ghosts, but they were said to be born of trauma, souls that refused to let themselves be escorted beyond the ether. They weren’t anything to speak of gently and some didn’t even believe they were real. They couldn’t, shouldn’t, be created on purpose.
“That’s the province of Asten.” She could hear Ágnes’ own instructional sharpness in her tone, and she straightened from muscle memory. Though if Ágnes had been here, she would have no doubt been dragging Csilla away.
“And They gave me this gift.” Mihály raised his hand in oath. “The most pure way to worship is to fully understand creation, to never stop trying to see what They have truly given us. That’s why knowledge is counted among the virtues. And our souls are Their most perfect creation, as eternal as They are.”
“Yet They corrupted Themselves in the making of them.” Shadow had only come about in the creation of humankind. Even an Izir shouldn’t forget that.
A sad, sick meow echoed from somewhere in a dusty corner, pulling her from the argument. A thin cat shook against the clapboard wall. She was so dark, knotted and thin, she nearly blended in with the shadows.
“That’s the mother of those dead kittens,” Mihály sighed. “Skittish thing.”
Csilla scowled and walked diagonally towards the wall, giving the cat a wide berth. Then she crouched, held out her hand, and waited. She tried not to think about the man staring at her, watching as if she were another experiment.
Gingerly, the cat stepped forward. She was a skeleton—not many mice around this time of year, and she was clearly too weak to hop on the table and fight the tarp for what Mihály had laid out. She might not even be able to chew bones.
The pink nose touched Csilla’s fingertips, and Csilla stroked the ridges of her spine, trying not to even breathe. When she got close, Csilla snatched her up in her cloak. The cat yowled but didn’t fight. She didn’t have the strength to.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, sweet thing. I’m going to help you.” Her own breath quickened with the cat’s panicked panting. She turned back to Mihály, revulsion churning. She thought she could still help the church by finding the killer, or at least help herself to Mihály’s knowledge. But this was more than she could stand. She wasn’t lying when she said she wasn’t delicate; she’d treated festering wounds and wrung chicken necks, walked hours in freezing sleet delivering medicines. The difference was that was all in the service of life. There was no life here.
“I’m going back now.” Her shoulders shook with anger, but it was all directed at herself for daring to expect something better. “Forget I ever came to you.”
He arched an eyebrow. “You came looking for me. You believed I could help you.”
She cringed at the reminder as he continued.
“And I can do more for you than you even know if you stay with me.” The sweetness was back in his voice, softening her again despite her instincts.
“What do you mean?” Csilla looked back at the table, all the stiff and dried out corpses, their frozen yawns uncomfortably close to screams. “You said your powers don’t create souls and you hardly seem inclined to help me help the Church.”
“Create? No. But with the right vessel, I can move one.” He stepped in close and drew a finger across her cheek. She jerked back, the sudden familiarity a jolt. “I wasn’t prepared before, and animals have a fragile essence. No shadow, of course, but not quite brilliance either. And moving a soul into a creature that already has one never ends well. But you, empty but not dead—“
“Do it then.” Her heart hammered, and the cat squirmed. “If you can prove you’re right using me, you can leave them alone.”
He took a deep breath, closing his eyes for a moment. “First we need a soul. And a lot of blood to carry it.”
Her throat seized, dry and closing. “Whose blood?”
“And that is where our interests align. I agree the killer needs to be caught.”
Her heartbeat thudded in her throat as pieces slid together. “You want to give me the murderer’s soul?”
Mihály shook his head. “We could, if it comes to that, but what we need is his blood. Trust me, it’s better if we use someone else’s. It’s hard to work miracles with an open vein.”
“You know something about it, then?” Her voice was so quiet she wasn’t sure he could hear her. But his lips thinned, and he rolled up his sleeve. Along the river of his vein was the raised pale flesh of a scar. By the thickness, the cut that had made it had been deep, and she instinctively reached for it even though it was long healed.
Magic that came from the body was powerful. There was a reason the Church used it in vows, and spilled blood was prayed over and cut hair was burned. That power made it easy to turn dark. “But you’re an Izir.”
“Which is why I can’t work shadow magic.” His tone was even and the brilliance of his soul showed in his smile, melting her doubt. “Asten intended for us to have these physical forms, no matter what went wrong in the making of them. Let me help you. And you will help me.”
Her entire being curled with want at his promises, rich with power and more than she’d ever dared hope for. “But we still need a soul.” Her voice was nothing but a whisper.
“I have one in mind.” His eyes were lit with a look she recognized. Hope, undercut with desperation.
He talks to ghosts.He said he calls them.
“What—“
