The mother hesitated but passed the child over with exhausted arms. There was a high flush on his freckled cheeks, and heat radiated from him like a furnace. At least she felt like herself again as she made soothing noises to the child and felt him relax.

“It’s dangerous to be out at night,” Csilla cautioned, adjusting the boy to rest on her shoulder. “You must have heard what’s been happening.”

“It can’t be worse than Orban.” The woman reached out to smooth the boy’s sweaty hair as he quietly groaned.

“Is that where the illness is?” Orban was a two-week ride away, but there’d been no call for extra hands or supplies from their parishes.

“If only.” Her eyes were steely. “Has the news truly not reached Silgard?”

“It hasn’t reached me,” Csilla answered.

The woman reached around her daughter, pulling her close even as the carriage jostled. “There was a creature sealed in our woods after the Severing, and it woke.”

“Woke?”

She shifted her daughter into her lap and put a hand over the upturned ear. “Woke and took a body. Took a girl, then killed her mother. Only one of our priests could work a banishment. Everyone else was powerless.”

Csilla clutched the boy tighter in horror. “Have they sent—”

“They’ve sent no one, that I know of. Our bishop said the fact that only one priest could claim the glory meant it was no real demon at all. But the old black mark is gone. My brother went and looked. That’s why we’re here.”

She didn’t want to ask, but she had to. “The body of the mother...Was it...defiled in any way? Did you see it?”

“Unfortunately I did. But she was just dead.” The woman blinked like she wanted to cry, but that well was dry and filled in. “At least in Silgard there’s none of that. People are good, and if not good, at least human.”

That’s what everyone new to the city would think.

The cab slowed again, but the hoofbeats turned quick and nervous. Csilla slid back the panel. The dim glow of lights showed nothing without the ability to look ahead.

“What is it?”

“Looks like everyone is on the streets, the blackcoats too. Maybe a fire?”

Or murder. The woman was still looking at her with hope. Csilla’s fingers danced over the brooch pinned to her dress. The sapphires were probably real.

Before she could think too much about how she was robbing both an old woman and the dead, she pulled it off and passed it up through the roof slot. “Take them to the mercy hall by the merchants’ guild.” She touched the woman’s knee. “Ask for Katherina if they won't let you in. And if they have to send you back, this should pay for that, too.”

The woman thanked her for doing so much, but it didn’t warm her when she knew she couldn’t do nearly enough.

Csilla opened the door and hurried to the throng, searching for Mihály. He should have stood well above the crowd, but there was no sign of him. The people she passed were pressed tight together, faces worried, and when she reached out to touch an arm, the person jumped like she was scalding.

“What happened?”

The man drew his finger across his throat like a blade.

Csilla swayed on her feet. So close. “Inside?” Where was Mihály?

“No, out the back and a ways down. It was Janos.”

The name meant nothing to her, but her heart ached all the same.

“Did you see the Izir?”

“Oh, you’re the girl who was with him.” The man looked her over with fresh eyes. He left not long after you did, said he was going home. Lucky he did. The rest of us have to freeze out here until we get permission to leave from the priests.”

No doubt waiting for her now, disappointed. She sighed, taking a measured breath to release her frustration, when a familiar figure caught her eye. The rhythm of Ilan’s sure-footed steps coming towards her echoed in her chest, and fear closed her throat. The iron in his gaze was the weight of every right thing she’d given up, everything Mihály had told her. He would only have to touch a weak spot, and she would confess everything.

He was famously good at finding weak spots, and she was already thin-skinned with guilt.

She smiled through her shaking. He’d been kind to her once. More than that, really. He kept the Church’s tenants even when they contradicted his nature.

Ilan eyed her gown and its embroidered vinework and her pearl-beaded slippers. “What are you doing here?”

“The Izir brought me. But I left before anything happened.”

A fresh light entered Ilan’s pale eyes. “And yet you’re here.”

He slipped a leather cuff over her wrist and snapped the leash tight.

14

Csilla

The cell floor chilled, sharp with chips of crumbled stone, and Csilla kept her knees up to her chest as she shivered against the damp. The space had a hollow carved out for lamp oil and holy books, a crusted drainage hole on the other side, and was otherwise bare. Somewhere in the walls and beneath the floors was the labyrinth of tunnels for ferrying holy relics and keeping the seal of Silgard safe. In a more peaceful time, this was one of the cells where the faithful went when they wished to give up the world in its entirety, but now it had been partially converted to house the church’s enemies, and the cells were full of people awaiting their turn for a whipping or for their family to gather enough money to pay off their sins. She’d heard that Mihály’s theories inspired petty crimes as people lost faith in the church, but this seemed far beyond people testing the limits of what they judged a sin.

She put her forehead down on her knees, surrendering to the dark and praying for calm for her rolling stomach. The church would forget about her and leave her to dissolve like the water-eaten cracks in the wall. And that would be if she were lucky.

The scrape of a door opening had her on her feet, face pressed against the flaking iron of the bars. Grunting. The thud of boots. A wet, rough slap of flesh on stone.

They were dragging in an unconscious man.

No. Even the unconscious had some movement—the twitch of an eyelid or breath at their lips.

This was a body. The light of their torches highlighted the trail of blood streaking the floor. The man yanked Csilla’s door open and deposited the corpse with a squashed thud too much like the delivery of a pig carcass to the kitchens.

What once was a man was now all fish-belly white flesh and smears of copper.

“We thought a mercy girl wouldn’t mind. Everywhere else is full.”

They’d never been full. But she had no time to reflect on that when she took in the body.

The victim was face down splayed on the stone, mole-dotted skin on depraved display. She touched her heart. They could have at least given him a blanket for dignity, and she didn’t even have a cape to offer him.

The marks along his back were still smeared, hard to see in the dim light. Corpses had never bothered her- she’d worked with the mercy crews since she could toddle, and flesh was flesh. But as she touched the sliced skin, a pulsing shiver worked its way up her spine and set her scars burning. She traced the cuts the same way the scholars had made her trace their books. That had only been finger over paper. Now on this fresh human velum, her fingers froze. The cooling body couldn’t explain the sudden frostbite twinge.

She moved to the crushed column of the victim’s throat, her small hands where the murderer’s had been, a whispered prayer to the hanged saint Angyalka on her lips. Angyalka had lived and was blessed with the visions that led to the naming of the first Incarnate, even though the bruises never faded. The blotchy purple under her fingers would be holy if it weren’t so cold.