She held herself closer, unable to look at him. “And if it doesn’t work at all? You’ll still help me?”
“I said I would.” He reached over and tapped her lightly on the nose, forcing her to look up. “I’m not perfect, but I’m no liar.”
Well. It depended on one’s definition of lies by omission. But his pain was so raw she couldn’t bear to agitate it more.
“You said you know she’s still here. I’d like to...” Her voice faltered. She believed, she did, but calling ghosts was more of a prank, the kind of thing older children faked to scare the younger ones on new moon nights. But they’d never had an actual ghost to try on. And there was more magic in the world than she knew. She’d seen it in those shivering drops of blood. In the fact that Mihály knew his lover was still in the world, even if all Csilla saw was dust kicked in the air of a too-empty house. “I’d like to meet her.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think you can.”
“When do you see her?”
He closed his eyes, lips curved in a mocking smile. “All the time. She’s always there, in the corners, in the shadows. But I don’t know how to make anyone else see.”
The loneliness there was drowning. She put a hand on his arm, though she knew the small anchor wouldn't help. “What about when you sleep? Does that better?”
The slightest shake of his head, then a shiver down his body. “Sleep is worse.”
She sighed and settled on the far side of the bed, propping herself on a pillow. They couldn’t help each other in this. She should go.
But he looked so sad.
“Do you want me to tell you a story?” She’d told the younger children stories as best she could when they cried. She wasn’t very creative, but it rarely mattered. Even saint tales, so overtold ears closed as soon as they started, could help when all someone wanted was a soft voice and the comfort of someone making time for them.
He stretched out and rolled over to half look at her, and some of the darkness in his eyes had lightened with actual amusement. Good.
“You’re so bad at lies, I can’t imagine you tell interesting stories.”
She scowled, but he wasn’t wrong. “Why don’t you tell me one, then?”
His head was tilted so he was speaking into her shoulder, his arm moving to drape across her. Her breath caught, but it would be cruel to shake him off. She’d endured far worse in the name of help.
“Once, there was a boy who could turn his touch into gold.” His voice was sleepy and touched with medicine. “His parents took him from place to place so he could repay his debt to them, but it was never enough. Finally, someone offered them a very large sum of gold to take him off their hands.” He yawned. “And then when it turned out the gold he made turned to ash the next morning, they tossed him out again.”
“That’s not a very good story.” She tried to keep the pity out of her voice.
He chuckled. “Well, it wasn’t a very good childhood.” He caught her injured hand and brought it to his lips. She froze at the contact.
Then he rolled over. “Good night, Csilla. I think I will get some sleep.”
She watched his back until his breathing was even and deep, then started to ease off the side.
He shuddered so hard it shook the bedframe, a cold sweat on his skin. “Mihály?”
His eyes were open, the pupils wide and inky and unfocused. His lips and tongue were moving with the zeal of prayer, but no sound emerged.
She rose to her knees to turn him on his side- he didn’t look nauseous, but there was no telling. He grabbed her wrist with such force that it felt like he could break it.
“Mihály!” She shook him as best she could even as her stomach turned and her panicked heart raced, but though his eyes fell shut again, his grip didn’t ease. The pillow beneath his head was damp with sweat, the palm against her skin cool and slick as she twisted. This must have been what Tamas had been talking about with his spells, but among all the bottles, she didn’t see any true medicine.
His fingers finally softened, and the thumb that had been jammed onto her vein changed to sweet stroking. His eyes opened again, lighting with surprise. “Csilla...” He looked at where his hand still wrapped her wrist, as if it weren't part of him. “What did I do to you?”
“What you’re doing now, that’s all,” she answered, but when he pulled away there was blooming red that would soon turn withering blue and black. “Are you alright now?” She kept her voice soft and even. Mercy workers who dealt with soldiers or other victims of violence spoke of similar visions, the way a mind tried to protect itself. A bruised wrist was nothing.
“I’m so sorry.” The whisper barely reached her ears when he reached for her again, reverent as he brushed the pain.
There it was. Light. Purity. Her heart thrummed a divine cadence, and the ache in her skin eased.
“There,” he breathed, bending forward to rest his forehead against hers. “Better?”
Csilla cradled the tiny miracle of her newly uninjured arm. “Better,” she lied, both in words and the way she forced herself still when he kissed her brow, his exhalation still sour with drink.
As soon as his breaths were regular again, she slipped away.
18
Csilla
"You're sure about this?" Mihály pried the wooden boards off the stable floor, broken flakes of hay now pushed all over the room as they cleared the space.
"I know all the back ways into the church," Csilla replied.
Hopefully this was what Ilan had meant when he had asked them to come in quietly. If not, they were in for a dark, cold wander.
The tunnels under the church ran fifteen meters deep along the foundations, coupled with wells and trenches washing waste out to the river and cesspools best avoided. Some passages stretched out under the eight districts of the city, quiet except for the occasional sinkhole. The diggers had thought that one day there may be an emergency that required quick removal of the most holy treasures or safe passage for the Incarnate. Now the tunnels were sealed off at their ends and nothing more than places for church-raised children to scare each other with ever more outlandish stories of the ghosts of saints and mad anchorites chasing visions in the dark.
"And what's down there besides rats and the dead?" He heaved again, and Csilla winced as slivers of old wood shattered.
