“I spent a lot of time in Sol.” He gestured to the window where strings of shells from the southern coast hung, waiting for the weather to be warm enough for open shutters and music-calling breeze.
On the borders, then. “In the war?” The western territory of Pista was one that broke away from the Union nearly fifty years back.
He laughed. “Do I look like someone who went to war? Shall I tell you shiver tales of apostate generals and their demons?”
Csilla shook her head. She’d cared for veterans in her mercy work, and they didn’t speak of war so lightly. Pista hadn’t accepted the Severing, didn’t accept the Union, and soldiers claimed they had dark forces in their army. It was ridiculous- even before Pista had broken off, the demons had been sealed and the bloodlines that could spawn Sotir wiped clean. It was nothing but their powder weapons that made demons out of ordinary men.
Or so she would have thought before Shadow had leaked into their city. She knew everything about the creation of the world, very little about how it was actually run.
She took a deeper drink, the honey not quite covering the herbs, as if it could wash down her discomfort. “Thank you for that. I should be going.”
“Shouldn’t you have an escort? I’ll go with you if you like.”
She started to say it was kind of him, then shook her head. There was no guarantee their little trap had caught the person they were after, and if the killer was still looking for someone involved with Mihály, there was no better target than Csilla. It could also put Tamas in danger, and she didn’t want to draw that onto him.
But there were no footsteps trailing her, not even a prickle of unease as she walked towards the cemetery through gray streets and the scant moonlight. Curfew was soon, and though her hand and jaw still ached, Mihály needed her. It was enough to make her go on.
When she found him, he was asleep against the tomb, medicine bottle loose in hand. Sighing, she took his shoulders and propped him up a little straighter, then wiped the drool from his lips. Even that didn’t cause him to stir.
“Mihály.”
His eyelids fluttered. She pressed a palm to his cheek in case her hands would stir his blood. He turned his face and closed his eyes firmly.
“You’re going to let yourself freeze out here? You’re practically setting yourself up as bait.” And if she thought that would work, maybe she’d let him. But the killer only seemed interested in those who listened to him, and might even be with the Inquisitors now with everything gone so toppled over.
He didn’t respond. She looked around the cemetery. There was no one else save a dim figure wiping down a grave on the far side and a few ash-colored pigeons claiming the highest points of the domed stone to roost on.
“Mihály!” Perhaps she should kick him while she didn’t have a soul to blacken.
The person across the way was looking at them now. Csilla swallowed hard and crouched down close. “Come on. We have to go.”
“She’s not here yet.” Mihály’s words were brittle in their frustration. “She’s always here, but I can’t see her.” He curled his fingers around the side of the crypt as if he could shake the ghost from the stone.
“Do you think she’ll come at all? The seal has weakened. Maybe...maybe ghosts went with it.” It felt cruel to say, but Tamas had been right that sometimes treatment looked like torture from the outside.
“Asten lives in my blood, diluted as it is” he said simply. “The Church’s power doesn’t matter, gone or not.”
Not to you, she thought with a frown, though there was comfort in the reminder. The divine meant hope. Csilla tugged on his arm, but she’d have had better luck moving the stone. Perhaps a different tactic would be more persuasive. “I’m sure she doesn’t want you to freeze.”
He half-lifted his shoulder in what could have been a shrug. “I’ve stayed out in worse.”
Csilla sat down next to him, deftly removing the bottle and pouring the pungent remains on the ground, just in case he decided to self-medicate further back to where he couldn’t even listen to reason. It wouldn’t affect the sleep of the dead.
He opened his eyes to glare. “That was not easy to brew.”
She let the bottle drop on the brown and trampled grass. “I don’t care.”
“Well that’s a first.” There was a depth in his eyes like the river on days it was exceptionally still and dark. How could he be so educated and handsome and yet so completely, bafflingly self-destructive? The charming man he’d shown her the first night they’d met had all but disappeared.
“I care about you,” she said finally, “which is why I am here in this cemetery and not somewhere warmer. Why don’t you go see Tamas? He wants to help you, you know. He tried to help me.” She might not have welcomed his attempts to push her away, but that didn’t make them not a kindness.
A few snowflakes drifted to kiss her hair, sharp white crystals on the breath of the night air to remind them that while it might already be third month, the weather made no promises. Csilla stared at the clouded sky in despair. Men who drank froze quickly, and she had no way to move him. She unfastened her cloak and spread it across the pair of them, settling herself in beside him. He was barely warm.
“What are you doing?” The touch of concern in his voice softened the brittleness of her irritation.
“I want to meet this soul.” She had to face the girl he wanted her to become.
Mihály sighed. “I don’t know if you’ll be able to sense her, even if she’s here, even with my power. Have you ever seen a ghost?”
Some of the novitiates whispered of things haunting the halls of the church, rites gone wrong and angry spirits, people who had loved too much to even give it up for eternal joy, those who feared eternal cold. Some of the braver ones tried to summon them and had their ears boxed for it.
Any 'ghosts' were the cats, with their quick feet and ability to appear and disappear like spirits.
“No,” she admitted. “I looked for them, though.” For a while, imagining her family had died had seemed a more pleasant fantasy than the idea that they’d left her. “No one came and asked for me, so I thought…” She’d checked and wiped every monument in the cemetery, offered candles and wine and endless tears. The spirits hadn’t seemed to notice, though the mercy priests praised her secretly selfish dedication to the dead.
Her chest squeezed with the shame of it.
Mihály rubbed his eyes as if trying for sobriety. Then he shifted and put an arm around her, pulling her to his chest with an awkward thump.
It was like being embraced by a drunk but friendly bear and she squirmed, but he held fast. Finally, she sighed and relaxed, letting her cheek settle on the coarse wool of his coat.
His breath slowed. He was falling asleep again.
Tiny snowflakes landed on her makeshift blanket, sparkling crystals glittering for a moment before melting into dark spots on the fabric.
Where were the ghosts? And where in this cemetery did she belong?
The sounds of the city beyond the walls grew fainter with people making their way in for the night. Her nostrils burned with every frosted breath as the snowfall picked up.
