A miracle. There was no other word for what she’d witnessed: it was the violent transformative nature of the divine. A perfect death and resurrection.
There had been no official miracles for centuries. There especially shouldn’t be one now. She’d felt the light die underneath her.
“Just...stay still,” she told the twisting woman, trying to collect her thoughts in some sort of order. “I’ll get...”
Tamas. Leading her to bed. Pushing her down the stairs.
Talking to someone in the room who wasn’t her. And then nothing until she was faced with a corpse, in a blankness of stolen dream time. That rejuvenated corpse, now talking to her.
Csilla choked back a cry, a hand slapping her mouth. She tasted salt and copper.
“I feel lightheaded,” Madame Varga was saying, voice slipping in the way of someone in the midst of hallucination. “Get me some water, please?” At that her eyes slipped shut, and she slumped over, the red on her face an accusing badge.
Csilla slapped her own cheek, stinging against scratches she didn’t remember getting and drawing tears. There was no sudden jolt into waking, and when she looked down the dropped knife between her feet pointed back at her in accusation.
This was how the demon had been hiding, directed by Tamas’ knowledge from his years of walking the Union. Neither she nor Mihály would have knowingly said yes to Shadow. But Shadow was always willing to lie.
Asten Themself had intervened. They’d saved Madame Varga. It was worthy of praise. She’d felt the light herself, beautiful and far colder than anything she’d ever imagined.
When she touched the back of her neck, all her old scars were gone.
27
Ilan
Violent orange and red advanced on the outer buildings in a hot and ashen wind that stole all the chill of the night, demolishing boards and licking heavy against stone. Panicked people crammed the courtyard, shouting, carts coming from all quarters with over-full buckets of water and muck from the river to try to smother the flames. Someone had spread a large quilt over the stones beneath the statue of Arany, and a few injured souls sheltered beneath her many wings, her presence shadowing their puckered and blistered skin as dripping gold painted their wounds.
The cathedral had been attacked, and he hadn’t been there to stop it. He was the one who deserved to be scoured over this, and when the flames died he would kneel in what was left of holiness until his knees bled, whip himself until the pain matched his loathsome lapse in judgment.
“What happened?” Mihály ran up behind him, panting. Ilan’s eyebrows rose; he would have thought the Izir would have stayed in his carriage, going to what was important to him.
“You followed me?”
“Of course. If people are hurt I can do something.”
That was uncharacteristically thoughtful, but no reason to question small miracles. Everyone’s hands were helpful in a crisis.
“Go find the injured, then. Help them if you can.”
Ilan’s eyes swept the building, trying to piece together the origins of the fire. The smoke had a strange sting—not the clean burn of wood or even the sooty one of oil, but something chemical, a smell he associated with feverish childhood days trapped indoors- sharp medicine and spilled paints and wood finish. As buckets of water were dumped the heated wood and nails sizzled the gagging scent intensified.
Heavy steps echoed behind him. The Prelate.
“You know how weak we are.” He lowered his voice. “And you bring the heretic here.” Rhythmic shouts and splashes from buckets of hauled-in water sounded behind them, regular as bells.
“He can heal the burned. This isn’t a time to question what little of the angel’s gifts remain in the world.” Fuck, he was defending the Izir. Small miracles indeed. “What happened? This was clearly no cooking fire.”
“One of ours said he saw a flash like dark deliverance.” Abe touched his mark.
Ilan’s heated blood went ice. “The demon?” Or the killer with his dark magic. Perhaps the seal could be washed by more than blood, and the ashes of the faithful would scour it useless all the same.
But demons didn’t feel like this, as he now knew. The loathing and guilt in his throat were a meal he made for himself, the burning well-deserved as it went down, and Arany’s flowing tears told him there was still something blessed on this land.
“We haven’t let anyone else in the city,” Abe replied, which wasn’t an answer.
“And the seal?” Ilan sucked in a breath at the same moment the priest sighed. The moment he’d first bled for the faith on the mock seal in Saika was still one he saw when he closed his eyes, the presence of Asten’s power and the sure knowledge of his purpose crystalized into a single perfect moment. When he’d clenched his fist and let his blood run, the answering shine was whiter than glare on a snowy peak, and his parish priest had kissed both his cheeks and told him their church had never seen someone so blessed.
“Still hidden. I don’t want to risk going down there while this is going on.”
Wise. More than rats and cats might follow.
“Is there something I can do?” He fumbled for the knife sheathed quiet and patient in his boot, pulse strong and worried. He would open a vein over the dying divinity, punishment and penance in one.
“It won’t help.” Abe curled his weathered hand over Ilan’s fingers. His skin was a mass of nicks and fresh scabs. “Nothing helps, but as long as Arany weeps, there’s hope. Talk to the witnesses. I’m going to count the dead.”
Ilan touched his mark as he headed towards the makeshift coalescence in the courtyard. It would be a good thing for the victims to die under Asten’s bright and eternal eye. Better if it happened quickly.
One man was sitting up. Mattias, one of the Inquisitorial priests who’d served under him till everything shifted. The man’s right cheek was splotched in fetid purple-black, his eyelid bugling and swollen shut, lashes gone to cinders. If anyone had had a good view, it was him.
“Can you speak?” Ilan asked, and Mattias’ nodded slowly, shifting so his uninjured eye could catch Ilan.
“It hurts, but I can.” His voice was gravelled with the pain.
“Were you there when the fire started? Where was it?” Everyone had a different story, when they noticed, what had burned first. Mattias was the worst off, the most likely to have seen something.
It still galled that if he’d been there, he might have been able to stop it. Mattias’ eye would have been the least of what he could have saved.
