“No, my dearest, no. I’m ready. I was ready before he took me out of there.” She closed her eyes. “Promise me before I go.”
“No, please let him buy you time. I’m...” But there was no honest way to finish the sentence. She was never going to be welcomed back. She clutched her skirt in bone-white fingers, hating the richly dyed wool. It was no help at all. “I’m sorry. I tried very hard to be good. And I did one thing.” She wanted Ágnes to know. “I think I felt Them. It was so much more than you ever...”
Ágnes was still. Csilla wiped the woman’s forehead again, but the woman’s skin was no longer twitching under her touch, and when she put her palm to the sunken cheek there was no response. Her chest was unmoving. No breath. No pulse.
Impotent horror seized Csilla, denial thrumming with her heartbeat.
She’d seen this moment dozens of times, offered comfort. Why had no one ever told her there was no comfort to be had? Ágnes was with the eternal now, her work done. Her face had lost all its tension; there was clear peace. It was supposed to be a joyful time.
When Madame Varga died, a flood of divinity had healed her and brought her back, unblemished and as whole as graced Rozalia. Csilla raised a hand, waiting for the shine.
Nothing.
Mihály reached for her, but she shifted away.
“Csilla.” His voice was tinged with hurt, but there wasn’t enough free in her to care.
“She died, and my last words to her were defending you.” She should have been thanking her, telling her how much she loved her, not filling her last moments with worry. She put her hand to Ágnes’ cheek, still warm, and stroked the thin hair that was straw-brittle under her fingers, until the woman’s chest was wet with drops of dark dampness on the mercy gray. The faithful spoke of turning their pain over to Asten, no burden too great for Them. It would be such a comfort to have that option. Csilla would have to keep everything alone. Whatever had touched her was gone.
“Thank you for bringing me.” She forced the grief down into numbness. It wasn’t easy; the grief was very large, and the heart that needed to hold it was broken. “We should go back. Madame Varga will wake up. She’ll want you there, and she’ll have questions.” They wouldn’t have answers, but they could be there.
“I don’t want to be there, so stay here as long as you need.”
She wasn’t overly kind, but she was still a person. And she was alive. “That’s cruel.”
Mihály recoiled. “Cruel? Do you even know what I’m doing for you? Do you think I like being surrounded by Evie’s things? Do you think I like sharing the old woman’s bed? Virtues and vices, the things I’ve done to her to keep her eyes off you, and you can’t even stay put and be grateful.”
“You what?” Csilla spun, fists clenching. Something flashed back in her mind, a diluted memory of being choked by the scent of goats milk and roses, a dark pleasure at the novelty of slitting the woman’s throat instead of kissing it.
Mihály’s laugh was bitter. “You think she lets me stay for old times’ sake? Because you’re such a dear?”
“That’s…” It was more than a sin. It was cruelty itself. “She shouldn’t be allowed to live here.” She shouldn’t be the one Asten chose to live. If Csilla had one miracle in her, it was wasted.
“It’s not much of a sin. I agreed to it.”
Horror and empathy warred in her chest. “You shouldn’t have…”
He grinned, but it was the hollow grin of a skull with no beauty to it. “It doesn’t matter what I do, I’m blessed.”
That dissolved her bitterness. She was only blaming him because he made himself a target. He hadn’t asked to be what he was any more than she had.
“It’s for you.” There was a bite to his last word, a hint of sheathed claws. No wonder he hadn’t cared when he saw the woman soaked in blood. “I never wanted it.”
He’d only wanted Evie. And that was what had damned them all. She tried to find the words to break him, but she wasn’t Ilan. She wasn’t made to hurt people.
But she had. The both of them had.
And the church needed to know.
“Find Ilan,” she said quietly. “Bring him here.” He would deal with them fairly if nothing else. He would know what to do next. And it would give her a moment to think of how she was going to tell Mihály that not only had he been the one to place the targets on the victims’ backs, he’d put the knives there as well. “Please.” She reached out to touch his hand, just to show she forgave him. She always would.
At the brush of skin on skin, the air around them lit, silver and cold.
Her breath caught at the shine and a rolling whisper surrounded her. Once a visiting priest from a coastal parish had brought a shell and let Csilla hold it to her ear. They told her it contained the voice of the sea, something so vast you couldn’t see the end of it, or hope to know its depths. The metaphor had been blatant, even to a twelve-year-old.
But this sound was like that.
Csilla drew her hand back, and the light and gentle roar dimmed.
“What in creation...” Mihály took a strand of her hair and curled it around his finger, where it became a shining cord. “How?” The word was half whisper, half prayer. He touched her hair, her lips, her neck, leaving a ghostly trail of brilliance as she shook.
“Find Ilan,” she whispered again, staring at the silver glowing in her fingernails. “Quickly.”
29
Ilan
The fire had been smothered save for a few smoldering heaps still being beaten out. The majority of the clergy had moved from the broken church to other homes opened to them by the citizens. It gave him room to hunt.
The stone buildings and the stable were fine, though Vihar had kicked a wall in panic and his coat was soaked through, and the dog whined with strained barks. It seemed a smart choice to take the hound while wandering a drafty and empty cathedral. There were traces of chemicals in the smoldering remains of the granary, on the stone outside the chapter house, in the gardens beds that had yet to be prepared and would now grow poison in the upcoming year. Whoever had done this had known where there were cracks in the church. A cuckoo in the nest of sparrows.
He rubbed a further spill of snow-white grains between his fingers. This was someone's violent science, not magic.
Faces of acolytes, priests, and elders flitted through his mind, each a potential enemy. Even when they had the glass, it could only tell them who had sinned, not the nature of the crime. Priests gave in to Shadow like anyone else, were punished by him like anyone else. But of all the ones he'd ever struck, none seemed to hate the church this much. Even those who only turned to Asten's house to escape abuse or poverty were grateful for what they'd received. They still attended service days, painted themselves in Arany's gold.
No one watched them now. If the union she died to bless was now corrupted, the eyes of the church dark, there were no more blessings on the gates. Another shadow war would come on them as things woke from long sleep.
