Bled and marked for the Church.
Called to service, just like she'd always wanted.
4
Csilla
There were three things everyone knew to be true of the Izir: he was beautiful, he was holy, and he never turned down wine. It had been easy enough to steal the bulb-shaped bottle now sloshing in her leather sack. If Csilla had a soul, she would have earned another black mark against her. And if she thought too hard about what was coming, she’d be drinking the wine.
He was a heretic. That was what she had to keep reminding herself as she trudged to the farthest of the eight city districts. The Izir was a heretic, no matter who his ancestors were. Asten had given harder tasks to Their followers in ages past. The Prelate had said it himself, and her stinging palm reminded her of who she belonged to with every nervous twitch of her fingers. Obedience was a virtue: obedience was submission.
The snow was thicker on this side of Silgard, and the roads darker, with many close-crammed houses that couldn’t afford a door lantern. Just two days ago a body had been found pressed into the squelching mud of the riverbank. The thought of the girl lying dead in the night for hours chilled worse than the air, and Csilla said a quiet prayer that her departed soul was at peace, that she’d been good enough in life to join the brilliance in the ether. She quickened her steps, touching the necklace to keep the chain from sawing at her.
In the square, orange fires burned in baskets set high on wooden pillars, flames flickering with each pass of breeze. The gathered crowd was a flock of ravens in the smoky light, all dark coats and anxious voices. A few specks of white and green—patterned kerchiefs, children’s gowns—peeped here and there as the throng shifted, but everything else was navy and black, colors that wouldn’t show soot or stain in the months when they couldn’t be easily washed.
Snippets of conversation reached her ears, wants and wishes and fearful requests, some in languages she didn’t speak. Anyone could petition to live in Silgard, as long as their soul was clean and they swore by the virtues. But these people, their faith so palpable it was almost a chorus, weren’t here for Asten. Their praise and yearning were all gifts for the Izir.
“There is so much hope beyond what the church offers you, cousins. There is comfort to be had, even in the unknowable. Death is not another Severing. The worlds here and there are not so far.”
The Izir’s impassioned lilt carried even to the edges of the crowd where Csilla lurked as a flickering shadow, her shaking hands tight around the poison bottle. He spoke in the rhythm of liturgy, his tone as resonant as the bells that rang the hours. No wonder the crowd had gone pliant. Csilla paused after every step further into the throng, his words snagging the ever-present hollow in her chest and pulling her closer as surely as if he had her by the hand.
She wouldn’t call it Shadow, but it was honey-sweet temptation. Csilla tried to block the words, keep her focus on the bone around her neck and the promise she had made. The city built by Asten’s own angels was proof of the truth. And in the face of such undeniable, beautiful proof, who would sin?
But people did. Even now, they shoved each other, trying to be the closest to the blessed man. Their dark desires rolled off them easily, stirred by his presence. Greed. Wrath. Lust, in flushed cheeks and grasping hands.
The hard glass of the wine bottle bit into her ribs as she pressed it close.
“We’re meant to relish this existence and learn, not cower. There is a reason knowledge is counted among the virtues. You’ve no reason to fear questions, less to fear ghosts.”
His words were met with raised hands and murmured prayers. The crowd began to shuffle forward for whispers, offerings, a final word. Idolatry.
The worshipers shifted as they took their final blessings and dispersed, and Csilla took her first full look at the man she was to kill. He was more simply dressed than she’d imagined—two buttons on his overjacket had been resewn badly, and his boots showed obvious scuffing. All of it was the simple black worn by priests who worked among the public, even his four-mark carved from obsidian. But he was as tall and had a face as finely formed as she’d expected, with light reddish-brown hair as sleek as summer fox fur. His beard was neatly trimmed, his eyes warm, and every inch of him seemed to glow from within, an aura that made her palms itch to press together in supplication, to touch her forehead to those damaged boots. No wonder there were at least a dozen stragglers eager for a few moments of personal attention.
A man with bloodshot eyes approached, and the Izir touched his face without hesitation, running his thumbs over the man’s crusted lashes and murmuring something Csilla couldn’t hear.
When the man opened his eyes again, they were clear and filled with adoration.
Csilla pressed a shaking hand to her lips, breathing awe. A miracle. Elmere had been right. This man could do real miracles.
And she was going to kill him.
He continued through the crowd dispensing touches of grace— a word to a person with a swollen knee, a brush of the forehead for a boy whose mother claimed he was filled with demons. Csilla frowned at that. There were no demons in Silgard, and if the woman needed the Izir to tell her so, she should never have been allowed to live in the brilliant city.
The Izir must have known it, but he checked the boy for marks and blood anyway, reassuring the woman with a gentle hand that she and her child were well and the trouble was only earthly nightmares. The wrapped cloth she passed him bulged with tribute.
Then he was in front of Csilla, and she was all too aware of the jealous stares of the crowd.
“Are you here for a blessing?” His smile was kind, practiced, the face she’d seen on Ágnes as she rubbed the backs of small ones who wouldn’t live through the night.
“I...” She couldn’t give him poison where there were still people to see. “I have something I want to discuss with you. It’s very personal.”
Her cheeks burned at the accusing voices of those still waiting.
“Oh?” He stepped close, and she breathed in the spice of incense on his skin, and under that, something clean like fresh water. “And I see you’ve brought an offering.”
Her stomach dropped, and he reached out before Csilla could pull the bottle back. When his fingers brushed the glass, it glowed as bright as the glare of sun on morning snow.
Csilla winced, snatching it to her chest as a curse threatened to slide from her mouth. She’d been sure the bottle hadn’t been through rites yet.
But all bottles were equally dull to her touch.
The Izir jerked his hand away. “That’s consecrated wine. Why is it dark?”
He was right. If it were held by any souled person, the bottle would be dusted with the pale golden sheen sparked by the latent connection between humanity and their creator.
“I...”
He gestured to the eye of Asten melted into the glass, a sign of church make. “And it was stolen.”
Csilla’s heart seized. She should have come up with a better plan. But when she looked into his eyes, there was no judgment there. He seemed...delighted.
She stepped back. People were never delighted to meet something like her.
“Well,” he said, looking her over more carefully as she shuffled her feet on the ground, willing them to sink and save her from this humiliating turn, “it seems we do have something to discuss.”
She should have dropped the bottle and let it smash, run and been done with the whole business. But if she failed and lost her home in the church, she’d be lost herself, and all these souls believing the Izir would be damned. Only the church could lead them back to brilliance. The thought came with a note of sweetness more tantalizing than even the heresy.
