“They saved a place for the recruits near the front.” She pointed. “Best view from there.”
I tracked the angle of her finger to a narrow channel cut through the crowd. Otis and Isla were seated on a long, low bench. The siblings looked haggard, even from this distance.
Violette hurried ahead, and I stared after her without moving until Kit sidled up to me again and threw his cloak across my shoulders.
“Come on,” he said. “Can’t keep them waiting.”
Since frailty was my excuse to cozy up to Kit, I overplayed it a bit. I wanted Violette to seemyhands all over him for a change, though in reality, it was far subtler than that. We walked through the parted crowd and took our designated seats, and I leaned into the crook of Kit’s arm. We’d never been close like this in Ashpoint, so even his hand tucked around my side, obscured by the folds of our cloaks, felt scandalous.
A woman in a fur-trimmed cloak walked out to stand between two wooden tables. Her beady eyes and stringy, graying hair were familiar to me, but I didn’t place her inmy memory until she opened her mouth and I saw the row of jagged, pointy teeth.
It was Matina, the woman who had interrogated me when Kit and I first arrived. I shrank from her inspection as she scanned the row of initiates.
“Welcome, all,” she said in a gravelly drone. “A new day is upon us. We gather to pay homage to Eeus, and to celebrate the sacrifices given in his honor.”
Behind her, the Ossuary doors opened, and two figures emerged, each carrying a naked body. My eyes widened, and I battled between the urge to look away and the need to understand what was taking place. I glanced at Kit and found him staring straight ahead, his features stony and set. He didn’t even blink.
I looked forward as well, though I found it a struggle to focus on the corpses being hefted toward the open tables on either side of Matina when I was so consumed with staring at the people who carried them.
Reimond’s long, lithe body draped across Anders’s burly arms. I searched the crowd for Thoma while bracing for the horror I expected to find on his face. A cursory search did not reveal him, so I returned to the display before me and the person I should have noticed first. Rosie crept forward, struggling with the weight of another woman’s body.
It felt unseemly to scrutinize the woman’s exposed form, her breasts sagging and long brown hair swept back from her profile.
“Kit,” I gasped and grabbed his knee.
He gave a scarce nod like he understood, but I couldn’t keep myself from blurting out, “Kit, it’s Tessa.”
“I know.” He bobbed his head with more force this time. His arm around me had grown tight, fingers sinking into my ribs with painfulpressure.
Matina waited until the bodies were stretched out, flat on their backs with their faces aimed toward the sky, before continuing. “These initiates succumbed to the third Oath and, in doing so, served our god with their greatest and last. Now, we see their remains given to Eeus, that they may become part of his essence and his return.”
Anders and Rosie pulled out long, curved knives and set them on the tables beside the bodies. The blades glinted in the bleak, gray light.
Kit had warned me. He said that the initiates who had passed would have their remains prepared for Eeus. But I was a farmer, not a hunter. The only things I’d seen “prepared” in this manner were chickens and an occasional hog. To see a human treated the same way…
Nausea surged into my throat, and I choked it back down.
I scanned the crowd again, having lost track of Violette after she directed us to our seats, but she was easy enough to find. She and Merrick occupied high backed chairs against the outer wall of the Ossuary, next to Levitt. They looked like two kings and a queen lording over the ceremony.
The cold seemed to invade me, sinking from my cheeks to my feet as I gazed at the tables once more.
Front and center, Matina spoke louder than ever. “We commit this sacrifice, knowing that suffering is the key that unlocks Eeus’s fondest blessings. May our commitment echo through the void eternally.” Stepping aside, she bowed to the initiates hovering over their dead peers before telling them, “You may begin.”
Anders’s face creased in concentration as he wielded the knife skillfully, starting at the top of Reimond's chest and drawing a line slowly down.
It was silent work, and he was quick about it. Merciless. He carved pale skin from bone and peeled it back in nearly bloodless layers. I knew enough from butchering pigs to realize they must have drained the bodies beforehand to keep the mess to a minimum. While he progressed with little hesitation, Rosie had an entirely opposite reaction.
She shivered like a reed in the wind, fumbling with the knife and wiping the tears that raced down her cheeks. I wished I could go to her and hug her, somehow shield her from the atrocity she was being forced to commit. When she finally managed to take the weapon in both hands and raise it over Tessa’s lifeless form, I ducked my head into Kit’s chest.
Kit’s breath stuttered, and I wanted to cover his eyes too. Was this the kind of thing that frequented his nightmares? Bodies being butchered while people passively looked on?
Kit jostled me. “Pen, you have to…” He didn’t finish, but I knew.
Steeling myself, I turned forward once more, staring past the macabre display at the Ossuary’s arched wooden doors. I remembered Edgar’s proud claims to have helped carve those towering works of art. His contribution to the city center, a grand achievement. I wonder who else would think of him when they looked at the old building, and how long his legacy would live after his death.
So much death.
I focused so hard I could have memorized the grain in the aged oak. I counted the bolts on the wrought iron hardware. And, when I was done with that, I started counting the cobbled stones stacked up the building’s towering edifice.
