I have prospered.
Avrum
Even having never visited the servant rooms before, I have no trouble finding them. I descend the only staircase off the kitchens and enter into a slender hallway, barely wide enough for me to fit as I walk.
Against the stone walls, only two of the gas lamps cut through the darkness. I pass doors on both sides, while the sound of water dripping echoes from somewhere far off, and the smell of mold tickles my nose.
“Avrum.” Lysander’s harsh whisper makes me jump. “Avrum, over here.”
I run over to the nearest door and lean closer to the wood. “Lysander, are you there?”
“Yes,” he sighs.
“Are you hurt at all?”
“Not besides my pride.”
I glance from left to right, expecting to see a guard, but see none.
“Keagan left,” Lysander says, as if reading my mind. “Fils de salope.But he should be back any minute now.” Even though I can’t see him, I can sense the eye roll just from his tone. “He gets great enjoyment out of keeping me here, but he was a little wounded that I wasn’t sentenced to the guillotine.”
I try not to smile. The thought of displeasing Keagan does bring me some satisfaction.
“Keagan may be outside watching the end of Cornelius’s service,” I tell him. “Henri had his body set on a pyre and burned.”
“Ah, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”
There’s a pause.
“Lysander?” I lean in closer to the door and lower my voice even more. “Those scars on your arm. How—”
“Malcolm,” is all he says.
“Malcolm gave them to you?”
“Yes. He marks everyone he turns. I am just one of many.”
“Does that mean Henri has scars?” I ask, almost scared of the answer.
“He hides his as well.”
I remember the vicious lines across Lysander’s forearm, the raised, pink flesh zigzagged in a way that made it look like it had been done on purpose. How did Henri conceal his?
“Why does he do this? I just don’t understand it.”
“Malcolm searches for those who are loyal to the old ways and for those who have wasted their lives living in sin. The latter are given one chance to redeem themselves…” His voice wavers. I wait for him to continue.
“If they can’t, Malcolm brands them with their sin and curses them. They must live forever with their guilt and without salvation, as I told you before.”
“He’s mad.”
“You must remember,” Lysander goes on, “Malcolm is one of the first of us. Created in a time when faith was the only explanation for living. Things were much different then.”
“But he is no god. He cannot condemn men this way. I’m sure your life before this was nothing—”
“No.” The power in his voice surprises me. “My life before this was everything it should not have been.”
I press my lips into a hard line and glance down the dark hall again.
