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 Evie.’ 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 starshine 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 smouldering heaps still being beaten out. The majority of the clergy had moved from the broken cathedral 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 an empty cathedral. There were traces of chemicals in the smouldering remains of the granary, on the stone outside the chapter house, in the garden 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 – the building and its Faithful. 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 novitiates, 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 onlyturned 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.
The Church itself was empty. Ilan’s thoughts seemed to echo in the space meant for hundreds, now only him and his dog and a few corpses outside. If their enemies had wanted them weak, they’d gotten it; the glass was dark. Arany’s statue was nothing but decoration, no more miraculous than the human-wrought iron of the gates.
They hadn’t just wanted them weak. They wanted them out. And the smell of dead ash would more than cover any demons. The realisation clicked with a hyper-awareness, every creaking beam and gust blowing through cracked windows possibly an enemy.
The dog stopped his sniffling hunt, a low whine in his throat as he bristled.
‘What is it?’
There were no footsteps echoing, no voices. They were alone, not even ghosts. Anyone who died here would have immediately passed to Brilliance.
The dog scratched at the wall and whined again.
‘Hm?’ He put a hand on the stone, searching for any irregularities that would speak to hidden passages. ‘I hope you aren’t smelling one of the cats.’
