‘Then why steal wine? Even in Silgard there’s no shortage of friends willing to treat a pretty girl in the tavern. You look like you could use a good night.’
His wink set off a fresh wave of indignation that smothered the shock of the compliment. With her unwashed hair and work-worn hands, she wasn’t pretty, and he was supposed to beholy. But though she’d just seen him heal with a divine touch, he spoke like any common man. He didn’t even have a novice’s reverence for the city.
But Izir were still mostly human, for all the touches of power on them. That mere humanity should have made her task easier, but instead her hands began to shake.
‘You were right. It’s an offering.’ She rubbed her fingertips against her skirt, silently begging for intercession. If there were a time for their god to hear her, it was now.
‘Just take it.’
If he took it, he’d take the damning choice away.
She hated how she wanted that loophole.
‘People don’t bring offerings unless they want blessings.’ Mihály deftly pulled the quilt from his bed and folded it on the wooden floor, gesturing for her to sit on the faded red and green squares. The joviality leeched from his eyes. ‘What have you heard?’
Csilla lowered herself onto the quilt, tucking her skirts tightly around her legs. Now she was sitting where the Izir slept, almost – not even the tiniest second-hand sin, but enough to send a fresh heat to her cheeks and worry across her skin.
He crouched down, forearms draped over his knees, perched like one of the loathsome stone demons that peered over the eaves of the cathedral, monstrous reminders of ever-lurking Shadow.
‘Show me the wine again.’
Csilla swallowed and took the bottle from the sack, the surface still dark against her hand. Mihály reached out again, this time only a fingertip. Enough to spark the silver glisten on the glass.
‘Why doesn’t it react to you?’ he asked, tapping the bottle and watching the light shimmer and dim under his touch like the wink of moonlight on water. Each little light was a needle prick in her heart.
‘That’s personal.’ Csilla shifted, starting to stand again. Surely leaving the wine with him would be enough; by the number of bottles around he went through troughs of the stuff. ‘I have to go.’
Another second and she would confess everything; the fresh rarity of his instant acceptance, like they were equals, had stripped what little resolve she had managed.
‘Wait!’ He lurched forward, hand outstretched, stopping a hair’s breadth away from her arm.
She froze at the panic in his voice. There was a note in that one word more genuine than all the smiles and blessings she’d seen from him.
‘I just want to know,’ he continued. ‘It’s like you don’t have a soul.’
Csilla swallowed. If he had any knowledge about what she was, she’d better find out before he was dead.
‘And if I don’t?’
‘I’d say that’s impossible.’ But his slight smile widened, as if impossible was his favourite thing.
‘The Church thought so, too. But here I am. They tried to come up with an answer, you know. I was studied extensively. No one ever made sense of it.’Until now.
She looked down at the floor, shame creeping up her neck. The Prelate had called this a use for her flaw. Her designated place in the grand design. And she wished she could reject it.
His tongue darted to skate his upper lip as he considered.
‘Is that the blessing you came here for? You think I can miracle you a soul from the ether for the price of a bottle of stolen wine?’ His brow arched, and he sat back with a thump that made herwince. ‘I hate to disappoint you, but I have as little power to make souls as I do to fly. We Izir may have a touch of angel blood from those long years back, but we’re still mostly human.’
She hadn’t realised a small part of her had hoped for just that until the idea died at his words. She forced down the lump in her throat. It shouldn’t even matter. She’d been given the one way she could serve, and it was with his death.
‘My affinity is finding sickness and knowing what treats it, a remnant of Ezüst I’m told,’ he continued. ‘But I can’t make a soul.’
He gave a shy smile that made her feel as if she should be the one apologising for pointing out his weakness, something small and haunted in his gaze.
Ezüst the healer sat between Mercy and Knowledge on the starry compass of virtues. There were ghostly impressions of handprints still visible on the wooden table where they prepared medicines that were said to be his. The connection softened her more than it should.
‘Now that you’ve put it like that, I see that it’s foolish. Just... drink the wine. You can keep it as payment for indulging me.’
