Izir were rare, descendants of the angels who walked the world of salt and blood before the Severing and those humans they had loved. There had been one in town for weeks – not that her endless work gave her leave to gawk. He certainly didn’t come by the cathedral; blooded divinity had no need of intercession.
Elmere nodded, gesturing to his pocked skin. ‘He heals, child.’
The lesionsweren’thealed, but if Elmere was feeling better, that was a true blessing.
‘How?’
A hundred litanies crawled through her throat. Where there were blessings, there should be praise, and this was the closest that remained to miracles in the world.
The old man’s laugh was a bark. ‘Through Asten eternal. Virtues and vices, didn’t the Church teach you anything?’ She bit the inside of her cheek at his teasing as he continued. ‘He heals with a touch, and he has the most marvellous voice. Makes one think of how Silgard must have been in its glory.’
There had been a time when the streets glowed with the divinity of those who walked on them, every footstep a benediction. Saints and angels had made this city the locus of the Faith, nestled safely in the centre of the territories of the Immaculate Union, its walls of stone inlaid with prayers to last until the material world fell to dust.
But that was when their god, Asten, still found the world worthy of notice. Now, when the walls cracked, they wererepaired with nothing more than earthly mortar, and the only things that watched from on high were vigilant pigeons.
‘One day we’ll be gloried again,’ she said, words tripping off her tongue as easily as song. ‘Once every soul is Brilliant.’
It was the Church’s most important charge. Asten may have left, but perfect obedience would lure Them back and wash the world clean, would allow the angels to return and bring a second golden age. It was only the fact that humans were a corrupted creation in the first place that made obedience so hard.
‘He might get you a miracle too, you know.’
Elmere’s voice was soft, but the words chafed as she bowed her head for a prayer to blessed Arany, an angel whose sacrifice had kept humanity’s hope alive long centuries ago.
It was kind of him to say, but there was no miracle for something like her. Not even in a city built on one.
2
Ilan
There was little pleasure in burning a man when it produced such dismal results. The High Inquisitor scowled at the pinkened strips along the shaking merchant’s forearm, skin that would soon shrivel to blisters.
‘I’ve already told you everything,’ the man gasped. ‘The cheating I’ll give you, but I didn’t have anything to do with that girl’s murder. Mercy. Please.’
Ilan’s lips thinned at the impotent plea. He set the iron rod back in the fire, gaze lingering on the steady orange smoulder that gave the windowless room a smoke-tinged glow of golden holiness. He’d been sure of this lead. Multiple witnesses had testified they’d seen the man prowling Silgard’s dank riverbank in the mornings, right where the latest death had been. The man himself had confessed to sabotaging his neighbour’s eel traps so readily Ilan had been sure it was a ruse.
But he really was just that easily cowed, a cheat wanting to be the only option for serving eel pies when the city opened its doors to celebrate the Incarnate’s return from the war front. Failure scored him as surely as the marks he’d left on the crook, and Ilan let his hand linger on the metal until the heat stalked back up it, ready to scald.
‘Hold out your hand.’
The merchant uncurled his tense fingers, wincing as if expecting to have them broken.
Ilan fished a piece of consecrated glass from his pocket and placed it on the man’s sweat-slick palm, murmuring a cleansing invocation.
The misshapen piece, broken off an older miracle and worn smooth by years of sinners’ touches, glowed with soft light as it read the man’s soul. The taint of guilty Shadow present before Ilan’s care had been brushed away by the man’s confession like the soil covering a buried gem. A small satisfaction eased the knot in Ilan’s stomach. At least he’d set one part of the city right tonight.
He untied the ropes binding the man’s forearms to the table and gestured to the burns.
‘Find a mercy priest to tend to that before it blackens.’
With luck it would scar, a daily reminder of what Asten thought of swindlers, and save him work in the long run.
The man half-sank before he stood, his run out of the purification room more of a stumble. He was replaced in the doorway by a long-faced novitiate, one burn-reddened hand curled on the door frame.
‘Yes?’
Ilan didn’t bother to temper the sharpness in his voice. It was late, and the driving energy that came with his calling was fading. Chasing whispers and paranoid suspicions was long and haggard work, even before the physical acts. Bodies in pain, souls desperate for escape, were also closest to the divine, their confessions the most likely to save. But getting them there was exhausting and left tired grit behind his eyes.
The boy averted his gaze from the whips and ropes that dragged the misguided back onto the path, focusing instead on the floor.
