The single sheet in the book of orphans would say the same thing it did every time she’d looked: date found, name given, no family, adopted or otherwise, perhaps a note of her vows, then a blot over them if they’d been quick in their updates. The one small notation of her existence in all the Union’s history, only to be edited if she married or had children, was reinstated, or died. Only one of those things was looking likely at the moment.
The inquisitor rubbed the bridge of his nose.
‘Very well.’
But instead of leaving her to it, he stepped back in. Hopefully her smile looked grateful instead of concerned. It felt more like a grimace as she passed him.
The cathedral library was second only to the University stacks in its collection of knowledge, possibly also its size. Wall-length windows were partially hidden by the shelving that stretched up to the level of the clerestory, the wood further blocking what light could come through the grime on glass too tall and awkwardly placed to clean regularly.
Ilan had gone to sit at one of the quill-knife-scratched tables, bent over something she couldn’t read, everything soft and hazyin the candlelight and dust. Erzsébet took the opportunity to steal into his lap, a paw occasionally tapping at the papers he was sorting, brushed back by a surprisingly gentle hand.
The little traitor was purring. Csilla glared, but the cat showed no remorse.
Fine, it was probably easier to search without her underfoot anyway. Csilla thumbed through bound texts on the pretence of a search, silently willing him to leave. There were a few volumes that looked very interesting and would open a tribunal of questions if she were caught looking.
Ilan didn’t move. He muttered to himself, he made notes, he occasionally shifted and clucked as the disloyal cat attempted to capture his attention with a headbutt to his face, but he didn’t leave or look at Csilla. She stepped lightly around the room, trying to pretend she was simply confused, when her eyes fell on his work and she couldn’t stop a gasp. It was what she wanted to see, but so much more horrific than she could have imagined.
There was a sketch of a girl’s body, exquisitely rendered and grotesquely intimate, and across her chest there were carved symbols, not wholly unfamiliar. Beneath the paper were older works, notes of demons and the hero priests and saints who vanquished them, Ilan’s notations fresh over the yellowed pages with their browning letters.
She brushed her wrist where Mihály had touched her as if some holiness lingered.
‘Shadow script?’
The words escaped before she could help it. Mihály had been right. There was something dark here. No one in Silgard would risk those corrupted words. There were knives that killed a body, and there were words that destroyed a soul.
‘You know it?’
There was a measured note in his voice as he turned, gaze suddenly sharp and pinning, and she stepped back until her shoulders hit the stacks.
‘I’ve seen it.’ Not like this, not written on flesh. ‘When I was little they thought I might be...’ She flushed to say it. ‘A demon, or something adjacent. They tried to make me read.’
She’d been made to kneel on stone until her knees bruised, offered book after book until she’d ruined pages with frustrated snot and tears and earned a cuff on the back of her head. Even now she curled in on herself at the memory, forcing it back with a shove.
‘Could you?’ His eyes swept her as if he could possibly see something the scholar priests had missed.
‘Of course not!’ The words were hot with the shame that still squeezed her chest at the memory.
‘Useless, then.’ He leaned back in the chair, Erzsébet jumping to the floor at the sudden shift.
It wasn’t like she was ever anything else.
‘Is it real?’ The words fluttered as they left her lips. Real, as in not a copy made by someone who had studied the imperfect remains from before the Severing. Real, as in written in the hand of a demon itself.
Ilan didn’t answer but instead raised a hand to beckon her closer, pushing the papers slightly to the side. There were three other bodies.
‘Saints preserve,’ Csilla whispered, brushing her mark as a ward, though the paper couldn’t hurt her.
‘Does it look familiar at all? From what they showed you before.’
It was a simple question, but still unfamiliar enough to throw her, and she stalled. Every line he’d drawn was once part of a breathing person.
He looked back, a pale eyebrow arched. ‘I don’t remember taking your tongue.’
Csilla forced herself to step to his shoulder and look.
‘They’re . . . different. All complete, for one thing.’
The examples of Shadow invocations she’d been brought had all been broken, lost to time, or even for those not, a syllable here or there purposefully left blank or reversed to avoid any accidental workings.
