A small voice in the back of her mind began to murmur. What would his followers say if they knew the man offering them so much hope of life spent his time like this?
Her feet tensed in her boots, ready to run.
Mihály stared at the bleak menagerie, his expression unreadable. ‘I find those that are already sick or hurt. I don’t go around killing things for death’s own sake. In most cases, it’s a mercy.’
Csilla grimaced. ‘What do youdowith them?’ She forced herself to walk over. The creatures were beyond help, but they deserved the respect of being seen.
Oh, there werekittens. Tiny, with brown and white patches, looking so much like her Erzsébet it cracked the centre of her heart and sent the pieces to her lurching stomach. She longed to be back in bed with her cat snuggled close, timing her breath to the rhythmic purrs. Enjoying what life she had, not staring at this panoply of death. She missed the cathedral with a seizing homesickness, and she grabbed her mark of virtues. When she’dhad a question, she only had to ask Ágnes and be given the correct answer. She didn’t have to confront so much awfulness on her own.
‘I study them,’ Mihály said. ‘I study the bodies. And I study their souls.’
‘Study their... How?’ She reached out and stroked the head of one of the kittens with a fingertip, the fur now dry and patchy. They couldn’t have lived long. She had to believe they hadn’t lived long, that they hadn’t suffered.
Mihály’s cheek twitched, and for a moment it looked like he wanted to stop the words.
‘I can see souls when they leave the body. Hear them, if they stay around. Call them, direct them, if they want to come back.’
Direct them? Did his heresy have some truth to it? She tried to quiet her thoughts with recitations of Faith. People were born with split souls, theirs to do with what they liked. If they obeyed the tenets of the Church and remembered the Brilliance within them, they would rejoin Asten’s peace after their mortal trial ended. And if they followed the corruption of the Shadow, their soul would never join Asten eternal. They would spend eternity knowing nothing but loneliness and all the sorrow that came with regret.
There were ghosts, but they were said to be born of trauma, souls that refused to let themselves be escorted beyond the ether. They weren’t anything to speak of gently, and some didn’t even believe they were real. They couldn’t, shouldn’t, be created on purpose.
‘That’s the province of Asten.’ She could hear Ágnes’s own instructional sharpness in her tone, and she straightened from muscle memory. Though, if Ágnes had been here, she would have no doubt been dragging Csilla away.
‘And They gave me this gift.’ Mihály raised his hand in oath. ‘The purest way to worship is to fully understand creation, tonever stop trying to see what They have truly given us. That’s why Knowledge is counted among the virtues. And our souls are Their most perfect creation, as eternal as They are.’
‘Yet They corrupted Themselves in the making of them.’ Shadow had only come about in the creation of humankind. Even an Izir shouldn’t forget that.
A sad, sick meow echoed from somewhere in a dusty corner, pulling her from the argument. A thin cat shook against the clapboard wall. She was so dark, knotted and thin, she nearly blended in with the shadows.
‘That’s the mother of those dead kittens,’ Mihály sighed. ‘Skittish thing.’
Csilla scowled and walked diagonally towards the wall, giving the cat a wide berth. Then she crouched, held out her hand, and waited. She tried not to think about the man staring at her, watching as if she were another experiment.
Gingerly, the cat stepped forward. She was a skeleton – not many mice around this time of year, and she was clearly too weak to hop on the table and fight the tarp for what Mihály had laid out. She might not even be able to chew bones.
The pink nose touched Csilla’s fingertips, and Csilla stroked the ridges of her spine, trying not to even breathe. When she got close, Csilla snatched her up in her cloak. The cat yowled but didn’t fight. She didn’t have the strength to.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, sweet thing. I’m going to help you.’ Her own breath quickened with the cat’s panicked panting.
She turned back to Mihály, revulsion churning. She thought she could still help the Church by finding the killer, or at least help herself to Mihály’s knowledge. But this was more than she could stand. She wasn’t lying when she said she wasn’t delicate; she’d treated festering wounds and wrung chicken necks, walked hours in freezing sleet delivering medicines. The difference was, that was all in the service of life. There was no life here.
‘I’m going back now.’ Her shoulders shook with anger, but it was all directed at herself for daring to expect something better. ‘Forget I ever came to you.’
He arched an eyebrow. ‘Youcame looking forme. You believed I could help you.’
She cringed at the reminder as he continued.
‘And I can do more for you than you even know if you stay with me.’ The sweetness was back in his voice, softening her again despite her instincts. ‘The Church has turned its back on its own tenant – I have knowledge they wouldn’t ever admit to. That is why I preach. It’s a light, meant to uncover. Not darkness.’
‘What do you mean?’ Csilla looked back at the table, all the stiff and dried-out corpses, their frozen yawns uncomfortably close to screams. ‘You said your powers don’t create souls, and you hardly seem inclined to help me help the Church.’
‘Create? No. But with the right vessel, I can move one.’ He stepped in close and drew a finger across her cheek. ‘Do you know what that would mean for people? How much hope there is in the idea of rebirth?’
She jerked back, the sudden familiarity a jolt.
‘I wasn’t prepared before, and animals have a fragile essence. No Shadow, of course, but not quite Brilliance either. And moving a soul into a creature that already has one never ends well. But you, empty but not dead—’
‘Do it, then.’ Her heart hammered, and the cat squirmed. ‘If you can prove you’re right using me, you can leave them alone.’
