‘Our blessing remains.’ There hadn’t been so much as a stutter in the glass, or any of the powers of the Church. If the power of Arany’s sacrifice was waning... well, he measured the city’s balance of vice and virtue. He would know. ‘We can’t make any judgement beyond that.’
If the boy were wise, he would drop the matter.
He was still too much of a child to be wise.
‘But it’s been almost two months and so many people are dead, and the congregational priests are saying you’re going to have a replacement, and if Asten really has called you—’
The force of Ilan’s hand took the end of the sentence. Blood bloomed from a dry crack in the boy’s lips, parted in shock from the smack.
Ilan made a loose gesture of blessing over the wound and dropped his wrist. Congregants called him the Holy Wolf for his viciousness. What they seemed to forget was that creation itself had been an act of gloried violence. It was only right that a certain amount was still required to keep it pure.
‘Apologies, Inquisitor,’ the boy mumbled, tongue darting over the seeping red.
‘Watch what rumours you listen to. All our souls are at risk – be thankful I just corrected yours.’
The boy bowed, and Ilan nodded.
There was silence as he left, but the disquiet in Ilan’s mind echoed louder than any words.
A replacement. Unlikely. The Prelate would have warned him if things were truly bad enough to threaten his appointment. The Incarnate himself had named Ilan head of Silgard’s Order of Justice, the High Inquisitor and steel hand that scoured away sin. No lesser power could undo that charge, and the only higher power was no longer speaking to Their creation.
Ilan straightened his cassock, touched the sharp silver four-point mark pinned to his collar. He would take evening prayers in his own chambers. And he would pray for the same thing he’d prayed for nightly for all these long weeks, as blood polluted consecrated stone.
Let me be Your justice, swift and holy.
He would show them all thathewas Asten’s chosen servant, brought here to purify with leather and steel. And he would showthis monster, who had driven his city into froth-mouthed fear, what it meant to face the wrath of the divine.
3
Csilla
Csilla walked with small, sure steps that paused as she bowed her head to every wisp of holiness on the streets. The Eyes of Asten were carved on doors, illegible intercessions to saints baked into bricks along with the maker’s fingerprints, infusing even the shadows with a certain hallowed air.
The fierce form of the angel Ignaz, cardinal embodiment of Justice, was pressed into an alcove, a fat black cat curled beside it. The silver-plated statue was clean of bird droppings, and she nodded approvingly at the resting feline as it opened a slit-pupiled eye.
‘You’re doing wonderful work for the Faith, cousin,’ she told the cat, who yawned wide enough to show fang then shut its eye again. Well. Maybe he couldn’t appreciate the praise, but it was worth giving all the same. Ignaz would certainly welcome the feline acting as judge and executioner to any pigeons or crows who sought to dirty her holy form or her protected district when she couldn’t do it herself.
Bells echoed across high roofs, tolling the hour, and Csilla sucked in a breath. She’d meant to be back an hour ago, but extra minutes here or there, helping take down laundry or soothing a colicky baby, did tend to add up. She pulled her empty satchel to her chest and ran, dashing through a side street that would lether out near one of the bridges mostly used by merchants. Then if she cut through one of the open courtyards of the guild district, avoided the main thoroughfare and its horse-drawn cabs, and slipped through a back entrance, she could technically be on Cathedral grounds in time to help make dinner.
The city truly wasn’t that confusing, much as pilgrims complained that the districts bled together and the door fronts didn’t always face the expected direction. It was simply much like the divine itself: difficult to parse when in the thick of it, and best understood through long study and the occasional overview from on high. She’d had nearly twenty years, and plenty of time hanging out high cathedral windows, to take in the whole.
Her calculations were almost correct. It was only the wobble of a loose heel that slowed her. Shoes donated for charity had already walked a fair number of miles.
Csilla pulled the iron of the back gate closed with a sigh, adding ‘mend a boot’ to her list of tasks.
‘Csilla. I’ve been waiting.’
The quiet voice drew Csilla up short and dispersed the mental calculation. Elder Ágnes, her face shadowed by the peak of her red hood covering the frost-rime white of her hair. The Head of the Mercy order must have been waiting for her arrival, and watching in feast day colours. Csilla bit her lip. Had she missed something?
‘I’m sorry, Elder. There was just so much to do. I’m late for dinner, aren’t I?’
Whoever she’d inconvenienced would no doubt be cross, and then she’d have to apologise for that. She sighed. Sometimes it seemed like her life was nothing but apologies.
Ágnes put a hand on her shoulder, urging her through the low door. ‘Oh, don’t worry about that. There’s something else for you to do.’
‘Hm?’ Csilla let herself be led back to where she slept, a windowless side room of the cloisters crammed with three small beds for visiting penitents to share. They came and went. She never left. ‘What else could there possibly be?’ Not that she wouldn’t do it, if asked, but she was tired.
A set of grey robes lay on the bed, the sleeves and hems embroidered with a dance of red poppies and lined in matching scarlet. The uniform of the Church’s mercy priests, the inverted match of Ágnes’s colours. Her heart dropped.
