She smiled through her shaking. He’d been kind to her once. More than that, really. He kept the Church’s tenants even when they contradicted his nature.
Ilan eyed her gown and its embroidered vinework and her pearl-beaded slippers.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘The Izir brought me. But I left before anything happened.’
A fresh light entered Ilan’s pale eyes. ‘And yet you’re here.’
He slipped a leather cuff over her wrist and snapped the leash tight.
14
Csilla
The chill of the cathedral’s cell leeched through every bit of her shoes and clothing, the floor sharp with chips of crumbled stone.
Csilla kept her knees up to her chest as she shivered against the damp. The space had a hollow carved out for lamp oil and holy books, a crusted drainage hole on the other side, and was otherwise bare. Somewhere in the walls and beneath the floors was the labyrinth of tunnels for ferrying holy relics and keeping the Seal of Silgard safe. In a more peaceful time, this was one of the cells where the Faithful went when they wished to give up the world in its entirety, but now it had been partially converted to house the Church’s enemies, and the cells were full of people awaiting their turn for a whipping or for their family to gather enough money to pay off their sins. She’d heard that Mihály’s theories inspired petty crimes as people lost faith in the Church, but this seemed far beyond people testing the limits of what they judged a sin.
She put her forehead down on her knees, surrendering to the dark and praying for calm for her roiling stomach. The Church would forget about her and leave her to dissolve like the water-eaten cracks in the wall. And that would be if she were lucky.
It was hard to believe this squalid and freezing room was part of the place she’d once called home. That somewhere above herÁgnes was likely in prayer, and the others in the mercy crew were folding bandages and laughing among themselves. That Erzebet was no doubt curled on Csilla’s bed, pleased to have the whole of it for herself.
The scrape of a door opening had her on her feet, face pressed against the flaking iron of the bars. Grunting. The thud of boots. A wet, rough slap of flesh on stone.
They were dragging in an unconscious man.
No. Even the unconscious had some movement – the twitch of an eyelid or breath at their lips.
This was a body. The light of their torches highlighted the trail of blood streaking the floor. The man yanked Csilla’s door open and deposited the corpse with a squashed thud too much like the delivery of a pig carcass to the kitchens.
What once was a man was now all fish-belly white flesh and smears of copper.
‘We thought a mercy girl wouldn’t mind. Everywhere else is full.’
They’d never been full before. But she had no time to reflect on that.
The victim was face down splayed on the stone, mole-dotted skin on depraved display. She touched her heart. They could have at least given him a blanket for dignity, and she didn’t even have a cape to offer him.
The marks along his back were still smeared, hard to see in the dim light. Corpses had never bothered her – she’d worked with the mercy crews since she could toddle, and flesh was flesh. But as she touched the sliced skin, a pulsing shiver worked its way up her spine and set her scars burning. She traced the cuts the same way the scholars had made her trace their books. That had only been finger over paper. Now on this fresh human velum, her fingers froze. The cooling body couldn’t explain the sudden frostbite twinge that shot through her fingertips. Crusted bloodscraped away from the thin lines of the wounds under her probing.
She moved to the crushed column of the victim’s throat, her small hands where the murderer’s had been, a whispered prayer to the hanged saint Angyalka on her lips. Angyalka had lived and was blessed with the visions that led to the naming of the first Incarnate, even though the bruises never faded. The blotchy purple under her palms was still swollen, blood congealed under the skin like a sausage in the casing.
She stiffened as footsteps sounded in the hall and the cell door swing open, a moment later her shoulders were seized by skeletal fingers.
Ágnes.
‘What are you doing?’ she hissed. ‘There’s nothing that can be done for the man now.’
‘I wanted to see.’
She turned to look Ágnes in the face, and sharply drew in a breath. She looked so much worse than she had just days before. There were bluish bruises shading her skin, and her eyelids drooped. But Csilla’s gasp was too quiet, and the older woman continued, though her voice grew more hoarse with every word.
‘See? And touch?’ She shook Csilla’s limp hand, and the sting in the scold sent her gaze to the floor. ‘Is this what you’ve gotten from being with the Izir?’
‘He’s stopped preaching heresy,’ Csilla said, looking down. Easier to face the entire inquest branch of the clergy than the woman who raised her. ‘I’m on holy business.’
If it involved Mihály it had to be holy, no matter what it looked like.
