‘You’ve got a soul.’ Ilan repeated the words, eyes darting around the dim room. He wasn’t a child grasping his mark against ghosts. He still wanted to.
‘Not here,’ Mihály said. ‘But one close to me, one I know will welcome a second chance.’ He smiled at Csilla in a way that could have been mistaken for warmth if Ilan weren’t so used tolooking for sin. There was avarice behind his gentle touches, and Ilan was sure that Csilla wasn’t aware. Maybe even Mihály didn’t realise. But it was always the worst sort of people who wanted nothing more than to think of themselves as good.
Csilla stiffened, tilting her head. Maybe she was more aware than he gave her credit for. He could push again if it would help wake her from whatever thrall Mihály held.
‘Is this why you’ve been preaching that there can still be form beyond death? Trying to make yourself feel better about your own ghosts?’
The Izir’s handsome face sharpened into something fierce.
‘One ghost. But I think everyone has the right to know that what is dead is not necessarily lost. There’s precedent. Angyalka. Rozalia.’ He spoke with too much fire for it to be beautiful.
‘Angyalka never fully died, and Rozalia was the lover of an actual angel. Your theology is rather self-serving.’ Miracles were miracles because they were rare.
‘And yours is far too narrow. Csilla will be quite comfortable, don’t worry for her. I’m seeing to that.’ He reached out, a finger gliding along the cream lace at her neckline.
She’d gone pale, and Ilan raised an eyebrow as her lips parted, closed, then tried again. She pulled at her collar where Mihály had touched like it choked her.
‘Csilla? Are you alright?’ Mihály ran a hand over her head, a master being gentle with a pet.
‘I don’t feel well,’ she said, not looking at either of them. ‘I’d like to go back.’
The first sensible thing that had been said here, really. And she still did look incredibly pale, trembling almost imperceptibly, alone as an untethered boat in a storm.
She just liked that he was divine.
The grieving father’s words came back to him. Kovács Lili, who had trusted Mihály’s power and the comfort it brought. And theman at the club, killed only a few feet from where Mihály had passed.
The Izir had death among his followers and death in his secret home. If he knew more, that thread of connection could lead back to the source.
Ilan stepped back from the table, resisting the urge to yank Csilla behind him. But she had made her own choice even after seeing all of this.
‘Well, Inquisitor?’ Mihály asked. ‘You can see I’ve only told you the truth about the power the divine has granted me. No lies. No heresy. Will you help us?’
He should ask to pray on it, to take it to a higher power. But it was a struggle to conjure images of righteous saints and not shaking blood and screaming rabbits. The draft on the back of his neck felt too much like ghostly fingers, the settling sighs of old wood like something unseen breathing in the room. The Izir didn’t even seem to understand the horror of what he was saying. A soul stuck to this plane wasn’t some academic curiosity: it was a person’s very essence being tortured.
The only answer to all of it was to find the killer as quickly as possible and set everything back in order. He would save Silgard, both from the violence of the murders and, once all was done, this unsettling man.
He glanced at Csilla again, so clearly putting on a mask of acceptance, as if by wanting something to be normal badly enough she could make it so. Perhaps she was right, and the Church would accept her again after all this. When she had a soul.
‘Yes,’ he answered, the mark on him heavy. ‘Damn me, but I will.’
17
Csilla
Ilan had asked that they come and look at the latest body in the morning before Matins and Prime prayers, when the fewest people would be up and about. That meant far too many hours for her to keep to her own troubled thoughts. She’d excused herself to a bath as soon as they returned, and Mihály had been happy enough to leave her to it; the trip back had been awkward enough with her feigning cramps and exhaustion, Ilan split between what seemed to be mild concern for her and less mild contempt for Mihály, and the Izir himself lost in some reverie with his ghost.
Evaline’s ghost. She should have put it together more quickly. Csilla had been wearing her clothes, likely drinking from her cups, costuming herself in her jewellery, being made a puppet of what Mihály wanted in truth. She should have asked more questions, been more suspicious from the moment he was delighted to find a hollow girl among his admirers. An odd shame sat heavy in her stomach, twisting. She shouldn’t have been so naive as to think his quick desire to help her, to coddle her and show her off, had had anything to do with her. In a way he was no different than Prelate Abe. She was made to be useful, not cared for.
There are worse things than being useful,she told herself.
It was scant comfort as she made her way to the room of the woman she might become; she’d guessed its location through Mihály’s darting glances and the faint line of dirt in front of the door that suggested even servants left it alone. The draw was part curiosity, part masochism. Perhaps if she could see who Evie had been, she could understand why she’d been so dearly loved.
If Csilla had thought her guest room opulent, that was nothing compared to what was given to the cherished daughter of a wealthy house. She pulled back the sky-blue window curtains, quilted with tiny pearls, each one worth a day’s portion of Church rations and still lovely despite the dust dulling their lustre. The view faced the cathedral, where the gilt of the towers turned what little light there was into haloed glow. Below were gardens of the house; beyond, public lawns that would be green come full spring. What had been designed to please Evaline also pleased Csilla. That was some comfort. Perhaps a part of her would feel at home.
But there was no ghost. She held her breath to see if anything stirred the air, but it was silent as a snowfall. Where was she?
Had Mihály even told Evie what he thought about souls? Csilla dragged her fingers over the spiralled mahogany bedposts, Evie’s marble-topped writing desk, nicked with careless pen-knife strokes, the small bottles of perfume gone rancid. Little things untouched by the grieving hands still in the world.
