The words were so incongruous they were nonsense. The Izir were closer to Asten than anyone, with one divine ancestor who had never been touched by the corruption that came with the creation of humanity. The world may have lost the presence of the angels, but even the Severing couldn’t steal the sacred blood of their children left behind or stop those children from having their own. Even diluted as it was, the power of their angelic forebearers still manifested once or twice in a generation, as remarkable and unpredictable as a falling star.
‘He’s been drawing worshipers from the Church.’ Abe’s voice thrummed with the fire of a sermon. ‘Claiming to see the dead, saying there are paths to grace before judgement, a time when the fate of souls is malleable. It’s just the kind of thing that appeals to the weak, false comfort that if they die in Shadow, it’s not the end.’ He gestured to the flickering Seal. ‘We need the people’s faith, now more than ever. He’s brought doubt to our doorstep, and it’s showing in service attendance. Anyone who trusts their soul to him...’
Would spend their eternity wrapped in nothing but hunger and self-flagellating misery, forever apart from the divine. Knowledge was one of the four virtues, but only if what was learned was true.
‘I’d be happy to speak to him . . .’
It was a strange mission. Csilla swallowed a bleak laugh at the idea that she could convince anyone of anything. Her skirts were stained from years of kneeling outside during services. Noone listened to her about what to serve for breakfast, much less theology.
‘We’ve already tried.’ Abe’s voiced wavered with something she didn’t understand.
Csilla tensed. ‘But then, what—’
The priest reached into a pocket of his robes and pulled out a necklace. A bird skull on a chain, the beak replaced by one made of silver filigree. The bleached bone and polished metal were awful and lovely in one, the hollows of the eyes almost alive with the flickering shadows.
Abe snapped off the beak, revealing a stoppered vial nestled inside. It was far smaller and slimmer than the medicine bottles she took her patients, and whatever in it was clear, not the brown syrup that soothed coughs. He put it in Csilla’s hand and closed her fingers around it, the glass still warm from his body heat.
‘Perhaps in your reading you’ve come across Scorn’s Friend. You always were a studious little thing.’
She was, and she knew the piece of death in her palm.Poison.
Her head dizzied, her face dampening with sweat despite the cellar cold.
‘But I’m a servant of the Church.’
Mercy workers saved, protected. She clutched at the vial, metal digging into the flesh of her fingers. She’d been right to be shocked at her acceptance. It was a dream, and this was the second when the beautiful turned grotesque and the shock of the impossible shoved you back into waking.
There was no waking. Only strokes of fire and Shadow, the corroded magic, and the Prelate’s unwavering gaze.
‘You’re not, though, are you? You wear our robes, speak our words, pray to our god.’ His voice wasn’t unkind, merely flat with truth. ‘But you lack a soul. And that’s why you’re the onlyone who can do this. It’s no sin for you. There’s nothing of you to blacken.’
‘Butmurder . . .’
No one stole the right of death from Asten. Even the worst crimes were punished by abandonment on the winter ice or in the forest ravines of the north, not execution. It may have led to death all the same, but it wasn’t murder.
People die, she reminded herself, though her vision blurred. It was a mercy worker’s job to know that, even more than carefully memorised prayers and the ratio of herbs to blessed water. It was a truth pressed into their hands every day as they folded endless bandages and soothed fevered skin.
Abe reached for her trembling arm. ‘All you’ll be doing is delivering him back to the arms of the divine and saving the city from apostasy. It’s not murder, it’s mercy. For all of Silgard. The Incarnate himself has signed the order. It will be secret, but it will not be unholy.’
If the Incarnate signed the order, why do you still think it’s a sin?How could the Prelate stand in this place of light and ask something so dark? She shook her head, not trusting her voice, and the new fabric scratched around her throat.
Abe’s grip tightened. ‘If you won’t do it, you can leave. You’ll never pass a holiness test, child. Silgard has no place for you, and we’ve given you shelter long past what is owed by the tenants to care for orphans. An adult’s duty is to take a role and contribute to order. If you won’t serve, you’re no use.’
Her mouth twisted in open shock. What was treating the city’s ill, washing its dead, and giving a lap to its children if not being of use? It didn’t matter if she wore the brown lining of a novice or the glowing white of a prelate or the hand-me-downs of no one at all, her work was good.
‘I don’t want to . . .’
‘Asten doesn’t ask what you want to do for Them, but what you will do for Them and for our eventual perfection.’
Csilla turned her gaze to the saints and martyrs watching the exchange. If she could pray for their strength and be answered, maybe this wouldn’t feel so much like drowning.
‘I don’t understand . . .’
‘Submission isn’t meant to be light work. You don’t need to understand to serve.’
He was right. It was selfish, presumptuous, for her to argue. She wasn’t anything, and she was being offered a way to do good.
Even if it was no kind of good she would have ever elected to do.
