When the man opened his eyes again, they were clear and filled with adoration.
Csilla pressed a shaking hand to her lips, breathing awe. A miracle. Elmere had been right. This man could dorealmiracles.
And she was going to kill him.
He continued through the crowd dispensing touches of grace – a word to a person with a swollen knee, a brush of the forehead for a boy whose mother claimed he was filled with demons. Csilla frowned at that. There were no demons in Silgard, and if the woman needed the Izir to tell her so, she should never have been allowed to live in the Brilliant City.
The Izir must have known it, but he checked the boy for marks and blood anyway, reassuring the woman with a gentle hand that she and her child were well and the trouble was only earthly nightmares. The wrapped cloth she passed him bulged with tribute.
Then he was in front of Csilla, and she was all too aware of the jealous stares of the crowd.
‘Are you here for a blessing?’ His smile was kind, practiced, the face she’d seen on Ágnes as she rubbed the backs of small ones who wouldn’t live through the night.
‘I...’ She couldn’t give him poison where there were still people to see. ‘I have something I want to discuss with you. It’s very personal.’
Her cheeks burned at the accusing voices of those still waiting.
‘Oh?’ He stepped close, and she breathed in the spice of incense on his skin, and under that, something clean, like fresh water. ‘And I see you’ve brought an offering.’
Her stomach dropped, and he reached out before Csilla could pull the bottle back. When his fingers brushed the glass, it glowed as bright as the glare of sun on morning snow.
Csilla winced, snatching it to her chest as a curse threatened to slide from her mouth. She’d beensurethe bottle hadn’t been through rites yet.
But all bottles were equally dull to her touch.
The Izir jerked his hand away. ‘That’s consecrated wine. Why is it dark?’
He was right. If it were held by any souled person, the bottle would be dusted with the pale golden sheen sparked by the latent connection between humanity and their creator.
‘I . . .’
He gestured to the Eye of Asten melted into the glass, a sign of Church make. ‘And it was stolen.’
Csilla’s heart seized. She should have come up with a better plan. But when she looked into his eyes, there was no judgement there. He seemed... delighted.
She stepped back. People were never delighted to meet something like her.
‘Well,’ he said, looking her over more carefully as she shuffled her feet on the ground, willing them to sink and save her from this humiliating turn, ‘it seems we do have something to discuss.’
She should have dropped the bottle and let it smash, run and been done with the whole business. But if she failed and lost her home in the Church, she’d be lost herself, and all these souls believing the Izir would be damned. Only the Church could lead them back to truth. The thought came with a note of sweetness more tantalising than even the heresy.
Once everyone was Brilliant, Asten would return and make the world perfect again, the way it was always meant to be.
A flutter of hesitation rose in her throat as the Izir smiled down at her, his face as radiant as a saint’s vision.
She bowed, touching her still-aching palm to her chest. The Seal was weak, but the Church was strong, and she would be strong for it.
‘If you would, Izir.’
Hopefully preaching made him thirsty.
5
Csilla
With the city ringed by walls, the Faithful built towards heaven. The Izir’s room was a converted attic in an upriver district, the window enlarged to the size of a door with a ladder leading up, and the whole thing clearly a newer make and more hastily wrought than the sturdier building below.
Csilla blanched. Not only did he expect her to follow him home, she had to climb into it?
