In her new chamber, everything was built for comfort. The bedframe was made of rich mahogany, and a fireplace—a luxury she couldn’t even begin to fathom—was swept clean of soot. Even the thick walls allowedprivacy.No whispered fights bled through, no drunken shouts, no loud snores. It was utterly soulless. Anyone could inhabit this room, sleep on the soft mattress beneath the thick covers, and leave in the morning without having made any dent in it. It was a bedroom designed for transience.
Her suitcase waited for her in the wardrobe. Not bothering tounpack, she found her nightgown and shimmied into it. She drew out herGuide to Botany,rifling to the few remaining blank pages at the back. She took her time now, writing down everything she’d learned today in the smallest possible handwriting: about the Wake, Weavingshaw, and Lord Avon, as well as her mother’s warnings.
Demon-kissed.
It was very little to go on—almost nothing. But it was a start.
Leena’s first dayattending the Saint’s consultations was wretched. So was her second. And her third. She knew she’d eventually succumb to the misery of this job, that it would become routine, but her heart was not hardening quickly enough.
Mr. St. Silas’s shop was organized with an impersonal hand, perhaps seeking to separate itself from the very personal stories told within those walls. Or perhaps he simply did not care.
The confessors were usually led through the entrance, which opened up to a single eerie hallway, by one of the Saint’s many bruisers. The hallway was long and straight, and contained several locked doors. Leena had no idea what lay behind those doors.Likely torture chambers.
In the early morning, the Saint unlocked the confession room—a claustrophobic space with red-bricked walls and a single shuttered window. Inside was a fireplace, a large writing desk that curved between her and Mr. St. Silas’s chairs, and one last chair in the center of the room meant for the confessor. Mr. St. Silas’s and Leena’s seats were made of pliant leather, while the confessor’s was wooden—the very same kind Leena imagined prisoners sat onwhile awaiting trial in the dock. Either an allusion to the courtroom or a mockery ofit.
The consultations always ended exactly at half past noon, with lines of people forming at dawn for a chance to trade their secrets. At these consultations, the Saint was unyielding and exacting—a timepiece in one hand, a pen in the other. All the secrets he heard—all the terror they brought, all the heartache—seemed to affect him not at all.
On that first day, it was thesterilityof the entire process that drove Leena nearly mad.
She watched as Mr. St. Silas tugged on a pair of leather gloves before withdrawing one of the black ledgers that she had seen lining the shelves of his study, and opening it to a fresh page. He glanced at Leena disinterestedly, his first acknowledgment of her that morning. “Never touch the ledgers.”
“Why not?” Leena asked, already feeling stiff and uncomfortable in her chair.
Mr. St. Silas raised a brow at her question. “Because I command it, Miss Al-Sayer.”
Leena swallowed a grimace at his order, said in tones that not only expected her total obedience but took it for granted. He handed her parchment and a dip pen, instructing her in a low voice to watch well and report exactly to him.
That first morning was a blur.
Leena’s body tensed each time the door swung open, unsure what would meet her on that threshold and what secrets would be released from the darkness and into the light, stirring phantoms in their wake.
Yet the confessions she heard in those first few hours were…nothing.
Little more than gossip. A young man who admitted to stealing his mother’s clothes to sell at the market for Tar, leaving his mama with only her underthings to wear.
A middle-aged woman who told them that her youngest child was not actually her child at all but birthed by her unmarried daughter.
A musician who had broken the fingers of his rival during a drunken brawl confessed he had not been drunk but had known exactly what he was doing.
Margery had been wrong—the Saint of Silence not only accepted schoolroom scandals, he also paid for them.
Leena sat there in the stifling room, the morning coffee Mrs. Van had brought during the break steaming in her hands, and it was all she could do not to look at her employer. Finally, she could not help it, and she gazed at him askance. Absentmindedly, he was stirring two teaspoons of sugar into his coffee while his eyes remained on his ledger, before swallowing it down with a twist of his mouth.
Putting down the cup, he met her look with one of his own. “A problem, Miss Al-Sayer?”
Even now, within the small confines of the room, he had a way of disconcerting her with a single look, just as she’d seen him do with all his confessors. There was a tempered menace about him that forced itself to be felt, that naturally overtook and bludgeoned any space to bend to his will. Perhaps that was why all the confessors had left the room looking as if they’d been battered although they’d never once been touched by him; they must have been absorbing the teeth of the Saint of Silence’s presence.
Leena straightened, not wanting to begin her employment with a show of fear. Mr. St. Silas caught her movement wordlessly, and a slow, derisive smile spread across his lips. Nothing seemed to escape him.
She said carefully, “Only that I am surprised that you would pay precious coins for such trivial secrets.”
“All secrets have value. What may seem trivial to you could be someone else’s ruin.”
“Butwhy?” She tried not to sound demanding, already knowing the Saint did not take kindly to being questioned. “What can you possibly gain from it?”
What she really wanted to ask, but dared not, was:Where do you get the money for such a grim exploit?
“It is not for you to question, Miss Al-Sayer.” His response was reticent, just as she should’ve known it would be. “Not when you still have not informed me of any ghosts following the confessors throughout the entirety of this morning.Tryto be of some use to me.”
