Spinning around in the dark water, I saw a glimmer of light. I swam toward it and was nearly there when my lungs gave out. I took a throatful of water and began to cough and thrash toward what I hoped was the surface. I splashed up in a tiled canal twenty yards downriver from the octagon.
The ringing of steel echoed past me. Cassius was still fighting.
I hooked my arm onto the cobbled walkway and pulled myself onto the cold stones. I hacked up as much water as I could before stumbling back toward the fight. Navigating between the watery graves, I made it to the octagon unseen and crept in behind Braids. I plunged my knife down at her neck, cutting loose her necklace. She bucked like she’d been goaded with an electric prod and whirled on me.
Cassius leapt between us and severed her sword hand—bracelet, blade, and all. She collapsed, howling.
“Clever,” said Bazalgette, now standing next to Henry’s killer’s body. Buzz Cut rushed Cassius again, swinging his rods in a quick arc. The centurion parried, ducked, then ran his sword through the vestige’s gut. The man sank to the wet tiles. I pounced and cut off his binding necklace. I heard a whoosh of flames igniting and swung around. Bazalgette was standing next to the killer’s flaming corpse. The sickening smell of
burning flesh wafted into the octagon.
I took a few steps forward, but Cassius grabbed my arm and held me back. “It is thanaturgic flame. It cannot be extinguished by other than thanaturgic means.”
I watched the evidence Emaline had taken such care to provide me burn.Damn.
Bazalgette smiled in the light of the flames. In his fingers he held the killer’s bindings. He rolled them back and forth, like tinder, until they flashed and were gone.
“I wouldn’t linger,” he said, casually strolling toward the cobbled walkway. He paused and looked back. “By the way, your violation of Precedent in openly attacking another thanatist didn’t go unnoticed.” Then he disappeared into the north culvert that followed the Tyburn toward the palace.
When he’d gone, I turned to his vestige warriors. They looked up at me wide-eyed, as their semblances began ripping free from their bodies.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
You can sanctify soil without much trouble, but hallowed ground is something altogether different, for not all soil is willing.
—Abbot Edwin, first Abbot of Westminster Abbey,Journals
Lyingon the pumping station floor, Bazalgette’s fallen vestiges blurred in the same way Cassius had the night we met. They screamed and writhed on the wet tiles as their blue semblances began to tear from their corpses. Cassius stared down at his feet and sighed.
“Ah, hell.” I dropped to my knees next to Buzz Cut, scooped up his bindings, and tied them back around his neck. As I did, the memory of my brother Mark spending a whole Saturday with me at the pier came and went. My heart skipped a beat, and I took a hard breath. Buzz Cut stopped thrashing and lay still, staring up at me.
I did the same for Braids, tying her sword-hand binding around her elbow. The memory of Aunt Gloria chasing off someboys who’d followed me home flared and was gone. Another hollow.
These vestiges were still injured, but they wouldn’t lose themselves forever. I sat back, gasping for air, feeling a little weaker, and colder.
Cassius hunkered down next to me on the wet floor. “Are you all right?” “I think so.”
“Good,” he said. “Then tell me, please, why you would do that?”
“I don’t know, man.” I shook my head and told him I just didn’t want them to lose everything because of me.
The centurion glanced at the vestiges. “You show human empathy toward necromantic beings who would not have savedyou.”
I sighed.
Cassius shook his head. “Sooner or later, you will have no choice but to dismiss a semblance from a vestige.”
I’d read the term. “ ‘Dismiss’ is an awfully clean word for killing someone.”
“Nevertheless—”
“As long as it’s not today.”
Cassius stood, his sword hanging at his side. “Well, Jack Solomon, I will at least say that I am happier to know you today than I was yesterday.” “Thanks, man,” I said, still trying to catch my breath. “Tell me something, though. Do semblances know what they’re getting into?
When they’re bound, I mean?”
“Most find it an acceptable risk,” Cassius explained, “since they believe that occupying a real body will improve their chances of moving on.”
