“I just have one question,” he said. “Is this a personal errand, or did the Council send you?”
She decided to tell the truth. “The Council sent us.”
“Then my answer is no.”
“Come again?” Sephi asked, cocking her head to the side like she’d misheard him.
“I said no,” Francisco said.
She frowned. “Just like that? I’m sure we can talk this through. Whatever your objections, we can find a compromise.”
He got up from his chair, his expression stern. “No compromises. No deals. You’re welcome to stay the night. Consider it an apology for trying to kill you. But there will be no more talk of doing favors for the Council.”
“Wait,” Sephi said.
“Good night.” Without another word, he retreated through a door and shut it behind him.
Sephi looked around at her friends. “Well fuck me. That didn’t go as well as I’d hoped.”
Magnus scowled. “You barely even tried to convince him. That was pathetic.”
“Hey, I didn’t see you chiming in,” Sephi said.
“Because you told me to shut up and let you handle it,” he said. “So I did. Obviously, that was a mistake.”
Her temper flared. “You know what, Magnus? Eat a bag of assholes. I’m doing my best.”
“Your ‘best’ sucks,” he said, shaking his head. “Typical Persephone.”
“And what does that mean?” she asked.
“You waltz through life, never taking anything seriously. Well, this mission is serious. If we fail, people will die. The entire Cradle could burn. Maybe all of Esper. So for once in your life, could you at least pretend to give a shit about something other than yourself?”
With that, he stormed out the front door and slammed it shut behind him.
Chapter 10
The next morning, Magnus’s words still throbbed in her skull like the ache of a rotting tooth. All she wanted in life was to be left alone, but somehow she’d ended up here, standing in a necromancer’s bathroom, feeling responsible for the fate of the world, and trying to come up with reasons why Francisco should help the Council when she herself had been forced into it.
She looked in the mirror while brushing her hair, untangling knots and removing chips of bone from the battle the night before. Her hand moved slowly in long steady strokes. She wasn’t in any hurry to finish and leave her temporary sanctuary.
Nothing but problems waited for her outside those four flimsy walls. The problems couldn’t reach her in here, though. Life was simple in the bathroom. Tranquil and uncomplicated. Maybe she could just stay in here forever and let the world handle its own troubles.
Three hard knocks rattled the door in its frame, shattering her momentary peace. “Persephone,” Magnus called.
“Leave me alone,” Sephi said. “I’m taking a dump.”
“Charming,” Magnus’s voice responded.
He was the last person she wanted to see right then, but apparently, she couldn’t avoid him any longer. With a sigh, she opened the door. “I’m kidding. Although you did tell me to pretend to give a shit.”
“Give a shit, not take a shit. But I’ll choose my words more wisely this time.”
She leaned her shoulder against the door frame and looked up at Magnus. “What do you want, Red?”
“We need to talk to Brother Francisco again,” he said.
“Oh, it’s ‘we’ now?” Sephi asked. “Last night it was all on me.”
Magnus scrubbed a hand over his face. His fingers rasped against the stubble on his cheeks, and he rubbed at his red-rimmed eyes.
“I lost my temper last night. The fight with the undead drained me, but that’s no excuse.” He cleared his throat, like the next words had gotten stuck on the way out. “I apologize for my behavior. We have to work as a team if we hope to have any kind of success.”
His apology caught her off guard. It wasn’t often that she told someone to eat a bag of assholes and the person apologized to her. But Magnus’s remorse seemed genuine. If he could swallow his pride and extend an olive branch, the least she could do was meet him halfway and accept it.
“I’m sorry, too,” she said. “We were all on edge last night. That was one hell of a battle.”
Magnus’s lips curled up in a rare smile. It made him look ten years younger. “It was one for the history books. A battle worthy of Minerva herself.”
The idea of impressing the Red General secretly thrilled Sephi, but she kept that to herself. “It’s a shame no one else was around to see it. No one will ever believe us. Hell, I can barely believe Francisco could manipulate that many skeletons at once.”
Magnus nodded. “I had the same thought. Then again, he’s been out here for a century at least, honing his skills, strengthening his magical power. He might be stronger than me, you, and Echo combined.”
“That’s saying something,” she said. “You chewed through skeletons like they were spun sugar.”
He shrugged. “I’ve trained my whole life for trials like last night. I was pleasantly surprised to see you holding your own amidst the horde. You might not be so useless after all.”
“Why, Magnus, you’re going to make me blush,” she said. Then her brow furrowed. “I know we need to talk to Francisco again, but is it weird that I’d rather fight more skeletons?”
“Yes,” Magnus said.
Sephi patted his unyielding breastplate affectionately. “There’s the Red I know.”
She pressed her hand firmly to his chest, and he let her move him out of the way. “Do you have a plan?” he asked.
“Almost never.”
They found the Night Brother in the field behind his house, tossing bread crumbs to a flock of ravens. The black birds surrounded him, like minions awaiting their master’s bidding.
“Yeah, not creepy at all,” Sephi said under her breath, quiet enough that Magnus didn’t hear her at her side. Raven friends, skeletal hordes, and a secluded house in a scary forest? She started to think “the Night Brother” was the perfect name for him.
Out loud, she said, “Interesting choice of pets.”
Brother Francisco glanced over his shoulder at her. “Ravens are too smart and free-spirited to be tamed as pets. I think of them as my friends.”
The birds darted looks at Sephi as she stopped to stand beside Francisco. Their coal-black eyes stared right through her, gazing into the secret recesses of her soul. They judged her and found her unequal to the task ahead.
Or they were wondering if she had any food.
The Night Brother spread some more crumbs in an arc in front of him. “Most people think ravens are evil because of their association with dark mages.”
“I’ve heard that,” Sephi said. “Where dark wings fly, the warlocks spy.”
Magnus nodded. “The raven’s flight gives warlocks sight.”
Francisco’s nose wrinkled in disgust. “Utter rubbish.”
“So ravens don’t act as spies for the Occultum?” Sephi asked.
“Some do,” Francisco said. “But not of their own free will. Members of the Occultum ensnare the birds with magical shackles, forcing them to act as their eyes and ears. But the birds have no choice in the matter. They didn’t do anything wrong, and yet, they are unfairly maligned as evil.”
Sephi was pretty sure he wasn’t just talking about ravens anymore. Perhaps this was a way to connect with him on a personal level. “You know, what the Council did to you, exiling you, it wasn’t right.”
“No, it wasn’t,” he said, keeping his gaze fixed firmly ahead of him. “I’m not evil. I’m a scholar. I figured out something new, something revolutionary, and they punished me for it.”
“I’m no friend to the Council,” Sephi said. “But I’ve seen what you can do firsthand. It’s pretty damn terrifying.”
His eyebrows drew together. “Yes. All the more reason to study it. Not bury our heads in the sand and pretend it doesn’t exist.”
“I can’t disa
gree with that,” Sephi said.
“And I didn’t start by commanding skeletal legions,” Francisco said. “I was a healer. I lived to help humans, to atone for the sin of the First Magic.”
“Stop,” she said. “I know the White mission statement. What I don’t know is how reanimating the dead relates to healing.”
He shrugged. “On its own, it doesn’t. What I can do, what all my brothers can do, is simply manipulating the human body with magic. Whether it’s stitching together torn flesh or curing a sick child of their affliction, the White Brothers control the natural state of living things. And death is just another stage of life.”
“Is it, though?” Sephi asked. “Isn’t death the end of life?”
Francisco shook his head. “Not at all. That was the misconception I sought to dispel. When a person dies, they don’t really die. Their body does. Generally speaking, their soul goes to Etherean. Or Demura if they were assholes. There are exceptions of course. Like the restless dead who roam the Valley of Lost Souls. Hence the name.”
“I never really paid attention in class when my teachers talked about the Four Realms,” Sephi said.
“It doesn’t surprise me that you were a bad student,” he said. “Since you keep interrupting me.”
Sephi bowed her head. “Yeah, sorry about that. Please, go on.”
“My brothers and I spent our time trying to heal the body, but I decided to go one step further and try to rejuvenate the soul.”
“You tried to resurrect the dead?” she asked, interrupting once again.
He looked frustrated, but he nodded. “I tried. Resurrection has never worked. Once the soul departs the body, it usually departs the Realm, and as far as I can tell, there’s no calling it back.”
“Then how do you speak to the dead?” Sephi asked.
“I don’t,” he said, turning to look at her. “Whatever the Council thinks I can do for them, they’re wrong.”
Magnus cleared his throat. “What about a dead soul that never departed this Realm? Could you speak to a soul like that?”
Francisco smoothed his hand over his beard, lost in thought. Then he nodded. “I believe so. In theory. But there’s no such soul as that. They all move on, one way or another.” He paused. “Unless their soul has been trapped somehow. I’ve only read about one way to do that, but it requires an immeasurable sacrifice.”
“And if someone made that sacrifice?” Magnus asked. “Hypothetically?”
“Then, yes,” Francisco said. “In theory, I can contact a soul with my magic. Then anchor it to the physical world and allow it to communicate.”
“In that case, we’re talking to the right man,” Magnus said. “The soul we need to speak with has been trapped for the last thousand years.”
The brother frowned. “That can’t be. I scoured the library for any mention of such a thing. There’s nothing.”
Magnus nodded. “That information isn’t in the library. It’s in the Council’s private archives. Or so I’ve been told.”
“The damn Council and their secrets,” Francisco said. “They wanted to bury me in those archives, too, hiding my discovery from the world like a dirty little secret. I probably would have ended up there, my corpse a bloody footnote in their secret history books, if not for Father Barnabas’s intervention.”
“He’s the one who told us to find you,” Sephi said.
Francisco scowled. “He’s a fool if he expects me to be grateful to him. Granting me exile instead of death was no favor. They stole everything from me. My life, my reputation, my legacy. And now, after damning me for my discovery, they expect me to use it to help them?”
“Yes,” Sephi said. “Their arrogance is only matched by their hypocrisy. They cast you out, only to call on your aid when it suits their needs. And they’re so high on the smell of their own farts that they believe you’ll concede to their demands.”
Magnus looked shocked, but Francisco snorted a laugh. “So we’re in agreement, it seems.”
“About the Council, yes,” Sephi said. “But when it comes to helping us speak to a dead man, don’t think of it as helping the Council. Think of it as helping yourself.”
“How will this help me?” he asked, turning to face her. She had his full attention now.
“You said they stole your reputation, your legacy. This is your chance to reclaim them. If you help us, you’ll be saving the whole damn Cradle. You can show the world your powers aren’t evil. That you’re not evil.”
Francisco waved her statement away. “The Council will sweep it under the rug like they always do with inconvenient facts.”
“Okay, that might be true,” she said. “But you can prove to the Council that your abilities are worth exploring.”
He rolled his eyes. “Like I give a shit what the Council thinks anymore.”
“But you can reclaim your life,” she said, hating how desperate she sounded.
He turned away from her and tossed out another handful of food to the ravens. “That isn’t my life anymore. My life is here now.”
Sephi’s stomach churned. She was losing him. Whatever spark of interest he showed was gone, smothered by old grudges and bitter resentment.
She shot a worried look at Magnus. His narrowed eyes met her gaze, and he nodded his head insistently in Francisco’s direction, silently urging her to say something—anything—to convince him.
Sephi wracked her brain for another line of reasoning to get through to the disgraced brother. “But you’re a White Brother. It’s your mission to help people.”
“A century of forced solitude absolves me of that responsibility, I think.”
“You can save people,” she said.
“People who might as well be on another Realm,” he said. “They’ve gotten along just fine without me for the last hundred years. They’ll continue to get by.”
“You won’t even try to help?” she asked. “To possibly save thousands of lives?”
“Sorry, but no.”
Magnus spoke up. “Then try to save one person.”
Francisco rolled his eyes. “Let me guess. That one person is me? By helping you, I’ll be saving my own soul or some such nonsense.”
“No,” Magnus growled. “I’m talking about the woman I love.”
Francisco’s eyebrows raised in surprise. “What do you mean?”
“Myrina, my bride-to-be, was kidnapped. She might already be dead, but if she’s alive, the only chance of saving her life is by completing this mission.”
Sephi’s jaw dropped open. This was the first she’d heard any of this, although it certainly explained Magnus’s comment from the day before, and why he had seemed on edge about this whole mission.
“I’m very sorry to hear that,” Francisco said, dropping his gaze to the ground. “But I don’t see how that responsibility falls on me.”
“Simple,” Magnus said. “If you refuse to help us, you’re letting her die.”
“That’s not fair,” Francisco said.
“None of this is fair,” Magnus said, his face a mask of fury. “What happened to you, what happened to Myrina, it’s all a wicked twist of fate. Now, we can either stand by idly, cursing our misfortunes, or we can do something about it. You can do something about it. If you refuse to help me, I want you to look me in the eye right now and tell me you’re going to let Myrina die.”
“If this is some kind of threat, I’m not intimidated by you,” Francisco said, drawing himself up to his full height. He wasn’t as big as Magnus, but the Night Brother’s shoulders were broad beneath his robes. He looked like he could handle himself in a fight.
Magnus held up a placating hand. “There’s no threat. I’m not going to fight you. I just want you to own up to the consequences of your decision. I want you to confess that on this day, you choose to let Myrina die.”
Francisco shook his head. “I can’t say that.”
“You fucking say it, or you come with us,” Magnus growled.
“It’s not t
hat simple.”
“It is that simple. Either you’re Brother Francisco, the noble man you claim to be, or you’re the Night Brother, the man everyone believes you to be.”
Francisco stared down at the ground, seemingly unable to meet Magnus’s fiery gaze. He stroked his white beard uneasily, like smoothing it out could smooth his thoughts. Finally, he looked up and nodded.
“I can’t promise I can save Myrina,” he said with resolve in his eyes. “But I promise I will try.”
Chapter 11
After a quick breakfast, they loaded up the cart and were on their way south and east, heading toward the thousand-year-old grave of the heretic of Viscayne. The ancient trees disappeared as they rattled along the dusty red soil, revealing a cloudy gray sky above them.
Spires of weathered rock thrust up from the surrounding terrain like ancient sentinels. The craggy walls of a canyon loomed in the distance, and they followed the downward sloping path of a dried-up river bed which would lead them to the canyon’s entrance. Magnus told them that inside, they would find their destination.
As the day wore on, the air dried up and turned hot. Sephi turned the reins over to Echo. The Green sat beside Francisco, while Sephi lounged against her pack in the back of the wagon.
Magnus sat against the box boards opposite her with his eyes closed, but Sephi knew he wasn’t asleep. He kept his body upright against the rhythmic jouncing of the iron wheels over the uneven ground. She figured he was just signaling that he wanted to be left alone.
After the revelation that his betrothed had been kidnapped, she could understand why. He’d clearly been keeping that to himself, and he’d only revealed the secret to convince Francisco to join them. A million questions burned in her brain about it, but she chose to respect his privacy for now.
Both Magnus and Sephi sat far away from the bulky canvas sack Francisco had loaded into the cart before they left. Neither one of them had missed the dry clatter of bones from inside the bag. The Night Brother had brought a few friends along with him, apparently.
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