by Sarah Ahiers
“I go by Lea,” I mumbled.
“Yes, well, perhaps you should return to your discussion with Brother Faraday, as this next part will be . . . unpleasant.”
Sebastien shoved the arrow the rest of the way through my shoulder.
I grunted and the room rolled. Sweat broke out on my forehead and my stomach contorted.
Sebastien broke the shaft and removed the arrow from my shoulder.
“Some stitching on both sides and you’ll be back to normal in no time,” he said. “As long as you refrain from heavy use of this arm. I take it you are right-handed? Good, then it shouldn’t be so difficult.”
Brother Faraday diverted my attention while Sebastien set a needle to my skin. “The coin itself burned you? After you prayed to Safraella?”
“Yes. I couldn’t release it.”
“But the ghosts still chased you? I don’t understand what this means. . . .” The last bit he addressed to himself, his gaze retreating inward. Sebastien finished the stitches in my back and moved to the front of my shoulder.
“While it was burning me,” I continued, “a ghost tried to pull me out of my body, and something pushed it away.”
That drew Faraday’s attention. “What do you mean?”
“I’m not sure I can explain. There was a flash, like embers maybe? And the ghost was thrown away from me. I didn’t pay the flash much attention. I was trying to stay seated on my horse.”
“A miracle?” he asked. “You held off a ghost by the strength of your faith alone?”
There had been stories and tales of priests or clippers so devoted to Safraella or their own gods, so favored that the gods protected them from the ghosts. They could walk the dead plains at night, unmolested. Those of incredible, fervent faith—saints or those who saw the goddess herself in a vision—were sometimes granted true resurrections and brought back to life in their existing body. It hadn’t happened in hundreds of years. I scowled. “I’m no saint.”
Faraday blinked rapidly. He flipped the coin in his palm. “Do you mind if I keep this?”
I waved his question aside. “Have it. I have a pouch full of them. They’re really only worth the value of the coin.”
“To you, maybe, but to me it is apparent you had an experience with the goddess Herself, that She somehow deigned to answer your prayers. You must be very special, Lea Saldana.”
Sebastien, finished with the stitches in my shoulder, dressed the wound with a foul-smelling salve and wrapped it tightly with white cloth. He moved on to my hand, cleaning it with another damp towel before slathering the burns with the same salve, wrapping my hand and pronouncing me mended.
“I don’t see that I’m favored by Safraella,” I responded to Faraday. “Two nights ago my whole Family was slaughtered by the Da Vias. If She loved us so, then why did She let us be destroyed?”
Faraday closed his fingers around the coin. “Yes, I can see how that would be . . . upsetting. But do you not also see how you were the sole survivor? How you escaped the slaughter of your Family?”
I shook my head.
Luck. It had been only dumb luck that had saved me.
And since everything had been my fault, the luck tasted like dry ashes in my mouth.
Brother Faraday showed me to a room. It was small, and sparsely furnished, but the bed was clean and my body sank into it. My mind, however, could find no rest.
I was surrounded by men of faith, servants of Safraella, and yet I’d never felt so alone. The pain in my shoulder and hand paled against the pain of my heart. Before, whenever I’d felt sad or lonely, I’d talk to Rafeo, who would be quick to cheer me with a joke. Or I’d find Val, who could make my body tremble with well-placed hands and lips.
But Rafeo’s voice had been silenced. And the love between Val and me had been a lie.
My shoulder ached as my thoughts plagued me, and finally, after close to an hour, I sat back up.
Someone pounded on my door, but before I had a chance to answer, Brother Faraday slipped inside, latching the door behind him. He held a robe and a wide-brimmed hat in his arms.
“Brother Faraday?”
“There’s no time,” he whispered, handing me the clothes. “The Addamos have come looking for you. Well, looking for your brother Rafeo.”
I jumped to my feet. “What?”
“Put on the robe and hat. We’re going to sneak you out. You’ll have to leave your horse—Butters, was it?—but we’ll take good care of him. The rest of your belongings have already been packed.”
“I don’t understand.” I slipped the rough wool over my head. “How did they find me so quickly?”
“They must have left at dawn to get here so soon, though I suspect they’re checking as many monasteries as they can. And they haven’t found you yet. But they might if you linger.” Faraday opened the door a crack and peeked out. He glanced over his shoulder, and after I tugged the hat in place, hiding my hair, he gestured for me to follow him.
Voices trickled around the corner of the empty hallway—Brother Sebastian arguing with someone.
Faraday held up a hand and we ducked into an alcove. I clutched my key around my neck and listened carefully.
It wasn’t an argument, it was an interrogation from an Addamo clipper.
“He had to have stopped here,” the clipper’s voice echoed.
“I’m sorry, Brother, but no man called on us last night.”
The front door to the monastery opened, and another Addamo walked in. Faraday and I pressed our backs against the wall of the alcove.
“There’s a palomino stallion in the stables, well-bred,” the new clipper announced. “Could be the same one he was riding.”
“Well?” the first Addamo asked Sebastien.
I chanced a look. Sebastien bowed his head. “The horse wandered onto our land this morning. He had no tack to identify his owner. We are planning to keep him until his owner claims him. It is only right, considering how finely bred he is.”
“It’s awfully convenient.”
“I’d actually say it’s inconvenient,” Sebastien said. “Both for you and for the owner of the horse. Are you truly confident this clipper braved the dead plains at night?”
“Of course we are. He was arrow shot by one of my men. We watched him ride into the dead plains north from Genoni.”
“Perhaps he succumbed to his wounds? Or the fury of the ghosts? An injured man is more at risk for possession. Or maybe he returned to Lovero, through a different gate.”
The Addamos paused as they thought this over. “The Caffarellis could be hiding him,” one mumbled to the other. “Maybe he circled back on foot to the Lilyan gate.”
“Why don’t you come this way and I will get you some refreshments,” Brother Sebastien said.
One of the Addamos made a frustrated sound, followed by footsteps as they trailed after Sebastien. “The Addamos would pay handsomely for any information, of course.”
Whatever Sebastien said in reply was lost as they left the room.
Faraday and I waited a few more moments to make sure it was safe for us to move.
“You could’ve told them about me,” I whispered.
He shrugged. “Like the king, we do not support one Family over another. They should know this.”
“But by helping me, aren’t you supporting the Saldanas?”
“Haven’t you heard? The Saldanas are all dead, wiped out by the Da Vias. Anyway, it’s a disgrace they offered us money like we’re some sort of commoners. We, too, are disciples of Safraella, even if we don’t murder in Her name. Sometimes clippers forget this.”
I smiled. “When you’re a clipper, you’re schooled to think highly of your own importance.”
He peeked around the corner, then waved me forward. We scurried out to the yard. There a wagon waited, hitched to a chestnut mare. In the back rested my two bags, though the saddle and saddlebags had been left behind.
“Come.” Faraday gestured as we rushed to the wagon.
&nbs
p; “Won’t we look suspicious?”
“We’re just two priests, going about our duties.”
Priests inside the city walls generally tended to the common, accepting offerings of blood or bone from people who hoped to gain favor from Safraella, seeing to their spiritual needs.
The monasteries on the dead plains, though, served many purposes, including offering sanctuary for travelers. But their two main duties as priests of Safraella were to play the role of cleaners on the dead plains—finding any bodies and returning them to their families if possible—and to pray for the angry ghosts.
At night, the priests would gather at the gates and pray for the angry dead, pray for their torment to end, for Safraella to offer them a rebirth so they could stop their endless searching for a body. No one knew if it worked, but the priests had faith.
“I have to say, I never expected a clipper to ride here in the middle of the night seeking safety.” Faraday took the driver’s seat and adjusted his own hat. I sat on the bench beside him. “You certainly brought much excitement with you.”
“I apologize.”
He smiled. “It has been liberating. A nice change of pace. Sometimes, things can get boring.”
I yawned and regretted my lost rest. “What? At a monastery in the middle of the dead plains, surrounded by angry ghosts?”
“Yes, well. As you may have noticed, the ghosts aren’t very good conversationalists.”
He flicked the reins and we moved forward, leaving the monastery behind. “Where is it you’re headed?”
I paused. Faraday had only helped me. And he was a priest. Of course, I’d trusted Val, and look where that had ended up.
But there was no point in lying, not if I wanted to reach my destination and find my uncle. He was the key to the Da Vias and my revenge. “Yvain,” I finally admitted.
“Then we’d better move a little faster.” He clucked his tongue and the horse sped up.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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eleven
YVAIN WAS A CITY AS DIFFERENT FROM RAVENNA AS the dead plains monastery was from the palace in Genoni. Where Ravenna was a city of nightlife, masquerades, and carnivals, Yvain was tiny and quiet, more provincial, with fresh flowers in the window boxes of every house, and fragrant red mosses growing between the cobblestone streets.
I hated it immediately. There was no life to the people. No sea air and the sweet smell of the lantern oil. No fashion and pride in what they wore. In Yvain, the women didn’t even cover their hair, and beneath the cloying smell of the flowers, the warm stench of sewage from the canals drifted everywhere.
Walls divided the city from the dead plains, since Rennes was not a country that bowed to Safraella. Ghosts could not pass through walls, and the city walls kept the dead plains ghosts out, but anyone who died within the city, behind the walls, and became an angry ghost would be trapped inside the city with everyone else. So like the old days of Lovero, people stayed inside their homes once the sun set.
“Why doesn’t their regent simply bow to Safraella?” I complained as the wagon slowly made its way into town behind a line of people entering the city before the sun set.
Faraday shrugged. “It’s a question of geography. Lovero is pushed against the sea on the south and west, and bordered by the dead plains on the north and east. When the Sapienzas took the throne, the people supported a royal line that would bow to Safraella and free the country from the menace of the ghosts. But Yvain is the only city in Rennes pressed against the border of the dead plains. It’s more easily managed with the walls, and any ghosts inside Yvain can’t get farther into the country because of the canals. To the ghosts it’s a labyrinth of waterways.”
“It still seems it would be a good idea to follow Safraella.”
“The people of Yvain, and Rennes as a whole, find our devotion to a goddess who deals in death and murder to be macabre at best.” Faraday chuckled.
“She offers resurrection.”
“Yvain’s patron is Acacius, a minor god of crops and debts. It’s why they have flowers everywhere. And you will find honorable people here. If they accrue a debt, they will do anything to repay it. If they are devout, Acacius gives them their own version of eternal life, by making them one with the land and plants and animals.”
“I’m sorry,” I scoffed. “But I’d rather deal with blood and death and return as a person than water some pretty flowers and pay my debts and come back as a wheat field.”
“Well, you are biased. But for them, becoming part of the land is a form of immortality. They would rather try to live full lives here and now than be faced with death and murder only to be reborn and have to face it all over again. Acacius offers gardens and farms, trees and flowers. You will find little hunger in Rennes.”
We struggled to break free of the crowd, Faraday steering the wagon past the heavy gates of the city walls. He shifted in his seat. “You don’t have to go after the Da Vias, you know.”
I stiffened. I hadn’t told him my plan.
“Don’t be alarmed. It just seems your most likely course of action.” Faraday grinned. “But no one seems to realize you, Lea Saldana, survived the attack on your Family. Very few people get such a clean chance at starting over.”
I pushed my growing anger aside. “You’re suggesting I give up serving Safraella? You? Her disciple?” My whole life I’d been a clipper. If I gave it up now, no one would avenge my Family. Memories of the Saldanas would fade, until we’d simply become another of the lost Families. “Being a clipper is a calling.”
“Oh, I understand a calling. But can it truly be counted one if you’re born into it? Did your mother or father ever ask if you wanted to be something else?”
I snorted. “Who would give up a life of money and power and respect?”
“Those things are gone with the lives of your Family. Those things are fleeting, as you can see. Intangible.”
I looked away, scanning the faces of the crowd around us. They blended together until I didn’t truly see anyone. “I do not care for the turn of this conversation, Brother.”
Faraday held up a hand in surrender. “I apologize. I forget you are not of the church and unused to discussions of philosophy and faith. I spoke out of concern for a sister and that is all.”
“Whatever my plans are, they are well considered.” Find Marcello. Enlist his help. Kill the Da Vias before they realized I’d survived their attack. Simple.
Faraday nodded, then drove the wagon down a side street almost as busy as the entrance. He pulled the wagon off to the side and stopped.
“Here we are.” He gestured to a small building to his left. The setting sun highlighted a carving on the door, a blank bone mask. This was a church of Safraella.
“They allow our churches here?” I asked.
“Clippers are not allowed in Yvain, of course, but they do permit a few small churches. Mostly for the use of the monasteries. We return as many bodies from the dead plains to Rennes as we do to Lovero, but many of us can’t make the trip back to our monasteries in one day. I’ll stay here for the night and head back in the morning. There is plenty of room for you, too. The Brothers will be happy to welcome you.”
It would be easy to walk into the church, get a good night’s sleep, then find my uncle in the morning.
But the Addamos were already after me. If they had sent members to the monasteries, then next they’d be heading for the nearest cities, including Yvain. And the first place they’d check would be the churches. Anyone could be made to talk. Anyone.
“This will be where we part ways,” I said.
Faraday’s smile dropped, but he nodded.
I jumped off the wagon and grabbed my two bags. “Thank you, Brother Faraday. I wish I could offer you something. In the past I would’ve granted you good grace with the Saldana Family. I still could, but it’s not worth much these days.”
“I’ll take it.” He leaned over me. “You may be the only Saldana now, but I do not think your Family’s story is complete.”
“Well, it’s kind of you to say so, anyway. If ever you need assistance, Brother Faraday, you need only ask it of a Saldana. There. Now it’s official.”
“Thank you. Look for a letter from me. I will write with any information about your situation. Good luck, Lea Saldana.”
He clucked the horse forward into a small alley beside the church. I fought off a yawn. My shoulder, hand, and entire body ached from the Addamos and ghosts. I’d need to find somewhere to rest.
Around me, the streets grew empty as the sky grew darker. Unlike Ravenna, there were no crowds of people waiting for the moon to rise. The few who remained headed for inns, lit brightly against the encroaching darkness of the streets. Building after building held businesses where they’d offer to lend money if paid back with interest. In Lovero, if people didn’t pay their debts, someone typically hired a clipper to pay them a visit.
I walked along a canal, bags heavy in my hands, wrinkling my nose against the smell. The small boats people used as transportation were tied against docks and buildings. Lanterns adorned many of the boats, but for what purpose in a city that hid from the night, I didn’t know. Perhaps Yvain had carnivals like Ravenna, and they decorated their boats with flowers and fires. Remember why you’re here.
I couldn’t care about masquerades or good food or flirting with boys. None of that meant anything anymore. Maybe it never had. Maybe if I’d been more like Matteo, focused on my studies, I would’ve been able to save my Family. To save Rafeo, who was lying alone in the tunnel.
I could still do it. If I worked hard, became the best clipper, maybe She would undo what had happened. Maybe She would return my Family to me. Even just Rafeo. If I could have Rafeo, I could serve You better.
No. It was impossible. True resurrections never happened. Or at least hadn’t happened in hundreds of years. It was a stupid thing to wish for, but I couldn’t help it. I missed them so much. So much.