Trouble had already flown ahead, visible as a shaft of darkness spearing through the haze. I nudged Priestbane back into motion.
As we reached the road, evidence of the town’s hasty abandonment came into view. Chicken feathers, scraps of cloth, and clumps of straw littered the rutted ground. An escaped hog rooted in a ditch, grunting industriously as we passed. The first building we reached was an old stone smithy, which had a dark stain above its doorframe where a consecrated horseshoe had been nailed to ward off spirits. Someone had torn it off and taken it with them for protection.
My shoulders tightened as the buildings closed in on either side of the road, their doors and windows gaping. The setting sun painted their west-facing sides a glowering red and plunged the rest into shadow.
I hadn’t been to a town since before Mother Katherine brought me to the convent seven years ago. This one was significantly larger than the village where I’d grown up, which barely even qualified as a village. I could still picture the desolate ramshackle huts growing smaller and smaller, receding down the hill as the convent’s wagon carried me away.
Even though this place looked nothing like it, I still wanted to get out as quickly as I could. Staring straight ahead, I pressed my heel against Priestbane’s side.
“We need to find a place to rest,” the revenant objected. When I didn’t answer right away, it asked, “You aren’t planning to ride through the night, are you?”
I didn’t answer. I hadn’t thought about it.
“You need to stop. Your body hurts.” There was an edge to its voice.
I pictured the wisps glittering along the road. “That doesn’t matter.”
“Well, it matters to me,” the revenant snapped. “Whatever you feel, I have to share it with you. Do you realize you haven’t stopped to eat or drink all day? You let the horse stick its nose in a stream a few times, so I know you’re at least aware of the concept in theory.”
I was well on my way to ignoring it again, but then it said that, and I found myself looking down at Priestbane. I barely recognized him as the horse Leander had ridden earlier in the day. His dappled coat was dark with sweat, his mane knotted up with burrs. Guilt sliced through me like a knife.
I drew him to a halt near the outskirts of town.
It took longer to work my boots out of the stirrups than I expected. When I slid from the saddle, the ground’s impact jarred through my legs, and my vision whited out with pain. When my senses returned, I was leaning against Priestbane’s saddle. He had stretched his head around to investigate, his hot breath gusting over my hair.
“I told you,” the revenant said.
“Why aren’t you helping me this time?” I gritted out.
“I can’t lend you my power too often. Your body has limits, and not being able to feel them is dangerous. If you push yourself too far…” It hesitated, then said darkly, “I had one vessel whose heart burst. She barely sent me back into my relic in time. Another who started having fits—she couldn’t wield me after that.”
“How many of your vessels have died, exactly?”
“I assure you, none of them were my fault,” the revenant snapped. “I warned them every time, and they didn’t listen.”
It actually sounded upset about its vessels dying, but then again, it would be, if it had to go back into its reliquary afterward.
“You can’t blame us,” I pointed out. I tested my balance, then began hobbling toward a nearby stable. If the revenant asked, I would pretend that I had picked it out at random, but the truth was I had chosen it because there hadn’t been any stables that looked like it in my village. “All you do is call us names and rant about murdering nuns.”
“Yes, that’s all I do, isn’t it?” the revenant hissed. And then it vanished from my mind with a kind of angry flourish, like it had stalked out of a room and slammed the door behind it.
I shrugged. Priestbane followed obediently, his head low and ears relaxed as he clopped up to the stable. The latch came unstuck with a squeak of rain-swollen wood, and the door shuddered open after I kicked the bottom slat a few times. The inside was dim, pungent with the musty odor of mice and horses.
First I took off Priestbane’s tack, staggering under the weight of his sweaty saddle, and left him inside. Then I drew water from the well in the yard, filled the stable’s trough, and dried him off with handfuls of straw. I found hay in the loft and checked it for mold before I tossed it down to him. While I worked, I felt the revenant slowly creeping back into my consciousness.
“You treat that beast better than you do yourself,” it commented sourly, watching Priestbane nose through the pile.
“He’s a good horse. He carried me all day. He doesn’t deserve to suffer because of the things I ask him to do.”
“Have you ever considered that your body carries you?”
I didn’t know what to say to that. As I stood watching Priestbane, the light shining through the gaps in the walls slid upward and disappeared, casting the stable into darkness. The sun must have descended below the rooftops outside.
“Don’t sleep here,” the revenant said suddenly. “There’s a human building attached to this one, isn’t there?”
“I think so.” I had seen something like that out in the yard, possibly living quarters for the inn’s ostler. Honestly, though, I didn’t see the point. My gaze fixed on the deep drifts of straw piled up along the wall.
It must have noticed me looking. “Don’t you dare. Your pathetic little meat body is on the verge of collapse, and there’s a building made specially for humans just a few steps away. Go on, move. And bring the priest’s things. You may have forgotten that you need to eat to survive, but I haven’t. Nun!” It gave me a jab that made me sway on my feet. I was still staring at the piles of straw as though I’d fallen into a trance.
My vision seemed to be fading in and out, but perhaps that was only because the stable had gotten darker. Finding that I didn’t have the energy to argue, I reached for the straps of Leander’s saddlebags and dragged them after me as I stumbled toward the door to the ostler’s room. I almost tripped over the threshold on the way inside.
“Build a fire,” the revenant ordered, before I could even take in my surroundings. It poked me again, nudging me forward through the dark room until I collided with a stone ledge, fumbled, and heard something clatter to the floor. A mantelpiece, I realized, as my eyes began to adjust, and then I made out what had fallen off: a carved wooden animal, something the ostler had been whittling before he’d left. A child’s toy, still unfinished.
I picked it up and carefully put it back on the mantelpiece. For some reason, my hands were shaking.
“What are you doing? Don’t bother with that. Light the fire.” There was real urgency in the revenant’s voice now, not just impatience. I considered telling it that I wasn’t going to freeze to death, not this time of year, and especially not down south in Roischal, but speaking didn’t seem worth the effort. Numbly, I felt around on the mantelpiece until I found a tinderbox. Crouching, I shoved some wood into the hearth from the bin nearby and went to work with the flint, my clumsy hands striking a few weak sparks.
Power surged forth from the revenant. The next spark flared brightly. Fire licked across the kindling, the dry wood hungrily popping and crackling. A warm glow illuminated my surroundings, which turned out not to contain much: half-repaired bridles hanging from nails on the wall, a straw mattress piled with horse blankets.
The revenant relaxed as soon as the fire blazed to life. My hands also stopped shaking. I stared at them, suspicious.
“Now eat something,” the revenant said quickly. “You haven’t eaten a legitimate meal the entire time I’ve been in your body. The nuns occasionally forced some sort of horrid gruel down your throat, but I hardly think that counts.”
Once again, arguing seemed pointless. I dragged Leander’s bags closer and rummaged through them. Sheafs of parchment, an ivory comb, spare smallclothes. Finally, a bag that contained a loaf of bread, a few wr
inkled apples, and a round of cheese wrapped in wax. I hesitated as I shook everything out onto the floor. Something about this seemed like a bad idea.
“The smoke could lead people to us,” I concluded finally, my thoughts working at a fraction of their usual speed.
“There aren’t any humans close enough. If that changes, which I sincerely doubt, I’ll wake you.” It was silent a moment. Then it asked, as though it had been mulling over the question for a while, “Fire doesn’t bother you?”
“No.” Occasionally the smell of burned ham made me vomit, but the revenant didn’t need to know that. “It isn’t as though someone else shoved me in. I did it to myself.”
The revenant was silent again. I started to get the vague sense that there had been something wrong with my answer. Then it said, “Go on, eat.”
I felt it monitoring me closely as I took a bite of bread and chewed. Whatever this loaf was, it bore little resemblance to the coarse barley bread we ate at the convent. I had never tasted anything like it before. It melted in my mouth like butter, and its crust looked golden in the firelight. “Another bite,” the revenant prompted.
I ate the entire loaf that way. As soon as I swallowed, the revenant would tell me to take another bite, or command me to drink from Leander’s water skin. It didn’t relent until crumbs dusted my robes and the skin hung empty. Then it let me crawl over to the bed and collapse on top of the blankets. Surrounded by the smell of horses, I could almost imagine that I was back at the convent, sleeping in the barn to avoid Marguerite.
My full stomach felt as heavy as an anchor, dragging me down toward sleep. I had the murky sense that I was forgetting something important. The reliquary. I needed to keep the reliquary within reach, in case… in case the revenant…
In case the revenant what?
The revenant was saying something, but I couldn’t muster up the energy to listen. “Good night, revenant,” I mumbled, hoping that for once, it would be quiet.
It stopped. At last, blessed silence. I had almost drifted to sleep before I heard its low reply. “Good night, nun.”
EIGHT
Dead. Dead! Dead!”
I jerked awake to the sight of Trouble’s beak poised above my face, his angry gray eye glaring down at me. As my brain scrambled to catch up, he hopped over me with a flick of his tail and snatched the round of cheese from Leander’s half-open bag. He flapped away triumphantly, his cries of “Dead!” muffled by his prize.
By the time the revenant spoke, I had already thrown back the blankets and reached for my nonexistent dagger. “There isn’t anything here—the bird sensed me, that’s all. We’ll have to be careful about that in the future.” Balefully, it watched Trouble flap away into the stable. “We could always eat raven for breakfast instead.”
The revenant had to settle for a couple of wrinkled apples. I was back on Priestbane and following Trouble again before the sun appeared on the horizon. I flexed my hands on the reins, testing the gloves I had scavenged on our way out. They were too large for me, so I had tied them around my wrists with twine.
The man on the road had mentioned my scars. In all likelihood, that was the way the Clerisy would try to identify me. I didn’t stand out otherwise; my pale skin and black hair could belong to hundreds of other girls in Roischal. I was lucky that this time of year, no one would think twice about a traveler wearing gloves.
My robes, on the other hand, I’d had to leave behind in the village. Their distinctive appearance instantly marked me as a Gray Sister. I still had on my chemise, my boots, and my stockings, but I had found a linen tunic and a tattered, mouse-gnawed woolen cloak in one of the houses to replace the robes. Among all the refugees fleeing their homes, I wouldn’t attract attention. Except for the fact that I was riding a Clerisy warhorse.
Priestbane was well rested and energized by the morning chill. His head bobbed in time with his eager strides, and he looked around with his ears pricked forward, seemingly interested in every dripping branch and dew-silvered cobweb. When we flushed a rabbit from the bushes, he snorted at it in challenge.
Saint Eugenia’s reliquary bumped against my ribs at the motion. I felt around its edges, ensuring that the shape was still hidden underneath my clothes. As long as I kept the cloak on, I was fairly confident no one would be able to tell it was there.
“Stop doing that. If you keep touching it, someone’s going to notice.”
The revenant was probably right. I moved my hand away, then felt a flicker of unease. I was beginning to listen to it as though it were a bizarre traveling companion—someone who shared my goals out of more than mere necessity. I couldn’t drop my guard.
Last night, I had been lucky that it hadn’t tried to betray me. I suspected that my physical weakness had bought me time. It had brought up the consequences of its vessels pushing themselves too far for a reason, and it knew that I wouldn’t surrender without a fight—that I would rather die than allow it to possess me. It likely couldn’t afford to risk my body failing in a struggle. After what had happened to its previous vessels, it had reason to be cautious.
“Nun, I’ve sensed something.”
I twitched upright in the saddle. “What is it?” I asked roughly, pushing my thoughts aside as though it had walked in on me writing them down on paper.
“I’m not certain,” it answered after a hesitation. “But whatever it is, it’s nearby.”
So far that morning, we hadn’t passed any signs of life. Right now Priestbane was carrying me through an abandoned field, his hooves crunching over the stubble of harvested grain. I stopped him to listen. Straining my ears, I thought I could hear bells tolling faintly in the distance. And something else—the distant cries of ravens.
Trouble circled above us and cawed once as though in reply. Then he soared like an arrow over the hill ahead, fading to a white speck against the clouds.
Feeling the change in my posture, Priestbane danced forward. I shortened the reins to keep him from breaking into a canter. He took excited, mincing steps all the way up the hill.
When we reached the top, I could only stop and stare.
Below us lay a valley filled with mist. A city’s towers speared from the mist into the sky, their points lit reddish gold by the rising sun as their long shadows spilled over a half-obscured jumble of battlements and rooftops below. I struggled to make sense of the bewildering image. I had never seen a city before, or even a building larger than my convent’s chapel. This place could swallow the convent whole without noticing.
The clear faraway tolling of a bell carried across the valley. Pennants streamed from the towers, flashing white and blue.
“That’s Bonsaint,” I said stupidly. It had to be. Bonsaint was the capital of Roischal, famous for its colossal drawbridge, which had been constructed over the banks of the River Sevre as a defense against the Dead. Crossing it was the only way to enter the city.
“It’s nothing compared to the cities that stood before I was bound,” the revenant answered scornfully. “Look, it was even built using the stones of an older one.”
I stood up in the stirrups for a better view. Sure enough, the ancient-looking gray stone of Bonsaint’s fortifications matched the look of the numerous ruins scattered across Loraille, one of which stood near my old village. The children had been forbidden from playing there, for good reason. Most of the ruins from the Age of Kings had been abandoned because they attracted too many spirits, their lingering taint of Old Magic irresistible to the Dead. I had heard that in Chantclere, daily rituals of incense and prayer were required to drive away the shades that accumulated in its streets. It seemed likely that similar measures were necessary in Bonsaint.
I could hear the ravens cawing more loudly from my current vantage point, but I still couldn’t see them. They had to be down in the valley, hidden by the mist.
As soon as I had that thought, the wind shifted. The sound of the bells grew louder, and with it, men shouting and the distant, tinny clash of steel against steel. The m
ist was beginning to burn away, peeling back from the green valley like a shroud.
“I can smell powerful Old Magic,” the revenant said at once. “It’s coming from the city. That’s why I wasn’t able to tell what I was sensing earlier. Old Magic, and spirits—nun, there are hundreds of spirits here. No, thousands. Thousands of them, and not just shades…”
It trailed off as the mist blew away from the base of Bonsaint, revealing what I first took to be another layer of mist covering the valley, silvery and low to the ground. Then I realized I was looking at a mass of spirits, so densely packed that their shapes blurred together into a silver mass, an endless sea. An army of the Dead.
They were held at bay by a thin line of soldiers curved in a defensive half-circle in front of the river, fighting for their lives against an almost equal number of their own possessed men. They were hopelessly overwhelmed, about to be overcome at any moment. Behind them, an encampment of civilians stretched along the bank. Even from a distance I recognized the battered tents and wagons of refugees who had fled their homes. People who had come to Bonsaint for refuge but hadn’t been let inside.
The giant drawbridge stood upright on the opposite bank, unmoving.
A thought struck me like a single clear toll of the bell echoing across the valley: these people had been condemned to die. The Divine of Bonsaint was prepared to sacrifice them all to protect her city.
I didn’t pause to think. I turned Priestbane toward the valley, urging him first into a trot and then a canter.
“Nun, wait. You aren’t trained—you need to be careful. You can’t ride straight into a battle—nun!”
As far as I could tell, that was exactly what I needed to do. “If you guide me, I’ll listen to you.” A fierce certainty gripped my heart. “We’ll fight the way you used to, before your vessels forgot how to wield you.”
The silence stretched on for so long that I started to wonder if the revenant wasn’t going to reply. The valley drew nearer and nearer; Priestbane’s stride leveled out. Then it said decisively, “We need a weapon. There.”
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