Vespertine

by Margaret Rogerson

  “I thought you were responsible for the attacks on Roischal. Practicing Old Magic.”

  “I see.” He hesitated. His lips parted, but nothing came out. I had never seen him appear so uncertain. “I’ve been investigating the situation for some time,” he said finally, swiftly, with an air of disbelief that he was revealing this out loud. “Before the first soldiers were possessed, there were a few suspicious incidents here and there. But the more I looked into them, the more I found myself being assigned… errands. I was sent to Naimes, to conduct evaluations. Sent to the countryside, to battle spirits. And then—”

  “Sent to retrieve me in the harrow,” I finished.

  He gave me a humorless smile. I wondered if he was thinking the same thing I was. All along, even then, we had been on the same side. The anger I had seen on his face in the evaluation room, learning about the possessed soldiers—that was because it had happened while he was leagues away from Roischal, forced to put his life-and-death investigation on hold to administer tests to dozens of giggling novices. No wonder he had wanted to get it over with.

  I thought of the notes filling the margins of his prayer book. The impersonal emptiness of his chamber. This had consumed his life for months, I wagered, and until now, he had confided in no one. With an uncomfortable twist in my stomach, I realized that the dedication must have been written by his dead brother, Gabriel.

  “So the revenants aren’t in league with each other,” he said slowly, almost to himself. “Rath—your revenant wants to stop Sarathiel, not free it? When it sent the thralls to Naimes, that was to destroy Saint Eugenia’s relic, not find your revenant a vessel.”

  “They don’t like each other very much,” I explained.

  “This is mad,” Leander said. “I shouldn’t…” He glanced away; a muscle shifted in his jaw. Then he looked back at me and said as though it cost him, “Help me. I understand that you hate me, but this must be done. I need to see it through.”

  I had forgotten I was still holding the dagger. When I stuck it back through my belt, he relaxed minutely.

  “Ask him what he was planning to do with the casket,” the revenant said.

  “What were you planning to do with the casket?”

  “I was going to throw it into the Sevre.” He paused, looking at me warily, and I realized he was addressing the revenant when he asked, “Will that work?”

  “Most likely.” I waited for the rest of the revenant’s answer, then relayed, “It would be easier to dump the ashes over the altar and let the Old Magic finish the job, but there would be a risk of Sarathiel escaping.”

  “And tell him to keep holding the lid shut,” the revenant added. “Right now I’m fairly certain that’s the only thing keeping Sarathiel inside. The lid must have been left a little ajar for it to have snuck out enough of its power to kill the sacristan. I’ll bet the priest picked up the casket just in time.”

  Hearing this, Leander turned a shade paler beneath the bruises. “Ah,” he said calmly. He stepped out from behind the altar and went down the chancel’s steps, avoiding looking at the sacristan’s body. It struck me that he hadn’t even known whether his plan would work. Any mistake could have killed him. This was a burden he had been prepared to shoulder alone.

  “Why have you decided to trust me?” I asked, catching up with his long strides and his dramatically billowing vestments.

  He shot me a sideways glance. “In the crypt, you didn’t kill me. I was unconscious and at your mercy, and you let me live. If Rath—if the revenant were in control…”

  “I’m not a saint,” I said, because I could see where this was going.

  Looking down the empty transept ahead, he smiled. It wasn’t his condescending smile from before, but instead a rather pallid real one.

  “What?” I demanded.

  “Nothing,” he said. “The procession is due to return soon, but we have enough time to slip out the back. From there the walk to the parapets overlooking the river will take us only a few minutes. Anyone who sees us will keep their distance. I’ve made certain enough of that.”

  Anger throbbed to life dully in my chest. “Is that why you torture people with your relic?” I asked. “To ensure they don’t get in your way?”

  “We’ve already established how much you dislike me. If it’s any consolation, I don’t like myself, either. One can’t, in order to be a confessor.” He stated it plainly, as though he hardly cared, but opening the door to the vestry, he paused. “When I used Saint Liliane’s relic on you in Naimes, I will admit—I was not entirely…”

  He trailed off. The Divine was standing in the vestry, her many layers of ornamentation being removed by an attendant. The smell of cold winter air and incense clung to her robes. With her miter set aside, I saw that her hair was brown and curly, cut short for tidiness, which made her look even more girlishly young.

  “Leander?” she asked in confusion.

  Both of us stood frozen: Leander in the open, me halfway behind a garment rack, still conspicuous to anyone who bothered glancing in my direction.

  She said in her gentle voice, concerned, “I noticed you had gone missing—I grew worried. I called an early end to the procession. You’ve been so unlike yourself these past days.” She noticed me first, followed by the casket in Leander’s hands. Her eyes widened. “What are you doing?” She dismissed the attendant with a gesture.

  Her beseeching gaze lingered on me; I saw the moment she figured out who I was. She looked back at Leander in shock. “Leander, you must put that down,” she said softly.

  “I know everything,” he replied, unmoved.

  “You don’t understand. Please.”

  It came to me in a flood. Someone had tampered with the cathedral’s records. Someone had repeatedly sent Leander away from the city to hinder his investigation. Only one person in Bonsaint had the authority to issue such commands.

  Perhaps someone had even purposefully moved the casket’s lid and left it ajar.

  The Divine lunged for the casket with a cry of despair. At the same time, Leander dove back out the door. Together, we slammed it in her face.

  A pause followed. Leander wore a look of disbelief at what he had just done. I imagined the Divine standing on the other side, stunned, having probably never been treated with that much disrespect at any point in her entire life. Then she let out a shout and started banging on the door.

  “The bench,” the revenant said. I left Leander with his back against the door to grab the wooden bench standing against the wall nearby. It had to be at least twice a man’s weight, a huge old antique bulging with carvings, but the revenant wasn’t trying to hide itself now. When I finished dragging it into place, Leander was staring at me.

  “This way,” he said, emerging from his trance. He wheeled back toward the nave, his robes flying behind him as his pace broke from a jog into a sprint. Behind us, the door shuddered ineffectually with blows from the Divine’s fists. Then all fell silent.

  “I doubt that’s a positive development,” the revenant remarked, right before wood exploded across the transept.

  I paused to look over my shoulder. The Divine stumbled from the wrecked doorway wearing an expression of piteous shock, clutching a bloody-knuckled hand to her chest. From her robes, she had drawn forth an amulet set with an amber stone—a rivener relic. She drew up short when she saw the sacristan’s body. “No,” she whispered, in what seemed like genuine grief, then looked back at us with red-rimmed eyes. She began to raise her scepter.

  The revenant blazed to its full power so quickly that I staggered and had to steady myself against a pillar. Silver flames rolled over my cloak, dripping ghostly embers onto the carpet.

  “Run,” I told Leander.

  The fury’s shriek rippled across the cathedral, summoning a wind that lifted the draperies and sent dust streaming from the chandeliers. The noise ground harmlessly in my ears, held back by the revenant’s power. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Leander vanish into one of the doors
in the opposite transept.

  With a cry of frustration, the Divine flung out her other hand. The pews beside me burst into kindling. As I leaped behind a pillar to avoid the flying shards, the candelabra fixed to the pillar’s side violently erupted into flame, roaring toward the vault in a twisting column of fire. When I stumbled back, another pew exploded in my path. The Divine was panting, her white and gold vestments smeared with blood.

  No one could wield more than one relic at a time, not even a Divine, but she was switching from one to the other so rapidly she might as well be. And she was incredibly strong—I had never heard of an ashgrim relic being wielded like that before. My cheeks still stung from the heat.

  But her relics also gave her weaknesses, as I knew intimately from my time with the revenant. I scrambled toward the sacristan’s body and yanked at the censer attached to his belt. As I had hoped, the incense was lit; he must have noticed something amiss before he died.

  “What are you doing?” The Divine sounded upset. She had paused, the rivener amulet clenched in her hand. “Please, leave him alone.”

  She couldn’t attack me with the rivener’s power without potentially mangling the sacristan’s body, and she wasn’t willing to risk that, I noted with surprise. I finished tugging the censer free, then charged her.

  “Stop!” she cried, throwing out her hand.

  A fissure split the floor in front of me, fracturing the flagstones. It wasn’t a calculated attack; I barely stumbled as the cracks raced beneath my feet toward the sanctuary, zig-zagged up the steps, and struck the altar with a great clap of sundered stone, breaking it in two. The Divine froze with her hand still outstretched, staring in horror at what she had done. Then I tackled her, and she went down in a tangle of robes.

  We clawed at each other like a pair of brawling novices. Holding my breath, I shoved the censer close to her face; she coughed and choked on the smoke. When she turned her head aside, I drew my dagger. Her grip on me slackened as she felt the misericorde’s point press against her throat.

  “Please,” she whispered, hoarse from the incense. Tears glittered in her eyes. “I’ve waited for so long. This isn’t—this isn’t fair, this isn’t how it was supposed to happen….”

  She trailed off, distracted by a flicker of motion. Leander had reappeared in the transept, glancing repeatedly over his shoulder. Looking hunted, he swiftly crossed to the other side and tried a different door. I guessed that the clerics returning from the procession had blocked his escape route. By now they had to be sensing some of the chaos transpiring in the chapel.

  We were nearly out of time. I knew the clerics wouldn’t pause to listen to our mad-sounding story, not after they discovered us attacking the Divine.

  Thinking furiously, I didn’t react quickly enough when she wrenched an arm from my grasp. Too late, I noticed that she was still holding the scepter. The fury’s shriek rippled past, distorting the air with its power. Across the nave, Leander fell to his knees. The casket tumbled from his hands.

  As though time had slowed, I watched it bounce once and then split open, flinging Saint Agnes’s ashes in a powdery spray across the carpet.

  We all sucked in a breath, staring. A heartbeat passed. The ashes looked utterly harmless. Then something vast and silver erupted from them like a great flower opening, a bloom of wings unfurling. The force of it flung me aside as though I weighed nothing. My head cracked against a pew, and my vision exploded white.

  Through the ringing in my ears, a thread of sound emerged, whining like a mosquito.

  “Nun, get up,” the revenant urged, shrill with panic. “Get up!”

  I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even blink. The scarlet threads of the carpet swam into focus in front of my nose, each individual filament lined in silver.

  “Nun!” The revenant shook me frantically.

  A cool breeze stirred my hair. I had the impression of something colossal bending over me as I lay stunned on the floor, studying me as though I were an insect. I recalled how Sarathiel had looked in the illuminated manuscript, its serenely masked face and half-closed eyes, its multitude of wings. Monstrous but somehow also holy—a figure that could be cast in bronze above an altarpiece, worshipped as much as feared.

  The revenant was still trying to rouse me. “Artemisia!” it shrieked, and then its presence flooded my veins like fire.

  Suddenly, I could move. My arm stretched out. My hand gripped the pew. I pulled my feet under myself and stood. Except it wasn’t me controlling my body; it wasn’t me who lifted my head to the nightmare hanging suspended overhead, the ravaged face of Sarathiel.

  “This is my human,” the revenant snarled through my mouth, and blazed into a torrent of silver flame.

  As the ghost-fire roared up around me, obscuring my vision, I felt strangely calm. I tried to make sense of what I had seen. The six wings, some half-furled and others spread, their ghostly immensity stretching from balcony to balcony. The singed edges of the pinions, blackened and curled. And the terrible face, where the diagonal crack in the mask had split and one half had fallen away, leaving it preternaturally beautiful on one side, a bare and grinning skull on the other.

  When the flames cleared, Sarathiel was no longer there. Silver embers danced in the air above the nave, winking out one by one. The disturbed draperies settled back into place with whispers of silk against stone. Except for the epicenter of destruction around us, the cathedral looked eerily untouched, peaceful in its darkened majesty. From the stained-glass windows stretching above, Saint Eugenia gazed down with a hint of a smile.

  Then, voices. Shouts of alarm. The thump and groan of the cathedral’s doors shuddering open, bringing into view the shimmering glow of hundreds of candles gathered outside. At the periphery of my vision I had vague impressions of shocked faces lining up along the gallery, but I couldn’t see them properly. My eyes weren’t looking in that direction. When I tried to make them do it, nothing happened.

  Leander stirred. My head jerked around sharply at the first sign of movement. I watched as he attempted to climb to his feet, slumped down as though he were exhausted or had forgotten how to stand, then tried again.

  The Divine gave a little cry and hurried over, her bloodstained skirts bunched in her hands. She helped him upright, clutching at him.

  “That has to be the most idiotic human I’ve ever seen,” the revenant marveled in disgust, in my voice, out loud.

  If the Divine heard it, she gave no sign. She was too busy tenderly lifting Leander’s face, looking into his eyes. “Sarathiel,” she breathed.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  No one else was close enough to hear her say it. The clerics were arrayed along the galleries and balconies, standing in the shadowed arches around the nave, emerging from cover like timid creatures after a storm. The cathedral guards reacted first, starting forward with a coordinated clanking of armor. The Divine looked up and noticed her audience for the first time. She was cradling Leander’s head protectively, lost in her own world.

  “Stay back!” she called out breathlessly. I didn’t think she was faking her distress.

  Shocked murmurs filled the vault. At once, I saw how this scene appeared. The clerics had sensed a revenant, but they thought it was my revenant, its power too entangled with Sarathiel’s to be told apart. The sacristan lay dead nearby, with his censer at my feet; the Divine was bloody and distraught, Leander seemingly injured. Behind us, the altar had been sundered in two. And I was the only person who could be responsible.

  I took a step forward, nearly lost my balance, and caught myself against the back of a pew. At least it felt as though I did; but it was the revenant making me move, each action accompanied by a clutch of uncertainty as I discovered what my body was about to do.

  My head was pounding, my stomach a sour knot of terror and fury. An image assaulted me of the city going up in a pillar of silver flame, the soul of every soldier and cleric and civilian in Bonsaint extinguished like candles, blazing so brightly that even the holy s
isters in Chantclere would turn their eyes northward in fear. No one would be able to touch us then—not the Clerisy, not Sarathiel. My fingers tightened on the pew’s back until the wood splintered.

  Once, I had believed that this was what the revenant wanted. Now I felt the trembling in my arms and knew that it was afraid. I wasn’t sure what to do, but I reached out anyway—a silent offer to take over again, like an extended hand. The revenant hesitated. Then, in a grateful rush, it withdrew.

  The next breath that I drew in was a breath at my command. Experimentally, I tried turning my head to look at the clerics on the balcony, and my body obeyed.

  Their expressions of dread turned to confusion. A ripple of relief passed through the cathedral. They could no longer sense the revenant.

  “They can’t sense Sarathiel, either,” the revenant said, its presence inside me a roiling tangle of emotions. “It’s hiding itself. It will try to impersonate the priest.”

  Nearby, the Divine had succeeded in drawing Leander to his feet, though he was still leaning heavily against her. “Confessor Leander is unharmed!” she called out. “He will—he will recover from the attack. Bring the shackles of Saint Augustin, quickly. Artemisia of Naimes—” She broke off, listening as Leander murmured something against her breast. Then she finished, “Artemisia cannot control Saint Eugenia’s relic.”

  I wondered what he had said to her—or rather, what Sarathiel had said to her. Clerics scattered at once to do her bidding.

  In the following hush I grew aware of a dull, muted rumble, like the crashing of surf against a distant shore. It was coming from the candlelit crowd gathered outside the cathedral’s doors. Their movements were restless, threatening to press inside. They were beginning to chant a word. At first I couldn’t make out what it was, but a familiar cadence emerged as more voices joined in and the rhythm strengthened, thrumming through the chapel like a pulse.