Vespertine

by Margaret Rogerson

  “Artemisia. Artemisia. Artemisia.”

  The wind shifted direction, blowing in a gust of night air that smelled of smoke and sweat and the wild places beyond the city, untouched by humankind. And with it came a dangerous energy, the unleashed violence of a building storm. I felt it prickling across my skin; I could almost taste it. The hair stood up on my arms.

  “Artemisia. Artemisia! Artemisia!”

  “Close the doors!” ordered the Divine, wide-eyed.

  Guards scrambled to obey, dimming the noise to a muffled thunder. The bar fell into place with a reverberating thud that reminded me of the day the thralls had attacked in Naimes. Then, the doors hadn’t succeeded in holding back the Dead. I wondered if they would hold back the living now.

  I didn’t dare try speaking to the revenant. There were too many people watching me; they might see my lips move. All of them ignorant of how close they were to death, trapped inside the cathedral with an unbound Fifth Order spirit. I felt as though I were an open flame held aloft beside dry kindling. One wrong move could ignite everything.

  The Divine worriedly touched Leander’s cheek, smoothed back his hair. He tolerated this for a moment, then looked at me. No—it looked at me. Leander’s face appeared the same, but something dead and ruined and ancient gazed out from within his eyes. He stepped toward me, the Divine clutching at his arm.

  “We must not kill her,” the Divine whispered. “You promised there would be no more killing. What did you do to my sacristan? When I moved the casket’s lid for you—”

  Leander’s expression was implacable, serene. “One life. That was all I required. And he was old, Gabrielle. I could sense his strength ebbing—he wouldn’t have lived out the winter. He would have made the sacrifice himself if he had known the truth.”

  “That I am your destined vessel,” she said, her face lighting.

  “It is the Lady’s will,” it agreed tranquilly.

  “Very well. But we won’t harm Artemisia.”

  “Of course not,” Sarathiel soothed. “We only need Saint Eugenia’s relic, and then she will no longer be a danger to you.” It turned to me. “Give me the reliquary.”

  “I don’t have it.”

  Sarathiel regarded me with mild surprise, as though it hadn’t expected me to prove capable of speech. “Where is it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  With the Divine anxiously looking on, he began to search me—it did, I reminded myself, as Leander’s elegant hands smoothed down my tunic, lifted my hair as though it were an animal’s tail to check beneath. This was just Leander’s body, a vessel, his mind locked away as a prisoner inside. I wondered if his consciousness was buried too deeply to be aware of what was happening, or if he was watching, feeling every touch.

  Sarathiel finished and stepped back. It didn’t appear angry or disappointed to have not found the reliquary. A trembling lector returned with the shackles, made his obeisance to the Divine, and then stared at me uncertainly. I obviously wasn’t what he had expected of Artemisia of Naimes. I wondered what he had envisioned—someone older, or more beautiful.

  The chain had been removed, but they were unmistakably the shackles I had worn in the harrow. While the cuffs had been left warped and scorched by my escape, they still appeared functional. I instinctively stiffened, prepared to resist.

  Sarathiel leaned in close, closer, until Leander’s warm lips brushed my ear. “We could quarrel with each other here, little vessel,” it murmured, breath soft against my cheek. “But how many humans would survive a battle between revenants? Rathanael knows. Why don’t you tell her, Rathanael?”

  The revenant tugged my gaze upward, and my heart stopped. A translucent, barely visible silver mist was pouring silently down the cathedral’s walls, creeping over the stained-glass windows, collecting in ghostly pools in the corners. It rolled across the carpet and seeped between the pews, reaching its fingers toward the preoccupied clerics standing in the aisle.

  “Its mist is like my fire,” the revenant said. “It will kill anything it touches.”

  I imagined the mist reaching the first clerics, their bodies dropping limply to the carpet. The brief panic before the others fell, one by one, like puppets with cut strings. And then I would be standing alone with Sarathiel in a cathedral full of corpses. Chilled to the bone, I extended my hands.

  The lector closed the cold, heavy weight of the first shackle around my wrist. A flash of blistering pain stole my breath. I barely felt the second, my thoughts dazed and swimming.

  “Forgive me, lady,” said the lector, distraught. He began to bow to me the same way he had to the Divine, caught himself, and scurried off instead. Sarathiel watched him go like a cat drawn to the movement of a fleeing mouse.

  I seized the chance to speak to the Divine. Roughly, I said, “Whatever it’s promised you, it’s lying.”

  She smiled at me, and I felt a wash of despair, realizing that that was the same thing Leander had told me in the catacombs, nearly word for word. I hadn’t listened. And now neither would she.

  “Have patience, Artemisia.” A light and certainty illuminated her features in a way I had only seen once before, after the appearance of the sign in the cathedral. “I can’t explain everything to you now, but the Lady has answered my prayers. I know it’s difficult to believe, but you will understand—I’m certain of it. You need only a little time.”

  * * *

  They placed me in a room in one of the cathedral’s spires. It was shaped like a halved birdcage with curved walls and a half-moon floor, its limestone bare save a straw pallet tucked in one corner. Wind moaned through a small barred window; ancient water stains wept down the sill. The main source of light was a torch in the hallway outside, its glow spilling beneath the door.

  I went to the window. With the revenant’s power, I might have been able to bend its bars. Standing on my toes and peering through it at an angle, I could see a section of the courtyard far below, still sparkling with the protestors’ candles. From this high up, their chanting blurred into a meaningless ebb and flow of sound.

  I willed them to disperse, to go home. To pack their things and leave the city. Otherwise they would die, and it would be my fault. The hopeless weight crushing my chest felt like the effects of Leander’s relic—and I even felt sorry for him, Sarathiel’s prisoner in body and soul, a helpless captive to everything he had tried to prevent.

  I bent and pressed my forehead to the sill.

  “There was nothing you could have done differently,” the revenant remarked.

  “I could have stopped the Divine.”

  “You’re mortal, nun. You aren’t perfect. In fact, for a human, you make remarkably few stupid decisions. Only rarely do I want to possess you and bash your brains out against a wall.”

  I turned away and sank down on the pallet. “I thought you said I was the worst vessel you’ve ever had.”

  “I didn’t mean that. Nun….” Whatever it had started to say, it didn’t seem to be able to finish. After a long pause, it said instead, “Sarathiel still isn’t at its full strength. That was why it took the priest as a vessel—it needs to hide itself as it continues to recover. It won’t risk revealing itself until it has destroyed my relic.”

  I lifted the shackles and let them drop against my lap, clinking. “Is there anything you can do like this?”

  “I could take over your body, but only if you let me, and it wouldn’t be much use. My power would still be suppressed.”

  I looked back at the window, at the patch of dark sky behind the bars. Clouds must have blown in, because I couldn’t see any stars.

  “There’s one other thing,” it ventured. “Something that doesn’t have to do with my power at all. Now that I’ve seen the altar up close, I believe I could replicate the ritual that nearly destroyed Sarathiel. But there are certain limitations,” it went on when I didn’t react. “For a ritual that advanced to succeed, we would need a site of power—a place that’s been prepared for Old Magic, l
ike the altar.”

  “A forge to make a weapon,” I said, remembering its earlier metaphor.

  “Yes, precisely,” it said. It sounded surprised—either because I had caught on so quickly, or because I wasn’t vehemently protesting the idea. “Unfortunately, it would take days to suitably prepare this cell. Old Magic has never been practiced here before, which is necessary for a space to withstand the energy of a powerful ritual. If we tried, I imagine the results would be quite messy.”

  Mouth dry, I thought of the scorch marks on Saint Agnes’s altar, and was ashamedly glad this conversation was theoretical. But my thoughts dwelled on the idea of using Old Magic nonetheless. How far would I go, if I had no other choice? I could no longer condemn those who had turned to heresy as a last resort—not now that I knew how it felt to see so many lives hanging in the balance, unable to help, the hopelessness and guilt closing in like the walls of a tomb. If there was any force that could save them…

  It was true that the saints had committed terrible wrongs. But it was equally true that Loraille wouldn’t have survived the Sorrow without relics. For each spirit imprisoned, how many innocents had been spared a terrible death? Hundreds? Thousands?

  I stared at my scarred hands, my throat tight. The way I had felt as a child listening to the sisters’ hymns, filled with pure, soaring, wondrous faith—I knew suddenly, with a visceral wrench of loss, that that feeling was gone forever. I could never get it back again.

  “You can share these things, you know,” the revenant intruded. “You don’t always have to leave everyone in agonizing suspense.”

  “I can’t accept it,” I answered.

  “Accept what?”

  I wasn’t certain I could put my tangled, poisonous thoughts into words. It felt blasphemous to even try. “That—that there can be such a thing as… not necessary evil, because evil is never necessary—it can’t be—but… acceptable evil. Hurt and cruelty that the Lady would allow in service to Her will. Like the goat in Naimes,” I said, dimly aware that I’d never told the revenant about the goat, and it would probably think I had lost my mind. “She wouldn’t make someone kick the goat.”

  The revenant was quiet—a careful, pained pause. “Nun,” it said, “isn’t that what She’s done to you?”

  I heard a rattling sound, and realized I was shaking, the shackles clattering together. I wondered if I should pray. But the stars were gone, the Lady’s gaze obscured. I had no sign save the hundreds of voices chanting my name outside.

  TWENTY-SIX

  The noise continued through the night. I slept little and ached with cold, standing frequently to look out the window. Several times I heard shouting; once I heard glass breaking, followed by screams and horses’ hooves clattering across the courtyard. In the distance, something was burning, sending up a plume of orange-lit smoke.

  I judged the hour near dawn when keys rattled outside the door. To my surprise, it swung open to reveal a lone orphrey, white-robed and veiled. She beckoned to me in silence.

  “Where are you taking me?” I asked, but the orphrey didn’t answer. I could see little of her averted face behind the veil.

  “She can’t answer you,” the revenant said. “She’s a thrall. The spirit possessing her is acting under Sarathiel’s command.” It paused as though listening. “I can’t tell for certain in this state, but I believe it’s one of the blight wraiths from the square.”

  I followed. She walked swiftly, remaining out of arm’s reach, but paused, waiting, when I purposefully dawdled and fell behind. There was a fear and hesitation to her movements. On a whim, I asked, “Can you understand me?” But she only stared, drawing her arms protectively against her chest.

  Eventually, it grew clear that she was taking me on a circuitous route to the apartments. We entered a hall I hadn’t investigated the evening before. A cathedral guard stood near the lone door. He twitched as we passed, his posture stiff and his head bowed.

  “Another thrall,” the revenant observed. “And another spirit inexperienced at possessing humans. Wearing that consecrated armor must be torture, but it’s too afraid of Sarathiel to disobey.”

  To my surprise, I felt as bad for the newly risen spirits as I did their vessels. They were like confused children, born through no fault of their own into an unforgiving world of hunger and fear. If they hurt anyone, they did so only for those reasons—not out of evil, or even malice.

  As we neared the door, a conversation carried into the hall. The Divine was saying, sounding threadbare with exhaustion, “But no one at the convent will come forward. If they know anything, they aren’t willing to speak. Can’t we simply exorcise Rathanael from her?”

  “An exorcism would merely return it to its relic,” Leander’s voice replied patiently. “In doing so, we would give it a chance to inhabit a new vessel. At least for now we have it contained….”

  While they spoke, the orphrey puzzled over the door, shrinking back several times in apparent fear before she gained the courage to touch it. The door swung open, interrupting the conversation.

  The Divine was curled up in a chair in front of a window. She wasn’t wearing her maquillage, and she looked pale and smudged; she clearly hadn’t slept. Sarathiel stood beside her with a hand on her shoulder, which she was clasping to herself as though it were a precious relic. I wasn’t sure whether it was just my imagination, or if its tranquil expression truly did betray a slight air of impatience.

  It struck me, seeing the Divine so at ease with Sarathiel, that she had never favored Leander. She had kept him close to watch him—assigned him important duties merely to keep him busy. And he had played the part because he’d had no other choice, locked in a treacherous dance with his own enemy. The entire city had been fooled; so had I.

  The Divine was watching me. In a rustle of silk, she rose, came to me, and drew me down to sit beside her on a cushioned settle. She tried to take my hand, but I moved it.

  “Artemisia,” she said earnestly. “This does not need to be painful. All you must do is tell us who has the reliquary, and then this ordeal will end. You will be better off without Rathanael.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  A line appeared between her brows; she hadn’t expected that question. “Because it’s wicked.”

  “And Sarathiel isn’t?”

  Gently, she shook her head. “It was sent to me by the Lady. Perhaps you have heard…” She hesitated, color rising to her cheeks. I wondered if that was why she wore the maquillage. “It’s true that I was not the Assembly’s first choice for Divine. When I arrived in Bonsaint, I was so alone. But after countless nights of praying for guidance, uncertain of my ability to lead, the goddess gave me Sarathiel. Trust me when I say that it has spent centuries regretting its misdeeds. Lifetimes in which it has listened to the devotions, the choir, has been surrounded by the Lady’s presence. It has changed—repented. Can you say the same of yours?”

  The longer she spoke, the deeper my stomach sank. I too believed that the Lady had sent me a revenant. But there was one key difference.

  “No,” I said, “because my revenant doesn’t lie to me.”

  Disappointment shaded her features. She badly wanted me to believe her. “But how long have you known it? Sarathiel has been my heart’s companion for many years. Of course, there are still moments when I am unsure… but the Lady sent me a sign,” she added swiftly. “You wouldn’t understand. You weren’t there.”

  “In the cathedral?”

  “You heard of it,” she said breathlessly.

  “The pauper’s balcony. I was there.”

  Her eyes widened. We regarded each other at an impasse, and the world fell away in a weightless plunge as I realized that looking into her face was like gazing into a mirror. We both believed the other misguided for trusting a revenant—both thought the Lady meant us to ally ourselves with our own. One of us was right, the other wrong. A warped reflection in a glass.

  A sense of unreality crept over me. Could I truly claim to kn
ow better than a Divine? What if the sign in the cathedral hadn’t been for me after all? Who was I, to believe that I alone knew the Lady’s will? I had based my convictions on the path of a raven’s flight. The dying words of a half-insane holy woman.

  Perhaps we were both wrong, both equally deluded, and it was never possible to trust a revenant.

  Then the Divine shook her head. She said with quiet faith, “The sign… no—it was for me, I am certain of it,” and the illusion cracked, a mirror fracturing.

  I spoke through gritted teeth. “You have to know by now that Sarathiel’s been controlling the spirits. It’s the one who told you not to lower the drawbridge, isn’t it?”

  A sad smile crossed her face. “No. You are misinformed. Those spirits… they are why I must become Sarathiel’s true vessel. Otherwise, they cannot be stopped. Sarathiel has been helping me protect the people of Bonsaint; it would not take lives.”

  “What about the sacristan?”

  The Divine’s smile turned puzzled. She turned to look at Sarathiel, who was watching us intently. “Sarathiel, why are you staying in Leander’s body? When will we be together, like you promised?”

  “Gabrielle,” it said quietly.

  She rose and went to it by the window, cupping Leander’s cheek. “Perhaps you should rest. It must be taxing, inhabiting a body after so long without one.”

  Sarathiel turned Leander’s face against her hand, closing his eyes as though seeking a momentary respite from the world. The Divine watched this with a tenderness that bordered on pain. I could tell she had been honest about her history with Sarathiel; there was a familiarity to their intimacy that spoke of countless hours in each other’s company, whispered confessions exchanged in the chapel’s shadows. I imagined her solitary, white-robed figure bent over the altar nightly in prayer. How pious she must have appeared—how lonely.

  Suddenly her delusions made sense. Being a Divine wasn’t so far off from being a saint. Sarathiel was perhaps the only being in Bonsaint who knew her not as the Divine, untouchable in her holiness, but as Gabrielle. No wonder she had fallen for it. She hadn’t had anyone else.