‘Your Chloe Sauvage, I presume?’ Jean-Fran?ois asked.
Gabriel nodded.
‘And looking at the girl beside her, I saw dark smoky lashes, a raised eyebrow, a beauty spot beside quirked lips. I realized this was the sisternovice I’d met in the stables the day I chose my horse. The same who’d inked my palm at my first mass.’
‘Astrid Rennier,’ the vampire said.
‘“Remove your tunic and lay upon the altar, Initiate,” Prioress Charlotte commanded.
‘I did as I was told. Sisternovice Chloe bound me down with leather straps, shiny steel buckles, and I winced at the chill of the spirits she poured on my skin. These four were holy women of the Silver Priory, brides or betrothed of God Himself, and I dared not even glance at them. Instead, I looked to the statue of the Redeemer above. But still, I could feel Sisternovice Astrid beside me, smell the rosewater in her hair, hear the soft whisper of her breath as she ran a straight razor over the muscles of my chest.
‘There was something impossibly intimate about it. Even with other eyes upon us. Her touch was gentle as feathers, the press of her fingertips to my skin had goosebumps crawling over every inch of me. My heart was all a-gallop. And despite my best efforts, I found my blood rushing to a place I’d absolutely no desire for it to be.’
Gabriel chuckled to himself.
‘You ever get an erection in front of a pack of nuns, coldblood?’
‘Not that I can recall, no.’ Jean-Fran?ois frowned slightly. ‘Although admittedly, I’ve never found myself in need of one where nuns are concerned.’
‘Well, it’s not ideal. To their credit, if any of the sisters noticed, they were too polite to call attentions. I thought perhaps the thrill of the sisternovice’s touch would fade once Prioress Charlotte began stabbing those needles into my skin. But as I saw Astrid take up a long silver lance, I realized she herself was to do my inking.
‘“Blessed Michon,” she prayed, “First of the Martyrs, heed this prayer in blood and silver. We anoint this flesh in your name, and offer this boy in your service. May all heaven’s host bear witness, and all hell’s legion tremble. Sweet Mothermaid, give me patience. Great Redeemer, give me strength. Almighty Father, give me sight.”
‘“Véris,” the other sisters replied.’
Gabriel shook his head, sighing soft.
‘The room was filled with choirsong, yet all was silence. We were surrounded by sisters of the Priory, and somehow, completely alone. There was only pain between me and that girl then. Pain and promise. Her breath was cool on my bare and bleeding skin. Her hands warm as firelight as she hurt me, again and again.
‘I’d thought my sevenstar was painful, but it was a honeyed bliss compared to this. Thirteen hours I lay on that altar, bathed in candlelight and pain from the hands of that strange and beautiful girl. It was agony. It was euphoria. And somewhere in the middle of it, both became interlinked. I couldn’t bear another moment. I never wanted it to end. I wanted her to stop, and I wanted her to keep hurting me, some dam of pressure breaking loose inside. Pain had been punishment when I was a boy. But now it had become reward. Bliss in torment. Salvation in suffering.
‘I didn’t realize I was crying until it ended. And Sisternovice Chloe poured a measure of what felt like freezing fire over my bleeding skin, and Astrid Rennier spoke like an angel into my ear.
‘“This is the hand,
‘“That wields the flame,
‘“That lights the way,
‘“And turns the dark,
‘“To silver.”’
The Last Silversaint shrugged. ‘And then it was done.’
Jean-Fran?ois continued writing in his tome, though his eyes flickered to Gabriel’s small and secret smile. ‘The design is of some importance?’
Gabriel blinked hard, as if coming back to himself. And slowly, he nodded.
‘The chestpiece of the aegis signifies a silversaint’s bloodline. De Coste had that wreath of roses and snakes, which along with his ability to crawl right on my tits marked him as the Blood of Ilon. Theo and Abbot Khalid both wore the broken shield and roaring bear of the Dyvok. The wolves on Greyhand’s chest were for the Blood of Chastain, which explained his affinity with Archer. I’d often thought that falcon could understand when he spoke to it. Turns out, I wasn’t wrong.’
‘And that is why you wear the lion,’ the historian smiled. ‘Your dear mama.’
‘I’d no vampire bloodline to call my own. I knew nothing of my father, nor what my mama had been to him. His lover? His victim? His slave? But whatever uncertainty I had about the vampire who’d sired me, I knew at least I was hers. So I clung to that truth she’d given me as a boy. One day as a lion is worth ten thousand as a lamb. I wore that ink like armour. I worked harder than I’d ever worked in my fucking life, no matter what shit the other boys threw. Not just in the Gauntlet, either. We were expected to master all manner of knowledge – the geography of the empire, catechisms of the One Faith, and tactics of great battles. The banes of the horrors we hunted, the preparation of chymical weapons – black ignis, silver caustic, hellspark, and sanctus most important of all.
‘I’d never been much for schooling. Seraph Talon gave us lessons in the Great Library or Armoury, aided as ever by his dutiful assistant, Aoife. The good sister was a patient tutor, and no slouch when it came to the arte of chymistrie. But Talon was a bastard, plain and simple. That damned ashwood switch of his tasted my palms more times than I can remember. My every mistake was met with a bloody thrashing and a creative curse about the shite in my veins or my mother’s virtue. But his punishments only spurred me on.
‘I cut gashes into my heel to remember the ounces of brimstone in a one-pound silverbomb. Each morning, I’d prick the measure of shadeberry for a jigger of angelgrace or the amount of yellowwater in a charge of black ignis into my fingertips with my sword. Every day for four weeks, I plucked hairs to etch the number of hollyroot drops in a dose of sanctus into my mind. Anything, everything I could do to remember.’
‘You plucked hairs from your head to remember a recipe?’
‘Not my head.’
The historian glanced down at the silversaint’s crotch, one eyebrow raised.
Gabriel nodded. ‘Every day for four weeks.’
‘How many hollyroot drops are in a dose of sanctus?’
‘Sixteen,’ Gabriel answered immediately.
‘Good God Almighty, de León.’
‘I told you, coldblood. Some people are born lucky. And some people make their own. I’d had nothing ever handed to me, save this curse in my veins. But this was my life now. And if I were to spend it among these hunters in the dark, then I’d damned well be the best of them, or die trying. And my opportunity for the latter finally arrived, after half a year of blood and sweat and silvered ink.
‘A frail summer had been and gone at San Michon, and winter’s chill was in the air. I was training at the Thorned Men, nursing a split lip and cracked cheekbone. Master Greyhand was atop the Thresher, wailing away on Aaron. It was around noonbells when the Gauntlet doors opened wide and Abbot Khalid strode into the training ground.