* * *
By late in the day, the last signs of pursuit had faded. “I can’t sense them any longer,” the revenant said. “They either lost our trail, or they gave up. The priest wasn’t with them.”
Good. I imagined Leander crawling across the forest floor on his hands and knees, searching for his relic in the dirt.
I eased his horse out of the creek we had been following to hide our tracks, listening to the wet crunch of the stallion’s hooves transition to a solid thump on the soil. Sitting astride a warhorse was exhilarating after learning to ride on the calm old draft horses at my convent. He had carried me at a canter for the better part of an hour before we had finally slowed down, following the winding deer trails over the hills.
I needed something to call him. “Priestbane,” I said experimentally, and watched his ears swivel back with interest. He snorted out a breath that I took for approval. Patting his neck, I cast around for a telltale flash of white among the trees ahead. When I caught sight of Trouble flapping through the bare branches, I adjusted our path.
The revenant’s scornful voice broke in. “Don’t tell me you’re still following that raven.”
“I think he’s taking us somewhere. He’s flying eastward, which means we’re heading deeper into Roischal.”
“You do realize that there’s nothing mystical about ravens, don’t you? They don’t gather around convents because they’re divine messengers of your goddess. They come because that’s where humans bring the corpses.”
“That’s fine. If he’s leading us to corpses, that’s where I want to go.”
“You must be popular at the nun parties. Do you have any friends? Just out of curiosity.”
My hands tightened on the reins. Sophia might count, but she was eight years old, so that seemed embarrassing to admit out loud. “Do you?” I asked without inflection.
“I’ve been trapped inside a relic for the past century. What’s your excuse?”
“I was possessed by an ashgrim as a baby.” My voice sounded harsh and ugly. “When I was ten, I stuck my hands in a fire to get it to stop trying to kill my family. The other novices think I murdered them. That’s why.”
As soon as I finished, I felt blood rush to my face. That was a lot more than I’d intended to say out loud. A profound silence came from the revenant.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I added, before it could think of some other way to mock me.
To my relief, it didn’t speak again for a very long time.
Eventually, the trees thinned. Priestbane trotted into a clearing, a field hazy with mist flushed gold by the setting sun. I didn’t realize we had reached civilization until we startled a flock of grazing sheep, who fled bleating in terror, their rumps sodden with mud.
I reined Priestbane to a halt as their shapes vanished into the mist. The rooftops of a town loomed ahead, eerily silent at a time when children should be shouting, dogs barking, the air fragrant with the smoke of evening cookfires.
“Revenant, can you sense anything?”
The question seemed to draw it out of thought. I wondered if it had been plotting its next attempt to possess me. “Nothing aside from a few shades infesting those buildings’ crypts.”
“Cellars.”
“What?”
“When they aren’t under chapels, they’re called cellars.”
“I don’t care,” it hissed. “Anyway, there are no humans ahead. At least,” it added nastily, “no living ones.”
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.”