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 mist 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.”