“The metal is consecrated, of course, but that won’t be the unpleasant part. I haven’t crossed the Sevre since before I was bound, and I’m not looking forward to doing it again.”
“Won’t walking on a bridge make a difference? We’ll be high above the water.”
“Certainly, it will make a difference. You can’t drown from on top of a bridge. You can, however, ardently long for death as you vomit over the rail. I’ll be able to suppress my power to reduce the effects on your body, but you’ll still feel sick as we cross, and you’ll need to hide it from the other humans. Your Clerisy will be watching for signs of possession.”
Neither of us mentioned that the problem could be avoided entirely if I were able to dismiss the revenant back into its relic, even just for a few minutes.
“Lean over and look into that puddle,” it said suddenly.
“What?”
“Your reflection,” it said impatiently. “I want to see what you look like.”
Soon it was going to regret saying that. “Just don’t scream.”
“Why would I scream?”
I shrugged. That was how Marguerite had reacted when she’d first arrived at the convent and discovered me watching her from beneath the bed of our shared room. But possibly, hiding under the bed had been a factor.
I bent over the puddle, watching my reflection materialize in the shallow water. Gray eyes, stark against a filthy face smeared with dirt and dried blood. The skin underneath ghastly in its pallor, surrounded by a tangled curtain of long black hair, snarled like a bird’s nest with burrs and leaves. Overall, not the worst I had ever looked first thing in the morning.
I felt the revenant recoil.
“If we come across the priest, he won’t recognize me,” I pointed out.
“If the Clerisy sees you like this, they’ll think you’re a thrall!”
“My eyes aren’t glowing.”
“That isn’t always a reliable sign,” the revenant snapped. “Experienced spirits know how to prevent it. In any case,” it hurried on, possibly realizing it had revealed too much, “we don’t want to give them any reason to pay special attention to you, and you look precisely like a thrall that’s spent a fortnight blundering through the wilderness, trying to eat twigs and moss because it has no idea how to care for its human vessel. And you smell like one, too, for that matter.”
A fair observation. I soaked a corner of my cloak in the puddle and scrubbed my face, which the revenant endured in prickly silence. I got the feeling it wanted to complain about the cold but couldn’t, since I was acting on its advice. “Clean that cut on your hand while you’re at it. I would consider it a personal affront if you got this far only to die of wound fever.”
I had forgotten about my hand. The thin, shallow gash looked like it had been sliced by the bolt’s fletching, right through my glove. I more regretted the damage to the glove. My scars made it impossible to handle a needle and thread.
After I had cleaned the wound to the revenant’s satisfaction, I shoved the wet handful of cloak beneath my tunic and scrubbed away at my armpits and the other parts of my body that I could reach. The revenant seemed utterly uninterested in the proceedings, just as it had on the occasions when I’d relieved myself in the woods or the harrow’s chamber pot.
“Is it true that spirits can’t remember anything about their human lives?”
“Yes,” it answered tartly.
I had never considered before now that someone would have needed to speak to a spirit to learn that information. I had always merely accepted it as one of the Clerisy’s teachings. “So you don’t know whether you were a man or a woman in life.”
“No, and I don’t see why it matters. Humans are so tedious. Oh, you have dangly bits. Congratulations, you’re going to put on armor and swing a sword about. Oh, you’ve ended up with the other kind. Too bad—time to either have babies or become a nun.”
It wasn’t exactly that simple, but I decided that I didn’t want to argue about the Clerisy’s hierarchy with a Fifth Order spirit. Also, it had a point. “It would be useful if you did remember something. We still don’t know why your soul turned into a revenant.”
“No doubt because I was horrifically nasty and evil,” it spat.
Probably, but I received the impression that I would upset it if I agreed. Instead, I said nothing, giving my dirty fingernails a final halfhearted scrub before I tugged my gloves back on. “How is this?” I asked, leaning over the now-murky puddle again.
It gave me a grudging inspection. “Better,” it admitted, then added darkly, “But you’re going to have to do something about that hair.”
* * *
We spent the rest of the morning going over the various obstacles that we might encounter on the bridge and what I might have to say if I was stopped for questioning. By the time the sun rose above the city’s battlements, I had nearly succeeded in picking most of the burrs from my hair. We were debating whether I should claim I was from Roischal or Montprestre when a ratcheting sound echoed across the bank, and I looked up to see the towering span of the Ghostmarch move. In slow, ponderous jerks, the bridge slanted away from the city walls and began to descend over the river, producing a tortured, drawn-out groan like a living creature in agony.
I tensed behind the outcropping, the back of my neck prickling. I had never seen anything like this before. It seemed impossible that something so large could move, much less at the whim of humankind. Up along the wall, I glimpsed the furious spinning of winches and pulleys as workers let out the ropes. In the river below, massive pilings stood anchored in the rapids, waiting to receive the bridge’s weight. The Ghostmarch plunged them into deep shadow before at last, with a crunch and scrape of rock, it settled in place against the opposite bank.
A crowd had already gathered, but no one approached the end of the bridge. I thought it likely that some were remembering the effects of Leander’s relic from the day before. Thankfully, though I was too far away to make out details, I didn’t see any sign of his black robes among the knights and clerics gathered on the other side.
“Those clerics will be using their relics,” the revenant warned.
“Will they be able to sense you?”
“Not while I’m suppressing myself. But, nun, I won’t be able to stay hidden and lend you my power at the same time. While we’re over the river, I won’t be able to use my power at all. You’ll be on your own.”
I bit back a number of possible replies about its performance yesterday, which it seemed to be doing its best to pretend hadn’t happened. In silence, I clambered down, slipped out from behind a boulder, and merged with the crowd.
I had chosen a spot away from the front, not wanting to be one of the first to cross. I regretted it as a sea of humanity closed in around me, shoulders jostling mine, bodies pressing close, dozens of voices vying for supremacy in my ears. Babies were crying, couples arguing. Nearby someone was consoling an elderly man on a cart, begging him to drink a little water. My head swam. I wished that I could pull my hood up, but the revenant and I had agreed earlier that hiding my face would seem too suspicious.