“What’s wrong with you?” Its voice sounded muted. Suppressing itself, I guessed. “You already feel like you’re going to vomit.”
“It’s the people,” I muttered under my breath.
“What about the people?”
“There are a lot of them.”
“You could have mentioned that this would be a problem earlier,” the revenant hissed.
I hadn’t known it would be. I took measured breaths through my nose, focusing on the ground in front of my feet. The crowd inched forward in fits and starts, clogged with carts and wagons, periodically halted by balking mules that refused to set foot over the river.
And then I reached the bridge. The moment I stepped onto the planks, I felt as though all the blood had drained out of my body through my feet. I could feel the power of the current raging beneath me, snatching my strength and carrying it away, hurling it onward down the river, pummeling it to nothing. I didn’t feel my next shuffling step. My legs had gone numb.
For the revenant, the effects seemed to be worse. It had curled itself into a tight knot to hide, and now I felt it struggling not to unravel, radiating feeble pulses of misery. I doubted it would be able to speak even if it tried.
Through the waves of dizziness and nausea, I slowly became aware that the knights stationed along the bridge were paying special attention to dark-haired girls. Some they drew aside to be scrutinized by a funereal-looking old man in crimson and silver vestments, which I recognized from the convent’s books as the robes of a sacristan. As we drew nearer, I caught the red glint of a ruby on his finger. One of a sacristan’s duties included lighting the cathedral’s candles and incense, like Sister Lucinde had done for our chapel in Naimes.
But the ashgrim wasn’t his only relic. An oval-shaped moonstone pendant gleamed at his breast, too large to wear as a ring. I noticed that he was waiting on the far side of the bridge, where he would be able to use his shade to examine the girls as they stood over the Sevre. Even worse, there was a raven perched on his shoulder, which seemed to fix me with a beady stare as I hunched inward, hoping to pass unnoticed.
It was no use. A knight loomed from the crowd to block my path, his visored face impassive as he gestured me over to wait. Unable to think of any way to escape, I joined the group of girls clustered by the rail. Some of them were looking over it at the frothing chaos of the Sevre, the mere idea of which made bile creep up my throat.
The nearest girl turned and gave me a tentative smile, which quickly changed into a look of alarm when she took in my expression.
“I have the flux,” I croaked, and she sidled away with gratifying haste.
One by one, the knights motioned us forward. The reliquary hung as a leaden weight beneath my tunic, and the raven’s attention seemed focused on me as the other girls filed past. Finally, my turn arrived. A gauntleted hand halted me mere steps from dry land.
My vision blurred. I had an impression of rheumy eyes peering at me from beneath dark, silver-shot brows, and a deep, sonorous voice asking me a question.
“Anne,” I replied, hoping the sacristan had asked for my name. “I’m from Montprestre. I came to visit my aunt, for the feast, but then—on the road…”
I couldn’t remember the rest. The story that I had rehearsed with the revenant slipped from my mind as the sacristan stooped closer, his spidery fingers brushing over the moonstone pendant.
A tickling, crawling sensation washed over me, as though tiny insects had been released to skitter over my skin, searching for a way inside. I struggled not to react. Only a Sighted person would be able to feel the effects of the relic. But the revenant had reached its limits—I felt its knot beginning to fray. Any moment now the sacristan would sense something. And out of the corner of my eye I saw the raven ruffle its feathers, preparing to deliver a pronouncement.
A loud, harsh caw broke the spell. It hadn’t come from the raven on the sacristan’s shoulder, but rather from somewhere behind me. Mirrored in his giant moonstone, I glimpsed a flash of white pinions.
He looked up, frowning. At the same time, a decisive voice said, “That isn’t her.”
A horse’s hoof thudded against the bridge. My gaze wavered up to Captain Enguerrand, who was looking down at me in turn with no trace of recognition.
“Move along,” he said, already glancing past, as though I were of no more interest to him than the dozens of other pedestrians crammed onto the bridge.
I ducked my head and obeyed, shouldering past the people in my path, barely registering their protests in my urgency to reach solid ground. A jumble of ropes dangled threateningly above as I passed into the dripping, echoing shadows of the gatehouse.
My first impression of Bonsaint wasn’t a favorable one. As soon as I emerged from the gatehouse’s darkness, color and sound whirled around me like a spinning top. My stomach heaved, and I blindly stumbled to a gutter and threw up. I crouched there for a long moment with my eyes squeezed shut.
I smelled urine, the sour stink of spilled ale, and pastry frying in grease. Around me, dogs barked. Children laughed, shrieking as they ran past. Vendors shouted about hot pies and fresh cold mussels straight from the Sevre.
The other half of the clamoring voices sounded completely nonsensical to my ears. I briefly panicked before I realized that I was hearing different languages. Sarantian, and perhaps Gotlandish. Gotland had fallen in the Sorrow’s aftermath and was now an uninhabited wasteland to our northeast, overrun with spirits. The Gotlanders who had survived the cataclysm now thrived in Loraille’s cities, with entire districts given over to their language and trade.
Sarantia had escaped the worst of the Sorrow by collapsing the mountain pass that connected it to Loraille. Once our closest ally, it now traded with us only by sea, wary of risking overland contact. Nevertheless, the shared history between our two nations was such that many people in Loraille had varying degrees of Sarantian heritage, evident in their brown complexions and dark, wavy hair.
Now that I was listening properly, I could identify the lilting cadence of Sarantian without doubt. I could read it passably, since some of our convent’s texts were written in it, but here it was being spoken too quickly for me to follow.
Cautiously, I shaded my face against the sun and opened my eyes.
I was in a square larger than the grounds of my convent. The shops that crowded its sides were each as tall as the chapel—high, narrow buildings of stone and white plaster, whose tiled roofs and chimneys stretched so far toward the sky that following them upward made me list sideways and almost fall before I caught myself against the gutter. I averted my eyes from the spires beyond, which soared even higher, the flocks of ravens flapping around them as tiny as gnats.
The bustling view below wasn’t any safer to behold. I focused on the statue of Saint Agnes that stood at the center of the square, her feet strewn with offerings of wilted flowers. Beggars crouched around its base, holding out bowls for alms. A smaller statue of Saint Agnes stood in the cemetery in Naimes, erected over the grave of a pilgrim. Her familiar marble countenance was the closest thing to a friend that I was likely to see in Bonsaint.
My heartbeat gradually calmed. I was trying to work up the balance to stand, feeling like a sailor recently deposited onshore, when a voice above me said, “Are you all right?”