I first grew aware of the change in the air when I noticed two lay sisters comforting a sobbing novice. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but the rumors quickly spread. Somewhere in the infirmary, a patient had died. The lay sisters delivering fresh linens and broth began to look tense, their grips tight on their trays. At the second death, panic struck. Someone screamed at the sight of the limp, shrouded figure being carried out the doors to the fumatorium.
With so many ill and injured patients being cared for in the infirmary, it was inevitable that some of them would die. But the threat of plague still haunted Loraille even a hundred years after its last appearance. Cities ravaged by pestilence gave birth to plague specters, Third Order spirits whose trailing miasma seeped beneath doors and through the cracks in windows, infecting anyone it touched. Only a single relic capable of curing plague existed, and it was located far away in Chantclere.
The scream shattered the hall’s fragile calm. Some of the patients tried to bolt, while sisters rushed to restrain them. The healers shouted for order—in the mayhem, the patients who were unable to stand were at risk of being trampled. A lay sister dropped her tray with a crash of broken crockery, then sank to the floor in tears.
“What in the Lady’s name is going on in here?” boomed Mother Dolours.
She swept into the room like an advancing storm, the skirts of her robes bunched in her hands to keep them off the floor. She paused to take in the scene, then looked directly at a patient lying on a pallet nearby. He paled, shrinking against the wall.
“Goddess grant me patience,” she said. She waded toward him through the sea of pallets, bent, and took his arm. “It isn’t plague!” she roared.
The hall went still. As everyone stared in shocked silence, she slapped a hand to the man’s chest. Color flooded back into his pallid face, and he shot up from his pallet, gasping. Mother Dolours roughly patted his cheek, much as one would pat an obedient horse, then grunted in satisfaction at whatever she saw and moved on to the next patient.
The revenant had gone quiet along with everyone else, huddling down to watch. I had never seen someone healed by a relic before. I had been taught that the process was slow and taxing; the bound spirit needed to be carefully controlled, or else it would worsen the illness instead of curing it. But Mother Dolours moved to another patient, and another, without so much as pausing for breath between them. Silence reigned as it became clear that she intended to heal the entire hall.
“The relic she’s using binds a wretchling,” the revenant said. “That explains it—these humans must have been drawing their water downriver from the city, where it’s tainted with refuse. I’ve seen it happen before, but naturally no one ever listens when I warn them about it.”
It fell silent again as Mother Dolours started down my side of the hall. I felt it squashing itself out of sight, an uncomfortable sensation, as though it were wedging itself beneath my rib cage to hide. I tensed with the certainty that Mother Dolours would be able to sense it anyway, but when she reached me, she merely gave my bandaged hands a perfunctory once-over. “You don’t have it, child?”
I shook my head, resisting the instinct to flatten myself against the wall like the first man had. Dozens of people healed, and she wasn’t even out of breath. “Blight,” I lied. “I’m feeling better.”
“Good girl.” And she moved on to the patient beside me.
By the time Mother Dolours left, the wing was full of dazed-looking patients sitting up and wolfing down bowls of porridge. The first man she had healed fearfully signed himself every time her voice thundered in from an adjoining hall. All seemed to be well until a young novice skidded around the corner, panting.
“Curists are being sent from the cathedral,” she announced. “Her Holiness is investigating the reports of plague!”
The sisters, who had all sat down in exhausted relief, leaped up and rapidly began tidying. Marguerite joined them in bundling away armfuls of linens. She kept giving me pointed looks that I eventually realized were intended to communicate something to me, but I had no idea what, and the stare I sent back attempting to convey this made her blanch and flee to the other end of the hall.
“Next time, you need to do that into a mirror so I can see what it looks like,” the revenant remarked, sounding slightly impressed.
I wondered if she had been trying to warn me that the convent’s sanctuary law might not hold up against the threat of plague. The Divine might be able to use the fear of an outbreak, even a rumored one, as an excuse to search the refugees. The remainder of the evening became a race for Mother Dolours to finish healing the other halls before the curists arrived.
“There are too many,” one sister whispered. “She’ll do it,” another insisted. Even the revenant was invested. “Once I saw a curist try to heal a third this many humans, only to get partway through and keel over dead into a chamber pot.”
The chapel’s bells rang the fifth hour; lamps were lit to stave off the dark. Meanwhile the novice ran in and out, thrilled to be the bearer of important news. “She’s in the north wing!” she reported. “The east wing! There’s only half the wing left!”
Sighs of relief filled the hall.
Moments later, the curists arrived. I received my first glimpse of them when they paused in the adjoining corridor, resplendent in their cream-colored robes and half-capes trimmed in gold. I guessed which one was the head curist by the number of rings on her fingers: a diminutive woman with elegant Sarantian features, a hawklike nose, and black hair streaked dramatically with gray.
“Where is the abbess?” she asked, casting a keen glance around our hall.
“Dead, most likely. And good riddance—”
It choked on its words as Mother Dolours came striding into view. “As you can see, Curist Sibylle,” she said in her resonating voice, “there is no sickness here.”
“I do see that, Mother,” the head curist said dryly, still surveying our hall. “How curious, that out of hundreds of patients, not one of them appears to be ill.”
A lay sister squeezed out a shrill, nervous giggle before the others managed to hush her. The head curist raised her eyebrows but didn’t comment. She turned back to Mother Dolours. In a softer voice, she said, “We will cause the least disruption that we can, Dolours, but Her Holiness demands a thorough report.”
I didn’t think I imagined the note of disapproval in her voice as she spoke of the Divine, and was certain of it when Mother Dolours laid a grateful hand on her arm.
Once she had gone, the sisters rushed over to guide Mother Dolours toward a stool, hastily shoving it beneath her when she tottered dangerously on her feet. She collapsed onto it with a great whoosh of air and over the next few minutes, to the awed astonishment of everyone in the hall, proceeded to drink her way through several mugs of ale, passed along to her by a chain of sisters with practiced efficiency. Then, ruddy-faced and restored to full vigor, she charged off to resume her duties. I felt the revenant wince as she went by.
“She could exorcise you, couldn’t she?” I asked, and knew I was right when it sourly refused to answer.
* * *
Full dark had fallen by the time the curists left. They passed my pallet on their way to the door at the end of the hall, speaking to each other in low voices. I was doing my best not to look suspicious in any way—and failing miserably, according to the revenant—when amid their low-voiced conversation I caught a familiar name. Leander.