“I only thought of the idea because of you,” she countered. “Before, I couldn’t figure out how to protect myself from possession when I ran away. But then I realized a spirit can’t possess you if you already have another one taking up room inside your body, even if it’s just a shade.”
“That’s actually quite clever,” the revenant said in surprise.
“So I’ve kept it summoned ever since I left Naimes,” she continued. Her vehemence faltered. “And it’s—it’s been helping me.”
I was so startled I let go of her. “It speaks to you?”
“No. It doesn’t know words. It reminds me of… of a child. When it wants to warn me about something, it’s like a little tug on my cloak.” She looked down, frowning, rubbing her wrist defensively. I remembered the burns on her fingers—they must have been caused by her amulet. “I don’t think the nuns can sense it, or at least they aren’t looking for it, since there are so many shades in the convent already. And it isn’t like they can possess people or anything. Another one doesn’t make a difference.”
“She’s right.” The revenant briefly shifted my vision, showing me Marguerite’s soul. Caught up in the network of golden veins was the tiniest silver glint, far too subtle to notice if the revenant hadn’t drawn my attention to it. “Even I wasn’t watching for a shade.”
Swiftly, she went on, “I thought I would hate it, having it inside my head all the time, not knowing how to put it back into its relic. But I don’t. It’s so happy. It just likes having company. And while I was traveling… I nearly ran into a group of thralls. It saved my life by warning me off the road.”
“The human who wielded the relic before her must have been kind to it.” The revenant sounded distant, its emotions shuttered. “It’s rare for spirits to willingly help their vessels, even ones as simpleminded as shades.”
“Mother Katherine,” I told it reflexively, and then Marguerite’s earlier words sank in.
No one was using it.
Marguerite looked at me with something terrible in her eyes. Grief, pity. I didn’t know which was worse. “Artemisia, I’m sorry.”
I stumbled away as though she had struck me. Barely thinking, only wanting to get away, I grabbed for the ladder leading to the hayloft and started to climb.
“I loved her too,” she said, her voice thick.
I couldn’t turn around. I didn’t want her to see my face.
I didn’t know why I was so upset. I had known for a long time now that Mother Katherine had died in the attack. I just hadn’t been willing to admit it to myself. But my throat still ached as though I’d swallowed a stone. Heat prickled painfully behind my eyes.
I wondered if I was going to cry. I hadn’t cried since I was a child, before I had come to the convent, and I didn’t want the first time I did it again to be in front of the revenant. I felt its presence hovering: too close, seeing everything.
“Go away,” I said, even though there was nowhere else for it to go.
“Nun.”
Whatever it wanted to say, I didn’t want to hear it. It would have killed Mother Katherine itself that day if it had gotten the chance. I had no way to articulate the misery of the shed, the light that had come pouring in when she opened the door. I hadn’t been able to see her face, but I had known she was there to save me. Later I had found out how it had happened: that the story of a girl who had thrust her own hands into a fire had reached the convent, and Mother Katherine had left at once, in the middle of morning prayers, to travel to my nameless town and find me. Like I was worth something—like I was wanted.
Leave me alone, I thought to the revenant. To Marguerite, to the thousands of people who needed my help, to the Gray Lady Herself. Leave me alone.
The revenant seemed as though it wanted to say something else, but I turned my face into the hay, and it was silent.
* * *
When I woke, I knew I wasn’t alone. The weight of someone else’s company filled the loft. I cracked open my eyes, sore and swollen from crying, and found Marguerite sitting near the edge with her knees drawn up to her chest, her arms wrapped tightly around them. She looked like she hadn’t slept much. I remembered with a twist of dread that I had agreed to go with her to the ceremony today.
Seeing me stir, she bent to do something out of my line of sight. I heard water dripping as she wrung out a cloth. “Here,” she said, passing over the wet rag. “Put this over your eyes. I promise it helps.”
You would know, I thought, then felt bad for thinking it. She was right—it did help. Also, it gave me an excuse to cover my face.
Into my private darkness, she said as though she had heard me, “Crying doesn’t make you weak, you know. It’s just a reaction your body has, and there isn’t anything you can do about it.” She sounded sullen. “I know what you’re probably thinking, and it isn’t like I do it on purpose. I don’t want to go around crying all the time. But usually, I’m not even feeling that emotional when it happens. I just leak more than most people.”
I wasn’t certain how to answer. If I tried, I knew I would accidentally say something horrific and ruin the moment.
But Marguerite obviously wanted me to say something. “I told the sisters you had left the infirmary and I would be checking on you to make sure you’re all right.” The silence drew out. “Artemisia,” she said, “I couldn’t stay in Naimes.”
“Why?” I asked. My voice sounded awful, like a croak throttled from a half-dead raven.
Fortunately, she was used to that. “I hated it there. I didn’t want to be a nun, and no one gave me a choice. Wearing gray for the rest of my life, being surrounded by dead people, never leaving the grounds… It was a nightmare.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that, either.
“I’m not like you,” she answered anyway. “I didn’t belong in a place like that.” She took a deep breath. The next time she spoke, her voice shook with something almost like anger. “When I ran away, I knew I might die, or worse. But it would have been worth it. Worth it to live for a week, a day, even a minute outside those miserable gray walls. Being stuck there was like dying already, except so slowly that I barely noticed.”
I risked a glance at her from underneath the rag. She wasn’t looking at me; she was staring out into the stable, seeing someplace else, her jaw set and the color high in her cheeks.
“I want to go places,” she declared. “To see the world for myself, not just read about it in letters. I want to travel all the way to Chantclere. I’m going to see it. I’m going to see the ocean. Aunt Gisele said it’s blue down there, not gray like it is in Naimes. And I’m going to see it.”
Those words had the quality of being repeated over and over to herself like a prayer. I wondered again why her aunt had stopped sending her letters. I didn’t know a great deal about her family, only that they had visited her often in the early years of her novitiate, but over time their visits had dwindled. I supposed it would be easy to forget about a daughter locked far away amid the rocky cliffs of Naimes—easy to justify not making the long, dull, treacherous journey to see her.