I recognized one of the streets we took on our way to the square; it was the narrow, winding avenue where the procession had passed my first day in Bonsaint. Now it was lined with stalls selling festival food. A puppet show occupied the archway that Charles and I had crammed into, the Raven’s King puppet wailing in cowardly despair as the puppeteer pelted him with cloth ravens. Children’s laughter rang in my ears.
Suddenly, the festival’s bright colors seemed garish. The good cheer felt artificial, as though everyone had to keep celebrating, or else the horrors of the countryside would darken their doors. Sister Lucinde had once claimed that nothing bad ever happened on a high holy day. Soon I would find out whether she’d been telling the truth.
“Nun, we’re getting closer to the ritual site. I think the pull is coming from that building in the distance. The one with the spires.”
I followed the tug on my gaze to a collection of spires rising above the rooftops, their shapes nearly lost in the glare of the late-afternoon sun. They were the same spires I had been dizzied by upon my entrance to Bonsaint. Standing still for a moment, I felt it too—the insistent tug of the invisible string urging me in that direction.
Charles noticed me looking. Squinting, he shaded his eyes with his hand. “Have you seen the cathedral yet?”
“The what?” I asked stupidly.
“The Cathedral of Saint Agnes. It’s the second biggest in Loraille, after Saint Theodosia’s in Chantclere. There are seven spires, one for each high saint. Anne?”
The realization had hit me like a bucket of cold water. The cathedral’s sanctuary. The seven tall shapes in the vision had been stained-glass windows; the white plinth below them…
Leander was conducting his rituals at the altar.
I should have realized it earlier, but the idea was so profane I could barely wrap my head around it even now.
“Anne?” Charles repeated, concerned.
“I forgot!” Marguerite exclaimed loudly. “How could I forget? Anne always gets sick when she eats mushrooms.” She grabbed my sleeve and turned me around, mouthing, What’s wrong?
“I’ll tell you later,” I muttered. There wasn’t anything we could do about it now, and Charles was hovering, looking concerned. At least I didn’t have to fake my unhealthy pallor.
I saw the effigy first as we neared the square, a straw figure towering high above the crowd, its face shaped into a rough approximation of human features and the top of its head worked into a crown. The low sun lit it gold against a windy sky torn with clouds. As a representation of the Raven King, it was intended to look sinister, but something about this one’s appearance made my skin crawl. In Naimes, the effigy we used was only about the size of a novice. It had always struck me as looking a little forlorn, as though it knew the fate that awaited it. This one looked like it was waiting to be worshipped.
Charles whistled at the sight of it. “That’s the biggest one yet.”
The ravens had already gathered, numbering in so many hundreds that they looked like a living black cloth draped over the rooftops. They flapped and croaked above the crowd, animated by the excitement in the air.
The buildings’ chilly shadows fell over us as we entered the crowd. Without everyone catching sight of Jean and hastily moving out of our way, I wasn’t sure how we could have gotten through. People were packed into every inch of space, even perched on the statue of Saint Agnes in the center of the square, laughing and eating festival food, pointing at the ravens.
Eventually we found a storefront awning that no one had claimed yet, most likely because they couldn’t reach it. This presented little challenge to Jean, who boosted us up one by one onto the warm slate tiles. From there I could see that the effigy had been raised on a wooden platform, similar to the minstrel show’s stage, but larger and elevated higher above the crowd.
“Look,” Charles said to Jean. “There’s Brother Simon.”
Marguerite and I craned our necks to see the gray-robed figure swinging his censer over the platform. I had never seen a Gray Brother up close. There weren’t as many of them as there were Gray Sisters, since so many Sighted boys went on to become soldiers.
I tried to imagine Leander being raised by monks. Sleeping in a crowded dormitory, laboring away at menial chores. It was almost impossible to picture, even though he couldn’t be far past his boyhood in a monastery—he was only a few years my elder. Where had he gotten his first taste of Old Magic? A locked-away artifact, a forbidden scroll?
“Do you know,” the revenant inserted into my dark ruminations, “it took me nearly a hundred years to figure out that monks existed? All that time, I just assumed they were unusually hairy nuns.”
Any further observations were mercifully cut short by a commotion in the crowd: hooves clattering, cries of excitement. The Divine’s litter had arrived in the square, escorted by a group of clerics, including the hateful black-robed figure riding in a position of honor alongside. He wasn’t on Priestbane, I noticed; he was seated atop the same white horse he had been riding when he had chased me into the forest.
I remembered the rock and worried Priestbane had been lamed, until Charles leaned over to say, grinning, “Did you hear that Artemisia of Naimes rode the confessor’s old horse into battle? Turns out, it was actually his all along—she took it from him on the way to Bonsaint. Apparently he can’t ride it anymore, because people recognize it. He gets mobbed by crowds wanting to touch it for her blessing.”
My mouth twitched with the rare urge to smile.
The revenant said, “I don’t sense anything unusual yet, but I can’t extend my power far with so many clerics nearby. Keep an eye on the priest for any behavior that looks suspicious. Perhaps your pathetic human senses might actually prove useful for once.”
It took some time for the Divine to make her way to the platform. The impressively armored cathedral guard had created a path for her through the crowd, but she stopped frequently as she walked along it, pausing to speak to the festival-goers clamoring for her blessing, stretching out their arms and hoisting up their babies. She spent so long greeting them that the clerics began to look impatient. I watched her bend her head over an old woman’s crippled arm, and it struck me that this wasn’t the behavior of a ruler who would callously bar refugees from the city.
Perhaps the decision hadn’t been hers. Leander was still at her side. To an ignorant observer he probably just looked annoyed by all the babies, but I guessed that his subtle air of discomfort had more to do with his concealed injury. Did he ever leave the Divine alone? I remembered comparing her to a painted doll, but perhaps she was more of a puppet, with Leander tugging her strings.
The group finally reached the platform, dwarfed by the giant straw effigy stretching overhead. I could guess why they’d made it so large this year—the spectacle would come as a much-needed reassurance of the Lady’s goodwill after the devastation that had befallen Roischal.
Based on the crowd’s anticipatory hush, the Divine was going to speak. In Naimes, Mother Katherine had never bothered. She had simply gestured at the dejected-looking effigy, smiling a little sadly, and the Lady had answered in a thunder of wings.