Startlingly small in comparison, Marguerite had placed herself in front of him and the others, her arms spread as though trying to protect them from the thrall. I wondered what she thought she was going to accomplish. Even if she were armed, she wasn’t any good at fighting. The thrall would kill her more easily than a kitten.
I was already moving, throwing off Charles’s slack arms. If the other soldier tried to intervene, I didn’t feel his touch. I didn’t feel the people who ran into me or shoved me or trod on my boots. I only grew aware of the revenant speaking at the very end.
“Keep going,” it was urging sharply. “Don’t fall over, you horrid nun. You’re almost there.” And then it said, “Grab him.”
When the thrall saw me coming, he started to bring up his sword, but his angle was poor. I seized his arm and wrenched it, and the sword went clanging to the ground. Before he could think of rushing me, I planted a hand on his face and drove him down. With the revenant’s strength, he went easily, and the spirit came boiling out from his mouth and nose and eyes, streaming between my fingers. I wasn’t sure if the revenant had exorcised it, or if it was so desperate to escape that it had abandoned its vessel on purpose.
The revenant said viciously, “Don’t let go,” and I felt the spirit being drawn inward, into me, siphoned up like breath, until all that remained of it was a cold half-sated hunger numbing the pit of my stomach like frost. The revenant had devoured it.
There was a pause in the square—a brief cessation of noise, in which I heard a strange gasping, sighing exhalation. Marguerite’s hands were on me, helping me to my feet, her astonished face lit silver, and then I saw it: across the square, the blight wraiths were abandoning their vessels en masse, pouring upward as pillars of light. I stared in confusion, wondering if the Lady had intervened with a miracle. Awe swept coldly over my body.
Then I remembered what the revenant had said in the hayloft. Most spirits would rather leap into the Sevre than cross me.
The spirits knew it was here. They were fleeing in terror—all of them at once.
The white vicar still remained, its radiant form suspended above the square. But as soon as I looked, a thin, earsplitting scream rippled through the air: the debilitating wail of a fury. The sound grated in my ears like fingernails scratching down a pane of glass, but it didn’t freeze me the way it had in Naimes. This time, it hadn’t been aimed at me. Across the square, silhouetted by the conflagration, the Divine had finally raised her scepter. The vicar wore a look of deathly scorn, but the relic’s power had caught it fast, and already the soldiers were closing in.
A face leaped out from the crowd nearby: Leander, illuminated by the ghost-light. He was gazing upward at the fleeing spirits. He looked young and almost vulnerable as he watched his plan collapse. Then his mouth twisted. He shoved forward, his hand wrapped around his ring. The first person to get in his way fell writhing to the cobbles. Then Captain Enguerrand’s armored figure stepped from the crowd to block his path.
I didn’t see any more. The heat was smothering me; the smoke was filling my lungs. Distantly, I registered that the people Marguerite had been trying to protect were watching.
“It’s her,” one of them said. “It’s Saint Artemisia.”
I often wanted the ground to open up and swallow me whole. Just this once, I received my wish. The world turned sideways, and everything went dark.
TWENTY
I awoke on a bed in an unfamiliar room, full of unfamiliar people staring at me. They drew back when I yanked myself against the headboard, exchanging glances and whispering. Most of them signed themselves; an old woman even got down and prostrated herself on the floor.
My heart slammed dizzily against my ribs. The first thing I noticed was that I could still faintly smell smoke. Perhaps it was coming in from outside, or it was clinging to everyone’s hair and clothes. The second thing I noticed was that I wasn’t wearing my gloves.
“Where are my gloves?” I asked.
“Calm down, nun,” said the revenant, as Charles hurried into the room.
“You’re awake,” he said, his expression relieved until he saw my face. He dropped to his knees beside the bed. “Artemisia, it’s all right.”
Artemisia. He was calling me Artemisia in front of these people. But it didn’t matter; they already knew. “Where are my gloves?” I repeated. For some reason, it hurt my throat to speak.
He reached for my shoulder, then seemed to think better of it. “Elaine’s washing them, along with the rest of your clothes. You don’t remember? The smoke—you told us about the smoke. How the smell bothers you.”
I didn’t remember saying that, but I wasn’t about to admit that in front of a roomful of people who were likely well on their way to being convinced that I was mad. Strangely, a small prick of guilt came from the revenant.
“Where are we?” I asked instead, trying to make my voice sound less harsh. There was a little boy clinging to the skirts of a woman who I thought might be Elaine, and I didn’t want to frighten him.
The woman stepped forward; the little boy shyly hid behind her legs. “This is my house,” she said softly, her gaze lowered. “We brought you here after you saved us.”
“They’re helping hide you,” Charles added, turning back to me, his gaze earnest. “The Clerisy doesn’t know you’re here.”
“Yet,” the revenant put in darkly. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned about humans, it’s that your kind loves to gossip. Nuns are no exception, by the way. The ancient and terrible knowledge I harbor about Sister Prunelle’s bunions would make even you beg for mercy.”
A thousand questions crowded my mind. I wanted to ask everyone to leave, but I was their guest. I assumed that this room, with its multiple cots and cushion-covered chests, functioned as the sleeping chambers for the entire household. It looked like everyone I had rescued from the thrall had returned here, not just Elaine’s family. There were perhaps a dozen people in the room, about half of them seated, the others standing as though they had forgotten how to sit. I didn’t recognize any of them except for Jean, crouched in the corner with his big hands wedged between his knees. The old woman was still prostrated on the floor, mumbling prayers.
“Please,” I said. “Don’t do that.”
Elaine bent and murmured something to her, gently drawing her up, leading her over to a seat on one of the chests. Then she hesitated, wringing her hands. “Is there anything you can tell us?” she asked in her soft voice, still keeping her gaze averted, as though I might blind her. “About what happened? About why the Lady—”
Suddenly, a jumble of voices filled the room, all asking questions simultaneously. “How did the spirits get into the city?” “Why didn’t the Lady send Her ravens?” “Has She forsaken us?” “Are we—” “My father was in—” “Can you—”
My pulse began hammering. Some of the people who had been sitting were starting to stand up. The little boy hid his face, frightened by the adults yelling.
If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t have been able to speak. But I focused on him and forced out the words. “I think it was a warning.” I wasn’t certain whether anyone would be able to hear me through the noise, but silence fell as soon as I began to talk. “She was trying to warn us of the danger. She didn’t forsake us. She never does.”