“That I am your destined vessel,” she said, her face lighting.
“It is the Lady’s will,” it agreed tranquilly.
“Very well. But we won’t harm Artemisia.”
“Of course not,” Sarathiel soothed. “We only need Saint Eugenia’s relic, and then she will no longer be a danger to you.” It turned to me. “Give me the reliquary.”
“I don’t have it.”
Sarathiel regarded me with mild surprise, as though it hadn’t expected me to prove capable of speech. “Where is it?”
“I don’t know.”
With the Divine anxiously looking on, he began to search me—it did, I reminded myself, as Leander’s elegant hands smoothed down my tunic, lifted my hair as though it were an animal’s tail to check beneath. This was just Leander’s body, a vessel, his mind locked away as a prisoner inside. I wondered if his consciousness was buried too deeply to be aware of what was happening, or if he was watching, feeling every touch.
Sarathiel finished and stepped back. It didn’t appear angry or disappointed to have not found the reliquary. A trembling lector returned with the shackles, made his obeisance to the Divine, and then stared at me uncertainly. I obviously wasn’t what he had expected of Artemisia of Naimes. I wondered what he had envisioned—someone older, or more beautiful.
The chain had been removed, but they were unmistakably the shackles I had worn in the harrow. While the cuffs had been left warped and scorched by my escape, they still appeared functional. I instinctively stiffened, prepared to resist.
Sarathiel leaned in close, closer, until Leander’s warm lips brushed my ear. “We could quarrel with each other here, little vessel,” it murmured, breath soft against my cheek. “But how many humans would survive a battle between revenants? Rathanael knows. Why don’t you tell her, Rathanael?”
The revenant tugged my gaze upward, and my heart stopped. A translucent, barely visible silver mist was pouring silently down the cathedral’s walls, creeping over the stained-glass windows, collecting in ghostly pools in the corners. It rolled across the carpet and seeped between the pews, reaching its fingers toward the preoccupied clerics standing in the aisle.
“Its mist is like my fire,” the revenant said. “It will kill anything it touches.”
I imagined the mist reaching the first clerics, their bodies dropping limply to the carpet. The brief panic before the others fell, one by one, like puppets with cut strings. And then I would be standing alone with Sarathiel in a cathedral full of corpses. Chilled to the bone, I extended my hands.
The lector closed the cold, heavy weight of the first shackle around my wrist. A flash of blistering pain stole my breath. I barely felt the second, my thoughts dazed and swimming.
“Forgive me, lady,” said the lector, distraught. He began to bow to me the same way he had to the Divine, caught himself, and scurried off instead. Sarathiel watched him go like a cat drawn to the movement of a fleeing mouse.
I seized the chance to speak to the Divine. Roughly, I said, “Whatever it’s promised you, it’s lying.”
She smiled at me, and I felt a wash of despair, realizing that that was the same thing Leander had told me in the catacombs, nearly word for word. I hadn’t listened. And now neither would she.
“Have patience, Artemisia.” A light and certainty illuminated her features in a way I had only seen once before, after the appearance of the sign in the cathedral. “I can’t explain everything to you now, but the Lady has answered my prayers. I know it’s difficult to believe, but you will understand—I’m certain of it. You need only a little time.”
* * *
They placed me in a room in one of the cathedral’s spires. It was shaped like a halved birdcage with curved walls and a half-moon floor, its limestone bare save a straw pallet tucked in one corner. Wind moaned through a small barred window; ancient water stains wept down the sill. The main source of light was a torch in the hallway outside, its glow spilling beneath the door.
I went to the window. With the revenant’s power, I might have been able to bend its bars. Standing on my toes and peering through it at an angle, I could see a section of the courtyard far below, still sparkling with the protestors’ candles. From this high up, their chanting blurred into a meaningless ebb and flow of sound.
I willed them to disperse, to go home. To pack their things and leave the city. Otherwise they would die, and it would be my fault. The hopeless weight crushing my chest felt like the effects of Leander’s relic—and I even felt sorry for him, Sarathiel’s prisoner in body and soul, a helpless captive to everything he had tried to prevent.
I bent and pressed my forehead to the sill.
“There was nothing you could have done differently,” the revenant remarked.
“I could have stopped the Divine.”
“You’re mortal, nun. You aren’t perfect. In fact, for a human, you make remarkably few stupid decisions. Only rarely do I want to possess you and bash your brains out against a wall.”
I turned away and sank down on the pallet. “I thought you said I was the worst vessel you’ve ever had.”
“I didn’t mean that. Nun…” Whatever it had started to say, it didn’t seem to be able to finish. After a long pause, it said instead, “Sarathiel still isn’t at its full strength. That was why it took the priest as a vessel—it needs to hide itself as it continues to recover. It won’t risk revealing itself until it has destroyed my relic.”
I lifted the shackles and let them drop against my lap, clinking. “Is there anything you can do like this?”
“I could take over your body, but only if you let me, and it wouldn’t be much use. My power would still be suppressed.”
I looked back at the window, at the patch of dark sky behind the bars. Clouds must have blown in, because I couldn’t see any stars.
“There’s one other thing,” it ventured. “Something that doesn’t have to do with my power at all. Now that I’ve seen the altar up close, I believe I could replicate the ritual that nearly destroyed Sarathiel. But there are certain limitations,” it went on when I didn’t react. “For a ritual that advanced to succeed, we would need a site of power—a place that’s been prepared for Old Magic, like the altar.”
“A forge to make a weapon,” I said, remembering its earlier metaphor.
“Yes, precisely,” it said. It sounded surprised—either because I had caught on so quickly, or because I wasn’t vehemently protesting the idea. “Unfortunately, it would take days to suitably prepare this cell. Old Magic has never been practiced here before, which is necessary for a space to withstand the energy of a powerful ritual. If we tried, I imagine the results would be quite messy.”
Mouth dry, I thought of the scorch marks on Saint Agnes’s altar, and was ashamedly glad this conversation was theoretical. But my thoughts dwelled on the idea of using Old Magic nonetheless. How far would I go, if I had no other choice? I could no longer condemn those who had turned to heresy as a last resort—not now that I knew how it felt to see so many lives hanging in the balance, unable to help, the hopelessness and guilt closing in like the walls of a tomb. If there was any force that could save them…