People had begun to notice me. A space was forming, a hush falling. I was met with somber face after somber face, every one of them smeared with ashes. Some were bruised and bloodied from the riots that had taken place overnight, their eyes defiant. Others clutched talismans that I recognized from the stalls—splinters of the holy arrow, scraps of cloth.
At first a number of them gazed searchingly at Marguerite, who probably looked a great deal more like the Artemisia they had expected. Then their eyes began to settle on my ungloved hand. Whispers started circulating. I couldn’t hear them, but I could imagine their contents. Look at her hand. Look at those scars.
To my relief, an approaching figure provided a momentary distraction as he jogged toward us through the crowd. It was Captain Enguerrand, though for a disorienting instant I didn’t recognize him. It gave me a strange shock to see him dressed in ordinary clothes instead of plate armor, revealing him to be average in build, only about Charles’s height and not much broader at the shoulder. Abrasions encircled his wrists where he had been tied with rope. The sword belted around his waist was his only sign of authority, but the crowd parted for him without hesitation.
“The barricades will hold for a time,” he said, his tired, perceptive gaze flicking to me before settling on Mother Dolours. “How long do we have?”
Her face was grim. “Not as long as I would like. Not long enough to evacuate the city.”
Marguerite’s hand tightened on mine. We both knew what she meant. Overturned wagons would hold back the cathedral guard. They wouldn’t contain Sarathiel.
I tried to imagine how long it would take everyone in the cathedral’s square to walk to the Ghostmarch, for the drawbridge’s mechanisms to be engaged and its weight let down. Then for everyone to cross, funneled across its span. I guessed that meant we only had about an hour, at best. Even if the city had a whole afternoon to evacuate, there would still be people left behind—the elderly, the less mobile, families who were sheltering in their cellars out of fear.
“Fleeing wouldn’t do much good in the long run anyway,” the revenant provided helpfully. “The Sevre is annoying for a revenant to cross, but not impossible. Sarathiel will regain its full strength before these humans have gotten far.”
My skin prickled in warning, and I noticed that Mother Dolours was watching me as though she’d heard the revenant speak. Perhaps she had, I thought with a chill.
“I will strengthen our defenses with prayer,” she said brusquely, leaving me none the wiser. “Captain Enguerrand, I entrust the rest to you. Don’t make any fool decisions,” she added, coaxing a faint smile from his tired mouth. “Lady watch over you, child.”
That last part was directed at me. It occurred to me that perhaps I should say something, thank her at least, but she had already charged off, unceremoniously lowering herself to her knees on the cobbles. She bowed her head. The revenant shuddered. Inside one of the cathedral’s shadowed windows, I saw the dancing flames of a candelabra go still.
I turned back around. Hundreds of anxious faces awaited my gaze. Pinned by their attention, I felt a familiar paralysis begin to creep over me. I didn’t know what to do or what to say. These people had rescued me with the expectation that now that I had been freed, I would save them in turn. But the shackles had left me powerless.
Enguerrand glanced at me, then paused and looked more closely, his brow creasing. He beckoned me aside into the partial cover of a vendor’s stall. Marguerite let go of my hand, but followed, dragging Charles along with her. I felt a pang of gratitude when they took up positions behind me, prepared to block anyone who tried to approach.
“I can’t do anything with the shackles on,” I told Enguerrand, once we had reached the awning’s flapping shadow.
“I know. Mother Dolours told us.” I supposed there had been enough witnesses in the cathedral for news of what had happened to have reached the convent. “We have a smith here to see about removing them, but Artemisia, before we go any farther…” For some reason, he looked sad. “You aren’t obligated to help. I need you to understand that. If at any point you feel like you need to stop, I want you to tell me. No one will be upset with you if you can’t help.”
Hearing those words in his kind voice did something terrible to me that I didn’t understand. My throat closed up like a fist; my heart ached as though it had been pierced. I nodded, avoiding his eyes.
He reached out as though to touch my shoulder. I flinched, and he dropped his hand. He looked at me once more with that same deep sadness, then opened the stall’s flap to usher a third person inside. “This is Master Olivar, from the Blacksmiths Guild. Will you let him take a look at those cuffs?”
Master Olivar turned out to be a small, wiry man with skin as brown and wrinkled as a walnut and bright, intelligent dark eyes. To my relief, he sketched a perfunctory bow and then proceeded to ignore me almost completely in his rapt inspection of the shackles.
“I have never seen their like,” he marveled, his fingers fluttering deftly over the hinges. “Extraordinary craftsmanship, extraordinary. The iron could be filed, yes, but it would take a long time, longer than you say we have. To break them open by force…” He shook his head. “No person has the strength. One might heat the metal first, but of course, we cannot do that without injuring young Artemisia.”
His gaze hadn’t lingered on my ungloved hand, but his eyes were knowing. To a blacksmith, his own arms striped with old burns, my scars had to be easily identifiable. He looked up at me keenly, questioning. “To open them, we will need the key.”
If either the Divine or Sarathiel had been carrying it, I hadn’t noticed. Sarathiel, I suspected, had never had any intention of releasing me. For all I knew, it could have tossed the key into the Sevre. “I don’t know where it is,” I answered.
In the silence that followed my admission, which I tried not to read as despairing, the worried murmurs filling the square outside intruded on the stall’s fragile privacy. With the sound, my awareness of the crowd returned. I doubted many of them knew the whole truth, but they had to suspect something. Rumors must be spreading like wildfire.
My heart lurched when I glanced outside and noticed for the first time that there were children among the protestors. Even babies, cradled tightly. Their families likely thought it was safer here than at home, even with the riots. Danger had infiltrated every part of Roischal, including the streets of Bonsaint. Nowhere was safe. It wasn’t the cathedral that offered a final promise of protection now—it was me. They were gathered here to be close to me.
I wondered how Saint Eugenia had felt facing the revenant on that hill in the scriptorium’s tapestry—if she had been afraid, or if faith had turned her heart to iron. Or if there had never been a sunlit hill, a rearing horse, a glorious battle. Perhaps those parts had been made up, like my holy arrow. Perhaps the decisions that shaped the course of history weren’t made in scenes worthy of stories and tapestries, but in ordinary places like these, driven by desperation and doubt.
Enguerrand was right, I thought with a painful twist. No one would be upset with me if I couldn’t help, because they’d all be dead. The people of Roischal needed me as much as I had needed them. Even with the shackles, there was still one way I could save them.