I wanted to tell the revenant, You see, here is the Lady’s grace. It has been here all along. She has shown me Her grace in a drink of water when I was thirsty and bread when I was hungry and a bed when I was tired, not through miracles, but through the kindness of those who stood to gain nothing from helping me. It is through the hands of strangers that She has carried out Her will. But I was too weary and muddle-headed to form the words aloud. By the time I had strung them together in my head, I was already being helped back onto Priestbane’s saddle.
This time, to my relief, the revenant didn’t relinquish control. It was good not to have to move my heavy body—to simply hand over my burdens to a friend. I watched it hold out my arm, which Marguerite was wrapping in bandages she had stripped from her chemise.
“Just one more,” it said through my mouth, addressing Captain Enguerrand. “Let’s head to the convent next.” Then it muttered to me alone, “Stay awake, nun. They’re going to need you before this is over.”
Time seemed to fold in on itself. It was as though I nodded off for an instant, and then we had entered a familiar section of the city, the convent’s mossy walls approaching. I braced myself to endure the scourge of the lichgate, but as we approached its iron bars, no rebukes came. A solitary voice ghosted over me, whispering softly, “My name is Sister Anna. I pray to the goddess, though my bones are long dust. Still I pray, forever.”
Dismounted, I was led stumbling across the grounds. Marguerite held me up on one side, and Charles the other. The revenant was beginning to have difficulty controlling my body.
Beneath their worried chatter, it gasped, “I didn’t predict how much of your strength this ritual would require. No one’s ever attempted Old Magic on this scale before, except…”
It trailed off. Except for the Raven King, I finished numbly.
As though to banish that thought, it raised my head and called hoarsely to Captain Enguerrand, “The chapel. The final symbol needs to be drawn on the chapel’s foundations.”
Behind us, a scattering of screams erupted. The crowd began to flow inside more rapidly. A sister quickly scaled a ladder leaning against the wall. Looking out, she shouted down, “There are thralls coming! Knights, in armor! And”—she faltered, her face turning pale—“the confessor.”
The nuns scrambled into action. The lichgate began to close on the heels of the last civilians streaming inside. The crowd had kept pace with us at the end, but the convent couldn’t possibly hold everyone. I hoped the rest had fled, even though deep down I knew it didn’t matter—that on this side of the lichgate or the other, there was no escape from Sarathiel.
We were passing the barnyard now. I heard a wrench of metal behind us, and realized we wouldn’t reach the chapel before the thralls breached the gate. I tried to speak, and experienced a brief moment of panic before the revenant caught on. I stumbled as the weight of my body returned.
“I need to get the shackles off,” I panted.
Over my head, Charles and Marguerite exchanged looks of dread. I knew what they were thinking. They had heard from Enguerrand that removing the shackles was impossible.
Then a heavy clinking sound drew everyone’s attention. Jean was returning from the stable, carrying a chisel and mallet taken from the convent’s small smithy, where repairs could be made to horseshoes and the wheels of the corpse-wagons. Large as the mallet was, it resembled a toy in his enormous hands.
No person has the strength, Master Olivar had said. But I wagered that he had never met Jean.
As he advanced, Charles caught Marguerite’s eye. “He can do it,” he insisted. “I’d bet my life on it.”
Marguerite’s lips parted, but no reply came. Her eyes were on the chisel. She was probably thinking that a single miscalculated swing could sever my wrist. She still hadn’t let go.
“Let him,” I said.
That broke the spell. They helped me to the ground. Jean set the chisel against the shackle on my left wrist. When the mallet struck, the impact reverberated through my body, humming along my bones as though my arm were the clapper inside a bell. The shackle parted, split cleanly in two.
He repositioned the chisel. Raised the mallet again. A crack, and the right shackle broke, falling away from my wrist. Power roared into my veins like a healing draught, like a river of cleansing fire. Suddenly, I found that I could stand.
A strange double vision overtook me as my eyes fell on the knights invading the convent through the breached lichgate. I felt as though I were back in Naimes, except this time, instead of watching helplessly from afar, I could stop it. I could make it so that the thralls never took another step, never raised their swords. I could do anything.
I stretched out my hand. The knights collapsed like toppled toys, the wraiths that had possessed them streaming violently from their bodies. Another wave of knights followed, and they fell in turn. The effort barely registered. I no longer felt human. I was a vessel, forged to bear the revenant’s power.
The sister watching from the ladder gave a strangled cry. She clambered down, stumbling as she fled. A moment later, mist seeped over the wall, pouring down its side in a silvery curtain. At its touch, the ivy curled and browned; a sparrow dropped dead from the withered leaves. More mist crept through the open space where the gate had stood, reaching its fingers into the convent. Within, barely visible, strode a tall, black-robed figure.
On the battlefield, I hadn’t dared unleash the revenant’s full power near the soldiers and refugees. The same risk had held me back in the square. But now I had no choice. I had wielded the revenant’s ghost-fire before in my own convent—perhaps I could control it again here.
“Revenant,” I said, “attend me.”
I had almost forgotten how it felt. The triumphant howl of power unleashed, the spreading of a great pair of fiery wings. My cloak and hair seemed to lift around me, weightless. Flames roared forth, tumbling over the convent’s grounds. The mist evaporated in their path. The confused, roiling wraiths vanished like stars smothered behind a spreading cloud. I felt a distant twinge of regret at their loss, but it quickly faded to nothing before the towering onslaught of my hunger. The fire spread onward to engulf the city, racing through the streets, sweeping over rooftops, flooding into every window and alley and cellar.
Everywhere, souls flared to life. I could map the city by their glittering multitude alone—the rats skittering through the walls, the constellations of insects clotted around the foundations of buildings; the families huddled fearfully inside their homes, wrapped in each other’s arms. But it was Sarathiel who glowed the most brightly, its brilliant light condensed into the shape of a man like molten silver poured into a mold. With distant, starved amazement, I realized that I could see the priest’s soul, too—glimmers of gold drowning in Sarathiel’s light.
I needed to destroy Sarathiel. This much I remembered through the consuming haze of hunger. But I couldn’t devour its essence without consuming everything else—every living thing in Bonsaint, down to the worms in the graves and the weeds poking up between the cobbles.
And why not? I no longer remembered why I cared. The world was radiant. My thoughts were silver fire.